More Macca

Ever since he was at The White House I've been on a Macca kick, and stumbled upon this article:

Bob Dylan, never one to throw around compliments lightly, didn't mince words in a 2007 Rolling Stone interview:

"I'm in awe of McCartney. He's about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he's never let up. He's got the gift for melody, he's got the rhythm, he can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anybody. And his melodies are effortless, that's what you have to be in awe of. ... He's just so damn effortless. I just wish he'd quit [laughs]. Everything that comes out of his mouth is just framed in melody." 

It goes on to point out a point I've hammered on Xmastime many, many times over the years:

It's impossible to pinpoint when the shorthand for Paul McCartney's contributions to the Beatles catalogue became ballads and catchy pop songs. Or when John Lennon's compositions began to fall automatically into the edgier and more experimental category.

It might have been as early as 1965, when McCartney, accompanied only by a string quartet, recorded Yesterday. Or when Lennon created the psychedelic wonders of Strawberry Fields Forever, recorded 18 months later. But it wasn't long before their differences as songwriters, even though they always shared credit, started being analyzed in endless sugar-and-salt, sweet-and-spicy cliches.

Like all generalizations, though, this one has some truth in it: as surely as Lennon wouldn't have penned Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, McCartney wouldn't have written Revolution. Yet on the album The Beatles (better known as The White Album), Lennon wrote the gentle, heavily-orchestrated lullaby Good Night and McCartney came up with the raucous screamer Helter Skelter. On Abbey Road, it was Lennon who composed the lush, beautiful Because, while McCartney was responsible for the throat-shredding Oh! Darling.

The strengths and weaknesses of their post-Beatles work only added to the myths.

One thing that seems harder to debate, though, is that McCartney has no peer in popular music as a melody writer. His gift was dramatically obvious when he was in the Beatles and it has resurfaced, albeit with less consistency, on every one of his solo albums.

It's also of note that it was McCartney, who spent a lot of time before Revolver dicking around with tape loops he made from tapes of such avant-garde stuff as Stockhausen while Lennon laid on his couch getting fat in wedded suburban bliss, which led to the innovative, psychedelic hypersonic musical leap the album provided. Mythology will have you believe Lennon sat around coming up with weird, trippy stuff while McCartney whistled How Much for the Doggie in the Window? over and over.

Hey, look who's #1!

It's Okay to Like Paul McCartney, Dammit

I've defended McCartney in the stupid "Lennon vs. McCartney" debate many, many times on this blog, I won't even bother linking to them oh wait I guess I will HERE and HERE. And HERE. And countless others.

So it's nice to see someone else sticking up for Macca. He's a bit strong with the "Lennon sucks!" language, I get cranky when I hafta point out to people that McCartney was Lennon's equal (if not more) within The Beatles, but I also love Lennon at the same time.

Some favorite from the list:

3. He wrote what might be Lennon’s most iconic song introduction (the mellotron opening to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’).

6. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was McCartney’s idea. In fact, most everything the band did post-Epstein’s death in ’66 was driven by him. We have McCartney to thank for their entire post-66 catalogue.

10. McCartney recruited his friend George Harrison into the group. Lennon attempted to recruit Yoko Ono into the group. These recruitments had varying level of success.

13. He had the sense to excavate Let It Be from under the musical submersion of Phil Spector’s whitewashing string arrangements. Delivering his partner’s classic ‘Across the Universe’ in pristine acoustic glory.

15. Lennon’s quip in response to the question “Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?” was “He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles.” He was talking about Paul.

More Happy Birfday Paul!

 (ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE)

I've defended McCartney in the stupid "Lennon vs. McCartney" debate many, many times on this blog, I won't even bother linking to them oh wait I guess I will HERE and HERE. And HERE. And countless others.

So it's nice to see someone else sticking up for Macca. He's a bit strong with the "Lennon sucks!" language, I get cranky when I hafta point out to people that McCartney was Lennon's equal (if not more) within The Beatles, but I also love Lennon at the same time.

Some favorites from the list:

3. He wrote what might be Lennon’s most iconic song introduction (the mellotron opening to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’).

6. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was McCartney’s idea. In fact, most everything the band did post-Epstein’s death in ’66 was driven by him. We have McCartney to thank for their entire post-66 catalogue.

10. McCartney recruited his friend George Harrison into the group. Lennon attempted to recruit Yoko Ono into the group. These recruitments had varying level of success. [XMASTIME NOTE: ziiiiiinger!]

13. He had the sense to excavate Let It Be from under the musical submersion of Phil Spector’s whitewashing string arrangements. Delivering his partner’s classic ‘Across the Universe’ in pristine acoustic glory.

15. Lennon’s quip in response to the question “Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world?” was “He’s not even the best drummer in The Beatles.” He was talking about Paul.

July 6, 1957

John Lennon met Paul McCartney:

The pair chatted for a few minutes, and McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar – the instruments owned by Lennon and Griffiths were in G banjo tuning. McCartney then sang Eddie Cochran’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and Gene Vincent’s ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’, along with a medley of songs by Little Richard.

Later on, Lennon and Pete Shotton discussed the young McCartney, and whether to invite him to join their group. For Lennon it was a dilemma – should he admit a talented member who may pose a challenge to his own superiority within the group, or should he persist without McCartney, retaining his leadership yet likely consigning the group to failure?

They decided McCartney would be an asset, and roughly two weeks later Shotton encountered McCartney cycling through Woolton. Paul mulled over the invitation to join, and eventually agreed to join the Quarrymen’s ranks.

