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Delicate Dynamics: A Fresh, Female Look at the Breakup at the Core of the Beatles
Tim Knight
1. Introduction: The Beatles Today
The Beatles, the most famous pop group of all time, broke up fifty years
ago. Fifty years before that was just after the Treaty of Versailles which
ended the First World War, before the Roaring Twenties, and way before the
infamous Wall Street Crash of 1929. The Beatles, in other words, broke up a
long time ago. They released new recordings for only eight years, between
1962 and 1970. They stopped performing concerts four years before that.
One of their leaders, and founder, was killed forty years ago, and another of
the four members died nearly twenty years ago. Pop music in the 1960s was
all about the present, the latest fashion, the latest musical idea. However, the
best-selling album around the world in the first decade of the 21st century
was a compilation of the Beatles’ hit singles from the 1960s, called simply, 1.
Hundreds of books have been published about the group since they broke
up, and continue to be published; some of them are best sellers. Countless
websites devoted to, or related to, the group are maintained, while on
YouTube fans make documentaries about the band, swap comments about
their songs, and analyze and deconstruct them with audio software. Podcasts
about the group, the individual members, and their music are being made
and downloaded by growing numbers of devoted listeners on various
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platforms, such as iTunes, Apple’s Podcasts app, Google Podcasts, and
Podbean. Social media is awash with Beatles-related accounts. There are
about 70 Facebook groups devoted to the band. One, which started four
years ago, now has well over 100,000 members; another, which started only
two years ago, has over a third as many already. About 60 accounts on
Instagram focus on the band as a whole, or as solo artists. On Twitter, as
well as the of ficial accounts, both for the group and for the individual
members, even the dead ones, there are dozens of accounts run by fans.
One, called the Teatles, is devoted (“mostly,” it avers) to the Beatles drinking
tea!1
All this output on a pop group that lasted less than ten years and ceased to
exist fifty years ago is extraordinary. Along with many people who want to
celebrate their music and personalities, a large part of the continuing
interest is focussed on debating the reasons why they broke up when they
did, and a fascination especially with the relationship between the two
acknowledged top-tier members, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the
writers and singers of the large majority of their songs. They were, David
Hepworth writes, “two lost boys who somehow transformed their differences
into the greatest creative dividend of all. Unlike most partnerships where
creative tension is allegedly at work, they managed to avoid discouraging
each other. While clearly capable of loathing from time to time, it was the
contributions each made to the other’s ideas that struck the sparks” (loc.
161-166).
One interesting development recently has been a critical examination of
how the group’s story has been told over the years, and especially at that
relationship between the two major figures, who “at their best,” argues
1 @Teatlemania.
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Hepworth, “were like magnets in balance, holding the iron filings of the
Beatles’ music in perfect suspension” (loc. 166). The recent, fresh analysis
has largely come from at least two quarters with four common threads. The
first three are, that they are second or third-generation Beatles’ fans; female;
and American. The fourth is that their analysis broadly tips the balance of
much of the historiography of the Beatles away from what they argue is a
bias towards John Lennon, and back towards supporting Paul McCartney, or
at least giving his side of the story equal weight. This paper outlines this new
development and sets it in context.
2. Female Power in the Beatles Story
Girls were a big part of the phenomenon known as Beatlemania in the
early-mid 1960s. Barbara Ehrenreich, the feminist author, pointed out that
for the teenage, or even younger, female fans, it was “rebellious to lay claim
to the active, desiring side of a sexual attraction: the Beatles were objects;
the girls were their pursuers” (qtd. in Gould 181). What was perfect about
the Beatles as objects, too, was that the four different individuals attracted
their own ardent fans, as Gould writes,
For the adventurous, John; for the conventionally romantic, Paul;
for the motherly, Ringo; and for those who couldn’t quite make
up their minds, perhaps George, who couldn’t quite make up his.
The sharp-tongued, intimidating one, the pretty, personable one,
the unassuming, homely-but-cute one, the vague, handsome one
– around and around it went (183).
