I can remember breathlessly watching the three nights they originally
ran this back in 1995, and thinking "who the fuck on the planet ISN'T
watching this?" As the respective albums were released I'd buy them at
Sounds at the mall in Oxford, running to the mall shitter to read the
liner notes cause I couldn't wait until I got home. - XMASTIME
I've blathered on before many times about how great 1995 was, and in reading about Peter Jackson's upcoming doc Get Back we see The Beatles agree with me:
Nineteen ninety-five was the year in which The Beatles had a full-on
resurrection, although they were only partly responsible for it
themselves. While the “Anthology” project certainly reignited interest
in the band, The Beatles were also a fundamental part of the Britpop DNA
and hence unavoidable. Plus, Ian MacDonald’s 1994 book, Revolution In The Head: The Beatles’ Records And The Sixties,
had given them the kind of critical reevaluation that was hard to
ignore. “A sunny optimism permeated everything and possibilities seemed
limitless,” he wrote. “The Beatles were at their peak and were looked up
to in awe as arbiters of a positive new age in which the dead customs
of the older generation would be refreshed and remade through the
creative energy of the classless young.” The book’s commentary was not
just encyclopaedic, but its cultural scholarship also painted The
Beatles as genuine pop geniuses, and with good reason.
And some good news for Paul!
Nineteen ninety-five also saw the pendulum start to slowly swing back
to McCartney, as from hereon it would start to be him who the culture
would hold up as King Beatle. It was as if people had suddenly realised
that, yes, John Lennon was 15 years dead, but we still had half of the
greatest writing partnership in the history of pop walking among us,
making records, touring, appearing on TV and influencing an entire
generation of musicians and nascent stars obsessed with his old band.
Mostly, I can't fucking wait for Thanksgiving to watch this film:
You’ll see John scribbling down the lyrics for “Don’t Let Me Down”.
You’ll see vast amounts of funny interplay and, in one particularly
jaw-dropping moment, you’ll see George calmly suggesting that
McCartney’s recently unveiled masterpiece “Let It Be” might be improved
by a short intro. “What, like this?” asks McCartney, literally inventing
the famous introduction right before our eyes.
"So we run through this song once and then it's on to Arby's, right?"
