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The Beatles Anthology

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from: Erik Tarloff

If You Want Some Fun, Sing Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000, at 3:13 PM ET

Chris,

Your posting this morning was both thoughtful and thought-provoking and also brings us back, neatly and appropriately, to the entire trajectory of the Beatles' career. In other words, to the book we're supposed to be reviewing.

What comes across forcefully if one reads The Beatles Anthology from cover to cover, as you and I have had to do, is how profoundly distorting it was to be a Beatle. To have become the most famous (and most closely observed) people in the world just as they were emerging from adolescence, to have been given so much wealth, so much power, and so much unstinting idolatry so early ... they had no experience of adult reality against which to judge what was happening to them. It may seem paradoxical, but to have experienced such success so precociously retarded the normal process of emotional maturation.

With this in mind, their breakup is perfectly understandable and was, as you suggest, inevitable. Most of us can remember the way our friendships were scrambled with the onset of puberty. Girlfriends and boyfriends came between best friends. Inseparable companions became mutually uncomprehending aliens. New intellectual interests superseded previously shared enthusiasms. One's position in the world--or at least within one's high school social hierarchy, the only world we truly occupied--shifted in unpredictable ways.

It seems clear to me that this common process was delayed by almost a decade for the Beatles. During the height of Beatlemania, they were imprisoned within a bubble that protected and isolated them from the world at large, and the only people upon whom they could rely, the only people with whom they could deal as equals, were each other and possibly Brian Epstein. Once they wanted a measure of autonomy, once they started to fall in love, once they felt impelled to branch out as artists and as independent adults, the intimacy they shared and the chrysalis in which they shared it inevitably became a hindrance and an irritant. So the reasons for the breakup that you cite--Yoko, artistic rivalry, and the growing inequality among the band members (to which I would add assorted legal and financial disagreements)--seem to me to be proximate rather than underlying causes. Something was going to do it. It was time for them to leave home.

And as we all know, when it's time to leave home, a certain angry rebellion facilitates the move.

They said enough terrible things about each other in early '70s, and sang enough vicious songs directed at one another, that one could characterize their rupture as a sort of messy divorce. And, in fact, one of the things I found most moving about TheBeatles Anthology TV series is how affable George and Paul were with one another as they reminisced together. There was a time when they weren't even on speaking terms. Now they seemed able to recollect those tempestuous emotions in tranquility and even in comradeship.

John's contributions to the book suffer in this regard. Of tragic necessity, they are derived from interviews conducted prior to 1980, and many of them reflect the proximity of the breakup and the emotional disorientation that unavoidably followed. They reveal a bitterness toward the whole Beatle period that, one might reasonably expect, would have mellowed with the years. It's certainly pretty to think so.

It's ironic that so many people regard the Beatles as harbingers of political radicalism. There's no denying the radicals of the period regarded them as allies. But as we've both observed, their fundamental social outlook was actually quite bourgeois. It's true they opposed the war in Vietnam--as did plenty of conservatives--and it's true they let their hair grow long, wore funny clothes, and took a lot of drugs; but, except for John during the period of greatest personal turmoil in the '70s, they never espoused especially radical political positions. As early as 1966, George wrote "Taxman," which can even be interpreted as a protest against the welfare state, and John Eastman, Paul's brother-in-law and manager, once observed, "Paul's a kind of Republican." Of course, it's not really so simple as that, and I have no idea how (or even if) the surviving Beatles vote, but in any case, celebrating peace and love isn't intrinsically a clarion summons to the barricades. The most radical thing about them, I suppose, is their implicit message that having fun is a good thing ("the one thing that money can't buy"). That was a message that resonated and continues to resonate.

As, of course, does the music.

This has been a very great pleasure, Chris.

Best wishes,
Erik

P.S. I had intended, before we began, to devote a paragraph or two to Paul's extraordinary bass-guitar playing, a great and profoundly influential part of the band's legacy. Our conversation, however, has branched out in others directions. Nevertheless, the clip I had chosen to illustrate the point remains an awfully nice way to end things. It's a lovely reminder of the spirit of the Beatles at their height, when they were an indivisible unit, when they were inseparable mates. And just listen to the bass!

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A Little Help From My Friends

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from: Erik Tarloff

If You Want Some Fun, Sing Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000, at 3:13 PM ET

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This week, our Book Clubbers take on The Beatles Anthology. Click here to learn more about the critics and here to buy the book.

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Reader Comments from The Fray:

[Reaction to Monday's entry:]

Solipsism, shmolipsism. It's heartening to note how much this bunch of boomers were affected by the Fab Four, and thought about them, and take the Paul vs. John weltenschaung, or the "Revolution" vs. "Revolution" posture. Under the influence of hormones and vast quantities of various pharmaceuticals around about 1970 I was sure the Beatles were aliens, among us with special knowledge to impart to the illuminati. But in that state I spent too much time trying to decipher the code in the moving letters in the fabric of my jeans.

The time changes and key changes and technical details were probably George Martin.
The angst was John.
The walrus was Paul.
Just enjoy it.

--Brian Levy

(To reply, click here.)

You must learn about Liverpool: its status and impact on northern England, the impact of its history as a port city and shipyard center. These factors created a unique socio-economic environment for Liverpool, different from Manchester, different from Leeds. The Liverpool culture as it was in the 1950s helped shape the outlook of its youth, and the Beatles represent that cultural heritage. Starkey had the poorest upbringing, and Harrison the closest thing to middle class of any of them. Because of McCartney's closeness to his musical family extending before him, he is the most rooted in Liverpool's heritage of the embarkation point of American popular music into Britain, during the post-war era. Ask Paul about the music, that's what John would have said.

--Jono

(To reply, click here.)

