Things they said
ponygirl2000 kindly pointed this out to me: Chuck Berry's song Brown-eyed Handsome Man as covered by John Lennon on a tape in the late 70s. It's a good cover anyway, but, as Ponygirl says, the thing that pushes it into squee territory is that John randomly mashes it with Get Back, of all the songs. (Thus outranking the tape where he sings Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey on his 31st birthday, but not the clip for Sean sings With a little help from my friends for him, calls it his favourite song and John is glowing in nostalgia about how he and Paul sang back-up for Ringo on that one while simultanously giving interviews denying Sean ever heard a single Beatle tune.)
Speaking of rarities, YouTube has Soily, which was the hard rock number with which Wings used to end their concerts and which was strictly a "live" song, meaning it's not on the regular records except the live "Wings over America" album from 1976. It's a screamer in the tradition of "Long Tall Sally" or "I'm Down" and very handy if someone comes up with the old "Paul only wrote silly love songs in the 70s" cliché.
Click to viewOne thing that I find striking (in a positive way) about the 60s generation of musicians - especially the survivors - is that yes, flawed as hell as people, but how really generous and supportive they were/are of each other, in addition to the more expected competition with each other.
The most obvious case being the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (i.e. John and Paul write their first number one for the Stones, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Keith Richards are on some Beatles recordings doing back-up singing and in one case instrument for hte hell of it), but there was George's friendship with Eric Clapton (and mutual appearing on records), Donovan teaching John and Paul finger-picking guitar playing in India (which resulted in "Julia" and "Blackbird" respectively). When Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys heard Rubber Soul, he came up with Pet Sounds, the most artistically challenging album the Beach Boys ever produced (which in turn led to Revolver and Sgt Pepper), and when it initially had a slow going Andrew Oldham, then the Stones' manager, took the unprecedented step of paying for a page in the English papers saying Pet Sounds was the best record ever produced while Paul brings it up and praises it to the skies in about every 1966 interview you can find. Still does, as a matter of fact. Case in point, a quote from the 90s:
It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. I love the album so much. I've just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life ... I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album ... I love the orchestra, the arrangements ... it may be going overboard to say it's the classic of the century ... but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways ... I've often played Pet Sounds and cried. I played it to John so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence ... it was the record of the time. The thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines ... and also, putting melodies in the bass line. That I think was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded 'Pepper', it set me off on a period I had then for a couple of years of nearly always writing quite melodic bass lines.
"God Only Knows" is a big favorite of mine ... very emotional, always a bit of a choker for me, that one. On "You Still Believe In Me", I love that melody - that kills me ... that's my favorite, I think ... it's so beautiful right at the end ... comes surging back in these multi-colored harmonies ... sends shivers up my spine.
(The sad part of the story is that the album Brian Wilson started to compose to match Pepper, Smile, was dismissed by fellow Beach Boy Mike Love as avantgarde bullshit which led to Brian having a nervous breakdown and spending the next two years in bed. End of the Beach Boys as anything more than a nostalgia act.) The whole original idea of Apple was to help and encourage other artists (alas, alas). Harry Nilsson wasn't just John's 70s drinking buddy, John really admired him as a singer, produced an album for him and tried to get Harry (already on the downward slide) a new record contract by making his own next record contract depending on Harry being given one by Capitol. Then there's the entire side chapter of The Who - Beatles interband relations, which is amusing, awkward and touching in turns. (It also resulted in Helter Skelter, which Paul said was a reaction to The Who's "I can see for miles".) The Who came a few crucial years later and were a few years younger than the Stones and Beatles members, so Pete Townshend being an unabashed fanboy of both resulted in this quote from an 1968 interview:
" I had an incredible conversation once with Paul McCartney. The difference between the way Lennon and McCartney behave with the people that are around them is incredible. What Lennon does is he sits down, immediately acknowledges the fact that he's John Lennon and that everything for the rest of the night is going to revolve around him and no one else. He completely relaxes and let's everybody feel at ease and just speaks dribble little jokes, little rubbish like he's got, "In His Own Write" and little things. Like he'll start to dribble on and get stoned and do silly things and generally have a good time. Of course everybody gets into his thing and also has a generally good time.
