Entertainment For Lively Minds
George Harrison: Living In The Material World
Has anyone seen the Scorcese George Harrsion doc Living In The Material World yet?
It's an excellent portrait of this most mysterious of Beatles. And it's warts and all - as far as I know, right down to Eric Clapton discussing nicking Patti Boyd off him. She's in it too.
Watching it, I wondered what a world in which the Beatles never existed would be like. They touched everyone and everything in their heyday, it's just amazing. Their ideas, the things they did, the people they met, the lives they led. It's inconceivable a rock star's life could be as exciting as theirs was ever again.
It's also inconceivable that anyone could be so original again either. Name me one band today who's doing something totally new?
Anyway, I highly recommend it. Out now on DVD.
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I loved it
I liked the re-telling of the Birth Of The Beatles (our creation myth, surely?).
The second half flags, as could be expected, but there is still great stuff there, including a clip from his 74 tour which confirms he wasn't in form.
Wonder why Jeff Lynn wasn't in it? Not that I'm complaining. I'm with the anti-Jeffs.
The unseen film and pictures throughout are worth it alone.
And you are right. No band can ever be so influential again. Pop was young and rock unborn when The Beatles started. You could argue that pop/rock is in its old age now and the grandchildren can only re-heat what their elders have invented.
.
:-)
Not on general cinema release yet from what I can see
A friend wanted to see it today, and I could only find one showing in Notting Hill in the whole of London. Pretty bizarre timing, posters everywhere, no general release film. They screwed something up.
I believe
it only had a very limited cinema showing (something like a couple of days) then it was straight onto DVD
Long, long, long.....But Not long enough
I went to see it at the cinema. It was fantastic. It's over 3 hours long and there was an interval after about 90 minutes, but at the end I heard quite a few people mutter that it was too long. What utter bollocks. I could think of loads of stuff that wasn't included...no videos of his solo output such as 'When we was fab' ...no footage of the Japan concerts or the Carl Perkins TV show or the Prince's Trust shows etc. etc. There was possibly a little too much Ravi Shankar and Jackie Stewart. Anyway, minor criticisms apart, I agree with Five-Centres. Buy the DVD.
Steps
They're doing something The Beatles never did.
They're reforming.
So we really do live in exciting times today.
They're all lot older now though
So they're being renamed 'Stumbles'
Stairlift
surely ?
Shuffles
?
Mobility trikes?
.
It interests me...
In everything I've read or seen, George comes across as a dullard and a sanctimonious killjoy.
Looking to see a differing perspective.
Believe it's being shown on BBC4 in its entirety in a couple of weeks so will hold fire on the pennies for now.
BBC
I'll be waiting for the BBC broadcast too, apparently it's timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of his death. I can't believe it was ten years ago.
If it's worth buying (which I imagine it will be), it'll probably be a fiver after Christmas. I think I paid £3 for No Direction Home on DVD.
It's very long...
but I enjoyed it - not much new information - Yoko says that George was heavily involved in Revolution No.9 - Macca says the intro (melody) to "And I Love Her" was George's (why didn't he mention this in "Many Years From Now"?).
There's one bit in the film which shows George (post-Beatles) signing some papers and saying he doesn't know what he's signing - and Paul's also in the room signing papers - don't know when this was but it looks like they're staying well away from each other.
The overriding impression
in Peter Doggett's book You Never Give Me Your Money is of a complex man with long-held grudges against both Lennon and McCartney who spent the majority of his post-Beatles life trying to forget he was ever in the band, trying to avoid the public gaze while enjoying the trappings of fame through escaping to a pile in the country. The biggest flaw in his personality was never being able to reconcile his wealth, the source of his wealth and his very real and genuine spirituality and humbleness. Even when Anthology was being put together Harrison still couldn't bring himself to allow closure on being one of the Fab Four. He needed a bigger ego than the one he had to really kick his demons into touch. Macca has probably had the most success in confronting not being a Beatle anymore.
