#tim riley

[tavolgisvist]

Q: 'When I’m Sixty-Four'? A: Paul. I think I hepled Paul with some of the words, like "Vera, Chuck and Dave" and "Doing teh garden, digging the weeds."

(John Lennon, 1972, interview for Hit Parader)

Q: 'When I’m Sixty-Four'? A: Paul’s completely. I would never even dream of writing a song like that. There’s some things I never think about, and that’s one of them.

(John Lennon, 1980, All We Are Saying by David Sheff)

A pert clarinet chimes in as Paul sings “go for a ride,” and then fills out the lead voice with harmony during the last verse. The verse climbs from worldly-wise homey virtues and promises to the humble title question: “Will you still need me/Will you still feed me/When I’m sixty-four?” The bridge has a more expectant beat and shifts to minor, but the final line of the stanza always resolves whatever troubles may lie ahead—all worries are ironed out, all doubt laid to rest. Before returning to the main verse, a chime of happiness is duly rung.

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)

JOHN: … But when I was singing and writing this and working with her [Yoko], I was visualizing all the people of my age group, from the sixties, being in their thirties and forties now, just like me. And having wives and children, and having gone through everything together…I’m singin’ to them. I hope the young kids like it as well, but I’m really talking to the people who grew up with me. And saying, ‘Here I am now. How are you? How’s your relationship goin’? Did you get through it all? Wasn’t the seventies a drag, you know? Here we are, well let’s try to make the eighties good, you know?’ ‘Cause it’s still up to us to make what we can of it. It’s not out of our control. I still believe in love, peace; I still believe in positive thinking – when I can do it. I’m not always positive, but when I am I try to project it.” <…> …we…we were the hip ones in the sixties, but the world is not like the sixties. The whole map’s changed. And we’re goin’ into an unknown future, but we’re still all here. We still…while there’s life there’s hope.” Kaye: “So it seems like instead of the ‘down’ litany of the early seventies where all the things you don’t believe in, now it’s…” JOHN: “Exactly! And that’s why I put the ‘ting, ting, ting’ on the beginning of (Just Like) Starting Over. And I hoped somebody would catch on, but it’s easier if I explain it. ‘Cause I like to be mysterious. A little part of me still…But, in actual fact, on the beginning of Mother, the Plastic Ono album, you hear this litany [makes sounds of bell] Bong! You know, very slow church bell. Which was like a death knell. ‘I don’t believe in, I don’t believe in’ and the Freudian things about mother and father, and that was a kind of negative/positive. I was tryin’ to make a positive out of a negative, but it was heavy-going. And the reason this one [(Just Like) Starting Over, to start Double Fantasy] goes, ‘ting, ting, ting’ is to show that I’ve come through. And whoever’s listening must’ve come through, or they wouldn’t be here. And that’s the…because I always considered my work one piece, whether it be with Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John, Yoko Ono… So, to me it’s one part of one whole piece of work from the time I became public ‘till now. And that’s the connecting point between that, and you [Kaye] hit it right on the head. And the eighties is like we got a new chance, you know?”

(John Lennon (and Yoko Ono), interview with Laurie Kaye and Dave Sholin, December 8, 1980)

[carolsturka]

[I also had a] key moment interviewing a key subject, [Beatles friend and associate] Barry Miles, I was trying to come up with the reason that Lennon was so quiet and passive in the “Let It Be” movie [made in 1969]. So as I’m doing my research I’m realizing that [he and Yoko Ono] had just had a miscarriage at that time. So I said to Barry Miles, “Is that the reason that he’s so passive?” And Barry Miles just waved me off. He said “Oh no no. We knew they were on heroin all through 1968. And we were glad. Because it got him off acid.” That was really like WOW! They were really dealing with a major drug problem. And we sort of know that. In mythic terms we know that he was a major drug user.

Interview with John Lennon biographer, Tim Riley [x].