But Paul McCartney worries, he wants a genuine conversation, a genuine relationship, starting off from square one: "We've got to get it straight that we both know where we're both at before we begin." One of them is fucking Paul McCartney, a Beatle, the other one is me, a huge monumental Beatle fan who still gets a kick out of sitting and talking to Paul McCartney. And he's starting to tell me that he digs me and that we're on an even par so that we can begin the conversation which completely makes me even a bigger fan. That's all it serves to do. The conversation comes to no purpose and all he serves to do is to confuse himself. He's trying to say, "Oh, you know, you know where you're at. I know where I'm at, we're both really just us and let's talk." So what do you say? "I'm a fantastic fan of yours, man." He really tries to get it together often and you've got to re-lax, you've got to take people ."
Come the 70s, Pete Townshend re-met Paul via Linda whom he was friends with which resulted in a relaxed friendship with both McCartneys (he was one of the people Paul asked to speak at Linda's memorial service) as well as some shared concert appearances. (Pete even came up with the idea of letting Paul manage his money but Paul - wisely, probably, and likely as nod with the memory of how mixing business and friendship had ended in a horrible catastrophe the last time, as well as having visions of a plastered Pete ringing him up at night asking "hey, man, what are you doing with my money?" declined.) He was one of the people whom Paul asked to speak at Linda's memorial service; reflecting on this was the occasion of the " I really came to know Paul so much better and to love him and to accept him in a way that I don't think I would have done had he had a more traditional kind of showbiz marriage" quote which ends with "At her memorial, I said that her presence in Paul's life felt like my property, like their marriage was something that belonged to me. They showed us a way of doing it that was legitimate for us, they created a whole new world around their marriage, the sheer time they were together, and they reinforced all those things I believe in: the Stones, the Beatles, Paul and Linda, they'll all live with me through my lifetime."
Asked more recently about the musicians of his generation came up with this:
Music Week: (M)usically-speaking, who from your generation inspired you?
Pete Townshend: Ray Davies for his storytelling. Paul McCartney for his energy and self-confidence. Mick Jagger for his ability to work with so many lovable nutters. Bob Dylan for his new mustache. My generation were extraordinary. All of 'em.
The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, was the godfather of Ringo's son Zak Starkey, was one of the house guests at Los Angeles during John's Lost Weekend (John nicknamed him the "Baron von Moon") and also was friends with both McCartneys, who were among the last people to see him alive in the night he died after returning from one of Paul's Buddy Holly parties. (In one of the last photos of a living Keith Moon, he's even wearing a Wings t-shirt and sitting on a table with Paul and Linda.)
A rock generation younger was David Bowie, whose story about his friendship with John Lennon is one of the coolest, best (and most positive) stories about John in the 70s out there, so allow me to draft a 70s musician into this tale of mutual musician support:
It's impossible for me to talk about popular music without mentioning probably my greatest mentor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fabric of pop and imbue it with elements from other artforms, often producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful and imbued with strangeness. Also, uninvited, John would wax on endlessly about any topic under the sun and was over-endowed with opinions. I immediately felt empathy with that. Whenever the two of us got together it started to resemble Beavis and Butthead on "Crossfire."
The seductive thing about John was his sense of humor. Surrealistically enough, we were first introduced in about 1974 by Elizabeth Taylor. Miss Taylor had been trying to get me to make a movie with her. It involved going to Russia and wearing something red, gold and diaphanous. Not terribly encouraging, really. I can't remember what it was called -- it wasn't On the Waterfront, anyway, I know that.
We were in LA, and one night she had a party to which both John and I had been invited. I think we were polite with each other, in that kind of older-younger way. Although there were only a few years between us, in rock and roll that's a generation, you know? Oh boy, is it ever.
