#lynchian beatles

[tenderlady]

Hi there! A while ago, you said in your tags to this post that you believe David Lynch would be one of the best suited directors for making a movie about the Beatles. What can I say, I've been thinking about this ever since, vaguely-yet-passionately agreeing, without putting my thoughts into actual sentences...Would you mind elaborating?

You ever get an ask so good you have to break out your laptop to type up your thoughts with greater alacrity?

My friends and I have this concept that we call "trapdoors," which are basically concepts or things that, if brought up in conversation, will cause whoever is talking to you to tumble into an abyss of information that you are duty-bound to provide. Beatles biopics happen to be one of mine, so if you would like to join me in the abyss, the trapdoor is under the cut.

I actually have a few working directors that I think would do a great job with a Beatles movie, including Sofia Coppola, Peter Greenaway, Park Chan-wook, and even, potentially, Martin Scorsese. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the best-suited director working today for making a Beatles movie is actually David Lynch.

I think a lot of this ultimately comes down to what you want from a Beatles biopic, and what you haven't liked about Beatles movies in the past. For me, I'm tired of Beatles-biopic-as-hagiography and I want more stories that approach them as fully-rounded people. And one thing that is very specific to me personally is that I'm interested in the moments when the Beatles story has occasionally tilted toward the magical and mysterious, for lack of better phrasing. So an ideal Beatles biopic, for me, would be one that is dedicated to showing the Beatles themselves as holistic human beings and doesn't shy away from showcasing their bad behavior, but also one that is concerned with portraying those magical realist elements that I find so fascinating.

Enter David Lynch. Lynch has a well-documented fascination with the pop culture of the mid-20th century and an interestingly sumptuous eye toward production design (I'm thinking about the ambiguously midcentury setting of Blue Velvet in particular here), so I think at the bare minimum, if he were to make a Beatles movie, it would look right. But I'm more interested in Lynch's directorial choices and pet themes than I am in how his films look.

Much of his work is concerned with fame, be it the attainment of it or what it means to have it (ex: Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire), and also with the production of art and what it does to our psyches to create (ditto the above examples). These themes would obviously come to bear in any serious film about the Beatles, but I think David Lynch has historically had interesting things to say about these topics.

Lynch's films (and work in general) often veer into horror in their sudden depictions of graphic violence and sexuality, but that would actually be a more realistic depiction of the Beatles' history than most of what we've gotten. I think a gritty, Wild at Heart-style Lynch movie about Hamburg could be very fun. The leather and the 50s and the weird sex stuff of all of it is very Lynch, but all very true to the reality of what the Beatles' lives were like. Their story is full of these seemingly random spurts of violence (Stu getting kicked in the head, the Bob Wooler incident, the cherry bomb at the concert, John's murder, George's stabbing, just to name a few), to the point where reading about them can feel occasionally Lynchian in itself.

For me, though, the biggest draw of having a Lynch-directed Beatles movie is what Lynch is best known for, which is that dream-(or nightmare) feeling that so much of his work has. Something that drew me to the Beatles as an overeducated adult with lots of music listening behind me now is this strange sense of the mystical that hangs over so much of the Beatles narrative. The story of Paul's premonition of the dream with the gold coins, the John and Paul being mirror images of each other, people in the Beatles circle being visited by dead loved ones in their dreams, John and Paul claiming to have SHARED dreams, the whole Emperor of Eternity thing; like I could go on and on and on. These stories are all so fascinating, but often get underexplored in the (legitimately) very rich text of the Beatles story, so I get it, but I also know that Lynch would see these moments and do something really fucking cool with them.

Primarily, I see a Lynch-directed Beatles biopic going one of three ways: a Blue Velvet-style gothic set during the Beatlemania years about a naive black-Irish twink biting off more than he can chew in the pursuit of fame. David Lynch loves doubles and doppelganger imagery (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Inland Empire....), so I think he would get a lot of mileage out of the matching Beatle suits and haircuts and all the merch with their likenesses on it. I also want to see some real horror mined out of the hiding in meat vans and getting mauled by girls with scissors trying to cut off your hair for relics. Shit is crazy.

