A McCartney Festival, Part 3

After my recent binges on books about Paul McCartney, an Amazon algorithm brought to my attention a new documentary about McCartney called Man on the Run. Interestingly for me, it covers much of the same period that the McCartney Legacy books did, from the Beatles breakup to the formation of Wings to the release of Band on the Run in 1973. Though this doc is "authorized," with McCartney, listed as an executive producer, providing some narration, it largely views those years in the same way the the Legacy books do: McCartney, wounded, unhappy and depressed, stumbles around trying to kickstart a solo career, and has ups and downs along the way to what is certainly his post-Beatles masterpiece, Band on the Run. Both projects wind up viewing Wings as a vanity project that was doomed to failure because McCartney was too controlling to allow any real freedom for his bandmates (in reality, sidemen). 

Of course, failure here may seem an odd term to use. Over ten years, Paul and various iterations of Wings produced eight albums, all of which went gold and most of which hit number 1 on the Billboard album chart, spinning off some twenty singles, most of which hit the top 40, twelve winding up in the top 10. Within four years of the Beatles breakup, all four of them would have top 10 singles and albums as solo artists, and from our vantage point today, it could seem like their successes were destined to happen. But if it hadn't been for the help of his wife Linda, Paul might have sunken into a much longer period of depression and drunkenness, though it seems doubtful that he would have given up music altogether. His first solo album was a somewhat ragged do-it-yourself project that someone in the documentary says makes Paul the grandfather of the lo-fi pop genre. The second album, Ram, was billed as by Paul and Linda and it's definitely a step up, with the glorious "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" sounding like a really good Beatles outtake. The first Wings album, Low Life, was a critical disappointment with no hit singles. Due to the critical drubbing it took, I didn't buy it back then and to this day have never heard it in its entirety. Luckily, the album Red Rose Speedway (credited to Paul McCartney and Wings) and the single "My Love" were commercial hits, even if the critics still weren't really warming to Paul's solo music. Band on the Run would change everything.

This film features lots of previously unseen photos and videos with background narration mostly from present-day interviews (we don't see faces but the voices are identified), and we hear from some of the Wings guys who are allowed to be mildly critical of Paul—they are more critical in the interviews collected in the Legacy books. What we don't get is much about the songs and albums themselves, which are covered in detail in the Legacy books and McCartney's 2-volume Lyrics book. One of my bugaboos about current day docs is that most do not use a single narrator who leads us along and ties things up (Paul comes close to providing this). I'm glad that Ken Burns still uses this style—see his latest series on the American Revolution. Doc makers may think that this lack of a godlike narrator gives their work a more authentic feel, but it also allows for the omission of anything that the interviewed people don't bring up. Still, I recommend this to McCartney and Beatles fans; viewers not already steeped in Beatles knowledge might find this rough going at times. I think I'm ready to bid farewell to Paul as an object of study for a while. I could see myself reading a third volume in the Legacy series, but frankly after the mid-80s, I lost interest in his music, even as I kept up on his output and his interviews. Seeing him sing "Hey Jude" at the 2012 London Olympics made me quite teary, and I can't promise that I wouldn't read more biographical material someday. After all, I'm still on the watch for new Beatles books (and, I'll admit, more unnecessary remasters and repackagings).

A McCartney Festival, Part 2

As I was returning the 2-volume Paul McCartney Lyrics books (Dewey Decimal number 782.42 for 'songs') to the library, I happened to stroll past the biography shelf and two more volumes stood out to me: The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1 covering 1969-1973 and Volume 2 covering 1974-1980. Beatles scholar Allan Koznin was the motivating force behind these two books which began, I assume, as an attempt to do for McCartney what Mark Lewisohn did for the Beatles: to provide a day-by-day account of Paul and associates in the recording studio, beginning with his first solo sessions occasioned by the imminent splintering of the Beatles. But the project grew from just a record of the recordings to a record of McCartney's daily life during these years, hence its placement in the biography (though as a former library cataloger, I might have been inclined to put it in a popular music number (781.66 for 'rock music'). 

These two books are absolutely stuffed with interesting tidbits about McCartney, his music, his sidemen, his social engagements, his drug use, his run-ins (friendly and not-so-friendly) with journalists and with ex-Beatles, and his family life. I have always maintained that, when McCartney insisted that Wings was a real group and not just a shifting band of sidemen, he was lying, to the public and maybe to himself, and these books prove that. The testimony of the various members of Wings tells us that, despite telling the guys that they were in this whole hog, Paul rarely let any of them write material or even make suggestions about songs or performance style, except for Denny Laine, formerly of the Moody Blues, the only person besides Linda McCartney who stuck with Wings for the whole decade. They also weren't paid quite as well as you might have expected.