To some extent this has happened with other bands since, but not to such
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an intense and widespread degree. Beatlemania swept Britain in 1963, and
the United States the following year, as has been documented many times,
for example, in books by Braun; Gould; Norman; and recently, and
humorously, by Craig Brown. The band even apparently helped people in
America move on together to a cheerier story and happier frame of mind
when they visited the USA three months after the violent death of President
Kennedy (Lewis). The films, A Hard Day’s Night (Lester) and the more
recent Eight Days A Week (Howard) show teenage girls screaming so loud,
the Beatles could hardly hear themselves play in concert at that time. Film
of the Beatles’ famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan television show during
their first visit to the United States in early 1964 also shows this. Brown
describes, “Screaming, screaming and yet more screaming. The camera cuts
to the audience – virtually all girls between twelve and fifteen years old”
(154). Brown also reports that at a concert at the Southend Odeon in
England, one policeman, “armed with a noise meter recorded the screaming
at 110 decibels, the equal of a sustained artillery barrage” (126). The
policeman was just one authority figure who did not know what had hit him.
Gould describes the phenomenon and the power the screaming girls
wielded:
The screams that first arose spontaneously when a few girls were
undone by their proximity to these chimerical heroes soon
became established as a signature of the fans, turning the girls
into active participants in the phenomenon of Beatlemania.
Screaming set a lofty standard of participation… The girls had
stumbled onto a brilliant tactical gambit. There, inside a frenetic,
shrieking mass of Beatlemaniacs, the voice of adult authority was
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utterly still (184).
Once the Beatles stopped touring and playing live concerts – after a last
performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco in the summer of 1966 – for
the next few years, women ostensibly played quieter roles in the developing
story. John Lennon was already married, to Cynthia, and two members,
Ringo Starr and George Harrison, soon joined him, in getting married to
Maureen, and the model Patti Boyd, respectively. The four th, Paul
McCartney, remained single, but had a steady, glamorous girlfriend, the
actress Jane Asher. The Beatles were famously active in the clubs and social
nightlife of London, but it was their work in the studio that drew most
attention as they continued, and developed, their songwriting and recording
at an astonishing rate.
Not so well known to observers in the early years of the Beatles, though,
was the key role played by the absence of two females in the relationship of
the duo at the heart of the band. Lennon and McCartney had, it was noted,
different personalities, but they bonded over a desire to write songs, and, on
a more personal level, because they had both lost their mothers. Paul’s
mother died of cancer when she was 47 and he was 14; John’s more
bohemian mother farmed him out to be raised by his aunt from the age of
five and, tragically, when he was 17 and while he was re-building a
relationship with her, she was run over by a car and killed. Both later wrote
Beatles songs featuring their mothers: first, John’s eponymous Julia, while
in Let It Be, Paul refers to “Mother Mary,” Mary being the name of his
mother. Then a year after the Beatles broke up, as a result of “primal scream
therapy under Arthur Janov,” (Norman, “John Lennon”), Lennon released a
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song simply titled Mother.
The absence of their mothers helped draw John and Paul together. The
sudden absence of a man in 1967 then created a gap into which others
eventually moved and helped pull them apart. In the summer of 1967, only a
couple of months after their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club
Band, grabbed the attention of the pop and rock music world everywhere,
their manager, Brian Epstein, died from a drugs overdose. By this time, John
Lennon was much more mellow, but also more lethargic, as a result of taking
copious amounts of the drug LSD, and later an addiction to heroin (Doggett
55-56; Hamelman 128). Into the vacuum, Paul McCartney spearheaded
various projects, including a film for television that was badly received, and
even George Harrison for a while took the lead in taking them all to India to
do a course in meditation. The Beatles, led in this case jointly by McCartney
and Lennon, also set up Apple with a stated aim of fostering creative types
ever ywhere to bring their music or ar t to greater attention. Notably,
however, by then, May 1968, something had changed and the press
conference given by John and Paul in New York City to promote Apple was
irritable, devoid of the fun and joy for which the band’s press conferences
four years earlier had been (Brown 456-8).
The band’s creativity continued apace, but the various ventures were all
troubled in different ways. The quiet and effective management of Epstein
was missing, and the relationships among the four members of the group
started to fray after many years of intense work and socializing.
Into this increasingly delicate environment, writes Sheffield (“And in the
End”), “four brash New Yorkers entered the Beatles’ inner circle,” a circle
that had hitherto been only open to friends and colleagues from their
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hometown Liverpool. In 1967-8 their authorized biographer Hunter Davies
had detailed this over four pages (338-341). Even their essential record
producer George Martin, and recording engineer Geoff Emerick, were
excluded from the more intimate times in the recording studio, such as
when it came to meal breaks (Emerick and Massey 217). By early summer
1968, though, the dynamics among the group themselves were changing.
