tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/john-lennon-22139/articles
John Lennon – The Conversation
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217346
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
Now and Then: How composition choices made John Lennon’s music memo into a Beatles song
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559968/original/file-20231116-25-g5g3in.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C2%2C1599%2C769&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now and Then finds a place alongside Beatles' songs like We Can Work it Out or Girl which move between major-key and minor-key sections. A still from the song's video.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(YouTube)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/now-and-then-how-composition-choices-made-john-lennons-music-memo-into-a-beatles-song" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Beatles’ “<a href="https://www.goldradiouk.com/artists/the-beatles/ringo-starr-last-song/">last song ever</a>,” released 61 years after their first single, was bound to be significant. </p>
<p>But how did John Lennon’s lo-fi, 40-something-year-old cassette recording of <em>Now and Then</em> — deemed <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-george-harrison-originally-blocked-the-upcoming-final-beatles-single-fucking-rubbish">“fucking rubbish”</a> by George Harrison during the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/music/the-beatles-now-and-then-documentary-premiering-cbc-1.7014053">failed 1995 attempt</a> to revive the song — become an instant <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67381253">No. 1 chart hit</a> and worthy addition to the Beatles’ catalogue in 2023? </p>
<p>Beyond the <a href="https://www.nme.com/features/music-features/the-beatles-now-and-then-final-song-ai-documentary-peter-jackson-music-video-inside-story-3527104?fbclid=IwAR2lTygUCfYjjrAoqgJX19Vwtp7ykMHmf_fd5dAMXygunvbac6v8f0_lEPY">AI-assisted</a> salvage of Lennon’s voice from the noisy cassette, it is worth examining Lennon’s raw materials, and the strategies that made the unfinished <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67285117">late-1970s</a> musical sketch a Beatles’ song.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now and Then</em> official music video.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Personal music memo</h2>
<p>Had Harrison told Lennon himself that the song was rubbish, Lennon might have responded, “Well I’m not finished with it yet, am I mate?” </p>
<p>Lennon’s original <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/02/now-and-then-listen-to-the-final-beatles-song-john-lennon-paul-mccartney-ringo-george-harrison">“demo tape”</a> was not made for formal presentation (to a music publisher, for instance). </p>
<p>It was a personal memorandum to capture basic song ideas — something musicians do all the time. If they stopped there, <em>Yesterday</em> would be <a href="https://www.insider.com/paul-mccartney-yesterday-original-title-scrambled-eggs-the-beatles-2021-10"><em>Scrambled Eggs</em>,</a> and the Rolling Stones’ <em>Satisfaction</em> would be one minute of Keith Richards’s signature riff and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/satisfaction-comes-to-keith-richards">45 minutes of snoring</a>. </p>
<h2>Unorthodox compositional form</h2>
<p>The surviving two Beatles decided to finish the song in 2023, bringing in producer Giles Martin, son of George, the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/giles-martin-wanted-to-rip-off-his-dad-george-for-the-beatles-now-and-then-3536272?fbclid=IwAR3VATdqJWRWEci4YdzOIcCF7IIfaK-zrPZx8DA9VzvtEnpX_zlnixl6ujQ">celebrated fifth Beatle</a>, and incorporating Harrison’s guitar parts from 1995. The <a href="https://amoralto.tumblr.com/post/164029803633/tape-labels-and-official-lyrics-sheet-w-jeff">lyric sheet</a> from these sessions, marked up by producer Jeff Lynne, suggest Lennon hadn’t titled his song-in-progress.</p>
<p>What likely bothered Harrison most about Lennon’s recording was its unorthodox application of verse-chorus song form. In verse-chorus form, the chorus typically provides the main “hook.” </p>
<p>Verse-chorus songs occassionally feature a “pre-chorus,” which follows the verse to set up the chorus. </p>
<p>Another section common in verse-chorus songs is the bridge, usually a contrasting musical idea introduced only after the verse and chorus. </p>
<h2>Delayed chorus</h2>
<p>On Lennon’s recording (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk88M4ABo_4&ab_channel=DavidBennettPiano">heard in this musician’s video</a>), Lennon introduced a bridge-like section where a pre-chorus would normally go. But rather than propelling the song toward the chorus, it meanders awkwardly, delaying and undermining the arrival of the chorus hook. </p>
<p>John most certainly would have revised this. In his absence, Martin and the remaining Beatles opted for the only solution available: cutting Lennon’s misplaced, unfinished pre-chorus/bridge and composing a new bridge.</p>
<h2>Most Beatles’ songs in major keys</h2>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> plays on the <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad-760215">contrast between major and minor tonalities</a>. Major keys are commonly described as “bright” or “happy,” while minor keys are often described as “dark” or “sad.” </p>
<p>Major-key songs dominate the Beatles’ catalogue, comprising <a href="https://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/beatles-blog/now-that-youve-found-another-key-beatles-songs-in-minor-keys">roughly 81 per cent</a> of their recordings. Only four per cent remain entirely in minor keys, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolpPmuK2I8&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>Come Together</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAe2Q_LhY8g&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>I Want You</em></a>.</p>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> is among the remaining 15 per cent of Beatles’ songs that move between major-key and minor-key sections, alongside <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfqsM_XAcc&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>We Can Work It Out</em></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l3ntDR_lI"><em>Girl</em></a>.</p>
<p>Lennon’s verse for <em>Now and Then</em> is among the most minor-laden sections of any Beatles song, opening with alternating minor chords. Mired in minor darkness, Lennon engages a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1qvgn0KY1M&ab_channel=StevenBaur">harmonic sleight of hand</a> reminiscent of Beethoven or Schubert, shifting abruptly to a major-chord refuge (on the sixth scale degree). But this ray of brightness is illusory; listeners feel the inevitable pull back to minor-key darkness. </p>
<h2>The sound of nostalgia?</h2>
<p>As musicologist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520232082/conventional-wisdom">Susan McClary</a> explains,
this particular compositional strategy evokes “Never Never land.”: it “variously radiates hope, escape or nostalgia for a lost arcadia … but it takes only a half-step drop in the bass to return the piece to harsh, unmerciful reality.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSPAbGs6mpA&ab_channel=StevenBaur">Lennon’s melody</a> and his descending opening phrases strongly imply a melodic resolution to the home pitch (A). Following the aforementioned glimmer of major-chord brightness (on “make it through”) and its slide down to the E dominant chord (“it’s all because of …”), Lennon pauses dramatically. </p>
<p>Finally, Lennon intones the last word (“you”) over the inevitable return to A minor. But rather than the expected melodic resolution down to the home pitch, Lennon clings hauntingly to a dissonant note (B) one step above, before ending with “you-ooh-ooh-ooh” — a trademark vocal ornament.</p>
<h2>Seeking relief in the chorus</h2>
<p>Pop convention would grant a major-key payoff at the chorus, but Lennon’s pre-chorus/bridge thwarts any such gratification. So the 2023 Beatles cut it, opting for a conventional move directly to the major-key chorus.</p>
<p>The reward is bittersweet. Rather than moving upward to the stable, conventional major key alternative (the so-called relative major), the chorus falls a whole step to G major. Lennon’s melody seeks to ascend, but the melodic leap (on “I miss you”) is tinged by a passing minor chord (a common strategy to evoke longing, as in the opening melodic leap of the classic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU&ab_channel=Movieclips"><em>Over the Rainbow</em></a>.)</p>
<p>This is not the magical moment we have so often experienced with the Beatles, Beatle-esque strings notwithsanding. Rather than transcendence, fond remembrance settles into resigned acceptance.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song</em> (Short Film from The Beatles).</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Admirable guitar tribute, but not Harrison</h2>
<p>The transcendent gesture comes with the newly composed instrumental bridge, which does move up to the satisfying relative major. McCartney’s soaring slide guitar is a beautiful invocation of Harrison’s melodic sense and phrasing. But it is unmistakably not the Beatles’ late, inimitable guitarist. It is hard not to hear this loss in McCartney’s tribute. </p>
<p>Equally painful is the impossibility of Lennon and his bandmates working his pre-chorus/bridge section into the song. It contains some of the most expressive moments on Lennon’s recording. </p>
<p>Their last song offers a real experience of a glorious past, but makes painfully audible what has been lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Baur does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For their “last single” Now and Then, the remaining 2023 Beatles kept John Lennon’s chorus, but changed where it fell. This necessary “repair” meant losing some of Lennon’s most touching passages.
Steven Baur, Associate professor of musicology, Dalhousie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216920
2023-11-03T15:48:02Z
2023-11-03T15:48:02Z
Now and Then: enabled by AI – created by profound connections between the four Beatles
<blockquote>
<p>In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music … to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not surprisingly, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67207699">Paul McCartney was positive</a> about the appearance this week of what has been trailed as the “last” Beatles song, Now and Then.</p>
<p>Much has been made of <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/paul-mccartney-ai-final-beatles-song-1235352398/">AI being part of the production</a>. Machine learning was used to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2023/11/02/1208848690/the-beatles-last-song-now-and-then">recognise John Lennon’s voice</a>, and then isolate it from other sounds – a piano, a television in the background, electrical hum – to make it usable in a new recording. It also comes amid a slew of Beatles-related activity recently – a <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/beatles-celebration-night-bbc-newsupdate/">new podcast series</a>, Peter Jackson’s epic 2021 documentary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/26/beatles-final-days-get-back-let-it-be-john-harris-peter-jackson">Get Back</a>, new versions of the famed <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beatles-red-and-blue-sheffield-1234706610/">Red and Blue</a> compilation albums, and a Paul McCartney tour, during which he is playing some of the Fab Four’s back catalogue.</p>
<p>The commercial juggernaut seems unstoppable, so it’s perhaps easy to be cynical about a “new” song from a band that broke up in 1970, two of whose members are dead. Certainly, Now and Then does raise questions about how technologically mediated releases relate to collective artistic output, and what it means to be a band.</p>
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<h2>Collective creativity in bands</h2>
<p>In many ways, though, the AI label is a red herring, and this new song – which actually has its roots in a John Lennon demo tape from 1977 – demonstrates a continuing pattern. The Beatles and their narrative provided a seminal example of how bands work, and seemed to be ploughing the furrow for others. </p>
<p>From their original formation as schoolboys (Ringo joined in 1962 when they started recording), to their enormous financial success and cultural impact, the Beatles laid down templates that others have followed. <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/july-6-1957-day-beatles-9594637">Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting</a> at a church fete in 1957 is now the stuff of legend.</p>
<p>Their <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-revolutionised-music-by-putting-the-record-centre-stage-56103">innovations in the studio</a>, assisted by producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Martin">George Martin</a>, helped to make recordings – especially albums – a central feature of the popular music experience. They emerged into professional practice together, splitting as they formed new relationships and moved onto the next phases of their life while still relatively young men.</p>
<p>Bands are simultaneously social groupings, creative units and economic entities. The economic “brand” can obviously run on for many years after the others have stopped. There is also long history of posthumous releases, including <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/jimi-hendrix-6-essential-posthumous-albums">Jimi Hendrix</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6fmq/">Elliott Smith</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/prince-why-five-years-after-his-death-the-purple-one-still-reigns-159166">Prince</a>, even Otis Redding’s defining hit <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-otis-reddings-final-masterpiece-sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay-122170/">(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay</a>. Demo recordings, unheard live performances and radio broadcasts are all established parts of artists’ catalogues.</p>
<p>This becomes complicated, though, when the act in question is a collective with deceased members whose presence on the recording is technologically facilitated. A key example is the Beatles 1995 <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-free-as-a-bird/">Anthology</a> project, which saw the surviving members revisit John Lennon demos from a cassette given to McCartney by Yoko Ono, and add new parts to finish the songs.</p>
<p>This wasn’t entirely unique. Queen’s <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/queen-made-in-heaven/">Made In Heaven</a>, in the same year, saw the band finish songs that Freddie Mercury worked on in the studio before he died. But it did involve resurrecting fragments of home recordings to clean them up for the commercial market.</p>
<p>The technology wasn’t sufficient at the time to properly isolate Lennon’s voice on Now and Then, so it was abandoned until Peter Jackson used machine learning to remove noise from source recordings for Get Back. By this time George Harrison had died, so this technology allowed McCartney and Starr to return to the song, incorporating Harrison’s guitar solo from the aborted 1990s attempt.</p>
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<h2>Come together</h2>
<p>We can, then, consider the process behind this latest song in evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms. The possibilities of multi-track recording since the 1950s mean it’s long been the case that musicians have worked separately on the same song. As <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-the-beatles-white-album-60s-70s-john-lennon-wider-cultural-35006/">George Harrison said of The White Album</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a lot more individual stuff … people were accepting that it was individual. I remember having three studios operating at the same time. Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was in another and I was recording some horns or something in a third.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even when the Beatles were together, many canonical songs were the work of only one or two of them. McCartney wrote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXTJBr9tt8Q">Yesterday</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Man4Xw8Xypo">Blackbird</a> alone, and is the only Beatle who plays on them. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1OgNqBkVE">The Ballad of John and Yoko</a> didn’t feature Harrison or Starr.</p>
<p>And the former band members played on each other’s “solo” records too. There are more Beatles on Harrison’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNL40ql4CYk">All Those Years Ago</a>, or Lennon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-SSa-D1i-M">Instant Karma</a> than on some of the band’s tracks. They all played separately on Starr’s 1973 album Ringo.</p>
<p>So Now and Then continues longstanding practices, going back to their heyday. Its status as the final Beatles song, though, reveals technological limitations. AI can create convincing facsimiles, but can’t replicate the facts of who actually played or sang the various parts, which is a central plank of what constitutes a band.</p>
<p>Audiences <a href="https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/215862/EA14B274-3E9F-47EC-94FF-5B7AF6167671.pdf">ascribe authenticity</a> to music in many ways, and core among these for bands is the line-up – some acts <a href="https://theconversation.com/ac-dcs-back-in-black-at-40-establishing-rock-bands-as-brands-143473">have effectively replaced key members</a> within the brand, others have had <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/7-times-when-replacing-the-lead-singer-of-a-band-did-not-work/">less success</a>. It’s often a source of debate, at least, with “<a href="https://livemusicexchange.org/blog/stoned-again-adam-behr/">classic</a>” line-ups being those that earn the audience stamp of authenticity.</p>
<p>So what of the song itself? It won’t supplant the likes of Hey Jude or Help in The Beatles’ musical pantheon. That bar, though, is high and the plangent piano-led ballad has a familiar yet distinctive arrangement, steeped in nostalagia but affecting on its own terms nevertheless. Lennon’s voice is clearer than on previous reconstructions and the harmonies sound like, well … The Beatles.</p>
<p>In that sense, what’s at the heart of this project is the presence – even spectrally – of the actual four people who made up the creative and social underpinning for the brand. The “last” Beatles song sees them demonstrating the importance, even as a coda to their recording career, of the interpersonal connections that set things in motion in the first place.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.</span></em></p>
This new last Beatles song, enabled in part by AI, demonstrates the importance of the profound and lasting connections between the four musicians.
Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216981
2023-11-03T02:44:41Z
2023-11-03T02:44:41Z
Is Now and Then really a Beatles song? The fab four always used technology to create new music
<p>Over the past few weeks, Paul McCartney has been touring Australia to play through three hours of his musical legacy – from Beatles and Wings favourites to solo material, and some unexpected deep cuts. </p>
<p>A particularly moving pair of songs was the bookending of McCartney’s performance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuuOAA9ekbg">In Spite of All the Danger</a> (the first song the band recorded as The Quarrymen) and the performance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12R4FzIhdoQ">The End</a> – one of the last songs the Beatles recorded together. </p>
<p>The encore featured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTZ804WxpGg">I’ve Got a Feeling</a>, in which McCartney and his late bandmate John Lennon “sang” together, performing alongside footage from the rooftop performance from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-get-back-review-peter-jacksons-tv-series-is-a-thrilling-funny-and-long-treat-for-fans-172404">Get Back documentary</a>. Hearing McCartney’s current vocals alongside Lennon’s from the 1960s was poignant for both the crowd and McCartney. </p>
<p>These moments of connection over the decades between McCartney and Lennon are made stronger by the release of the new, and last, Beatles single, Now and Then. </p>
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<p>Now and Then is one of four songs from a Lennon demo cassette provided by Yoko Ono and given to Paul McCartney in 1994, with a handwritten title: For Paul. The remaining Beatles finished Lennon’s demos for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODIvONHPqpk">Free as a Bird</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7krBKzmVI">Real Love</a> for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_Anthology">Anthology</a> release in 1995. </p>
<p>While these songs may have lacked a little of the original magic, with John’s voice sounding more distant and thin compared with Paul’s, the scarcity of new material allowed fans to embrace the songs, warts and all. At the time, Now and Then was deemed too tricky to complete, as John’s voice was buried in the mono mix of his home-recorded piano. It sat there for 28 years.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 2021 and a new AI tool developed by film-maker Peter Jackson to separate audio sources on Get Back could now be used on Lennon’s old demo. John’s voice is now clear, present, and free to be flown in seamlessly over any new arrangement. </p>
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<p>It has a natural expression, captured in that not-overthought, early-demo moment. </p>
<p>George’s archived acoustic guitar take was added, with Paul providing updated piano, slide guitar and bass. Ringo added his distinctive feel remotely from Los Angeles. </p>
<p>Giles Martin, son of George, and keeper of the production flame, contributes a suitably Beatles-esque string arrangement that taps into many of his father’s well-loved stylistic traits. </p>
<p>There are insistent quarter-note pulsing rises, sitar-esque bends, and a final switch from four in a bar to three, reminiscent of The End from Abbey Road.</p>
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<h2>Is this a Beatles song?</h2>
<p>Due to the use of AI tools to finish Now and Then, and the song having been recorded without the Beatles in a room together, some may ask “is this really a Beatles song?”.</p>
<p>After the release of Get Back, audiences were able to experience what it felt like to be in the room with the band, watching their ideas form, seeing them joke and laugh, and also the tensions that happen with a group of creative people who have experienced a lot together.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-get-back-review-peter-jacksons-tv-series-is-a-thrilling-funny-and-long-treat-for-fans-172404">The Beatles: Get Back review – Peter Jackson's TV series is a thrilling, funny (and long) treat for fans</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The four Beatles in front of Big Ben" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The fab four in a room, playing together, often seems essential to their sound.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/search/the-beatles">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Get Back is relevant here for many reasons. </p>
<p>The first film version of this footage <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_(1970_film)">Let it Be</a> by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg was released briefly in 1970 with the album, and painted the last days of The Beatles as a dark, acrimonious time, and cemented Ono’s role as alleged “villain” in Beatles lore. </p>
<p>Jackson’s new version Get Back reframed fans’ perceptions of The Beatles’ breakup, the relationship of the surviving members, and their ongoing legacy. In the 1990s the Anthology film and albums captured a new generation of Britpop-loving Beatles fans, and the release of Get Back and Now and Then may do the same for another generation.</p>
<p>The fab four in a room, playing together, often seems essential to their sound. However, the Beatles were always fascinated by recording technology – from reversing tape loops in Taxman, to using Lennon’s voice through a Leslie speaker cabinet for Tomorrow Never Knows, to the musique-concrete Revolution 9, where the band cut a variety of tape loops and sounds together.</p>
<p>Using current music technology was always part of the band’s creativity, and with Now and Then, they are still engaging with technology to make new music, albeit in a slightly different way. </p>
<p>Will it be remembered as fondly as their other songs in the canon? </p>
<p>Perhaps – or perhaps not. But that is not the heart of this release. </p>
<p>John and George are gone, however, we still have Ringo and Paul with us to complete this new and final Beatles track. </p>
<p>Despite the time, distance and technology, Now and Then finishes a long and winding conversation that began in the early 1960s, and has now come to a thoughtful and musical end. </p>
<p>With time, it allows fans to reframe John’s love letter to Yoko as a message to Paul, the band, and even the fans. </p>
<p>Perhaps that will be its enduring value: “I know it’s true…And if I make it through, It’s all because of you”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">Sgt Pepper's at 50 – the greatest thing you ever heard or just another album?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Beatles have released a new track - using new technology to strip Lennon’s vocals out of an old demo casette tape. Will this be part of Beatles canon?
Jadey O'Regan, Lecturer in Contemporary Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Co-author of "Hooks in Popular Music" (2022), University of Sydney
Paul (Mac) McDermott, Lecturer in Contemporary Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177454
2022-04-22T01:35:23Z
2022-04-22T01:35:23Z
What is toe jam? From harmless gunk to a feast for bugs
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456809/original/file-20220407-14-flir0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girls-toes-healthy-beautiful-wellgroomed-1371423317">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/all-about-toe-jam">Toe jam</a> can be a source of fascination, disgust or barely noticed. It can be a sign you need to wash your feet or rethink your choice of footwear. It can also lead to major health issues.</p>
<p>Toe jam, the gunk and debris between your toes, has even made it to a Beatles song.</p>
<p>But it was unlikely John Lennon was thinking about foot hygiene when he wrote the lyrics to the second verse of <a href="https://genius.com/The-beatles-come-together-lyrics">Come Together</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football</p>
<p>He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola</p>
<p>He say, ‘I know you, you know me’</p>
<p>One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uSM5MpKSnqE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yes, The Beatles really mentioned toe jam in Come Together (YouTube).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is toe jam, actually?</h2>
<p>Toe jam isn’t a medical term. There is no formal medical term to describe the dead skin cells, sweat, sock lint and dirt that combine in the small and often cramped spaces between our toes.</p>
<p>Toe jam can have the consistency of soft cheese or cake crumbs. It can smell or be odourless. And its colour can range from white to grey-brown.</p>
<p>You’re more likely to create toe jam if you wear closed-in shoes when it’s hot, or gumboots that don’t allow sweat to evaporate.</p>
<p>Poor foot hygiene will certainly make it more likely you’ll develop toe jam. That’s because sweaty debris accumulates in between the toes if you don’t pay attention to cleaning these areas in the shower or bath.</p>
<p>Toe jam may also be more likely if your feet sweat a lot for other reasons. For instance, we know <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2009/september/sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet">sweaty feet</a> can be a problem for children and adolescents, who have more active sweat glands. And some people have a serious medical condition called <a href="https://www.sweathelp.org/index.php">hyperhidrosis</a>, where they sweat excessively.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anhidrosis-why-some-people-apparently-like-prince-andrew-just-cant-sweat-127280">Anhidrosis: why some people – apparently like Prince Andrew – just can't sweat</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Is toe jam like athlete’s foot?</h2>
<p>The collection of sweat and dead skin between toes provides bacteria living naturally on our skin the chance to thrive. </p>
<p>These bacteria, which include ones in the genus <em>Brevibacterium</em>, feed on sweat, releasing molecules that give the characteristic “cheesy” <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-feet-stink-by-the-end-of-the-day-125037">smell of sweaty feet</a>. Brevibacterium is also used to ripen some cheeses.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soft cheese, cut in slices" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No wonder your feet smell cheesy if you don’t wash them properly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cheeseboard-sliced-yellow-limburger-cheese-top-1343151806">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This warm and damp environment is also a perfect site for <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/tinea">tinea pedis</a>, a fungal skin infection you might know as athlete’s foot. </p>
<p>Signs of tinea might be soggy white skin between your toes, which can be itchy, and red areas, a sign of skin damage. <a href="https://dermnetnz.org/topics/athletes-foot">Damaged skin</a> between toes might develop small fluid-filled blisters and may also bleed if the weak skin is torn.</p>
<p>So while toe jam isn’t the same as tinea, it might provide the perfect conditions for the fungus to grow.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-feet-stink-by-the-end-of-the-day-125037">Why do feet stink by the end of the day?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How serious is toe jam?</h2>
<p>Generally, toe jam is a minor health problem. You can <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/getattachment/233c1fdf-8802-471e-9828-f792110c30d1/Sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet.aspx">manage it</a> with good foot hygiene. And if you develop tinea, you can use a short course of an anti-fungal treatment you can buy from a pharmacy (see below).</p>
<p>It is quite a different prospect, however, for a person living with a chronic disease such as diabetes, someone who has poor vision (so can’t see toe jam or its complications developing), or who may be unable to reach their feet due to limited mobility.</p>
<p>Diabetes not well controlled with diet and exercise, or drugs, increases the <a href="https://www.diabetesfeetaustralia.org/">risk</a> of a person having reduced blood flow (peripheral arterial disease) and reduced feeling in their feet (sensory neuropathy). </p>
<p>Broken skin between the toes caused by tinea can become infected rapidly, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248359/">increasing the risk</a> of:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>infection spreading to the foot and leg (cellulitis)</p></li>
<li><p>infection of the bone (osteomyelitis)</p></li>
<li><p>gangrene (dead tissue caused by lack of blood flow)</p></li>
<li><p>amputation of a toe, part of the foot or leg. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>So early identification of tinea in a vulnerable person is especially important to prevent complications.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-on-us-a-close-up-look-at-the-bugs-that-call-us-home-25754">Life on Us: a close-up look at the bugs that call us home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4 ways to avoid problems</h2>
<p>Here are our four tips to avoid problems with toe jam, including developing tinea and its complications:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>wash the spaces between your toes and dry them carefully after a shower or bath, and after swimming. Gyms and swimming pools are a common place to pick up a fungal infection on your feet so it’s a good idea to wear thongs to reduce the risk of tinea</p></li>
<li><p>if possible, avoid wearing footwear that doesn’t allow sweat to evaporate (such as closed-in shoes made of synthetic material and gumboots). Going barefoot, when there is no risk of injury, will also allow sweat to evaporate</p></li>
<li><p>treat sweaty feet by using an <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2009/september/sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet">anti-perspirant</a> containing aluminium chloride. More severe cases of hyperhidrosis may be managed using drugs, such as <a href="https://www.dermcoll.edu.au/atoz/plantar-hyperhidrosis/">Botox</a> injections to the feet. Fungal infections (<a href="https://dermnetnz.org/topics/tinea-pedis">tinea</a>) should be treated using over-the-counter antifungal creams such a terbinafine or clotrimazole. Resistant infections might require a course of prescribed antifungal medicines</p></li>
<li><p>pay attention to <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/all-about-toe-jam#when-to-see-a-doctor">signs</a> indicating an infection is spreading from the foot. These could be pain and swelling in the toes, or red streaks along the foot and up the leg. This requires an urgent visit to a podiatrist or doctor.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Footnote</h2>
<p>Lennon mentions a “walrus gumboot” in verse three of Come Together. The final line of verse two says “you got to be free”. The cover of The Beatles album Abbey Road shows Paul McCartney walking barefoot (second from the left).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Beatles album Abbey Road propped up behind turntable playing a record" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maybe The Beatles were onto something.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/naples-italy-10032019-fabulous-beatles-depicted-1334880947">Imma Gambardella/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maybe the Beatles did know a thing or two about toe jam and foot health.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beatles-abbey-road-at-50-is-a-marker-of-how-pop-music-grew-up-in-the-1960s-124433">Beatles: Abbey Road at 50 is a marker of how pop music grew up in the 1960s</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Robinson is affiliated with the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans and the Australian Podiatry Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Donnan is affiliated with the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans and the Australian Podiatry Association.</span></em></p>
Toe jam was mentioned in a song by The Beatles. Maybe they knew a thing or two about foot hygiene.
Caroline Robinson, Associate Professor Podiatry, Charles Sturt University
Luke Donnan, Lecturer in Podiatry, Charles Sturt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169914
2021-12-03T13:43:17Z
2021-12-03T13:43:17Z
‘The Beatles: Get Back’ glosses over the band’s acrimonious end
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435425/original/file-20211202-15-1ov4pyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1922&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did Paul McCartney, right, and Ringo Starr hire Peter Jackson for a rescue operation?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ringo-starr-and-sir-paul-mccartney-introduce-the-new-video-news-photo/88098772?adppopup=true"> Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the new film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/">The Beatles: Get Back</a>,” “Lord of the Rings” director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/">Peter Jackson</a> tries to dispel the myth of the the Beatles’ breakup. </p>
<p>In 1970, Michael Lindsay-Hogg released “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/original-let-it-be-movie-michael-lindsay-hogg-peter-jackson-get-back-1250561/">Let It Be</a>,” a film documenting the band’s recording sessions for their eponymous album. The movie depicted George Harrison arguing with Paul McCartney – and it hit theaters shortly after news of the band’s breakup emerged. Many filmgoers at the time assumed this depicted the days and weeks during which everything fell apart. </p>
<p>By the time it hit theaters, nearly 16 months after filming, this rehearsal footage got mistaken for a completely different time frame.</p>
<p>In 2016, Jackson gained access to Lindsay-Hogg’s original footage. Over the course of four years, he edited it into an eight-hour, three-part series, thanks to a streaming deal with Disney+. </p>
<p>In their press rounds, both Jackson and McCartney have been eager to recast the legacy of this period. </p>
<p>“I kept waiting for all the nasty stuff to start happening, waiting for the arguments and the rows and the fights, but I never saw that,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/20/i-just-cant-believe-it-exists-peter-jackson-takes-us-into-the-beatles-vault-locked-up-for-52-years">Jackson told The Guardian</a> and others. “It was the opposite. It was really funny.”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what is really fabulous about it, it shows the four of us having a ball,” <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-says-the-beatles-get-back-documentary-changed-his-perception-of-their-split-3095528">McCartney told The Sunday Times</a> after seeing the film. “It was so reaffirming for me.” </p>
<p>It seems to be working: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/arts/music/beatles-get-back-peter-jackson.html">A recent New York Times headline proclaimed</a>, “Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind.” </p>
<p>A lot of these sessions contain the irrepressible gags that made the Beatles famous. (Lennon and McCartney singing “Two of Us” in grandiose Scottish brogue almost steals Part Three.) But in their interviews, Jackson and McCartney accentuate the positive as if to paper over the acrimonious <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/paul-mccartney-says-he-sued-beatles-save-band-s-music-n1235898">history of lawsuits</a>, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/beatles-catalog-paul-mccartney-brief-history-ownership-7662519/">the loss of the Lennon-McCartney publishing catalog</a> and the lurching solo careers that followed.</p>
<h2>A muddled chronology</h2>
<p>The timing of the theater release of the “Let It Be” sessions seeded confusion over how the group unraveled. </p>
<p>“Let it Be” was shot in January 1969, just weeks after the “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/review-the-beatles-white-album-186863/">White Album</a>” hit stores.</p>
<p>The band then put these tapes aside to work on the larger project they intuited from this material, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-revolutionary-use-of-recording-technology-in-abbey-road-124070">Abbey Road</a>,” which they completed seven months later. </p>
<p>The split actually came at a September 1969 meeting, when <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-beatles-messy-breakup-50-years-ago-130980">Lennon told the others</a> he wanted a “divorce.” They persuaded him to keep his departure quiet until the band completed some contract negotiations. Then, in March 1970, <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-beatles-messy-breakup-50-years-ago-130980">McCartney publicly proclaimed</a> he was “leaving the Beatles” to release his first solo album. </p>
<p>An epic descent into suits, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-courtroom-hit-parade-the-beatles-top-ten-lawsuits-414216.html">countersuits</a> and press squabbles ensued. Harrison even wrote a song called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzdw2WcSmb0">Sue Me Sue You Blues</a>.” </p>
<p>Only in May 1970 did the “Let It Be” album and film come out, with the band’s messy divorce as the backdrop. </p>
<p>After the initial theater run, “Let it Be” fell from view. For decades, the only way you could get a glance of it was through a black market copy. The Andy Warhol-esque, <a href="https://www.artforum.com/print/196704/the-value-of-didactic-art-36733">so-real-it’s-boring verité style</a> – the non-narrative approach then in vogue – flummoxed even 1970 audiences.</p>
<p>But because the “Let It Be” album and film came out after “Abbey Road” – which was released in September 1969 – it quickly got mistaken for telegraphing their breakup, <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-says-the-beatles-get-back-documentary-changed-his-perception-of-their-split-3095528">a belief that the Beatles themselves seemed to internalize</a>.</p>
<p>The Beatles’ own traumatic memories of this period kept the raw footage from this project in the vaults for over 50 years. In the meantime, bootleggers published nearly all of its audio.</p>
<h2>Conflict brewing</h2>
<p>Now at significant remove, the remaining Beatles – McCartney and Ringo Starr – <a href="https://variety.com/video/peter-jackson-get-back-beatles-secrets/">seem to have hired Jackson</a> for a rescue operation, disingenuously dubbing the film a “documentary” when they, in fact, served as executive producers alongside their Apple Records directors, Jeff Jones and Ken Kamins.</p>
<p>In response to Jackson’s three-part series, which coincided with the release of <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/reviews/get-back-book-review-beatles-let-it-be-transcripts-1235087090/">a book of transcripts from the “Let it Be” sessions</a> and McCartney’s songwriting memoir, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-paul-mccartneys-the-lyrics-can-teach-us-about-harnessing-our-creativity-170987">Lyrics</a>,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/arts/music/beatles-get-back-peter-jackson.html">media outlets</a> <a href="https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/the-beatles-get-back">around the world</a> appear to have embraced this new version of history: that these sessions actually scanned as lighthearted, that – poof! – the scars had vanished.</p>
<p>But the strange and beguiling thing about Jackson’s edit rises from how it displays an unstable mixture of groove and conflict.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘The Beatles: Get Back.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>Despite the walkout from Harrison and continuous disagreements about what the project was – first a TV show, then a feature film and album, which needed a rooftop concert for a “payoff” – the band ultimately rallied to write the now-classic tracks “Something,” “Oh! Darling,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” along with Lennon’s “Polythene Pam” and “I Want You.” </p>
<p>So Jackson’s “Get Back” clarifies the Beatles’ resolve to resume work and put their extra-musical squabbles aside. The music pulls them inexorably forward, and they trust these early song fragments enough to carry them. They have had bust-ups and walkouts and uncertainties and failures, and always found their way through. For Lindsay-Hogg and 1970 audiences, this all seemed bewildering and tense – the band kept a tight lid on internal rows. To the Beatles themselves, and to anyone who’s ever worked to keep a band together, it felt about par.</p>
<p>Telling the average person to watch eight hours of freighted doubt and raw, undeveloped material is a big ask. <a href="https://www.theonion.com/new-beatles-doc-gives-man-greater-appreciation-for-how-1848132216">As The Onion joked</a>, “New Beatles Doc Gives Man Greater Appreciation For How Long 8 Hours Feels.”</p>
<p>But there is a moment in Part Two of Jackson’s series – the first day on the set when Harrison doesn’t show up – when the rest of the band sits around talking about the situation. McCartney suddenly goes quiet. The camera lingers on him, and you can see him drift into a thousand-yard stare as he contemplates the looming uncertainties. He doesn’t quite tear up, but he does look as unguarded as he ever does, and markedly tentative. </p>
<p>The moment catches hold because it’s so out of character – McCartney rarely displays himself unveiled, without pretense. The shot lingers and takes the measure of the man and the project, how much they have to overcome and how precarious everything suddenly feels. </p>
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<p>In retrospect, the miracle is not that they finished “Let It Be,” but how these sessions served as the warmup for their final lap, “Abbey Road.” After upending expectations with the contrasting breakthroughs of “Sgt. Pepper” and the “White Album,” figuring out what to do next would have confounded lesser souls. </p>
<p>That five-decade gap where fans waited for a refurbished “Let It Be” tells you a lot about how fraught January 1969 seemed to its four principals – and how deep those scars went.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Riley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In their press rounds, director Peter Jackson and Paul McCartney have been eager to recast the legacy of the band’s final years.
