But You Know It's Not Allowed: A Case for Imagine as a Lennon/McCartney Song

[itsnotmymind]

When Paul McCartney decided to include secret messages to John Lennon on Ram ("you took your lucky break and broke it in two" being the type of message he admits to, "I find my love awake and waiting to be / what can be done for you, she's waiting for me" the type he doesn't), he must have known how John would react. This was after Lennon Remembers

Comments

Management Issues I

[selenak]

Lots to unpack. In general, re: Paul making Ram in its current form rather than with "Dear Friend" as a placatory gesture, despite knowing something like "How do you sleep?" must be coming - I'm going with "he was too angry not to at this point". Lennon Remembers cut too deep not to be. BTW, lest we forget, he wasn't the only one. Derek Taylor has talked about how deeply what John said about him and the other employees hurt - which John scoffed at in later interviews -, and George Martin seems to have been the only one doing the emotionally healthy thing (instead of the indirect messages thing) and actually saying point blank to John, when he met him again, that John had hurt him, at which point John pulled his usual "that was just me being me, you had to know it didn't mean anything" defense. (Which, head, desk.) Anyway, nobody has accused Paul of being a turn the other cheek type, temper wise. And he was past the depression and "I suck" part of post-Beatledom by 1971, and apparantly wildly going back and forth between "fuck you

Re: Management Issues II

[selenak]

From today's perspective, it seems glaringly obvious that there was no way not just John but Ringo and George would have accepted Paul's in-laws as managers. However, I really think a lot of that estimation is hindsight. Ringo himself said that if "Lee Eastman had been Lee Northman", he'd sided with Paul. It was by no means a foregone conclusion in his case, it wasn't in John's, see above, and I don't think Paul was aware of the amount of George's resentment of his bossiness in 1969 (for evidence, see not just hindsight, but Let It Be conversations about George during his temporary walkout). And the core of the matter was that they really, direly, and quickly needed both someone capable of being a fixer due to the Apple mess, and capable of managing them. Which is why I don't think Paul would have gambled at this point - he was far too aware of how much of a mess they were in. He truly saw the Eastmans as the solution, the only solution.

(nemperor once listed the possible managers for the Beatles as of 1969, and it turned out there

Re: Management Issues II

[itsnotmymind]

Ringo himself said that if "Lee Eastman had been Lee Northman", he'd sided with Paul.

But that's exactly my point. I know the situation was desperate, but it seems like "maybe my bandmates would be uncomfortable being managed by my future in-laws", especially with band already in a band state of relations. The #1 reason that Eastmans were not a good idea of the Beatles wasn't John L.'s personality clash with Lee Eastman, but the fact that they were Paul's in-laws. I wonder if Lee and Paul discussed that at all beforehand, what they said.

BTW, this is what Paul had to say about the situation in the Beatles' Anthology:

I put forward Lee Eastman as a possible lawyer but they said, 'No, he'd be too biased for you and against us.' I could see that, so I asked him, 'If the Beatles wanted you to do this, would you do it?' And he said, 'Yeah, I might, you know.' So I then asked them before I asked Lee Eastman seriously. and they said 'No way - he'd be too biased.' They were right - it was just as well he didn't do it, because it really

Re: Management Issues II

[selenak]

Also, even if relations between the Beatles were good, I have a hard time seeing John, George, and Ringo being OK with being managed by Paul's in-laws. No matter how well-intentioned Paul and said in-laws were. I think everyone would have been better able to communicate about it, but I don't think they would have accepted it.Probably not, you're right. I'm trying to think of precedent and parallels, because they did employ a lot of their friends from Liverpool, of course, and nobody had objected to, say, Paul giving Peter Asher a key job at Apple (that survived the Paul/Jane breakup) - but none of them were ever in a position of power over the band, which automatically comes with the management gig. Then again, pre-Brian, management was handled by a wild variety of people, with Alan Williams being the only semi professional to do it, and none of these was treated as an authority. And of course post Brian's death, "we'll manage ourselves" had resulted in de facto Paul being manager (initializing projects except for India, which was

Give me something to sing about

[selenak]

Okay, last night I was too tired due to rl business, but here I am, ready to proceed

Re: Give me something to sing about - PS

[selenak]

"Bridge over Troubled Water": yep. Btw, of course Paul Simon (along with Boby Dylan and Paul) is listed by a bitter late 1979/early 1980 John as the formerly serious competition he no longer needs to worry about because They Have Sold Out on that self therapy tape. And the 1975 tv appearance has him joking with Art Garfunkel about "your Paul and my Paul".

Re: Give me something to sing about - PS

[itsnotmymind]

No worries! Real life is important.

I don't think John ever said publicly that Jealous Guy is about Yoko specifically, but he did say it was about his relationships with women. My favorite interpretation is that it's about everyone John ever loved and hurt, but I'm not sure if that's actually what he intended or not. Either way, the song is more about him than the person he hurt.

Is there a Lennon song other than "Jealous Guy" which started out as a melody to a completely different lyric, that we know of?May Pang claimed that some of the melodies on Double Fantasy were first written when he was with her (I believe Beautiful Boy was one she named). But in all these examples, it seems that there were lyrics with the original melody, but John then changed the lyrics later

Re: Give me something to sing about - PS

[selenak]

. John was definitely open about being an asshole while Paul was more open about wanting to be likeable (I think John wanted to be liked as much as Paul did, if not more, but he went about it a different way). Paul seems to have a harder time admitting to his flaws and admitting mistakes.

Quite true, on both counts. And if We can work it out is anything to go by, 60s Paul must have been incredibly frustrating to argue with. "Try to see it my way" indeed. I can John escalating the verbal onslaught out of sheer "what does it take for him to admit he's wrong?" annoyance.