9th graders learn who's better: Stones or Beatles

(972 words)

My daughters know not to ask Daddy any homework questions involving subjects like algebra or biology.

I just don’t get it.

Same goes for humanity, sociology, civics, nutrition, astronomy, horticultural, automotive repair, personal finance, IT, physics, chemistry, fashion, hospitality, theology … 

And let’s not even get into why they know to run to Mommy anytime they have questions involving basic grooming and hygiene.

So I was taken aback when our 9th grader approached and said she needed my insights on a subject she’d been assigned to argue for debate class.

Who’s better: Stones or Beatles?

Now, it was my turn to be taken aback.

This is what they’re teaching in our middle schools?

I couldn’t believe it. This isn’t a subject that ought to be discussed in a classroom.

It ought to be discussed in a dimly-lit bar with a really cool jukebox.

And I should be the teacher!

In fact, my entire life has been something of an honors tutorial on the subject. I remember spending hour-after-hour in the Athens bars going point-by-point over every song in their glorious catalogs to divine the answer.

It was Ohio University where I graduated with a .23.

That wasn’t my GPA.

It was my BAC.

I started my answer with a question: Who did you choose to argue: Stones or Beatles?

“The Stones.”

Hallelujah.

If she’s learned anything from me it is musical tastefulness, a realm which to me is far more important than all that scholarly crap that winds up on the resumes.

She was correct.

The Stones are the better band.

I plugged a Stones playlist into the stereo and as the first iconic chords of “Jumpin' Jack Flash” began to play I commenced my illumination.

“First of all, the Stones are the better band merely on the basis of longevity. They’ve been thrilling the world for 54 years.”

That cannot be overlooked.

“Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” “Shattered,” “Sweet Virginia,” “Memory Motel,” “Miss You,” “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Waiting on a Friend” and “Honky Tonk Woman” are just a handful of the hits the Stones recorded after the Beatles hung it up. And if I had the opportunity, I’d play for each of you the outstanding 2005 “A Bigger Bang” album to prove the Stones are still in their fifth decade capable of great studio work.

Many great bands burn out or fade away within five years due to ego, addiction, artistic differences, death, suicide, envy or the other many pitfalls of fame.

The Stones have overcome all those and reign still.

Second, the Stones are more inspirational.

Ask Bruce Springsteen.

I heard an apt interview with him where he summed it up perfectly. He said it changed his world when he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

“I remember looking at them and thinking, well, there’s only four guys in the world who can do what they’re doing and there they are. No one else can do that. Me, included. But when I saw the Stones they were more gritty, more real. They weren’t smiling. They weren’t pretty. I thought, man, I can do that. The Stones are what made me want to be in a band.”

Every musician in the world wanted to listen to the Beatles, but they wanted to be a Stone.

Another point: the Stones were dangerous.

When the Beatles were playing it safe singing, “All You Need is Love,” the Stones were releasing, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

I played it for Josie and emphasized the lyrics with historical context about crucifixions, Russian revolutionaries and WWII holocausts.

I watched with glee while your kings and queens fought for 10 decades for the gods they made

I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?” when after all it was you and me

The world in 1968 was raw from war, strife, injustice and the monumental assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. And here comes Mick Jagger beseeching sympathy for the devil.

They didn’t shy away from confronting this. In fact, when Robert Kennedy was murdered during the recording sessions, the Stones had a historic choice to remove the Kennedy line in the name of taste.

Instead, they made it plural.

Even today, it’s incredibly incendiary.

I told her the Stones are the better band is because they are a true band.

I love that about them.

I contend if the Beatles had never met you still would have heard of John, Paul, George and Ringo. They all had the gifts to be famous.

John, Paul and George all went on to individually make tremendous and indelible solo music. They were a trio of geniuses.

And Ringo, well, Ringo would have made a dandy game show host.

Had the Stones never met, the only one anyone would have ever heard of is Charlie Watts and the only people who would have heard of him are the handful of obsessives who can name famous jazz drummers.

Mick would have become a financier, Keith a junkie, Bill Wyman a gynecologist and Brian Jones still dead.

Instead, they had each other and became something the world will never see again.

That Stones solo work is either obscure or sucks just bolsters my point.

