Friday
29Aug2008
New Bio-Pic To Look at John Lennon's Early Years
Friday, August 29, 2008 at 10:42AM
It's odd how you can say something one day and then a
couple days later you see something online or in the newspaper (remember
newspapers?) and think to yourself, "I was just talking about that..." It happens to me a lot. This week, it's happened twice.
We discussed how the Mathieu Kassovitz/Babylon A.D. dust-up was rare because
usually people in the industry wait a couple of years before trashing their
movies. The next day, somebody came out and trashed Basic Instinct 2 and Sharon
Stone.
And earlier this week, I compared the upcoming Che
Guevara bio-pics to making a film about John Lennon. Steven Soderbergh (for the
time being) has split his Guevara movie into two distinct chapters. I said, "It's
like making a John Lennn movie and putting all the Beatles stuff and the New
York City stuff together. You'd be better off with two distinct movies."
Hey, guess what: They're making a John Lennon bio-pic covering his early years in Liverpool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Screen Daily reports that Nowhere Boy will shoot next March in Liverpool, eyeing a 2010 release, with artist-turned-director Sam Taylor-Wood shooting a script written by Matt Greenlagh (who wrote the very well received music movie Control last year). "I knew as I closed the final page that this was the film I had been looking to direct following [short film] Love You More," Taylor-Wood told Screen Daily. "The story spoke to me on so many levels - both personal and artistic. The women in John's early life truly shaped who he became and the strengths and weaknesses of their relationships are central to this film." That's true. Lennon's relationship with both his parents left a lot to be desired, and though his mother was in his life until his late teens, when she was killed walking across the street, he was primarily raised by his aunt. I would assume the movie also covers details of his first marriage, since he met Cynthia at 17 and married her at 22, right before British Beatlemania began to change the known universe. Lennon is one of the early performers of rock n' roll perfectly suited for a bio-pic. Darker than Johnny Cash with a childhood nearly as tumultuous as Ray Charles, John's youth really influenced his timeless music and his angry, aloof personality straight through to the end. It's easy to get these kinds of things wrong, of course, but let's hope for the best.
Reader Comments (7)
Sounds good. After all Lennon was the least least talented guy in the Beatles. How could you go wrong with a film about a guy who had no talent at all. I can think of a few ways.
That's a moronic statement. Are you sure you didn't co-write Disaster Movie?
Ringo Starr....more talented than John Lennon. Really? Then again: The statement as a whole....Really? Ditto what Colin wrote.
Yeh, I'm pretty sure i didn't write Disaster Movie. My current opus is a historical murder story with a redemption theme.
My sources re Lennon are here: http://www.areddy.net/beatles_suck/default.asp?page=least_talented_beatle_list
Well, with back-up like that, my argument stands very little chance, but here goes...
I'd say John had the second-most talent, behind Paul. It's easy to beat up McCartney for his silly love songs (as Lennon did, after which Paul turned the comment into the biggest hit of his solo career), but the guy could play any instrument better than the other members of the band. He also redefined bass playing. His melodies are stronger than Lennon's, although his lyrics aren't typically as good or as insightful.
Harrison would be third. Lennon was a far superior singer and with maybe five or six exceptions in his whole career, Harrison's songs couldn't touch John's strongest stuff.
Ringo's a good rock drummer but he's not more talented than Lennon, who, according to the valuable book Beatelsongs, wrote more of the band's material than anyone else. Yes, Lennon and McCartney shared credit, but in interviews after the dissolution of the band, John and Paul discussed exactly who wrote what. Lennon wrote 84 songs to Paul's 73. Harrison wrote 22. Ringo wrote 2.
He was a solid rhythm guitarist but a better composer, shifting both musical keys and time signatures much more than was common in the 1960s, and also more often than in the other members' works.
True, he was so apathetic by 1968 that he also wrote some of the band's worst songs at the end, but it's hard to knock "In My Life," "Help," "Day Tripper," "Ticket to Ride," "Norwegian Wood," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "All You Need is Love," "Don't Let Me Down," "Revolution," "Across the Universe," "Nowhere Man," his two-thirds of "A Day in the Life," "Dear Prudence," "Come Together," "A Hard Day's Night," "She Loves You," "I Feel Fine," "No Reply," "Julia," "Strawberry Fields Forever," and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."
Well, I came home a bit sloshed last night so my arguments weren't the most lucid. To show that I wasn't just messing around with the Beatles there is actually some evidence that it was in fact their producer George Martin who arranged the songs and did the multiple changes in key, which are very hard for an untrained musician like Lennon to come up with.
If you compare the early recordings of the Beatles and the Quarrymen as they used to call themselves, they had none of the audio magic they had when they were produced by George Martin. Obviously, he didn't do everything for them but I think he was instrumental in creating the special sound that we know as the Beatles today.
Here are a few sources, including a few audio clips from George Martin himself:
http://www.record-producer.com/learn.cfm?a=2986
http://www.beatlesagain.com/bgeorgem.html
I don't think it's a fair argument whatsoever to decide who was the strongest as we weren't able to see John's effort for the past 30 years. You can't take into account anything any of the Beatles did after 1980. That being said, I think Paul is excellent in creating hugely successful and easy to swallow music, but something tells me if John was alive, he would have been an unbelievable force to be reckoned with.
Either way, I don't think we can compare. They each were equally important in what they brought to the songs and the group, and none of the Beatles catalogue would be as amazing as it is without any one of those boys. It's obvious that Paul lost a great deal of talent when he stopped collaborating with John. They needed each other.