Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Someone should put him in an asylum.

I remember when he was a cute black kid with an amazing amount of talent. Now he's an ugly white woman with a huge appetite for young men and enough negative cash flow to choke a Third World country.

Nah... Put him out of our misery - put him down!!

Amazing how the music/songwriting industry has changed.Sure Lennon and McCartney got into music to get girls and not have a "real" job(as they put it.),But i remember a quote from Paul saying how he and John didnt have a clue regarding royalties as per songwriting.Something along the lines of "we thought if you wrote songs, they were yours and floated around in the air,nobody owned them".Brian Epstein also was clueless in his monetary mangement of the Beatles, just look at what he did with the Beatles product endorsements; he thought 10% was a fair price! he gave away millions of the Beatles hard-earned.

Greg, Epstein was a whole lot sharper than you think, although his own personal demons did put a lid on his true potential. You criticize him for getting 10% for product endorsements. Some historical perspective is in order, I think:

In the early '60s, licensing was a very young business. Without the Web to make information easily researcheable, and with Epstein located in a northern gray city in black and white England with no prior experience or mentors, he did very well in getting that 10%, although he was not very selective in the types or quality of the products endorsed. Much (or most) of it was ****.

An example: For 9 years of my career, I lived on the royalties from my own licensed products. At the time, (early 80s-90s) the standard percentage was 5% of wholesale ("A" level) price. I wanted a TV advertising budget, and that came half out of my own royalties, bringing it to 4%. Most recently, numbers have shrunk to the 2% range. (Thank you, Walmart.)

Determined Productions (the Licensing company of Charles M. Schultz' "Peanuts") was considered for years to have a plum position in the world of licensed products here in license-glutted America, yet as recently as the mid-'90s, their fee was only 15%. They learned to be much more selective, as I'm sure Epstein would have had he lived on. He may be a distasteful personality to a lot of people, but he was a very quick study!

I like Yoko, and I think that people who dont like her are being pretty narrow minded....you dont even know her? (not that I do) If John Liked her, then shes Okay with me .....Paul can be a jerk (see let it be) who has an ego at times (see anthology 7)..................

besides....if yoko hadnt come into the band history....we might not have such great songs as Happiness is a warm gun, Get back (rumour), Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey, Ballad of john and yoko....etc.....

It's interesting that someone wants to slag off on Paul being a jerk, or having and ego problem when you don't have a clue as to what really was going on at the period for all of the lads. But to insinuate that Paul was the only one of the lads with a large ego or at times could be a jerk doesn't really understand that all of the Beatles had their faults. In all honesty John Lennon probably had the biggest ego of the four, and could at times be the biggest jerk of all. With that said, I luv em all and am truly thankful that they were who they were with very different personalities. It served their music well and has provided all of us with an immense catalog of great music and memories.

Lennon was probably the biggest jerk in the band. He said things that Paul had to get him out of many times. The two most layed members were George and Ringo.

Absolutely true, Dan. The constant garbage flying around early days was "George cant't play for nuts and Ringo needs to find a decent teacher".

Put the whole package together and funnily enough, it worked!! A champion team will always beat a team of champions.

so you were all there?..........Truth is, none of knows any of them or any of their "egos" nor can we judge anything that they said first-hand. None of us have the place to say "I hate yoko" or "I hate paul" or "I hate John" cause none of us really know what went on. and as much as we say that yoko and paul hate eachother, we dont know that for certain....remember, paul and linda would frequently stop by the dakota apartments to see john and yoko.......

Absolutely true, Alex! (As Howard would and often does say?)

Dan: how do you know that Ringo and George were "layed" the most? I'd put my money on John, personally. Girls love a wise-a** and he was tops, always taking the pi** out of someone or something and often himself. My problem with Paul is that he always has taken himself far too seriously.

I have always liked Ringo's attitude the best, he has always seemed like a regular guy. George also seemed like a very humble man. I think Paul thoroughly enjoys the limelight. John hated it most of the time I would bet.

Adam, John and Paul had an opportunity to purchase the Dick James/NEMS shares in 1967.

Alex, I have no problem with Yoko being around. You're right about some of those songs. The Ballad of John & Yoko has a great bass line. And lets not forget some of his solo stuff. I think just about everything was about or influenced by her.

I really don't mind her. I was just stirring things up a bit with Adam. He seemed to take exception to something I said and I just ran with it.

I actually met Yoko in San Francisco in 1981. I spoke briefly to her and she was very kind and autographed a copy of San Francisco Magazine.

When you speak about Anthology George, IMO, comes off as kind of bitter to me.

I agree. Ringo's tough childhood with all the health problems seems to have made him very sanguine. George seems to have been a nice bloke upon whom success didn't sit too well after awhile and it made him prickly.

I think that John was by far the most complex and intelligent of the four. He had a gift for language and a depressed side that must have been very difficult for him to come to terms with. He did not suffer fools lightly, that's for sure! After awhile with such massive success and having to mix it up so often with people whom he considered to be his intellectual inferiors, he turned sardonic and more sarcastic than ever. I would guess that his biggest challenge was intellectual stimulation and his biggest battle was against boredom. Too smart by half for his own good, he allowed himself to look too deeply into things and what he saw only began to get resolved in his last few months.

Paul seems to have been brilliant and creative, but unlike John, he never went too deeply into his own psyche and didn't spend too much time confronting his own demons. I'd venture to say that his entire adult life has been spent running from one thing to another in an attempt to find peace. His musical output post-Beatles and his and Linda's fondness for weed before embracing militant vegetarianism would bear this out in a minor way. He is happiest basking in the admiration of his fans. His attempts to appeal to a wider demographic (e.g.: "Liverpool Symphony") and the most recent "triumph" (?) at Superbowl halftime show us a little boy with a wrinkled face still flattening his nose on the outside of the window of happiness.

Gee, sounds like a fortune cookie or something...

Now I'll brace myself for the inevitable fallout...How dare me, what a stupid comment, what an ignorant statement, etc. Nothing personal to anybody here. The Beatles had a huge effect upon me and remain a touchstone of my life, just as it was with many others. I grew with them, succeeded with them, failed with them, tried some of the things they did, saw them as exemplars and avatars, laughed, cried, and all that stuff.

They were the symbol of an era and had a vast influence upon world culture. And Rick was there with them, adding spice to the mix.