During the 70s, McCartney released his two best albums, Band on the Run and Venus and Mars, and the stories of those recording sessions are highlights of the books.  Wings Mark I broke up just before Paul and Linda and Denny went to Lagos, Nigeria to work on Band on the Run. Paul always put a good face on that experience but it was a wild and wooly ride, with Paul and Linda becoming the victims of a roadside mugging during which some demo tapes were stolen. They also spent much of the summer of 1974 rehearsing and recording in Nashville with Wings Mark II and met, among others, Dolly Parton, Chet Atkins, Vassar Clements, and Roy Orbison. The Wings fellas also did quite a bit of drinking and getting in trouble. The stories of Wings' initial informal concert trek in England also make good reading. The Wings Over America tour is dealt with, as is the rough handling of Linda in the press and by most of the Wings guys (deserved to some degree, but I always felt sorry for what she went through). The two books were exhaustively researched, and it's a little exhausting reading them, but for a McCartney fan, rewarding. Though, if there is ever a Volume 3, I'm not I'll need to read that one.

A McCartney Festival, Part 1

I was 7 when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and I've been a fan ever since. After their breakup, I followed the careers of all four of them, but mostly Paul McCartney who certainly had the most commercial success of the four and who has maintained the respect and love of fans and critics to this day. Recently I had the occasion to consume three different McCartney artifacts. I'll start with the 2-volume hardcover set Lyrics, in which, over several hundred pages, McCartney presents the lyrics to over 150 of his songs, from the early days of the Beatles to his most recent solo albums, and writes brief commentaries about each.

Of course, he leaves out lots and lots of songs, and to my mind, he included too many from his 21st century works. But his commentaries are spotty. Some give us nice tidbits: Helen Wheels was the name of his Land Rover; Got to Get You Into My Life was about wanting to smoke dope, wanting literally to get more pot in his life; Picasso's Last Words was based on a bet with Dustin Hoffman; The Two of Us, despite seeming to be a bittersweet song about Paul and John, was actually written about Linda. But too often the commentary winds up being about a time or place or person, sometimes only tangentially related to the song under discussion. It feel like he started the project with energy and good intentions, and things eventually sort of sputtered out. Some fans have posted long lists of historical points that, based on previous evidence, he seems to get wrong. The bulk of the pages in the two large volumes are taken up with photos and drawings and handwritten lyrics. Much as I love the Beatles, and McCartney in particular, I'm glad I got this from the library and didn't spend $100.00 on it. Apparently there is now a paperback edition in one volume that costs $30.00 (pictured above), but still, though it was fun to flip through, this seems on the whole to be a non-essential work.

Statues in a Garden

I have piles and piles of books in the basement that I've kept for years that I told myself (and others) I would read in my retirement. Now that I'm retired, I've been trying to make good on that promise. I picked this slim novel up on a whim years ago at a second-hand bookstore in East Lansing and as I was about to pitch it in a mini-frenzy of weeding the other day, I decided to give it a go. It's one of the best novels I've read in years. 

I read Colegate's The Shooting Party way back in the 1980s and saw the movie, and liked both. This one, written earlier, shares some of the atmosphere of that book. It's set in England during the summer of 1914, leading you to believe that WWI will play a part, but it doesn't really, except for a handful of contact points. It's been described as being about scandal overtaking a high class family, but really, it's about what happens before the scandal. The aftermath, though important and devastating, is dealt with mostly in brief in the final pages.  The story concerns the aristocratic Weston family: Aylmer Weston, a cabinet member who is used to a busy life, his wife Cynthia who is used to a life of ease, their two children and their nephew Philip whom they adopted as a child. Philip, though much loved by Cynthia, has never quite fit in. This summer, Philip starts a chain of actions that threatens to blow up their perfect sleepy summery family life. To say more would be spoiling a surprising narrative.

As interesting as the story is, I was captivated by the narrative style. One Goodreads review refers to Colegate's technique as "Virginia Woolf lite" and that's a perfect way to put it. There is a narrator of sorts, though we don't learn who it is until the end, but most of it is told third person with shifting perspectives with the first person coming up only occasionally. It's more like it's being told by a hive mind, so to speak, of all the characters. It takes a few pages to get used to this style, but it's very effective. As interesting as the story is, I was At under 200 pages, it can be read in a couple of sittings, though I tried to stretch it out because it was so good. I will try to dig up more Colegate.

Barbra

I'm not exactly a Streisand fan, but I don't dislike her, either. I much prefer her as a singer. For my money, her best acting was in What's Up Doc in which she pulls off the feat of making the frantic screwball heroine likable—something Katherine Hepburn couldn't do in Bringing Up Baby, the model for What's Up Doc. This book took Streisand ten years to finish; at over 900 pages, it's an exhausting read, and was undoubtedly exhausting to produce. Much of it is fun to read, with some juicy tidbits about her co-workers. But for me, the biggest problem is that her overall point seems to be to rebut her reputation for being controlling, demanding, and egotistical. At this, she largely fails. Even as she insists she is not those things, many of her anecdotes show her to be exactly those things.