The Beatles were too big for any one of its individual members when they went their separate ways. They each tried to adjust in different ways, to create an identity without it having an association with their past. On that identity level Harrison succeeded better than the others because he got the songwriter/musician credibility he craved (and which Lennon and McCartney sniffed at) from Bob Dylan and carved a career outside of music with Hand Made Films. His career arc after the Beatles is the most interesting because the every fact that Lennon and McCartney held him back in The Beatles gave him the impetus to express himself creatively whereas Lennon and McCartney always suffered from having lost their creative twin and the benchmark they'd set themselves. Even when they no longer wrote together they needed each other but Harrison needed no one.
Don't think so...
... Harrison, creatively, had dried up after ATMP, which was pretty much an album of songs he'd written whilst still in the group. The film emphasises this - hardly a mention of any post-Beatles music aside from "My Sweet Lord" (though no mention of the law suit) and a bit of Wilburys, which was pants. The real bit of post-Beatles creativity was his film involvement - bankrolling Life of Brian particularly.
After All Things..
his musical creativity did diminish, or at best fluctuate erratically, but his creativity in other areas flourished, specifically in film. That's why I think his story after the Beatles is perhaps the most interesting because he had creative success in a completely different area of the arts. It's also interesting that of all The Beatles he was the most supportive of The Rutles, probably because it allowed him to channel his cynicism towards The Beatles through humour.
I suppose my main contention is that out of all 4 of them he remains the one who is the least defined as an artist by his time in The Beatles and to achieve that degree of "independence" he needed to have reached some significant milestones after 1969, which he did. Macca, on the other hand, always has to live with the comparison of his music post Beatles with the work he did while in them, an almost impossible position to be in really.
Not sure
he was involved in the creative side of Handmade films, was he? Not as writer, actor or director at least. I can't think of any areas where he was creative outside music, except maybe gardening.
Entrepreneurship
is a creative process as far as I'm concerned even if it largely means someone with deep pockets giving others a chance to shine artistically when no-one else will go near them.
As a business owner I would say that though.
Steady with those opinions sir.
;-)
Most perceptive
observations and ones i broadly agree with.
Late bloomer
I don't buy that Lennon and McCartney truly "held him back." Post-Revolver, after George's song is the lead track and he's got 3 songs on the album (how is that holding him back?), and meanwhile, Lennon is spending a lot of time dropping acid and watching TV, George would have had every opportunity to bring in some great songs. Instead, he spent months trying to learn to play the sitar. That was his choice.
By the White Album, George is finally coming in with better songs but it's his misfortune that Lennon has woken up from the drug haze and produced a ton of great songs, and Paul has matched him. (I'll never understand why they rejected All Things Must Pass but many of George's other songs on the White album are on the fluff side.) It's not really until Abbey Road that George truly got his groove on. And by then the band is falling apart. So was George truly held back or was he just a victim of bad timing and his own insecurities (which seemed to drive him to forever seek out heroes to worship, first Lennon, then Clapton, then Dylan).
And George's music, after ALMP, is just mediocre to bad. Clearly he did need someone. And that someone was Paul and John. I think people underestimate how much Paul's fingerprints (musically) are all over George's Beatles songs. John was never much help with George's arrangements (and is missing entirely from any role in many of George's songs, vocally or instrumentally) but John did apparently help him a bit with the lyrics. George clearly was resentful but some of his predicament in the Beatles seems like his own doing and his own choices.
I agree
with the idea of bad timing and his own insecurities. But his long-standing and oft-quoted perception of his lot while in the band was that John and Paul didn't give him sufficient credit and exposure as a songwriter within the group. That perception spurred him on after the band fell out and fell apart even if the realities of what he achieved musically as a solo artist don't stack up.
It's interesting that George basically felt Paul bullied him in the studio and yet there is a telling comment from, I think, Klaus Voorman about George doing about 150 takes on a part of a song in his studio in the early 70s. And it begs the question: was he bullied or was he actually being driven by Macca to "get the job done" because, in many respects, it's apparent that Macca was the one keeping it all together for a long time on the work front while John and George navel-gazed.
It's like Noel Gallagher says in the Word interview, words to the effect that his role as a leader in Oasis when it required across the first two albums came to be resented and he was then perceived as the dictator rather than the motivator.
It never ceases to amaze,
the way a narrative takes hold.
In this case being - John was the driving force, George was the other 'true' talent, Paul was the populist, Ringo was, well, Ringo.