For one thing, Lennon, who had let McCartney shape the ‘Pepper’ album
largely through inertia, came back to the studio to dominate the early weeks
of recordings for what became known as the White Album (Emerick and
Massey 246). The differences in personality had always been there; now
there were increasing musical differences, too. At one level, this contributed
to the richness of the Beatles’ output, but it also caused an increasing
tendency of band members to work alone, or largely alone, in the studio. As
tensions festered, the “four brash New Yorkers” appeared. Sheffield (“And in
the End”) explains the New Yorkers’ impact:
Different as they were, all four had confidence. None of them
were intimidated by the band. None were crippled by British
manners. Their rough edges appealed to the Beatles and made
them easier to trust. All four had a massive impact on the
Beatles’ chemistry.
Two of the people Sheffield is describing were men – Phil Spector the
record producer, and Allen Klein, the businessman, who became their
manager, crucially at the behest of only three of the four Beatles, McCartney
being the one opposed, and – on this matter at least – more and more
estranged (Brown and Gaines 301-8; Norman 371-4). By extension, later, in
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1970, McCartney also found himself the odd man out when tapes of what
were known as the ‘Get Back’ sessions were handed over to Spector for
mixing and overdubbing for release as the album Let It Be (MacDonald 270-
3).
Spector is the least controversial of the four. Doggett prefers to call the
other three “the intruders… whose names can still provoke a sharp intake of
breath from true adherents of the Beatles cult” (64-5), and who also, Weber
points out, “seemed to render much of Davies’ work obsolete” (loc. 864).
Klein is the most vilified of the three still and it is now more interesting to
note the influence of the other two New Yorkers, both women from that city
– “a Tokyo-born avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono, [and] a photographer
named Linda Eastman” (Sheffield, “And in the End”). In the phrases of
Hamelman, Klein and Ono were two of the forces “pulling… John out of one
socket” (127), while among those “Yanking Paul was… his relationship with
Linda Eastman” (128). Internal forces - resentments among the band
members themselves - were also pulling them apart, but the entry of these
women helped to upset the delicate dynamics even further.
Both Eastman and Ono were artists in their own right, which appealed to
the two Beatles. The couples got married little over a week apart (John and
Yoko following Paul and Linda) in April 1969. Soon after, Paul helped John,
but without George Harrison and Ringo Starr, record a song about John and
Yoko to release as the Beatles’ next single. The wives were artists, but not
musicians, and yet both wives also sang on future records in Lennon’s and
McCartney’s solo careers. Both John and Paul suffered criticism among fans
and writers for recording and even performing with their wives, but it did
not stop them.
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As Rob Sheffield (“Dreaming”) points out, the Beatles did not just invent
“most of what rock stars do” (21). They “also innovated things other rock
stars don’t do… Here’s a big one: John and Paul both quit the Beatles to
start new bands with their wives” (21). When set in the context of other pop
and rock stars and bands, it is hard to disagree with Sheffield’s description
of this as “weird” (22). He goes on to argue that “the weirdest twist wouldn’t
be knowable for another decade - both couples still together ten years later,
still married and making music until death did them part… Choosing
women as artistic collaborators over the band, well, that’s a case where they
had no imitators” (22). He amusingly asks the reader to consider the idea of
other famous names in rock bands splitting to make music with female
partners.
3. The ‘new’ analysis
3a. The Podcast
Let us now turn to the female Americans who have been recently
examining the Beatles story, and in particular, in how the Beatles story has
been told. Another Kind of Mind (AKOM) is a podcast with average 4.5
ratings (out of 5) on Apple Podcasts, with associated website and Twitter
account. It started in 2019 and is run by three women. Two of them host
each episode. In the first one, the host Thalia Reynolds said she had long
been fascinated by the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership and
personal relationship which is, she says, “at its heart a love story, equally
beautiful and tragic. I’ve always felt it hasn’t been told with the nuance and
sensitivity that it deserves. The two men are often, either pitted against one
another, or their affection for one another is framed as lop-sided” (AKOM,
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“May I Introduce to You”). She goes on to say another imbalance is the way
biographers of the band had presented John as the only Beatle with an
interesting backstory, and not given enough weight to the backgrounds of
the other three members. With that comment in mind, it is interesting to
note that of the following eighteen episodes, one is devoted to Ringo Starr,
and one to George Harrison’s role in playing on a John Lennon song which
criticized Paul McCartney. Fourteen of the other sixteen episodes are
devoted to Lennon and McCartney, twelve of them in what they call their
“Breakup Series.”
