Smile vs. Sgt. Pepper Comment by Michael Gerber on Apr 22, 20:03 @DD, that’s an interesting take. I think SMiLE was made much, much colder-feeling by Van Dyke Parks’ lyrics. The music, to me, is gorgeous, but the lyrics are self-consciously artsy in a very 1967 way, especially when you compare them to Tony Asher’s quite approachable and personal lyrics for Pet Sounds.
Happy 50th Birthday to McCartney’s “Ram” Comment by on Apr 21, 02:47 I just discovered that on the original Ram album cover, the colourful zig zag border was designed by McCartney himself. Embedded among the zig zags is the acronym L.I.L.Y. Yes, a secret message. It turns out that L.I.L.Y. stands for Linda I Love You. Pretty gosh-darn romantic. To Ram fans out there, is (was) this common knowledge? In 1971, did fans notice the L.I.L.Y. and were they trying to figure it out? https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/paul-mccartney-album-covers-explained/?amp
Something Happened Comment by on Apr 19, 21:22 I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s; I’m turning 65 soon and because of that, and having lost my mother last year, I have been very nostalgic. I really can’t tell you what it meant, growing up during that time, only what it meant to me. There’s a lot I don’t remember, but I do recall growing up with black and white images of war – all the time – on the TV. Later, I learned that it was in Vietnam, and it was not popular, but in my suburban world no one went to war that I knew of, and no one protested. But what I absorbed as a kid was that there were remarkable things going on all the time. I knew about women’s lib, bra burnings, we knew that Anita Bryant was wrong about homosexuals, and that people of all colors were equal, though I only saw white people (except when going into the city to see my grandparents). There was just this sense in the air that exciting things were happening while we lived our ordinary lives. I wanted to be a hippy. By the time I was old enough to know what a hippy was, it was too late, but in high school we wore bright colors, stripes, crocheted tops, bell bottoms, said things like “far out” …later, we learned about marijuana, though I didn’t try it until I was 18. Underlying everything was the music, the soundtrack! I was talking to my sister recently, and wondering how did we get our awareness about everything, because our parents didn’t talk about current events much. She said ‘I think it was the music’. Yeah yeah yeah! While I was only 4 when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and don’t know if I saw them, their music was everywhere, for years. I remember my neighbor blasting “Don’t Let Me Down” over and over – I’m sure it drove the adults crazy but I liked it. We had TV but what was most prevalent in our lives was the radio; it was always on, at home, on transistors, in cars, and we just soaked up all those sounds – The Beatles, Dylan, all the protest music. Then there were the Monkees and later the Partridge Family and yes, the Brady Bunch. Well, I was the middle girl of three, like Jan. For some unknown reason I don’t remember having a lot of records, but when I was in high school I asked for The Beatles red and blue albums for Christmas. Then came Pink Floyd…. So I wish I knew how to sum up, or how to put into words what it was like growing up during that time. But it influenced me in so may ways and still does. I took LSD numerous times after I graduated high school, as well as many other drugs and alcohol. I felt I had just missed out on the excitement, but the substances were easy to get. I’ve now been clean and sober 33 years, around the same amount of time as Ringo. In later times in my life, I became an activist, helped with community organizing, marched in many marches, worked at non profits (including with kids who were in gangs) became a social worker, and am now a therapist. I wanted to change the world in a big way but now content myself with helping individuals. And here I am revisiting some of my past, and especially all that great music.
My Yoko Problem… and yours? Comment by on Apr 19, 00:31 According to the internet, the quote is: It was said that I never loved Cyn. That’s far from the truth. We were young, bigheaded and got into a physical relationship too soon. Perhaps if we took things slow we would have made it. I know we would have made it. This is apparently from 1974 (so during the split from Yoko), though I can’t find the source. Does anyone know?
Smile vs. Sgt. Pepper Comment by on Apr 17, 06:38 Very late to the discussion, but Smile to me always sounded like it was made by people who did not love each other while Sgt. Pepper sounded like it was made by people who did love each other. Cold versus warm.
