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selenakI've always liked The Ballad of John and Yoko, both for the song itself - the jaunty Chuck-Berry-style rock tune making sure that the lyrics come across as witty and at times self-mocking instead of self-pitying, the deceptively simple "What we did on our honeymoon" narration (deceptively because like Alan Pollack and as a matter of fact Cynthia Lennon I think John was settling old scores with the press about the more-popular-than-Jesus disaster while he was at it) - and for the backstory. I am a sucker for eye of the hurricane, one peaceful/joyful interlude in dark times type of tales, and April 14th, 1969, when this song was recorded, was against all odds such an occasion, arguably the last completely happy day in the Beatles saga before the band ended. (Yes, they pulled themselves together for Abbey Road, but everyone was on their toes and guarded to make that happen, which is not the same thing.) This despite the fact that George and Ringo weren't even there; Ringo was filming The Magic Christian with Peter Sellers and George was on holidays. (If you're familiar with the promo which shows all four Beatles playing, that footage was taken from Let it Be.)
As I said, the odds were completely against a good day. The Get Back/Let it Be sessions in January and early February had been a disaster. Then the big argument about Allen Klein (whom John wanted as new manager and Paul did not) had raged through February, driving the proverbial nail in the soon to be filled coffin and resulting for the first time in a three against one situation because George and Ringo signed on with Klein as well. (And would regret it through many a lawsuit in the 70s, especially George since Klein became involved in his plagiarism trial re: My Sweet Lord as well, but nobody could know that then.) Then in March Paul married Linda and John married Yoko, ten days apart, with no other Beatles present at either wedding (though George was arrested on the day of Paul's for drug possession). So, like I said, it's an awful time. But lo and behold, as John returns from his honeymoon (which was probably the most public honeymoon ever, even at an age of celebrity, since he and Yoko, arguing the paparrazzi would follow them anyway, said they might as well turn all that publicity in peace compaign), something unexpected happens. For the first time since before Pepper, John is the one itching to get to the studio to record a song he's written. But not alone, and not solely with Yoko, either. He's also not inclined to wait for the return of George and Ringo, but rings up Paul to ask whether he would be available right now, both to polish off the song and to record it at EMI.
It's probably telling for the relationship as well as John's general effect on people that previous arguments or not, anything along the lines of "do you want to make music together?" was replied to with a resounding YES, and not just from Paul. The studio was booked, and they got even their old engineer back, Geoff Emerick, who had walked out of the White Album because the situation had become so tense. Emerick: I asked Peter (Brown) rather tentatively if John was 'okay' these days. He understood precisely what I was getting at; as the Beatles' designated minder, he had seen plenty of Lennon at his worst. "Yes, he's fine," Peter assured me. "He's in really good spirits at the moment, a nd he's really up about the new song. And he specifically asked me if I could get you to engineer it." How could I possibly say no that?
So the newly married Ono-Lennons arrived the newly married McCartneys' doorsteps at Cavendish, Paul's house where due to its close location to the Abbey Road studios the Beatles often used to meet pre-recording in happier times. In a 1971 interview Yoko, presumably trying to smooth out some bitchy remarks of John's about Linda (the "too tweedy" and he doesn't know why Paul bothered statement you might recall), comes up with a positive statement and remembers this: Linda cooked for us. We had a nice dinner together, things like that. And she was pregnant, so it was hard for her to cook. She had a big tummy and all that. But she was doing it, and it was nice.
Afterwards, John and Paul went upstairs to the music room, talked the song through and worked out the musical arrangement, and then all four went to the studio, where the employees were flabbergasted at the good mood everyone was in. Geoff Emerick: The session was booked to start in mid-afternoon, and to my amazement a chipper John actually rolled up spot on time, with Paul following. It was officially supposed to be a Beatles session, but they were the only two band members to turn up that day, Paul taking the drummer's chair, playing Ringo's kit with confidence and ease. The two Beatles seemed remarkably relaxed, despite the horror stories I had heard about (...) the Let it Be sessions. On this day, they reverted to being two old school chums, all the nastiness of recent months swept under the rug and replaced by the sheer joy of making music together.
Quite a good vibe there, Apple art director John Kosh agrees in very 60s lingo, and the fact that they were reduced to two only seemed to spur them on. Emerick: The whole record was completed in just a few hours, from start to finish, including the mix - just loke the good old days. A new eight-track machine had been installed in the control room just recently, and we put it to good use that day. The eight -track recorder allowed for lots of overdubs, so John played all the guitars - lead and rhythm - while Paul handled bass, piano, percussion, and drums; they made for a great two man band. That was one of the first times I put microphones both on top of and under the snare drum, which imparted a larger-than-life crack to the sound, the perfect compliment to John's agressive vocal. The luxury of eight tracks allowed us to do a detailed stereo mix, and, as icing on the cake, the record ended up being mastered by Malcolm at Apple.
