It's been years since I read my last Beatles related book, but Get Back last November evidently meant that bookstores now place more recent publications where passers by like yours truly can spot them, and thus I ended up with Craig Brown's One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time, which I think is best described as an entertaining collection of vignettes dealing not just with the Beatles but various people flitting in and out of their lives, with fandom, with hatedom, and with (some) biography. How it would feel to someone new to Beatles lore, I couldn't say. Occasionally, when recognizing from which previous biography or even interview some quotes hail from, I thought, good lord, I know way too much about these people. Otoh, there were some stories I hadn't come across before, or had not connected to the Beatles, like "the Singing Nun", Sister Luc-Gabrielle, aka Jeannine Deckers, who had appeared on the same Ed Sullivan show the Beatles made their American debut on. (Not a story with a happy ending, that one. But remarkable.)

Nitpicks first: Craig Brown can tell a story, and most of the chapters I enjoyed reading, regardless as to whether there was new content or not. Unfortunately, the exceptions to this rule happen relatively early in the book, though not to a degree that they stopped me from reading further. But they did irritate me. As I said, this is also a book about fandom, and two chapters have Brown himself taking the tour in Liverpool that includes the childhood homes of John and Paul. The description of the somewhat self important (in his telling) guides with their insistence that the stuff they rattle off to 130 000 visitors a year is "confidential, private information" that must not be recorded comes across as somewhat snooty, but it's nowhere as irrating as the "Brown takes a tour in Hamburg" chapter where he decides to write the dialogue of every German he meets phonetically, in "accent". I hate it when writers do that - not just when it's supposed to be a German accent, it's just as annoying when it's supposed to be a French one, a Scottish one, for for that matter Scouse - because it makes comprehending what each word is supposed to mean really hard for me, no matter how fluent I am in English. Also, I just don't think it's funny, which evidently it's meant to be.

(I should add here that later chapters, where he's letting various female fans talk, come across very differently - with affection for the women, who do most of the talking and looking back, and when they make a bit fun of their younger selves, it's a case of "laughing with", not "laughing about". But the Mendips, Forthlin Road and Hamburg tour chapters really annoyed me.)

On to the praise: Craig Brown often hits on hilarious, eminently quotable tales, and not just when he's quoting the Beatles themselves in full snarky, goofy glory. As I said, he also devotes some chapters to dedicated haters of the Fab Four, and none was more so than Anthony Burgess (yes, A Clockwork Orange Burgess), who wasn't just seething throughout the 60s but was still ready to fire off Beatles-loathing sallies decades after the band was no more, which tells you a lot about Burgess. (And yes, the over the topness of his hatred does make it funny.) Stories like the one about Ms Deckers which end unhappily are written with a matter of fact compassion, while he comes across as pretty even handed in his depiction (and selection of quotes by and on) such vivid yet controversial characters as John's aunt Mimi. (Opinions on Mimi vary from "Stern yet loving" to "vicious control freak from hell", with the later two voiced memorably by both Julia Baird - John Lennon's younger sister - and Cynthia Lennon (John's first wife).) He's also pretty good in showing how inevitably skewered everyone's memories inevitably are - as with the "Beatles meet Elvis" encounter which everyone involved later described somewhat differently from each other, or the "John beat up Bob Wooler at Paul's birthday party" tale, where the description of the reason for the violence and the extension of the injuries greatly varies not just with the describer, but also with the times (i.e. John Lennon himself gave various different descriptions of this incident to different people over the years) , with the biographers, depending on their own agenda, often adding to it (so unsurprisingly the version where it's a miracle Wooler survived is the one in Albert Goldman's biography).

Interestingly, Brown entirely avoids the question most people writing books about the Beatles get asked - "who's your favourite Beatle?" - but instead answers one for himself which I haven't seen asked before in fandom, to wit, if you could be any Beatle at any point in their lives, which one and when would you want to be? (Craig Brown would like to be Paul during his years of living with the Asher family at Wimpole Street ("living with Jane, cossetted by her family, blessed by luck, happy with life, alive to culture, adored by the world, and with wonderfull songs flowing as if my magic from my brain and out through the piano: I want to hold your hand, I'm looking through you, The Things we said today, And I love her, We can work it out, Here, there and everwhere, Yesterday") (Put like that, I can see his point.) Generally speaking Brown keeps a good balance between the four in the stories he chooses to tell - there are far more George anecdotes, for example, than in anything penned by Philip Norman - except in the last section, ca. 1968-1970, which is very Lennon centric, but very much not in a Philip Norman way. Chapter 140, which tells the tale of John and Yoko's encounter with Gloria Emerson (transmitted by the BBC), utterly skewers the former two simply by using their own words. It does some across as perhaps the most cringe worthy John and Yoko event ever, as they proceed to lecture Emerson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Saigon, was by no means a pro establishment figure and would return to Saigon to cover such subjects as the false American body count, the use of hard drugs by G.I.s and the effect the war has on the Vietnamese civilian population, on Vietnam and the effectiveness of their peace protests, and listen not to a single thing Emerson had to say. And the conclusion of that chapter is absolutely lethal. The most Yoko hating rant by a 1960s fan does not compare with ths effective dagger-by-quote without any bashing at all:

Years later (Gloria Emerson) said that, by the end of her time there, she had lost count of the number of young American soldiers she had comforted in their final moments.
Nineteen years later, in the December 1988 issue of Q magazine, Yoko spoke to the journalist Tom Hibbert about the legacy of the bed-ins, in which she and John had stayed in bed 'for peace'.
HIBBERT: Are those bed-ins something you look back on with pride?
YOKO: Oh yes. Pride and great joy. Those things we did were blessings. At the time we were doing it peopole used to sort of laugh at us - we were hoping that they would laugh with us but it didn't work out that way. But in the end, you see, it did have an effect. Last year when Reagan and Gorbachev had their summit and shook hands, I sort of felt, well, John and I did have an effect.

End of chapter. He's made his point.

On the joyful side of things, he's also really good at getting across the excitement of the concerts, the reason why those early press interviews with the Beatles felt so refreshing, witty and new, and the marvel of the ever changing music. (And is not above making fun of himself; teen him way very unimpressed by the Abbey Road cover, considering it a let down compared to previous covers, and had no idea it would be the most recognizable, most imitated and parodied Beatles album cover of them all.) And he finds some unexpected angles that do manage to paint a portrait of an era and a place through a single chapter, as in the one that compares and contrasts the 1963 - 1969 Christmas messages from the Queen to the ones recorded by the Beatles for their fan club. The framing Brown chooses to open and finish his book with also is new - well, not the opening, but the ending to correspond with it. The first chapter describes record store owner Brian Epstein using his lunch break to visit, with his employee Alistair Taylor in tow, the Cavern, where he sees the Beatles for the first time. The last chapter starts with the aftermath of Brian Epstein's funeral in 1967, and then goes back in time through Brian's life, each section earlier than the previous one, ending on that moment of the opening chapter where he tries to verbalize for the first time the impact the Beatles have had on him to Taylor. Brian Epstein is of course present in many a chapter other than these two, but by placing him in this way Brown doesn't just underscore his importance to the saga but also in a way makes him the pov. Which, given that moment in one of the Beatles concert movies where Brian says that everything the fans felt for them, he's felt for them - and there you have the key difference between Brian Epstein and, say, Elvis' manager Colonel Parker, to say nothing of Allen Klein - , strikes me as an inspired choice.

onyxlynx has reminded me that it was 50 years ago that the Beatles recorded She Loves You, which is perhaps THE song that defined them in the first stage of Beatlemania. Its history from the moment of composition to the recording is also very well documented; Slate put up an article which is an excerpt of Ian McDonald's Revolution in the Head.

