I'll Come Flying Like A Spark

I thought that maybe finishing the book and writing about it would cool this Crowdie jag I'm on but I have a few more observations to share, if only with myself.

* Neil's songs are just the sneakiest. At heart they're very simple but so many will take a subtle turn or unusual route and then blindside you hooks. I can't much explain how (and for all that went into that lengthy bio, that doesn't either) but it's definitely a skill of his, and something I now realize I'd pointed out before.

Often, this musical sneak attack is a match for introspective lyrics examining the dark reaches of the male psyche, as in this slow-burning but explosive cut from TEMPLE OF LOW MEN.



* That's Split Enz' Eddie Rayner in the corner on keyboards by the way (he played with them and sometimes toured in the band's early days). Thanks in part to Mitchell Froom's big bag of tricks in the studio (he was George Martin to Finn's Lennon/McCartney act) and guest musicians like Rayner and Tim Finn, Crowded House were a trio that hardly ever sounded like one.

* Notice too that song embeds a very obvious callout to other songs with the lines: People Are Strange/God Only Knows. Neil also does this a lot, even getting two Beatles references in the first couplet of "Don't Dream It's Over": Within/Without and catching the rain "in a paper cup." Can't be a mistake!

* Other songs nick bits of his influences, and they're all great too: The jangly "Weather With You" is "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in disguise; peel back "Into Temptation" and find "A Day in the Life" while "Pineapple Head" is a more obvious "Norwegian Wood" tribute but with another sucker-punch hook.



* I probably came off too hard on "Chocolate Cake" below. I like it enough, and it doesn't offend me personally. But it was an odd choice for a single. Ultimately, the problem with seeking an "edge" for Crowded House was that their strengths were often so well hidden.

Tell Me What You See

It doesn't declare a winner, nor does it even argue for one; rather John McMillian's BEATLES VS. STONES filters the story of the Beatles through the perspective of the Rolling Stones and vice-versa, examining the obvious and subtle ways they informed, influenced, imitated and irritated one another.

As a guy well-versed in Beatle history, I appreciated McMillian's telling of familiar material from a unique angle; and as a guy largely ignorant of the Stones' story, I learned a few things.

Central to the story is an examination of the paradigm of the respective group's origins and early marketing: The Beatles were minor criminals from hardscrabble Liverpool presented by manager Brian Epstein as the huggable moptops-next-door while the Stones, hailing generally from better homes, economic conditions and opportunity around London, cast as menacing rulebreakers by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.

These images were enduring, and played into a supposed rivalry fanned by the press. While the bands themselves largely got along, a bit of a frenemenship emerges. McMillian describes how John and Paul casually school the young Stones with an impromptu studio writing session, which no doubt sped the Stones' transition from blues interpreters to rock songwriters, which eventually, would spur the Beatles to new heights. Occasionally this would lead to the sincerest forms of flattery, as when the Stones followed SGT. PEPPER with SATANIC MAJESTY'S REQUEST, rankling the caustic Lennon in particular.

As their respective success and influence grew (not to mention their use of drugs), McMillian documents how they were perceived by the counterculture they played to ('Revolution' vs. 'Street Fighting Man'); and finally how their business interests collided, first when Paul and Mick pondered joining the band's interests; and finally when Mick enticed John to seek Allen Klein's representation despite knowing Klein to be a thief. This issue would eventually tear the Beatles themselves apart, just as the Stones enjoyed their greatest artistic triumphs.

Live a Little, Be a Gypsy, Get Around

What happens after you've accomplished it all and you haven't yet turned 30? The dilemma hangs heavily over Paul McCartney as he restlessly struggles to craft a post-Beatles life in Tom Doyle's biography MAN ON THE RUN. Based on a series of revealing interviews with the subject and richly detailed reporting, Doyle paints McCartney as far less calculated, and in a sense, more complex, than I would have guessed: In fact, Paul was adrift, depressed, and stoned for much of the 1970s even as he rarely dropped the jolly exterior and optimistic outlook he projected.

Cast as too domineering by George and too uncool by John (both accusations appearing accurate), the Beatle breakup left Paul with a kind of post-traumatic distress he medicated with pot, musical excursions both brilliant and banal, and life with a young family.

Periodic encounters with John Lennon recounted in the book illustrate a complicated and heartbreaking estrangement between the famed songwriting duo. John's public posture was many times more savage than what he'd share privately with Paul, whereas McCartney would frequently come off more flippant and careless than he'd intend, particularly his unfortunate "it's a drag, man" soundbite that carried the day upon Lennon's assassination. As Doyle tells it, Paul spent much of the 1970s in a vain search for a foil to provide the kind of competitive spark and counterforce that Lennon did, even if unconsciously so. The murder left him devastated and confused.

The book also provides a useful framework for understanding McCartney's inconsistent post-Beatle recording career, which even for us fans is something of a complicated narrative. McCartney's self-titled earliest effort largely resulted of therapeutic play in a home studio, while the 1971 followup RAM, conceived amid the legal unraveling of the Beatles, were both savaged by contemporary critics, although RAM's stature has greatly benefited upon reconsideration. "RAM was something of a marvel," Doyle argues. "Really the true successor to ABBEY ROAD, in its baroque detail and flights of imagination, it was variously funny, daft, touching and knowing."

Living a hippy lifestyle on a rural Scottish farm, Paul's next venture was, in his words, growing a band from a seed. Wings grew, all right, morphing from the dull, ramshackle outfit of the debut WILD LIFE, to the Peppery BAND ON THE RUN, to arena rockers of VENUS AND MARS to the radio popstars of SPEED OF SOUND and its successors. Part of this was Paul's unwillingness to reel in his outrageous versatility, but it was also his inability to keep another group together, with only himself, musically dubious wife Linda and ex-Moody Blues utilityman Denny Laine a presence throughout the Wings' career. One problem? He paid them too little.

The dissolving of  Wings Mark 2 (guitarist Jimmy McCullough and drummer Joe English, who joined following BAND ON THE RUN and accompanied the founding trio through the WINGS OVER AMERICA triumph) seemed to serve as another disappointing setback for McCartney, who even at the top of his game was always courting doubt. But, as Doyle points out, McCartney's growth from a guy who seemed lost without his Beatle bandmates to an artist who could fill a triple-live album almost entirely with non-Beatle cuts you know by heart in a matter of a only few years, is simply remarkable, even if it came with some filler.

The book takes us through McCartney's adventures in recording (the near-fatal chaos of BAND ON THE RUN's creation in Lagos and high-seas hijinx for LONDON TOWN); his idiotic drug busts in Scotland and in Japan; the deaths of Lennon and ex-Wingman McCollough, all leading to what Doyle suggests is the dawn of a calmer, more stable period to follow.

The below playlist includes representative cuts from Macca's singles, LPs and other projects during the decade: