tedglart
Many thanks for all of your responses, especially to Jolie Amethyst, who managed to confirm every single one of our worst fears, and thus save us a lot of work. We may print up a few decks for our own amusement, but essentially I think we can consider the project "indefinitely shelved".
Drawing slightly altered versions of the photo-collages is a practical option, but I think this deck is a rare case where photographs work better. After all, we "know" the Beatles through photographs. A drawn likeness somehow puts the image at a slight remove from the physical world, mythologising it perhaps, which doesn't seem appropriate treatment for living beings, especially 4 such grounded, humorous, working-class blokes. Who actually prefers the "Yellow Submarine" cartoon to the sight of our heroes eating sandwiches in "Hard Day's Night"? But the surrealistic blending of multiple images somehow helps the Fab Four escape some of the restrictions of dull quotidian reality. Gives it a slightly psychedelic feel too.
As for your questions about the organisation of the deck, I can only say that we approached each card with the coressponding Rider-Waite-Smith image in mind, sometimes to mirror it, often to ironically subvert some aspect of our beloved model. The music that makes up the sky on the Fool card is part of the actual sheet music of the song "Fool on the Hill" and the dog is Martha, Paul's sheepdog. There are dozens of photos of friends and lovers of the Beatles sprinkled throughout the deck and many references to important historical events in their lives. We had hoped to make the deck a virtual compendium of Beatle-lore and include a splendid companion book pointing out the details. The current version is a very basic prototype. Often the jokes are obscure linguistic puns. The Nine of Swords merely simplifies the geometrical shapes of the RWS card. We had hoped to create suggestive poetic links between our deck and the RWS rather make another clone. But admittedly in its current state some of the connections are too loose. Most people know the RWS meanings for each card and shouldn't have to work too hard to make sense of The Beatles Tarot on first acquaintance.
Please write to us again if you have any other ideas or questions.
Drawing slightly altered versions of the photo-collages is a practical option, but I think this deck is a rare case where photographs work better. After all, we "know" the Beatles through photographs. A drawn likeness somehow puts the image at a slight remove from the physical world, mythologising it perhaps, which doesn't seem appropriate treatment for living beings, especially 4 such grounded, humorous, working-class blokes. Who actually prefers the "Yellow Submarine" cartoon to the sight of our heroes eating sandwiches in "Hard Day's Night"? But the surrealistic blending of multiple images somehow helps the Fab Four escape some of the restrictions of dull quotidian reality. Gives it a slightly psychedelic feel too.
As for your questions about the organisation of the deck, I can only say that we approached each card with the coressponding Rider-Waite-Smith image in mind, sometimes to mirror it, often to ironically subvert some aspect of our beloved model. The music that makes up the sky on the Fool card is part of the actual sheet music of the song "Fool on the Hill" and the dog is Martha, Paul's sheepdog. There are dozens of photos of friends and lovers of the Beatles sprinkled throughout the deck and many references to important historical events in their lives. We had hoped to make the deck a virtual compendium of Beatle-lore and include a splendid companion book pointing out the details. The current version is a very basic prototype. Often the jokes are obscure linguistic puns. The Nine of Swords merely simplifies the geometrical shapes of the RWS card. We had hoped to create suggestive poetic links between our deck and the RWS rather make another clone. But admittedly in its current state some of the connections are too loose. Most people know the RWS meanings for each card and shouldn't have to work too hard to make sense of The Beatles Tarot on first acquaintance.
Please write to us again if you have any other ideas or questions.