I didn’t realize a lot of the rooftop takes are actually on the album. I thought that was a all a visual, didn’t know they were downstairs recording. You’d think it’d be noisy or something to actually record on the roof
Something I already knew, but actually watching John’s massive ego on film is hilarious. He seems pretty tapped out writing wise at this point (and smacked out frankly). But anytime somebody else brings a new song he has to passive aggressively criticize it. You can tell it’s killing him. George brings in I Me Mine he wrote the night before and he says, “We don’t play waltzes, this is a rock and roll band!” Paul is over here working out one of the greatest songs of all time in Let It Be and John is screaming “it’s just two damn chords! Play it already!”
John still had moments, but there's no question his abilities as a writer took an absolute nosedive once he get with Yoko and got into hard hard drugs. The man who wrote Hard Days Night in a single evening, and who wrote Help, and In My Life, and on and on, was, by the end, reduced to such lyrics as "I want you, I want you so bad, it's driving me mad...she's so heavy." Meanwhile Paul comes into the studio and says "oh I thought of this last night..." and busts out a 75% finished "Backseat of My Car." That's the real difference between the two of them in 1969. Linda didn't have Paul hooked on Heroine as a means to control him.
There were aspects to their relationship where he was the "jealous guy" but Yoko absolutely refused to give John an inch of time away from her once they got together. She used sex and drugs to keep him on a short leash, and when John finally tried to break it off with her, she offered her own personal assistant, May Pang, essentially whoring her out to John so that he would be with someone she knew and could keep an eye on. And when she invited him back to London in 75 (I think it was), under the pretense of collecting some of his things, Pang begged him not to go, knowing that he wouldn't come back. John went, Yoko immediately got him back onto hard drugs (he'd given them up) and he never left her again. Yoko is a cancer, and people are offering these "Yoko did nothing but sit there" takes based on the documentary, missing the fact that a lot of her worst moments were removed by Peter Jackson (who wouldn't have been allowed to show them by John's estate, which Yoko controls). There are like two or three times when he shows her screeching like a harpy, but he cuts out the times when she would interject in a discussion/argument between the band, and sometimes offer suggestions on the music. That was the shit that really got under Paul's skin.
To be fair the lyrics were never really the point. They put words like cauliflower in there til they thought of something else. They were mainly trying to find a catchy tune with words that fit it In the doc you saw them have songs that started out as “statements” and ended as filler. “Get back” was about anti immigrant sentiment til the lyrics morphed. Seems like “I want you (she’s so heavy)” was something about black and white civil rights at one point
Right, but "I want you, I want you so bad, it's driving me mad...she's so heavy." was the final lyric of the song. Those are the only words. It's a far cry from the creativity he previously had is all I'm saying. He clearly found inspiration again after the breakup: Plastic Ono Band proves that.
I actually love it too, especially the way it descends into static and then stops as the first side of the LP ends. I think the I have a dream stuff was done as a one-off gag and was never intended to be the lyrics, especially since we hear him singing the actual lyrics before that and of course those are the lyrics he settled on.
I had no idea some of the rooftop recordings are actually on the album either. I guess Paul got his live album after all.
Yoko is a horrible human being. Her treatment of Julian Lennon is the stuff made of fairy tales about evil stepmothers. I will say though, that she merely was a conduit for all of John’s worst instincts and feelings. She simply enabled him to openly be the selfish and self-destructive prick he had always been privately.
Never knew all that. Does Paul ever talk openly about Yoko. The doc def made her seem pretty innocent.
Did George and Paul's relationship improve after the Beatles? Seeing the "love you George" messages from Paul yesterday felt weird when the last thing I saw was them being frosty on Get Back
They all mellowed by the end of the 70s and seemed to collaborate fine on the Anthology stuff. It helped that George was finally recognized as an equal to L/M. He had a lot more confidence and "dgaf" about him by the time they reunited in the early 90s.
it didn’t really warm until late 90s. there’s a George interview in the late 80s and someone mentioned to him Paul was quoted that he wanted to write with George and George said “I don’t know why he’s start now, he hasn’t wanted to for nearly 40 years.” Even when they did anthology in the early 90s it wasn’t great. In that documentary you can see George is still very much bitter and makes some cutting comments about Paul. Paul conversely really walks on eggshells to not piss him off and kind of let’s him make the comments. But once George was first attacked and stabbed in his home and then got his cancer diagnosis, they became close again. Paul would visit during chemo and shit and they’d play ukeleles and shit. Paul recently has talked about being quite lucky that he was able to mend his friendships with his dead band mates before they passed.
