I think the idea that this is (or that was in the 90s) just a publicity or money-grabbing stunt is pretty laughable
I'm completely with you on that. If it was a money-grabbing thing, it would be the record company, not the actual members.
That said, even at the height of their powers {and it is rarely talked about just how considerable those powers were as the 1960s progressed}, the Beatles didn't just release an album and think "We're the Beatles; it'll sell millions." They would get in touch with the Stones and other competitors and ascertain whether or not the competition had any new releases about to come out and they would deliberately avoid each other's work so sales wouldn't be compromised. One thing I always liked about the Beatles was that although they could be arrogant and bossy and lord it over their entourage, they were actually quite humble, naive and very ordinary guys {which explains why Apple was a disaster}. They wanted to make money and part of that was maximizing sales; don't release an album if Dylan and the Stones are slated to do so in the same week ! The other part of that was to give the buyers the ultimate in quality product, songs, album covers, great mono and stereo mixes......gotta love their ethos.
Regarding what Lennon said about Paul not knowing him ... to each his own I guess. I personally take just about everything John says with pounds of salt, given his penchant for avoiding straight answers, always trying to be witty or clever, be controversial, stir things up, etc
I agree. I found John to be something of an excuse-making hypocrite much of the time. He blamed everyone else for his personal failings rather than take responsibility. So it was the fault of advertisers in the '50s that he was a lifelong smoker, it was the fault of the London swinger {their dentist} that he became soft on acid, it was George, Paul and their entourage that were to blame for his heroin addiction; when he was writing all those songs about gimme some truth, the hypocrites in the songs could easily have been him.
He long seemed to have issues with Paul, stemming back to at least the recording of "Rubber Soul" where the engineer, Norman Smith, noticed considerable friction between the two. And after the break-up, he took as many opportunities to take pot-shots at Paul as he could. In song, in interview, even in album covers
Not that Paul was altogether innocent in the early days of the break-up
But arguably, he was reacting to all the anti-Paul stuff in the press from John and George. John felt that Paul took over the band but refused to acknowledge that he was on the way to becoming an acid-casualty and that someone needed to keep the guys working. If left to their own devices, John and George were basically lazy.
Thing is though, John was consistent in his moving away from Paul throughout those 10 years and he even said that he told Paul to stop just turning up in New York and dropping in unannounced at his house, that this wasn't Liverpool in the '50s anymore. Lennon's thing was that he moved in a different direction from the Beatles after '69, whereas Paul still wanted that and that's why John could feel, with some justification, that Paul didn't really know him. Paul's actions showed that he didn't
really know him any longer.
Whenever I hear Paul talking about John in a sort of present tense, I flick my eyebrows and say "meh."
I love his work, but he's probably the last band member I would go to for any factual information about things.
It depends on the factual information. I mean, he couldn't even remember the name of Revolver in 1970. But he remembered its cover.
And whether reasonable or not, I would utterly trust Lennon's assessment of his own feelings at any given point. The content may not be nice, but it's the reality of the feeling that matters.
at any rate, this is all subjective. I like the new song. I like the two songs from the 90s. Other people don't. To each their own.
I completely agree. I enjoy the swapping of views. I like reading what those who agree with some of my points say, I enjoy what those with a totally different or opposing point say.
I wasn't talking about solo outings on the album
I know. But I was trying to show that there is no straightforward reading of the recording of the White Album. There are all kinds of scenarios in there. And many of the greatest songs on that album
are the ones where all four are playing, or were playing and maybe one got taken off and replaced by an instrument at a later date. Even a song like "Back in the USSR" in which we all know Paul, George and John played the drums because Ringo had left the band, had Ringo playing it until he did quit. So the notion of them working separately, when one takes into account the Esher demos, falls flat the more one reads about the making of the album.
It's significant that the album started off being recorded on 4-track then moved to 8-track once they discovered that EMI had a new 8-track that was being tested. And because they decided to make it a double album, it meant that there were sometimes 2 or 3 studios being used at the same time.
I was saying that, by then (according to everything I've read on them), they weren't working in the studio together as a band much anymore
Well....
It's nuanced. It had been happening in increasing measure since "Help !" in 1965 with "Yesterday" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away." Revolver and Pepper between them had a number of tracks in which the whole band wasn't involved. Much of this had nothing to do with friction and rancour ~ it had everything to do with the expanded musical palettes of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison. They were less of a two-guitar, bass and drums band and looked to explore what instruments could optimize a song. That was the case long before they started falling out. In the Beatles' official biography, George complains that the band had not played whole songs in the studio since they stopped touring. But this was because of the nature of their overdubbing, not because they weren't working as a band. The White album sessions did introduce a "hands-off
my song" attitude that hadn't been there before.
The interesting thing is those solo excursions all but stopped after the White album. A particular Beatle might carry on the work on his own,
after the band had laid down the tracks, but the last 2 Beatle albums saw more joint playing than the previous 3.
They were treating other members more like session musicians, where they would each come in on their own and record their contributions on the other's songs
When Mark Lewisohn's "The Beatles in the Recording Studio" came out around '92, Ian McDonald's "Revolution in the Head" came out in '94 and Barry Miles' "Many Years from Now" came out in '97, that effectively put an end to the myth of the Beatles as their own session men during the White album sessions. John was the one that started putting that stuff about in 1970 after he'd left the band and was angrily vilifying everyone and every aspect of their success. He was, by his own admission, "out of his head" either with heroin or primal scream therapy at the time and he spent quite a while apologizing to people in the years after due to what he'd said.
If George Harrison was around, one could ask if John and Paul acted as his session men. Had they done so, he wouldn't have needed to bring in Eric Clapton. John wasn't being a session man when he crashed the piano notes at the start of Obladi-Oblada.
One only has to read Lewisohn's "Sessions" and look at some of the studio documentation to see a very different picture emerge.
We often elevate the Beatles to the status of flawless gods and assume that everything they said at every time was correct, factual and accurate. I learned a long time ago that that was not so and they were fallible just like the rest of us. And talked a lot of bullshit at times. They were Scousers !
It was a period where a lot of change was happening and rancour had set in. Yet there is a tremendous amount of joint enterprise on that album.
This could be wrong, of course, but that's what I've read
One of the benefits of being the most interviewed group of people ever {ha ha, I exaggerate just a little....} is that there are so many words from them that one can peruse and take in. And draw one's conclusions.
rainbows and 
unicorns about everything. There are many areas of disagreement. And I like strong arguments and debates. And I don't even mind if people do get upset about some things, even if I'm not. We can accommodate each other's foibles.
I think he felt uncomfortable about taking the illusion of the Threetles any further.
Anyway, that's just my two cents.