And though their lifestyles contradict the opinion, I contend the Stones would to this day still be playing music together in shabby clubs and theaters if they’d never become famous.

I still believe — despite all the inflatable dolls, the private jets and the disposable supermodels — with the Stones it’s the music that matters.

And because this was a school project and I want my darling to succeed, I needed to share with her the one irrefutable reason that would blow away anyone arguing the Beatles — and I love the Beatles — are better.

None of the Stones ever got anywhere near Yoko.

Class dismissed.

Related …

Roll on, Stones

Stones 50 best? ForGrrrt it

“USA! USA!” and why we all whoo

Listening to classic rock with my senile Mom

Lennon vs. McCartney

The divisive Paul McCartney Christmas song

The Boss for God

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.

Imagining a planet at peace

First of all, there’d be no more talk radio. Everyone would have to raise their hands and be recognized before they spoke.

We’d all make eye contact with one another as we strolled down the sidewalks. We’d give little, “Hey, you hang in there” nods of encouragement to everyone we came across to let each other know we’re all in this together.

If we saw someone driving like a maniac, instead of getting enraged at the reckless incivility, we’d all pull over assuming the driver was on the way to the hospital to help deliver triplets.

And that’s exactly what he’d be doing.

Baseball would be more popular.

I woke up today with an impulse to join the shrill fray and give my redundant opinions on who’s to blame, what should be done, and how anyone with any sense saw this tragedy coming.

But the thought fatigues. Like everyone else who opines -- and there’ll be a lot less opining on a peaceful planet -- I’ve already done plenty of that.

I’ve written about the problems with solutions ranging from the silly to the serious.

So I just wondered when any of us is ever going to get a break and just what that would be like.

The only ones who felt obliged to work more than seven months a year would be the ones running all the ice cream stands.

There’d be a lot more hammocks and time to enjoy them.

We’d all play a lot more golf on courses that never got too crowded and never cost more than $29. And when we were done we’d sit and laugh and joke for hours on pleasant porches and still make it home in time for dinner with families that never fight.

We’d read more and instead of talking about politics, we’d talk about the books we enjoyed.

TVs would still be big and hi-def, but there’d only about 40 channels.

Being liked and respected by the dozens of people who really know you would mean more than being famous to millions who don’t.

We’d play more games involving processed wood than games involving batteries and LED screens. All the best games -- chess, checkers, Jenga, Scrabble, blocks -- never need recharging.

We’d be more tolerant of the harmless eccentrics and we’d all agree it’s best that the real crazies shouldn’t be allowed to purchase deadly weapons with fewer restrictions than sane people face purchasing a keg of beer.

And little 9-year-old girls born on days renown for tragedy would grow up to do things so heroic and magnificent we’d all sit around and wonder at the irony that a girl born on September 11, 2001, was part of a generation that ushered in an era of peace on a planet that had been forever riven by violence.

I saw John Green, father of Christina Green, today talking about the death of his daughter. He spoke of his devastation and then surprised me by saying, “It shouldn’t happen in this country or anywhere else, but in a free society, we are going to be subjected to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.”

It’s a stunning, oh, well, reaction to a loss from which he’ll likely never recover.

He’s saying we are all consigned to live in a violent world overrun by the senseless slaughter of innocents. It’s been that way since just after Eden and that’s the way it’ll always be.

But it won’t be that way in a peaceful world. There won’t be traffic, bedbugs, hunger, despair, loneliness or madmen bent on murder. There won’t be evil, there won’t be heartache and there won’t be tears.

So I guess in a truly peaceful world the biggest difference is there won’t be people.

Of course, the grief-stricken father’s correct. It’s never going to get any better.

We just have to hope it does.

"Hey Hey Johnny," songs for dead celebs

An old friend of mine used to keep a list of people who should have been shot instead of John Lennon. It was a very long list and he tended it with a maniacal fervor.

Of course, there were men like Kim Jung Il, Idi Amin, the since decapitated Saddam Hussein and other tyrants bedeviling the planet about 25 years ago.

But there were also numerous garden variety miscreants who, I felt, certainly didn’t deserve ballistic ventilation. I remember his list included one wobbly NFL kicker for the Detroit Lions whose scattergun field goals had cost my friend a small fortune in ill-considered wagers.

