One more song post this year
Dec. 29th, 2010 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakEarlier this month Paul McCartney was among the five people acknowledged by the Kennedy Center Honors, and you know what this means? New covers of Beatles songs (and one solo McCartney song) on YouTube. (For non-Americans like myself who couldn't watch it on CBS). Steven Tyler did the Abbey Road Medley (has anyone done that before live? I don't think so, but I may have missed something), Dave Grohl and Nohra Jones made a great duet out of Maybe I'm Amazed, Gwen Stefani was merely okay but gets points for originality on combining Helllo Goodbye with Penny Lane, but imo the best performance was the last one, when James Taylor and Mavis Staples tackled Let It Be and then the entire hall went into the nah-nah-nah chorus of Hey Jude. But judge for yourselves.
First part, with Gwen Stefani & No Doubt doing Hello Goodbye/Penny Lane, and Dave Grohl & Nohra Jones duetting on Maybe I'm Amazed. Michelle Obama looks great with glasses. (BTW, given both Obamas keep mouthing the songs along and did that during the Gershwin Award thing in the summer as well, they seem to be genuine fans. I wonder whether that's the reason for all the American awards this year?)
Steven Tyler has a go at the Abbey Road Medley from She Came In Through The Bathroom Window onwards (in slightly abreviated form). Trivia: because every bit of Beatles lyrics was avidly interpreted by fans, and, err, the occasional band member, there was and is some debate who exactly came through the bathroom window. John in his 1980 Playboy interview (the same one where he says the doesn't want to sound like one of those fans but Hey Jude still is totally about him) thought it was Linda. Jonathan Gould in Can't Buy Me Love and Peter Ames Carlin in various articles think it was Yoko. Certainly both ladies were "protected by a silver spoon"; Gould suggests the Yoko interpretation because of the "banks of her own lagoon", pointing out that Yoko had just had an artificial lake installed at Tittenhurst Park in 1969, but heretically I think the first interpretation offered all the way back in the late 60s, that this was a reminscence of one of the more adventurous fans breaking into a hotel bathroom window in Beatlemania days, with or without a silver spoon, is the most likely. Back to the songs; I was delighted to see James Taylor because he actually started out on the Beatles' good-intentions-lead-the-road-to-hell attempt at the 1960s artist-support-artists idea, Apple. He was discovered by Peter Asher, in charge of Apple Records at the time. (Also the brother of Paul's ex girlfriend Jane and one half of Peter & Gordon.) Both Peter Asher and James Taylor hightailed it out of dodge, err, Apple, when Allen Klein took over; you can read more about it in this recent Peter Asher interview. Anyway, so Taylor was one singer with an actual Beatle connection that evening. But then Mavis Staples pulled out all the stops and brought the house down on Let it Be, and Steven Tyler came back to the stage when everyone went into the Hey Jude chorus. I was both amused and touched that back in the audience, Ophra Winfrey at once joined in, and so did the First Couple who jumped up and rocked along. (Well, they had practice from the Gershwin occasion.) Also? Going by the occasional cut to the honorees, Paul sang along from Golden Slumbers onwards.
First part, with Gwen Stefani & No Doubt doing Hello Goodbye/Penny Lane, and Dave Grohl & Nohra Jones duetting on Maybe I'm Amazed. Michelle Obama looks great with glasses. (BTW, given both Obamas keep mouthing the songs along and did that during the Gershwin Award thing in the summer as well, they seem to be genuine fans. I wonder whether that's the reason for all the American awards this year?)
Steven Tyler has a go at the Abbey Road Medley from She Came In Through The Bathroom Window onwards (in slightly abreviated form). Trivia: because every bit of Beatles lyrics was avidly interpreted by fans, and, err, the occasional band member, there was and is some debate who exactly came through the bathroom window. John in his 1980 Playboy interview (the same one where he says the doesn't want to sound like one of those fans but Hey Jude still is totally about him) thought it was Linda. Jonathan Gould in Can't Buy Me Love and Peter Ames Carlin in various articles think it was Yoko. Certainly both ladies were "protected by a silver spoon"; Gould suggests the Yoko interpretation because of the "banks of her own lagoon", pointing out that Yoko had just had an artificial lake installed at Tittenhurst Park in 1969, but heretically I think the first interpretation offered all the way back in the late 60s, that this was a reminscence of one of the more adventurous fans breaking into a hotel bathroom window in Beatlemania days, with or without a silver spoon, is the most likely. Back to the songs; I was delighted to see James Taylor because he actually started out on the Beatles' good-intentions-lead-the-road-to-hell attempt at the 1960s artist-support-artists idea, Apple. He was discovered by Peter Asher, in charge of Apple Records at the time. (Also the brother of Paul's ex girlfriend Jane and one half of Peter & Gordon.) Both Peter Asher and James Taylor hightailed it out of dodge, err, Apple, when Allen Klein took over; you can read more about it in this recent Peter Asher interview. Anyway, so Taylor was one singer with an actual Beatle connection that evening. But then Mavis Staples pulled out all the stops and brought the house down on Let it Be, and Steven Tyler came back to the stage when everyone went into the Hey Jude chorus. I was both amused and touched that back in the audience, Ophra Winfrey at once joined in, and so did the First Couple who jumped up and rocked along. (Well, they had practice from the Gershwin occasion.) Also? Going by the occasional cut to the honorees, Paul sang along from Golden Slumbers onwards.
