September 11, 2018

"Who knows who broke up the Beatles?" said Howard Stern and Paul McCartney said "I do."

"John. There was a meeting where John came in and said ‘hey guys I am leaving the group.' He had found Yoko and John loved strong women. His mother was a strong woman, his aunty who brought him up was a strong woman but, bless her, his first wife wasn’t a strong woman."



ALSO: Paul talks about his experience with group masturbation and his distaste for orgies.
"See, this is my experience, because I’m just not into orgies. I don’t want anyone else there, personally. It ruins it! I would think—I’ve never actually done it. Didn’t appeal to me, the idea.”

41 comments:

n.n said...

Strong woman. Strong aunty. Equal in rights and complementary in Nature.

Mr. Majestyk said...

It's too bad they couldn't find a way to stay together.

eddie willers said...

It's too bad they couldn't find a way to stay together.

I'm not so sure. They'll never be equaled because the death of John Lennon meant no lousy new songs or creaking world tours. They will remain on top forever.

To an Athlete Dying Young
By A. E. Housman


The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

chickelit said...

McCartney let his grey wisdom come through. Good on him.

mockturtle said...

"Who cares who broke up the Beatles" FIFY.

gilbar said...

i'd always assumed it was John hating Linda that broke up the band
I figured Yoko was a symptom not a cause

Mr. Majestyk said...

They still had plenty of creativity among (amongst?) them in the 70s. I think it would have all come out better if they had stayed together on good terms. But, of course, we'll never know.

Drago said...

Donald J Trump.

mccullough said...

“John liked strong women” is a diplomatic way of saying John was a pussy.

tim in vermont said...

My vote goes with the "They had their time and made a lot of great music and went out on top, isn't that great?" category.

Do we really need a Beatles Residence in Las Vegas? Branson, Mo?

robother said...

So it was Yoko, like we always thought.

Mary Beth said...

So it was Yoko, like we always thought.

Well, Paul's not going to blame Linda.

tcrosse said...

From National Lampoon Radio Dinner:
Give Ireland back to the Irish
Give Lappland back to the Lapps
Give China back to the Chinese
Give Yoko back to the Japs.

PM said...

That's quite a ranging conversation.

AustinRoth said...

It was not Yoko, not directly. Put the blame, if there really needs to be blame, where it belongs - on John. Paul certainly does.

And I agree, it was probably for the best they went their separate ways. We may not think of highly of the Beatles today if they had spent the next decades putting out lesser music and/or incessant touring.

readering said...

Lots of bands break up. But of course there is only one Beatles. Was devastated at the time but I didn't really know much about band breakups then.

Ralph L said...

Does it still count as a circle jerk if the lights are out?
Asking for some friends.

William said...

Who would have thought that it would have been The Rolling Stones who would be able to hold it together for fifty years.

stephen cooper said...

Each of the guys in the Beatles deserved a chance at being their own artist.

Lennon really needed a chance not to "be a Beatle" but to be the good father he eventually was to Sean - that was was more important than being part of a "band", and if he were still a "Beatle", he would not have had the time it took to be a good dad to Sean. The awful thing, of course, is that some idiot murderer took away the rest of John's life.

Eventually - sometimes it takes a few years - nobody gives a fuck about bands except the people in the band, and even they eventually do not give a fuck, when they realize how much being in the band might have taken away from their chance to be a creative artist in their own write, to be a good dad with plenty of time for his family instead of his band, or just simply a person who is more than a member of a band, but a person who has friends and self-respect and who helps out other people.

I am not a fan of popular music, as such, unless it is really really good - like Bix or Louis at their best - but even if I were a fan of popular music, I would have wanted Paul and John and Ringo and even George to have their shot at being their own artists.

And, for the record, every single one of those guys wrote a few songs post-Beatles that are, in my opinion, better than anything they wrote as a Beatle.

Final thought: I wonder what Paul McCartney thinks of all the times Howard Stern has mocked and used and humiliated poor women who came on his show for a few bucks? The guy who wrote "all you need is love" must have a few thoughts about sucking up to the guy who used so many young women in a mean and humiliating way. Or maybe he just doesn't care. He is famous and the women Stern humiliated are obscure.

PJ said...

I'm with Mr. Majestyk. It is only speculation to say that John and Paul might have written/recorded a bunch of bad songs if they had stayed together. It is a fact that they wrote/recorded a bunch of bad songs separately.

traditionalguy said...

All glory is fleeting.

stephen cooper said...

lennon - oh my love and one or two other solo songs are way better than help and hard days night

ringo - photograph and it don't come easy are better than whatever he wrote as a Beatle

george - just sticking to the singles, what is life was as good a song as dylan ever wrote, and as much as I like here comes the sun and something, he wrote better love songs when he was older

mccartney - arguably the only Beatle who was not a better artist after the band broke up, we all get older and some of us are at our best in our 20s, but "just another day" and "admiral halsey" are, alone, more satisfying as works of art than his earlier more popular songs.

rhhardin said...

Bernie McGuirk's theory was that Chapman meant to shoot Yoko but missed.

Njall said...

Someone asked Mick Jagger at the time if he could foresee the Stones breaking up. Nah, he said. But if we do we won’t be so bitchy about it.

Pugsley the Pug said...

