Paul On Meeting John

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.]

paul: john likes me ?!?! but ...😳 hes a boy ... and ... IM a boy >_<

george: uughh how can i get them to see im just as good of a songwriter as them🚬🚬

john: okay ringo now hit the second tower

it's kinda funny that get back gave them name credits. imagine sitting down to watch 8 hours of beatles footage and not being clear on which ones are the beatles

Okay, starting to side with McLennon-ers slightly because what is this

OH JOHNNYYY 🥰🥰

Is it normal to feel lesbian attraction towards john lennon and paul mccartney

"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)

Int: It’s possible - you know this as well as anybody does. It’s possible that all of you will be best known not for your individual work but because you were Beatles. Does that trouble you at all?

George: No, not at all because who are we anyway, you know? I mean, even if they knew me as me - George Harrison - they don’t really know me. It doesn’t matter what they remember you for. It’s really what you attain for your own personal self that counts. 

“Y’know, it’s something that other people see us as The Beatles, and I try to see us as The Beatles, but I can’t.” - Scene and Heard (1967)  

“To be able to deal with these people thinking you were some wonderful thing - it was difficult to come to terms with. I was feeling, you know, like nothing. Even now I look back and see, relative to a lot of other groups, The Beatles did have something. But it’s a bit too much to accept that we’re supposedly the designers of this incredible change. In many ways we were just swept along with everybody else.” -  Rolling Stone (1987)

“I don’t mean to sound mysterious or try to baffle anyone, but when people come up to me expecting me to be just like what they thought a Beatle would be, they’re disappointed. I never was a Beatle, except musically. I don’t think any of us was. What is a Beatle anyway? I’m not a Beatle or an ex-Beatle or even the George Harrison. I’m just a man. Very ordinary.” - Men Only (1978)

“Like Chance, the main character in Being There (one of George’s favorite books), he wanted to just ‘be there’ in his garden, in his solitude, with his hands in the dirt. He didn’t want to ‘be’ anything but a man who loved music, the earth, women, and God.” - Chris O’Dell

they make me sick why are they like this

Ok ok ok so basically John Lennon wrote all these sappy love songs about soulmates who never got to be ("if we must start again, we will know, that I will love you", "No need to be afraid, it's real love, it's real") in casettes he was gonna hide forever in his basement titled FOR PAUL, told HIS WIFE that he is bisexual but only has a thing for men who is 'emotionally and artistically' connected with him, constantly referred to Paul as his "ex-wife" in many interviews and that they "divorced" after the beatles broke up, used to jerk off together (I shit you not google this) with Paul and his Beatles mates MORE THAN ONCE, used to have women leaving him because "he never looked at me the way he looked at Paul", and they say rumours about them are overplayed?????

1979 is now up there with 1968 in my “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED BETWEEN PAUL MCCARTNEY AND JOHN LENNON” years.

You don’t just make something as joyful, teasing, naughty, and romantic as McCartney II out of the blue… You don’t just then come out of retirement out of the blue and starting boogying to Double Fantasy + Milk and Honey tracks COINCIDENTALLY, do you? DO YOU??

This is driving me a little crazy. What is your favorite conspiracy theory here?

George Harrison and Bob Dylan, Concert for Bangladesh, 1 August 1971; photo by Bill Ray (?).

Q: “One of the coups of [the Concert for] Bangladesh was Dylan’s appearance, because he had done so little since his motorcycle accident in 1966. Was he initially reluctant to do Bangladesh?”

George Harrison: “He was. He never committed himself, right up until the moment he came onstage. On the night before Bangladesh, we sat in Madison Square Garden as the people were setting up the bandstand. He looked around the place and said to me, ‘Hey, man, you know, this isn’t my scene.’ I’d had so many months… it seemed like a long time of trying to get it all together, and my head was reeling with all the problems and never. I’d gotten so fed up with him not being committed, I said, ‘Look, it’s not my scene, either. At least you’ve played on your own in front of a crowd before. I’ve never done that.’ So he turned up the next morning, which looked positive. I had a list, a sort of running order, that I had glued on my guitar. When I got to the point where Bob was going to come on, I had Bob with a question mark. I looked over my shoulder to see if he was around, because if he wasn’t, I would have to go on to do the next bit. And I looked around, and he was so nervous — he had his guitar and his shades — he was sort of coming on, coming [pumps his arms and shoulders]. So I just said, ‘My old friend, Bob Dylan!’ It was only at that moment that I knew for sure he was going to do it. After the second show, he picked me up and hugged me and said, ‘God! If only we’d done three shows.’” - Rolling Stone, 5 November 1987 (x)