Is the Beatles 1962-66 (the 'red' alb) the only record of theirs that you need?

Was he scowling throughout the rest of the reported 14 hours filmed and there was no other footage?

But it stands in stark contrast to the absolutely beautiful and moving “Here Comes the Sun” video they released a few years ago.

― Sam Weller, Friday, November 3, 2023 3:23 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is such a good & funny comparison. the "Sun" video is a perfect example of how less is more with an institution like the beatles, where the audience is inevitably going to be bringing a gigantic amount of memories, emotions and deep connections to the song, the band, the history, etc, and all thats needed is to create a space for the viewer to access that stuff and it can be a profound experience. whereas the "now & then" video does the exact opposite and seems to be in a frantic panic to be constantly reminding us that the Beatles were four fab lads who started in the cavern club then the world caught beatlemania and they wore sgt pepper suits and did let it be and oh yeah one of them died no wait two of them died and also yellow submarine was good and they had beards at one point etc etc. and its just like, dude, i'm choosing to watch the video, please trust me that i remember who the beatles are and why this is important ffs

Maybe it was made for the UK market, where people are more likely to need reminding than in the US.

I wonder how George would respond once told that "Here Comes the Sun" is the most streamed Beatles song.

NARRATOR: Paul McCartney, when told, had no comment other than "We always knew George had it in him

Forgot George said this when the Anthology stuff was rolled out:

“I hope someone does this to all my crap demos after I’m dead – turn them into hit songs.”

Even the "Free as a Bird" music video repurposed old Beatles clips to better use than this new video.

Think Glass Onion is easily my favorite of these recent remix videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBQIAWh3YBs

BTW, that shot of Paul/Ringo singing reminded me of this hilarious spot during the Classic Albums series for Motorhead's "Ace of Spades" and Eddie Clarke phases in to play (We Are) The Roadcrew" with the rest of the band.

I think it helps to remember that Peter Jackson has pretty much zero aesthetic sensibility (and has been wise enough to surround himself with folks who do for some of his big projects). Whereas LOTR shows the team busting their asses to bring the tech to support the production designers' vision, Hobbit shows what happens when the tech itself is the focus and Jackson exerts more control, so it looks like video game cutscenes. Get Back allowed him to flex his editing and narrative skills with the aesthetics taken care of by Lindsay-Hogg and crew. When he's in charge of the lot, you get stuff like this video.

I think a good contrast is that last Rolling Stones video for “angry” where it goes through different eras and it’s very effective at it - speaking exclusively about the billboards.

that glass onion video above was cool, for some reason I'd never bothered watching it.

Andrew Hickey's perceptive take on Now and Then:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/92258652?utm_campaign=postshare_fan

That was great, thanks.

I don't agree with him on the demo:

And, frankly, he was right. Lennon's original demo is a meandering, borderline-unlistenable, mess

I really like the demo (and the Free as A Bird and Real Love ones), though missed any unexpected reference to Turnham Green. I haven't found the relevant section, but I may have been hearing that as 'wander in eternity' !

For example, in the section that becomes in the final track the middle eight, Lennon sings (starting 2:13 in the demo) "Tow (sic) and then I miss you/Oh, now and then I wan te dow de Turnham Green/I know return to me" as near as I can phonetically transcribe it

Lennon and McCartney's collaboration was often in the form of editing each other's work, and sometimes extensively rewriting it (as when McCartney turned Lennon's sad acoustic dirge about being unloved and uncared for as a child into "Yellow Submarine") and what both men missed in their solo work was the ability of the other to find the core good idea among their bad ones and to polish it up for them and turn it into something workable. Both released plenty of fatuous solo work that could have been turned into classics with just a little bit of help from the other (as well as both releasing plenty of actual classics in their solo work).

It seems like a lot the examples of McCartney's solo work with the most critical cachet are tracks that sound kind of half finished - Maybe I'm Amazed, Ram, McCartney II, is this because people hear them as demos for Beatles songs that never were? Though I suppose the white album, Let It Be and at least the medley section of Abbey Road have a kind of unfinished, directionless quality to them as well. Even before they split up it feels like they'd reached the limits of what they could think of to do.

i don't get the idea that ram sounds half-finished - the arrangements are lush, rich and elaborate, and george martin does orchestral arrangements on a few tracks! it's basically paul continuing from where abbey road left off and deciding to make his own smile.

mccartney i & ii sure do sound half-finished but neither's really that good overall. mccartney ii is fascinating and endearing but only half of it is really that compelling, though the good ideas he had were really good and i would have loved for him to do a whole album of "coming up"s or a whole album of ymo/kraftwerk-esque synth pieces. it's just a weird grab bag of ideas as-is though.

man, I wished he'd kept going in THIS direction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5GVEfxZFbg

xp and ram is easily one of the most beatles-esque of all their solo albums yeah

"secret friend" is the best and a whole album in the vein of it and "all you horse riders / blue sway" would have been wonderful

secret friend is one of the best post-beatle things and the first mccartney track to break through the (not entirely false but woefully reductive) stereotypes about his solo work for me

and while I agree with a lot of hickey's points but the notion that lennon in the late 70s was more or less over the beatles is a total misreading and a disappointing concession to official mythology from someone who is usually better than that - if anything it was mccartney who was closer to acceptance over the end of the band at that time (in spite of his claims to the contrary in the last few decades)

I don't know about "over" the Beatles, but he seems to have the most balanced perspective by December 1980...