I totally share your view that McCartney was not so much 'bullying' George as spurring him on. As you mentioned earlier, if Paul was truly the bully that he is often portrayed as, he would never have allowed, at the absolute peak of their powers, Taxman to be the lead track on Revolver (although it should be remembered that it was he, not George, who played the blistering guitar solo on said track).
Similarly, Abbey Road, a record that many (often begrudgingly) admit was more of a 'Paul-driven' record than anything else, nevertheless was 'allowed' to contain a very prominent contribution from George.
McCartney has also often mentioned the fact that, of all the Beatles' songs, it was Harrison's 'Something' that Sinatra chose to cover. Doesn't quite fit with the 'poor George' narrative.
That said, no-one outside of the fabs and perhaps their inner circle should judge what it was like to live through the most remarkable of experiences in popular culture and its aftermath.
And this is great:
I think
that temperamentally George and John were more similar but Lennon had the more outre personality. Paul had his moments of public display of resentment and bitchiness but overall he kept his counsel better when talking about his relationship with the others in the years after the split. With the possible exception of Ringo each one of them was cruel to one or more of the others, a level of cruelness that can really only be explained by the fact that they were very close friends (brothers) with a deep and intimate understanding of what brought them together and what drove them apart.
The split was less to do with creative differences and more to do with business and politics but once the inner sanctum was unlocked the spell was broken and the outside world came crashing in on the magic they'd created together. It wasn't just Paul, it wasn't just Yoko, it wasn't just the lawyers that broke up The Beatles, it was a chain of events not least of which was a realisation from each of them that there was an alternative to being a Beatle once the bubble had been burst (possibly Epstein's death was the catalyst).
To this day I think each one of The Beatles is misunderstood and ofte misrepresented, largely because each one of them adopted very different approaches to coping with life after The Beatles, much of the coping borne from a defensive attitude in response to unrealistic and relentless expectations made by the public and the media. On some level they and the public adopted a view, based less on facts and more on their own emotional investment in the music and the myths, of what each Beatle represented in terms of personality and ability. Lennon in particular did much to create his own myth whilst simultaneously disabusing others of theirs
I have no truck with mythologising. I'd rather know the warts and all because, like attitudes to religion and science, it's more amazing to consider the achievements of The Beatles, before and after, in the context of how much crap they lived with and how badly they behaved to each other; in other words against the backdrop of real life and not some artistic equivalent of a perpetual Neverland. Given the constant pressure they were under from the business side of being a Beatle it's astonishing they ever had time to make any music at all, let alone music of such quality and timeless appeal.
I remember just before this came out...
George was always in the press bemoaning the Beatles and thinking...well just shut the fuck up about them then.Then he goes and produces the above?
You can't fucking have it both ways George.BTW I love George.
Don't Bother Me (because you can't!)
Am I misunderstanding your post bricameron? If not how can I put this? Please brace yourself for some very upsetting news but George has passed away - I don't think he had much input into this new DVD/film!
I think
Mr C is referring to 'When We Was Fab' (video shown above), which is clearly a celebration of his 'other' band's, er, fabness.
Only sleeping?
We hear a lot about Lennon and his drug haze, around '66-'67, Ian MacDonald makes a big thing of it, how he allowed McCartney to take over etc etc. For a man supposedly indisposed he was surprisingly present and involved with a lot of outstanding and brilliant recordings during this period. OK some of his work on Sgt Pepper was not quite such a high standard as previous contributions, still not too shabby mind. I often wonder how he managed it all if he was supposed to be so passive and out of it. Rather exaggerrated perhaps?
Also, I think Harrison's Long Long Long is one of the best things on The White Album.
I don't think George would have agreed
There was a somewhat tasteless comment from George, when asked about why there was such a golden lode of high quality songs on All Things Must Pass, which went along the lines of it was like someone who was constipated suddenly getting diarrhoea.
Hey...
Nobody tell me how it ends, I only got the DVD yesterday and was planning to watch it over the weekend!
In a nutshell
He got a ticket to ride, but now he don't care.
I dont know what that means...
...but i'm hoping everything turned alright for the plucky underdog of the popular beat combo...