[eppysboys]

Pauline Sutcliffe described a novel Stuart began in this period, where a character named Nhoke is the thinly veiled composite of Lennon and Sutcliffe, "an artist living in horrid rooms in Puke street." She remembered how Stuart wrote of the "terrible change in John" in the months after they met, mirroring the loss of his mother. "He was capricious, in-calculable and self-centered, yet at the same time he was always a loyal friend. A frustrated and misunderstood child not given its due need of affection ends as a man without roots, in rebellion or bewilderment, almost embittered."

Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life by Tim Riley

[jamesginortonblog]

What We Know So Far About Joss Whedon's The Nevers

His sci-fi show set about Victorian women with superpowers is coming to HBO.

Townandcountrymag.com https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a28611448/the-nevers-hbo/

Joss Whedon’s next TV project, The Nevers, "is an epic science fiction drama about a gang of Victorian women," starring Laura Donnelly. Color us sold.

Here's what we know about the forthcoming HBO show so far.

IT'S ABOUT A GROUP OF WOMEN WITH EXTRAORDINARY ABILITIES DURING THE VICTORIAN ERA.

They're known as "the Touched," and they're ready to face some formidable enemies.

"[The Nevers is a] phrase that’s meant to evoke a sort of reaction to their oddity, to what is considered unnatural. The idea that you should never be like this, you should never have existed. Something is not the way it should be, and you don’t have the right to have whatever weird power or ability that you have," Whedon said, describing his characters.

"And that idea, that some people are not of the natural order, is fascinating to me."

HE'S ALSO SHARED THAT HE'S FASCINATED BY THE VICTORIAN ERA.

"I just love that era, I love that stuff, it’s fascinating to me," he said in an interview with IGN about the time period during Queen Victoria's reign, from 1837 until 1901.

"Particularly, the end of the century, when the world was just about to shift radically. Those are always fascinating things to me."

THE CAST READS LIKE A WHO'S WHO OF OUR FAVORITE PERIOD DRAMAS.

Outlander's Laura Donnelly (you'll recognize her as Jamie's sister Jenny Fraser) will star, as will Grantchester's James Norton, and Poldark's Pip Torrens and Eleanor Tomlinson.

Other members of the cast include Nick Frost, Denis O'Hare, Ann Skelly, Olivia Williams, Zackary Momoh, and Tim Riley.

THERE WILL BE BOTH GAME OF THRONES AND BUFFY ALUMS BEHIND THE SCENES.

In addition to Whedon, who will serve as showrunner, executive producer, writer, and director, Bernie Caulfield, Jane Espenson, and Doug Petrie will be executive producers.

IT'S UNCLEAR WHEN THE SHOW WILL PREMIERE.

[tavolgisvist]

“If I Fell” rests on as big an equivocation musically as its lyric does emotionally: the trepidation of that first word (“If”) is sung above an uncertain E-flat-minor chord, the perilous half step above the song’s D-major key. Christgau and Piccarella write that “the yearning for tenderness and the yearning for revenge become almost inextricable” as John’s get-even tactics mix with Paul’s gently reassuring vocal blend to realize the song’s layered emotions. Love suddenly means more than “just holding hands.”

<…>The duet that John and Paul sing in “If I Fell” is the best example of what Mann [William Mann, the Mann of the London Times, who wrote about “aeolian cadence”] is referring to: the melody itself seems written as harmonized—both lines are so lyrical it’s hard to say just which one is the “melody.” The intertwining harmonies are so strong that they seem to carry the entire song along behind them. Melody and meaning govern the musical setting.

Paul’s upper harmony enters with the verse, and is constant, as strong an imaginative presence as John’s lead. Their voices align geometrically as they travel in the same direction (“If I give my “), part toward opposite paths in contrary motion (“heart”—where Paul falls and John rises—“to you”—where Paul rises and John falls), and wind up in unison for the final linking line (“I must be sure”). Breaking up lines with these harmony patterns only increases the temperamental dividends of McCartney singing atop Lennon: John sounds hurt, uneasy but still hopeful; Paul is romantic, yearning, and full of promise. Their vocal blend conveys the emotional quandary.