We also have, courtesy of Paul's younger brother Mike, a photo of Lennon & McCartney when they were finishing composing this song at the McCartney house in Forthlin Road (note the school exercise book with the lyrics on the floor in front of them - they were so freakin' YOUNG - and John wearing glasses, which at this point he only did when not in public):





And here's a bit Ian McDonald doesn't quote in his notes but which I already mentioned in an earlier post of mine, because it's a story that still amuses me, a Paul quote:

We sat in there one evening, just beavering away while my dad was watching TV and smoking his Players cigarettes, and we wrote 'She Loves You'. We actually just finished it there because we'd started it in the hotel room. We went into the living room - 'Dad, listen to this. What do you think?' So we played it to my dad and he said, 'That's very nice, son, but there's enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn't you sing, "She loves you. Yes! Yes! Yes!"' At which point we collapsed in a heap and said, 'No, Dad, you don't quite get it!' That's my classic story about my dad.

Also qoted by me before, though in a different post, and yet apropos for a requote here, is a story about the recording the song, from their later engineer Geoff Emerick who at this point was still lower in the ranks at EMI (the "Norman" in the story is the actual engineer for She Loves You) :

As John, Paul and George tuned up in the studio, Norman noticed that the microphone on the bass amplifier was distorting, so he asked me to go downstairs and move it back a few inches. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mal and Neil go out of hte studio door, no doubt heading for the canteen to fetch the first of an endless tream of cups of tea for the four musicians. On this day, though, they wouldn't be gone for long.
"FANS!"
There was no mistaking Big Mal's booming voice as he shot back through the door, tailed closely by a breathless Neil. The four Beatles stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
"What the bloody hell are you on about?" Lennon demanded.
Before Mal could get the answer out, the studio door flew open again and a determined teenage girl sprinted in, heading straight for a bewildered-looking Ringo hunched behind his drum kit. Instinctively, Neil launched himself at her in a perfect American football-style tackle and brought her to the ground before she could reach her quarrry. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion before my widened eyes.
As Mal dragged the sobbing teenager out the door, Neil caught his breath and broke the news: somehow the huge crowd of girls that had been gathered outside had overpowered the police and broken through the front door. The canteen was swarming with them, and dozens of rabid fans were racing around the EMI facility in desperate search of the Fab Four.
"It's a bloody madhouse out there," Neil shouted. "You've got to see it to believe it!"
I stood rooted to the ground, not sure what do do. Looking up at the control room, I could see George, Norman, and Brian staring down at us with great concern. Brian was the first down the steps. (..) Curious as to what the fuss was all about, I poked my head out the door. What I saw astounded, amazed and frightened me - but it also made me burst out in laughter. It was an unbelievable sight, straight out of the Keystone Kops: scores of hysterical, screaming girls racing down the corridors, being chased by a handful of out-of-breath, beleaguered London bobbies. Every time one would catch up with a fan, another two or three girls would appear, racing past, screeching at the top of their lungs. The poor coppers wouldn't know whether to let go of the nutter he was struggling with and go after the others, or whether to keep his grip on the bird in hand.
As I wandered down the hallyway, I could see the scene being repeated everywhere. Doors were opening and slamming shut with alarming regularity, terrified staffers were having their hair pulled (just in case they happened to be a Beatle in disguise), and everyone in sight was running at top speed. The fans were totally out of control - Lord knows what they would have done to the four Beatles if they had actually gotten their hands on them. The grim determination on their faces, punctuated by squalls of animal-like screaming, made the whole thing even m ore bizarre.
I returned to the studio, which seemed strangely calm in comparison, like the eye of the hurricane; things did seem to be somewhat more in control there. Neil had decided to do reconnaissance, prmising to keep us informed, and a grim Mal was stationed at the doorway, literally standing there with arms crossed; he reminded me of one of the Queen's guards at Buckingham Palace. Ringo, still on his drum stool, seemed a bit shaken, but John, Paul and George Harrison soon began taking the piss, racing around the room, giggling and screeching in imitation of the poor fan who had launched herself at him.
George Martin, flustered at first, finally regained his schoolmasterly disposition and, with a good deal of formality, announced that the nonsense was over and that the session would now begin.

So what is it about She Loves You? To go all often repeated cliché on you, it's bursting with vitality, it tells an inclusive story (instead of one singer declaring/mourning his love, as was usual until that point, you have a friend talking to anothe - talking sense into each other, you could say - and the song is also sung by not one singer but John and Paul harmonizing and almost creating a third voice like that) , and it's damn near irresistable as a cheering up method. Also? It has the most bizarre real life repetition in Beatledom when it comes to its composers' lives. Because what else is that tale, told by both Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney, of how during John's 18 months lasting "Lost Weekend" in the mid 70s Paul played least likely marriage guidance counsellor ever?

(The one thing Paul and Yoko disagree on is who came to whom asking/offering help, which cracks me up, because that is, err, very them.)


So, real life "She Loves You", Yoko Ono version:

"Paul told me he was going to see John in L.A. He asked what it would take for me to go back to John, and I said, 'Well, maybe if he courted me.'

"I want the world to know that it was a very touching thing that he did for John. He'd heard the rumours that John was in a bad way, in a rough situation, and he was genuinely concerned about his old partner... It was so sweet that he wanted to save John. Sure, they were two macho, very talented guys who had strong opinions, arguments, like most brothers. But when it came to the crux of the matter, when Paul thought John was in dire straights, he helped... John often said he didn't understand why Paul did this for us, but he did.

"John told me later he'd said, 'You want to know how to get Yoko back?'... The fact that John immediately tried to court me, and came back to New York, had some meaning."

Real life "She loves You", Paul McCartney version:

“When they split up, Yoko came to London, a little diminutive sad figure in black. She came round to Cavendish, and she said, ‘John’s left, he’s off with May Pang.’ So, being friendly and seeing her plight, Linda or I said to her, ‘Do you still love him? Do you want to get back with him?’ She said, ‘Yes’. We said, ‘Well, what would it take then?’ because we were going out LA way. I said, ‘I can take a message. What would I have to tell him?’. And she gave me this whole thing: ‘He would have to come back to New York. He can’t live with me immediately. He’d have to court me, he’d have to ask me out. He’d have to send me flowers, he’ll have to do it all again. (...) (In Los Angeles) I took John in the back room of the house, and I said, ‘Yoko was through London and she said she wouldn’t mind getting back together. How about you. Would you be interested in that?”

In conclusion: "...and you know you should be glaaaaaaad..."

The Frankfurt Book Fair is one of the highlights of year to me, but it is extremely exhausting. You could wipe the floor with me right now, and there's still one more day to go.

On to the narrative. Before getting to some of the books I browsed through, here's my literary celebrity anecdote of the week. One of the most famous specimens we have of those is Harry Rowohlt, who is most famous for, in no particular order, a) being a great translator (English-German, and there isn't a tricky pun he can't master), b) doing great readings for which the bookstore owners and publishers need to have enough beer ready (he supposedly gets through the occasional sixpack per evening), and c) being a male chauvinist of the first degree. For some reason or the other, I had never heard him read before, which is the equivalent of never having been to a Springsteen concert when you're into 80s rock'n roll, so to speak, and thus I was resolved to remedy this lack and go to a reading. Of which he did several: he has the translation of Mark Twain's memoirs and of an essay and short story collection by Kurt Vonnegut out. I'd have gone for the Twain, but it took place simultanously with another obligation, and thus I ended up at the Vonnegut.