Seen the second half
HBO split it over two nights and I just stumbled upon it channel-hopping. Given that the post-HJH period is far less interesting to me it was still a fascinating couple of hours, so I really want to see the first half now. As mentioned in the podcast, Olivia's description of the attack in Friar Park is riveting.
Sorry to bang on
Kraftwerk were, in their way, every bit as, if not more 'original' and innovative than, the Beatles. Pretty much all recorded music today is influenced by either or both of those acts.
Shame their innovation kind of ground to a halt around 1983, but still. What a legacy.
Oh come on..
The amount of singer/songer/guitarists that come from the Beatles is way beyond any amount of any electro stuff.
If you removed Kraftwerk and electronic stuff right out of the picture (un-invent them if you will) my collection would shrink by maybe 5%-10%.
Music that is passed on by people strumming acoustic guitars at sessions and at festival camp sites (etc etc) will long outlive most anything spawned by Kraftwerk. It's the songs that count and the ability to share them socially.
Kraftwerk,
in the History of Popular Music, are an interesting footnote whilst The Beatles would need an entire volume. Maybe two.
Point missed...
...I never said Kraftwerk were more influential or better than the Beatles - himmel forfend - but their influence is felt throughout popular music, just as is the Beatles'. Limiting their influence to 'electro' is a bit narrow, too. Without them, like it or not, hip hop and what is irksomely nowadays termed 'R n B' would be very different - arguably the two most powerful and popular genres on Earth.
God protect us from "people strumming acoustic guitars at sessions and at festival camp sites". In my experience, when the acoustic guitar comes out at a festival, most sane folk run a mile. Is there anything worse than some bloke at a party getting out his balsawood plank and forcing his godwaful version of Leavin' On A Jetplane down everyone's throats? Same goes for the aspiring DJ and his white-only, over-shrill collection of Belgian gabba, by the way, so it cuts both ways.
Two most influential acts of all time? The Beatles and Kraftwerk.
Take yer point
about Social Science students at festivals strumming 'Norwegian Wood'. Makes me shiver at the mere thought. But I'm afraid we will probably have to disagree about Kraftwerk. To me they were just a nice little plonky plink band who had a catchy hit single once ( 'The Model' or something wasn't it? ).
The Beatles changed the musical world.
Agreed...
...about the Beatles. But so did Kraftwerk.
Insert respectful gentlemanly handshake here.
( But, you know, I would still humbly venture that there's a big difference between a band one personally loves...and a band that actually changed everything ).
Couldn't agree more...
...and there's no bigger Beatles fan than I.
Crikey
K and the HJHs are my two favourite bands of all time.
This thread has been like watching my parents fighting!
Not fighting.
More like a respectful grapple.
( Although, ahem, I'm still surprised that Kraftwerk are taken so seriously ).
Junior pipes up
wellll...
"a nice little plonky plink band who had a catchy hit single once"... saying this about Kraftwerk is like saying that the HJHs were "that group that made those films with Victor Spinetti... you, know, they did that "Bird" record with the dead one singing in a cupboard".
Er,
no it isn't.
I think it is...
Kraftwerk have inspired, and will continue to inspire, many people. The fact that you don't like them very much, or the music they have inspired, doesn't disprove that.
Stalin was VERY important and influential - I don't like him, but he definitely was.
Paper Lace
inspired people too.
But they weren't the Beatles.
( Or Stalin ).
Kraftwerk inspired musicians....
Paper Lace inspired suicides.
On the contrary Mr Moose.
One might advocate that, by promoting extreme vigilance and circumspection in the face of enemy fire ( 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' ), the Nottingham historical-pop combo were more concerned with saving lives.
Anyway, I think you should suspend judgment
pending the release of the 3-hour documentary "Metal on Metal: The Life and Works of Wolfgang Flur".
Meanwhile, I will say no more on the subject of Paper Lace until after I've watched "Keep Your Pretty Head Low: The Life and Legacy of Phil Wright"
Never sat in on many sessions then?
That aside. Songs live when they are played in a social context. Weddings/karaoke/cover bands/x factor - whatever. It's the act of passing on a song.
You are quite right about hip-hop. It's my fault for lumping anything non-song based together.
It's my movie of the year, bar none
I bought it via iTunes on Monday evening (half way through listening to the podcast) I love it for so many reasons - and one of them is how brilliantly Scorcese understands the art of the documentary . I could wax lyrical for ages, but am still at work so I'll confine it to four moments:
1. The photos of a lost and bereaved Lennon in Stu's studio.
2. The footage of the breakup signathon in Savile Row with George complaining about 'more documents where I don't know what I'm signing ' and Paul looking isolated, hurt and defensive, the look on his face aiming to shout, ' this is all wrong and it's such a damn shame' George mantraing Krishna.....
3. George talking about the deceased John's nastiness and when the interviewer says ,'So he was no angel then ? George responds initially No and then stops for a moment and clearly remembering some decades old incident says ,'But he was,' his voice cracking like a sad little boy's
4. Heartbreaking account from Ringo about his last meeting with George.
The whole thing is so warm and tasteful and candid that you'll have your own favourite moments too.
Astonishing and essential. Make sure you see this movie!
It was a good,
very well-made, documentary similar in presentation to the Anthology series. Astonishing? No.
Fair enough if you don' t have an emotional stake in it
What I meant was I found it to be so, but then I do tend to leave my critical faculties at the door when it's HJH product I'm experiencing.......
Diff'rent strokes la.
Fair enough...
... that "signathon" was the most interesting bit for me - what year was that? From Macca's appearance it looks a good few years after the break-up.
At a guess
I'd say 1970?
Wasn't it 1974?
It can't have been 1970 because Paul didn't even file suit until December of 1970, right?
For what it's worth: I think it was 1974 when they got together in New York to sign the papers to dissolve the band. That's when that footage must have been shot. As I recall from Doggett's book, John was supposed to show up but he didn't and when they called him, he said he wasn't coming because the "stars" weren't properly aligned or some such nonsense. George apparently began screaming at him but John refused to show, and only signed the papers later. I wonder if John just found it too upsetting to sign with his old bandmates there. The footage is certainly grim.
It certainly...
... looks more like the Wings era (mid 70s) than earlier. That's why I was fascinated because I'd never seen that footage before and it was really good quality but only very brief. If it was 74, and it certainly looks like it was, it was chronogically incorrect as part of the film.
If the Beatles didn't exist
Paul du Noyer wrote a great piece for the magazine about what would have happened if McCartney hadn't gone to the fete at Woolton. I think Richard Starkey was a bus driver or something.
There are loads of times
when the HJHs nearly didn't happen - when they were first deported from Hamburg, for example. JWL was the only member of the group for whom there was literally no alternative by 1961 - his drive and ambition, partly born of that desperation, must have been the most important aspect of the group in the pre-Beatlemania period.
Deep joy
I’m mid-way through the second half and loving every second.
Only moderately low point so far is the blissed-out smiley Hare Krishna guy who speaks about their George-produced hit single Hare Krishna Mantra. He recalls hearing it being sung at “soccer” matches including, he reckons, a Manchester United home game where he witnessed “5,000 fans” singing along.
A big turn-out at Old Trafford that day, then?
That would be count of the real Mancunians there
"pauses to allow sighs of exasperation at obvious dig"
Mrs Cues and I had a "George Harrison" Saturday night last night - "Living in the Material World DVD, big pizza, couple of bottles of Harviestouns excellent "Bitter and Twisted" ale for me and some sparkling wine for the good lady.
Very enjoyable tribute to the quiet one. I would'nt say it was warts and all. "Things" were alluded to, such as the contradiction between his mystical Eastern spiritualism and his spiky East Lancs pragmatism, and there was much dancing around what Mark ellen colourfully described as his "crumpeteering". But the "Lives of John Lennon" it wasnt.
I'm not overly sure of the fundamental toucihng of so many peoples lives theory about the Fabs. I tends to think thst they rode the wave of the explosion of the consumer society and the collapse of regard for country, religion, family etc. If it wasn't them it would have been somebody else.
How many times
will Macca relate the story about the falling-out over George's proposed guitar parts for Hey Jude? It obviously still rankles with him to this day.
Likewise Ringo has told that "I thought it was you three!" HORA so many times now it practically walks by itself.
