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Something, or the perils of marrying a Beatle, plus photos by Linda McCartney
Treasures you find at YouTube, #14533: the original promo for Something. Which is... something. Apparantly whoever shot it - the busy Michael Lindsay-Hogg, or was he too busy being traumatized by the rough cut of Let it Be at that point? - had the bright idea that since this is a love song, the four Beatles should pose with their respective significant others (at that point: Yoko, Linda, Pattie and Maureen) and demonstrate the joys of romance. Now, the ladies are doing just fine in the result, but the guys... George, whose big song this is, glowers throughout as if someone just told him Frank Sinatra called it his favourite Lennon/McCartney tune. (Or as if Eric Clapton just broke the news of being in love with Pattie, but I think it's a bit too early for that.) John is stone faced throughout, with a very brief grimace of an exception. Paul by contrast tries desperately to look jolly and cheerful and only succeeds looking like a crazy axe murderer (the beard helps). Ringo looks like he's thinking "are we done shooting this yet so Mo and I can go home?" Though he and Maureen win the most convincing on screen couple stakes. Judge for yourself:
How is this for a depressing thought: more than half of the people in this video are dead now (John, Maureen, Linda and George), with Yoko, Paul and Ringo as the sole survivors. On a related but brighter note, this reminds me of something I've been meaning to post. Pattie once joked that dating a Beatle, let alone marry one, was like joining the French Resistance, and she wasn't completely wrong. At least at the beginning of each relationship, fannish hatred was certain to be yours. Cynthia Lennon was the only one who went through the indignity of being hidden away and having to pretend she didn't exist at the start because Brian Epstein thought John being married would be a detriment to fannish hopes. (To say nothing of Brian's hopes, biographer Bob Spitz adds a bit cattily.) It didn't last long, not with the amount of public attention the Beatles were getting, and later girlfriends/wives didn't have to put up with it. This didn't make their lives that much easier. Maureen got her face scratched when Ringo became the second Beatle to tie the knot. Pattie had to disguise herself as a chamber maid to get out of the hotel where she was staying at with George. The absolut maximum of fannish hostility, though, was reserved for Linda and Yoko, who at the time of the break-up were often singled out as culprits not just by fangirls and -boys but even in the so called "serious" media. (My parents, for example, were absolutely convinced that animosity between Linda and Yoko broke up the Beatles. Why? Because they remembered reading it in the papers at the time. Pointing out that by the time Linda encountered Yoko, the Beatles were already in free fall and that they hardly interacted enough to form any kind of relationship, hostile or otherwise, was greeted with much surprise.)
Since Yoko is the better known woman (and hostility towards her became proverbial and made it to more recent stupid flowcharts as well as several spirited defense posts), I'll write about Linda. Now, the Linda hatred started to ebb away from the mid-80s onwards - probably due to a combination of sheer endurance (i.e. the stabiliity of the McCartney marriage and -family which was and is rare in the rock business), animal rights' campaigning and vegeterianism, and by the time she died of cancer in 1998, she was downright popular. Though occasionally you come across the old hostility revived. Germaine Greer for example, quoting witticisms like "what do you call a cow with wings? Linda McCartney!" and wondering "if Stella McCartney knew her mother was once known as Linda Starfucker". Then there is the latest McCartney biography by Howard Sounes, which I won't buy because the excerpts I read in newspapers contained such gems like "By marrying Paul, Linda instantly became a public figure — but opinion about her was always divided. Almost everybody I interviewed who knew her personally spoke very warmly of her, yet people in the media — myself included — found her a gauche, abrasive woman lacking in charm". And the usual hypocrisy of the press writing of the 60s who on the one hand reports male rock stars' promiscuity with an undertone of admiration but immediately cries "groupie!" in disdain when a woman in the same era also practised free love. Mr. Sounes would have us know that the woman's postumous image as as vegetarian saint is false because, shock horror, she slept with "probably 20 men" in the 60s before her marriage to Paul. And this sexist crap gets printed in 2010, not 1970. No money for this book from me, H.S., so thanks for getting these excerpts printed as a warning.
When the former Linda Eastman died, most headlines and obituaries picked of the various professions she had "photographer"; several collections of her photography are available both in print and online. Below the cut are some favourites of mine, demonstrating why she was indeed an excellent photographer.