The George Martin book I read came out around 1990 I believe. In it, he said Lennon and McCartney were the true talent and Harrison and Starr could have been anybody. I thought that was a little shitty to say but Martin did say it.
George benefited from being held back. He had to step up his game and produce the best material possible to be featured alongside the L/M stuff on every record. That meant the stuff he didn't get to include was almost good enough and could be tinkered with and perfected. It's no coincidence that his best solo album was his first, featuring a dozen songs (at least) that he'd been tinkering with going back to the White Album days. After he burned through his backlogue on All Things Must Pass (and had the huge success with the Bangladesh concert), he never really reached those heights again. He was no longer held back, no longer frustrated, and no longer as motivated as he once was. Living in a Material World was fine,* but things took a serious nosedive after that. Ringo is Ringo. He was invaluable to the group, but not as a drummer. He was the glue. edit: *You know how totally out of place Within You and Without You ended up sounding on the Sgt. Pepper's album? It's a good song, but it doesn't really fit. Imagine a whole record of just that; that's Living in a Material World. And that's the best solo album George had after he burned through his backlogue (though his final solo album might be just as good).
Before watching the doc I thought George was "lead" guitar and John would play "rhythm." But we saw John play the solos on "Get Back" and it kind of seemed like it was business as usual. Was John the main guitar soloist?
I thought it's been crazy to see they were working on 2 albums at once, really. A lot of the first episode had songs that would be released on Abbey Road.
yeah I didn't know a few of those were already started in January. I knew Maxwell's Silver Hammer but not Something. And of course Paul had multiple songs that would end up on McCartney and Ram. I knew a lot of the B-side medley on Abbey Road was just bits of stuff they had leftover from Get Back, so that made sense, but I didn't realize how close they were to just releasing Bathroom Window and Polythene Pam on the Get Back album. Basically they would come into the studio when it was time to cut an album and start sharing what they were working on. If it came together in the time allotted, they finished it and put it on the album. If not they kept it for the next album or cut it entirely. I know "Run for your Life" ended up on Rubber Soul but it had been written and finished for Help, I think. Based on what I've read about other bands, most had much more of a structured format to the album-recording process. The Beatles basically didn't know what not to do and they just did what made sense to them. George Martin deserves a ton of credit as the old vet who just guided them along their creative process, and didn't try to force them to do things a certain way.
Yep- plenty of instrument switching in the Beatles. George played bass on some songs and Paul would play guitar. Paul played just about every instrument in the band along the way.
Just finished. Thought it was awesome that George was the one to turn the amps back on when they tried to shut them down. Also interesting that it seemed like John used his guitar for his bass parts.
i want to find the young tory idiot who is like "this free beatles concert sucks" and kick him in his old balls
Dick Cavett is a really good interviewer, never heard of him because he was before my time but went down a rabbit hole with his interviews
Great effort by Cavett to get all of that out of George considering how reluctant he was at the start of the interview to talk about anything associated with the Beatles.
Finished the doc this morning. Best parts were when they were just jamming to their old songs and other peoples songs. Also incredible they could just pluck half written songs from when they were teenagers as if they play them all the time.
Yeah it's hard to believe the state that's given us the comedic genius of Scott Frost could have cranked out those two legends
That's how memory works when you're a musician. I can remember my clarinet parts from middle school band pieces. If you can remember one note, it all comes back to you
My brain doesnt work that way. Fascinating. But I can remember completely random and useless sports trivia.
I think there's a memory boost benefit for everyone with songs -- think of the alphabet song for example, or rap songs where you can remember every single word years later. It's just heightened if you're a musician, partly from training and partly from natural tendency
Yep. I can still remember bits and pieces of songs on piano from 25+ years ago. Guitar is even easier. Just need to run through the chord progression once and it all comes back. Some songs more difficult than others for sure though.
We're conditioned to think they're famous posh, and aloof rock stars that would never tolerate a kid that's being annoying ect. But they all really did seem like a family and loving uncles to her