So John was sort of [in Liverpool accent] "Oh, here comes another new one." And I was sort of, "It's John Lennon! I don't know what to say. Don't mention the Beatles, don't mention the Beatles, don't mention the Beatles, you'll look really stupid."
And he said, "Hello, Dave." And I said, "I've got everything you've made -- except the Beatles."
A couple of nights later we found ourselves backstage at the Grammys where I had to present "the thing" to Aretha Franklin. Before the show I'd been telling John that I didn't think America really got what I did, that I was misunderstood. Remember that I was in my 20s and out of my head.
So the big moment came and I ripped open the envelope and announced, "The winner is Aretha Franklin." Aretha steps forward, and with not so much as a glance in my direction, snatches the trophy out of my hands and says, "Thank you everybody. I'm so happy I could even kiss David Bowie." Which she didn't! And she promptly spun around swanned off stage right. So I slunk off stage left.
And John bounds over and gives me a theatrical kiss and a hug and says "See, Dave. America loves ya."
We pretty much got on like a house on fire after that.
He once famously described glam rock as just rock and roll with lipstick on. He was wrong of course, but it was very funny.
Towards the end of the 70s, a group of us went off to Hong Kong on a holiday and John was in, sort of, house-husband mode and wanted to show Sean the world. And during one of our expeditions on the back streets a kid comes running up to him and says, "Are you John Lennon?" And he said, "No but I wish I had his money." Which I promptly stole for myself.
[imitating a fan] "Are you David Bowie?"
No, but I wish I had his money.
It's brilliant. It was such a wonderful thing to say. The kid said, "Oh, sorry. Of course you aren't," and ran off. I thought, "This is the most effective device I've heard."
I was back in New York a couple of months later in Soho, downtown, and a voice pipes up in my ear, "Are you David Bowie?" And I said, "No, but I wish I had his money."
"You lying bastard. You wish you had my money." It was John Lennon.
Marianne Faithfull, as mentioned in other posts, knew and knows them well; she met Paul on the first weekend she came to London at age 17, via John Dunbar who became her first husband, then later the others. She's one of the artists featured in the 1965 tv special The Music of Lennon and McCartney, which Paul had to push for because she was pregnant at the time and for some reason tv was squeamish about showing pregnant women (in the end, they only showed her head when she sang Yesterday and avoided the torso), and remains friends with him. I already quoted her complimentary take on The Fireman; in an interview a few years earlier (right in the middle of the messy McCartney/Mills divorce which she alludes to) she had this reminiscence, which starts when talking about Brian Jones and whether he could have recovered instead of died:
MF: If Lennon hadn't been shot, he'd be alive now. And he did just the same as Brian [Jones]. And was probably just as fucked up. John was a scary guy, you know. I liked him, but I was a bit frightened of him even though I didn't have any reason to be, because John only went for you if you were a phoney. And I wasn't.
Q: So he'd find a weak spot and go for it?
MF: If there was one yes, he would. He was kind to me though.
Q: Paul McCartney was good to you too, wasn't he?
MF: Very, yeah. Still is...oh, he's going through such a terrible time.
Q: It's hard to imagine how he got himself into his current mess...
MF: I know exactly how he got into it. He wasn't used to sleeping alone. He missed Linda. Poor Paul.
Q: He was never allowed to be the cool Beatle, was he? That was always John; he was the sweet one.
MF: Oh, but he was cool. That's just the way of the world, y'know. They see everything in black and white. But the reality is so much more interesting; all the subtle shades of grey.
And lastly, we have the guy everyone else was in awe of in the 60s, Bob Dylan himself, he who inspired just about everyone to take a look at their songwriting and work harder on it. (And, err, also to take pot, but that's another story already told.) Who two years ago was reflecting on his contemporaries thusly:
"Lennon, to this day, it's hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is. 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 he can sing a ballad 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."
Now you could say everyone in celebrity world is just smarming about each other. But at this age? They don't have to, anymore. And somehow I doubt they were faking it in the 60s, either.
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