Sunday read: The past and future of ‘Be’

The Beatles on the set of “Let It Be,” from denofgeek.com.

I was going to write something about the events at the Capitol last week. I thought it was interesting how they provided a perversely tragic bookend to the inauguration of the president’s other favorite president, Andrew Jackson, an occasion when mobs overran the White House and Jackson himself had to sneak out a window. (“The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant,” said Supreme Court justice Joseph Story.) To paraphrase Karl Marx, history repeats itself, the first time as farce, the second as tragedy.

But I’m still too angry and upset to deal with it. So I’m going to go to my Happy Place: talking about the Beatles.

You’re probably aware by now that Peter Jackson is taking the raw material of the “Let It Be” sessions and refashioning it into a new documentary, one that appears to be much happier than the sometimes bitter original film, which ended up as the group’s official swan song (and, in fact, appeared after the group had broken up).

I can’t help but think: Is this revisionist history? Or is it closer to the way things were?

And what impact does re-editing our memories have on their impact?

So I bring to you a pair of Sunday reads: “Let It Be” director Michael Lindsay-Hogg on Jackson’s project, and Francis Ford Coppola on the changes he made in “The Godfather Part III” (now retitled “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone”).

“Let It Be” hasn’t been easily available since the VHS era; I can remember seeing it in a midnight showing at the Abalon Theater in New Orleans sometime around 1980, when midnight movies were a common way of showcasing older or outre works. Its reputation had preceded it: the Beatles seemingly trapped in a different studio than the familiar Abbey Road, constantly surrounded by cameras (in the days before that was a thing), with John bringing Yoko into the inner sanctum and Paul and George bickering over guitar parts.

Harrison, in fact, quit the band during the sessions. He didn’t return for more than a week, but when he did, he brought Billy Preston with him, and the rest of the sessions were calmer.

It’s Harrison’s attitude, along with Lennon’s opinion of the music, that’s colored opinion of “Let It Be” over the years. But McCartney and Starr have their own memories, and with more than five decades gone, we’re apparently going to see a more even-handed take of the era.

Does that mean Lindsay-Hogg’s original version is wrong? Not even he thinks so.

That argument was a small thing but it suggested there was certain amount of tension between them at this time in their life and indeed, why wouldn’t there be tension? They’re musicians and artists and they’ve known each other since they were teenagers and so they got married very young.

And you have to remember the time: the band is past its days of novelty. There are many things amazing about the Beatles, but for me, what often stands out is their energy — an ability to bring the joy of live performance to the studio. Just yesterday, I was listening to “I Want to Tell You,” a Harrison track off “Revolver,” and you can hear the thrill of musicians discovering new parts of themselves, and their love of doing it together.

By early 1969, though, they’d become businessmen and spouses and, above all, more cognizant of their individuality. The White Album, released just a few weeks’ before, showed they could still bring it, but it also showed they didn’t need each other as much as they did a couple years previous.

The White Album has been criticized for its sprawl, which brings up the question: What would you cut? What would you change? That got me pondering the value of good editing. I happen to love John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces,” but a recent article in The New Yorker mentioned that famed editor Robert Gottlieb wanted Toole to cut some of its set pieces. (Fortunately, they survived.)

In Hollywood, editing can make or break films. In his interview about “Godfather III,” Coppola talks about how “Godfather II,” which some critics consider superior to the first “Godfather,” was originally received at a screening.

When we previewed The Godfather Part II in San Francisco, we had a tepid reaction. And it was a mixed movie, meaning the sound and everything was done. That night, I made 121 changes, which is unheard of, because to make an editorial change when the film already has music and everything is really hard. We went three days later and previewed it again in San Diego, and the difference was night and day, which was the version that generally people value, which is Part II.

I’m reminded of a line told me when I was working on a story about film editor Kevin Tent, who’s done most of Alexander Payne’s films. Another editor said that his position is the most optimistic he knows; editors always think they can save the movie.

“Godfather III” appears to have been improved by Coppola’s changes. What will “Get Back,” the Jackson “Let It Be,” do to the image of the late Beatles? I’ve got a feeling it will add another facet to one of the great stories of recent years.

You can read the Coppola interview here and the Lindsay-Hogg interview here.

Sunday read: The (maybe, could be, if you say so) greatest albums of all time

Image from Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer via AL.com.

Many years ago, when I was in high school, I purchased a slim book called “Rock Critics’ Choice: The Top 200 Albums.”

