Wednesday, June 16, 2010

'Lennon' versus 'McCartney'

Getting back to the Gilmore book, an interesting aspect of its citation of “Heart of Glass" as an indexical citation of the time period was that, if polled at the time, everybody would have chose that as just the song to be so employed; it was indexical of its time as a  past time even as it was current!

Thinking of this period also reminded me of a minor vexation that has stuck with me all these years, though most recently occasioned by seeing McCartney at Citi Field last year: the theories of canonicity proposed by the way teenager so that period valued the solo, post-Beatles work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. This valuation was one-way and total: Lennon was cool, McCartney was not. (This was before Lennon's murder, which of course changed things, it was understandable afterwards why Lennon, for a time, would be more highly regarded, but I am skipping of the time before). That McCartney sold more records, that the people involved actually knew most solo McCartney (I e. Wings) songs than they did solo Lennon songs, did not move them; nor was the preference made on the basis of n sort of musicological or aesthetic criteria. Lennon was cool, basically, because the adults, or the elder siblings, in their lives told them this was so; there was no autonomous judgment, no heart-swell of an incipient generational cri de coeur. 

To put it in theoretical terms—and, en passant, I might indicate my Theory book is mow definitely published, a copy is by my desk as I type this—one might use this to say something like: usually, the debate over pop culture is framed as a contrast e g. between Adorno’s wholesale rejection of it as conformist instinctual trash, and corporate versus Hebdige’s defense of the proliferation of subcultures and consciously styled practices in the aftermath of rock, punk, etc. But what if one has the conformism Adorno castigate manifested itself in a minor snobbery that seems to be Hebdigean in savvy but is in fact totally ersatz and handed-down? Or, to put it another way, when high art is no longer used as cultural capital, when a mass phenomenon is used in just the way Bourdieu discussed avant-garde painting being used as such, how does that affect the frame? (In a sense this question continues the thread I started with my Caillebotte post on this blog of spring 2009).  It may well be that the solo work of John Lennon was better than that of Paul McCartney; at this point, to make that judgment I would have to listen to their entire oeuvres and probably write on them. It is not the judgment that was the problem; it is that the people who made it had no adequate criteria of reaching that judgment.

Additionally, the unthinking preference for Lennon had these problems:

1)  -- It branded itself as the consensus of a new generation-that later to be called Generation X—yet not only was the valuation in question made of artists of a previous generation, the critical judgment and valued were totally those of elders—if was as if something manufactured in one country was relabeled as being made in another than marketed as echt indigenous to the second country.
2)   -- It had nothing to do with msic-0evne the most atavistic, instinctual, un-cerebral response to music, It had totally to do with wanting to be cool and in with the in-crowd. The only lessons about aesthetics that were relearned were the lessons of canon-making.
3)   --It used a form originally liberating, and intended by both Lennon and McCartney in their different ways, to still be liberating, as a mode of confirms and oppression, of a herd mentality that was precisely hegemonic because it presented itself as a sophisticated cutting-edge judgment.
4)  -- It used a potentially critical perspective—of not just supposing McCartney’s larger sales made him a better artist—to foster a stupid consensus. And it made somebody who took risks with his life and art—John Lennon—into an organ of cultural policing and of social authoritarianism. McCartney deserved better so did John Lennon. In addition, this attitude used the semantic and emotional vocabulary of critical judgment, without the actual presence o fit. This was even worse than just not being critical at all, merely being enthusiastic or consensus-driven, because this attitude had the aura, the aroma, of a critical mentality without its real presence. This led to the assumption, vis a vis critical thought, that this generation had ‘been there, done that’ and that, for this generation, such critical frames as e. g. literary theory of the 70s and 80s provided were supernumerary. Much of the backlash against theory in the 1990s and 2000s can be traced to this perception that a critical stance had already been canvassed and integrated when in fact it had been only glimpsed.
       I pledged not to get into the McCartney-Lennon debate, and John Lennon is profoundly important to me in a way I cannot even get into here,  but I can’t resist throwing this out—if Lennon had lived, would he ever have collaborated with Michael Jackson? 

7 comments:

Ben said...

