- From Faith Current: “The Sacred Ordinary: St. Peter’s Church Hall” - May 1, 2023
- A brief (?) hiatus - April 22, 2023
- Something Happened - March 6, 2023
Folks, here’s an interesting revision of opinion from Faith on Paul McCartney. Enjoy—MG.
I got it wrong.
Back in April, I wrote a piece for Hey Dullblog about Paul’s choice to put Linda in his band (“I’m Gonna Go WIth Linda on Keyboards”). It included this paragraph:
Paul seems to have been the one who protested loudest about Stu’s and Pete’s musical shortcomings. That guy matures into Studio Obsessive Paul. Which then turns into Micromanaging Paul, the Paul of “let’s do sixty-two fun-filled takes of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer!’” royally pissing off everyone in service of a song he apparently didn’t even like. We admire Paul for this attention to detail, and we should. For one thing, we don’t get Sgt. Pepper without it. But mistakes were, you know, made. Damage was, you know, done.
Later in the same piece, I twice use the term that we’re all familiar with, “Perfectionist Paul.”
I shorthanded Paul this way because I made a mistake I try very hard not to make — I did the lazy thing and believed a trope of the Standard Narrative, without double checking it first.
I was wrong to blindly trust the Standard Narrative — it’s probably wise never to blindly trust anything, really. Putting aside for the moment that there weren’t 62 full-band takes of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, there were 21 (we’ll come back to that), I believe now that “Perfectionist Paul” is most likely a myth, and a derogatory and damaging one that does a disservice to our ability to understand Paul, the band, and how they made their music.
This article, then, is an attempt to repair my dented Beatles karma, and to do my part to mythbust the persistent fallacy of “Perfectionist Paul.”
Please bear with me because in order to do this, I’ll need to break a social taboo. A stupid social taboo, but a taboo nonetheless.
We live in a culture where only rap stars and baby-fascist presidents are allowed to take full credit (and then some) for their own merits. Other than that, it’s not allowed, to say you’re brilliant or talented, any more than it’s allowed to say you’re beautiful or sexy. It’s woven into the fabric of our culture, especially for women, this muzzling of our ability to love ourselves more publicly, more daringly, more honestly.
But in the service of pursuing the truth of this story and rectifying a wrong, I’m going to take the hit and violate this social taboo by sharing a bit of my own story.
What you need to know for all of this to make sense is that I’m — for lack of a better term — a prodigy of words and language, first identified as such when, in second grade, I scored off the scale on a series of college-level reading/writing tests. Words are and have always been my superpower. No surprise, then, that I’ve worked as a professional wordsmith in various capacities for most of my adult life — as a songwriter, a screenwriter/script doctor, and a political speechwriter, to name a few. (I’m not, you’ll notice, a prodigy when it comes to focus…). Of course, I’ve never recorded iconic albums at Abbey Road or played at Shea or on the Rooftop, but I do have extensive and diverse experience in a variety of different, often high-stakes creative situations. And I have far too much experience being accused of perfectionism by professional colleagues.
If you have a superpower of your own — and I suspect many of you do, since serious Beatles study seems to attract such people — you might know a bit about this problem. If so, my sincerest empathy and condolences. If not, I invite you to walk in my world… and Paul’s… for a few minutes. To experience the creative process the way a prodigy does.
As is the case with so much of the Beatles’ story, at the heart of all of this lies a paradox.
Being a prodigy doesn’t mean everything you do is brilliant (I wish!) and it certainly doesn’t mean everything (or really anything) you do is perfect. What it does mean is that prodigies often have the ability to perceive extreme detail in their area of exceptional talent — extreme detail that people who don’t have that particular exceptional talent aren’t able to perceive. As such, it’s not that our creative standards as prodigies are necessarily higher, although sometimes they are — it’s that because of our ultra-heightened perception of detail, it often takes — paradoxically — more time and effort for us to reach the same standard of quality than it does for someone who isn’t a prodigy.
If you’re confused by that last paragraph, it’s okay. Like all paradoxes, this one can be a little hard to wrap one’s mind around in the abstract, so let’s look at a hypothetical example.
Let’s imagine that a band is recording a new song. And that the “perfection” of that song is measured on a scale from one to five, with one being complete shite and five being perfect — whatever “perfect” means, which is largely irrelevant since there’s no such thing as a perfectly recorded song anyway.
Let’s now also say that, because there’s no such thing as a perfectly recorded song, four is the highest possible rating. We’ll call a four “near perfect” and that’s as good as it gets, really.
Now let’s say, just hypothetically, that the band in question is the most famous and influential band in history, and as such, has very high standards. Nothing goes out the door, ideally, without being rated a four, with all of the individual latitude that standard contains.
Next, let’s suppose that two members of this hypothetical band are recording this new song. Let’s call them Juan and Pablo, y’know, just to conceal their identities. (For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the other two band members, Jorge and Ricardo, are off in the bog getting high.)
Juan is a phenomenally talented singer/songwriter who may also be a word prodigy, but he isn’t a musical prodigy and therefore doesn’t have a finely tuned ear for sonic detail. He listens to the latest take of the song and, from what he hears and by his elevated-but-not-musical prodigy standards, he gives it a four. Near perfect. Good on, then, the song has met his standards, and Juan doesn’t need another take. Time to move on.
Pablo has the same high standards as Juan — he’s also looking for a “near perfect” four. But unlike Juan, Pablo is a musical prodigy. When he listens to the same take, he hears details… musical flaws… that Juan, for all his wordsmithing brilliance, isn’t able to hear. So for Pablo — using the exact same “near perfect” standard as Juan — the song isn’t a four yet. It’s maybe a high three. More work will be required to make the song sound as good to Pablo as it does to Juan. Not better than. Not perfect. As good as.
Maybe at this point, Juan gets frustrated. Maybe he’s tired and wants to go home and drop some acid and listen to the latest Dylan album, and he thinks Pablo is just being, well, a perfectionist. After all, Juan listened to the song and it’s clearly a “near perfect” four. What the hell’s wrong with Pablo, making them do another take?
But what Juan isn’t getting is that this isn’t Pablo being a perfectionist. Remember, Pablo is judging the song using the same standard as Juan. Neither of them is looking for a perfect five. They’re both after a “near perfect” four. But because Pablo hears more detail than Juan does, he also hears more imperfections. So it’s going to take more work on the song before Pablo’s ears can hear the song as the “near perfect” four that Juan is currently hearing.
Same standards. Different ears.
Now is a good time to remind you, dear reader, that virtually every problem in this dumpster fire we call human civilization stems from an inability to understand what it’s like to walk in the other person’s shoes.
Geoff Emerick demonstrates this inability to understand or validate another person’s experience when he talks about Paul working on the vocal for Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da: “Richard and I began the long, tedious process of rolling and rerolling the tape as [Paul] experimented endlessly, making minute changes to the lead vocal, in search of some kind of elusive perfection that only he could hear in his head.” (Here, There and Everywhere, p. 254) That’s Emerick imposing his non-prodigy experience onto Paul. It doesn’t seem to occur to Emerick that Paul’s not trying for perfect, but for “near perfect” — just like Emerick presumably is — or that Paul can hear actual flaws “in his own head” that Emerick simply doesn’t have the ears to hear. And notice Emerick’s not very gracious about it, either, with words like “tedious” and “endlessly” and, yes, “perfection[ist].”
But calling someone a name doesn’t make it so. I can call you a monkey, that doesn’t mean you swing from the trees and eat a lot of bananas. I can call someone a perfectionist, that doesn’t mean they’re actually aiming for perfection. It just means I lack the imagination or empathy to put myself in their shoes and understand that the other person has skills that I don’t have and is thus able to perceive things I can’t perceive.
Anyone can call anyone anything — and they often do, when tensions are already high for other reasons, like, say, mysterious things that happened in India and someone in a tiara eating your digestive biscuit and feeling unappreciated as a songwriter and also other Bigger Problems that we won’t get into here.
People get pissed at each other, and things that they used to feel fine about start to annoy them, and they start to put nasty names to those things. That’s human nature, when a relationship is strained — to wound by weaponizing whatever’s to hand, especially when the people involved don’t seem especially good at talking about their real feelings. All normal if unfortunate behavior, but none of it makes the nasty names true. In other words, someone calling someone a name doesn’t constitute any kind of credible evidence that the name is accurate. Understanding that starts to clear away a lot of the confusion here.
I hope this at least offers cause for reflection when it comes to the “perfectionist Paul” trope, but…
What if the reasoning above is 100% wrong? What if it turns out that Pablo… Paul… actually was looking for perfection whereas the others weren’t? Mind you, nothing I’ve found in anything Paul has shared re: his creative process suggests this is the case, and he’s released lots of material that could have, by his own admission, benefited from another pass, starting with McCartney.
So, seriously, is this just me creating a convoluted excuse to apologize for Paul’s creative process? Well, the thing is, I don’t need a convoluted excuse — I’ll unapologetically apologize for Paul McCartney’s creative process anytime. Because even if Paul is or was at some point a perfectionist (and again I don’t think the record supports this), we’d still be wise to think twice before calling him — or anyone, really — a perfectionist.
We throw a lot of words around in Beatledom, not all of them kind. It seems to me that, at the very least, if we can’t be kind, we’d perhaps do well to throw those words around a bit more mindfully — and I’m including myself in that “we.” Because “perfectionist” is almost always used as a pejorative term. A slur. You can tell this right off, because it’s usually paired with the word “accuse.”
If I may go back to my personal story one last time here, I know firsthand how much it hurts, to have that accusation hurled at me by someone who has no interest in learning what the world looks like through my eyes… or in our case here, through Paul McCartney’s ears. How much easier just to hurl the accusation and move on, leaving someone else to deal with the damage.
In truth, labeling Paul a perfectionist because he has the ability to hear musical flaws we can’t hear says more about us than it does about Paul. It’s us projecting our discomfort with our lack of musical prodigy-ness onto him, demanding that he bend to our limited viewpoint and slapping a disparaging label on him when he (thankfully) refuses to sacrifice his gift to our lack of one. It’s our arrogant and narrow-minded insistence on dragging him down to our level of ordinariness. It’s Geoff Emerick resenting having to do the work of rerolling the tape (which BTW, it’s literally his job to do, in service of Paul’s creative process.)
Inherent in accusing someone of perfectionism, whether it’s true or not, is a sort of reverse classism. It’s not far off from the “don’t get above your raising” attitude that permeates the rural culture I grew up in — the belief that someone who has more education or talent is somehow behaving inappropriately when they use that education or talent in a way that puts them ahead of everyone else. By calling Paul a perfectionist, we’re essentially saying, “don’t get above your raising.” Don’t use your superior ears, and if you do, we’ll call you names, even as we’re busy venerating the results.
Calling Paul a perfectionist is essentially demanding that he diminish his talent in exchange for being liked. It’s bullying, really, though we perhaps don’t intend it to be. And we’d all be better served in Beatledom to stop enabling that kind of nonsense. We’re better than that. Or we ought to be. All of us, self included.
One more thing. Here’s a spreadsheet of the number of full-band takes for every song from Rubber Soul on, because yes, this is what I spend my spare time doing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AY0JhyOmm__9gmGPovWfAT86oGc4B2rCAFL-7lJwCSs/edit?usp=sharing (source: The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, EMI 1988, Mark Lewisohn)
Notice that Paul’s not in any way unusual relative to the others in terms of number of full-band takes for any of his songs. Notice that Maxwell, which John once claimed they did “a million takes” of, doesn’t even make the Top 20, nor does Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da. Top chart position? George, with a song that didn’t even appear on any Beatles albums. Most appearances in the Top 20? That would be John.
Now, of course, the number of full-band takes isn’t the only way to determine how much work a song took, but that’s the thing usually cited by the Standard Narrative and by John and George when they were in post-breakup “nasty names” mode. Paul’s prodigy-ears did mean he often overdubbed more than the others, particularly his own parts, but that’s not perfectionism. That’s because his ability to hear more detail meant that it also took him more takes to reach the same “near perfect” standard that the others were using.
So here’s the thing then — if the Standard Narrative got something this easy to check wrong… well, we’re back to the thing we started with. Just because the Standard Narrative tells us it’s so doesn’t make it true. Maybe it’s time to start questioning the gospel on other, bigger things as well.
This article, by the way, is not perfect and was never intended to be.
Q.E.D.
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The spreadsheet is great, and your explanation makes sense. I think there are some important differences between “perfectionist” and “lots of takes.” The multiple takes of “Strawberry Fields” included the whole band, and the changes from take 1 to the final band versions were big ones. None of the arrangements matched the mood and sound that John wanted, but the final result was impressive all the same. The 102 takes of “Not Guilty” wer a lot for a song that wasn’t all that great to begin with, but at least all four Beatles got to play instruments and try things out. That’s not the same as Paul recording and re-cording his vocals on “Oh! Darling!” or “Obla-di, Obla-da,” on his own time, which might have been painfully boring for the engineers, but didn’t impose on John, George, or Ringo. But when Paul’s pursuit of just the right sound required the whole band to take multiple takes, or to whack an anvil with a hammer (thanks, Mal) it was too much. The quality of the song. the level of participation, and the degree to which the song changed all affected whether the work was a satisfying pursuit of excellence or perfectionism. Some songs, like “Hold Me Tight” were a hard slog for the whole band. Others (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”) pitted Paul against the rest of the band.
Faith, enjoyable post as always!
Your experience has clearly been different, but I don’t agree that “perfectionist” is necessarily a critique, much less a slur. I’ve had it applied to me–descriptively–more times than I can count, to describe a quality of having a strong, extremely detailed vision of what I want to create, and taking the time and attention necessary to achieve that. That is accurate. I am a perfectionist. And I am a perfectionist in precisely the same way you’re describing Paul, in that I work with other talented, mercurial, opinionated collaborators to create sprawling idiosyncratic creative projects that my name is at the top of. When I piss a collaborator off by being thoughtless or bullying or distracted or boring or a million other things, I cannot achieve the quality I wish to achieve. That is a flaw in me and my “talent,” not in my collaborators for not being able to put themselves in my shoes.
Once you detach from the idea of perfectionism being a slur, it becomes clearer that Paul’s bandmates, specifically John and George, used that term as shorthand to express something other than or extra to merely having a strong, extremely detailed vision etc etc. When John and George bitch about Paul’s perfectionism, they are referring to a failure in his people skills; an overbearing quality he apparently had which rubbed them the wrong way. Over and over again.
This really matters. Paul needed John and George to make the sounds he wanted for his own work, and by doing things that apparently antagonized them, he was sabotaging himself, and the group. That’s what they meant by “perfectionism” in this case, and it’s a 100% legitimate critique. They were his bandmates; if they thought he was overbearing or unpleasant or made them not want to be Beatles or make Beatles records, they had a right to say it. And they said it, and we have to acknowledge that as part of the historical record. Nobody talks about “Not Guilty” or “Strawberry Fields Forever” putting massive stress on the group; but they do talk about “Obladi Oblada” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” That must be explained.
Which leads me to your use of “the Standard Narrative.” You’re not arguing with a bunch of rock critics or Boomer historians–in this case, you’re arguing with John and George directly (and Geoff Emerick, and and and…) Those people were there, we were not. To come back 55 years later and retcon it so that Paul was eminently reasonable, just following his Godlike ears, and they were all…what? Jealous? Lying? Being unfair to Paul for reasons-reasons-reasons? That sounds fannish to me. It’s not impossible, but by calling it “the Standard Narrative,” you’re covering the fact that you’re disagreeing with not only primary sources who were consistent, but the only sources who could really know. The Beatles was the single time that Paul McCartney recorded with musicians as an equal, and John and George came to really dislike the experience. Why?
Paul somehow managed to infuriate George Harrison so much that he said Paul “ruined me as a guitar player,” and that he “would never be in another band with Paul McCartney.” John could’ve recorded with Paul before his death–to the tune of what, $100 million in 1976 dollars?–and pointedly did not. Grouse about “the Standard Narrative” all you like, but it provides an explanation for this animosity–Paul’s overbearing nature and tendency to drive the band through too many takes of songs the rest of them found minor or uninteresting. The studio logs don’t matter; what we think of the songs doesn’t matter; THEY said it clearly and consistently. If we’re now going to conclude that Paul actually wasn’t especially overbearing, or didn’t drive his bandmates batty, we’re going to have to come up with an equally simple, equally compelling explanation for the animosity…that is equally supported by the historical record. Saying that people often don’t understand the uniquely gifted is true, but it is equally true that the uniquely gifted are often uncommonly poor at managing group endeavors (especially when they are taking cocaine).
Finally, there’s no arguing taste, but if all we had was Paul solo material, this blog wouldn’t exist. Solo–left to follow his own talent without hindrance; left to handpick his collaborators and drive his studio folks through as many takes as his golden ears told him to do–McCartney’s work has never come close to equalling his best Beatles work, much less surpassing it. So where’s the evidence that Paul hears more or more finely or better than John or George? Embedded in your argument is a belief that Paul is musically better than the others, and while he’s clearly more adept in some ways, his solo catalog suggests to me that he maybe should write a lot less, record a lot less, and that his creative method may well be flawed and self-sabotaging. Just like John and George seem to be telling us.
I think you discovered something that surprised you–the studio logs–and then crafted a whole new paradigm to explain that one set of data. But this new explanation to me feels thin. It is unprovable, is at odds with primary sources, and solves a problem that doesn’t need solving. “They said Paul was a jerk, but what if he wasn’t?” Twenty-one takes or sixty-two, Paul’s bandmates said he was overbearing and–despite 13 years of overwhelming success, wealth and acclaim–almost defiantly chose to stop recording with him. That’s the larger story, untouched by the studio logs, and if it wasn’t Paul’s “perfectionism” that did it, one has to come up with something equally as persuasive. Saying Paul is a musical genius who hears differently–something which I’m not sure his post-1970 catalog shows–is an interesting theory, but one that I’ll need a lot more convincing on.
Hey all,
I think maybe the best way to address Michael’s questions, which are a bit outside the scope of the point made in the article, but are perhaps some of the reasonable next questions to explore, is probably to share the part of the article that I cut for length… so I offer part 2 below. I think it’s enough in the vicinity of what Michael’s asking that it covers things…
*Just so you know what you’re getting into, please note this is rough draft stuff and only very lightly edited.*
For me and for many — probably even most — prodigies, growing up with an unusual gift was to grow up with an acute awareness that the love and approval of parents and teachers and the larger world was contingent on the successful expression of that gift. It’s all too easy, when your child or your student has exceptional talent, to begin to conflate the ability with the person. For a prodigy, our talent becomes so interwoven with who we are that it’s hard for us — and for those around us — to separate the two and our worthiness of love and approval too often becomes intertwined with our success (or lack thereof).
That link — between the expression of my talent and my worth in the world/worthiness of being loved was burned into my consciousness at an early age — my gift and I became one and the same — eventually in my eyes as well as in the eyes of my parents and teachers.
Because of this, being loved and accepted in the world required continually accomplishing things to make people proud of me. An endless treadmill in search of love and approval. Prodiges aren’t usually allowed to be loved outside of their gifts.
And at the same time, being a prodigy also requires a continual devil’s bargain — fulfilling one’s gifts in order to win the approval of parents/teachers/etc while also somehow downplaying it so as to not alienate peers, who often resent it when someone else is able to do things easily that they have to work at. (Our culture tends to love prodigies and geniuses — from afar and as long as we don’t have to live in close proximity to them.)
So for me and I suspect for most prodigies who have to walk in the real world, It was a constant push-pull — express my gift and bask in the praise of my parents and teachers, or dumb it down and dim my light and have, you know, actual friends.
I never did find a balance. Paul, in the early days with John, seems like he did. He and John were complimentary parts of the same whole in one particularly important way that was crucial to all of it working — John’s lyrical gift, Paul’s musical gift — meant that they could interact as equals and neither of them had to dumb themselves down in order to be liked/loved by the other. And together, they got the approval of the world for it. They had it all, for awhile, at least least in terms of Lennon’/McCartney (in terms of the band, see below for a bit more on that). It all goes wrong at a certain point, of course, in ways directly related to all of this, but that’s outside the scope of this and a separate perpetually in progress article that may get finished someday…
But back to the main thing here. Unsurprisingly, that same link between love and accomplishment that was burned into me seems to have been burned into Paul’s consciousness at an early age and in a similarly destructive way. While there’s no indication that Paul was an intellectual prodigy, per se, initially, that generalized link between love and accomplishment would almost certainly have been ignited when he was a schoolboy, as an academically gifted student marked early on for a professional career, and with ambitious, social climbing parents anxious to see their son step up in the British caste system.
Once that accomplishment=love link is forged, I don’t think it ever really goes away, at least not without a lot of therapy or self-directed inner work (neither of which would have happened for Paul or any of them until much later in life). Speaking personally, I’ve struggled for years and have largely given up trying to separate the two at this point, much to my dismay as it means that if I don’t eventually live 100% up to my potential, I’m probably destined to die unhappy and dissatisfied with my self worth. But I digress… it’s the wine, probably.
Paul would have transferred that same pressure to justify his worth and earn his family’s love when his life became about music, only now with even more pressure given that in his family’s eyes, music would have been a step down from a professional career (as is the case with most families when their kid wants to be an artist — again, we like artists, as long as they’re not our kids where we have to worry about them living in our basement forever because they have no life skills… “The guitar’s all well and good, John, but you can’t make a living with it.”). Paul’s father’s subsequent disapproval of his choice to pursue music over a teaching career would almost certainly have put extra pressure on Paul to justify his rebellious decision by overachieving with music, so as not to lose the love-linked-to-approval that he’d come to expect from his family as a promising student.
When he and John forged their bond, I’d suggest that Paul’s accomplishment=approval=love link would have extended — and I would suggest actually almost completely shifted — to wanting John’s love and approval (“I made him choose between his father and me and he chose me.” Yes, he did, John.), as well as the band’s, and then further to father figure George Martin. Oh, and then when they hit it big, also, you know, the entire effing world, which loved him only as long as Lennon/McCartney and the band continued to produce hit records and brilliant songs, constantly having to top themselves. The work required to get a “near perfect” four, in short, got more and more high-stakes for Paul. And Paul, I think, became more and more terrified of letting John, the band, Martin, the world and himself down by underachieving or failing to meet expectations.
It’s really no wonder then — and probably inevitable — that Paul would be the one most attached to public approval for his music, the one who most wanted to keep touring (not just for the applause, which for someone with a love=approval link would have felt like oxygen, but likely in part for that), and of course, most devastated when the band broke up and the public blamed him for it.
In my personal story, the pressure to perform in order to be loved more or less drove me mad for awhile, and nearly ruined my life. Still threatens to on a daily basis, actually. Maybe it even did ruin my life — the jury’s still out on that.
So can you start to see how exhausted and afraid Paul probably was, this deeply sensitive, wounded motherless boy, that the world would stop loving him… that the band would stop loving him… that John would stop loving him… if he didn’t live up to expectations? If he didn’t strive for — not perfection — but the closest he could get?
And can you start to see how this mattered particularly to Paul, because music was the only place where he could fully express his emotions, his inner life? How the irritation and the annoyance and the pressure to “move on to the next song already” forced him to stuff it all back down inside or alienate his closest friends and bandmates, and created a bubble of shame and frustration and isolation, which in turn, increased the pressure to get it all out into the music? A vicious, self-repeating cycle of madness that led to masterpieces, but also extreme emotional torment. It’s a miracle — and a testament to his inner strength — that he survived it at all, that he didn’t become yet another casualty to genius via suicide or a cycle of substance abuse and rehab or just descending into insanity and obscurity.
Am I in this matter a Paul apologist? As a fellow prodigy, you’re damned right I am. It’s an impossible position to be in. To feel that you have to achieve, to constantly better yourself, to impress and dazzle, in order to be loved, and at the same time, have those who demand the best from you reject you because you hear flaws they can’t hear, denying you the right to hold the music to the same standards as your bandmates do?
It’s no wonder he fell apart for awhile.
And then what if you deliberately lower your standards and make something sloppy, like say, a debut solo album, in response to the criticism? To prove you’re not a “perfectionist”? And what if, when you do that, your worst fears come true — the people whose approval you most want then accuse you of not being as talented as they thought you were? A fraud. (not helped by the Wenner interview, of course). And what if, just as you feared all your life, the whole world falls a little out of love with you as a result of lowering your standards? What if this proves to you that it’s true — people really do only love you when you’re dazzling? And what if that wounds you all over again? What if you knew that you’ll never escape the trap, no matter what you do. What if you’re damned either way.
What if, in other words, you were Paul McCartney?
How might you respond if you found the emotional ground underneath you collapsing even as you felt yourself coming into the full flower of your gift?
Related to this, when these same intimate relationships become rocky, when we, in essence, fall out of love, things that used to not annoy us, or that annoyed us but we overlooked them in the happier times, start to REALLY annoy us when we’re already dissatisfied in the relationship for other reasons. And now we have nothing to lose by pointing these little annoyances out, in order to score a few points, make ourselves feel better, get even for whatever we’re angry or hurting about. And of course these little things get magnified in proportion to our sense of perceived personal injustice. And not only do the actual things that annoy us get magnified, but so does the importance of these things. That little thing that used to annoy us a little but we could live with it because we love the other person becomes that HUGE thing that is so awful that we can’t live with it for another minute because it’s the worst behavior in the whole world. (In a marriage, the cliche example of leaving the toilet seat up, which suddenly becomes Grounds for Divorce when the marriage is falling apart.) We’ve all been there, and if you haven’t, can I please have your life?
As to why Paul didn’t do a better job managing the interpersonal effects of his prodigy-ness, I’m a bit at a loss as to why anyone would expect him to. Being a prodigy doesn’t come with a built-in set of coping skills or people skills or any kind of emotional intelligence to understand how to handle it. In fact, quite the contrary. In my firsthand experience, people tend to think if you’re a prodigy, that somehow means that you know how to do everything well, including get along with people while somehow also expressing fully your talent. But as we know, the Beatles really didn’t know how to do much of anything particularly well other than make incredible music. They clearly didn’t know how to resolve conflicts or talk through anything or work their way through complex interpersonal dynamics. They almost certainly had no coaching in any kind of healthy collaborative process — where would they have gotten it from?
Where was Paul supposed to learn how to handle all of this? It’s easy to forget this now, in 2022, but 1968 was well before the self help movement that we all now take for granted. There wasn’t a Barnes and Noble self-help section where he could pick up the latest copy of “So Your Bandmates Think You’re a Perfectionist” or listen to a Ted Talk on “How to Make an Iconic Album Without Alienating Your Lead Guitar Player” or sign up for a weekend workshop on “So You’re a Prodigy in the World’s Most Important Band: Now What?” Good self-help resources simply weren’t available to anyone in the 60s (or really even the 70s or 80s). We forget that now, awash in self-help resources everywhere we look. None of that existed back then. All there was was Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carngie, both of which had very dubious advice that would unequivocally have gotten Paul into even more trouble had he used it.
Regarding George’s nasty comment, I’m not sure what you’re asking here that isn’t covered in the article ,but at the risk of starting George arguments, let’s unpack it a bit more.
First, George can be annoyed with Paul’s creative process all he wants. That still doesn’t make Paul’s perfectionist. That just makes George annoyed with Paul’s creative process. Again, accusing someone of something doesn’t make it true, and people say a lot of stuff when they’re wounded and striking out, and I’m not seeing why George in particular would get a pass re: that, especially since he had a lot of personal axes to grind almost right from the beginning of the band.
Which axes? Well, starting with Paul more or less dumping him to spend time with John. Add to that being not-a-prodigy in constant self-inflicted competition with Lennon/McCartney, just for starters. Then there’s his general grouchiness about fame and celebrity. There are lots of reasons to take George’s grousing about Paul with a grain of salt.
One of them is illustrated starkly in Get Back. Since we have an actual video of it, the Get Back “Two of Us” exchange between Paul and George is the one usually pointed to as an example of how put-upon George was by Paul’s demands since we have an actual video of it, as some kind of “proof” of Paul telling George what to play. What’s actually going on here is quite different, though.
When George gets mad at Paul for “telling him what to play” on “Two of Us,” my own musician’s ears (not prodigy/Paul level ears, of course, but functional) tell me that’s not what Paul’s doing.
George was at that point (and all through the White Album sessions which had just wrapped) under the thrall of Clapton (he talks about Clapton all throughout Get Back like Clapton’s the second coming). Clapton is, of course, an extremely good technical guitar player, much better in fact than George (or most anyone, really). But what George at his best has that Clapton tends not to have is restraint. The ability to underplay, to avoid showing off, to hold his contributions to a track back in service of the song and save it till it’s just right rather than playing all over the track just because there’s an empty space to fill. In this way, George was just the right guitarist for the Beatles, whereas Clapton would have been just the wrong one.
The problem is that, in Get Back and especially during the “Two of Us” spat, George isn’t playing like George Harrison. He’s playing like Eric Clapton. He’s playing too much, too busy. When Paul tells him in the “Two of Us” scene not to play a riff after every phrase, and to hold it back for the solo, he’s telling George, “Don’t play it like Clapton, play it like George Harrison.” And Paul was right and it was a compliment, though George didn’t recognise it as one and maybe Paul didn’t either — Paul wanted George, not Eric. A compliment, but not one that anyone recogised or had the ability to articulate.
More broadly, I’d suggest that we take literally everything that the four of them threw around about one another with a grain of salt from when they came back from India through probably at least 1974. Most of it got retracted anyway, when they all came to their senses again, and the rest, well, as I said above and in the article, people say stuff when they’re upset all four of them were piss poor interpersonal communicators — see the discussion above about no access to self-help tools to make them even aware of their lack in this area, much less how to fix it. It’s no wonder they went off to India and to primal scream therapy and drugs, etc. — that was literally the best ideas they had at the time, and not very good ones, really.
Anyway, thank you, all for reading, and I hope this article inspires a fun discussion. I don’t do all that well with the back-and-forth of comments — it tends to stress me out a bit — so I’m happy to say my piece, plus this little extended bonus cut, and go poof until the next one. <3
Hope you all are enjoying the new Revolver as much as I am!
Faith
Faith, this all makes a lot of sense to me. I think you’ve captured a lot about McCartney’s probable inner life and why he has a reputation for being “prickly” about criticism. Your point about the historical context is also important. The Beatles were born in the 1940s and grew up in Northern England — not exactly a time or place known for its embrace of therapeutic ideas about managing relationships. And then to experience that level of fame! It’s amazing that one or more of them didn’t die young of an overdose or accident, honestly.
I agree it’s a plausible reading, within reason. Paul McCartney does not, to my eye, profile as a prodigy. He profiles as an extremely intelligent, driven person who is particularly gifted at music. He did not pick up any instruments at a particularly early age; he was not driven to learn how to read and write music; when he expressed his songwriting at around 14 (not five), he was gifted but not prodigious.
All that data, and the data of his very hit-and-miss post-Beatle years, do not read to me as prodigy. Geniuses do not suddenly lose their ability to create genius-level work when they lose a collaborator; that’s someone gifted and driven who, in a certain situation, can do the thing. The very definition of first a prodigy, and then a genius, in the ability to do the thing regardless.
If you’d like to see who I’m comparing him to, read about Dudley Moore. Similar time, similar place, similar class standing. Dudley profiles more like a musical prodigy to my eye; but neither are in the league of a Mozart, who was a true prodigy.
When you’re a prodigy, people treat you differently, even if—or especially if—you grow up in an intellectually blighted area. People RECOGNIZE you very early (under five); they have strong opinions about you. You are strongly liked, or strongly disliked, and you feel it — a very peculiar sensation at a very small age! In addition to the binary that Faith presents–either expressing your gift, and being ostracized, or suppressing it and feeling blighted–there is a third choice, which is to apply that precocity to the study of people. Most of the genius-level people I’ve met are also very socially adept, and most are very attractive. Whether or not they are physically attractive, they’re super-attractive.
Paul’s super-attractive, but it all came later. There’s really no evidence that Paul was recognized as a prodigy of any sort; nor did his academic record show prodigal talents or even marked aptitudes in allied fields like math. There were, even in England in 1955, lots of ways for prodigies to be identified and elevated, and Dudley’s career is proof. That Paul even had the choice to go to Hamburg rather than Oxford or some such suggests that he wasn’t a prodigy. He was a smart, driven kid who loved rock and roll. Who MADE himself into something, wasn’t born as it. In lots of ways, that’s more impressive.
Like John, much of Paul’s “genius” was being the right guy at the right time. But that’s definitionally something very different than a prodigy. By ’68-’69, when he’s walking into Twickenham with songs he’s written overnight–that’s after 15 years of practice and soaking in it. Wonderful, impressive, but not prodigal. And his defiance of the feelings of his working partners–people he NEEDS to make his stuff–makes me think he’s a very smart guy on an ego trip. I am currently watching a person I went to school with be dragged in the press for doing a series of stupid, socially graceless things; this behavior makes me realize that they are not a genius as I previously thought, but a very smart person. A Paul, not a Mozart.
None of this invalidates anything that Faith says about Paul — but we need to be careful about the language, especially on a fan site. There’s an element of “just-so” story to both this and the original post: defining a term in an idiosyncratic way based on her own experience—“perfectionist” or “prodigy”—and then justifying Paul’s behavior within those custom-made parameters. She’s taking as read that Paul is not just extraordinary but also wonderful/reasonable/perceptive, and then arguing backwards to fit that story.
IMHO, one can either LOVE a Beatle, or see him clearly. Interpreting Paul, and identifying with Paul, are two different, fundamentally opposed pleasures. And if you don’t see that they are opposed — if you’re defending — you’re identifying. Did it myself with John for years; then I got interested in what made him tick, and switched. A lot of the blowback I used to get re: John is this very switch happening, and people not liking it.
Look, I really appreciate Paul and agree with a lot of what you have said regarding his motivations, insecurities, and internal dilemmas at the time. I am the type of person who wastes my time defending him in Youtube comments sections. However, I want to caution against looking at this context and concluding that, because we can empathize with Paul, he was right and his bandmates were wrong. Yes, we should take John and George’s post-breakup statements with a grain of salt, but I think it’s pretty much undeniable that something Paul was doing in the studio was causing problems. This is clear even if everything said post-breakup was meant to be defamatory. And it’s not just John and George saying it — we have testimony from Ringo, engineers, etc.
