As the author of Fab Four FAQ, Fab Four FAQ 2.0: The Solo
Years, The Beatles: Fifty Fabulous
Years, and Revolver: How The Beatles
Reimagined Rock ‘n’ Roll, Robert Rodriguez has emerged as one of the
foremost Beatles scholars of the twenty-first century. His obsession continues
in his podcast with fellow Fab Four freak Richard Buskin (Days in the Life: The Lost Beatles Archives; Beatles 101: The Need-to-Know Guide; Beatle Crazy! Memories and Memorabilia) and his most recent book, Solo in the 70s: John, Paul, George, Ringo
1970-1980, which fills in the cracks of Fab
Four FAQ 2.0 with a feast of information on Beatles bootlegs released in
the ’70s, songs they covered as solo artists and solo songs covered by others,
their promotional films, studio collaborators, legal entanglements, and
business associates, as well as an immersive 165-page timeline that places
their solo achievements into historical context. Solo in the 70s is the first title on Robert’s new imprint ParadingPress (you are a true Beatles fan if you suss
why he chose that name). He is also the creator of Backbeat Books’ FAQ series,
of which my own upcoming book The Who FAQ
is a part. So thanks again, Robert, for helping me get that job and thanks for
Psychobabbling with me here on Psychobabble!
Psychobabble: I have the attention span
of a housefly, and about halfway through writing The Who FAQ I started getting a little antsy with writing about the
same band every day. You, however, have really committed to being a Beatles
scholar, writing five books on them to date and conducting the ongoing Something About The Beatles Podcast.
Do you ever find yourself with a serious Beatles hangover?
Robert Rodriguez: Well, it does
sometimes blow people's minds when I only half-facetiously say that The Beatles
aren't even my favorite band. I'm only partly kidding about that: while there
are other artists whose work I enjoy equally as much, there aren't many that I
have been so driven to explore in such depth as these guys. But when you've
written five books on the same subject – something I never set out to do, by
the way – there's often a presumption that that's all you live and breathe,
24/7. Or that my house is completely tricked out with Beatles, as far as the
eye can see. No and no.
Now obviously, you cannot steep yourself in The
Beatles' history as long and as deeply as I have and not come away
feeling like you would toward members of your own family: you always love them
but you don't always like them. I think that the capacity for keeping a
critical distance helps my ability to do what I do, processing their work
analytically and not purely emotionally. It keeps the writing honest, and the
readers deserve no less. That said, as John Lennon once noted, you don't fall
in love intellectually. So I am quite sure that there are any number of things
that I am fond of within their body of work that may strike people as
indefensible. I'll cop to that!
A cool question came up the other day at the end of
a podcast taping, one we'll probably address on a future show: if you could
only listen to either Beatles music, or solo Beatles music, on a desert island
for the remainder of your days, which would it be? Without hesitation, I said
solo, which drew an incredulous response. Why would I want to listen to songs I
already know inside and out, forever? That would be like reading the same
twelve books over and over again: no matter how good they are, sooner or later
the mystery tends to dissipate, you know what I mean? The Beatles group catalog
has been inescapable – it's everywhere, and I am one of those people that will
just as likely turn the dial if a Beatle song comes on.
The solo body of work, though – that's a whole
other thing. Notwithstanding the fact that there's so much more of it,
even my favorite solo albums are still fresher to me personally than The
Beatles product. And I haven't even explored every single one in depth yet,
truth be told.
So to circle back to your original question: while
I may not listen to their stuff all the time, the story and the history
I always find compelling. Especially the post-sixties era, which is at
once so intriguing and less familiar.
PB: I imagine that there’s more to sink
your teeth into with the solo years since there’s more to criticize.
RR: Well, there's that.
The whole aspect of the period being unrelentingly fascinating, as well as – to
a certain degree - uncharted territory and therefore, a challenge. It's one
that I think the free-standing chapters as a structure is very well suited to.
