| Author | Message | ||
     Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.244.98 |
Des, this is for you... Just wanted to bring to your attention a truly brilliant work of art that can be satisfyingly interpreted if you keep the author’s personal circumstances and apparent creative intentions firmly in mind, but which without that awareness is merely amusing nonsense. In other words, an example that smashes the theory of intentional fallacy to brick-dust. I assume you’re familiar with the song ‘Come Together’, which John Lennon wrote for the Beatles in 1969. It’s generally accepted that the song characterises the four Beatles in order, ending with Paul McCartney. It’s certainly very difficult to make any sense of the lyrics without that assumption. Close listening suggests that the last two verses, which reference John and then Paul, were probably written first as they are the most coherent and purposeful. I would go further and suggest that the painful sharpness of the last verse suggests that Lennon started with that, with the attack on McCartney, but added the penultimate verse to balance it with self-criticism so that the band would be willing to record it. He then added the first and second verses so that the manifest meaning of the song would be ‘We all need to understand each other’, thus burying its original and finally latent meaning, which was ‘I hate McCartney’. The first and second verses appear vague and oblique – probably because they were not written to say anything. Look at the last two lines of the penultimate verse: Got legs down below his knees Hold you in his arms, yeah, you can feel his disease …which is a blend of defensiveness (‘I may kneel but I get up and walk away’) and self-critical referencing of Lennon’s emotional and drink/drug problems. Now look at the last two lines of the final verse: He say one and one and one is three Got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see …which is a brutally sarcastic comment on McCartney’s’s pop star persona, the way he tried to reach out to as many people as possible but had nothing much to say to anyone. In a recorded concert from 1969, Lennon delivered the repeated ‘one’ in a drone clearly intended to suggest vacuous and tedious monotony. The point I’m making here is that the song’s brilliance can only be appreciated if the personal attitude and intentions of the songwriter are well understood. Without that, it merely sounds like random nonsense. With a great bass riff however. P.S. As this is a critical article (however short and daft) I think the quotes are fair usage. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.59.115.60 |
Interesting reading, Joel (even if not aimed at me). Wasn't the last time Lennon attacked McCartney in song, either, although Come Together is a little more oblique than How Do You Sleep? | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
I agree with the assertion about the final verse. Not so sure about what goes on in the penultimate verse, though. For some great lyrics about the dissolution of the Beatles, see King Crimson's "Happy Family" off the Lizard album: Happy family, one hand clap, four went by and none come back. Brother Judas, ash and sack, swallowed aphrodisiac. Rufus, Silas, Jonah too sang, "We'll blow our own canoes," Poked a finger in the zoo, punctured all the ballyhoo Whipped the world and beat the clock, wound up with their share of stock. Silver Rolls from golden rock, shaken by a knock, knock, knock. Happy family, wave that grin, what goes round must surely spin; Cheesecake, mousetrap, Grip-Pipe-Thynne cried out, "We're not Rin Tin Tin." Uncle Rufus grew his nose, threw away his circus clothes Cousin Silas grew a beard, drew another flask of weird Nasty Jonah grew a wife, Judas drew his pruning knife. Happy family one hand clap, four went on but none came back Happy family, pale applause, each to his revolving doors. Silas searching, Rufus neat, Jonah caustic, Jude so sweet. Let their sergeant mirror spin if we lose the barbers win; Happy family one hand clap, four went on but none came back I'm particularly fond of the line "If we lose, the barbers win"  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.208.21 |
Hubert, on reflection I think 'Got legs down below his knees' should probably be read as meaning 'I may be a mystic but I think for myself'. While 'you can feel his disease' is most likely a very open-ended admission of not being well mentally. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.19.134 |
I grew up with the Beatles (I was 14 in 1962) - and things work only if they work for you. Satire is a form of art that trenscends the Intentional Fallacy to some extent - like TW3. Everything else in Art and Literature doesn't transcend the Intentional Fallacy or what Aesthetics is all about (ie Aesthetics is not about satire although you can satirise Aesthetics as you have just done) and thus, in any general rules, anyone can point to exceptions. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.19.134 |
In other words, when I talk the talk I talk AUTUMN MYTH - I don't talk Calypsos. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
