The Beatles At The ABC Cinema In Huddersfield, 29th November 1963 - Part 3 (part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part

On a cold day in February of 1964, the Beatles made what may have been their only visit together to the National Mall. Fresh off their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Fab Four couldn't fly down from New York City due to eight inches of snow that fell on the nation’s capital and they were forced to take a train to Washington, D.C. Met by enthusiastic fans at Union Station, John, Paul, George, and Ringo made a brief stop on the Mall for a quick photo-op before going to their hotel. Photographer Dennis Brack captured this picture of them near 4th Street. The British rockers played a show that night at the Washington Coliseum - their first ever U.S. concert.

Even though John is under-powered in this period we still see what made him so magnetic to Paul and to others around him. There is a scene early in Part Two that I find riveting. It takes place a couple of days after George has left. The status of everything - the project, the band - remains uncertain, but they are ploughing on for now. John, Yoko, Ringo, Paul and some of the crew are sitting in a semi-circle. Paul looks pensive. Ringo looks tired. John is speaking only in deadpan comic riffs, to which Paul responds now and again. Peter Sellers comes in and sits down, looks ill-at-ease, and leaves having barely said a word, unable to penetrate the Beatle bubble. At some point they’re joined by Lindsay-Hogg, and the conversation dribbles on. John mentions that he had to leave an interview that morning in order to throw up (he and Yoko had taken heroin the night before). Paul, looking into space rather than addressing anyone in particular, attempts to turn the conversation towards what they’re meant to be doing:

Paul: See, what we need is a serious program of work. Not an endless rambling among the canyons of your mind.

John: Take me on that trip upon that golden ship of shores… We’re all together, boy.

Paul: To wander aimlessly is very unswinging. Unhip.

John: And when I touch you, I feel happy inside. I can’t hide, I can’t hide. [pause] Ask me why, I’ll say I love you.

Paul: What we need is a schedule.

John: A garden schedule.

I mean first of all, who is writing this incredible dialogue? Samuel Beckett?

Let’s break it down a little. The first thing to note is that John and Paul are talking to each other without talking to each other. This is partly because they’re aware of the cameras and also because they’re just not sure how to communicate with each other at the moment. John’s contributions are oblique, gnomic, riddling, comprised only of songs and jokes, like the Fool in King Lear. Take me on that trip upon that golden ship of shores sounds like a Lennonised version of a line from Dylan’s Tambourine Man (“take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship”). “We’re altogether, boy”? I have no idea. Does Paul? I think John expects Paul to understand him because he has such faith in what they used to call their “heightened awareness”, a dreamlike, automatic connection to each other’s minds. But right now, Paul is not much in the mood for it. His speech is more direct, though he too adopts a quasi-poetic mode (“canyons of your mind” is borrowed from a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) and he can’t bring himself to make eye contact. “To wander aimlessly is very unswinging,” he says (another great line, I will pin it above my writing desk). Then John does something amazing: he starts talking in Beatle, dropping in lyrics from the early years of the band, I Want To Hold Your Hand and Ask Me Why. (To appreciate John’s response to Paul’s mention of a schedule, American readers may need reminding that English people pronounce it “shed - dule”.)

What’s going on throughout this exchange? Maybe Lennon is just filling dead air, or playing to the gallery, but I think he is (also) attempting to communicate to Paul in their shared code - something like he loves him, he loves The Beatles, they’re still in this together. Of course, we can’t know. I can’t hide, John says, hiding behind his wordplay.

— Ian Leslie, "The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson's Get Back" (January 26, 2022).

[I was curious to read more of Ian Leslie's approach to the Beatles in general and Lennon-McCartney in particular, since he's currently writing a book about John and Paul's relationship: “John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs". He's also the author of that New York Times opinion piece that came out today.]

Robert Fraser’s interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need is Love

Some highlights:

Robert Fraser: Peter Asher was Jane’s brother. I think he brought Paul over to my place. He made me sorry because he saw a sculpture in my apartment and said, “I want that.” It was quite a lot of money for those days, it was like 2,500 quid. Paul never asked the price until he decided to buy something. If he liked it, he wanted it.

Steven Gaines: I guess they didn’t have to think about the price

Robert Fraser: No, but most people, even if they don’t have to think about it, they want to know the price. Paul was very, very open-minded, but he was also more…Well, John was too, but I mean John was sort of very difficult to…He was more difficult to…He was very shy in a way, and it comes out in an aggressive way.

Steven Gaines: It’s an odd decision Paul made to live at his girlfriend’s home with her parents.

Robert Fraser: Paul was a very domestic sort of personality. He liked the idea.

Peter Brown: I didn’t think twice about it, but looking back on it now, it was pretty ahead of its time to move in with your girlfriend’s family.

Robert Fraser: Even now, he’s done exactly what he wants. He’s not really like…He never really lived a rock star’s life.

hello!! hows the comic going? :) the color palette on the first few pages looks IMMACULATE im gonna eat ur art on a sliver platter

Hi!!! Thank you so much!

