Magical mystery tour

SHEER anguish to read, Wilfrid Mel-

lers’s new book about the Beatles is
still the most important treatment of
the subject yet to have appeared, and
I recommend it, with a lorry-load of
reservations. It ought to go without
saying, but for several reasons doesn’t,
that the Beatles are a serious topic
deserving serious treatment. The
famous sottise about them being the
greatest song-writers since Schubert
has always seemed to me to be closer
to being right than to being wrong, and
I say this out of respect for the inter-
vening musical tradition rather than
contempt for it. The Beatles’ achieve-
ment is as richly original as all but the
most formidable contributions to the
song-writing heritage. To take its meas-
ure demands the full resources of the
student’s mind.
Professor Mellers has resources
aplenty. One such resource is common
sense, which would have found room
to be employed more often if the book
were not so crammed with detailed The Beatles: no room for argument about their musical and artistic stature
scrutiny of musical examples. If cri-
ticism of music is to be anything better singing quality by the unfailingly
TWILIGHT OE THE GODS:
than merely impressionistic, technical The Beatles in Retrospect surprising displacement of stress:
terms are bound to be brought in. If by Wilfrid Mellers (Faber £2.95) ‘Here / Making each day of the year /
they are bound to be brought in, Changing my life with a wave of her
Professor Mellers, who knows all about THE LONGEST COCKTAIL PARTY hand…’ Mellers approves the Beatles’
them, is amply qualified to do the by Richard DiLello (Charisma £1.90) ‘poetry of the commonplace’ without
bringing. As we have by now come to quite seeing that such a gift matters
expect, scolds trying to pass for bright by CLIVE JAMES far more than the self-conscious poet-
will inevitably level charges of pseudery icising of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ of which he
— a characteristically modern method bridge) without imagining that they says ‘the words are poetry’ without
for the numb-skulled to experience get to the heart of the matter. They are adding the necessary qualifier that the
their ignorance as a virtue. Professor descriptive and descriptive only. Beatles were at their weakest with
Mellers has no need to be afraid of that. The great secret of the Beatles is imagery. Their unique quality was to
What he needs to be afraid of is the tied up with the eternal problem of know at which points a scrap of
possibility that his analyses are really how music and words fuse. Alfred ordinary language needed to be
nothing much more than elaborate Einstein, a critical mind in the best touched in order to make it sing. The
descriptions. European tradition of high scholarship, knowledge was instinctive, but as Mel-
Is the reader merely illiterate who found this problem insoluble — he was lers correctly divines, there is nothing
tends to find not all that much of working on it at his death. The farthest simple about instinct.
substance behind these barricades of he got was to suggest that it was a What Professor Mellers needs most
jargon? Perhaps he is simply stunned. matter of emphasis. When Professor to do is to acquire the courage of his
It takes nerve and endurance to grap- Mellers talks about how the music and convictions. He overdoes his politeness
ple with Professor Meller’s transitions the words combine, he is more tentat- to Yoko Ono when he says that her avant-
empirically suggested by the modal ive than when describing the music, gardism has affinities with Lennon’s
tune, his parallel triads, his unstable but also more interesting. Even in this pop. The avant-garde is dead and pop
mediant modulations, his sharp seventh dangerous ground, though, there are is alive. What kind of affinity is that?
in the rising scale, his flattened fourth still some decisive things he could have Richard DiLello’s The Longest Cock-
of the subdominant, his pentatonic said. He calls the words in ‘For No One’ tail Party is an absorbing book of
ululation, his minor of the supertonic ‘touching oral poetry.’ They are better gossip about Apple, into which doomed
and his quasi-African homophony. than that. Lines like ‘A love that should organisation the Beatles generously-
(These last two sounding like, respect- have lasted years’ are articulated with ploughed their money, trust and youth.
ively, a kid juiced on BioStrath and a an attention to their interior balance Their reward was chaos, unhappiness,
bent half-caste con man.) which establishes Lennon and McCart- bad faith, theft. For anyone who knows
There is no reason to believe that ney as the restorers of the lost lyrical what the music business is like, the
these terms are not used precisely and tradition in English. Burns would have miracle is that the Beatles got anything
consistently: throughout the book understood them at once. done at all. As it happened they
musical examples are taken and ana- Every time Professor Mellers ven- restored popular art to the main
lysed to the roots, and even the tures a suggestion about the Beatles’ stream when every responsible pundit
untrained reader can appreciate the lyric-writing, the book flares to life. To had long ago pronounced the trick
rigorous discipline of what is going on. call their handling of language ‘pre- impossible. Their essential dignity
But as a writer of lyrics I habitually syntactical’ is clever and right. A new survives their own lapses, professorial
employ a whole handbook-full of edition of the book should have more prose and snide chatter. About their
technical terms of my own (scared of such moments. It ought to talk, for stature as a creative force there can no
the Prof’s long tied semibreves? Then example, about how the Beatles’ longer be any argument. There never
watch out for my trochaic one-line language was helped towards its could be, really.

Observer, December 16, 1973