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In this thread I rank my favorite post-Beatles Beatles songs: 291-1. (1 Viewer)

Shaft41 said:
I hope to take a few minutes and compile a list of a few songs from this extravaganza that I feel are criminally underrated, but I guarantee you one of them is "Getting Closer"  Man, that's good stuff.  
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For some reason I always think about that one together with "Daytime Nighttime Suffering," and I now wish I'd switched them in the order.  Not a huge difference, but feels better.  I guess because they're both fairly obscure and underappreciated Wings songs that I think are good rockers or at least power pop.

prosopis said:
I will now tell you that I came in here with a medium to strong dislike for Paul McCartney. I also had no clue that there was this much post Beatles music from the former mates. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Especially Ringos output, wtf? I had no idea. McCartney was a close second though. I vastly underrated the quantity of his output. I did come into this with an open mind.

My mind has been turned around for McCartney. He does have stuff that I feel is excellent. Sadly that's not what I heard on the radio. I loved the Flaming pie album. I also liked the covers album who's name I do not recall. Had the word devil in it? Honorable mention to Ram.

I did not realize how much I liked George or how much of his music I knew. While I heard many of the songs from ATMP I had never just listened to the album. This was a true find which I have found is a nice companion to Flaming Pie for my taste. I alternated these two albums all weekend while hanging out in the backyard.
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I love all this feedback but especially these parts of course.  The other album is Run Devil Run.  That's been a popular find for several people here.  I'm absolutely thrilled that you like Flaming Pie  and ATMP so much!!!  It's so cool that they formed your weekend soundtrack.  :)  

 
krista4 said:
I saw it, but since there's a new Hair Metal category, too, I figured I shouldn't press @rockaction or anyone else to let me choose for them.  :)  
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@krista4 Hair metal is my youthful specialty, but I don't particularly care for it anymore, unlike the punk that really influenced the best of the hair metal bands. I don't think there'll be a big loss. Plus, I'm trying to go with stuff I haven't drafted before and we've had cheesy '80s categories where I've been able to draft the cream, especially one band in particular I always draft regardless.

Would you like to make more Beatles selections? Totally amenable to that...

 
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rockaction said:
@krista4 Hair metal is my youthful specialty, but I don't particularly care for it anymore, unlike the punk that really influenced the best of the hair metal bands. I don't think there'll be a big loss. Plus, I'm trying to go with stuff I haven't drafted before and we've had cheesy '80s categories where I've been able to draft the cream, especially one band in particular I always draft regardless.

Would you like to make more Beatles selections? Totally amenable to that...
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Just let me know.  It's your draft, so please take anything you really want first!

 
Oh god...my last chance (I think?) and so many choices, though...  I've been avoiding any of the "obvious" ones and still want to, I think.

 
prosopis said:
I will now tell you that I came in here with a medium to strong dislike for Paul McCartney. I also had no clue that there was this much post Beatles music from the former mates. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Especially Ringos output, wtf? I had no idea. McCartney was a close second though. I vastly underrated the quantity of his output. I did come into this with an open mind.

My mind has been turned around for McCartney. He does have stuff that I feel is excellent. Sadly that's not what I heard on the radio. I loved the Flaming pie album. I also liked the covers album who's name I do not recall. Had the word devil in it? Honorable mention to Ram.

I loathe Band on the Run and will turn the radio off when it comes on. I was hoping this song would not make your list. I would have replaced it with Silly Love Songs which is a fantastic song.

Ringo I just have nothing constructive to say. Rock on brother, you appear to have been the smartest of the bunch.

I did not realize how much I liked George or how much of his music I knew. While I heard many of the songs from ATMP I had never just listened to the album. This was a true find which I have found is a nice companion to Flaming Pie for my taste. I alternated these two albums all weekend while hanging out in the backyard.

John I knew most of and no real finds for me there, other than Krista's write ups. I love back stories to music and this did not disappoint.

I know there were other things I liked and want to return to. I thought there was a list on page one but as of now I do not see one. It would be a cool reference.