I was already vaguely familiar with the book, compiled by writer Paul Gambaccini, thanks to a list of the top 10 (or 20, I forget) having already appeared in one of the Wallace/Wallechinsky “Book of Lists,” if I recall. It was released in 1978, and reading it today — when pop music has spread out in countless new directions — gives you an idea of what would become the hardened canon for years to come:

1. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Beatles
2. “Blonde on Blonde,” Bob Dylan
3. “Highway 61 Revisited,” Bob Dylan
4. “Astral Weeks,” Van Morrison
5. “Rubber Soul,” the Beatles

And on down the line: “Revolver” at No. 6, “Exile on Main Street” at No. 7 (surprising for the time, given that it was considered one of the weaker Stones albums until later), Love’s “Forever Changes” at No. 16, “Led Zeppelin IV” at No. 29, et cetera. You could already see some trends rising thanks to the coming of punk — lots of Velvet Underground, the Stooges’ “Funhouse” at No. 114 — and some (a lack of funk, high rankings for “Frampton Comes Alive” and Supertramp’s “Even in the Quietest Moments”) that would wither.

(The Supertramp ranking is almost entirely due to critic Ritchie Yorke placing it at No. 1 on his personal top 10. Yorke would later be listed as No. 6 on Greil Marcus’ list of “10 Worst Rock Critics” in “The Book of Rock Lists.”)

“Rock Critics’ Choice” was one of many best-of/ratings works I’ve purchased or read over the years. The first “Book of Rock Lists,” co-edited by Dave Marsh, did a nice job in a closing chapter that consists of nothing but Top 40 singles and albums for the each year between 1955 and 1980. The various editions of “The Rolling Stone Record Buyer’s Guide” cemented its own canon with its 5-star ratings — some of which were vastly changed from previous or in future editions. (The Doors, in particular, were knocked down a peg between the red first edition and the blue second edition.) Spin magazine leaned towards the contrarian; Rolling Stone, no doubt thanks to Jann Wenner’s heavy thumb on its scale, favored the tried and true (and white and classic rock).

I learned from all of them, even if I didn’t buy or listen to the albums they touted. They’re the reason I love Thunderclap Newman’s “Hollywood Dream” (a Record Guide 5-star work), that I’m familiar with Brian Eno’s “Another Green World” (avant garde for its time), that I question the fondness for Sonic Youth (“Daydream Nation,” which was hailed as one of the best albums of the ’80s, has always left me cold).

So now here’s Rolling Stone with a new list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It’s my Sunday read — which I mean literally, as I’ve just dipped into it myself.

Right away, of course, I found entries I vehemently disagree with. Alanis Morrisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” at No. 69. ahead of “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” and “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band,” among many others? Gotta be trolling. Elvis Costello’s “My Aim Is True” at No. 430? That seems way too low. And what the hell is any Britney Spears album beyond her greatest hits (because she made some amazing singles) doing here?

Which is the point, of course: argument starting.

To give RS great credit, the magazine surveyed a wide variety of contributors — artists, industry figures, journalists. (Too bad we can’t see their individual lists — that would be revealing, I imagine.) I don’t see Wenner‘s thumb anywhere, which makes sense, given that he doesn’t own the magazine anymore. And these lists should be a starting point, not a final say. There’s no reason “Sgt. Pepper,” influential as it is, should always be No. 1. (It’s not even in my personal top five Beatles records, which goes “Revolver,” “The Beatles,” “Rubber Soul,” “Please Please Me” and “Abbey Road,” if you’re wondering. At least as of today.)

Anyway, take a gander. Get angry. Go, “Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that.” Figure out what your favorites are. And if you want to make “Even in the Quietest Moments” No. 1? It’s OK. Ritchie Yorke died a few years ago, so the slot is yours for the taking.

You can read “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” here.

It was the worst year ever

“Genseric’s Invasion of Rome” by Karl Bryullov. 455 was not a good year, at least for the Romans.

The Covid-19 pandemic. Economic loss. Murder hornets. The president retweeting Chuck Woolery.

2020 must be in the running for the worst year ever.

Still, according to a 2018 article in Science magazine, there are better contenders. The scientists interviewed in the piece suggest the worst year in history — certainly the beginning of the worst era — was the year 536.

