#mark hertsgaard

[primulcalator]

New Mutants Summer Special #01 (1990), Ann Nocenti, Bret Blevins, Greg Wright and Bill Oakley.

[beatleshistoryblog207]

LECTURE 18: COMING APART (PART 1): By 1968, George Harrison was increasingly becoming a song writing force to be reckoned with within the Beatles. He had been writing songs for years, but the inclusion of his mod rock classic “Taxman” as the first track on Revolver greatly emboldened him, strengthening his confidence and prompting him to throw himself into song writing with even more enthusiasm. When the Beatles’ self-titled album (a.k.a., the White Album) was released in 1968, George’s eclectic style was on full display with such tracks as “Savoy Truffle” and “Piggies.” But arguably his most acclaimed and beloved song on the album, the epic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which featured lead guitar by his close friend and collaborator Eric Clapton. Well into the twenty-first century, the song is still regarded as a resplendent masterpiece as Classic Rock era. American journalist and author Mark Hertsgaard referred to the song as “the first great composition of George’s career and perhaps the single most impressive song on the White Album.” Songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” demonstrated that George was an immensely gifted writer. Many of the songs that he wrote in the late 1960s would end up on his first post-Beatles’ break-up solo album, the magnificent All Things Must Pass (1970).

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

“‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ was later called the first gay love song, and it did express the sort of fear, shame, and hopelessness that many homosexuals have felt in the face of the larger world’s disapproval. However, this interpretation is worth noting not because it sheds light on Lennon’s sexual orientation - it doesn’t - but because of what it says about his ability to reach inside himself and articulate larger human truths, truths that reach across barriers of age, race, class, and other categories and speak to people who otherwise feel isolated from one another…the lyrics…are compelling because of the honesty and directness of their self revelation; at the same time, they are inclusive and open-ended enough to accommodate alternative interpretations that others may assign them.”

- A Day In The Life by Mark Hertsgaard (pg. 128)

[longforyesterday]

The alarm clock that heralds the transition to McCartney’s portion of the song was actually set as a joke, according to George Martin, who added, “We left it in because we couldn’t get it off” the tape. But it is a sublime bit of serendipity; there couldn’t be a more appropriate introduction to Paul’s “Woke up, fell out of bed” lyric. Lennon was the more philosophical of the two, but McCartney showed more empathy for the daily life of the average person—think of “Lady Madonna,” for example, or “Paperback Writer”—and here that perspective provides a reassuring anchor to Lennon’s cosmic musings. McCartney’s everyman seems oblivious to all but his own small concerns—a cup of tea, a quick cigarette on the way to work—yet he is not an unsympathetic character; he simply has enough trouble keeping his own life together without also trying to confront the moral issues raised in Lennon’s part of the song. He represents each of us who retreats from full engagement of life.

Mark Hertsgaard, A Day In The Life – The Music And Artistry of the Beatles

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

I just saw a post you did a while ago about your top 3 beatles and its so refreshing to see people who can appreciate both john and paul without putting the other down. So thank you!

(Re: I think its this post that you’re talking about?)

Thank you! I appreciate you saying this - and I agree!

I think its completely fair for people to have a favourite Beatle (mine is John), and I also think its fair to like some of the bugs, and dislike others. For example, if someone hates John, but doesnt hate George, Paul and Ringo, I think thats still understandable and fair, because at the end of the day its not up to me to decide who someone does or does not like (creatively and/or as a person).

But at the same time, I can’t understand writers (or even just bloggers) who favour John, and subsequently feel the need to place him in dichotomous opposition to Paul (therefore vilifying Paul), because at the end of the day, they were a partnership! They loved each other; they fought a fucking lot too, but they still always loved each other. And that in fact goes for all of the Beatles imo. So in assessing the convoluted interpersonal relationships (especially between John and Paul), I always think of a Marya Hornbacher quote: “Hatred is so much closer to love than indifference.”

Ultimately, John and Paul are both still good on their own, but I think they just worked together perfectly (creatively, at least), balancing out one another’s merits and flaws ~exquisitely~ 😌. They were just much stronger as a team! Also, if you wanna read a Beatles biography that doesn’t vilify either party, id recommend ‘A Day In The Life’ by Mark Hertsgaard!

[longforyesterday]

The Beatles’ most important artistic contemporary, Bob Dylan, quickly recognized how special they were. […] He was driving through Colorado, he later recalled, when the lightning struck: “We had the radio on and eight of the Top Ten songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid.” Dylan said he kept quiet about how much he admired the Beatles, but “in my head, the Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking but it was so far out I couldn’t deal with it—eight in the Top Ten. It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn.” If the Beatles influenced Dylan toward a more rock ’n’ roll future, he in turn influenced them toward a more poetic approach to songwriting. But this development came later.

Mark Hertsgaard, A Day In The Life – The Music And Artistry of the Beatles

[longforyesterday]

To make things easier, Martin endeavored to learn guitar, but soon gave up when it became clear that John and Paul were learning his instrument, the piano, much more quickly. Nevertheless, moments of incomprehension continued to pop up. During the overdubbing session for Lennon’s song, “Good Morning Good Morning” on Sgt Pepper, for example, John insisted on correcting Martin in front of outside musicians. John was playing notes on his guitar that Martin was translating into notes for saxophone players. John kept contradicting Martin’s instructions because John didn’t realize that some saxophones were pitched in E-flat, some in B-flat, and so forth. When Martin explained this, John replied, his voice heavy with disgust, “That’s bloody silly, isn’t it?” Such brazen technical ignorance caused some professionals to disparage the Beatles as musical impostors, a criticism that confused mere expertise with creativity. The Beatles needed George Martin to translate their ideas into proper musical terms, but the ideas were theirs to begin with. To his great credit, Martin was both intelligent and emotionally healthy enough to accept that “theirs was the greater talent” and to recognize that in most cases “an idea coming from them was better than an idea coming from me.” Recalling his collaboration with McCartney on the high, piccolo trumpet overdub that brightens the middle of “Penny Lane,” Martin wrote, “It is true that I arranged it, but… if I had been left to myself, I honestly do not think I would have written such good notes [as Paul did].” Moreover, precisely because the Beatles didn’t know what they didn’t know, they could suggest innovations that never would have occurred to better-trained but more conventionally minded colleagues.

Mark Hertsgaard, A Day In The Life – The Music And Artistry of the Beatles

[longforyesterday]

When I listened to the working tapes of “A Day In The Life” at Abbey Road Studios, the first words audible as take one began were John murmuring, “Sugarplum fairy, sugarplum fairy.” This was in lieu of a proper count-in to the song, something Lennon was incapable of, according to Mark Lewisohn, the EMI Beatles archivist who listened to all four hundred-plus hours of tapes in the Abbey Road vaults to write his official history, The Beatles: The Complete Recording Sessions. “While Paul or George’s 1-2-3-4 count-ins were always appropriately sensible, John’s—from the earliest surviving archive tape to the last—were anything but,” wrote Lewisohn. “Only John Lennon could have devised so many demented ways of saying four simple numbers.” But there was method to the madness in this case, and humor as well: “sugarplum fairy” was sixties slang for the person who supplied one’s recreational drugs.

Mark Hertsgaard, A Day In The Life – The Music And Artistry of the Beatles