Paul’s divorce

[Please note: the following is a spoof, sarcasm! It is not fact, it is not a prediction for the future, it’s a JOKE!]

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills have had their days in court and all that’s left for them is to wait for the judge to sort out the money. We’ll get a huge number of newspaper and tabloid guesses about how much, none of which are all that likely to be accurate.

HM’s appeal was turned down on the grounds that if she chose to spend her entire settlement on a “victory party” that’s her problem, not his and that she failed to produce medical evidence that she suffers from Tourettes and therefore cannot be held to a gag order. She also failed to prove that a victim of that syndrome is per se unable to keep their mouth shut. The offer from her ex-husband to provide a full-time special minder to gag her any time she slips and starts to talk about their relationship was refused.

HM then appeared on Good Morning to the Whole World accusing Paul of errantry, barratry and rolling an old lady in a barrel as well as referring impolitely to her wooden leg. Oddly enough, the News of the World has joined The Mail, The Globe and The Mirror in a lawsuit filed against Ms. HM alleging barratry in that she threatened those papers, together and separately more then 150 times in one 12-hour period. Leading barristers have opined that it’s an open and open case.

In separate suits HM also claims the royalties from Paul’s new #1 hit album titled After the Ball is Over saying that she actually wrote and sang all the songs in it as well as playing all the instruments.We expect a statement from MPL as soon as the laughter dies down.

The tell-all book for which HM received a $1 million advance on royalties has after 18 months failed to earn the cost of printing and the publisher advises us they will sue her to recover the advance as the book sold only 423 copies – all to her dearest friends. The book is now available on half.ebay.com, new, for $0.25 plus postage.

Bea goes to boarding school so her mother can spend at least nine months of the year someplace other then Great Britain. Paul’s world concert tour enjoys unprecedented success although he breaks and returns to England for every school holiday.

HM suit appealing for a restraining order preventing her former personal trainer from telling reporters about their relationship (even though, of course there was no personal relationship between them) is scheduled for next week. This follows upon her earlier attempts to get such gag orders to cover five former nannies, 12 dismissed security guards, 14 chauffeurs, three bike mechanics and a trash collector.

HM’s dearest friends report that she is happy and delighted to be free from all the hubbub and also to be free of “that dreadful old man” and that she is seriously depressed, on vast amounts of medication and a suicide watch must be provided by her ex-husband.

 

Seriously for a moment–Point 1: could be please forget about the accusation that it’s all Paul’s fault for letting his little willie overrule his head and lead him to marry this woman. If there’s one fact about HM’s past that is completely beyond dispute it’s that she is world class as convincing men, whether old or young, that she is the most desirable female they’ll ever get a chance at. Every single man who has spoken of his relationship with her emphasizes that at first she’s absolutely perfect and that it takes quite a while to realize that it’s all a scam. She’s fooled plenty of men who didn’t have Paul’s romantic outlook and made major fools out of them as well.

Point 2: “They” haven’t been battling in the press; HM’s been battling in the press. Paul’s issued a very few statements, mostly direct, simple denials. He did change the locks on the two houses he was living in. Considering that he’d had his phone tapped and that we now have her “word” that she had secretly taped and video-taped him before she moved out, I personally think it was a minimally smart move.

Yoko’s lack of knowledge of the Beatles

I clearly remember my husband telling me about some new English band that was causing quite a stir back in February, more or less, of 1962. I remember because I went over how they spelled the name and how it might be pronounced in the shower and we only lived in that house with that particular shower for a few months. We were both art majors and members of the old Bohemia that immediately preceded the famous 60s counter culture. Not quite Beat Generation – that has mostly petered out and not completely a part of the foundation for the next. At any rate it was a group that paid attention to what was happening in politics, in the arts and letters, and in entertainment. I remember only that they were English, in England and that there was something different about them.

I relate this because while we were in Nashville, Tennessee and Yoko was in NYC we were essentially members of the same little group. We heard about the antics of her general artistic movement though I doubt we heard of her in specific – she didn’t make a very big splash at that time. I remember that there was a review in the underground newspaper on the University of Tennessee campus the fall of that year. My point is that her crowd must have heard of the Beatles if that knowledge had filtered down to US in Tennessee. Knowing what was going on was one of the base lines of that movement!

One does remember that HM also claimed ignorance of who the Beatles were as well as calling the fans “Beatle nutters” – roughly the same attitude that Yoko seemed to have at that time. I assume they both thought it would make their “falling in love” with a famous man seem to be simply an ordinary person falling in love with another ordinary person and that it had nothing to do with their fame and fortune. Umhmmm.

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.

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!

Dancing with the “Stars”

Faded almost stars attempting to restart careers no better then tepid originally, with a sprinkling of sports wannabees possessing little more then youth.
They must have saved a bundle on those putative singers and musicians! I’ve rarely heard worse in a “house band” on TV.

Outside of noting that the first female contestant had the lowest bosum I’ve ever seen, at 66 I ride considerably higher, I can’t help thinking that standing the “contentants” in a wallflower line is very clearly showing their desperation to be somebody again, anybody!

I’ve never been a fan of reality shows exploiting the misery or unrealistic aspirations of more or less failed people, starting with the vomitious Queen For A Day — and it doesn’t look as if it’s ever going to end — explaining why last night is the first time I’ve watched anything but a movie on a non-PBS station in several years.

I’m late in meeting my deadline and I doubt I’ll be posting again this week, but I’ve pages and pages of notes that will be going up regularly very soon. I promised some Beatles friends that I’d post the photo of me with the gentlemen of BeatlemaniaNow so here it is.