Great to see George's brothers, though, who really do look just like two ordinary old geezers from Liverpool and Pattie, of course, who still looks fabulous.
In her book, Pattie tells a lovely story about one or other of George's brothers and his wife coming to stay with her and George in Esher and behaving as if they were still in Liverpool. They insisted on maintaining their Northern working class routine to the point where they had to have their tea (evening meal) served at exactly the same time every day. And it had to be honest, plain fare, too. None of your fancy foreign muck.
Pattie, who comes from quite a posh background admitted to being more than a little stressed out by this Royle Family style carry-on.
It seems that both Harrison brothers (Peter and Harry) later worked as gardeners for George at Friar Park and according to an obituary on the Liverpool Echo's website Peter (the middle brother) died from cancer in 2007.
Who would
that 'somebody else' have been?
Blimey,that was average...
I came away from this thinking...yes,and? This was little more than Anthology watered down with an update.I don't understand the whole 'Scorsese' is a genius filmmaker bit.Show and tell me something new fer cryin' out loud.It's not even well put together...
The day I met George
In 1981 I got to meet George during the photo shoot for the Somewhere In England LP sleeve (below - they later changed it to a different design for the CD). In the picture, the pavement/road he appears to be laying on is actually a relief sculpture-type thing hanging on the wall, so he’s standing/sitting/leaning against it.
He arrived in a black Porsche 911 and was a little pissed-off because he’d been nicked for speeding on the M40 on the way in. He said “When the cop asked for my address, I said ‘do you want my London address, my Oxfordshire address, my New York address, or my LA address?’”
The shoot was done after hours at the Tate Gallery and I took along a bunch of records for him to sign. I cleared them with his manager first who advised me not to offer him the EMI Best Of LP (the one where he’s sitting on the bumper of a hot rod car) containing one side of Apple solo tracks and the other side George’s songs for the Beatles, as “he will probably tear it up in front of you” such was his apparent disdain for that cobbled-together album.
Otherwise he was happy to sign anything and was particularly taken with the booklet for the Concert For Bangla Desh box set which I took along, claiming not to have seen it for years. He made a point of showing it to Ray Cooper (who was also present) saying stuff like “Eric looks great in this picture!”
When it was all finished he slipped my mate (who worked as a porter in the Tate and was thus able to get me in to watch the shoot) a 50 quid tip for staying back after hours and looking after George’s little group.
It goes without saying that we all agreed he was a lovely man.
A lovely man indeed
When my sister-in-law was fundraising her her trip to walk up Mount Everest for charity, she wrote to all her eminent neighbours in the Oxfordshire area to ask if they'd contribute.
Nothing at all from Jeremy Irons (her immediate neighbour), but £2000 and a nice letter from George.
Watched the first part last night.
The most surprising moment* for me was when George was talking about the recording of WMGGW: even from his earliest interviews, he'd taken care to speak carefully and deliberately, which eventually led to him partly losing the broad Scouse accent of his youth but...
...was it me, or did recounting that episode cause his 'real' voice to come back, perhaps betraying the anger and dissatisfaction he still felt, some 20+ years after the event?
*Apart from Bongo's miraculously (and suspiciously) rejuvenated barnet, obviously - remember when we all thought he was the Beatle who was ageing gracefully?
Enjoyed it.....
.....though, by definition, it's a familiar tale and the unfamiliar tale (part 2) will have awful clothes (as hinted at with the dire, dire, dire, dire, dire, dire, dire threads worn by George and Paul in the 'signing documents' scene in part 1 - 1974?) and dire music.....two mainstays of the post-60s era and not, by any stretch of the imagination, limited to ex-HJHs.
Part 1 also confirmed that the go-to-man-bar-none for stories of the HJH's hitmakers is Ringo, and that whoever was in charge of the camera on George's first visit to India in '66 (George?) was an absolute genius at the craft.
Part 2 is on Sky+ but is it really worth my while if I'm to see dreadful post-'69 clothing leading to the abyss of the 1980s?
(P.S. Where's Joe Brown?!)
Please advise.
Where was Dylan?
As usual Bob Dylan was conspicuous by his absence in the film.
First he doesn't show up at the Concert For George at the Albert Hall (not even a film appearance, like the one he did for Johnny Cash) and now there's no sign of him paying tribute in the Scorcese film.