I will grant her this: her reputation has been made worse because she's a woman. As a director, Stanley Kubrick was certainly as demanding and controlling as Streisand, but rarely called out for being a pain in the neck like she has been. (Of course, she has not, to my mind, directed a movie as great as Dr. Strangelove or 2001 or Clockwork Orange or even his lesser films like Barry Lyndon or The Shining.) Her controlling attitude as as actor, singer and director (an attitude she has had since her first stage appearance in 1961) has hurt her reputation in ways that wouldn't have hurt a male artist. Still, she shows in this book that she is, indeed, demanding and controlling, sometimes in fairly petty ways. I'm not sure she's aware of how badly she comes off sometimes, though it is brave of her not to sugarcoat her behavior, beginning with her very first Broadway role right up to her latest concert tour. As a singer, she is spectacular. As an actor, she is fine. I can't judge her as a director, because Yentl is the only film she's directed that I've seen and I wasn't terribly impressed with that (though she did take on lots of directorial chores in A Star is Born which I liked). Still, despite wild overusage of phrases like "Point is" and "Needless to say," for a 900 page book, this is a breezy read and feels like it gives a fairly honest idea of what she is like, for better or worse.

A Queerish Earnest

We actually went out to a theater to see the National Theater Live production (recorded) of The Importance of Being Earnest. It's always fun to see filmed theater, and I wish there was more of it. The production had a campy style, which seemed appropriate for an Oscar Wilde play, and a gay subtext which seemed less necessary. It's like a queer veneer was laid over the action of the play at random, having little to do with anything that was actually going on (Algernon and Jack prancing about and bumping butts, Gwendolen and Cecily kissing on the lips). One reviewer called it "subversive-lite." I know some critics have detected a more serious gay subtext in Algernon's concept of "bunburying," making up a story or an identity in order to lead a double life. Algernon and Jack could have been presented with at least the actual possibility of a physical relationship. There seems to be no attraction between the two women, so their kiss and grabs are totally unmotivated.

But the production was colorful and well-acted by all. Lady Bracknell, the real star character of the show is often played in a campy manner (or sometimes by a man in drag). Sharon D. Clarke plays her a bit more realistically as someone who is ostentatiously used to having power over others and getting her way. Hugh Skinner (Jack/Ernest—the standing man in white in the photo above) looks and acts exactly like a young monied man of his time. Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon gives a very queer reading of the part, to the point where his sudden attraction to Cecily barely registers. But he is fun, and his character largely steals the show from Jack, who is sort of the title character (his name actually being Ernest is a plotpoint). Ronke Adekoluejo tries a bit too hard to toughen up the character of Gwendolen, and Eliza Scanlen, in mostly underplaying, is sometimes in danger of being disappearing.

I generally think that colorblind casting is a good thing. Here, Algernon, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen are played by Black actors, which brings a Bridgerton tone to the play (realistically, there is a vanishingly small possibility that these characters would have been Black in the Victorian era). It makes mincemeat of one of the last plot revelations, but generally, the casting works. I should add that I have never been able to buy the ridiculous conceit of a woman assuming she can only be attracted to someone of a specific name (Gwendolen to Ernest). It's so stupid, it almost makes me mad—couldn't Oscar Wilde have thought of a better device? But the play has so many good laugh lines, it's hard not to just give in. (Pictured just above are Skinner and Gatwa.)

Mother, Jugs and Speed

Apparently, nostalgia for the 1970s has been overtaking me which accounts for my re-watching of this dark comedy which I saw when it first came out in 1976. I was in college and I remember thinking it was a bit cheesy but also kinda daring in how it mixed comedy and drama. With two of the three leading roles taken by 70s icons (Bill Cosby as Mother, Raquel Welch as, well, you know), I would have thought this might not have weathered the years too well, but it remains surprisingly watchable, though today's young people might not dig it.

The title trio works for a scrappy little ambulance service in Los Angeles. Mother is the old hand, cocky and confident as he swigs beer from the driver's seat; Jugs is the office dispatcher who is taking night classes to get certified to be a driver, though the big boss (a wonderfully slimy Allen Garfield) isn't yet ready for women in the ambulances; Speed (Harvey Keitel) is the new guy, a cop currently under investigation on corruption charges. There is some character development along the way, including Jugs and Speed becoming an item, but mostly the film jolts from one emergency call to another. Mostly they're played for darkish humor, with the funniest moment being an attempt to get a woman on a stretcher down from a second floor apartment that goes hilariously awry. Sometimes there is tragedy: there is one death in the ambulance, and one of the drivers is shot dead during an altercation with an out-of-control drug user. The three stars (and Garfield) get most of the spotlight, so it's not exactly an ensemble piece, but there are solid turns from Bruce Davison as a likeably mellow driver and Larry Hagman as a crazed horndog. Keitel, known mostly for fairly intense roles, gets to relax a bit here. It takes some time to get used to him in that mode, but he does a nice job and works up some decent chemistry with Welch. Even Cosby, current-day pariah for his record of sexual assaults, is good. The PG rating is a relic of the era—this might get an R today.