Krista I thank you for your knowledge and time. I enjoyed this and I found new stuff to listen to.

Guns and Roses cover of Live and Let Die is freaking awesome and I love it.

Band on the Run is vastly over rated and I don't think that many people really like it. They just say they do.

Elvis Costello is a big no for me. See Band on the Run.
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live action shot of Prosopis posting.

 
Pip's Invitation said:
We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert...
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We're so sorry if we caused you any pain
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But there's no one left at home
And I believe I'm gonna rain

We're so sorry but we haven't heard a thing all day
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But if anything should happen we'll be sure to give a ring

We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But we haven't done a bloody thing all day
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But the kettle's on the boil and we're so easily called away

 
Awrighty

My BFF is a curator. An unfortunate one, as a matter of fact. If he hadn't had me to chase around in our 20s and 30s, his life would have been all home, kids, stuff, wife. No singular episodes, great loves, defining pursuits. His family were all upper middle class, summer porch alcoholics and he wishes every day he could afford to be one, too. He's a good, good, man but, if it has added up for him at all, that would be based in his stuff.

My BFF is very dedicated to his stuff. His photos (a great but unsuccessful photog [tho a top-flight printer, in the time that it mattered]), his axes, his albums and his memories of giving life a head start & chasing it down with me. His roman a clef about young wikkid has probably passed 1000 pages and he is about as grumpy about it as he is about people touching his stuff.

Having him as my BFF for fifty years has not helped me understand a stuff-based life, but it has made me appreciate it. I have thought of him a lot during this countdown. Not that @krista4 is a stuff-instead-of-life person at all (quite to the contrary, by all appearances) but he would have been very invested in this countdown and would love to have an outlet to do this kind of thing in public (i have kept him as distant from FFA as he has me from his Wikkid Kronikles, for fear of world's colliding). He is a massive Beatles fan, too.

I like lists - don't think there's a fantasy sports person who doesn't, but compiling them dizzies me. I am in awe of the passion, perspicacity & comprehensiveness of this countdown in a way that i am of artists in other media. Thank you to Krista and those participants who've underlined and overwritten, argued and supported her thoughts along the counting.

For my contribution, i promised - as a participant who remembers things Beatle from the beginning - to consider John, Paul, George & Ringo's post-Beatle careers as i might have considered them contemporarily if they had not first been Beatles. Since this intro went longer than i imagined, i shall post this and begin that hence.

 
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Richard Starkey - God bless Ringo. He's kept the beat of good feeling wherever he's gone for almost 60 years. As a performer, however, he's done nothing singular and little which, as i listened to it, i didn't feel couldn't be done better by others or not exist at all without the aid of his famous chums. Never considered owning a recording of his and  this countdown didn't change that.

John Lennon - This is the most difficult one to quantify. A fiery, talented wiseguy goes right to the head of the class with me, as a teacher when a lad and a leader when on my own. Our natural grudge with life - that no one can show us an oasis from the selfish, petty, ridiculous machinations of our woundlicking and/or compensating contemporaries - made us each surly and hilarious. Unlike me, Lennon took a hero's course against the most obvious idiocies once he gained the standing to do so, whereas i've remained subversive & perverse. The latter is better for art, and it showed in his music.

Lennon was actually smarter than us, but his work suffered by his need to keep showing us that he was smarter than us. In this, he's the one who benefitted most from being a Beatle. He might also have offered the most. McCartney distracting him, Harrison countering him, Martin refining him. All some of the most wonderful things ever to happen to a revolutionary and the result shaped everything you or i have ever heard.

But it didn't actually cross over to his solo career, merely gave him the standing to do whatever he felt like doing. A lot of pulling stuff out of his butt for the sheer pleasure of knowing others would greedily sniff it. Then the hero path - righting wrongs (and writing of righting), "elevating" femaleness, revealing true vulnerabilities, all with radical fervor. Just as songs which aren't as clever as they think they are become more awful for the attempt, a LOT of Lennon's revolting was revolting. Thank creation that he actually was clever and had a clever man's distaste for taking even himself too seriously, or i dont think i ever would have bellied up to the bar as a listener. The Beatles gave him a rich boy's chance to be a hero, but it's to his credit that he took it when most don't. 

