Defining Rock

Tim Ripley, Ask Me Why, said Rock is typified by “more adult themes: isolation, despair, alienation, loss and the positive correlations of peace, communication, self-worth, vision and hope.” Note that the “positives” contain only unemotional hope type while the first mentioned qualities, the important ones, are all emotion. Nowhere is happiness, content, love triumphant, friendship mentioned. Misery is the only legitimate truth. Rock & Roll is adequately defined by the “jury” of Juke Box Jury in Britain and Dick Clarks American Bandstand in the US: “it’s got a beat and you can dance to it.” I looked all over the web, Wikkipedia to Rolling Stone Magazine and nowhere did I find anything approaching a definitive definition. Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head, opines that Rock concentrates of feel and beat rather then on music. That Rock is laid-back while “pop” tries to catch a moment, story, or feeling. Later (p. 206) he says the difference between pop at its best and Rock is well-crafted music.” Take that, Hoagie Carmichael, Bert Bacrack!! Most of the books aggressively name John Lennon as a master of Rock, primarily because of his tendency to wallow in misery and this in many ways probably set the preoccupation of Rock with the negative emotions. Rock critics celebrate John’s emotionality even when they imagine most of it and somehow find something to love in George3’s insecurity, status as lead guitar or soloist. Paul’s skill and competence playing and singing however is seen as insecurity and unfair to John and Georges perceived insecurities. Riley claims that Paul’s universality is a sin in Rock as Rock people aren’t like everybody else. Rock is said to be marked by something they call “texture” although I can’t imagine any music that lacked it. I have read that Rock specifically sets “listening pleasure” out of consideration in favor of commiting to the idea that if you enjoy it as music it’s not Rock. I do understand that everyone who writes professionally about the Beatles or abut Rock needs a to stay in with the Rock press but that knowledge doesn’t quite make me forgive MacDonald, Riles and all the others for crumbling before those prejudices. John would no doubt have been discarded from the Rock mainstream for Double Fantasy had he not been killed before they got into print. If any singer/composer sinned against the Rock rules, Double Fantasy is the album in evidence. If you have suggestions for refining a definition of “Rock” I’d be grateful if you’d share it with me. [Sorry for the delay, I haven’t been well and only got my computer problems lessoned a couple days ago.]

Beatle Books I Recommend

If you are looking for a book about the Beatles because of a realization of what great music they made, begin with A Day In The Life by Mark Hartsgaard. It focuses on the music but covers enough of the life of the group to satisfy a moderate interest. The author carefully documents his facts and if he puts more trust in certain biographers then I do, well it’s a matter of opinion isn’t it? His commentary on the music is concise, readable for the non-musically educated and betrays less favoritism for one or another member of the band then most.

If you want to know more about the individuals who were members of the Beatles – but not ever possible obscure detail, read The Beatles by Hunter Davies. This is a well-written book with an added forward if you end up with one of the later editions (It was first published in 1968).  It is an authorized biography and Davies had a good deal of access to all four Beatles and most of the people around them. It was edited, in a few cases heavily, by the Beatles and/or some of their relatives (as explained in the commentary to the revised edition.)

During the live of the band, and for some years after, some facts about their beginnings, particularly details about John’s family, were deliberately suppressed. Given the world of 1963 this was an appropriate decision. Davies book reflects most of these limitation although there are some hints for the attentive reader.

For those who want nothing but the facts and all of the facts I recommend Mark Spitz The Beatles. Unless you are willing to wait for Mark Lewishon’s 3-volume history (2010 – 2020) this is about the best you can do. It is far from perfect but of those available, it’s certainly one of the best. It’s complete with 100 pages of footnotes, which I note the reviewers found quite impressive. Unfortunately, a fair number of debatable issues do not have any footnote and a large proportion of the footnotes are quite trivial.

If you are curious about what happened to John, Paul, George and Ringo after the Beatles broke up, the situation isn’t too good. The supposedly best bio of John is not only nearly as big as the Spitz book, it’s pointedly avocatory. Ray Coleman was a reporter who covered the Beatles during their popularity and he is very sympathetic to John’s point of view. I’m willing to take his word for objective facts but his focus is always as Lennon’s friend.

I think the best book on Paul is Barry Miles Many Years From Now although it does not give you much on Paul’s post-Beatles career. It focuses on the things Paul was doing besides being a Beatle and is written by someone who was there and a friend. Howard Elson’s McCartney, Songwriter, is the best of the books I’ve read that includes Paul’s post-Beatle career although it was written and published in 86 and therefore a good bit isn’t there.

