In his new series for Slate about creative partnerships, Joshua Shenk explores one of the most fruitful creative collaborations in history: that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Part three, about the break-up the Beatles, comes to a conclusion that’s different than some of the theories you may have heard previously.
Yet, looking for concrete divisions in their labor, though not irrelevant, can certainly seem myopic. It feels, from Davies’ account, as though the two men were bound by a thousand invisible strings.
Davies looked on at the partners before Yoko, before The White Album — “the tension album” Paul said. But tension had always been key to their work. The strings connecting them hardly dissolved, even in the times when the collaboration was adversarial, the kind of exchange that Andre Agassi described when he said that, if he hadn’t faced Pete Sampras, he’d have a better record, “but I’d be less.” Picking up on that incisive line, Michael Kimmelman wrote in his review of Agassi’s book Open that “rivalry … [is] the heart of sports, and, for athletes, no matter how bitter or fierce, something strangely akin to love: two vulnerable protagonists for a time lifted up not despite their differences but because of them.”
And:
This is nasty stuff. But the opposite of intimacy isn’t conflict. It’s indifference. The relationship between Paul and John had always been a tug of war — and that hardly stopped when they ceased to collaborate directly. Asked what he thought Paul would make of his first solo album, Lennon said, “I think it’ll probably scare him into doing something decent, and then he’ll scare me into doing something decent, like that.”
I’ve said it before: love and hate are the same emotion. (via @tcarmody)
A list of ten movies that weren’t made…and a good thing they weren’t. Including a Lord of the Rings adaptation with The Beatles.
According to Roy Carr’s The Beatles at the Movies, talks were once in the works for a Beatle-zation — with John Lennon wanting to play Gollum, Paul McCartney Frodo, George Harrison Gandalf, and Ringo Starr Sam. Collaborating with director John Boorman, screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg thought the Beatles should play the four hobbits (and agreed with McCartney that he would be the ideal Frodo).
The most interesting of several infographics related to The Beatles is the first one depicting the declining rate of collaboration within the band gleaned from songwriting credit data.
(thx, bryan)
Well, not so much The Beatles as The Quarrymen, a band formed by John Lennon and some schoolmates that was the precursor to The Beatles. (via @brainpicker)
Video of The Beatles’ last public performance in three parts: one, two, three. They performed on top of the group’s own building with an audience situated on rooftops and down on the street. (via the year in pictures)
A list like this could spark endless debate: a ranking of all the songs by The Beatles, from #185 (Revolution 9) to #1 (A Day In The Life).
To novice Beatles fans, I warn you not to believe the hype about “Revolution 9.” I’ve listened to it many times over the years, waiting for the light in my head to switch on so I could unlock its mysteries. All I’ve ever gotten out of it is the vague feeling that immediately after listening to it, something is going to rise out from under my bed and butcher me in my sleep.
Each choice is extensively annotated and defended; start here if you want to work your way through them all.
Video of Peter Sellers reciting The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night in the style of Laurence Olivier doing Shakespeare’s Richard III. Got all that? (via cyn-c)
This Bird Has Flown is a tribute album of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul on the 40th anniversary of its release. Includes covers by Ted Leo, The Fiery Furnaces, and Sufjan Stevens.
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