He Didn't Like Being Called "pretty" But This Way Of Sitting Doesn't Exactly Discourage It. I Think He's

Based on “Love Me Do: The Beatles’ Progress” by Michael Braun for The Observer (5 July 1964).

Scotch and music:

“Uh, I need another drink, baby,’ says John.

Paul goes to the phone. ‘Hello? Yeah, send us six single Scotches - No, make it doubles, yeah, doubles.”

Such a good writer!!

Have I been checking regularly since yesterday whether you updated ATM? Nope, not me ... *whistles* :D

Ha! It’s happening! I’ve uploaded it to AO3, I just need to check the formatting and hit post. Also, signal is somewhat patchy where I am, so when all those things align, it’ll be live. Thank you for showing you’re interested. Made me smile a lot.

Hey why not? Whatever works.

“Paul used the fact that Brian was gay to get his own way. He’d come in and put on his bedroom eyes. He’d use his own sex appeal to manipulate Brian into doing what he wanted the band to do.”

- Tony Barrow

I agree with this except I think it is very likely there was a physical relationship, although who can say. Well I wish someone could say. But I know it's none of my business. But still ...

Discussing McLennon's opponents arguments

Disclaimer: By writing McLennon in the title of this post, I made a simplification. I understand "believing in McLennon" as believing, or even contemplating / leaving a window to the possibility that John and Paul's relationship was not purely platonic. This includes variations: that John was unhappily in love with Paul, that they were secret lovers, and - most likely in my opinion - that their feelings for each other were (at least in part) romantic, but they didn't do anything about it. Often, especially in general (non-Mclennon) Beatles groups, I am faced with disbelief or even outright dislike when someone starts this topic. Today I will try to look at what the opponents of our thesis say.

"You're just sexualizing everything! There may be a close friendship between men" (in a more ridiculous and nasty version that I saw in the comment on YT: "Only women and gays believe in McLennon because straight men know that there can be close friendship between men") Well, we start with a difficult topic. There are two different harmful points of view in society. The first is amatonormativity, according to which the only important relationship in a person's life is a romantic one, and friendships are less important. In this context, our critics might be right. BUT! There is also another harmful mechanism that must not be forgotten - homophobia. According to it, being an LGBTQ person is something wrong and a disgrace. Therefore, we cannot think of our idols (e.g., musical idols) as having (or contemplating) romantic and / or sexual relationships/feelings with people of the same sex. Homophobia permeates society as a whole, including historians who often interpreted two men who were close to each other as "just friends" (for example, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion). We are dealing with the same at McLennon. So we should be prudent and, where possible, fair when trying to judge any relationship considering the existence of both homophobia and amatonormativity.

"Who cares? What does it change if these two guys were in love?" Well, it changes a lot. If we accept that Lennon and McCartney were in love, we adopt a slightly different view of the breakup of the Beatles. That would explain (at least to some degree) why John was so ostentatious about his relationship with Yoko, why they got married just eight days after Paul, why he disliked Linda so much, and, most of all, why he attacked Paul so fiercely in 1970 and 1971. Of course, anger, jealousy, greed and insecurity can cause different behaviors (e.g. Gilmour and Waters fighting), but John and Paul fought each other like lovers. They wrote songs for themselves. In one of them, Paul, wanting to ease the battle, writes: "I'm in love with a friend of mine." Why? And why, for instance, does Lennon mention fucking McCartney in 1970s interviews? Broadening your horizon and accepting that the two guys had a romantic friendship would help with the analysis. Isn't that what being a historian/scholar is all about?

"It's impossible because they were both straight" This is something I wrote about above - plugging your ears and shouting: "Lalalala, my idol can't be gay!". Even if you don't think it is likely that two people had a non-platonic relationship, please be at least open to that eventuality. As for John not being straight - I'm preparing a masterpost on it, which will be released this month. Of course, I'll link it here later. As for Paul, the case is more difficult. I think I'll also make a post about it. I suspect (and would like to emphasize that this is only my interpretation, which may not be true) that Paul has been and is attracted to women all his life, and that the only man Paul has looked at romantically is John. It's like in this meme: "I'm straight but John Lennon is John Lennon" :D

"How can you discuss this? Isn't that interfering with their private lives?" Firstly: In my opinion, we can discuss the private life of celebrities, especially if they themselves decide to share it with us. John, Paul and those around them have largely decided to do so. Anyway, people have always analyzed the private life of the Beatels. Here, for example, we see a girl asking Paul in 1964 about his relationship with Jane Asher. And the most important thing: I've noticed that McLennon's opponents are quite okay with analyzing the private lives of the Beatles until the topic of homosexuality / bisexuality comes up. Only then do they say: "Leave them, it's their business!", not before. Do you know what it's called? Queerphobia. Secondly: Just read this post. That's all for now. What do you think? Feel free to comment.

