The Long and Winding Road - There And Back Again

January 8, 2011 10:09 PM

The Beatles' Lord of the Rings. Yes, that CNN article dates back to 2002, but Superpunch has recently had a contest to design posters for the film-that-never-happened (including a fake Wikipedia page for the film) and someone has written a fictional account of a fan discussing the film-that-never-happened with Paul McCartney, as if it had actually been made.
posted by crossoverman (35 comments total)

Best poster. Most amusing poster.
posted by crossoverman at 10:23 PM on January 8, 2011

From the article;

"The Two Towers" is due out in December..."

Those poor fools in March 2002. They had no idea of the horrors that would befall them in nine months time.

Also; Hobbit-like???
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:28 PM on January 8, 2011

Also, I assume they would have had Yoko playing Galadriel? Hopefully not. She'd have been perfect as Boromir... the one that tears the Fellowship apart from the inside.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:31 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Donovan as Legolas
Eric Burdon as Gimli
Richard Nixon as Sauron
Daniel Elsberg as Aragorn
Timothy Leary as Tom Bombadil
George Martin as Elrond
Jim Morrison as the drunken fool
posted by philip-random at 10:48 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

with special appearance by: Janis Joplin as "herself"
posted by clavdivs at 10:58 PM on January 8, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hard to say who Robert Plant would have played, since no character commits the epically weird WTF of looking for women in Mordor.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:29 PM on January 8, 2011 [5 favorites]

In defense of Mr Plant, he was going to look for women wherever he went. One can only imagine the weird vibes at Rivendel.
posted by philip-random at 11:38 PM on January 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

That story is a pretty long and winding road to a punchline! I laughed.
posted by egypturnash at 12:33 AM on January 9, 2011

Hmm, I still prefer the 1942 Humphrey Bogart version.
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:56 AM on January 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Effigy2000 Can we drop the racist and misogynist Yoko dissing, thanks.
posted by PinkMoose at 5:31 AM on January 9, 2011 [6 favorites]

"So which one's your favorite? The cute one, the fallen one, the magic one or the annoying one?"
posted by PlusDistance at 6:02 AM on January 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

What's racist or misigynistic about dissing Yoko?
posted by the cuban at 7:03 AM on January 9, 2011

Yeah, PinkMoose, you seem to be projecting something there.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:07 AM on January 9, 2011

Nah, at this point in history I think busting out with "Yoko broke up the Beatles" "jokes" says more about one's ignorance than one's insight.
posted by jtron at 8:38 AM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

AND WHAT IS SAYS IS: I HAVE LOTS OF IGNORANCE
posted by jtron at 8:47 AM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

I think there's a great deal of truth that many of the final straws were related to Yoko. Or, more accurately, John's insistence on bringing her, clearing everything with her, having her participate in songs against the views of the remainder of the group, and sitting her in George's chair when he stormed off in a way Paul and Ringo took as intentionally symbolic. John's actions more than hers, but at the least she happily went along with it.

If the final straws hadn't been her, they would have certainly been something else.

But it wasn't something else.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 9:23 AM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

(and nothing there has anything to do with race or gender, now does it.)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 9:23 AM on January 9, 2011

Can we please stop with the speciesist misandry of the Boromir-bashing? Thank you.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:01 AM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hmmm... Boromir... Borromian rings... The metaphorical connection seems pretty clear cut. Is there any evidence for it?
posted by cmoj at 11:01 AM on January 9, 2011

Or, more accurately, John's insistence on bringing her, clearing everything with her, having her participate in songs against the views of the remainder of the group, and sitting her in George's chair when he stormed off in a way Paul and Ringo took as intentionally symbolic. John's actions more than hers, but at the least she happily went along with it.

As you say, John's actions more than hers. It's pretty simplistic to say that Yoko broke up the Beatles and really stems from that tired cliche of women getting in the way, when it reality the band self-imploding would have happened with or without her since there were already cracks by the time she appeared on the scene.
posted by crossoverman at 12:47 PM on January 9, 2011

Effigy2000 Can we drop the racist and misogynist Yoko dissing, thanks.

Pinkmoose is that a joke that went over my head, or did something get deleted? What is racist and misogynist about it?
posted by Hoopo at 12:48 PM on January 9, 2011

Where was the racist/misogynist bit? Was it removed?
posted by sourwookie at 1:02 PM on January 9, 2011

... a list what detailed what women's
garments would best suit the figures of people he knew.
...

WHAT? Leave me hanging there?
PLEASE! We've got enquiring minds here!
posted by Twang at 1:02 PM on January 9, 2011

that tired cliche of women getting in the way,

You know, sometimes people, even female people, can be in the way without it being because they are women. Might want to think about who here is trading in stereotypes of 'women' and who here is talking specifically about one person named Yoko Ono.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 1:22 PM on January 9, 2011

Where was the racist/misogynist bit? Was it removed?