Mark Lewisohn, who went through all the Beatles recordings and EMI logs with a fine comb, also reports of the takes (eleven in all) that just before take four, you hear them joking:
John (on guitar): Go a bit faster, Ringo!
Paul (on drums): Okay, George!
What did Yoko and Linda talk about in the meantime? We don't know. We only know what they didn't talk about. As Yoko wrote in her obituary for Linda in Rolling Stone: Linda and I left them alone. But we didn't go chummy-chummy, wink-wink, 'Aren't they silly boys?' either. We both stood by our men. That was how we were.
They might have talked about New York, where Linda came from and where Yoko had spent significant years (and would of course move back to for the rest of her life in a few years). It's only an urban legend that they both went to Sarah Lawrence (Yoko did, though she didn't finish; Linda went to college in Tucson, Arizona), but they had both grown up in Scarsdale and though they had never met pre-Beatles, they had overlapping circles of aquaintances. Or they might have talked about the daily hate fest from the fans that was still going on. Yoko once got yellow roses from the Apple Scruffs, not as a compliment but as a racist insult, and most of the postcards from her and John's "You are here" exhibition had resulted in vicious attacks; Linda, despite being pregnant, got spat at when she left Paul's house alone, and once the girls tried to trip her. On the walls of the house someone had written "Linda is a cunt". Later, she said to an old New York friend, Danny Fields: I thought of Paul telling me how the Beatles used to be prisoners in their hotels when they toured, because there were thousands of people out there who loved them so much that it was dangerous to be among them. Believe me, a dozen people who hate you and wait for you has to be just as bad. I was a prisoner in Paul's house. Heather was six, how could I explain this to her? 'Oh, it's OK, they'd hate anyone who lived there with Paul.' Please, you can't expect a child to know what that's about. Hate? It's a new life for her, and I have to tell her about hate, about why these people hate Mummy. It was very, very difficult.'
Christ, you know it ain't easy/ You know how hard it can be, indeed, but if anyone was going to get crucified, John, it would have been the women. Who nonetheless must have thought it was all worth it instead of getting the hell out of there. By the way, given the date it occurs to me Linda wasn't the only one who was pregnant; so was Yoko, albeit in an earlier stadium, her second attempt after getting together with John, which, as the first one, would end in a miscarriage. But they couldn't know that on April 14th. Fannish hate or not, the future might have looked very hopeful to them; they were newly married, their husbands right now were in great spirits, new loves and old ties in balance instead of competing, their daughters from previous marriages had started to adapt to the new life (again, Yoko could know she'd lose Kyoko), and there were babies on the way. I have no idea whether it was that day this poto was made, but it might have been:
As for Paul and John, they were in the zone. You can hear it on the recording; as Pollack put it: You don't need to read Lewisohn to tell with your own ears how urgent a sense of creative fun and collaborative byplay was shared by John and Paul in this April 1969 recording session. The way Paul's harmony vocal is handled also creates a sense of increasing communion. Pollack again: John sings the first three Verse/Refrains single tracked by himself though with some extra reverb. Paul joins him for the final two sections; tentatively at first, in the fourth iteration (he jumps in for just the last word of each line of the verse, "bath, said, head, drag"), but sits out the refrain; then, for the grand finale, Paul sings all the way through.
By 11. p.m it was all over, but the general high the day left had some retrospectively ironic consequences, because it was that regained sense of comradery and joy that let Paul conclude that clearly another album (i.e. Abbey Road) was the solution to everything. Again, he wasn't the only one. It was so refreshing to see Paul and John in good spirits and the vibe of that session helped me up my mind just a week later, writes Geoff Emerick, re: the offer that came from Paul to return for good in order to engineer their next record. Of course, by the time the Abbey Road sessions started, John and Yoko (with Kyoko and Julian with them) had had a car crash in Scotland (their respective other parents were horrified, not least because nobody had told them Scotland was in the card, and retrieved them at once), Yoko had had another miscarriage, and the general mood between the group was more, as Geoff Emerick put it, like four old gunslingers saddling up one more time. But that was the summer. In spring, just one more time, everything seemed to be possible.
There's a 2003 Mojo interview with Yoko in which the reporter sees Paul's participation in the song as his tribute to John and Yoko. Replies Yoko:Yeah, I thought that was beautiful. Paul was trying to be diplomatic about the situation, try to make it turn out well… he meant well. There were other instances where he’d do things that were meant well.
John was asked about The Ballad of John and Yoko in a 1980 BBC interview; the reporter wanted to know whether the song's success - it went on to become the Beatles' 17th and final UK number one single - gave John and Yoko a feeling of satisfaction and achievement as a duo. After all, it was their song, wasn't it? To which John answered, and the dots aren't dots of omission but from the transcript, indicating hesitation:
No, because ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko' was… Paul and I made that record. He was… he played bass and drums and I played guitar and sang, you know.
It was, if you like, the last complete Lennon/McCartney cooperation.
As I said, the odds were completely against a good day. The Get Back/Let it Be sessions in January and early February had been a disaster. Then the big argument about Allen Klein (whom John wanted as new manager and Paul did not) had raged through February, driving the proverbial nail in the soon to be filled coffin and resulting for the first time in a three against one situation because George and Ringo signed on with Klein as well. (And would regret it through many a lawsuit in the 70s, especially George since Klein became involved in his plagiarism trial re: My Sweet Lord as well, but nobody could know that then.) Then in March Paul married Linda and John married Yoko, ten days apart, with no other Beatles present at either wedding (though George was arrested on the day of Paul's for drug possession). So, like I said, it's an awful time. But lo and behold, as John returns from his honeymoon (which was probably the most public honeymoon ever, even at an age of celebrity, since he and Yoko, arguing the paparrazzi would follow them anyway, said they might as well turn all that publicity in peace compaign), something unexpected happens. For the first time since before Pepper, John is the one itching to get to the studio to record a song he's written. But not alone, and not solely with Yoko, either. He's also not inclined to wait for the return of George and Ringo, but rings up Paul to ask whether he would be available right now, both to polish off the song and to record it at EMI.
It's probably telling for the relationship as well as John's general effect on people that previous arguments or not, anything along the lines of "do you want to make music together?" was replied to with a resounding YES, and not just from Paul. The studio was booked, and they got even their old engineer back, Geoff Emerick, who had walked out of the White Album because the situation had become so tense. Emerick: I asked Peter (Brown) rather tentatively if John was 'okay' these days. He understood precisely what I was getting at; as the Beatles' designated minder, he had seen plenty of Lennon at his worst. "Yes, he's fine," Peter assured me. "He's in really good spirits at the moment, a nd he's really up about the new song. And he specifically asked me if I could get you to engineer it." How could I possibly say no that?
So the newly married Ono-Lennons arrived the newly married McCartneys' doorsteps at Cavendish, Paul's house where due to its close location to the Abbey Road studios the Beatles often used to meet pre-recording in happier times. In a 1971 interview Yoko, presumably trying to smooth out some bitchy remarks of John's about Linda (the "too tweedy" and he doesn't know why Paul bothered statement you might recall), comes up with a positive statement and remembers this: Linda cooked for us. We had a nice dinner together, things like that. And she was pregnant, so it was hard for her to cook. She had a big tummy and all that. But she was doing it, and it was nice.
Afterwards, John and Paul went upstairs to the music room, talked the song through and worked out the musical arrangement, and then all four went to the studio, where the employees were flabbergasted at the good mood everyone was in. Geoff Emerick: The session was booked to start in mid-afternoon, and to my amazement a chipper John actually rolled up spot on time, with Paul following. It was officially supposed to be a Beatles session, but they were the only two band members to turn up that day, Paul taking the drummer's chair, playing Ringo's kit with confidence and ease. The two Beatles seemed remarkably relaxed, despite the horror stories I had heard about (...) the Let it Be sessions. On this day, they reverted to being two old school chums, all the nastiness of recent months swept under the rug and replaced by the sheer joy of making music together.
Quite a good vibe there, Apple art director John Kosh agrees in very 60s lingo, and the fact that they were reduced to two only seemed to spur them on. Emerick: The whole record was completed in just a few hours, from start to finish, including the mix - just loke the good old days. A new eight-track machine had been installed in the control room just recently, and we put it to good use that day. The eight -track recorder allowed for lots of overdubs, so John played all the guitars - lead and rhythm - while Paul handled bass, piano, percussion, and drums; they made for a great two man band. That was one of the first times I put microphones both on top of and under the snare drum, which imparted a larger-than-life crack to the sound, the perfect compliment to John's agressive vocal. The luxury of eight tracks allowed us to do a detailed stereo mix, and, as icing on the cake, the record ended up being mastered by Malcolm at Apple.
Mark Lewisohn, who went through all the Beatles recordings and EMI logs with a fine comb, also reports of the takes (eleven in all) that just before take four, you hear them joking:
John (on guitar): Go a bit faster, Ringo!
Paul (on drums): Okay, George!
What did Yoko and Linda talk about in the meantime? We don't know. We only know what they didn't talk about. As Yoko wrote in her obituary for Linda in Rolling Stone: Linda and I left them alone. But we didn't go chummy-chummy, wink-wink, 'Aren't they silly boys?' either. We both stood by our men. That was how we were.
