20/20 Lennon Specal Last Night

[Norbert]

Anyone see it? I sat through about 20 minutes of it. Mintz and Gruen
are not worth my time.

DF producer Jack Douglas made a few appearances. He recalled asking JL
what the secret to great songwriting was, and Lennon answered: "You
tell the truth and you make it rhyme."

Douglas also recalled that guitarist Earl Slick so wanted to work on
Double Fantasy that he pretended he could read sheet music when he
couldn't, which ended up giving the others some amusement.

[super70s]

Post by Norbert
Anyone see it? I sat through about 20 minutes of it. Mintz and Gruen
are not worth my time.
DF producer Jack Douglas made a few appearances. He recalled asking JL
what the secret to great songwriting was, and Lennon answered: "You
tell the truth and you make it rhyme."
Douglas also recalled that guitarist Earl Slick so wanted to work on
Double Fantasy that he pretended he could read sheet music when he
couldn't, which ended up giving the others some amusement.

Thanks for the tip, I'll see if I can catch it on my cable provider's
"Rewind TV" feature.

As for reading sheet music, legend has it none of the Beatles could either.

[pamina58]

John said somewhere that he had people who notated his music for him.

[Norbert]

One would expect sight-reading in an experienced session guy, though.
This is not a put-down of Slick. He that career without a standard
session player's skill? More power to him.

John likely had others do formal charts for him, but he could do his own
basic ones with the chord listed; I've seen images of them somewhere.

And we've qll seen McCartney calling out songs' changes to the others in
rehearsals.

[super70s]

Post by Norbert
And we've qll seen McCartney calling out songs' changes to the others in
rehearsals.

Any good musician can listen to a song and tell you which chords are
playing, even I can do that and I'm a mediocre guitarist who rarely
plays anymore. Doesn't necessarily mean you can read notation.

BTW I didn't get to see the special, the local ABC affiliate apparently
pre-empted it for some football recap (you were talking about Sunday
night weren't you, I wasn't even aware 20/20 aired on Sundays).

[Norbert]

My feeling was that Slick failed disastrously at pretending to be
reading the charts, giving much amusement to his session mates, and this
is why Douglas told the story.

Anyway, yes, the 20/20 episode ran on the 8th. If it's any consolation,
you didn't miss much. The portion I saw was mostly Mintz and Gruen
going through their dreary routines.

[Norbert]

The recent 20/20 JL Special is now on Youtube.

For what it's worth, I could not sit through the thing.

[pamina58]

The Beatles knew chords, they knew voicing, they learned 3-part harmony,
which is counterpoint.

Learning notation, per se, might have inhibited their style of creating,
which is through playing first. Or, they might even have been fibbing
about not 'reading' music, as part of the myth that they were untrained
musicians...when they were, in fact, quite sophisticated...you see them
flipping from major to minor chords, using tritone substitutions,
rethinking old progressions...savvy stuff...

[Norbert]

There are also artfully-placed major 6 and 7 chords in their music.

Lennon and Hqrrison employed time changes in some of their songs, which
isn't common in popular music. Harrison undoubtedly knew what he was
doing; I suspect Lennon's time changes were unconscious. Harrison
basically said as much; that when he questioned Lennon about this aspect
of some of his songs, Lennon wasn't aware of it.