Sir Paul McCartney: I politicised the Beatles

The Guardian UK ^ | Monday 15 December 2008 10.36 GMT | Sean Michaels

[weegee]

He's already painted himself as the most avant garde Beatle, now in what seems like another attempt to rewrite history, Sir Paul McCartney claims he was responsible for radicalising their their political views

In a statement that forces us to read Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da as a commentary on American neo-colonialism, Sir Paul has said that it is he who turned the Beatles on to politics, introducing John, Paul and Ringo to the evils of the Vietnam war.

Whereas John Lennon is widely considered the "political one", penning songs like Revolution and Give Peace a Chance, sweet Sir Paul is now presenting an alternative history. In a forthcoming interview with Prospect magazine, McCartney claims to have been the catalyst for the group's anti-war position.

"...someone said to me: 'Bertrand Russell is living not far from here in Chelsea, why don't you go and see him?'" McCartney said. Russell, then in his 90s, was a prominent philosopher and activist. "So I just took a taxi down there and knocked on the door."

"He was fabulous. He told me about the Vietnam war – most of us didn't know about it, it wasn't yet in the papers – and also that it was a very bad war."

That, McCartney explained, was enough. Filled with idealism, conviction and, er, a smattering of current events, "I remember going back to the studio either that evening or the next day and telling the guys, particularly John, about this meeting and saying what a bad war this was...."

While it's John Lennon who has retained the reputation for rabble-rousing, "I politicised the Beatles," McCartney insisted. And now he has passed the "megaphone" to a new generation of political artists, he said. People like Bono...

Somewhere in England, Paul McCartney is squeaking: "Me too!"

[weegee]

Gilmour only recently began to reappraise his priorities in life when he had several homes and a fleet of sports cars.

He got rid of some of the excess at that point and put up some of the items for charity. He’d had a rich lifestyle for decades by that point.

Rog laughs that Pink Floyd became rather “Spinal Tap” at the end with Gilmour’s wife writing songs for the band.

[weegee]

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/chart_display.jsp?g=Singles&f=The+Billboard+Hot+100

The top 10 songs today are:

1 T.I. Featuring Rihanna - Live Your Life
2 Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
3 Britney Spears - Circus
4 Lady GaGa Featuring Colby O’Donis - Just Dance
5 T.I. - Whatever You Like
6 Beyonce - If I Were A Boy
7 Katy Perry - Hot N Cold
8 Kanye West - Love Lockdown
9 Ne-Yo - Miss Independent
10 Britney Spears - Womanizer

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Yeah, these songs will hold their own for the ages against the thousands of other artists who are recording for independent labels today. < /SARCASM >

The corporations are engaging in a circle jerk.

[weegee]

The Beatles’ response to “what was it like to be a Beatle” is “what is it like to not be one?”. They can look at a photo and see some detail they don’t like or know what they were thinking there that the rest of the world doesn’t take away from seeing that photo.

And Ringo was a fan of Lightnin’ Hopkins before he joined the Beatles just as they were about to break.

[KevinB]

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da as a commentary on American neo-colonialism....

Paul has several times said that "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" was a phrase a Jamaican friend of his used to use and he simply built a song around the phrase.

[KevinB]

George was a saint. A really good man.

Hardly. Read Patti Harrison's and Eric Clapton's books sometime and you'll learn a lot about George that you won't like. For example, he had an affair with Ringo's wife Maureen while George was married to Patti and Ringo was married to Maureen. He was also a huge acid head and coke head, though he eventually cleaned up to a large degree.

[SunkenCiv]

“Give Ireland Back to the Irish” is the sum total of his political output, unless one wants to count “Ebony and Ivory”. Oh, and “Wonderful Christmastime”. /sarc

This will be Paul, next year: “I turned the Beatles onto drugs. Oh, and going to see the maharishi, that was my idea too.”

[KevinB]

Yeah but Paul’s post Beatle stuff was largely crap in a major way. I mean enough to make you cringe.

I have to agree that Paul has written some stuff post-Beatles that is embarrassingly bad; however, there is some very good stuff in there as well. A few of the songs from Flaming Pie are as good as anything he did with the Beatles.

By the way, the new Fireman (McCartney) album is a little out there but not too bad.

[nickcarraway]

You mean “Spies Like Us” wasn’t a biting satirical jab at the Cold War?

[Mr_Moonlight]

I mention Badfinger as they were on Apple and some people thought their tunes were Beatle cast off tunes.

Badfinger's "Come And Get It" was written by Paul McCartney

[McLynnan]

I’m definitely a baby boom weenie and still love some of the Beatle’s music, especially Hey Jude and much of the Sgt. Pepper album. I’m not especially fond of Paul’s post-Beatle body of work though.

[x]

I think Sir Paul has himself confused with Tommy Smothers, who really did politicize his group, as hard is it is to believe.

It can happen when you're sixty-four sixty-six.

[weegee]

George got off acid when he saw the human debris in Haight-Ashbury in San Fransicko.

[KevinB]

George got off acid when he saw the human debris in Haight-Ashbury in San Fransicko.

Yes, that's right, but according to Patti in her book he was heavy into coke for quite a while after that. Until I read her book I hadn't known that coke was a big part of his repertoire.

[BruceysMom]

My favorite Beatles joke:
What would it take to reunite the Beatles?

Two more bullets.

I read that George was chanting about (To?) Krishna when he died.
I have no use for any of the Beatles and yes I am a baby boomer.

[domani]

Let me hear the a song you wrote that is better before you critique other songwriters.

[domani]

99% of all songs written will not stand the test of time. I was talking about a hit song and you are talking about standards. It is obvious you don’t know the difference. The music business is like any other business if you are not in it understanding it from the outside is not as easy as it seems.

[Liberty Valance]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOuqULVz5Zg&feature=related
Who needs the Beatles when we already had A Swingin’ Safari?

[weegee]

The hits remain the hits. The songs that don't make the charts rarely ever come back to take the charts although there are some examples of songs that took 2-5 years to become a "hit".

In defense of bad singing (Kanye West on SNL, industry use of autotune, and the changing culture) (LA Times 04:10 PM PT, Dec 15 2008)

By sounding bad in even the wrong ways on SNL, Kanye's arrived at something wholly new in the spectrum of vocal values: sheer charisma in place of both skill and authenticity... In other words, he's the perfect frontman for a time in music where there is only an ever-changing front.

It isn't about the song at all, it is about Viacom driven celebrity worship. The industry is pushing crap on us again as it did in the Disco era and did in ages passed.

[weegee]

The music "business" does not respond to market demand. Rather than following what is "popular" it dictates what SHOULD be popular and denies the rest access to the market (magazine covers, CD listening space at stores is $ponsored by labels, SNL, MTV, Tonight Show, soundtrack placement, radio, et al...).

The industry doesn't want to chase the next big thing, they want to own it outright and set the trends rather than get into bidding wars.

The major corporations were slow to accept Elvis and the Beatles too.

It is a farce to list what is "popular" when not all songs are being given equal measure. AC/DC had a top selling album this year but I don't recall them getting acceptance in the industry circles.