“Yer Blues”: a parody? Really? | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I just finished re-reading Lennon Remembers and he said in the interview that is was a parody of (as Oudis posted above):

the British blues boom of 1968 and the debate among the music press at the time of whether white men could sing the blues.

I get the feeling that while the song itself is not a parody, John’s idea behind it was. Personally, I love the song and it is in my top 10 to 15 Beatles songs. It rocks.

Myself, I think there is a basic misunderstanding of John’s use of the word “parody” in this circumstance. I don’t believe he was suggesting it was intended to be either humorous or satirical, just that he was looking for a way into recording the song in the way that an actor might search for a way into a role that they doubt they can pull off if they go for their usual way of thinking about a role.

It’s worth taking a look at the exchange between John and Jann Wenner on the subject during the 8 December 1970 Rolling Stone interview:

JL: All these songs [Plastic Ono Band] just came out of me. … They all came out, like all the best work that anybody ever does. Whether it is an article or what, it’s just the best ones that come out, and all these came out, because I had time. If you are on holiday or in therapy, wherever you are, if you do spend time… like in India I wrote the last batch of best songs, like I’m So Tired and Yer Blues . They’re pretty realistic, they were about me. They always struck me as — what is the word? Funny? Ironic? — that I was writing them supposedly in the presence of guru and meditating so many hours a day, writing I’m So Tired and songs of such pain as Yer Blues which I meant. I was right in the Maharishi’s camp writing “I wanna die…”

JW: Yer Blues , was that also deliberately meant to be a parody of the English blues scene?

JL: Well, a bit. I’m a bit self-conscious — we all were a bit self-conscious and the Beatles were super self-conscious people about parody of Americans which we do and have done.

I know we developed our own style but we still in a way parodied American music… this is interesting: in the early days in England, all the groups were like Elvis and a backing group, and the Beatles deliberately didn’t move like Elvis. That was our policy because we found it stupid and bullshit. Then Mick Jagger came out and resurrected “bullshit movement,” wiggling your arse. So then people began to say the Beatles were passé because they don’t move. But we did it as a conscious move.

When we were younger, we used to move, we used to jump around and do all the things they’re doing now, like going on stage with toilet seats and shitting and pissing. That’s what we were doing in Hamburg and smashing things up. It wasn’t a thing that Pete Townshend worked out, it is something that you do when you play six or seven hours. There is nothing else to do: you smash the place up, and you insult everybody. But we were groomed and we dropped all of that and whatever it was that we started off talking about, which was what singing…what was it? What was the beginning of that?

JW: Was Yer Blues deliberate?

JL: Yes, there was a self-consciousness about singing blues. We were all listening to Sleepy John Estes and all that in art school, like everybody else. But to sing it was something else. I’m self conscious about doing it.

I think Dylan does it well, you know. In case he’s not sure of himself, he makes it double entendre. So therefore he is secure in his Hipness. Paul was saying, “Don’t call it Yer Blues , just say it straight.” But I was self-conscious and I went for Yer Blues . I think all that has passed now, because all the musicians… we’ve all gotten over it. That’s self-consciousness.

To me, here’s how I read his comment. He’s suggesting that he felt his environment and background prevented him from being an “authentic” blues singer, or from approaching recording the song as if he was one. He’s admitting that he remained unconvinced that art-school/university educated middle-class white boys from the English suburbs (which is true for many of those involved in the “British blues boom”) could ever be considered as authentic. However authentic they themselves may have believed themselves to be, he couldn’t see it as anything more than unauthentic imitation by those who were fooling themselves into believing they were the “real deal”.

That, I believe, is the nature of his “parody”. He’s not really convinced white boys (with the possible exception of Dylan) can sing the blues, especially English ones, and he found himself with a blues song to record. Not believing that someone like him was capable of creating an authentic blues, and that he was too self-conscious to try, he needed to find another way into the recording to make it work. While he couldn’t convince himself he could do an authentic blues, he could happily “parody”/ape the approach, style and sound of those English boys who believed that they were authentic.

In many ways it’s him turning around and saying, “White boys can’t sing the blues, so here’s my take on those white boys who think they can…”

I don’t believe the parody element ever came into the writing of the song, or what he was saying, but rather in his approach to how he got it on tape – in that he did a sincere imitation of what he considered to be unauthentic imitation of the real deal.

Does that make any sort of sense?

I’d also like to address this comment:

@Oyster Black Pearl said
[John was] not that much of a fan of the Blues (I think it’s fair to say like others he saw it as going over old ground and lacking creativity)…

John was, and always remained, a huge fan of the blues. He never had any of the disdain for it as he often expressed for jazz, and always saw himself as coming from the blues tradition, and that everything he did was based on the blues. In fact, in the same 1970 interview, he gave my favourite ever quote about “What is the blues?”.

JW: You feel basically the same way about rock and roll at 30 as you did at 15.

JL: Well, it will never be as new and it will never again do what it did to me then, but like Tutti Fruitti or Long Tall Sally is pretty avant garde. A friend of Yoko’s in the village was talking about Dylan and “the One Note” as though he just discovered it. That’s about as far out as you can get.

The Blues are beautiful because it’s simpler and because it’s real. It’s not perverted or thought about: It’s not a concept, it is a chair; not a design for a chair but the first chair. The chair is for sitting on, not for looking at or being appreciated. You sit on that music.

JW: How would you describe “Beatle music”?

JL: It means a lot of things. There is not one thing that’s Beatle music. How can they talk about it like that? What is Beatle music? Walrus or Penny Lane ? Which? It’s too diverse: I Want To Hold Your Hand or Revolution Number Nine?

JW: What was it in your music that turned everyone on at first? Why was it so infectious?

JL: We didn’t sound like everybody else. We didn’t sound like the black musicians because we weren’t black and we were brought up on an entirely different type of music and atmosphere. So Please Please Me and From Me To You and all of those were our version of the chair. We were building our own chairs, that’s all, and they were sort of local chairs.

The line I’ve bolded shows John’s deep admiration for, and debt to, the blues. It has to be remembered that much of his beloved “Rock ‘N’ Roll ” was made up of artists that had been considered as (rhythm and) blues performers until the new label was thought up.