What wsa the objection to this hairstyle? I just don't get it.

OK, but is 'The Long and Winding Road' for John? I don't know any story about the song, I only have lyrics that brings me a lot of mcln-feelings and tears. It was 1969 so I think lyrics match perfectly. It sounds for me like 'You broke my heart on Abbey road, you left me for her, I tried so hard to return to you and I don't know what to do now 'cuz I still love you'. Don't you tell me you've never cried over this song!

I’ll tell you a story about this song. I never actually loved it, it was never my favourite beatles song. When I went to Paul’s concert 4 years ago it was the song that hit me the most, I cried like a baby, it was so emotional. 

All the songs in the Let it Be and Abbey Road album written by Paul are about loss, separation and broken hearts. Paul was engaged with Linda in 1969 and seemed quite happy too, so WHY WOULD HE WRITE SUCH A SAD COMPILATION OF SONGS?

Because he was breaking up with John, he was losing him, and tried his best to have him back. He knew it was over and he could do nothing but sing his desperation away. ‘let it be’ is about dreaming his mother telling him that that’s life, that he had to let it happen, no matter if it hurted. ‘Oh!darling’ was a desperate scream of love. ‘The long and winding road’ is his resignation, he gave up, singing how much he tried to come back to him, to put the pieces together and start again.

Many times I’ve been aloneAnd many times I’ve criedAny way you’ll never knowThe many ways I’ve tried

He’s completely lost and desperate, still begging forgiveness from John, waiting for him to come back 

Don’t leave me standing hereLead me to your door

We all know that it will never happen. 

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. 

When you were young and your heart was an open book

Don’t Let Me Down | Paul’s Upbringing

John, because of his upbringing and his unstable family life, had to be hard, witty, always ready for the cover-up, ready for the riposte, ready with the sharp little witticism. Whereas with my rather comfortable upbringing, a lot of family, lot of people, very northern, ‘Cup of tea, love?’, my surface grew to be easy-going. Put people at their ease. Chat to people, be nice, it’s nice to be nice.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Paul grew up in the warm embrace of a loving family. There was hardship, certainly: they were definitely working-class, and the war had been unkind to the cotton exchange business, so it fell on mother Mary to be the main bread-winner of the family, as a domiciliary housewife. Her nursing job also made it so they were always on the move, from one new outskirt council estate to the next, “always on the edge of the world” that was the rebuilding of a war-torn Liverpool. But despite this surrounding instability, the core of the family itself was a safe harbour of reliably loving parents.

I got my compassion for people from my mother. She was a midwife. I think that would probably be the most important quality. Again, respect and caring for others.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Jonathan Wingate for Record Collector: Paul McCartney gets back to work (July 2007).  

[My mum] was very kind, very loving. There was a lot of sitting on laps and cuddling. She was very cuddly. I think I was very close to her. My brother thinks he was a little closer, being littler. I would just be trying to be a bit more butch, being the older one. She liked to joke and had a good sense of humour and she was very warm. There was more warmth than I now realise there was in most families. […] They aspired to a better life. That idea that we had to get out of here, we had to do better than this. This was okay for everyone else in the street but we could do better than this. She was always moving to what she saw as a better place to bring her kids up.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Not only had this notion of rising out of their current situation been instilled in Paul and his brother Michael from an early age by his mother – by encouraging them to speak “the Queen’s English” and insist on their education, for example – his father, Jim McCartney, also did his best to pass down his values of “Toleration and Moderation”, a good education and a special emphasis on an honest and responsible work ethic.

I think I got my respect and tolerance for people from my dad, which is a pretty cool quality to inherit. He was very big on tolerance, my dad. It was a word he used to use all the time. I think I grew up with that attitude. You know, you’d say, ‘Bloody hell, I hate that guy.’ and then you’d stop and go, ‘Alright, wait a minute, maybe he’s got a point,’ and you’d try and consider it from his or her point of view. I think that was a great lesson.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Jonathan Wingate for Record Collector: Paul McCartney gets back to work (July 2007).

He had us out aged about nine. I was virtually a door-to-door salesman by the time I was twelve. […] I was certainly not shy with people, I think because of all these activities my dad encouraged us into. I think it’s probably very good for your confidence with people. It was all right. That was my upbringing.

[…]

My parents aspired for us, very much indeed. That is one of the great things you can find in ordinary people. My mum wanted me to be a doctor. ‘My son the doctor’ - and her being a nurse, too. No problem there. And my dad, who left school at fourteen, would have loved me to be a great scientist, a great university graduate. I always feel grateful for that. I mean, God, I certainly fulfilled their aspirations, talk about overachieving! That was all bred into me, that.