I know he's a miserable git, but even by Bob's standards I felt this was a little ungracious.
Beatle-expert Carol From Luton wondered why...
...Pete Best wasn't asked. It's a fair point. EVERY other key participant in the Hamburg era, still living, was there - why not Pete, even for a couple of comments? It felt mean-spirited.
Sadly
they've been trying to airbrush poor Pete out of the Beatle picture for decades.
It does appear mean-spirited, as you say.
I have a feeling...
...he'll outlive them all. When he's 80 he'll be happily appearing on talk shows and documentaries. He'll be the last man standing. I hope so.
Not sure if anyone's still reading this, but here goes ...
I got this from my wife for Xmas, and watched it last night. Very enjoyable and skillfully put together, particularly how it doesn't separate George pre- and post-HJHs, but shows this as part of a continuum of his maturing process.
However, on reflection, I think this was a hugely wasted opportunity, due to no (or only very minor and/or euphemised) references to:
- what he was really like as a husband (to each of his wives)
- what he was like as a dad
- his legal hassles re Allen Klein, Concert for Bangladesh & My Sweet Lord: did these sap his energy, turn him nastier, bring out his better side, wash over him? Whatever the answer, it must be revealing?
- why his music plummeted in quality so badly after All Things: I've never heard that before, and will get it pronto, but after that it seemed to be a hole load of 1970s noodling: isn't that worth commenting on, given his excellent song-writing beforehand?
- his womanising, and the episode with Ringo's wife (when George told him in front of others that he was in love with her)
- did he actually drive fast cars, or just chat to Jackie Stewart about them? If the former, then does that tell us anything more?
- he was clearly very taken with lots of material things, despite the insistent references to his spirituality, so what's that all about?
- what are the references to his "darker side" about?
All in all, it was too much of a hagiography for my ultimate liking. An opinion only strengthened by the sight of Olivia as top producer.
Shame, really ....
Olivia admitted
that she didn't want to give much personal material to Scorsese but he managed to get a lot regardless. It sounded like a very difficult process for her and there was no way she was going to trample on his memory at all.
This seemed to be a love letter from Olivia and Marty and a kind of appeasement for the fans to allow her to slink into as much obscurity as her position will allow.
Strange isn't it..
.. how it's the 'womanising' part of the story that people find so strange. Strikes me that people who openly discuss.. "yep, sorry I fancy your missus" may possibly be quite healthy. Or in the Clapton case "Ok, go ahead she's yours".
Apparently we have a choice - we are either supposed to be in 100% monogamous relationships. Like our grandparents. A furtive world, where no one expresses a desire for anyone else. Or we are supposed to be in mendacious, treacherous relationships with others, where everything happens behind closed doors leaving people feeling betrayed. This is the normal state of affairs surely. Anything that deviates from these two options is seen as wrong in some way.
From all accounts the participants in these stories seem to have dealt with it in quite a mature way. In the end beneficial to all concerned. I prefer this to the grim, tatty 1930's photograph pinned to the wall. Portraying a world that never actually existed.
I thought its absence from the film was strange
for two reasons:
- it highlighted that he obviously had a different idea of love for his wife/wives than most of us might assume. I'm not judging here, I just thought it was an interesting take which wasn't examined;
- it means there were significant areas missing from the film, so that even with 3 1/2 hours running time, there were big parts left well alone whilst others (eg his interest in Eastern mysticism) were repeatedly gone over. The end effect was rather unbalanced in my view.
For avoidance of doubt, I wasn't interested in seeing a load of prurient or salacious details: you rightly point out Marky that the people concerned have dealt with maturely, although I'm not sure the women had much realistic choice.
I still think it's a much less well-rounded picture of the man than I'd been led to believe.
I wonder
if the '60's period would have been better covered by a British director who had experience of late-'50's, early-'60's UK ?
Someone like..
Michael Winner perhaps?
That was my problem
Couldn't think of someone suitable who would have the insight! Ken Russell may have proved interesting.
Alan Parker
surely.
I agree - this is what made The Filth and the Fury so good - Temple's understanding of the context. Billy Dainty, FFS!