I think that one of the reasons Lennon's solo work is considered "cooler" than McCartney's is that - collaborative work granted (Wings, John And Yoko, Paul and MJ) - purely as solo artists John released 'Woman', 'Watching The Wheels Go Round', 'Jealous Guy' and the (wildly overated in my opinion) 'Imagine'. Paul released 'The Frog Song'. This doesn't take away from either's genius as individual musicians or collaborative artists, but it does go some way to explaining the phenomenon.
Do you think (just out of interest) MJ would not have worked with Lennon for musical reasons?

Nicholas Birns said...

Well, Lennon might have disdained MJ as too 'pop', who knows, of course Lennon did not get to live into the era where MJ attained stardom. Certainly their collaboration would have been interesting! That is a good point about Lennon doing strictly solo albums, and I think you are definitely right that this contributed to the cool factor, although I think people also resented McCartney for being in a group that was NOT the Beatles,

mrmofo said...

Well Ive listened to all of thier solo work over and over and over again. I dont like johns work that much. John has 1 good album "imagine", 1 ok album "plastic ono band", and One album with good songs but ruined by yokos songs "double fantasy. Paul on the other hand has amazing albums, Ram,Venus & Mars,Band On The Run,London Town,Tug Of war,Flowers In the Dirt, Flaming Pie,Chaos, and I could go on and on. The reason why John is more famous is because he got shot. Thats the only reason, but his solo work is not great nor good. Its Ok. Pauls work can be compared to the beatles work. The reasons why critics dont like paul as much is because he didnt right imagine,get shot, or talk shit about peace. Paul is more musicaly talenten, instrumentaly and lyrically. John just got shot and is the founding member of the beatles. But the songwriter of most of the good beatle fans were written by Paul. When Paul dies the world will stop spinning.

mrmofo said...

And by the way Wings is just pauls 70's touring and recording band. No one in the band did shit. Paul wrote and produced all the songs. 4 songs in the whole discography werent by paul, so paul is just teased because he didnt get shot.

Nicholas Birns said...

Agreed (and sorry for not seeing this comment for a while). McCartney is punished for just being productive and managing to stay alive....this happens to writers too (John Updike is a good example)...but if WIngs had been an actual 'band' they would perhaps have been even more tormented by negative comps. to the Beatles...

Nicholas Birns said...

Mrmofo, I do think you have to give John at least Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey...but I agree, in the aggregate 1970-1980 Paul probably beats 1970-1980 Paul, though for me this is close....

Anonymous said...

I have a strong disagreement with what has been posted about the Lennon albums relative to Paul's albums. I love Paul's music, it's cool and stuff of the like, but it has no real meaning. As catchy as stuff like Band on the Run, and Heart of the Country are, they don't measure up to God, Imagine, Woman, Jealous Guy, Watching the Wheels, etc. As far as albums go, Plastic Ono Band-ok? WHAT?!?!?! That particular album just so happens to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. It is gorgeous, honest, and raw. If you think it is 'ok' then it is because you do not understand it. Imagine is a great album, with songs like Imagine, Jealous Guy, Gimme Some Truth, Oh My Love, and even Oh Yoko. Sometime In New York City is... regrettable I admit, but besides "Maybe I'm Amazed," so is McCartney 1. Mind Games has some great Lennon tracks as well. Out the Blue, Only People, Mind Games, I Know (I Know), and Intuition are great. As far as Walls and Bridges goes, it is gorgeous. Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out) is beautiful if you understand it musically, What You Got, Old Dirt Road, Whatever Gets You Thru the Night is a great duet with Elton John, and Steel and Glass is awesomely reminiscent How Do You Sleep from Imagine. I agree about the Yoko tracks on Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey, but you cannot use them as an evaluation of John's post-Beatles compositional skills relative to Paul's. It is not fair. Woman, Watching the Wheels, Beautiful Boy, etc. and Nobody Told Me, I'm Stepping Out, etc. are great LENNON compositions that McCartney would be hard pressed to match. This is not about whether or not Paul's solo stuff is better than Yoko's half of the album. In conclusion, while Paul's music is pretty consistently good stuff, catchy and fun, it just does not stand the comparison to the honesty, depth, rawness, and emotion embodied by John's body of solo work. I respect everybody's opinion, but for all people's whining about the lack of appreciation for McCartney, John is the one who is being way underrepresented here.