BEATLES SONGS AT CHRISTMAS

..and John (no Santa hat for him)

Paul - the cover of his Xmas song 

I am posting this on Christmas Eve rather than New Year's Eve, writing in my dining room in peace and quiet as the sun reluctantly comes up on a dark December morning.  After I step outside, I will have to hear Christmas songs by Slade, King Christmas or Bing Crosby over various public PA systems.  (Enough of the Scrooge.)  This year I have particularly noticed two songs, both of them written by former Beatles: Happy Christmas, War is Over by John Lennon and Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. Which is better?

Now, I can bore on the Beatles for hours and have conducted tours and given talks on them, but these mainly concentrate on the time they were together, rather than after they split up.  The Beatles fit neatly into the 1960s, arriving in 1960 out of John's Quarrymen and going their separate ways in 1970 after which they led more or less successful solo careers.

The Quarrymen were John's group and he brought in his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who was more interested in painting and who died at twenty one of a brain haemorrhage, but who is credited with thinking up the Beatle name.  Later John invited Ringo to join them on drums in place of Pete Best, their manager Brian Epstein being given the job of breaking the news to Best that he would miss out on probably the biggest payday in pop history.  Paul became more important as the band progressed and bought a house near the Abbey Road studio, from where he could manage their music more effectively.  John felt his control of the group slipping away and moved to New York with Yoko where he took a long break from music.

There was never any question of Paul taking a sabbatical.  Music just poured out of him and he recorded his solo Christmas song, making a video for it at the Fountain Inn in Sussex, which I know well.  A catchy tune, a fireside in an English country pub, warm wishes for friends and family in the festive season - you could hardly get more sugary.  The song has made Paul about £10 million since 1979 so he has done very well out of his cosy Christmas.

John, whose own father left when he was little and who walked out of his marriage to Cynthia after he met Yoko, was not so good at family.  He wishes peace for everyone as he tells them that war is over with the proviso "if they want it".  Sadly, many people do not and war is definitely not over for many around the world.  John was good at big themes, Paul at little ones. Paul is the family man, John the saviour of society, painting a bigger picture. 

Thackeray said that the job of the artist was to make the new familiar and the familiar new, which I always think is a good summary of the difference between Lennon and McCartney.  it is Paul who can bring the everyday to life, either with pathos in She's Leaving Home about an unhappy girl leaving home at five in the morning "meeting a man from the motor trade" (What a brilliant phrase, both banal and suggestive - you just know that she will have her heart broken.) or with humour as in Back in the USSR, surely still the wittiest pop song ever written.  Meanwhile John is looking for new directions in psychedelic trips, newspaper articles and even circus posters such as Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite on Sgt Pepper.

I am more of a Paul man myself never having been much into drugs or tripping into new realms of consciousness.  I love his simple pop songs of true love And I Love Her or Things We Said Today (both on the Hard Day's Night album) or Blackbird, which sounds like a song about a little bird, but has an underlying symbolism relating to civil rights. John could never have written a song as simple and as symbolic as this, being more concerned with the demons inside him.  After he lost the discipline of working with Paul, his music could be pretty self-indulgent.  Try listening to Revolution Number Nine on The Beatles, usually known as the White Album, more than once.  It will drive you up the wall.  

John realised that, in his words, you have to “coat the message with a little bit of honey” so he used his ability to make a decent pop song to get his message over.  Happy Christmas (War is Over) is surprisingly hypnotic and stays with you without cloying in the way that Wonderful Christmastime does not.  Too much honey and you are in danger of getting sick of the stuff.

No group could make a three minute pop song like the Beatles when they were at the height of their power.  John and Paul, much like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 200 years ago, were young motherless men with very different personalities and backgrounds who struck sparks off each other, achieving more together than they would have done separately.  John was struck down by a random and meaningless act of violence - itself as good an argument as any for chaining America's gun laws - while Paul is still making music and will headline Glastonbury next summer.  If I had to choose which one to be stuck on a desert island with, it would be Paul, but I have to admit that John wrote the better Christmas song.

Merry Christmas everybody - and a Happy New Year to all, family and society.

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My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner