"d. northcutt" wrote:

> paramucho wrote: 
>> I don't see McCartney's actions in the same way that Derek does, but
>> like others here believe that Paul just has a habit of wanting to put
>> himself in the center of everything. Many of us are like that and it's
>> no big deal. Lennon may well have been doing the same thing had he
>> survived. 
>Probably - because when he was alive, John wanted to put himself in the >center of everything, too.   
>Saki wrote a really interesting article, many years ago now, about 
>how after John died, Paul has been trying to *become* John, 
>unconsciously.  I'm not sure I agree 100% with that, but
>the article was real food for thought as far as the idea
>that the two of them were more alike than different.

Was it the following article? I don't entirely agree with all
the points myself anymore (this was written in 1993, and I
suspect I was worried that Paul wasn't sincere about
vegetarianism, for one thing) but the more central thesis
still makes sense to me. 

It wasn't until I saw how much John and Paul resembled each
other that I stopped trying to peer into which one was better
or greater. I also found that when instead you look at the
Beatles' overall syncretism, you see the real stuff of genius. 

Sometimes breaking the Fabs into pieces leaves us with the
impression that the individual parts don't equal a whole.
That's one of art's great paradoxes, and I suspect it's the
paradox at the heart of the John/Paul controversy. If you go
looking for which Beatle was "it", the driving creative force,
you'll never find it.

Apologies for any immaturity in the article to follow; I was
young once.

---- 

How much alike those two have grown over the years. Both John and
Paul have had their share of bumpy roads---a long hiatus between
hits; times of diminished creativity; forays into other
political/philosophical fields.

Now it's hard to know who influenced whom. 

Hindsight muddies the waters, rather than clears them. Where there
was once a band called the Beatles with a leader named John, there
is now a legend based on ever-shifting patterns of creative
tension. Despite the fact that it's in the past, we can't seem to
fix that movement in time. Different factions provide different
interpretations. John was the guiding light. Paul was the
innovator. George was the spiritual center. George had a talent for
borrowing. Paul was a prevaricating diplomat. John was a political
nutcase.

Ringo was the easy one. 

The two really complex members of the team were, of course, Lennon
and McCartney. And they remain that way, even with John's output
frozen by historical circumstance. It's a tragedy in innumerable
ways, but for Paul it seems to create a perpetual competitive
flame, something his creative wings can't help but pursue. All this
remarkable life of his, so it seems, is woven of well-used threads:
his need to be loved by all, and his need to be like John. It would
be facile for me to suggest that this is all there is to the man.
But these strands seem to predominate in his psychological core.

What Paul lost with John's death, among other things, was his
ability to prove who was the better, more talented, more creative
Beatle... and what strikes me as sad is that Paul still has the
desperate *need* to prove this fact. I see this current
preoccupation with vegetarianism as an offshoot of this need. John
sought power through politics, when music failed as his medium of
choice. Not surprisingly, Paul's now seeking the same avenue.

Is it sincere? Is it posturing? Hard to tell. Are we right to erupt
with righteous indignation? Not sure.

Whoever has had experience with conversion to a cause will have
some sympathy for Paul's situation. It is said that there is no
enthusiasm like that of a convert who is inevitably making up for
lost time as well as perpetually reiterating his sincerity (beset
as he is by the doubts of others). Such piousness is not easy for
others to take, but piety is in plentiful supply. This year---and
last, and the next---it takes the form of vegetarianism, as in 1967
when Paul temporarily followed John and George's lead. In the years
beyond, it may be some other activism, some new transcendence into
political/environmental/ religious vision.

What familiar territory! Weren't there similar searchings in the
sixties, that decade of divination?

I don't know where John would have ended up in his own personal
search for beatitude---a search that was inevitably borne on the
shoulders of his fans, some of whom followed his footsteps like
acolytes: religion, surrealism, politicism, primal screams, drugs,
macrobiotics...while the most intriguing search was tragically left
off in mid-stride. Emerging from a complex decade, some of it
exhibitionistic, some of it reclusive, John seemed to be making
peace with his own familial past (he'd asked Aunt Mimi for relics
from the home he shared with her in Liverpool, and began to show
particular affection for his Quarry Bank tie), and with life's
simpler pleasures (anathematic to spiritual diets!) like chocolates
and Gitanes. He was learning to please himself.

That's a hard lesson. There are no such simple pleasures for Paul,
it seems, a man whose need for love and acclaim drives him to try
some of the same avenues as his erstwhile partner. Yet the fabric
hangs ill on Paul's frame. Why is that? Is he somehow less suited
to activism? Is he too much the proselyte? Is he guilty of urging
us too vociferously to see his vision, beating his audienceswith
icons and tracts till they turn away?

But John did the same thing, didn't he? And it seems in hindsight
that we forgive John for the same transgressions made by Paul.

Maybe that's an inevitable complication based in the
"apparent" differences between them.

Lloyd Rose, writing in "The Boston Phoenix" in December
1985, had some insightful things to say about the Lennon mystique
which flourished amidst the plethora of biographical material,
whether good or bad, whether truthful or libelous. "It hardly
matters," says Rose, "that [John] was 'on' in these
interviews, playing the media game, hiding behind a show of candor;
he still had a force and reality none of the writing about him
conveys.... Just as you're getting fed up with reading about his
silliness or meanness, his own words spark up off the page---savvy,
funny, rueful---and you understand why people fell for him. 'He was
a terrible guy, actually,' [said] a Liverpool Art Institute
acquaintance, 'but I liked him'."

How is Paul different? Hasn't he been accused of the same faults---
the media manipulation, the false candor? It's not just me, I
guess, who was willing to forgive John his faults, while punishing
Paul for the same transgressions. Is there something fundamentally
distinct about the two men? Perhaps something related to the need
for love?

It's a tough lesson, and I suppose Paul tries to learn it: to
follow his inner light without the need to be loved for it. But
he's too concerned about his own legend to do it...and I don't
blame him. As he sees it, there's an inequity in the historical
record. I wonder if, through the pursuit of politicism, Paul is
hoping to show us how like John---and how worthy of love and
respect---he really *is*.

Winning respect is no easy matter. Would John's seemingly-incipient
serenity (if we read the clues at the beginnings of his fortieth
year) have allowed him to acknowledge Paul's creative
contributions?

Perhaps if Paul and John had grown naturally into ripe middle age,
on their opposite shores, and rebuilt some of the relationship that
was damaged at the end of the Beatles era, they would have come to
terms with this conundrum. And perhaps we, as appreciators of their
music, could have come to a greater understanding of that
complicated Lennon/McCartney dynamic...and been better able to sit
still and be polite when the good Doctor tells us what he thinks we
ought to know.

I give Paul credit for one thing among many: he's still searching
for a path to righteousness, or what he believes is righteousness
these days. Decades past, it was assumed you'd get all that angst
out of your system by the time you were in your twenties, then
settle down with the one true answer in your head, convinced you'd
found out all there was to know. Faddishness is no real crime, I
suppose, if it's just a part of the man's search for an answer.
 
To me, and to others, it may seem like the wrong goal is being
sought (to wit: becoming a bona-fide Legend), but that's Paul's
weakness, his handicap. He will bear it all the rest of his life.
This impediment of his may cause me occasional irritation, but it
seems to me that if I can afford Lennon the necessary excuses for
his excesses, I could extend the same graciousness to McCartney.
Through his musical gifts, he's certainly given me enough in
return. 

 
-- 
"Who put all those
things in your head?" 
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saki@ucla.edu