I haven’t found a good book on either George or Ringo. The books I’ve read that attempt to follow all four of them after the breakup are extremely sketchy. I have to say that you’ll probably get more out of a study of their official websites and the better of the fan websites.

Review – The McCartney Years

I read a number of reviews before I could afford to order my copy of Paul’s 3-disk videos and concerts and, despite knowing that rarely does a reviewer cut him any slack, I was a little afraid I’d be disappointed. Well, I wasn’t. Sure, I don’t doubt that some of the video isn’t absolutely tops in every single video and no doubt they were right that the sound quality here and there isn’t perfect – I’ll never know since I don’t have an expensive “home theatre” attached to my inexpensive and far from new TV. (My computer speakers, however, are top notch just in case you’re interested.)

Sure, one or two of the videos appear dated in a way that isn’t fun and I don’t love absolutely every song but all in all, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had from the collection.  Some are just plain fun, some are thought provoking, some wonderfully illustrate the song and some are utterly off the wall – If I’d thought about what I wanted them to be, those are the words I’d have used. Most of them look like they were fun (as well as hard work) to do and many of them go to very odd and unusual places, mostly places in Paul’s head. It helps that I’ve always enjoyed surrealism.

I’d end up with a rather long list if I named my favorites but I can mention a few: Fine Line, computer “reduced” and animated in … fine lines; Push, with lovely relaxed ride on the underground, Brown-Eyed Handsome Man with the most inventive collection of line dancers ever conceived; Hope of Deliverance with the torches in the dark and of course Coming Up with Paul and Linda taking all the roles. Not to mention that it’s fascinating to watch the years go by – Paul’s years and the changing band but my own years as well.

So maybe there are imperfections; frankly I’ve found perfection to be more then merely rare in this world. My personal opinion is that if you can’t find something to be entertained by on these disks, you’re working awfully hard at being a party-pooper! Don’t miss the “easter eggs” at the beginning and end of each menu choice!! I think that they are repeats on the credits but there’s a lot of film and music lurking on those disks. For instance, Calico Skies plays on the Setup menu of disk 2 with Paul sititng by a fire in the woods with an acoustic guitar. Not, perhaps, a formal video but an enjoyable illustration of one of my favorite songs.

The concert footage I enjoy as well although I notice that by the time they filmed Rockshow, Paul was tired and perhaps worried; strain is very obvious in his face. He must have been tired as well for the performance at Glastonbury but there’s far less strain apparant. The Unplugged footage is completely different with neither wear and tear or worry burdening Paul’s expression. Watching the videos of the original Wings I do feel that Paul was really pushing to bring the band to real success — I’m not going to examine his reasons as they are pretty obvious — and my research indicates that he succeeded quite well. The videos helped me realize that Wings really was a very different band from the Beatles and I can’t help feeling a good bit of respect that Paul could manage to do it without coming across as something synthetic.

Interview With The Grand Old Man Of Rock ‘n’ Roll

It’s tempting to wonder what a 66 year old John would say about the celebrations last month of 40 years since Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band was released – worse yet, the rather sentimental observations of the 50th anniversary of the day the Quarry Men played at the St. Peter’s Church Fete in Woolton. The day that Paul McCartney taught John the words to 20 Flight Rock and tuned his guitar. So, donning my reporter impression with my battered fedora bearing a dog-eared cardboard Press pass, I walked up to him as he was entering his apartment and asked:

“Good morning, Mr. Lennon” (I don’t call him “John” because I’m from the south and we just do it that way.)

Good morning Mr. Lennon” (I wonder, wouldn’t it possibly be “Sir John”? Oh well, this is America and we don’t have knights and such.)

“Good morning, Mr. Lennon, would you mind letting the world know how you feel about this anniversary?”

John Lennon, looking at Yoko; “Is it our anniversary or something? You’re supposed to remind me of those things.”

Me: “Oh no, Mr. Lennon, nothing like that. It’s the 50th anniversary of the day the Quarry Men (fill in ad lib please)”

JL: “Well, shit man, that’s, why, it must be 50 60 years ago now! Why would you still be on about that. I apologized for that, I KNOW I apologized for it. Why would I be celebrating getting my life mixed up with that fooker? You see what he did on his last excuse for a record?”

“They don’t make record like they ought to, cost $30.00 and all you get is this dinky little silver colored thingy. What the hell happened to that nice black vinyl we used to have? Those were records, damn it!”

