George Harrison: Search & Destroy

It's obvious that the Beatles believed their own myth and their own hype. All of them. Including Ringo, and especially Lennon.

its not like they had a choice when every fan journalist and tv show host asks them when the Beatles are getting back together on a daily basis

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, October 15, 2017 6:56 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and this has what to do with their songwriting, exactly?

Lennon's beliefs and feelings about the Beatles and associated hype seemed to change weekly, but he at least professed to think a large segment of their work was crap rushed out to meet deadlines.

Though that may have been prompted by a feeling that the only way to get out from under the Beatles thing post-breakup was to tarnish the myth as much as possible.

god knows what he'd make of his mid 70s period if he were alive today.

When he wrote "I don't believe in Beatles", he was contributing to the myth. You don't even write a line like that unless you believe your own hype. He knew what he was doing.

I feel like a key part of Lennon's story is that much of the time he didn't know what he was doing and was trying to not be miserable. I mean, the myth was already there, and it was pretty much impossible for someone as self-obsessed as Lennon not to engage with it.

As Adam Bruneau pointed out, every interview any of them did after 1970 was “When are you getting back together?” and “Remember when you were on Ed Sullivan?” And I think it’s safe to say no fewer than 95% of their interactions with fans (or hell, even close friends) were/are about their Beatle years. So yeah, it has to do with their songwriting because that’s what their lives were.

As for Lennon believing his own hype, kids brought massive LENNON SAVES banners to some of their 1966 shows, the Klan threatened a terror attack, records were burned, and later, murders were committed based on non-existent secret messages on the white album. Hype (an insufficient term) like that isn’t exactly easy to dismiss (and it’s not as if he didn’t try, saying, “It’s just a rock ‘n’ roll band breaking up, it’s not the end of the world”).

(x-post)

Indeed!

Moving on to the others: McCartney, as amazing as it seems now, initially tried as hard as he could to make a break from the Beatles thing. Yes, there's the songs about Lennon on Ram and Wild Life and a little Beatle hangover on McCartney, but from 1972 up until Tug of War there's not much Beatle-referencing stuff there, unless you count the odd Beatles track played at Wings shows.

It may have been Lennon's death, but I'd say from Tug of War onwards the Beatle references came back in McCartney's work - slowly at first with 'Here Today', the re-recordings on Broad Street and stuff like the 'My Brave Face' and 'This One' videos, before totally kicking into fucking overdrive from Flaming Pie onwards...

So yeah, it has to do with their songwriting because that’s what their lives were.

No it doesn't, though. The two aren't related at all. Just because you get asked a question in an interview, it doesn't automatically mean you must write about it. If they were that keen to move on and create something distinct, they wouldn't have bothered being so self-referential.

Even Harrison, bless him, as wounded as he was from the Beatle years (which enabled him to form supergroups, put out a wad of spotty records and let him get away with not being bothered about touring) couldn't resist throwing the Beatles references about!

There's references galore on almost all of his albums.

Just because you get asked a question in an interview, it doesn't automatically mean you must write about it. If they were that keen to move on and create something distinct, they wouldn't have bothered being so self-referential.

I don't know if I'd ever watched that 1980-era footage of John and Yoko walking around Central Park until a few years ago or so, but sure enough, as soon as someone recognizes him, it's the Beatles question and it's ten years later.

Except it wasn’t a question in an interview; it was many questions in every interview, of which there were many, in addition to every fan they happened to encounter.

It still doesn't mean you have to write about it! McCartney actually didn't for a very long time, and he would have kept the Beatles going forever if he could have done. Harrison was all "I'm having a better time playing with Dylan and hanging out with Clapton" etc. etc. yet he could be as bad as Lennon for slipping Beatles references into his work.

What are those songs apart from "Living in the Material World?"

(And obviously "When We Was Fab" much much later)

"All Those Years Ago" I suppose

If the Stones had split up after Exile on Main Street you can bet people would have been asking them when they're getting back together constantly too. Plenty of bands have had to endure that. There's still, incredibly, people asking Paul Weller if The Jam are ever gonna reform. Don't see him writing songs about that. Will The Smiths reform? Don't know, but don't see Morrissey writing songs about it.

'Isn't It a Pity?', 'Run of the Mill', 'Sue Me, Sue You Blues', 'Living in the Material World', 'This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)', 'Here Comes the Moon', 'All Those Years Ago', 'When We Was Fab' ... I could go on...

'Wah-Wah', there's another...

If the Stones had split up after /Exile on Main Street/ you can bet people would have been asking them when they're getting back together constantly too. Plenty of bands have had to endure that. There's still, incredibly, people asking Paul Weller if The Jam are ever gonna reform. Don't see him writing songs about that. Will The Smiths reform? Don't know, but don't see Morrissey writing songs about it.

I didn't know "Isn't It a Pity" and "Run of the Mill" were so specifically about Beatle relationships. It actually puts a little more meat into "Run of the Mill" for me, personally. But those are great songs anyway. "Wah-Wah" too.

iirc, “Isn’t It A Pity” dates from the Revolver sessions. George possibly rewrote some lines in 1970.

I don’t believe the Jam nor the Smiths had an equivalent effect on popular culture that the Beatles did. Nor were the fan bases of either band a fraction of that of the Beatles.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, October 15, 2017 8:26 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We're not talking about, measuring or comparing a bands effect on popular culture. We're talking about people being asked a question in an interview and the effect of this on their songwriting.

xxpost:

At least on Dark Horse he had Clapton making off with wife and falling off the wagon to think about - even if the former only got onto the LP in the form of new lyrics on 'Bye Bye Love' ... He should have waited until his throat had healed, though. I'd have far more time for that record if I could put up with the singing.

