Back again, this time for reals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfNg484cRCQ
As the Shea Stadium section grinds on, McCartney gives in to the despair gripping his soul and sings ‘I’m Looking Through You’.
Wait, McCartney doesn’t do that at all. To the best of my knowledge, the Beatles hadn’t actually released the song yet, although presumably they’d written it. Apple Corps wouldn’t dare to mess around with time to that extent – would they? It’s all so confusing, though that might be the raging Convention Cold I brought back with me from Birmingham. This will be a short entry so I can get another bowl of chicken soup down my gullet.
So, anyway, ‘I’m Looking Through You’. I did manage to struggle through the level despite the virus, but while I was watching this:
I heard something closer to this:
That’s Drimble Wedge and the Vegetations with Bedazzled, from the film of the same name, but it might as well be Paulbot and the Bored Androids. At 1:10 on the first clip, a pair of robot policemen chase down a screaming robot fan (and why didn’t I get that when I played?) – while Paulbot sings of lovers disappearing without trace. It’s all a bit sinister. The robot Walrus’s next verse seems aimed directly at the fans – “You’re thinking of me the same old way…” Once, that was intimidating – the lover/the fans seemed ‘above’ him. But they’ve remained the same, screaming, indiscriminately loving, giving themselves completely to the ideal of The Beatles – “the Beatles bring joy into the world, happiness”, says one gum-chewing, wide-eyed evangelist at the real Shea Stadium (look around 1:10) , “I wish they’d be around forever, they could bring happiness to everybody.”
But Paulbot and the Vegetations don’t want to be around forever, at least not how they are now. They don’t want to bring the same old happiness to everybody any more. That’s been done. That’s old, finished, nowhere. It fills them with inertia. “The only difference is you’re down there,” smirks Paulbot, and it feels like a sneer, a slap in the face. The Beatles have now reached the top, and success measured in screaming teenage crowds is no longer the goal, if it ever was. We’re back to the Shea Stadium levels as the story of breaking out of the old paradigms, of starting to flex and experiment.
There’s another story, of course – a more standard one of a love that’s just died at the roots. In every chorus, it’s the lover who’s changed, who’s not the same – but then we’re back to the idea of love for something being unsustainable if it can’t accept growth or change. Is Paul singing as the fans here, indulging in a moment of delicious paranoia as he contemplates their reaction to what must happen?
Who knows, I certainly don’t. I’m flying on cough mixture.
NEXT: Another test for my Shea Stadium theme hypothesis. Could my theory of a dinosaur fandom not be entirely correct?