The journalist Rob Sheffield recently wrote: “The Beatles remain universally hailed as the greatest thing ever, but somehow, you still think they’re underrated.” He also said “your Beatles will change all through your life,” which is so correct and brilliant that I think it could replace all organized religion. He has a new book, you should buy it (Indiebound).
There’s a compulsion, I think, when writing about The Beatles, to try to emphasize your mega-fan status right out of the gate. That they mean more to you than to other people, or that the songs you like best are the best songs to best-like. That you understand that the only real reason to doubt that we are spiritually alone in the universe is that John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up in Liverpool at the same time, and found each other. There are those who point to the complex workings of the human eyeball as a sign of an invisible hand, but I’ve only ever had my belief in the cosmic void tweaked by the existence of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.”
I was raised by a Paul mother and a John father, I should say that now. And I love my mother dearly, but my father has better taste in music, so I grew up a John girl. I was raised to have mild contempt for Paul, I will admit, because my father is a bit of a dick like that. My mother brought a Give My Regards to Broad Street album into the home, and my father refused to let it touch any of his own albums. Paul, it was explained to me, was a talented man with an irredeemable streak of honeyed sentimentality, held in check only tenuously by John’s crankier skill-set. Neither of them, he would remind me, could play a guitar correctly to save their lives. George eventually could, and Ringo was not a man who could possibly be objected to by anyone. Ringo wrote a song about an octopus’ garden.
I saw Paul McCartney, twice, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn this past June.
It was great, I’m going to get that out of the way right now. I am not convinced by the health argument for vegetarianism, but Paul McCartney looked closer to fifty than seventy (his actual age at the time of the concert), and sounded thirty. He played for a thousand hours and did a million songs, including two million-song encores. Periodically, he took breaks from standing and playing the guitar in order to sit and play the piano. Two different pianos. Nor, really, could he bring himself to actually sit the entire time he was playing the piano. He was (simply) having a wonderful time. Why else would he bother? He doesn’t need the money, though I was happy to give him more. Be honest: have you adequately compensated The Beatles for the happiness they have brought you? Could you not do still more?
It’s not surprising that he still tours, really, when you imagine what it must feel like to be bathed in that much palpable human love for over three hours. And it wasn’t even just for the Beatles numbers. People love Paul McCartney so much that even obscure Wings songs were met with a wave of YOU DO YOU, GUY, THAT’S COOL. I was with a Wings fan, and she was so happy and full of love I thought she might explode. I was struck by the sudden realization that, had “Maybe I’m Amazed” been released under the rubric of The Beatles, we would probably consider it one of the fifty great love songs of our age, in the way that “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” would be played at all sporting events had it been recorded by a male singer.
His tribute to George (“Something” on the ukelele) was beautiful. His tribute to John was so classically Paul-not-quite-getting-John as to be more endearing than a more accurate tribute might have been. As though I, of course, could possibly be said to “get” John more than his oldest friend, which is laughable. I apologize.
What I mean, though, is that Paul elected to sing his song for John, “Here Today.” There is nothing wrong with “Here Today,” it’s very sweet. John would have hated it. Or, rather, he would have teased Paul about it, and called it “Puke Today” or “Here I Gag,” or something much funnier. But that’s okay. It’s a little adorable, when you think about it.
And here I come to the part I tried to explain to my father on the phone after the concert. Paul is better now. Paul makes more sense now. What was annoying about Paul, should you ever have been annoyed by Paul, was that he was 26 and pretending to be an old dude. I won’t insult your intelligence by making the obvious “When I’m Sixty-Four” comparison, any will do: “Yesterday,” “The Long and Winding Road,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Golden Slumbers.” Paul, who is a stone-cold genius and a lyrical wordsmith, always wrote songs like he was already a grandfather. And you knew he was getting head from models and doing drugs off inappropriate surfaces with the rest of the band, so it always seemed a little incongruous at the time.
But hearing a seventy-year-old Paul McCartney sing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” is different. It’s not something twee and aggravating that you have to flip past on the White Album to get to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” or “Happiness is a Warm Gun.”
When Paul McCartney is singing “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” live, and you’re there, and he is just GOING FOR IT, you realize that, well, life goes on, brah. It does! He knows that better than a lot of people, even if he didn’t know it when he originally wrote and recorded it. Paul McCartney has grown into his own back catalogue, somewhere along the way.
May he outlive us all. Except for Ringo.
Tags: age, concerts, John fathers, music, paul mccartney, Paul mothers, the beatles, the cosmic void, the immortal Ringo Starr
I think you really have to dig into the solo albums to appreciate what they all contributed together. After listening to a bunch of John and Paul solo albums I think I’m a Paul girl. Mind Games is a great album but I sometimes find myself needing to not listen closely to John’s lyrics because they can be silly in a not supposed to be way. And listening to John’s solo albums that were released immediately after Abbey Road make you realize how much of Abbey Road sprang from John’s head.