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 14, 06:04 @Lara nad @Michael To be fair, this whole thing started with Michael defending George from accusations that his ATMP album was in fact only good in those places where it was worked on by Paul and George Martin. So Michael tried to show that all Beatles had different strengths, and this is where this split: “John and George had cultural value” / “Paul has musical value” started. But the thing is: EACH of them had ALL those values, musical and beyond-musical. All of them wrote some great music and all of them wrote some crap music as well. We all have our favourite Beatles, but the thing is, as @Lara said, that if, for example, someone loves John for being a feminist, they still in the first place love John for his music and for what he did as a Beatle. On the other hand we all choose our favourite Beatles based on our own temperament and character and so we will see their “cultural values” beyond the music in different aspects. I am not offended by anyone stating that George had a hand in making “Eastern religions” popular (although “Eastern religions” are all very different, and martial arts or attentiveness practice have nothing to do with George’s beliefs), I am sure that his influence was important for some people; but on the other hand it was not important for others. Equally, Paul’vegetarianism didn’t impress some people, but may have had some influence on others. George is not just a “spiritual inspiration”, he is also a musician; Paul is not just a musician, he is a whole complex person who is liked/loved for different aspects of his life, just as in case of John and George. What I am really trying to say is that all those “cultural influences” that can be ascribed to John and George, are also present in Paul’s case, and what kind of made me (kind of) oppose Michael is that I felt that he was telling me (Paul’s fan, obviously) how *I* feel about Paul. And I know that if John’ fans and George’s fans love John and George for reasons beyond their music, exactly the same can be said about *my* love for Paul. And thank you @Lara, @Michael, @Tasmin, @Nancy for your knowledge and this discussion, I find it great and also helpful in claryfying my own views…
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 12, 19:37 Excellent comment Lara. And yes, singing “Hey Jude” along with fellow concert goers IS a spiritual experience. I think many of us have a spiritual connection with the Beatles. Beyond the music, that’s the glue that bonds us to them.
Ethical Reflections on John/Paul Comment by on Apr 12, 10:56 Maddingway, I’m officially done with this subject. I don’t know how many times I can say that I have no problem with fanfiction about real people that announces itself as fiction, that I think it’s worth differentiating between what we can know happened (with all of the many caveats that entails) and what we’re speculating about, and that talking about how “alternative facts” of various types are significant in our culture amounts to saying that all “alternative facts” and their purveyors have the same level of seriousness. They obviously do not and I have never said they did. I was also asking in good faith when I inquired if there was any legal evidence of McCartney having an illegitimate child or children. The one legal case I was aware of (Bettina Huebers) was dismissed as far as I know. It’s not a subject I’ve investigated in depth, and it would not surprise me at all if he does have one or more illegitimate children. I simply wondered if any had been legally established as such. All I can say at the end here is that I’m not the enemy you seem to think I am. I’m not coming for you or your community, and if you find good things there I’m genuinely glad about that.The Beatles As They Were Heard: KHJ 93 Los Angeles Comment by on Apr 11, 20:31 Idon’t know about Radio Veronica, but Radio Caroline is online
Ethical Reflections on John/Paul Comment by on Apr 11, 00:05 I am disappointed in this reply. Here we go. >To the point about “alternative facts,” I continue to think it’s important to draw distinctions about what is provable reality and what is not. That the Beatles themselves engaged in mystification or lies doesn’t change my conviction on that score. “Provable reality” is a lot more tenuous than you might think especially considering you and Michael have both admitted that the Beatles worked very hard to make sure that their reality of being sex addicted pill heads was not provable. Just as an example, we only know that John was a heroin addict and emotionally dependent on LSD because he admitted that he was a heroin addict and that he was emotionally dependent on LSD. However his drug bust only found about 200 grams of hashish, a cigarette rolling machine with traces of marijuana, and half a gram of morphine. None of those things are heroin or LSD, therefore *they are not provable reality.