Two high school friends informed this next great nerd discovery, one that merged my two great lifetime loves: science fiction and the Beatles.
Their names were Joe Lee and Ann Victor, and they both had an album that just blew my doors off – 3:47 EST, by the Canadian band Klaatu.
Hearing it, I knew that it must be mine. It was pop-rock that just burst with creativity and novelty, quirky and offbeat and – uniquely, in my experience – as nerdy as music could be.
This album, released in 1975, was the band’s first. It started off with a track that was unmistakably science fiction in theme: “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”, a paean to first contact between humankind and whatever’s out there. Though Close Encounters of the Third Kind would not hit theaters for another two years, the song retroactively threw off the same vibe, with its footsteps-in-the-woods opening sound effects and Mellotron intro. I was hooked.2
Other tracks stood out. The raucous “Anus of Uranus” is open to multiple interpretations, but its tone and humor and clever production unquestionably added color to the album. “Doctor Marvello” and the lovely, ethereal album closer “Little Neutrino”, with its extended outro, just wrapped the whole album up as a nerd treasure trove.
The last track of side one of the album, all the more so: “Sub Rosa Subway”, an ultra-nerdish trivia fest that serves up the real-life story of Alfred Beach, who built the world’s first subway in New York City in 1870, sounded so much like the Beatles that the world decided that Klaatu – who were never individually named and of whom no photographs existed – were in fact the reunited Fab Four.
First, the story of that song – then a look at Klaatu going full interstellar.3
Sub Rosa Subway
“Back in 1870, just beneath the Great White Way
Alfred Beach worked secretly, risking all to ride a dream
His wind machine…”
One of the most interesting cases of mistaken identify in rock history happened in 1977, when music journalist Steve Smith suggested in a review that Klaatu, a Canadian progressive rock trio, might actually be the Beatles, secretly reunited.
It’s an easy case to make: the perpetual inventiveness, strong musicianship and expansive themes owed much to the studio-era Beatles, conveying an influence possibly underscored by outright worship. John Woloschuk, Dee Long and Terry Draper may not have been the reunited Beatles, but they clearly were among the Fab Four’s biggest fans.
This was especially obvious on “Sub Rosa Subway,” the last track on side one of the band’s 1975 debut album, 3:47 EST. The lead vocal (by Woloschuk), near-perfect Paul before you even get to the inflection, is only the start: from the song’s Victorian theme to its sweeping arrangement to the punchy horns and soaring strings to the totally-Paul bass line, this song is vintage McCartney, a masterpiece in the same sense that the successful forging of an acknowledged classic is itself a work of art.
On top of all of the above, we have the jacked-up guitars over cinematic orchestration, embedded voice-over-the-phone, a key change out of nowhere. A more McCartney-esque facsimile is hard to imagine; Smith’s suspicions that the Beatles had reconciled were completely understandable.
Capitol Records, Klaatu’s label and the Beatles’ distributor, milked the reunion rumors for all they were worth. The band eschewed live performance and used the songwriting credit “Klaatu,” rather than their names, so the ‘Beatles Reunion Hoax’ ended up going on and on, until a Washington D.C. radio program director tracked down their actual names in the U.S. Copyright Office.
The band suffered for it in the end. The whole thing, now a hoax in the minds of the record-buying public, tainted them as frauds – even though none of it had been their doing. Though they recorded several more albums, Klaatu disbanded, even in the face of such a promising start, only a handful of years later.
Hope
It was Klaatu’s follow-album – Hope, released in 1977 – that cemented them forever in geek history.
A concept album on a par with progressive rock’s best, Hope was an integrated suite of songs that told the tale of a faraway civilization gone wrong. Its musical invention was pervasive, its production pristine. The narrative, though somewhat simplistic, was excellent pop fare while also teasing at possibilities as yet unexplored in the genre: it seemed to be an album that David Bowie or Yes might have undertaken, but more accessible.
Side One of Hope takes us to a civilization in a faraway star system. The opening track, “We’re Off You Now” sets up the journey to come; “Madman” intimates, with some subtlety, that this world fell to a leader who led it to ruin; “Around the Universe in 80 Days” echoes the hopefulness of the previous album’s “Calling Occupants”, almost bookending it, setting up some hint that the horror to come isn’t absolute; and Side One wraps up with “Long Live Politzania”, a national anthem that is, in context, being scrutinized by archaeologists long after the fall of the planet.
This is all great fun, and it surges with unapologetic novelty. But it’s Side Two that really reaches out and grabs the inner nerd, as the narrative shifts to the aftermath of this civilization’s collapse. “The Loneliest of Creatures”, with its children’s sing-song pianet and operatic chorus, reveals that the lone survivor of this planet is an astronomer, the Lighthouse Keeper, who spends his final days scanning the stars for with his laser flare for some sign of remaining life. “Prelude”, featuring a bombastic London Symphony Orchestra, summarizes the civilization’s fall, leaving us with “So Said the Lighthouse Keeper”, which chronicles the lone survivor’s final day. “Hope” summarizes the album’s message, that it need not all come to this – making the album a parable for the modern world.
This is all very simple and pop, to be sure, and its cleverness doesn’t overreach; Hope doesn’t try to be more than it is, as much progressive rock of the era was certainly guilty of. It allows the listener to let it lay claim to greatness for existing at all, in an era before such themes and modes of expression were considered cool.
Many years after my discovery and embrace of Klaatu, I unpacked these two great albums – essential entries in every nerd’s collection! - for my kids. My younger son, Trey, took to it in particular. I burned him a CD of Hope to use as bedtime music, alongside 90125 and the Beatles No. 1s. When he was six, I’d ask him what music he wanted as I tucked him in, and true to form, he’d say, “SometimesIFeelLikeI’mTheLoneliestCreatureInTheUniverse!”
Comments