#77, Parting words from Billy Shepherd. (whoever he is)
Who is "Billy Shepherd"? Well, most of the time in this article, he portrays himself as a groupie.
He talks about "bearding the boys in their lair" and drinking lager with them; talking shop with them, etc.
"Talking shop". That's how professionals or, at least, accomplished amateurs, interact with each other. You can't "talk shop" with a musician if you're not a musician yourself.
And in at least one instance, "Billy Shepherd" talks as if he were a Beatle himself. "The Beatles planned. We went through the 'we want to get into films, but in a different way to most pop people' days." The Beatles stop becoming "they" and become "we" for the purpose of that passage, anyway.
I should say that -- PID/PWR considerations aside -- I don't agree with a word of this article.
Yes, I DO prefer the old days of the Beatles. "Really". "Please Please Me" is more "pleasing" than "Why Don't We Do It In The Road"?
I like the youthful and innocent drug-free Mop Top Beatles infinitely more than I like the later editions. I acknowledge that a lot of the coverage from the earlire days and a lot of what was asked of them at press conferences and printed in fan publications rings somewhat puerile now, and I acknowledge also that there was good music produced throughout all eras.
But the only thing that I can "understand" and empathize with is that they could not remain forever in their early-20's and that the burden of their celebrity must have grown unbearably huge. So SOME change might have been inevitable.
Beyond that, I have disdain for the content and tone of this article, which does not even remotely refer to the truth about the regular usage of drugs, which accompanied and was largely responsible for the Beatles "change". I mean, separate and apart from any unannounced change in personnel that might have taken place in 1966.
I do not "accept the fact that they had to change", and "Billy Shepherd" would have you believe that they changed purely for artistic reasons and no others.
There's nothing wrong with conformity, especially if that means remaining drug free. There's nothing wrong with winning a reputation with the conformists. I don't believe in "peace". I don't believe in "goodwill". And if I believed in those things, I wouldn't understand how the "Butcher Album" (designed and produced before September 1966) was designed to contribute to them.
I don't like John and Yoko naked, and I don' t like John with Yoko at all. I don't care if it's "what he wants to do". Change is NOT inevitable (beyond the reservations that I expressed above). "Freedom" is NOT vital most of the time. Most of the time, "freedom", in the absolute sense, is destructive.
And the author, "Billy Shepherd", doesn't even feel "free" enough to allude -- in the present tense -- to Paul McCartney as an individual -- the only one of the four of whom this is true for the purpose of this article.
He mentions John, Paul, George, and Ringo as the four Beatles. He mentions John and Paul as a songwriting team. He refers to an old fan publication ("Paul likes black socks"). And he has one quote from Paul, "Today, we just go into a studio and it happens eventually".
But while he tells his readers that Ringo has become an actor in his spare time and that George has widened his musical interests to take in Far Eastern influences and that John has become an exhibitionist, he never states what it is exactly that Paul is doing with his newfound "freedom".