In the first of these, one of the presenters claims the reason for the
breakup of the band fifty years ago “remains mysterious” (AKOM, “The Big
Bang”). She says “the traditional narrative is steeped in biases and
predicated on unchallenged post-breakup spin. These tropes are so
ingrained in our collective conscientiousness that they may be obscuring a
more realistic, more logical version of events.” She says the podcast will
apply “sensitivity and emotional intelligence to our analysis” of the Lennon-
McCartney relationship, “the core issue” of “the divorce.”
The presenter goes on: “In a nutshell, we believe this was a high stakes
game of chase that spun out of control. The end game was never to end the
Beatles, or for Lennon and McCartney to separate as a creative partnership.
And while we are the first to suggest the breakup was a negotiation gone
awry, we don’t see this as primarily a battle for dominance within the band,
but rather an elaborate play for respect, love, appreciation and commitment.
We believe this attempt to renegotiate the terms of their par tnership
ultimately, and unintentionally, resulted in the demise of the Beatles. Join us
for this radical re-telling of the breakup” (AKOM, “The Big Bang”). Whether
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or not their re-telling is really ‘radical’ is a matter for debate, but certainly
this writer has not heard in other Beatles podcasts or discussions claims that
‘nuance,’ or ‘sensitivity,’ or ‘emotional intelligence’ will be applied.
Among many positive reviews of the podcast2 was one that said it felt
“new,” wondering, “Perhaps it’s because they’re women, and women have
been largely shut out of these types of discussions in the past? Maybe.” The
presenters concentrate mostly on events in the period from late 1967
onwards, after Epstein’s death and through to just after the breakup. There
is not space in this paper to rehearse all the arguments they put forward or
all the evidence they examine, but there is no doubt they have done copious
research, quoting from famous and more obscure books and newspaper
ar ticles. They also play audio clips of inter views given by Lennon,
McCartney, and others around this time. As one would expect from their
stated aims, they do not merely state the known facts, but delve into the
possible reasons for the behaviour of the main players. Naturally, this leads
beyond facts into speculation, often into the minds of John and Paul. One
negative reviewer of the podcast criticized the presenters for their “dime
store psychology and rank speculation.”
The thrust of the podcast is that most of the writers of the Beatles story
hitherto have been heavily biased towards John Lennon, regarding him as
the leader, visionary, and genius with the most talent, while casting Paul
McCartney as a scheming villain who was just a support act. Instead, they
argue, McCartney was at least equal to Lennon in all those positive attributes
and behaved better. One of the presenters, called Phoebe, derides the male
2 The comments by reviewers come from reviews left by listeners via the Apple Podcasts app.
― 52 ―
music writers and biographers who supposedly hang on Lennon’s every
word and tell the anti-McCartney story as “jean jackets” for their alleged
propensity to wear denim. The presenters argue that their re-telling actually
recognizes Lennon as more emotional and vulnerable, and consequently, as
a more sympathetic man, than how he comes across from the traditional
narrative. They say writers have used words like ‘angry’ about John to show
his strength, as opposed to ‘hurt’ for Paul to stress his more feminine, softer
side. They argue that Lennon has usually been portrayed as the ‘male’ in the
partnership, powerful and with agency, in contrast to the ‘female’ McCartney
and dispute that. Interestingly, in one episode they make much of the
comment reportedly made by Yoko Ono to Philip Norman, that John “had
contemplated an affair with Paul, but had been deterred by Paul’s immovable
heterosexuality” (“John Lennon” 669).
In episode 8 of their ‘Breakup series,’ the presenters take issue with John’s
claim in interviews with Jann Wenner in 1970 that he was ‘done’ with the
Beatles by 1969. They argue that the evidence actually suggests that he was
as much invested in the Beatles and his relationship with Paul as McCartney
was with him and the group. To give some flavour of the podcasts, let us
look at some of their actual discourse.
Diana Erickson: Paul was a force to be reckoned.
Phoebe Lorde: He’s not just feeling depressed and pitiful. He’s
angry.
D: Right, Paul’s anger is ignored. But is very much present when
you dig into things.
P: Paul is not allowed to be angry in the Beatles story.
