Letters

Readers sound off on Beatle battles and Bollywood box office.

Feb 7, 2003 | [Read Gilbert Garcia's "The Ballad of Paul and Yoko."]

Perhaps Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono are too close to the material about which they argue. People immersed in their own work often do not fully appreciate the ways in which their work is perceived by their audience.

Paul, there is absolutely no way that any Beatles fan would ever denigrate your contributions to the band or to pop music history, no matter whose name comes first on the Beatles' writing credits (apologies to George for his significant contributions). Clearly, you and John wrote different music. The fact that you both agreed, at some point, to present a united front to the world in your writing credits, reveals much to us about the nature of the project that was the Beatles. The sounds you both heard in your heads and transferred to your songs, in whatever proportion, define the band -- that and Ringo's metronome beat. We know "John songs" and we know "Paul songs." We love them both. The Beatles would not have been the Beatles without both of you.

Yoko, see above. John's legacy is safe in the hands of those who loved his music. I have always been a fan of Paul McCartney's. But he does himself no favors by trying to overwhelm Lennon's contributions. I hope both Paul and Yoko will leave it alone. Continue your own projects. Contribute even more to your legacies. But don't let the Beatles' legacy become one of bickering.

-- David Dewar

Good God, it is 2003, and you idiot music press people are still savaging Yoko. Get this through your heads: John chose Yoko over you 35 years ago. Get over it and stop ripping into her as if you were still petty gossips in high school. Come on, drawing her as a Blue Meanie? repeating that inaccurately reported story about Yoko calling Paul Salieri? You're only repeating Newsweek's highly inaccurate take on the quote. Yoko empathized with Paul for being put in the position of Salieri; she didn't put him down as being Salieri.

And as for savaging her for the admittedly stupid idea of stealing Zappa's highly overrated work (his sometimes friend Captain Beefheart was the real thing): Why are you savaging Yoko but letting John off scot-free? Because he's the icon and she's the alleged evil bitch? Condemning Yoko for plagiarizing is fair game, but to be consistent you also have to condemn John for similar thievery, resulting in the litigation over "Come Together" (and George for "My Sweet Lord," for that matter). And to be even more fair, you should condemn the many artists, from Sonic Youth to Public Enemy to Beck to Patti Smith, who owe much of their reputations to the fact that both the general public and the alternasnob crowd have no idea that Yoko pioneered a huge section of today's sounds 30 years ago.

Going back to my high school comparison, Yoko truly is the "weird" student that everyone else in high school -- even the other rejects -- felt they could rip into with impunity. Are you really proud of yourself for continuing this incredibly stupid tradition?

--Michael Russell

So, from Gilbert Garcia's point of view, John Lennon is nothing more than a pathetic, disturbed, moody man who made a good career move by being murdered more than 20 years ago. Meanwhile, poor Sir Paul has to go on and on about how he wrote "Yesterday" all by himself, how he came with the tape loops for "Tomorrow Never Knows," how he invented the avant-garde Beatles. What a sad life. Oh, how I pity him!

Well, at least he has a life. He's a happy, rich, talented man, still working, still making records, writing books, painting. It's a lot more than we can say about John.

It's funny how these days, every time someone tries to defend John Lennon, the old "Oh, that's only because he died and turned into a saint" bullshit is heard. People like Mr. Garcia fail to understand that people defend John because he was a wonderful artist, loved and respected. He certainly had a lot more to give, but his life was cut short at 40. Just because some critics didn't like "Double Fantasy" doesn't mean it wasn't a great album, or that John should retire for good. Ask Dylan and Bowie if they listened to the critics' advice back in the '80s. Maybe they should have retired back then, hmm? Of course, Mr. Garcia is someone who thinks that Chapman did Lennon a great favor by killing him. Now he's the great "saint-martyr Lennon," and poor McCartney has to deal with it.

So, Paul should be a little more graceful toward his old partner. Everybody knows that Paul is great, that he wrote "Yesterday," "Hey Jude" (with input from Lennon, yes, Mr. Garcia! Go and check your fonts), that he's 60 and still filling up stadiums. He's one of the best known, loved and admired people of the last century, and of the new one. He's mega! But if he still has problems with not being the coolest Beatle, or the martyr Beatle, or the avant-garde Beatle, well, I don't know what more the fans can do to boost his ego. Maybe offer him some virgin sacrifices.

As for Yoko Ono, it's obvious that Mr. Garcia hates the woman, so there's no point discussing her art or the very nice way she keeps Lennon's memory alive. I always appreciated her for that, but maybe I'm only a blind and silly fan who can't see how Paul is really the great one, and John was just the moody bastard with the writer's block, who returned with a lousy record that, thankfully, was his last one.

But you know what? I'm not the only one...

--Cristine Affonso

It's so disappointing to be reminded that your heroes are mere mortals. I can overlook Lennon's embarrassing late-career slump and McCartney's dopey '80s duets -- after all, Michael Jackson was still black then and indisputably cool, and two trailblazers of modern music like Paul and Stevie Wonder can be forgiven for a radio-friendly paean to racial harmony -- but watching Paul and Yoko behave like a pair of bitchy sorority girls is demoralizing and, frankly, diminishing to the most innovative and inimitable body of work in the brief history of pop. It's particularly bothersome given that the Beatles' output, particularly when compared with the later efforts of both Lennon and McCartney, proves definitively that neither was quite as good without the other. Even in their finest solo hours, Paul and John never equaled their work in the Beatles, even well after their songwriting partnership was in name only.

It's too bad that Paul feels upstaged by John's martyrdom. And I'm sure that, whatever else we think about her, Yoko would prefer still having her husband to undermining Paul's importance to the Beatles. But those of us who love the music, whose lives have been changed for the better by it, know that the Beatles were first and foremost a group of four (it's irritating to see George, Ringo, and producer George Martin so continuously ignored and overlooked, though I'm sure they have all been happy to be left out of the feuds whenever possible), and that their enormous achievement was a phenomenon contingent on an enormously unlikely sequence of fated meetings, changes in modern culture, and turns in history, and can never be reduced to the skill or brilliance of one member.

Besides, what difference does it make whose name comes first? Michael Jackson owns the songs anyway.

--Edward Tarkington

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