Lennon vs. McCartney

People are so eager to argue these days it’s easy to find disharmony in topics renown for harmoniousness.

Like The Beatles.

Because of their partnership, their break-up and ensuing rivalry ending in tragedy, it’s impossible for some to discuss John Lennon and Paul McCartney without choosing sides.

I was recently between two Lennon fanatics who were trying to goad me into saying Lennon is superior.

Alas, even when it contributes to more shrill disharmony, I cannot tell a lie.

Wrong, I said. The people have spoken and they prefer Paul. If you constructed a mighty Beatles jukebox and gave everyone a dollar to pick two, the world would be dancing to all Paul’s tunes.

“Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” “Yesterday,” “Penny Lane,” and “Eleanor Rigby,” are songs our descendants will still be enjoying 500 years from now.

Lennon songs (“I Am The Walrus,” “Strawberry Fields,” “Come Together”) great as they are don’t deliver the same melodic satisfaction.

These facts infuriate Lennon fans and turn them into Jam Band Guy.

Jam Band Guy thinks music needs to be complicated.

Jam Band Guy tells you you’re simpleminded for enjoying what gets your toes tapping. Jam Band Guy wants to torture people into listening to a 13 minute 29 second Phish song called “Time Turns Elastic,” never realizing most of us would rather spend the time hearing Tom Petty sing “American Girl” four times.

I resent such snobbiness so I decided to unleash the neutron bomb of the Lennon/McCartney argument.

“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, if your boy Lennon’s such a genius, then explain Yoko Ono.”

The name is a conversational stink bomb.

I’m not saying she’s the most evil woman in history. She’s never killed anybody (although she did kill The Beatles).

Her artistic contributions have inspired more people to say “WTF?” than anyone in recorded history. Her music is what Jam Band Guy would call “complicated.” It is unlistenable.

Her public pronouncements are routinely bizarre. Read just three of her recent tweets:

“If any of the streets need cleaning in your hometown, clean them in your mind.”

“Draw a window on the wall to remind you of the moonlight that soaks the walls while you are asleep.”

“A memory is a shadow of the past. Drink a glass of water to be back in the present.”

I mean, WTF?

And this is the woman to whom the genius Lennon devoted his life?

WTF!

Yet, here we are almost 31 years after his death and we’re still saddled with her channeling his spirit, divining his intentions and carping with McCartney over whose is the more deserving legacy.

I can’t enjoy much of Lennon’s post-Beatles work because it makes me think of Yoko. The song, “Woman,” is lovely, but whenever I hear it I see him in my mind singing it to her and, yeah, they’re both naked, and it’s ruined.

And she unwittingly conceded the whole tawdry argument in 2005 when she told a panel of music journalists that John used to lay awake at night and ask her, “You know they always cover Paul’s songs and never mine, and I don’t know why.”

“You’re a good songwriter,” she says she told him. “It’s not just ‘June and spoon’ that you write.”

Jam Band Guy strikes in the Ono memory bed.

In fact, the last song Lennon ever performed publicly was a cover of Paul’s “I Saw Her Standing There,” with Elton John in 1974.

It dismays me to have to disparage a man I really admire and love for all he did and all he represents.

It’s just more bitter residue from how it all so sadly ended.

Stephen King has a new book out about a time traveler who goes into the past to try and prevent the Kennedy assassination.

If I had access to the machine, I’d go back to outside The Dakota on December 8, 1980. I’d time my intervention so Lennon would see my heroics.

He’d owe me.

I’d use my new found celebrity to leverage dates with early ‘80s anti-Onos like Suzanne Somers and Adrienne Barbeau.

I’d work to re-construct a future John without Yoko.

Think of the catharsis if Lennon had lived and went on to divorce Yoko, date comely bimbos and felt free to admit that, yeah, once in a while he caught himself singing, “Ob-La-Di! Ob-La-Da!”

Think of reconciliations and an end to arguments about who’s better.

Imagine.

Roll on, Stones

The most important nugget I gleaned during four years of incidental education at Ohio University had more to do with philosophy than journalism.

It was bestowed not by an illustrious professor in an august hall, but by a boisterous bartender in a dingy tavern.

I still repeat it word-for-word to youths who seek my wisdoms about how to navigate this cruel practical joke we all call life.

It is eight words long and I now share it with you to enhance your lives and the lives of the needy. Here goes:

“You can’t have a party without The Stones.”

That’s it. It’s all you need to know.

The Golden Rule, fortune cookie Confuciusisms and myriad self-help books all come up wanting next to that nimble little guidepost.

I’ve been to parties without the Stones and they invariably suck. A really good party needs the Stones.

And so does a really good life.

As the band hits the publicity circuit to celebrate the release of the “Exile on Mainstreet,” I’ve been immersed in the Rolling Stones. But, really, I’ve been immersed in them since I learned how to use my ears.

I love country music, listen to jazz, classical and bluegrass. My playlists are crowded with Dylan, Springsteen, Kinks, Petty, Van Morrison and the sublime Mark Knopfler. I can find something to appreciate in all forms of music -- and I don’t count rap, Celine Dion or anything Ryan Seacrest listens to as music.

So, you see, I’m not a music snob.

But nothing hits me on the testicular level the way The Rolling Stones always have.

One thing that I’ve always loved about the Stones is that they’d be nothing without each other. Mick Jagger would be a banker, Charlie Watts would be a famous jazz drummer (famous to about 400 people), Bill Wyman would be a gynecologist, and Keith Richards would be a bum.

