Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Ten reasons why the Beatles broke up
They stopped doing concerts.
The band was increasingly less bound by their Englishness. As significant others fell away, their replacements were invariably foreign-born: Yoko, the Eastmans, Klein, Spector, et al. John's future in particular lied in America. The days of hanging out with Mal and Neil and the boys were over; the Liverpool entourage dissolved.
They couldn't figure out how to get rid of George Martin.
John fell in love for the first (and last) time in is life.
Brian Epstein died before they were done with him.
George Harrison had a little brother's chip on his shoulder. From his direct rudeness to Yoko and his dig at Lennon on the "I Me Mine" session to his appearance on the Paul-roasting "How Do You Sleep," George could always be counted on, in his low-key way, to bring some gasoline to a fire.
Paul McCartney vetoed "Revolution" as a single.
Apple Corps: which forced them to be businessmen before they were interested, cluttered their lives, and provided all the battlegrounds you could ever want. (To a man, they eventually became obsessed with business, accumulating the kind of immense wealth you have to work towards--you cannot just fall into it. But that came later.)
Robert Christgau on the break-up: "Three of the Beatles thought they were geniuses, and only one of them was."
There was no route to a reunion.
The band was increasingly less bound by their Englishness. As significant others fell away, their replacements were invariably foreign-born: Yoko, the Eastmans, Klein, Spector, et al. John's future in particular lied in America. The days of hanging out with Mal and Neil and the boys were over; the Liverpool entourage dissolved.
They couldn't figure out how to get rid of George Martin.
John fell in love for the first (and last) time in is life.
Brian Epstein died before they were done with him.
George Harrison had a little brother's chip on his shoulder. From his direct rudeness to Yoko and his dig at Lennon on the "I Me Mine" session to his appearance on the Paul-roasting "How Do You Sleep," George could always be counted on, in his low-key way, to bring some gasoline to a fire.
Paul McCartney vetoed "Revolution" as a single.
Apple Corps: which forced them to be businessmen before they were interested, cluttered their lives, and provided all the battlegrounds you could ever want. (To a man, they eventually became obsessed with business, accumulating the kind of immense wealth you have to work towards--you cannot just fall into it. But that came later.)
Robert Christgau on the break-up: "Three of the Beatles thought they were geniuses, and only one of them was."
There was no route to a reunion.
Friday, October 16, 2009
The dark twin
This blog is the twin of my other blog. I originally meant for the two blogs to be simple mirrors of each other. Just like actual identical twins--who share not only their outside features but also, I presume, the inner (identical kidneys, identical spleens)--the blogs were to have identical content, and differ only in their names. I was even going to dress them the same.
Then it struck me that they should be wholly different blogs--not twins at all (as they were not born at the same time), but merely brothers. They could be different from each other in starkly contrasting ways, even be enemies, like Edmund and Edgar in King Lear. This could be interesting.
But no, I've settled on a third model--namely the Siamese twin. These blogs will be Chang and Eng, speaking with separate voices, seeing things with separate pairs of eyes, each one reaching for his wife while his brother looks the other way and hums to himself, but bound together, the two of them, by a highly unnatural, shared pelvic center. In short, expect some overlap.
The blog title is, of course, taken from one of the oldest examples of mis-heard rock lyrics, Lennon's "and curse Sir Walter Raleigh" line from "I'm So Tired."
Then it struck me that they should be wholly different blogs--not twins at all (as they were not born at the same time), but merely brothers. They could be different from each other in starkly contrasting ways, even be enemies, like Edmund and Edgar in King Lear. This could be interesting.
But no, I've settled on a third model--namely the Siamese twin. These blogs will be Chang and Eng, speaking with separate voices, seeing things with separate pairs of eyes, each one reaching for his wife while his brother looks the other way and hums to himself, but bound together, the two of them, by a highly unnatural, shared pelvic center. In short, expect some overlap.
The blog title is, of course, taken from one of the oldest examples of mis-heard rock lyrics, Lennon's "and curse Sir Walter Raleigh" line from "I'm So Tired."
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