From: nahigian@athena.mit.edu (Gabriel H Nahigian)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles
Subject: Re: "Two Of Us"
Date: 10 Oct 92 23:04:56 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <1992Oct9.215148.18546@leland.Stanford.EDU>, raindrop@leland.Stanford.EDU (Nathaniel Michael Pearson) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct2.205853.24961@midway.uchicago.edu> dlm3@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
|> >In a recent article, mcodogno@nyx.cs.du.edu (Maurizio Codogno) suggests:
|> >
|> >>Could someone tell me whether "The Two of Us"
|> >>is indeed a song about the good old times when Paul & John
|> >>were not so angry at each other? (You and I have memories...)
|> [lots omitted]
|> >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.
|> >
|> >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?
|>  
|> Along the lines of Paul's allusion to earlier songs, the "Sunday driving" line
|> reminds me explicitly of "Day Tripper":  "a Sunday driver, yeah..."  Could
|> both of these refer to an even more cryptic inside joke?  People often mention
|> "Day Tripper" (for some obvious reasons) as one of John's earliest musical 
|> experiments in pun and double-entendre.
|> 
|> >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 f permission to each seek his
|> >own way in the world. But in doing so each brings the companionship
|> >home to a final rest.
|> >-- 
|> >"The Lana Sisters, clad in pink, added a welcome feminine flavour.
|> >'Much better than those Beatles' I heard one gentleman remark."
|> >------------------------------------------------------------------
|> >saki (dmac@math.ucla.edu---despite appearances to the contrary)
|> 
|> 	The title, too, strikes me an indication of deeper meaning.  "Two of
|> us" implies that there are more of "us" (four, maybe?)  Paul could have called
|> it "Us", "Just us," "You and Me" (used in the lyric) or a myriad of other
|> things which might have changed his phrasing but not the surface message of the
|> song.  Yet he chose a title which explicitly implies that not everyone 
|> involved in the singer's life is directly mentioned.  
|> 	Overall, "Two of Us" fits as one of the final compositions in a string
|> of McCartney songs of reconciliation, homecoming, rest -- even redemption.  
|> Hey Jude, Let It Be, Get Back, Golden Slumbers, The End:  all contain the same
|> cadence of resolution, the same inevitable direction toward a reunion with the
|> good and familiar.  You're right, Saki; "Two of Us" may be the most bittersweet
|> of all these reconciliations -- Paul's final farewell to a union he couldn't 
|> save.  
|> 
|> 				Nat Pearson
|> 				raindrop@leland.stanford.edu

     Actually, "Two of Us" is supposed to be about Linda Eastman McCartney.

Gabe (nahigian@athena.mit.edu)
     "Do you speak French?"
     "Non."