George, of course, is great. And I’m not a Ringo hater at all. I don’t get the Ringo hate. He was a fine drummer. Not everyone needs to be John Bonham.
Oh, I think this calls for a post on how much I hate John Lennon.
I didn’t realize how much I needed this post until right now. Please write it, Mallory!
Everyone, Mallory and I are having a semi-serious Facebook fight about this right now, and if she is intentionally goading me into saying increasingly deranged things in support of John Lennon, it is working 100%.
Oooh can I write about how much I love Jarboe??
George Girl here, but I get the John and Paul love too. It’s all terrific, all of it.
Speaking of Rob Sheffield, I’m reading Talking to Girls about Duran Duran right now and loving it. I might even love it even if I weren’t an 80s girl with a years-long crush on Simon LeBon.
My mom is a John and my dad liked John Denver, but apart from that you and I are the same sort of Beatles fan. Everything about this is wonderful and exactly right. I’m sure you’ve heard the story about John telling Paul that “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road” was the best song Paul ever wrote?
Wow, Nicole, this was beautiful. I, too, love the Beatles more than anybody else does, and have always been more of a John girl. Every time I think about Paul, I just think about Peter Serafinowicz being Paul and kind of smirk. But now I will probably think of this, too.
Let’s talk about George and his knack for staying in the background murmuring hare krishnas while Paul and John bickered in front of the group and then sticking his head in, “Hey guys, I’ve got this song?” and every time it’s a masterpiece like “Something”. Let’s take a second to listen to his early take of “Be Here Now” or as I like to call it, “The Greatest Song That Exists, Don’t You Just Feel Better Now?”
http://youtu.be/y30GLrNQizU
Well George could be a nasty prick, as many of his friends talked about in the documentary about him. He had a mean streak and could say the rudest things to friends. And for goodness sake, the man had an affair with Ringo’s wife that broke poor Ringo’s heart and his marriage! So yes, George could be a jerk, too. Lets not view him with rose-colored glasses.
I feel like the public scrutiny of the Beatles over the years has well proven that all four of them have things about them that people don’t like, and that fans of each are hardly going to be unaware of these things. People know about the affairs, people know John was abusive, people know all this stuff. It’s not like their lives haven’t been raked through with fine-toothed combs or anything. They all have done things people disagree with and they’ve all done them under the microscope that we stuck them under as multigenerational fans. Expecting perfection out of anyone’s kind of a stupid thing to do anyway, why should we expect it from the Beatles?
I’m not defending any of their shitty behaviors over the years, but it does get pretty tiring that every time someone’s discussing the music, there’s someone piping up with “you and your rose-colored glasses.” We can talk about the music without having to always mark a little asterisk next to it going, “Oh by the way, also J/P/G/R did thing/other thing/other other thing, so please don’t think I’m unaware.”
But in this case, pointing out that George was completely capable of bad behavior is a direct response to the first post suggesting George was “staying in the background murmuring hare krishnas.” The idea that he was some humble sweet dude all the time is wrong; he was perfectly capable of extremely nasty behavior.
P.S., This idea that George wrote a song and “every time it’s a masterpiece” is silly revisionism. As George Martin said in a very recent interview, most of George’s early songs were “rubbish.” So George developed later as a songwriter. Nothing wrong with that, although George certainly had a chip on his shoulder about it.
This is great and I love it – my mom was a George girl, my dad didn’t go in for all the rock n’ roll shit, and my little sister somehow ended up INSANE about Ringo for a brief period in the mid-90s – but also:
YAY NEW ROB SHEFFIELD BOOK YAAAAAAAAY. Love Is A Mix Tape is just so so wonderful.
Love Is a Mix Tape is the best book with the worst title. I love it beyond reason.
It makes me cry so hard every time, and yet I reread it at least once a year. Damn you, Rob Sheffield.
The BIKE SHORTS THING, and then how her friends were wearing bike shorts at her funeral?! My friend and I cried so hard at that part. It’s so good, the whole book.
Oh! I was avoiding it because the title is truly awful. Good to know that may be the wrong choice.
“…had “Maybe I’m Amazed” been released under the rubric of The Beatles, we would probably consider it one of the fifty great love songs of our age…”
I’ve said in the past that I’m a George girl, with periods of both John and Paul, and of course a deep affection for Ringo. But I’m pretty sure as I’ve aged I’m now Team Yoko (because she’s cool as fuck, also the rumors that she broke them up are pure misogyny)
I’ve seen Paul twice and there is just so much joy and everything wonderful at his concerts! He’s so completely full of energy and having SO MUCH FUN for, like, three hours – and he’s 70! I am 100% a Paul girl (and even own Give My Regards to Broad Street both on vinyl and VHS – and it is terrible, but somehow endearingly terrible).
“There’s a compulsion, I think, when writing about The Beatles, to try to emphasize your mega-fan status right out of the gate. That they mean more to you than to other people, or that the songs you like best are the best songs to best-like. That you understand that the only real reason to doubt that we are spiritually alone in the universe is that John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew up in Liverpool at the same time, and found each other. There are those who point to the complex workings of the human eyeball as a sign of an invisible hand, but I’ve only ever had my belief in the cosmic void tweaked by the existence of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.'” – LOVE. (and, guilty!)
(also, hi, I’ve been lurking on the Hairpin for ages and following you both on Twitter and I am so excited for this site!!!!)
Oh! I was avoiding it because the title is truly awful. Good to know that may be the wrong choice.
When the Backstreet Boys were popular I decided my favorite was Howie just to be contrary. Does that mean I would have been a “Ringo girl?”
When the Backstreet Boys were popular I decided my favorite was Howie just to be contrary. Does that mean I would have been a "Ringo girl?"
everything about this, you, and Paul is perfect.
Nice piece. I’m a Paul girl but John is a close second. And I hate to tell you your Dad was wrong about Paul, but … your Dad was wrong about Paul. There’s a lot of facile criticism of the Beatles. But one thing that many people get wrong is the idea that John was the tough cynic and Paul was the dew-eyed optimist. I read a great comment the other day that summarized how oversimplified that was and this person (who is just some anonymous commenter I will never know) said it better than I could so I’ll quote because I don’t want to plagiarize. Here’s his/her comment:
“Lennon — often the most disarmingly sweet, genuinely naïve of songwriters (from “There’s a Place” through “Dear Prudence” and “Oh Yoko” to “Beautiful Boy”) — gets pigeonholed as the cynic. McCartney — sometimes harrowingly bleak (“Eleanor Rigby” through “Little Lamb Dragonfly” to “Mr. Bellamy”) or frighteningly intense (“Helter Skelter” through “Beware My Love” to “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight”), often melancholy even in apparently affirmative songs (“P.S. I Love You” through “Penny Lane” and “Band on the Run” to “Ever Present Past”) — gets pigeonholed as the optimist.”
They were both sentimental. They both had a dark streak. They were more alike than they were different. And fame ruined a great creative relationship but it was fab while it lasted.
Love this!!! I was a hardcore teenage John (right down to the granny glasses) who grew into more of a Jagger/Richards.
Oh, also, I am practically allergic to sentimentality, but Love Is a Mixtape is SO GOOD if only for the excellent late-80’s indie one hit wonder recommendations.
I am a George girl with all of my heart, having decided well back in my younger years that his talent with a guitar was by far the greatest of the group, and his knack for songwriting the best (an opinion that I continue to hold after experiencing their solo albums), but seeing Paul McCartney live in Memphis on the same tour you saw definitely knocked out a point near the top of my bucket list, were I to actually have a bucket list.
I mean, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to seeing the Beatles live, honestly, especially considering I’ve got no urge to see Ringo at all (his solo stuff is the only Beatles solo stuff I just don’t even bother with, having never liked a single note of it).
I will say that seeing Paul live actually changed what I’d thought was a solid, set-in-stone belief of mine, which was “The Long and Winding Road is the worst song the Beatles ever did.” I am now less inclined to skip it when it shuffles on, and it’s all thanks to Paul playing it live for me. The cringe factor on those schmalzy power chords have apparently been subdued by the sheer power of Paul.
I am a George girl with all of my heart, having decided well back in my younger years that his talent with a guitar was by far the greatest of the group, and his knack for songwriting the best (an opinion that I continue to hold after experiencing their solo albums), but seeing Paul McCartney live in Memphis on the same tour you saw definitely knocked out a point near the top of my bucket list, were I to actually have a bucket list.
I mean, it's the closest I'll ever get to seeing the Beatles live, honestly, especially considering I've got no urge to see Ringo at all (his solo stuff is the only Beatles solo stuff I just don't even bother with, having never liked a single note of it).
I will say that seeing Paul live actually changed what I'd thought was a solid, set-in-stone belief of mine, which was "The Long and Winding Road is the worst song the Beatles ever did." I am now less inclined to skip it when it shuffles on, and it's all thanks to Paul playing it live for me. The cringe factor on those schmalzy power chords have apparently been subdued by the sheer power of Paul.
I feel like the public scrutiny of the Beatles over the years has well proven that all four of them have things about them that people don't like, and that fans of each are hardly going to be unaware of these things. People know about the affairs, people know John was abusive, people know all this stuff. It's not like their lives haven't been raked through with fine-toothed combs or anything. They all have done things people disagree with and they've all done them under the microscope that we stuck them under as multigenerational fans. Expecting perfection out of anyone's kind of a stupid thing to do anyway, why should we expect it from the Beatles?
I'm not defending any of their shitty behaviors over the years, but it does get pretty tiring that every time someone's discussing the music, there's someone piping up with "you and your rose-colored glasses." We can talk about the music without having to always mark a little asterisk next to it going, "Oh by the way, also J/P/G/R did thing/other thing/other other thing, so please don't think I'm unaware."