October 22nd – Any Beatles fans out there? OK,
stop reading; go get a paper and catch up with the important things that are
happening in our lives, these are just the musings of a very sad individual.
You all know, those of you that have followed these ravings
over the past ten months, that I’m not, never have been and, with very few
exceptions, never will be in any way, shape or form considered to be a Beatles
fan. You’ll remember (Ha!) that IMVHO they’ve done nothing of worth either before
or after the release of Revolver, either
as a band or singularly. OK, I’ll give you All
Things Must Pass, Mr. Harrison’s first solo effort was a brave stab, but
only in part as the one enduring track off’f that album was something of a…what
is it Mr. Tarentino calls it…referencing, that’s it, it was a reference to summat else, summat famous,
and law suits followed…
I can remember hearing Strawberry
Fields for the first time on Radio Luxembourg; I was with a guy who was a
useful guitarist and I had a hankering to be lead singer and front man for a
band we were going to put together…poems,
prayers and promises as John Denver would say. Good to have dreams in your
life though…no, not good, imperative to have dreams in your life, I’d say.
Dreams have made me the BOG I am today. Well, the transcendental-like recording
production of songs like Strawberry
Fields passed me by completely. All I could hear whizzing round my head was
the line;
FM, but they’re an
insincere bunch of shysters, these Beatles.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think, along with probably every
other second person on the planet, that they could turn a decent tune; not
denying that. But that’s all it was to me, almost all of their back-catalogue
was just a decent line-up of successful pop tunes that, far from speaking to me
just convinced me that, as a band and as individuals, they had hidden shallows;
that what they preached was a recipe for the self, a cheerleader for the hedonism
to come. As for this hazy, crazy, mop-top, spaced-out, spokesmen for a
generation persona they dressed themselves in…? Uh-uh. Didn’t buy it. Just
think it was a smart marketing ploy, like so many other musical movements. Now,
that’s not their fault, I know, it’s ours. We’re the ones who gave them new honours and watched them grow with
the fertilizer of our adoration so that like
our strange garments, cleave not to their mould but with the aid of use.
Well, that was a Facebook friend’s suicide note, wasn’t it? Very
happy for folk to try and Beatle-convince me otherwise (or it may be that I’m
just a lost cause) but that’s what you get from a Hendrix-lover.
I’m not going to get into a who did you think was the least sincere kinda thing…but…suffice to
say that, Paul McCartney always had his shirt-tail showing too much for me.
Still, at least, when there’s miserable old curmudgeons like me about it must
have given him immense satisfaction when, on this day in 1969, he was able to
deny that, contrary to popular press reports of the day he was, indeed, not
dead.
Apropos of nothing at all, below is just one of the myriad
reasons I never got into Beatle-mania and, at one and the same time, gives
reasons for my deep distrust of the right-on philosophy announced by all
peddlers of the next big thing, but, in honesty, are really only used as a
sales point for us; the slave-labour from which are manufactured fame’s
building blocks.
Play-don’t play. WGAF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Mmu66buMA
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