As they turn the corner into the bridge, it’s on the key line “Don’t hurt my pride like her,’ and the bridge admits vulnerability: “Cos I couldn’t stand the pain.” The rising line they sing to these words captures the essence of romantic pain, and is followed almost immediately by a tinge of regret, as the major chord flips into minor on the words “and I.” Lennon does a neat glide down between the words “new” and “love,” and Paul makes a delicious error when he cracks on the word “vain” at the end of the second bridge. In the middle of such a delicate arrangement, the mistake is priceless.

<…>The music empathizes how we hear Lennon’s sense of consequence surrounding a new involvement—we share both his hope and his fear.

This love triangle exposes the emotional landscape that earlier Lennon songs inhabited: the brooding melismas that qualify the hopeful lyrics of “All I’ve Got to Do,” the sympathetic anger of “Not a Second Time,” and the humble infatuation that grows into unswerving determination in “I'll Get You.”

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)

[tavolgisvist]

“Oh! Darling” is a masterful piece of singing from Paul, his most spine-tingling vocal assault since “Long Tall Sally” and “I’m Down.” Beneath a motorized banging piano (left) and blistering chopped guitar chords (right), he gives himself a swaggering bass line that swerves and pivots, mitigating the angered surface with a constantly swaying bottom. The heated rhythms of “Got to Get You into My Life” are slowed to a simmering gospel blues torched with Ray Charles vocal melodramatics, sacred inflections redeeming secular heartache.

In addition to the angular bass line that undergirds the verse, Paul writes himself a walloping solo vocal break at the top of each verse. Like Elvis Presley in “One Night” (1957), McCartney crams more into every new title outcry, making each one more charged than the last—it’s the kind of break that allows a great singer to unleash the very essence of what the song is all about. By seizing the moment completely, Paul defines it, shapes it in his own terms; his vocal authority commands all the other players. He makes these moments unig-norable the same way he makes the feverish ad-libs in “Hey Jude” so compelling—by letting his guts tell him where to land, and trusting his spontaneous sense of what sounds right to guide him toward the most riveting spontaneous phrasing. Nothing sounds planned because it isn’t, and the gripping sense of emotion in the rising and descending swells at the end of each verse helps ground his flights as they set up his next entrance.

The bridge transcends the lift of the verses: as he sings “When you told me/You didn’t need me anymore,” Paul’s voice comes unhinged, and the clipped guitar of the verses balloons into huge arpeggiations of the harmonies (right). It’s one long scream of pain, and Paul sustains the tension right up to the last solo plea, “I nearly broke down and di-i-i-ed, oh, darling!” as he links the final desperate cries of the bridge up with the return of the verse. The escalation of harmony in the bridge is almost secondary to the way he contorts the word “need” (from A major, the band jumps from D7 to F7 on that word to intensify the basic blues progression) . In these moments he nearly leaves everyone else behind, and his focus dares the others to match his emotional pitch.

The third verse is all warmed up: Paul takes more chances stretching words (“I’ll never maaaake it . . . alone”), and lets silences spew their own inner tensions. The second time they move toward the bridge, Paul ad-libs “Believe me, darling”; we know what’s going to happen, and they know that we know, so they’re forced to make even more out of it the second time.

As the second bridge comes around the bend, the sense of excitement is inescapable: the persuasive piano rumble that gets going in the left barely hints at the explosion of energy that takes place once they land on it. The end of the band’s fuse suddenly ignites Paul’s voice: “When you told me—whoo—woo!!”

That single ad-lib takes the whole track into hyper-space—you can hear it in the way the piano’s octaves get manic throughout the succeeding bridge, and the way it reluctantly cools to the unsettled determination of the final verse (“I’ll never le-e-et . . . you down”). (With energy like this in the air, there’s no need to dress things up with roving synthesizers and sly backup vocal jokes.)

The last line Paul sings has all the sorrow of rejection and the resolve of not caving in that the entire song has sustained: he grieves over his loss, convinced that he doesn’t deserve it. A guitar frames the track with bristled notes as the band holds the final chord.