Tim Riley, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Journalism, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165127
2021-09-13T12:13:38Z
2021-09-13T12:13:38Z
‘Imagine’ at 50: Why John Lennon’s ode to humanism still resonates
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420554/original/file-20210910-19-y8luzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C694%2C2220%2C1633&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fifty years ago, did John Lennon tell us not to pray?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-of-john-lennon-news-photo/80800975?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, John Lennon released <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lennons-imagine-at-50-a-deceptively-simple-ballad-a-lasting-emblem-of-hope-167444">one of the most beautiful, inspirational</a> and catchy pop anthems of the 20th century: “Imagine.” </p>
<p>Gentle and yet increasingly stirring as the song progresses, “Imagine” is unabashedly utopian and deeply moral, calling on people to live, as one humanity, in peace. It is also purposely and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/imagine-50-years-john-lennon-beatles/100238128">powerfully irreligious</a>. From its opening lyric, “Imagine there’s no heaven,” to the refrain, “And no religion too,” Lennon sets out what is, to many, a clear atheistic message.</p>
<p>While most pop songs are secular by default – in that they are about the things of this world, making no mention of the divine or spiritual – “Imagine” is explicitly secularist. In Lennon’s telling, religion is an impediment to human flourishing – something to be overcome, transcended.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/phil-zuckerman/">scholar of secularism</a> and a devout fan of the Beatles, I have always been fascinated by how “Imagine,” perhaps the first and only atheist anthem to be so enormously successful, has come to be so widely embraced in America. After all, the U.S. is a country that has – at least until <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx">recently</a> – had a much <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/31/americans-are-far-more-religious-than-adults-in-other-wealthy-nations/">more</a> religious population than other Western industrialized democracies.</p>
<p>Since being released as a single on Oct. 11 1971, “Imagine” has sold millions, going No. 1 in the U.S. and U.K. charts. And its popularity has endured. Rolling Stone magazine named “Imagine” as the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-151127/aretha-franklin-respect-36873/">third greatest song of all time</a> in 2003, and it regularly tops national polls in Canada, <a href="https://radioinfo.com.au/news/imagine-voted-best-gold-hit/">Australia</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jan/07/johnarlidge.theobserver">the U.K</a>.</p>
<p>Countless recording artists have covered it, and it remains one of the most performed songs throughout the world – the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZaXRQIjR68">opening ceremony</a> of this year’s Olympics Games in Tokyo featured it being sung by a host of international artists, a testament to its global appeal.</p>
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<p>But not everyone is enamored of its message. Robert Barron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/07/25/imagine-blared-at-the-olympics-is-a-totalitarians-anthem/">responded to the recent Tokyo rendition</a> by lambasting “Imagine” as a “totalitarian anthem” and “an invitation to moral and political chaos.” His issue: the atheistic lyrics.</p>
<p>Numerous attempts have been made since “Imagine” was released to reconcile Lennon’s anthem with religion. Scholars, those of faith and fellow musicians have argued that the lyrics <a href="https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/faith-and-reason-imagine-really-atheist">aren’t really atheistic</a>, just <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/imagine-the-anthem-of-2001-83559/">anti-organized religion</a>. Others have taken the sledgehammer approach and just changed the lyrics outright – CeeLo Green sang “And all religion’s true” in <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cee-lo-green-outrages-john-lennon-fans-by-changing-lyrics-to-imagine-202240/">a televised rendition</a> on New Year’s Eve 2011.</p>
<p>In interviews, Lennon was at times <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/dbjypb.int3.html">ambiguous about his beliefs</a> on religion and spirituality, but such ambiguity is at odds with the clear message of “Imagine.” The song’s irreligious ethos is frank. The first verse speaks of there being “no heaven,” “no hell” – “Above us, only sky.” In such clear, distilled words, Lennon captures the very marrow of the secular orientation. To me, Lennon is saying that we live in a purely physical universe that operates along strictly natural laws – there is nothing supernatural out there, even beyond the stars.</p>
<p>He also expresses a distinct “here-and-nowness” at odds with many religions. In asking listeners to “Imagine all the people, livin’ for today,” Lennon is, to quote the <a href="https://www.upworthy.com/ever-heard-of-union-hero-joe-hill-hes-missing-from-most-history-books-today">labor activist and atheist Joe Hill</a>, suggesting there will be “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8qoB1XwtHM">no pie in the sky when you die</a>,” nor will a fiery eternal torture await you.</p>
<p>Lennon’s lyrics also give way to an implied existentialism. With no gods and no afterlife, only humankind – within ourselves and among each other – can decide how to live and choose what matters. We can choose to live without violence, greed or hunger and – to quote “Imagine” – exist as a “brotherhood of man … sharing all the world.”</p>
<p>It is here that Lennon’s <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-secular-life/202002/what-is-secular-humanism">humanism</a> – the belief that humans, without reliance upon anything supernatural, have the capacity to create a better, more humane world – comes to the fore. Nihilism is not the path, nor is despondency, debauchery or destruction. Rather, Lennon’s “Imagine” entails a humanistic desire to see an end to suffering.</p>
<p>The spirit of empathy and compassion throughout the song is in line with what <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1948550612444137">scholarship</a> has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13674670310001606450?src=recsys">found</a> to be strong traits <a href="https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/research/centres/benedict-xvi/docs/benedict-centre-understanding-unbelief-report.pdf">commonly</a> <a href="https://phys.org/news/2021-02-atheists-believers-moral-compasses-key.html?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Phys.org_TrendMD_1">observable</a> among <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2012/04/30/religionandgenerosity/">secular men and women</a>. Despite attempts to tie Lennon and “Imagine” to blood-lusting atheists <a href="https://sojo.net/articles/why-john-lennons-imagine-actually-not-great-song">like Stalin and Pol Pot</a>, the overwhelming majority of godless people <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311795/living-the-secular-life-by-phil-zuckerman/">seek to live ethical lives</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/08/21/staunch-atheists-show-higher-morals-than-the-proudly-pious-from-the-pandemic-to-climate-change/">studies have shown</a> that when it comes to things like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/24/the-group-least-likely-to-think-the-u-s-has-a-responsibility-to-accept-refugees-evangelicals/">wanting to</a> <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/32/3/502/5298199?login=true">help</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/socofthesacred/status/1427973457703211012/photo/1">refugees</a>, seeking to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-020-00396-0">establish affordable health care</a>, <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/fractured-nation-widening-partisan-polarization-and-key-issues-in-2020-presidential-elections/">fighting</a> <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/10/22/religion-and-views-on-climate-and-energy-issues/">climate change</a> and being sensitive to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088868309352179">racism</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/28/religiously-unaffiliated-people-more-likely-than-those-with-a-religion-to-lean-left-accept-homosexuality/">homophobia</a>, the godless stand out as particularly moral.</p>
<p>Indeed, secular people in general <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-10474-001">exhibit an orientation</a> that is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1368430211410996?casa_token=lAvYSk5xzI8AAAAA%3AzyF9nW4T0_p6nuM_v2NIiZLkEuar1rhGQdg2J7Qy2NLmu3c-yiWb4zFoeVnMpOKC3FiIpKXO9y17bfQ">markedly tolerant</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5?src=recsys">democratic</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-secular-life/201807/religion-secularism-and-xenophobia">universalistic</a> – values Lennon holds up as ideals in “Imagine.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/11/09/the-unbearable-wrongness-of-william-barr/">Other studies reveal</a> that the democratic countries that are the least religious – the ones that have gone furthest down the road of “imagining no religion” – <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479878086/society-without-god-second-edition/">are the most</a> safe, humane, green and ethical. </p>
<p>“Imagine” was not the first time Lennon sang his secular humanism. A year before, in 1970, he released “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MqKXjclNHw">I Found Out</a>,” declaring his lack of belief in either Jesus or Krishna. Also in 1970, he put out the haunting, scorching “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNkPpq1giU">God</a>.” Beginning with a classic psychological explanation of theism – that humans construct the concept of God as a way to cope with and measure their pain – “God” goes on to list all the things that Lennon most decidedly does not believe in: the Bible, Jesus, Gita, Buddha, I-Ching, magic and so on. In the end, all that he believes in is his own verifiable personal reality. Arriving at such a place was, for the bespectacled walrus from Liverpool, to be truly “reborn.”</p>
<p>But neither “I Found Out” nor “God” achieved anywhere near the massive success that “Imagine” did. No other atheist pop song has.</p>
<iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/3b1N670SLd1liunyZXM3KD" width="100%" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165127/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phil Zuckerman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Regularly topping lists for ‘greatest song of all time,’ the former Beatle’s classic 1971 song is taken by many as an atheistic anthem.
Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies, Pitzer College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167444
2021-09-08T20:11:42Z
2021-09-08T20:11:42Z
John Lennon’s Imagine at 50: a deceptively simple ballad, a lasting emblem of hope
<p>1971 was a tumultuous year. The counter-cultural movement of the 60s was still being felt. Demonstrations were held opposing the Vietnam War and in August, Australia and New Zealand withdrew their troops. </p>
<p>Apollo 15 landed on the moon. Feminist Gloria Steinem made her first address to women in America. Switzerland held a referendum on women’s suffrage. In New York, John Lennon sat down at a brown model Z upright piano and began to write what would become an inter-generational, transnational phenomenon — and perhaps the gentlest of protest songs — Imagine.</p>
<p>Imagine was recorded on May 27, at Lennon’s new home studio. The song was released to the world as part of the album of the same name (co-produced by Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono and Phil Spector), on September 9.</p>
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<p>For three minutes and three seconds, the lyrics of this gentle ballad present a vision of unity and of hope. It is a space in which to dream of real change in the world. </p>
<p>As with all songs, the interpretations are as broad as the listeners. For many, it is a call for peace; for others it is a prayer. </p>
<p>The verse lyrics, partly <a href="https://archive.org/details/allwearesayingla00lenn">based on poetry by Ono</a>, remove all the central components that seem to separate us: violence, hate, borders, poverty, greed, governments, religion, consumerism and capitalism. </p>
<p>The final verse offers a vision of a unified world at peace. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You may say I’m a dreamer<br>
But I’m not the only one<br>
I hope someday you’ll join us<br>
And the world will live as one</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Imagine would become Lennon’s best-selling single of his solo career. In 2004, Rolling Stone labelled it third on its list of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone%27s_500_Greatest_Songs_of_All_Time">greatest songs of all time</a>, saying “we need it more than he ever dreamed”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/giving-peace-a-chance-music-can-drive-us-apart-as-much-as-it-unites-82745">Giving peace a chance? Music can drive us apart as much as it unites</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Unpacking it musically</h2>
<p>Imagine is often used to teach beginner music students, but it would be a mistake to think it is just a simple, soft rock, piano ballad.</p>
<p>This perception is due to Lennon’s highly effective crafting. As a peace anthem, the song appears simple, but dig a little deeper, and you find layers of complexity and nuance. </p>
<p>Imagine was written in the key of C major, which has no sharps or flats, so it is melodically and harmonically playable and broadly accessible.</p>
<p>The melody is comprised of small intervals (the difference in pitch between two notes), and repeating small motives (a fragment of melody repeated, manipulated or re-positioned throughout the melody), all within a singable range of one octave.</p>
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<p>The introduction to the song sets up a gentle sway between harmonic resolution and tension, like waves on a beach. </p>
<p>The third, longer phrase (“Imagine all the people”) steps into a passage of unresolved tension. This culminates in a harmonic state of balance, like a broom standing on end. It can fall either way — forward into resolution (the next verse) or back into tension (the chorus). This balance is intensified as the rhythm section pauses and Lennon sings in falsetto.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Imagine there’s no heaven <br>
It’s easy if you try<br>
No hell below us <br>
Above us, only sky <br>
Imagine all the people<br>
Livin’ for today</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The opening piano chords also create a sense of pushing into tension before falling back to resolution, linking to the dreamlike feeling of the lyrics. The third phrase, “imagine all the people” starts on the four chord and holds that tension until “living for today” lands on G, creating more stability. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most distinctive part of Imagine is the short piano riff between the vocal lines. This riff uses just three notes — A, A# and B — called “chromatic passing notes”. Your ear thinks these notes will go up again, to the C chord. Instead, Lennon brings the listener’s ear down to the G melody note, creating a gentle sense of unpredictability.</p>
<p>Imagine transports the listener. The lyrics lift the spirit. The easy rises and falls of the melody comfort. Lennon’s familiar voice reassures.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-white-album-at-50-its-avant-garde-eclecticism-still-inspires-104505">The Beatles White Album at 50: its avant garde eclecticism still inspires</a>
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<h2>A balm in times of crisis</h2>
<p>Imagine has inspired an outstanding array of cover versions, sung by everyone from Elton John to Madonna. American singer Eva Cassidy’s interpretation remains a particular favourite. Her expression and subtle reinterpretation of the melody, her note choices and phrasing, are breathtaking. </p>
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<p>At times of crisis, people <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2015/11/imagine-why-do-we-always-turn-to-john-lennons-best-known-song-after-a-violent-tragedy.html">have often turned to</a> this song. Queen covered Imagine the day after Lennon’s death in 1980; <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhsxh">Neil Young played it</a> in the wake of 9/11.</p>
<p>After the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, people gathered on the streets as a man quietly played the song on a piano decorated with a peace symbol.</p>
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<p>In March last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, Gal Gadot and other celebrities released a now ironically celebrated and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/arts/music/coronavirus-gal-gadot-imagine.html">much criticised version</a>. </p>
<p>And last September, Melbourne students wrote their own version:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Imagine there’s no Corona <br>
And we can see our friends</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our interconnectedness and reliance on one another are our biggest strengths. 50 years after Lennon wrote the song, Imagine will accompany us along the way: a lasting emblem of hope.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/tv/CFMGqkjHg6f/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Carriage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Released on September 9, 1971, the power of Imagine has not diluted. It is the song many turn to at times of crisis: from Neil Young after 9/11 to a pianist on the streets of Paris in 2015.
Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/147857
2020-10-09T15:40:05Z
2020-10-09T15:40:05Z
Two of Us: inside John Lennon’s incredible songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362629/original/file-20201009-23-1t18rew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C208%2C1524%2C1018&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greatest pop songwriting team ever?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Library of Congress</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>John Lennon was acutely aware of his place in the musical lineage, and the strengths and weaknesses of his own songwriting. His tendency to speak in bold strokes – “Before Elvis there was nothing!” – belied at times both the variety in his work, and its complicated legacy.</p>
<p>Lennon would have been 80 years old on October 9, and his son Sean’s recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08t4mx9">interview with Paul McCartney</a> highlights a few aspects of how their partnership shaped popular musical practice. McCartney recalls seeing Lennon around locally – on the bus, in the queue for fish and chips – before their famous first meeting at the <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/july-6-1957-day-beatles-9594637">Woolton Fête</a>, noting with approval at the time Lennon’s nascent identification with the Teddy Boy sub-culture.</p>
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<p>Importantly, their shared social milieu was an important foundation for the musical partnership. Sean Lennon also wonders about his father’s insecurities as a musician and a feeling that: “Somehow he wasn’t officially a true musician, and everyone else was.”</p>
<p>McCartney’s response is telling: “I don’t think any of us were, tell you the truth. And I think that was a very good, strong thing about us, actually.”</p>
<p>Part of the significance of The Beatles as a phenomenon, and the Lennon-McCartney partnership within that, was that its overwhelming industrial and creative success helped to ingrain the “band” as a modus operandi for making popular music into common cultural currency. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1314494539567108096"}"></div></p>
<p>The self-taught, peer-driven mode of music making that emerged from early rock and roll and skiffle was solidified as the next generation of its exponents – including Lennon and McCartney – took advantage of the relaxing social conditions as the 50s gave way to the 60s, and closed the gap between amateur and commercial activity. </p>
<h2>Joint ventures</h2>
<p>Mick Jagger once referred to the Beatles as a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rolz1VasS4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m45s">four-headed monster</a>”. Indeed, The Rolling Stones’ own creation myth – a youthful Jagger and Keith Richards re-kindling a childhood friendship at <a href="https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/blue-plaque-honours-birthplace-of-31457/">Dartford train station</a> over a chance encounter and a package of blues records – occupies a similar place in the historical narrative to Lennon and McCartney’s first encounter.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0fFyZzqPDws?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>An important underlying aspect of how such partnerships worked, however, is that as well as springing from self-taught musicianship, and the rough-and-tumble of social lives away from the formal demands of school and adult society, they combined what had hitherto often been separate functions – that of songwriter and performer. This wasn’t exclusively the case in rock. </p>
<p>The role of the songwriter as a marker of authenticity in rock music – singing one’s own compositions – drew from a Romantic wellspring, harking back to the 18th century, of artists as a source of inspiration and value beyond being mere entertainers. It also drew from folk traditions, as singer-songwriters asserted their individuality – Bob Dylan is a case in point here. </p>
<p>But there was a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/327341082.pdf">growing sense of authenticity in bands</a>, residing in the membership as well as the music. It mattered, for instance, when Ringo Starr contracted tonsillitis and was replaced for part of a tour of Australia by replacement drummer Jimmy Nicol. And songwriting partnerships such as Lennon-McCartney, and Jagger, Richards (as they appeared in the credits) were at the heart of this.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>They were also central to the power dynamic within bands. There was – and is – a financial advantage to being credited as a songwriter on top of being a performer in terms of the rights and royalties that accrue. A band is a partnership on several levels: social, creative and financial. Indeed, some acts have deliberately reoriented their arrangements to account for this. </p>
<p>R.E.M., the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthblatt/2014/02/03/six-surprising-things-that-u2-and-the-red-hot-chili-peppers-have-in-common-other-than-a-spotlight-at-the-super-bowl/#473929a7fc23">Red Hot Chilli Peppers and U2</a>, for instance, made a point of co-crediting all band members regardless of who wrote a particular song or passage. And Queen shifted to such an arrangement and away from individual composers’ credits, partly as a way of reducing intra-band disputes about which songs to choose as singles.</p>
<h2>Moving apart</h2>
<p>In the case of the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney had ceased to co-write the songs several years before the band actually split, although as performers and bandmates they continued to help shape them in the production process. Tensions across one of these axes might be sustainable. The Beatles took divergent paths as the 60s wore on, as is natural enough for school-friends as they move through adulthood and start families. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/262481000" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But by the end of the decade, simultaneous divergence in the creative, social and financial pathways made the partnership unmanageable. “Musical differences” is often jokingly referred to as a proxy for personal enmity. But in truth, the various threads are often hard to fully disentangle.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Lennon and McCartney complemented one another as personalities and as musicians. McCartney’s melodic facility smoothed over some of Lennon’s rougher edges. Lennon’s grit added texture and leavened some of McCartney’s more saccharine tendencies. </p>
<p>Their legacy, though, was more than just musical. Their success coincided with, and helped to shape, an explosion of youth culture as both creative and commercial enterprise. </p>
<p>We can’t know, of course, what would have happened had Lennon lived to 80, especially given that – their business problems receding into the past - his personal relationship with McCartney had become warmer again by the onset of the 1980s. With the hurly-burly of the Beatles behind them, they found common ground over the more prosaic matters of middle age. </p>
<p>As McCartney <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-299-1297236">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’d chat about how to make bread. Just ordinary stuff, you know. He’d had a baby by then – he’d had Sean – so we could talk babies and family and bread and stuff. So that made it a little bit easier, the fact that we were buddies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the fact that their evolution as songwriters and as friends took place in tandem is still felt in the emergence of popular musical enterprises from schoolyards and youthful peer groups in rock and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147857/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>
For a decade after they met as teenagers, Lennon-McCartney was the most potent songwriting partnership in pop music.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130980
2020-04-10T12:12:04Z
2020-04-10T12:12:04Z
Inside the Beatles’ messy breakup, 50 years ago
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326989/original/file-20200409-165427-i79n2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=100%2C8%2C1658%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who broke up with whom?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-beatles-celebrate-the-completion-of-their-new-album-sgt-news-photo/3297187?adppopup=true">Anurag Papolu/The Conversation via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade. </p>
<p>In a press release on April 10, 1970 for his first solo album, “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/paul-mccartney/albums/mccartney/">McCartney</a>,” he leaked his intention to leave. In doing so, he shocked his three bandmates.</p>
<p>The Beatles had symbolized the great communal spirit of the era. How could they possibly come apart? </p>
<p>Few at the time were aware of the underlying fissures. The power struggles in the group had been mounting at least since their manager, Brian Epstein, died in August of 1967. </p>
<h2>‘Paul Quits the Beatles’</h2>
<p>Was McCartney’s “announcement” official? His album appeared on April 17, and its press packet included a mock interview. In it, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/04/10/paul-mccartney-announces-the-beatles-split/">is asked</a>, “Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?”</p>
<p>His response? “No.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Daily Mirror took McCartney at his word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Daily Mirror</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But he didn’t say whether the separation might prove permanent. The Daily Mirror nonetheless framed its headline conclusively: “Paul Quits the Beatles.” </p>
<p>The others worried this could hurt sales and sent Ringo as a peacemaker to McCartney’s London home to talk him down from releasing his solo album ahead of the band’s “Let It Be” album and film, which were slated to come out in May. Without any press present, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/03/31/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-letter-john-lennon-george-harrison-let-it-be/">shouted Ringo off his front stoop</a>.</p>
<h2>Lennon had kept quiet</h2>
<p>Lennon, who had been active outside the band for months, felt particularly betrayed.</p>
<p>The previous September, soon after the band released “Abbey Road,” he <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/why-the-beatles-broke-up-113403/">had asked</a> his bandmates for a “divorce.” But the others convinced him not to go public to prevent disrupting some delicate contract negotiations. </p>
<p>Still, Lennon’s departure seemed imminent: He had played the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival with his Plastic Ono Band in September 1969, and on Feb. 11, 1970, he performed a new solo track, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQny1XxOdI">Instant Karma</a>,” on the popular British TV show “Top of the Pops.” Yoko Ono sat behind him, knitting while blindfolded by a sanitary napkin. </p>
<p>In fact, Lennon behaved more and more like a solo artist, until McCartney countered with his own eponymous album. He wanted Apple to release this solo debut alongside the group’s new album, “<a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/let-it-be">Let It Be</a>,” to dramatize the split. </p>
<p>By beating Lennon to the announcement, McCartney controlled the story and its timing, and undercut the other three’s interest in keeping it under wraps as new product hit stores.</p>
<p>Ray Connolly, a reporter at the Daily Mail, knew Lennon well enough to ring him up for comment. When I interviewed Connolly in 2008, he told me about their conversation. </p>
<p>Lennon was dumbfounded and enraged by the news. He had let Connolly in on his secret about leaving the band at his Montreal Bed-In in December 1969, but asked him to keep it quiet. Now he lambasted Connolly for not leaking it sooner. </p>
<p>“Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada at Christmas!” he exclaimed to Connolly, who reminded him that the conversation had been off the record. “You’re the f–king journalist, Connolly, not me,” snorted Lennon. </p>
<p>“We were all hurt [McCartney] didn’t tell us what he was going to do,” <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lennon-remembers-part-one-186693/">Lennon later told Rolling Stone</a>. “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it! I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record…”</p>
<h2>It all falls apart</h2>
<p>This public fracas had been bubbling under the band’s cheery surface for years. Timing and sales concealed deeper arguments about creative control and the return to live touring. </p>
<p>In January 1969, the group had started a roots project tentatively titled “Get Back.” It was supposed to be a back-to-the-basics recording without the artifice of studio trickery. But the whole venture was shelved as a new recording, “Abbey Road,” took shape.</p>
<p>When “Get Back” was eventually revived, Lennon – behind McCartney’s back – brought in American producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Spector">Phil Spector</a>, best known for girl group hits like “Be My Baby,” to salvage the project. But this album was supposed to be band only – not embroidered with added strings and voices – and McCartney fumed when Spector added a female choir to his song “The Long and Winding Road.” </p>
<p>“Get Back” – which was renamed “Let it Be” – nonetheless moved forward. Spector mixed the album, and a cut of the feature film was readied for summer. </p>
<p>McCartney’s announcement and release of his solo album effectively short-circuited the plan. By announcing the breakup, he launched his solo career in advance of “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/let-it-be/">Let It Be</a>,” and nobody knew how it might disrupt the official Beatles’ project. </p>
<p>Throughout the remainder of 1970, fans watched in disbelief as the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfT_a3bIw">Let It Be</a>” movie portrayed the hallowed Beatles circling musical doldrums, bickering about arrangements and killing time running through oldies. The film finished with an ironic triumph – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/01/30/beatles-played-london-rooftop-it-wound-up-being-their-last-show/">the famous live set on the roof of their Apple headquarters</a> during which the band played “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and a joyous “One After 909.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NCtzkaL2t_Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Beatles played their last live show in a January 1969 concert staged for the documentary ‘Let It Be.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The album, released on May 8, performed well and spawned two hit singles – the title track and “The Long and Winding Road” – but the group never recorded together again.</p>
<p>Their fans hoped against hope that four solo Beatles might someday find their way back to the thrills that had enchanted audiences for seven years. These rumors seemed most promising when <a href="https://longreads.com/2019/06/24/took-you-by-surprise-john-and-pauls-lost-reunion/">McCartney joined Lennon for a Los Angeles recording session</a> in 1974 with Stevie Wonder. But while they all played on one another’s solo efforts, the four never played a session together again. </p>
<p>At the beginning of 1970, autumn’s “Come Together”/“Something” single from “Abbey Road” still floated in the Billboard top 20; the “Let It Be” album and film helped extend fervor beyond what the papers reported. For a long time, the myth of the band endured on radio playlists and across several greatest hits compilations, but when John Lennon sang “The dream is over…” at the end of his own 1970 solo debut, “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-108294/">John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band</a>,” few grasped the lyrics’ implacable truth. </p>
<p>Fans and critics chased every sliver of hope for the “next” Beatles, but few came close to recreating the band’s magic. There were prospects – first bands like Three Dog Night, the Flaming Groovies, Big Star and the Raspberries; later, Cheap Trick, the Romantics and the Knack – but these groups only aimed at the same heights the Beatles had conquered, and none sported the range, songwriting ability or ineffable chemistry of the Liverpool quartet.</p>
<p>We’ve been living in the world without Beatles ever since.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Riley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Unbridled ambition and bruised egos created an irreparable fissure.
Tim Riley, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Journalism, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129740
2020-01-17T21:44:37Z
2020-01-17T21:44:37Z
‘Lennon Walls’ herald a sticky-note revolution in Hong Kong
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309498/original/file-20200110-97165-l8lmj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1599%2C1168&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hong Kong's first Lennon Wall appeared in 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lennon_Wall_stair_view_20141101.jpg">Wpcpey/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Months of anti-government protests in Hong Kong have physically reshaped the city. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XzywWaQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">scholar of urban landscapes</a>, I have been interested in how the citizens and activists made use of the urban environment during the movement, including walls of Post-it sticky notes and other creative displays. </p>
<p>These spaces, which locals call “Lennon Walls,” have sprung up on buildings, walkways, sky bridges, underpasses and storefronts and carry messages like “Hong Kongers love freedom,” “garbage government” and “We demand real universal suffrage.” </p>
<p>The <a href="http://lonelyplanet.com/czech-republic/prague/atdtractions/john-lennon-wall/a/poi-sig/401339/358835">original Lennon Wall</a> was in central Prague, west of the Vltava River and south of the iconic Charles Bridge. Since the 1960s, the wall had been a location for romantic poems and anti-government messages. After Beatles legend John Lennon’s murder in 1980, someone painted a portrait of Lennon and some of his song lyrics on the wall. In time, messages evoking Lennon’s common themes of peace, love and democracy covered the space. It became a location for <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/pragues-famous-john-lennon-wall-it-over-or-just-reborn-180953415/">community-generated protest art that endures</a> – yet is ever-changing – today.</p>
<p>In Hong Kong, the first Lennon Wall appeared during the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests – named for their participants’ use of umbrellas to shield themselves from police pepper spray. This wall of an outdoor staircase in the city’s Admiralty district, near the Central Government Complex, was covered by handwritten sticky notes supporting the protest. The colorful mosaic became one of the most memorable sights of the movement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309508/original/file-20200110-97178-a2vhry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Hong Kong, pedestrian tunnels and other public walls have become Lennon Walls, spaces of protest and political engagement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Hou</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Freeing expression</h2>
<p>In 2019, as anti-government protests spread throughout Hong Kong, <a href="https://newslab.pts.org.tw/news/73">more than 100 Lennon Walls</a>, covered in sticky notes and other creative displays, appeared around the city. Like the rivers of protesters flowing through Hong Kong’s urban canyons, these sticky notes have covered all sorts of surfaces, including storefronts and freeway pillars. </p>
<p>The Lennon Walls in Hong Kong have transformed nondescript walkways, sky bridges and tunnels into spaces of gathering and exchange where ordinary people would pause, read, write, and engage others in conversations. The simple and highly adaptable technique has allowed multitudes of citizens, visitors and tourists to participate in the movement and the political debate. </p>
<p>The messages on the walls are not exclusively in support of the protest movement – one note read “Hong Kong belongs to China,” a view decidedly opposed to many of the protesters. But the community has apparently developed a tacit agreement that people won’t take down or cover over messages they disagree with. The walls themselves have become an exercise in democracy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/07/10/dozens-police-riot-gear-remove-flyers-officers-personal-info-tai-po-lennon-wall-message-board/">Hong Kong’s authorities have removed</a> some of these walls over objections from protesters. However, new notes, posters and other displays reappear in a matter of hours. It’s another way the movement is expressing its motto, “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/hong-kong-protest-latest-bruce-lee-riot-police-water-a9045311.html">Be water</a>,” signifying that the protesters’ actions should be adaptable, tactical, fast and spontaneous – the way water flows through cracks in a structure.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309510/original/file-20200110-97165-x5pog9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Passersby transform a wall of a New York City subway tunnel with sticky notes carrying all sorts of messages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Hou</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Around the world</h2>
<p>As Hong Kong took inspiration from Prague, other cities have followed Hong Kong’s lead. </p>
<p>In November 2016, after Donald Trump’s surprise presidential win, New York City residents used sticky notes to transform a pedestrian tunnel beneath 14th Street into a space of therapy and mourning. Passersby would stop, read, take pictures, add to the collection and <a href="https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/new-yorks-subway-therapist-and-his-collage-of-a-citys-hopes-and-fears/">come away with a sense of shared emotion</a>.</p>
<p>This spontaneous and collective form of public communication has brought new life to the historical idea of public space as a place for expression, dialogue and assembly, a concept dating back to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/agora">Greek agora</a>. Recent examples included New York City’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/surprise-police-raid-clears-out-zuccotti-park/">Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street protest</a>, and the <a href="https://elpais.com/tag/movimiento_15m/a/">Puerta del Sol square in Madrid</a> during the 15M Movement where tens of thousands of people gathered to protest against the government’s austerity policy.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309511/original/file-20200110-97130-cyulx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A spontaneous Lennon Wall appeared on a decorative pillar in the the popular Ximenting district of Taipei, Taiwan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Hou</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Around the world, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennon_Wall_(Hong_Kong)#Influence_around_the_world">Lennon Walls</a> have sprung up to show solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters. In New York City, supporters set up <a href="https://www.thevillager.com/2019/08/lennon-walls-imagine-a-new-hong-kong/">temporary, portable Lennon Walls in public parks</a>; there were similar efforts in Seattle and San Francisco.</p>
<p>In Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, supporters created spontaneous Lennon Walls in the tourist-frequented Ximenting area, and inside a pedestrian underpass near National Taiwan University. In Tokyo, supporters at the busy Shibuya crossing intersection became <a href="https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E6%B8%8B%E8%B0%B7%E7%8F%BE-%E9%80%A3%E5%84%82%E7%89%86-%E7%B4%99%E7%89%8C-%E4%BA%BA%E8%BA%AB%E4%BB%A3%E7%89%86%E9%81%BF%E5%85%8D%E6%89%93%E6%93%BE%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E4%BA%BA/?fbclid=IwAR15mDL_cig5sUhLHbP7_1Yq2aVFfQG3oKu0peomOdgbZ097WmGkC3BXthQ">human Lennon Walls</a>, inviting passersby to post messages of support on protesters’ clothes.</p>
<p>By occupying public walls, or at least publicly accessible ones, these Lennon Walls show how ordinary people are reclaiming urban spaces and voices in a political process. Even if sticky notes can’t themselves fuel a revolution, they serve as reminders that people have the collective ability to reinvigorate democracy, wherever they are.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Hou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
First seen in Prague in 1980, a form of public protest and free expression has spread throughout Hong Kong and around the world.