Now Harry Rowohlt as a reader is as good as advertised - deep narrative voice like a Hamburg foghorn, terrific individual character voices, and with his white beard and hungover face, he looks like a legendary seaman looking for his albatros, too. Being as good as advertised is a must to put up with him, though, as the male chauvinism isn't exaggarated, either. A female publisher friend of mine told me that her company once wanted him to translate something by a female writer, and back came the commissioning letter (these were the days before the internet, young padawans) as a fax with his handwriting on it saying "I don't translate women".

Anyway. Since he knew the late Kurt Vonnegut, has been translating him since decades, he was asked about anecdotes and what they talked about. Says H.R.: "Rarely something serious. When we were on the reading tour together, he was mostly busy hitting on the woman from Hanser" - their German publisher - "who'd been seconded to take care of us. She came across as somewhat shy and embarrassed because he was so much older than she was, and he said: 'Don't worry, the oldest woman I ever had sex with is my wife.'"

Said my female publisher pal that a lot of literary giants from abroad behave like this. She once had to babysit an author who wanted her to pick him up at his hotel room, and when she did, his bed was unmade and he said to: "Serious work took place here", pointing to the bed. When a (male, gay) editor friend of us heard this, he smugly commented that luckily this is a problem he never would have to face when babysitting foreign authors. "Not necessarily," I replied. "What would you have done if it had been Gore Vidal?" "I'd have said, You're too old for me, Mr. Vidal," he returned.

On a brighter note, today there was a truly gigantic cosplay competition, for which Richard Taylor of Weta and Lord of The Rings making off specials fame was the judge, and winners got a ticket to New Zealand and five days in Wellington with set visits. There was some adorable and very elaborate stuff, but the uncontested funniest was a couple of villains (Uruk-hai, Mouth of Sauron, Witch King, Nazgul) in search of a new theme song. By the time an Uruk-hai danced to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Bad", we were all in stitches. Also very funny was a group of hobbits and one Legolas who enacted a scene where Legolas takes Sam's wish to be like an elf literally and starts to coach the hobbits to move like elves, which turns into a funny desaster. Incidentally, the majority of cosplayers were female. We were all left cheering, much entertained and realy anticapatory for the filmed Hobbit. (The moderator joked that Leonard Nimoy's unforgotten face palm hymn, "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", would clearly make Nimoy belatedly the next Enya.)

And now for notes on some of the books I browsed through:

A short but creepy and intense novella by an Argentine author, titled "Wakolda", in which the German middle aged doctor developing an interest in an Argentine family with newborn twins and a twelve years old older daughter turns out to be Mengele. Mengele has been fictionalized before, memorably as a Hitler cloning ghoul in Ira Levin's "The Boys from Brazil" and only thinly, somewhere between fiction and faction, in Peter Schneider's novella "Vati" which was based on Schneider's interviews with Rolf Mengele, the son. And he's become proverbial for evil scientists. Whenever one shows up in sci fi, you can bet reviews will call him "a space Mengele" sooner or later. "Wakolda" isn't a thriller like "The Boys from Brazil", but it is very suspenseful because the readers know what Lilith, the twelve years old, and her family are unaware of, and as mentioned incredibly creepy - the author actually dares and pulls off a Mengela pov at times (the other times we're in Lilith's), and the chilling sense of dissociation, of not clinical craziness but the insanity of racism coupled with pseudo science when he contemplates skull forms and the degree of "degeneracy", and the implication of scenes as when Lilith says about her old doll she once tore off a limb and sewed it on again to know what it would be like and what the doll was made of, and "José" benignly thinks he entirely understands, is throat-constricting. Just the right length, too, because it's a novella, not a novel: spending any longer time in that mind would have felt unbearable to me.

Hunter Davies (editor): The John Lennon Letters. The good news is that the book offers both scans of the original documents and transcriptions, which since John's scribblings often came with little cartoons is a great advantage. The bad news is that very little of the collection is new. Of course, this only applies to nutters like me. If you only ever read one Beatles biography and/or one Lennon biography in your life, or none at all, then this will be all new to you, and it does illustrate various aspects of John's character very well: the love of puns, the wit, the ability to be very moving, or compassionate, but also the capacity for vicious over the top outbursts if he was in demolishing mode, and incredible paranoia. But as I said: if, like yours truly, you have already plugged your way through various people's memoirs and biographies, then the letters, post cards and even shopping lists (I'll get to that) will be familiar, and the only advantage is to have them all in one volume.

One reason for the relative lack of new material is that Hunter Davies seems to have gotten much of it not from the recipients but because a lot of it had been auctioned off and thus been scanned, photographed and otherwise put in the public domain. Or published in very limited editions, like John's postcards to Derek Taylor from the mid 70s which were previously available only in Taylor's hidiously expensive privately printed memoirs. (Since one of said postcards is the one - previously quoted but not shown in books like Peter Doggett's - that offers first hand proof John was indeed towards the end of his "Lost Weekend" toying with the idea of a Lennon/McCartney reunion in New Orleans, this was a kick for me.)

The copyright holder for all of this material is still Yoko, which brings me to another ambiguous point: the editing policy. Davies provides some linking texts but those are by and large disappointingly superficial. This becomes particularly grating where the choice of material to be included is only understandable if you're firm on your Lennon related literature, as is the case with the earlier mentioned shopping lists. Who aren't of any earthly interest - they're shopping list's, for God's sake! - and a casual reader must wonder why the hell they're included, except to provide some material for the later part of the 70s, and wonder whether there isn't anything else available. Well, the only bit in those lists that isn't about listing various items to be purchased by John's personal assistant, Fred Seaman, is a scribbled question whether Fred has stolen and sold John's boots as memorabilia. Why is this relevant? Because Fred Seaman was among the disgruntled Lennon-Ono employees to write a book, "The Last Days of John Lennon"; not available in print because writing it went against the original contract with the Lennon-Onos he had signed; Yoko also successfully sued him for theft of various items. Additionally to presenting himself as John's only confidant in said book, Seaman was one of Albert Goldman's main sources for the description of later 70s John as a half crazed junkie hermit and the John/Yoko marriage on the brink of divorce when he died. The only thing about all of this which Hunter Davies mentions is that a footnote that Fred did turn out to be a thief. Which works just on the opposite way it was presumably intended. I mean, I'm all for demonstrating that as opposed to being John's bff, Fred Seaman was an already distrusted employe, but this could be accomplished via quoting just the "did you sell my boots?" remark in an explainatory text instead of asking me to see John's shopping lists as valuable contributions in a letter collection, and then not even bothering to explain the point here is a counter narrative to Seaman's descriptions of John and Yoko.

To present actually interesting texts from the later 70s to match the earlier ones would be even better. But alas. The interesting texts end around 76ish. During the 18 Lost Weekend months and in the one, two years afterwards John had intensified and in some cases resumed contact with various family members in England - his older son, sisters, cousins, aunts etc., before it started to slacken again. And here, again, I can see why some of the letters are included because of the background knowledge, but Davies doesn't provide it in his editing notes, which simply inform us that after his reunion with Yoko and the birth of Sean in 1975, John lived a happily ever after for the final five years of his life.

