Fans and journalists often blame Paul or Ringo for never coming up with something new during press moments, including in-depth interviews. When discussing the Mal Evans biography 'Living The Beatles Legend’ by Kenneth Womack the creator of one of the best Beatles podcasts recently wrote me:
“What I'm looking for in any new book is fresh insight or new information.”1
The opposite is what Kenneth Womack went looking for the first moment he laid hands on the materials from boxes of what would later become the 'Malcolm Frederick Evans Archives’. The most exciting or surprising artifact Ken Womack uncovered from the archives during the first minutes after opening in New Jersey the big box with artifacts Gary Evans had put together in England, for Ken's eyes only. Ken was not looking for something new, but to find out and verify about Mal Evans’ perspective:
“I knew exactly where I was going. I went right to May 9th 1969, Paul had confided in him (Mal Evans) that was the day they (John, George and Ringo) broke the Liberty Bell of The Beatles And I thought well: what would Mal have been feeling when his idols, when his world was collapsing.
I went right to that date in the diary and there were no words. just a picture of Paul losing his mind.”2
Anent books finding something new is not my main objective. Being entertained, drawn into a new world, not my own, is what I expect an artist to do with his art, music, sculpture, books, plays, movies - and yes podcasts about The Beatles. The storytelling style and qualities matter to me as much, if not more. We all read to inform ourselves, to learn, to analyze, and to get to know the world of humans better. Just as often I want the text to take me ‘float downstream’. All I need to do is pick the medium and “Turn off my mind, relax / Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void”. Great storytellers, composers, musicians, painters, photographers, cinematographists, and sculptors will draw us into a ‘shining’ place. We are entertained and undergo experiences in a trance, ‘in dreams’, as if in the real world…
In dreams we do so many things
We set aside the rules we know
And fly the world so high
In great and shining rings3
The characters, feelings, and events may stay with me for years, if not forever, while some of them become moral points of reference.4 I adhere to the romantic idea about the power of art to change life on a personal scale and level. Having met hundreds of writers and publishers, for decades at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, I learned literature has the potential for rapprochement, for a better understanding of human evil, and visions of a better world. The texts of authors like Salman Rushdie, Frank Herbert, Raoul Schrott, Julia Zeh, Heinrich Böll, Robert Seethaler, and Robert Menasse offer this soft and formidable power.
The emergence of new ideas may not necessarily come from the literature. It could be of course any autonomous, personal-based, need for resolution and ideas, which uses art to express itself in the real world. The stimulus from art, and/or this state of curiosity and need for resolution, all together, most likely coincidentally, function as a trigger for learning. But the emergence of new ideas could be coming from anything else, and that may include friends, lovers, a policeman, a colleague, drugs, music, brain manipulation, etc. We don’t know. For me, this process provides a sense of sanity and normalness and is part of why I appreciate or even love life.
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Interviews with artists are a different ball game. Having worked for artist, I often loved their work, but couldn’t care less about the content of their interview, except for business and marketing reasons. Paul and Ringo are men who have lived long, interesting lives. Yet, Paul's interviews tend to be about the same half a dozen things as interviewers ask the same questions over and over again.
My advice is to neither blame Paul nor Ringo for this.
Why put the blame aside? Most journalists do their interviews wholly unprepared, are unwilling to do their prep research, and inevitably ask tedious, insipid questions, eliciting the same old answers. In our crazy capitalist system commercial success of any artist depends on the public response, yet the artist, the celebrity is not in control of the public discourse, let alone the fans’ and general audience’s responses.5 As if any idolized celebrity owes the fans anything, or worse as if the fans’ personal lives improve when they know more intimate details about their heroes. Author Schaffner and Lennon’s friend Pete Shotton wrote in 1983: “It was almost as if the media and the general public sought to turn their beloved “moptops” into pets”.6
In interviews, Paul and Ringo are “Beatled-to-death” (to steal a phrase from Allan Kozinn7) by journalists who unknowingly are vexed by the ‘Chris Farley Syndrome’8. I propose the interviewee has no responsibility here, none whatsoever. The interviewers should shoulder the blame solely. Any interview obliges the journalist to keep the ball in the air. And Beatly-questions are, as a matter of principle, a lack of intellectual good manners.
