The Beatles: Lyrical Art and Graffiti

The Beatles by Richard Avedon

Hello all, I know I've been missing in action this week and I'm sorry! To be honest I just haven't had the juice for it... you know, I've been wrapped up in life. Does that ever happen to you? I'm positive the answer must be yes because I firmly believe all human beings are the same deep down. With the world we live in today it's easy to get overwhelmed and carried away, there's a barrage of digital information at our fingertips, thousands of channels and crazy things happening in the world every day. Also, there's that thing called WORK! Yeah, work can drain me mentally and take away my desire to blog, grrr.

Anyway, today is Thursday and I am back! Hooray it's Thursday and tomorrow is Friday wheeeee! So, what have I been up to while wrapped up in life's little treasures? That's a question I will answer in my next post. For now I hope you will all enjoy this post on various images I have collected from the web, the common theme being the amazing and wonderful group The Beatles. I love their music and all of the art and other forms of self expression it inspires, it's truly indicative of the everlasting impact The Beatles have had on societies throughout the world!

Since this post is all about them, I started things off with my favorite piece of The Beatles art, the psychedelic portrait titled in their name by Richard Avedon (above). What's not to love about all of those funky poses and psychedelic colors?? Besides, you know I love this art because I have it in my art den at home! Take a look:


What's that I hear? You love The Beatles too and want this art in your home!? You could print them out like I did and [impatiently] frame them (they don't look too polished up close!), or you can go bigger and better (and probably really expensive and do this (as seen in my brief post last Monday):


Either way it will look good, I was just too impatient and I wanted my own Richard Avedon trippy Beatles art too much to wait! Hey, it suits me just fine for now, but perhaps one day I will get a bigger version!

Anyway, as you will see, the following images are a montage photography, graffiti and artwork which in some way represent The Beatles and their music, "All you need is love" seems to be the most popular lyric used, but I really love this first one... I couldn't agree with The Beatles more, you got to be free!

By the way, if you enjoy this post, which I hope you do, you may also be interested in checking out one of my past posts on Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters!

xoxo

This is the actual sign and gate for Strawberry Field in Liverpool, England....

...covered in graffiti from all of the Beatles lovers around the world :)....

I really like this one....

".....but I'm not the only one... I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one!"

I really love this lyric.... couldn't be more true!
"The love you take is equal to the love you make"

I wanna live in a Yellow Submarine, a Yellow Submarine.... I'm lovin' this art and the metal heart peace sign too...

This funky piece is a paper cutout art by Pinky Vision....

These pieces below are by an artist named Chepita and I found them on Flickr.......

And last, you might remember these images which I have featured in past posts....

Also featured in [this post]

Also featured in [this post]


((All images via Google image search, WeHeartIt, Vi.sualize.us and Flickr)

Words

Neil Young--"Words" (mp3)

I was driving back to school after picking up some doughnuts for my advisee group the other morning, when I started looking through Ipod songs for one to kick off the shuffle back to campus. In the "R"s, there were the Doors waiting with "Roadhouse Blues." Seemed like a good choice. Hadn't heard it in a long time. So off we went. Good driving song, harmonica, basic blues pattern, distinctive guitar licks, Jim Morrison, the whole package. And then late in the song, the lyrics distilled into this:

"Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.
Well, I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer.
The future's uncertain, and the end is always near."

Yeah, I thought. Now we're at the crux of the matter. It's not just fun and games anymore. Now we're back in the mead hall with Hrothgar and his men, knowing that Grendel could bust in anytime he wanted to. By title, by subject matter, "Roadhouse Blues" seems like a girls-n-partying kind of song if you don't pay attention, but there's always at least a little more to a Doors song.

I think it was Eddie Murphy who used to do a schtick about how white people listen to lyrics and black people don't. He made the point in the context of why white people can't dance. They're focused on the wrong thing and missing the rhythm. But if that accusation is still out there, mark me down as 'guilty.'

I can't help but listen to the lyrics. I'm obsessed with them. I doubt that this comes as a surprise to those of you who know me or have read this blog for awhile and found me trying to squeeze deep meaning out of the nearly-dry sponge of a cheesy Jackson Browne song. I used to try to make sense of the early, impressionistic R.E.M. songs, which might not have made any sense at all. But, at least, I knew the words.

Often, I am disappointed when I know that there is a good line coming in a song and I try to get someone I'm with to listen, but people have other things to say, other things to think about (and maybe their own favorite words), and so something else will come up before we get to the line. Lyrics, I guess, are meant to be mulled over in private, to be dissected and applied privately.

But a lyric freak wants more. He wants to world to pay attention to the "poetry" that goes along with the melody and the beat. He wants the recognition that popular music can offer insights worth more than a momentary consideration, insights that are worth coming back to again and again. Often, the insights come in small snatches, couplets or turns of phrase or pithy sayings. I always think of Dylan's genius of insight in "Positively 4th Street:"

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes;

You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

But sometimes, somebody builds an entire song where he or she is really trying to say something, even say something amidst a mid-tempo, a variety of guitars, a good-rocking sound. Take a look at this little gem of a passage that opens Aimee Mann's very last song, "It's Not Safe," off of I'm With Stupid:

"All you want to do is something good,
So get ready to be ridiculed and misunderstood.
'Cause don't you know that you're a fucking freak in this world
In which everybody's willing to choose swine over pearls?
And maybe everything is all for nothing,
Still you'd better keep it to yourself,
'Cause God knows it's not safe with anybody else."

I can almost imagine someone cruising along with Aimee in the background, not paying attention, just kind of going, "Da da da da da da da, duh da da da da da da da da da da da da, duh da da da da da da fucking freak da da....wait, what?" Yeah, there's insight and powerful words there worth stopping for.

You know, popular music doesn't have to be an either/or, as in, either 'I like songs that make me move' or 'I like songs that make me think.' Well, I guess some of it does. But when you listen to the lyrics as a matter of habit, you not only enjoy the good ones, you get to make fun of the stupid ones. But those moments are hardly worth mentioning; all of us have been tuned in a little too carefully to some crappy words. Instead, I prefer to dwell on the opposite--those moments when the words shine, when the songwriter transcends the form and offers us true wisdom. That's the joy of listening to the lyrics.

Neil Young's "Words," from Harvest, is available at Itunes.