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D: The reason we are specifically flagging this issue is that for
the story to make sense, we need to get beyond the trope of Paul
being desperate and appreciate his power as an adversary, and
his confidence in his own ar tistr y at this time. And that’s
important because a lot of John’s actions during this time are
directed at a person he sees as pig-headed, in control of
everything, stubborn, controlling, domineering, and someone
who doesn’t care about him, and is insensitive, and so, when you
realise this, that John’s actions make a little bit more sense.
The presenters discuss Lennon’s supposed insecurities and paranoia
towards the end of the Beatles, and wonder how he and confident Paul could
be partners for so long. Presenter Diana Erickson mulls: “How close and
deep they must have been, for John, who’s that paranoid to feel completely
safe with him being his partner. It’s sweet and it’s sad, actually. That we’ve
got the world’s two most competitive men a hundred per cent trusting each
other. Until they didn't.” A common theme throughout is to suggest that
Paul was an equal to John not just in terms of talent, but also in terms of
being an individual with agency, who was no more or less ready to walk away
from the Beatles as Lennon, the man who had demanded “a divorce” from
the others in September 1969. They argue that McCartney, already musically
and creatively more independent, was just as well-placed to leave and start
afresh with his own new wife and burgeoning family. They suggest that
Lennon was feeling competitive for Paul’s attention, but failing to get it, and
worried that he was losing his partner. Replacing Paul with Yoko Ono was, in
essence, a defence mechanism.
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One question that arises from these points and others in the podcast is,
how ‘radical’ is this re-telling really? The question has certainly occurred to
some listeners. One reviewer writes, “Maybe it’s because of my generation,
but I never got fed the narrative that Paul was inferior. So the constant
pushback from the hosts here seems a bit too much, and can often fall the
other way despite their assurances that they ‘love John too.’ I’ve caught
many moments where they definitely imply that Paul is the artistic genius
and John is an inferior artist” (firenze721). Another reviewer commented
that it often sounded as if they were arguing against a Rolling Stone article
from the 1980s. This frequently does, indeed, seem to be the case, and in
support of their arguments, they often cite authors of recent works, such as
Doggett, Hamelman, Shenk, and Womack, who take a far more even view of
events and actions by key individuals.
3b. The Historian
To help answer the question posed towards the end of the previous
section, let us turn to a historian from the United States, Erin Torkelson
Weber, who has published a book of historiographical scholarship called The
Beatles and the Historians. She also maintains a blogsite, in a clever reversal
called, The Historian and the Beatles. She analyzes the way the Beatles story
has been told in the years from they were together as a band until just before
publishing the book in 2016. Like the podcast presenters, she has examined
a huge body of literature on the Beatles, but she adds an extra dimension by
also examining the telling of the Beatles story in the context of what various
professional historians argue is the way to write history. She demonstrates
that a lot of the writers about the Beatles fail to measure up as reliable
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chroniclers of the group’s story.
Weber divides the approximately fifty-five years between the beginning of
the band’s emergence into the public domain and when she published her
book into four main narratives. First, the “Fab Four Narrative” from 1962 to
1970; second, the “Lennon Remembers Narrative” from 1970 until 1980; third,
the “Shout! Narrative” in the wake of Lennon’s death and Norman’s book;
and fourth, the “Lewisohn Narrative” which has developed in recent years,
resulting “in a new Orthodoxy” (loc. 49). Weber goes into impressive,
detailed analysis of many publications, and there is space only to summarize
her main points on the major works briefly here. It is a highly recommended
study, however.
Weber writes that “the first major narrative in Beatles historiography,”
promoted by the band and their management and people around them in the
1960s, “consisted of three major themes” (loc. 253). First, that the members
of the band were the best of friends with no serious tensions; second, that
certain aspects of their existence which might have damaged their popularity
(especially relating to drugs or sex) were “whitewashed”; and third, the
“promotion of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership” (loc. 253).
Included in this narrative is “the only authorized biography” of the band,
written by Hunter Davies. The first edition was published after the death of
manager Brian Epstein and after their first mauling at the hands of the press
(over the Magical Mystery Tour film), but just before Apple got going, before
Yoko Ono and Allen Klein appeared in the story, and tensions within the
band became serious, some of which were captured on film during the
making of what became the Let It Be documentary. Davies witnesses and is
able to describe several hours Lennon and McCartney spent composing the
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song, “With a little help from my friends,” (345+) one of the rare occasions
by then when they really did write together.
