Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Post No. 100!!?!

John Lennon  >  Paul McCartney

It's math.
Posted by Short Round at 10:08 PM
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2 comments:

The Crow said...

Not fair! The juxtaposition of those two pictures is intentionally misleading.

I have to disagree with you on this equation. The simple fact is that, while Lennon was busy cheating on his wife and "finding himself" and causing all sorts of PR problems for The Beatles (e.g. "bigger than Jesus," Two Virgins), McCartney was busy writing the bulk of Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and Magical Mystery Tour. Sure, John showed up long enough to pen classic songs like "A Day in the Life" and "Strawberry Fields", but Lennon alone could not have kept the Beatles ship from sinking. In fact, it was partly John's self-annihilation that forced The Beatles to stop touring (obviously a good thing in the long run), and, in the end, it was his perennial negativity about The Beatles that forced the break-up (I won't go in to the Yoko thing, because there was also the whole Linda thing, too).

Also, it can be assumed by your choosing a picture of John in full "Che" regalia and Paul in full "total-creepy-old-guy" mode, that you are implying McCartney is somehow less sincere than John. But, come on, let's just assume for a moment that he would have survived his attack and kept making music, Double Fantasy is dripping with unabashed sentiment. Follow that line, man. By the 1990's John would have been peddling his celebrity for a Jerry Lewis telethon with the best of 'em.

The great myth of John Lennon is that he had some over-arching belief system that transcended his already incredible music, thusmaking him not just a great songwriter/musician but also an incredible statesman?/humanitarian?/what? When in actuality, he was a depressive, scared man, who spent nearly his entire adult life trying to find some way to atone for the sins he committed as a young man, and the giant hole in his chest from his dead-beat dad and dead mother. His politics were merely an outward expression of the world he wished existed, but was too afraid to make real in his own life, e.g. his total abandonment of Julian (which, of course, plays into your questions about how much an artist's personality plays into your reading of their work).

That being said, on the whole, the classic-to-dud ratio of John Lennon's catalog is much better than Paul's. I will for sure grant that, though both of their post-Beatles output suffered intensely from the breakdown of their uniquely creative partnership.

Also, sorry for this random outburst of McCartney partisanship. I absolutely love this blog and have been making my way through your entire backlog over the last few months. Thanks for making my work day just a little brighter.

April 22, 2010 8:33 AM
Short Round said...

No, I agree! Post No. 100[!!?!] came at the tail end of a long period of Lennon partisanship for me. While in fact I do disagree with you on the subject of sincerity (these guys have argued that Lennon always tells the truth and McCartney always lies, such that Lennon's schmaltz is schmaltzy because he feels schmaltzy whereas McCartney is just damned good at writing schmaltz and writes it because he can), I have wholly come around to the position that McCartney is brilliant. Is was a two-step process, first of starting to listen to the bass (see also here) and second of rediscovering Ram, which is now one of my very favorite albums.

Thanks for the feedback—especially the positive feedback, which of course makes a fellow feel good.

April 22, 2010 9:32 AM

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