Emitt
Rhodes-Side We Seldom Show-Mirror
It’s not really possible or realistic
to be writing a book of this nature and not to mention The Beatles. A bit like
Elvis, they loom so large over late 20th century popular music that they’re
impossible to ignore. Whenever I have a conversation with anyone about music
that involves The Beatles, there always seems to be an inherent assumption that
one should love or hate The Beatles. It’s a bit like following a football team.
What I always find difficult to explain in conversation-and probably in print
now-is how important and significant The Beatles were. The moment I mention
this; the moment that I say that they were the biggest band ever and that there
never will and never can be any group in popular music as influential as The
Beatles then a light seems to faintly come on and it’s “ah, so you do love the
Beatles then?” type moment. I find this totally exasperating. However much I
try to explain that it isn’t really the point, it always appears as if I’ve burnt my bridges
and for all that I may have been raving about the newest album by The Fall or
some wildly avant garde Japanese music, I’m really a just a fan of the four
loveable moptops.
I do have mixed feeling about The Beatles.
They’re just too big; too much of a myth and a monolith. It’s very difficult to
work out what the essence of “The Beatles” is. They clearly are so much more
than a 1960’s pop band that were commercially successful at the time. It’s not
just The Beatles but “The Beatles”. You just can’t get away from them; just when
you think that that last word has been said about them then they’re back again,
every five years or so, and being cited as the main inspiration behind each successive
generation of guitar bands. For a group that broke up forty years ago and didn’t
even last for a decade that’s some achievement. They hang over Liverpool like a
big cloud and each and every time that music is mentioned in the context of my
city, then you know that The Beatles won’t be far behind. As a good example, a
perfect example of this that with any television programme abut music in Liverpool
and in fact with any documentary about Liverpool, then the stock footage of them
playing at the Cavern will be wheeled out yet again.
For a long time the only Beatles albums
I had were the Red and the Blue album, but of course I knew all their other
songs, just like everybody else does. The Beatles though, didn’t exactly leave
behind a massive body of work and their entire output of albums only takes up a
small space on my shelves. Every few years of so-usually when they are back in
vogue with the hip and fashionable-I pull them off the shelves, dust them down
and listen to them all over again, vacillating between jaw-dropping admiration
and extreme boredom.
I think that there’s a lot more of writing
to be done about The Beatles before the end of the year but for now
- Paul McCartney is one of the finest songwriters that Britain has ever produced.
- John Lennon was a dickhead.
- Ringo Starr isn’t much better.
- George Harrison?
- Emitt Rhodes made some of the best songs that Paul McCartney never did.