Don't mean i have to like it. And what i liked least was how little post-Beatle invention he gave to the music. There are scads of flourishes, lyric & melodic, to enjoy, but all couched in fairly prosaic song structure. It would have behooved for him to ask his "Why not?"s with equally adventurous depth of composition. Folk song 4/4, mostly. This all would have put me in  similar territory to which i have Neil Young. As a listener, i would have welcomed - and always thrilled to be reminded of - the rare, fascinating & heartbreaking occasions when the product was as good as the inspiration, but i wouldnt have bought the albums or even been moved to make a mix of highlights so that i could indeed be moved by visits. Music is how we remove polemics from our passions, not how we install them.

 
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George Harrison - In this silly life, there is no more abiding thing to be than curious. There may be no greater mastery in all things Beatle than George Harrison's curiosity. Who else would form a film company to finance an unwritten Monty Python movie on the life of Christ purely because, "I want to see it"? And that curiosity made him the Beatles' musicologist and fed most of their greatest efforts. And that might even had been topped by his wide taste & range as a guitar player, always in service of the song over the spotlight . Eventually, it made him the most consistent songwriter of the group and the best self-producer. Tis a shame he was reportedly so melancholy and restless. More than any modern artist i can think of, he did it right - ever increasing his output while, if not by, ever reducing his ego. Yearn do i for the day when that is the point of it all.

That said, while i would have owned more George Harrison albums than the others combined if there had been no Beatles, i wouldn't (as i didn't) have played them all that often. One of the great treats of this countdown was k4's reminding me of some of the great stuff i'd had in my collection all along but forgotten about. And that mostly comes from the one part of Harrison's artistic modesty that hurts his music - not getting out in front of his songs. Many of them don't need it, but they could almost always use it. I don't know if it's that he couldnt sing chesty. I can't sing chesty, but i'm still able to get out front. And we need that, it's part of the invitation of art. "I will take you there" helps us go. We need to go, we need to be brought. Harrison is easy to forgive on that count because of who he was and what he did & didnt, but it often makes me regret his songs as much as enjoy them.

Paul McCartney - My last career, poker, gave the world one of my favorite expressions - "the nuts". There's sumn magical about occasionally having a hand that can't be beat in this equivocal arcade of existence.

I've never bought a Wings or McCartney solo record, although my collection inherited a couple from relationships. The albums were so uneven, always disrupted by fetishes, simplisms (to accommodate a certain band member or commercial viability) or adventures in cuteness. And i'm an album guy  - my work on the production end of concerts de-valued them for me anyway, but i always greatly preferred album-support tours to hits tours. Eventually i just kinda gave up on THE Beatle as a recording artist and sat back to marvel at how well his pipes aged and how blissfully & casually he enjoyed his legendness.

But this countdown has shown me incontrovertibly that Sir Paul is the entire point of music - the capture of life in melody. No single instrument, not the piano under Beethoven's hands, not the cello in Yo Yo Ma's or the axe in Hendrix's lifts us out & away from caprice & capture like all the shades of McCartney's voice. In service of this, i've made a McCartney mix from the best in this countdown (old-fashioned guy that i am, i wanted to make a 90minute cassette or 78minute CD mix of the best, but it wasnt big enough) and i'm very quickly realizing that this - as perfect in scramble as other mixes are in order - will be as effective upon my moods as my morning dose of Django Reinhardt. It's the nuts. Thank you for that, Miss Krista.

 
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wikkidpissah said:
Awrighty

My BFF is a curator. An unfortunate one, as a matter of fact. If he hadn't had me to chase around in our 20s and 30s, his life would have been all home, kids, stuff, wife. No singular episodes, great loves, defining pursuits. His family were all upper middle class, summer porch alcoholics and he wishes every day he could afford to be one, too. He's a good, good, man but, if it has added up for him at all, that would be based in his stuff.

