The Black Album: Solo Beatles According to Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke’s Take on the Post-Beatles

Ethan Hawke gives an Oscar-winning performance in a likely Best-Picture-winning movie, but the best of the post-Beatles that his character compiles for The Black Album does not do justice to John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Hawke’s remarks in a note to his son about the flaws of each Beatle individually ring true. John’s self-involvement eventually wears thin, as does Paul’s penchant for sentimentality, and George’s obsession with spirituality. However, “he can’t sing” as a tag for Ringo–the singer on Beatles classics including ‘Yellow Submarine’, ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and ‘Octopus’s Garden’–is just a hackneyed putdown. Certainly in a recording studio, where a singer gets multiple cracks at getting each phase just right, Ringo can come off as well as Sinatra, within a narrower range to be sure. His voice on CD has actually improved over the decades, as it has deepened. And especially on his last several albums, contra Hawke, you can “go home and crank up a Ringo Starr album start to finish…” “[Y]ou’re just not gonna do that,” Hawke insists. The hell you’re not.
But I do grant Hawke’s overall point, that when you juxtapose the tracks of all four, “they elevate each other.” Indeed they do, which was why I wrote a book called Let’s Put the Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010 four years ago, on how you can thereby create several terrific post-Beatles CD-sets, including an intial set, which I dubbed Black Box aka ‘The Black Album’.
As for John’s ‘Life Begins at 40’ not making the cut because the irony involved is murderous, well, it was just a rough demo that he might have done further work on and as such it’s just not very good. Then Hawke goes on to completely mischaracterize the rift between John and Paul. “[T]ell me again why love can’t last. Why do we give in to pettiness? Why did they?” Etc. The thing is, Ethan, the entire span of their rift was about 21 months. They loved each other dearly, but the pressures they came under would have done in almost any friendship. But not theirs. Because of the depth of that love, they repaired their relationship, which once again became solid, if intermittent, from 1972 through 1980. I would maintain that it was one of the great male friendships of the 20th century, and with just an ounce of support from Yoko, the two would have worked together again, no question.
More Hawke flubs: No, John did not carry a switchblade around in his pocket. No, he did not punch anyone at a memorial for his recently-deceased mum. No, Paul was not several years younger than John. The age gap was only 2 ¼ years. No, “badassness” was not an entrance requirement for the Quarry Men. Contra Hawke, Paul was already involved with girls at the time and was already cool, for a 15-year-old. No, Paul never chased John out onto the street at that memorial for Julia, saying “John, why are you being such a jerk?” No, the whole scene of them exchanging confidences re. their dead mums, followed by an embrace on the street, never happened; John knew about Paul’s mother’s death long before. And John certainly didn’t cap off this bogus tear-jerker of a scene with, “Can we please start a rock’n’ roll band?” Good grief, they’d already been playing in the Quarry Men together for the better part of a year, and it was a skiffle band then, not a rock’n’ roll band.
Apparently when the boys were 25, they had had little beyond “a gaggle of babes outside their hotel room” by way of romantic experience. Is Hawke kidding? All were married or in long-term relationships by that age, and had had a plethora of relationships and flings on the side. So they had plenty of life experience to inform their lyrics. No mystery there. Did they write substantively because, as Hawke has it, “they were in pain. They knew that love does not last. They knew it as extremely young men.” Hooey! At 25, each was involved in the first great love of his life, a love they all expected to last, even John at that point. And did they start writing about “adult life” subjects like “marriage, fatherhood, sobriety, spiritual yearning, [and] the emptiness of material success” only in the 1970s? Hardly. Granted, with more life experience comes more sophistication in one’s lyrics, but the four boys didn’t have to wait for their 30s to start writing about long-term relationships and marriage, or of other great disappointments in life. John and Ringo had kids by the mid-1960s for heaven sake. (And no, Ethan, the boys were never champagne drinkers.)
Hawke writes, “If you’re a romantic like me, it’s hard not to long for some indication of healing between [John and Paul].” And such indications are not hard to find. Ethan, they were all healed up by the end of 1971. They saw each other off and on for the next 4 1/3rd years, despite living on different sides of the Atlantic. They hung out sometimes. Even after immersing himself in raising Sean and despite Yoko’s disapproval, John continued to talk with Paul on the phone from time to time. By John’s death the two had drifted apart somewhat but their friendship was intact and awaiting a bona fide renewal. It was George whom John was at odds with in 1980, and George who would regret that the matter lay unresolved on December 8th.
“Some say that Paul, the pupil, had surpassed John, the mentor,” Hawke relates. But John was never Paul’s mentor. As a key member of the band, Paul was John’s musical equal from day one. “Some say Paul was a little snot who bought the publishing rights out from underneath the other three,” he informs us. But this sentence has no referent to reality. Nor had Brian Epstein been serving as a mediator between John and Paul’s egos in the year before his death. By then the boys were working exclusively in the recording studio, where Brian was absent.
No, Brian Epstein did not decide what went out as a single, and what track merited the A side. These were collective decisions, including George and Ringo and even George Martin. Hawke’s account of John’s ‘Revolution’ being out-voted in favor of Paul’s ‘Hey Jude’ as the A side is fantasy. Lennon immediately acknowledged ‘Hey Jude’ as the best thing Paul had ever written; of course it would be the A side. The combination made for the greatest single in the history of pop music. John was pleased, not peeved. Yes, it’s true that the new single upstaged the Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet at Mick Jagger’s birthday bash, but Paul was the lone Beatle in attendance. No other account I’ve read indicates that side two of Beggar’s Banquet remained unplayed at the event. That seems hardly likely.
As for John’s comment about the prospect of playing with Paul again: “It would always be about, ‘Play what?’ It’s about the music. We play well together—if he needed me, I’d be interested.” Where does Hawke get this? In the many thousands of pages about the Beatles that I’ve read over the years, I’ve never laid eyes on this quote. If legit, it’s a good one. But it’s hardly unique in proposing a musical reunion given the right conditions. There are several such musings on John’s part, as there are on Paul’s part, not to mention George’s. All that a Beatles reunion required was an OK on Yoko’s part, but she never gave it—until John was dead.
For Hawke, the moral is that even if love doesn’t last, the music love generates can. Just as his character’s marriage in the movie didn’t last but the father-son relationship that emerged from it, like the music produced by a defunct band, does. It’s a touching thought in the context of the film, but the parallel with Lennon/McCartney is invalid. Absent an assassin and one overly-possessive/ambitious spouse, John and Paul would inevitably have collaborated again. Those two continued to have a real love for each other. Despite its hiatus during 1970-1971, and despite what Hawke implies, it was never over.
As for Hawke’s 50 track Black Album playlist, he utterly disqualifies himself as a guide to the post-Beatles by including on a would-be Beatles album-set: ‘Silly Love Songs’, ‘Pipes of Peace’ and ‘Listen to What the Man Said’. These would suit a Mac compilation of some sort, but it’s impossible to imagine John and George okaying the inclusion of these very non-Beatle-ish tracks on a collective release that all four would have had to stand behind. Another 14 of Hawke’s selections should have been pre-empted by much better material, which is abundant.
Hawke has done the post-Beatles works a big favor by inserting a would-be post-1970 Beatles compilation into what is truly a landmark film. While Hawke’s performance in the film is masterful, his Black Album selections leave a lot to be desired. But I suppose that’s half the fun—razzing many of the picks of the professed guide and substituting one’s own. At least Hawke has drawn attention to the desirability of conducting such an exercise in the first place. For that, all we post-Beatles fans owe Ethan Hawke a big thank-you.