Jeff Hou, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124433
2019-09-30T12:16:01Z
2019-09-30T12:16:01Z
Beatles: Abbey Road at 50 is a marker of how pop music grew up in the 1960s
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294748/original/file-20190930-194829-xlqyt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C1%2C995%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imma Gambardella via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary re-issue of the seminal Beatles album Abbey Road – remixed and with a slew of alternative takes – along with the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-reunite-abbey-road-celebrate-50th-anniversary-2551762">celebrations by surviving band-members</a> and fans alike, illustrates the recording industry’s preoccupation with <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/nostalgia-in-music-the-1975-charli-xcx-troye-sivan-1999-pop-queen-a8729266.html">nostalgia</a>. </p>
<p>It’s also an opportunity to cash in on both the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-album-at-70-a-format-in-decline-99581">vinyl resurgence and the wave of anniversaries</a> that accompanies the canonisation of Baby Boomer rock pioneers. The Beatles lead the pack but <a href="https://www.ledzeppelin.com/news/first-official-feature-length-led-zeppelin-documentary-1270591">Led Zeppelin</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/rolling-stones-let-it-bleed-50th-anniversary-exclusive-1203342975/">The Rolling Stones</a> have also put out anniversary re-releases and documentaries. </p>
<p>It’s easy to be cynical but Abbey Road is a musical moment with an anniversary that warrants marking. It received mixed reviews on release in September 1969. The Guardian found the record “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/oct/08/beatles-abbey-road-review-archive-1969">a slight matter</a>”, although Rolling Stone remarked that it showed that the band was “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140421055432/http:/www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/abbey-road-19691115">still unsurpassed</a>”. Commercially, there was no question. It entered the UK charts at number one, where it spent a total of 17 weeks, with similar performance internationally. </p>
<p>The album’s effect on musicians was both immediate and longstanding. Booker T and the MG’s recorded and released an instrumental cover of the album – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kQxJEBDR90XXxs3zOWts4Fy7XWaXfxVZc">McLemore Avenue</a> – within a year, featuring themselves crossing the road outside their own Stax Studios. Frank Sinatra, meanwhile, made “Something” a feature of his concerts for years, recording it twice and calling it “<a href="https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/something.html">the greatest love song of the last 50 years</a>”.</p>
<h2>Sublime swansong</h2>
<p>Abbey Road’s reach into the popular consciousness is long. It has immortalised the former EMI studios, now taking the name of their address, and the zebra crossing that featured on the iconic cover is <a href="https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk">a tourist attraction</a> today.</p>
<p>Its real emotional and musical weight, though, comes through the combination of songwriting and production craft with historical placement. Although Let It Be was released in 1970, Abbey Road was the <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">last album the band recorded</a> – a mixing session for Lennon’s portentous “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” was <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/08/20/mixing-editing-i-want-you-shes-so-heavy/">the last time</a> all four members were in the studio together.</p>
<p>They were mired in financial difficulties – their <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/apple-records-the-story/">Apple venture</a> (a portfolio of ventures from record label to a shortlived boutique) was struggling after a ramshackle launch period. Their increasingly divergent social and musical lives were also shot through with legal disagreements, and whether to take on Allen Klein as their manager – as favoured by Lennon, Starr and Harrison – or, McCartney’s preference, the Eastman family of his new wife Linda.</p>
<p>Their recording swansong followed fragmentary, disparate work on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-white-album-at-50-its-avant-garde-eclecticism-still-inspires-104505">1968’s White Album</a> and the fractious Get Back sessions in the early months of 1969. That was an attempt to rekindle their early, live energy first in Twickenham film studios and latterly their Apple building on Saville Row although it collapsed into discord, leaving hours of tape that would eventually surface as the 1970 album Let It Be, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/arts/album-review-getting-back-to-essentials-beatles-refuse-to-let-it-be.html">Phil Spector tasked with finishing the job</a>. </p>
<p>Work on Abbey Road in summer 1969 wasn’t free of discord but, unlike the preceding Twickenham sessions, it didn’t result in sloppy and incomplete recordings. This was due in no small part to the reinstatement of George Martin as producer and the band’s return to EMI studios. Martin instilled a sense of discipline. His involvement came <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">with the condition</a> that the band “let me produce it the way we used to”. </p>
<p>The band, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/15-legendary-unreleased-albums-67688/the-beatles-get-back-1969-160197/">unable to face returning to the Get Back tapes</a> – “none of us would go near them”, remarked Lennon – concurred. As Harrison <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KbY5AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=bob+spitz+the+beatles&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzvvOTrfjkAhVytHEKHSpJCFQQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=bob%20spitz%20the%20beatles&f=false">would recall</a>: “We decided, ‘Let’s make a good album again’.”</p>
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<p>It’s plausible that, sensing the end was near, they wanted to go out on a high. The extent to which Abbey Road was planned as a finale is debatable. As with much of the Beatles’ final days, matters are shrouded in contradiction. The mix of schoolboy friendships, working relationships, a strained legal partnership and creative inspiration meant that the months of recording were unlikely to be either unremitting contention or unbroken harmony. It’s also almost impossible to discount hindsight and the tendency to read their final moments as a band into the music – “The End"’s elegiac conclusion to the medley on side two in particular.</p>
<p>Regardless, they were reaching the end of the road. All were involved in solo projects by the time they recorded Abbey Road and Harrison and Starr had already temporarily left the band during recordings for the White Album and Get Back.</p>
<h2>End of an era</h2>
<p>Abbey Road, though, reveals the possibilities and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2014.969976">strengths of the "band” as format</a> – the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It’s the first time after perhaps Sergeant Pepper that their creative impetus is audible as merging across one another’s songs – the Beatles as an entity, beyond the group of individual musicians.</p>
<p>Abbey Road fuses song-craft and recording innovation with the confidence that the group dynamic brought to the table. Their first forays into eight-track tape and transistor technology gave the album a fuller sound than previously, while it was one of <a href="https://www.moogmusic.com/news/beatles-use-moog-synthesizer-abbey-road-sessions">the first mainstream albums to feature a synthesiser</a>. Sonically, it was as much the first album of the 1970s as an artefact of the late 1960s.</p>
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<p>Few, acts are as synonymous with a decade as the Beatles are with the 1960s. And while this is party historical accident – their creative collaboration ended with the decade – it also means that Abbey Road signposts the passing of one era into another. As we stumble uncertainly towards a new decade ourselves, there’s comfort in that album’s uneasy synthesis of sunshine and strife into a coherent musical statement.</p>
<p>In 1963, The Beatles had recorded their first album Please Please Me in one lightning 13-hour session. By the time they walked out onto the zebra crossing in 1969, they had expanded the parameters of popular music, helping to turn it a recording art form. Their success also solidified the concept of the band as a preeminent creative unit in popular music. Even at the end, they continued to point the way forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Regarded as one of The Beatles finest albums, Abbey Road is the last time all four band members were in the studio together.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104505
2018-11-20T11:56:01Z
2018-11-20T11:56:01Z
The Beatles White Album at 50: its avant garde eclecticism still inspires
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245569/original/file-20181114-172710-19vnxrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">badgreeb via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For an LP with a plain white cover, the Beatles eponymous ninth studio album – more commonly referred to as the “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/the-beatles-white-album/">White Album</a>” – has generated a mass of symbolism since its release 50 years ago in November 1968.</p>
<p>With its glossy all-white gatefold cover, black inner sleeves and portraits of the Fab Four hidden inside the sleeve, the influence of the White Album can be traced across a huge range of cultural artefacts. For example, the author of New Journalism, Joan Didion, named her study of the end of the 1960s dream, <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n02/martin-amis/joan-didions-style">The White Album</a>. The starkness of the LP’s presentation seemed aligned to the collapse of post-war idealism documented by Didion’s book. </p>
<p>For cult leader Charles Manson, the record <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/charles-manson-how-cult-leaders-twisted-beatles-obsession-inspired-family-murders-107176/">contained a litany of hidden messages</a> that only he and The Beatles understood. George Harrison’s Piggies and Paul McCartney’s (admittedly crazed) Helter Skelter foretold the chaos of a bloody race war, a new apocalypse that Manson was to instigate and alone survive.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-50-the-beatles-white-album-remixed-106784">Revolution 50: The Beatles’ White Album remixed</a>
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<p>In 2004 Brian Joseph Burton, AKA Danger Mouse, issued <a href="https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/reviews-nme-7347">The Grey Album</a>, a mash-up of The Beatles and rapper Jay-Z’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/the-black-album-88686/">The Black Album</a>.</p>
<p>And, as if the cultural and commercial importance of the White Album could be doubted, a re-issue of the record to coincide with its 50th anniversary went into the Billboard top 200 <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8485591/the-beatles-white-album-returns-billboard-200-chart-top-10">with a bullet</a> at number six. Interestingly, of the 63,000 units sold in the week from November 9 to 16, 52,000 were in traditional album sales.</p>
<h2>After Sgt Pepper’s</h2>
<p>The album remains the Beatles’ most intriguing contribution to the art of sound. It’s hard to imagine in today’s landscape of remakes, sequels and parodies that the pop fans of the 1960s expected their favourite artists to keep moving forward and with each new recording to have developed something entirely fresh. So, the lush, psychedelic world of the previous LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with its iconic Peter Blake designed cover, was substituted by a stark minimalist aesthetic (albeit one created by another legendary <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-hamilton-1244">British pop artist, Richard Hamilton</a>).</p>
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<p>The music inside Hamilton’s sleeve revealed a similar shift of gear. For practically the first time, Beatles songs appeared as solo efforts – some of the record’s 30 tracks had even been recorded by a single member of the band. This had occurred before (think of McCartney singing Yesterday accompanied by a string quartet or Harrison’s forays into Eastern mysticism) and yet for the first time the group was revealed as a collection of individuals rather than a well-oiled unit. </p>
<p>As the late Roy Carr, who co-wrote one of the best books on the group, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/627259.The_Beatles">The Beatles: an Illustrated Record</a>, put it, “on this double LP they act as each other’s session men”. The individual characters of each group member were also laid bare: Lennon’s dark cynicism, McCartney’s eclectic optimism, Harrison’s mysticism and Starr’s love of country music. The collaborative aspect of a pop/rock group dynamic had begun to dissolve. The White Album in fact marks the clearest instance of the disintegration of the Beatles as a group and was thus the springboard for the various solo careers of the band, with tantalising glimpses – good and bad – of what was to come in the years following the split.</p>
<p>It is the sprawling mixture of music and ideas on the record that makes is so fascinating, especially in hindsight. For example, Revolution 9 is a tape collage put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono echoing the experiments in this field by <a href="http://120years.net/the-grm-group-and-rtf-electronic-music-studio-pierre-schaeffer-jacques-poullin-france-1951/">RTF and GRM in France</a> and the <a href="https://www.soundonsound.com/people/story-bbc-radiophonic-workshop">BBC Radiophonic Workshop</a> in the UK and reviewed by the NME at the time as a “pretentious piece of old codswallop”. Birthday and Helter Skelter contain distorted blasts of guitar <a href="https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/is_helter_skelter_really_the_first_metal_song_ever_made_paul_mccartney_replies.html">prefiguring Heavy Metal</a>. McCartney was here trying to top The Who: “Pete Townshend said I Can See For Miles was the dirtiest, filthiest record ever, so we were trying to out-filth The Who.”</p>
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<p>There is also Lennon and McCartney’s trademark virtuoso vocal performances set to new diverse means (I’m So Tired, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Martha My Dear) and moments of great beauty such as Lennon’s <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/julia/">tribute to his deceased mother</a>: Julia.</p>
<h2>Growing pleasures</h2>
<p>The Beatles’ closet allies though believed they had gone too far. Their producer, <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-martin/">George Martin</a>, probably recalling the perfection of albums such as “Revolver” (1966), famously declared on the Anthology documentary: “I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double,” while stalwart engineer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/03/beatles-recording-engineer-geoff-emerick-dies-age-72">Geoff Emerick</a> described the LP as “unlistenable”. </p>
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<p>Yet ultimately it is the messiness and eclecticism of the White Album that makes it so great – an aspect I tried to capture in <a href="https://headpress.com/product/the-beatles-white-album/">my book</a> of individual reflections on the songs on the LP by artists, poets, academics and performers. The White Album is perhaps the truest deconstruction of The Beatles as a unique group of musicians that we have.</p>
<p>And still the LP continues to fascinate. New York artist <a href="http://rutherfordchang.com/white.html">Rutherford Chang</a>’s response to the record is an obsessive project. Since 2006, Chang has collected as many copies of the LP as he can, no matter the state of decay (he currently holds around 2,200 copies). In fact, it is the individual modifications (markings and collaging on the cover, and so on) that make the collection so unique. Chang has also sonically layered multiple copies of the LP one on top of another so that those so familiar songs become unrecognisable – a phased mush of noise. </p>
<p>This is precisely the kind of iconoclastic experimentation that the Beatles themselves hoped to achieve with the original 1968 project. </p>
<p>The White Album may have contained the first hints at the limits to the Beatles longevity as a group. But its avant garde eclecticism, or what <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/story-tags/barry-miles">Beatles biographer Barry Miles</a> referred to as “multipurpose Beatle music”, is one of the very things that ensures their work continues to inspire and provoke creativity 50 years on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Fifty years after its release, the Beatles’ White Album continues to inspire and provoke creativity.