My BFF is very dedicated to his stuff. His photos (a great but unsuccessful photog [tho a top-flight printer, in the time that it mattered]), his axes, his albums and his memories of giving life a head start & chasing it down with me. His roman a clef about young wikkid has probably passed 1000 pages and he is about as grumpy about it as he is about people touching his stuff.

Having him as my BFF for fifty years has not helped me understand a stuff-based life, but it has made me appreciate it. I have thought of him a lot during this countdown. Not that @krista4 is a stuff-instead-of-life person at all (quite to the contrary, by all appearances) but he would have been very invested in this countdown and would love to have an outlet to do this kind of thing in public (i have kept him as distant from FFA as he has me from his Wikkid Kronikles, for fear of world's colliding). He is a massive Beatles fan, too.

I like lists - don't think there's a fantasy sports person who doesn't, but compiling them dizzies me. I am in awe of the passion, perspicacity & comprehensiveness of this countdown in a way that i am of artists in other media. Thank you to Krista and those participants who've underlined and overwritten, argued and supported her thoughts along the counting.

For my contribution, i promised - as a participant who remembers things Beatle from the beginning - to consider John, Paul, George & Ringo's post-Beatle careers as i might have considered them contemporarily if they had not first been Beatles. Since this intro went longer than i imagined, i shall post this and begin that hence.
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I'm looking forward to this, and I love this preface.  I've had a stressful day, so I will wait until I'm more relaxed later to read the next couple of posts.  I want to be in a frame of mind to take them in fully.

You're right, by the way, that I'm very much about experience rather than stuff, sometimes to my detriment.  I hate feeling at all wed to "stuff" so much that I've occasionally given away a piece of "stuff" that I later wish I had kept for sentimental reasons.  

Feel like I'd really appreciate your BFF and wish we could come up with a way to share this with him, but it's hard to figure without worlds colliding.  I've kept a Word document of the write-ups (including ---INTERLUDES---!), but if I gave that to you, he could still easily search for a line from those and come across this thread.  If the search function here ever worked, I suppose.

Do you remember The Book of Lists?  It came out every few years when I was a kid, I think in the1970s and 80s.  Maybe it still exists.  But I went freaking nuts every time waiting for it, bought it the first day it appeared, and pored over all the new lists for the year and changes to any lists they'd published previously.  Don't know what it is in the brains of those of us who loves lists, but it's always been that way for me.  I've always felt like it was some sort of hyper-organizational compulsion I have, which shows up in other areas than list-making.  (Edit:  I just looked it up and forgot that I also went crazy over the People's Almanac, which spawned The Book of Lists).

This thread has been a different type of labor of love for me than the first one.  The first felt like more of a necessity, something that had been running around in my head so long I had to get it down in some written form.  This one was in some ways more fun, in that I didn't feel like I "needed" to do it but that I wanted to share some wonderful music with other people.  I know some in the thread are as knowledgeable about these songs and albums as I am, but some were coming to this with less background on the solo works.  It's been a great balance of both.

 
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yeah, my personal bathroom has always had a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House and a copy of either Book of Lists or People's Almanac in it for 30-40 yrs (there's a giant PA in there now). woulda died of colon cancer a long time ago without em.

ETA: will find a way to turn my BFF on to some of your 'ludes, if i gotta c&p em or whatever

 
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I loved all of that, especially the George and Paul write-up.  I'm not going to do it justice right now ever, but I will reply, after I get through tomorrow's holiday and back to stewing in my own juices (that might have sounded unnecessarily dirty).  Tonight I'm re-watching The Apartment, which apparently I first watched so long ago I forgot it was B&W.  And more importantly, pretty sad.  I'm also setting up the DVR for tomorrow's The Man Who Would Be King.

And now I have a playlist to consider, too!  I'm in love with the title of it.  That's why his eyes look like that.