I hold onto the hope that no one that reads the book can come away thinking
that they have a handle on who my favorite ex-Beatle is: I tried to diss them
all equally!
Seriously though, contrasted with covering The
Beatles as a group, I think that there's a natural tendency to look for
patterns and some sort of arc. We find that when studying The Beatles, a
subject whose story is already so familiar. When I was researching the Revolver
book, the only real preconception I had was that it was on an undeniably higher
artistic level as an achievement than was the much-lauded Sgt. Pepper – especially
as a group effort. It was therefore striking to me to step back and see
that it not only represented their high-water mark, but it came precisely at
their half life: three years after Please Please Me and three years
before Abbey Road. It was the end of the four-headed monster and the
marking of group dominance passing from John to Paul.
Studying this first post-Beatles decade, one looks
for similar patterns. Now George had been on an upward trajectory at least as
far back as 1968 in terms of developing as an individual artist, outside The
Beatles paradigm. I do believe that once he achieved world validation as this
talent who had been hiding in plain sight all these years, he no longer tried
as hard. It was as if once the world gave him the recognition that John and
Paul had denied him, on some level he felt he'd done it and thereafter, made
music for his own satisfaction, mostly. The achievement that was All Things
Must Pass completely overshadowed the 1970 debuts of all three of his
ex-bandmates.
John had been asserting his independence from The
Beatles with his outside excursions well before the official split. I don't mean
the experimental stuff with Yoko, but the Plastic Ono Band stuff. “Instant
Karma” is as solid a piece of work as any of the singles the group issued
during their final few years. But I do think that on some level, John missed
facing a direct competition from Paul the way he had when they were in the same
band. They paid close attention to each other's work, especially during those
early years, but at the same time, they failed to recognize that what made The
Beatles The Beatles was that in-house
challenge they had to try harder. Furthermore, their respective spouses were,
as George Martin was quick to point out, no substitute for what they had in
each other.
Assuming that as artists they had in mind the goal
of continuous growth and not repeating themselves, I think that they really
could have benefited by, at the very least, putting themselves in the company
of someone on their artistic level. I really don't think that studio session
players, Elephants Memory or the members of Wings really qualify. At least –
during that brief shining moment known as the “lost weekend” – John was
intuitively seeking out other successful artists to work with: Nilsson, Bowie,
Elton, Mick Jagger. He should have done more of that: found people to challenge
him. Look at who George worked with, in comparison: Eric Clapton, Billy
Preston, Gary Wright, the Dominoes, Leon Russell – all artists that had their
own identities. It could not help but raise his game.
I don't know that Paul recognized what he lost by
working without peers. If ever an artist cried out for the iron fist in a
velvet glove, it was him – a man twice as prolific as he needed to be and who
had a tough time distinguishing between genius and garbage. Furthermore, at
times during the decade he seemed to deliberately cultivate a posture of
embracing low culture: “Magneto and Titanium Man,” anyone? This from the guy
that a decade before was listening to Stockhausen.
I think that he achieved the kinds of validation
that are the easiest to recognize: tons of record sales and triumphant world
tours. But I'm not convinced that it ever truly satisfied him, not when the
critics were routinely taking him to task for not being the artist he'd once
been while in his 20s. Clearly – and this is very apparent in the post-1980 years
– his place in history, and especially within The Beatles' legacy – was
something that concerned him. Constantly justifying yourself is never fun, and
I think that it's obvious that he felt on the defensive far too often.
PB: John never pulled any punches when
running down Paul’s post-Beatles career. The only thing I’m aware of which he
was ever complimentary was “Let Me Roll It”— not surprising since Paul wrote it
as a sort of tribute to John. Am I missing anything? Did John ever have
anything else nice to say about the solo/Wings years?
RR: John did famously
praise Band on the Run as a whole, calling it a “great album” in Rolling
Stone. But there's always this interesting pattern when you look at John's
remarks on Paul's work: even when he praises, he almost always condemns in the
next breath. Just after saying what he did about Band on the Run, he
went on to call Wings “as much a conceptual group” as the Plastic Ono Band,
given its revolving door line-up. I'm not sure that was a compliment!
