Halloween hoves into view once more, does it not, and thus, at this spookiest time o' the year, there is no better time to unveil the following jibber-jabber. So draw the curtains, put another (oh get on with it, for f*ck's sake)...
The Beatles, as any fule no, spawned (and occasionally did their best to encourage) a ludicrous amount of over-interpretation. In this regard, precisely what the proportion of accident to design was in their latter oeuvre remains a matter of conjecture; but there is little doubt that at least some of the time they chucked material in purely to see what sort of ridiculous response they'd get from lumpen "fannage"/critical mass. Ian Macdonald, one of the latter, regarded this as a very bad thing, tending to see it as tantamount to lighting fuses that trailed off into darkness with unforseeable consequences (viz, for example, certain alleged aspects of Mansonism, etc.).
Well, perhaps. That period of popular culture was, for many reasons, wide open to symbolism, real or imagined, and it's certain that whatever the Beatles did would have been scrutinised for "meaning". So they couldn't really win.
What's also certain is that the scamps were still up to their old tricks (if that they be) on Free As A Bird. Lizzie Bravo recently sent a link to a little seen interview with Macca, circa Anthology, in which, tongue firmly in cheek, he points out that the backwards message towards the end of "Burd" can be "interpreted" as John saying "Ha ha - made for John Lennon", and thus expressing post-mortem approval for the whole project. Palpable nonsense.
At which point, as chance would have it, an odd blue flare rises on camera:
The director stops proceedings, and Paul laughs, as you would, joking to the effect that this is John once again making his presence felt.
Yet should ye choose to freeze the interview, and zoom in on the bottom left hand corner, you might "see" something a little odd:
This, it doesn't need to be said, is akin to seeing Ringo's fizzog in a potato, and is drivel, though perhaps amusing, at a push slightly uncanny, but undoubtedly typical, in its way, of Beatle-ish accident... or design.
And I'm sure there are better things I could be doing with my evening.
(Should ye wish to see the interview, it can be viewed HERE. And thanks, as ever, to Lizzie for the original link.)
If this was "planned" it is certainly well executed.
ReplyDeleteSpooky.
I see nothing but I spent no time looking either, silly. You will see anything if you spend enough time trying to find it. I went through the same crap myself when I was a kid, looking at all the album covers for clues, hearing things in Revolution 9, etc. I'm glad I finally woke up and realized these guys were no different than anyone else out there...they fascinate me, yes, but did they have any answers? Ha! Look within. Didn't they say that themselves? Still, I do believe in spirits and if John was doing a whammy here with that blue flash I wouldn't be surprised....
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