I enjoyed the book but was annoyed by the constant "me & Paul"ness as well and the ongoing character analysis of George Martin.
That was my impression in the first 150 pages or so of the book. Later on, he does balance out a bit but to a large extent, the damage is already done because he in effect implies that the Beatles' early success was mainly down to Paul McCartney. I find his attitude towards George Martin is kind of churlish, but..........I've recently read Norman Smith's autobiography, the truly entertaining but "old man rambling" 'John Lennon called me normal' and though he had his own views of Emerick {not what I'd call complimentary !}, he had a similar view of Martin. Actually, he was alot more savage.
I was saddened that Harrison's guitar playing was so maligned, though Emerick should know, and that Ringo is basically painted as a chess playing recluse with no physical strength & little timing ability.
In his definitive biography "Many years from now", McCartney says George's contribution to the band was alot more than just "standing around with a pick in his hands, waiting for a solo" or words to that effect. In 1967, the biographer Hunter Davies recognized that Harrison "even became the leader in some ways" with his internal search that bled into his {and by extension, their} music. Lennon recognized in 1980 that George brought that Eastern and Western fusion together in rock music and that has affected Western music ever since. And in "Revolution in the head", Ian McDonald stipulates that his increasing knowledge of Indian music had a great influence on their music, either in terms of the instruments he was bringing to colour their sound or the philosophical bent that influenced their {and indeed, that generation's} lyrics and world view.
As far as Ringo goes, in 35 years of extensive reading on the subject, I've yet to come across anyone that has anything but good things to say about his timing. Few people talk of him in terms of great technical ability {in '67, George Martin quipped that he couldn't even do a drum roll}, but nearly always praise his feel, timing and weird fills.
I have to admit that I read the basically very enjoyable tome through a lifelong filter of antiMcCartneyism.
Easilly done. Lennon and Harrison both resented McCartney for a variety of reasons even before the Beatles broke up and once they did break up, he was presented as the one that broke them up, even though McCartney was actually the last to leave. Ringo quit in '68, Harrison in '69 and Lennon just after Abbey Road. It was Lennon quitting that effectively ended the Beatles but they didn't go public on it because of a money deal just concluded with Capitol. When McCartney took them to court to dissolve the partnership, one of the many lingering outcomes was that both Harrison and Lennon took public potshots at Paul musically ~ Harrison saying he'd had enough of McCartney telling him how to play his own guitar and that Macca was too dominant a bassist and Lennon criticizing Paul's music as "granny music" and saying he sounded like Englebert Humperdinck.
It was a fairly quick read;
I read it in a 3 month period last year as part of what I call my "Lou Reed" ~ books I read when I'm on the loo !
Regardless, it is nice to see a positive outlook on Paul. There has always been an anti-McCartneyism that's stemmed since the breakup of The Beatles, but I think that's finally turning around.
Kind of depends on which books you read. Three of the earliest I read in '76 when I was 13 were "Yesterday, today, tomorrow" {I can't recall the author}, "The Paul McCartney story" by this English Tory MP called George Tremlett and "The Beatles~ an illustrated record" by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler {they also did one on the Stones}. Certainly the latter two were written in 1974 and all three are extremely pro McCartney. The latter is pretty tatty towards George Harrison.
I'd say there has long been mixed signals towards McCartney. Because George was into Indian music and Hinduistic philosophy and John did all those awful avant garde albums with Yoko, brought "Revolution 9" into the Beatles' ouvre and went heavilly political {an amusing aside, Carr and Tyler, when reviewing the "Two Virgins" nude LP cover, say it "showed Lennon in his true political colours, ie, bollock naked". When I was 13, I didn't know what that meant !} they were seen as the deep Beatles. But the reality was somewhat different. McCartney was into avant garde music and art 3 years before Lennon got into it {Lennon used to say "avant garde is French for 'bullshit !'} and had been bringing it into the Beatles' music as early as 1966. The difference with him and Lennon where the avant garde was concerned was that Lennon blasted it in your face even if it sounded awful while McCartney made it accessible.
George Harrison .... his role WAS that of lead guitar, so it makes sense that he would focus on that.
The first chapter of Simon Leng's "While my guitar gently weeps" gives a lengthy and brilliant synopsis on the development of the role of the lead guitarist in early 60s pop/rock and how Harrison fitted the bill.
Incidentally, Harrison between mid '66 and '68 was so immersed in sitar practice, he says he rarely touched a guitar outside the studio. This coincided with the period in which McCartney came into his own as a guitarist in the band and also went in many directions regarding other instruments.