 
KarmaPolice said:
So.... is there a Spotify playlist for this one? :popcorn:
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Funny you should ask, as I was just coming back to the thread to post about that!  I have about 200 songs on the playlist and will add the other 100 this weekend, then will post it.  :)   Look above a couple of posts for a wikkidpissah special playlist of some of the Paul songs I selected.

 
krista4 said:
Funny you should ask, as I was just coming back to the thread to post about that!  I have about 200 songs on the playlist and will add the other 100 this weekend, then will post it.  :)   Look above a couple of posts for a wikkidpissah special playlist of some of the Paul songs I selected.
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....but I can't understand about 80% of wikkidposts

 
wikkidpissah said:
John Lennon - This is the most difficult one to quantify. A fiery, talented wiseguy goes right to the head of the class with me, as a teacher when a lad and a leader when on my own. Our natural grudge with life - that no one can show us an oasis from the selfish, petty, ridiculous machinations of our woundlicking and/or compensating contemporaries - made us each surly and hilarious. Unlike me, Lennon took a hero's course against the most obvious idiocies once he gained the standing to do so, whereas i've remained subversive & perverse. The latter is better for art, and it showed in his music.

Lennon was actually smarter than us, but his work suffered by his need to keep showing us that he was smarter than us. In this, he's the one who benefitted most from being a Beatle. He might also have offered the most. McCartney distracting him, Harrison countering him, Martin refining him. All some of the most wonderful things ever to happen to a revolutionary and the result shaped everything you or i have ever heard.

But it didn't actually cross over to his solo career, merely gave him the standing to do whatever he felt like doing. A lot of pulling stuff out of his butt for the sheer pleasure of knowing others would greedily sniff it. Then the hero path - righting wrongs (and writing of righting), "elevating" femaleness, revealing true vulnerabilities, all with radical fervor. Just as songs which aren't as clever as they think they are become more awful for the attempt, a LOT of Lennon's revolting was revolting. Thank creation that he actually was clever and had a clever man's distaste for taking even himself too seriously, or i dont think i ever would have bellied up to the bar as a listener. The Beatles gave him a rich boy's chance to be a hero, but it's to his credit that he took it when most don't. 

Don't mean i have to like it. And what i liked least was how little post-Beatle invention he gave to the music. There are scads of flourishes, lyric & melodic, to enjoy, but all couched in fairly prosaic song structure. It would have behooved for him to ask his "Why not?"s with equally adventurous depth of composition. Folk song 4/4, mostly. This all would have put me in  similar territory to which i have Neil Young. As a listener, i would have welcomed - and always thrilled to be reminded of - the rare, fascinating & heartbreaking occasions when the product was as good as the inspiration, but i wouldnt have bought the albums or even been moved to make a mix of highlights so that i could indeed be moved by visits. Music is how we remove polemics from our passions, not how we install them.
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Your last sentence is a perfect summary of the issues I've had with John's solo career, though I've never been clever enough to put my finger on it like that. 

I've never sought as you have here to separate my feelings for the post-Beatles work had I not known they were Beatles, and although I've looked forward to your engaging in that exercise (or writing about it, since I expect the engagement pre-dated this thread), I don't want to.  Chalk it up to fear, perhaps.  I love the Beatles immensely, as you all might have gathered(!), and it might be that a piece of my brain has this niggling feeling I would appreciate both Ringo and John less if I pursued this, and...I don't want to.  

In fact, knowing John as a Beatle might make me forgive him some of the lesser moments of his solo career not only because he gets a partial pass for his Beatles work, but because it would be to ignore his progression as a human.  Or at least what I like to think of as progression.  We might have danced around it too much - although I think Uruk called it out a time or two - but John was a ####ty man, husband, and father during the Beatles years and for a period beyond.  Songs that alluded to spousal mistreatment and abuse weren't just make-believe, setting up a fictional scenario as Paul did in his songs.  He was a wife beater, drug abuser, and an absentee father, at best.  And I've long struggled with the fact that his songs were my favorites - and really it wasn't very close.

