7/27/07: The 4 Seasons “Beggars Parade” (1966)

Here’s something different: an entry about a band that didn’t release an album during the Summer of Love. The 4 Seasons were certainly busy, though. The singles kept coming, and the start of 1969 saw the release of the band’s own attempt at making a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

A lot of older artists—like, say, Rick Nelson—tried to update their sound during those turbulent times. Longtime member and songwriter Bob Gaudio made the smart move of hooking up with folkie Jake Holmes for The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette, and produced a particularly insightful masterpiece. Holmes was probably already suspicious of hippies. He wrote a song called “Dazed and Confused” that would later be credited to Led Zeppelin. (Most likely scenario: Jimmy Page heard Holmes perform the song in New York City, and thought it was an old blues tune that he was free to swipe.)

The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette had an innovative LP design that opened up as a newspaper. (Jethro Tull would later swipe the idea for Thick As A Brick.) The articles included lots of fun swipes at the hippie scene. It’s even more heart-warming to know that the duo wrote the album from within Gaudio’s 28-room replica of an Elizabethan castle out in New Jersey. That’s the exact opposite of a commune.

Anyway, “Beggars Parade” isn’t found on The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette.

If it were, we would’ve known about the song a lot sooner. “Beggars Parade” is a stealthier item from 1966’s Working My Way Back To You—which we’ve always ignored because the title track is easily the most irritating song in the band’s catalogue. The album turns out to be both impressive and controversial. In fact, the biggest shock about the echo-laden “Beggars Parade” is that its angry folksiness is courtesy of the veteran hit-making team of Gaudio and Bob Crewe.

Most older bands were offering olive branches to the flower-children market. There’s nothing cutesy or pandering about “Beggars Parade.” Here’s the opening:

        Tell me who’s good and who’s bad
        Tell me who’s happy and who’s sad
        Then go line ’em up to march in the parade
        Who needs the truth?
        Feed ’em lies
        They’re all hungry for alibis

Things get even better. The chorus calls out the children of privilege marching with the lazy bums, and then makes one of the best points ever about professional victims:

        Your skin is thin
        Mine is, too
        What’s so special about you?
        Make excuses ’cause you can’t just make the grade
        Look in the mirror
        Yeah, it’s true
        Pitiful soul, oh, that’s you

That part about losers who “can’t just make the grade” seems a little extreme even to us. Gaudio was probably already living in his castle by then. Maybe we’re just jealous because we’re writing this entry from our third-story office in a modest New Jersey Victorian. The boys weren’t done yet, though:

        Hungry for bread?
        Plant a seed
        Satisfy your evil greed
        Though you’d rather collect that unemployment check
        Why should you work
        Like the rest
        When it’s easier to protest?

Folkie like Phil Ochs took similar stabs at their comrades, but “Beggars Parade” was probably the most confrontational tune ever released by an est ablishment act. (Jan & Dean were past their chart prime by the time of “The Universal Coward.”) Now we want to buy tickets for “Jersey Boys” on Broadway. We’d like to see how that musical handles those tumultuous times. It could be the antidote to “Rent.”

Make it your own: So how did we catch up with “Beggars Parade”? Working My Way Back To You was combined with The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette on a 2-CD set released last year. Sadly, you’ll still have to track down the Rhino label’s out-of-print Imitation Life to piece together a complete version of that newspaper.

We’ll add that Jake Holmes’ early albums are available on CD, although the best one seems to be out-of-print again. The team of Gaudio & Holmes also got together to modernize Frank Sinatra with 1969’s brilliant concept album Watertown.

 

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