We had George Newnes Encyclopedias. I can still remember the smell of them. If you didn’t know what a word meant or how it was spelled, my dad would say ‘Look it up.’ I think that’s a great attitude to take with kids. It steers you in the right direction. It was part of a game where he was improving us without having had an awful lot of experience of improvement himself. But I always liked that, and I knew I would outstrip him. By going to grammar school I knew I’d fairly soon have Latin phrases or know about Shakespeare which he wouldn’t know about.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Just from these passages alone, we can spot the origins of Paul’s tolerant and caring nature, social skills, self-reliance, and tireless drive for self-improvement (with its nuances of social climbing and fierce competitiveness).

All in all, it was a good solid childhood: exploring the woods outside of his house – “Mother Nature’s Son” through and through – playing and running from Speke teds with his friend George Harrison, going to school and working the occasional odd job, helping his family and making them proud.

And then, Paul McCartney’s secure existence was shattered.

My head was in a whirl, only then I realized, I lost my little girl

On the 31st of October 1956, Mary McCartney abruptly dies from complications following her mastectomy. She’d been admitted at a far too advanced state of breast cancer after she’d kept working – while in pain – for several weeks, choosing not to divulge this symptom or the fact that she had a lump in her breast to her colleagues.

The whole family is caught unawares, but the boys especially are mostly kept in the dark.

I remember one horrible day me and my brother going to the hospital. They must have known she was dying. It turned out to be our last visit and it was terrible because there was blood on the sheets somewhere and seeing that, and your mother, it was like “Holy cow!’ And of course she was very brave, and would cry after we’d gone, though I think she cried on that visit. But we didn’t really know what was happening. We were shielded from it all by our aunties and by our dad and everything.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

The boys are sent away to stay with relatives, noticing that something was wrong but unaware of what was going on, unable to actually say goodbye.

Two days later, it’s too late.

Paul is 14.

As Jim comes to break the news, and his brother Michael breaks down in tears, Paul has an unexpected response.

Mum was a working nurse. There wasn’t a lot of money around – and she was half the family pay packet. My reaction was: ‘How are we going to get by without her money?’ When I think back on it, I think, ‘Oh God, what? Did I really say that?’ It was a terrible logical thought which was preceded by the normal feelings of grief. It was very tough to take.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

It would not be the last time that Paul McCartney’s initial shock response to grief is considered “flippant” or “callous” by the people around him; a fact that has haunted him throughout his life.

I’m very funny when people die. I don’t handle it at all well, because I’m so brought down that I try to bring myself up. So I don’t show grief very well. It actually leads some people to think I don’t care, and I do. I’m not good at it like some people. […] But I’ve always been kind of inward about those things. So I just deal with it myself.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

By virtue of nature or nurture, Paul exhibits from early on an extreme difficulty or unwillingness to deal with his less pleasant emotions.

His response to the alarm that is pain is to deny that it is ringing altogether.

And this manifested not only in inadequate optimism for some situations, it most often took the shape of what appeared to be too hard and cold pragmatism. Some people, unfortunately, saw his defence-mechanism of turning completely rational in the face of crisis and mistook it for him not caring; when, in fact, he cared so much that his only solution was to try and shut it off.  

He carried with him a great burden of guilt and regret; not concerning his reaction to his mother’s death but also due to other misdemeanours and minor hurts he’d caused her when she was alive.

There’s one moment that I’ve regretted all my life which is a strange little awkwardness for me. There was one time when she said 'ask’ and she pronounced it posh. And I made fun of her and it slightly embarrassed her. Years later I’ve never forgiven myself. It’s a terrible little thing. I wish I could go back and say, ‘I was only kidding, Mum.’ I’m sure she knew. I’m sure she didn’t take it too seriously.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

In retrospect, he even theorized that the lyrics to his acclaimed ‘Yesterday’ were related to his mother’s sudden departure.

With ‘Yesterday’, singing it now, I think without realising it I was singing about my mum who died five or six years previously, or whatever the timing was. Because I think now, “Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say, I said something wrong…”

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Pat Gilbert for MOJO: Don’t look back in anger (November 2013).

So in the aftermath of life completely pulling the rug from under his feet, Paul was not only struggling to deal with his own emotions, trying to bury them far from sight as best as he could, he was being consumed by terrible guilt for doing exactly that.

More than that, he was under the care of his uncle and aunt for several more days, trying to rally his brother so that they wouldn’t appear ‘softies’ in their cousins’ eyes, while friends and family tried to hold together a shattered Jim McCartney, “whose first thought was to join his wife”.

Seeing his father break down like that had a huge impact on Paul.

My mother’s death broke my dad up. That was the worst thing for me, hearing my dad cry. I’d never heard him cry before. It was a terrible blow to the family. You grow up real quick, because you never expect to hear your parents crying. You expect to see women crying, or kids in the playground, or even yourself crying – and you can explain all that. But when it’s your dad, then you know something’s really wrong and it shakes your faith in everything. But I was determined not to let it affect me. I carried on. I learnt to put a shell around me at that age.