Nope. What you see is the entire thread. ((Don't worry: we're still looking for the racist/misogynist bit, too.))
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 1:23 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

WHAT? Leave me hanging there?

Let me know the waaaaaaaaaay....
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:54 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Indeed, it's arguable that Yoko actually kept the Beatles together longer than would otherwise have been the case as the cracks and divisions started to show pretty much immediately after the death of Brian Epstein; John in particular being so messed up (in grief, psychedelic confusion, his own dark places) that had he not found Yoko, he might have self-destructed in some way or other as early as 1968.

Which would have spared as O-bla-dee-O-bla-dah coming out under the Beatles moniker, but otherwise would have been quite a profound tragedy.
posted by philip-random at 2:20 PM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

We didn't delete anything and are maybe as confused as you, for the record.
posted by jessamyn at 2:53 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

You know, sometimes people, even female people, can be in the way without it being because they are women. Might want to think about who here is trading in stereotypes of 'women' and who here is talking specifically about one person named Yoko Ono.

Okay, I think maybe jumping straight to misogyny was PinkMoose taking things a little bit too far, but I think Yoko Ono gets a bad wrap - and a lot of that is based on the tired cliche of women who get in the way of "guy stuff", particularly bands. Certainly that's where the knee-jerk jokes about Yoko breaking up the Beatles comes from.

As philip-random points out, the history doesn't really bare it out as being Yoko's fault. In fact there were myriad reasons for the band breaking up - mostly to do with the band and not to do with Yoko Ono, who has become a scapegoat. Whether it comes down to misogyny (bros before hos) or not, it's entirely baseless to blame the break-up of the Beatles on one woman. (As for accusations of racism, that might stem from the fact no one makes jokes about Linda breaking up the band. I dunno.)
posted by crossoverman at 3:20 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Speaking as a recovered Beatle fanboy who once read everything on the subject, history, at least in the form of every Apple memoir I read by anyone who was there at the time, does bear out that the rest of the band found her intolerable. But I'd be inclined to exonerate her on the grounds that she herself didn't have any innate power to wreck the band, she only had the power that John gave her. And he wasn't stupid or lacking in insight, on some level he knew what was happening. So yeah, Yoko didn't break up the band, John did. But she was certainly instrumental. (Absolutely no pun intended.)

The "racist" and "misogyny" charges are drivel. That she's female and Japanese does not make criticism of her misogynistic or racist. That's a very tired old manipulative dodge.

(As for accusations of racism, that might stem from the fact no one makes jokes about Linda breaking up the band. I dunno.)

Several memoirs state that Paul tried to make a point about the situation by inviting Linda to the sessions. But it backfired because Linda was courteous to Apple employees, didn't intrude in discussions or act like she thought she was in the band and was generally no more trouble than any given employee or hanger-on, so it didn't really make the point at all.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:22 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't care what did or didn't happen. I feel deleted.
posted by philip-random at 4:23 PM on January 9, 2011

Among the more interesting autopsies is Peter Doggett's You Never Give Me Your Money. One of his observations is that they came remarkably close to reuniting during John's California period, but that after he came back to NY, friends and relatives found it remarkably difficult to get through to him on the phone. So, at least, he says.

As to Linda and the breakup, well, Doggett also makes the point that her family caught on to Allen Klein early on and wanted to get Paul (and anyone else who cared to follow) out from under his influence ASAP. Didn't go over well with the others, as you can imagine, less so as it became increasingly clear that it was the right thing to do. So, in that sense, one might argue that the Eastmans broke up the Beatles.
posted by IndigoJones at 6:01 PM on January 9, 2011

the discourse around yoko suggests that she does not have a place as a musician b/c she is just a pushy bitch who broke apart the best rock and roll band evah thru the power of her magical vagina.

(ymmv, but i have more albums from yoko then i do by the beatles)
posted by PinkMoose at 9:30 AM on January 11, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yoko notwithstanding, I have a very hard time imagining a Beatles-driven LOTR that would be anything short of horrific.
posted by lodurr at 9:55 AM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

random factoid (heavy on the "-oid"): I was once told by the sister of John's & Yoko's former personal assistant that John & Paul talked on the phone at least once a month during the Dakota period.

Anyway, my impression has always been that John & Paul both needed the Beatles to be over. Yoko may have been everybody's excuse for that, but she gets a bum rap IMO. (And FTR, I don't care much for Yoko as an artist or a musician. But she seems to have helped John get clean, for whatever that's worth.) Ringo maybe didn't do so well, but I think it was also a better deal for George overall.
posted by lodurr at 10:01 AM on January 13, 2011