The art of writing in an interesting fashion about your own life is still severely underestimated. Having had an interesting life doesn't do the trick, as I found out many years ago when I slogged through Marlene Dietrich's memoirs, which were deadly dull, despite the facts of her life being certainly of the fascinating kind. But not many people
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Comments 23
These few passages about the Beatles confirm a few things for me:
1. "George didn't want to do it, didn't see the point - what did it have to do with anything? "
Gees, George could be such a pain in the ass. For a spiritual man, he sure did spend a lot of time pissing and moaning.
2. But one voice had not been heard from. Eyes under lids looked toward that person. Time froze. "Fuck it," John said. "Let's do it."
And in a few short sentences, this underscores that the Beatles broke up because John and Paul broke up. Nothing happened in that band unless John and Paul wanted it to happen, and as soon as John stopped supporting Paul, the band was over.
It's a shame Lindsay-Hogg wasn't more honest about his own Yoko resentment. But then few people want to make themselves look bad in their memoirs. Thanks for this review.
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2.) Well, yes. If you have a main axis like that and it stops functioning, you can't drive anymore. Or, to get less technical and more Ray Connolly's favourite comparison for them: Mum and Dad getting a divorce, not son's rebellious attitude was what did the family in.
re: honesty - we're all a bit hypocrites like that, I think, wanting to believe we were the ones open minded and impartial, and it was the others who ( ... )
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I'm probably too hard on George. But sheesh, why complain about having to play live when you're a musician? George sometimes reminds me of that line from The Empire Strikes Back where Yoda tells Luke Skywalker, "Always with you it can't be done." ;)
And that anecdote about John saying "Let's do it" reminded me of that Mum and Dad analogy, too. Mum is coming up with the ideas to keep things going but it all depends on Dad agreeing. And George often played the angry teenager.
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He did have his adolescent moments during Let it Be, and "what's the point?" sounds like one of them, but as I said - he also had a lot more moments where he tried to make the project work, and this despite the fact that a) he hadn't wanted to do it in the first place, and b) his dissatisfaction about not getting more room for his own songs on Beatles albums was ever more fueled. Let's not forget, these were the sessions where George offered "All Things Must Pass" and met monumental indifference, whereas things like "Dig It" or "Yer Blues" ended up on the album, plus Paul was already starting to work on Maxwell's Silver Hammer. I'm not anti Maxwell and think both John and George were unfair about it, but if I were George, had just written some of my undeniably best songs, and got zero reaction while John and Paul were busy with less than ( ... )
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Wow. I sure hope that's true.
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The stuff about Mick and Keith was interesting to me because I don't know a lot about the Rolling Stones. I've always wondered why they managed to stay together while the Beatles split up, what was different for them.
George wanting to make a "Rosebud" video was amusing. The Beatles really thought they were capable of anything back then.
I had heard about John playing the recording of him and Yoko having sex to the rest of the group, but it was still. Um. I really don't know what to say to that, actually.
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The Stones had Klein managing them for a few years, didn't they? John in his Lennon Remembers interview gives that as the reason for why he didn't believe the bad stories he heard about Klein: I had heard about all these dreadful rumors about him but I could never coordinate it with the fact that the Stones seemed to be going on and on with him and nobody ever said a word.
My understanding is that the Stones ended up regretting having Klein as their manager, so I guess John should have been a little more careful.
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Paul says Mick did warn him about Klein but when asked to repeat the warning in front of John waffled, and instead said: "He's alright if you like that sort of thing." And Marianne Faithfull says the reason for Mick's volte face was that he hoped if Klein was busy with the Beatles, they could get rid of him without losing too much money.
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I agree, and I threw a couple other examples in a comment to your post on jhp.
[make for a surplus of father figures regarded with varying emotional investment, and that's not touching on Geraldine's lovers without possible fatherhood like Robert Capa or Henry Miller,]
And in the end, the warmest relationship he has with an adult man as a child is with the old Russian guy who babysat him when he was small. It's the one real father-son-like photo that's included, and MLH makes a point to say how safe and loved he felt with the man, unlike with the three men who could actually make a claim on the "father" title.
Interestingly, MLH's "fatherlessness" defines him just as much as John Lennon's did him, though in very different ways. For John it was a chip on the shoulder, for MLH it was this disconnection and longing.
[One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a ( ... )
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http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/423134.html
http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/521855.html
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The scene where MLH has to pitch the an idea for a promotional film to the Beatles, where they all sit around an elegant table eating and ignoring him, and he eventually pulls up a low, heavy ottoman to sit on at the table, dragging it and hurting himself in the process, is hilarious. It gives a taste of the Beatles in their royal mode. I wished I could have included it in my other post, but it had nothing to do with j/p, really.
I got so fed up with MLH's failure to grasp what was, to me, obvious about his family. I mean, how many more anvil-sized hints did he need? He's one of these people whose worldview doesn't include people keeping secrets, so he has to keep nagging because he expects someone will eventually give him a straight answer. Hello? If it were true, why would anyone tell you directly, ever? Try to consider the context for one or two seconds, buddy!
Other than that, he's a great, perceptive writer, LOL. We're all blind to our parents, I guess.
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