Your argument is essentially that they should have just accepted Paul’s overbearing and controlling tendencies because of his “superior ears.” That arrangement seems impossible and unfair. It relies on the idea that Paul was always right (he wasn’t) AND that he was the superior Beatle. Even if you believe Paul is the most talented of the four of them (which I do, most of the time, though how can it truly be measured?), he’s still in a band of equals who should be treated as such. It seems foolish to presume that every time Paul criticized Ringo’s drumming, he was just hearing something that Ringo couldn’t. This, unfairly and inaccurately, presumes that Paul consistently has a better ear for drumming than Ringo. And even if this was true, the expectation that Ringo, despite being the band’s actual drummer, should’ve just accepted it seems ridiculous.
Paul McCartney is one of the great talents of the 20th century. I don’t think he’s a musical prodigy. I do think he is a genius (though through multiple debates on this topic, I have come to realize that the term “genius” is extremely subjective). But even if he’s the most brilliant, incredible, naturally talented, always-right person on the planet, he still shouldn’t be absolved for being arrogant and insensitive towards his friends/equals.
When talking about Paul McCartney, considering everything you have laid out is essential: his conflation of external accomplishment and internal worth, the impossible pressure placed upon him, the lack of tools and resources he had available to help manage his mental health and interpersonal relationships. All these things allow us to understand why he acted as he did in the late 60s and to empathize with him as a real human being. However, it does not follow that because he has understandable motivations, everything he did was justified. We should still acknowledge the problematic and, frankly, harmful effects of his actions. Paul doesn’t have to be blameless and eternally correct for us to sympathize with him. Just because a flaw is human and understandable doesn’t mean it’s not a flaw.
@Maya, I didn’t read what Faith wrote as excusing Paul, but rather as trying to understand him.
You gave a few examples of his misbehavior, which is fair enough, but I bet there was some on his bandmates’ part too (ok, not Ringo – what IS it with that guy?!).
Perhaps their less than optimal behavior isn’t called out as often due to the three-against-one dynamic that resulted over their business differences (Klein) and because Paul refrained.
I’m amazed at how seldom John is seen as having been WAY out of line in imposing his girlfriend on the band. He and George changed Paul’s release date instead of asking him to change it, which was NOT cool. And we can’t forget Klein (unfortunately) – how reasonable was it to expect Paul to agree to a manager who was antagonistic toward him and clearly in John’s corner? How crappy was it of John to tell Paul he wanted a divorce in front of Klein (among others), and bring up ending the “myth” of Lennon-McCartney in a meeting instead of one-on-one? Speaking of which, during the storied trip to Spain, did John change Brian’s mind about the name order they’d agreed to, putting an end to the McCartney/Lennon credit?
Sure, some of the above is probably defensible to one degree or another, but just saying… As a fellow Paul defender (obviously!), I thank you for your intrepid YouTube activity.
I mean, yeah, I agree that John and George acted poorly as well, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile to measure their and Paul’s actions against each other in this instance. It’s not like their bad behavior cancels out. We could stack up John and Paul’s mistakes to see whose are greater, but in the end, we’d still be left with two towers of mistakes.
If I had been saying that Paul was the cause of the breakup, then I think it would be relevant to bring up how other parties’ misbehavior also, and perhaps more directly, contributed. The statement invites comparison because the implication is that Paul acted worse than the others. However, if I just say “Paul did something wrong” and the counter is “WELL John actually did this other thing wrong,” it just reads like defensive whataboutism to me. And I do think I observe this tendency more often from Paul fans. My guess is that it’s a reaction to decades of relative mistreatment in Beatles history. After decades of people unfairly highlighting Paul’s flaws, it’s easy to perceive further discussion of said flaws as an attack. But I think nowadays some fans of Paul feel like he’s being attacked when he isn’t and are needlessly defensive. Even Paul himself engages in this a bit: his repeated assertion that he, too, was an innovative musician and was actually involved in the avant-garde before John was, at one point, a legitimately necessary thing he had to say to rebuild his reputation. But this aggressive image rehabilitation is no longer necessary, so it sometimes seems weirdly defensive when he goes back to these talking points.
I find it interesting that you feel John and George’s misbehavior are seldom discussed. Forty years ago, yeah, and I won’t pretend that the impact of those years is no longer felt. I mean, I spent two days arguing with someone on Reddit who said that John and Yoko were the true victims of the Beatles breakup and that Paul manipulates everyone in his presence to do his bidding, so I get it. However, I really don’t think Paul is the underdog anymore in Beatles discussion and literature. Maybe it’s the spaces that I’m in, but I definitely don’t think people highlight Paul’s flaws while ignoring John or George’s. I certainly don’t see that tendency amongst Dullbloggers.
In this post, I sense a bit of that defensive attitude that goes overboard in excusing Paul for something he shouldn’t be excused for. The whole idea here is that Paul was well within his rights to act the way that he did and that we shouldn’t have expected him to act otherwise. That goes beyond merely understanding his motives and mental state; it is a denial that his flaws were really flaws. I don’t think this denial is accurate, nor do I think it is necessary in order to empathize with Paul.
@Maya, although it’s not as bad as it used to be, I still find that John’s Beatles-era band-related misdeeds are often ignored while Paul’s are cranked up a notch. Although John is heavily criticized, it usually has to do with violent behavior – the things I mentioned aren’t even acknowledged. I also find it much more common for John fans to hate Paul than vice versa, which, along with the imbalance you acknowledged as existing in years past, does foster defensiveness. I’ve learned to avoid the more negative spaces – heydullblog is a safe haven.
@Laura Even with Ringo, I remember George Martin saying that when he didn’t like something, he’d tell John or Paul that it was crap. In Get Back, we can see that George Harrison isn’t exactly tactful when he has an opinion to share (“that’s corny”, “that’s the same old sh*t”, etc) and when they get to Apple, he’s sometimes the one telling Paul what to do. (I also remember laughing when I watched the Living In the Material World doc and Phil Spector described George as the biggest perfectionist he’d ever worked with.) John would openly insult Paul and George’s songs, and George Martin also said he could be cruel to Paul. And it’s funny how the takeaway from the Ob-la-di story is always about Paul making them do a bunch of takes and never about John storming out of the studio, getting high, coming back and telling Paul how to play his own song. Is that not bossy, or rude?
Basically, it seems to have been an environment where everyone was pretty blunt with each other, which is probably why the work was as good as it was, but also why they all struggled with different kinds of insecurities and looked to people outside the band (mostly their wives) for emotional support and reassurance. While I definitely don’t think Paul was a perfect delight to work with at all times, there can also be a real double standard there.
The way I look at it, @Liz, is to try not to bring a lot of opinions to it–meaning, not trying to figure out “How is X not rude/bossy/overbearing, and Y is?”–but to accept all that information and say, “And even so, Paul was considered overbearing/bossy/perfectionist, at least by John and George. Why might that be?”
@Maya “We should still acknowledge the problematic and, frankly, harmful effects of his actions….Just because a flaw is human and understandable doesn’t mean it’s not a flaw” sounds like it’s been put quite strongly to me.
I think many people would agree that yes, it’s understandable to be hurt or irritated if someone has become “more producery” and doesn’t seem to be welcoming your contribution as much as they might have done in the past–or as much as you might think they should given how much Bob Dylan seems to value it these days (if you’re George). And yes, it could be very frustrating indeed that someone’s telling you how to play your part based on how they’ve heard something in their head and then also telling you when you’re not hitting it (which reminded me about John’s dissatisfaction with the Beatles’ recordings and George Martin’s theory that the recordings never matched what John heard in his head–though everyone tried to help him get there short of swinging him around from the ceiling, if I’m remembering that correctly 🙂 ).
However, I’m not sure everyone would be on board with the “problematic and frankly harmful” claim, and disagreeing about that isn’t, I think, necessarily a sign that people are trying to characterize Paul as a perfect, blameless being.
Ultimately what it seems to come down to, and where people might reasonably disagree, in my opinion, is the question of whether or not Paul should have just bitten his lip and, say, let George do what he wanted with Hey Jude, or let Ringo do what he wanted with the drumming on Back in the USSR. But then, should Ringo have not said when he thought songs weren’t up to snuff or were moving in what he thought was the wrong direction? George Martin said Ringo did offer such input and was listened to. Should John have just shrugged and gone “Oh well” when Ringo’s drumming wasn’t what he wanted on Polythene Pam?
People might say, oh, well, it was the frequency with which Paul did this that was the problem. But then, what’s an acceptable vs. unacceptable level of direction or disagreement? Reasonable people could…disagree.
Or, okay, Paul should have been more sensitive. But then, *were* any of them that sensitive with one another? Did I not hear George calling some of Paul’s ideas crap? Did George Martin not say that both John and Paul could be cruel to one another when giving feedback? What’s an acceptable level vs. an unacceptable level of sensitivity on any given day? I don’t think there’s any one right answer.
And what’s Paul supposed to do when he realizes that whatever he’s saying is annoying the others more than usual (and I like the way Faith put it–that things we let slide when we’re in a good place in relationships can suddenly become The Worst when we’re not) and so steps back, but then the others complain he’s stepped back too far and say they want him to be more of a producer again?
Here’s what Paul says in an October 1986 interview with Chris Salewicz, found on amoralto’s tumblr
Paul: I was beginning to get too producery for everyone. George Martin was the actual producer and I was beginning to be too definite, and George and Ringo turned around and said, ‘Look, piss off, we’re grown-ups and we can do it without you fine.’ People like me who don’t realise when they’re being very overbearing, it comes as a great surprise to be told.
So I completely clammed up and backed off: right, ‘OK, they’re right, I’m a turd.’ So a day or so went by and the session started to flag a bit and so eventually Ringo turned round to me and said, ‘Come on… produce’, and so it was like you couldn’t have it both ways. You either had to have me doing what I did, which, let’s face it, I hadn’t done too bad, or I was going to back off and become paranoid myself, which was what happened./end Paul
None of this sounds like great, mature, communication, from George and Ringo’s “piss off, we can do it without you” to the “Okay, I will” response from Paul.
Instead of thinking “You either get me exactly as I am or you get nothing,” Paul could have…I don’t know, tried to find other ways to show them they were valued even if he did strongly want certain things certain ways on certain songs (unless that’s not an acceptable desire? Again, reasonable people could disagree on that)? Maybe by mixing up songs where he had a more definite idea of what he wanted vs ones where he didn’t? But then, it sounds like Paul did really get tripped up on what would be acceptable to say vs. what would trigger a “piss off” response, especially after having been told to, well, piss off. So again, what’s an acceptable level of input? I should also note here that there’s a later interview where he says he would carefully consider whether he should say anything or not.
Like I said, it’s understandable that they were annoyed at times that they were being told what to do or not do, especially at this point in the Beatles experience.
However, I don’t think it necessarily follows that “Others were annoyed by Paul” necessarily =”That means Paul’s flawed.”
Personally, I’d go with something like: “Paul heard some songs a certain way and directed his bandmates about how to achieve those songs the way he wanted. Given where they were at the time personally and as a band, they found this extra annoying.”
Are “frankly harmful” and “flawed” essential parts of your reading? If so, why?
Just a bit of a tangent, but I also think it’s interesting that former members of Wings have talked about how wonderful it was to work with Paul, but have said that biographers and journalists only seem to want to emphasize the negative. It’s not as though they *didn’t* have issues with money or the musical direction sometimes, or that Paul didn’t ignore things he didn’t want to deal with. But the positives have a hard time making it into biographies. I’d recommend looking at the Understanding McCartney series on youtube if anyone’s interested in the negatives *and* the positives.
@Nina, nice comment, thank you!
I’m not privy to the details of the financial agreements that the members of Wings had/have with Paul, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that there are ongoing royalty flows that make antagonizing your ex-boss Paul McCartney (a beloved billionaire with lawyers) not the smartest idea, especially when an interviewer asks you about his most famous flaw. Also, the other members of Wings were basically “for hire”; their thoughts on Paul’s working method are a data point, sure, but not one I’d give too much credence to. Especially since Wings = employees of Paul, and Beatles = four equals. Conflating those two arrangements seem to be the whole problem.
John and George were clear that Paul’s overdirective behavior in the last years of the Beatles was instrumental in their not wanting to be in The Beatles anymore, or in any future bands with Paul. Is that not “problematic and frankly harmful” if you like The Beatles? If your primary interest is Paul, okay; but me personally, I like The Beatles — so anything any of them do that makes the Beatles stop, I would characterize as “problematic and frankly harmful.”
Paul’s being overdirective is not a matter of unknowable religious doctrine upon which reasonable people can disagree. Further, what “reasonable people” think doesn’t matter; there were any four people in this relationship, and two of them (at least) said Paul was bossy. This is as substantiated as could possibly be, and if we’re going to examine such a basic point, there has to be an overwhelming reason to do so, and really compelling counter-evidence. There isn’t, and there isn’t.
So…why? Why the endless, needless wriggling? The original post takes a perfectly reasonable idea–that a topflight musician was too exacting with his schoolchum bandmembers, annoyed them, and caused even more tension in a time already filled with tension caused by business and relationships and drugs–(in other words, exactly what happened with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, for example) and works very hard to make that idea cruel and unfair to Paul who, actually, was simply expressing himself as a genius in an world geared towards non-geniuses. Now we have comments like yours and others, appealing to the crowd, “Does THIS seem unreasonable, O Beatles fans? Oh but John and George THEMSELVES did blah-blah-blah…What would you have Paul do, O Beatles fans, if you were Paul?”
Why all this rhetorical effort? Why not instead acknowledge that there is 1) a tendency among some fans to overidentify with Paul; 2) a tendency for these same fans to consider Paul unfairly maligned–in ways and to an extent that the generally contented and beloved man himself apparently doesn’t share (“I was beginning to get too producery for everyone”); and 3) these fans, fired by their own fascination, write long briefs chronicling just how their man has been wronged. People have a right to their opinions, but however carefully rendered, this opinion is not inherently more interesting or thoughtful than “John was the sole genius of The Beatles.” It’s partisan-talk, and fun as that, but okay okay okay.
“I don’t think it necessarily follows that “Others were annoyed by Paul” necessarily =”That means Paul’s flawed.”
See, this is where it gets loopy. The statement isn’t “others were annoyed by Paul.” It is that “Two out of Paul’s three main collaborators said consistently, and in similar language, that a particular behavior of Paul’s at a particular time made them not want to be in a band with him anymore.” John’s and George’s stories are consistent, fit with what we know about the larger story, are largely corroborated by Paul himself, and John and George were in a position to know. And if what they are saying is even remotely true, then any reasonable Beatles fan–indeed anybody who likes Beatles music–should conclude that, yes, this is a flaw in Paul, because it injured the group he needed, and in fact desperately wanted, to continue.
You quoted him: “I was beginning to get too producery for everyone.” Even Paul agrees; and if anyone is planning a long comment about how Paul was gaslit by the others and has Stockholm Syndrome and was kept in a closet for six weeks only being let out after he agreed that yes, he was being jerky — please don’t. John, George and PAUL all agree: Paul was overbearing in the post-Epstein years. If “Back Off Boogaloo” is about Paul and not Marc Bolan, then even RINGO agrees. It’s as settled as Beatles history gets.
Compare, for example, Lennon’s taking up heroin. We could construct a long argument about how it was understandable from John’s perspective, and that John was an addict and not in control of this behavior, and even how John’s exquisite mental mechanism–the thing that made him so wonderful!–was the logical cause of this self- and other-destructive behavior. Or we could simply say, “Yeah, John’s heroin use and probable addiction was a contributing factor in the breakup of the Beatles.” And we could reasonably conclude that anybody who wouldn’t agree to this non-controversial, well-sourced, and completely rational conclusion was pretty far out on the “John is God” end of things. (Like, Lewisohn.) The “John is God” people might say that “No, it was PAUL who broke up the band for reasons reasons reasons, and in fact Paul DROVE John to heroin for reasons reasons reasons.” Because they’re not interested in constructing the most durable model of events; they’re interested in defending, and ultimately exonerating, their guy.
All grist for the mill, as far as this blog’s concerned, but I think that’s throwing up chaff because you don’t like the history you have. Fun as a game, but the more interesting question is: why defend Paul for being overbearing? Why defend John for being a drug addict? Why defend George’s apparent scorn at being a Beatle? Why the desperate need to shuffle the data to give your guy a better hand? Why not simply accept the information? That’s not supplication to the dreaded “Standard Narrative,” it’s acknowledging that after 10 years of intense public scrutiny leading to a mass of data, and 60 years of fan and journalist analysis of that data, we kinda know the main points of the story. How could we not?
“Two out of Paul’s three main collaborators said consistently, and in similar language, that a particular behavior of Paul’s at a particular time made them not want to be in a band with him anymore.”
Except in 1970, George said it would be selfish of the Beatles to not continue making music, adding something I can’t quite recall about a flower being beautiful but a garden being more so. And after they got rid of Allen Klein a few years later, George is said to have thought it cleared the way to record with Paul again.
Except in 1970, John talked about a probable rebirth for the Beatles and said he wouldn’t destroy the Beatles out of hand. Derek Taylor, who was close to John, said that if Paul went to John and said, “let’s do it together again,” he probably would. In 1976 John said about the Beatles, “I always felt the split was a mistake in many ways.”