* This is because the Beatles PR machine moved heaven and earth to keep these things under wraps. How do we know that George and John’s dentist spiked their drinks with LSD? Because someone told us about it, not because there was a pharmacological analysis of the coffee they drank. Without such a report the “reality” of their coffee being spiked simply isn’t provable, we only have their recollections to go on. And yet this is taken as “fact” despite there being no material evidence! We only know about the heroin and LSD and marijuana because the Beatles themselves admitted to it. Otherwise there’s very little *provable reality* to back up that their drug usage truly happened. Yet everywhere you find a Beatles history nerd you will find chatter about the usage of these drugs. Mark Lewisohn, God bless his pointed head, has been breaking his back trying to figure out what is true and what is not true and apparently he is the only person on Earth that is interested in doing so. Everyone else seems content to live off of Paul’s repetitive storytelling and accusing their rhetorical opponents of not behaving rationally. And what is this all the result of? The “alternative facts” established by the Beatles themselves that were heavily promoted as part of their PR image as a band. Once again, I must reiterate: you are borrowing trouble and being patronizing. It’s silly. >What I am saying is much more basic and observable: J/P fanfiction focuses on two men and not on the women those men were engaged in long-term relationships with. This is what shipping culture is about, Nancy. Check out X-Files fandom sometime, the Mulder/Scully fandom is still going strong there. Are you wringing your hands because Mulder/Scully fanfiction inherently excludes characters like Alex Krycek or Walter Skinner? Here’s one more closely related to Beatledom and RPF as a genre: there is a very intense Current Year subculture of John/Yoko fandom that promotes a lot of Lennono garbage including tinhatting and writing fanfiction and creating silly little “proof posts” trying to verify that Yoko actually did love John and that she wasn’t using him as a walking wallet. Are you going to write a Very Special Episode about how John/Yoko fanfiction is inherently misogynistic because it writes out poor Cynthia? (which Lennono shipping does with great glee. Even in death poor Cynthia can’t catch a break.) Or, God, poor Alma Cogan, the woman who is alleged to be the actual love of John’s life and whose death sent him into a depression spiral in 1967? No one ever stands up for Alma Cogan even though she was a vital piece of John’s life. Where is the worry about all the other women who were important to John being excluded from his life? That’s what the Lennon Estate has been doing for decades at this point, and yet there has been very little complaint about this besides some grumbling about how Julian has never been treated right. Where are the posts about Yoko contributing to the imminent collapse of the United States? Yoko has done very tangible harm and perpetuated many lies and yet somehow she doesn’t get linked to the profound political problems in the United States. McLennon tinhatters are not using johnlennon dot com to sell dopey avante garde art projects and make money off McLennon. Yoko Ono does use johnlennon dot com to sell her dopey avante garde art projects and makes money off Lennono. I find it interesting that this does not stir up as strong a reaction as tinhatters saying “John and Paul were gay and in love with one another and here’s a free story I wrote about it.” >I also believe those motivations are worth examining. That would be a neat post to read and respond to. I look forward to you writing that so long as you do research on your topic beforehand and avoid trying to link the behavior of me and my community to political upheaval. >Finally, I think there are lies of varying seriousness. I agree that the Beatles told plenty of lies, for a lot of different reasons. Much depends on motivation and on whether the lie hurts anyone else. This is the point where I’ve moderated my stance the most. All lies do damage. They’re not always equal in damage, that is true, but they always cause some measure of hurt and pain. >I’m genuinely interested to know if any paternity claims have been legally established. Either a) you’re playing games with me re: human biology or b) you genuinely don’t know about the paternity claims brought against Paul and the money spent on them. More about a credible paternity claim brought against Paul during his Beatle years: > But that was hardly the end to the complications of Paul’s love life. In the spring of 1964, during the shooting of A Hard Day’s Night, an even more delicate situation of the same nature arose. A young girl in Liverpool had given birth to a baby boy she claimed was Paul McCartney’s son. Paul denied being the father, and the young girl was referred to an acquaintance of David Jacobs in Liver-pool, a man named D. H. Green. She and her mother visited Green’s office in late March. Green told Jacobs that he found them quite decent and reasonable. He felt that the girl had no intention of trying to hurt Paul and that her only concern seemed to be getting enough money to buy a pram for the infant. > Jacobs was in the midst of negotiating a small settlement for this purpose when the girl’s mother confessed her plight to a friend. He knew how much the child was worth and intended to see the mother was properly looked after. He eventually made contact by telephone with David Jacobs in London. Jacobs’ greatest concern was that even if they gave the girl a large settlement it would in no way ensure that the newspapers would not get hold of the story, or that more wouldn’t be demanded later. Jacobs advice to Brian and Paul was that the less money they paid, the less culpable they would appear if the story