A quite unlosable game
Various things made me recall one particular poem by Philip Larkin today:
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
If you like, you can hear Larkin recite that poem. I remembered when listening to the Marianne Faithfull interview I linked a couple of entries back. Some years ago I used that poem for an Alias vignette, a prompt reply (the prompt being "sex"), precisely because of the mixture of nostalgia and regret, the sense of "just too late". The symbols Larkin chooses for the start of the Swinging Sixties - the end of the Chatterley ban, the Beatles' first LP - are a mixture of very British (outside of England, it didn't matter whether or not the Brits were permitted to read the Penguin edition of a long ago D.H. Lawrence novel that already felt somewhat quaint) and international, though the Beatles took another year to reach the rest of the world. Still, if you think about it: the song that opens that first LP, I Saw Her Standing There, is far more sexual than I Want To Hold Your Hand, aka the song they finally crossed the ocean with. It's also one of my two favourites from said first LP, the other one being the concluding song, Twist and Shout (which has its own massive innuendo, but was a cover). Either one captures that urgency, that drive of this very first album, recorded in 24 non stop hours, so perfectly well, along with the spirit of 1963. And because one can't hear it too often, here's a vid where the album version is matched to footage of the Beatles (and surviving members) singing that song through the years:
Speaking of the Beatles: not that again, thought I, when I found Rolling Stone yet again did a "Who was the foremost member of the foremost group of all time? Was Paul McCartney or John Lennon the real driving force behind the Beatles?" article, complete with the old "Lennon was edgier and more envelope-pushing, and rock critics tend to favor those qualities over McCartney's more tradition-bound, pop-minded virtues" cliché. I'll give you edgier in the sense of "attitude", but "envelope-pushing" - not according to John Lennon, who, pre-Yoko, was prone to statements like "avant-garde is French for bullshit", disdained "that pop-opera jazz" and even post-Yoko could go on and on about how the Beatles had betrayed the pure rock'n roll spirit by branching out to other genres. It was "tradition-bound" Paul McCartney, having discovered Stockhausen and Cage, came up with the tape loops for Tomorrow Never Knows in Revolver (something for which which we don't have to take his current day word, since a) both producer George Martin and sound engineer Geoff Emerick bring it up in their respective memoirs, and b) there's a 1966 interview before the release of Revolver which mentions just this. It was also Paul who conceived and dominated the entire Sgt. Pepper album, arguably the high point of the Beatles' musical experimentation; Emerick names is the album where Paul McCartney became "the group's de facto producer" along with George Martin. (Something which later on in The White Album era, where relations started to break down, caused John to call Pepper "the biggest load of shit we've ever done"; he didn't talk about Pepper as something to be proud of until the mid-70s which not so coincidentally was when he and Paul were patching relationships up.) Not to mention that, as Ringo put it, it was "Paul the workoholic" who dragged everyone into the studio to begin with.
All of which, btw, doesn't mean I'd go for the simple reverse of the Rolling Stone estimate; Paul was certainly always the more pop-minded, and definitely fond of more traditional music than the rest (When I'm 64, for example, is both homage and affectionate send-up to the music hall songs his father loved); he simply had a magpie approach to all musical styles and never appears to have seen rock and pop, or for that matter avant-garde and music hall, as irreconcilable. And John definitely deserves all the credit for making his song writing more and more first person confessional, whereas your typical McCartney tune of the mid to late 60s is more prone to be third person, telling stories about other people (with the full range from tragic Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie to swinging Desmond and Molly Jones); it's not a coincidence one was prone to praise Bob Dylan and the other Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds if you asked them in the 60s about fellow musicians they were impressed with. It just never was a black and white situation of only one of them being the "envelope-pushing" one. To quote Alan Clayson: The myth (...) of raw John and melodic Paul - and I think that was actually a bit of a misnomer, because Paul was just as much of a raver as John was - you know, witness 'I'm Down' on the B-side of 'Help!' for example, and John was capable of being just as sort of twee, if you like, as Paul was - and certainly, his career after the Beatles - I'd say the adjective to describe John then would be 'uxorious' - meaning somebody with excessive love of his wife. I mean, if you think about things like 'Oh Yoko!' and 'Oh My Love' and 'Forgive Me My Little Flower Princess' - you know, I think that John was just as capable of being sentimental or cloying as Paul at his most excessive was.
John, in a rarely non-competitive mode, put it best in an interview for Melody Maker: "I copped money for Family Way, the film music that Paul wrote while I was out of the country making How I Won the War," said Lennon, laughing. "I said to Paul, 'You'd better keep that', and he said, 'Don't be soft.' It's the concept. We inspired each other so much. We write how we write now because of each other. Paul was there for fifteen years, and I wouldn't write like I write now if it weren't for Paul, and he wouldn't write like he does if it weren't for me."
And that, Rolling Stone, is why you don't ask "John or Paul?" questions.
On a lighter note, here's a hilarious vid presenting a view on the Beatles from the year 3000:
And a great blog entry about them apropos the Rock Band game . The author also wrote a great entry on Band on the Run , and why it's a contender for Greatest Ex-Beatles Album.