Now, both Cynthia Lennon in her second book of memoirs, Julian Lennon in various interviews, John's sister Julia Baird (in her second book) and his cousin Stanly in interviews with various Lennon biographers all have painted a negative picture of Yoko Ono and quite often accused her of intercepting phone calls between various family members, including Julian, and John. The John Lennon Letters includes (as one of the few genuinenly new items) two or three letters by John to his cousin Liela who apparantly took him to task for his neglect of his older son; in reply, he accuses Cynthia, his ex wife, of preventing Julian to call him as often as Julian used to do during the Lost Weekend, of influencing Julian against him and of doing all of his to punish him for going back to Yoko because she wants him back herself. There are also some remarks about both Julian and other family members only contacting him when they want money from him.

Again: if you're aware of the larger context (i.e. the years of feuding between Yoko and various family members, John's claim to Feminisism being made questionable by being the worst divorce seeking and then ex husband this side of Charles Dickens and his hugely and acknowledged by him as such relationship with his older son), this comes across as a defensive move, to show other versions of the tale than the ones given by the Stanley clan and Cynthia. But Davies provides no such context.

(Footnote: mind you, even knowing the context John logic strikes me as, err, special. I have no doubt that teenage Julian sometimes wanted money from his multimillionaire father from across the Atlantic. Or that the cousins and sisters weren't quite the purely motivated by love innocents who were kept separate from John by his evil second wife as they present themselves; again, he WAS a millionaire, they were not, and the sad truth is that from Ringo and Paul, both of whom got and get on well with their family, you have stories about how even family relationships irrevocably change once you're the embodied trust fund fpr everyone. But when it comes to the who neglected/did not contact whom side of things about his son and ex wife re phone conversations with Julian, Cynthia has John's mistress May Pang to back her up about the fact it was John who had to be pushed and reminded into them, Cynthia who was eager to encourage contact between Julian and his father, and documented years of bending over backwards to oblige John as a defense against the idea she was using their son to punish him. (Another book I browsed through at the fair, Philip Norman's new Mick Jagger biography, includes a chilling little reminder of this courtesy of a story Chrissie Shrimpton tells, who was dating Mick for a while and thus once visited the Lennons with him. They were playing a board game called "Risk" when: "Cynthia was winning, and John started getting so nasty that she just gave up the game and went to bed. I remember thinking, 'She is so much under his thumb that she doesn't even dare to win a silly game.'")

Ironically enough, earlier Cynthia and Julian related letters and postcards show John from a far more sympathetic side. The collection includes not just the early love letters he wrote her (again, this isn't new material if you're familiar with Cynthia's books) and a letter about Julian from 1965 when the Beatles were touring America) that shows him tender, concerned and painfully aware he's not good at fatherhood, but a mid-70s/Lost Weekend era letter to Cynthia where he's downright relaxed and even joking with her as one does with someone you've known since literally your school days instead of paranoidly convinced she's on the warpath to reclaim him. There are postcards to Julian through the early 70s showing that if he had, pre Lost Weekend stopped calling, he at least was still writing, and trying to show Julian he wasn't forgotten. The most surprising element there, and this Hunter Davies duly notes, is that one of the post cards includes two lines from the much later song "Beautiful Boy", hitherto always assumed to be exclusively a Sean inspired song.

Also surprising, in a good way: John patiently answering fan mail in the early Beatles days (and it is his handwriting, which is where the reprints come in well), even giving the fan in question who evidently had asked whether the Beatles had siblings, the correct information about his two younger sisters, Paul's brother, George's siblings and Ringo's only child status. It's the kind of letter you'd think John would have shoved on some of Brian's people's shoulders, but apparantly not or not in the early days.

Not surprising, because I had read it before, but still good to read as a counterpoint to some of the other stuff: John exercising a rare bit of self censorship in the late 60s when asking Hunter Davies, who back then was writing the official Beatles biography, to take out again some negative stuff he'd said about his late mother's partner John "Bobby" Dykins, the father his half sisters, so little Julia and Jackie, back then teenagers, wouldn't have to read it and/or get teased about it at school. To my mind, that's far more sympathetic than his famed general let-it-rip attitude. Ditto also concerned remarks and questions about Astrid Kirchherr for quite a while after Stuart died, showing John not making that death into something only he was hurt by but seeing it as primarily Astrid's tragedy.

Most glaringly missing, unless my time pressed browsing at the fair made me overlook the pages in question: letters to Yoko (true, the eighteen months of the Lost Weekend aside they were always living together, but you'd think at least some of the correspendance from India in early 1968 when he was falling for her would have made the cut) and letters to Paul (or George; there are two or so post cards to Ringo) other than the public ones ostensibly adressed to Paul and Linda but sent not to them but the magazine Melody Maker as part of the musical and media blood bath of 1971. ("Who was right, who was wrong?" our editor asks rethorically and diplomatically tells us nobody can say.) Davies said in an interview that Paul declared the John letters he has to be private, which is understandable but means said public feuding letters are the only ones with a focus on the Lennon/McCartney relationship on the entire volume, which is a pity.

In general: could have been better selected and edited, but is still worth purchasing if you're a fan and want the publically known letters all in one volume instead of dispersed in various other books. I'm not sure that if you're not interested at all in either John Lennon and/or the Beatles already, reading will give you much, though, which is a great contrast to some other collected letters editions I've read. For example those of the poet Ted Hughes; many of these work even for newbies to Hughes's oeuvre, or for that matter the Plath/Hughes saga. Not least because they're far more thematically diverse and longer; someone brings up Wilfred Owen, Hughes comes back with a mini essay about the impact of WWI on the English psyche in general and on his family (his father was a veteran) in particular. Things like that.

This book fair also offered a good contrast, and with a focus on the 60s, no less, though the writer is nearly a generation older than the Beatles: the Richard Burton diaries, previously extensively quoted in both Melvyn Bragg's Burton biography and in "Furious Love" (book about the Burton/Taylor marriage), but this is the first publication of the diaries themselves. As opposed to the Lennon letters, these are properly indexed and footnoted, with a good introduction not only providing biographical background but also pointing out to the reader that it's worth wondering for whom Burton wrote his journals. Not only because he was far too famous not to be aware of the likelihood of postumous publication but because he was type of actor who always not so secretely wishes he was a writer instead, and because the diaries themselves prove that he showed them to Elizabeth Taylor on occasion, so they are part of their marital dialogue as well.

Those thwarted literary ambitions make Burton's journals from what I could see enjoyable to read. He has a talent for the mot juste (about co-star Genevieve Bujold: "She has the acting power of a gnat. Of a dying gnat."), is a good storyteller with a feeling for set pieces (the ghastly tale of one evening where Rex Harrison's wife Rachel Roberts becomes so drunk and appalling that the Burtons, no mean drinkers themselves, are genuinenly shocked, is very Edward Albee esque, interested in the people he observes, doesn't spare himself with criticism and manages what many a fiction writer does not: make an established relationship (the main diaries start when he's already together with Elizabeth Taylor) feel no less sensual and intense than a falling-in-love one. He's in various mixtures funny, tender, horny and never boring when talking about and occasionally to her, and there is no impression of passion lessening as the years goes on; their problems were others. He's also writing about their children, hers and his, on a regular basis, showing that superstardom kept neither of them from being involved parents. In conclusion: must aquire once I get home.

Speaking of getting home: I know I owe dozens of answers, but I won't have the chance until the train journey back tomorrow in the late afternoon, and/or Monday. But I will catch up with lj and correspondance then!

One of these days I'm going to write a guide to German railway stations, and in it, Essen will get a bad mark for having the tracks for the local lines miles away from the ones for the regional trains, so there. Meanwhile, have some multifandom links:

Torchwood:
Meta about Tosh and Jack, investigating an often overlooked relationship.

