Give War a Chance
Man, this post from Terry Ott’s Beatle Bits blog really pisses me off with the way it continues the near-deification of John Lennon :
- The McCartneys are pressing for a worldwide ban on LMs, which given the nature of wars these days, is most likely highly unrealistic.
But their hearts are in the right places.
However, I couldn’t help but note that it took Paul just about 30 years to come out as really against war, something John Lennon made famous in 1969 with his bed-ins for peace as well as the immortal,”Give Peace A Chance,” mantra and song.
You have to know that Lennon was on to something when, 35 years later, the mere mention of “give peace a chance,” is met with howls of derision by the usual neo-con suspects.
No argument here that slogans — like “Give Peace a Chance” — are simplistic and are not themselves a solution.
But being simple sometimes is also the best thing to engage in, even with highly complex issues like war, or the lack thereof.
And I’m not suggesting that Sir Paul is any less sincere than John was in 1969, but somehow I don’t think Macca will come up with an anthem-like song like Lennon did with “Give Peace a Chance.”
And for sure we won’t see the McCartney’s taking to their bed in public for the abolition of landmines.
Yeah, we won’t be seeing the McCartney’s doing a bed-in, because they’re too busy actually doing something.
Landmines kill or maim over 10,000 innocent people every year. Outlawing landmines isn’t the pipe dream of an aging hippie, it’s an attempt to minimize civilian casualties that’s got the support of almost every industrialized country except the United States. Paul McCartney has raised millions of dollars to help anti-landmine charities, what has John Lennon done?
Let’s see…He sat in bed with his wife while reporters took pictures of him, he mailed a bunch of of acorns to world leaders, and he spent a bunch of money to put his bumper-sticker slogan (which was also in the chorus to one of his songs) on billboards and full page ads. This may be some interesting pseudo-performance art, but it’s half-assed activism at best. “War is Over (If You Want It)” may look good on a t-shirt, but it’s a lie. As this year’s war protests prove, a more appropriate slogan would be “War is Over (If They Want It)”.
And by the way, Paul McCartney has written an anti-war anthem. It’s called “Freedom” and, like “Give Peace a Chance”, it totally sucks.
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I want to go on the record as saying that I like Paul McCartney way better than John Lennon as a song writer and a human being. However, I DO think that John Lennon’s anti-war stance and billboards (and terrible but well-intentioned songs such as “John Sinclair”) did inspire a lot of people to get politically involved, and specifically to work toward the goal of ending the war in Vietnam. Just ask any aging hippie who ever went and protested or voted against Nixon during that era. Or go to somewhere current like killradio.org, a site devoted to bringing real news and stories to the network-starved public–John Lennon’s face stared out at me from the streaming computer’s desktop for months from that place until someone replaced it with something cooler (I think a SWAT team member on fire). You have to treat John Lennon’s activism like you would his song-writing–just because Paul was better doesn’t mean Lennon didn’t contribute anything meaningful.
Comment by Danimal — October 21, 2003 @ 6:33 pm
What Danimal says is of course true, but the thing is, Paul McCartney has been greatly misrepresented and maligned as a person, musician, and artist for just about every single day he has been alive that John Lennon has not.
I for one am getting suck and bloody tired of enduring the ravings of musical illiterates who have no clue what Paul’s true contribution to music or the culture of 1960’s Britain really was. We have to endure the retarded clich? that john was an activist, artsy passionate artiste, and Paul was a hack song writer pretty boy with occasional brilliance, but brilliance only made possible because of his association with John Lennon.
Yes, John was brilliant and passionate and amazingly important, but so was Paul. The truth of course, is that they were both brilliant, though like Danimal, I like Paul better. I think Paul’s musical output is clearly superior in quality, self confidence, and diversity of styles. Not to mention, he was the best dressed member of the Beatles.
But I digress. If at some point Paul is finally recognized for the musical genius that he (Like John) is, I might stop being so annoyed at the cult of John Lennon. Until then, I will focus instead on the crap that john Wrote, like give Peace a chance, or Revolution number 9.
And oh yeah, Freedom is complete crap.
Comment by Ross Angeles — October 22, 2003 @ 10:39 am
OK, here’s my take on it: Both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were geniuses — but McCartney’s genius is both deeper and wider than Lennon’s was. The press, beginning in the 1960s with the first worldwide popularity of the Beatles, was very smitten by John because he was the “cool” Beatle. He was the one who always had a sarcastic remark to make, and who loved to put people down. Paul, on the other hand, was labeled the “cute” Beatle because the teenyboppers thought so. It was also a convenient putdown on the part of the press — a good excuse not to take Paul seriously.
This lapped over into the notion that he only wrote “sappy ballads” — never mind songs like “I’m Down” or “Helter Skelter,” or that his rendition of “Long Tall Sally” is one of the grittiest solos in rock history. Those are some of the reasons that some people like to denigrate Paul.
Personally, I feel that John Lennon, genius though he was, was also a very unbalanced, very troubled individual. Paul McCartney, on the other hand, is and always has been very well grounded. He’s always known what he wanted, and has gone out and gotten it. Some complain nowadays that he charges too much for tickets to his concerts. Well, why should he give away his talent? Does his plumber fix Paul’s pipes for free?
Comment by Wayne Engle — December 14, 2003 @ 12:52 pm
HAHAHa, no. Paul McCartney’s song-writing ability was limited to his years in the Beatles. His solo work sucked, “Band on the Run”? Sucked. “Live and Let Die”? It was decent, but nothing like his Beatles songs. John Lennon on the other hand, wrote tons of amazing songs as a solo artist. His music was personal, confessional, and he knew how to write a good melody. Paul McCartney is a great musician and one of the most influential bass players of all time, but his songs are a product of labor, not genius. Personally, Sir Paul has been one of the most egotistical douchebags of the last 20 years, often times bemoaning the fact that John Lennon was killed and not him, because then people should see he “was a genius, too!” A guy that did some truly shitty collaborations with the King of Pop, a guy that forces his bandmates to eat only vegetarian while they’re on the road, a guy who seeks to put his name ahead of his dead friend’s on the songwriting credits, reversing the agreement they made when the friend was alive..He’s a guy who wrote some great songs 40 years ago, and really has been living off the legacy of that band ever since.
Comment by bottcorecords@hotmail.com — June 21, 2004 @ 5:02 pm
As far as I’m concerned, Lennon and McCartney’s solo careers peaked at the exact same time with Mind Games and Band on the Run respectively. Following that, They each released albums that were weak in comparison to their earlier work (Walls and Bridges / Venus and Mars). From there, Lennon retired for five years, released half an album worth of good material, and then died. McCartney, on the other hand, has spent the last thirty years churning out hit-and-miss material. Considering that even now his new albums usually have one or two good songs is remarkable compared to some of the shit his contemporaries release (Eric Clapton, Rolling Stones, etc.)
If the roles were reversed, with Lennon steadily releasing material and McCartney getting shot, I’d imagine we’d be having the same argument about how shitty John was compared to Paul. Just because John didn’t live long enough to become a washed-up rock star doesn’t mean it probably wouldn’t have happened (not that being old and irrelevant does anything to diminish your former greatness).
Comment by greg — June 21, 2004 @ 5:43 pm