“Kid in the apartment downstairs told me he recorded and mixed his very own album just sitting in his bedroom. That’s not what we did in our bedrooms in MY day. He didn’t have a guitar or anything, just typed it all in .. well, that’s what he said. I don’t know what the fool was on about. Gave me one of those dinky disc things but Yoko hasn’t had time to play it for me. I’m not allowed anywhere near all that electronic and computer stuff. Yoko says my energy is wrong for them and it fucks them up. What good is a fucking new millennium anyway if a man can’t even get a fucking record to play?

John Lennon moves into the door but I hear him muttering as he climbs up the white freestanding circular staircase: “That fucking little shit, Paulie, That Was ME too!”

Yoko gave me a look and I figured that was as much story as I’d get for the day.

This is your on the story reporter signing off for the day.

Memory Almost Full – Review

So, am I ready to write a review of Memory Almost Full? I’ve got several thousand words done already from commenting on the album, the individual songs, the reviews, the critics themselves and what the album means to me. Thousands of words and I suspect even I am not really interested in reading them all. Worse yet, they don’t even begin to communicate how I feel about this album. In the year and a half I’ve been seriously learning about the Beatles, learning their history–that of the Band as well as that of each member and close associate–I’ve come to have a lot of respect for McCarthey’s talent and ability. Perhaps one of the most attractive thing about this album is that it showcases those talents in their full maturity without loosing his playfulness and humon.Play McCartney (I) right after listening to Memory; yes, it’s very much the same man with almost 40 more years practicing his art.

First of all, the album absolutely blew me away. I now truly understand that most difficult of Beatle words; “gobsmacked.” I’m confident that it means the way I felt the moment when the album really hit me. That wasn’t the first time I listened to it or even the second; it was either the third or fourth. I was sitting right here in front of my computer with the speakers neatly aimed at my ears while it played and built and quite suddenly it crashed into me.

It’s more then just difficult to write a review of this album; if you’ve really listened to it, your mind and emotions are, at the very least, a bit unsettled. Not necessarily by what is said but by the way he leads you into and out of the songs, tweeks your own memory bank and finesses you into a look back at your own life. Truly listening to this album puts you on a mad, dark roller coaster ride; helter skelter you’re up and then you’re down—serious, happy, puzzled, abandoned. Who else would write a song for mandolin and work-boot? Who else could?

Paul’s voice, as always, is confident and pure (when that’s what he wants.) The album is full of music difficult to sing well. Considered simply as an additional music instrument, the human voice has more variety and flexibility then any other. The possessor of a remarkably elastic and true voice, Paul exploits it fully from a clear, warm, open low to an equally warm and pure high and an assortment of rocker-raucous inbetweens. Knowledge and practice beat youth and beauty most days.

I’ll take Paul at his word; that he generally isn’t thinking about what’s going on in his own life when he writes a song; he just makes up a song. He knows that some of his fans can’t resist trying to link the love songs up with his wives or children or somebody and his sad songs with whatever. I don’t think it seriously irritates him but if he ever did write any songs about HM, I suspect they’ll never be recorded and the demo tapes are ashes. On the other hand, I wasn’t able to resist making some tentative and not really serious connections in House of Wax—the Beatles were the House, Beatlemania the walls and who each of them really is/was are the secrets hidden in the yard. Anyway, if you need to know, House of Wax is my favorite (at the moment) in the album. I was on the verge of getting angry about the women “scream and runn around,” let’s not get into the female hysteria bit, but he pulled a major save with “Like wild demented horses.” Now that’s some imagry I can really dig!

I’m not going to go through this album song by song. It opens with a bounce, a gentle rocker (albeit with words to think about) and a 100% solid gold McCartney silly love song of unusual beauty. (Though I’d like to know where he found those butterflys that buzz) Having made his polished bow to expectations and the past, Paul proceeds to bounce our heads off the floor, walls and ceiling! This album could just as well been titled “It’s About Time” in more ways then one. While I’ve found that a lot of people who really liked Chaos and Creation in the Backyard don’t like this one as well, and visa versa, I’ll admit to being very, very fond of both.

As a whole, the album is definitely disturbing. It is crafted to arouse mixed emotions and it surely must have been deliberate. It comes close to setting up a dissonance in your brain the way the Beatles used subtle dissonance to help the girls scream. Did Paul deliberately select songs that would have this effect? Is the somehow a concept album? Not an album for people who hate thinking.

Also not an album safe for the knee-jerk (you can leave the “knee” out, I don’t mind) McCartney haters. Number 3 on the Billboard chart in the US, number 1 on the internet album sales, number 2 in downloads and number 5 in Britain, either means that Paul has managed to accumulate a vast number of devoted fans OR it’s a damn fine album. Doesn’t make the whiners look too good as the waffle around citing one of Paul’s early solo albums as his best work – we remember how much those same albums were hated at their release.