He did express some admiration for Paul's following
through on the “daft” plan he'd intended for The Beatles in their latter days:
showing up unannounced at small venues to play. But this was followed by “He's
back on his pedestal now.” And on and on and on. Another example: from Ram
– the album that John found so much to object to, messaging-wise – he did
praise “Uncle Albert,” especially “Admiral Halsey”’s “hands across the water”
segment, before then noting that it “tripped off” afterward and that he didn't
like that at all.
“Coming Up” - a great live performance by Wings of
a rather inconsequential composition – is renowned as the song that grabbed
John by the ears and served as a catalyst for his wanting to get back in the
game, challenged by Paul's adept way with a single. But then he followed up
with saying that hearing “Waterfalls” from the same album led him to think that
Paul was sad. It's like he couldn't just say anything nice and leave it at
that!
PB: Back to Ram, it’s funny how Lennon poked fun at fans who read too much into
Beatles miscellany on “Glass Onion”, but he seems kind of guilty of that too
considering his interpretations of some of the Ram material, and more bizarrely, the cover of All Things Must Pass as jabs against him. Should we just assume
this is paranoia born of the bitter way the band ended or was he a closeted
conspiracy theorist all along who maybe recognized a bit of himself in the
“Paul is Dead” crowd?
RR: That's an astute
observation that speaks to the tendency of those accusing to be guilty
themselves of the very crimes they are calling out. I didn't particularly pay
attention, but maybe Paul did sing, “Get back to where you once
belonged” directly to the front row during that recent 50th
anniversary special – did anyone notice? Certainly John had a history of
paranoid pronouncements – both the 1970 Jann Wenner interview and the 1980
David Scheff one are rife with them.
That said, he wasn't always completely off
the mark. But he of all people should have recognized that, given The Beatles
own history of slipping lyrics with obscure insider references and double
meanings into their work, it would've been unnatural for the practice to just
stop.
PB: It’s pretty well known that despite
the cynicism he often expressed about The Beatles days, John really thought
they’d get back together again eventually. However, I was surprised to read
that George said he was itching to get the band back together in 1974, since he
seemed so reluctant to revisit the past and had a pretty strained relationship
with Paul. What do you think was the main obstacle to The Beatles reforming in
the seventies?
RR: George ran so hot and
cold on that. At the moment he spoke those words about The Beatles “kicking
down some doors,” he was clearly up. We know that he genuinely enjoyed
the “I'm The Greatest” session with Ringo and John back in 1973 and might've
leaped at the chance for that to continue. But placing himself in a situation
where Paul could revert to form and dominate him once again was abhorrent. Obviously,
it never did happen: the Threetles sessions came closest, and even at that, one
can see the tension between them during the “impromptu jam” segment in Anthology.
But it isn't hard to imagine a scenario where, if John and Paul figured out a
way to work together, that George and Ringo would climb on board, too.
What is interesting to note is how close those
Lennon and McCartney came to doing something. We now know that tales of John
announcing his intention of joining Paul in New Orleans during the Venus and
Mars sessions in early 1975 are a matter of record and not merely urban
legends. I think that by late 1974, John had come to recognize that he and Paul
had at last reached a place of parity – John now had something he'd never had
before: a #1 album with a #1 single, Walls and Bridges and “Whatever
Gets You Thru The Night.” Not to get all pop psychology 101 or anything, but he
may have gotten past his sense of underachieving to where he could work
alongside Paul again and not feel like he was the one needing help – you
know what I mean? They could get together as equals again.
If you look hard enough, there's a track on Venus
and Mars that could have totally worked as a fitting collaboration. I leave
it to you to figure out which one, but it's there. But the reconciliation
closed the door on that. There are many people walking around with this
delusion that Yoko Ono split The Beatles up – maybe it's more accurate to say
that, once split, she helped keep them apart. During the final decade of his life,
John and Paul were never closer than when the lost weekend was in full swing.