Option two would be a Mulholland Drive-style psychological horror set during the height of the Beatles' Swinging London decadence, like around 1967, potentially including India. It would definitely 100% include the Emperor of Eternity acid trip and would be primarily focused on the strange relationship and identity sublimation between John and Paul. Again, Mulholland Drive-style. Gayest potential option imo.

The last option, and the one that makes the most sense with where Lynch is in his career rn, is a Twin Peaks: The Return-style meditation on nostalgia and memory and time. I think this one would probably be getting a little too close to the present day to be feasible, but I think a lot could be done with the idea of current-day Granddude Paul constantly seeing reproductions of his own younger self and dead friends and lovers everywhere he goes. As much as I love Now & Then, the whole thing does how a weird techno-gothic, Black Mirror sheen to it, one that I think Lynch would recognize and have something to say about. Would this make Paul Coop and John Laura Palmer? Hard to say and much to unpack there, but still.

Regardless: I think David Lynch is the only one out there doing it in a weird, fucked-up way that the Beatles would deserve. (Also he literally got into transcendental meditation because of the Maharishi, so there's definitely some six-degrees-of-Beatles happening there lmao)

If you read all of this, thank you, and I'm sorry, and here is a picture of Kyle MacLachlan as Paul from the David Lynch Beatles biopic that is currently screening in my heart for your trouble

#thanks for the question love!! #i hope this was even remotely close to what you were looking for!!! #i have Much To Say on this topic lmao #lynchian beatles

[the-boney-rolls]

The Great Covid Beatles Binge, Day 2: Give My Regards to Broad Street

Hoo boy, here we go!

OK so we open with a stern/bored looking Paul stuck in traffic in the rain and it looks like he's spacing out... hey, Paul, are you starting to daydream? Paul? Is this whole movie about to be a dream, Paul? Oh god

This silly little car! The computer, the carpet, the pool ball gear shift. It's giving the 80's car version of the Beatles house in Help! It's also giving hyper-masculine in a way that is, I'm sorry, not convincing.

This plot is already deeply inscrutable. Something about some missing tapes, a reformed criminal that Paul knows somehow and trusts for some reason, and some ominous business men. Something bad will happen at midnight if the tapes aren't found. OK!

Ringo looks so cool and hot! That vest over that sick as hell dragon shirt. Yes. This scene is genuinely funny, too -- Ringo spends the entirety of "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Yesterday" searching through his mountains of drum equipment looking for brushes, only to find them too late. Apparently, the reason for this scene is that Ringo just didn't want to re-record old Beatles songs!

And now we have Paul, Ringo, George Martin and Geoff Emerick all together in a scene! Makes me think about how George Harrison apparently was a little miffed Paul didn't just call him to ask for filmmaking advice since it was something he had experience with. What could have been!

“Wanderlust” is such a great song, actually, damn.

“I’m not a bad boy, really. I’m just — er, manipulated” John??

Now this is more like it! Surprise Linda in drag, hell yes!

I don't know why this scene is happening? It's a rehearsal for... something? But I'll take it. I love "Ballroom Dancing" and I love vaudeville Paul.

I'm starting to feel like Paul's grandpa in AHDN, "so far, I've been in a train and a room, and a car and a room, and a room and a room." Did Paul's experience on that set define what a movie is to him? "Ah yes, a movie must include lots of transportation from one location to another and then some musical scenes." But dear, it worked because there were jokes! And all four of you to play off each other.

I.......... what

This is Silly Love Songs, of all things!

Again, I don't know why this scene is happening in the context of the movie. Is it another rehearsal for something? A music video? Television special? Who knows, Yoko! But OK here we go, I sure am having fun! Linda is extremely into it. That slap bass kills. There's a Michael Jackson impersonator for some reason? Sure! It makes no sense but I love this man and his bizarre beautiful mind.

So now we're doing band rehearsal in some kind of barn? Or abandoned warehouse? Or something? All of the plot of this movie seems to happen in dialog in cars en route to some ambiguous musical engagement.

“Do you think we can get some heat in here or are we practicing to be Canadians?” God bless you, Ringo.

“Should we try Not Such a Bad Boy” “Do we have to?” “Yeah” Bossy Paul bosses around a Beatle, we love to see it.

Is this song about him or John? 