Many people on the various Beatle and McCartney lists I’m on and many of the reviewers and commentators on Memory Almost Full mention their surprise (or admiration or whatever) that Paul could produce an album like this when he’s almost 65/retirement age/drawing his pension. Obviously to these people, 65 is the end of everything useful, interesting or creative in live. Actually after 60 or so there are a number of factors that affect what an individual can or can’t do and none of these factors are their age.

First and most important is what the individual thinks they can do. Keep in mind that most women become grandmothers between 35 and 45 (not 70 as the illustrations and advertisements would have it) and it’s pretty easy to be a great grandmother-father before 65. Even the person who is 65 can limit their activities by believing, as I suppose the majority of younger people do, that they can’t do anything worthwhile after 65. Obviously, if you KNOW you are too old to do it you aren’t going to try.

Those who haven’t fallen victim to that supposition are limited by mobility, health, energy levels and opportunity. These factors basically govern what they are likely to do or will attempt to do in their 60s or their 90s. It isn’t as if every one hadn’t seen a multitude of examples of this running from the late George Burns to somebody’s great grandfather down the block. Being over 60 changes you and changes what you are interested in doing and usually changes the methods you choose to use in order to do it, but it certainly doesn’t end your productive life. There is no cosmic switch that turns you off when the magic number comes up!

Reviewing

I have really tried over the years to keep in mind that when someone has decided that they don’t like someone or something, he or she is unlikely to admit it even if they happen to find something about it or him to like or if he or she accidentally does something that they do actually like. It’s entirely to be expected that when Paul McCartney puts out a new album there will be as many opinions as there are people paid (or not paid) to write about music. Somehow the ones who have decided not to like it seem to be just as eager to spread their opinion around as everyone else. The best technique is not to talk about things you dislike and maybe the world will forget about them. That’s the best way; I didn’t say I followed it.

I’m also learning that it’s completely foolish to try to guess who Paul wrote this or that song about. I’ve read a dozen or so reviews of Memory Almost Full today and there’s one guy who thinks the whole album is about how much Paul loves Linda. I think one person or another has named every single song on the album except Dance Tonight as being about Heather Mills. Come to think of it, why on earth did they leave that one out considering that she was on that silly dance show? The truth is for the most part I don’t care who or what Paul thought he was writing about, the question is does the song do it for me?

The second best cheap amusement for the day is reading all the articles (and comments on them) marking the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Here the range of opinion isn’t nearly so great: there are those that feel it was both important and great and there are those who thing it was only one of those things or neither. I only have two things to dsay about that: if it’s so unimportant and not great why are we still arguing about it 40 years after the sales receipt went into the trash? The other thought is that my mother taught me to keep an extra around in a brown paper bag, there are some people you just don’t serve the good stuff to.

My opinion of Memory Almost Full? Great, marvelous, exciting, scary, nostalgic, prescient, fun, sad, terrifying and visionary. In other words, I like it a lot. It is quite definitely an album to listen to several times before you start forming an opinion. The arrangements are intricate, layered and full of color and texture. My favorite? House of Wax and then Mr. Bellamy. I’ve always had a weakness for dramatic music. After that I like Feet in the Clouds a lot. I like the way he winds over and under, around and through without quite touching the melody. I’ve liked an awful lot of Paul McCartney songs in my life but I can’t say there are very many I like more then these. He also proves it truly can be done, a wild and free electic guitar solo without feedback or distotion!

Smart Listening

I’ve read quite a few reviews of Paul’s solo albums – both contemporary with their release and retrospective. When reading them, particularly hose written at the time of release, my reaction to their mostly negative criticisms is that the crime Paul’s committed was to fail to fulfill the critic’s expectations. For McCartney (I) and Ram he failed to write a “Beatle albums.” Each subsequent album disappointed whether it wasn’t rock enough or pop enough or sentimental enough, because it didn’t directly build on whatever the critic had come to like in a previous album.

These failings for me underline in the most explicit way possible that Paul’s albums, as a solo artist and as the leader of Wings, carried on the Beatles’ legacy – by not sticking by a winning formula, not stopping with what worked last year, but always carrying us to new ideas and horizons. Ironic that what many critics came to value most in the Beatles received endless criticism when it was Paul’s work.

It’s not easy to approach a new album by Paul without your mind flashing on particular past albums or songs that you particularly like. I’d like Memory Almost Full to have a lot of songs like Monkberry Moon Delight – but I strongly suspect that Paul isn’t going to give it to me. I’ll be working hard not to think of all the songs he’s done that I love when I open up the package and put the new disk on.