Looking at John's solo career, I've taken solace - or comforted myself in my adoration of him - that he seemed to be evolving.  Sure, John's songs were always more raw, but the first record evidenced a willingness to lay bare his struggles that seems to me incomparable in music.  And simultaneously, he seemed to be genuinely adopting causes he cared about and trying to do good in the world, if not practically or directly, at least by using his platform to try to create awareness.  Part of this also was an evolution of his thinking about women and an understanding of how poorly he'd behaved in the past - yes, this one took a bit more time, but I feel like he was progressing.  And finally he made a move that seemed to me the opposite of John-dom as I know it, which was to retreat and be a father for five years, with no connection to the business at all.  So while much of the music wasn't his best or was too polemical, since I'm viewing it as a John continuum, I can still appreciate it in his evolution as a human.  

Spot-on point about the absence of inventiveness.  Paul fans have long argued that he was the impetus behind most (or all) of the Beatles experimentation - he was certainly the one who came up with the tape loops for "Tomorrow Never Knows," for instance - and it seems to have been borne out by their post-Beatles output.  It emphasizes your point about how he got the most out of being a Beatle, as well.  I've mentioned in the past that Paul needed John as an editor on some of his post-Beatles work.  John needed Paul as an inspiration to confirm what was possible.  John's being so insecure might have necessitated having someone like Paul (never lacking in confidence) to say, "We're gonna do this weird thing and people will love it."

 
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krista4 said:
Your last sentence is a perfect summary of the issues I've had with John's solo career, though I've never been clever enough to put my finger on it like that. 

I've never sought as you have here to separate my feelings for the post-Beatles work had I not known they were Beatles, and although I've looked forward to your engaging in that exercise (or writing about it, since I expect the engagement pre-dated this thread), I don't want to.  Chalk it up to fear, perhaps.  I love the Beatles immensely, as you all might have gathered(!), and it might be that a piece of my brain has this niggling feeling I would appreciate both Ringo and John less if I pursued this, and...I don't want to.  

In fact, knowing John as a Beatle might make me forgive him some of the lesser moments of his solo career not only because he gets a partial pass for his Beatles work, but because it would be to ignore his progression as a human.  Or at least what I like to think of as progression.  We might have danced around it too much - although I think Uruk called it out a time or two - but John was a ####ty man, husband, and father during the Beatles years and for a period beyond.  Songs that alluded to spousal mistreatment and abuse weren't just make-believe, setting up a fictional scenario as Paul did in his songs.  He was a wife beater, drug abuser, and an absentee father, at best.  And I've long struggled with the fact that his songs were my favorites - and really it wasn't very close.

Looking at John's solo career, I've taken solace - or comforted myself in my adoration of him - that he seemed to be evolving.  Sure, John's songs were always more raw, but the first record evidenced a willingness to lay bare his struggles that seems to me incomparable in music.  And simultaneously, he seemed to be genuinely adopting causes he cared about and trying to do good in the world, if not practically or directly, at least by using his platform to try to create awareness.  Part of this also was an evolution of his thinking about women and an understanding of how poorly he'd behaved in the past - yes, this one took a bit more time, but I feel like he was progressing.  And finally he made a move that seemed to me the opposite of John-dom as I know it, which was to retreat and be a father for five years, with no connection to the business at all.  So while much of the music wasn't his best or was too polemical, since I'm viewing it as a John continuum, I can still appreciate it in his evolution as a human.  

Spot-on point about the absence of inventiveness.  Paul fans have long argued that he was the impetus behind most (or all) of the Beatles experimentation - he was certainly the one who came up with the tape loops for "Tomorrow Never Knows," for instance - and it seems to have been borne out by their post-Beatles output.  It emphasizes your point about how he got the most out of being a Beatle, as well.  I've mentioned in the past that Paul needed John as an editor on some of his post-Beatles work.  John needed Paul as an inspiration to confirm what was possible.  John's being so insecure might have necessitated having someone like Paul (never lacking in confidence) to say, "We're gonna do this weird thing and people will love it."
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Well said. For everything else, the worst thing i can say about John Lennon as an artist is that he was necessary. The best i can say is that he made his life more a part of his art than any other popular figure and let us see it from every angle. That unusual brand of bravery helped a Boston Irish kid find his own.