They might have talked about New York, where Linda came from and where Yoko had spent significant years (and would of course move back to for the rest of her life in a few years). It's only an urban legend that they both went to Sarah Lawrence (Yoko did, though she didn't finish; Linda went to college in Tucson, Arizona), but they had both grown up in Scarsdale and though they had never met pre-Beatles, they had overlapping circles of aquaintances. Or they might have talked about the daily hate fest from the fans that was still going on. Yoko once got yellow roses from the Apple Scruffs, not as a compliment but as a racist insult, and most of the postcards from her and John's "You are here" exhibition had resulted in vicious attacks; Linda, despite being pregnant, got spat at when she left Paul's house alone, and once the girls tried to trip her. On the walls of the house someone had written "Linda is a cunt". Later, she said to an old New York friend, Danny Fields: I thought of Paul telling me how the Beatles used to be prisoners in their hotels when they toured, because there were thousands of people out there who loved them so much that it was dangerous to be among them. Believe me, a dozen people who hate you and wait for you has to be just as bad. I was a prisoner in Paul's house. Heather was six, how could I explain this to her? 'Oh, it's OK, they'd hate anyone who lived there with Paul.' Please, you can't expect a child to know what that's about. Hate? It's a new life for her, and I have to tell her about hate, about why these people hate Mummy. It was very, very difficult.'
Christ, you know it ain't easy/ You know how hard it can be, indeed, but if anyone was going to get crucified, John, it would have been the women. Who nonetheless must have thought it was all worth it instead of getting the hell out of there. By the way, given the date it occurs to me Linda wasn't the only one who was pregnant; so was Yoko, albeit in an earlier stadium, her second attempt after getting together with John, which, as the first one, would end in a miscarriage. But they couldn't know that on April 14th. Fannish hate or not, the future might have looked very hopeful to them; they were newly married, their husbands right now were in great spirits, new loves and old ties in balance instead of competing, their daughters from previous marriages had started to adapt to the new life (again, Yoko could know she'd lose Kyoko), and there were babies on the way. I have no idea whether it was that day this poto was made, but it might have been:
As for Paul and John, they were in the zone. You can hear it on the recording; as Pollack put it: You don't need to read Lewisohn to tell with your own ears how urgent a sense of creative fun and collaborative byplay was shared by John and Paul in this April 1969 recording session. The way Paul's harmony vocal is handled also creates a sense of increasing communion. Pollack again: John sings the first three Verse/Refrains single tracked by himself though with some extra reverb. Paul joins him for the final two sections; tentatively at first, in the fourth iteration (he jumps in for just the last word of each line of the verse, "bath, said, head, drag"), but sits out the refrain; then, for the grand finale, Paul sings all the way through.
By 11. p.m it was all over, but the general high the day left had some retrospectively ironic consequences, because it was that regained sense of comradery and joy that let Paul conclude that clearly another album (i.e. Abbey Road) was the solution to everything. Again, he wasn't the only one. It was so refreshing to see Paul and John in good spirits and the vibe of that session helped me up my mind just a week later, writes Geoff Emerick, re: the offer that came from Paul to return for good in order to engineer their next record. Of course, by the time the Abbey Road sessions started, John and Yoko (with Kyoko and Julian with them) had had a car crash in Scotland (their respective other parents were horrified, not least because nobody had told them Scotland was in the card, and retrieved them at once), Yoko had had another miscarriage, and the general mood between the group was more, as Geoff Emerick put it, like four old gunslingers saddling up one more time. But that was the summer. In spring, just one more time, everything seemed to be possible.
There's a 2003 Mojo interview with Yoko in which the reporter sees Paul's participation in the song as his tribute to John and Yoko. Replies Yoko:Yeah, I thought that was beautiful. Paul was trying to be diplomatic about the situation, try to make it turn out well… he meant well. There were other instances where he’d do things that were meant well.
John was asked about The Ballad of John and Yoko in a 1980 BBC interview; the reporter wanted to know whether the song's success - it went on to become the Beatles' 17th and final UK number one single - gave John and Yoko a feeling of satisfaction and achievement as a duo. After all, it was their song, wasn't it? To which John answered, and the dots aren't dots of omission but from the transcript, indicating hesitation:
No, because ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko' was… Paul and I made that record. He was… he played bass and drums and I played guitar and sang, you know.
It was, if you like, the last complete Lennon/McCartney cooperation.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 06:14 pm (UTC)See, this is one of the reasons why I enjoy your Beatle essays so much -- unlike so many of them, you recognize and admire the women as well! It never fails to astonish me how many people are still hanging on to this tired old *hate* of Yoko and Linda and the other ladies.
John (on guitar): Go a bit faster, Ringo!
Paul (on drums): Okay, George!
BLESS!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 06:32 pm (UTC)Latest bizarre proof of people still doing this: I actually saw an anti-Nancy Shevell fannish secret. I mean...
On another note, love your MMT icon featuring the famous sveater. :) And yes, that good-humoured exchange is one of my favourite things about that day's events!