From menudo.uh.edu!swrinde!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!quads!dlm3 Mon Nov 22 21:30:40 GMT-0600 1993
Re: "2 of Us"..whazzit about?
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>Yeah, but the *artist* is usually the *least* knowlegeable about their
>own work. (My wife said so, and she's an *art* major, so she *knows*...)
>
>saki posted a wonderful examination of this song some months back.
>saki ...?
Amazingly, I found the original post, from October 1992. I apologize
for the rerun. It was in response to just such a query as that of the
original poster, who asked about the true meaning of "Two Of Us":
Paul had pretty definite ideas about this one...and far be
it from me to contradict him. After all, the man knows for
whom, presumably, he writes a song. And Paul was adamant that
"Two Of Us" was for Linda Eastman, his then-recent girlfriend,
soon-to-be wife. That's what he told journalist Ray Coleman.
But Paul had one remarkable gift among many, just like his
erstwhile songwriting partner, a certain Mr. Lennon. And that
was to be capable of writing a song with more than one target.
Perhaps more accurately, Macca could manage to aim a ballad
directly at one person, on the surface, but in the deep structure
the song veered straight into another quadrant. You have to look
at the song from more than one vantage to see the extradimensional
intent. A rose is a rose is a rose...but depending how you hold
it in your fingers, the physical planes, even the colors, can change.
Sure, as John said to the intruding fan in Tittenhurst Park (captured
like home-movie footage in the film "Imagine") "They're only words".
And they are...just like James Joyce wrote "only" words; or
Shakespeare "only" plays; or the way a Greek fresco is "only" plaster
and paint. "Two Of Us" may be "only" a love song for Paul's intended
bride (curiously, it was not planned for Paul's own performance,
having been demo'd for a group called Mortimer in 1969, though
never issued by them).
Dr. Macca had written songs before this that had an ostensible
surface meaning, clear and unambiguous, flummoxing the would-be
critic looking for hidden revelation. "When I'm Sixty-Four"
was written for Paul's father, so it is said, and was presented
to him on his own sixty-fourth birthday (resurrected from an
instrumental tune Paul had written in his late teens, when
musical composition was just beginning to blossom for him).
But something else happens here. Was there ever a more quaintly
sweet entreaty toward a loved one, begging her to make up her
mind and marry the singer before his dreams of an idyllic English
lower-middle-class union wafted away into modern complexity? ("Send
me a postcard, drop me a line/Stating point of view....Fill
in a form, mine forevermore....") It's a nice sublimation of one's
private life within the lyrics of a more public offering. The
parallels between Paul's provincial dream and the protagonist's
fantasy come very close to the composer's ongoing relationship
with his then-fiancee, Jane Asher, with whom he could never
reconcile his old-fashioned vision of marriage.
Similar with "Martha My Dear", which everyone knows is about Paul's
sheepdog. :-) Of course it borrows the canine's first name, but
without deep analysis the song rings true as a tribute to a love
about to be lost. The admonishment is gentle, but the woman's to
blame for the break between two people "meant to be for each other".
And think of "Hey Jude", which Paul asserted many times began as
"Hey Jules", meant as a song of comfort for John's son Julian upon
the end of his parent's marriage. Obtuse lyrically (apparently still
bearing a few lines from its stage as a work-in-progress), the song
says more to the child's father than to the child. And Paul's message
is one of relinquishment. The two compatriots had been together for
over a decade, their shared creative output a wonder to the world of
music. But Paul foresaw the split and prepared himself for it--while
giving tacit permission to John to pursue his new direction within
the words of the song.
I've always heard "The Two Of Us" as a gloss on that sentiment. To me
it refers to a companionship as deep as love, certainly as intertwined
as love, but based on intense complexities that govern male-to-male
platonic relationships. It works fine for a woman and man, too, of course,
for whom "Sunday driving" and "lifting latches" must have some personal
resonance. And the most revealing phrase of the song---"You and I have
memories/Longer than the road that stretches out ahead"---suggests an
indefinable period of mutual recollection. That doesn't fit Paul and
Linda terribly well in 1969, when they'd known each other for only
a couple of years and had been romantically involved for a much shorter
time.
As a metaphor it's fine, as far as it goes. Intensely deep infatuation
often carries with it the illogical but indefatigable impression that
one has known one's enamorata forever. And what Paul is saying in this
lyric *is* rather remarkable: that memories reach back in time further
than the infinite path of the future. But on the level of historical
reality, it's always seemed to me that Paul was referring to an old
comrade with whom he'd who'd been through the best of times *and* the
worst of times---and to me the inevitable candidate seems to be John
Lennon.
This way, some of the lyrics lose their self-contained mystery. "The
two of us riding nowhere/Spending someone's hard-earned pay"---this
suggests the aimlessness of John and Paul's Art College days, when
they regularly cozened money from a parent, aunt or friend; "...Sunday
driving, not arriving..." brings to mind their relentless all-day or
all-night marathons hauling equipment in a van for some remote musical
gig. "...sending postcards/Writing letters on my wall" might be the need
to stay in touch with loved ones across the water when they were in
Hamburg (I don't think it's literally writing letters on the wall, but
rather using the wall as a makeshift desk).
It's arguable that these lyrics seem nostalgic about early, carefree
days with a companion, when funds were tight and nights were filled
with purposeless amusements like "burning matches" (remember the
legend where Paul was charged with attempting to set fire to a German
cinema?) "Lifting latches"---maybe the door to some hidden Hamburgian
pleasures? Awfully hard to say absolutely, but it's the way I've
always heard meaning in that part of the song. Of course I could
be stretching things a bit...but I've got a special license for
that. :-)
Now the last part seems to be to indicate the inevitable close of
a beautiful friendship. "Two of us wearing raincoats/Standing solo in
the sun...." (Is this a reference to John's treatise on precipitation?
"Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines/It's just a state
of mind...?") It would make sense then---or rather nonsense, like
John's paradox suggesting that one can "get a tan from standing
in the English rain"---to wear raincoats in the sun. But "standing
solo"---is the team broken? Is the partnership at an end?
The repetition of two fast friends "on our way home", to me, implies
a home for each, separate now for the first time in years...or like
in "Hey Jude", almost a musical act of permission to each seek his
own way in the world. But in doing so each brings the companionship
home to a final rest. Admittedly it's a much-needed rest. The two
of them had gone as far together as they could go. Or so it seemed
at the time. The composer may have felt that he had to bring the
pair to some kind of closure; otherwise the creative spirit in
both of them might never have moved onward.
Odd, then, isn't it, that more than two decades from the time
that compositional duo parted ways, their work while "standing
solo" remains eclipsed by their work as a team? Perhaps it's
not just the perception of hordes of stubborn acolytes like our
humble selves. Some partnerships---whether artistic or emotional,
platonic or romantic---were simply meant to be, and remain intact
beyond all illusions of homecoming.
--
"They are 'The Beatles', the smash hit, refuse-all-imitations,
Number One Group in the sensational Beat craze now devastating,
if not deafening, the British Isles."
------------------------------------- saki ([email protected])
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