The Meat Puppets song inspired by The Beatles
A path of continuous refinement is a common thread in the journey of most bands. As Meat Puppets unveiled their inaugural album in 1982, the unforeseen sonic evolution that would define their third album was likely beyond the imagination of their early fans.
In fact, the band’s self-titled first album was recorded in a matter of days, resulting in a sloppy punk-inspired feel with a persistent background fuzz that made it seem more cheap than innovative. By the time their second album dropped, Meat Puppets had embarked on a much-needed departure from the unintelligible noise of their first offering, arriving instead with a new, country-style rock infused with psychedelic effects.
The third album was again significantly cleaner and a lot more technical than the previous two records, with a blend of Meat Puppets II’s mystical poeticism coupled with a fresher feel. The band had to look backwards to move forwards, though, and enlisted the help from none other than The Beatles to solidify their confidence when putting out different forms of material.
Like their preceding counterparts, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Meat Puppets’ Curt and Cris Kirkwood often indulged in recreational drug use to conjure musical inspiration. Riding the waves of the post-punk era of the 1980s meant that the brothers’ first album ended up being nothing more than a relentless, jarring attempt at the genre. Up on the Sun, the band’s third album, was a more deliberately calculated affair, drawing on earlier offerings from The Beatles to instate their new sound as more refined and matured than anything they’d put out before.
‘Seal Whales’ is one of the album’s more understated efforts. As a track that’s purely instrumental, it showcases the band’s inherent talent for country-infused guitar riffs. However, despite the final product, the original version did actually have lyrics, but they quickly became discarded when lead singer Curt Kirkwood discovered the power it could hold if they only took a leaf out of The Beatles’ book: “I might have sang it in practice a few times,” he said.
Adding: “But they were pedestrian to me, and they just followed the tune that the guitar was doing and didn’t put that much thought into it. A lot of times it was just like, Oh, we’ve been playing this without singing it. And it just turned into an instrumental. It’s kind of like a revelation. Oh, we don’t have to have any lyrics. One of my favorite Beatles songs is ‘Flying’ and I thought, ‘You could do that.'”
Like ‘Seal Whales’, ‘Flying’ almost becomes lost to the shadows of The Beatles’ more renowned works. Even when it’s discovered, though, it’s left to the bleak hands of ambivalence, with some saying it’s one of the band’s most dull contributions. However, even though some say the same of ‘Seal Whales’, it’s arguably the biggest testament to the reflective characteristics of the Up on the Sun era.
This work was also the first album that instated the band as major players, paving the way for the skyrocketed prominence that awaited them in the 1990s. By then, they were no longer stuck in the regressive grasp of dusty, post-punk knock-offs. The new instinctual approach that beckoned them was possibly the best decision of their career.
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