It’s human nature to have your memories colored by what follows – for mixed feelings to become hardened in one direction. Just as John and George described the Let It Be sessions as being utterly miserable in hindsight when the sessions weren’t really wall-to-wall misery, it’s at least possible that the more negative comments they made about Paul were influenced by what came later, most likely the lawsuit.
@Laura,
“Except in 1970, George said it would be selfish of the Beatles to not continue making music, adding something I can’t quite recall about a flower being beautiful but a garden being more so.”
Yes, and I made a big big deal about that here on Dullblog when that information came out. One of the difficulties of moderating and engaging is that people are, naturally, taking what I just said as the totality of my opinion. IT NEVER IS. I’m simplifying wildly to make a point or move our discussion away from icebergs and towards open ocean.
To your list, I’d add the actual document the Beatles signed in 1979 asserting that they planned to perform again. One could dismiss that as simply a legal maneuver to scare off the current Broadway hit “Beatlemania,” but I happen to think it was genuine.
I personally feel that The Beatles would’ve performed together again. But what we KNOW is that they didn’t after April 1970 (even after 1975 when there was no legal impediments to doing so) and that John and George were adamant that Paul’s overbearing behavior was a central reason why.
@Laura—
Yes, thank you for bringing this up. Re: 1975, here’s Alan Steckler quoting (from memory, of course) George: “The only way the Beatles can get together again is if Allen isn’t there. I’m ready to do it. So is Ringo, and I think we can persuade John to go along with it. But if we’re going to work with Paul, we need to get rid of Klein.”
I know this is a radical idea, but what if PAUL rebuffed George at some point? We have nothing from Paul indicating he thought George was a delight to work with, either. They seem rather incompatible. Not saying Paul isn’t the one mostly to blame for this dynamic, just that it might…be a dynamic. Of course, Paul would never *say* that in public even if it were true.
If so, why WOULDNT George go all “well screw you then, I didn’t wanna deal with your bossy ass anyway!!!” — partly because that is often true, but also partly due to hurt feelings and a desire to save face. Much is made of Paul’s tendency to self-justify and whitewash himself, but I think it’s a fallacy to think John AND GEORGE didn’t do the same. Plus, if they are feeling the weight of having being in the wrong about Klein and the lawsuit, they have huge motivation to exaggerate Paul’s bad behavior, to make it seem he “deserved” it.
Again, not saying Paul isn’t legit difficult to work with! Just that I think things are more complicated than they appear, and George’s statements should be viewed with healthy scrutiny, just like everyone else’s.
@Ann, got a source on those George comments?
Where’s the evidence that Paul rebuffed George’s desire for a reunion? Is there any?
Here’s some data on the lawsuit between Klein and John/George/Ringo.
Here’s a quote from George from 1976, which seems consistent with how he viewed a Beatles reunion…lukewarm, at best. And you can understand, because he of the four had the most to gain from solo recording.
I personally think George only agreed to Anthology because he’d been bilked out of a lot of money and was feeling broke. That’s how little I think he wanted to go back to Beatledom. You have to remember that George’s religious beliefs held that the very stuff of Beatledom was at best illusory and at worst an active impediment to achieving enlightenment. Which was more important to him than anything else, human frailties aside. George’s issues with Paul (and to a lesser degree John) weren’t just personal, they were philosophical, and bone-deep. Do I think there were times when he was more relaxed about it? Sure. But if you take George’s religious practice at all seriously, you can see why going back to being a Beatle, even temporarily, would be something he’d approach with great, great wariness.
Steckler’s quote is from Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money.
I’m familiar with all that stuff and don’t disagree with anything you say, I’m just asking a question. 99% of the time George might have felt just as you say, but if even once or twice he was open/wanted to reunite and felt rejected (AGAIN! Paul *sued him* to get away already!) that would HURT. I accept that Paul actually, internally enjoyed and wanted the Beatles more, but sometimes I think we forget that he is the one who left. The others did not want to let him—they *FOUGHT it! This was a messy, messy, messy breakup and people say all kinds of shit—publicly and to themselves—about messy breakups after the fact. Very much including endless variations on “Well, I didn’t want you, anyway!!” ANY such statement by someone who got spectacularly, publicly dumped should get a bare minimum of scrutiny, no? In George’s case specifically, I dunno! I’m not attached to any conclusion—maybe it *was* as simple as he said. But it’s odd to me the question doesn’t get asked more.
George was a complicated guy and his possible motivations, conscious and unconscious, should be factored in when appraising his public statements. George may not have cared nearly as much as John or Paul about his public image, but imo he VERY much had a *personal* image of himself that he wanted to maintain. I’m not convinced he saw himself very clearly, to be honest. (Do any of us?)
*Yes yes yes I know, Klein/money/inertia etc. Maybe George was secretly, unreservedly happy about Paul leaving and was only toeing the party line in court for money or because he got strong-armed or??? …..tho again, that also might make a person over-compensate in public.
Here is the excerpt in question from Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money:
“So why did they decide that Klein had to go? Steckler believed he knew the answer. ‘George called me and said, “We’re not re-signing with Klein,”‘ he recalled. ‘I asked him why, and he said, “The only way the Beatles can get together again is if Allen isn’t there. I’m ready to do it, so is Ringo, and I think we can persuade John to go along with it. But if we’re going to work with Paul, we need to get rid of Klein.”‘”
I’ve always found this quote interesting because it implies that, at least for George and Ringo, they left Klein BECAUSE of Paul rather than in begrudging acquiescence to him. However, it doesn’t seem like this is an example of Paul rebuffing George because right after Doggett gives a quote on how Paul was also open to a reunion after Klein left, but John wasn’t. Still, it does provide evidence that George’s feelings towards being a Beatle were more conflicted than we might imagine. I also think the following quote from October 1971 Record Mirror (https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-UK/Music/Archive-Record-Mirror-IDX/IDX/70s/Record-Mirror-1971-10-16-S-OCR-IDX-3.pdf) is of interest here:
“In a “Come back Paul, all is forgiven” mood, George Harrison said this week: “I wish we could all be friends again. It’s a drag that things are as they are, because Apple is now becoming much more what we originally wanted it to be. “Personally I’d like to see Paul back at Apple and let him do what he wants to do. After all the new studio is his studio, too, and I’d like to see it all happening for us all.”
He also brings up his usual talking points about Paul in the same interview (“I had to do about eight of Paul’s songs before we got round to doing one of mine”), but I don’t know if that makes his assertion that he wants Paul to come back more or less compelling. Still, that’s another example of George being open to reconciling with Paul as early as 1971. But I don’t think we have any examples of Paul specifically rebuffing George about a Beatles reunion. I know Paul has said a few times that there were times when each of them wanted to reunite, but never a time when all of them did, which vaguely implies that George wanted a reunion at one point, but that’s really weak. I actually CAN think of a clear example of when Paul rebuffed John though. It is from Paul’s point of view, so take his bias into account, but it’s very clear. Here’s the excerpt from his November 1995 Club Sandwich interview:
“John phoned me once to try and get the Beatles back together again, after we’d broken up. And I wasn’t for it, because I thought that we’d come too far and I was too deeply hurt by it all. I thought, “Nah, what’ll happen is that we’ll get together for another three days and all hell will break loose again. Maybe we just should leave it alone.”
Re: George on Anthology, I think your interpretation is the one we have the most evidence for, but even with this, we have conflicting accounts. The other day I was listening to the excellent Beatles Anthology Revisited, and it includes a George interview excerpt where he says that they’ve been trying to get the Beatles Anthology done for years and that the real impediment is Yoko: “The only problem at the moment is that Yoko wants to make her version of the Beatles story.”
Also, dumb question, but how do you do that complex formatting in replies? I feel like those little quote boxes would make my quote-heavy replies more understandable.
I definitely believe that the post-breakup accounts of Paul being totally insufferable as a bandmate are exaggerated and spurred on by the general hostility of the break-up. I do not believe that John and George consistently hated working with him from 1968 onwards. I have always found the “tyrannical monster of a control freak” portrayal of Paul to be implausible.
However, even accounting for all this, I think it is difficult to deny that Paul’s behavior was causing problems. This is discussed prior to the break-up and is specifically brought up in the lunchroom tapes if I recall correctly. Was it THE cause of the breakup? Was Paul just so unbearable that he could no longer be tolerated as a bandmate? Probably not, no. But I think accepting that Paul was causing problems helps us to understand why there was division in the band, where the resentment towards him came from, and why the Beatles broke along the lines it did.
@Michael Thanks for your reply! Well, you know what they say. Write “Paul is bossy” on the internet three times and a Paul fan will appear 🙂 I do wonder, though—where, in a major, post-split Beatles publication, are you going to find an in-depth, sympathetic yet not whitewashed account of Paul like the kind Norman and Lewisohn and others have written about John? (if anyone has recs, I want to know! And I know people’s mileage varies re how much whitewashing is in Norman and Lewisohn—but that’s a whole other 10,000 word comment)? If Martin Shough, for example, wrote the next big thing Beatles book, I think I’d have a lot less to say!
Regarding John and George claiming they didn’t want to be in a band with Paul anymore, as you say, at particular moments, sure. And yet John might very well have worked with Paul again—May Pang thought he was heading that way before he left her. If I’m remembering correctly, George also said at one point after the breakup that Klein had been a barrier to working with Paul again and he valued the possibility of working with Paul more than he did retaining Klein.
It also seemed like George wasn’t completely hankering for the Beatles to end definitively when they did and had some regrets, so he may have suffered through working with Paul again if the split hadn’t happened when it had, as he did on Abbey Road after having walked out during LiB.
In terms of anything that caused the Beatles to end being “problematic and frankly harmful,” surely you don’t also mean something like “falling in love and wanting to move on,” which is of course how one version of the story goes. 😉
Seriously, though, you mention that you could construct a long story about John being an addict and not being in control of his behavior. To which I say, I’ve certainly read that before, and I don’t object to reading it!
We might actually be in closer agreement than I thought? What I’m most interested in is trying to understand what happened without adding in judgments that dictate how other fans should feel (judgments of the “You should think negatively of John or George or Paul or Ringo ” variety).
In other words, I’m happy to look at “John’s doing or saying this led to George being angry, which we know from__. Paul doing x was the straw that broke the camel’s back for George later on, and George saying or doing this other thing led to John doing this.” Something like this looks at what we know about why they might have been at odds with one another without telling other fans how they should feel about it (though I’m sure it wouldn’t be entirely free of disagreement either.)
I think we run into endless back-and-forth disagreements that have little likelihood of getting resolved when we:
1. Tell other fans how they should feel or
2. We suggest that the Beatles themselves were right or wrong to feel certain ways (I’ve seen “George should have been grateful he got to write at all! Other bands at the time wouldn’t have let him or encouraged him to any degree so he had no reason to be resentful of Lennon-McCartney’s dominance!” and I’m sure we’ve all seen other examples of people suggesting various members were either justified or wrong to feel the way they did).
I’ve definitely done both—and I can see why explaining why I think it’s important to look at things from a different angle looks like #1 too. #2 feels like the trickiest one for me, though. It’s hard *not* to have an opinion on those things. It’s just that people aren’t necessarily going to agree and I don’t think there’s any one right answer to lots of this. I mean, you will have people who say “I wouldn’t have cared if Paul had forced the others into the studio and told them every note to play—having Abbey Road is worth it” and others who are horrified by that idea.
Side note: I think it’s worth asking why Paul became “more producery” in the first place. As he said in what I quoted previously, George Martin was the producer. Was it because George Martin got less involved because the sessions had become stressful due to Brian’s death and resulting band tensions/band member significant other troubles and breakups/drugs? Was it because the band thought George Martin had gotten too much credit for their work and sidelined him a bit? Or was it because they wanted “less production?” Or because Paul, as he learned more and had achieved more success, had firmer ideas and knew how to implement them? A combination of all of those things? I’ve seen some biographies briefly touch on these things, mostly separately, but if anyone has recs on anything more in-depth, I’d like to know. And if it doesn’t exist, I wish it did!
@Faith, I think you make great points here, and I agree we shouldn’t rely 100% on the “Standard Narrative”, and question it, but I remembered this quote from Linda McCartney. This is from the 1984 Playboy Interview of Paul and Linda. They are talking about “Give My Regards To Broadstreet”.
LINDA: “But he’s written a great theme song for it. The music is all live, and Paul’s had a chance to work with great musicians again. He’s started coming home happy again, fulfilled. Paul is a perfectionist. He hasn’t been happy, he hasn’t had a chance to work with the best since the old days.”
Now, she may be alluding to some of the points you listed above, like Paul being a prodigy, but Linda clearly thought of Paul as a perfectionist.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a negative definition, even though John and the Press at the time, used it as such.
Faith, I appreciate your take and your willingness to share it. But I have to agree with Michael G. that the other band members certainly experienced Paul as a perfectionist in the pejorative sense, and the idea of Paul as a “musical prodigy” more gifted than the rest doesn’t square with his solo career. I say that as a McCartney fan.
McCartney is the band’s best all-around musician — he can play the most instruments, and his bass work in particular is stellar. However, I think that only if “musical prodigy” is defined as raw ability divorced from judgment does it make sense to describe McCartney that way. Being wildly dedicated to the soundtrack of “Give My Regards to Broadstreet,” as in the quote that Tasmin brought up, is just sad to me. One of the things I see in McCartney is being driven by anxiety/compulsiveness at some points, and losing sight of the big picture. “Broadstreet” is one of those times. However much he enjoyed working with those great musicians, what he was asking them to work on wasn’t high quality, and he either couldn’t see that or hid the knowledge from himself.
To Michael G’s point about McCartney needing to write and record less, I don’t think he can. He’s not built that way. My post about his being the “Dickens of rock” is partly about what I see as that reality: he’s compulsively prolific and not consistently the best judge of his own work. Stephen King is a modern writer I’d put in the same category. With these artists/musicians/writers, classic work sits side-by-side with mediocre or deeply flawed work.
Not only do I think Paul exhibits an inability to judge his own work, but also I think he sometimes just doesn’t care enough to try and make something great, even when he can. I came across an interview Wings did in New Musical Express to promote Wild Life and it contains this exchange:
Linda: “[The songs on the album] were quite easy songs to write.”
Paul: “‘Ram’ was a little more difficult for me — I tried a lot on that.”
Linda: “It’s all gotten so serious.”
I read that and thought, “Huh. So he just…didn’t try on Wild Life? That explains a lot.” It’s like he read the negative reviews for RAM and just said “fuck it.” This also reminds me of George Martin saying that Paul was trying for a real musical success with Tug of War, implying that that wasn’t what he was doing throughout the 70s. Also, I found this excerpt from a 2005 interview in the Guardian relevant and amusing:
“‘I wanted to make a really good record,’ [McCartney] says, when I tell him as diplomatically as I can that he sounds more engaged than he has for a long time. ‘I kept telling myself, “I’m gonna make a good record”. It’s one of those arrogant statements you make when you want to really motivate yourself.’ Does he not normally say that before making an album? ‘No,’ he says, as if it never occurred to him that maybe he should. ‘Normally, you just cross your fingers and hope that you do.’”
Regardless of whether or not McCartney is a perfectionist in the studio, I would say that he is decidedly not a perfectionist when it comes to songwriting. Songwriting is just something he does — because he enjoys it, because it’s what he knows best how to do, because it’s the fundamental way he interacts with the world and expresses himself. And if he enjoys playing a song, that’s reason enough to record it. Without the construct of the Beatles, and especially without the Lennon-McCartney partnership, this instinct (need?) to just continuously create ran amuck. His enthusiasm, comfort, and genuine joy in making music seem to outweigh critical considerations.
McCartney does seem to have poor judgment and a certain blindness in assessing his own work, though I think the worst examples of him just being completely wrong tend to be when he’s out of his comfort zone (for the love of God, Paul, stay out of the film industry). However, I sometimes do think that if his top priority was making critically successful music, then he would be able to do so. Maybe he’d need to bring in some collaborators to help him come down from the high of his own enthusiasm, but I think he could do it. But alas, that’s not the Macca way.
P.S. I LOVE the McCartney/ Dickens comparison. Spot on.
Thanks, Maya. I’ve really come to believe that creativity is compulsive for McCartney; it’s the way he’s wired. To go back to the Dickens comparison, I don’t think Dickens could have written his best work without writing everything else he did. And I don’t think either man could have borne not to release all that work — the connection to the audience is just too important to them.
No doubt he was a perfectionist when he was in the Beatles. He had to be – he was under intense pressure to produce groundbreaking material all the time. It must have been a huge relief to have that pressure lifted off him (when he eventually got over the trauma of it all), and he probably did think fuck it. Who wouldn’t?
Also, he was juggling a lot of stuff in the 70s – a young family, a new band, a million lawsuits. I suppose he just thought, ‘It’ll do,’ for the sake of his sanity and to keep everyone around him happy. Ultimately, he got a load of grief for being a perfectionist. It enabled him to produce great art, but perhaps on a personal level, the payoff wasn’t worth it.
Personally I don’t necessarily regard the word perfectionist negatively. I make music myself, and I sometimes use 50-60 takes on a tiny detail until I’m satisfied (depending on how difficult it is to achieve of course). But then, I am also aware that perfection cannot be fully achieved, because what does that even mean?
