I finally finished that 992-page monolith, so I just wanted to provoke some basic discussion about things I’ve realized or reconsidered about the band.
John Lennon was a dick! Man, I really have a hard time feeling the respectful awe that I’ve always felt for him after reading about his overboard drug use and extreme mistreatment of his first wife, Cynthia, and the neglect of their son, Julian. Especially after Lennon’s own father disappeared, it’s like he should have known better, but he just perpetuated the cycle.
The other three guys are equally guilty of allowing Yoko to “break up the band” by not stepping in and making a fuss out of her appearances in the studio. The book goes on and on at length about how disruptive and offensive her presence was to them, but they still allowed her to be there! They should have drawn a line in the sand the very first time she showed up.
“Lovely Linda” was kind of a skank! Those two deserved each other. Paul should have stayed with Jane Asher.
I’ve always heard how Brian Epstein mismanaged the band’s finances, but I just figured that it was sour grapes because he probably made a few slight accounting errors that resulted in not quite as much money being made as could have been. Holy Shit. :eek: :eek: :eek:
Magic Alex! God, I could read an entire book about that huckster. Completely hilarious and amazing side-story to the main saga.
I still don’t understand the sudden 180 with the Maharishi; it’s like one day they were totally cool with him, and then after a slight accusation of “some impropriety,” they’re fleeing the camp and John’s writing “Sexy Sadie” about him. Huh? Did I miss the paragraph where he raped a kitten in front of everyone?
The story for years was that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made sexual advances on one or more of the young ladies in the group. Mia Farrow was suggested to be one of those ladies. Later, John, Paul and George (Ringo had previously left Rishikesh) denied that was the cause of the rift (and according to Wikipedia Mia was ambiguous about the alleged incident); but it’s hard to understand the abruptness of their disenchantment with MMY without imagining some sort of traumatic twist.
If it’s true it shows the double standards and bigotry of the four lower-class lads from Liverpool: it’s ok for them to screw anything that moves, but a brown man touching a white girl was unthinkable to them.
Stories vary on whether the supposedly celibate Maharishi made a pass at an unnamed woman in the Beatles’ entourage but the falling out probably had more to do with his increasingly aggressive money grubbing (he allegedly told them that he expected them to give him 20-25% of their income in a Swiss bank account) and use of the Beatles’ name for self promotion than for the reported sexual advance. The latter could have been a last straw, though, the last in a series of incidents which had caused the group to become increasingly disenchanted with the Maharishi and their intial false impressions of him as a specially enlightened individual.
The race angle is something I’ve never heard before, but I would note that John Lennon married a Japanese woman.
Word on Lennon being a dick much of the time, especially in his younger years. He had a sadistic streak that appears to have come out a lot when he was drunk. I do think he had a conscience about it though and actually made an effort to become a better person. He was extraordinarily open minded, willing to listen to other points of view, intellectually curious and capable of empathy and remorse.
I thought Spitz’s descriptions of their formative years was very illuminating. In particular, I think, he got accross their working class roots and attitudes which included a lot of sexism and homophobia, but I was also fascinated by the extraordinary artistic, collaborative bond that John and Paul had in those years.
No real arguments with your observations, **VC03 **- overall, did you like the book? You came to read it after that previous thread where a few of us pointed to it for its thoroughness and readability…
As for all the observations - I really came away with the feeling that everybody was in WAAAAAYYYYYYY over their heads - these were middle-to-lower-middle class kids who wanted to play rock and didn’t fully grasp that they were the focal point for a global shift in culture, music, etc…and Epstein was a preening twit who had barely a clue when it comes to business other than kinda not screwing up taking over a part of his family’s business - and he had a thing for the boys in the Beatles. But once they took off, he was played by everyone around him.
As for John, yep he was a dick - he’s my fave, but man, what a dick - I humor/comfort myself with the arc he continued on up to his death, where he seems to have grown up and learned a lot. As for Yoko - well, I think of it this way: John was the leader of the gang - period. That has nothing to do with talent: Paul was far more talented musically (except as songwriters, where they were a balanced pair) and George came into his own - but both kowtowed to John. How different is that from any teenage gang - where a kid is the leader and everyone follows? Well, by the time the Beatles got into their 20’s, they kinda didn’t need to grow up - they were a phenomenon and insulated from so much, that they kept that basic teen gang dynamic and John was still the leader. When I think of it that way, it is not too hard to imagine a big teen leader making stupic demands of his boys and them going along - jeez, I sure did that when I was a teen and desperate for the approval of the cool kids - it took a while for me to realize that what they were doing was NOT okay…