I enjoyed reading your exchanges here, and I agree that Rubber Soul, rather than Revolver, has plenty to offer in the way of Lennon/McCartney musical experimentation and maturity. But it had begun even earlier than that. Listen to Help and you'll notice a sudden departure from the purely simple boy-loves-girl stuff. Indeed, even different instrumentation such as the use of the sitar began to make its appearance there.

--Paul Splett

(To reply, click here.)

Say what you want about John vs. Paul or Revolver vs. White but "Hamburg that most romantic of northern european cities"!!!!! Eh?!!!! Ever actually been to Hamburg? Must have been one helluva girl if you found it romantic! Try Copenhagen or Stockholm next time.

--simon warner

(To reply, clickhere.)

I just got back from four years in Hamburg and I totally disagree with you two. Hamburg is a beautiful city! Maybe you never got away from the Reeperban and surrounding St. Pauli district? I've never seen a city with so many parks and trees, the general architecture is elegant, there's a white sand beach along the Elbe, bicycle paths everywhere, there are more canals than in Venice and the bars never close ( I lost count of how many times I walked out of a bar into full daylight--not recommended).

--Maldwyn

(To reply, clickhere.)

In discussing the quality of "Martha My Dear" (definitely my favorite song on the White Album), Erik Tarloff mentions an effective rhythmic shift in the melody. I think it worth mentioning that unusual rhythms, phrasings, and chord progressions previously unknown, or at most little seen, in pop music were characteristic of the Beatles' songs from the beginning.

One of the first serious critical appreciations of the Beatles as songwriters was by the musicologist Deryck Cooke, who analyzed the phrasing in "Yesterday" (a McCartney song, of course) with great admiration for its creativity, originality, and imagination. (The essay is in Cooke's collection Vindications.)

I think this characteristic deserves to be mentioned along with the sheer beauty of the melodies and the breadth of the musical influences: The classical references Tarloff finds in "Penny Lane" and "Eleanor Rigby" were at least possibly and partially from George Martin, who arranged the guest instrumentalist parts of those songs, which I suspect are what's being referred to. But the melodies of the instrumental parts were evidently Paul's own, and the suggestions of instruments were at least partially his as well.

--Meriadoc

(To reply, clickhere.)

I agree with this posting. George Martin, who, unlike the Beatles, was musically literate, played a major role in plotting out and writing down the musical arrangements. But usually the ideas came from the original song writers (according to Martin, Paul was far more specific in his instructions than John, who tended toward the impressionistic). Thus, for example, Paul, having heard a Brandenberg Concerto on his car radio en route to the Abbey Road studio one day, requested a piccolo trumpet for "Penny Lane." On the other hand, the suggestion of a string quartet accompaniment for "Yesterday" came from Martin--this story is in The Beatles Anthology, the book under discussion, incidentally--but McCartney then sang some of the lines he wanted the individual strings to play.

I also agree that a certain harmonic freshness distinguished the Beatles' song writing from very early on, although it was certainly more venturesome in the later albums than their earlier efforts.

If you like the Deryck Cooke essay (did you know he's the same Deryck Cooke who prepared the performing version of Mahler's unfinished 10th symphony?), you should also check out a book by another British musicologist, Wilfred Mellers, called Twilight of the Gods. It has some very good material.

--Erik Tarloff

(To reply, clickhere.)

Another book must be mentioned when it comes to analyses of Beatles music: Revolution in the Head, by critic and Shostakovich biographer Ian MacDonald, much of which was over my head, especially the talk of harmonics. But it was enlightening even for those of us who slept through Music Appreciation (for instance, the simple comparison of Lennon's "horizontal" melodies with McCartney's "vertical" melodies).

Here's a variation on the "desert island" game that we used to play (and of which George Martin would approve): Edit the White Album down to a single LP. You then have the greatest Beatles album ever, bar none (wait--let me listen to Revolver one more time). For the record, "Martha, My Dear" makes my cut. And how about "I Will"--what a tune! Do you know that's Paul singing (not playing) the bass line? Stop me before I start blathering...

--cazzie

(To reply, click here.)

A Fraygrant writes:

Before he was killed John did an interview with Playboy where he gave detailed opinions and the origins of nearly every Beatles song. Is this article available anywhere on the web?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are several, including this one. But before you reach any conclusions about the authorship of Lennon-McCartney tunes, you should consult a book called Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, which came out a few years ago. It's an odd, fascinating, sloppily-edited book, but at the heart of it are interviews Paul gave to a long-time friend (the book's author is Barry Miles). In these quotes, McCartney discusses the writing of every single tune they wrote, and gives a percentage breakdown on who did what. (He'll say, "That was maybe 60 percent mine, 40 percent John.") Sounds a little self-serving, but his assessments ring absolutely true. His memory seems quite clear, and he recalls little tidbits on the songwriting that support his case. Beatles fans (especially those dismissive of Paul) should read it because they'll learn a lot. (e.g., Paul wrote the tune for "In My Life," and it was Paul's tape-loop experimentation that produced the astonishing sound of "Tomorrow Never Knows." Hey, I love John, but it's time to give Sir Paul credit.

--Bill

(To reply, clickhere.)

[Reaction to Tuesday's "Book Club"]

I always listen to the acoustic "Revolution" as a warmup to the electric take. It takes on a sort of Led Zeppelin dynamic, acoustic blues before the thunder erupts. And of all Beatles songs, this is the biggest eruption of them all. The guitars howl like the damned, the drums 'n bass lock in thundering goose-step, and Lennon sounds righteously pissed off. If I was in a band I'd cover it that way too. Open with the acoustic shuffle and harmonies and then split some skulls wide open going electric. But then maybe I've listened to too much Led Zeppelin.

--Jerol

(To reply, click here.)