On the other hand, I’d say “perfection” (in brackets because of the above mentioned precautions) can have many faces, and it is not always about doing no errors during recording. There is also feeling and expression, and if a (technically flawed) performance makes for an otherworldly artistic experience, it can be “perfect” in it’s own way. This goes f.e. for many tracks on The Velvet Underground And Nico. It contains several instrumental errors (musicians playing off-key or getting out of rhythm etc.), but they obvious went for the feeling.
But then it also depends on what type of music you are making.
Thank you Faith for these thoughts as they, in turn, prompt looking at the topic in a new way.
Like @Anders, I do not take perfectionism as a pejorative. In some fields it is an absolute necessity.
Perhaps though, as others have suggested, that it was not so much a matter of being a perfectionist as it is personality? We have all worked with individuals whose constant iterations have both bettered the end product and have served as an inspiration to us to try to stretch ourselves. Then there are those who, irrespective of the quest for betterment, are simply an incredible pain…
Not directly related to your post but the mention of his name in this thread brought to mind Geoff Emerick. Why is there such enmity in Fandom toward him? Yes he said some critical things, but did he not have a first-hand view?
Either way, thanks to you and the others on this thread for the topic.
Re: Emerick, I thought it was a decent read, I especially liked all of the technical details. Some criticise it for being partisan, but of course it is – it’s his memoir not a history book.
I think that people largely took exception to Emerick’s portrayal of George. They obviously didn’t click as people even back in the day, but I later found out there was some fallout between them at some point… Lewisohn mentioned it in an interview, apparently whatever happened was on George. So Emerick got a bit of payback, it seems?
Emerick’s book is okay, if one also reads Ken Scott’s book, to balance it out.
I guess it is also easier to be a “perfectionist” if you are a classical composer. There, the creative process is largely about creating a score that the musicians will have to play after, meaning that you don’t have to test other people’s patience to get the tiny note details exactly the way you want it (of course it’s a different story with conductors who can use hours to get the musicians to play “just so” – as in phrasing, loudness, attack and so on).
In the world of popular music, where the music is rarely played after a written score, and where the artistic work is largely done in a recording studio, being a “perfectionist”, a la Paul, may be easier if you are a one-man band doing everything yourself. This is my experience anyway since my own approach to music making isn’t worlds apart from Paul’s. I often record everything myself, knowing pretty much what I want to achieve, whereas it sometimes causes clashes if I have to work with others.
So I can understand both the other Beatles’ frustrations about doing 64 takes, as well as Paul’s motivations for doing so – and his sense of detail.
This just sounds like a redefinition of perfectionism to me rather than something actually distinct from it. And even if it is, what does this really change? Whether it’s perfectionism or prodigious ears, Paul’s overbearing tendencies still drove his bandmates nuts. Your explanation maybe helps us understand his perspective more, but this doesn’t change the effect of his actions.
Let’s get into a hypothetical. The band is working on one of Paul’s songs. They do a couple of takes that all sound very similar. Something doesn’t sound right to Paul, so Paul makes them all record it again. Six more takes and Paul says it’s still wrong. Everyone else thinks it’s good, but Paul is making them do it again and again and again. After 18 takes, Paul says it sounds good and they wrap on the song. Paul, from his point of view, was being reasonable and just trying to get everything to sound right. If we want to go by your framework, he’s not even being a perfectionist. And we can empathize with this! He’s not a villain; he’s a person trying his best within his own framework. But his bandmates are not bullying him or engaging in “reverse classism” by being annoyed by this. And this isn’t even accounting for Paul’s tendency to find small faults not just in his own part of the song, but in his bandmates’. We have numerous accounts that he would sometimes show Ringo exactly how he wanted a drum part, or tell George how to play his solo. Even if Paul was always right, if the drums and guitars he was hearing in his mind genuinely were better, this still isn’t an ok thing to do. The Beatles were a band of equals. Even if Paul actually had superior musical talent, he still has no right to treat his bandmates as inferiors. And they’re not bullying him for getting upset by this treatment. I mean seriously, what do you expect them to do? When Paul tells Ringo he needs to change the drum part, Ringo’s supposed to go “Ah yes, it’s ok that Paul doesn’t respect my role as the drummer of this band, because I understand that he just has superior ears to me.”
I realize that that was a little harsh on our Macca, so I want to make a few things clear. I am NOT an absolutist about this. I don’t think Paul was actually this unbearable presence in the studio all of the time, or even for the majority of the time. But if he got like this for one or two songs an album, that’s still a negative quality that is going to frustrate people, even if he doesn’t mean to. I also think that Paul wasn’t necessarily as bad or tyrannical as John and George said. I imagine that sometimes Paul wasn’t actually being that overbearing, but because it was Paul and resentment had grown, they got irritated more easily. The dynamics of the breakup only worsened their retrospective assessment. The idea that Paul was this monstrous personality that, 1968 onward, they genuinely couldn’t stand working with rings false to me. The Ballad of John and Yoko session, the general positivity about the Abbey Road sessions, the scenes of joy in Get Back — these examples show us that they didn’t consistently hate working with Paul, but they don’t disprove the issues they had with him.
Whether or not Paul fits your idea of a perfectionist seems irrelevant to me. I mean, OF COURSE, Paul isn’t being purposefully unreasonable. OF COURSE, from his perspective, he’s just trying to get the song to sound right. But his musical talent doesn’t excuse his emotional insensitivity. I’m glad that people are looking to empathize with Paul and understand his motives instead of writing him off as tyrannical and cruel. However, just because someone isn’t trying to do harm doesn’t mean we should dismiss the harm they caused.
Really interesting food for thought, and the spreadsheet’s very handy.
“Mind you, nothing I’ve found in anything Paul has shared re: his creative process suggests this is the case, and he’s released lots of material that could have, by his own admission, benefited from another pass, starting with McCartney.”
It might be useful here to distinguish innate perfectionism from situational perfectionism. Some people really are uptight about everything in their life needing to be perfect, and there’s a lot of evidence that Paul isn’t one of those people. I remember him saying that in the early days of the Beatles, if George Martin didn’t notice a mistake, they wouldn’t point it out to him and they’d feel like they got away with something. Beatles recordings contain a lot of tiny errors and background noises and things I find quite charming and humanizing but that probably would have driven a true perfectionist crazy. But even someone who isn’t an OCDish perfectionist can get finicky about doing things right when those things really matter to them or when their professional pride is on the line. I’ve been in that situation myself sometimes as a generally easygoing person who can still be insistant on doing things right when they’re important… or when I’m stressed out and channeling anxieties about other aspects of my life into a particular project. In Paul’s case, I suspect it was a bit of both by the time the White Album rolled around.
I see Paul as competitive and also as a people-pleaser: he hates to fail and he hates to let people down, and how much of that is ego vs. insecurity vs. conscientiousness is hard to say, as is often the case with creative people. But what happens when someone who hates to let people down is asked to shoulder the weight of impossible expectations that grow heavier every year? Once the Beatles got to the top, people expected everything they did to meet or exceed their previous standard. Every album had to be a hit, every single had to go to number one, and once they started pushing boundaries with Rubber Soul and Revolver, people expected them to not only keep pumping out number one hits but also to continuously revolutionize popular music itself. How long could anyone keep that up for? Once you release an album like Sgt. Pepper which is hailed as a masterpiece and which captures the zeitgeist so well, how do you do it again, and differently, and better, every 6-12 months?
I think there are a lot of indications that the pressure was getting to him by ’68, and I assume that it only got worse once John stopped shouldering half the load and lost interest in the game (which I take to be – among other things – his own response to that impossible pressure). Paul had to write the hit singles and come up with amazing new ideas and keep the band together and run the business and clean up after John and make the whole world happy while coping with romantic breakups, crumbling friendships, family pressures, drug and alcohol issues, incessant media attention, the fact that he had no idea how to run a business, and the small army of stalkers who followed him everywhere and kept breaking into his house and stealing his stuff – all at age 26. In light of all that, I don’t think it’s too surprising that he sometimes melted down at work or focused all of that chaos and frustration into trying to get the songs right. It may be more remarkable that he kept it together as well as he did. It’s also worth remembering that a lot of the negative comments from his bandmates were made in the context of a contentious breakup and the lawsuit that followed. Those weren’t objective judgments – they were pissed off at him and trying to paint him in a bad light. That doesn’t mean he was perfect or was never annoying, but I bet if you could time travel to 1970 and give Paul McCartney truth serum, he’d have plenty of things to say about his friends’ bad habits and his unvarnished opinions on their songs. But he never did that, so we have a tilted narrative that persists to this day.
Ultimately, I think what Linda brought to Paul’s life was someone who could tell him not to worry so much about what other people wanted from him and that he should just enjoy his life and make whatever music he wanted to make. Maybe that was better for his sanity than it was for his art, but I’d rather have Broad Street than live in a world where he ODed at 30 because he couldn’t cope with it all. And as a Beatles fan, I love the albums they made and I’m glad they put as much effort as they did into them. The opening to Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da *is* what it needed, and since I’ve been happily bopping along to it for 40 years, I’m glad they got there.
@Maya, this is such a perceptive comment. It’s something I think about a lot lot lot.
“I see Paul as competitive and also as a people-pleaser: he hates to fail and he hates to let people down, and how much of that is ego vs. insecurity vs. conscientiousness is hard to say, as is often the case with creative people. But what happens when someone who hates to let people down is asked to shoulder the weight of impossible expectations that grow heavier every year?”
If one believes, as I do, that Paul’s people-pleasing was actually codependence–if it was that central and intense a drive for him–one can well imagine him growing more and more brittle under the pressure. Especially after Magical Mystery Tour broke the magic spell of Beatle success and, even worse, the others more or less thought of it as Paul’s baby, a Pepper that didn’t work.
“I think there are a lot of indications that the pressure was getting to him by ’68, and I assume that it only got worse once John stopped shouldering half the load and lost interest in the game (which I take to be – among other things – his own response to that impossible pressure). Paul had to write the hit singles and come up with amazing new ideas and keep the band together and run the business and clean up after John and make the whole world happy while coping with romantic breakups, crumbling friendships, family pressures, drug and alcohol issues, incessant media attention, the fact that he had no idea how to run a business, and the small army of stalkers who followed him everywhere and kept breaking into his house and stealing his stuff – all at age 26.”
This, summed up beautifully, is the central issue; imagining this fully, and having enough self-knowledge and “emotional intelligence” to surmise what it might’ve been like, is the absolute baseline to any accurate understanding of the band post-Brian.
“…they were pissed off at him and trying to paint him in a bad light…”
What is interesting is what John and George chose as Paul’s big flaw. Sure, he made music that people all around the world deemed instantly classic; yes, he dealt reasonably well with all the pressures of fame and fortune, even getting married in 1969. But he was such a SQUARE about it, a workaholic, a control-freak, a perfectionist. Like Beatles fans would think, “Yeah! Fuck that guy for making all this great music!” And some fans said/thought exactly that. The late Sixties and early Seventies were weird, man.
“I’d rather have Broad Street than live in a world where he ODed at 30”
Me too, and I think that was more of a possibility than we realize.
Michael, can you expand upon the idea that Paul’s people-pleasing is actually codependence? I don’t think I understand exactly what you mean.
Also, regarding John and George choosing Paul’s perfectionist/ controlling/ “square” tendencies as his big flaws to reveal to the public: do you think there was something else they could’ve/ would’ve said that would have been more effective? If so, what?
Brushing up on my terms, @Maya, I went to this site, which I will quote from now:
If John Lennon were not an addict–and that didn’t start with heroin, he showed those tendencies from teenage years on, IMHO–then Paul could potentially simply be a people-pleaser. But the fact that John was almost certainly an addict, and Ringo might have been one as well, suggests strongly that Paul’s behavior was not your common variety desire to be liked, but an actually codependent relationship with John, and potentially Ringo as well. Never forget that this behavior is a system; it fits together.
Re: “square” — I think that was guaranteed to hit Paul in the most painful spot.
This is really interesting because I’ve often seen it essentially accepted as fact that Paul is a people pleaser, but he really doesn’t fit with the definition above. He likes to be liked, definitely, and he doesn’t want to let people down, but I don’t think that he tries to “make others happy even at the expense of [his] own needs and desires” or that he has a “hard time saying ‘no.'” He’s diplomatic, polite, and generally kind, but he’s still going to push for what he wants even if it’s opposed to others’ desires, even if it makes other people unhappy. There’s also a level of emotional awareness that people-pleasers have that Paul lacks. He’s not attuned to everyone’s feelings in a way that a person focused on making others happy would be. And I don’t think this is just the case in a working environment, where he is the most evidently uncompromising — I’m reminded of that anecdote in “Loving John” where Paul keeps pestering David Bowie to change the record at a party, even though it’s something Bowie clearly doesn’t want to do.
I still think in general Paul tries to be likable (and in most cases, he can achieve this), but this doesn’t seem to be his dominant motivator. I suppose what we perceive as people-pleasing is a combination of codependency (needing to be needed by specific people) and wanting to be liked (though not to the extent of a people-pleaser).
Regarding the “square” thing: if being considered square was what would hurt Paul the most, it’s interesting how quickly he seemed to embrace the idea. In 1967, he was a swinging London bohemian, but in the 70s he seemed to reform his image around being an ordinary farmer/ family man. Was this reactionary, then, a la “Silly Love Songs”? I actually think that attack — insulting his music — was probably the most purposefully hurtful out of everything that John and George threw at him.
@Maya, remember that the main influence on Paul’s development has been fame, money and power. So normal psychological traits are going to manifest a bit differently in him. Addiction is a different matter because it really does seem to be so powerful that behaviors are similar whether you’re a prince or a pauper. But subtle things like people pleasing or codependency are going to be harder to spot through the scrim of fame, money and power.
I think Paul did embrace the “square” label at some point, perhaps because he saw the disorder and unhappiness in John and George’s “non-square” lifestyles. I know who I’d rather be in the 1970s.
@Liz, I agree with every word. It’s easy to forget “the weight of impossible expectations” and that John let Paul bear the brunt of it, probably because he wasn’t up to it anymore. And it’s easy to ignore that the drubbing Paul took from John and George “weren’t objective judgments – they were pissed off at him and trying to paint him in a bad light.” As you said, he didn’t retaliate, so “we have a tilted narrative that persists to this day.” Well done!
I second that. Great comment Liz!
I think it speaks to Paul’s character that he has never retaliated. I do think he was more emotionally mature than John and George, in the sense he could see that would be futile, and could also permanently sever relationships.
@Liz, I want to frame your comment and put it on my wall. This is the type of compassionate analysis I wish there was more of in Beatles literature. We don’t need to reject Paul’s flaws in order to empathize with him. We just need to acknowledge bias, look at context, and try to see where he is coming from mentally.
Something that intrigues me about how a lot of Beatles fans tend to analyze Paul is that, in response to how he was treated without compassion and cast as the villain for such a long time, they swing in the opposite direction and try to excuse his flaws/ make it look they aren’t flaws at all. This interests me because we don’t do the same thing with John — I think most Beatles fans acknowledge his obvious flaws but empathize with him anyway.
Anyway, you didn’t fall into this trap and provided some really compelling analysis. Thank you!
@Maya, I also want to frame Liz’s analysis!
I think a few things are going on with Paul fans:
scenario 1: Fans are responding to “Gotcha! Look at this bad thing Paul did!!!” takes in which someone posts something Paul has said or done designed to make him look bad without without providing any context. From what I’ve seen, someone will say “That wasn’t a good thing for him to do or say (or not do!) but this doesn’t seem representative of him.” In situations like these, it seems people who really, really want to stick it to Paul aren’t satisfied with agreement that whatever thing he said/did was bad—they seem to want people to…dislike him for it? Be convinced that it is representative of him even when people have provided examples for why they think it isn’t?
Scenario 2: Paul fans talk about his flaws and still empathize with him. If you look at pro-Paul podcasts like Another Kind of Mind and One Sweet Dream, for example, neither are shy about talking about Paul’s flaws or “roasting” him. The AKOM tumblr has a post saying Paul could be insensitive, conflict avoidant in a bad way, and more I don’t fully remember. But that information is there!
Scenario 3: Paul fans acknowledge that others see some things as flaws, they just either don’t care or don’t agree about those things being flaws. For example, I’m a Paul fan and I just saw him being criticized for not being emotionally open to the degree a few people thought he should have been. I simply do not care if a few people thought they were entitled to emotional access they didn’t get. If they were hurt, I understand it. I simply don’t think that’s Paul’s problem and I value respecting one’s own boundaries over someone feeling hurt that they wanted access they didn’t get.
And, of course, all three scenarios can exist in the same fan—me, for example! I have very, very rarely run across a Paul fan who thinks he has no flaws and hasn’t ever done anything wrong.
Just dropping this here, quote from Geoff Emerick quoted in Chronicles, p. 179, just to redeem Geoff a little… 😉
“It’s a question of having patience. Paul had it and John didn’t. John was always a bit fidgety and restless, wanting to get on, ‘yeah, that’s good enough, a couple of takes, yeah. that’s fine.’ but Paul could hear certain refinements in his head which John couldn’t.”
