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Overnight Prince fans
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,106 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Okay… *first cup of tea of the day? Check. Rolls up sleeves*Not to be getting too off topic and in the full acknowlegement that you've made your case well, I do take exception to one or two things there.
Right… so Eleanor Rigby(which is a staggeringly sublime set of lyrics, never mind the music which is beyond out there for a "pop singer" in 1965), The End, Penny Lane, Yesterday, Let it be, Fool on the hill(inc a melodic twist that Lennon would have been hard pressed to match on his best day), Mother nature's son, Blackbird. Seriously? The song "For no one" alone is one of the most nail on the head lyrics reflecting the pain of breakup ever committed to tape. Never mind that but for the fact that Macca was in the mix a goodly chunk of Lennons output would have been simplistic torch songs, albeit good ones. As an exercise listen to the first demos of John's stuff and then Paul's stuff and compare and contrast. The intro to Strawberry fields forever is all Paul. Tomorrow never knows kicked off as something very different to the released track. The soundscape created by the looped tapes was Macca's idea as he'd been getting all avant garde with his influences at the time. That could go the other way and did, but the notion that the Paul lad was lacking in the lyrics dept is as daft as suggesting John couldn't muster some serious chops as a melody writer(his particular knack was blindingly "simple" piano intros that any number of classical composers would have been chuffed to write. And he kept that skill going. EG check out the "Real Love" intro or "Lucy in the sky with diamonds". His timing was wonderfully all over the place. He could go from a waltz to 8 to the bar, to 4 to the bar in under a minute. Ringo Starr deserves a bloody medal on that score. She said she said, Good morning good morning but two examples)Firstly: The whole John vs Paul debate: McCartney was unquestionably the best musician and composer in The Beatles, but Lennon has him beat completely as a lyricist; it's not even close! There's dozens of Lennon songs that have excellent lyrics; I'd struggle to name many -dare I say any? - McCartney songs with the same characteristic. Lennon was able, when he wanted to, to use metaphor and allusions, vivid imagery, wordplay and lot of just oul plain speakin' straight from the gut- Paul just didn't have all that in him.
I'm not saying that McCartney was lacking in this department, per-se, just that they weren't at the same level, though it must be said that McCartney's main aim was always first and foremost to "compose"beautiful music; he was a lyricist second.
Walls and bridges is OK, but the majority of songs would find a fight waiting to get on a Beatles album. Oh and the guts of the Plastic Ono band stuff was knocked together within the Beatles timeframe. Hell Jealous Guy was a "Beatles song".Secondly: Lennon was in no way a spent force by The end of The Beatles. The Plastic Ono Band and Imagine were his first two solo post-Beatles albums: Plastic Ono was truly revolutionary - any ultra confessional singer songwriter album that's been released since owes it a great deal - and Imagine was a massive success, with critics and with the public. Walls and Bridges, from 1974, is also an excellent album IMO
Mostly true. And you back that up…Thirdly: The argument that his influence in The Beatles was on the wane by the end, while McCartney's was on the rise, is partly true and partly false.
EGIt's true in the sense that McCartney, from maybe 67 onwards, was the main driving force in terms of getting things done - recording, writing and looking after the business side of things for the band. And it is also true that his songs began to outnumber those of Lennon on Beatles albums, from about Revolver onwards.
She's so heavy is a good song, but a long way away from I am the walrus in quality. Come together is the ironic death rattle of a band and of Lennon's best years. Have a listen to the demos of Come Together before Macca's bass line. The guts of Lennon's input to those last sessions were barely formed if wonderful snippets of songs teased out and added to by the rest of the guys and George Martin. He was already viewing the exit at that point. Literally and creatively.But, it's false, to assume from there that Lennon was washed up. Even up until the very end, with Abbey Road, Lennon was still producing the goods - Come Together, She's so Heavy, Because - those are outrageously brilliant pieces of music. McCartney, taking that final album as an example, may have had him beat in terms of the sheer number of songs on it, but in terms of quality?... Far from the case.
If by maturity you mean edging away from innovation and looking more inward and indulgent. When he was at his peak those traits made for fantastic songs like Help! You've got to hide your love away, a real cracker like Julia and a long list of others, but after his creative wave crested he became self indulgent and out of touch. That he could sing Working class hero(good song) without a trace of self realised irony says it all. Imagine there's no possessions indeed Johnny boy. That country estate must have weighed so heavily.And that's how I see the late period of the band: McCartney's output increased, but Lennons maturity and resonance did too: Score draw.
Then again he was always had the petulant hypocrite tendencies. That works when you're 20 and innovation and anger and the blood is quick, it starts to look and sound tiresome in a 35 year old. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend got the irony of still singing "I wanna die before I get old" at 40 and beyond, but Lennon never got his joke. I'm not so sure he ever would have. I suppose that's a large part of his appeal. In a way he remained an adolescent and genuinely too, not as some money generating caricature like so many others.
Joke is overall and granted by a nose, I'd be more a Lennon fan than a McCartney one and when both were on and in the room together there are precious few songwriters in history that would approach them, Still, I can see that Macca had more range and natural talents, was more self aware and held onto the fire for just a little longer.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Wibbs!
McCartney = better musician: no question - the man is/was a genius. But I didn't dispute that!
Also we can't forget that there was collaboration a plenty between the songwriters during their career. Listen to this -
A McCartney driven tune, but it wouldn’t be the same without that Lennon input
Okay, I was wrong to give McCartney next to no credit as a lyricist, but - and we're now further into the realm of subjective taste - I find Lennon's lyrics are more interesting -
Take something like Julia, for example, -the lyrics to that song are so personal (exorcising - well, partially - his demons about his mother's death, all the while equating the new love he feels for Yoko with a sort of symbolic reincarnation of another maternal figure) and poetic ("Her hair of of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering in the sun" ) that while it is self indulgent and inward looking, it's also great art that operates on many different levels: it’s psychologically dense; poetically vivid and intensely personal. But, yet it’s still enigmatic enough that its meaning is not one hundred percent concrete - it can be reinterpreted in different ways; its definition never stays the same, which, I think is a hallmark of great art - I experience different feelings and emotions every time I listen to this song. It’s only one song, says you, but - SUBJECTIVE OPINION - McCartney never managed to pen words of such deceptive simplicity, but with such multilayered depth. Thank heavens for Lennon and his introspection!
And on the charge of Lennon being a full of crap, hypocritical idealist? - Yes! He definitely was... but who isn't?
It's one of the main reasons why I find his music so fascinating: He was full of contradictions - cynical yet romantic; syrupy yet caustic; politically engaged and aware, but also self-regarding and self-absorbed. You can make sense of wherever he was in his life by paying attention to the lyrics in the songs. He could run the gamut between threatening to knock a girl out, and then turning it around with writing some of the most heartfelt love songs of all time. Does that mean he was full of it? Absolutely. But personally I'd rather listen to someone who was unafraid to let it all hang out emotionally, even if that leaves him guilty to the charge of inconsistency of character and contradiction, because I think that truly embodies what it is to be a human being - we grow and change and sometimes what we think and say, and even who we are, is not always static and unchanging. And that’s why, for all of Paul’s awe inspiring genius for music, I will always put Lennon above McCartney in terms of lyrics and emotional resonance: his words make me feel the human being behind the music, consistently and profoundly.
So, yeah, in summation: Listen to Prince0 -
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Mind you, what IS it about a celeb's death that upsets people? Since that's a horribly open question, take a musician. Is it that you feel you know them through their music? They were part of your childhood? (Bowie for me, I'm one of those that liked some of his songs, but for me he was the Goblin King dammit) That they had a unique sound and now it's gone?
It's a bit of an odd thing really. Most of us don't know any of these people and never met them in person. I don't think I'd be -devastated- at the death of any celeb, musician or otherwise, because as much as I might like their stuff, I didn't know them. And yet, I can kinda see the why as I was upset at Terry Pratchett's death since he's been well up there as a favorite author since I was about twelve. I suppose I'd also feel a bit bad for Bono too, not least since I think he gets way too much flack.
*cough* Sliiightly off-topic, just musings.
Music at it's absolute best can make a profound difference to our emotional state. My humour can be transformed from "meh" to joyous in an instant when I hear the opening chords of a favourite song. In the case of U2, I have immersed myself in their music since I was 16, and that includes reading interviews with them. You can't help but feel you know someone, albeit in very restricted way, when you're hearing what they have to say for years.
There are supposedly people who can separate the music from the person making it, hence the number of people who will often give me the "Oh I love U2 but I hate Bono" line.
That attitude is incomprehensible to me and I suspect that anyone who comes out with that line doesn't really understand what they're saying. An Irish person will say "Oh I love this, that and the other" when what they really mean of course is "I quite like this, that or the other." Like is not love.
A musician pours their personality into their music, so by definition if you like the music you can't help but like the person to my mind.
It follows therefore that if you like the tunes and the person who makes them, you're going to be upset by their death, in proportion to how big a fan you are.0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyclqo_AV2M
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