Mark Goodall, Senior Lecturer Film and Media, University of Bradford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102291
2018-09-04T13:26:00Z
2018-09-04T13:26:00Z
How a Beatles song about ‘revolution’ helped Nike become a billion dollar brand
<p>Fifty years ago the Beatles released a single that sold over 8m copies – their highest selling 45rpm – Hey Jude. While Hey Jude made the greater impression, it was the B-side – Revolution – in which John Lennon addressed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-starts-on-campus-102243">global political upheaval of 1968</a> that has the more interesting story. Rare as it was for a pop song to address politics, the message in Revolution – which I outline in <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/advertising-revolution-the-story-of-a-song-from-beatles-hit-to-nike-slogan/">my book</a> – attracted fierce resentment within the radical left before re-appearing in 1987 in one of the most seminal and <a href="https://vimeo.com/89811766">ground breaking advertisements ever made</a>.</p>
<p>Lennon wrote Revolution in India where the Beatles were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/09/indian-retreat-where-the-beatles-learned-to-meditate-is-opened-to-the-public">meditating with the Maharishi</a> while the Vietnam War and Chinese Cultural Revolution raged on. There was a major <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_4090000/4090886.stm">riot in London</a> and Paris was brought to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/may-1968-the-posters-that-inspired-a-movement-95619">brink of another revolution</a> in May of that year. </p>
<p>Upon their return to London, the Beatles recorded the song with Lennon lying down to sound serene. In one line he sings: “You say you want a revolution … but if you’re talking about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.” And then, after a pause, he sings “in” (because he hadn’t made his mind up).</p>
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<p>The rest of the band argued that the slow bluesy number was insufficiently commercial and so a faster, rockier version with distorted guitars needed to be re-recorded. Lennon reluctantly agreed, despite worrying that the political message would be more difficult to understand.</p>
<p>The first version (Revolution No. 1) appeared on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/4b8c/">the White Album</a>, which was released later that year. The faster version, simply named Revolution, became the flipside to Hey Jude. A third version – Revolution No. 9 – was also included in the White Album. This was just a scramble of noise, static, and nonsensical phrases – though an early example of electronic mixing.</p>
<h2>‘A lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear’</h2>
<p>Hey Jude was proclaimed as one of the Beatles’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/21/how-hey-jude-became-our-favourite-beatles-song">best songs</a> by the pop media which largely ignored Lennon’s more political offering. Yet the radical underground media railed, with Ramparts, the American literary and politcal journal, declaring “Revolution preaches counter-revolution”. </p>
<p>The New Left Review called it a “lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear”, while the Village Voice wrote: “It is puritanical to expect musicians, or anyone else, to hew the proper line. But it is reasonable to request that they do not go out of their way to oppose it.” The Berkeley Barb sneered “Revolution sounds like the hawk plank adopted in the Chicago convention of the Democratic Death Party” and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/mar/15/popandrock.pressandpublishing">Black Dwarf dismissed the song</a> as “no more revolutionary than Mrs. Dale’s Diary”.</p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/89811766" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Then in 1987 the song reappeared when the small advertising agency, <a href="http://wklondon.com/">Wieden+Kennedy</a>, selected it for a Nike advert. It was the first major television advert Nike ever made. Wieden+Kennedy had previously attracted industry attention by featuring Miles Davis and Lou Reed in their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK6y9_0gsEg">adverts for Honda scooters</a> and were becoming the agency that could deliver coups. </p>
<p>They also managed to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/story-behind-nikes-controversial-1987-revolution-commercial-192421/">secure Yoko Ono’s support</a>. She explained that she didn’t “want to see John deified” nor for “John’s songs to be part of a cult of glorified martyrdom”. Instead she wanted his songs to be enjoyed by a “new generation” who would “make it part of their lives instead of a relic of the distant past”. So Revolution was licensed for a media campaign that cost between US$7m and US$10m.</p>
<p>The advert consisted of a jerky black and white, hand-held camera film that showed Nike athletes and ordinary people participating in a variety of sports at various levels of seriousness. It became a massive success. Nike sales doubled in two years and the advert’s theme of empowerment and transcendence with a personal philosophy of everyday life formed the basis of Nike’s branding for the following years and allowed them to dominate the newly emerging “sign economy” of brand culture (how brands started to gain value at a more cultural and aesthetic level). </p>
<p>By 1991, Nike held 29% of the global athletic shoe market and its sales had exceeded US$3 billion.</p>
<h2>Selling out?</h2>
<p>Yet the ad attracted controversy. Time magazine wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mark David Chapman killed him. But it took a couple of record execs, one sneaker company and a soul brother to turn him into a jingle writer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Chicago Tribune described the advert as “when rock idealism met cold-eyed greed” and the New Republic said: “The song had a meaning that Nike is destroying.” </p>
<p>Revolution, it seems, had apparently morphed from a “petty bourgeois cry of fear” into a sacred text, twisted and spoiled by a sneaker company. The most significant response was the US$15m lawsuit <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/05/arts/nike-calls-beatles-suit-groundless.html">filed by Apple Records</a> in an attempt to halt the commercial. Apple claimed that the advert used the Beatles “persona and good will” without permission. Reportedly, the action was settled out of court after the campaign had run its course, with Apple, EMI and Capitol agreeing that no Beatles version would ever be used again to sell products – truly the Nike Revolution was a one off.</p>
<p>Yet the critical attention generated by the advert appears to have had long term consequences for Nike. The <a href="https://business.nmsu.edu/%7Edboje/nikerpts.html">negative press coverage</a> on the brand accumulated, focusing on allegations of a “patriarchal culture” and <a href="https://qz.com/1042298/nike-is-facing-a-new-wave-of-anti-sweatshop-protests/">labour abuses</a>. The Nike Revolution advert did not just launch Nike into the stratosphere of brands. It singled it out for critical attention.</p>
<p>Yet it also helped normalise the everyday wearing of sports shoes.
Thirty years later, the everyday wearing of shoes designed for professional athletes is a normal part of consumer culture, demonstrating how society can live in the legacy of extraordinary marketing campaigns. Indeed, the possibility that so many people are wearing these shoes because Lennon, meditating in Rishikesh, decided to address the politics of 1968, is a reminder that the collision of culture and politics in the medium of advertising can often create the most unpredictable outcomes imaginable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Bradshaw is co-author with Linda Scott of Advertising Revolution: The Story of a Song From Beatles Hit to Nike Jingle, published by Repeater.</span></em></p>
John Lennon’s Revolution was panned by the radical media as a ‘petty bourgeois cry of fear’ in 1968. Then, in 1987 it was claimed by Nike to be the controversial soundtrack of its most seminal advert.
Alan Bradshaw, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/100168
2018-08-02T21:01:01Z
2018-08-02T21:01:01Z
Neil Sedaka’s 1975 song revived for anti-immigrant era
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230441/original/file-20180802-136673-507p0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A top hit in 1975, Neil Sedaka's song “The Immigrant,” proves its continuing relevance, with the rise in xenophobia in the United States. Here people on an Atlantic Liner arrive at what is probably Ellis Island, the gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the U.S. from 1892 to 1954</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a13598/">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Neil Sedaka is an American singer-songwriter who has written dozens of hit songs. Many of them he sang himself. Others are better known in cover versions by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Ariana Grande. </p>
<p>Sedaka’s wholesome image and infectious cheerfulness are easy to slight and have too often belied an extraordinary career. His song “The Immigrant” was a Top 30 hit when he released it in 1975, but today it seems even more relevant, as debates rage in the United States over <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disgrace-of-detaining-asylum-seekers-and-other-migrants-99673">immigration</a>, repatriation and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21975">racism</a>. </p>
<p>Recent events along the U.S.-Mexican border have revealed how easy it still is for restrictionists and xenophobes to gain the upper hand, and to enact hard-line policies that inflict misery on people drawn to the U.S. in hopes of a better life. Sedaka dedicated “The Immigrant” to John Lennon, who at the time was mired in a bitter dispute with U.S. authorities over his application for permanent residence in America. “I thought the song was beautiful,” Lennon told Sedaka after watching him perform it on TV. “Yoko and I were watching and we loved it.” </p>
<h2>A musical talent at eight-years-old</h2>
<p>Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939, Sedaka was only eight-years-old when he began to attend the Juilliard School of Music on a piano scholarship. By the time he was thirteen, though, his interests had shifted decisively from classical to popular music, and after teaming up with his neighbour, the 16-year-old lyricist Howie Greenfield, they found work in the fabled Brill Building on Broadway, where professional hit-makers wrote rock ‘n’ roll songs for an exploding teenage market.</p>
<p>Sedaka composed songs for some of the great Black female singers of the late 1950s, including LaVern Baker (“I Waited Too Long”) and Dinah Washington (“Never Again”), but he scored his biggest success with Connie Francis, for whom he and Greenfield penned the trivial “Stupid Cupid.” Their range and growth as a songwriting team, however, was evident by 1960, when they wrote the lush ballad “Where the Boys Are,” which Francis recorded for the “spring break” movie of the same title, and which many artists have since covered.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230422/original/file-20180802-136661-imljgy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">(Left to right) Nigel Olsson, May Pang, John Lennon, Jozy, Neil Sedaka.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter/@NeilSedaka</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sedaka’s career as a singer took off during these same years. Beginning in 1959, he produced a string of bubbly, doo-bee-doo-wappy hits such as “Oh! Carol,” “Calendar Girl,” and “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” before achieving his first number one record with “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” During these years, Sedaka sold 25 million records, second only to Elvis, and unlike Elvis, he wrote or co-wrote his own songs.</p>
<p>And then the wheels came off. The Beatles arrived, revolutionizing the music scene in America as they had already done in Britain, and immediately casting successful solo acts like Sedaka (as well as Paul Anka, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Elvis and others) into cultural obscurity. </p>
<p>Sedaka continued to write and record songs, but his most notable airplay during these years came when other people sang his music, including The Monkees, The Fifth Dimension, Tom Jones and Tony Christie (“Is This The Way To Amarillo”).</p>
<p>By 1971, Sedaka had abandoned hope of making his comeback in the United States and moved his family to England, where he played rough working men’s clubs in the north, and tried hard to get his voice back on the radio. His luck turned when he recorded an album with the future members of 10cc (best known for their number one hit, “I’m Not In Love”), and met Elton John, who signed him to his Rocket Record Company, and re-launched him in America.</p>
<h2>‘Sedaka’s Back’</h2>
<p>The comeback attempt worked, and Sedaka stormed again to the pinnacles of popular success with his album <em>Sedaka’s Back</em> and singles like “That’s When the Music Takes Me,” “Laughter in the Rain” (his first number one since “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”), “Bad Blood” (another number one, with Elton John on backing vocals), “Solitaire” (covered by The Carpenters, Jann Arden, Sheryl Crow, Clay Aiken and many others), and “Love Will Keep Us Together” (the best-selling single of 1975, not for Sedaka, but for The Captain and Tennille).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A live-concert recording of Neil Sedaka singing ‘The Immigrant.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The Immigrant” belongs to this period. Strikingly different from the love songs and ballads that make up the bulk of Sedaka’s output, it was among the finest products of his new songwriting partnership with the lyricist Phil Cody, and it took Sedaka as close as he ever came to political controversy.</p>
<p>The issue of immigration was important to Sedaka and Cody. Sedaka’s parents both came from Jewish families who relocated to New York. His mother’s origins were Russian-Polish. His father’s were Turkish. </p>
<p>Cody’s father, meanwhile, emigrated from Sicily to New York in 1930 with dreams of becoming an opera singer, but he spent his career as a carpenter. Cody said he wrote the lyric for “The Immigrant” with his dad in mind, but it also clearly arises from painful personal experience. “I spent a lifetime being teased about being a little dark Italian kid in a white Protestant neighbourhood,” he remarked recently.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A live-concert recording of The Captain and Tennille singing Neil Sedaka’s song, ‘Love Will Keep Us Together.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘The Immigrant’</h2>
<p>In “The Immigrant,” Cody and Sedaka do not go back to the beginning of international migration to America when roughly 30,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas crossed over from Asia.</p>
<p>Instead, they concentrate on the powerful allure of what for more than two centuries has been known as “the American Dream” of freedom, equality and opportunity, and the ways in which that dream — then as now — was being betrayed by intolerance and self-interest, as indeed it had been betrayed from the start by vigilante and legislative agendas that were virulently anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-African, anti-Asian and anti-communist.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=757&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230300/original/file-20180801-136655-16cdskz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neil Sedaka with Elton John.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rocket Records</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cody begins the lyric with a vision of what the United States was like when his father (“the young searching foreigner”) arrived “to live in the light of…liberty.” </p>
<p>There were, he imagines, harbours with open doors, billboards with advertisements, “plains and open skies,” “dream boats” travelling “to the heart of America,” and people “waiting in line for a place by the river.” “Was it anything like that when you arrived?” he asks his father.</p>
<p>In the chorus, Cody is much more confident. Steeped in nostalgia, he asserts that, when his father settled in New York, “It was a time when strangers were welcome here.” </p>
<p>Sedaka’s music enhances the optimism of Cody’s words, lifting the emotional register of the song, and displaying his immense gift for the memorable melody. Above all, the chorus speaks directly to the belief that shaped the U.S. as a nation of immigrants: “people could come from everywhere.”</p>
<p>In the second verse, Cody makes it plain that those days of acceptance are gone. “Now,” in the 1970s, people still arrive with hearts “set on miracles,” but they are turned away, and the promises of the “magical land called America” are denied to them.</p>
<p>Sedaka closes the song with a return to the hope of the chorus, and a reaffirmation of the America Dream that places “The Immigrant” in the same tradition as Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” (1883), the sonnet affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230303/original/file-20180801-136664-spviql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neil Sedaka performing in Canada, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">©Neil Sedaka</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The promises of the U.S. have always been threatened by powerful forces both within and without the country. Cody and Sedaka’s song concerns the liberal ideals of freedom and cultural plurality that drew people like Cody’s father and Sedaka’s grandfather to America, and that in the current political climate are once again under siege. </p>
<p>Like many great songwriters, Sedaka has fallen in and out of favour. But at his finest, he composed songs that lodge themselves firmly in the mind, and that remain moving and relevant. In “The Immigrant,” he speaks out on one of the most controversial issues in all of American history and champions a vision of the country that prizes compassion and diversity.</p>
<iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/68SWbVaqoabS4rGruvReyG" width="100%" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
<p><br></p>
<h2>Lyrics to “The Immigrant”</h2>
<p>Harbors opened their arms to the young searching foreigner<br>
Come to live in the light of the beacon of liberty<br>
Plains and open skies, bill boards would advertise<br>
Was it anything like that when you arrived?<br>
Dream boats carried the future to the heart of America<br>
People were waiting in line for a place by the river<br>
<br>
[Chorus]<br>
It was time when strangers were welcome here<br>
Music would play<br>
They tell me the days were sweet and clear<br>
It was a sweeter tune, and there was so much room<br>
That people could come from everywhere<br>
<br>
Now he arrives with his hopes, and his heart set on miracles<br>
Come to marry his fortune with a hand full of promises<br>
To find they’ve closed the door, they don’t want him anymore<br>
There isn’t any more to go around<br>
Turning away, he remembers he once heard a legend<br>
That spoke of a mystical, magical land called America<br>
<br>
[Chorus x 2]</p>
<p>©Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100168/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Morrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Neil Sedaka’s song “The Immigrant” was a top hit in 1975, but today it seems even more relevant, as debates rage in the United States over immigration, repatriation and racism.
