Okay, last night I was too tired due to rl business, but here I am, ready to proceed. :)
Jealous Guy: I think it's about Yoko, Paul and John being aware of his own issues in this regard. (Which also applied to Cynthia in the past and May in the future, of course.) I find it vaguely intriguing that the song started out with a completely different lyric about something different altogether in India, because, and correct me if I'm wrong/missing/forgetting something, while we know Paul wrote many songs with "dummy" lyrics at first, the melody coming before the words (and not just in the case of good old Scrambled Eggs), John in general seems to have been a lyrics and melody together kind of composer. Is there a Lennon song other than "Jealous Guy" which started out as a melody to a completely different lyric, that we know of? That the melody came to John in India, in 1968, the year of transition from Paul to Yoko, may or may not also play a role (cue the ever unanswered "what exactly happened in India?"). I think there's a viable case to be made that "Jealous Guy" is a song like "Julia", in that it's on one level of course about John's mother, but on another also about Yoko, deliberately invoking her and conflating her with Julia; thus "Jealous Guy" manages to both openly address Yoko and not so openly Paul as well. And I see it as John trying to warn himself not to make the same mistakes in this new relationship he's made in the old one. (What with the "boat called Paul/ boat called Yoko" statements he was making to Yoko during the same era and the constant habit of parallelling the two relationship right till December 1980, that's not too much of a stretch.) Why did he use the melody for "Child of Nature" instead of coming up with a new melody for "Jealous Guy"? Might be purely pragmatism (it's a good unreleased tune, why waste it?), might be also because he knew Paul would recognize the melody (since he definitely knew it, it's on the tapes of India composed melodies the Beatles made at George's house once they were all back).
"How?" and the direct melodic lift from "The Long and Winding Road" - that's fascinating. I remember a music critic seeing it as another (for him, the critic) satisfying swipe at Paul, but I agree with you that it's anything but, given the song's message. I see it more as an attempt to get back (ha) to their old dialogue. I mean, John presumably was aware that "The Long and Winding Road" was one of those few McCartney songs openly autobiographical and the expression of his 1969 misery (and a case of Paul's tendency to use song writing instead of therapy or, you know, openly admitting to said misery). And it was the song that more than any single other gets cited as a case for Paul's Phil Spector and Allen Klein loathing because of their releasing it in a version he hated. And then there's the dual matter of Ian McDonald theorizing that John's playing on the song "amounted to sabotage" and John accusing Paul of sabotaging/not supporting enough "Across the Universe" (the released form of which he also didn't like). So, speculating, I'd theorize that "How?" is a reply to "The Long and Winding Road", this time without ire, acknowledging the issues in it and saying "this is how I feel as well" - hence the direct musical allusion.
"Crippled Inside": I'm seeing this about both himself and Paul. The lyrics you quoted describe their shared Beatle looks of the mop top years. (And John could put on the cheerful, cheeky Beatle facade as efficiently as Paul if he needed to; in "Loving John", May Pang describes a scene where Tony King tells John that his sales have suffered because people saw him as angry, angry, angry all the time now, not the cheeky, smiling John they've fallen in love with, and John resurrected witty Beatle John on the spot for subsequent PR interviews to promote "Walls and Bridges". ) And certainly they both were, sometimes in different and sometimes in similar ways, deeply messed up.
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timeasmymeasure
Give me something to sing about
Date: 2016-12-10 09:01 am (UTC)Jealous Guy: I think it's about Yoko, Paul and John being aware of his own issues in this regard. (Which also applied to Cynthia in the past and May in the future, of course.) I find it vaguely intriguing that the song started out with a completely different lyric about something different altogether in India, because, and correct me if I'm wrong/missing/forgetting something, while we know Paul wrote many songs with "dummy" lyrics at first, the melody coming before the words (and not just in the case of good old Scrambled Eggs), John in general seems to have been a lyrics and melody together kind of composer. Is there a Lennon song other than "Jealous Guy" which started out as a melody to a completely different lyric, that we know of? That the melody came to John in India, in 1968, the year of transition from Paul to Yoko, may or may not also play a role (cue the ever unanswered "what exactly happened in India?"). I think there's a viable case to be made that "Jealous Guy" is a song like "Julia", in that it's on one level of course about John's mother, but on another also about Yoko, deliberately invoking her and conflating her with Julia; thus "Jealous Guy" manages to both openly address Yoko and not so openly Paul as well. And I see it as John trying to warn himself not to make the same mistakes in this new relationship he's made in the old one. (What with the "boat called Paul/ boat called Yoko" statements he was making to Yoko during the same era and the constant habit of parallelling the two relationship right till December 1980, that's not too much of a stretch.) Why did he use the melody for "Child of Nature" instead of coming up with a new melody for "Jealous Guy"? Might be purely pragmatism (it's a good unreleased tune, why waste it?), might be also because he knew Paul would recognize the melody (since he definitely knew it, it's on the tapes of India composed melodies the Beatles made at George's house once they were all back).
"How?" and the direct melodic lift from "The Long and Winding Road" - that's fascinating. I remember a music critic seeing it as another (for him, the critic) satisfying swipe at Paul, but I agree with you that it's anything but, given the song's message. I see it more as an attempt to get back (ha) to their old dialogue. I mean, John presumably was aware that "The Long and Winding Road" was one of those few McCartney songs openly autobiographical and the expression of his 1969 misery (and a case of Paul's tendency to use song writing instead of therapy or, you know, openly admitting to said misery). And it was the song that more than any single other gets cited as a case for Paul's Phil Spector and Allen Klein loathing because of their releasing it in a version he hated. And then there's the dual matter of Ian McDonald theorizing that John's playing on the song "amounted to sabotage" and John accusing Paul of sabotaging/not supporting enough "Across the Universe" (the released form of which he also didn't like). So, speculating, I'd theorize that "How?" is a reply to "The Long and Winding Road", this time without ire, acknowledging the issues in it and saying "this is how I feel as well" - hence the direct musical allusion.
"Crippled Inside": I'm seeing this about both himself and Paul. The lyrics you quoted describe their shared Beatle looks of the mop top years. (And John could put on the cheerful, cheeky Beatle facade as efficiently as Paul if he needed to; in "Loving John", May Pang describes a scene where Tony King tells John that his sales have suffered because people saw him as angry, angry, angry all the time now, not the cheeky, smiling John they've fallen in love with, and John resurrected witty Beatle John on the spot for subsequent PR interviews to promote "Walls and Bridges". ) And certainly they both were, sometimes in different and sometimes in similar ways, deeply messed up.