Beatles Top 100

I rarely am able to view Best-Of lists without screaming and I'm sure if I really dug in I'd go nuts, but at least this Rolling Stone article on the 100 Greatest Beatles songs gets the top 3 pretty correct (I personally woulda put Rain in the #3 spot, but oh well):

3. Strawberry Fields Forever

Strawberry Field (Lennon added the "s") was a Liverpool children's home near where Lennon grew up with his Aunt Mimi. When he was young, Lennon, who had been abandoned by both his parents, would climb over the wall of the orphanage and play in its wild gardens.

"I was hip in kindergarten," Lennon explained in 1980. "I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius — 'I mean it must be high or low,' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn't see."

2. I Want to Hold Your Hand

The song "was the apex of Phase One of the Beatles' development," said producer George Martin. "When they started out, in the 'Love Me Do' days, they weren't good writers. They stole unashamedly from existing records. It wasn't until they tasted blood that they realized they could do this, and that set them on the road to writing better songs."

The lightning-bolt energy lunges out of the speakers with a rhythm so tricky that many bands who covered the song couldn't figure it out. Lennon's and McCartney's voices constantly switch between unison and harmony. Every element of the song is a hook, from Lennon's riffing to George Harrison's string-snapping guitar fills to the group's syncopated hand claps.

With advance orders at a million copies, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was released in the U.K. in late November and promptly bumped the band's "She Loves You" from the top of the charts. After a teenager* in Washington, D.C., persuaded a local DJ to seek out an import of the single, it quickly became a hit on the few American stations that managed to score a copy. Rush-released in the U.S. the day after Christmas, the song hit Number One on February 1st, 1964.

*I wrote about this girl back in 2012. 

1. A Day in the Life

Lennon wrote the basic song, but he felt it needed something different for the middle section. McCartney had a brief song fragment handy, the part that begins "Woke up, fell out of bed." "He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought, 'It's already a good song,'" Lennon said. But McCartney also came up with the idea to have classical musicians deliver what Martin called an "orchestral orgasm." The February 10th session became a festive occasion, with guests like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and Donovan. The studio was full of balloons; the formally attired orchestra members were given party hats, rubber noses and gorilla paws to wear. Martin and McCartney both conducted the musicians, having them play from the lowest note on their instruments to the highest.

Lennon & McCartney and Some Idiots

550 artists answer the immortal question: Lennon or McCartney?

Here is the final tally of responses:
Lennon: 282
McCartney: 196
No answer: 50
Ringo Starr: 4
George Harrison: 15
Jimi Hendrix: 1
Lou Reed: 1
Keith Richards: 1
Oasis: 1

Some important observations: Adam Levine of Maroon 5 blew off the question; Australians (including Baz Luhrmann, Ben Lee, and the lead singer of Wolfmother) are very indecisive; Bo Diddley doesn't get The Beatles ("I don't understand what they're doing. Never have"); several yuksters made jokes about Vladimir Lenin; actress Caitlin Gerard voted for "Lemon;" Jack McBrayer is in awe of McCartney; Johnny Rotten chose Lennon, but "I've met McCartney and liked him, so that's a puzzlement;" Will.i.am is the worst ("McCartney with Lennon glasses"); and a special shoutout to Hungarian American director Nimrod Antal who went with "Oasis," which is objectively the correct answer.

Paul is the Best, Duh

Just the other day I mentioned to someone that while John Lennon wrote a million great songs in The Beatles, anytime you hear anything "interesting" in one of his songs, the odds of it being because of Paul is about 90%. A great example is while John may have written Ticket to Ride, it was McCartney who got  hold of it and turned it into something more brilliant. From the song's episode of the A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs:

While “Ticket to Ride” is mostly — or possibly solely — John’s song, the record is very much Paul’s record.

Either way, though, the song is primarily John’s in the writing, but the arrangement is primarily McCartney’s work — and while Lennon would later claim that McCartney would always pay less attention to Lennon’s songs than to McCartney’s own, in this middle period of the group’s career most of their truly astounding work comes when  Lennon brings in the song but McCartney experiments with the arrangement and production. Over and over again we see McCartney taking control of a Lennon song in the studio and bringing out aspects of it that its composer either had not considered or had not had the musical vocabulary or patience to realise on his own.

It goes on to explain how it was Paul who came up with the song's iconic drumming and guitar line. In other words, pretty much what makes the song the song.

Listen to the whole thing here. You're welcome, people!

Episode 127: “Ticket to Ride” by the Beatles

A Day in the Life

John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for A Day in the Life are up for auction and expected to fetch near 500,000 pounds, which means I'm about to become the owner of John Lennon's handwritten lyrics for A Day in the Life. THIS ARTICLE gives some glimpses into the incredibly quick birth of the song from start to finish.

The first thing that strikes you when you look at Lennon’s handwritten lyrics for A Day in the Life is how little John Lennon seemed to agonise over them. Save for a handful of scribbled-out words, the words appear to have tumbled out in one rhapsodic flow, pending the later addition of Paul McCartney’s middle eight.

What else do we know about A Day in the Life? We know that two days must have elapsed between Lennon’s lyric and the recording of the song which began on January 19, 1967. The two news stories — the death of London socialite Tara Brown and those holes in Blackburn, Lancashire — that inspired Lennon’s lyric can both be dated to the Daily Mail which appeared on January 17...No other Beatles song illustrates with such clarity the way Lennon and McCartney’s writing approaches complemented each other. Ever preoccupied with finding ways to smuggle avant-garde ideas into the confines of a pop song, it was McCartney – apparently, wearing a red butcher’s apron – who overrode George Martin’s misgivings and freighted in the New Philharmonia to create the song’s iconic 24-bar happening...It was McCartney also who contributed a cantering middle-section (“Got up/Got out of bed ... ”) once the rest of the song had been completed.

