By The Landlord
Robin: Holy smoke! I want a car, chicks dig the car.
Batman: This is why Superman works alone. – Batman and Robin (1997)
Eric: Remember how we copied Abbott and Costello when we started? How we liked Laurel and Hardy, and Jewel and Warriss?
Ernie: We must be a mix of all of them. Yet, pal, we’ve found our own style. We lean on each other.
Eric: Is that what it is? I thought you were drunk… – Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise
Clyde: This here’s Miss Bonnie Parker. I’m Clyde Barrow. We rob banks.
Bonnie: When we started out… I thought we were really going somewhere. But this is it. We’re just going. – Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
“The way I always used to write with John was either in a hotel bedroom on the twin beds, with an acoustic guitar and we're just looking at each other. He'd make up something, I'd make up something and we'd just spin off each other. Him being right-handed, me being left-handed, it felt to me like I was looking in a mirror.” – Paul McCartney
“Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.” – John Lennon
Hello. Two’s company? This week we summon the magic of the pair, where two sets of hemispheres combine their share. They multiply the sums of their singular parts, in mysterious alchemy to conjure their chemistry – and arts.
Essentially though, the topic is songs where famous couples or duos creative or romantic, adventurous or anarchic, real or fictional, get a prominent lyrical or titular appearance in a song, but ideally where they are the primary focus rather just a passing mention.
So it should be topic of wide entertainment and colour. But it must take two, whether magenta and cyan combine to make blue, it takes two to tango, or the goal is the old one-two.
But in doing so, ideally let’s also look for songs that capture the magic of famous pairs. How does it all work? What are the traits? What is this strange symbiosis, that mutually feeds and hydrates?
Is it best when they’re different, or two of a kind? Twins are fascinating, but perhaps more potent are when contrasting characters are combined.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
So what kind of famous duos might come up and what role do they play in a song? Do they represent harmony in friendship, or perfect romance, or fire-and-ice destruction and chaos? Brilliant comedy and creativity, glamour, or total tragedy? Are they glamorously doomed? Bonnie and Clyde, Ike and Tina, Richard and Elizabeth, or Romeo and Juliet?
Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1997)
Might they capture a particular era or reflect a culture of the times, to colour, to create setting, a time, a flavour or just a clever, or a criminal rhyme?
Are they as bad or as good as each other? A silly but empathetic Laurel and Hardy, an odd couple like Felix and Oscar, a comic and straight man like Abbott and Costello, or a dodgy pair of stereotypes, like Amos ’N’ Andy? Are they so inseparable, like Morecambe and Wise, that when one goes, the other also sadly dies?
Morecambe and Wise
But while they are very much from another era, let’s go back to go forward. It’s impossible to underestimate the extraordinary influence of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, who conquered the world with their down-at-heel oddball, inseparable friendship, cheering up the world in the Depression era, setting a blueprint for duos in comedy, music and much more for another hundred years. Here’s an example where they multiplied their dynamic in a rather surreal way:
Ollie: If you brats don't get to bed, I'll break your necks!
Stan: Shh... Don't talk to them like that. Treat them with kindness. You'll get more out of them. Remember the old adage, you can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead! (Brats, 1930)
Or where fine mess they got into is expressed musically:
Woman: About how much money do you boys average a street?
Ollie: I would say about fifty cents a street.
Woman: There's a dollar. Move down a couple of streets. (Below Zero, 1930)
Or, in a moment of fabulous joy, with a spontaneous, silly, surreal dance:
Way Out West (1937)
Laurel and Hardy were similar, but strikingly different, but is it their contrasting appearance as much as their characters, that added to the their appeal? Or can extremely similar looking types who enhance each other, like Bert and Ernie, or Stadtler and Waldorf, have some kind of role in song lyrics, and is it their look, or their combined characters that play a role?
Might they be extremely contrasting in thought and style, but also represent do-anything-for-you-type friendship, like Thelma and Louise, Holmes and Watson, Kirk and Spock, or C-3PO and R2-D2?
In some duos, traditional roles are inverted, such as where grandson Morty is nervous, moral and sensible, but grandad Rick is outrageously clever and naughty?
Or could they be mentioned to capture a thoroughly twisted, violently sadistic relationship, like Tom and Jerry, or Itchy and Scratchy?
Or a strangely off-beat comedy, homoerotic friendship like Batman and Robin?
Batman and Robin (1997)
The more colourful, complex and nuanced the better, perhaps. Songwriters will use reference to a duo of famous couple to perhaps reflect whatever pairing they have in their lives, including of course, their own songwriting or other forms of relationships. Talking of which, the most famous of all, provided that love-hate potency by their insatiable need for each other, to write, but also contrast, but the creative process could also be telepathic.
Geoff Emerick, who worked as the principal sound engineer for EMI at Abbey Road, observed just how different Lennon and McCartney were in their working styles, each also with a complex array of contradictions:
“Paul was meticulous and organised: he always carried a notebook around with him, in which he methodically wrote down lyrics and chord changes in his neat handwriting. In contrast, John seemed to live in chaos: he was constantly searching for scraps of paper that he’d hurriedly scribbled ideas on. Paul was a natural communicator; John couldn’t articulate his ideas well. Paul was the diplomat; John was the agitator. Paul was soft-spoken and almost unfailingly polite; John could be a right loudmouth and quite rude. Paul was willing to put in long hours to get a part right; John was impatient, always ready to move on to the next thing. Paul usually knew exactly what he wanted and would often take offence at criticism; John was much more thick-skinned and was open to hearing what others had to say. In fact, unless he felt especially strongly about something, he was usually amenable to change.”
Joint editors: John and Paul
But it’s John first wife, Cynthia, who perhaps sums up the differences of music’s ultimate songwriting pair most succinctly: “John needed Paul’s attention to detail and persistence. Paul needed John’s anarchic, lateral thinking.”
So then, two is our company, and it’s time to summon up your own odd, or perfect couple reference in song, no double also using lots of imagination, detail, persistence, and much lateral thought.
Bringing these duos together into no doubt perfect playlists of pairs, let’s welcome back the all-seeing and -hearing eyes and ears of Uncleben to the chair! Please place your selections in the comment boxes below for deadline at 11pm UK time on Monday, for playlists published next week.
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