The photos which launched her career as a photographer and had the most long term consequences were the ones she shot of the Rolling Stones for Town & Country; she was the only female photographer on that particular sessions, which meant she was the one whom the Stones allowed to stay longer, which resulted in shots like this:
The last one, of Brian Jones, impressed Brian Epstein enough that in return for a print, he made Linda one of the photographers at the launch party for the Beatles' new album, Sgt. Pepper, in May 1967. Her actual reason for being in England was to take photographs for the planned book Rock and other four letter words, and as rock stars went, they didn't get bigger than the Beatles, so getting invited to this particular launch was a coup. It also had long term consequences of another sort:
But back to Linda's own photos. Here are two great Janis Joplin portraits:
Linda's photographs of Jim Morrison and the Doors, with her commenting on real Jim M. versus the legend and fictional depictions like the film The Doors:
Jimi Hendrix:
Simon and Garfunkel:
Linda is also responsible for my favourite photograph of John and Yoko as a couple. One of the reasons why I like it so much (and which makes it rare for a John-and-Yoko picture of the late 60s): it's not staged, they're not posing for it. They're both working (in Paul's house, as it happens, which is why Linda had the opportunity to take the photo), which is the other and main reason why I find it so appealing: John and Yoko, both sitting at a table, busily scribbling away on various scraps of paper. It gives you - well, me at any rate - a feeling for them as creative artists in a way other pictures don't, capturing that quality.
Something similar goes for this photo of John Lennon, only in this case I'd say it emphasizes a quizzical vulnerability in a time period where most photos have him looking angry, stony or both:
There are a few biographical parallels between Linda and Yoko which, as Linda's friend Danny Fields correctly said, hardly made them twin sisters, but which are interesting: both were daughters of very rich families, both were raised in Scarsdale, both married hastily in college to the disapproval of their parents, with those marriages not lasting long, both gained even more disapproval from their families by their choice of profession (Lee Eastman might have been a highly successful lawyer in the music publishing business, but "rock photographer" was not the job he'd had in mind for his daughter, and compared to her Harvard-graduated brother who became his successor, she was a college dropout with hippie friends which was a disappointment), both were vaguely members of New York City's creative community, both left New York for London, both had daughters of exactly the same age by a previous marriage when they fell in love with a Beatle. And both were consequently blamed for everything anyone didn't like about their husbands from this point onwards. Here they are during the last photo shoot the Beatles ever did, Linda very pregnant with Mary:
Linda had a great talent for snapshots that captured something lost a moment later, which a posed photo usually can't render, like in this photo from the early 80s in Scotland, capturing her youngest, James, mid-jump while Stella plays obliviously and Paul watches them both:
Speaking of Stella, that's an adorable portrait during recordings in Montserrat:
And one of Mary, named after Paul's mother and nowadays a successful photographer, following her mother's footsteps:
And one of her oldest daughter Heather with Paul:
Little Heather, by the way, was nearly crunched by grieving fans on the day Linda and Paul married and had to rescued by a policeman. If you think fans take it badly today if their idol marries, behold this:
(BTW, "who held out against marriage for so long" cracks me up. He was 27!) In one of the later Linda interviews (in fact I think one of the last before cancer started to affect her) she talks about photography, her relationship with Paul, Paul and John and the Beatles' split:
The photo the interviewer mentions is one I've linked before, but it's worth relinking:
In conclusion the most famous song Linda inspired, which is dedicated to her:
How is this for a depressing thought: more than half of the people in this video are dead now (John, Maureen, Linda and George), with Yoko, Paul and Ringo as the sole survivors. On a related but brighter note, this reminds me of something I've been meaning to post. Pattie once joked that dating a Beatle, let alone marry one, was like joining the French Resistance, and she wasn't completely wrong. At least at the beginning of each relationship, fannish hatred was certain to be yours. Cynthia Lennon was the only one who went through the indignity of being hidden away and having to pretend she didn't exist at the start because Brian Epstein thought John being married would be a detriment to fannish hopes. (To say nothing of Brian's hopes, biographer Bob Spitz adds a bit cattily.) It didn't last long, not with the amount of public attention the Beatles were getting, and later girlfriends/wives didn't have to put up with it. This didn't make their lives that much easier. Maureen got her face scratched when Ringo became the second Beatle to tie the knot. Pattie had to disguise herself as a chamber maid to get out of the hotel where she was staying at with George. The absolut maximum of fannish hostility, though, was reserved for Linda and Yoko, who at the time of the break-up were often singled out as culprits not just by fangirls and -boys but even in the so called "serious" media. (My parents, for example, were absolutely convinced that animosity between Linda and Yoko broke up the Beatles. Why? Because they remembered reading it in the papers at the time. Pointing out that by the time Linda encountered Yoko, the Beatles were already in free fall and that they hardly interacted enough to form any kind of relationship, hostile or otherwise, was greeted with much surprise.)
