Beethoven’s Unfinished Tenth Symphony Gets Completed by Artificial Intelligence: Hear How It Sounds

in Music, Technology | September 27th, 2021

Few sym­phonies are as well-known as Beethoven’s Ninth, an asser­tion sup­port­ed by the fact that it’s no doubt play­ing in your head even as you read this. Few sym­phonies are less well-known — at least by Beethoven’s stan­dards — than his Tenth, pri­mar­i­ly because he nev­er actu­al­ly got the thing fin­ished. He did make a start on it, how­ev­er, and at his death in 1827 left behind notes and drafts com­posed along­side the Ninth, which had also been com­mis­sioned by the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety. Such is Beethoven’s stature that his enthu­si­asts have been spec­u­lat­ing ever since on what his incom­plete sym­pho­ny would sound like if com­plet­ed, employ­ing any tech­niques to do so that their time put at hand.

“In 1988, musi­col­o­gist Bar­ry Coop­er ven­tured to com­plete the first and sec­ond move­ments,” writes Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Art & AI Lab direc­tor Ahmed Elgam­mal at The Con­ver­sa­tion. “He wove togeth­er 250 bars of music from the sketch­es to cre­ate what was, in his view, a pro­duc­tion of the first move­ment that was faith­ful to Beethoven’s vision. Yet the sparse­ness of Beethoven’s sketch­es made it impos­si­ble for sym­pho­ny experts to go beyond that first move­ment.”

When Beethoven’s mile­stone 250th year approached, how­ev­er, the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was well under­way. To Matthias Röder, the direc­tor of Salzburg’s Kara­jan Insti­tute, unit­ing this tow­er­ing com­pos­er and this promis­ing tech­nol­o­gy had become an irre­sistible propo­si­tion.

Elgam­mal and Röder were just two of the team that came togeth­er to take on the for­mi­da­ble task of engi­neer­ing a form of machine learn­ing capa­ble of help­ing to com­plete Beethoven’s Tenth. The oth­ers includ­ed com­pos­er Wal­ter Wer­zowa (“famous for writ­ing Intel’s sig­na­ture bong jin­gle”), com­pu­ta­tion­al music expert Mark Gotham, and musi­col­o­gist-pianist Robert Levin, who “had pre­vi­ous­ly fin­ished a num­ber of incom­plete 18th-cen­tu­ry works by Mozart and Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach.” Deutsche Telekom pro­vid­ed fund­ing for the project, and also pro­duced the short doc­u­men­tary video on its result above. How­ev­er con­cep­tu­al­ly intrigu­ing, this A.I.-driven musi­cal endeav­or could final­ly be put to the test in only one way: hear­ing it per­formed by a 100-per­cent human orches­tra. As Wer­zowa puts it, look­ing sky­ward, “We hope when he hears it now that he smiles.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quar­tets: An Ear­ly Cel­e­bra­tion of the 250th Anniver­sary of His Birth

Did Beethoven Use a Bro­ken Metronome When Com­pos­ing His String Quar­tets? Sci­en­tists & Musi­cians Try to Solve the Cen­turies-Old Mys­tery

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Writes a Piece in the Style of Bach: Can You Tell the Dif­fer­ence Between JS Bach and AI Bach?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear the Brazilian Metal Band Singing in–and Trying to Save–Their Native Language of Tupi-Guarani

in Language, Music | September 23rd, 2021

The indige­nous lan­guages spo­ken in Brazil num­ber around 170, a tes­ta­ment to the sur­vival of trib­al com­mu­ni­ties near­ly wiped out by colo­nial­ism and com­merce. Yet 40 of those lan­guages have few­er than 100 speak­ers, and many more are declin­ing rapid­ly. For lin­guists, “it’s a fight against time,” Luisi Destri writes at Pesquisa. Researchers esti­mate most, if not all, of these lan­guages could dis­ap­pear with­in 50 to 100 years, and some believe 30 per­cent might fade in the next 15 years.

“Knowl­edge is passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion,” says Luciano Stor­to, pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of São Paulo, “main­ly through nar­ra­tives told by the old­est and most expe­ri­enced to the community’s youngest mem­bers.” What hap­pens when those younger gen­er­a­tions are uproot­ed and leave home. When their elders die with­out pass­ing on their knowl­edge? (What hap­pens to lan­guage in gen­er­al as the lin­guis­tic gene pool shrinks?) These ques­tions weighed on Zhân­dio Aquino in 2004 when he found­ed Brazil­ian met­al band Aran­du Arakuaa.