Robert Morrison, Professor of English Language and Literature, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87547
2017-12-22T13:43:31Z
2017-12-22T13:43:31Z
Magical Mystery Tour: a rare Beatles flop – but it paved the way for Monty Python
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200393/original/file-20171221-15883-z7wx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/november-8-2015-vector-illustration-beatles-337587353?src=JlUF0ktJHM7Ufa4zmEapnw-1-2">Shutterstock/Anita Ponne</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was <a href="http://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">much celebrated in 2017</a>. But this Christmas also marks 50 years since the release of another Beatles production that received much less critical acclaim – the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>Much of the music within it was produced during a particularly fecund period (even by the Beatles’ standards) and is, or course, peerless – from the music hall echoes of Your Mother Should Know through the plaintive, melodic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGEX_7IqaC4">Fool on the Hill</a> to the boundary breaking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKIs1J_nB4A">I Am the Walrus</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the film itself fell far short of that artistic bar. First broadcast on Boxing Day 1967, it is, to put it mildly, seriously flawed. Incoherent, sexist, technically shaky and verging on boring, history hasn’t been kind to its cinematic qualities. </p>
<p>Contemporary reviews and audience responses were also so generally scathing that Paul McCartney was moved to issue an apology of sorts to the television broadcast’s 20m viewers. He said in a <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db67.html">hastily convened interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KiC_96xhbq4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Matters weren’t helped by the Beatles’ psychedelic, colourful exploration being broadcast in black and white on BBC1. A repeat on BBC2 (then the only colour TV service) a few days later did little to redress the situation, if only because there were <a href="https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/colour-lauches-in-the-uk/">fewer than 200,000 colour sets</a> in the UK at the time. </p>
<h2>Pushing institutional boundaries</h2>
<p>For all the defensiveness of McCartney’s response (“You could hardly call the Queen’s speech a gasser”) they do point towards some retrospectively mitigating aspects of the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>The film’s distinctly British surrealism and cavalcade of barking sergeant majors, fat aunts, dolly birds, wacky racers and midgets clearly prefigured Monty Python’s explosion of absurdity into mainstream television. </p>
<p>Indeed, George Harrison said later on that he saw Monty Python as a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-things-you-didnt-know-george-harrison-did-w452593">continuation of the spirit of the Beatles</a>. He also funded some of their films, including The Meaning of Life – whose notorious <a href="https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/terry-jones-talks-about-playing.jpg">Mr Creosote sketch</a> has visual echoes of a scene in Magical Mystery Tour where John Lennon, dressed as a waiter, serves pasta to Ringo’s fictional Aunt Jessie <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/what-happened-lisa-uploads/siteedp4317-045-mf.png">by the spade full</a>.</p>
<p>What the Pythons added to the mix were sharply honed scripts. Magical Mystery Tour, by contrast, was almost entirely ad-libbed from a <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/piechart2/piechart-911x1024.jpg">one-page diagram</a>. The Beatles’ skill as writers and arrangers was poured into their music instead. </p>
<p>Something else the Pythons had, and which the Beatles lacked, was the benefit of Oxbridge educations. Magical Mystery Tour’s sensibility was more rooted in working class entertainment and tropes than the Pythons’ Oxbridge-infused references. </p>
<p>The very concept of a coach journey – albeit one largely filmed at a decommissioned RAF base – was based on the “charabanc” trips (<a href="http://onabbeyroad.com/0mmt2.html">group bus excursions</a>) of the band members’ childhoods.</p>
<p>The film evokes the past – both a British past in general and, more specifically, as filtered through the Beatles’ own histories. It certainly shows them pushing the boundaries of what a rock band of four Liverpudlians (whose post-school education essentially took place in the nightclubs of Hamburg) could attempt, both artistically and institutionally. Their commercial and creative clout allowed them to broadcast the film during a key annual peak slot for British television viewing.</p>
<h2>Prime time</h2>
<p>Magical Mystery Tour occupied a particular space in the history of mass entertainment – from the “end of the pier” shows, through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill">Donald McGill</a> postcards that George Orwell defended against artistic snobbery, to the anarchic weirdness of the likes of Mr Blobby on Saturday night TV. </p>
<p>The Beatles infused that particular strand of entertainment with the forward looking experimentalism of their music, while retaining a characteristic, widely recognisable Britishness. It was this that paved the road for Python and others to follow.</p>
<p>That Magical Mystery Tour was their first real failure since breaking through into the mainstream was also partly a matter of practicalities. While still flowering creatively, they were logistically rudderless after the death earlier that year of their manager Brian Epstein. </p>
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</figure>
<p>Their lack of understanding of the demands of editing a film foreshadowed their later <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/apple-the-short-strange-blossoming-of-the-beatles-dream-2113050.html">business-related shortcomings</a>, notably the Apple boutique and record label. If the latter of these was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/neil-aspinall-beatles-friend-and-road-manager-who-became-the-boss-of-apple-800235.html">revived to become the familiar Beatles brand of today</a>, it was initially a costly failure that contributed to the band’s demise.</p>
<p>But while the film may have overreached, it still demonstrates a clear broadening of mainstream creative boundaries. Popular music fans were certainly receptive to their successful experiments. And even if the broader television public was less ready for a caustic, psychedelic vision of Britain in prime time during the Christmas holidays, Magical Mystery Tour still stands as a useful cultural document. </p>
<p>The Beatles being what they ultimately became, there’s much to be gleaned from their falls as well as their flights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
The Fab Four made a less than fabulous film.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88924
2017-12-21T19:06:05Z
2017-12-21T19:06:05Z
Humbug, tinsel and gravy: in search of the perfect Christmas pop song
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200086/original/file-20171220-4948-1faljgb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The search for the 'ideal' Christmas song crosses a very broad range of genres and artists</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">CC/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, musicologist Joe Bennett <a href="https://joebennett.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/musical-and-lyric-traits-in-the-uk_s-favourite-christmas-songs1.pdf">took a sample</a> of the top 200 Spotify streams from the Christmas week of 2016 and dissected those that were Christmas-related. </p>
<p>The results, analysed according to parameters such as beats per minute, key signature and lyrical content, were passed to professional songwriters with a pedigree of hits for major artists to produce an <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/christmas-music-musicology-holiday-songs-743236">“ultimate” Christmas song</a>. The result is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96jOezZhlRQ">rather effective</a>, even for unbelievers.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The ‘ultimate Christmas song’ – according to a group of musicologists who sampled Christmas-related Spotify streams.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Aptly enough, that project was commissioned by a <a href="https://www.intugroup.co.uk/en/news/news-and-press-releases/is-this-the-happiest-christmas-song-in-the-world/">chain of shopping centres</a>. But while it distinguishes between lyrical themes, it primarily illuminates the aesthetic dead-centre of the Christmas pop song. </p>
<h2>From commerce to campaigns – political Christmas songs</h2>
<p>The concept of the “Christmas song” is rife with political contradictions. It marks a day to put aside division and commerce, and yet is aimed squarely at that most blatantly commercial and competitive institution, the pop charts.</p>
<p>There’s a broad umbrella of musical and lyrical tropes that – pardon the pun – rings bells for listeners in constituting a “Christmas song”. The machine-tooled nature of the archetypal Christmas pop song is such a recognisable format, in fact, that it’s been opened up to a hybrid of data analysis and songwriting, as Bennett’s work illustrates.</p>
<p>Other researchers have sought to bring a broader typology to the service of unpicking the ideological resonance behind Christmas songs. </p>
<p>The musicologist Freya Jarman, for instance, uses a <a href="http://edinburgh.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748628087.001.0001/upso-9780748628087-chapter-8">framework</a> of overlapping concepts linked to Christmas, including the “traditional/religious” (such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjmGbI-Mnys">Mistletoe and Wine</a>), “nostalgia” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9QLn7gM-hY">White Christmas</a>), “romance” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gmARGvPlI">Last Christmas</a>) or “parties/friends” (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r89CjMZDQpQ">I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day</a>).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Wham’s Last Christmas taps into the romantic Christmas spirit.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The last of Jarman’s categories though – “good will to all men” – most starkly highlights the complexities around commercial acumen and the political potential of Christmas music. </p>
<p>In the broader canon of “political” pop songs, many of the most well known are, in fact, Christmas songs rather than more overt “protest” songs – a political message smuggled in among the sleigh-bells. John Lennon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Vfp48laS8">Merry Christmas, War is Over</a> is one example, another being Jona Lewie’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HkJHApgKqw">Stop the Cavalry</a>, a universal soldier’s lament.</p>
<p>Other Christmas songs, notably <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w7jyVHocTk">Do They Know It’s Christmas</a>, have involved direct political lobbying, such as when Bob Geldof tried to get the government to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2016/07/13/music-tax-the-prime-minister-how-live-aid-changed-the-uk-and-the-world/#7624372dea7f">waive taxes</a> on the single itself. This arguably became a more powerful intervention than other more obviously “political” songs – forcing the government to take a <a href="https://theconversation.com/jo-cox-charity-single-theres-no-going-back-in-the-merging-of-pop-and-politics-70615">position</a> on the tax arrangements around charity singles.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Some Christmas songs such as Bob Geldoff’s Do They Know It’s Christmas are an act of direct political lobbying.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such tensions around commerce and authenticity in popular music become especially marked around Christmas, with the charts a key battleground. </p>
<p>When Rage Against the Machine’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ">Killing in the Name Of</a> became Britain’s <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8423340.stm">Christmas Number 1</a> in 2009, it was the result of social media campaigning against the domination of X Factor releases as seasonal chart toppers. The song’s broad political message was deployed in the specific context of a longstanding debate within popular music consumption.</p>
<p>This method leaked from commentary on popular music’s internal politics into broader political discourse. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHQLQ1Rc_Js">Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead</a> was pushed up the charts by social media after <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22145306">Margaret Thatcher died</a> in 2013 and, latterly, the similar success of a protest mash-up accusing UK Prime Minister Theresa May of being a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxN1STgQXW8">Liar Liar</a>” caused <a href="http://www.electionanalysis.uk/uk-election-analysis-2017/section-8-personality-politics-and-popular-culture/sound-bites-the-music-of-election-2017/">headaches for broadcasters</a> regarding election regulations.</p>
<h2>Striking a balance</h2>
<p>But while the underlying politics of commercialism and community have now extended into the techniques of political messaging the rest of the year round, there are still attempts to strike a balance. </p>
<p>There’s a raft of Christmas songs that circumvent, without fully avoiding, the Yuletide by taking a sideways (or critical) view of it. These allow ambivalent listeners to participate in the festivities while maintaining their sense of critical distance from the more traditional trappings.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Fairytale of New York is a story of love gone wrong with Christmas as the backdrop.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8">Fairytale of New York</a> is an obvious example here. Where the “traditional” Christmas song is about Christmas, it’s about a love story gone awry, with Christmas as the backdrop. This allows sceptics to buy into the aesthetic, and even the sentiment, while holding firm their anti-Christmas credentials. </p>
<p>Others look at the contradictions head-on. Tim Minchin’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q">White Wine in the Sun</a> uses the Australian December sunshine as a pivot to focus on family, taking a swipe at commerce – “selling Playstations and beer” – while embracing the sentimentality. Addressing the social context of Christmas is another means of tackling the broader, implicit, politics of class. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tim Minchin takes a swipe at the excessive commerce of Christmas in White Wine In The Sun.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More universal ‘human’ Christmas messages</h2>
<p>Family, fraught relationships and exclusion can make for a more potent, perhaps realistic, Christmas story than snowflakes and Santa. </p>
<p>In The Kinks’ caustic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPPCPqDINEk">Father Christmas</a> the narrator, a department store Santa, is mugged by a group of youths demanding practical help. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Give us some money … Give my daddy a job ‘cause he needs on".</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Paul Kelly’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh79619xxk8">How to Make Gravy</a>, an isolated and fractious address from a prison cell, packs its emotional punch through mundane details and implied backstory. The story here is both personal and, through that prism, national. </p>
<p>Eschewing the standard Christmas musical and lyrical devices entirely, How to Make Gravy is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the typical tinsel-draped fare, and buries its politics in the personal. Yet it’s still become a Christmas classic. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy is an emotional Christmas appeal from a prison cell.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The search for authenticity and political punch</h2>
<p>From outright celebration, through charity to explicit political salvos, there are many ways to musically address the pleasures and strains of the season. Aesthetic tropes – the musical bells and baubles – notwithstanding, the form is actually very broad and embraces a range of genres. </p>
<p>The “ideal” Christmas song in the sense of commercial pop is also open to subversion. Beyond this, there’s a strong draw among some sections of the public towards more cynical, or at least ambivalent, takes on the traditional Christmas customs - even if these often end up adhering to what are ultimately similar sentiments. </p>
<p>As in Dickens’ immortal story of Scrooge in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm">A Christmas Carol</a>, there’s room, it seems, for the humbug to carry the day without ruining it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>
From outright celebration, through charity to explicit political salvos – is there such a thing as the ‘ultimate’ Christmas pop song?
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84113
2017-10-09T23:15:47Z
2017-10-09T23:15:47Z
50 years ago, John and Yoko came to Canada to give peace a chance
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189109/original/file-20171006-25749-1t45lwg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C2%2C2000%2C1392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On Dec. 23, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono went to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to meet Pierre Trudeau. The Canadian prime minister was the only world leader to meet with the peace activists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Bregg)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago this Christmas season, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Canada to launch one of the most unique and celebrated counter-cultural protests of the turbulent 1960s.</p>
<p>Lennon and Ono visited Canada several times in 1969, a year when the Vietnam War and the massive demonstrations against it reached new levels of intensity. </p>
<p>The famous Beatle and his new bride <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/12/15/john-lennon-yoko-ono-war-is-over-poster-campaign-launched/">arrived in Toronto on Dec. 15, 1969</a>, as part of the launch of their global “War is Over!” billboard campaign. A few days later, the couple <a href="https://happymag.tv/watch-a-long-lost-interview-where-john-and-yoko-discuss-their-war-is-over-campaign/">sat down with Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan to discuss the billboard initiative</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1107256010773798913"}"></div></p>
<p>And on Dec. 23, Lennon and Ono achieved what seems to have been among their top priorities as the leading peace activists of the era: they met the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau. According to the Beatles Bible website, it was <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/12/23/john-lennon-yoko-ono-meet-canadian-prime-minister-pierre-trudeau/">the only time the couple was able to take their peace campaign directly to a world leader</a>.</p>
<p>Canada was a favourite place for John and Yoko in 1969. During their first visit in the spring of that year, they staged their famous “<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/on-this-day-in-montreal-john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-s-bed-in-1.3602576">Bed-In for Peace</a>” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal, lying down together for eight days in front of the world’s media to publicize their message of peace and, in the middle of it all, <a href="https://youtu.be/OF91o0HenhU">recording their anti-war anthem <em>Give Peace a Chance</em></a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montréal: Dozens of journalists and celebrities attended, many of whom are mentioned in the lyrics. Lennon and Tommy Smothers on acoustic guitar.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following Montréal, the couple travelled in June to the University of Ottawa, where <a href="http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rock-fights-for-gun-control/">student leader Allan Rock hosted them</a>. Rock, Canada’s future United Nations ambassador, then took them in his car on a tour of the city, which included a stop at the prime minister’s official residence. Trudeau, they learned, was not in, but Lennon stood at the doorstep and wrote him a note before he returned to the car and they pulled away.</p>
<p>The second visit took place in September 1969 when Lennon, Ono and a hastily assembled version of the Plastic Ono Band (which for this gig included Eric Clapton) flew at the last minute from London to Toronto to take part in an all-day rock ‘n’ roll festival held at the city’s Varsity Stadium — and produced a <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/john-lennon/albums/live-peace-in-toronto-1969/">live recording</a>. Less than a month earlier, another <a href="http://www.woodstock.com/about/">rock ‘n’ roll festival — at Woodstock</a> in upstate New York — had taken the American youth movement to its highest peak and given it a heady, almost fantastic, sense of its own power and purpose. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189428/original/file-20171009-9731-10wst3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono perform in their first public appearance as the Plastic Ono Band, at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium in September 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In their crusade for peace, Lennnon and Ono asked difficult questions, crucially relevant today. </p>
<p>How do we effectively protest against social injustices and war? It’s easy to deplore it. How do we all come together to <em>stop</em> it? Lennon and Ono did not, of course, put an end to violence. But they thought creatively and courageously about uniting people in opposition to it, and their example can inspire us today.</p>
<h2>New hope for peace</h2>
<p>In Europe, Lennon said: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beatles-McLuhan-Understanding-Electric-Age/dp/0810884321">We got a lot of hope from Woodstock</a>.” If so many people could gather together for peace and not war, he said, perhaps counter-cultural forces could actually change the world for the better.</p>
<p>Their Toronto show was a fraction of the size of Woodstock, but Lennon was exhilarated by the experience. He closed his set with the song he most wanted the crowd to hear: <em>Give Peace a Chance</em>.</p>
<p>Almost three months to the day, Lennon and Ono returned to Canada, this time to announce a music festival to take place outside Toronto in the summer of 1970, billed to be far bigger than Woodstock.</p>
<p>The couple had renewed their efforts to meet Trudeau, and formal negotiations between their staff and Trudeau’s office were under way. Other world leaders — including British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and U.S. President Richard Nixon – did not want to know John Lennon. He was the dangerous Beatle, the “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/when-john-lennons-jesus-controversy-turned-ugly-w431153">we are more popular than Jesus</a>” Beatle. </p>
<p>Just a year earlier, he had been convicted on drug possession charges and posed naked with Yoko on the jacket of their <em>Two Virgins</em> album. A month earlier, he had returned his MBE medal to the Queen in yet another snub to “The Establishment.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189104/original/file-20171006-25749-u9s22w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s 1968 ‘Two Virgins’ LP Sleeve.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of this stopped Trudeau from agreeing to meet him. From a political point of view, of course, Trudeau undoubtedly recognized that posing with one of the most famous rock stars in the world was an opportunity to boost his popularity among younger voters. But it’s also easy to imagine that Lennon’s iconoclasm appealed to Trudeau, and that he saw in Lennon an ally on issues such as effective peace activism and the escalating horrors of the Vietnam War.</p>
<h2>A meeting of the minds</h2>
<p>Lennon and Ono met Trudeau on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. After introductions and a brief photo session, they were ushered into Trudeau’s office. Lennon was nervous when the meeting began but, according to Ono, Trudeau immediately put him at his ease by telling him that he liked his book (<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/in-his-own-write-a-spaniard-in-the-works-by-john-lennon-book-review-all-you-need-is-love-of-wordplay-9920692.html">presumably either <em>In his Own Write</em> from 1964 or <em>A Spaniard in the Works</em> from 1965</a>). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uEqnT6Pr3iY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band, Live at Toronto, Varsity Stadium, 1969.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their primary topic of conversation was the Cold War. They agreed mutual trust had to be created so that “disarmament and peaceful diplomatic relations could begin.” Each of them — Trudeau and Lennon — would work “<a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=jrv4ZPlub2UC&rdid=book-jrv4ZPlub2UC&rdot=1&source=gbs_vpt_read&pcampaignid=books_booksearch_viewport">in very different ways toward this goal</a>.”