Battlestar Galactica:
Beginnings, a charming series of glimpses of Kara and Sam during the New Caprica year. Sometimes I wonder how I developed into an accidental Kara/Sam shipper to the point where the "my Sam" scene in the finale made me misty eyed. I think it's probably due to them NOT being a couple of destiny (tm), and Sam being one of the few examples of how a character originally probably meant as nothing more than a temporary obstacle instead gained narrative dignity, three dimensionality and an endearing everyman decency in an increasingly dark world.

Feminism on tv:
Great article about the 80s show Cagney and Lacy and the actresses playing the leading roles (and where they are today). Of course, the most depressing aspect about this is that what made C & L revolutionary then - a buddy cop show where the two buddies in question are women, with the bond between them treated as intensely and importantly as in the male variations of the concept - still makes it unusual now, decades later. Also, don't read the comments. There are some incredibly annoying oafs represented there.

Beatles: Alice Cooper about Lennon and McCartney.  The words " Alice Cooper" and "awwwww" usually aren't associated (by me) in the same sentence, but they are in this excerpt from a longer interview where the interviewer, Kim Mitchell, is evidently baiting him for some negative stories and instead Cooper comes up with some great 70s tales of how they would defend the respective other even at the worst of times if anyone but themselves dared to attack, and  is full of affection and respect for both of them. Add some stories about John in Los Angeles and babysitting Keanu Reeves, and you have a very entertaining take from someone who was actually around, as opposed to many a journalist.

This cd (the label is Ace) is, to coin a 60s phrase, groovy. I was familiar with some but not many of the covers, as the people at Ace did not go for the obvious (no Motown, no Tina Turner) and include some rarities instead, like Chubby Checker's take on Back in the USSR, though yes, they do include (and indeed end with) the one and only Aretha Franklin singing Let it Be. (As is proper, considering Paul had her voice in mind when he wrote it.) (Alas, Ace couldn't get permission to use any Ray Charles covers, which is a pity because his voice also was an inspiration, for another song, The Long and Winding Road, about which Paul said: It doesn't sound like him at all, because it's me singing and I don't sound anything like Ray, but sometimes you get a person in your mind, just for an attitude, just for a place to be, so that your mind is somewhere rather than nowhere, and you place it by thinking, Oh, I love that Ray Charles, and think, Well, what might he do then? So that was in my mind, and would have probably had some bearing on the chord structure of it, which is slightly jazzy.) I am amused by the anxious disclaimer in the footnotes that the choice of songs "is not intended to be a slight on the words and music of George Harrison"(because there are none present, which is why the cd isn't called "Black America sings The Beatles"). George gets the Scorsese documentary later this year, he can do without a cover compilation.

Given that John and Paul both loved and were hugely influenced by black American singers and songwriters when learning their trade as teenagers, the fact their own songs later were enthusiastically covered by black singers, sometimes even the very ones who inspired them, is a great example of transatlantic to and thro. Most of the interpretations on the cd boast amazing vocal performances; I'm not always keen on the intrumental arrangements, but there is no doubt none of the examples are just lazy copies of the originals, au contraire, each of the singers and groups tried to make the songs their own. This sometimes can be a revelation, as when Fats Domino sings Everybody Has Something To Hide (Except Me and My Monkey), which in the original version on the White Album is aggressive heroin-fueled John Lennon paranoia turned to the max, but as sung by Fats is just pure joie de vivre. To coin another 60s phrase, dig it. (And I never liked that song before.) Or when Mary Wells (not just the first black but one of the very first American artists to cover the Beatles) sings Please Please Me, gender pronouns changed, so what what used to be youthful tongue-in-cheek male exuberance suddenly is a confident woman telling her lover he'd better get more sophisticated in bed. On the other hand, it can also go over the top - Gene Chandler's version of Eleanor Rigby is even more bleak than the original because it's stripped of any of the melodic beauty and just cuts, cuts, cuts. (As with everything, any opinion is personal and thus subjective; your mileage may differ.) Or: Linda Jones delivers a stand-out, soaring vocal on Yesterday but the problem for me there is that Yesterday is a song where less is more and which should be delivered understated rather than going for orchestra (note: the famous combination of strings and guitar in the original actually is limited to a quartet and one guitar, which is all the difference between George Martin and Phil Spector producing) and operatic vocals.

Sometimes the interpretation makes you feel the difference neither as a revelation nor as a lessening but simply as a great alternate interpretation, as with Roy Redmond singing Good Day Sunshine; the slowed down tempo and his voice associate a long hot day in the American South rather than a brisk British breeze which is the impression the original gives me. And the Caribbean accent in R.B.Greaves' voice when he sings Paperback Writer (a song with a lot of very British allusions, from the Daily Mail to a man named Lear, not to mention the whole "Dear Sir or Madam" address) give the spoof/satire of the song a different kind of boost. And whether you see We can work it out like John did ("In We Can Work It Out, Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, 'We can work it out / We can work it out'—real optimistic, y'know, and me, impatient: 'Life is very short, and there's no time / For fussing and fighting, my friend.') or notice that actually the Paul passages aren't optimistic, they're rather bossy and firm on the point that the singer is right and the other person is wrong, and unwillingness to budge from that point and interpret the song as Poppy Z. Brite did instead ("'We can work it out' is a love song to a hot-tempered friend, but it's also a warning to cut the crap if the relationship is to continue. We can get it straight or say goodnight. I love you dearly, but quit fucking with me. Beneath his benign nature and his pretty face Paul has a core of steel. John needed that"), the effect when instead of a duet you have the song sung by a single voice, and a female one instead of two males, as is the case here with Maxine Brown singing, is startling. It becomes far more a wooing attempt to convince the other person instead of an argument. And Al Green turning I want to hold your hand, aka the very song that die hard Rolling Stones fans keep quoting as an example of the early Beatles being asexual (conveniently ignoring the even earlier I Saw Her Standing There and Please Please Me, and of course that little ditty J & P wrote for their heroes) into what the leaflet calls "a steaming hunk of Memphis funk" is pretty amazing.

Speaking of the footnotes in the leaflet of the cd, they are generally well written and informative, and occasionally make me smile, as when they're talking about Little Richard's version of I Saw Her Standing There (other than I'm Down undoubtedly the most L.R.-esque song Paul McCartney ever wrote): McCartney wears his admiration for Little Richard like a favourite shirt, and is always happy to admit that the group nicked their falsetto 'ooooooooooh's from the Georgia Peach (who had, in turn, appropriated them from one of his few idols, the gospel singer Marion Williams). Because this is music and not gossip, the tale of Ringo being chased by Little Richard is missing, but we do get the photo of four fanboys (if you're into Doctor Who, think David Tennant in the presence of Lis Sladen) using the opportunity when they're opening for their hero in Hamburg to get their picture taken with him:



(Note Ringo only just shaved his pre-Beatles beard, combed his hairs forward but hasn't dyed yet his white streak. This was just after they fired Pete Best and hired him.)

However, at one point the leaflet contains a true clunker, to wit, when it gets to cover songs from the White Album (Back in the USSR as done by Chubby Checker, Blackbird as done by Billy Preston, Rocky Raccoon as done by The Moments, Everybody's got something to hide (except for me and my monkey) as done by Fats Domino and Why don't we do it on the road as done by Lowell Fuson) and confidently states that all of those were "predominantly or completely composed by McCartney". Four of them were, my friend, but Everybody's got something to hide is pure Lennon. Brush up your Ian McDonald.