Aquino has a degree in ped­a­gogy and his band has been invit­ed to play in schools and lec­ture at uni­ver­si­ties. But they do not use indige­nous instru­men­ta­tion and sing in an indige­nous Tupi-Guarani lan­guage as a pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic exer­cise. Raised in the north­ern state of Tocan­tins and descend­ed from a Guarani-speak­ing tribe, the gui­tarist and singer says, “I [had] very close con­tact with indige­nous cul­ture because of my grand­moth­er and class­mates. When I [began] play­ing in bands, it just felt nat­ur­al to put my back­ground on it.”

When he moved to Brasil­ia in 2004, Aquino searched for like-mind­ed musi­cians and formed what may be the country’s first folk met­al band. While folk met­al as a cat­e­go­ry is hard­ly new (met­al has always incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments of folk music, from its ear­li­est incar­na­tions in Black Sab­bath and Led Zep­pelin to the bleak­est of Scan­di­na­vian black met­al bands), most folk met­al has been Euro­pean (and Pagan or Viking or Pirate), and some of it has allied, sad­ly, with the same fas­cist move­ments that threat­en indige­nous exis­tence.

While Aran­du Arakuaa — the name trans­lates to “cos­mos knowl­edge” — may be one of the first folk met­al bands in Brazil, it isn’t the only one. Along with bands like Aclla, Armah­da, and Tamuya Thrash Tribe, the band is part of a move­ment called the Lev­ante do Met­al Nati­vo, or Native Met­al Upris­ing, a col­lec­tion of musi­cians using native instru­ments, themes, and lan­guages — or all three in the case of Aran­du Arakuaa, who incor­po­rate mara­cas and the gui­tar-like vio­la caipi­ra.

How do acoustic indige­nous folk and the elec­tric crunch and growl of met­al come togeth­er? Hear for your­self in the videos here. Aquino knows Aran­du Arakuaa does­n’t win every­one over at first. “Peo­ple are not indif­fer­ent to our music,” he says. “They will love it or hate it. Most peo­ple think it’s strange at first and then we have to prove that we are good.”

While intel­li­gi­ble lyrics are hard­ly nec­es­sary in met­al, the lan­guage bar­ri­er may turn some lis­ten­ers away. But sub­ti­tled videos help. Aran­du Arakuaa might seem to have a dif­fer­ent focus than most met­al bands, but in songs like “Red Peo­ple,” we hear the rage and the resis­tance to war and depre­da­tion that bands like Black Sab­bath, Iron Maid­en, and Metal­li­ca — all influ­ences on the Brazil­ian band –have chan­neled in their music:

Some of us ran away, we hide in the for­est
We still fight
The red peo­ple still resist­ing, while there is land, while there is for­est
Every­thing became dif­fer­ent
Our spir­its are called demons
Each day less trees, less ani­mals, less his­to­ries, less songs…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Native Lands: An Inter­ac­tive Map Reveals the Indige­nous Lands on Which Mod­ern Nations Were Built

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Superstar Violinist Nigel Kennedy Reinvents Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”: Watch Two Dynamic Performances

in Music | September 21st, 2021

Vio­lin­ists don’t often make the news these days, but when one does, you can be rea­son­ably assured either that a musi­cal con­tro­ver­sy is afoot, or that the vio­lin­ist in ques­tion is Nigel Kennedy. This time, both of those are the case: Kennedy, as The Guardian’s Dalya Alberge reports, “has pulled out of a con­cert at the Roy­al Albert Hall with only days to go after accus­ing the radio sta­tion Clas­sic FM of pre­vent­ing him from per­form­ing a Jimi Hen­drix trib­ute.” At issue is his intent to per­form a ver­sion of Hen­drix’s “Lit­tle Wing,” but even with its “Celtic-sound­ing melody,” that com­po­si­tion was ulti­mate­ly deemed “not suit­able” for the audi­ence.

It seems that Clas­sic FM’s man­age­ment would have pre­ferred Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, of which Kennedy record­ed the world’s best-sell­ing ver­sion in 1989. That a clas­si­cal radio sta­tion famous for con­cen­trat­ing its pro­gram­ming on the “hits” and a clas­si­cal per­former famous for delib­er­ate­ly unortho­dox musi­cal turns would fail to see eye-to-eye should not, per­haps, come as a sur­prise.