Thanks for reading everyone. I get stressed out reading and responding to comments, so I don’t, but know that I deeply appreciate your engagement with the contents of my brain… 😉
Faith
The discussion of if Paul was a prodigy, made me wonder what exactly the difference was between a prodigy and a genius? Michael explained it well in his comment, and here’s what I found:
“What is the difference between Genius and Prodigy?
• Definition of Genius and Prodigy:
• A genius is someone who has exceptional abilities in terms of creativity and intellectual capacities and even out of the box thinking.
• A prodigy is someone who masters a discipline at a very young age. He displays the mastery of an adult in a specific field.”
Definitely Paul wasn’t a prodigy, but I think he and John fit the definition of genius. I think we’ve had discussions here before about John and Paul being geniuses. I seem to recall it was a lively debate.
@ Tasmin, thanks for bringing up these differences. I also recall an earlier vigorous debate on the nature of genius. I’ve been reading these comments with interest. If Paul is just Paul not Mozart then presumably John is just John not Shakespeare, nor even TS Eliot. But do they have to be to meet genius? They are John Lennon and Paul McCartney – songwriters. It is one thing to compose a piece of music and another thing to write poetry or prose, but to marry the two together without sacrificing form and structure of either takes a completely different set of skills altogether. And if neither John and Paul were prodigies, well they were certainly in good company with many other exceptional talents. @Michael Gerber, I’ve come across a few music critics who believe Paul’s solo work surpasses his Beatles work, that he was only just getting going when he was a Beatle. I wouldn’t go that far myself, but taking into account that some of Paul’s best work as a Beatle had very little input, if any, from John (and vice versa), I wouldn’t entirely dismiss their insights either. Yes, he could be extraordinarily patchy and downright bad (as was the prodigy Mozart who wrote hundreds of mediocre pieces) which makes me wonder if that is the nature of genius anyway – the brain is wired to push out crap in order to reach and push out the gems lurking deep within. On the other hand, equally likely in Paul’s case, years of cannabis abuse has dulled his judgement and insight. A bit of both, perhaps.
“@Michael Gerber, I’ve come across a few music critics who believe Paul’s solo work surpasses his Beatles work, that he was only just getting going when he was a Beatle. I wouldn’t go that far myself”
Nor would I, @Lara. As much as I like some of Paul’s solo stuff, it was “merely” wonderful pop music, rather than wonderful pop music that significantly reshaped the culture. It’s that last part that signifies genius, to me. How much of that reshaping was the music itself, and how much of it was all the stuff around the music, and/or a certain kind of cultural receptivity, and/or a sense of an era waiting for “a Paul McCartney” to come along? Impossible to say. Genius is tremendous talent plus timing, and opportunity.
Let me keep clear on my terms: I said Paul was not Mozart, because Paul did not display the specific characteristics of a musical prodigy, of which Mozart is a common standard. A “prodigy” is a very specific thing, and Paul wasn’t one, in music or anything else. John wasn’t one either, in words or anything else. Prodigies are demarcated by YOUTH. Both John and Paul came into their gifts later, which is not to dismiss those gifts–just to say that they weren’t that specific thing we call prodigies.
If Paul McCartney isn’t a genius, I don’t know what a genius is…but geniuses, in every field, can only give what they have to give. They do their thing, then recede. Paul is actually interesting in this regard: Had the Beatles continued on, Paul might well have been able to give us a few more years of genius; Abbey Road seems to indicate this. That album suggests that Paul McCartney was a musical genius whose instrument was The Beatles. (In the same way Brian Wilson was a genius whose instrument was The Beach Boys and the Wrecking Crew.) John Lennon was a genius of a different sort, one of communication and self-definition (what we might today call “branding”), who picked rock and roll as his metier because of the time in which he lived.
But this kind of talk is only useful when it reveals, rather than obscures.
@Michael “As much as I like some of Paul’s solo stuff, it was “merely” wonderful pop music, rather than wonderful pop music that significantly reshaped the culture. It’s that last part that signifies genius, to me.” I don’t know, that seems an overly narrow notion of genius to me. I believe a genius can be a genius without anyone at all noticing–or, more pertinent, a genius can still be a genius even after the cultural winds have turned against him.
The main difference between Beatle Paul and solo Paul is how lazy his lyrics became now that they no longer had to pass muster with John Lennon. Even without John’s PR war against him, rock critics (generally English majors, of course) would have still pilloried Paul for his weak lyrics, regardless of how strong his music and melodies were. Still, a lazy, often unfocused genius is still a genius, and I’ll happily contend that Paul’s released dozens and dozens of songs since 1970 that–except, in most cases, lyrically–match the genius of his Beatles work.
Of course, I went to a state college, so what do I know? 😉
“Of course, I went to a state college, so what do I know? ”
You know enough to pay a reasonable amount for an excellent college degree, that’s what! 🙂 (My wife went to Wisconsin, and I live not too far from UCLA.)
Men Only, eh @Baboomska? 🙂
“I’m only a man” says George to “Men Only” magazine. There’s a nice symmetry to that.
“I don’t mean to sound mysterious or try to baffle anyone, but when people come up to me expecting me to be just like what they thought a Beatle would be, they’re disappointed.”
George always gave such thoughtful interviews. I don’t know if the entire article is online. I’m not seeing it anywhere, just that twitter screengrab.
More interesting screengrabs from that interview. George sounds open to the idea of a reunion, as long as it doesn’t get too crazy or Beatlemaniacal. He didn’t want them to become a nostalgia act, etc.
There does seem to be a certain touchiness on the internet about any defence of Paul. The over-identifying Paul fan label is an easy one (which is not to say it doesn’t exist, along with John and George over-identifiers) but I think many comments I’ve read here are genuinely questioning the contradictory words, statements and behaviour by all of them during 1968-1970. I haven’t noticed anyone in particular denying that Paul was over producery (and by his own self-admission). But asking or questioning WHY Paul adopted certain behaviors doesn’t make it heresy to the standard narrative. The common theme throughout is that John and George wanted to leave the Beatles. Did they? If so, why did they not release Paul from his contract, which initiated his court case to dissolve the Beatles when they refused to do so? If they wanted to leave a supposedly toxic situation, then why the battle?
This from George in an interview with Howard Smith in April 1970, BEFORE the court hearings.
Q: “You think the Beatles will get together again, then?”
GEORGE: “Uhh… Well, I don’t… I couldn’t tell, you know, if they do or not. I’ll certainly try my best to do something with them again…”
So this is interesting. That George would do his best to work with perfectionist, overbearing, guitar ruining Paul, presumably in a situation that was harmful and problematic to him?
I’m curious as to why John and George were so keen on wanting Klein to manage the Beatles if in fact they wanted to leave? Or did they want Klein to manage PAUL in the recording studio on their behalf? But Brian Epstein had little say in the creative direction of the band and I’d surmise Klein would have even less. Part of the problem as I see it is: A. Paul doesn’t talk about his bandmates the same way they talk about him. Similarly, he doesn’t talk about his father either regardless of what any of them said or did to him. That’s just the way he is, and, B. there is an odd reluctance to discuss the behaviour of John and George in the recording studio (beyond either heroin or spiritual enlightenment) and in live performances, which date back to the Hamburg days, and, C. the possibility that something happened to not just John in 1968, but to Paul. All of this conjecture of course but so much about the Beatles is. Isn’t it?
@Lara, I don’t think Paul could be “released from the contract.” It was a partnership involving all four of them. The issue I recall was tax — from this letter.
What could’ve been done was ending that original agreement, and writing a new one which…would’ve landed them all in court, and been Apple x1000 because they or their representation would’ve had to negotiate it point-by-point. I suspect prior to the court case, Eastman representing McCartney began by suggesting this precise thing, “Just let my guy out of the original partnership deal.”
Say Klein does that. What does EMI do? “HOLY SHIT, Paul’s no longer part of the group??? We have to renegotiate the entire deal, or we’re taking you all to court!”
But listen: I’m not an expert on the Beatles’ financial situation in 1970-71, and I expect no one but Peter Doggett could really explain it. And would we want him to? Isn’t it simpler just to take it as read? Similarly, what’s the benefit to trying to get into Paul’s head about “overproducer-y”? Why did he do it? Was it his genius? Was it a character flaw? If you’re not obsessed with Paul, it’s simply not that interesting. Just as if you’re not obsessed with John, the reasons WHY he decided to form a single unit JohnandYoko with his wife just aren’t that interesting. He did! How weird! Made it harder for the group to function! Fan-litigating it–“Well, John was damaged because his mom had died, and had always been looking for a soulmate, and was heavily into drugs, and it was the Sixties, and and and”–there’s just not that much gold there.
Paul felt he was justified to behave as he did; the others did not. Standard narrative.
John, Paul, George and Ringo all mentioned Paul’s tendency to overdirect, and all mentioned that it was a source of tension in the band. Standard narrative.
All of the Beatles had shifting feelings about getting back together, but they didn’t. Standard narrative.
The reason I rant about this is: history isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the story that the most fans with the most keystroke ability, want to hear.
As I’ve said earlier in the thread, if one wants to change a basic fact in the accepted story, there has to be really powerful evidence to do so, or a really powerful reason to try. And even then, you have all this data that you have to deal with. If we all decided Paul wasn’t bossy, then we’d have to explain all the data that says he was/is. There’s an efficiency to the Standard Narrative which makes it the preferred story, after 55 years of fan talk; any new story has to be more efficient.
I think everything you have said tells us why we should re-examine the “Paul’s behavior was the cause of the Beatles breakup and John and George hated being Beatles” narrative. And this HAS been re-examined: I don’t think most authors today would place the impetus for the Beatles breakup on Paul. Mikal Gilmore’s analysis of the breakup’s key point is the rejection of this narrative. But I don’t think that is what this post is calling into question. This post is making the claim that Paul’s behavior in the studio was totally normal because Paul is just a superior genius and we can’t have expected him to act differently. In fact, expecting him to act differently would be bullying, actually. The goal of this is exoneration, not understanding. The extent to which Paul’s bad behavior contributed to the breakup can and should be questioned. For the reasons that many people have explained in these comments, I personally find it unlikely that Paul was this unbearable presence that John and George consistently couldn’t stand working with and were desperate to get away from. I certainly do not think that he was behaving in a manner bad enough to cause the breakup.
This post, however, is not just saying that Paul’s bad behavior is understandable from his perspective, nor is it saying that it may not be as bad as some say. It is saying that it is not bad behavior at all. The implication here is that, rather than Paul doing something wrong by being overbearing, everyone else was doing something wrong by not accommodating his genius. In my opinion, this is a ridiculous idea that aims to make Paul McCartney a victim in a situation where he clearly wasn’t. I think that when EVERYONE testifies, including the man in question, that Paul was doing something wrong, then it’s more likely than not that he was doing something wrong. Something malicious? No. Something unforgivable? No. Something that would force the Beatles to break up and make his friends hate him forever? Also no. But something that caused tension and had a negative effect on the Beatles? Yes, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. The alternative — that everyone else was just hypersensitive, jealous, and resentful of Paul’s genius and leadership — seems just as far-fetched to me as the idea that Yoko’s presence was completely benign and everyone else was treating her totally unfairly, actually.
Well said, @Maya.
“Mikal Gilmore’s analysis of the breakup’s key point is the rejection of this narrative. But I don’t think that is what this post is calling into question.”
Periodically my massive, ravening ego compels me to say that “John broke up The Beatles, using things like Klein and Yoko on purpose, but then realized his mistake later, or maybe just wanted to break it up a little and then bring it back together again”–was a theory on Dullblog before the Gilmore article. I remember Devin and I spending happy hours chewing it over via phone. The thing that’s really interesting about Gilmore’s article is that ROLLING STONE was now saying it.
In all seriousness: I am sure that this was coincidental, because “John did it, maybe not thinking it through as he did it” is the most efficient reading given all the evidence.
Paul’s bossiness was an excuse for Lennon’s behavior, and calling it out was a way to smear him in the hip press. Could Paul have been so passive as to avoid that label? Probably not. Certainly not if he’d been anything like the guy he’d been from 1962 on.
@Michael – My impression from watching Paul in the Get Back film is that he was the only adult in the room (out of the four Beatles, I mean). Everyone who was responsible for making sure that the work got done was relying on Paul to get the others to cooperate. He was the only one among them with any sort of work ethic.
Have you ever tried to get an adult to do something they can’t be bothered doing, even though it has to be done and other people (who pay your wages) are telling you to make sure it gets done? I have, and it’s hell. John and George (especially George) did not like being told what to do. They didn’t like being told to go to school, do their homework, clean up their own vomit. They didn’t like authority basically, and that was before they were rich and famous.
I suppose you could argue that Paul didn’t have the right to tell them what to do. But other people were putting him in that position; they were relying on him to do it because they didn’t dare.
I agree with Lara on this. I think Paul ended up being the Beatle who wanted out. And once he had made that decision, that was it – he was never going back on it. Never mind that they couldn’t stand working with him, I bet it was him who would never work with them.
@Michael Gerber. I’m no expert on the Beatles financial situation either. However, to be released from a contract under British contract law is not entirely unusual, as in rescission. Again,
why would two Beatles who didn’t want to be Beatles any more be interested in ending the original agreement and drawing up a new one? Sure, there would have been some fat hefty fee to pay – there always is. I’m not sure how two American entertainment lawyers would have navigated an existing contract signed under British law; Peter Dogget may well know more, but he is a music journalist and writer, not a lawyer. With due respect, this is not just a question of getting into Paul’s head regarding his over-producery; it is the perception of Paul’s bossiness by the other three BEFORE he brought court proceedings against them and how he was perceived by them AFTER the dissolution of the band. Paul won his case; did the judiciary detect an element of collusion amongst the other three? But who am I to say. To make myself clear, I’m not denying the fact that Paul was bossy; rather it was the extent of his bossiness which caused the greatest tension within the band. For myself, I’m not particularly interested in cherry picking as to what is interesting or what is boring about Beatles history. Should anything about the Beatles matter after 55 years? Because the Standard Narrative said so? To be ‘taken as read’ is exactly that: hot on sweeping statements and, apart from a few examples, not hot on concrete examples to back them up. Which doesn’t make it particularly efficient in my opinion
@Lara, if you believe that Paul was bossy–or, more precisely, that J/G/R thought he was–and that this behavior, whatever it stemmed from, was a source of tension, then we agree.
As to the contractual situation: I think we’re pretty safe in assuming that if there had been a simple solution, it would’ve been employed. And trying to peer back at the process 55 years later is difficult indeed; I am only comfortable speaking in the broadest terms, and quoting people who’ve studied it much more than I have.
@Michael Gerber. I didn’t state at all that there were things too hot to handle. That’s my fault in not phrasing it properly. What I meant is that the “standard narrative” is not very good in providing examples in order to assert Paul’s exaggerated bossiness (read exaggerated) in the studio. To be specific, there are only four songs that are constantly called into contention: Obli Di Obli Dah, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Hey Jude and Two of Us, of which only the last two show any dissension between Paul and George. This from a total of nearly 200 in the Lennon McCartney catalogue from a time period 1962 to 1970. Can anyone name any other songs that were fought over? Even George doesn’t seem to be able to. Is he able to state on what recordings where Paul ‘ruined’ his guitar playing? He vaguely says they worked on Paul’s eight songs rather than even one song of his, during the atypical Get Back sessions and doc. What eight songs? This is what irritates me about internet discussions, even non internetty discussions. Once fans get a seed planted in their heads, off they go at the rate of knots. I’m of the belief that if anyone is accused of whatever gets up the accuser’s nose then at least come up with the goods. That is beyond basic. John calls out Paul about SFF in the lunchroom tapes (heavily edited by Peter Jackson) but at least John was specific in his accusation. However, as discussed on other earlier threads, that song was his problem so I’m not going there.
@Maya. I didn’t say that I agreed with Faith’s comments. I said that I agreed with some of the comments on the topic brought up by several people, including some of the more pertinent comments from Faith’s. We both seem to be on the same page then: that tension and problems were instigated by several factors, as stated by Mikal Gilmore several years ago. Goodness, these discussions are certainly circular.
On a lighter note re Paul’s perfectionism: I’m Looking Through You is considered one of the sloppiest recordings they ever made. Which doesn’t stop it from being a great song, in my opinion.
@Lara, IMHO I think you’re asking for a level of proof that is unlikely to appear in any informal situation, especially a creative one with celebrity and fame all around it. It’s not up to us, as fans looking back decades later, to “prove” something that The Beatles said about each other. They said it; they were living it; we know they had that opinion at that moment; and all that is very strong. As strong as you get about something ultimately personal and seldom spoken, unless you’re deposing someone. We have to trust that George knew more about his guitar playing and Paul’s impact on it than we do (or Paul did/does).
Asking for an excessive level of proof, to me, leads us into a situation where we can’t know nearly anything about The Beatles, which allows for an internet-style “I’m just asking” free-for-all. Which then devolves into the person/people who CARE the most and are the loudest setting the terms of discussion. (I’m not saying you do that; I don’t think you do.) And discussions like that are ultimately useless because one finds oneself engaging with people solely on terms of their obsession. Which is like talking to someone who is high–they might be glimpsing real truths about the Universe, but they can’t express it.