 
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wikkidpissah said:
Well said. For everything else, the worst thing i can say about John Lennon as an artist is that he was necessary. The best i can say is that he made his life more a part of his art than any other popular figure and let us see it from every angle. That unusual brand of bravery helped a Boston Irish kid find his own.
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Bravery.  Absolutely that's it.  I hesitate to compare to Paul again, as I hate to contribute to their being endlessly compared, but what Paul would do with experimentation didn't take bravery.  Paul was ever-confident he'd be loved, or if he weren't, that it would roll right off his back.  John desperately needed to be loved but often felt unworthy of it.  As a result, baring himself the way he did was terrifying but necessary, taking immense bravery on his part.

I don't know a lot of Amy Winehouse music but know you're a fan, and I was thinking earlier that she seemed to evidence that same bravery.  At first I was thinking that one could draw a direct line from John's doing it to her being able to, but then it occurred to me that, for that sort of person, another person's having done it might not be the inspiration, but instead that it is a compulsion that comes from within and takes a certain sort of stunning desperation.  

 
krista4 said:
Bravery.  Absolutely that's it.  I hesitate to compare to Paul again, as I hate to contribute to their being endlessly compared, but what Paul would do with experimentation didn't take bravery.  Paul was ever-confident he'd be loved, or if he weren't, that it would roll right off his back.  John desperately needed to be loved but often felt unworthy of it.  As a result, baring himself the way he did was terrifying but necessary, taking immense bravery on his part.

I don't know a lot of Amy Winehouse music but know you're a fan, and I was thinking earlier that she seemed to evidence that same bravery.  At first I was thinking that one could draw a direct line from John's doing it to her being able to, but then it occurred to me that, for that sort of person, another person's having done it might not be the inspiration, but instead that it is a compulsion that comes from within and takes a certain sort of stunning desperation.  
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Off the top of my head, the thing that ties John Lennon to Amy Winehouse (and possibly to me) is not being boring. Not-boring people recognize how unrelentingly boring people are before they even recognize that they themselves are interesting. It doesnt take long to recognize that life is either going to be mind-numbingly boring or will consist of them being the antidote. What it takes a little longer to realize is that a precocious person's life quickly becomes one of dancing @ 1000mph without relief and that people begin to see you as what you can do for them instead of who you are and eventually resent you for it. It's really hard not to hate people and turn oneself over to total resentment after a while on that leading edge.

It's a very weird & special thing when people like that become artists (most become hustlers), because they have to turn the thing they resent most inside-out to do so. The only way to get anybody to love the REAL them is to turn it into a persona and make the madding crowd adore your ugliness as much as your beauty. Of course, one has to adore one's own ugliness before they can make next-level art out of it, but that stratum is kinda accidently where truth lives. Mining one's own ridiculousness is toxic work and that's where bravery comes in.

Bravery is keeping on because you should. Lennon had the bravery to show his vulnerability. Miss Amy had the bravery to show her vulnerability. Lennon was applauded for it because he was a man. Winehouse was exploited for it because she was a woman. Maybe Miss Winehouse had to show her invulnerability to be applauded. Who knows?

 
wikkidpissah said:
Off the top of my head, the thing that ties John Lennon to Amy Winehouse (and possibly to me) is not being boring. Not-boring people recognize how unrelentingly boring people are before they even recognize that they themselves are interesting. It doesnt take long to recognize that life is either going to be mind-numbingly boring or will consist of them being the antidote. What it takes a little longer to realize is that a precocious person's life quickly becomes one of dancing @ 1000mph without relief and that people begin to see you as what you can do for them instead of who you are and eventually resent you for it. It's really hard not to hate people and turn oneself over to total resentment after a while on that leading edge.

