Three Memoirs, Three Reviews
More leftover from my Brückenau days: book reviews. One of the books in question I’d browsed through before but hadn’t read it properly, the other two were new to me. What the three have in common is, aren’t you surprised, a Beatles connection; otherwise they’re widely different, though each struggling with the opening sentence ofDavid
( Read more... )
Thanks. Your book reviews are always fascinating. I especially enjoyed hearing more about Klaus Voorman's book as I had always had the impression (apparently false) that he didn't like Paul much. In interviews, Klaus always seemed to go on and on about George and John, and he seemed fairly dismissive of Paul's talents. As if all Paul did was stand around, smile, and look pretty. So it was good to hear that he had positive things to say about Paul now and again. It always bugged me that none of the Exi's seemed to understand or respect Paul.
On another front: You should consider writing a book about John and Paul's relationship, based on your extensive reading. You are such a clear writer and you marshall a strong argument, and it would be fascinating to have a book written about their relationship -- not about the Beatles or the band's history, but SOLELY about John and Paul's relationship. There has yet to be a compelling book that accurately or adequately captures the complexities of their relationship. I'm not talking about the sexual stuff (did they or didn't they?), although the speculation on that could be an interesting chapter, but a broad picture of their relationship that resulted in Lennon/McCartney, and the roles they took on for each other.
Just recently I rewatched that 1968 interview the two of them did about Apple (the one where Paul is wearing that green and blue jacket and John is wearing that white jacket) and I was stunned by how in sync they seemed, at a time of supposed tension. John dominates the interview, of course, frequently talking over Paul, and plays the hard edgy guy while Paul speaks softly, laughs and giggles at everything John says. They keep staring into each other's eyes to affirm each other's comments. Meanwhile, when the interviewer asks Paul about his public admission to taking LSD, John launches into a strong defense of Paul. Watching them, it's astonishing to see the very male/female, hard/soft dynamic between the two. And no books ever focus on that. Yet we all know that Paul was no where near as soft as he appeared, and John was no where near as strong as he seemed. It's fascinating, and I'd love to see that kind of gender politics taken into consideration in evaluating their relationship. But male writers, who have written all of the famous Beatles books, NEVER take gender issues into account in analyzing their relationship or the band.
It's surprising to me that after all there years not a single book seems to have focused on the John/Paul relationship. There is a guy (a Slate.com writer) who is writing a book on collaborative artistic partners that will look at the Lennon/McCartney dynamic but it sounds like the book is about other collaborative partners, too.
Anyway, I would love to read a well-researched book purely on John and Paul's relationship. And you are so incredibly well read on all this, and seem to understand the subtleties, strengths and weaknesses of both men. ...
How do you like that? I don't even know you and I'm asking you to write a book. :)
Reply
Reply
Not only now and again. You have to consider that in an interview the interviewer selects what he or she wants to print/broadcast, what they're interested in. Now George was as I said Klaus' favourite Beatle (he even lived with him for a while), John his second favourite, and he recorded with both of them repeatedly (as he points out, why would Paul need a bass guitarist? So they didn't record until the last decade when he asked Paul to play with him on his cd "A sideman's journey"), so it's not surprising he has more stories about the two of them. But that doesn't mean he doesn't like Paul, either as a person or a musician; he sounds very affectionate about him throughout the book. (Like I said, it's the kind of book you wish your friends would write about you, whereas, say, Pattie's remarks on Cynthia are an unwelcome reminder that sometimes the people we thought we were friends with didn't think of us the same way.) If he sounds dismissive about anyone, and basically presents him as just standing around looking pretty it's, ironically enough, Stu, given the impression the biographies leave one with re: Klaus' attitudes towards the Beatles. (He says Stu looked cool in his shades, and, err, that's it.) I think the story about Paul playing "Don't let the sun catch you crying" for Klaus recently because that was the song Klaus had always requested in Hamburg is telling - not only about Paul's great musical memory. It's not a song John would have sung, or Stu, or George. It was always one of Paul's songs, so yes, young Klaus liked him. (He just loved George and John more, and there is nothing wrong with that.) As for old Klaus, you have to consider the survivors bond factor. He says the contact between him and Paul got closer and more intense after Linda had died and there were lengthy phone calls to distract him, and then George's death really brought home how time was running out on them both and how few people were still around who'd see the days that they had seen, to paraphrase. I found the passage about Here Today incredibly moving, both in terms of Paul dedicating the song to him as well and in terms of Klaus' reaction.