Speaking of the John side of the Lennon/McCartney force, Chairmen of the Board manage to make Come Together sound positively sinister, which is intriguing. Otoh Donald Height's take on Don't let me Down to me is missing the passion of the original, but then Don't Let Me Down is one of my favourite John vocals, so admittedly it's hard to match. However, as mentioned before, the album concludes on a triumphant note, because frankly, who or what can top Aretha? I mean:



***


Lastly, on a related note of nice things you find on the internet: this very charming and endearing article in which the author, apropos a recent Paul McCartney concert, muses about musical fantasies and father figures.

Fandom: I'm so jaded observations of the day:

1.) I watched and enjoyed Thor, and watching it, I knew already that this version of Loki was going to prove fangirl catnip, resulting in cries of woobie! and mass adoption, complete with Loki/everyone pairings. So colour me completely unsurprised that this is exactly what happened. (What did me surprise me a little is that this includes lots of Loki/Sif, because "hey, I like X who is nifty, and Y who is nifty, and never mind they didn't have much screen interaction, they should totally shag!" is more likely to happen on the slash side of the force - case in point: those two guys from Inception whose names I can't even remember anymore -, so hooray for equality there.) I think in ye olde days of my personal fandom I probably would have gone the same way, but in my current mood I'm more inclined to be cynical and demand an equally cynically minded vidder vid woobies from several fandoms - Loki, Lex, maybe Lindsay from Angel to the tune of "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, pleaaaaase don't let me be so misunderstood". In lack of that, I'm tempted to rewatch some of Being Human season 3, or, as I personally subtitle it, Revenge on the Woobies.

2.) Speaking of equality: the way Ursula from The Borgias immediately became the most hated character of the show in fandom was a good demonstration that vilification and bashing of a female character for the perceived sin of coming between a popular couple works with het couples as well as slash couples. Complete with bashing of the actress for her perceived lack of prettiness. I mean, I knew that, of course, but I find it especially annoying in my shiny new fandom because the source text has been ever so good to avoid pitching women against each other. Bah.

Fandom: I'm so gleeful observations of the day:

1.) Yesterday andraste posted a link to a new clip from X-Men: First Class, which made me even happier on the Mystique and Xavier front, today I find yet more goodness in that regard. The First Class scene, for those of you not reading Andraste's journal:



I love the linked exchange between the adult versions and Erik as well and yet again am so glad about this idea of making little Raven and Charles each other's first other mutants, as well as giving them a relationship in their own right before either establishes one with Erik. As I said to artaxastra, borrowing a comparison to another fandom, if before Mystique was Saavik as far as we knew, now she's Leonard McCoy. Not that Saavik isn't a great character in her own right, but McCoy simply has another status in the narrative. (Also, the dialogue which [Bad username or unknown identity: Quigonejinn"] quotes in the post I linked above sounds like OT3 bait. I'm trying to resist. Actually, no, scratch that, I don't.)

2.) So, once upon a time (1965, to be precise), David Bailey, star photographer in 60s London, famous enough to be an icon in his own right (and to be the model of the photographer from Blow Up), was supposed to photograph the 50 most influential people in England. Bailey included himself in this as well as all five Rolling Stones but only wanted John Lennon of the Beatles, on the ground of considering them a silly boy band (though he later admitted he liked the late music from the White Album onwards), being a die hard Stones fan, and according to rumour being somewhat interested in John. John insisted on bringing Paul along for the sessions, which means we have the iconic moptop era Lennon/McCartney photographs from David Bailey. Who said he felt "a tension, an animosity" between them during the session and asked them to look away from each other to convey that in photo. What tickles me every time I think of it is that the Bailey photographs convey anything but animosity to each other as published then, and every time Bailey releases yet new prints from that session where they're all over each other and can't keep to the "look away, damm it!" instruction for longer than two pictures, his statement becomes even more hilarious. Now you'd think after a few decades we know even the most rejected print from that session, but no. Due to tumblr, I saw today David B. has released even more outtakes. The animosity, it is burning, I tell you. Burning.

( Also below an lj cut to protect your innocent eyes )

So that was fun to look at. (Btw, considering Bailey was one of the people who spoke at Linda McCartney's memorial service, I assume he and Paul made up later.) I do suspect that must have been the most interesting of the scheduled photo sessions, other than the ones Astrid Kirchherr did with them in Hamburg, that is. (Linda's photos of them were snapshots which is something else again.)

1.) Camelot: watched the first two episodes. Eva Green is great as Morgan, Joseph Fiennes a good ambiguous!Merlin, but alas, the youngster they've cast as Arthur seems to be capable of only one (slightly suprised) expression. This is a problem in a show where he has lots of screentime. (See, this is where underestimated Bradley James is underestimated, because he's really good not just at the comedy stuff, which Merlin especially in ye early days used Arthur a lot for, but also in giving the impression there's a lot going on inside in the angsty scenes.) And if virtually other actor is better than your leading man and some are genuine heavy weights, the problem is even stronger. Writing-wise, well, I'm biased but I think Chris Chibnall's contributions are evident. (Am I ever glad he's not working on Torchwood season 4...) In conclusion: could be worse, could be better, didn't grab me as much as The Borgias.

2.) Via Leviathan: one of my favourite scenes from Deathly Hallows was actually filmed but didn't make the cut, which is a shame because it's really well done - Dudley saying goodbye to Harry. This in a way completed Dudley's mini arc from caricature bully via the shock Dementor experience in Order of the Phoenix to human being, and it's played just right. Also, having seen Dudley's actor as Gilly the last season of Merlin, you can doubly appreciate what good work he does:



3.) Tumblr reminded me today of one of the passages in Philipp Norman's John Lennon: The Life which I found absolutely hilarious on Philipp Norman's behalf and sad on John's, to wit: "In contrast with John and Yoko’s low-key comings and goings, Paul liked to make an entrance with Linda, usually carrying her little girl, Heather, on his shoulders. “Here comes the Royal Family,” John would mutter. Bear in mind this is actually from the book where Norman tries to be more objective. :) I don't know who his editor was, but had it been me, I'd been tempted to say: "Philipp, dear, I've seen footage of John and Yoko in the late 60s. Come to think of it, I've seen footage of John and Yoko in the 70s, too. And in 1980. When were they ever low-key? I know you have the man crush of the ages on John Lennon, but let's try to make it a little less obvious, shall we?"
Leaving aside amusement, where it gets interesting and a little sad is when you wonder who Norman's source for this contrast and compare of John & Yoko versus Paul, Linda & Heather was, because it has to be either Yoko (whom Norman interviewed extensively for the book) or, even more likely, John and his gazillion early 70s interviews. (Which are certainly full of "she (Linda) came with a ready-made family, and he always wanted the family life" type of statements.) John in general on the subject of Paul & children is a psychological minefield, from suspecting Julian would rather have Paul as a father in a 1975 interview to insisting that Hey Jude was for him, damn it, not for Julian in 1980, and in the same interview going "he (Paul) has 25 children and million records coming out, when does he have time to talk?" And now let's look at that quote again. What is the "big production" the "royal" element of the McCartneys showing up? That Paul carries Heather on his shoulders. That he gets along with Heather. The thing is, Linda wasn't the only one who came "with a ready-made family". So did Yoko. So did John. Heather, Kyoko and Julian are all exactly the same age. John and Paul in the late 60s both fall in love with women with daughters from previous marriages. And from John's pov, it must have looked as if he was being continuously outdone in the parenting department. John manages to scare Yoko's previous husband so much that Tony Cox disappears with Kyoko and Yoko does not see her daughter again during John's life time; Paul manages to get permission from Linda's previous husband to adopt Heather within a year. John has difficulties talking to Julian when they're in the same room together, let alone play with him even in the 60s but tries to explain it by the fact he missed so much of Julian's early childhood due to the Beatles being on tour all the time. Except that Paul, who sees even less of Julian (what with not being the father) during the 60s, still has no problem playing with him whenever they meet and gets adored in turn. Both Yoko and Linda get pregnant in the late 60s; Yoko has two misscarriages, Linda gives birth to one healthy child after another. Finally in 1975 John and Yoko get Sean and John makes the big gesture of giving up his career for some years so he can devote himself to raising Sean, getting the father thing right this time, but he still needs a full time Nanny for that who does the actual primary care-taking; meanwhile, Paul and Linda somehow manage three, then four children without any Nanny and with going on tour and making succesful records at the same time, and without those children ever being neglected. It's enough to make someone less neurotic and competitive than John Lennon gnash their teeth.