Due to what is now believed to be a volcanic explosion in Iceland, the sun was dimmed by ash for more than a year, creating low temperatures and prompting crop failures. A few years later, bubonic plague broke out in the Byzantine Empire; up to half the population died. Famine struck Europe, the Near East, and Asia. Europe, in particular, didn’t recover for a century.

Neil Innes, 1944-2019

George Harrison once observed that the spirit of the Beatles was passed on to the Monty Python troupe, which was premiering “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” around the time the Fabs were disintegrating in 1969.

But if there’s a bridge between the two, it’s probably in the soul of Neil Innes, a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (which had its biggest hit record co-produced by one Apollo C. Vermouth, aka Paul McCartney), adjunct member of the Pythons (he played Robin’s Minstrel in “Holy Grail” and contributed music and routines throughout the years) and, above all, member and chief composer of the Rutles, still — more than 40 years later — the best Beatles parody.

Innes died Sunday. He was 75. The death was sudden, according to his website, and “without pain.” Which is only appropriate, given the immense pleasure he provided me and countless other Beatles (and Python and Rutles) fans.

I’m often shocked and stunned by the absurd ways so much of this world, especially the pop culture world, is connected. From my earliest memories, I loved the Beatles, spinning my aunt’s left-behind 45s when I was 5 or 6 years old. A few years later, starting to dig into the history of the group, I read Nicholas Schaffner’s neglected “The Beatles Forever,” which noted that its members had done some extracurricular production in the early Apple days, including McCartney’s work on the Bonzos’ “I’m the Urban Spaceman.” (Edit, 9:03 p.m.: I should mention that the Bonzos already had a Beatles connection — they performed “Death Cab for Cutie” in “Magical Mystery Tour.”)

Perhaps a year later, “All You Need Is Cash,” the mockumentary about the Rutles, premiered on NBC. I still remember the date clearly — March 22, 1978 — because it was the Wednesday before my bar mitzvah and half my family had come to visit. I spent the evening running back and forth from the TV, where I watched the film, to the living room, where I spent commercial breaks schmoozing with my aunts and uncles. Sorry that my attention was divided, aunts and uncles, but I was right to be concerned: In those days before we owned a VCR, I had no idea if I’d ever see the Rutles again, and the film finished dead last in the ratings.

Newsweek (or was it Time?) had done a story, however, and I knew there was a soundtrack album, which I dutifully purchased at full retail price. My family had a recordable 8-track player, and I bought a blank 8-track tape to make a Rutles-Beatles comparison record, since losts to the mists of history and crappy technology.

Perhaps a year after that, I was perusing the first “Rolling Stone Record Buyers’ Guide” in a mall bookstore and noticed that the double-LP collection, “The History of the Bonzos,” earned the maximum five stars. I found a copy at the long-departed New Orleans record store Leisure Landing and started immersing myself in “Spaceman,” “My Pink Half of the Drainpipe,” “You Done My Brain In,” and “King of Scurf.”

And, so, Neil Innes — creative, funny, whimsical — became one of my musical heroes.

There were other connections, it turned out. Ricky Fataar, who played Harrison parody Stig O’Hara in the Rutles, was a member of the Flames, a South African band produced by Beach Boy Carl Wilson, who sang lead on “God Only Knows,” which Paul McCartney has called his favorite Beach Boys song. Like the Beatles, the Rutles lost a member young: Ollie Halsall, a session man who did much of the McCartney-esque work. And, to bring the story full circle, Harrison appeared in “All You Need Is Cash” and mortgaged his house so Python could make “Life of Brian.”

I followed Innes’ career intermittently; I saw he attended the occasional Beatles convention, and would be the subject of an interview every so often. I took advantage of my time as CNN’s Entertainment section producer to interview two Pythons, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and one very ex-Beatle, Pete Best, but never got a chance to talk to Innes. I don’t know what I would have asked him, anyway: “Do you know how happy your music has made me over the years?”

Not very journalistically insightful of me.

I’m sad today, but Innes — who was characterized by John Cleese as “a very sweet man, much too nice for his own good” — had the right perspective on posterity. In the Rutles song “Back in ’64,” he tells of trying to describe the excitement of the ’60s to a grandchild, only to be ignored:

But as you’ve gone on and on
Your audience has flown
And as you find yourself all on your own

Still, he adds: “You may wistfully recall / How Benjamin Disraeli said that /
Life is too short to be small / Or maybe like some old time song / Over all it’s long so, so long, it’s all over …”

Good night, Neil. Your life was anything but small.

