#FT搬运工 关于披头士：哪些是真的、哪些是传说？

#FT搬运工 关于披头士：哪些是真的、哪些是传说？

我订阅了FT中文网的会员，日常搬运一些我感兴趣的话题，算是泛读。

这篇文章的作者在上个世纪60年代-70年代期间担任了苹果唱片公司的CEO，和披头士乐队成员关系紧密。

A Beatles confidant explores the myth of the Fab Four

confidant  n.私友、密友

fab four 是披头士乐队的昵称。

On January 30 1969, The Beatles — the band that had reshaped popular music and culture in a creative arc of only eight years (and with whom I had worked for that entire dizzying period) — played an impromptu show in London, immortalised as “the rooftop concert”.

arc  n. 弧（度）；弧形物；天穹；弧光（全称electric arc）

      adj. 圆弧的；反三角函数的

      vt. 走弧线；形成电弧

impromptu  adj. 即席的, 即兴的(地说、表演、做或作曲不是事先有准备的) = offhand = extemporaneous

immortalise  v. 使不灭,使不朽

The six-song set was staged atop 3 Savile Row, the building we had bought as the headquarters for their adventurous multimedia company, Apple Corps. Although none of us realised it at the time, it was to be their final live performance as a band. And as far as rock shows go, it was a great one.

atop  prep. 在…的顶上

As far as  至于。。；说到。。。

On that freezing rooftop in London, I saw and heard everything that was great about The Beatles. The humour, the look (John and Ringo wore their wives’ coats for the performance) and, of course, the music. But I also saw the frayed ends and the bitterness that was already spilling out in my office at Apple, where I had been appointed as executive director the year before, having spent most of the 1960s at Brian Epstein’s management company.

Rooftop  n.屋顶

Spill out  溢出, 洒出

I heard “One After 909”— a track they used to play in the clubs in the early days — as a plea for the innocence and optimism of the pre-Fab Four days, when they dreamt that one day they would make it to “the toppermost of the popper-most”. I heard “Don’t Let Me Down” as a plea for communion from John Lennon to his love and artistic partner, Yoko Ono. Bookended with the clean-cut Beatles of the early 1960s, the band were looser and more careworn, closing out the decade and their career with both a bang and a relieved exhale.

Careworn  adj. 忧心忡忡的(担心焦虑或责任繁重的)

Exhale  v. 呼出(气); 散发(某物) = emit

Historians love round numbers, and as we mark the 50th anniversary of that performance, there undoubtedly will be musings on the events of that day and their significance. The closing of a chapter of The Beatles as a live band. A desperate effort to “Get Back” to the joy of the early days. An attempt to end the documentary film Let it Be in style. The Beatles’ swan song. Paul’s idea. John’s idea. An engineer’s idea. Long in the works. Spontaneous. None of the above.

round number 大概；以总数表示

muse  v. 沉思冥想(全力思考)

#FT搬运工 关于披头士：哪些是真的、哪些是传说？

Brown and the band relax in East Sussex, 1967

Like music, history is more art than science. Recalling the rooftop concert, one can cite how many songs were played, who was there, who engineered the sound, what chord George plays on the outro to “Dig a Pony”, and so on. In fact, Beatles scholars such as Mark Lewisohn have dedicated their lives to piecing together the history of the band from every scrap of notepaper and every ledger entry.

piece together  拼凑起

ledger  n. 账簿

History is not merely what happened, but how we remember it. Memories fade. They become twisted by bias, or altered by alcohol or drugs. In the case of The Beatles — one of the most discussed and documented cultural phenomena of all time — their history has been particularly vulnerable to fable, on the one hand, and sanitisation on the other.

The love of fable runs deep: in the late 1960s I had to find Paul McCartney in the Scottish Highlands to show him to the media to “prove” he hadn’t died. And everyone in the inner circle knew that Yoko Ono did not break up the band. Sanitisation is no less averse to facts. Countless fawning biographies have scrubbed off many of the rough edges of The Beatles to conform to a fan’s perspective of an unerring, almost inhuman goodness.

Run deep 深深的、深刻的

Sanitisation  粉饰

Unerring  adj. 准确无误的;无偏差的，一贯正确的;可靠的

Soon after the contentious break-up of the band in 1970, The Beatles themselves knew their own story was up for grabs, and they had both a commercial and a personal interest in telling it on their own terms. John, Paul, George and Ringo would each ultimately write an autobiography or grant extensive interviews to push their side of the story. But from the mid-1970s, I collaborated with all of them to produce The Love You Make, eventually published in 1983. Gleaned from thousands of hours of interviews, the book represented the first organised effort by the band to set the narrative in their own words.

contentious  adj. 爱争论的 = quarrelsome = belligerent; 有争议的 = controversial

glean from  收集

Yet so raw was this inside look at the rise, fall, and gathering immortality of the band that the book was all but disavowed by its surviving members. Perhaps they were content with their own singular recollections and personal narratives — but not with any that deviated from them.

deviate  v. 偏离(一个路线、方向、目标或目的) = diverge = digress

With the passage of time, the healing of wounds, the death of John Lennon in 1980, and an avalanche of biographies and histories, the band made a second effort to cement their collective version of their history: the best-selling 1996 Anthology book and companion music, which included two new “Beatles” songs featuring the voice of the late John Lennon accompanied by George, Paul and Ringo.

with the passage of time 随着时间的推移

avalanche  n. 雪崩, 山崩(大块雪或岩石沿着山坡下滑的现象)

Anthology represents the closest thing to a consensus on The Beatles, by The Beatles. But it didn’t put an end to misinformed narratives. A film-maker who contacted me recently about the rooftop concert insisted that the police had “broken up the show”. That’s tidy, but not entirely true. The police came, yes. But I met them on the rooftop and assured them that we owned the building and could not be forced to shut down. The police went into a huddle before returning to politely ask us to turn it down to prevent traffic jams and a possible disturbing the peace citation. But by then, Paul had the third take of “Get Back” in the bag and the show was over. Ringo thought an arrest would have made for better footage, but it wasn’t on the cards.

anthology  n. 诗集, 文选(诗、文、曲、画等的选集) = ana = analects = florilegium = miscellany = omnibus

huddle  v. (出于寒冷或恐惧)密密地挤成一堆; 缩在一起; n 一堆人(或动物)

citation  n. 引用，引证；传票；褒扬

on the cards 很可能发生、很有可能

With the passing in recent years of my friend and fellow Apple executive Neil Aspinall and producer and “fifth Beatle” George Martin, there are only Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and myself left from the early days to recount the fading details for posterity. The rest is up to historians and The Beatles’ still-growing legions of fans. Fortunately for the latter, there is nothing to be misunderstood from the opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night”, the sweet melody of “Yesterday” or the final crescendo of “A Day in the Life”. They belong to us all.

crescendo n.高潮、顶点；adv 逐渐增强的

Peter Brown is chairman and chief executive of BLJ Worldwide. He served as executive director of Apple Corps, The Beatles’ holding company, from 1968-70

apple corps 苹果唱片公司，由披头士成立，旨在更好地销售自己的唱片，经营自己的乐队。