did come out. Brian agreed that the best they could do was pay the girl a small sum and hope that the matter would be kept quiet. > Jacobs drew up the agreement. For the mother, with the stipulation that Paul should continue to deny being the father of the child, and that this payment did not in any way represent an admis-sion, there was a four-figure sum. The deed stated that in the eventuality of a prosecution and trial that proved to the satisfaction of the court that the child was indeed Paul McCartney’s, the maximum payment the court could order for the maintenance and education of the child was £2.10s a week until he was twenty-one. > In consideration for the money paid to her, she was never to make any claim against Paul in the future or allege that he was the father or disclose the terms of the agreement; otherwise she would be liable to return the payment. > By this time, however, the newspapers had heard hundreds of all sorts of crank rumours and accusations about all four of the Beatles. > Cynthia Lennon later summed it up: *It appeared from the evidence on the solicitor’s desk at this time that Paul had been a bit of a town bull in Liverpool. Claims for paternity suits rolled in. He found himself in great demand in more ways than one. Whether the claims were true is anybody’s guess.’ Brown, Peter. The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles. London: Macmillan, 1983. More: > The only sour note to the day came from the uncle of Anita Cochrane, who plastered Liverpool with 30,000 leaflets recounting his niece’s affair with Paul and its outcome. Anita, an 18-year-old Beatles fan, discovered that she was pregnant after partying with Paul at Stuart Sutcliffe’s flat in Gambier Terrace. Unable to contact him by registered letters and telegrams, she eventually retained a lawyer who threatened legal action… Brian Epstein is said to have intervened personally and offered £5000 in exchange for renouncing all claims on Paul (published figures vary depending on the source). The agreement said that Anita must never bring Paul to court or say or imply that he was the father of her child, Philip Paul Cochrane… Miles, B. The Beatles diary volume 1: The Beatles years. Omnibus Press, 2009. However I always found this long quote about the Australian tour to be much more illuminating rather than a single case out of Liverpool that was hushed up with brown paper bag money: > The night was not entirely without its compensations though. > That evening, and indeed every evening of the tour, the Beatles partook of one pleasure they had discovered in Hamburg as unknown teenagers and developed to an obsessive sport over the next three years. > Lennon, in particular, must have been consumed with perverse delight by the grand confidence trick which he and his colleagues were perpetrating upon the whole western world. By day they won the hearts of mum, dad and the garden gnome with their cheeky, innocent charm and by night, according to more than a few observers, they hurled themselves in bacchanalian orgies beyond the comprehension of the humble folk who paid them homage. The “satyricon” scenes which John referred to in an Australian context in his milestone 1971 interview with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner certainly did occur, though such was the wall of absolute secrecy that only those tour party members accepted into an exclusive inner sanctum ever witnessed them. > Tour manager Ravenscroft carefully concedes, “They had girls in their room, yes. That was in the hands of Mal Evans, who was very good at picking the right girls. It was all very discreet and well organ-ised. When they were getting involved in that sort of thing I kept right out of the way.” > “That sort of thing” is more frankly explained by journalist Jim Oram: “John and Paul, particularly, rooted themselves silly. A seemingly endless and inexhaustible stream of Australian girls passed through their beds; the very young, the very experienced, the beautiful and the plain. In fact, I can vividly remember one spoilt virgin in Adelaide who proudly took her bloodstained sheet home with her in the morning.” > “Yes it all went on, and more,” admits Bob Rogers, “there were just so many women. The boys never, to my knowledge, repeated the dose. They’d rather have a less attractive woman than the same one twice. They had become supremely indifferent to it all, as women and girls continually prostrated themselves in their presence. You see I’d always thought that the one great thing about womanizing was the challenge and I couldn’t believe it could be so casual. Rather than getting into hallucinogenic drugs, I was convinced that they would all end up homosexuals, out of sheer boredom with conventional sex. There was no pill in 1964 and with the amount of Beatle screwing that went on I just can’t believe that there wasn’t an explosion of little Beatles all over Australia in 1965. Maybe there was.” > Jim Oram has a theory in that regard: “John once told me, ‘We’ve got the best cover in the world. If a girl comes home after being out all night and breaks down under the old man’s questioning and admits that she had spent the night with one of the Beatles, he tells her not to lie and goes up the road to kick the bum of the boy next door.’ It must have worked because there were no instances of angry parents on the tour, which was almost unbelievable.” Baker, Glenn A. The Beatles down under: The 1964 Australia & New Zealand Tour. Pierian Press, 1985. From all of this, there are two possibilities: 1) Paul has been pretending that he doesn’t have illegitimate children. All four of them did this. He has had sex with thousands of women through out his career as a Beatle. It is simply unthinkable that there weren’t any broken condoms, missed birth control pills, or other prophylactic failures. We have at least one case of a woman who had Paul’s baby and was quietly paid off out of fear that it was true. And before you try to assert “provable reality,” please keep in mind that civilians had absolutely *no idea* about the Beatles’ LSD usage before Paul blabbed on national television. The Beatles PR machine is unstoppable lmao. We don’t know about them because the people involved do not want it to be known. This is the power of the “brown paper bag money” that Mr. Gerber has discussed in other posts. 2) Paul McCartney has achieved what millions of men and women have desired for years: he has figured out how to have sex without accidentally knocking someone up. He can stop himself from impregnating women at will thus enabling him to have sex with hundreds if not thousands of women without ever producing an illegitimate child. He has transcended time, space, and the laws of physics and biology. Linda Eastman is the only woman he has ever had children because of his perfect control over his own sperm. I have to be honest. Now that I’ve typed this all out… Option 2 really does seem like the most likely conclusion. I would delete all those quotes up there now that I’ve realized that Paul McCartney’s perfection extends to controlling his sperm count and not just his musical ability but I went through a lot of work grabbing them from my books so uh yeah they’re staying lol. My conclusion to this reply: I live in Ground Zero for political instability in the United States so I will say this: McLennon tinhatting is not even in the same league as the political instability that you cited at the end of your post. I find your linking my friends and community to this movement of “alternative facts” to be a repugnant one. McLennon tinhatting can be cringy, eyebrow raising, or just plain weird, but it is absolutely not in the same realm as “alternative facts” and it does not hold a candle to the political problems you mentioned. It is remarkably insulting for these two things to be compared. McLennon tinhatters never incited a riot at the capitol building in Washington DC. The “alternative facts” crowd did. After reflecting on this for the past week I think this is the part of your post that annoyed me the most. If you want to take a stand for “ethical standards” then you should really start there.
Interview with Jay Goeppner of the the Beatle Brothers Comment by on Apr 10, 10:45 dear jay geoppner for easter igot some more bubles your friend andy
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 7, 19:44 @Peter, I think fans fall into the trap of each Beatle eyeing the others as in “would this song I wrote be suitable on a Beatles album”. They weren’t writing for each other any more. Who cares if they didn’t like each others work? Other people did and we don’t know if some solo songs as Beatles songs would have been better or not. George, John and Ringo wouldn’t have wasted any time on Ram either, as they scorned it at the time. All three certainly got that wrong considering how well Ram has been reappraised. George was worried about putting The Inner Light as a B-side to Lady Madonna because of his voice. Paul: “you MUST sing it, George, you can do it, it’s such a beautiful melody”. I think this selective negativity around Paul and George should stop.
- The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 6, 09:58 Bai Lang, same on finding “meaning” in McCartney. He and his music are far from perfect, but he’s the Beatle I connect with most. In addition to the elements you mention (being an involved husband and father, who took his whole family on tour when that wasn’t cool, for example) I love his penchant for storytelling in his songs. I also agree that his vegetarianism has influenced a good number of people.
Fred Arnold’s Beatle Memorabilia Collection Comment by on Apr 5, 16:43 Fred was my friend in the 80’s when He owned the Prism Record Store on King Street in Historical Battery Charleston, SC and the Riverside Drive store – I did Punk art for Fred for his Punk-a-Rama show on Saturday Night on the USS Yorktown Aircraft Carrier Public Radio WSCI 89.3 around 1987 the radio show was replaced by first Space Ambient Music yet he was contracted to do the show on Charleston’s new Rock Station. He was the Rodney on the ROQ ”Rocks” of LA for the Southeast America and he met a lot of the great bands including Ian from the Cult he interviewed when he was in America as Southern Death Cult. Ian stayed with Fred. Michael Griffin aka Skinhead ”Reggae Punk type”
Discovered! Another bad Beatles lyric Comment by on Apr 5, 13:45 I have no problem with the “whim” lyric. The song seems to be from the point of view of a guy who is frantic because the girl he likes is only thinking of some other dude, who seems to be ghosting her. The girl is most likely deeply in love with the other dude, but the frantic guy is insisting “it’s only a whim!” because he can’t accept the truth. A little two-minute soap opera, that song is.
