The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones

The tide of the long weekend has receeded, leaving behind the detritus of four days spent in and and out of every pub in South West London. Among the empty bottles, broken records and cigarette ends however floats an eternal question. Raised in the early hours of some god forsaken morning, it caused the same flared tempers, frayed nerves and impassioned speeches it has been illiciting for decades... That's right kids, it's the big one:

The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?

The inner torment this question poses to the undecided is indescribable. Angie or Elenor Rigby? Ruby Tuesday or Penny Lane? Paint it Black or Yellow Submarine? My mother singing sweetly to her namesake (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), my aunt in throes of excitement over the cheek of Jagger in a lace dress in Hyde Park circa 1969. Kurt's greatest influence being The Beatles, ensuring that Nirvana had a melodious quality without which their music would have descended into cacophonic chaos, and while Punks like to believe they had distanced themself from produced Rock, The Clash and The Sex Pistols both site The Stones as heavy influences. Where would we be without London Calling? How could I live without Nevermind?

The Beatles changed everything - they took the mundane and made it special, their music made all the little things, the every day, into art, so that not only their lives took on a fabled new meaning but so do ours. Penny Lane was a junction in Liverpool where Lennon and Mc Cartney met to catch a bus into town, while Strawberry Fields was the name of a Salvation Army Children's home around the corner from where Lennon grew up. Yet they are both in Our Ears and in Our Eyes, There Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies. Starting a revolution so in keeping with their generation, they believed that All We Needed was Love - the little hippy corner of my heart still believes they were right. Later they took the world on guided psychedelic tours of their souls, through Tangerine Trees and Marmalade Skies. They urged us to Come Together, they asked us to Let It Be. When I want to escape, when I want to understand, when I want to ask questions and hear answers and find myself in another time they are who I choose.

The Rolling Stones are a rolling sexual revolution. Nothing is more convincing of the raw sexual magnatism of Rock and Roll than the fact that men and woman have drooled over that motley crew of misfits for generations. Granted, the first thing that springs to mind when looking at Mick Jagger's lips is fellacio, but still - the music turned them all into the most unlikely of sex gods. The plaintive notes of Jaggers voice make me want to Try and Cry for Angie, and make me Miss Ruby Tuesday. With his urging I would go out and Paint It, Black, and even if I Can't Always Get What I Want, If I Try Some Times, I Just Might Find, I Get What I Need. The Stones take you where you want to go, but probably couldn't go by yourself. Jagger's highly sexed mewling teamed with the hedonism that is Richards unite to make every base instinct, every buried desire okay, in fact commendable. And so I choose them when I want to get lost, when I want to drown, when I want to be free.

And there you have my argument - perhaps less lucid when slurred out at 5 in the morning while being chased around the kitchen by a mad man with a metaphorical gun urging me to CHOOSE, but no less fraught and heart felt. Why should I have to choose?

They are both so eternal for me, both so necessary. So I shan't...SO there!

Isle of Wight 2010

Sorry about the silence. There has been rather a lot of work related drama over here, and this has caused my creative endeavours to take a bit of a back seat, not a good thing when the catharsis of writing is what keeps one sane! Anyway, since we last 'spoke' I have had a rather large adventure, my favourite type of adventure in fact. A weekend of song, sun and silly outfits all round at the Isle of Wight festival.

I have long wanted to go to this particular festival as it is the godfather of the English festival. It is the setting of one of the greatest Rock 'n Roll moments of all time. In 1970 Jimi Hendrix played to 600 000 people on the Isle of Wight, in his last major performance. Jimi came on round midnight to give everything he has left to give. Within three weeks he would be dead. Opening with a distorted version 'of ‘God Save The Queen’, he looks troubled, but sung and played with what has been described by some as a savage grace'. Someone sets the stage on fire after his set, like a wake for the 1960s. After Jimi's performance, and the havoc wreaked on the Island by its 600 000 hippie guests, the Isle of Wight would not host a festival for another 32 years.

The festival is now pretty corporate with its Marlboro only cigarette booths, ITV sponsorship and exclusive sale of Carling, however the energy of the crowd is reminiscent of its optimistic hippie ancestors. An older audience means less surly, stand offish teens, and more ridiculous twenty something eager to learn from the free spirited community left in their parent's generation. There were many a tie dyed sexagenarian floating around in a Debbie Harry bubble of euphoria as Blondie blasted the crowd with hits that don't seem to have aged at all, and ladies in their fifties were launched onto the shoulders of graduates as we all bemoaned our Hearts of Glass. Paternal types disseminated baby wipes to grossed out twenty five year olds as we all waited in the queues for lavatory facilities that at best could be described as short long drops (ick). Everywhere I looked were society's escapees, doused in glitter, sucked into Lycra, be-wellied and ready to rock out to anything from The Strokes to Crowded House. I bought a flower garland to wear in my hair, and was only too charmed when a spaced out lady wearing a hemp dress asked me if I had found Robin Hood yet, because I looked just like Maid Marion.

Maid Marion??

Londoners who would normally be found shouting at an overzealous commuter gave up on charging their iPhones (myself included), and instead of recording every moment on their cameras gave in to the experience and chatted to the person next to them as they queued for cider or basic sanitation. The sun shone for us, and by the time Paul McCartney took up the stage on Sunday it didn't matter that the heavens opened. In fact it was a blessing, as it served to wash away the wee that some ingrate had found it necessary to hurl into the crowd. My companions on this adventure, Tiff and Lara, were rather revoltingly splattered, but god bless the healing (and cleansing powers) of a Beatle, for after being severely anti-bacterialed, they continued to bop, and get their Hey Jude on.

Happy kids, even post the pee incident...

Sir McCartney was unbelievable. He showed himself to be every bit the Rock/Pop veteran as he charmed the crowd. I wept as he sang Here Today a tribute to John Lennon, and I felt my heart would burst forth from my chest as 45 000 people beseeched Jude not to make it bad. I am still a bit awed that I saw a Beatle, and floated for the rest of the night on that thought. After Paul left us with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, we danced in the rain in ridiculous disposable ponchos and I couldn't think how it was possible to be any happier at that moment. Despite my dose of Year 2000 cynicism, and my inability to go an hour without sarcasm, I can't help but feel like those hippies were onto something with all their Peace and Love and Rock 'n Roll.

All you need is love...and The Beatles

I have finally made the ultimate pop pilgrimage. I spent the weekend in Liverpool paying homage to the Beatles. It was like going on a second honeymoon and falling in love all over again. Being there on the streets that they walked, seeing the things they must have seen, dancing in the Cavern Club – it was all kind of surreal. I have loved them for so long that I kind of forgot why. It’s natural – of course you love the Beatles. But when I was there reading all their history, and imagining what it was like, I began to appreciate their upbeat naivety anew.

Their early music was cheerful and positive and hopeful in such an un-self conscious way, totally unspoiled and pure. It’s strange to try and comprehend how ordinary they were in so many ways, and how extraordinary as well. Walking past their modest homes, seeing Strawberry Fields, and Penny Lane, you desperately look for the key to what set these men apart from their contemporaries…where their sparks of genius came from. But at the end of the day Penny Lane is just a road sign, Strawberry Fields just another wooded area, and the Cavern one of thousands of clubs just like it. Like putting on John’s glasses on - It’s no use, unless you have his eyes. They saw everything differently, and the only way to appreciate that is through their music, where they try to show us what they see.

I find this sort of tourism strange – trying to recapture an age, or walk in someone’s shoes. A life is intangible – you can’t measure it or recreate it. However, Liverpool is very proud of being the birthplace of the Beatles, as proud as the Beatles were to have come from there. 60 000 people visit Liverpool every year in search of the Beatles story. And Liverpool caters to it. But in the understated English way - this is no Graceland. The Cavern club has been restored to its former glory (meaning very little glory – unplastered brick tunnels, merely adorned with photos of the hundreds of acts that have played there, including many of the fab four). Unfortunately it now appears to be frequented by dress wearing stags and tiara totting hens, in various stages of uproar and disarray. However, the club has a very good house band called The Cavemen, who regularly trot out Beatles tunes (much to the endless horror of the staff I’m sure) and with the familiar melodies ringing through my head I couldn’t help but tingle at the thought that this was were it had all started.

Opposite the Cavern club Mathews Street displays a primitive and odd shrine to the ‘Four Boys Who Shook the World’. Mary holding three angels representing the Beatles (the fourth babe, representing Paul, went missing years ago but was recently returned anonymously, by someone who called it a childish prank – it is yet to be returned to the monument.) The memorial is oddly organic, and after the assassination of John Lennon another cherubic figure was added which carries a guitar and is surrounded by a halo with the words, "Lennon Lives".

Further into Cavern Quarter sits dear Eleanor Rigby, a solitary figure on a bench, dedicated eternally to all the lonely people. Her face, which must still be kept ‘in a jar by the door’, is shapeless. She was a labour of love by the sculptor Tommy Steele, who placed a number of objects inside the figure, "so she would be full of magical properties". They were an adventure book (for excitement), a page from the bible (for spiritual guidance), a clover leaf (for good luck), a pair of football boots (for action) and a sonnet (for love).

Feeling in a particularly reflective mood, the trip was tinged with a certain melancholy. The Beatles were ‘just a pop band’ but there is no doubt that they changed the world. Their messages, their style, their causes, still ring as true today. It seems so sad that they are no more. The loss of John Lennon, such a profoundly different pioneer, I felt all over again. To lose him to violence seemed an intolerable cruelty. To lose anyone to violence is intolerable. As our train chugged out of the city I couldn't help hoping that we might all Give Peace a Chance.

Yesterday...and the day before that, and the day before that...and...

Sorry for the silence, dear readers! Have had a nasty bout of the influenza for the last four days, compounded with sneaky little wisdom teeth popping out all over the place. This is just a short post to tell you that exciting posts are on their way, as this weekend I am off to Liverpool to do a bit of a Beatles pilgrimage... So from this little Daytripper, I will soon have a new post for you, With a Little Help From My Friends...