The second narrative, throughout the 1970s follows not only the demise of
the Beatles but the destruction of the Fab Four “myth,” as he put it, by John
Lennon in his interviews with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine. In a
pre-internet world, Lennon’s comments may have faded from consciousness,
but they were published as a book entitled Lennon Remembers. Although
Lennon has a dig at McCartney for being “a good PR man, Paul… he really
does a job” (61), the influential San Francisco-based Rolling Stone firmly fell
in with Lennon’s version of events leading to the breakup of the Beatles.3
Wenner failed to challenge Lennon on many contradictory statements and
patently false claims, but John’s comments were so iconoclastic and his voice
so strident and, for a time, seemingly ubiquitous, that they held great sway
among many fans and on the writers on the music press, the “jean jackets,”
in the phrase of Phoebe of the AKOM podcast. Ironically, it seems in
retrospect that it was Lennon who had ‘done a good PR job.’
The intense story of Lennon and McCartney continued, despite the band’s
breakup. As Shenk points out, the reason “we can’t assign a date to when
John and Paul definitively split is that it never definitely happened” (loc.
3890) because they bickered in print and in their songs in the early 1970s,
then they called a truce, and met quite often during a rapprochement in the
middle of the ‘70s, then had a more physically distant but strong speaking
relationship on the telephone in the latter part of the ‘70s. They also often
talked about each other in interviews during those years, and in the case of
3 The magazine had featured Lennon on its inaugural issue in 1967, and the co-founder and early editor Jann Wenner maintained a close relationship with the Lennons into the 1970s and, with Ono, also after Lennon’s death.
― 57 ―
the still alive Paul, well beyond. Clearly, they were never indifferent about
each other.
In December 1980 John Lennon was murdered. Weber’s third section is
the “Shout! Narrative,” which follows that shock. She writes, “The official
Fab Four narrative which had controlled the Beatles’ story in the 1960s and
the Lennon Remembers narrative of the 1970s had also overlooked
contradictory facts, but following Lennon’s murder there was now an
emotional motivation on the part of some writers to do so” (loc. 2354). She
writes that, “it was very dif ficult, if not impossible, for some writers to
employ the detachment and distance required in order to produce an
accurate accounting of the Beatles’ stor y. That cer tain facts went
undiscovered or were ignored following Lennon’s death, while not
uncommon in histor y, had enduring consequences for Beat les
historiography” (loc. 2354).
By chance, Philip Norman, an English journalist, was ready to publish
what was soon touted as the “definitive biography” of the Beatles just before
Lennon’s death. He did not attempt to hide his preference for John Lennon
over the other members of the band, and even claimed on American
television in a promotional interview for the book that Lennon “was three-
quarters of the Beatles” (loc. 2507). As many people’s emotions were so raw
following Lennon’s death, the idea that he was the one genius in the band
and the only one of real interest gained wide acceptance. Weber writes that,
“Norman later retreated from his assertion that Lennon was 75 percent of
the Beatles, but Lennon’s story consumes 75 percent of Shout!” (loc. 2515),
largely ignoring Harrison and Starr and using McCartney “mainly to serve
as Lennon’s foil.”
― 58 ―
McCartney made valiant attempts to argue his case, for example, to Hunter
Davies in a telephone call in 1981, which Davies reported and included in a
new edition of his authorized Beatles biography. However, the view of
Norman, not only that Lennon was great, but also that McCartney was
manipulative, shallow and a social-climber, held greater influence in the
historiography of the Beatles, despite its flaws. Not until the 1990s did the
world seem more receptive to McCartney’s side of the story, in Barry Miles’
Many Years from Now. While praising his vivid and dramatic prose, Weber
criticises Norman for adopting a “novelistic approach” (loc. 2451) and certain
misplaced emphases which “skew[s] the narrative” (loc. 2451). She writes
that the book’s “lack of documentation” (loc. 2459) damages its credibility,
and she argues that the “author’s evident and admitted bias” (loc. 2480) is so
strong, it calls “into question the work’s methodology, analysis and
conclusions” (loc. 2493). In 1988 an American professor Albert Goldman
wrote a notorious biography which portrayed Lennon in a completely
dif ferent light, but it was so extreme that McCartney dismissed it as
“trash,”(Coleman 31) and although its salaciousness helped it sell well, it
was never taken seriously enough by many to dent the prevailing view of
Lennon, especially during his time with the Beatles as outlined in Shout!