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 4, 18:17 @Lara You made three points in your reply that I particularly enjoyed. The first was about the student riots in Europe in 1968. Lots of causes for these as you know, but I agree that John and Yoko were not exactly in the van when it came to protest. At this stage I view their actions as nothing more than Yoko’s performative art and a desire for attention rather than a serious engagement of the issues. Second, like a lot with celebrity and even part of the Beatles story, I find it creepy to read of all those “best mates with John” stories. Maybe I am misreading all the literature, but John Lennon strikes me as one who didn’t have a lot of friends in his last years. That is perfectly fine if that was his choice, but after 1975 he didn’t seem to be collaborating on anything with anyone other than Yoko. I don’t mean to imply that after his death that critics, musicians, and contemporaries should have dissed John, but forty years on the hagiography was thick from people who hadn’t given him a moment’s thought in ages. The third point is your mention of Paul’s musical peers and competitors in the seventies and eighties. It seems than many forget that while there certainly a lot of dross on the airways, it was a creatively fecund period for many artists and he had new challenges to face.
Ethical Reflections on John/Paul Comment by on Apr 4, 18:00 @Maddingway, Nancy responded to the overall thrust of your post, whereas I just have a few nitpicks/ questions about claims you made. (Perhaps you were being purposefully inflammatory to make a point.) @Maddingway said, “When Paul’s bad behavior around Linda’s attempt at writing a biography is discussed (“There’s only room for one rockstar in this house,” I believe that’s what he said?)…” I’ve never heard Linda attempted to write an (auto?)biography. Got anything to substantiate that – and Paul’s alleged reaction? @Maddingway said, “They lied to their fans about being single. They lied to their fans about being on drugs (at least for a while.) They lied about being swingers. They lied about all the women they slept with. They lied about the women they impregnated. They lied about their manager being gay. John lied about being happy with Yoko. Paul lied about the children he abandoned and refused to acknowledge.” John, on the advice of their manager, did briefly lie about being single – is that what you’re referring to? What did they ever say (or not say) about being swingers (or not?)? How do you mean they lied about all the women they slept with/impregnated? As in lies of omission? When did they lie about using drugs? More omission? When did they say Brian wasn’t gay? As for John lying about being happy with Yoko, i don’t think he was in their later years, but neither of us knows. (I’d say he was entitled to lie about his personal happiness unless he did so to sell records.) What proof is there that Paul abandoned and refused to acknowledge children?
- Ethical Reflections on John/Paul Comment by on Apr 3, 13:05 Maddingway, thanks for your comments. Here are my (brief) thoughts, a bit moderated after three years but not much. To the point about “alternative facts,” I continue to think it’s important to draw distinctions about what is provable reality and what is not. That the Beatles themselves engaged in mystification or lies doesn’t change my conviction on that score. The key to my “unacknowledged wish fulfillment” point is the “unacknowledged” part. I’d amend your statement that “Fanfiction is not fact and fanfiction writers know this” by inserting a “most” before “fanfiction writers.” It’s that group I’m talking about here. It’s one thing to tell a story you and others enjoy about people who actually exist (or existed) — great! It’s another to insist that the fundamentals of it are true. For examples of that, take a look at some of the comments on the “Were John and Paul Lovers?” thread. I think you have misunderstood what I mean when I say that John/Paul fanfiction writes out women. I certainly am not arguing that “slash fandom must be inherently rooted in hatred of women and desperate attempts to write women out of the narrative.” What I am saying is much more basic and observable: J/P fanfiction focuses on two men and not on the women those men were engaged in long-term relationships with. I believe the motivations for doing that are both various and complicated, and can’t be boiled down to “hatred of women.” I also believe those motivations are worth examining. Finally, I think there are lies of varying seriousness. I agree that the Beatles told plenty of lies, for a lot of different reasons. Much depends on motivation and on whether the lie hurts anyone else. This is the point where I’ve moderated my stance the most. Also, is there proof that McCartney fathered children he then abandoned? The only case I’m aware of is one where the claim was disproven. I’m genuinely interested to know if any paternity claims have been legally established.
