Beatles week: John day

 

The Beatles meant a lot to me. But without John, I don't think they would have mattered so much.

On the other hand, without any of the others, they really wouldn't have been the Beatles. So let's just let John day be John day, okay?

John

1.  John did a few embarrassing, genuinely cringeworthy things after the Beatles. But he aimed high, and there are few pieces of music in the world that hit my heart so true as when his did.

2. If John was a Marx Brother, he would have been Groucho.

3. "Happy Christmas/War is Over" is the same tune as "Stewball was a Racehorse".

4. Clerkmanifesto is written to the same theme as John's song "God".

5. I could never in a million years pick my favorite John song as it depends so deeply upon the time and place in my life. But also... "Across the Universe".

6. My favorite picture I did of John is not here today because I already used it on an earlier Beatles Week post. But of today's photos I probably like the pig one best. These below might not be my favorite set of pictures of any of the Beatles, but they are the most experimental.

7. John would not have read clerkmanifesto because English people don't find me amusing. 

It's okay though because Bob Dylan considers me hilarious. 

Hi Bob!

8. A Swede wouldn't know the second song on side one of the great Beatles album "Rubber Soul".

But a Norwegian would.

9. A Chocolate Oliver is a crisp, slow baked cookie made with hops and malt, thickly covered in dark chocolate.

10. The thing I love best about the great reworked Beatles documentary "Get Back", from which so many of my pictures are partly taken, is the toast. I just loved all the toast the Beatles eat.

Beatles week: Paul day

 

It's still Beatles week, some 37 days after it started! And we are up to Paul, which might make one think there are a lot more than four Beatles.

Well, much has been bandied about the "fifth" Beatle at least. A colleague of mine even subscribed to the theory that George Martin was the most important Beatle. Madness all.

But there is no fifth Beatle any more than there is a fifth cardinal direction. That is the beauty of it.

Anyway, we are onto our second to last Beatle, and you may be cottoning onto how this is maybe a ranking of least important Beatle to most important Beatle. 

I am here to tell you that the Beatles are inseparable, and also distinct, so maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.

You should know the drill by now: ten clerkmanifestoish things about Beatle Paul, followed by ten daemon pictures of Beatle Paul of varying quality, because that's how I roll.

Paul

1. There is no corollary Marx Brother for Paul. 

Just kidding. 

It's Chico.

2. Paul was the most talented Beatle. There, I said it! 

However, hold your horses until you get a load of item number four!

3. Paul McCartney is famously a vegetarian. He doesn't eat meat! But don't worry. If he comes to your house for dinner you can feed him lamb.

4. Paul was the second best Beatle. This is determined by the tiebreaker of how i don't think any song he wrote post Beatles is as good or as fresh as his best Beatles songs, unlike certain other murdered Beatles who shan't be named.

5.  My favorite Paul picture here is the one with the grasshopper. But I am a little obsessed with the dinosaur one as well. They are kind of the Lennon and McCartney of my Paul pictures.

6. My favorite Paul song is definitely, no, I can't do it. It is too hard.

7. Not to go on about the pictures below, but some of them are probably better without all the filter tricks.

8.  The longest passage of French I know by heart is from "Michelle". The longest passage of German I know is from the German version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand".

9. In the scrapped version of "Lord of the Rings" that the Beatles started filming in 1968 , Paul played Aragorn.

10.  Paul totally reads clerkmanifesto! He is re... oops. 

Nope. 

He's gone.

Beatles week: George day

 

Ten pictures of Beatle George.

PLUS

Ten fact-adjacent... things about Beatle George.

All together here, all together now, 

on Beatles week at clerkmanifesto, it's...

the day of...

George

1. I have been a passionate Beatles fan for nearly 50 years, but it only just occurred to me: George had the same name as my Grandpa, and a similar disposition as well. I wonder if George Harrison watched golf. (I looked it up. He was into formula one racing- six of one...)

2. If George were a Marx Brother he would be Zeppo.

3. Here Comes the Sun and Something notwithstanding, and despite underdog counter narratives, George is the distant third best Beatle. Writing two or three masterpieces is a bit different than writing, like, 40.

4. Taxman is the first Right Wing protest song, and a pure glimpse of rock n roll's Achille's heal. It's a rollicking song, and I can probably forgive George and the Beatles for it, but it's hot garbage. Do you have any idea how rich George was?

Very.

5. Having a hard time coming up with compelling factoids here I looked up some on the Internet. I found this one particularly amusing: 

"George Harrison's ancestry had a diverse mix. His father had Irish heritage, while his mother was of Irish and English descent."      

Ooooooh! Exotic!

6. That said, George did not bring any baked beans with him when he went to visit the Maharishi.

7. Yes, George was the third most talented Beatle, BUT, he was possibly tied for the second most talented in his next group, The Traveling Wilburys.

8. I guess my favorite picture here is the lion one.

9. George's favorite fruit was passion fruit! I made that up. But we both like(d) to meditate, so why wouldn't we both like passion fruit?

10. George is too dead to read clerkmanifesto, but he would have loved it! Until he read this post, at which point he would have remembered: "Oh yeah, I'm dead" and then lapsed back into nothingness.