Once he was back at The Dakota, the drawbridge was effectively back up.
But move forward five years and the dynamic has
changed. As I point out in the book, they were all at a particular crossroads
where working together would've made sense: Wings was on life support – George
had suffered a blow to his confidence when Somewhere in England got
handed back to him – John was back in business and, for the first time, about
to move Yoko out of his shadow and off his coattails with the pending “Walking
On Thin Ice” release. Lastly, Ringo was again soliciting help for a new
project, one that each had pledged their support to. Only gunplay ended what
was already in motion.
PB: On a related note, I’m glad you got
to Watching Rainbows in your chapter
on Beatles bootlegs. It was the first bootleg I ever owned, so I have a soft
spot for things like the band version of “All Things Must Pass”, which has some
great ramshackle backing harmonies, the long “Mean Mr. Mustard” jam, and the
title track. I was surprised when none of these pieces were included on Anthology 3—although I suspected that
“Watching Rainbows” may have been left off because it sounds like John is
singing “Shoot me” toward the end of the song. It makes me wonder if there’s
enough worthwhile material for an Anthology
4. What are your thoughts on another volume?
RR: Those Twickenham recordings are one more elephant
in the room of conspicuously unreleased recordings, aren't they? There was that
worthless teaser disc issued with Let It Be...Naked, but they clearly
have the goods – it'll now be up to their coming up with an organizing
principle that makes sense for a release or series thereof. Of course, this
will all be predicated on their mustering up the will to even face an issue of
the conspicuously joyless Let It Be film. The Summer of '69 rough cut
could be a terrific Criterion-style bonus disc, perhaps packaged with a disc of
the Glyn Johns Get Back album.
As for an Anthology 4, the Apple business
model has traditionally been ‘why put out something new when we can keep on
re-selling fans the same old stuff?’ Releasing something new and unheard has
always been the exception rather than the rule. Therefore, I do not hold my
breath. That said, what could they put out? Top of the list would be “Carnival
of Light” - the '67 psychedelic freak-out vetoed by George for Anthology 2
that remains in the vault, though I suppose not many would want to hear it more
than once. Demos keep surfacing, such as the “World Without Love” one that
Peter Asher found not long ago: a collection of them would make a nice thematic
release.
I wish that Apple's thinking was more along the
lines of a Rhino Handmade or Bright Midnight: a sort of boutique outlet that
would get the rareness out in optimum quality with small runs to satisfy the
hardcores. Not everything has to be swinging for the fences, and as should be
clear by now, to satisfy the widest possible audience is to dissatisfy those
who already have everything. The one thing we collectors don't have is the
pristine first-generation quality vault material that Apple revealed they had
with the year-end iTunes dump back in December. These people are forever
leaving money on the table, which they don't need to do. There are any number
of obvious omissions they could satisfy fans without breaking a sweat – the
Christmas album, complete Hollywood Bowl sets, Shea, the promo films, the Esher
demos complete – that they simply concede to the bootleggers for no good
reason.
You didn't ask, but since we are discussing Solo
in the 70s, what about a 'best of' collection collating the singles between
1970 and 1980 from all four of them in the same package? You could easily fill
80 minutes with their collective number ones, though I suppose John would get
short shrift and it might then be too Macca heavy – maybe make it Top Tens;
another with classic solo album tracks, and still another with non-album
B-sides. By trading on the popularity of the better known stuff, the package
could serve as a promotional tool for the solo back catalog by showcasing less
familiar material, all in a pleasing setting that any Beatle fan would love.
You may say that there's nothing stopping anyone
from putting together personally-programmed collections like this now, but I do
think there is value in an official package, thoughtfully assembled and
contextualized. Personally, I think it's inevitable but within my lifetime
would be nice.
PB: You think Yoko would let something like that happen? She maintains
pretty tight control over John’s back catalog, and I wonder if she’d not like
the idea of his solo stuff sitting alongside Paul’s.