The French horn player coming in late to record "For No One," inexplicably in a bright red motorcycle helmet, so late that he’s preparing up until right before the solo starts. Reminds me of that story of Ringo recording Hey Jude. But it also feels very symbolic of something. There are so many odd inscrutable details in this movie, it could almost be Lynchian in someone else's hands.

“We’re running, and running out of time too” It feels meaningful but I don't know how.

Hello Mr. Darcy! Wow, can I have an entire movie that’s just this Victorian dream sequence? Can we go back in time and do a Beatles movie period piece, please??

The strings in this which are inspired by but are not quite "Eleanor Rigby" are lovely. Apparently this whole sequence is called "Eleanor's Dream," which implies that Paul is Eleanor. Make of that what you will, I suppose.

I like that Linda is a pants-wearing photographer in this period scene. Linda's gotta Linda.

This strikes me as very Evil Beatles. Again, make of that what you will.

Barbara and Linda are acting the HELL out of this going over the waterfall scene damn.

I don't know, I could screen grab this entire segment, it's amazing, it's insane.

But I can't gloss over Paul being horny for Ghost Horse Girl Linda. Incredible.

"That’s it you’re finished. What are you gonna do now?" Well ok at least this one is pretty obviously a reference to the critical reception of his career after the Beatles and again after John.

"Uncle Jim" Ok so I guess this is supposed to be his dad, but what is the point of this scene? And why the monkey? The further I get into this film the more I feel like I am looking deep into this man's psyche but through the murkiest of windows. I'm here for the weird dream symbolism, Paul, but if you're gonna go that route, again go full Lynch and get even weirder.

Just the straight up original recording of "Band on the Run" feels out of place with all these re-records. I wonder why that choice.

His car license plate is "PM 1" That's right, baby, you're number 1.

Another little cute but inconsequential day dream (presumably within the dream that is this entire movie). He looks like Roy Orbison here.

Oh ok Harry was just locked in a cupboard this whole time. So the whole "plot" was pointless. Cool cool cool.

Paul and Harry being giddy and laughing together is cute though, and it makes me wish that that relationship was fleshed out more. Who are they to each other, exactly??

Yup it was all a dream. Love it, love that for us. Thanks, Paul.

OK so this was definitely barely a movie. There could have been something here, but I'll go back to what I said above -- I wish he'd gone weirder with the whole thing! And I wish Paul himself had been weirder. The character Paul is kind of a dud, just plodding along from place to place and only coming alive when he performs. It's like that Hawaiian shirt is supposed to be a stand in for characterization. But worth it for the music video scenes and for getting a tiny glimpse into Paul's psyche.

#give my regards to broad street #paul mccartney #the beatles #linda mccartney #ringo starr

[treadmillshitshow]

my dream for the beatles biopics is each movie is a diff genre … paul’s should be exactly like slumdog millionaire where it’s all flashbacks and it ends with a dance numver … ringo’s should be a slasher .. george should be able to look into the camera and talk to the camera .. johns should be a lynchian psychosexual horror film

[matrixresurrections]

thank you for liking all the correct beatles songs and making a playlist specifically for me to listen to beatles songs i enjoy. i am talking about 4 fat sluts

HAHAHWA you are so welcome <3 enjoying the beatles in a sexy post modernist lynchian feminist kafkaesque counterculture etc etc way is my passion

[bluetapes]

New interview with Trupa Trupa on at The Quietus!

It’s been something of a long slog for me this week – a new job, packing up and moving out of the one-bed rising-damp-and-arsehole-neighbours flat I lived in in South London for four years and moving into a new place in the dark heart of Nottinghamshire, all with a mewling three month old girl in tow. This isn’t me complaining – it’s all context. Because when I finally get hold of Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, member of Polish post-punk-no-wave-psych-rock malcontents Trupa Trupa, I am heavily laid down with mucus and medication, rundown and broken. We have been trying to get our planets to align for a couple weeks. I expect frustration, anger, disdain, contempt. Instead, I get gracious civility. “This is the most important year of your life, no? So you need to take your time to make sure your baby grows up to be the best she can be.”

A tenuous analogy here (and one I’m sure my daughter won’t especially enjoy when she gets older) but Kwiatkowski and the other members of Trupa Trupa - Tomek Pawluczuk (drums), Wojtek Juchniewicz (voc, guitar) and Rafał Wojczal (keys, guitar) - must feel the same. The four-piece have spent five years crafting an aesthetic that spans genres and eras, from Sonic Nurse-era Sonic Youth to an electrified and frothing Pere Ubu, an esoteric Slint or a Lynchian take on Siouxsie & The Banshees, which culminated in the critically acclaimed second album Headache in 2015.

That album, pushed out into the world by the normally avant garde/ electronic/ noise/ ambient trail-blazers Blue Tapes, was an immediate slice of melted influence and frayed synapses, traipsing manically from 60s rock deconstructions to post-punk pealings and no-wave wrecking balls, all tied together with intelligence and brio. It was a truly breathtaking album as notable for its breaths as for its blusters, and the world (well, the chosen few) held its collective breath to see what would be borne forth next.

Yet as any creative tends to look at their work as something of a birth and Jolly New Songs (also through Blue Tapes) has been gestating for quite some time, almost two years, the excitement and anxiety and relief that comes with such labours of love lie heavy on Kwiatkowski as its birthday looms – October 27.

Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: We liked Headache and we still like Headache, so we are not so arrogant or self-assured enough to believe that anything that came afterwards would live up to it. There was so much positive feedback for Headache, so it was a joyful time for us. That said we were very tired because there was so much that came along surrounding that nice feedback, a lot more than we ever expected, and it was great but it really took it out of us. We started to write new songs, then one year exactly after the premiere of Headache we said to each other, “Are we ready for another baby? Another Headache?” We respect the Headache baby but we felt it was too exploited in a way. So this time we tested this new album on many people first, on our friends and journalists, people at festivals, as because it is part of us it is difficult to see if we were making Headache part two. We see us as evolutionary, not revolutionary. We didn’t want to change outright – but we wanted to step forward, evolve.

Jolly New Songs could take on many different meanings as a title. The phrase itself could be seen as jocular, even pantomime-esque, certainly here in the UK anyway, and yet it’s something of a misnomer as many of the tracks on here aren’t joyful at all. How then do you think that phrase encapsulates what’s happening on the album?

GK: In the past we have always had problems giving names to our albums, mainly because we find that things could mean different things to each of us. So we refused to name them – our first EP is called EP, our first album is just called LP. Our second album was called ++ or Cross Crossbecause it was the (image on the) cover. When Headache arrived we couldn’t see how we couldn’t give it a name, so came up with a new challenge – whatever we all thought was the best track would become the name of the album. So with Jolly New Songs it wasn’t anything intentional. On the other hand we often have done things unconsciously without considering the step, so it has transformed into something else. Not only is it paradoxical – it isn’t jolly at all, but sad – but it is somewhat lighter an album that Headache is, as those songs carried a lot of darkness.

Can you elaborate on the darkness of the songs? Is it in the composition, the rhythm…

GK: Some of the songs we see as march songs. ‘Never Forget’ obviously. ‘Jolly New Song’ also. There is this movement we really like, Franz Schubert’s Lieder Winterreise (Winter Journey), very short German songs, and I thought aspects of the songs on the album have this aspect of fighting, yet in the same way full of energy and full of joy.

There is a clear disparity between the albums on the first listen; with Headache there was this restless sense of urgency, something that has somewhat been laid aside on Jolly New Songs. Yet nothing is truly joyous or indeed clear-cut on the new album, which undercuts any sense of immediacy. Headache really hits you sonically, a kinetic blast, while this one is far more insidious that gets under the skin. Was that part of that evolutionary process, to take what was successful with Headache and juxtapose it with more subtle, dissimilar methods? It is imbued with unease, therefore making it difficult to describe the journey it takes you on.

GK: While we were testing this new material on everyone – friends, family, musicians, journalists, owners of labels – it isn’t common that 95% of the feedback is the same, yet with Jolly New Songseveryone says that there wasn’t the aggression that was in the last one, that you needed to listen two, three times, maybe even four times, to truly get it. But not because it was hard to understand but because there is an atmosphere built into the songs that is hard to describe, and it lingers. Conclusions change about the album the more it is listened to. But strangely we as members faced the same problem. In the past making a track listing has been really easy, it falls into place. With this, every member envisioned the track listing in a different way. The songs lend themselves to interpretation far more than Headache does or even could. There is this book by Julio Cortazar, an Argentinean writer who lived in France, where you could read it in any order you want (Hopscotch) . So to settle it for the album, we chose the track listing in alphabetical order. So the listener can see that. But really our producer (Michał Kupicz) sent us the masters in alphabetical order and that spoke to us in another way, to choose the order as accident. A very strange compromise but we were satisfied. This shows that it is a strange album, and we respect it, but of course are really open to other voices (to interpret it).