I’m actually quite close to finishing it, but as always I got second thoughts about literally every page on it so far. So I’m just taking some time off it :D My whole style changes throughout pages and that’s something I don’t like- but what’s done is done I guess. It’s just a silly smutty comic really that’s what I’m trying to remind myself daily :D here are some panels tho! Since my last semester is starting, I don’t know if i’ll have any time to continue this :((( but I’ll link my AO3 here soon!!

Paul calling George Martin “Daddy”

Joan Baez performing I Never Will Marry, c. 1958

Teddy boy Paulie ❤️

"Well, believe it or don't, I don't really care what you believe. What I do care about is that the one outlet that I had has been taken from me, and that is no fun. I'm not really mad at her [Yoko], you know. I want to yell at her because I'm still popular, and I can't do anything about it. Sound funny? Look!" He held up an envelope. "This is from Francis Coppola. He wants me to do a score for a film he's working on. He says, 'I'm living in a volcano and it's wonderful. Wish you were here. Want to work on a movie?' Here's another one. Frank Perry wants a little Lennon touch on his Time and Time Again. It's a time-travel movie. Just my thing, right? But I don't have any music in me. Here's a guy who wants an interview, but I don't have anything to say. I got three offers here to perform, one to produce, and a million letters that just want to know how I'm doin'. That's popularity. And I don't have anything to give them, so I have to write back nice polite letters saying ‘Thanks but no thanks' because on the off chance I ever do get out of this slump or block or whatever it is, if I ever do get the muse back, then I'm gonna need all these people. "So, you know what I say? I tell them that bit you and Yoko thought up for the Immigration press last year. I tell them that I'm fully employed minding the baby and playing househusband. Now that lie is getting a little stale. People have to wonder, don't they? I'm a bit surprised no one has caught on yet. 'He's got a maid, and a nanny, and a cook, and gofers, I wonder what it is that keeps him so busy?' But the public will believe what the public wants to believe. So I'm a househusband. And it galls the hell out of me to turn down offers that I'm dying to accept and am incapable of fulfilling."

John Lennon talking about losing his muse, as told by John Green in Dakota Days (1983)

George Harrison on Let It Be, in an interview for Entertainment Tonight and WEA (taped on 22 September 1987; interview conducted by Laura Gross). No infringement intended, footage is copyrights its respective owner(s).

A look back at how George viewed the movie and The Beatles’ break-up in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; and Dhani on the same subject in November 2021.

“[T]he group had problems long before Yoko came along. Many problems, folks.” - George Harrison, The Dick Cavett Show, 23 November 1971

“When you’re so close, you tend to lock each other up in pigeonholes. Musically, with Ringo and John I had no problem. But with Paul, well, it reached a point when he wouldn’t let me play on sessions. It was part of our splitting up. But at the same time I have a tendency to defend Paul — John and Ringo too — if anyone else said anything without qualification about them. After going through all that together, there must be something good about it. It’s just that around 1968 everyone’s egos started going crazy. Maybe it was just a lack of tact or discretion. Probably the biggest problem of them all was that there was no way Yoko Ono or Linda McCartney was going to be in The Beatles. That really helped put the nail in the coffin. That’s said without any bitterness against Yoko and Linda, because I can really enjoy them as people, but, let’s face it, The Beatles were not with Yoko or Linda. I suppose it was a result of Yoko being an outsider, coming in… and John was pushing her… and she had such a strong ego anyway. Then Paul got Linda to get his own back.” - George Harrison, NME, 11 December 1976

“[Let It Be] was really supposed to be us rehearsing to make a record and they were just filming the rehearsals, and that turned into the movie, you know, Let It Rot (laughs), as The Rutles called it. That, you know, I didn’t like. There’s scenes in it, like on the roof, that was quite good, and there were bits and pieces that’s okay, but most of it just makes me so aggravated that I can’t watch it. Because it was a particularly bad experience that we were having at that time, and… it’s bad enough when you’re having it, let alone having it filmed and recorded so that you’ve got to watch it for the rest of your life. I don’t like it.” - George Harrison, interview for Entertainment Tonight, taped 22 September 1987 (x)

Gerge Harrison: “At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself. He was so on a roll — but it was a roll encompassing his own self. And in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings. Having said that, when it came time to do the occasional song of mine — although it was difficult to get to that point — Paul would always be really creative with what he’d contribute. For instance, that galloping piano part on While My Guitar Gently Weeps was Paul’s, and it’s brilliant right to this day. On the Live In Japan album, I got our keyboardist to play it note for note. And you just have to listen to the bass line on Something to know that, when he wanted to, Paul could give a lot. But, you know, there was a time there when…” Q: “I think it’s called being human — and young.” GH: “It is… [sighs] It really is.” - interview conducted in 1992; Guitar World, January 2001

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