Posted on 12/24/2021 3:43:58 AM PST by Kaslin
Beatles fans of all ages can flock to Disney Plus for a new documentary called "Get Back" that reassembles footage of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr creating music as the band begins to dissolve. NPR used the occasion for guilt-trip clickbait: "How did we get stuck with the idea that four white guys make a rock band?"
NPR music critic Ann Powers uncorked a long, unforgiving treatise on how it doesn't matter that the Beatles were progressive and loved black music because they were still somehow part of making rock music white and exclusionary: "Rock's defining narrative still stands alongside others that reflect the historic segregation of Anglo-American social spheres."
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones wouldn't play segregated venues and paid tribute to black musicians who inspired them. But Powers wrote, "As they became rock's norm, they allowed white fans to enjoy what the late great music writer Greg Tate identified as a pasteurized form of Black culture." Tate called it "everything but the burden."
They "allowed white fans" to eat a Velveeta cheese version of black music. So much of this racialized criticism thrives on a vivid imagination of "allowance" and thievery.
Powers writes that black musician Questlove's documentary on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, compared with the new Beatles documentary, "felt like a newly uncovered landmark in the recentered cultural world emerging in step with the Movement for Black Lives. The other, wonderfully intimate and revealing as it is, reasserts familiar hierarchies."
NPR is reasserting its familiar ideology. This is where many readers would check out after a few hectoring paragraphs. Can't you just love the Beatles without feeling like you're reinforcing an "informally segregated sphere"?
This is not how people listen to music any more than people only limit themselves to one ethnicity of food. The alleged racism here is about definitions: what is rock; what is pop; what is rhythm and blues. This artificially sets up the genre of rock to be a white, male preserve because many of its stars are white men.
But the "familiar hierarchy" of white people also loved the Motown sound and embraced its virtuoso black performers and innovators such as Stevie Wonder. You can love rock, jazz, country and classical. You can have them all on your playlist.
Powers wants to pretend we're still living in 1965. She cited an "infamous" cover story in Time magazine on "The Sound of the Sixties" that proclaimed, "The Beatles made rock'n'roll fun again ... The Beatles also made it all right to be white again."
Time's writer wasn't spewing racism. Powers left out the next sentence, which suggests whites are culturally inferior, quoting French critic Frank Tenot: "Since the downfall of the Viennese waltz, nothing in popular music, and particularly dance, has known any success unless associated with one or another of the rhythmic discoveries of the Negro."
NPR's point here is to keep white men perennially confessional about their "privilege." Powers started with rock buddies McCartney and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters being "band guys," then added that term was problematic. "In 2021 it's as common for women, trans and nonbinary people to jump into rock's timestream as it is for men. Yet something continues to infuse the rock mythos with the sweaty-socks scent of conventional, if boyish, masculinity. Whiteness, too."
What's exhausting here is taxpayers still have to fork over their money to NPR to "infuse the news mythos" with the arrogant odor of cultural guilt-tripping. "Public radio" is at war with half the "public" it supposedly informs. It's long past time to pull the funding plug.
Duke Ellington did that sort of thing. Ellington was just a flat out genius.
Ann Powers is a loser.
Powers, by virtue of this obvious attempt at stirring the racial relations pot, comes across to me as a mediocre writer who thinks if she can stir up enough (unwarranted) racial stink, it will advance her career. WRONG!
A few months ago there was a hubbub about changing street names in Liverpool - Mathew Street (location of the Cavern Club) and Penny Lane. Seems they were named after slave traders. Turns out the claim appears in a footnote in Lewisohn’s epic Beatles history published in 2014. Scrounging footnotes in a quest for things to be offended by.
On a related note, if cultural appropriation is becoming a ‘thing’ again, then let me ask - what was the race of John Nesmith, inventor of basketball?
Well, there is the White Album.
bump
Give Ireland back to the Irish,
Give Lapland back to the Lapps;
Give Taiwan back to the Chinese,
Give Yoko back to the BLAM
—RADIO DINNER
All good points JP. Ringo reminds me of a dog that’s happy no matter. George, lacking in confidence because he knew he was mediocre.
Paul, the most versatile, talented writer, singer and player. Never understood Lennon except this series shows how he and Paul would bounce off of each other.
Not mentioned in any of the comments was the classical influence on their music. Thinking about it they were seemingly attempting to unite the world thru their music from asain themes, sounds, country, black, psychedelic, corny folk, hard rock, tasty acoustic guitar and classical. Their vocals were what bound it together, excellent harmonies.
The care they put into their song arrangements, not just playing the song and being done with it but taking care with each note, over and over until it was right. An amazing amount of thought and work went into each piece ..... well maybe not Number 9 ..ha,ha
The christening touch was the incredible sound engineering done by others during mixing. Few bands excelled in this area and I would suppose it was mostly Paul’s influence to go that deep after the song had been recorded.
I’ve played keyboards and recorded all my life. Had Fender Rhodes like the one in Get Back as well as the older small Whurlitzers using reel to reel tape then the 4 tracks when they were the rav. Now I’m using VIP instruments built into the recording software and playing keyboards with action only dreamed of 50 years ago. Sampled sounds from top notch instruments ... amazing.
The ease of digital recording now is so far ahead of what they had available 50 years ago I’ve always wondered how much more from some of the old icons we would have gotten if they had had this new tech available.
Same for novelists from days of old who didn’t have MS Word
JCon
Working version of course...just like how Paul wrote the melody for Yesterday at someone’s house. Scrambled eggs were for breakfast so he vamped to the melody, Scrambled eggs, oh my bahy how I love your legs
my baby that should say
Deport NPR to North Korea.
That is where they belong.
Indeed John laughed at loud at what he considered a ridiculous lyric
“please, lock me away”
Great post. I loved George, and I hate to sound cruel, but he came across as a Fredo; he wanted to be taken seriously but fell woefully short when compared to Paul and John. He simply wasn’t able to easily accept his role in the band. And Yoko? They treated her intrusion with complete respect but wow, I could feel the tension she brought. Very strange indeed. I’m left with the feeling that their breakup was timely and the music they gave us ranged from fun to profound. A thoroughly enjoyable series that allowed me to relive that era.
The sleeping giant is waking up.
How can any of these bands be considered racist, when they stole their sounds and songs from black people? Ask Little Richard.
They were irreverent jokers who'd say whatever came into their heads, not censorious scolds. They could believe that truth came out of India and still make fun of Indians. I'm not attacking or condemning them. The world was/is like that.
YUP.
The US was 85% white, and the UK even more white, and whites and blacks lived very different lives. Still, the music brought people together more than they otherwise would have been. In retrospect, now that they're gone, we can kind of smile at all those white kid bands, rather than feign outrage. If pop music makes you bitter, angry, and censorious, you aren't listening to it right (or you're just trying to get attention).
Odd since “Get Back” is the one song in the Beatles catalog that credits another artist - keyboardist Billy Preston (who is Black) who had hits like “Nothing From Nothing” and “Will It Go Round In Circles” - on the record’s label. I guess that means those British Fops were misappropriating Black culture < /sarc >
Lennon wrote the song “Woman Is The Nigger Of The World”. He obviously was mature enough not to use the term “N” Word.
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