Some of the songs feel quite nebulous; not that they are half-formed, more like a spectre or ghost, haunting the listener. Songs seem to be getting going, building, exploding, and then they are gone again. Yet the next song starts and the whisper of the last doesn’t leave you, your mind is still processing what has happened beforehand.

GK: I think that most things that happen in the band come through accidents. We promise ourselves never to be bored at rehearsals and to be satisfied with that. I think we are testing many things all of the time, so nothing becomes fixed in place, we are always shifting. There are four members of Trupa Trupa but it is really rare in the band that there is a fully democratic idea from the band. For us we see ourselves something like Fugazi, where every member is a composer, every member has a distinct voice, every member is author and owner of their lyrics. Every member has particular tastes and listens to different kinds of music. For me, the most important music is the classical style of music you know, Glenn Gould, as well as the Beatles and the Velvet Underground. For Wotjek who also is singing it is the Swans, Fugazi, Sonic Youth, more the New York avant garde scene. Rafal (guitar) is more a fan of Elliott Smith… So when we meet each other, we never have time to make one proper vision, so we are carrying these backgrounds with us. Maybe that is why what we are catching is very strange. We can come together with a song but it is just the body, like architecture, like sketches. We build from the musical blocks that we have.

It is such a diverse melting pot musically, but you are also well steeped in things literary seeing as you are a recognised and published poet. In the press notes it’s stated that Walt Whitman was an influence on the last song on the album, ‘To Me’. Were there other literary or political influences that helped with the building of these songs from architectural sketches to Jolly New Songs?

GK: There are many paths taken, and can be taken, through the lyrics of this record. They come often from very dark and very pessimistic situations, and the people of Gdansk where we are from. It is in the north of Poland by the sea and is best known because the Second World War started here. On the other hand the solidarity that came about for the people of Gdansk informs it as well. On the other hand one of the world’s greatest pessimists in Arthur Schopenhauer was born here. These are all influences without even thinking about them. And for many years, centuries, Gdansk was not part of Poland but more of a free city, a port, with these shipyards, a gateway to the world, something like Hamburg or Liverpool. So Gdansk has always had a history of spreading new ideas. But there are many other influences on this album, most of which take things at a dark angle. ‘Never Forget’ – there are not many songs about the Holocaust and Shoah. My grandfather was a prisoner in a concentration camp not far from Gdansk, and many Polish people were in or have direct relationships with people who were in concentration camps. Poland is the site of the world’s biggest genocide. On the other hand my grandfather was also a German soldier in Wehrmacht, so there are very complicated histories here and they leave impressions on us, they mark us. But again, these are just songs. I would like people just as much to treat the songs just as songs. I don’t like to talk at length about famous artists or events in history because it may inform me and what I do but it may make a song into a situation that can only come at in a particular way or with a particular idea in mind.

Even if you divorce the songs from these totemic influences, the sonic palette you have created is not so discerning that anyone will be led down the same aural path. The genre staples – post punk, psych rock, noise rock, the avant-garde, the influences you have mentioned already – can lead to very different interpretations. Christian Eede, from tQ, reviewed ‘To Me’ and described it as “triumphant”, and the presser from Blue Tapes & X-Ray Records describes elements as “anthemic” – and outside the slipstream of the album perhaps it is. But for me the album subverts those mainstream signifiers to the point where ‘To Me’ comes across more as a sly counterpoint to what we would expect crossover songs to be…

GK: See, it is what you want it to be (laughs). The word anthemic – what does it mean? To me I don’t – is it religious? A national anthem? ‘To Me’ could be powerful, and I don’t want to say it isn’t, but to me it isn’t. Others have compared us to psychedelic music and no-wave, or mentioned bands like Swans, Shellac, Slint, Beak>… Nothing we do is conventional, like a rock song structure, which is what I think of as anthemic. But then what do I know?