But then, Kennedy has long dis­played a keen instinct for pub­lic­i­ty and a ten­den­cy to — well, one would say épa­ter les bour­geois, were Hen­drix not now regard­ed as so thor­ough­ly respectable in his own right. As Kennedy sees it, he was “one of the fore­most com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry, along with Stravin­sky and Duke Elling­ton.”

The gui­tarist’s exalt­ed sta­tus rests, Kennedy argues, on his hav­ing “brought all types of music togeth­er.” Even in a song like “Pur­ple Haze” — which you can see Kennedy rein­ter­pret with the Pol­ish Cham­ber Orches­tra in 2005, and again at the 2015 Thanks Jim Fes­ti­val in Wro­claw — musi­col­o­gists hear traces of both the Amer­i­can blues and the Mixoly­di­an mode, along with such uncon­ven­tion­al-for-1967 touch­es as the dimin­ished-fifth melod­ic inter­val, long known as the “dia­bo­lus in musi­ca” and the E7♯9 chord, now known as the “Hen­drix chord.” Much of the song only uses two oth­er chords, mak­ing “Pur­ple Haze” the rare three-chord, under-three-minute rock hit that con­tains more than enough sub­stance to inspire an uncon­ven­tion­al­ly mind­ed clas­si­cal musi­cian. But then, try telling that to a pro­gram direc­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Japan­ese Vio­lin­ist Cov­ers Eddie Van Halen’s “Erup­tion”: Met­al Meets Clas­si­cal Again

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Recording Secrets of Nirvana’s Nevermind Revealed by Producer Butch Vig

in Music | September 20th, 2021

Peo­ple fig­ured out that I’d tapped into some­thing in mak­ing that record; a lot of labels came call­ing because they want­ed to see if I could bring that mag­ic to what­ev­er artists they had. But I found it sor­ta annoy­ing in some ways, because peo­ple thought I had a for­mu­la, that I could take a folk artist or a blues gui­tarist and make them sound like Nir­vana.

The pop cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind caught every­one involved by sur­prise — from the band, to the label, to Butch Vig, just then mak­ing a name for him­self as a 90s alt-rock super­pro­duc­er by releas­ing Nev­er­mind and Smash­ing Pumpkin’s Gish the same year and help­ing define the sound of gui­tar rock for the 90s. “It was per­fect tim­ing com­ing out when there was a shift in music and it felt like a rev­o­lu­tion,” Vig tells Spin. “Despite being a great record, it would not have the same cul­tur­al impact” if it were released today.

Vig offers a few rea­sons why it’s dif­fi­cult for an album to have the same influ­ence. “Every­thing is so instant that it’s hard to build up some mys­tique. When you real­ly want some­thing but can’t quite get your hands on it, that makes it all the more pow­er­ful.”

Fans could even­tu­al­ly get their hands on the album with­out much trou­ble in 1991. (Gef­fen orig­i­nal­ly shipped only 46,521 copies in the U.S. in antic­i­pa­tion of low sales); but they couldn’t get enough of Kurt Cobain, who became a com­mod­i­ty before social media turned every­one into an aspir­ing com­mod­i­ty, a role con­tem­po­rary stars like Bil­lie Eil­ish now talk about open­ly in terms of the toll it takes on men­tal health.

Revis­it­ing Nev­er­mind on its 30th anniver­sary offers an occa­sion to dis­cuss what made the album, the band, and Cobain so major­ly appeal­ing at the time. It also gives us a chance to talk about what hap­pens when media com­pa­nies and record labels seize on a unique event and dri­ve it right into the ground. These are worth­while dis­cus­sions, but if we’re talk­ing to Butch Vig — super­pro­duc­er and founder and drum­mer of 90s jug­ger­naut Garbage — our time is bet­ter spent ask­ing the ques­tion he’s best poised to answer: what, exact­ly, made Nev­er­mind such a great album? What did Vig hear behind the mix­ing desk that has so cap­ti­vat­ed lis­ten­ers for 30 years?