I’ve noticed another quality that most of Paul’s albums seem to have for me. The first time I listen to one I’ll find that I like one or two songs and I think a couple will turn out to be songs I don’t like. I noticed that in Chaos and Confusion in the Back Yard. In that album I loved Jenny Wren and English Tea but Riding to Vanity Fair seemed to me to be over-arranged and too elaborate. By the third time through I began to find more and more to like in most of the songs, particularly in Riding to Vanity Fair, made the difference but mostly it was the dense tapestry he creates behind the words that ends up winning my heart.

Then I managed to prove to myself that dumping assumptions and expectations and repeating my listen absolutely must be my practice with McCartney music. I was given a copy of the “lost McCartney II album,” which was the original version but it was not in released. I didn’t like it much. Then one day I was actually really paying attention when it came on and I realized that I’d wanted it to be a continuation of McCartney (I) – and it certainly isn’t that. In reality, II is like I only in being highly experimental. In a sense it’s Paul’s Revolution #9.

When I really listened to it I recognized that it was related to I only because each was, for its time, highly experimenta. I began to get really interested in what was going on. My father happened to be a fan of early electronic music so I’d heard quite a lot of it in the late 50s and early 60s. For me, and I’m pretty sure for my Pa, it was more “interesting” then enjoyable. McC II is “avant guarde” music McCartney style – meaning that you don’t have to move completely into weird-space to actually enjoy listening to it. (Though I’ll agree with the commonest American Bandstand criticism “you can’t dance to it!”

So when Memory Almost Full comes into my hot little hands, I’ll be doing my best to hear it with new ears and I’ll play it 3 or 4 times all the way through before I’ll share my opinions with anyone so I won’t have to eat my words publicly. Whatever is on the new album, it won’t be like Chaos and Creation and it won’t be like Ram either. It will, however, be very much like Paul McCartney.

Paul’s Date

I’m not going to make a habit of commenting on newspaper stories about “the divorce” (shades of the 1930s) but one in the March 25, 2007 — The Mirror Is more then just a bit too much.
MACCA: OUT OF THE FRYING PAN by Carole Malone
But the biggest drawback is that Ms Guinness, 52, has spent most of her adult life ricocheting from one unsuitable man to another. There was a time when she had relationships with almost every top-ranking musician ever to have a hit – Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and Bryan Ferry to name but a few.
I realize it’s too much to expect a tabloid editor to draw the line at puerile accusations based on abysmal ignorance. That’s their basic stock in trade. Not only does Ms Malone obviously consider dating rockers and princes for fun (and no doubt for games) is the equivalent of putting out to Arab arms dealers for cash; she tries to reanimate the fictional feud between The Beatles and the Rolling Stones – which only existed in the imaginations of earlier tabloid geniuses and a second-rate record company that dropped the golden ball on The Beatles.
She also is apparently oblivious to the fact that Paul’s “good wife” Linda had her own flings with many of the same rockers before she married Paul. Or that Paul could manage a pretty darn good fling his ownself.
Frankly, I think any single woman of 50-something who doesn’t have a “past” can safely be assumed to be too boring for Paul.

Mull of Kintyre

Mull is a very strange song to be a tremendously popular one. It isn’t a bit catchy, there is no “lick” or even any real “hook”. It’s one anyone can sing but it doesn’t flatter the singer’s voice. I suspect that an examination of the newspapers for a couple of months before it’s release (11/11/77*) might provide some clues as it seems to me it must be one of those songs that found it’s own perfect time and place. A perfect moment when it countered an insecurity felt by many or fulfilled a fairly specific need.

The song does invoke “indestructible Britain”; it says that some things don’t change or disappear as so much does in our times. It’s not that it invokes the past but that it places the security of a part of the past in the now.

I by no means intend to imply that Mull isn’t a good song. It simply doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of song that becomes a runaway best seller. The more usual mega-hit either is sprightly and catchy or has a hood that sinks deep into human experience/emotion, like Yesterday. Mull is practically a novelty song, particularly at a time when Folk was pretty much dead. It’s very simple, folky, in tune and lyric. The bagpipes contribute a strong pull on the sort of emotions that are very difficult to express in words and I’m sure they contributed despite the fact that you’d think they’d put the English portion off.

By the way, there may be a very simple explanation as to how Paul got the pipes in tune for recording this song: he tuned the guitars TO the pipes. Guitars are much easier to tune!

*It was the Queen’s jubilee year, she toured what was left of the Empire and then attended celebrations in various portions of Britain; EMI fired the Sex Pistols during the summer and firemen went on a national strike 3 days after the release – for what the info is worth.