Important to realize is that in interviews Ringo, if in a good mood, is willing to put his humour on display, and Paul is forever a gracious host. They are indulgent participants in interviews, always willing to cooperate, hardly ever malicious, venting frustrations or being mendacious. Clive James is quoted to have told Martin Amis “People lacking the grace that is a sense of humour also lack common sense. A sense of humour, is nothing but common-sense dancing”.9 On humour The Beatles score well. Not only during the heydays of USA Beatlemania, sixty years on Paul and Ringo are still humourous and gracious hosts. In 2023 ‘The Beatles and Humour’ is worth an academic anthology.10
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Allan Kozinn, co-author of ‘The McCartney Legacy. Volume 1, 1969-1973’ (2022)11 :
“Here's the thing about Paul McCartney.
I mean (...) keep in mind that apart from The Beatles (...), I've interviewed hundreds of people in the classical music world, and some jazz. So, I know how people behave in interviews.
Paul is the most professional interviewee I have ever seen, you walk into the room and he immediately makes you feel, even though as a journalist you know that this is not true, he immediately makes you feel like you are old pals and he has nothing he wants to do more than answer your questions, he's absolutely interested in what you have to say and what your questions are.
That is a skill, you know, it really is and he is spectacular at it.”12
According to Allan Kozinn, most of the people in The Beatles’ orbit are pleasant in interviews:
“... in The Beatles world, all the people that I talked to, were really interesting fascinating, and, generally speaking, pleasant to be with. You know, I mean they're there to do this and they understand, what the deal is, so you know unless they have something against you in advance, which I guess none of them did you know, they're going to be they're going to be fine.”13
Generally, most interviewers act inane, they refuse to study as many of Ringo’s and Paul’s print and audio interviews as they might have time to do, because, as Allan Kozinn testifies:
“(Paul) has certain set pieces that he does. About, you know, dreaming, having dreamt Yesterday and all that, I mean, that's just the most famous one, but he has a lot of them. (...) What you want to do is read all these interviews and don't ask him something that is going to lead to one of the standard answers and you'll get a really good interview if you ask him new questions, so that he can't go into those (set pieces).”14
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Bouie, Jamelle (2023). Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025. New York Times, Nov. 14, 2023. Assessed November 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/opinion/trump-stephen-miller-immigration.html. Online. Published in print on Nov. 15, 2023, Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Checks and Balances Are for Losers’.
In November 2023 Jamelle Bouie wrote in the New York Times how he believes “Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view.” What goes for politicians, goes for legendary artists, or celebrities. Hence the need for paparazzi and gossip. Many books about The Beatles are discarded if they do not seem to offer a lot of new stuff, even if they are written very well, and offer great entertaining storytelling.
Womack, Kenneth, and Gary Evans (2023). The Incredible Untold Life of Mal Evans, Beatles Legend. On ‘You Can’t Unhear This’, 15 November 2023. Assessed November 2023:
Kerr, Richard, and Jennings, Willbur H. (1988). In The Real World. T-071.954.311-9 BMI, ISWC, JASRAC. [Its first release by Roy Orbison on the ‘Mystery Girl’ album (1989).]
O’Sullivan, Sibbie (2021). My Private Lennon - explorations from a fan who never screamed. Mad Creek Books / Ohio State University Press. ISBN: 978-0-8142-5566-7. Paperback.
Sibbie O’Sullivan is the author of an attempt to write a ‘personal memoir’ about the influence of John Lennon on her life, through decades, into her sixties. We will discuss and review her book in early 2024.
Historian Erin Torkelson Weber disagrees. She proposes that “the beloved, “moptop” image of the Fab Four narrative resulted from a number of factors and promoters. Each of the individual Beatles played a role in creating and sustaining it, as did their manager Brian Epstein, and other members of the Beatles’ inner circle. The worldwide press and popular opinion also contributed”. As proof Weber quotes a.o. Larry Kane: “The press withheld unpleasant, unapproved knowledge in exchange for access to the band and the perks provided by that access.” Larry Kane is a contrived witness, with weak anecdotal proof, and no credibility to report on forces at a meta-level. Weber proclaims that “deliberately constructing this image required cooperation from the press, which either chose not to reveal unapproved information or simply accepted the Beatles’ version of the facts”. Weber suggests a manipulative control of all media by one artist’s agency. Brian Epstein and his team were in charge of the public discourse as they made a deal with the media: positive stories for far-reaching access.