In the videos here, you can see Vig — with com­men­tary from sur­viv­ing Nir­vana mem­bers Krist Novosel­ic and Dave Grohl — demon­strate how sev­er­al tracks came togeth­er, and how he enhanced and expand­ed the sound of the trio with­out need­ing to do much to make them sound absolute­ly huge. As he tells Ker­rang in a recent inter­view, when the band first hired him:

A cou­ple days lat­er, a cas­sette showed up in the mail, with a hand­writ­ten let­ter, and I put it on and heard Kurt going, ​‘Hey Butch, it’s Kurt, we’re excit­ed to come and rock out with you. We’re going to play a cou­ple of new songs, and we’ve got Dave Grohl, and he’s the great­est drum­mer in the world.’ And then I hear the gui­tar intro to …Teen Spir­it, and when Dave hit the drums, it just com­plete­ly destroyed every­thing.… I thought, “Wow these songs are great,” even though the record­ing qual­i­ty on that cas­sette was hor­ri­ble.

The mag­ic was always in the songs, whether cap­tured on a boom box or the stu­dio gear of Gef­fen records after the band left their indie label Sub Pop. (It’s worth lis­ten­ing to the Sub Pop founders tell their sto­ry on the How I Built This pod­cast.) Hear Vig talk about how he bot­tled it above, and see more of his Nev­er­mind mak­ing-of pro­duc­tion videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

Watch Nir­vana Go Through Rehearsals for Their Famous MTV Unplugged Ses­sions: “Pol­ly,” “The Man Who Sold the World” & More (1993)

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Strange Magic of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile”

in Music | September 16th, 2021

Poor Poly­phon­ic. He was just about to deliv­er anoth­er per­fect­ly mixed trea­tise on a clas­sic rock mag­num opus when the YouTube algo­rithm and the Jimi Hen­drix Estate stepped in to stop him before pub­lish­ing. So while you can watch this real-time expli­ca­tion of Hendrix’s more-than-just-a-jam “Voodoo Chile” with just the the graph­ics and the nar­ra­tion, you should cue up the 15 minute track how­ev­er you can (for exam­ple on Spo­ti­fy), and then press play when when the video gives the sig­nal. (This might be the first YouTube explain­er video to ask for copy­right-skirt­ing help.)

And any­way, you should have a copy of Elec­tric Lady­land, right? It’s the one where Hen­drix and the Expe­ri­ence real­ly push all the bound­aries, tak­ing rock, blues, jazz, psy­che­delia, sci-fi, everything…all out as far as pos­si­ble in the stu­dio. It’s the one that intro­duced future mem­bers of the Band of Gyp­sies. And it’s the one that hints of every­thing that might have been, if Hen­drix hadn’t passed away soon after.

Now, clas­sic rock radio usu­al­ly plays the much short­er and less laid back “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” that clos­es the album. But this essay is about the longest track on Elec­tric Lady­land, the one that ends side one. This is the track that Hen­drix want­ed to sound like a light night jam at New York club The Scene—and which he record­ed after one par­tic­u­lar night doing just that. He taped the audi­ence effects soon after. Steve Win­wood is on key­boards. Jack Casady from Jef­fer­son Air­plane plays bass. And Mitch Mitchell turns in one of his great­est per­for­mances and solos.

In the lyrics, Poly­phon­ic notes, Hen­drix con­nects the blues to his Chero­kee her­itage and to voodoo, to sex, and then beyond into sci­ence fic­tion land­scapes. The song is a self-por­trait, show­ing the past, the influ­ence, the train­ing, and then the poten­tial that music, mag­ic, and (let’s face it) LSD could bring. The band is vib­ing. Win­wood drops riffs that are more British folk than Chica­go blues. Hen­drix strays far beyond the orbit of blues, swings past it one more time on his own slight return, and then explodes into star­dust.

Polyphonic’s video also looks beau­ti­ful and per­fect­ly inter­spers­es his cri­tique with the song’s main sec­tions. It may have sound­ed like a jam, but Hen­drix care­ful­ly designed it to flow the way it does. And Poly­phon­ic fol­lows suit. It is a high­ly enjoy­able walk through a track (again find it on Spo­ti­fy here) many already know, reawak­en­ing a sense of won­der about all its inher­ent, strange genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Jimi Hendrix’s Home Audio Sys­tem & Record Col­lec­tion Gets Recre­at­ed in His Lon­don Flat

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Zoom Into a Super High Resolution Photo of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”

in Art, Google, Music | September 14th, 2021

“Just as we take the train to get to Taras­con or Rouen, we take death to reach a star,” Vin­cent Van Gogh wrote to his broth­er from Arles in the sum­mer of 1888:

What’s cer­tain­ly true in this argu­ment is that while alive, we can­not go to a star, any more than once dead we’d be able to take the train.