It’s wrong, of course, to talk about the need for more gun violence on a day so marred by tragic gun violence, but I always think about him and his list on December 8.

I was too young to be moved by the grief tsunami that swept across the country 30 years ago this evening.

Of the Beatles, he’s probably only my third favorite behind Paul and George, which is like finishing last since who cares about Ringo (in fact, I think Ringo was on my friend’s list).

My favorite solo song of his is “Watching the Wheels,” but the rest move me very little. And I maintain all the best and most tuneful Beatle songs were Paul’s creations (“Hey Jude,” “Penny Lane,” “Yesterday,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “Eleanor Rigby”).

And then there’s the whole Yoko Ono thing. We have, as a nation, watched her for more than 40 years and no one has yet to figure out what he saw in her.

Lennon’s hailed for his devotional fatherhood to Sean, but no one ever mentions how he abandoned his first family and never paid a minute’s worth attention to his first son, Julian, who released a fine album I recall from about 1985, and seems to have grown up normal despite John’s cold absence. 

Still, I’m fascinated by Lennon and understand my friend’s list wholeheartedly.

Why him?

His contributions were incomplete. It was Lennon I thought of after Paul’s recent diss of George Bush. McCartney praised Obama and hinted it was great we had a president who knew how to read.

Conservatives howled because, well, that’s what conservatives do best.

My first thought was, “You guys ought to be glad some one shot John Lennon. I wish he’d been around as we were ramping up to fight this goddamn ridiculous Iraq war. Man, he’d have been raising holy hell.”

We lost so much when we lost him -- and the music wasn’t the half of it.

That’s what I lament about his death. We lost an agitating jester.

I never let this day pass without playing the two great songs written to commemorate his death and life. They are monumental works and I still struggle to get through them without wiping tears.

The first is “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny),” written by Bernie Taupin and Elton John, who was one of Lennon’s best friends and with whom he made his last concert appearance.. 

It’s a fascinating friendship. Elton bet Lennon that if his version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” went No. 1, Lennon would have to perform at Madison Square Garden with him. It did and their lively version of, ironically, Paul’s song, “I Saw Her Standing There” is Lennon’s last live performance.

Elton performed “Empty Garden” once and couldn’t make it through. Propelled by a heartbeat rhythm, the song is so plaintive, so heart wrenching, it combines rage and grief to create something beautiful. He’s never played it again.

The other is “All Those Years Ago” by George Harrison. It’s the flip side of the Elton song.

It’s a bouncy delight about the joy he knew by being friends with John when it was just the four of them bouncing around in the van as it rolls across the English countryside. It’s the side of John Lennon even Yoko never knew.

How he wrote a song this beautiful, this euphoric, about something that had to be so devastating to him leads me to believe angels exist and they love to dance.

Here’s a short list of other worthy songs inspired by dead celebrities:

• “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John, about Marilyn Monroe. It pained me when he and Taupin re-wrote the lyrics to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. Seemed kind of cheesy. Still does.

• “American Pie,” Don McLean, about Buddy Holly and, really, the death of era. Still one of the most compelling pop songs ever and the best to over-analyze in the company of good friends and a warm bong.

• “Song for Sonny Liston,” by Mark Knopfler, about the legendary boxer. Knopfler is one of the best storytelling songwriters. This 5:07 song makes me want to read books about Liston.

• “American Roulette,” by Robbie Robertson, about James Dean, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe. Concussive beat, stinging guitars and urgent vocals make this feel like an ambulance ride to the ER after an OD.

• “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” by Drive-By Truckers, about Ronnie Van Zant, George Wallace and Bear Bryant.” Man do these guys cook. This starts at a simmer and burns to a boil. Every southern band is compared to Lynyrd Skynyrd.   It’s time to start comparing bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Drive-By Truckers.

• “Alcohol and Pills,” by Todd Snider about Hank Williams Sr., Elvis, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons and Jimi Hendrix. Another cautionary tale: “Alcohol and pills, it’s a cryin’ shame. You think that they’d have been happy with the glory and the fame. But fame don’t take away the pain. It just pays the bills. And you wind up on alcohol and pills.”