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)

[tavolgisvist]

…the song [“Free as a Bird”, 1977] itself is unfinished. The bridge Paul McCartney writes for it is a conspicuous lift from the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand),” accented by the first three words (“Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew/The boy who said he’d be tine. . ..”). This direct song lift was widely heard at the time of the single’s release, played on National Public Radio, but McCartney has remained mum on the subject. Aside from being an arch reference to an early girl-group staple, the kind the Beatles themselves might have covered (alongside “Chains” or “Please Mr.Postman”), it cheapens the entire effort. To have the remaining partner of the centuiy’s greatest and most popular songwriting team finish his dead partner’s demo by stealing a bridge from a well-known favorite seems hinky, even for McCartney.

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)

Seems like the other day my baby went away He went away 'cross the sea It's been two years or so since I saw my baby go And then this letter came for me It said that we were through He found somebody new Oh, let me think, let me think, what can I do? <…> Whatever happened to the boy that I once knew? The boy who said he'd be true*? Oh, what will happen to the life I gave to you? What will I do with it now?

(Remember (Walkin' in the Sand) by The Shangri-Las, 1964)

* Remember I'll always be true

(All My Loving, 1963)

If I fell in love with you Would you promise to be true

(If I Fell, 1964)

Whatever happened to The life that we once knew? Can we really live without each other? Where did we lose the touch That seemed to mean so much? It always made me feel so Free as a bird

(Free As A Bird, 1977/1995)

Whatever happened to the woman we once knew the river's rising fast And if she hears me now trying to get a message somehow don't burn the boats till last <...> don't burn the boat it's built to last <...> and the boat is burning fast**

(Whatever happened to, John Lennon, 1977)***

**He did put it that way; he was “riding on the boat called Paul, and now I’m going to ride on a boat called Yoko.”

(Yoko Ono, interview with Paul Trynka for MOJO, May, 2003)

***listen to John's guitar in All My Loving and in Whatever Happened To

The thing that strikes me about the ‘All My Loving’ recording is John’s guitar part; he’s playing the chords as triplets. That was a last-minute idea, and it transforms the whole thing, giving it momentum. The song is obviously about someone leaving to go on a trip, and that driving rhythm of John’s echoes the feeling of travel and motion. It sounds like a car’s wheels on the motorway, which, if you can believe it, had only really become a thing in the UK at the end of the fifties.

(Paul McCartney about All My Loving, The Lyrics, 2021)

PLAYBOY: “All My Loving.” LENNON: “All My Loving” is Paul, I regret to say. Ha-ha-ha. PLAYBOY: Why? LENNON: Because it’s a damn good piece of work. [Singing] “All my loving…” But I play a pretty mean guitar in back.

(John Lennon (interview, 1980), All We Are Saying by David Sheff)

[tavolgisvist]

(McCartney’s original phrase [for “Drive My Car”] was “Baby, you can wear my diamond ring”; Lennon reputedly shortened and reversed the sexual roles.) <…> The singer is a hopeful lover, his prospect more interested in easy fame than in love—a subtle parody on the Beatles’ own stardom and the status seekers it put them in touch with. The title line’s vernacular slang is twisted with implications: the woman wants “to be famous, a star of the screen,” but she’s also teasing the singer sexually (“drive my car” means both “make me rich” and “turn me on”). “Working for peanuts is all very fine,” she tells the singer, “but I can show you a better time.”

A continuous guitar riff is doubled in the bass for the verse. A qualifying “but” sends the vocals into high, taut harmonies at the end of each verse (on the words “But you can do something in between” and “But I can show you a better time”); the drum fills underneath exaggerate the flirtation… <…> The coy concluding line of the refrain (“And maybe I love you”) is underlined by Lennon’s double tracked vocal in the right channel—the only double-tracked stereo vocal in the song.

The final verse is the punch line, what the singer suspects all along: she’s got no car, but she’s found a servile driver, “and that’s a start.” Love may be as fickle and fleeting as fame, but the “beep-beep”s are the singer’s hoots of conquest. <…>“Drive My Car” ’s musical intricacy is uncanny, but its ingenuity is never forced. The flirtation that begins as satire ends as seduction.

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)