Lewisohn has a similar approach in his first ‘ultimate reference book’ ‘The Beatles Live!’:
“Reportage of the group’s background and success began to go awry in the very early days of the Beatles fame, often—with reason—fuelled by the Beatles’ or their aides themselves, and it has not stopped to his day.”
Lewisohn's use of the word ‘awry’ comes without explaining the need for this negative connotation. A positive manipulation is suggested by James (Jimmy) McGrath:
”In most official photographs of The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are positioned apart, separated by George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Such images present The Beatles as a group, not just a band. Lennon and McCartney’s visual distancing had a practical effect: these images could not be cropped to show only the two leaders. The subtle group emphasis counterbalanced a more eminently readable detail, variations on which adorn most pre-digital Beatles releases: ‘Words and music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.“
Lack of research and borrowing from incorrect sources are key in Lewishon’s methodological critique of other texts claiming to tell the band’s history:
“They almost all share in a fundamental lack of care in the accuracy department, and often show little or no ‘research’ beyond the borrowing of ‘facts’ from other incorrect books.”
The problem with lies, myths, and mistakes is that one mistake or lie requires other fictional constructions to create a cohesive story. Historian Mark Bloch explains in ‘The Historian’s Craft’: “by its very nature, one fraud begets another”.
Until late into the eighties only a
“few Beatles biographers grasped the essential lesson (that) in recounting history all evidence, including direct eyewitness testimony requires analysis and, if necessary, independent verification.”
- Torkelson Weber, Erin (2016). The Beatles and the Historians - An Analysis of Writings About the Fab Four. McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-1-4078-0478-3. Print. Chapter one: The Fab Four Narrative.
- Bloch, Mark (1953-2006). The Historian’s Craft. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN: 0-7190-3292-X. Print.
- Kane, Larry (2003). Ticket to Ride: Inside the Beatles 1964 Tour that Changed the World. Running Press. ISBN: 978-0-7624-1592-2. Print. p. 77.
- Lewisohn, Mark, and George Martin (foreword) (1986). The Beatles Live! The Ultimate Reference Book. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 9780805001587. Print. p. 9.
- McGrath, James P. (2014). ‘Where You Once Belonged’ Class, Race and Liverpool Roots of Lennon and McCartney’s Songs. Popular Music History, 9 (1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v9i1.27616. Also in :
- McGrath, James and Mills, Peter (2023). The Beatles in Perspective - A Carnival of Light. Equinox, ISBN: 978-1-78179-242-0. Paperback, pp.13-34.
Shotton, Pete and Schaffner, Nicholas (1983). John Lennon: In My Life. Stein and Day Pub. ISBN: 9780812861853. Print. pp. 95–96.
Kozinn, Allan (2020). Kozinn Remembers. On ‘Things We Said Today’, episode #324, 31 July 2020, 55:22-55:40. Assessed May 2023:
Reynolds, Simon (2011). Retromania. Pop culture’s addiction to its own past. Faber & Faber. eISBN: 9781429968584. eBook. Ch.2, Total Recall.
Jacobson, Howard (2019). For Clive James, a sense of humour was just good manners. The Guardian, 30 November 2019. Assessed May 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/nov/30/for-clive-james-a-sense-of-humour-was-just-good-manners. Online.
Kapurch, Katie; Mills, Richard; Heyman, Matthias (Anthology Editors) (2023). The Beatles and Humour Mockers, Funny Papers, and Other Play. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN: 9781501379345. Print.
Further info: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/beatles-and-humour-9781501379345/.
Kozinn, Allan, and Sinclair, Adrian (2022). The McCartney Legacy. Volume 1: 1969-1973. 1st edition (22 Dec. 2022). Dey Street Books. ISBN: 9780063000704. Print.
Kozinn, Allan (2020). Kozinn Remembers. On ‘Things We Said Today’, episode #324, 31-07-2020, 41:04-42:08. Assessed May 2023:
Kozinn, Allan (2020). Kozinn Remembers. On ‘Things We Said Today’, episode #324, 31-07-2020, 1:07:00-1:07:26. Assessed May 2023:
Kozinn, Allan (2020). Kozinn Remembers. On ‘Things We Said Today’, episode #324, 31-07-2020, 42:20-43:05. Assessed May 2023: