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Originally Posted by Glice
Personally, I dislike this inference that the mere act of doing something 'avant-garde' is an end in itself. Paul may well have been more emotionally attached to the 'avant-garde', but maybe John had the confidence because he made 'good' 'avant-garde'. Iincidentally, the only evidence of Paul's avant-stripes I've seen so far has been to mention Stockhausen, AMM, Floyd and no-one else.
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It's easy with hindsight to point to the limitations of Paul's achievements within the avant-garde (just as it's easy to over inflate them). He certainly wasn't any kind of authority on its intricacies, but then again here was a guy in his early-to mid-twenties with a very modest educational background, brought up in an area of Liverpool not exactly known for its cosmopolitanism who was also quite busy at the time maintaining a fairly successful career in pop music. Given all of this he did choose to find out what he could from people that often looked down on him (while quite happy to exploit his fame and fortune). Other people within pop music would eventually exceed Paul's involvement with and knowledge of the avant-garde, but only at a time when it was far more acceptable to do so. McCartney was, after all, coming at it is as a pop musician just a few years after pop had been largely defined around the likes of Elvis, Buddy Holly and Lonnie bloody Donegan (who were hardly seeking inspiration from the Bauhaus, let's face it.) In essence then, I think it's fair to say that Paul was more a supporter of the avant-garde than he was a practitioner, using his wealth and influence to help fund and champion establishments like the Arts Lab at a time when no one else with his kind of profile was exactly rushing to do so.
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Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom
those off-handed digs at Lennon, J are a tad....predictable?
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I'd be the last to deny Macca's capacity for prickery, but given the degree of 'off-handed' digs Paul received from John and Yoko in the years up until Lennon's death (immortalised in the quite horrible, 'How do You Sleep?' song), i'd say that ol' Macca's desire to call into question John's avant-garde credentials are quite mild - if only because they're actually justified.
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Originally Posted by MellySingsDoom
If he'd actually released an album of said stuff (either then or now), I would listen to it out of curiosity, if nothing else.
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Ian Peel's book 'The Unknown Paul McCartney: McCartney and the Avant-Garde' provides loads of examples of more experimental focused singles, albums and eps that he's produced over the years under various pseudonyms. Admittedly, much of this isn't very good and tends to demonstrate his inability not to situate experiments within quite insipid conventional forms (as with his stuff under the Fireman moniker). But in a way, that's something I've always found interesting about McCartney's engagement with the avant-garde: it's never been used as a thing in itself, but rather as a means of opening up his quite traditional brand of songwriting. In that sense, he really can be described as someone who 'used' the avant-garde, rather than simply falling blindly into it in a way that, it could be argued, someone like Lennon did in his collaborations with Yoko.