2003: The Quarrymen Have Conflicting Hazy Memories On What Happened The Day John And Paul First Met.

Gorgeous

This is just too much for me.

The Beatles | 1965 © Robert Whitaker

George and Paul / Hamburg. 1960

Good lord this man is gorgeous

You were only waiting for this moment to arrive...

Paul gazing at John in the Beatles’ Rain music video

Mirabelle: George Harrison tells his own life story. (October, 1963)

Hi girls, George Harrison here, lead guitar.

I’m not taking any notice of course, but the other three are skipping around the room, saying, “Hi girls! George Harrison here, lead guitar.” Well, I’ve got to introduce myself some way, haven’t I? 

One thing about us Beatles is that we’re just as nutty now as we ever were. Our chart success hasn’t changed us, thank goodness. I remember the first time I ever met Paul was on the bus home from school. He was sitting laughing to himself. I thought, “We’ve a right case here,” and then I realised he could see his own reflection in the window. Well, I thought, that explains it!

John, I recall, was eating fish and chips, but his hair being so long kept getting in the way! Ringo, who I met in a club, looked moody. Then when we started talking he explained he’d been talking hard and the effort was too much for him. He can’t help it, poor lad.

I was never officially introduced to myself. In accordance with the natural custom I was born, at the time being fairly small (about twenty inches long). My mother insists that I was brought into the world singing and playing a guitar, but I think she’s joking.

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Get Back Narrative

I’ve received a couple of asks seeking clarification regarding my earlier post about how the Get Back documentary was redefining the Beatle narrative.

I’ll try to summarize. 

1. Media articles like this, this and this regarding Ono’s presence. While it’s obvious that the band was heading toward dissolution with or without Ono’s presence, Ono’s continued presence in the studio, her unsolicited participation in band business (no, she didn’t just sit there and read, as some would claim), and her willingness to speak on John’s behalf is hardly exculpatory. Even Time magazine, which at least attempted a more considered analysis of the Beatle break-up era, claimed, after watching Get Back, that ‘Yoko’s presence was not a huge negative factor, and that none of the band members appear much bothered by her constant presence; they joke and talk with her comfortably”.  This is a shocking claim, given that a) the documentary clearly depicts the deleterious effect of Yoko’s presence upon band members during the failed meeting at George’s house, and b) George, Paul, and Ringo have all gone on record regarding their discomfort in Ono’s presence and the disruptive nature of her involvement in band business. 

(As an aside, I would also like to know in what workplace, no matter how creative or unorthodox, it would be acceptable to bring your lover or spouse to work everyday and insist that the presence of that person was absolutely benign.)  

2. The exclusion of information which would provide context to behaviour, such as John and Yoko’s heroin addiction. “By the advent of the “Get Back” sessions, Ono openly joked about taking heroin being the couple’s form of exercise”).  This was excluded in the Get Back documentary and, as a consequence, from mainstream media. Obviously the inclusion of this information would more accurately contexualize John’s behaviour in the band, including his insistence on Yoko’s presence.  

Another compelling piece of information that was not included in the documentary was that Patti Harrison briefly left George around the time of George’s departure from the band.  Since there was no mention of this event during filming, Peter Jackson decided not to share it, claiming he didn’t want to make any “moral judgements.” To whatever extent his brief estrangement from Patti affected George’s judgement we’ll never know (George didn’t even mention it in his diary of that day), but its exclusion in the documentary is regrettable. 

3.  Editorial Choices by the filmmaker.  Peter Jackson has gone on record that he was not influenced by Ringo or Paul, and nor by Olivia or Yoko at any point in the making of the Get Back Documentary. And there’s no reason not to believe him.  But:  the Get Back documentary reflects his editorial choices–what he believed was important to leave in, and what he believed was acceptable to leave out.  As Erin Torkelson Weber indicated in this earlier post, “the reality is that, without unrestricted access to the hundreds of hours of actual audio and visual tapes Hogg and Jackson used to make their films, fans are still being offered only someone else’s interpretation/vision/translation of the primary source material…so we have to rely on evidence that has already been framed and filtered.” 

And that reality–that we are watching someone’s else’s version of the truth, has escaped mainstream media and a certain cohort of Beatle fans who either find the Get Back version of the Beatle break-up era more commensurate with their own beliefs, or simply don’t know any better. 

I never realized John joined Paul on the stairs. I thought John had left by then. Good show of support.

John Lennon & Paul McCartney at the British Embassy after their concert in Washington, DC | 11 February 1964 © Fred Ward

Such a joker

Paul: a comedic genius