Weber cites various historians throughout this section to support her view
that Norman’s book lacks credibility as a reliable history. To quote one
occasion: “Partisanship,” as Garraghan reminds us in A Guide to Historical
Method “and good histor y do not mix” (loc. 2493). Having personal
preferences in writing history is not an inherent flaw, Weber writes, citing
another historian in support, but “deliberate authorial bias” (loc. 2564) can
lead to problems. Norman, she argues, allowed his admitted strong
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preference for only one of the Beatles to choose evidence and arrive at
conclusions to fit his theories, and to apply “moral judgments unevenly” (loc.
2564). She points out that some writers on the band more recently, such as
Doggett, have avoided that.
The fourth section of Weber’s historiographical examination is called “The
Lewisohn Narrative.” Mark Lewisohn was a researcher helping Norman on
Shout! but he continued his research following the publication of that work.
He was even granted access to all the log books at the Abbey Road studios in
London, where the band had recorded most of their output. Weber dates “the
onset of the Shout! narrative’s decline” (loc. 3160) to 1988, when Lewisohn’s
compendium of the band’s recording sessions was published. This cleared
up some of the disputed claims, such as who did what on which track. His
essential role is, perhaps, more as a chronicler than as an interpretive
historian, and for general readers, his books, such as Tune In, can be too big
and dense. His work, however, has been, and continues to be, invaluable.
Because of what he has uncovered and because his credibility as an
impartial researcher is so high, recent, insightful biographers of the Beatles,
such as Brown, Coleman, and Gould, or tellers of certain aspects of the
group’s story, such as Doggett, MacDonald, and Shenk, cite Lewisohn as a
key source. Their books are far more even-handed than Norman’s. Another
beneficial influence is that these books and others include a list of sources,
which Shout! does not.
Weber credits Lewisohn with changing “the answers to the two major
debates in Beatles historiography - who was responsible for the group’s
breakup, and whether Lennon or McCartney deserved the most credit for
the band’s greatness” (loc. 3166). The two previous narratives had provided
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the answers ‘Paul,’ and ‘John,’ respectively. However, in Lewisohn’s “revised
narrative Lennon and McCartney were more or less equals; both men were
musical geniuses, and it was the unique combination of their personalities
and skills, cooperation and competition, which drove the Beatles artistry”
(loc. 3173). Weber points out, too, that the critical reputations of Harrison
and Starr were also improved. Since the Lewisohn narrative’s ascendancy,
writers with musical knowledge, such as Gould and MacDonald, have been
offering new insights. In the early 1970s, the musicologist Mellers had
analyzed the songs in a still fine book, but he chose not to attempt any
biographical context. MacDonald’s superb Revolution in the Head, does
include it, and is able to boast on its cover the comment, ‘the finest piece of
Fabs scholarship ever published’.4
Weber points out that there has been some resistance to the narrative
prevailing in the wake of Lewisohn and Macdonald, but it has been declining,
and “Lewisohn, widely acknowledged as the undisputed Beatles authority”
(loc. 4336) is now at work ‘cementing’ his new Orthodoxy. Having published
Tune In in 2013, he is researching and writing two more mammoth volumes
in what will surely be ‘the definitive Beatles biography.’
4. Discussion
Let us return to the question about the podcasters’ claim to be re-telling
the Beatles story in a “radical” way. As one of the reviewers quoted earlier
pointed out, it seems that they protest too much that McCartney has not
been given his due, or that Lennon’s flaws have not been acknowledged.
They often refer to John’s emotional instability in the late 1960s, but the
4 From Mojo, a British music magazine.
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group’s recording engineer Geoff Emerick writes about his “wild mood
swings” (303) and Doggett argues that “Lennon’s insecurity was almost
instinctive” (266). In support of their points, they draw on books and papers
of recent writers such as Shenk, Hamelman, and Womack. Most of their
attacks on the way the Beatles story has been told relate to what Weber has
shown to be the narratives from 1970 to the early 1990s. It is true that there
has been some resistance to the idea that John and Paul were creative
equals. It is also true that although Norman states that he has softened his
opinion about McCartney, Shout! has been published in new editions
virtually unchanged. Some ‘facts’ which have been strongly disputed, and
virtually refuted by Lewisohn’s research, have remained unaltered. However,
the flaws of the book are now widely acknowledged, which they used not to
be. Lewisohn’s volumes are on their way to becoming the new ‘definitive
biography.’ Furthermore, in recent years, even those responsible for the
earlier, partial narratives have softened their stance. Norman himself has
written a balanced biography of Paul McCartney, while in Rolling Stone,
Gilmore has written: “The Beatles in their death throes were one of the most
mysterious and complicated end-of-romance tales of the 20th century, as well
as the most dispiriting. The Beatles hadn’t just made music - they had made
their times, as surely as any political force, and more beneficently than most.
