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Tonight Phoebe selected a new show to watch on Netflix called
Beat Bugs. I was surprised when the opening song to the programme was “All You Need Is Love†by the Beatles. Not only must that have cost a fortune to procure, but it was of course the song that Phoebe does her nude interpretative dance to. I started to sing along but Phoebe shouted at me that it was her song. I think the Beatles might have to say something about that. But maybe not: they (or the people who own the music now) seem happy to sell it to the highest bidder.
It turned out that the premise of the show is Beatles music being used to create stories based around some anthropomorphised insects, so the show seems to potentially include the whole of the Beatles back catalogue (plus the songs are often performed by big stars like Pink, Sia, Robbie Williams and -hold on-James Corden). There's clearly been a lot of time and money spent on this thing - and I remember the Beatles had a cash-in cartoon of their own back in the day - but it made me feel uneasy. Would John Lennon have been happy about his songs being put into the mouths of slightly annoying insects? And rewritten or at least edited down to fit into stories about insects trapped in jam jars? Who knows?
It's good, I suppose, that this music is coming to a new generation and I think it's likely that these songs will be known for centuries and be reinterpreted again and again over this time. And artist loses control over their art once it has been released into the ether. How would Charles Dickens feel about the Muppet Christmas Carol (once he'd got his head around the technology that produced it). I suspect he might well have found it frivolous and insulting, but you're wrong, my imagined version of Dickens - it's better than your original book.
The insect version of “I am the Walrus†expunged the stuff about the pornographic priestess taking her knickers down, but fair play, did include the line about getting a tan in the English rain.
But I was mainly thinking about how much this thing must have cost and how little control a creative person ultimately has over his or her creations. Maybe the 40 year old John Lennon would have loved this if he'd seen it. Maybe the nearly 80 year old John Lennon might have done, had he lived. Perhaps the 25 year old Lennon'd just be blown away to know that his music was still relevant in 50 or 60 years time. But maybe not if you only told him about the cartoon.
Phoebe loved the show anyway. So that's probably the only review the makers of the programme require.
