By TRB
Oh don't ask me. The last time I wrote about The Beatles I made enough enemies for a lifetime. The Beatles, mostly thanks to Paul, have a corporate public relations team ready 24/7 to answer any question you might have as long as The Beatles come out of it smelling as clean as today' laundry. It is funny in a way to see them in all their button down suits, the perfect image of the British gentleman. Well, their hair was too long for that. So it is not a perfect image.
Then you look at the Stones. Keith is lying up on the sofa in Mick's living room trying to kick a heroin habit. And that is pretty much the real image of behind-the-scenes British rock from that perod. Yes maybe Herman's Hermits and the Dave Clark Five were a little too clean. They needed someone to dirty up their image in the worst way. But I guess they took their eyes of the ball, or maybe they were trying to appeal to our parents. Maybe the idea was that our parents would purchase their albums because they dressed nice.
Then John Lennon said in so many words that he thought the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. What he meant was "How pathetic is that?" It was not a brag; just an observation to explain to the world that maybe they were going a little overboard with this Beatlemania stuff. Of course Americans chose the worst possible of all meanings and immediately - at least down South - created the Beatle's album bonfire. And that is when Paul McCartney embraced the concept of good public relations (keeping Lennon quiet in public) and you barely heard another bad thing about any member of The Beatles. Of course there was that embarrassing weed smuggling thing the Japanese tried to hang around Paul.
When George Harrison had cancer he used to come to Providence RI to see his son Dhani who was attending Brown University. George didn't hide out in a hotel. He hit the bars and the resteraunts and made some lasting friendships with people in both Boston and Rhode Island. His sister married a GI after WWII and still lives up this way. So this area was far from unknown to him.
George broke the "quiet Beatle" myth wherever he went. He was extremely witty and very sarcastic. He told you what was on his mind,and it was usuallly something very unpopular, like peace, better housing for people, better jobs, better wages. Harrison was the poor Beatle, not the quiet Beatle. The other three, especially McCartney and Lennon, grew up in luxury compared to George, whose father was a truck driver and whose family always had problems making ends meet.
But that's all off the point. Let me say what I've got to say and get out of here. It goes like this: It is not strange to me at all to judge John Lennon and George Harrison as the most talented members of the Beatles. Yes, Paul is an extrodinarily talented musician, but George's music is simply better. I am not going to mention all the songs. There are some albums in there like "All Things Must Past" which someone like McCartney can only look at and shake his head in wonderment.
Yes, George was the one who signed that bad deal, allowing him only two songs per Beatle record. No wonder Paul came out on top. You'll notice I am not talking about John Lennon. Simple reason. Lennon wrote "Strawberry Fields." When someone writes a better song, that's if it happens during my lifetime, maybe it would be worth the time to compare him to Paul or George. Otherwise, we're talking apples and oranges.
So George gets his two, sometimes three songs an album. I am going to break my own rule here and name names. Keep in mind, Harrison is limited to a small number of songs. What does he come up with? He writes "Something," perhaps the most beautiful Beatle song ever written. He writes "Here Comes the Sun," another beauty, which extends the career of Ritchie Havens and several others, and that can't be bad. He writes, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," giving Eric Clapton part of the solo. He writes "Taxman," probably the most sarcastic yet on-point song ever written about tax-happy government tax collectors.
And as we find out after the band breaks up and Harrison releases a multiple disk record album, he had been sitting on an astounding number of great songs for years. And McCartney released a solo album too, that wasn't half as good. And Lennon released an album of music that can only be called unique. And great. In fact, without Harrison or Lennon, it seemed that McCartney could come up with highly polished pop tunes, on which he played all the instruments. Why did he need all those people when he could do it himself and sound just as good?
Paul of course, didn't sound just as good. Ringo Starr might be the most underrated drummer of all time.The variety in his rolls and fills are amazing. Paul simply isn't up to snuff. George Harrison, most guitarists, including Eric Clapton, willl tell you is the best "timing" guitarist ever. George could put a note on a pin head while it was dropping.
I have mentioned this before, but I have to bring it up again. If you want to hear Harrison, Starr and Lennon playing together without McCartney listen to Lennon's "Just Give Me Some Truth." I believe it is on the album "Imagine." What you will hear is the power of Lennon, his voice and his songwriting, the unbelievable and unleashed style of George Harrison, whose guitar sounds like a monster. And the steady but powerful beat of Starr's drums.
But, you say, look at all those early songs Lennon and McCartney wrote together? Well it turns out they wrote a lot of work apart. It also turns out that their early songs are pretty awful. Will somone please, for once admit that "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is awful? You could say, "You had to be there during those times. . . " I was there, and it was awful. Please, Marvin Gaye was alive.
So Paul McCartney has some promotion or other running this week. Good for him. People used to say as a way of determining what kind of personality you were. "Are you a Paul or a John person?"
I am somewhat different. I am a John and a George person.
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