I thought the line actually reads "Hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease." (I've also seen "Hold you in his arms till you can feel his disease.") The meaning, then, could be something along the lines of "If you walk in his shoes (i.e. walk into his trap) you'll be afflicted by his views. (And you wouldn't want that)" | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.211.197 |
Fair enough, Des. The King Crimson lyric is clever stuff, but to me it rather smacks of schadenfreude. Lesser talents often try to stake out their place by mocking greater talents, in music as in literature. Still, it's less annoying than 'American Pie', where Don McLean seems to be arguing, with no hint of irony, that the Beatles and the Stones distracted American youth from protesting against the Vietnam War and thereby ruined the sixties. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.211.197 |
Hubert – that's good, I like that. Watch Lennon's lips in the available film clips: he definitely sings 'his arms, yeah'. Doesn't undermine your interpretation. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
Well, as Lennon himself sings: "Here's another clue for you all: the walrus was Paul."  About "American pie": now there's a song that tries so hard it falls flat on its face. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.155.19.134 |
Regarding the Intentional fallacy - my latest Real-Time Review is of King's The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands. In recent episodes, I've not reviewed from my own point of view or what I think is King's point of view when writing it or what I think the general reader's point of view is or TS Eliot's point of view from the point of view of his poem 'The Waste Land' but I have done it from the point of view of a character within the story: yes, a literary review by a character from inside the plot, one named OY (I?)= a creature that is also referred to as a billy-bumbler. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.184.78 |
So why didn't Lennon just sing, "If you walk in his shoes you'll be afflicted by his views. (And you wouldn't want that)." Honestly, these artists . . . | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
 I hadn't realized there was an inherent rhyme! Fits in nicely with the rest of the song, too. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.184.78 |
Seriously, tho, I often hear Lennon described as the Beatle with the guts. But all his attacks on weedy McCartney are hidden in awkward allusions and poetic code. I mean, how many guts does it take to tell ya weedy, lightweight mate he's a dick? Guts? My arse! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
Why does everyone hate Macca so much? I can understand people not liking Ono because her presence precipitated the rupture, but I can't believe Lennon and McCartney truly became enemies. When he was with the Beatles Lennon was just as much a star as McCartney, wasn't he? That huge mansion you see him inhabiting in Imagine was paid for with Beatles royalties. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.199.132 |
I like Macca's music! According to him John said he wished he could write like him sometimes. I used to think I preferred Lennon but found myself rating MaC's as the ones that moved me the most. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.219 |
I saw Paul on the telly a couple of years ago, where he basically showed an audience how he puts his music together. Apart from the usual guitar, piano and drums he had brought a mellotron and theramin, and experimented a lot with the (ancient) mixing console, tape loops and backward tapes he put together on the spot. Incredibly, he concocted a believable composition there and then in a matter of minutes. It sounded entirely like the Beatles. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.14.243 |
Why does everyone hate Macca so much? I didn't know they did. The music press here still love him, and he has a huge audience. I think it's been more 'cool' to prefer Lennon for many a year, but that's nonsense. McCartney at his best was (and quite possibly still is) a superb writer, and as I point out to anyone I can corner, the remastered CDs from late 2009 make it clearer than ever that he's an excellent bass player* too. *note to gcw - I refuse to say 'bassist'! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.181.14.243 |
Mind you, his hair's been a very unconvincing brown for a few too many years now. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.213.180 |
The new McCartney album is great. A song called 'House of Wax' is immense. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.174.136 |
There's a great story by Iain R. McLeod, 'Snodgrass', set in an alternate history where Lennon walked out of the Beatles in 1962 and, as a result, was still alive in 1992 but was an embittered drifter with no career. While the McCartney-led Beatles had become a minor pop group like many others from the early sixties – 30 years on, sentimentally remembered for their looks and love songs by a wholly middle-aged audience. |