RR: That's a good point.
Ultimately, if the demands of the fans and commerce were deemed too strong to
resist, her objections might be worn down. But I can't imagine she'd have much
on an issue with “Love” or “Jealous Guy” sitting alongside “Maybe I'm Amazed”
or “My Love. ” If anything, she could see it as the opportunity for “Out the
Blue" or “Bless You” to get a fair hearing alongside Paul’s overly
familiar work. That'd be my hope, anyway.
PB: As far as less overly familiar work
is concerned, which underappreciated solo album would you most like to see
embraced by a wider audience?
RR: John really did
himself a disservice by calling Walls and Bridges the work of a
“semi-sick craftsman.” As I've said in my books, 2.0 in detail, I think
it stands up as a fully realized thematic work, sort of a coming-of-age song
cycle, with material as strong as that on the much-lauded Plastic Ono Band.
John is in full command of his gift of making the personal universal – singing
about the desperation of facing adulthood when living like a teenager doesn't
work anymore. There's the sorrow of broken romance but also the joy of newfound
love. Even the swipe at Allen Klein, “Steel and Glass,” serves as a statement
of recognition that the world's a deceptive place: as much “I Found Out” as it
is “How Do You Sleep?” But unlike the stark, un-easy listening approach he took
on the earlier album, WAB is
engaging, tuneful and accessible. No small thing when so much of what you're
singing about is not exactly soothing.
Because he stopped preoccupying himself with pure
commerciality – unlike Paul – George's body of work is worth a second look. I
think that of the four of them, his work consistently possesses the quality of
engaging on a higher level beyond pure ear candy, rewarding repeated
listenings. While he always possessed a pop sensibility, I think he also saw in
terms of pure sound overall, wedding lyrics to melody as a single piece while
not necessarily preoccupying himself with hooks, choruses and the standard
trappings of successful AM hits. Thirty-Three & 1/3rd should've
been a bigger record than it was, but coming off the heels of back-to-back
albums that tended to project joylessness more than anything, it was destined
to be a hard sell.
I do think that Ram has been undergoing its
renaissance, recognized now for its inherent qualities that, at the time, were
overshadowed by the perception that Paul was a lightweight who had broken up
The Beatles. Back to the Egg is an album that, while I personally have a
hard time fully embracing it, still has a hardcore following. Wild Life
does too, only smaller.
PB: I’m actually a Back to the Egg booster myself, and “To You” might be my favorite
of Paul’s post-Beatles songs. That album brings us right to the edge of the
period you cover in both Fab Four FAQ 2.0
and Solo in the 70s. Any interest
in moving into the ’80s next?
RR: Oh, man. While I
believe an excellent book can be put together taking up where I left off and
continuing on at least through Brainwashed, covering everything from the
All Starr tours and Traveling Wilburys through the latter-day Beatle projects
like BBC and Anthology, I'm just not the guy to do it, because that
would mean revisiting Reel Music, Broad Street, Stop and Smell
the Roses, Sun Country wine coolers, the Michael Jackson collaborations and
too much else I'd rather not face twice.
There's plenty of good stuff too: the “Lost Lennon
Tapes,” Flowers in the Dirt, Time Takes Time and the Carl Perkins Rockabilly session special come to mind,
but to do it right, you can't just pick and choose – you have to cover all of
it. I'll defer to someone who loves Jeff Lynne.
PB: Any other titles in the works from
Parading Press?
RR: Oh yes. We're going
to take a little time now to properly set up the marketing infrastructure of
what we have, but there's more in the pipeline to come, not just by me, Richard
Buskin (Beatles 101) or Al Sussman (Changin’
Times: 101 Days That Shaped a Generation). Parading Press is an imprint
covering pop culture topics of interest, not limited to rock music or
Beatle-related subjects but also television, film and anything else worthy that
we think a readership would support. Keep watching our space!
PB: Will do, Robert.
Thanks again.
More from Parading Press.