Although Trudeau was more than 20 years older than Lennon and the two men came from such very different worlds, it was a remarkable meeting of minds, personalities and agendas. The meeting was supposed to last 15 minutes. It lasted 50. </p>
<p>After Lennon and Ono left Trudeau, they met the media. “If all politicians were like Mr. Trudeau, there would be peace,” Lennon told them. Later, Trudeau remarked: “<em>Give Peace a Chance</em> has always seemed to me to be sensible advice.”</p>
<p>Nine days later, the 1960s were over and a new decade had begun. Lennon, back in London in January, wrote and recorded <em>Instant Karma!</em>, one of his greatest singles as a solo artist: “Why in the world are we here? / Surely not to live in pain and fear.” By the spring, however, plans for the massive peace concert outside Toronto had collapsed, and soon after Lennon’s life was overtaken by public disputes and personal demons. </p>
<p>Trudeau, meanwhile, entered his third year as prime minister in April, and by autumn, faced the biggest challenge of his political career with <a href="http://historyofrights.ca/history/october-crisis/">the FLQ crisis and the invoking of the War Measures Act</a>. Within a year of their meeting, peace for both Lennon and Trudeau must have seemed further away than ever.</p>
<p>It’s easy to look back on Lennon’s activism and dismiss it as naive, as many did at the time and more have done since. That’s unfair. What Lennon was trying to do was to create hope.</p>
<p>Lennon looked squarely at the violence, misery and abuse that still thrives all around us. He responded with a model of peaceful protest, both on an individual level and in much larger ways, to activate the energies of resistance and to unite the popular with the political. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189229/original/file-20171006-25752-wae8b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lennon, right, and his wife, Yoko Ono, at The Hit Factory, a recording studio in New York on Aug. 22, 1980, four months before the former Beatle was murdered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Sands</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon was a peace activist who died at the hands of an assassin. Three years after Lennon’s death in 1980, Trudeau set out on the final major undertaking of his political career: his “peace initiative.” It was different from Lennon and Ono’s peace mission to Canada, yet it is possible to see in their crusade a precedent for Trudeau’s own initiative. </p>
<p>After visiting several countries on both sides of the Cold War divide, Trudeau brought his peace mission to a close with a speech to the Canadian House of Commons in February 1984. His initiative may not have accomplished all that he had wished. But as he recalled in his 1993 <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau/dp/0771085885">Memoirs</a></em>: “Let it be said that we have lived up to our ideals; and that we have done what we could to lift the shadow of war.” In 1969, and especially in their three visits to Canada, Lennon and Ono, too, did what they could “to lift the shadow of war” and give peace a chance. </p>
<p>With violence raging and political movements of intolerance and isolation gaining so much ground today, we might draw inspiration from their words.</p>
<p>It’s now commonplace for pop icons and political leaders to meet and use their respective positions to champion progressive ideals. Half a century ago, when Trudeau opened his door to Lennon, that was not the case. Their extraordinary meeting marks the first time that a rock hero and a world leader met face to face to discuss the past, the present and the future. Their 50 minutes together highlighted the importance of peace to both men, as well as their shared commitment to raising political consciousness and mobilizing the popular forces of compassion and acceptance. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan interviews John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Toronto in December 1969.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84113/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Morrison receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>
John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Canada on a peace mission: They met with leaders and asked difficult questions, relevant today. How do we effectively protest against social injustices and war?
Robert Morrison, British Academy Global Professor, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79702
2017-06-21T11:16:23Z
2017-06-21T11:16:23Z
Anita Pallenberg: how music’s muses are shortchanged by rock and roll misogyny
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174905/original/file-20170621-8977-1asyi8v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anita Palllenberg and Mick Jagger in Performance, 1969.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Two items of recent news will have captured the attention of anyone interested in rock and roll history. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/14/anita-pallenberg-dies-aged-73-rolling-stones-performance-keith-richards">death of Anita Pallenberg</a>, aged 75, on June 13, was greeted as the end of an era, the passing of a true 1960s icon whose role as a muse to the Rolling Stones it is hard to overestimate. A couple of days later, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/arts/music/yoko-ono-to-share-credit-for-imagine-john-lennon.html">it was reported</a> that another prominent muse, perhaps the most famous of them all – Yoko Ono – was to be given a writing credit for Imagine, previously credited to John Lennon alone.</p>
<p>Pallenberg was best known for dating not one, but two members of the Rolling Stones (Keith Richards and Brian Jones). She is also widely believed to have had on-screen sex with Mick Jagger while filming Nic Roeg’s arthouse movie Performance. Marianne Faithfull, Jagger’s former squeeze, led the tributes, posting on Facebook: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Anita used to say that we (the two of us) are light years ahead of the Rolling Stones. Witty and probably true!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Born in Italy, Pallenberg belonged to the <em>dolce vita</em> crowd and hung out with Andy Warhol in New York before embarking on a relationship with Jones, the most musically experimental and ethereal-looking Rolling Stone. Faithfull, meanwhile, descends from Austrian aristocracy (masochism came into being as a word due to her great-great uncle <a href="http://www.local-life.com/lviv/articles/venus-sacher-masoch-furs">Leopold von Sacher-Masoch</a> – the author of Venus in Furs). Accent and family tree alone suffice to turn her rendition of John Lennon’s Working-Class Hero into arguably rock’s most idiosyncratic cover version.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174911/original/file-20170621-30190-1vh8mom.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Anita used to say that we … are light years ahead of the Rolling Stones,’ Marianne Faithfull pays tribute to Anita Pallenberg on Facebook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facebook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Stones never sounded as good as when Pallenberg and Faithfull were in their orbit – a relatively brief imperial phase lasting from 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet to Exile on Main St in 1972. The band’s musical and lyrical palettes were expanded by Faithfull and Pallenberg, who introduced them to cosmopolitan European cultural references, providing an effective counterpart to their schooling in the American blues. If you don’t believe me, just give Sympathy for the Devil (1968) another listen. </p>
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<p>Faithfull, who split from Jagger in 1970, was not credited for co-writing Sister Morphine on the initial release of the Stones’ album Sticky Fingers’ (1971) – an omission only rectified with the remastered version of the album in 1994. She is hardly the only victim of Jagger’s and Keith Richards’ effective patenting of songwriting credits for the Stones – irrespective of duties carried out. But any discussion of contributions Faithfull, Pallenberg or Bianca Jagger (Mick’s wife from 1971 to 1979) might have made is exacerbated by the systematic objectification of female companions.</p>
<p>The default setting of rock’s institutional sexism has repeatedly denigrated women as groupies, trophy items and distractions from the serious work of writing and recording rock and roll. A playlist of misogyny could fill your iPod for a marathon run – but just start off by downloading Kiss’s Beth, Rainbow’s All Night Long or, indeed, the Rolling Stones’s Star Star.</p>
<p>Grunge rock ostensibly sought to dispel the macho posturing of yesteryear, but the <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/03/love-story-of-kurt-cobain-courtney-love">union of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain</a> was construed through traditional paradigms. Love was the more famous of the two when they met – but the lead singer of Hole (who the Nirvana frontman famously referred to as “the best fuck in the world”) was often presented as a modern day Yoko Ono, a parasite feeding off his talent.</p>
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<h2>Credit where it’s due</h2>
<p>Any divorce lawyer can testify to the difficulties in ascertaining what different partners bring to a relationship, but Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan provide an all-too-rare example (<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/why-robert-wyatt-s-wife-alfie-is-his-most-important-collaborator-1.2032866">Alfreda Benge and Robert Wyatt</a> also spring to mind) of a canonical male singer-songwriter recognising his wife for satisfying his creative as well as emotional and sexual needs. In public statements and copyright alike, Waits has been scrupulous in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/oct/29/popandrock1">acknowledging Kathleen Brennan</a> for the experimental turn in his musical production between Heartattack and Vine (1980) and Swordfishtrombones (1983).</p>
<p>If this is the exception rather than the rule, general patterns are inscribed within a broader tendency to underplay female influence on male musicians. Ann Powers, the LA Times rock writer, has <a href="http://www.academia.edu/14626423/_Bring_it_On_Home_Robert_Plant_Janis_Joplin_and_the_Myth_of_Origin">given the example of Janis Joplin</a>, who had an incredible influence on heavy metal that has gone largely unacknowledged. A similar case could be made for Tina Turner. Her semi-autobiographical song Nutbush City Limits remains a concert staple for Detroit rocker, Bob Seger, and was used to audition the Geordie vocalist Brian Johnson when Australian metal superstars, AC/DC, needed a new singer following the death of Bon Scott. </p>
<p>It is <a href="http://people.com/archive/tina-turner-the-woman-who-taught-mick-jagger-to-dance-is-on-the-prowl-again-vol-16-no-23/">well documented</a> that Jagger appropriated many of her stage moves after the Stones opened for Ike and Tina Turner in the mid-1960s. Ike has rightly been <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-flashback-tina-turners-abuse-871542">vilified as a wife-beater</a> – but the fact that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/290080.No_Woman_No_Cry">Bob Marley</a> and <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/john-lennons-dark-side-domestic-6481985">John Lennon</a> are generally seen as global ambassadors for peace despite having abused their female partners is evidence of a wider culture of sexism, the effects of which still resonate today. </p>
<p>Yoko Ono may not have endured the physical and psychological violence to which Lennon <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/john-lennons-dark-side-domestic-6481985">subjected first-wife Cynthia</a>, but she was almost universally vilified for reputedly breaking up the Beatles alongside her reputed personal and professional affectations. </p>
<p>I’ve always found Imagine schmaltzy and hypocritical mush – in my alternative canon, Voice of the Beehive’s Perfect Place would have trumped it to being awarded Song of the Century by the National Music Publishers Association. But Ono being retrospectively granted co-authorship as she collected the award for a composition – whose sentiment and style were little in evidence in Lennon’s life or songs prior to their meeting – is a symbolic milestone worthy of applause.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Duncan Wheeler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
All too often the women beside rock music’s giants are not given credit for their influence.
Duncan Wheeler, Professor in Spanish Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49915
2015-10-28T16:32:02Z
2015-10-28T16:32:02Z
Britain’s greatest living filmmaker? You may never have heard of him
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99987/original/image-20151028-21119-109tgmg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Watkins on the set of his last film, La Commune (1871)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2013/the-anarchist-cinema-of-peter-watkins">Icarus Films</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who would you choose as Britain’s most influential living film director? Ken Loach? Mike Leigh? Even Sam Mendes, director of the current Bond film, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34639118">Spectre</a>? For my money, it would be Peter Watkins, who celebrated his 80th birthday on October 29.</p>
<p>Perhaps you have never heard of Watkins, nor seen any of his films. Yet he pioneered making dramatic reconstruction look like gritty documentary reality, influencing everyone from Loach and Leigh to <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339030/">Paul Greengrass</a>, director of the <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bourne-saga/36132/the-bourne-saga-ranking-the-movies-in-order-of-quality">Bourne films</a>. The dozen films Watkins made over his 40-year career remain some of the most powerful and politically challenging of all time.</p>
<p>Born in Surrey, he began in amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. His professional debut was <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/520802/">Culloden</a> for the BBC in 1964 – retelling the story of the last land battle on British soil. It was hailed as a breakthrough for the way it used handheld newsreel-style shooting and direct-to-camera “interviews” with participants such as Bonnie Prince Charlie, as if television had been around in 1746. </p>
<p>But Watkins was doing more than finding new ways to make audiences take notice. He was also exposing how “reality” in television and film could be manipulated. If a documentary style could be convincingly faked in Culloden, what about other films and TV programmes that showed the world “as it is”? This was years ahead of its time. </p>
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<h2>Fall-out</h2>
<p>For Watkins’ next film, he aimed to bring the future to life in the same way as Culloden had done with the past. The results were incendiary. The War Game (1965) offered a stark “pre-construction” of what might happen if the UK was hit by a nuclear attack. The images were so disturbing – harrowing firestorms; emaciated bodies; the breakdown of civil society – that the BBC imposed a ban on it for 20 years. It was a notorious act of censorship, recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-war-game-how-i-showed-that-bbc-bowed-to-government-over-nuclear-attack-film-42640">revealed to have been imposed</a> in collaboration with the British government. Watkins had the last laugh when the film <a href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-fictional-nuke-film-that-won-the-oscar-for-best-documentary-b63b42798aeb">won an Oscar</a> in 1967 for Best Documentary Feature. By then, he had left the corporation. His subsequent work is arguably even more interesting. </p>
<p>Watkins’ first feature film, <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/privilege-1967">Privilege</a> (1967), imagined a dystopian future in which a British “coalition government” creates a pop star it can manipulate to control the young (played by ex-Manfred Mann singer Paul Jones). It received mixed reviews on release but has since <a href="https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/26244-privilege-the-squeeze-and-private-road-among-highlights-of-eiff-after-the-wave-retrospective/">been seen</a> as prescient of our Simon Cowell-era of manufactured pop. </p>
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<p>Disappointed with the reaction to the film and the continuing fall-out over The War Game, Watkins took the crucial decision to leave Britain in 1968. The most international of all British-born directors, he would go on to make films in various countries, always in the native language. </p>
<p>First came <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/gladiators.htm">The Gladiators (1968)</a>, shot in Sweden. Together with his US-produced <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/punishment.htm">Punishment Park (1971)</a>, it largely pioneered the futuristic “violence as game” scenario of participants fighting to the death for the pleasure of a TV audience. You can see the huge impact on science fiction in the likes of Rollerball (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/">1975</a>/<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246894/">2002</a>), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093894/">The Running Man (1987)</a> and the current <a href="http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Hunger-Games">The Hunger Games</a> franchise. With their devastating critiques of how the mass media can manipulate real suffering for entertainment, Watkins’ films also predicted the rise of reality TV.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99982/original/image-20151028-21112-v8zgr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1094&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Lennon responds …</span>
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<p>Meanwhile, he was influencing some of the most famous names of the 20th century. In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono cited him as the primary influence for their celebrated campaigns for peace. The previous year, Watkins had written a long letter to hundreds of opinion-formers asking what were they doing to work for world peace. According to Lennon, it was like receiving your “call-up papers for peace”. <a href="http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1887244,00.html">“Bed-Ins”</a>, <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1969.0331.beatles.html">“Bagism”</a>, <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1111">“Give Peace a Chance”</a>, <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/imagine.html">“Imagine”</a> – would these have happened without Peter Watkins?</p>
<p>Another famous stunt also carried Watkins’ trace marks. When <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/marlon-brando-rejected-godfather-oscar-2014-2?r=US&IR=T">Marlon Brando refused</a> his Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather in 1973, he sent a young Apache woman to the ceremony to protest Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans. This was after he had collaborated with Watkins on an aborted film about General Custer and The Indian Wars. </p>
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<h2>Munch</h2>
<p>In the early 1970s Watkins decamped to Scandinavia again to make what many regard as his masterpiece, Edvard Munch (1973). This biography of the famous Norwegian painter was shot in Watkins’ trademark documentary style. He identified so strongly with Munch that he invested many of his own feelings in the portrayal, which <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/manup/cstv/2007/00000002/00000001/art00003">helps explain</a> why it is so good. Ingmar Bergman, Sweden’s greatest filmmaker, <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/manup/cstv/2007/00000002/00000001/art00003?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf">reportedly said</a> “the film was made by a genius”. </p>
<p>Watkins continued working until the end of the 1990s, culminating in <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm">La Commune (Paris 1871)</a> (2000). This re-told the events of the 1871 Paris Commune, where Parisians mounted barricades on the streets to protest their hated National Government, only to be slaughtered by its troops. </p>
<p>I had the immense privilege of being invited to the eastern Paris studio along with a colleague to witness the shoot. Watkins shot for three hot weeks in July, reconstructing the commune with the help of 200 French people who were not professional actors. He shot in a series of long takes with minimal editing, aiming to provide a space for this cast to express their political feelings not only about the historical events but to draw the link with society today. Suddenly and thrillingly, characters in 19th-century costume <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/58009392/dont-forget-look-camera-peter-watkins-approach-acting-facts">were discussing</a> contemporary issues such as racial discrimination, and the power of TV, radio and the internet. Critics rated La Commune among Watkins’ greatest works, <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/film/10th-annual-film-critics-poll-the-abridged-results-6392368">voting it</a> one of the best films of the 2000s. </p>
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<p>Watkins is now retired in France, posting periodic updates on <a href="http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/">his website</a> about what he sees as the “media crisis” in the world today. His work has seen a major re-evaluation by a new generation, including career retrospectives at the likes of <a href="http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2001janfeb/watkins.html">Harvard</a> and the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/eventseries/peter-watkins-films-1964-99">Tate Modern</a>. He is indisputably Britain’s greatest film dissident. Happy 80th birthday, Peter Watkins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Cook has received past funding from AHRC</span></em></p>
Peter Watkins may not be a household name, but The Hunger Games, John Lennon’s Imagine and the Bourne films would be very different without him.
John Cook, Professor in Media, Glasgow Caledonian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.