• “Family Tradition,” by Hank Williams Jr. about Hank Williams Sr. I don’t know if Hank III has updated this one, but I’d buy it. You can’t go wrong with any of the great Nashville Hanks. Dallas Wayne has a great song that describes the blueprint for a really great night. It’s meant for Senior, but could apply to any of the Williams boys: “Crack the Jack and Crank the Hank.”

Imagine the fun.

Let's just bury Salinger, not praise him

During his life, Garbo-like author J.D. Salinger wished to be left alone and I was more than happy to oblige him. I tried to stop thinking about him in high school shortly after they made me read “Catcher in the Rye.”

The perennial favorite of homicidal malcontents and high school English teachers everywhere, the book did nothing for me.

I like books that feature protagonists with whom I feel like I could sit down and enjoy an afternoon of convivial drinking and perhaps a fragrant cigar or two. Guys like Capt. Augustus McCrae and Jake Spoon from “Lonesome Dove” or John Joseph Yossarian from “Catch-22.”

When I say I’ve spent many hours with guys like Holden Caulfield you might think I was once a licensed psychiatrist. Not true.

It’s just that, thanks to Salinger, disaffected Caulfields are everywhere.

Ian Fleming gave us a dynamic indelible character with a license to kill.

Salinger’s greatest contribution was an irritating character with a license to mope.

Certainly, there are many worthy reasons to go through life in a constant bitch. Living ain’t for sissies.

But there was no reason for Salinger to be like that and that’s my beef with the author who went through life as our national literary blister. His spent his post-Rye days shooing away interviewers, prospective publishers and hounding lawyers to sue anyone who dared reference his work.

You can write a book about a moody and depressing anti-hero, but when it succeeds beyond your wildest dreams you had better dare not become one.

One of my favorite interviews of all time was with hack crime writer Mickey Spillane, with whom I had the pleasure of engaging in a minor correspondence after I did a story about him that revealed a surprising side to the guy who created cold-blooded dick Mike Hammer.

And shame on you if you snickered at my usage of the word “dick.” In Spillane’s day it was a perfectly respectable reference to a man who practiced the detective trade. It wasn’t until later that it became a pejorative reference to the male sex organ and a subject for another day.

I found out that Spillane was a door-knocking Jehovah’s Witness. It’s true. From his home in lovely Pawley’s Island, S.C., the thrice-married brother would go door-to-door and preach the gospel of a religion that one of these days I just might give a try.

I loved the thought that this world famous author, a star from a series of hilarious Miller Lite beer commercials in the 1970s, would show up and politely ask strangers if they had a moment or two to discuss their eternal salvation.

Was it odd, I asked him, that he’d made a fortune selling more than 225 million books based on a ruthless character who killed without remorse while in private life he preached a loving and kind religion.

“Not at all,” Spillane told me. “Too many writers mistake a trade for an art. I tell stories. Sure, they are stories about sex, murder and deception, but there’s lots of stories like that in the Holy Bible, too.”

Like Hemingway, Twain and Steinbeck, our greatest American authors, Spillane engaged life with gusto. When he died in 2006, not a single story referred to him as “reclusive,” the adjective most used to describe Salinger.

Well, now his reclusiveness is complete.

I think our greatest writers inspire us to live. Not write. When I read Twain, I don’t feel like sitting all by myself and making up stories. I feel like going out and laughing with family and friends. I feel like enjoying the gift of life.

Salinger inspired lots of people, too. He inspired people to believe that giving into the grim burdens we all experience was a mantle to wear with petulant pride.

The papers are full of stories today about how Salinger soured and wrecked relationships throughout his life and will be buried in the next day or so in a grave that will long go unmoistened by tears of those that knew him best.

Many stories will mention that when John David Chapman killed John Lennon in 1981 he was asked, man, why did you do it?

“Catcher in the Rye,” was all he said.

So if he’s one of your literary heroes, I hope you enjoyed him for the artistry of his work and not because you relate to his miserable characters or because of the author’s misanthropic example.

You can enjoy the book, but the guy was just a cold-blooded dick.

And I mean that one in the most modern usage.