The interpretation I bring to a lot of Paul McCartney's music in 1968 going into
1969 is a sense of looking to the past to figure out what the way forward is.
In other words looking to the music that used to excite him so much,
or to the music of others as inspiration to find his own way forward.
Now, I would draw your attention to the interpretation I brought to Beatles
For Sale, because I said exactly the same thing about the band there.
Remember when it followed A Hard Day's Night
- Beatles For Sale - people thought, well,
maybe it's not such a good follow up album to A Hard' Day's Night and all that.
But my interpretation of it was the Beatles returning to their past.
There were more cover versions on that tune.
Sort of working their way forward by looking toward their past.
And I think in 1968 that's kind of what is happening with Paul McCartney.
In fact this week and next week and the last week of the class
really to the, to the end of the Beatles career I'm going to argue that Paul.
I think suf, not suffers, but is inspired
by a kind of nostalgia for having things back
the way they used to be.
They've taken a, a long journey in a short period of time, and I think in
many ways Paul wishes they could, they could
be the way they were in 1962 or 1963.
So it seems to me that a lot of his music
there's kind of a longing to, to get back to that.
And well, part of that will come out in the get back
sessions that we'll talk about next week as well as [UNKNOWN] music as well.
So you'll see asterisks in the Paul McCartney column.
But all the songs that I'm marking as song that are based on music of others.
Both John and Paul have songs that refer to their state in India,
and all of these songs were written in India without referring to their state.
But there are couple of tunes that actually refer
to the things that happened when they were In India,
or really strongly prompted by something like that.
In the John column I find his
music getting increasingly experimental during this period.
And we should probably bear in mind that Yoko Ono and John sort of start as
a couple in May of 1968, although they've
known each other for some months before that.
In May of 68, they really sort of established that relationship.
John leaves his
wife and and so Yoko, being an avant-garde artist, brings I think, a lot of that
experience and has that, had a certain kind
of effect of encouraging that in John's music.
So as you look down the John column you'll see not only the songs
referring to the stay in India, but also what I call his finger wagging songs.
This is John sort of making fun of somebody or
talking at somebody about something he doesn't think they
should be doing, or something they're doing that's foolish.
Sort of in the Bob Dylan finger wagging tradition of
telling somebody why, why they're wrong or why they're misguided.
And then the little number sign, little crosshatch,
shows John's songs prompted by phrases of others.
And this goes into that topic we've been following
up to this point of, of John using found objects,
or received sources as ways of creating lyrics.
So lyrics aren't really so much about him as much as they are about sort
of creating a kind of an interesting lyrical thing, given some kind of a thing.
We talked about the circus poster in Being for
the Benefit of Mr. Kite, we talked about the newspaper
in A Day in the Life, we talked about
the Timothy Leary psychedelic experience book in Tomorrow Never Knows.
So we're going to see more of that and
those songs are indicated by that cross hatch.
As far as George Harrison is concerned at this point its really with the
White album that George's songwriting begins to match that of John and Paul.
And maybe of all these songs, and we'll take
a look at it in detail a little bit later.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a song that
really sort of forecasts what George's solo career is
going to look like post Beatles.
He has Eric Clapton guesting on lead guitar and that.
I mean, it really is in many ways some, I bet
you some fans would argue, it's the best track on the album.