Paul should take the blame for John meeting Yoko. He was a part owner of the the avant-garde Indica Gallery (he wanted to show he was as “avant-garde” as John was by being a co-owner of the Indica) where those two initially met. I am guessing that he put the up the front money for the operators to open, which they then brought in Yoko for her to exhibit her “art”. John started getting testy with the group after the group came back from India in 1968 as well it seems after he got more intimate with Yoko along with deciding to divorce Cynthia. Simultaneously, Paul decided he knew the guys’ instrumental parts better than they did and argued with them on how to do their jobs - he would actually record their parts after they left the studio for the day. George had a lot of material that he wanted the group to record but was told it wasn’t good enough by John & Paul. Poor Ringo decided he had enough criticism and left the band during the recording of the White Album - Paul did the drums until they convinced Ringo to come back. It is amazing that it took another year and two additional albums and several singles before the band totally disintegrated. I have wondered if they had taken regular breaks like the Stones along with doing solo efforts long before Yoko and Linda showed up if they would have stayed together. BTW - saw Ringo perform this weekend and I think his voice is better and stronger than Paul’s is right now; ironic because he was considered the least talented singer of the four back in the day.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Njall said...

Someone asked Mick Jagger at the time if he could foresee the Stones breaking up. Nah, he said. But if we do we won’t be so bitchy about it.


I've been reading Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. A few of the essays have short bits about the Stones in them. Mick & the boys were doing their first US tour when Wolfe's career as an essayist was beginning. In 1964.
Mick Jagger was 21 years of age in 1964.
My God, they are old, old, old.

Njall said...

I treasure the music of the Beatles, but I’m glad they broke up when they did. I think their post-Beatles output was generally spotty and uneven, as some have said, and the uncertainty about what could have been is worth more than the certainty of decay, degeneration, and decline.

Also, although they are inferior to the Beatles, I enjoyed each Beatle’s solo output as a crystallization of the essence of that particular Beatle. George Harrison’s Living in the Material World is a great example of this; I treasure that album until the present day, mainly for how it consoled me back in the day, and still does honestly. I always thought John was my favorite Beatle until George died; then I realized it was always George, and that John was only a hipper answer.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I remember when the BBC was all gushy over the Stones playing a 50th anniversary show, after the Beach Boys did a a brilliant 50th anniversary *tour*, playing 50 song sets (in support of their best album since 1970). Of course they remained snakebit as a stunning (but typical) lack of communication between Brian & Mike about what would come after the tour blew up in the press.

Still they aren't exactly not together in theory. (Except for Carl & Dennis, of course: RIP)

Yancey Ward said...

Damnit!!!! Drago beat me to it!!!

Yancey Ward said...

I liked a lot of the post Beatles output by the individual members, but that synergy they had was lost to each of them, and never really replaced by any of them.

Quaestor said...

Strong is not an adjective I'd apply to Yoko Ono... Poseur, charlatan, parasite — those apply. But not strong.

Doug said...

Stephen Cooper - Lennon wrote"All you Need Is Love", not Mc Cartney.

Paul said...

Orgies? You mean those other dope heads were into that stuff to?

PM said...

Early on, Paul would return to the studio and overdub the instruments he felt were weak.

Reporter: Is Ringo the best drummer in the world?
Lennon: He's not even the best drummer in the Beatles.

The Crack Emcee said...

"[The Beatles] were the worst musicians in the world. They were no-playing motherfuckers. Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it. I remember once we were in the studio with George Martin, and Ringo had taken three hours for a four-bar thing he was trying to fix on a song. He couldn’t get it. We said, “Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.” So he did, and we called Ronnie Verrell, a jazz drummer. Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up. Ringo comes back and says, “George, can you play it back for me one more time?” So George did, and Ringo says, “That didn’t sound so bad.” And I said, “Yeah, motherfucker because it ain’t you.” Great guy, though."

- Quincy Jones

Wince said...

Paul talks about his experience with group masturbation and his distaste for orgies.

Was Paul was the founder of the #MeMe movement?

Kansas City said...

Paul seems like a nice and fair guy.

Etienne said...

Alan Klein broke up the Beatles. End of story.

But then, the Beatles had run their course.

Bilwick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bilwick said...

Re the group masturbation, I'm always surprised to find this is a more common phenomenon than I'd have expected. Back when the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) used to have comments and discussions (before, reportedly, the SJWs put the kibosh on that), I remember commenting, re the movie "Y Tu Mama Tambien," that I found it odd when the two heterosexual teenage boys masturbate together, each naked on a diving board of a swimming pool. Even though it wasn't "mutual" masturbation, I still found it odd. Maybe if a woman was involved (like in the closing scene where the final sex scene, where the "mama" gives the boys a "double header" . . . .*

Anyway, I was surprised how many guys responded to m comment with "How sheltered you are" and "Haven't you ever participated in a circle jerk?" [no]. Maybe I HAVE led a sheltered life after all.


*aka, I believe, "shotgunning."

tim in vermont said...

(Oh, yeah) Everybody had a wet dream
(Oh, yeah) Everybody saw the sun shine
(I've got a feeling) Everybody had a good year
(A feeling I can't hide) Everybody let their hair down
(Oh, no) ...


Sorry, having reading this post I broke out laughing in the car when I heard this lyric today.