You write the songs!

GK: It’s not what I think, I think we are a deconstructive rock situation. But people hear what they hear.

Very pragmatic of you! Well let me tell you how I listened to this album. You sent me a couple different versions of Jolly New Songs quite a few months ago now, so I have listened to it often. So the final listing has been somewhat disorienting to me, because after the dark journey that you take me on, ending with ‘To Me’ – I can’t work out if it’s a tip of the hat to hope, or if it’s more of a brainwashed downer denouement, something Orwell or Bradbury or Levin would concoct, like Rosemary’s Baby (which incidentally I watched on mute while listening to this album a couple months ago), where such a landscape of murkiness and uncertainty breaks you down in a sort of “if you can’t beat them, join them” kinda way. I can’t shake the unnerving feeling that, in the context of the album, having these moments of pop lightness only serves to subvert notions of hope, a sucker punch ending to a dystopian story where the protagonist hasn’t broken free at all but is very much a cog in the machine. Now I may be in a totally unique position in how the album makes me feel, but that unsettling nature makes me return the needle to the beginning. That sort of grotesque emotion and the Self, it’s unnerving yet utterly transfixing.

GK: Yes! To be truthful I have been pushing for such a hypothetical outlook (in the music) because ‘To Me’ becomes a sly wink, a slap to the audience to wake up, you’re wrong, there is something else going on here. Michael Haneke, a great Austrian film director, for me the album is positioned in this downward position so that the ending comes out like a Haneke film. It could be seen as one thing, but hopefully it can be seen as a perverse version of something more conventional. You mention Rosemary’s Baby and to me this is very much a movie album. ‘Love Supreme’ for example is very much similar to Roman Polanski, offering sound for a creepy horror movie. It’s cinematic in a very graphic sort of way.

I have been really floored by this album, but it is one that has crept up on me, like the best paranoid slowburn horrors of Haneke, Polanski and even Ti West of recent times, a subliminal listen. It feels like a slanted way to appreciate an album…

GK: As band members we had really similar reactions to how the music was coming about. We were coming up with ‘Only Good Weather’ and we looked at each other and said, “What the fuck? What are we singing, what are we playing? It’s stupid!” But we felt there was something to it, so we kept it. And then we came up to the second part of the song, the disaster part, and we were even surer that there was something to this, even if we didn’t know what ‘this’ was. Which made us happy because it isn’t easy to make not obvious guitar based psychedelic music anymore. What we have ended up with on Jolly New Songs are songs that are kinda traditional, but on the other hand are soundtrack songs, on the other hand they are like ‘Never Forget’ with this strong story about a death camp, on the other hand they are ghost songs for a kitschy horror film. I know I shouldn’t be so positive about the songs because I cannot be objective, but I can say we liked it but we were really interested in what everyone else’s reactions would be, in the way the songs kinda freaked us out also.

#trupa trupa

[tenderlady]

Every time I think about Lynchian Beatles I remember Laura Palmer literally being in Backbeat which is so funny to me

Sheryl Lee being in Backbeat is hysterical, but the Sheryl Lee/Twin Peaks/Beatles connections somehow go even deeper, by which I am referring to my favorite thing that has ever happened:

For bonus Lynchian Beatles, Sherilynn Fenn is also there!

#lynchian beatles #if john is laura palmer coded #(as i have already previously alleged) #does that make paul audrey coded? #or perhaps donna coded? #much to consider

[tenderlady]

Things are coming together

#lynchian beatles #lot of talk about how lynchian john is but i think ringo may actually be the one living the david lynch spirit

[tenderlady]

I saw those photos on my dash and immediately thought, “Did I wake up in an alternate universe where tenderlady’s Lynchian Beatles biopic exists?” Then I saw your tags. Glad to see we’re on the same wavelength.

the cavern is here to me

#i'm glad this is my legacy #maybe if we all exert enough psychic pressure david lynch will hear our call #and will also push sam mendes into a ravine or maybe a gulch #lynchian beatles #anyway i don't think i ever really internalized that it was literally called the fucking CAVERN #like hello we are the bugs playing live from a hole in the ground