I think without that yin-yang chemistry....they wouldn't have been as creative and gotten as big as they were.
For me, this is the key point about the Beatles as an entity and why it is impossible to say "this one was the main one" or "without that one, it wouldn't have worked". Unlike many bands, they recorded in such a variety of styles, configurations and doubled on various instruments and they all played a part in each others' arrangements. For example, it's hard to hear the song "Help !" without that lead guitar descending bit at the end of each chorus. But that never came in until take 7 or whatever and that was Harrison's idea. And in "And I love her", McCartney says they had changed the song from electric to acoustic and still felt it was missing something when Harrison did that little lead doodle that kicks off the song and pretty much makes the music and sets the mood. "She said she said" was two different songs when Harrison suggested that Lennon make them one song. "She's a woman was a boring Beatle B side until Lennon began playing the guitar off the beat and Ringo began that swishy drum pattern and it went in a different direction. And George's "Don't bother me" gave them so much trouble that it evolved into an arrangement that was light years ahead of 1963 Britpop {before Britpop even existed !}. These are just a few examples. They all influenced each other musically, sexually, socially, philosophically and songwriting wise and arrangement wise in a way that the Stones, the Byrds, the Who, the Kinks and others never did because the power structure in those bands was never like the Beatles. As Lennon once said "If there's a leader in the Beatles, I'm it. If not, then it's a democracy".
:Martin was the one who made the sound that made the Beatles. I always thought Martin was the 5th Beatle (producers count).
A controversial contention ! There was no 5th Beatle but the notion does underscore the reality that getting from initial idea{s} to record that someone buys and plays is a team effort with a number of {equally ?} important stages.
Norman Smith as their first engineer says he set up the mics to capture them a certain way and was told by John that he was the man that got the sound of the Beatles.
But in truth, it's kind of hard to say exactly what makes a group's sound.
:Harrison and Ringo added flavor, but on their own they would have accomplished little.
Of course, we'll never know this. It might be true, it might not. Personally, I don't think it is. As for flavour, I think that too often, adding flavour is given short shrift. I think that the flavouring is actually often what really makes a song unique. For example, the flavouring George Martin's scores bring to "I am the Walrus", "Strawberry field forever", "Within you, without you", "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yesterday" and the avant garde flavouring he brought to "Yellow Submarine" and "Being for the benefit of Mr Kite" and the flavouring the whole band brought to "Tomorrow never knows" elevate those songs from being the simple ditties they would otherwise be. Harrison's and Starr's limitations were what caused them to play as they did and were an indispensable part of the overall sound of the Beatles. Because that's what they had ~ a sound.
:Lennon made many of the songs more interesting that if Paul had written on his own
You could as easilly make the opposite argument though. Just before he died, Lennon accused McCartney of subconsciously sabotaging his great songs. While that is an incredible statement worthy of it's own comments, what has always interested me are the songs that Lennon says were sabotaged by McCartney's input, like "Strawberry fields" and "Across the universe". The ones he mentions {"Tomorrow never knows would be another"} happen to be the very ones that the world at large praise Lennon for in their scope, inventiveness and adventurousness ! Truth is, they both made one another's songs interesting.
Lennon was too far out there to have really been as popular.
There's alot of truth there. But Lennon was only "far out there" for a couple of years. It's significant to me that once he'd actually left the Beatles, he also stopped issuing albums of avant garde noise. He was just as capable of writing accessible tuneful pap {"Imagine", "Oh Yoko"} as McCartney was of writing thumping great rockers like "Helter Skelter" and "I'm down".
rayc,
Listen to I Call Your Name and then listen to Something, theres a huge difference.
There
is a huge difference. "Something" shows George writing a smoochy beautiful love song with McCartneyesque fingerprints. But "I call your name" was simply revolutionary for Britpop in 1964. Aside from the lyric that demonstrates the guilt some kids feel when their parents split up that it was somehow their fault {Lennon says he wrote this song before he'd even met McCartney} which no one was touching at the time, there is the music which, in the "middle 8" suddenly lurches into ska. Ska didn't even enter the public consciousness until '68~'69 and left pretty quick as it mutated into reggae. That it turns up in a 1964 Beatle song {it had recently made a chart appearance via Mille Small's "My boy lollipop and Lennon quickly cobbled together the middle 8 as they were about to record it} is pretty breathtaking and demonstrates one of the reasons the Beatles had such enduring appeal. While most of their contemporaries and rivals were rooted in the blues, the Beatles brought a huge range of musical background and likes into their work, even early on.
