I have been reading, slowly but steadily, Tim Riley's "Lennon: The Man, The Myth, The Music The Definitive Life" with enormous pleasure. No, the music criticism isn't up to Riley's superlative "Tell Me Why" but still, this feels like the real deal. The real Lennon behind all the masks.
Except.
Writing about the Beatles on the English comedy show TV program "The Morecambe And Wise Show", Riley gets it so wrong, I was left wondering if Riley, an American, doesn't really understand English culture. This is what Riley wrote about the Beatles uproarious performance on the show: "'Do you like being famous?' Morecambe turned to Lennon and asked. Lennon shifted from goonish to mock serious and retorted 'Oh, it's not like in your days, you know'', With this, he gave his taller host a perverse once-over with his eyes, up and down his frame, sizing him up flirtatiously, concluding with disgust. Morecambe barely recovered, and the audience came apart. In a dazzling, transformative moment, Lennon's once-over cemented everything their music hinted at: his manner simply dismissed this tired silly-straight duo as passe".
This is complete nonsense.
1. Morecambe and wise "silly-straight". There are two types of people, people who think Morecambe sinking Wise's rubber ducky while he has a bath hysterical and Tim Riley. These giants of English comedy passe? Lennon wouldn't agree.
2. Morecambe upset? Eric Morecambe upset? He wrote the fucking skit. Why would he be upset. This is England, the country thrives on self-deprecation. You think Chris Martin came out of nowhere?
3. Elsewhere, Riley claims Morecambe is calling Starr "Bungo". It's "Bongo"…
4. Lennon and the rest of the Beatles handled themselves fine but so did the duo. It was a transformative nothing. The Beatles on Juke Box Jury was much more transformative.
5. The duo went on for at least a year more of primetime TV. One of the funniest sketches I've ever seen was the duo with Elton John reworking on old Lucy Ball bit. On 1977. Fourteen years after the Beatles appeared.
6. I am including both of them here.
7. If Riley got this wrong, what else did he get wrong