Originally I think we were talking more generally about the reasons why the ex-Beatles would choose to write on Beatle-related themes and addressing your criticism of that.

Yes, that too!

We're not talking about, measuring or comparing a bands effect on popular culture. We're talking about people being asked a question in an interview and the effect of this on their songwriting.

there have been other musicians before and since the beatles who had the same kind of enormous social impact, but i don't know of any of them who made that impact as part of a collective entity. it doesn't make a lot of sense to ask michael jackson if michael jackson is ever going to get back together, and as tremendously famous as the beatles were individually, they were and always will be dwarfed by "The Beatles". it's not the sort of thing one can "move on" from, any more than someone can "move on" from being the american president.

Imagine if Bob Dylan had broken up.

Yeah he might have had someone going through his trash or something...

There's that great passage in Chronicles where he talks about once seeing a magazine cover that featured some multi-headed monster with, I think, his head and Kennedy's and, I don't know, Castro or something. That's what he had to deal with.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ec/08/af/ec08af640eb373a03c2b7e9459b371e7--malcolm-x-fidel-castro.jpg

Ha wow!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_We_Not_Men%3F_We_Are_Devo!#Artwork

"The manager of the company's art department, Rick Serini, recommended an artist who could airbrush and alter the face of the picture, while lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh offered a picture he'd procured from a local newspaper that morphed the faces of U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. These ideas were later morphed with the original "Chi Chi" Rodriguez image to create the cover art of the album.[9]"

We weren’t talking about that until you brought up the Jam and the Smiths. The frequency and rabidness with which Weller and Morrissey were asked about reuniting is likely significantly less than that of any member of the Beatles.

The frequency and rabidness doesn't matter - what matters is they still get asked, which was a response to Tim's post about Lennon getting asked 10 years after The Beatles broke up.

The Beatles were thought, by a sizable number of their fans, to have The Answer, if not An Answer to the seismic cultural shifts of the ‘60s.

This is all irrelevant unless The Beatles believed this themselves.

Weller and Morrissey may well have been similarly regarded by fans of theirs in their times, but questions put to them in interviews, and by fans/fanatics, did not have the same weight of “you changed our generation!” behind them.

With Weller and Morrissey it was more "you speak for our generation" rather than "you changed our generation" - this distinction is notable. The Sex Pistols changed their generation. This is all irrelevant though.

Again, this is not a matter of a single interviewer asking a single question in a single interview. The Beatles had (have) to endure a gauntlet of hectoring for decades, on a scale no other performers have had to endure. More likely than not, as artists tend to reflect the lives they’ve led through their work, this will come out in their music, consciously and otherwise.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, October 15, 2017 9:46 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, it's irrelevant - they didn't need to write about it - and again, McCartney didn't for a very long time even though he may have spoken about The Beatles often in interviews - until he finally gave in. Music and interviews are different things, and I don't believe any Beatles reference in their solo careers is anything other than conscious.

I think it's more that they all had colossal egos and believed their own hype and myth, in some ways contributing to their own myth by self-mythologising.

Dark Horse is underrated. It's patchy, but it's also got some real gems

I see no need to make that criticism in general about them. Sometimes, they seem humble to me, actually. Always totally willing to grant some kind of Joseph Campbell-type relevance to the Beatles "myth" rather than just criticize it as hype.

"Also" totally willing, etc.

I think it's more that they all had colossal egos and believed their own hype and myth, in some ways contributing to their own myth by self-mythologising.

― more Allegro-like (Turrican)

look they _made_ their own myth. what, you think they sold records just by writing good songs? if the beatles had been humble we would never have heard of them.

I've got a big ol soft spot for Dark Horse, bad singing and all. Pretty easily my second fave album of his. I will say my vinyl version on my shit speakers sounds way better than the remastered one on Spotify

Shame this didn't make ATMP. Top 5 George track for me:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N2rFr0DyQcg

since "the nurse"i've been convinced she's an artist i ought to get into it but neglected to do so. what a mistake, she's the best

look they _made_ their own myth. what, you think they sold records just by writing good songs? if the beatles had been humble we would never have heard of them.

― bob lefse (rushomancy), Monday, October 16, 2017 3:41 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No they didn't! Others made the myth for them any they bought into it and eventually began fuelling it.

They initially sold records by yes, writing good songs, but also looking the part (they were well packaged), being there at the right time and being helped along by the hype of their management team and others.

yeah, the Beatles contributed to their own mythology, being that they were in the Beatles and didn't just stop making music altogether. i don't really understand Turrican's point here, they should have written good songs but not referenced that thing they did for 1/3rd of their lives, seems like a dumb demand to make

like wow they consciously wrote about their own lives, oh no, what bastards

I'm not saying they shouldn't have done, I'm saying they did it to an embarrassing degree. There is a difference there.

Although The Beatles never played a gig where they decided to knock live goldfish into the audience out of champagne glasses, so I suppose there is that.

of course they did -- what else inspired George's "Fish on the Sand"?!

I'm not saying they shouldn't have done, I'm saying they did it to an embarrassing degree. There is a difference there.

― more Allegro-like (Turrican)

so the standard here is, what, turrican is embarrassed by the degree to which they wrote about their own lives?

If they were merely writing about their own lives, that would be fine... if they had still been in The Beatles. The tone of the solo Beatles when they get all self-referential isn't "this is what I did today", it's the sound of people believing their own hype.