The fol­low­ing sum­mer, as a patient in the asy­lum of Saint-Paul-de-Mau­sole in Provence, he paint­ed what would become his best known work — The Star­ry Night.

The sum­mer after that, he was dead of a gun­shot wound to the abdomen, com­mon­ly believed to be self-inflict­ed.

Judg­ing from thoughts expressed in that same let­ter, Van Gogh may have con­ceived of such a death as a “celes­tial means of loco­mo­tion, just as steam­boats, omnibus­es and the rail­way are ter­res­tri­al ones”:

To die peace­ful­ly in old age would be to go there on foot.

Although his win­dow at the asy­lum afford­ed him a sun­rise view, and a pri­vate audi­ence with the promi­nent morn­ing star he men­tioned in anoth­er let­ter to Theo, Star­ry Night’s vista is “both an exer­cise in obser­va­tion and a clear depar­ture from it,” accord­ing to 2019’s MoMA High­lights: 375 Works from The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art:

The vision took place at night, yet the paint­ing, among hun­dreds of art­works van Gogh made that year, was cre­at­ed in sev­er­al ses­sions dur­ing the day, under entire­ly dif­fer­ent atmos­pher­ic con­di­tions. The pic­turesque vil­lage nes­tled below the hills was based on oth­er views—it could not be seen from his window—and the cypress at left appears much clos­er than it was. And although cer­tain fea­tures of the sky have been recon­struct­ed as observed, the artist altered celes­tial shapes and added a sense of glow.

Those who can’t vis­it MoMA to see The Star­ry Night in per­son may enjoy get­ting up close and per­son­al with Google Arts and Cul­ture’s zoomable, high res dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion. Keep click­ing into the image to see the paint­ing in greater detail.

Before or after for­mu­lat­ing your own thoughts on The Star­ry Night and the emo­tion­al state that con­tributed to its exe­cu­tion, get the per­spec­tive of singer-song­writer Mag­gie Rogers in the below episode of Art Zoom, in which pop­u­lar musi­cians share their thoughts while nav­i­gat­ing around a famous can­vas.

Bonus! Throw your­self into a free col­or­ing page of The Star­ry Night here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Rare Vin­cent van Gogh Paint­ing Goes on Pub­lic Dis­play for the First Time: Explore the 1887 Paint­ing Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Paul McCartney vs. Brian Wilson: A Rivalry That Inspired Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper, and Other Classic Albums

in History, Music | September 10th, 2021

One could argue that the album as we know it did­n’t exist before the mid-1960s. As a medi­um of record­ed music, the “long-play­ing” 33 1⁄3 rpm record was intro­duced in 1948, and the mar­ket proved quick to take it up. A great many musi­cians record­ed LPs over the fol­low­ing decade and a half, but these were pro­duced and con­sumed pri­mar­i­ly as bun­dles of indi­vid­ual songs. The hey­day of radio, which last­ed into the 1950s, imbued the sin­gle — espe­cial­ly the hit sin­gle — with enor­mous cul­tur­al pow­er. Through that zeit­geist rose the Liv­er­pudlian quar­tet known as the Bea­t­les, the very band who would go prompt­ly on to tran­scend it.

In this ver­sion of music his­to­ry, the first true album was the Bea­t­les’ Rub­ber Soul. When it came out in 1965, it intro­duced to a vast lis­ten­ing pub­lic the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the LP as a coher­ent art form in itself. At that point the Bea­t­les had already been mak­ing hit records for a few years, as, on the oth­er side of the pond, had a south­ern Cal­i­forn­ian singing group called the Beach Boys.

Giv­en each act’s ever-grow­ing promi­nence and the unprece­dent­ed inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of pop cul­ture then under­way, it was only a mat­ter of time before their musi­cal worlds would col­lide. Decades lat­er, Beach Boys mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son would remem­ber his first lis­ten to Rub­ber Soul as fol­lows: “It just total­ly took my mind away” — a sen­sa­tion back then sought along many avenues, chem­i­cal as well as cul­tur­al.

