Rewriting History, Lennon Style
The BBC are broadcasting the John Lennon/Jan Wenner Rolling Stone interview tomorrow. There's a news story with some quotes over here. It's all been published before (in the book Lennon Remembers), so it's not new stuff, even if we've never heard it from the horse's mouth.
The thing is, in the Newsweek (?), Playboy and Radio 1 interviews he gave just before he was killed, he said - of all the stunning revelations he made in 1970 - "I lied."
That's it. Pure and simple. When he says he stopped writing songs with Paul in 1962, he was lying. To pick a couple of examples, "We Can Work It Out" is a Paul verse with a John middle 8. "A Day in the Life" is John verses with a Paul middle 8. They frequently finished things that the other had started. I think it's fair to say that after 1967 there wasn't much in the way of collaboration, which is why John's output gets a bit fragmented, and Paul shows him up a bit in 68-69, but then Macca's first solo album is almost 100% - obviously - unfinished songs.
So it's all very well the BBC broadcasting these tapes and trying to create a sensation in those too young to remember the Playboy and Andy Peebles interviews, but, to quote the Bard: everything's the opposite of what it is.
The thing is, in the Newsweek (?), Playboy and Radio 1 interviews he gave just before he was killed, he said - of all the stunning revelations he made in 1970 - "I lied."
That's it. Pure and simple. When he says he stopped writing songs with Paul in 1962, he was lying. To pick a couple of examples, "We Can Work It Out" is a Paul verse with a John middle 8. "A Day in the Life" is John verses with a Paul middle 8. They frequently finished things that the other had started. I think it's fair to say that after 1967 there wasn't much in the way of collaboration, which is why John's output gets a bit fragmented, and Paul shows him up a bit in 68-69, but then Macca's first solo album is almost 100% - obviously - unfinished songs.
So it's all very well the BBC broadcasting these tapes and trying to create a sensation in those too young to remember the Playboy and Andy Peebles interviews, but, to quote the Bard: everything's the opposite of what it is.
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, December 02, 2005
2 Comments:
yeah, but i think there was a strong element of lying involved in him saying "i lied".
it's clear that in a sense they did stop writing together in 1962, at least by candlelight. most of the stuff after that is bolted on.
By
roy, at 5:13 am
I probably agree overall with dog, though it's a tough one to call: certainly after '62 it gets easier and easier to spot whose section is whose, though the earlier poppy stuff of pre '65 at least does demonstrate fare more collaboration that Lennon (at that time) was happy to admit. Like Orson Welles, Lennon played with mythologising a helluva lot...
By
Lisa Rullsenberg, at 10:15 am
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