Can We Also Talk About This Really Quick???

Stevie in 1977.

What did Mimi think of Paul?

This is from an interview in 1970

How did you view the troubles the Beatles have been going through these last few years?

I don’t know all this business between John and Paul is about and I don’t dare ask John. I did ring Paul about it, and he told me things would straighten up. The boys have been friends so long. I remember them coming home from school together on their bikes, begging biscuits. I’m sure they’ll get back together soon. This is just a phase they’re passing through.

 What do you think changed John so much from his early days as a carefree kid?

She’s responsible for all this, Yoko. She changed him, and I’m sure she and Linda are behind the split between John and Paul.

—–

In the book “Paul McCartney: the biography” there’s a page in which Mimi talks about the first time she saw Paul:

“John was insecure, and when he saw Paul he wanted to look cool. He was suddenly hooked. He gave up all his friends for Paul. Aunt Mimi recalled that John jumped around the kitchen when he told her about his new friend. And when Paul arrived at John’s home for the first time, Mimi sarcastically said to John that they were like ‘chalk and cheese’ meaning how different they were. And John would start hurling himself around the room shouting ‘Chalk and Cheese! Chalk and cheese’ smiling and laughing. He was fucking in love with him, he adored him. She understood he found the partner of his life.“

What does Pattie know? 🧐

Question: Is there anything about one of your photographs that make you smile because you know what is going on behind the camera?

Pattie: There was a photograph I took in India and the Beatles where writing music for the white album. It was a very creative time. But I got one shot of Paul and John sitting together. John is just looking at Paul and Paul is making some sort of face. And I just wish I knew what they would have been saying. But something...there's something going on.

Interestingly, Pattie tweeted this on Paul's birthday:

Honestly, forget about India. I need to know in detail what occurred on that New York trip if we’re getting headlines from 1968 magazines like this:

Paul, George and Ringo’s reactions to meeting the Queen and receiving the MBE (Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

“Yeah. That line was a joke, you know. That line was put in partly because I was feeling guilty because I was with Yoko, and I knew I was finally high and dry. In a perverse way, I was sort of saying to Paul, ‘Here, have this crumb, have this illusion, have this stroke… because I’m leaving you.’”

- John, when asked about the lyric ‘The walrus was Paul’ in “Glass Onion”. (Playboy Interview, 1980) 

In 1965 [the Byrds] toured England and Paul invited us to his club, the Scotch of St James’s [sic]. He sent a limo to pick us up. He said he had been listening to our music. We were blown away. He took us for a ride through London in his Aston Martin, at great speed. He was really hip, he and John were so tight it was like one person at times. Unlike the Byrds, [where] Crosby would just leave you out to dry, the Beatles all defended each other to the hilt. If you criticised, say, George then they would all respond.

[—Roger McGuinn, in Paul McCartney: Now & Then, Tony Barrow and Robin Bextor]

[John and Paul] sort of had their own way of communicating. Hardly anything was spoken, they just knew what the other wanted or was getting at and they had the most amazing talent. […] Paul was an awesome musical presence. He was, like, ten feet tall with music and it was everything: folk, rock, musical hall, choral, it was all there. He was like a different animal with Lennon. When they were together they became something else, more than just the two of them together. That communication was incredible. It was like two high-speed computers just fizzing between each other.

[—Steve Miller, in Paul McCartney: Now & Then, Tony Barrow and Robin Bextor]

Early Paul McCartney song lyric and a doodle.

Paul McCartney and George Martin in Get Back, January 1969 Paul McCartney and George Martin recording Tug Of War, March 1982

John, Julian and George