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 2, 19:40 I’ve been following this post on and off, and there are a couple of things that interest me about the difference between a Beatles song and a solo Beatle’s song. Lots of solo songs started as demos (or even recording attempts) for the group but ended up on solo records. There are different categories, but “rejects” interest me the most. George played “Isn’t it a Pity” for Paul during the Get Back/Let it Be sessions, and mentioned his backlog of songs. Paul told him he should record them, which is definitely a rejection. If he’d said, “WE should record them,…” or “I will help you record them,” that would be something other than a rejection. “All Things Must Pass” got a fair number of rehearsals, but didn’t end up in the movie or on the record. “I Me Mine” got finished, but only because it was in the movie and thus had to be on the record, which is why George, Paul, & Ringo put it on tape in January 1970. I’m not sure if John & Paul rejected George’s songs because of ego or because they didn’t like them, but my impression is that while neither was enthusiastic about them, it was John who lost interest in them fastest. ATMP, Isn’t it a Pity, and other songs that The Beatles heard, and rant though as a group aren’t “Beatles” songs to my ears; the band was learning them, sometimes halfheartedly. “Not Guilty” on “George Harrison” (1979) has a very different feel and arrangement than the 102 takes The Beatles recorded in 1968. Those outtakes sound like The Beatles, but then again, so do other rejected recordings like “IF You’ve Got Troubles.” I don’t think anyone is surprised that neither song got released. The Beatles rejected some of Paul’s songs, too. “Teddy Boy” is a good example of a song that John, Ringo, and George disliked, and even if it’s in the movie, it was not a contender for the record. “Junk” is an Esher demo; it could easily have fit on the White Album, but didn’t. Other Paul songs that were briefly demo’d during Beatles sessions (“Back Seat of My Car,” for instance) didn’t get much attention from the band. There are more songs by Paul, and a few by John, that the author played for the others in a session, or that they briefly jammed on, that I would not call Beatles songs (“Child of Nature/Jealous Guy”) but none of them sound like The Beatles to my ears. I agree with the cliche that The Beatles were greater than the sum of their parts, and George Martin’s production (and the great engineers, the acoustics of Abbey Road, and the sound they captured) are unique. The magic didn’t always happen, although one fan’s duds are someone else’s favorites. Late Beatles songs were mostly written by John, Paul, or George, and completed and arranged in the studio. Occasionally, John & Paul combined half finished ideas, but there wasn’t much collaborative writing. None of the songs on All Things Must Pass got the attention or contributions that “Something,” “Here Comes the Sun,” or even “I Me Mine” received, and the production is miles away from anything recorded by The Beatles. None of the songs on McCartney sound much like The Beatles, either. To the extent that they do, it’s because Paul’s Beatles songs were often written, arranged, and occasionally recorded, by him with little or no group participation. As much as I want to like solo Beatles records, the studio musicians and collaborators they chose never achieved that elusive, compelling quality that their best work as a band did. And some of their best solo work is marred by mediocre or dated production (Mind Games, Walls & Bridges, Double Fantasy, Cloud Nine, Ringo, Band on the Run) and the worst ones have songs that they would never have dared played for the rest of the band. It’s hard to imagine George, John, or Ringo wasting two seconds on Paul’s songs on Wild Life or London Town, and there isn’t much on Sometime In New York City or Dark Horse to get the band all revved up.
The Beatles’ 13th Album? Comment by on Apr 2, 00:11 While George’s star has undeniably risen in the last decade or so, I don’t think it’s at all similar to the post-1980 canonization of John. I think it’s perfectly understandable why George’s reputation has improved. The style of his best music–from 1968 to 1971 or so–is very much in tune with a lot of modern indie music, and so is his low-key personal style; the George of that era feels very modern to me. His spiritual bent seems to resonate with a lot of younger listeners. He’s arguably got the two best songs on the Beatles’ most popular album, and he made the album that many people (me included) regard as the best solo album by any Beatle. And apart from its heavy-handed production (the recent remix helped), ATMP has aged very well–those songs are marvelous. (The other day I heard the mix of “What Is Life” without vocals from one of the rereleases, and it reminded me of something from Pet Sounds.) It’s also an accessible album, in a way that–say–Plastic Ono Band isn’t. I hold POB in high esteem, but hand that album to someone who doesn’t know anything about John Lennon, and I’m not sure how impactful it’s going to be. And while I love much of Paul’s solo work (I really do), Paul’s stuff is so all over the place in terms of style, quality and approach that I’m not sure there’s really an easy way into it for younger listeners. If someone has a high tolerance for Paul’s brand of idiosyncratic silliness (I say that affectionately), I’d recommend Ram; if they like Bowie and Eno, I’d recommend McCartney II. But I don’t think that the acclaimed albums–Band on the Run, Tug of War–that people used to single out as his strongest work have as much resonance anymore. So while I agree that George really only made one exceptional album on its own, I think it’s more than sufficient: Most songwriters never make an album as good as ATMP.
Recent CommentsMichael Gerber2020-09-14T13:07:50-07:00
