What opportunities did we allow to flow by, feeling like the timing wasn't quite right?
What kind of magic might have worked if we had stayed calm?
Couldn't I have given you a better life?
- This One by Paul McCartney.
1996: Paul talks about the take of ‘Mr. Moonlight’ on Anthology II.
“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."
Paul McCartney (and George Harrison’s hand) backstage at the ABC Cinema in Manchester, 20th November 1963 - part 4 (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5)
Who is the weirdest Beatle?
They all were 💖
I am a big fan of @orphanbeat's analysis. They really all were different types of weird, and I adore them for it.
Ringo is the sort of kooky uncle/grandpa that makes strange mspaint art that stirs up feelings of profound awe and fear and falls asleep in the middle of the family bbq and eats broccoli for breakfast.
George is a strange little gremlin. A gnome living in your garden. The scarecrow on the farm. The philosopher that lives in a cave to recieve visions from God but emerges every other hour for a snack.
Paul is a bizarre man. Throat kissed by an angel. Too much energy stuffed in a human form, and his seams are about to snap at any given moment. He hops onto a stage and you see those threads strain. He's not quite attached to the earth. This is his brain, but it's always in motion.
John is a weird raccoon man. A crazy cat lady. Something a grandmother would knit on a weekday morning. A trembling teacup of emotion. Take the calming painting in your therapist's office and put it inthe microwave... John is the result. He is a gangly puppet that will offer you his strings himself.
These pictures together are really good!
Paul McCartney and George Martin in Get Back, January 1969 Paul McCartney and George Martin recording Tug Of War, March 1982