It's a very weird & special thing when people like that become artists (most become hustlers), because they have to turn the thing they resent most inside-out to do so. The only way to get anybody to love the REAL them is to turn it into a persona and make the madding crowd adore your ugliness as much as your beauty. Of course, one has to adore one's own ugliness before they can make next-level art out of it, but that stratum is kinda accidently where truth lives. Mining one's own ridiculousness is toxic work and that's where bravery comes in.

Bravery is keeping on because you should. Lennon had the bravery to show his vulnerability. Miss Amy had the bravery to show her vulnerability. Lennon was applauded for it because he was a man. Winehouse was exploited for it because she was a woman. Maybe Miss Winehouse had to show her invulnerability to be applauded. Who knows?
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I suspect they question whether they themselves are interesting and worry that they are just "weird" instead.  And then, as you say, figure out that the weird means non-boring, in fact.  But that can take a long time with someone like John, who always questioned himself and then had the misfortune(fortune) of finding himself in a band with someone like Paul who might have more "surface" vocal talent or creativity.  In that instance, his best bet was, as you say, to make his "ugliness" even more of a foil against Paul's amiability and charm.  Giving in to the idea that he couldn't be "loved" in that same traditional way was the ultimate in bravery, I think, but tragically sad as well.

 
krista4 said:
I suspect they question whether they themselves are interesting and worry that they are just "weird" instead.  And then, as you say, figure out that the weird means non-boring, in fact.  But that can take a long time with someone like John, who always questioned himself and then had the misfortune(fortune) of finding himself in a band with someone like Paul who might have more "surface" vocal talent or creativity.  In that instance, his best bet was, as you say, to make his "ugliness" even more of a foil against Paul's amiability and charm.  Giving in to the idea that he couldn't be "loved" in that same traditional way was the ultimate in bravery, I think, but tragically sad as well.
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I might quibble with this more if the post you were reacting to wasnt so bitter. Not my best work. Lennon's insecurity was a bully's and, if this world continues to prove anything, it's that bullies abide. Turning in the armor when he was winning the fight was the brave act there.

Speaking of the fight, we both appear to marvel that Lennon and McCartney could abide each other at all. As miraculous that they did as what they did. John would absolutely have made too much of everything for Paul's tastes if they'd met as adults. Paul too facile in absolutely everything for John. Nothing angers a genius more than a regular person with a singular genius more abiding than all of his, especially when he doesn't find the use of it torturous at all. Lennon wanted to punch everyone in the nose. Paul wanted a pat on the head. And got it. John profound, Paul trite (almost every song from your countdown i excised from my Spotify mix was for triteness). John didactic, Paul insouciant. Mean/cute, hard/easy, certain/flexible, insidious/joyous - one might go on all day.

Thank heavens for rock & roll. The dynamic tension responsible for most energy and creation in life did not rain down on our boys from the stars in the firmament but up from the stars in their eyes. Write songs. Be on stage. Get money, chicks & fame. So they did, beyond anyone's wildest dreams. But for five more years did they stay together, though they were kings already. Because they knew that making something new was the greatest thing there was. And their Boswell, the quiet li'l neighbor boy who'd recorded every note of this extravagant relationship while he plucked along, came to the fore with the charts of their upward progress just when they might have chucked it. And their boss showed them how the masters had turned what they knew into what others could know.And a delightful, goofy ******* kept the time perfectly.  And we are chronicling it, collating it, curating it more than 50 years hence, as will others in other fifties. Because the new they made makes us want new of our own.

 
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By the way, I noticed on your Spotify that the song "Off The Ground" was on there, which I think was meant to be something else.  I had songs from the album on my list, but not the title track.

 
krista4 said:
By the way, I noticed on your Spotify that the song "Off The Ground" was on there, which I think was meant to be something else.  I had songs from the album on my list, but not the title track.
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thx. it was "Mistress and Maid" that i was adding and somehow ended up w title track instead. mix fixed -

 
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