Reply
Re: Exis, Astrid in a 2010 German interview sounds very protective and affectionate about Paul as well. (She was asked about the HM fiasco and about whether people like the Rolling Stones and Paul shouldn't stop touring and performing - her answer was "oh, but Paul does it so marvellously well, that's different from the Stones!" ("Paul macht das ganz wunderbar, das ist etwas anderes").) No idea about Jürgen Vollmer's current attitude. Now again the fact that it's decades later might have changed a few things, but I never got the impression they disliked Paul; just that they liked the others (except for Pete Best) more, which partly had to do with John's inherent leader of the pack/rock'n roll rebel charisma and partly with everyone's urge to mother George, and the excitement young people have for people coming across as different. You also shouldn't overlook something American or British biographers don't get about these Hamburg students. As Klaus points out, their wish not to be like their parents' generation in all things, including aesthetically, was because they all had childhood memories of the Third Reich. So the need to be different, dress in black, digging Cocteau and Sartre (there was a real craze for Sartre and Camus in the German theatre of the 50s, which hadn't been allowed to play any of these dramatists under Hitler, of course), and rock'n roll was in response to that, too, in addition to being the usual youngster thing. So naturally they would be drawn to the more overt rebels like John and George. Old Klaus, looking back, also reflects ruefully, "oh, we were so young, so sure of ourselves, so arrogant and pretentious" - but you are, at that age and carving your own identity with a cultural background where your parents' generation isn't "the greatest generation" but "the generation who screwed up beyond belief, to put it euphemistically".
Re: a book about John and Paul - I feel flattered you'd trust me with it. However, would it be in German or English? (It's really difficult to get a German book translated into English and published by a British or American publisher; I happen to know.) Also, there is the time factor. (As in, my time and the need to earn a living.) And the Paul being alive factor, which I would find inhibiting. However, in two decades or so, I think it would be a genuine option.
Reply
In addition to your points, I would add that, depending on what Paul got up to in Hamburg, there may be less to say about him during that period that's fit to print. Hamburg was an atmosphere of sexual freedom, and the few people who describe Paul at this time include Tony Sheridan, who called him "an effeminate diva" with "plucked eyebrows," and Little Richard who called him a "pretty little thing."
Reply
As for Little Richard, he'd have had to be blind not to notice the pretty, but he still prefered Ringo. :)
Lastly: I wonder whether Tony Sheridan also considered Jim McCartney to be an effeminate diva plucking his eyebrows? Because:
Reply
Reply
Good lord, except for the bald head, that photo of Jim McCartney is EXACTLY how Paul looks today. Strong genes in that Macca family.
And yes, Sheridan strikes me as quite the sexist pig. Don't you think that Paul must have been teased -- a lot -- about his features (the eyebrows, the little bow mouth, the eyes, heck, even his shapely legs and tush)? You'd think there would be more comments (from his fellow Beatles or from Paul himself) about having to hear such insults. Perhaps that's why he slept around like a madman? To prove he was straight in the face of near-constant comments accusing him of being gay or effeminate. Given the era -- a time when effeminate features on a man were not exactly a plus -- I sort of wonder how that affected Paul, and how John reacted.
More interesting gender politics for your future book. :)
Reply
*snort* I think I can guess how John "reacted."
:-)
Reply
Perhaps that's why he slept around like a madman? To prove he was straight in the face of near-constant comments accusing him of being gay or effeminate.
Partly, yes, I think so. (And partly he just plain enjoys sex and between 18 - 26 had the opportunity to get a lot of it.) Given that both in "Many years from now" (i.e. around 1995) the thing that Paul remembers about Royston Ellis, other than his poem, is that he told them every one in four was gay and that this caused much soul-searching and anxiety, and in Royston Ellis' description of their 2006 chance encounter in a Paris bar Paul brings up the very same thing (the "which one of us is gay?" anxiety and the poem), I think it's a safe bet he did feel he had something to prove at that age. Otoh, it's interesting that as opposed to a lot of other male celebrities the stories of young Paul/every woman with a pulse don't originate from him, i.e. he's not boasting/bragging neither as a young man nor as an old one. I think Philipp Norman and Peter Brown were the first to write extensively about Paul's pre-Linda sex life at the start of the 80s, and then various other biographers followed suit. The most you get from Paul directly is his reply when Chrissie Hynde is teasing him about it that "I knew a lot of girls" and that both he and Linda "played the field". (And in "Many Years from Now" his comment about the 60s as the time of sexual liberation and the comparison to the crossing of the Red Sea, Cecil B. De Mille style, with the waters of caution and restriction closing as soon as the 60s are over. But no "I had X and Y and Z" type of boasting.)
Re: John - well, it's interesting that his comments on Paul's looks when things are fine between them are coded masculine (the famous "also he looked like Elvis; I dug him" description of their first meeting to Hunter Davies given in 1967), whereas when he's pissed off at Paul you get the choice of word "pretty" which is coded feminine rather than masculine, especially in the linguistics in the day (as in "a pretty face may last a year or two").
Reply
Leave a comment