Since Yoko is the better known woman (and hostility towards her became proverbial and made it to more recent stupid flowcharts as well as several spirited defense posts), I'll write about Linda. Now, the Linda hatred started to ebb away from the mid-80s onwards - probably due to a combination of sheer endurance (i.e. the stabiliity of the McCartney marriage and -family which was and is rare in the rock business), animal rights' campaigning and vegeterianism, and by the time she died of cancer in 1998, she was downright popular. Though occasionally you come across the old hostility revived. Germaine Greer for example, quoting witticisms like "what do you call a cow with wings? Linda McCartney!" and wondering "if Stella McCartney knew her mother was once known as Linda Starfucker". Then there is the latest McCartney biography by Howard Sounes, which I won't buy because the excerpts I read in newspapers contained such gems like "By marrying Paul, Linda instantly became a public figure — but opinion about her was always divided. Almost everybody I interviewed who knew her personally spoke very warmly of her, yet people in the media — myself included — found her a gauche, abrasive woman lacking in charm". And the usual hypocrisy of the press writing of the 60s who on the one hand reports male rock stars' promiscuity with an undertone of admiration but immediately cries "groupie!" in disdain when a woman in the same era also practised free love. Mr. Sounes would have us know that the woman's postumous image as as vegetarian saint is false because, shock horror, she slept with "probably 20 men" in the 60s before her marriage to Paul. And this sexist crap gets printed in 2010, not 1970. No money for this book from me, H.S., so thanks for getting these excerpts printed as a warning.
When the former Linda Eastman died, most headlines and obituaries picked of the various professions she had "photographer"; several collections of her photography are available both in print and online. Below the cut are some favourites of mine, demonstrating why she was indeed an excellent photographer.
The photos which launched her career as a photographer and had the most long term consequences were the ones she shot of the Rolling Stones for Town & Country; she was the only female photographer on that particular sessions, which meant she was the one whom the Stones allowed to stay longer, which resulted in shots like this:
The last one, of Brian Jones, impressed Brian Epstein enough that in return for a print, he made Linda one of the photographers at the launch party for the Beatles' new album, Sgt. Pepper, in May 1967. Her actual reason for being in England was to take photographs for the planned book Rock and other four letter words, and as rock stars went, they didn't get bigger than the Beatles, so getting invited to this particular launch was a coup. It also had long term consequences of another sort:
But back to Linda's own photos. Here are two great Janis Joplin portraits:
Linda's photographs of Jim Morrison and the Doors, with her commenting on real Jim M. versus the legend and fictional depictions like the film The Doors:
Jimi Hendrix:
Simon and Garfunkel:
Linda is also responsible for my favourite photograph of John and Yoko as a couple. One of the reasons why I like it so much (and which makes it rare for a John-and-Yoko picture of the late 60s): it's not staged, they're not posing for it. They're both working (in Paul's house, as it happens, which is why Linda had the opportunity to take the photo), which is the other and main reason why I find it so appealing: John and Yoko, both sitting at a table, busily scribbling away on various scraps of paper. It gives you - well, me at any rate - a feeling for them as creative artists in a way other pictures don't, capturing that quality.
Something similar goes for this photo of John Lennon, only in this case I'd say it emphasizes a quizzical vulnerability in a time period where most photos have him looking angry, stony or both:
There are a few biographical parallels between Linda and Yoko which, as Linda's friend Danny Fields correctly said, hardly made them twin sisters, but which are interesting: both were daughters of very rich families, both were raised in Scarsdale, both married hastily in college to the disapproval of their parents, with those marriages not lasting long, both gained even more disapproval from their families by their choice of profession (Lee Eastman might have been a highly successful lawyer in the music publishing business, but "rock photographer" was not the job he'd had in mind for his daughter, and compared to her Harvard-graduated brother who became his successor, she was a college dropout with hippie friends which was a disappointment), both were vaguely members of New York City's creative community, both left New York for London, both had daughters of exactly the same age by a previous marriage when they fell in love with a Beatle. And both were consequently blamed for everything anyone didn't like about their husbands from this point onwards. Here they are during the last photo shoot the Beatles ever did, Linda very pregnant with Mary:
Linda had a great talent for snapshots that captured something lost a moment later, which a posed photo usually can't render, like in this photo from the early 80s in Scotland, capturing her youngest, James, mid-jump while Stella plays obliviously and Paul watches them both:
Speaking of Stella, that's an adorable portrait during recordings in Montserrat:
And one of Mary, named after Paul's mother and nowadays a successful photographer, following her mother's footsteps:
And one of her oldest daughter Heather with Paul:
Little Heather, by the way, was nearly crunched by grieving fans on the day Linda and Paul married and had to rescued by a policeman. If you think fans take it badly today if their idol marries, behold this:
(BTW, "who held out against marriage for so long" cracks me up. He was 27!) In one of the later Linda interviews (in fact I think one of the last before cancer started to affect her) she talks about photography, her relationship with Paul, Paul and John and the Beatles' split:
The photo the interviewer mentions is one I've linked before, but it's worth relinking:
In conclusion the most famous song Linda inspired, which is dedicated to her: