Holy Bee of Ephesus
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The Best & Worst of the Solo Beatles, Part 2: Paul McCartney
I have a little theory: Paul McCartney is insane. Batshit nuts. I don't know quite when the cheese slid off his cracker, but I'm guessing about twenty-five years ago. Yes, he's always been a little goofy, but lately? From his bizarre hair-dying experiments to the interviews that are about equal parts inane platitudes, vegetarian propaganda, and total gibberish accompanied by a cheery thumbs-up, he's been leaving a trail of crazy wherever he goes since the mid-1980s. It's not train-wreck, flame-out crazy, like Martin Lawrence wandering through traffic with a handgun. It's a subtler crazy, as if during the recording of Press To Play, alien beings had made off with his brain and attempted to replace it with an exact replica, but assembled it from poorly-translated instructions.
That's not what happened of course. What happened is that his ownership of many valuable song publishing rights kicked in about then, he became a multi-billionaire instead of a multi-millionaire, cut himself off from anything resembling reality, and has been living in a totally self-generated bubble-world ever since. And I don't blame him. If I became a multi-billionaire, I would reach foaming heights of crazy that would make Andy Dick look like a Presbyterian deacon.
For reasons directly related to his billionaire-induced craziness, Paul has become the most-maligned Beatle. With every misfire album and every cringe-worthy quote, his light dimmed a little more. But make no mistake — he was the driving creative force of the Beatles in the second half of their career, and that's no small thing. He always valued the concept of being in a band more than the others. Lennon gets credit for being the witty, rebellious iconoclast, Harrison gets credit for being the quiet mystic, and let's face it, both of them get double-extra-credit for being dead. Everyone loves a corpse, because they never disappoint. They're not around to release mediocre albums anymore. But both of them tired of the "band" concept long before Paul did. In the 70's, Paul tried to keep the idea alive by putting together a bunch of hirelings and calling it "Wings," but even he knew they weren't a real band — they were his employees, and various members came and went like the clock-punchers they were.
(At the start of his solo career, he followed the example of Lennon and installed his wife as full creative partner. His second solo album is officially credited to "Paul & Linda McCartney." On John & Yoko's joint albums, Yoko contributed full songs. Horrible, horrible songs. But songs, nonetheless. Linda's contributions consisted of 1) hilariously flat backing vocals placed super-high in the mix, and 2) helping to write some lyrics. The conceit fooled no one, but co-crediting songs kept their royalties from becoming "frozen assets" in the morass of the Beatles break-up lawsuits going on at the time.)
At times, Paul seems to be resented by fans for simply still being alive and somehow tarnishing the image of the Beatles by his very existence as a living, breathing doofus, which can't be helped. This can result in some unfair treatment. (There's a song buried in the second half of Off The Ground — if you make it that far– called "Winedark Open Sea," a kind of sparse, dreary piano ballad that I suspect would be hailed as a "classic" if it came from Springsteen or Neil Young. Those guys can get away with almost anything.) Other times, it's entirely his own fault. The parallels with George Lucas become obvious if you're petty enough to examine them (which is my stock in trade). The younger creative genius gives us several gifts we all cherish, things that beyond providing hundreds of hours of entertainment, may even have molded us as people. He then ages into the older billionaire crank and starts doing stupid shit, such as going back and futzing with the legacy. McCartney's bone-headed attempt to change the songwriting credits on "his" Beatles songs from "Lennon-McCartney" to "McCartney-Lennon" a few years ago is the musical equivalent of Greedo shooting first. Continue reading →
Filed under Music -- 1970s-80s, Music -- 1990s, Music -- 2000s
Tagged as paul mccartney, solo beatles
The Best & Worst of the Solo Beatles, Part 1: John Lennon
Everyone has heard the saying "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." It's an old chestnut that must predate the Beatles, but it seems to have been coined with them in mind. I won't waste your time by piling a bunch of effusive praise on a band that receives little but effusive praise (if you want a time-waster, check out "Face-Off #1" from August), but I'll just plunge ahead on and say the individual Beatles' post-1969 careers have been a little patchy. Navigating their solo waters is treacherous, and sometimes you wonder what happened to the white-hot, jaw-dropping level of creative genius that fueled the Beatles in the 1960s. It seems to have just faded away when the four individuals were separated. Much like the Sankara stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Which isn't to say there aren't moments of greatness in the Beatles' solo discography. There are. Many of them. It just requires a little stick-to-itiveness to separate the wheat from the chaff. So, armed with patience, earbuds, a copy of Madinger & Easter's Eight Arms To Hold You: The Solo Beatles Compendium, and mp3s of each and every Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr song (the fewer questions you ask about how I got them, the better), I listened to every note so you don't have to, and I am here to report back to you so you can fill your iPods with the cream of the solo Beatles' output, legally purchased from a reputable vendor. And since it's way more fun to write about things you don't like, I'll also be cautioning you on what to avoid.
The format will be as follows: Best Album, Best Hit Single, Best Non-Hit Song (there's lots of treasures buried halfway through an album side), followed by the Worst of those categories, and — since I never know when to shut up — runners-up for all categories. Only official studio albums of new material will be considered. No live albums, no albums of cover songs, no bootlegs, no film soundtracks, no compilations. Because that would take forever, and hey man, I have a life.
It's no real surprise that John Lennon has the smallest solo discography — he was murdered just ten years into his post-Beatles career, and he spent half of those ten years in retirement. His official output shrinks even more when you consider that two of his albums were credited jointly to wife/artistic partner Yoko Ono and were only partially filled with Lennon songs, one was a posthumous release containing leftovers from one of the joint albums, and one was an album of oldies covers (1975's Rock and Roll). When he was still with the Beatles, he and Yoko put out three "experimental" albums of random noise and Yoko's charming screeching. (Unfinished Music, Vol. 1: Two Virgins (1968), with the infamous nude cover, Unfinished Music, Vol. 2: Life With The Lions (1969), and The Wedding Album (1969)). Since these are not in any sense of the word "music" (unfinished or no), and even I won't sit through them, they won't be considered here. So we're left with only four true solo albums of new material. Continue reading →
Filed under Music -- 1970s-80s
Tagged as john lennon, solo beatles
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