Maxwell's Silver Hammer

garmachi

says...

That was fun to watch. Just curious, why the "dark" tag?

KnivesOut

says...

>> ^garmachi:
That was fun to watch. Just curious, why the "dark" tag?

Maybe my sarcasm meter is on the fritz, but don't you think a song about murdering people with a hammer kind of qualifies as dark?

garmachi

says...

Now that you mention it...

I was actually so focused on how well they were getting along and enjoying the songwriting process that it never occurred to me to take the lyrics into account. Time to dust off the Beatles MP3s!

ctrlaltbleach

says...

Not so sure they were getting along.

Taken from Wiki:
In the film Let It Be, during the Twickenham sessions in January 1969, McCartney attempts to teach the song to the rest of the band,[1] who are clearly less than enthusiastic. McCartney can be heard sniggering at 1:21 as he sings the line "... writing fifty times I must not be so ..." on the studio recording. This is sometimes rumoured to be because as McCartney sang the line "so he waits behind," Lennon mooned McCartney from the control room.

>> ^garmachi:
Now that you mention it...
I was actually so focused on how well they were getting along and enjoying the songwriting process that it never occurred to me to take the lyrics into account. Time to dust off the Beatles MP3s!

garmachi

says...

By no means do I claim to be a Beatles expert, but here I go:

Two summers ago, I decided, having never really payed attention to the Fab Four before, to immerse myself in "The Beatles Experience." My plan for this was to simulate traveling back in time and reliving their career starting from their surprising burst of popularity all the way to their painful demise. To do this, I acquired their first US release (since, after all, I am a US citizen...) "Please Please Me." I listened to it until I got sick of it. (This took a very long time!) I then acquired their second release, and so on, and listened intently, repeating this process all the way to their end.

I found myself eagerly anticipating the next release, aching for new music while simultaneously reveling in the genius of each new acquisition. Everything they did seemed to completely surpass everything else they had previously done. Surprise after surprise after surprise. The whole exercise took nearly a year, and I can only imagine the yearning and mania which must have accompanied experiencing the whole thing in real time.

Important to note: I decided to exclude any books, interviews, retrospectives, documentaries, etc, and only listen to the music. I had heard various stories of their demise, and decided to leave out all print/visual/other media and let their music tell me the story. I didn't even read the liner notes or song credits. Just the music.

This was an interesting experiment for me, because it became apparent to me very early on that John and Paul had strikingly different musical philosophies and approaches. It was a miracle that they stayed together as long as they did. Toward the end it became painfully obvious that each new album was a struggle to contain two galactic sized musical geniuses at odds. A clear favorite emerged for me, as I'm sure did for millions of fans, and I'll reserve my opinion for some other discussion. For now, the important thing is, it's amazing that they stayed together as long as they did.

I can't listen to Let It Be. All I hear in this album is the fighting, the struggle to express differing styles and it actually makes me sad. When I see them all in the studio gelling perfectly for a common goal despite the differences which took years to ferment, I'm amazed. Even more amazing is that despite all of the opposing forces they exerted, they still managed to transcend and make beautiful music, sad as it was at the end.