Give Peace A Chance

Can't they all just get along? Well, I guess since it's really not "all" anymore - just two of them - I wonder why Yoko and Paul can't just let the past become the past. This past week, John Lennon's widow accepted an award from the British music press and she suggested that her late husband suffered some insecurity centering on the number of artists who chose to cover Paul's songs as opposed to his. "I said, 'You're a good songwriter, it's not June with Spoon that you write. You're a good singer and most musicians are probably a little bit nervous about covering your songs,'" Ono said.
Okay - fair enough. Sounds a little like a self-esteem issue that could be worked out with a little bit of therapy and maybe a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. Where was Stuart Smalley when John needed him? "I'm good enough. I'm a strong enough song writer, and doggone it, people like me." Here's the catch: John's self-esteem ceased to be an issue almost twenty-five years ago. Why would Yoko bother to mention this little anecdote at this particular time in history?
Could it be that right about now Paul is starting to toy with the writing credits of Beatles songs. "Lennon- McCartney" songs will now be referred to as "McCartney-Lennon" songs. "This is not a divisive thing," insisted McCartney spokesman Geoff Baker in London. "It's not Lennon or McCartney. Even if Paul did 95 percent or more on these songs, he's not asking that John's name be taken off. He just doesn't think it should be first."
Paul, who used to be known as the "cute" one, is now better known as the "pissy" one. He also shares the distinction of being the "living" one (along with Ringo -once the "funny" one - who remains the "patient" one).
In the past few years there has been a movement among sports franchises to sell the rights to naming the stadium at which the teams play. Candlestick Park has had several different names, causing city officials to scramble about every few months or so to put up new signage in South San Francisco to direct fans to "Name of the Month" Stadium. Everybody knows that it's Candlestick Park. Just like everybody knows that it's a Lennon-McCartney song. Paul would write "I've got to admit it's getting better," and John would chime in with "Can't get much worse." It's a symbiotic thing, an alphabetic thing - like Abbot and Costello. Abbot wasn't funnier than Costello, his name just started with a letter that came before his partner's. Perhaps Ringo's patience will eventually be rewarded, and all the publishing rights will somehow magically transfer to him in the advent of the untimely event of Paul's passing (wasn't he dead around "Abbey Road" anyway?). Wouldn't that be "funny?"