I’m of the mind that we can and in fact DO know most of the important things about The Beatles, even when my own lived experience makes me suspect the story is much more complex than usually rendered. For example: I could argue, with some reasonableness, that Brian Epstein was a great, canny manager for the Beatles, even solely financially, even in light of Seltaeb. I could construct that case, and have real-world business evidence for that. But 1) I don’t think I NEED to do that and 2) the story works perfectly fine as-is. Why battle against all the writers, all the opinion? If my theory is right, eventually the history will soften on Brian; as it has on Paul and his perfectionism. In the immediate wake of the breakup, Paul was really viewed as a villain. I don’t think any sane person does that today. Which is why I think we can hold the narrative lightly–“George said Paul ruined his playing/he’d never be in another band with Paul” but also “Paul didn’t drive George out of the band, or break up the Beatles.”
@Michael Gerber. It’s funny this thing obsession. Perhaps, maybe, I don’t know. In all honesty, that although certainly I can get irritated by aspects of Beatles history, the other side of me gets a certain enjoyment, dare I say fun, in being contrarian, or playing the devil’s advocate. Seriously, I’m just not that obsessive, but I do think it’s healthy, important even, to punch a few at the sacred cows the Beatles have become, individually or collectively within the fandom. Which is why I enjoyed Faith’s post (wow, this is going to set the cat amongst the pigeons!!), which obviously doesn’t mean I agreed with everything Faith said, but she brought home a few home truths in my opinion, lost in the outcry over Paul’s ‘prodigy’ status. But given the ferocity of some of the replies to Faith’s post, it’s scary taking on a few sacred cows without slinking off, tail between legs. It’s tough being a Beatles fan at times. The Beatles history and narrative is taken so SERIOUSLY, particularly the break-up, that one wonders why, if it’s so settled, it’s still endlessly discussed 55 years later. Is there actually anything left to discuss about the Beatles, save getting into a Beatle’s head, as long as it’s the right Beatle head, or discussing the love life between two of them, or whatever. But getting back to proving ‘proof’. Of course it’s not the responsibility of fans to prove anything anything the Beatles said or did at a particular time. Not then or 55 years later. We can’t, we weren’t there. But it’s the anglo-saxon, North of England part of me when I read the words of George or John or Ringo around this time. It’s “put up or shut up” and I’m standing by that. George ‘said’ or John ‘felt’. Who cares? I suspect the judge who presided over each of the Beatles’ affidavits in 1971 probably didn’t care either, which is why he ruled in favour of McCartney.
Faith is absolutely right in my opinion when George wanted the Beatles to sound like Eric Clapton and his blues band but Paul didn’t, and that Lennon with Ono wanted the Beatles to turn left towards Fluxus, but Paul didn’t. And that was the crux of the matter because that stuff wasn’t what the Beatles were about. They were THE BEATLES. Why were John, George and Ringo pushing back agsinst bossy Paul? Because they thought the Beatles were no longer good enough for them, that they could do BETTER. And, by then, why not take advantage of the Beatles standing? It was the perfect scenario for them. What Paul was attempting to control (yes) was to follow the direction of what it was that made the Beatles so popular, so idiosyncratic: the construction of strong, well-developed and meaningful songs; the very music which had cemented their critical reputation to begin with. It’s no coincidence that I, as a kid in 1969, faithfully collecting my latest issue of the Beatles Monthly from the bookshop, couldn’t help but observe with dismay, the changing physical appearance of John, George and Ringo in those latter months. “They’re starting to look like all the other bands”, I thought, “and Paul will probably follow” and “the Beatles are starting to follow THEM and not the other way round”. And it was true. They wore the same clothes, the same long hair parted in the middle, the beards. Stick them in any line up of Led Zeppelin or whoever, and they’d be interchangeable. And that’s where Harrison’s and Lennon’s spiritual and avant-garde arrogance would have got the Beatles. Yes, we all know the old story of how Sgt Pepper’s onwards would never have been made without Paul, and “come on Paul, PRODUCE us then” but I think it went a lot deeper than that.
@Lara, I think you touch on something important here, and I feel it too — after John and George returned from India, I find them much, much less interesting, both as people and as musicians, than before. There is a sense that they are falling back to the pack, and as you say, both Harrison and Lennon’s directions for the band are pretty boring to me. While John and George could still make memorable Beatles music (“Come Together”; “Something”; “Here Comes the Sun”), Paul was the one who really kept the faith with the “Beatles idea.” Which is the idea that I’m fascinated by, personally and artistically.
“What Paul was attempting to control (yes) was to follow the direction of what it was that made the Beatles so popular, so idiosyncratic: the construction of strong, well-developed and meaningful songs; the very music which had cemented their critical reputation to begin with.”
Point very well made Lara. Perhaps it was Paul alone who possessed the intuition to recognize this.
@Neal, I think John and George understood this as well–but unlike Paul, they had become enamored with what the counterculture valued, not the mainstream.
This is what gave the “overbearing” critique of Paul such bite: they were coding him as a square, as “counterrevolutionary.” John wanted to make Beatles music that was hip, and George wanted to make Beatles music that was either spiritually meaningful (to him), or cool within the shaggy-jam-band ethos he was basking in. The key here is that, for the first time, some of the Beatles were really looking to other musicians to determine The Beatles’ style. Not merely in a borrowing/covering sense, but really in a derivative way. And I think Paul was worried by that, and rightly so.
@Michael If the logical conclusion of John wanting to be hip was ‘Sometime In New York City;’ and the utter bland out of George’s solo career the product of his spirituality, then I’m glad Paul was overbearing enough to stop that stuff like that becoming Beatles music.
@Michael, “enamored” is a loaded term. Maybe John and George just SHARED the values of the counterculture. You can disapprove of someone being enamored with something, it’s harder to criticize values that someone legitimately holds … isn’t it? And wasn’t the whole Beatles odyssey a series of explorations, of changes? Ideas John and George might have had played a role that was as justifiable in terms of such explorations as Paul’s were. And I don’t see John and George “looking to other musicians to determine The Beatles’ … in a derivative way,” all that influence was in the air ar the time, there was no escaping it. In my opinion, they didn’t go looking for it, they just found it and then transformed it in some very interesting ways. Ways I don’t see other bands at the time using at all. (As fond as I am of it, I’ll exclude Let It Be from this series of explorations!) And was Paul worried by these changes or threatened by them? At any rate, a Beatles style was something constantly evolving created by FOUR Beatles, not just Paul McCartney, as brilliant as he might have been.
And, just curious, but where do you see a “shaggy jam-band ethos” intruding on Beatles music?
@Jerry, to each his own of course, but here’s my full-throated response. Read it with a smile.
Where do I see a “shaggy jam-band ethos” intruding on Beatles music?
THE WHOLE PROJECT CALLED “GET BACK.” Which in my opinion produced the least authentic, most dated-sounding, least durable music in the Beatles late catalog. You may disagree–some people love it, though I think they’re crazy–but after listening to the Nagra reels stuff all throughout my teen years, If the “Get Back” material was all that existed of The Beatles, they wouldn’t even be a footnote; they would be “Nuggets” style stuff, a garage band from Liverpool who faded from the scene after their rhythm guitarist got arrested for heroin possession. “Get Back” music, though there’s a lot lot lot of it, is simply not very good. Pleasant or unpleasant, it’s no better than the BBC stuff…which I love, but it’s not about my loving it; it’s about “is this leagues better than what other groups were doing? Is it distinctive to them?” And I would say: Go listen to them sing ‘Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues,’ and tell me that’s any better than a session tape from a million other British pop groups at the same time.
Pace Peter Jackson, but “Get Back” is just not very good, and they knew it, which is why they didn’t even want to release it. Whereas something like “Hey Jude”–made six months earlier–is triumphant. “Hey Jude” isn’t drawing on trends in pop in 1968; it isn’t in dialogue with The Stones or The Who, or whatever. It’s purely Beatles music. That which only they could do, and which they could do best. A lot of White is this; all of Abbey Road is this.
If we want to compare apples-to-apples, I think the Esher demos show a band writing a lot better material, and performing it a lot better, too. So what changed? To my mind, between May ’68 and January ’69 Lennon and Harrison became much less interested in/committed to “Beatles music,” which they for various emotional reasons defined as “Paul music,” and much more interested in defining themselves against that. In Lennon’s case, the unvarnished truth-teller, a politicized version of Maharishi; in Harrison’s, rock’s preeminent devotee of KRSNA. Paul was the only one who unequivocally wanted to keep doing what they’d been doing, in the way they’d had so much success. And as square as that might’ve been, he’s the only one who doesn’t crap out during “Get Back.” “For You Blue”? “I Dig a Pony”? These are MINOR songs, filler. I’m hardly a Paul-partisan, but I agree with him in that the point of The Beatles is what’s on the vinyl, not whether it scratched John Lennon’s itch to be a Great Artist in the extremely parochial, dated (and really, REALLY middle-class) way he suddenly began defining it; or fed Harrison’s infatuation with Bob Dylan.
The idea of no overdubs, no studio jiggery-pokery was a terrible fit for any band which included Paul McCartney, who by 1969 had developed a whole working method based around the studio. But it was perfect for both Lennon and Harrison, who liked the optics of it and mistakenly thought that this would allow them to create more quickly, so that they could spend less time being Beatles, and more time doing what they wanted to do. The irony is that having to run through and then sift through endless takes of “Don’t Let Me Down” actually took a lot longer than making “Hey Bulldog” a year before. The material produced by this “shaggy jam-bandery” was so weak that they didn’t want to release it, and when they did, they had to include stuff like “Dig It” and “Maggie Mae” just to get enough stuff for an album.
“Enamored” may be loaded to you, but I used it specifically to underline the process by which, post-touring, both Lennon and Harrison became bored with making the glorious and unique type of music they’d invented, and began fiddling around with a lot of styles they were simply a lot less good at. Though I adore some of these experiments (the psychedelia, George’s Indian stuff, using Clapton on “WMGGW”) I think that by 1969 it was abundantly clear that their more successful, durable, and enjoyable music was going to be that which was done in the Beatles’ style. Not “Old Brown Shoe” or “Yer Blues” or “Revolution #9”, but Harrison doing “Something” and Lennon doing “Come Together”–both examples not of semi-digested influences, be it Ravi or Eric or Mick and Keith or musique concrete–but of music in the Beatles’ style. And that bugged them, and to some degree they blamed Paul.
It’s like George loving sitar but realizing in ’69 that there would always be thousands of players in India better than him.
It’s not about me disapproving of the counterculture; it’s about the Beatles’ post-touring discography being genius, classic stuff–except for this one period where it’s really quite mediocre. And I think that period reflects Lennon particularly becoming a dedicated follower of political fashion, in a way that he simply hadn’t been before, and which marred his talent for the rest of his life. I bow to no man in my love of the counterculture–I am literally a product of it, and it’s my obsession–but some parts of Hippie Thought have proven more durable than others, and the parts that Lennon was really in love with from late ’68 to around ’73–opioids as liberation, rich guy Weathermanism, really rigid almost Maoist ideas about class and authenticity and art–it’s all proven to be a buncha poseur bullshit, and to the degree that it informed Lennon’s music, it diminished it. For every “Working Class Hero” there’s a “John Sinclair.”
“It ain’t fair, John Sinclair
In the stir for breathin’ air
Won’t you care for John Sinclair?
In the stir for breathin’ air
Let him be, set him free
Let him be like you and me”
Holy shit. Either Lennon suffered a traumatic brain injury, or he was allowing political fashion to supercede his talent. While it was certainly his right to do that–and lots of people at the time applauded him for doing so–50 years later when the wheat has been separated from the chaff, I say, “Let me be, set me free/Take me back to ’63!”
@Michael G., strong agree, but I think all three songwriting Beatles were lost after 1967. I hear the same thing you’re describing in much of Paul’s ’68 output: why do we need the Beatles to be doing genre pastiches like “Lady Madonna,” “Rocky Raccoon,” or “Honey Pie,” which–to my ears–don’t turn other people’s music into something inimitable; they just demonstrate that the Beatles and George Martin can mimic the sound of other genres. I put them in the same category as the Stones covering “You Got To Move”: I guess it was fun for these rich blokes living in London to record these songs and play pretend, but I don’t hear any of the magic in the real thing.
I think psychedelia was the natural culmination of where the Beatles’ curiosity and openness to new ideas went, and the problem was, after Magical Mystery Tour (which was starting to reheat things they’d already done, see the title track, “Your Mother Should Know,” “Blue Jay Way”), they were at a loss for what more to do. George Martin had it right when he wanted them to “think in symphonic terms,” but that was never going to fly with John, who was mistrustful of anything that took formal education or had that kind of respectability attached to it (or that was so obviously up Paul’s alley and not his), or George, who was into Indian music and/or American jam band ethos. But Paul in ’68 doesn’t seem to have had any interest in it, either; in his non-Hey Jude songs from that year, I hear the kind of aimlessness as in his 70s output. The sounds of someone immensely gifted at music without anything in particular to say. Too many drugs? Not enough time collaborating with his increasingly erratic and addicted partner? Too much chaos in his own personal life, before he had time to process it? All of the above? Whatever it was, by Abbey Road, he was, as you note, back to writing music that only the Beatles could write. In India, though, I think John was the one writing that music: most of the truly Beatley songs on the White Album, to me, are things like Happiness is a Warm Gun and Dear Prudence.
Had the Beatles been functioning better as a group after India, there would have been a lot of potential to take John’s songs and merge them with Paul’s ability to think symphonically — a White Album that artfully explored to the fullest limits the discomfort and discord as well as the whimsy in that batch of songs. But it’s amazing they coalesced for as long as they did.
Last thought: I think that scene in Get Back where Paul is trying to arrange harmonies for Don’t Let Me Down is part compulsive musicality, and part him trying to make the song sound like the Beatles, and not the Band. (Side note: The Band are one of the few 60s acts that I just don’t get, the way that Mike feels about the Stones. The Beatles’ 1969 fascination with the Band was generally deleterious; for the first time, they weren’t just trying to emulate rather than improve upon music they liked, but they were doing so with music that was traversing somewhere they’d already been.)
Oh @Michael, don’t misunderstand, I feel that way about The Band, too! They’re just one small step up from jugband music.
@Michael B I think it was mostly George who was enamored with The Band, not John or Paul. ‘All Things Must Pass’ was his attempt to write a song in that vein during the Get Back sessions, and it became a better song once Phil Spector de-Banded it in 1970. The Band were alright on their first two records (the second more so) while they were still imbibing that magic Dylan pixie dust. After that, their career was as dull as George Harrison’s.
@Lara, “I’m Looking Through You” is one of my favorite Beatle songs. I love the acoustics of it, and just the looseness. But, Rubber Soul is my fave album.
I hope they do a Rubber Soul deluxe edition next!
I’m a Rubber Soul fan too @Tasmin. And the cover shot (and its various iterations) for the album must be my favorite! The boys look so cool and contemporary and illustrate so well that acoustic feel you describe.
Further to my earlier comment because it was late and I was too tired to expand upon it. ‘All of the Beatles had shifting feelings about getting back together, but they didn’t. Standard narrative’. I wasn’t referring to that though, which was something that occurred after the fact. It was the common assertion that John and George wanted to leave the Beatles in1968/1969, or earlier. The reason as to why they actually didn’t has remained unanswered or avoided by the fandom to this day. Except: “Paul was bossy and they couldn’t leave because of tax, litigation, court action, whatever.” There are conflicting accounts when the actual contract with EMI was signed in 1962 anyway, and it appeared to have lapsed in 1966, only to be re-signed in January 1967 for a period of nine years. Apart from this window of opportunity, history is littered with broken contracts affecting far more people in far less favourable financial circumstances than four young men from Liverpool, two of whom appeared unhappy with their lot in life. There is no standard narrative to the Beatles story. It is too conflicting, too contradictory and fraught with self-interest by its four members. There is just the Narrative to which some basic facts have been added and other basic facts have been left off to be ‘proven’ by obsessives (!). ‘If we all decided Paul wasn’t bossy, then we’d have to explain all the data that says he was/is.’ Nobody is deciding Paul wasn’t bossy though, therefore there is no data to find otherwise. Paul, George, and Ringo mentioned being unhappy with the presence of Yoko in the studio because it caused problems and tension. The Standard Narrative. I guess? The ‘standard’ narrative exists because it is too convenient and too tiring or discomforting or stressful for the fandom to provide answers that satisfy the disparate and often confrontational individuals that demonstrate profound interest in this particular band. Plain avoidance is so much easier – and simple. Yes, I agree that obsessiveness is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s also the reason why the Beatles fandom has existed for nearly 60 years and still counting.
@Lara, I don’t think I’m grasping much of this comment, but the idea of “avoidance”–that there’s just some data that’s too hot to handle, or makes “people” uncomfortable–is a common rhetorical device on the internet. I think this does happen, but much more rarely than assumed.
The Beatles story is mostly settled history; there are perhaps things to come out yet, but anything that would fundamentally change the story of the band would be surprising. Not impossible, but very surprising.
@Jerry. “Ideas John and George might have had played a role that was as justifiable in terms of such explorations as Paul’s were.” Yes, I agree to some extent, but John and George had fairly free rein in their exploration as heard on the White Album and on Let it Be with the inclusion of Eric Clapton and Billy Preston. Towards the end of the 60s, the number of bands on the scene were ten-fold the number they were at the beginning of the decade. As such, I think it was a question of how the Beatles were to retain their identity as much as their direction.
