Alexandersmap

    Tag: Paul McCartney

    • An Expression of Yes

      “The price of greatness is responsibility over each of your thoughts.” ― Winston Churchill

      Yesterday, in a clear break from discipline, I took the dog to the beach for a long walk. I collected smooth stones until my coat pocket was full and stuffed a few more into my pants pockets. The pup—her tail wagging furiously—greeted other dog walkers and sniffed the salty foam. I might have been more productive pushing through some report or calling a few customers, but the pup and I agreed this was the most productive lunch meeting I’ve had in a long time.

      We know, deep down, when we’ve done our best. So many people go through the motions nowadays, not really finding the magic in the moment in their work. Not really feeling the power of contribution to something bigger than themselves. As if our days are infinite. As if staying within ourselves isn’t a betrayal of our potential.

      Betrayal of potential is doing work that doesn’t matter to us for a beat longer than absolutely necessary. I post this blog every day because it speaks to me, and I speak through it. Like flossing, when you diligently do it every day you get a positive outcome. Shouldn’t our primary work be the same?

      What does it matter to you?
      When you got a job to do
      You got to do it well
      You got to give the other fellow hell
      — Paul McCartney, Live and Let Die

      We have no time for trivial pursuits. We have no time for work that doesn’t resonate, that doesn’t make us feel something essential within ourselves. If today were our last day on earth, would the work we are doing mean a thing? To borrow from Derek Sivers, if the answer isn’t a hell yes, it’s a no. How many no’s do we want to stack in a row? Make today a yes and start a new kind of streak.

      Walking on the beach yesterday was an expression of yes. It was walking away from a no and making the most of a fragile moment. The work was still there when I got back, but it felt different than it did earlier in the day. It turned out the work wasn’t the problem, it was the worker all along.

    • The Communal Nature of Creativity

      “Your dreams don’t belong to you. If you hold on too tightly to them without recognizing the mutual and communal nature of creativity, your work will probably not have significant impact in the world.” — Drew Holcomb

      Writing a blog doesn’t feel communal, it feels more like a drawing out of oneself something internal and placing it out in the world for the reader to do with it what they will. The fact that almost 8 billion people will ignore it isn’t even the ego hit one might believe it to be, it’s not even the fact that it won’t ever reach the level where it’s a blip on the radar for those almost 8 billion people. Ego isn’t creative, it’s only role is to fuel the audacity to publish anything at all, and then let people in on the secret. After that it awkwardly gets in the way and is best pushed aside.

      The communal part of blogging is when you click publish. The work is then out there for others to interact with. For random strangers who stumble upon it, it’s a chance to hear a new voice and accept or reject that voice on their own path to finding out. For the loyal subscriber, it’s a choice of whether to let the steady drip, drip, drip of a daily blog become a part of their daily conversation. And for the inner circle of family and friends who read what this character has to say, it’s a chance to reconcile the person they know with the words they might be surprised by. I’m just as surprised, some days.

      Writing a blog isn’t thought of as collaborative. It’s the writer’s thoughts and opinion put to page, and not generally the product of the community with which that writer engages in. And yet we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. The influence of my community is as clearly reflected in the work that I produce as any book I’ve ever read or experience I’ve had. In fact, many of those same books and experiences are being had by that community and discussed over beverages now and again.

      There’s no doubt that music is one form of creativity better expressed communally. Lennon had McCartney and was the better for it. And then he had Yoko, and took his work to a different and far more personal place. When one looks at his entire body of work, we see his transformation as the influence of those around him ebb and flowed. The chorus naturally reverberates more than the solo artist. That doesn’t take away the power of the individual artist, it amplifies it. For art to speak, it must engage with others, which means that the artist must also engage with others. So, hello and welcome! Nice to have you here. Drop a comment.

    • The How of Things

      “We humans live in two worlds. First, there is the outer world of appearances—all of the forms of things that captivate our eye. But hidden from our view is another world—how these things actually function, their anatomy or composition, the parts working together and forming the whole. This second world is not so immediately captivating. It is harder to understand. It is not something visible to the eye, but only to the mind that glimpses the reality. But this “how” of things is just as poetic once we understand it—it contains the secret of life, of how things move and change.”
      – Robert Greene, Mastery

      You might read a paragraph like the one above with the eye of a scientist, seeing the truth through the lens of composition of matter and chemical reaction and such. You might read it through the eyes of a politician or businessperson, immediately grasping the backroom deals and favors that occur well before the headlines catch the attention of the public. Or you might read it with the eye of an artist, seeing the structure of the words themselves and how they spin magic in their unique assembly on the page. There is indeed poetry in the how.

      There’s a light that dawns when you see this other side of things, this secret sauce of how and why things are the way they are. Lessons learned through experience and intelligent observation and time invested in the questions of how. Some people receive the gift of a curious mind early in life and immerse themselves in the wonder of how, but most of us are too dazzled by the sleight of hand to focus on how the magician does the trick.

      There’s magic in the how. Watch Paul McCartney at a mixing board isolating bits of a Beatles song and you learn the intricate composition and experimentation that went into crafting it. The magic seems to sparkle on the surface, but it’s much deeper than you might hear in a first listen. The final product is an illusion built on layers of sonic novelty and gumption. The joy lies in discovering things you missed the first dozen times you heard a song.

      The magic lies in the mix. What we see on the surface is only the tip of the iceberg. Dive deeper into the how.

    • I’ve Loved Them All

      And in the end
      The love you take
      Is equal to the love you make
      – The Beatles, The End

      Which Beatles album is the greatest? The answer is different for most everyone, but it usually comes down to Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s each wrestling for number one, with a couple of votes each for The Beatles (White Album) and Abbey Road. It’s a bit like asking which is your favorite child; you simply love them all as they are.

      The Beatles are always in the background of my life. Always. Born at the height of their popularity, you simply grew up listening to them. For those of us born “too late”, we missed out on the anticipation of a new album being released, for it was all out there when we began listening in earnest. When you’ve heard the later work, your jaw doesn’t drop quite as far to the floor when you listen to Rubber Soul. But you still appreciate the creative leap forward from Help! (a great album itself).

      All these places have their moments
      With lovers and friends I still can recall
      Some are dead and some are living
      In my life I’ve loved them all
      – The Beatles, In My Life

      Which is your favorite Beatle? This tells more about you than you might think. For me it was always George Harrison. The quiet Beatle. And for all the brilliantly prolific work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it was George who dropped some of the best songs into the mix of “best Beatles song”, which is close to impossible to determine.

      With every mistake, we must surely be learning
      Still my guitar gently weeps
      – The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

      If George has 3-4 songs that ought to be in the mix for the best Beatles song, Lennon and McCartney had even more individually, and collaboratively co-wrote some of the greatest songs ever written on some of the best albums ever released. So how do you choose the best? Look at their solo careers? Here too, the ratio seems about the same.

      We could spend our lifetime debating such things or just agree that it was a brilliant run for the Fab Four. For this business of picking a favorite is nonsense. In the end we love them all.

    • Considering the Music of 1973

      Oh, give me the beat, boys, and free my soul
      I want to get lost in your rock ‘n’ roll
      And drift away

      Dobie Gray didn’t write Drift Away, Mentor Williams wrote it. But Dobie made it an international hit. The right mix of sing along, stirring lyrics and his silky soulful voice made it magical. I go about with life, forgetting about a song like this for a time, and then hear it on the radio or shuffled on a playlist of songs and it washes over me all over again, bringing me back to the first memories of hearing it. Dobie’s version was released in 1973, by all measures a very good year for music, with some of the greatest songs ever written released that year.

      Consider these ten 1973 classics:
      Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
      Ramblin Man
      Let’s Get It On
      Just You ‘N’ Me
      Angie
      Money
      Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
      Over the Hills and Far Away
      Jet
      Love, Reign o’er Me

      And that’s just scratching the surface. Big albums were released in 1973, including Dark Side of the Moon, Band on the Run, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Houses of the Holy and Quadrophenia. Individual songs were brilliant, but this was the peak era of albums, when the entire record was a work of art gift-wrapped in an album cover to cherish. Radio latched on to songs and made them hits, but the fans were eagerly listening to deep cuts on the best albums and finding gold.

      The world itself was upside down in 1973, with Watergate beginning to boil up, the Paris Peace Agreement to get the United States out of Vietnam, inflation running amuck, and our parents dressing us in some crazy multicolor outfits. But hey, at least we had the music. And if you were a kid growing up in the early 70’s you were immersed in some of the greatest music ever created.

      1973 was a stacked year in a string of stacked years for rock and roll. Scan the music released in any year from 1965 to 1975 and you can create a heck of a playlist. These were the golden years for rock ‘n’ roll, when each release, and each year, tried to raise the bar. Popular music tried to stay hip and part of the action, and sometimes a song would rise up and become that classic for the ages. If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that popular doesn’t always equal good, and there were some really bad songs hitting the charts in each of those years too, but those tend to drift away, don’t they? As with life, we tend to remember the best things. Like great songs. You know a melody can move me…

    • Walking In Their Footsteps

      There’s a moment 7:24 into the James Corden Carpool Karaoke with Sir Paul McCartney when James remarks, “If my grandad were here right now he’d get an absolute kick out of this” and McCartney replies, “He is.” That moment grabs me by the throat each time I’ve watched it. After a trip to Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, I’ve revisited the episode on YouTube a few more times for the “I was right there” time warp it offers. Which is closely related to the “They were right there” experience of walking in their footsteps on that day.

      We’re all souls marking our time on this planet, eventually our time ends and we’re remembered in moments like Corden’s. Generations later we’re just a small ripple, echoes that show in the traits of future generations, the equivalent in personality to having the same color eyes or the same shape to the earlobes. I can only hope my children carry my better traits to the future, and leave the more annoying stuff behind. But whatever will be will be.

      As I write this my friend the Carolina Wren is singing her morning song outside. We’re well into November and I thought she’d have migrated south by now. But it seems she wanted to stick around a bit longer, brightening up the days with her songs. It’s a sound I wasn’t familiar with until she arrived just this year, but one I won’t ever forget now. It’s funny how little things like that mean so much over time. Which makes me wonder, how will we be remembered?

    • Oh, That Magic Feeling: Abbey Road

      Abbey Road turned 50 years old last week. It’s always been my favorite Beatles album, particularly side two with its magical medley. It grabbed me the year that Lennon was shot and hasn’t let me go since. To be coming into my own as a young Beatles fan and then lose one of them was a gut punch at a time when I hadn’t taken a lot of gut punches yet.

      Abbey Road ages well. From the first notes of Come Together to the surprise bonus track Her Majesty, the album is still an astonishing journey after countless listening. It’s The Beatles throwing it all out there to see what happens, as they’d done for each of their milestone albums since Rubber Soul. It would all end with Abbey Road, their last studio album, and the last song they’d ever collaborate on was Come Together. Surely they had a sense of irony?

      George Harrison, the quiet Beatle, was at his creative peak with two of the best Beatles songs ever, his masterpieces Here Comes The Sun and Something. As a kid I latched onto Harrison as my favorite Beatle. Lennon and McCartney were just too big for me then. Harrison wasn’t flashy, he just got things done. And he surely was doing, er, Something. “Something in the way she moves” would be a line James Taylor would borrow from George for his own song of the same name, a tribute to the giants around him when he was recording at Abbey Road Studios around the same time.

      If the album had great individual songs on side one, side two would become famous for that medley. How many radio DJ’s put the needle down on that medley and ran to the bathroom because they had time? All of them. Because, You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, The End…. Her Majesty. Boom. Rapid fire, half finished songs blended together into one unified medley. Brilliant percussion from Ringo and Paul’s underrated bass guitar, John and George on guitar… and all of them harmonizing like they’d sing together forever. But this truly was the end.

      One verse in that medley stands out for me the same back as a teenager as it does today, if the meaning has changed over the span of time;

      “Any jobber got the sack

      Monday morning, turning back

      Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go

      But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go

      Oh, that magic feeling

      Nowhere to go, nowhere to go”

      – The Beatles, “You Never Give Me Your Money”

      Surely the idea of nowhere to go meant something to The Beatles, having ground themselves to dust touring and then prolifically cranking out brilliant album after brilliant album. They were exhausted, sick of each other, burdened by business transactions gone wrong, wrestling with creative tensions, and incredibly, still in their twenties. Solo careers were just ahead for all of them, but they came together for this incredible album to give us one last gift. Let It Be would come later, but was recorded prior to Abbey Road. This would be it, but what a way to end.