Review: ‘Love Me Do!: The Beatles’ Progress’ by Michael Braun

Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress by Michael Braun

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Until finishing it last week, I’d never read “Love Me Do!: The Beatles’ Progress” – Michael Braun’s 1964 chronicle of Beatlemania in Britain and the U.S.

But I felt like I have.

That’s because whole sections of the book have been used in other Beatles biographies – I’m pretty sure I read some of the anecdotes in Nicholas Schaffner’s 1977 “The Beatles Forever” – and my shelves are full of Beatles biographies. For that matter, some of the passages seem ripped from Alun Owen’s script for “A Hard Day’s Night.” In fact, there were times I thought it might be the other way around — that Owen had stolen sections from Braun’s book, given that Braun’s book begins in late 1963, not long after the October show that made “Beatlemania” into a literal household word.

“What will your film be about?” a reporter asks Paul McCartney after a show in Cambridge. “Sort of a fantasy type thing?”

“Well, yeah,” says Paul, who obviously has no idea. I wonder if Owen did at the time. He and Braun must have been at the same events.

Yet, despite this familiarity, Braun’s book has the benefit of still seeming fresh. The Kindle edition I read had been based on a 1995 reissue with an introduction by the Beatle Brain himself, Mark Lewisohn, who praised it as perhaps “the best book ever written about them.” (This is before his own “Tune In” was released, of course, not to mention Bob Spitz’s biography and not long after Ian MacDonald’s “Revolution in the Head.”)

Braun, an American then working for British media, is an engaging writer and had the boldness – at the time – of presenting the Beatles warts and all, making jokes at others’ expense and drinking actual alcohol, and presumably taking up the offers of some of their female fans. No less an expert than John Lennon said it was “a true book. He wrote how we were, which was bastards.” But Lennon, who was in the midst of his post-Beatles flagellation when he said that to Jann Wenner, overstates the case: What comes across in Braun’s book is a companion to “A Hard Day’s Night,” except without the occasional quietude of the movie’s escapist sequences.

Indeed, it’s amazing the group was as funny and resilient as they were, given the meat grinder of early Beatlemania. Imagine being trapped in your own fame, your own lives. Wherever you go, you’re surrounded by security. You have to be, otherwise you’d be ripped apart by fans. Your managers – Brian Epstein, who maintains a loving distance, and Brian Sommerville, who handles publicity and appears frequently on the verge of quitting (which he did not long after) – have to protect you at all costs from … everything. The media keeps asking you how long you’ll last, and you wonder the same thing, since mere months earlier you were nobody, just four Northern lads struggling to impress the moguls in London.

My favorite quote about Beatlemania is from the acerbic George Harrison, who once said, “They gave their money, and they gave their screams. But the Beatles kind of gave their nervous systems. They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then blamed it on us.” But “Love Me Do!” has perhaps a more pertinent quote, from Paul after a concert in York: “Oh my God, my ulcer.”

I could only think: 21-year-old Paul McCartney had an ulcer?

So if the group in “Love Me Do!” are bastards, they’d earned the right. Here are the sniffy Americans grimacing at their hair. Here are the cops rolling their eyes. Here are the media asking for autographs, then waiting to tear down the pedestal they’d just built. (Epstein to a reporter after an American show: “Great, just great … the best reception ever.” Reporter: “Would you say it was the best reception ever?”) At one point, Harrison mutters on a plane, “Why don’t you leave us alone?”

And yet the group couldn’t help but be their cheeky selves. A BBC reporter asks John, “The French have not made up their minds about the Beatles. What do you think of them?” Lennon responds, “Oh, we like the Beatles. They’re gear.” Paul, whom Jane Asher characterizes as “insecure” (Paul?), lights up at the prospects of trying new things, like foreign films and intellectual repartee – things that likely wouldn’t have been available to a working-class teacher in Liverpool. And the JFK press conference still makes me laugh.

Braun, too, gets his licks in. He notes that the most dissonant sound to be heard in the Plaza Hotel ballroom is “the rare one of too much vermouth pouring into a martini,” and that “only Time [magazine] and the New Yorker used the word ‘coleopteran’ (the New Yorker being the only one to use it correctly).”

“Coleopteran,” incidentally, means “beetle-like.” I had to look it up. Now, there’s a similar word, “Beatlesque,” and nobody has to look it up.

Paul may have been insecure, but he knew there was something happening, even if others outside their bubble didn’t know what it is.