“But what about the drugs?”
—ancient dullblog proverb
Seriously tho, certain strains of marijuana give me mild auditory hallucinations—often quiet scratchy or screechy noises underneath whatever music or tv I’m listening to. Which is nbd for me but if I were a high-powered, stressed-out obsessive/compulsive sublimating all my emotional problems into my job, it would drive me nuttybonkers, too. A possible factor?
@Ann, I’m going to paint that on wood like “Live. Laugh. Love.”
Seriously though — it’s always important to remember that these guys weren’t “straight” when they were interacting with each other, and so yeah, you have a layer of data that is unknowable to us, probably forgotten by them, but definitely part of the story. “I’m Jesus Christ” is the tippiest top of a very large wave.
@Ann, your short post made me chuckle twice – first with the proverb, then with “…if I were a high-powered, stressed-out obsessive/compulsive sublimating all my emotional problems into my job…”
I mean, who could you possibly be referring to!? ,0)
Interestingly I think the one who maybe was more of a perfectionist than most Beatle die hards realize(and who ducked the reputation)…was George. I seem to remember some quotes about George wanting to do his guitar part to something over and over and over again. Repeatedly saying “I can do it better…I can do better. Let’s do it again” etc..and another John quote somewhere where he talks about George “If you don’t stop him he’d redo it a million times”
Of course George wasn’t the studio general that Paul was but it seems to me that in regards to his parts of a song he could be very much the perfectionist. Enough to drive the others a bit crazy
I recall reading those quotes as well. I would say McCartney has been judged out of context because of those three weeks in January 1969. Paul has admitted to his faults but he’s never been the sort of man to say: I know I did THIS but THEY did THAT. It doesn’t seem to be his style. Yes, I know he pointed out the 101 takes of George’s Not Guilty but he didn’t grind the point either.
Furthermore…George and his interest in guitars….the technical aspects of them etc also points to him perhaps having perfectionist qualities. John on the other hand just wanted to play the thing and could care less about much else it seems. George was the one who tuned the guitars before each concert. He left very detailed notes about all of his guitars before his passing. The more I think about it the more George comes across as the perfectionist, especially when he really takes interest in something
As always, the comments on this site are incredibly interesting, thought provoking, and well informed. One very minor point that has always irked pertaining to George and “Paul ruined me as a guitarist” is the fact that there is much documentation pointing to a solid two year stretch in ’66/67 that saw George focus heavily on learning to play the sitar versus continuing to evolve as a guitarist, and he never seems to factor that into his equation of his perceived deteriorating guitar skills.
@Dan, I’ve never considered George’s comment as referring to a particular period, but more in a general sense of working with someone who is watching you so closely and having so many opinions about your work (some of them right!) that you begin to question your ability. That is devastating to artistic development.
With you–totally makes sense. I guess my point in that was that there was a time period for George (and John) that Paul was the lightning rod for all that ailed the Beatles during the break up and immediate aftermath (just my opinion much of that was stoked by Klein, and then having to align with a strict narrative in their defense against his lawsuit).
Yes, @Dan, I think the necessities of that lawsuit amplified the usual bitchiness found in a band into Very Serious Legal Matters. 🙂
@Dan. I think you are correct in Paul being wrongly blamed for ‘ruining’ George’s guitar skills. Another thing that is overlooked is George’s admiration for Segovia as documented as early as 1962. It seems that George lost interest in the electric guitar for a while and switched to classical guitar (which he was extremely good at) before switching back to electric guitar then switching to the sitar (which, in George’s own words, he could never master) and finally switching back to electric guitar. And so on and so on. @Michael, what evidence or even any examples are there of Paul (only Paul?) watching over George so closely and having so many opinions of his work? George engaged in bitter rants retrospectively. A man who’d imbibed too much LSD and cannabis which sullied his sense of reason because his musical path didn’t quite go the way he wanted it to. No doubt it was Paul, being Paul, who arranged ‘Til There Was You, PS I Love You, and And I Love Her but it was George who performed them on classical guitar, simply because I assume Paul knew George was so much better on the instrument than he was. George did not use the classical guitar for his own songs during that early period for reasons only known to himself. And something I’ve read recently (but can’t find at present) from a quote from George in 1966 saying something to the effect: ‘John and Paul have become such fine writers that I can’t keep up so I’ve decided to learn the sitar’. Whether he meant as a songwriter or as a musician not being able to interpret what was expected of him, I don’t really know. But the vitriol that he, John and Ringo displayed towards Paul’s early solo work was inviscerating. It makes me wonder who really was the one who ended up questioning his ability. It damaged Paul. In between the gems, his solo work always had a faltering quality to it.
The relationship between Paul and George seems to have been strained from the beginning. From what I’ve read and understood is that during the Hamburg days both George and Paul were equally competent on lead guitar to the point that the band couldn’t decide who should have the role. It was only when Paul choked with nerves at a performance that it was given to George. Nothing like a second chance then? A little give and take? They could have taken turns but I doubt that George was prepared to move an inch. To rub salt into the wound, as Stu was still in the band, Paul was relegated to playing the piano, a role he perceived as a demotion if his comment ‘only the fat man gets to play piano’ is anything to go by. It’s quite possible that Paul held buried feelings of deep resentment here, perhaps thinking HE was the one who taught John guitar chords at the beginning and HE was the one who suggested to John that George join the band in the first place. With John also screwing him over in finding a new best mate in Stuart Sutcliffe, it doesn’t surprise me that John had a battle in asking Paul to choose between remaining with the band or go with his father’s advice.
The Abbey Road tapes are also revealing. When George started complaining that his songs were being ignored John rounded on him angrily telling him that he and Paul had given him LOTS of help right from the start with Don’t Bother Me and accusing him of pushing off to India to do his thing with the sitar. In effect, disengaging from the band. George’s artistic development was stymied by nobody except himself. He’s a likeable enough guy but goodness he seemed like hard work.
@Lara, I agree that the motivation for George’s claim that Paul ruined him as a guitarist is highly suspect.
However, although Paul (and John) sometimes played lead on recordings, I don’t think Paul ever wanted to play lead on stage. The performance when Paul choked was before George joined – and perhaps why Paul wanted him to join.
This is from Tune In and refers to an October 1957 performance, which Paul’s first with the Quarrymen and before George joined: “My very first Quarry Men gig, at the Conservative club in Broadway, was a disaster because I got sticky fingers and blew the solo in Guitar Boogie, which is one of the easiest things in the world to play… I was just too frightened; it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player… It’s a twelve-bar and I just couldn’t do it. The fingers stuck to the fretboard and wouldn’t lift off, and I sweated and blushed. After that I said ‘Forget me on lead’ and I never played lead again on stage. It wiped me out as a lead guitar player, that night.” I don’t know of any similar instances after George joined, and there’s no evidence that it was John rather than Paul who decided Paul wasn’t going to play lead.
Tune In also notes the multiple guitars bought by both John and George during their pre-fame days while the only electric guitar Paul bought fell apart during their first trip to Hamburg. It would be tough to sell yourself as lead guitarist without a guitar.
That said, Paul certainly didn’t want to be the bass player either – his “fat guy” comments refer to bass, not piano. Apparently, a keyboard player wasn’t an available role in most venues… perhaps portable instruments weren’t a thing or were very expensive.
I also don’t think, “John had a battle in asking Paul to choose between remaining with the band…” IMO, that was some creative storytelling on John’s part. Paul briefly tried to keep his day job, which worked out for evening and weekend gigs. When the Cavern lunch-time gigs started, John did force him to choose one over the other, but Paul doesn’t seem to have struggled with the decision.
@Laura. I concede that I got the fat man quote attributed to the wrong instrument. But it doesn’t change much. There were three guitarists in the band while in Hamburg – John, Paul and George. Stu Sutcluffe on bass with Pete Best on drums. Paul’s guitar broke when they went back to Liverpool, with Stu staying behind with Astrid, and returning to Hamburg a few months later, with Stu back on bass. When Stu left, no one was willing to take on bass.
Paul did because he had no choice (and for the same reason why they never played bass on stage). A well-worn story, I know. You’re right – a broken guitar was of no use to him. But I’d say, like John, Paul has indulged in bit of creative story telling himself. It’s been easy for him to make light of the tale, once lauded for his skills as a bassist, but I doubt he felt like that at the time. Apparently George rubbished Paul’s ability on bass at first, which is why they engaged Chas Newby on bass for a short time. From what is known, Paul never attempted to wrest away the lead from George. But what is telling is that Paul always composed his songs on guitar or piano, never bass. Thus his competency on the guitar increased ten-fold by his early twenties. Whilst George had the greater skill with rock and roll standards with much practice and rehearsal, when it came to the Beatles own compositions I think at times he struggled. It was George Martin, not Paul, who suggested Paul try the solo on Taxman.
This from a quote from Ringo in 1977:
“George was finding his independence and he wouldn’t be dominated as much by Paul as he was. ‘Cuz Paul, in the end, wanted to point out the solo to George. And George would say, ‘Well, I’m a guitarist. I’LL play the solo,’ and he always did, you know….Umm, I think ‘cuz He (Paul) got a bit like, ‘I wrote the song– I want it this way,’ where before it was, ‘I wrote the song– give me what you can give me.’ ” Which suggests The End started probably from 1968 when George came back from India brimming with resentment, while The Before puts paid to the notion that Paul ALWAYS stood over George from the beginning. That it is largely untrue. George was the main instigator to end touring so he could do other things. While I appreciate Paul could be bossy and annoying, I also can understand by 1967 or so, when his songwriting continued to develop and change, how frustrating it must have been for him to have composed both guitar and bass lines and attempt to explain them to an uninterested and often absent George. Boos to Ringo for not also calling out John for his attitude towards George.
@Lara, Lewisohn says Paul’s guitar was, if not in pieces, letting him down during their first six weeks in Hamburg. He also says John bought a guitar during their last three months there and, “In greater need of a new guitar than any of them, Paul kept his hand in his pocket.”
There’s also this though: “All five Beatles sent money home for their families, enough to make the occasional repayments on the guitars and amp, and maybe a little extra on top.” Er, if it for was for music-store debts and maybe a little extra, then MAYBE they sent money home for their families. But I digress! I don’t imagine John, Pete, or Stu needed to send money to their families, but if Paul did, it could have been a factor.
After George left, “Despite Paul having John’s Club Footy at his disposal, and maybe George’s Futurama, he passed on the idea [of playing lead]…” And, “George, though, was going home. The night before, he sat up with John and ran through the lead guitar lines he’d need to know. (Presumably, though not necessarily, Paul was switching to rhythm.)”
Of course, Lewisohn has no way of knowing whether or not John said since HE was the one with the new guitar HE was going to play lead. Except… at first they tried to bring Chas Newby over from England to play lead, but he was only available for two weeks over Christmas vacation.
It just doesn’t seem like Paul, no shrinking violet, pushed to play lead in the early days. And I don’t think bass is suited to songwriting… But I do agree that when George took up sitar and mainly composed his songs on piano, it was on him if his guitar playing stagnated. Both George and John could be pretty lousy about taking responsibility.
@Laura. You’re right. Lewisholn didn’t know what or what wasn’t said. How could he? He wasn’t there. The accounts from Tune In and Many Years From Now (from someone who actually was there) appear to differ. Lewisohn was brilliant at collecting facts and figures but he wasn’t so great at reading the emotions behind them. I don’t think I’m the only one whose reached that conclusion. I’m not getting into the whys of what months and days guitars fell apart. What was important was the guitar was Paul’s instrument of CHOICE. We know Paul had left-handed difficulties with some types of guitars. He has said so. It’s not up to me to challenge him because he didn’t take up X Y or Z guitar. And there is economic privilege to consider. John was far more comfortably off than Paul. So was Stu. John could afford to buy more guitars and have Mimi bail him out if necessary. Both he and George bought guitars on hire purchase. Paul’s sole and poorly paid parent told him NEVER to do that. As did many parents in the early sixties, and for good reason. So Paul took up bass then. He accepted it, was gracious about it, and turned the instrument into ways it had never been used before and crucial to the Beatles sound. Beatles fans should be thankful. As they should when, as the sole piano player in Hamburg, Paul brought his extended skills to the band. All unplanned but that’s fate for you, isn’t it?
@Lara, it may have been frustrating, but that’s the nature of being in a band, particularly a band with the other three Beatles. You can offer musicians suggestions about what to play if they ask or seem open to it; you can tell them exactly what to play *if they ask*; you can ask them to try it differently if they’re really veering far from your vision for the song and you don’t like what they’re playing or they seem stuck. But, generally speaking, you may not “compose both guitar and bass lines” and then tell your band’s lead guitarist exactly what to play as though he is a session musician. That’s simply not being a good bandmate. If Paul was so upset by this, he could have left the Beatles and worked as a solo musician. Paul understandably didn’t want to do this; the Beatles were generally a wonderful creative experience and a great vehicle for making music. That meant, however, that Paul had to be flexible. George, Ringo, and John don’t seem to have the same types of problems working with each other from a strictly musical standpoint (i.e., notwithstanding Yoko, heroin, etc.) because–as the Get Back footage reflects, for example–John might make suggestions, but he didn’t dictate and he didn’t treat George and Ringo like session players when they were working out parts. That matters to people, and Paul is not a victim for being in a band with people who didn’t want to take dictation from him.
@Michael B It’s obvious but worth reiterating that almost everyone in Wings suffered the same strife with Paul’s dictatorial nature, hence the constantly revolving line up. They joined under the pretense of Wings being a band and quickly discovered they were glorified session men. Only Denny Laine made it to the end, due to an overestimated view of his own self importance, and a misguided sense of loyalty for which he got burnt.
This old chestnut again. The reason why Jimmy McCulloch and later Henry McCullough left Wings was because of Linda’s lack of musical and stage professionalism. I can understand how frustrating it was for them. Both of them were drug addicts which didn’t help. Paul chose his band members because he didn’t want to compete with the egos he’d just left. As for being paid, (another well worn gripe that likes to rear its head) during the early 70s Paul’s assets were frozen as part of the Beatles legal settlement. The royalties from the solo albums were also not settled until the mid seventies. The various members were paid a weekly stipend of £100 which in today’s terms is really not that bad. Most of them left Wings for other reasons not dictatorship from Paul. Not to say there weren’t arguments as there are in any band. As for Denny Laine….the seedy autos, the tabloids and the paste and cut books love all this stuff. No doubt you’ve read them @Matt.
@Michael B. Something I forgot to explain. What I had meant by Paul composing his songs on guitar referred to his competencies. As he wrote far far more songs than George did in the early days, how could he not increase in competency? He couldn’t lay down his melodies and chord progressions without an instrument. Not all Beatles songs were composed in the studio but also at home or on holiday. Also I did not say Paul told George exactly what to play; I said he tried to explain to George what he’d written. Perhaps lead lines was the wrong choice of words.
So when they were all trying to work out their parts and not ‘dictating’ to each other, what did Ringo say?
“Come on Paul, produce us then”.
This is where Paul as band member and Paul as producer became confusing, just as much for him as for the others. I think you are being unreasonable.
@Michael B. I’m not sure how you interpreted the quote I provided from Ringo, but it appears Paul wasn’t a problem prior to 1968 or so. John didn’t dictate to Paul. He mocked him. Often. He also mocked George by waltzing with Yoko when George brought in one of his songs. But George would take it from his hero. As he did when John also instructed (yes, instructed) him what he wanted on his songs. He didn’t snarkily challenge John, he wouldn’t dare. It depends how you want to interpret the Get Back footage. Constructive criticism seemed beyond George. As we saw in the Get Back film, he descends to calling Paul’s ideas ‘shit’. Not ‘I don’t think that works very well’ or ‘that doesn’t sound right’ but ‘shit’. Flexible lads were John and George. That was part of their personalities and fans laud them for it. Also in the film, it was quite clear that when Adolf was composing Get Back he was presenting the song to Ringo and George. If he didn’t want their contributions then I guess he could have sat on the toilet and worked it out himself. Honestly, what the Beatles went through was NOTHING to the fights some bands went through.
EMI took a financial risk in signing the Beatles. They had contracts in place for albums and films and it was up to the Beatles to have the responsibility and courtesy to fulfill them. Recording studios don’t run by themselves. Producers, engineers, clerical, catering and cleaning staff all have to be paid and expected to work certain hours. It seems that ‘after the bubble never burst’ these four little Lord Fauntleroys could do as they pleased – turn up late or not at all, leave in huffs if offended, and roll up high, stoned, or drunk. And indulge in their own self-interests (who cares about the band, this is more important to ME). Creative license you may well say. After all, they WERE the Beatles, weren’t they? Gods in thrall to everyone they met. So Paul composed lead lines SOMETIMES – what drama. Half the time he was the only who turned up. That was really the underlying problem that got the others bitching wasn’t it? Major McCartney has called.
Ringo and Paul seem to get on well these days. Perhaps somebody finally reminded Ringo that he is the richest rock drummer in history, courtesy of the Lennon/McCartney catalogue. Hardly worth getting sniffy over a couple of songs where he didn’t play the drums.