Definitely top 3 Xmastime Beatles super-slice of super-slices.

Live-Blogging Get Back

EPISODE 1: DAYS 1-7 January 2-10

My live-blogging of the second episode HERE 

My live-blogging of the third episode HERE

TWO OVERARCHING POINTS:

GOOD: Although it makes total sense when I think about what Let it Be was to begin with, I'm fairly shocked at how much this is geared to super-fans. I *guess* I was expecting a kind of Anthology Part 2, but this is a super-inside look at how a band - THE band - works, and for a super-fan like me it is beyond intoxicating, and something I consider a gift to myself and fellow fans.

BAD: While I understand that watching them vamp through golden oldies shows us how much fun they have with each other and how much connective tissue they have with their own learned canon of rock n roll after having grown up together, it gets quite wearying. It probably takes up an entire hour, I mean camon. As much as they were musical gods, The Beatles - particularly John & Paul - were also great comedians, but we can get this across without repeatedly having to watch them them goof around to Blue Suede Shoes.

1:00 The intro to the brief “Here’s the entire career of The Beatles!” kicking off with In Spite of All the Danger does in fact make you think it’s just another part of the Anthology. Not sure why Peter Jackson, who made this entire thing for super-fans, felt the need for this run-through?

5:37 I didn’t think I’d comment during the career retrospective part but George, after being asked about the infamous dust-up in Manila, bitching that he hadn’t wanted to go to Manila in the first place is about the most George thing George could possibly have said at that moment.

10:01 Enough isn’t made of the fact that The Beatles had to wrap these recordings up so quickly because…Ringo had to start shooting a movie? Wouldn’t this be like D-Day being scheduled on June 6th because General Eisenhower had his Kick-the-Can Fantasy Draft on the 7th?

11:33 Michael Lindsay-Hogg looks like he’s 12 years old. The legend, unconfirmed, was always that Orson Welles was his father. Much like Ronan Farrow, what is is about famous kids who have unconfirmed famous fathers that makes it look like they’re pre-pubescent? MLH looks like he’s a fetus and yet he’s older than each of The Beatles!

11:33 First Beatle sighting: George!

Interesting that the first song heard in the entire doc is Lennon’s On the Road to Marrakesh, which would become Child of Nature, which would eventually become Jealous Guy, a track on his second solo album. Like All Things Must Pass and Gimme Some Truth, I don’t know why McCartney didn’t jump on this one to be on the album.

12:22 Interesting that The Beatles sit on normal, drab wooden chairs during rehearsals. I guess I'd pictured them being hoisted up by puppies dipped in gold while practicing with each other?

12:32 The idea that the band is putting themselves under the pressure of writing and recording an entire album to be presented on a live tv special is even crazier when you really that they’d released The White Album - not just an album, but a double album - JUST A MONTH AND A HALF EARLIER!!!

12:52 Lennon seems to have Don’t Let Me Down pretty well down right away but as you people recall it’s not even my favorite song called Don’t Let Me Down.

13:28 It’s pretty shocking to hear them quoting A Hard Day’s Night since in Beatles time it feels like that was a million years ago,…but it was only 4 1/2 years ago! Jesus.

14:38 It's weird that they’re basically given an airplane hangar to rehearse in and the band immediately pretty much huddles in each other’s laps.

15:27 I just realized at this moment that in only 6 months I will literally be twice as old as George Harrison was while filming this goddam thing.

19:50 McCartney’s flip-flopping sense of diplomacy within one sentence is both impressive and alarming: “the sound in here is terrible but you never know it just might be great.” What?

24:00 George tries to bring up “gee, I have a bunch of songs ready to go…” to Paul and is somehow cock-blocked by Ringo deciding at that moment to learn how to play piano. Ouch! (We don't see the footage of Paul slipping Ringo £5 for his efforts)

36:11 Again, I have no idea why Gimme Some Truth didn’t make it on this album.

One great thing in particular about this whole doc is a fresh viewing of John Lennon himself. Even as he’s one of the most well-documented people in human history, over the years fans like myself have kinda gotten used to the same set of a dozen or so Lennon “moments” - pictures, quotes or video frozen in time and by themselves: here’s Lennon being brilliantly Lennon, here’s Lennon clowning around, etc. But seeing him just sitting around with the other Beatles is incredibly refreshing - sometimes he’ll say something brilliant, sometimes he’ll start cutting up, sometimes while playing a song you can tell he wants to please Paul, and sometimes he’s just sitting there looking like a dope, like anybody else. Very illuminating, and, again, a real gift this film has delivered for fans.

37:21 George finally gets them to do Sunrise, which will become All Things Must Pass. The song sounds amazing, the three of them singing together is magical, and so of course they don’t bother recording it. Useless, gentlemen! Like tits on a bull, some may say.

39:11 George’s earnestness about how he and Paul should feel connected with each other as though they’ve each written each other’s songs is incredibly moving. Being a Liverpool man of 26 I'm sure Paul will make fun of this to John & Ringo the second George leaves the room (hey this has always been how it is, unfortunately), but I really liked it.

41:35 Okay now they’re considering doing an older Beatles song and George wants to do Every Little Thing so now we hafta officially question everything about George. WTF George all those amazing hits and incredible album cuts and THAT’S the song you pick?! That's like Derek Jeter going back and wanting to bang his high school girlfriend instead of his Murderer's Row of Mariah Carey./Jessica Alba/Minka Kelly/Scarlett Johanson/Adriana Limna OKAY DAMMIT GEORGE MY FINGERS ARE TIRED OF TYPING!