— Paul McCartney, in The Anthology (1995).

This is very important.

Not only had the only reality he’d ever known been destroyed by his mother’s sudden death, his own father – who was supposed to be this strong, unshakable pillar in his life – couldn’t be relied on to hold it together.

Paul had been let down. He was on his own.

Fear steems from a feeling of powerlessness. You feel painfully vulnerable to whatever life might throw at you, at constant risk of being hurt again, and the only solution is to be on the lookout. Be prepared.

Paul was caught unawares because the people he’d counted on to always be there suddenly weren’t. And with his compassionate and reasonable nature, he probably didn’t even blame them at all. But the facts were that Paul had been left hanging, not once but twice, when he needed them the most. So he kind of lost his faith in everything.

Life is chaotic and unpredictable; and people, through no fault of their own, are just as inconstant.

And so, in order not to risk being let down again, Paul took matters into his own hands. He tried to escape the pain and dread of being powerless by seizing control of whatever he could. And that was mostly himself.

And so begins Paul McCartney’s saga of isolating independence and other control-issues.

As Paul said above, he’s “always been kind of inward” about grief and other “negative” emotions. He’d rather be alone at this stage because he doesn’t want to expose his vulnerabilities. Not to others and much less to himself. So he needs a distraction. Something to devote himself to that’ll take his mind off the pain.

The saving grace, as usual, was music.

— Paul McCartney, The Q Interview (2007).

His brother Michael, probably the closest observer we could have of this period, recounts how Paul was like in the aftermath.

Paul was far more affected by Mum’s death than any of us imagined. His very character seemed to change and for a while he behaved like a hermit. He wasn’t very nice to live with at this period, I remember. He became completely wrapped up in himself and didn’t seem to care about anything or anybody outside himself.

He seemed interested only in his guitar, and his music. He would play that guitar in his bedroom, in the lavatory, even when he was taking a bath. It was never out of his hands except when he was at school or when he had to do his homework. Even in school, he and George Harrison used to seize the opportunity every break to sit and strum.

When we left our auntie’s house and returned home, it was agreed that Dad, Paul and I would take it in turns to do the housework.

“We’re a family on our own now,” Dad said. “We’ll all have to help.”

But time after time when I came home from school, I would find that Paul hadn’t done his bit. I would go looking for him and sometimes I would find him, up in his bedroom, perhaps, sitting in the dark, just strumming away on his guitar. Nothing, it seemed, mattered to him any more. He seldom went out anywhere – even with girls. He didn’t bother much with any of his friends except his schoolmate George Harrison and John Lennon, who was at the art school next door. Work and work alone – his school books and his guitar – appeared to be the only thing that could help him to forget.

— Mike McCartney, Woman: Portrait of Paul (21 August 1965).

So Paul takes to complete dedication to work and music to help him ignore his pain. And he’d rather go through this process of burying it on his own. We see him isolate himself from his family and friends, according to Mike socializing mostly with George, also in the context of playing music. John is also mentioned; this could be a smudging of the timeline in Mike’s recollections, as Paul would only meet John the following year. That or Paul’s mourning lasted until the autumn of 1957, when John was enrolled in art college.

We also have a clue about how guarded Paul was with his “negative” emotions – how resilient he always wanted to be – that no one imagined he would be so affected by his mother’s death as he was.

This will also be a repeating theme through Paul’s life: his wish to always be strong, positive and reliable will make others and himself overestimate his imperviousness to trauma. People will then feel free to burden him with their own pain or unload their frustrations on him, without feeling that there would be consequences; because Paul is so tough as to be unaffected by all that. This proved, time and again, not to be true.

His true strength arises, in my opinion, not in the fact that he is unshakable but in his determination to quietly pick himself up again and again.

Losing my mum when I was fourteen was a major tragic event in my life. But, when I think about myself, I am, overall, pretty optimistic, pretty enthusiastic, pretty much into getting on. One of the reasons being, she would want that. I know for certain she would want that. I know Linda would want that. I know John would want that, and George would want that. My dad would want that. They were very, very positive people. And the idea that their deaths would plunge me into some sort of morose depression would bother them. I know that for a fact. So that helps me to not go there.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by John Colapinto for the New Yorker: When I’m sixty-four (4 June 2007).

But as a 14-year-old Northern lad, his tactic of picking himself up didn’t involve dressing the wounds, which would continue to bleed silently in the recesses of his mind.

I certainly didn’t grieve enough for my mother. There was no such thing as a psychiatrist when I lost her. You kidding? I was a 14-year-old Liverpool boy. I wouldn’t have had access to one and I do now.

— Paul McCartney, interviewed by Nigel Farndale for The Telegraph: Love me do (17 May 2002).

But soon, Paul would find an even greater outlet for his love of music, almost magical in its specialness:

Someone to perform with.