At one point, Braun asks John and Paul if they’re going to change into song-and-dance men. John offers a flat, “We don’t want to learn to dance or take elocution lessons,” but Paul is a bit more expansive.

“People keep asking us whether we’re going to broaden our scope,” he says. “I don’t know whether we will or not. One of the things about us is that we intrigue people. We seem a little bit different.”

To say the least. And for tidbits like that, even with the story told a hundred times or more, “Love Me Do!” remains an excellent investment.

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Review: ‘Dreaming the Beatles’ by Rob Sheffield

Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World by Rob Sheffield

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved the Beatles.

I’m not exaggerating. In fact, I’ve loved the Beatles since before I have memories.

One of my first memories of identifying a record dates to when I was 5 or 6, circa 1970-71, when I heard “I Should Have Known Better” and “I’ll Get You” and knew they were by the Fab Four. (I did think the former’s title was “I Never Knew What a Kiss Could Be,” however. I had a lot to learn.) By that time, I had inherited my aunt’s singles collection, which included a number of Beatles 45s with the yellow-and-orange Capitol swirl. I played them constantly.

Even before owning the singles, I’d probably been hearing them for years. I watched the Beatles cartoon series in reruns (favorite songs: “Anna” and “And Your Bird Can Sing”). My aunt was a full-blown fan and visited my family in the summers – including 1966, when she saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium. And given that I was born in 1965, I suspect I heard the Beatles in the womb, because my mother – though preferring Eddie Fisher and Connie Francis to those long-haired British kids – liked to listen to the radio, and the radio would have been full of Beatles.

My love of the group has never really diminished. In high school I wore a T-shirt with “Beatle Maniac” on the back; in college, though my tastes branched out in many directions, I always came back to “Revolver,” or the White Album, or “Abbey Road”; and to this day, after decades of Beatle immersion, I continue to add to my Beatle knowledge, going from Nicholas Schaffner’s “The Beatles Forever” to Philip Norman’s “Shout” to Bob Spitz’s “The Beatles” to the first volume of Mark Lewisohn’s biography, while consuming other memoirs, magazine articles and comment boards.

I also know I’m not alone in my … obsession. So I was curious to see what Rob Sheffield – who has written some terrific Beatles-related articles for Rolling Stone – had to say about the Beatles’ hold on popular culture, the topic of his book “Dreaming the Beatles.”

Surprisingly, I think he missed the point.

Now, “Dreaming the Beatles” is engaging and interesting. Sheffield is too good a writer, and too knowledgeable a fan, to have produced a bad Beatles book. But what’s missing from “Dreaming the Beatles” (especially given its title) is something of the mysterious and mystical.

Before you roll your eyes again, hear me out.

In recent years, I’ve started thinking of the Beatles as something approaching a miracle. I know skeptics will scoff – every “miracle” can be read as the product of luck, timing and coincidence – but, still, what are the chances that four boys far removed from the cultural hub of their country find each other to form a good band, one of the best ever? What are the chances that they’re not only talented musicians but incredible songwriters? That they complement one another so well? That they meet both a manager and producer who underscore but don’t undermine their strengths? That they not only ride a rocket ship to fame – that’s happened countless times – but prove so adept at their art that they reshape not only popular music but popular culture as well? That their story (looked at from years later, of course) has an amazing arc that has them breaking up at the height of their powers, so we never have to deal with the usual – and inevitable – decline?

What are the chances that the corpus should be so free of waste? The Beatles produced just over 200 songs on 14 albums (counting the “Past Masters” singles collection) and virtually every one has something to recommend it. Hell, even the ones on the Anthology series have something to recommend them. (Though one of Sheffield’s favorites, “It’s All Too Much,” is one I struggle to recommend. Well, there’s George Harrison’s great lyric, “Show me that I’m everywhere, and get me home for tea.”) They were brilliant editors and remarkably self-contained. They could play most of the instruments and knew how they wanted others to sound (with the help of George Martin, of course).

Above all, they had an unmatchable chemistry. When I listen to the Beatles, no matter where I drop the needle, I can feel the propulsion, often more than that – I can feel an incredible love and joy. For all of my worship of the late-‘60s Kinks or the Clash’s “London Calling” album or the pocket-tight thwock of a Benny Benjamin drum part, no other artist has ever been able to sustain that sheer energy so long and so consistently. The Beatles make me happy, and I’m not the only one who feels that way.

