Years from now, when we are all dust, these clips will still be three of the strangest bit's of music put to film, although All You Need is Love isn't really music put to film as they sang live in the studio, but it's still very odd.
There something so unreal about The Beatles at this time, that they were so huge globally, universally even, yet their music and themselves seem so personal and familiar, like they are singing and playing to us, each and everyone individually.
The movie clips themselves are noteworthy for their very oddness, strangeness and at times down right sinister quality. You have the fab four wandering around some God forsaken autumnal moor or heath, in balaclavas and furs, jumping from an impressive height, walking around backwards, drip painting and deconstructing some kind of butchered piano and all under a very witchy looking tree that I for one wouldn't hang around under after dark ..very strange.
John Lennon striding against the human traffic on a Liverpudlian high street and then the four of them meeting like some street gang, then even odder, The Beatles on horse back in some street which cuts to a decrepit ruin in the country, the four beatles decked out in red hunting jackets ride cryptically past a stage set up with drums and amps to a table where they are waited on by what look like four footmen before John Lennon upends the whole thing.
And the last clip...The Beatles elevated above a crowd made up of their musical peers including Keith Richards, Donovan, Marianne Faithful and Keith Moon, demi Gods in their own domain, Dons to the whole 60's pop gangster family, gazing down upon their minions and postulating about love and other weirdness while Mick Jagger sings and claps along looking like a sheepish schoolboy...what were these people on?
Strawberry Fields
Penny Lane
All You Need is Love
After years of following rock in the form of the genius of Johnny Winter, the Doors, Spirit, Amon Duul II, Love, Capt. Beefheart and the Magic Band, the Groundhogs, the folk rock of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Eagles, etc, etc I recently went back to the Beatles and actually listened to the words as well as the melodies. What I discovered was the greatest song ever written, A Day in the Life, a song that described how you thought when taking Acid, Strawberry Fields, the gut-wrenching She's Leaving Home that lays bare the breakdown in a family and the singalong song written for Ringo which became the number one cover of all time for Joe Cocker with his arrangement of With A Little Help From My Friends. They really were the greatest band of all time.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't have put it better myself wild bill. Cheers, Anthony
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