Though Paul McCart­ney has cred­it­ed the effer­ves­cence of the 1960s to “drugs, basi­cal­ly,” the music he and fel­low Bea­t­les made was also enhanced by friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion with the Beach Boys, as detailed in the Jef­frey Still­well video essay above. To Rub­ber Soul the Beach Boys respond­ed with Pet Sounds. “Oh dear me, this is the album of all time,” McCart­ney lat­er recalled think­ing upon hear­ing it. “What the hell are we going to do?” Their return vol­ley took the form of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band, which in turn sent Wil­son into an Icarus-like flight toward the ill-fat­ed Smile project. More than half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, some say we live in a post-album era. Even if so, the heights of ambi­tion to which the Bea­t­les and the Beach Boys put each oth­er inspire artists still today — and their fruits will be lis­tened to as long as record­ed music exists in any form at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

The Mak­ing (and Remak­ing) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Great­est Rock Album of All Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Prince Appear on the Muppets Tonight Show & Reveal His Humble, Down-to-Earth Side (1997)

in Comedy, Music, Television | September 7th, 2021

From Frog to Prince: We will always love your music and you. Our hearts are yours. Thanks for being a friend.
– Ker­mit the Frog, April 21, 2016

There was a time when shar­ing the screen with the Mup­pets was the ulti­mate celebri­ty sta­tus sym­bol.

Prince nev­er appeared on The Mup­pet Show – 1999, the 1982 album that made him a house­hold name, was released the year after the series con­clud­ed its run — but he got his chance fif­teen years lat­er, with an appear­ance on the short­er lived Mup­pets Tonight.

In a trib­ute writ­ten short­ly after Prince’s death, Mup­pets Tonight writer Kirk Thatch­er recalled:

We were very excit­ed that Prince had agreed to do our Mup­pet com­e­dy and vari­ety show but had been told by his man­agers and sup­port staff before we met with him that we must nev­er look at him direct­ly or call him any­thing but, “The Artist” or just, “Artist”. As the writ­ers of the show, we were won­der­ing how we were going to work or col­lab­o­rate with some­one you can’t even look at, espe­cial­ly while try­ing to cre­ate com­e­dy with pup­pets!

His staff sent an advance team to make sure the work­ing envi­ron­ment would be to his lik­ing, spe­cial food and drink was laid in at his request, and the scripts of sketch­es that had been writ­ten for him were sent ahead for his approval. 

The Mup­pets’ crew grew even more ner­vous when Prince asked for a meet­ing the night before the sched­uled shoot day. Thatch­er had “visions of him trash­ing every­thing and forc­ing us to start over,” adding that it would not have been the first time a guest star would have insist­ed on a total over­haul at zero hour.

Instead of the mon­ster they’d been brac­ing for, Prince — who Thatch­er described as “only half again big­ger than most of the Mup­pets” —  proved a game if some­what “bemused” and “qui­et” col­lab­o­ra­tor:

He had fun addi­tions and improvs and loved play­ing and ad-lib­bing with the pup­pets and was very easy to talk to and work with. The whole sit­u­a­tion with his advance team and man­age­ment remind­ed me of the rela­tion­ship I had cre­at­ed between Ker­mit and Sam the Eagle in Mup­pet Trea­sure Island. Sam had con­vinced every­one that Ker­mit, play­ing Cap­tain Smol­let, was a furi­ous and angry tyrant, beset by inner demons and out­er tirades. But when we meet him, he was just good, old, sweet-natured Ker­mit the Frog… just in a cap­tains out­fit. The same for Prince. He was just a nice, fun, cre­ative guy who had built this per­sona around him­self, and had a team there to rein­force it, prob­a­bly to pro­tect his art, his per­son­al life and even his san­i­ty.

The episode riffed on his estab­lished image, shoe­horn­ing Mup­pets into a “leather and lace” look that Prince him­self had moved on from, and crack­ing jokes relat­ed to the unpro­nounce­able “Love Sym­bol” to which he’d changed his name four years ear­li­er.

Nat­u­ral­ly, they plumbed his cat­a­logue for musi­cal num­bers, hav­ing par­tic­u­lar fun with “Starfish and Cof­fee,” which fea­tures a pro­to-Prince Mup­pet and an alter­nate ori­gin sto­ry.

(The actu­al ori­gin sto­ry is pret­ty great, and pro­vides anoth­er tiny glimpse of this mys­te­ri­ous artist’s true nature.)

The show also afford­ed Prince the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chart some unex­pect­ed ter­ri­to­ry with Hoo Haw, a spoof of the coun­tri­fied TV vari­ety show Hee Haw.

If you’ve ever won­dered how The Pur­ple One would look in over­alls and a plaid but­ton down, here’s your chance to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Per­form “Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” with Ker­mit the Frog on The Mup­pet Show (1981)

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blis­ter­ing “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gui­tar Solo (2004)

Prince’s First Tele­vi­sion Inter­view (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.