So, again, what are the chances?

It’s an impossible question to answer (even John Lennon, in his demystifying “Lennon Remembers” phase, dismissed the group as “just a band who made it very, very big”), but Sheffield doesn’t really try hard. He does note their fearlessness – this was a band of men who were unafraid to sing girl-group songs without changing the sex and made those songs work brilliantly – and their obvious determination to push one another. (Until, well, they broke.) But something is missing – some music theory, some additional cultural context, some flights of fancy, something. (Not the Harrison song – that’s in here.)

Now, I know I sound dismissive. That’s not quite right. I enjoyed “Dreaming the Beatles.” Sheffield does get at the fact that the Beatles pretty much created the template for rock ‘n’ roll lives to the point where it became either myth or cliché, take your pick: the early member who died tragically, the change in drummers that sealed the unit, the wives who broke up that old band of mine. The story has become so well-known that even the parodies have become “part of the soup,” in Harrison’s phrase. (Harrison, who gets off some nifty sarcastic lines in Eric Idle’s recent memoir, could also be surprisingly defensive about the group.)

Sheffield highlights the importance of Nicholas Schaffner’s “The Beatles Forever,” a 1977 volume that was the entry point for many post-breakup fans (OK, like me), notes the impact of Lennon’s murder on stoking interest, and offers some nice character sketches and song analyses. Also some intriguing facts: Apparently, in the group’s lawsuit against “Beatlemania,” John Lennon wrote in a statement that “I and the three other Beatles have plans to stage a reunion concert, to be recorded, filmed and marketed around the world.” He made that statement just after Thanksgiving, 1980.

Still, that also highlights what’s missing: the motivation of Beatles fans. One of my favorite books, surprisingly unmentioned in “Dreaming the Beatles,” is Mark Shipper’s “Paperback Writer,” a 1978 novel in which the group reunites in 1979 and proceeds to flop. Things get so bad that they’re forced to tour as Peter Frampton’s opening act. The late ‘70s was a time when Beatles reunion talk was in the air, but Shipper knew the reason had less to do with the Beatles than us: If the Beatles got back together, we could return to the garden. That was never going to happen, and Lennon’s death put an end to the dream.

Some quibbles: Sheffield has McCartney’s “My Love,” which he roasts mercilessly, as released in 1971; it actually came out in 1973, which Sheffield surely knows. Also, he says “radio wouldn’t touch” McCartney’s 1985 single “Spies Like Us” (done for the film). They must have touched it a bit, since it made the Top Ten. (The song is awful, as Sheffield says.) And I was surprised that a fan like Sheffield didn’t bother to look up the man he puts down as “Anonymous Session Guy” in McCartney’s video for “So Bad.” Uh, that would be Eric Stewart, who also played on the recording and was better known as part of 10cc – a band who could also create clever hooks, particularly in their hit, “The Things We Do for Love.”

Anyway, I’ve spent 1,300 words criticizing “Dreaming the Beatles” for not really getting at the meat of how the Beatles became THE BEATLES – the measuring stick for every rock band from now until probably forever, their music and lives permeating the culture – yet I don’t think I did any better. It gets back to the old Elvis Costello/Frank Zappa/Martin Mull quote: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

You know where the answer is? In the grooves.

One, two, three, fo —

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Sunday read: ‘Would you please sing something?’ ‘No, we need money first’

This weekend brought the opening of Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary, “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years.”

Though it’s rather shallow in places — skipping over meeting Bob Dylan, offering no stories about hangers-on and little sense of what life was really like in the bubble (though the idea that the group had to take refuge in a bathroom at New York’s Plaza Hotel gives you an idea) — it’s hard to resist the siren song of the Fabs.

That’s especially true in the early months of American Beatlemania. John Lennon once commented how disappointed he was to see the actual U.S. of A. — “When we got here you were all walking around in fucking Bermuda shorts with Boston crewcuts and stuff on your teeth. … The chicks looked like fuckin’ 1940s horses. … I mean we just thought, ‘What an ugly race.’ ” And you look at “Eight Days a Week,” and you see what he means — and you also see how quickly fashion changed to catch up with the Beatles’ brash, cool youth. They simply radiated something different.

You also see what joy there was in their presence.

It was right there at the press conference at New York’s Kennedy Airport. The Beatles were undaunted by the American press — after all, they’d already faced Fleet Street — and they fearlessly joked in the face of questions about their hair and their music and their hair. It’s hard not to be won over with their cheek.