I liked the piece. I shared it with a few friends.

*seems to have had

yeah he was good at bluffing

esp in interviews he knew were for posterity

Ultimately, I don't care. To divine intentions is a mug's game, especially with four guys who knew they'd created the 20th century's most persistent, annoying mythos.

It’s okay, but I still prefer this Last Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch_Fb0AnzC0

the Firemen albums are McCartney going further in the direction of Secret Friend, to varying degrees of success (I think the third one is the only one that is completely successful)

Wow, nice article (Hickey on Patreon), thanks for sharing! Didn't expect Rutles and Asimov references, and it's particularly illuminating for him to point out Lennon's last words spoken in person to McCartney ("think about me every now and then, old friend") - so the title "Now and Then" has multiple meanings...

In 1981, a few months after Lennon’s death, McCartney invited Carl Perkins to collaborate on ‘Get It’, a song from his 1982 album, Tug of War. While working in the studio, Perkins showed McCartney a new song, ‘My Old Friend’, which contained the words: “Think about me every now and then, old friend”. Touched by the familiar lyrics, the former Beatle left the room in tears.

In a 1996 interview with Goldmine magazine, Perkins revealed an ensuing conversation between himself and Linda McCartney. “Paul was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and Linda said, ‘Carl, thank you so much.’ I said, ‘Linda, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ She said, ‘But he’s crying, and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.’

“And she put her arm around me and said, ‘But how did you know?’ I said, ‘Know what?’ She said, ‘There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. Me and Paul are the only two that know that, but now there’s three…you know it. I said, ‘Girl, you’re freaking me out!’…She said the last words that John Lennon said to Paul in the hallway of the Dakota building were…he patted him on the shoulder, and said, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’”

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/john-lennon-words-paul-mccartney-carl-perkins/

Love it. I almost didn’t believe, or didn’t want to believe, until the part where he said “Girl, you’re freaking me out!”

Might be time to rewatch this bit of awesomeness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiWAqhkCQZM

Dying at Hickeys line about the new track having “homeopathic amounts of George Harrison”

yeah I knew about that last line from lennon trivia for a while now, that was certainly the driving force behind paul wanting to finish this song off.

and as such, in a way, I kind of wish less of a big deal was made about the whole thing (like, they didn't need to do a video); it's really a personal project.

Now and Then '64

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tSefoJDKsU

Now and Then '66

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABa_RH1ygC8

i am in two kinds abt the new track

on the one hand, i wish they would lose their instinct to overdecorate the christmas tree when it comes to this stuff
clean up the tape & let us have that
we dont need new backing vocals & strings & shit

on the other hand, paul & ringo have every right to be full Beatles about it and want to add to it and make it into completed content for the world to enjoy

either way it’s good that this exists as a finished song & it is quite a nice song overall imo

^good post

Dying at Hickeys line about the new track having “homeopathic amounts of George Harrison”

By the way, "Knicker Elastic King" is miles better than any of these reunion Beatles tracks.

(x-post)

As posted on the Hickey thread, I don’t really subscribe to Hickey’s psychoanalytical theory that McCartney crafted ‘Now and Then’ ”…to be the message to himself he wanted to hear”

I suspect Paul’s main aim was give the fans what he thought they most want to see and hear: the sense that it’s a major and significant event, that the Beatles are back together for one last time, and that they always loved each other.

It’s really,really growing on me.

Maudlin, safe, pedestrian, clumsy, inflated, rhythmically-dull as dishwater, tedious, frozen-in-nostalgia, a real bummer, and absolute non-music as well. And no doubt the best they can do at this point (I don't care about Macca's recent solo work). And all of this is beside the point, as stated above. It's a genuine return to 1995 when we all had to pretend to like Free as a Bird for a week, when we could all hear it was a lump of over-produced caked snot with zero joy or adventure or meaning beyond its ominous commercial significance. Credit to them for resurrecting the heady past of 27 years ago, and I hope it does wonders for their grandchildren's' bank balances, or something.

mccartney should take on the rest of the lennon solo catalogue next - I think he really could turn it into better pop music. he could finally add a really scathing verse to how do you sleep (how do you sleep with brian to get your name first on the credits? something along those lines)

By the way, "Knicker Elastic King" is miles better than any of these reunion Beatles tracks.

That's a high bar!

XP In the late 90s a music magazine (forget which) had a feature where famous musicians sent in questions for an interview with Paul, and the question from Marilyn Manson Was "How do you sleep?" - in reply I think Paul just had a story about how in 1971 he was getting great sleep for the first time in his life.

Question would he been better put to Manson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWFehaQEMYI

the '64 Ed Sullivan "Now and Then" cover is awesome

and more enjoyable than the official release, i should add

nooooooo