The Man Had Some Chutzpah (with Good Reason) To Get Up There And Conduct An Orchestra. Symphony Musicians

Scary!

When the band was out drinking one evening in a nightclub [during the 1972 European tour], things turned disturbingly nasty. A young man in a green jacket sidled up to Paul and calmly informed the ex-Beatle that he had a revolver in his pocket and planned to kill him. Having coolly revealed this threat to McCartney, the youth swaggered over to the bar and stood there staring and grinning at the singer. McCullough and Laine arrived not long afterward. McCartney, clearly shaken, whispered to his bandmates, telling them what had just happened and gesturing toward the stranger. The guitarists, particularly the streetwise McCullough, who had begun his musical career as a showband player in the rough Northern Irish dance halls of the early 1960s, quickly took control of the situation. Pulling a knife out of his boot, and with Laine in tow, he wandered over to the bar. The pair flanked the now flustered wannabe thug, who began to protest his innocence, claiming it had all been a misunderstood joke. Laine and McCullough quickly wrestled him to the floor and searched him, producing no weapon. As soon as they let him go, the youth scrambled to his feet and took off into the night. In McCullough’s opinion, it was “one of those incidents that happens a thousand times on a Saturday night in any given city. I felt very protective of Paul because of his vulnerability. … He needed a strong helping hand from whoever was around him.”

[—from Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, Tom Doyle]

Title: Arrow Through Me

Summary: This is a look at what might have happened to the band, and especially John and Paul, if Paul had come to the conclusion before he met John that he wasn't straight. This fic tells the story of the band with that new context, and therefore it will diverge from the events as we know them.

Notes: Just so you all know, this is complete and being posted weekly.

Thank you to @merseydreams for beta reading this and being a generally wonderful human being.

Here's chapter one. Let me know what you think.

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. 

Why is nobody talking about "With a Little Luck" in the context of McLennon?

I watched docuseries about the music of Lennon and McCartney in the period 1973-1980 (I recommend it, lots of interesting information, although these "experts" are irritating) recently. The authors showed Wings performing "With a Little Luck" and I thought about this lovely song. The dynamics of John and Paul in the 1970s is very complex and complicated, but one thing is for sure: they wanted to write songs together again, but there was still something in the way. Paul said in 1974 that he has already received a Green Card so he is eager to write with John again. There's a quote from Linda: "Paul wanted desperately to write with John again". Lennon also considered reunion from at least 1974. He asked several people (May Pang, Art Grafunkel, Tony King) if he should do this. In 1975, McCartney invited him to New Orleans, where he recorded "Venus and Mars". John was going there but he didn't make it because Yoko let him go home after a "lost weekend". Why did John and Paul's urge to create songs again fail? There were certainly many factors: Lennon's insecurity and his feeling that he would turn out to be a worse songwriter than McCartney, especially since McCartney had been doing better commercially since 1973; his fear that Paul wants his humiliation; Apple-related business issues still unresolved; Yoko, who clearly limited John and Paul's contacts in the 1970s; and the fear of both guys that such a reunion would cause media pressure to get the Beatles back together, and I think they didn't want to (side note: my speculation is that the only Beatle who would want it was Ringo; John, Paul and George wanted to be seen as independent artists who could be successful in their own right). However, both John and Paul wanted to get back into their partnership (after all, John even had rented a studio in 1980 where he and Paul would work together on Ringo's album but his death stopped these plans). And Paul is an optimist. So I'm pretty sure 1979's "With a Little Luck" is a song about Lennon-McCartney reunification.

🎉 1 MORE DAY UNTIL MCLENNON WEEK! 🎉

Friendly reminder that McLennon Week begins tomorrow Monday July 4th!

(For more info check the guidelines and the prompt list posts.)

OMG look at Ringo! Why was it necessary to have a random girl in this pic?

Having a swim in 1963

“‘You see,’ he says, snuffing out his cigarette with a defiant jab, ‘what I have to combat is the original image of me as the downtrodden dummy. It’s still in everybody’s minds. you don’t know how hard it is to fight that tag. I’ve been caught in this trap for almost twenty years now. But it hasn’t ruined my life. I know what I am, I know what I can do. But what am I going to do, take out a newspaper ad or a billboard and say, “I’m not really like that”? People always latch on to the first image and refuse to let go. ‘It was the same with John. Because he had this rapier wit, they said he was nasty and things like that. But John was the kindest person I ever knew. He was the only one of the four of us who would give his soul. The three of us would hesitate, but John would give you anything without hesitation. And I loved the man dearly. We were friends all the time. ‘I love the other two, you know. We’re friends, and there’s no real problem, but we have arguments and little fights. We did when we were touring, and we do now. But nothing like the newspapers make it out to be.’ […] For Ringo, the enforced intimacy created bonds of camaraderie that no amount of time or litigation can break. ‘They are my brothers, you see. I’m an only child, and they’re my brothers. I’ve always said that if I ever spend all my bread, I can just go live with one of them, and vice versa, ‘cause we all love to spend it,’ he chuckles.”

— Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone: Ringo in the afternoon. (April 30th, 1981)

Flying - Ch 9 Update

Summary: It’s August 1966, and The Beatles are flying to America for what would be the final tour. When the plane instead goes down over the Atlantic, the group has to struggle to survive.

hi all! kind of a quick turnaround from last chapter to this (less than a month! new record?), buttttt i was excited so i wrote it. this one’s about half the size of the last, but i’m excited to hear thoughts / feedback on it. thanks (as always) so much for sticking with it!

and, (as always), i hope you enjoy. if you do, leave a comment or a message to let me know. cheers <3

Beautiful boys