[Playfully creative upbeat tunes: astonishing productivity and musical sophistication.]
That is you can't, you know, tune in But it's all right That is I think it's not too bad —“Strawberry Fields Forever”
![[Magical days: Mystery Tour photo.]](https://i0.wp.com/richardgilbert.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Beatles-Magical-Days.jpg)
[Magical days: the Beatles’ Mystery Tour photo.]
And how is it possible that McCartney follows “Strawberry Fields” on Magical Mystery Tour with his own masterpiece musical memoir, “Penny Lane”?
It’s not possible. But there it is.
So mostly my listening experience is characterized by my amazement of the band’s artistry and output. They became such sophisticated musicians (a nod here to their great teammate, producer George Martin), and as they grew they created songs of delicious musical complexity and thematic richness.
With the Internet at my fingertips as I grade (students’ longer essays are in digital form, so I’m using my laptop), I can look up lyrics. Or more often, I peruse the songs’ composition histories and recording accounts on Wikipedia. I grew up listening to the Beatles and other great music of the 1960s and ’70s, and so it seems to me now that I couldn’t have known how great they were. They just were. There. In the air.
Yet I recall how special they were to us. I wrote once here about listening to their first albums in my big sister’s bedroom and feeling a portal to adolescence and art open. With age and Wikipedia, my admiration of the Beatles is, if nothing else, more informed.
And I have a new, embarrassing admission. Having written a book, I feel my appreciation for their constant creation is deeper than it used to be. One book—though seven years of endless writing—and I identify with them. With their use of stray bits, stuff grabbed from the news, their passing moods and odd encounters. Their lives.
The word for them, I believe, is protean. Me, maybe not so much. Yet my memoir, all six versions, one glitch fixed after another, was my own Magical Mystery tour into my past.
~ ~ ~
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes There beneath the blue suburban skies —“Penny Lane”
![[Turning pensive: White Album portraits.]](https://i0.wp.com/richardgilbert.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Beatles-White-Album-Portraits.jpg)
[Turning pensive: the Beatles’ White Album portraits.]
In their wild messy crucible, the only constant was constant work. They were working hard, when they were. And they were loose too, getting each other in the mood, goading each other on.
McCartney was incredibly prolific, and I think he helped Lennon by pressuring him to produce. Of course their talents were complementary. McCartney’s seem more diligently worked, and recognizably draw on various traditions; Lennon’s appear more artistically intuitive, and more often their result is abstract, elusive. The prime example being “Strawberry Fields” vs. “Penny Lane.” I’m drawn constantly to the mazy former song, though probably I love more of McCartney’s songs than Lennon’s.
After their intense recording sessions, Lennon suffered creator’s remorse. In later years he’d accuse McCartney of being careless with his songs—and even of sabotaging them (including, incredibly, given McCartney’s sensitive playing on it, “Strawberry Fields Forever”; Rolling Stone ranks it number three on its list of 100 greatest Beatles songs, so Paul didn’t hurt it too badly). Now, I doubt I’d like either genius Beatle as a person—my hypothetical personal affection goes to George and Ringo—but Lennon and McCartney were too much the pros for such nonsense. They sang together, for a time, when they were hardly speaking.
Here’s a discussion, from Wikipedia, about Lennon’s waffling over his great song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” inspired by his son Julian’s drawing:
In later interviews, Lennon expressed disappointment with the Beatles’ arrangement of the recording, complaining that inadequate time was taken to fully develop his initial idea for the song. He also said that he had not sung it very well.
In the end, the work you make transcends the effort you make. If you are lucky. Anyway, what you got when you were trying hard is what you got. Whether it takes seven years to write a book or 67 takes for one song. Lennon couldn’t accept that. And maybe to a degree anyone who creates feels that way.
Perfection is not only elusive, it’s impossible. Art is a handmade, human thing.
Or so I think today, grading these essays, one Beatles tune at a time. Gettin’ by with a little help from my old friends.
[Wikipedia: The gatepost to Strawberry Field, now a Liverpool tourist attraction.]
Hi, Richard. I think my favorite Beatles’ album of all time is “The White Album,” mainly because it’s associated with a time and place (I first heard it in my first year of college, pulling an all-nighter, with all the bittersweet memories that has attached). And Rocky Raccoon is one of my favorite Beatles’ characters, from that album. But after discovering that album, I went back and bought from a friend two “Greatest Hits” albums which went together, and I’ve also got Sgt. Pepper and a few others by now. I think they are one of the greatest bands of all time, I’m with you on that, but sometimes they are deceptively simple, too. Very deceptively. It’s as if they’re trying to say, “Oh, we’re just four guys fooling around with some old instruments, don’t take us too seriously. Unless you want to.” But they do define an era, and they keep doing so, don’t they? That is, for many people. There are those clueless folks who’ve never heard of them, believe it or not. I can remember a friend in the late seventies telling me that some person only a few years younger than us had said to her, “Did you know that Paul McCartney was in another band before he was in Wings?” That’s what I mean by clueless!
I love the way you analyze them, Victoria. And not only has not everyone heard of the Beatles, not everyone likes them—I have a friend who says she hates them, their dumb rhymes or something. Actually, though I revere Dylan, many of his seem far dumber. But not everyone can or should like them. My admiration has come roaring back in middle age!
What I hear is the incredible sweetness of their singing. They are singing their hearts out. As bad as Lennon and McCartney got as people, as artists and as craftsmen and at some deep, primal level below that, they exuded purity, at times, in their simple yearning to make beauty, an impulse both deeply personal and impersonal, as if they were at once young men singing for love and also timeless conduits, human portals to the collective unconscious.
Thank you, Richard. I came of age with the Beatles, being exactly their age. Everything since then has seemed a rehash. I am going to set about to do my work while listening to them.
Thanks, John! I haven’t tried writing to music much, but I sure like grading to it. I imagine the effect would be the same: partly tuning out the songs, then catching a great sound or nice lyric, and wanting to replay. I guess that’s why I just grade to them . . .
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Getting by with a little help from my friends… yes. I will be listening to the Beatles tomorrow. Thanks, Richard.
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