Even as a bum, Keith would still be the most interesting of the bunch and the one I’d sit on the sidewalk to listen to.

In fact, the only member of the original Stones whose life trajectory would not be altered would be Brian Jones who would still have died young.

I love the Beatles but their dynamic was the exact opposite. Each of the Beatles would have become famous without the others. John, Paul and George each had genius that would have led to musical fame and without the others Ringo would have become a dandy game show host.

And this is more complicated than it sounds, but The Stones have always been about the music. They would still be together and making great music if all the fame vanished.

The money, the girls, the excess has always been secondary to the music.

With the exception of guys like Steve Earle, you don’t see that kind of authenticity much anymore.

Mick was on Larry King the other night and, as always, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His every expression is riveting. I was struck by how watching the 76-year-old King interview Jagger, 67, made Jagger seem 35 and King seem about 98.

The men are basically contemporaries.

It’s impossible to think of anything on earth that’s been as consistently outstanding as The Stones have been since 1964.

The Catholic Church? C’mon. Even America, the greatest country on earth, has had to endure Vietnam, Watergate and Kate Gosselin.

Compared to those institutions, the only smudge on the Stones during that same time, “Dirty Work” in 1986, is small potatoes.

“Exile on Main Street” was made in 1972 and it’s hard to argue that it isn’t their best. It came on the heels of “Beggar’s Banquet” ‘(68), “Let it Bleed” (’69) and Sticky Fingers (’71), a rock ‘n’ roll Rushmore that only The Beatles can equal during the same epoch.

Music in general’s been going downhill ever since, but the Stones still move the needle, even if they don’t use it anymore.

People who mock them and say they should have hung it up after “Some Girls” in 1978 just must not like music.

“What do they expect us to do?” Keith’s asked. “Set down our guitars and sign up for plumbing school? We’re musicians. This is what we do.”

And nobody’s ever done it better. Still. I could make raging rock fans out of primitive tribesmen by shoving earbuds into their heads and playing overlooked gems “Steel Wheels” (’89) and “Voodoo Lounge” (’94).

And it’ll sound sacrilegious even to many other Stones fans, but “A Bigger Bang” from 2005 ranks among their very best, including the revered “Exile.”

I defy anyone to listen to the songs, “Rough Justice,” “Driving Too Fast,” “Biggest Mistake” and the sublime Keith song, “This Place is Empty” and not be as moved as they are by the rock, country and balladry from their hallowed years.

I once, just for the fun of it, tried to compose the most depressing true statement about this riddle of life. Here’s what I came up with:

“Life is an endless series of disappointments, each one greater than the last, leading inexorably to the grave.”

Ha!

Of course, I don’t believe anything of the sort. But life is short and life is hard. You need to crowd it up with all the love and laughter you can find before it’s all taken away.

Really, life is a party.

And you just can’t have a party without The Stones.

Time on my hands & everywhere else

I’m thinking of getting a $75 tattoo of an $18,000 Rolex on my left wrist. It would appear jewel-encrusted, waterproof and would make even the stylish wafer thin ones look clunky by comparison.

I think a really nice timepiece is a great way to impress strangers, and I don’t have the otherwise means to do so without deception.

Plus, I have so many clocks and time-telling devices in my life that I no longer have any idea what time it really is.

Right now, the clock on my laptop says its 10:36 a.m., but if I raise my eyes slightly to the digital display on my stereo (now playing Sgt. Pepper by The Beatles) it says it’s 10:28 a.m.

Perhaps it’s fitting that my futuristic MacBook Pro is vaulting ahead in time while my Bose Soundwave plays “When I’m 64,” a 42-year-old ditty about the pending intrusions of the doddering ages (and did you catch how that last sentence shows what a materialistic brand name-dropping dandy I’ve become?).

I have three watches ranging from cheap to middle-class spiffy. With my car clock, cell phone, several scattered clocks throughout the home and the notoriously corrupt homewrecker in my favorite tavern and it would seem I’m a man with all the time in the world.

Yet, I can’t seem to find the time to precisely synchronize the dozen or so I rely on for essentials like picking up the kid at the bus stop or being on time for the weekly golf match.

“I’m sitting on my watch, so I can be on time.”

That’s a Bob Dylan joke from his 2001 song, “Bye & Bye.”

Is that posture the solution?

I’m always either late or early. Never right on time.

I’m either hurrying to get someplace or just sitting stationary killing time, a once favorite pastime of mine. That was before I read how Henry David Thoreau wondered if it was possible to kill time without injuring eternity. It brain barnicled the instant I read it and still nags at me whenever I have time on my hands.

Thoreau’s philosophical petard makes my possession of so many scattered and disagreeable time keepers seem like a crime against humanity.

I feel driven to always be doing something productive. No longer do I kill time.

Now time’s killing me.

Exchanging my unwieldy array of Babelonian time pieces in exchange for a time tattoo of a really nice watch would change all that.

It’d be a practical fashion statement, people would appreciate the eccentricity of it, and it would have the nifty benefit of relieving the pressure to always be punctual.

I’m sure I’m not alone. We’re all so stressed by constant nano-second reminders that time is running out.

Could fancy wrist tattoos ease some of our pressing worries? Is it an idea that will eventually sweep the country?

Only time will tell.