anyroads:

tikkunolamorgtfo:

theshoutingendoflife:

It’s gotten so fashionable on tumblr to hate on The Beatles but who else is going to eat rotten wood and contribute to soil fertility in complex forest ecosystems?

This is very funny, but can we also just talk about the strange irony that lies behind The Beatles pushback? Because it mostly has to do with sticking it to obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon that makes them superior to the populace at large, especially when it comes to all those foolish young women who only listen to popular, music-industry garbage. Except, they’re totally unaware of the fact that when the Beatles first became popular, they were massively reviled by…obnoxious, self-important men who believed their appreciation for folk music made them superior to the populace at large, especially when it came to all the silly teenage girls who only listened to popular, music-industry garbage, and acted like fools screaming from their stupid Beatlemania obsession. 

Like, the Beatles have effectively been put on a pedestal but the same people who hated them for being teen girl music in the early 60s, and it’s weird AF.

They literally changed the relationship of British culture to the working class and class markers such as accents. They were innovative and had an incredible understanding of music, despite not having any formal training of musical education, which set a new standard for what was expected of modern musicians and opened doors for others. And while the frustration at four British white dudes becoming the poster boys for a genre invented by black people is absolutely legit, that frustration is more about the culture that posted them as such. They weren’t co-opting, they idolized both Elvis and who HE took from, without an understanding of race relations in the U.S. or what it even meant that Elvis rose to success on the backs of men who never got recognition. There’s a story about Paul McCartney, and how he was floored to see a black woman forcibly removed from a whites-only space when they were on tour in the U.S. His reaction? The band refused to play any venues if they were segregated, forcing Southern venues to sell integrated seats. 

I have a lot of feelings about the Beatles, and I usually let posts on this site go by when they throw vitriol at them, because I don’t have the energy. Yes, John Lennon was abusive. He also actively worked on changing, not just his behavior, but his relationship to the world, his relationships, and to fix the core of the problem, not just the symptoms. Which is ultimately what we want from our abusers, isn’t it? Being publicly shamed, taking them down a peg, getting revenge on them – it’s satisfying, but ultimately unfulfilling and perpetuating the cycle they began. To see them change, work on themselves, challenge themselves – that leads us to feeling safer. Which is all we wanted in the first place. 

Every shitty opinion of the Beatles I’ve heard seems to be a reaction to how other people see them, not the band itself. Fine, you don’t like their music, but if that’s an integral part of your identity, that it somehow makes you cooler or better than others, then you’re trying too hard and you’re just kind of annoying. I think Oasis is garbage but I don’t shove it in people’s faces who love them, because it’s a subjective argument and all I’ll do is make people feel shitty, which, why would I want to do that? You can think the Beatles overrated, but the gazillion bands you DO like who were inspired them probably disagree with you. You can see them as privileged white men, but in their own time and place that context isn’t what it is now.

But to be perfectly honest, the thing that bothers the most about Beatles lore is the bullshit about Yoko Ono breaking the band up. George Harrison was bailing and wandering off on his own for months at a time way before she and Lennon started dating, and the biggest turning point for the band was when - after they had been fighting for weeks - they took a two week vacation during which McCartney hired his father in law as the band’s new manager, even though everyone else had told him a dozen times they don’t want this guy as their manager. And within like ten seconds the guy sold off half the band’s catalogue, which is how Michael Jackson eventually ended up with all their songs (and left them all to McCartney in his will). The band broke up because they started playing together as kids and now they were 30, and also because Paul was kind of a dick. And Yoko Ono got blamed for it, because she was too avant-garde for the mainstream, she was too Asian and female without trying to look like Brigitte Bardot, and she was too present alongside John Lennon when people wanted him to be the person they projected onto him. She challenged his abusive tendencies and pushed him away when she wanted to, and helped him and empathized with his pain, which is an admirable act of kindness, admirable only because she maintained boundaries for her safety and well-being. She challenged him to be a social activist and helped him educate himself, and even though he fell short sometimes, he literally strengthened important social movements. The FBI didn’t keep a file on him because they thought he was helping their white supremacist agenda in the 70s. People still hate on Yoko, still make jokes about her, the same “obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon” as tikkun put it, without realizing that most of his work that they love was inspired by and helped along by her. 

And finally, a sidebar: George Harrison put on the first charity aid concert, not only making them a thing, but also establishing a standard that celebrity visibility could and should be used to bring attention and support to issues like famine. And the did it by listening – not by barging ahead and deciding that he knew best what was needed, but by listening and acting based on learning from someone close to the problem.