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
If you like, you can hear Larkin recite that poem. I remembered when listening to the Marianne Faithfull interview I linked a couple of entries back. Some years ago I used that poem for an Alias vignette, a prompt reply (the prompt being "sex"), precisely because of the mixture of nostalgia and regret, the sense of "just too late". The symbols Larkin chooses for the start of the Swinging Sixties - the end of the Chatterley ban, the Beatles' first LP - are a mixture of very British (outside of England, it didn't matter whether or not the Brits were permitted to read the Penguin edition of a long ago D.H. Lawrence novel that already felt somewhat quaint) and international, though the Beatles took another year to reach the rest of the world. Still, if you think about it: the song that opens that first LP, I Saw Her Standing There, is far more sexual than I Want To Hold Your Hand, aka the song they finally crossed the ocean with. It's also one of my two favourites from said first LP, the other one being the concluding song, Twist and Shout (which has its own massive innuendo, but was a cover). Either one captures that urgency, that drive of this very first album, recorded in 24 non stop hours, so perfectly well, along with the spirit of 1963. And because one can't hear it too often, here's a vid where the album version is matched to footage of the Beatles (and surviving members) singing that song through the years:
Click to viewSpeaking of the Beatles: not that again, thought I, when I found Rolling Stone yet again did a "Who was the foremost member of the foremost group of all time? Was Paul McCartney or John Lennon the real driving force behind the Beatles?" article, complete with the old "Lennon was edgier and more envelope-pushing, and rock critics tend to favor those qualities over McCartney's more tradition-bound, pop-minded virtues" cliché. I'll give you edgier in the sense of "attitude", but "envelope-pushing" - not according to John Lennon, who, pre-Yoko, was prone to statements like "avant-garde is French for bullshit", disdained "that pop-opera jazz" and even post-Yoko could go on and on about how the Beatles had betrayed the pure rock'n roll spirit by branching out to other genres. It was "tradition-bound" Paul McCartney, having discovered Stockhausen and Cage, came up with the tape loops for Tomorrow Never Knows in Revolver (something for which which we don't have to take his current day word, since a) both producer George Martin and sound engineer Geoff Emerick bring it up in their respective memoirs, and b) there's a 1966 interview before the release of Revolver which mentions just this. It was also Paul who conceived and dominated the entire Sgt. Pepper album, arguably the high point of the Beatles' musical experimentation; Emerick names is the album where Paul McCartney became "the group's de facto producer" along with George Martin. (Something which later on in The White Album era, where relations started to break down, caused John to call Pepper "the biggest load of shit we've ever done"; he didn't talk about Pepper as something to be proud of until the mid-70s which not so coincidentally was when he and Paul were patching relationships up.) Not to mention that, as Ringo put it, it was "Paul the workoholic" who dragged everyone into the studio to begin with.
All of which, btw, doesn't mean I'd go for the simple reverse of the Rolling Stone estimate; Paul was certainly always the more pop-minded, and definitely fond of more traditional music than the rest (When I'm 64, for example, is both homage and affectionate send-up to the music hall songs his father loved); he simply had a magpie approach to all musical styles and never appears to have seen rock and pop, or for that matter avant-garde and music hall, as irreconcilable. And John definitely deserves all the credit for making his song writing more and more first person confessional, whereas your typical McCartney tune of the mid to late 60s is more prone to be third person, telling stories about other people (with the full range from tragic Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie to swinging Desmond and Molly Jones); it's not a coincidence one was prone to praise Bob Dylan and the other Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds if you asked them in the 60s about fellow musicians they were impressed with. It just never was a black and white situation of only one of them being the "envelope-pushing" one. To quote Alan Clayson: The myth (...) of raw John and melodic Paul - and I think that was actually a bit of a misnomer, because Paul was just as much of a raver as John was - you know, witness 'I'm Down' on the B-side of 'Help!' for example, and John was capable of being just as sort of twee, if you like, as Paul was - and certainly, his career after the Beatles - I'd say the adjective to describe John then would be 'uxorious' - meaning somebody with excessive love of his wife. I mean, if you think about things like 'Oh Yoko!' and 'Oh My Love' and 'Forgive Me My Little Flower Princess' - you know, I think that John was just as capable of being sentimental or cloying as Paul at his most excessive was.
John, in a rarely non-competitive mode, put it best in an interview for Melody Maker: "I copped money for Family Way, the film music that Paul wrote while I was out of the country making How I Won the War," said Lennon, laughing. "I said to Paul, 'You'd better keep that', and he said, 'Don't be soft.' It's the concept. We inspired each other so much. We write how we write now because of each other. Paul was there for fifteen years, and I wouldn't write like I write now if it weren't for Paul, and he wouldn't write like he does if it weren't for me."
And that, Rolling Stone, is why you don't ask "John or Paul?" questions.
On a lighter note, here's a hilarious vid presenting a view on the Beatles from the year 3000:
And a great blog entry about them apropos the Rock Band game . The author also wrote a great entry on Band on the Run , and why it's a contender for Greatest Ex-Beatles Album.