For today’s Sunday read, a sense of their humor: The transcript of the JFK press conference.

One of the glories of the film is it features a chunk of the press conference in glorious color, instead of the grainy black-and-white that’s all over YouTube (and to which I linked up top).

Incidentally, the great lines that have been repeated since then — “How did you find America?” “Turn left at Greenland” or “What would call that hairstyle you’re wearing?” “Arthur” — are actually creations of Alun Owen and his “A Hard Day’s Night” script. He obviously got it immediately. The rest of us may have taken some time to figure it out, but fortunately the Beatles are forever.

My favorite albums: ‘Skylarking’

From Astralwerks.

Update, 11:10 a.m. The @xtcfans account, which is the voice of Colin Moulding Andy Partridge (ack! I was so rattled I referred to the wrong guy), responded to my use of the phrase “still sniping at Rundgren” in this entry:

https://twitter.com/xtcfans/status/771361870682939392

My apologies for the glibness (and for referring originally NOT to “that bloke, the smart arsed one with the glasses”). The sentence has been changed.

Every so often, an act comes along that, based on tunefulness and wit, is likened to the Beatles. Emitt Rhodes was the “one-man Beatles” in the early ’70s; Squeeze, led by the songwriting team of Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, were the Beatlesque group of the early ’80s.

(Incidentally, apropos of nothing, here’s Emitt Rhodes on “The Dating Game”:)

And then there was XTC.

It was hard to know what to make of the English quartet, later a trio, as they put out albums such as “Drums and Wires” and “The Big Express.” Their songs were obviously pop, or pop-rock — how else can you describe “Life Begins at the Hop” or “Senses Working Overtime”? — but there was always something off-kilter about them, something angular and discordant: more art than pop.

Ironically, they were most Beatlesque when not being XTC, as when they masqueraded as the psychedelic band the Dukes of Stratosphear in 1985 and 1987. “Collideoscope” would have fit right in on “Revolver.” (OK, maybe the Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request.”)

So when the news came out that XTC was going to be making an album with Todd Rundgren, himself an occasional one-man Beatles, it was like news from pop heaven. Finally! A producer who could smooth out XTC’s loose ends and rein in their stranger impulses.

It worked out — and it didn’t work out.

Odds and ends: Beatles, Katrina, Beamon

Image from macblog.macmaster.ca.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ final American concert, held at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

The 1966 tour hadn’t been a happy one for the Fabs — there was that international incident in the Philippines and the “bigger than Jesus” controversy. Moreover, with the early August release of “Revolver,” the group’s music had moved well beyond the relatively simple structures of the early Beatlemania days, but they were still playing the early catalog. “Eleanor Rigby” and “Love You To” never did get a live treatment from the Beatles.

Still, I know at least one person who was ecstatic to see them on that tour — at Shea Stadium, no less, thanks to an Army buddy of my father’s who worked for promoter Sid Bernstein. Lucky.

It’s also the 11th anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico landfall of Hurricane Katrina. I can remember sitting at my desk at CNN Center in Atlanta, incredulous that a Category 5 was going to smash into New Orleans, the city in which I was raised. (It was reduced to a Cat 3 just before landfall and hit just east of town, but was still incredibly destructive, of course.) My mother, who still lives in town, had decided to evacuate and came up to Atlanta that weekend, but she had to leave our cat, Nesbitt, behind. When we went back three weeks later, we found Nesbitt, but that was some of the only good news. Here’s a story I wrote about the experience, and here’s another I wrote last year.

Better yet, watch Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke.” Incredibly powerful.

Louisiana is now suffering the after-effects of the torrential rains that hit Baton Rouge, Lafayette and environs. If you’d like to help, here’s a list of ways to pitch in.

On a happier note, today is Bob Beamon’s 70th birthday. Let’s go out on one of the great sports achievements of modern times.

How does Ringo Starr do that?

Image from Creativity Online.

Was surfing through YouTube the other day and found a couple videos devoted to the talent of Ringo Starr.

Even today, the Beatles’ drummer (who turned 76 in July!) is the subject of jokes — jokes that fit the drummer stereotype of not being the brainiest boffin in the lab. Ringo, in particular, is taken for granted because of his shambling, good-natured manner, regular-guy looks and the misbegotten idea that he lucked into the drummer’s chair with the best band that ever was.