Incidentally: in 1998, about half a year after Linda McCartney's death, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders (who was friends with Linda) interviewed Paul; in the resulting 14 pages interview (which is mostly about Linda), the subject of raising children and how to do that if you're simultanously a rock star and one of the world's most famous people came up, and here's what he had to say:

CH: With your money and prestige you could have sent your children to any school in the world. And yet you'd drop them off and pick them up every day at the same local school -- what the Americans would call the public school -- along with the local shopkeepers, farmers, and the other people in your village. Why?

PM: We'd seen a lot of people go through the expensive schooling route with their kids, and we understood why they did it, because they wanted the best for their children -- that's normally the reason people say. But we'd seen a lot of heartache happen, when the kids would be devastated to leave, for instance, Mummy at the age of eight. Whenever we saw anything like that, Linda and I instinctively would look at each other and register the fact that that wasn't how we were going to do it.
The other thing was nannies -- and [what] put us off that was when one of our friends' kids ran to the nanny and said, "Mummy!" The kid had forgotten who the mummy was, and it shocked us. So we decided not to go that route. The nice thing was that because Linda was from money, she knew that it wasn't the be-all and end-all. She used to talk to me about a lot of loneliness she'd seen in a lot of these big houses and a lot of unpleasantness in families, because they weren't close, they weren't truthful, they weren't honest, because they didn't spend much time together.
So even though people would say, "You've got to send your son to Eton," we just said, "No way, they'll end up being like a different race from us, and we won't just won't relate to them." We decided that even if we were going on tour we'd take them with us. People thought we were mad, they used to be after us about "dragging our children around the world." But we said, "Well, they are close to us and if ever they get the flu, then we're not in Australia and they're not in England, desperately worrying." Instead, Linda would be there, with the medicine. Or I would be there to tuck them into bed. We just decided that that was more important to us. (...)
So we didn't send them to the paying schools, we did send them to the little local school. We'd moved out of London because London was getting a bit too much the fast lane. (...)

CH: Did you ever take a vacation together without the kids? Most couples, they want to get away and have a little second honeymoon. Did you ever go off on your own without them?

PM: No, we even took Heather [Linda's daughter from her first marriage] on our honeymoon. People are little surprised at that. We've met people who say, "Oh I like children, but I only like them when they get to be about three years old, when you can talk to them." Linda and I would look at each other and say, '"But don't you like them when they're little babies?" And they just gasp a little bit. I think it was just always such a mystery to us. I [come] from a very strong Liverpool family. And when Linda and I met, she was a single parent happening to get on with her life. So we just kind of pulled it together between us and just said, "Well you know, we'll just do it in a certain way." And we stuck to it. (...) And this idea that babies are only good when they're three -- when James was really little I remember sitting on the sofa with him. He's just a baby and he was sitting with me like we were grown-ups and he was just sort of gaggling and going, "Ah goo, ah goo." So I just said, "Ah goo." Like agreeing with him in his language. He looked at me like, "You speak this language?" We're sitting there for hours just "ah goo." I just mimicked him because kids mimic their parents -- but its actually a lot of fun the other way around. Then I said, "Pa, Pa, Pa," and he'd just go, "Um, hum, Pa, Pa, Pa." They see you like using their words and it's oddly so exciting. From the second they were born to this day, I think you learn so much off kids -- if you're willing to be open and you don't close your mind and say, "Oh, I know how to be a parent." I always said to Lin that being a parent is the greatest ad-lib you're ever involved in. You make it up as you go along, you have no idea what the script is, you have no idea how these kids are going to turn out but if you're just with them a bit and listen to them a bit and let them talk to you instead of talking to them all the time, then natural things occur a bit more easily. We don't give them anything near the amount of credit they should have. They teach you in the end.

Considering those children are well into their 30s (or, in Heather's case, 40s) by now, without any of the usual celebrity kid episodes (i.e. getting into rehab by the time they're teens, bashing it out with photographers, writing tell-all Daddy Dearest or Mummy Dearest stories, etc.) and never complained about more than dad's annoying habit of tinkering on his guitar when everyone wanted to watch tv and Mum's striped socks, I'd say the method worked. This month there was a lovely article by Stella and Mary McCartney about their mother and her photography (on the occasion of another collection of her photographs coming out) in Harper's, and their childhood memories present the other side of the above mentioned quotes. It's a good one. The new Linda photos printed in advance are great, too, btw; below the cut are some of John, and of McCartneys in various combinations.

( Demonstration of why dismissing Linda's photography gets me mad )

Two more Elizabeth Taylor related quotes, one from this obituary:

She was a lovely actress and a better star. She embodied the excesses of Hollywood and she transcended them. In the end, the genius of her career was that she gave the world everything it wanted from a glamorous star, the excitement and drama, the diamonds and gossip, and she did it by refusing to become fame’s martyr.

And, somewhat apropos, here's a description of Elizabeth Taylor in the mid 70s meeting John Lennon, Elton John and David Bowie (whom she introduced to Lennon, with musical results). This could have gone quite wrong (what with John's nasty habit of putting people on pedestals and then kicking the pedestals away when the reality of them did not meet his impossibly high expectations), but it went splendidly. She was the queen, and he was her admiring subject. (Also I am amused that of the three rock stars present, it was Bowie whom she whisked away for a private audience. Good choice, Elizabeth.) John's recapitulating statement on her at the end of this excerpt from his girlfriend May Pang's memoirs, in a way, is the same thing the obituary quoted above says.


