“Scan Not A Friend With A Microscopic Glass – You Know His Faults – Then Let His Foibles Pass.”

the way George is talking, I'm crying

January 26th, 1969: Paul arrives at the studio accompanied by Linda and Heather just as George and Ringo are working out the melody for ‘Octopus’s Garden’ on the piano. John, who has been playing around on drums, chimes in none too discreetly with a question he’s been eager to ask Paul.

JOHN: Hey! Did you dream about me last night? PAUL: [long pause] I can’t remember. JOHN: Very strong dream. We both dreamt about it. It was amazing! Different dreams, you know, but I thought you must’ve been there. [inaudible] I was touching you. [inaudible] PAUL: Nothing to worry about, though? JOHN: Nothing to worry about, no.

Stevie in 1977.

GEORGE: I remember saying, “Well, one of us has gotta be the bass player, and it’s not me. I’m not doing it.” And John said, “I’m not doing it, either.” Paul just went for it. (1995) JOHN: Paul’s bass playing is underrated. Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He’s an egomaniac about everything else about himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. He’s a great musician who plays the bass like few other people could play it. (1980) RINGO: Paul is still, to this day for me, one of the most incredible melodic bass players around. He’s just incredible. (2016) PAUL: As time went on, I realized that I didn’t have to just play the root notes. At first if it was C, F, G, then it was normally C, F, G that I played. But then I started to realize that you could be pulling on that G, or just staying on the C when it went into F. And then I took it beyond that. I thought, well, if you can do that, what else could you do? You might even be able to play notes that aren’t in the chord. I just started to experiment. What could you do? Well, maybe you can use different notes. Sevenths instead of the regular notes, or maybe even a little tune through the chords that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Maybe I can have an independent melody. (2018)

JOHN PULLED THE “no actually we’re just good friends” 😭😭😭😭😭 madness.

Waiting for John to get back so they can carry on recording Think For Yourself. Begins with George Martin explaining a ‘booboo’ he made on the tapes.

George Martin: *explains* George Harrison: Ah, naughty. John? Paul: John love? George Martin: Jonathan, what are you doing? Someone: He’s just - where - is he messing behind the - I’ll get him.

ULM vol. 3 is back on YT - with some additions!

These are the additions I noticed:

John's statement about George (I think from Lennon Remembers) that he wouldn't buy his album, that ATMP means nothing to him, and that George should be grateful that he could learn from John and Paul.

The addiction of John and Linda's performance of "Love in strange" in the background when the song "Bless you" sounded with the line: "Love is strange".

Excerpt from a 1975 interview with John in which he says he wonders what Paul thought of his performance of "I Saw Her Standing There" at Madison Square Garden.

The questionnaire, in which John described Paul as extraordinary, Bowie as thin etc., was supplemented with pictures.

The ending (which kinda broke my heart).

John Lennon on sex and love

Some quotes from Bob Spitz's The Beatles Biography

“Paul loved working with John. At the beginning it was like sex–they popped them off, one after another.“

"John hooked right in and fed off the energy. John and Paul had remarkably similar tastes [in music]; they liked it fast, hard, and loose."

"It never occurred to Paul just how much he missed John. More than anyone else, John had been his friend for ten years, to say nothing of his collaborator, his sidekick, his shadow. Not only had they played music together, they'd hung out together, dreamed together, fucked together, become famous together. Grown up together."

“The last week in August, Paul McCartney returned to Liverpool, tanned and noticeably slimmer. In addition to starting school, he came back to begin a relationship he seemed destined for: hooking up with John Lennon."

"School proved a nagging obstacle for John and Paul, the occasional stolen afternoons unsatisfying, hardly time enough to get something going before Jim arrived home from work. Weekends were reserved primarily for the band. It wasn't so much that they needed time to write as much as it was each other's company. "Something special was growing between them," says Colin Hanton, "something that went past friendship as we knew it."

"But it was clear once Ivan and Paul got around to John, there was a lot of ‘checking out’ being done”

"But John was enamored of Paul’s prodigious talent, so much that all previous reservations disappeared. Transfixed, John squatted on his haunches, squinting, close enough to study Paul’s elastic hands.”

"John and Paul circled each other like cats. Their interest in each other was deeper and more complex than it appeared to anyone watching the encounter. There was instant recognition, a chemical connection made between two boys who sensed in the other the same heartfelt commitment to this music, the same do-or-die. For all the circling, posturing, and checking out that went on, what it all came down to was love at first sight."

“You know, I think he would like it. In fact I said to them I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I’m dead… make them into hit songs”

With thanks to Joe Wisbey from the Beatles Books Podcast