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The writer is author of ‘John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs’
这位作家是《约翰与保罗：歌曲中的爱的故事》的作者。
On Monday, the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes took to a stage in Las Vegas to announce plans for a music biopic that will not see the light of day for three years. Had it been about almost any other act, it’s likely that this news would have gone unheralded beyond Mendes’ immediate audience of movie industry insiders. What happened in Vegas would have stayed in Vegas. But this wasn’t any other act — it was The Beatles. The coverage, therefore, has been feverish and unavoidable.
周一，奥斯卡获奖导演山姆•曼德斯(Sam Mendes)在拉斯维加斯(Las Vegas)的一个舞台上宣布了一部音乐传记片的计划，这部电影将在三年后才会面世。如果这部电影是关于其他任何一个乐队的，可能除了曼德斯的电影行业内部观众外，这个消息不会引起太多关注。发生在拉斯维加斯的事情也会留在拉斯维加斯。但这次不是其他乐队，而是披头士(The Beatles)。因此，相关报道热烈且不可避免。
Opinions have been aired, questions hotly asked. Four movies, one for each member of the group — how is that going to work, exactly? Will they tell the whole story or just part of it? Is Paul Mescal pretty enough to be the young Paul McCartney? Who will play Yoko?
观点已经被提出，问题被热烈地讨论。四部电影，每位乐队成员一部——这究竟会如何运作？它们会讲述整个故事还是仅仅一部分？保罗•梅斯卡尔(Paul Mescal)是否足够英俊来饰演年轻的保罗•麦卡特尼(Paul McCartney)？谁将扮演小野洋子？
Beneath this clear evidence of enduring appetite lies another question: why are we still talking about these guys? We are further away in time from the break-up of The Beatles than that moment was from the Treaty of Versailles. Since they parted ways, we’ve seen the fall of Saigon, the rise of hip-hop and Taylor Swift, the end of the cold war and the birth of the internet. We’ve moved from a world of rotary phones and smoke-filled offices to the climate crisis and artificial intelligence. The Beatles shouldn’t be relevant. Yet here we are.
在这种对持久兴趣的明确证据之下，另一个问题浮现：为什么我们仍在谈论这些人？我们距离披头士解散的时间，比他们解散时距离《凡尔赛条约》的时间还要久。自从他们分道扬镳以来，我们见证了西贡的沦陷、嘻哈音乐和泰勒•斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)的崛起、冷战的结束以及互联网的诞生。我们从一个使用旋转电话和烟雾缭绕的办公室的世界，走到了气候危机和人工智能的时代。披头士本不该再有相关性。然而，我们仍在这里讨论他们。
There are, of course, other acts we still listen to from the 1960s, but, with the possible exception of Bob Dylan, we are not nearly as fascinated by them. In our endlessly fragmented culture, there is something about John, Paul, George and Ringo that grips us. It’s not just the boomers or Gen Xers either. Having just published a book about the relationship between John and Paul, I can tell you some of its closest readers are teenagers on Tumblr and TikTok.
当然，我们仍然在听20世纪60年代的其他音乐家，但除了鲍勃•迪伦(Bob Dylan)之外，我们对他们并没有那么着迷。在我们无尽分裂的文化中，约翰、保罗、乔治和林戈身上有某种东西深深吸引着我们。这不仅仅是婴儿潮一代或X世代的感受。我刚刚出版了一本关于约翰和保罗关系的书，我可以告诉你，其中一些最投入的读者是Tumblr和TikTok上的青少年。
I see two major reasons. First, and at the risk of provoking disagreement, The Beatles were just better at making music. They produced a body of work so various, so capacious in its emotional and sonic span, so complex and yet so damn catchy, that talking about them in the same breath as the Rolling Stones is akin to debating how Shakespeare compares to Marlowe or Jonson — interesting on one level but on another, completely missing the point.
我看到两个主要原因。首先，冒着引发争议的风险，披头士在音乐创作上确实更胜一筹。他们创作了一系列作品，其情感和声音的跨度如此多样、如此广阔，复杂却又如此吸引人，以至于将他们与滚石乐队(Rolling Stones)相提并论，就像是在讨论莎士比亚与马洛或琼森的比较——在某种程度上有趣，但在另一个层面上完全偏离了重点。
Second, the story of The Beatles is miraculous and irresistible. It’s the late 1950s and pop music is almost exclusively an American export, but two improbably gifted teenagers from Liverpool have the nerve to imagine they can take this music, make it their own and become more famous than Elvis Presley. John and Paul recruit the perfect fellow conspirators — a friend from school who plays guitar and shares their sense of humour; a drummer with an intuitive sympathy for what they’re trying to achieve; a local businessman with an artist’s soul who persuades a maverick London record producer to take them on. And they pull it off.
其次，披头士的故事是神奇而不可抗拒的。那是20世纪50年代末，流行音乐几乎完全是美国的出口产品，但来自利物浦的两个天赋异禀的少年竟然有勇气想象他们可以接过这种音乐，将其变成自己的，并比“猫王”埃尔维斯•普雷斯利(Elvis Presley)更出名。约翰和保罗招募了完美的同伴——一位会弹吉他并与他们分享幽默感的校友；一位对他们想要实现的目标有直觉共鸣的鼓手；一位具有艺术家灵魂的当地商人，他说服了一位特立独行的伦敦唱片制作人接纳他们。最终，他们成功了。
Not content with this wild success, they then move through several different musical incarnations, inventing modern pop and rock, and at warp speed. In 1964 they play “I Want To Hold Your Hand” on The Ed Sullivan Show; two years later they release “Tomorrow Never Knows”, a psychedelic trip in aural form, and the world’s mind is blown.
他们并不满足于这一巨大的成功，随后以极快的速度经历了几次不同的音乐变革，发明了现代流行音乐和摇滚乐。1964年，他们在《埃德•沙利文秀》(The Ed Sullivan Show)上演奏了《I Want To Hold Your Hand》；两年后，他们发布了《Tomorrow Never Knows》，这是一场听觉上的迷幻之旅，震撼了全世界。
Not only that, but each of them is a compelling character in their own right, with loving but knotty feelings about each other. At the end of the decade, The Beatles make one last album. Then, after seven years, the band splits, leaving behind a permanently changed world. End of story.
不仅如此，他们每个人本身都是引人入胜的角色，对彼此怀有爱意但又复杂的感情。在十年结束时，披头士制作了最后一张专辑。然后，经过七年，乐队解散，留下一个永久改变的世界。故事到此为止。
But of course, it’s not the end. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have asked whether we need more books — or more movies — about The Beatles. Perhaps it’s time to put that question aside. If anything of our civilisation is remembered in a thousand years’ time, there’s a good bet it will be the chorus of “Hey Jude” and an image of four men crossing Abbey Road in single file. Believe me: we’re only at the beginning.
但当然，这并不是结束。我已经数不清有多少次人们问我们是否还需要更多关于披头士的书籍或电影。也许是时候把这个问题放在一边了。如果我们的文明在一千年后仍被记住，很可能会是《Hey Jude》的合唱和四个男人单行穿过艾比路的画面。相信我：我们才刚刚开始。