Over the next 90 seconds George gives a remarkable speech about how he wishes he was a better guitar player AND foreshadows the coming of Billy Preston, to which John and Paul blink while waiting for the appropriate amount of time before they can talk about, you know, anything else.

44:26 Weird that they present themselves as being under the single greatest pressure any humans have ever been under and yet…have their weekends off? What? Are they Matthew Crawley during the Battle of the Somme?

It’s kinda weird/sad seeing George Martin throughout this doc. The way I’d always read it was that he was like “fuck this” and was never around for the Let it Be sessions. But throughout Get Back there he is just kinda standing around, looking fairly useless, the master for whom the pupils no longer have any use. He is THE only person I will ever accept as “The 5th Beatle”, so it’s painful to see him so seemingly useless here. Thankfully we know he comes roaring back months later during Abbey Road after the band comes crawling back to him, hat in hands asking for help.

54:37 Brutal 4 minutes of Paul doing all he can to completely ruin Don’t Let Me Down with terrible backups, all the while with John just staring at him until sanity reigns again with George calling it, in a word, “shit”. 

(Director Peter Jackson: “George is this wonderful, pragmatic guy who takes all the romance out of the other guys who go supernova into these flights of fancy. He just says, ‘That’s never going to happen.’ I really relate to George. You want John and Paul in your group, because you want that genius to be going into these crazy directions, but you always want George in your group as well to say, ‘That’s a bloody stupid idea.’ I really appreciate George for that. He would be great on a film set because he’s a let’s-just-cut-all-the-crap-out guy.)

57:54 OH NO HERE IT IS - the legendary argument with Paul & George! It’s always been framed as Paul accusing George of being annoyed by Paul’s musical instruction and George snarkily telling Paul he’ll basically play whatever Paul wants him to play as long as it will shut him up; now with the fuller context presented it’s pretty much Paul saying “I feel like I’m annoying you” and George saying “you’re not annoying me”. END OF SCORCHED-EARTH FIGHT!   

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED SO FAR: when Paul gets frustrated, he tries to blame the process. When George gets frustrated, he questions himself. When others are frustrated John doesn’t seem to really care, and Ringo is the drummer.

1:00:03 One of the more remarkable moments of the doc: while sitting around waiting for John to show up McCartney pulls the song Get Back out of thin air. Let’s be honest - it’s a fairly simple rocker song, it’s not like we’re watching the creation of A Day in the Life, but watching it from the moment it’s birthed is pretty thrilling, and a testament to the genius of McCartney people have spent decades rightfully espousing.

watching paul just pull get back out of the ether is still blowing my mind lol
pic.twitter.com/m5LWqCEqJR

— not the guy (@notnotnuanced) November 28, 2021

1:06:20 Lennon walks in late as they’re running through Get Back and, as half of Lennon/McCartney, instantly calculates how much $$$$ he’ll be making off the song.

1:09:57 Paul pleading to the rest of the band that they can still "ROCK!" is a ballsy move in this sweater/shirt combo.

1:14:04 Things are getting tense - George has even brought up the word “divorce”. And if we’re getting worried this is going to be curtains for the band it turns out it’s even worse than we think: Paul’s introducing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to the band. Jesus.

1:19:30 The fact that they can go directly from playing Paul's abysmally stupid Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to John's brilliantly transcendent Across the Universe is yet another indication of how great a band they truly are, or that Paul has some photo evidence of John doing some really weird shit.

1:22:52 For being “The Quiet One” George is one chatty motherfucker, but I actually like it - everything he says is very earnest and well-intentioned, while Paul wraps himself up in riddles of what/who they are/aren’t, and John just wants to run out the clock being funny. Ringo is just delightful, of course.

I wonder if a reason we find something like this 8-hour doc digestible in 2021 is that we’re so used to reality tv? I mean if we can sit through hours of the Real Housewives of ________ throwing wine glasses at each other before commercial breaks then surely we can sit through watching The goddam Beatles for a few hours, n'est-pas?

1:24:22 Paul seems to actually like George’s new song I Me Mine, then immediately tries to point out a grammatical mistake in the lyrics. George thoughtfully bites his tongue about Paul one day marrying a woman with one leg.

1:25:22 Paul confronting John to ask him if he’s written any songs has all the warmth of a bill collector but without the entertaining threat of violence.

1:26:25 If you’re worried about what happened to Scott Farkus after A Christmas Story then please don't, he went on to find work:

1:42:20 Paul brings in Linda for the first time, and the entire world decides to blame her for breaking up The Beatles OH WAIT A MINUTE she's white and American. Never mind. Great job, Paul!

1:49:42 As someone who’s read a million Beatles books and LOVES the Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End medley at the end of Abbey Road, I for one am shocked to see that Carry That Weight started out as Paul writing a country song for Ringo. Thankfully, knowing this still doesn’t take away the heavy emotion the song holds in its final resting place on Abbey Road. Superslice.

1:55:40 Lennon’s “yes?” responses to Paul during Commonwealth is legit LOL funny. It’s easy to see why, while he was obviously frustrated by Lennon’s lack of professionalism from time to time, it was virtually impossible for Paul to actually get angry at him.

2:04:55 Okay, getting to witness Paul McCartney introduce Let it Be to the rest of the band for the first time is a pretty special moment.

2:08:22

"I'm gonna spend years & years being like a beloved part of the band!"

"Oy vey." 

 

2:22:20 Aaaaaand this is the moment George quits The Beatles. “I’m leaving the band now.”