Why, then, did the Beatles walk away?” (“Why the Beatles Broke Up”). That
final question is significant because it recognizes that the delicate dynamic
among the four was breaking; it was not that Paul alone quit, or that John
walked away without a look back, or even that Harrison and Starr had
nothing to do with the group’s end.
Interestingly, ‘Phoebe,’ the most forceful of the trio of Another Kind of
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Mind podcasters and the most avowedly pro-Paul of the presenters, has
made disparaging remarks about Lewisohn. It could be that his approach is
not enough in tune with the podcast’s more emotional discussion and
analysis, or that he is too even-handed in his analysis. From the members of
the band themselves, it is fair to acknowledge that with Lennon and Harrison
both dead, and Starr not so interested in tackling the contentious issues, the
only voice that has been heard this century is McCartney’s, and he has been
an influence on the new narratives. We do not know what Lennon would say
about his old partner now, but McCartney’s most forceful adversary in the
“squabble over their joint legacy” (Doggett 321) remains Lennon’s second
artistic partner, Yoko Ono. The podcasters devoted one episode to her, and
although they recognize her impact in both negative and positive ways, they
are, perhaps rightly, keen to promote Linda Eastman as an equal partner for
Paul. To this listener, at least, the emphasis on intense emotions at play in
the Lennon-McCartney dynamic does seem fresh. The podcasters can be
very repetitive in making their points, but it is a mark of their dedication to
the subject, and even compelling, that women who became fans of the
Beatles in the mid-1990s are moved to discuss so passionately the
relationship of two rock stars fifty years after their band broke up, and forty
years since one of the two died. However, as they continue to rail against the
older narratives, new books which are much more attune to the new
Orthodoxy are being published, being praised, and proving people will
always buy books about the Beatles. Books in 2017 by Shef field
(“Dreaming”) and in 2020 by Brown, who celebrates and makes fun of
everyone with equal measure, are two light-hearted, but also insightful
examples. The podcasters, as mentioned, have drawn on other recent works
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by Shenk, Womack and others. Weber has shown that the older narratives,
while an essential par t of the historiography, have lost a lot of their
credibility. The prevailing narrative could, of course, change again in the
future because, as Weber points out, citing another historian, historians
“relish revisionism and distrust Orthodoxy” (Gaddis qtd. in Weber loc.
4465), partly, of course, because they need to justify their existence, and
writers need to sell books.
5. Conclusion
This paper has explored examinations of Beatles historiography emanating
from two quarters in the USA. One is a work of historical scholarship by a
university history professor called Erin Torkelson Weber. The other analysis
started in 2019 and is available in episodes of a podcast that are still being
released. Weber’s analysis reveals four prevailing narratives over the
decades since the band burst onto the music and cultural scene in the early
1960s. The first lasted until the band broke up in 1970; the second trailed in
the wake of John Lennon’s iconoclastic interviews immediately after the
breakup; the third was dominant for about ten years after Lennon’s violent
death, but then gradually lost its predominance to a new Orthodoxy that
emerged as a result of new research and distance in time from the events.
The presenters of Another Kind of Mind are a trio of American fans, who,
while clearly being in the McCartney camp regarding the Beatles’ story, are
bringing a genuine freshness to their discussion as to the emotions involved
between John and Paul. They do not only view the relationship as a love
stor y, as others have done, but also discuss it, with evidence-based
speculation, in those terms. The present writer speculates that one thing
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Weber may criticise the podcasters for is not allowing more time for the
stories of Harrison and Starr, which aligns the podcast series in one respect
closer to Norman’s Shout! Narrative than they would like. All these people,
podcasters and historian, are women who would know the Beatles more
from the time of their Anthology series in the mid-1990s than when the band
actually existed. Debate about the Beatles has been dominated for so long by
male writers and male fans on various internet outlets, and it is both
welcome and refreshing that female fans and historians are of fering a
different perspective on the band, especially as it is resulting from sharp
analysis.
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