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'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.
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.
Hey, look who's #1!
1 comment:
Which is why I understand Macca's efforts to revise his personal history over the last decade. That he’ll be remembered as just ‘The Cute One who later formed Wings with his wife’ is something he seems terribly afraid of and which he began to address in earnest in the Barry Miles-penned official biography Many Years From Now.
Listen, if I were him I'd be paranoid, too. Look at how John has been deified--particularly vis-a-vis post Beatles output--while Paul's been practically deemed half a step above Ringo. That's gotta hurt.
The question is, whether he's right in assuming this or not. He might be thinking Beatlemaniacs will get it right, but the masses won't. In the end, his legacy is secure and his defenders will likely make sure he gets his posthumous fair shake. At least I hope so. I know I'll be doing my part.
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