 

Nobody at the time seems to know what he’s meant, one way or the other. Historical consensus has been that he simply got fed up with McCartney hectoring him about what to play. Watching Get Back, it’s also obvious he’s anxious about the Lennon/McCartney team never giving him a chance to record his songs, which have gotten better and better over the years. It’s probably a mix of the two. They had always treated him like the kid brother but hell, he had the lead-off track on Revolver and four songs on The White Album! Of course we know he comes back - he almost single-handedly saves Abbey Road later in the year - but this is of course great drama and history for the documentary. 

 

END OF EPISODE 1!!!!  I can't wait to see Episode 2, when they move out of dreary Twickenham and back to their studio at Apple. And might I say, this is easily the greatest Beatles moment in 26 years, since the Anthology. :) As always, The Beatles simply make this world a better place to be in.

Two of Us

Over 10 years ago I posted the 4-part article from Slate on the genius of the Lennon/McCartney relationship and the duality of genius.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

Interesting bits, as per moi:

PART ONE:

Consider the moment Paul's brother Michael cited as an illustration of his "innate sense of diplomacy." It was in Paris in 1963. The Beatles' producer George Martin had arranged for them to record "She Loves You" in German. When the band missed their studio appointment, Martin came around to their suite at the George V hotel. They played slapstick and dived under the tables to avoid him.

"Are you coming to do it or not?" Martin said.

"No," Lennon said. George and Ringo echoed him. Paul said nothing, and they went back to eating.

"Then a bit later," Michael said, "Paul suddenly turned to John and said, 'Heh, you know that so and so line, what if we did it this way? John listened to what Paul said, thought a bit, and said, 'Yeah, that's it.' And they headed to the studio."

How would we chart the lines of authority for this decision? You could say Lennon made the call to refuse the recording session, then reversed himself—the band following him both times. But it was actually Paul who shaped the course the band took. His move to avoid a direct confrontation—to let John stay nominally in control—only underscores his operational strength.

Just as shorter people are more aware of height, Paul seems to have noticed the power dynamic more acutely. In a 1967 conversation about the band's Hamburg days, Lennon said that Paul had just recently told him about fights they had over who led the band. "I can't remember them," Lennon said. "It had stopped mattering by then. I wasn't so determined to be the leader at all costs." This is crucial. He had decided he didn't need to be the leader at all costs—itself a leadership claim. As the band rocketed to success, Lennon would increasingly acquiesce to Paul's ideas, much as a king in tumultuous times will defer to his counsel. But he never gave up the idea that he could, when he wanted, return straight to his throne.

PART TWO:

The favorite back-and-forth—who was the real genius in the pair?—looks to set one on a pedestal. But when we look closely at the back and forth, that debate's most cherished assumptions come into question—for example, that John charged ahead with the musical avant-garde while Paul nurtured traditional elements of melody and symmetry. It's true that John tended to stick his finger in the audience's eye while Paul usually preferred to coo to them. John's "Revolution 9" may be the oddest, most dissonant thing ever laid down on a big pop album and Paul's "Let It Be" and "Hey Jude" set a standard for sweetness and formal perfection.

But in some ways, it was Paul who forged the frontier and John who raced to catch and exceed him. From 1966 to '68, John lived a weird, sleepy, deeply interior life. He spent days on end dropping acid and watching television. Paul, meanwhile, threw himself into the London art world and its "happenings"—performances that blurred the boundary between artist and audience. In 1965, their music publisher Dick James gave them each a Brenell Mark 5 tape recorder. While John used his to record rough demos, Paul, immersed in the experimental work of composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, jiggered the machine to disable the erase head and make tape loops of layered sounds. He brought these to the Beatles sessions to create the sound for "Tomorrow Never Knows," the famous "John" song. 

PART THREE:

But the joint credit also served as balm on the cuts of a constant, intense—though often joyful—competition. "Imagine two people pulling on a rope," said George Martin, "smiling at each other and pulling all the time with all their might. The tension between the two of them made for the bond." According to the conventional wisdom, their drift apart had begun.

But the increased distance sometimes functioned like the space between boxers in a ring—giving more room for a powerful shot. "He'd write 'Strawberry fields,' I'd go away and write 'Penny Lane,' " McCartney said. "If I'd write 'I'm Down,' he'd go away and write something similar to that. To compete with each other. But it was very friendly competition because we were both going to share in the rewards anyway."

Friendly, but with a sharp edge. "I would bring in a song and you could sort of see John stiffen a bit," Paul said. "Next day he'd bring in a song and I'd sort of stiffen. And it was like, 'Oh, you're going to do that, are you? Right. You wait till I come up with something tomorrow.'"

PART FOUR:

It's supremely odd how history would play the collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The result of one of the most intertwined partnerships in music history, their work would consistently be reduced to static roles. It's almost as if, faced with the bound pair, a culture obsessed with individualism found a way to cleave them in two.

Take, for example, the relentless focus on "John" songs versus "Paul" songs—or sections of songs, or single lines—as though that's the skeleton key to the Beatles' inner workings. Actually, this tradition has an impeccable source: John and Paul themselves. The irony is that the way they came to tell their own story, after their split, may speak less to the way they separated and more to the way that they remained connected.

Two years later, John would mix up his tenses when describing Paul in an even more revealing way. It was Thanksgiving night in 1974, when he joined Elton John at a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.      Lennon wore a black silk shirt, a black jacket, and a necklace that dangled a flower over his chest. He had on his usual "granny" glasses with dark lenses. His thin, brown hair fell down past his shoulders. After storming through "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," Lennon came to the microphone to round out the set.

"I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight," he said. "We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we'd do a number of an old, estranged fiance of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang. It's an old Beatle number and we just about know it."

The song was "I Saw Her Standing There" [a "Paul" song.] Though he lived another six years, John Lennon never took the stage for a major show again. His strange words have a peculiar and lasting echo. By then, Paul and John had been the most famous exes in the world for four years. But somehow, they were still "fiances"—prospective spouses. As much as had passed, the energy between them was always in front of them—always, somehow, in the future.

It goes without saying: without one, there wouldn't have been the other. What a crazy, lucky thing that they met each other on that day back on July 6, 1957.

Two of Us, III

Yesterday I pointed out Slate's Part 1 of the discussion re: the collective genius of John and Paul; today's Part 2 brings up a point I've always thought to be more true than some magical, mystery explanation: sheer competition between young dudes:

But the joint credit also served as balm on the cuts of a constant, intense—though often joyful—competition. "Imagine two people pulling on a rope," said George Martin, "smiling at each other and pulling all the time with all their might. The tension between the two of them made for the bond." 

According to the conventional wisdom, their drift apart had begun. But the increased distance sometimes functioned like the space between boxers in a ring—giving more room for a powerful shot. "He'd write 'Strawberry fields,' I'd go away and write 'Penny Lane,' " McCartney said. "If I'd write 'I'm Down,' he'd go away and write something similar to that. To compete with each other. But it was very friendly competition because we were both going to share in the rewards anyway."

Friendly, but with a sharp edge. "I would bring in a song and you could sort of see John stiffen a bit," Paul said. "Next day he'd bring in a song and I'd sort of stiffen. And it was like, 'Oh, you're going to do that, are you? Right. You wait till I come up with something tomorrow.' "

Also, it's nice to see it acknowledged that despite being the "pussy, mawkish one," a myth I constantly seek to dispel, it was Paul who first dipped his toes into London's avant-garde scene of the day: 

The favorite back-and-forth—who was the real genius in the pair?—looks to set one on a pedestal. But when we look closely at the back and forth, that debate's most cherished assumptions come into question—for example, that John charged ahead with the musical avant-garde while Paul nurtured traditional elements of melody and symmetry.

But in some ways, it was Paul who forged the frontier and John who raced to catch and exceed him. From 1966 to '68, John lived a weird, sleepy, deeply interior life. He spent days on end dropping acid and watching television. Paul, meanwhile, threw himself into the London art world and its "happenings"—performances that blurred the boundary between artist and audience. In 1965, their music publisher Dick James gave them each a Brenell Mark 5 tape recorder. While John used his to record rough demos, Paul, immersed in the experimental work of composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, jiggered the machine to disable the erase head and make tape loops of layered sounds. He brought these to the Beatles sessions to create the sound for "Tomorrow Never Knows," the famous "John" song.

In 1966, a far-out artist named Yoko Ono moved to London from New York City. Paul not only met her first; he had helped create the India Gallery where she and Lennon met. Though it took several years to ripen, Lennon eventually threw himself into the relationship—he literally asked people to consider them JohnandYoko. (Yoko made for the third person, following Pete Shotton and Paul McCartney, with whom he collapsed his name.)

 Xmastime back in August:

It's also of note that it was McCartney, who spent a lot of time before Revolver dicking around with tape loops he made from tapes of such avant-garde stuff as Stockhausen while Lennon laid on his couch getting fat in wedded suburban bliss, which led to the innovative, psychedelic hypersonic musical leap the album provided. Mythology will have you believe Lennon sat around coming up with weird, trippy stuff while McCartney whistled How Much for the Doggie in the Window? over and over.

Like Mickey Mantle, there is no moment of the Beatles' career that is not fascinating. It has everything.

The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, but It Bends Toward Xmastime

Moi Say Moi:

...while John Lennon wrote a million great songs in The Beatles, anytime you hear anything "interesting" in one of his songs, the odds of it being because of Paul is about 90%. 

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand since the Universe is finally catching up to me, here's an excerpt from I an Leslie's newly released John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs:

McCartney's bass powers the song from beneath. In the middle section he walks down the scale as the vocal line moves up, an early example of his ear for the contrapuntal. "Please Please Me" is a model for how McCartney would impose himself on his partner's songs. Through his talents for arrangement, singing, and playing, he helped to turn a somewhat maudlin, aggrieved ballad into a cruise missile carrying a payload of joy.

Another great example I pointed out a coupla years ago is Ticket to Ride:

The song is primarily John’s in the writing, but the arrangement is McCartney’s work — in this middle period of the group’s career most of their truly astounding work comes when Lennon brings in the song but McCartney experiments with the arrangement and production. Over and over again we see McCartney taking control of a Lennon song in the studio and bringing out aspects of it that its composer either had not considered or had not had the musical vocabulary or patience to realise on his own.

It goes on to explain how it was Paul who came up with the song's iconic drumming and guitar line. In other words, pretty much what makes the song the song. 

 

59 Years Ago Today

John and Paul met each other:

While setting up their equipment to play, the Quarry Men's sometime tea-chest bass player, Ivan Vaughan, introduced the band to one of his classmates from Liverpool Institute, the 15-year-old Paul McCartney.

This historic occasion was the first time McCartney met John Lennon, two years his senior. McCartney wore a white jacket with silver flecks, and a pair of black drainpipe trousers.

The pair chatted for a few minutes, and McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar - previously Lennon and Griffiths had taken their instruments to a man living in Kings Drive, Woolton, who tuned them for a small fee. He also sang Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock and Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula, along with a medley of songs by Little Richard.

20 Flight Rock

Conan and Jack White playing Twenty Flight Rock is awesome for several reasons - one, because I fucking love Eddie Cochran, and also that song in particular has a place in history:

The song triggered a significant moment in music history when the barely 15-year-old Paul McCartney used "Twenty Flight Rock" as his first song when he auditioned for John Lennon on July 6, 1957 in Liverpool, England. The 16-year-old Lennon was impressed by the young McCartney's ability to play the song on the guitar during their first official introductions at St. Peter's Church Hall prior to a church garden fete. The good first impression of McCartney's performance led to an invitation to join The Quarrymen - John Lennon's band that would eventually evolved into The Beatles. On The Beatles Anthology, McCartney noted that: "I think what impressed him most was that I knew all the words."

July 6, 1957

John met Paul:

While setting up their equipment to play, the Quarry Men's sometime tea-chest bass player, Ivan Vaughan, introduced the band to one of his classmates from Liverpool Institute, the 15-year-old Paul McCartney.

This historic occasion was the first time McCartney met John Lennon, two years his senior. McCartney wore a white jacket with silver flecks, and a pair of black drainpipe trousers.

The pair chatted for a few minutes, and McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar - previously Lennon and Griffiths had taken their instruments to a man living in Kings Drive, Woolton, who tuned them for a small fee. He also sang Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock and Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula, along with a medley of songs by Little Richard.

Incredibly, the show was recorded:

The Quarry Men's set, remarkably, was recorded by an audience member, Bob Molyneux, on his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder. In 1994 Molyneux, then a retired policeman, rediscovered the tape, which contained scratchy recordings of the band performing Lonnie Donegan's Puttin' On The Style and Elvis Presley's Baby, Let's Play House.
The tape was sold on 15 September 1994 at Sotheby's for £78,500. At the time it was the most expensive recording ever sold at auction. The winning bidder was EMI Records, who considered if for release as part of the Anthology project, but chose not to as the sound quality was substandard.

Are you shitting me? I'm pretty sure Beatles fans would love to have such an artifact, regardless if it couldn't have fit onto Revolver nicely sound-wise. Unbelievable.

Paul Simon Hates John Lennon; Internet to Collapse Into Itself and Destroy Earth

I don't know what's more surprising - someone saying out loud they think McCartney was a better songwriter than Lennon, or someone saying out loud that Dylan is a "second tier" songwriter:

"I'd put Gershwin, Berlin and Hank Williams. I'd probably put Paul McCartney in there too. Then I'd have Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Then, in the second tier, Lennon is there, Dylan is there, Bob Marley and Stephen Sondheim are there, and maybe I'm there, too. It's about whose songs last."

I'm not saying which Beatle was the better songwriter, that debate will go on as long as the Earth rotates, but I continue to believe Paul has unfairly gotten the raw end of the deal; Lennon as Jeter to Paul's A-Rod.

Mostly, I've always been pissed at how because he got shot, he became a martyr, while Paul became the "pussy Beatle", a "lightweight fop." In a lot of people's eyes. John IS the Beatles, which is totally ridiculous. Paul could have a tendency to get a bit mawkish at times (one song about your sheepdog is one too many, Paul), but he also CRANKED plenty - witness his bone-shivering cover of "Long Tall Sally", or his heavy metal "Helter Skelter." On the very same day he recorded "Yesterday", Paul also ran through his Little Richardesque number "I'm Down", so don't tell me he's a pussy (twas his 23rd birthday, and he ALSO recorded "I've Just Seen a Face" - quite a fucking day. jesus.) John and Paul were both great because of each other. Yes, John probably helped Paul steer from his sentimental show tune side sometimes, but Paul also kept John from completely going off the deep end too eary with his "artsy primal scream feeling songs" - or, as I call them, "crap." So everyone, drop the Lennon is the Jesus Beatle and Paul sucked nonsense.

Get Back with Macca Himself

I've mentioned before that like millions of others, I'm breathlessly awaiting the 6-hour Peter Jackson Beatles doc Get Back, the film fans like me have been waiting for decades to right the sins of the ridiculously skewed Let It Be. One man whose view of the end of The Beatles was changed upon seeing the footage? Paul McCartney himself:

Paul McCartney’s favourite photo was taken in 1968 by Linda, then his girlfriend. It shows him and John Lennon writing together, beaming with the shared joy of being in the world’s best band.

That joy, though, is not how most of us think of the Beatles in their final days. We think of acrimony and bitterness, later confirmed by all those spiteful, score-settling solo songs (Too Many People by McCartney, How Do You Sleep? by Lennon). This simple story endured for five decades — the Beatles’ history was giddy and glorious until the late 1960s, then the band blew up and rained poison on each other.

Which is what McCartney thought too — until last year, when the director Peter Jackson sent him footage of the film he had been making for four years; The Beatles: Get Back, a three-part Fab Four extravaganza. 

“I’ll tell you what is really fabulous about it,” a thrilled McCartney says. “It shows the four of us having a ball.” The film reminds him, sweetly, of that photo by Linda. “It was so reaffirming for me. That was one of the important things about the Beatles — we could make each other laugh. John and I are in this footage doing Two of Us and, for some reason, we’ve decided to do it like ventriloquists. It’s hilarious. It just proves to me that my main memory of the Beatles was the joy and the skill.”

November 25 cannot come fast enough!

Two of Us, IV

Yesterday Slate continued it's series on the Lennon/McCartney connection, discussing the inner-workings of a partnership that never   really went away.

It's supremely odd how history would play the collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The result of one of the most intertwined partnerships in music history, their work would consistently be reduced to static roles. It's almost as if, faced with the bound pair, a culture obsessed with individualism found a way to cleave them in two.

Take, for example, the relentless focus on "John" songs versus "Paul" songs—or sections of songs, or single lines—as though that's the skeleton key to the Beatles' inner workings.

Actually, this tradition has an impeccable source: John and Paul themselves. The irony is that the way they came to tell their own story, after their split, may speak less to the way they separated and more to the way that they remained connected.
Two years later, John would mix up his tenses when describing Paul in an even more revealing way. It was Thanksgiving night in 1974, when he joined Elton John at a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.

Lennon wore a black silk shirt, a black jacket, and a necklace that dangled a flower over his chest. He had on his usual "granny" glasses with dark lenses. His thin, brown hair fell down past his shoulders. After storming through "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," Lennon came to the microphone to round out the set.

"I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight," he said. "We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we'd do a number of an old, estranged fiance of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang. It's an old Beatle number and we just about know it."

The song was "I Saw Her Standing There" [a "Paul" song.]

Though he lived another six years, John Lennon never took the stage for a major show again. His strange words have a peculiar and lasting echo. By then, Paul and John had been the most famous exes in the world for four years. But somehow, they were still "fiances"—prospective spouses. As much as had passed, the energy between them was always in front of them—always, somehow, in the future.

XMASTIME MOVIE REVIEW: Yesterday

 The trailer:

  

Interesting original thought exercise (as is any "what if?" Beatles scenario), but pretty much everything else was terrible. This was made for Beatle fanatics like me who can't resist taking the bait (tbh I can't believe I held out watching it this long.)

My thoughts:

Before even making it to the “gets hit by a bus and The Beatles are erased from history” part it already was the most implausible movie ever: 1. The main character, Jack, works in like a Home Depot and the manager offers him full-time because “the customers like you”. What? Are customers at HD seeking out the manager to tell them how much they like a worker? Really? 2. How does an unsuccessful non-profitable singer have a “real” manager who’s NOT his girlfriend? 

Speaking of the girl, Ellie - she insists on being his manager when he's a nobody, but when he's making the leap to become the biggest star in the world she says "nah, Imma stick with being a school teacher"?

I don't understand the idea re: if The Beatles didn't exist then neither would Coca-Cola or cigarettes? What?

Jack, played by a guy who looks like a chubby Russell Brand, was remarkably overly serious and unfunny. His constant bafflement isn't even funny. At 119 minutes (grrrrr), maybe the most-sustained unfunny movie portrayal ever.

Can movie people make one goddam movie without stuffing in a romantic slant? Come the fuck on, movie people.

LOVED the dad! Everything he said was funny.

Also loved all the Ed Sheeran stuff! I may have leaned more into him being a cartoonish pretentious douche, but I really liked him whenever he popped up.

The scene when he's trying to play Let it Be for his parents but they keep getting distracted is fantastic. Maybe THAT should have been the movie - a guy has all the songs, but nobody cares.

One thing this movie did prove is that as incredible as the songs themselves are, when they're not in the hands of the actual Beatles they're not anywhere near as good. There's a magical electricity when they play together, which is simply impossible to recreate.

He quit teaching to...work at Home Depot? What?

He's a lone singer-songwriter who mostly plays acoustic but all of a sudden he shows up with a full band playing Help! like they're Blink-182? And the crowd goes apeshit? What?

It's nice to see him meet John Lennon just for the fantasy of knowing he's alive, but why would he sit down with a total stranger and have some deep chat? I know we think of Lennon as a Svengali but at age 78, never having been a public figure, would he really be down for "hey come on in and drink my tea while I drop truth bombs on you!"? 

It's revealed that Lennon worked as a sailor his whole life, yet he somehow lives in this fucking house:

What? Was he a goddam Rear Admiral? Or Cap'n Crunch?

Kate McKinnon was funny but WAY too much.

About halfway through I started wondering about Gavin getting screwed over - a sweet guy who really gave Jack his start and he seems to be discarded...until....Ellie starts dating him? So is he then a villain? 

Beatles songs sound simple but are famously complicated, tricky chords to play, yet this guy has no problem knowing and remembering all of them? They make a big deal of him trying to remember the words to Eleanor Rigby but he has no problem nailing the music for Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite? WHICH HE FOR SOME REASON RECORDED? Hmm.

The big scene when Rocky gives that touching monologue before opening the door to lead Jack onstage where a huge crowd is waiting? I 100% knew it'd be the wrong door, but his recovering with "let's continue on this journey together" got a legit LOL. 

The big finale at Wembley Stadium: he reveals to the world that he didn't write these songs, that four men named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr did and...the crowd thinks for a minute, then cheers? Everybody collectively shrugs, "okay", and everything just goes back to how it was before? Really? No followup questions, no media asking "what the fuck?"  Four men named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison (who, unlike John whose anonymity would've kept him alive, may still have died of cancer in 2001), and Ringo Starr didn't show up with a few questions? The whole movie just...ends?

Look, Richard Curtis doesn't owe us anything. He gave us Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, Notting Hill, Pirate Radio and Red Nose Day (!), I just wish that after starting out with such an interesting premise he'd put in more thought to make it actually interesting/semi-plausible.

Here's the Let it Be scene I mentioned. You're welcome!

Jeter/A-Rod

Lennon: Are we supposed to giggle in the solo?
McCartney: Yeah.
Lennon: Okay.
McCartney: This'll, this is gonna knock you out, boy.

These few seconds of dialog before a take of Let It Be offers a fascinating microcosm of the personalities of Lennon and McCartney: Paul eager to please and hoping everyone likes his latest song; John irreverent and awkwardly funny while knowing the opening line mentions Paul's dead mother. Jeter/-Rod.