Tony de Freitas wrote:

>Think of how exciting a time we're in for if the classical equivalent of
>'Eleanor Rigby' or 'Michelle' awaits us.

I never liked the Beatles much back in the sixties - I was more of a Stones
man back then.  When all my friends had Sgt.  Pepper on their turntables
night and day, I was listening to Cream, Hendrix, Ten Years After, Deep
Purple (!), beginning to be able to relate to John Coltrane, Ornette
Coleman, Don Cherry, soaking up all the Bach I could find, beginning a
life-long love affair with Mahler and travelling everywhere I could (India
included) to listen to Indian classical musicians and try to understand
their music (those of us on classm-l will know that I'm still trying 30+
years later!).

So I suppose I was pretty confused musically in those days. I spent far
less time obsessed with McCartney et al than most of my contemporaries - I
quite enjoyed some of their more r&b and blues-based material, but not the
things more based on music-hall tradition, psychedelic experimentation and
straightforward whimsy. To this day, I have never listened to Sgt. Pepper
all the way through in one go, because it just can't hold my attention
(except I may possibly have heard the whole thing during some '60s parties,
after the critical faculties had been sufficiently dulled . . . . . . . .
.  and in those days I did inhale. Cigarettes, of course. Filthy things,
disgusting habit and I've been clean for years. We won't go any further
into that just now).  I thought McCartney was sentimental and sickly-sweet,
Lennon had an intriguingly abrasive surface but not much underneath, Starr
not worth thinking about (musically), and Harrison the only one with any
real talent.  But I would have said then and I still believe now that
"Eleanor Rigby" is a great song, a masterpiece.

Tony - and here I get to the point - appears to put "Michelle" on the
same level as "ER".  I have never understood why anybody likes this song.
To me it's just a mournful, depressing dirge with no redeeming features
at all, and a perfect demonstration of the vacuity of most of McCartney's
writing.  It's pigeon-holed in my mind alongside a piece sometimes
described as "classical" and which I mentioned some time ago in a
"favourite hates" thread - Stanley Myers' "Cavatina" (perhaps better known
from the sound-track to "The Deer Hunter").  So, for me at any rate, we do
already have a classical equivalent of "Michelle" and I don't want to hear
another one!  In fact, although film is another one of my lasting interests
that started in the 60's and is still going strong, I have never seen The
Deer Hunter.  And I will not willingly do so until it's re-released with an
alternative sound track.  Come to think of it I've never seen "The Sound of
Music" either, and that contains one of my favourite things - as played by
Coltrane, of course.

Ian Crisp
[log in to unmask]