Track your comments!
[x]


When you register, comments on your articles and replies to your comments appear here. Register Now!

Sign in to your account
[x]

Not a Scientific Blogging member yet?

Register Now for a Free Scientificblogging.com Account

  • Customize your profile with pictures, banner, a blogroll and more.
  • Leave comments on articles, add other members to your friend lists, chat with people on the site.
  • Write blog posts that can be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.

It's free and it only takes a minute!

Already a Scientific Blogging member?

Sign In Now

Forgot Your Password?
Banner
The Brightest Candles #2
By Patrick Lockerby | June 14th 2009 04:56 AM | 12 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
.

More The Chatter Box articles

All

About Patrick Lockerby

Retired engineer, 60+ years young.
Computer builder and programmer.
Linguist specialising in language acquisition and computational linguistics.
Interested in every human endeavour except the... Full Bio

The Brightest Candles #2

The brightest candles are the people whose light remains long after they are gone.

Imagine all the people
living life in peace
you may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one.

John Lennon ( 1940 - 1980  ) Imagine

Comments

It's worth mentioning - just as a caveat - that John Lennon was really really catchy, especially when he was working with McCartney.

kerrjac (not verified) | 06/15/09 | 20:35 PM
Hank's picture
Indeed.  The only real success he had (pre demise) was when he did the 'silly love songs' he ridiculed McCartney for doing.    Together they were the best ever but Paul was still the catalyst - you won't find restaurant musicians playing Lennon Beatles songs like "I am the Walrus", for example, and Lennon is fondly regarded from Beatle days only because they agreed to list the names in alphabetical order, so Lennon sort of gets credit for the good Beatles songs Paul actually wrote.

Hank Campbell | 06/15/09 | 20:41 PM
I agree. When they were together I always viewed Lennon as the intellectual dreamer type & McCartney as the catchy factor. The problem is that when intellectuals "think" about things, they usually err on the intellectual answer, which for the Beatles was Lennon. But ultimately you can't separate the 2, like distinguishing style from content, especially in a medium that's usually more style based.

The 2 are said to be contrasted in this song, where they each wrote interweaving choruses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NNupminV8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcntrly.blog...

On a separate note I've recently been listening a lot to Harrison's All Thing's Must Pass. The album is fresh like any Beatles record, but I'm amazed by how authentic & genuine it sounds, qualities that the Beatles rarely achieved.

kerrjac (not verified) | 06/15/09 | 20:54 PM
Hank's picture
Not achieved after Revolver anyway, when they started making events rather than music.    I'll have to rethink Harrison.   My longtime belief has been that I am a better musician than half of the Beatles (though the difference in that other half is what makes music empires) but I remember hearing his first solo album and it wasn't bad.

Hank Campbell | 06/15/09 | 21:16 PM
My impression - although I'd need to listen to more to substantiate - is that after All Things Must Pass, Harrison's solo career became as forgettable as Ringo & Paul's. But there are a good 6 or 7 songs on that album that are truly amazing.

kerrjac (not verified) | 06/15/09 | 21:20 PM
Becky Jungbauer's picture
Nothing achieved after Revolver? I bite my thumb at you, sir. The White Album and Abbey Road are easily two of their best albums, and Let It Be has some of the most beautiful songs they wrote.

Becky Jungbauer | 06/15/09 | 21:27 PM
Hank's picture
If we all agreed on everything there would be no need for more than one of us.   :)
I think there's a real demarcation for them after Revolver and it went into more of their weirder, psychedelic stuff rather than tightly written pop.

Hey, I haven't liked a Dylan album since Highway 61 Revisited either.

Hank Campbell | 06/15/09 | 21:35 PM
Becky Jungbauer's picture
Ah, then yes, I agree with you (and there can still be more than one of us) in that regard. It's definitely weirder and less of the earlier (and even some middle) pop/rock. Sgt. Peppers? Magical Mystery Tour? Yellow Submarine? I can't believe they weren't permanently stuck in the stratosphere for how high they had to be. (I still like some of the songs from those albums, although they aren't my favorite. And, speaking of Dylan, he was supposedly the one that introduced them to weed.) But the evolution into harder bluesy rock was natural, I think, and the personal tension gave their music in this time period a more strained, emotional feel than the earlier bits where they all dressed alike (which are still great songs in themselves).

Becky Jungbauer | 06/15/09 | 21:45 PM
Gerhard Adam's picture
In fairness though, Lennon's songs were typically much tougher for musicians to perform;

I am the Walrus, Come Together, Dear Prudence, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Strawberry Fields, She's so Heavy .... just to name a few .... These are much more difficult to perform successfully than McCartney's tunes which tended to be more melodic and therefore capable of multiple type of arrangements.

A song like "I am the Walrus" is doomed to only be playable in the original arrangement unless someone got really innovative.  Admittedly a lot of the difficulty may be because of George Martin's arrangements, but that is a factor in many Lennon songs.

Gerhard Adam | 06/15/09 | 21:10 PM
Becky Jungbauer's picture
While I enjoy songs from three of the four Beatles, I agree that some of the ones you listed are more difficult to play outside their original arrangement. (N.B. Keith Olbermann literally just noted that it's P.M.'s birthday today.) Michael Jackson did a cover of Come Together and it was ok, but not great. 2007's Across the Universe did a decent job staying in line with the arrangements, and I thought Bono covered Walrus well enough.

Becky Jungbauer | 06/15/09 | 21:36 PM
I agree after Revolver they did great stuff. Necessity is the mother of invention, & in the Beatles' case necessity took the form of not playing in front of tens of thousands of teenage girls' high-pitched shrills. If the Beatles had kept doing the same old shows, then maybe you'd have liked their music more. But more importantly, if the Beatles had kept doing the same old shows, then they wouldn't have been the Beatles in the first place.

kerrjac (not verified) | 06/15/09 | 21:44 PM
logicman's picture
The Beatles were great, collectively and individually, but only John Lennon ever had the chutzpa to tell our Queen Elizabeth to rattle her jewellery.  That was at the Royal Command Performance 1963.

I wonder if John Milton was ever followed by hordes of screaming girls?


PS  kerrjac  why don't you register?  It only takes a few seconds.


Patrick Lockerby | 06/16/09 | 03:19 AM

Add a comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <sup> <sub> <a> <em> <strong> <center> <cite> <code> <TH><ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <br> <p> <blockquote> <strike> <object> <param> <embed> <del> <pre> <b> <i> <table> <tbody> <div> <tr> <td> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr> <iframe>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA
If you register, you will never be bothered to prove you are human again. And you get a real editor toolbar to use instead of this HTML thing that wards off spam bots.