John was every excited. "I've never met Elizabeth," he said. "I'm dyin' to go."
The party took place in a lavish Beverly Hills mansion, and there was a large buffet table and a bar. John and I stood in one corner, searching for stars we had never seen in person before. While we looked over the crowd, everyone was busy staring at us. Even though John always liked to meet really famous people, he was still the most famous person in the room. We slowly made our way through the house, chatting with whoever approached us.
"Where's Elizabeth?" John asked. "I want to see Elizabeth."
Forty minutes after we arrived, Elizabeth Taylor sailed into the room. The party stopped dead while everyone turned to stare at her. There was a star! I was surprsed to see how small she was, because everything about her was larger than life. Her hair was teased up in an elaborate hairdo that towered over her head. Her extraordinary violet eyes were lined in thick beads ov violet eyeshadow. She made no concession to her weight and she was costumed in a paneled paisley dress, each panel in a different shade of pink. Around her neck she wore one huge diamond surrounded by a cluster of emeralds. She was dazzling.
Like teenage boys, John and Elton nervously approached her. She beamed when she saw them. "Oh," she said, "I'm so pleased to meet you." John and Elton responded to her genuine delight. They both did their best to amuse her. She laughed merrily at their lines and threw in a number of her own.
When David Bowie arrived, she seized his arm: "David, do you know John?"
"No, but I've always wanted to meet him." Bowie flashed his bright smile at John. There was a look of genuine admiration in his eyes. John, who found Bowie's music fascinating, was very cordial. David had great charm and was also funny. The dialogue began to flow even more quickly.
The group finally broke up, and David announced: "I've got to go. I've got to go." He turned to leave. Later in the evening we found him in deep conversation with Elizabeth Taylor on a couch in a deserted room at the back of the house. John and I stared at them. The screen goddess and the porcelain-faced, orange-haired rock star made a startling-looking couple. Yet, sitting there, gazing into each other's eyes, they seemed to be long-lost friends, sharing their most intimate secrets. "May, John, join us," Elizabeth called out when she spotted us, and we sat down beside them. In a few minutes all of the remaining guests had crowded into the little back room and once again we were surrounded by onlookers.
On the way home John and I talked about how much we had liked Elizabeth Taylor. "She's not rock'n roll," John said. "She's not like us. We get crazy as we get older. She's been trained to deal with things."

****

Being Human fanfic rec: The Opposite of Death, a coda to the s3 finale, near impossible to describe without spoilers. Very much about the three people I wanted to read about, though.


BTVS and AtS vid rec: Some Peace. Buffy, Angel, Darla, Willow, Spike, Faith, Wes, Gunn, Fred, Connor. My Jossverse love is strong, and the vid reminds me why.

Another minor "Eureka!" moment of more limited interest, on a note of "the things you learn via YouTube...": to my surprise, I saw that there are actually several cover versions of Paul McCartney's 1971 song Dear Boy (from his second solo album, Ram) around, the most prominent one being by Death Cab For Cutie (see below) from 2009. This startled me, because while Dear Boy isn't a bad song, I can think of a dozen solo Paul songs more attractive for cover versions. In fact, I hadn't been aware Dear Boy was known at all outside of the biographical context, because it's one of the songs John Lennon insisted was about him, from the musical breakup aftermath of 1971, gory details here . So I wondered: why this song, various bands? (Other than: like many a McCartney song, lesser or major, it's an ear worm.)

And then it hit me. I guess thinking about the musical 70s brought it on. Because no matter whether you believe John or Paul (who said the song wasn't about John, it was about Linda's ex husband, of whom she'd gotten divorced in 1965, two years before she met Paul), this is a (bratty, if you ask me) song about a clueless ex partner who didn't know a good thing when he had it, rubbing it in that the cluelessly dumped party is now fine and happy, thanks a lot, with their new life and companion. (Basically, what Paul claims it means is "your loss, now I'm with her", and what John claims it means is "your loss, now I'm with her".) Now, which incredibly popular anthem of the 1970s does this description remind me of, thought I? I Will Survive, of course.

...yeah. Dear Boy is Paul doing a Gloria Gaynor seven years earlier. Obviously. This realisation makes me alternatively facepalm and grin. No wonder one of the cover versions linked above is by a female group. (Before you ask, I Will Survive is the better song, undisputedly.) Like I said, not the best he can do, but the combination of jaunty tune and taunting lyrics speaks to the smarting ex in all of us. I'm back to facepalming and grinning again.



P.S. But while most smarting exes have to live with the suspicion the clueless partner in question doesn't much care we moved on as well, and it's not known what (if anything) the former Mr. Linda, Mel See, thought about the song, you can always rely on John Lennon to reveal to you and the general public you've hit a sore spot: "I heard Paul's messages in Ram - yes there are dear reader! (...) I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can't all be hearing things!" (Crawdaddy magazine).

General outburst of annoyance, nothing new, I just was reminded of it again: there ought to be a law against the overuse of nicknames (especially not canonical ones) and cutesy name forms in general, especially in shipper fanfiction. I mean, okay, there are characters for whom (creative!) nickname use is a core character trait - say, Lorne on Angel, or Q on TNG, or Sawyer on Lost. But there are any number of characters in any number of fandoms who just never go for "-y" or "-ie" forms of their names - Kirk is "Jim", he's not Jimmie, McCoy is "Bones", and I could also see people not Kirk calling him Len or Leonard, but would draw the line at "Lenny". (Disclaimer: I actually haven't seen any use of "Lenny", I'm just using Star Trek names because they're so well known.)

I guess the idea is to convey intimacy, but to me, it is just the opposite, it makes the story feel fake and breaks my suspension of disbelief. Also, moderation and contrast with the nickname use are key, imo. River Song's Hello, Sweetie on Doctor Who is great because a) nobody else we've seen in the last 40 years calls the Doctor that, and b) River herself otherwise is very much the unsentimental type. Which makes the use of "sweetie" both funny and a statement about the relationship, in a teasing way. (As always, personal opinion, I know some people grind their teeth every thime the phrase comes up.) If everyone else constantly used endearments as a form of adress towards the Doctor, or if he ran around calling people "Sweetie" himself all the time, it wouldn't work the same way. So, to get back to fanfiction - a story in which two people who in their canon usually address each other by the regular form of their first names, have done so for years, with one of them in a particularly close moment (and/or a moment where said character is making fun of the other character) - using an -ie form or something similar once - that works. But if we're suddenly hearing Bobsie and Adamcakes all over the place in every single sentence, and the speakers are decidedly not Lorne, I just throw my hands up in frustration.

In less frustrating news, Maria Hill will be in the Avengers movie, likely played by Cobie Smulders, whom I don't know but who certainly looks like a mature woman and not a girl on the photo, which pleases me. As does the fact Maria Hill is a character, not just because previously the only female character in the line up was Black Widow (nothing against Natasha, she's great) but because Maria Hill had terrific development in the comics these last three years, AND because I suspect that Joss, who can't very well use his self-created tough morally ambiguous female Marvelverse agent (because in the movieverse there are no aliens, and Abigail Brand's job is dealing with same, plus she's half of one), will write her in a similar way to Brand. (BTW, the article writer could do with some update on Maria Hill, he's still ending her summary with Civil War.)

Also, because I'm a sap and always need to remind myself of the good parts after having dwelled on the bad regarding what or whomever I'm fannish about, I've come to the conclusion that 1975 is the golden year for solo John Lennon interviews. He doesn't have a score to settle as in 1970 and thereabouts. He doesn't have to prove he's still cool as in 1980. He doesn't even have a record to sell. Behold, 1975 John, immediately post-Long Weekend, still with the good feelings generated by same re: old bandmates and also reunited with his wife who now is pregnant not only sounds happy but manages to talk about the dreaded "reunion" word with affection and some audience teasing instead of biting anyone's head of. The interview also has him questioned about the gazillion American compilations of Beatles albums, which for some reasons were sometimes quite different from the original British releases, the infamous "Butcher" album cover shot, mono versus stereo releases, hanging out with Paul and Ringo, and George's new record label. (Oh, and he says that Magical Mystery Tour was one of his favourite albums. If I had heard this interview before compiling my grand collection of contradictory John quotes last year, I could have paired that statement with a 1970 anti MMT-outburst, but never mind. Stay contradictory, John, it's fun.) Check out the interview here.

Lastly, going back even further, found on tumblr and based on 1964 interviews promoting A Hard Day's Night: