@dumbcloud And Now The DILF:John Edition.

Sorry I didn’t realise it didn’t originate with you. I just get frustrated sometimes as I see the same 2 biased sources-this guy and Erin Torkelson Webber continually reblogged. I do apologise though. Hope you are having a good Saturday

“When John got the drift about how the others felt, instead of keeping Yoko away out of sensitivity for their feelings and out of concern for the group dynamics, he said, “I don’t want to play with youse lot anymore.” Paul desperately wanted things to work out. He was enormously patient. It was only his great love for John and for the whole Beatles thing that stopped it from blowing up sooner than it did. I remember the exasperation on his face away from the studio. At the time he was Abbey Road far more than John, who mostly kept away. John’s input was minimal, except on his tracks, or the ones he featured on. George’s input was pretty strong, but Paul was the most visible one, perhaps to the point of being overwhelming. Not in a nasty way, but just being creatively in the lead. I think this was because his personal life was very happy. John, newly obsessed with Yoko, should have been happy, but was exhausted and in torment. Looking for some release, he and George had even taking up chanting together.”

— Tony Bramwell, Magical Mystery Tours

John’s theme song is clearly You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away. It’s literally his life story both from the LGTBQ angle and in general with his difficulty allowing himself to get close to people and show how much he loved them

the way While My Guitar Gently Weeps is such a George song like it's his theme song it encompasses his personality!!!

John Lennon & George Harrison (1964)

Can we all just weep at John’s body language in 3 & 4: “Constantly transferring your weight from one foot to the other or rocking forward and backward is a comforting movement that indicates you are anxious or upset…[rubbing your earlobes] is a soothing action to counter feelings of uneasiness or vulnerability.”

(Also in no.3, John and Paul’s synchronised head turning, ama cry over that as well, they were so attuned to each other goddamnit.)

The most shocking one for Paul would be Here Today. Imagine the pain of 1964 Paul finding out his creative partner was going to die

Beatle (Paul) Hypotheticals #16

If you could show Paul four of his solo songs in 1964, which one of the following songs do you think would most surprise him and why?

Kreen Akore

Monkberry Moon Delight

Dear Friend

Temporary Secretary

Are there any songs not listed above that you think would be more shocking to Paul? If so, which ones?

Finally an acknowledgment that the Eastman dynamic was pretty toxic to the Beatles too, not just Klein. So many people think Paul was offering sone kind of reasonable alternative to Klein when in reality his management offer was his in laws who had no desire to represent the other Beatles and their interests. Klein may have been a bad choice but in my opinion the Eastmans would have been a disaster for the other Beatles in terms of representation

wait re your tags what do you mean by wives of two members having more influence. on the group? or on those two members?

Linda and Yoko were basically the other two Beatles for the remainder of 1969. Everyone talks about Klein and the fact he offered Yoko a successful career being the main reason John stuck with him at all, but Linda was the one who brought her dad into it, and the clash of titans between Eastman vs. Klein was just as big a reason the group broke up as the psychosexual crossfire of Lennon/McCartney, possibly an even bigger one. I’m not saying Linda was scheming in any way, but obviously her father was one of the best lawyers in American entertainment business, and her boyfriend was the biggest rockstar on the planet who was in a shitstorm of legal/money problems. Of course the two would meet, and Linda soon went from black sheep of the family to Golden Daughter.

But as the year went on, the JohnandYokoandKlein monster grew stronger against John Eastman’s aggressive and selfish business tactics. Sure, Klein and the others tried to pressure Paul into going with him, but Eastman wasn’t even remotely interested in taking on the rest of the band (was listening to a 71 Paul interview, and he said his father-in-law wouldn’t have managed the others if they paid him, and Paul still went with him. Hm). Yoko obviously tried to meddle in as much as she could, and John helped her do so; Linda found herself tangled in a web of shit that she originally wasn’t planning to get into, but she’s no pushover and so she went to meetings and was her husband’s only source of strength for the rest of these cockfights (to her own detriment as well).

My point was: where do George and Ringo fit into his? John didn’t turn to anyone in the studio for help except his wife, and Paul confided in no one else except his own spouse and her family of lawyers (who were managing Paul Solo from the start). George’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer that same year too, it was a hard time for him and he had no real voice (and I think patience) to deal with the whole Eastman vs. Klein debacle. George and Ringo went with John and Klein because they were the ones actually giving them what they wanted, not the Eastman-McCartneys.

Ugh I love the sentiment but I’m so fed up of this take that Paul was the patient hero who held on until he just couldn’t before he was forced to let go? How about this-they were all assholes at different times. They all were rubbing each other the wrong way. They all had different goals and objectives. They also at different moments thought they didn’t belong in the band end this exacerbated tensions. I just hate this boring view that Paul And to a certain extent Ringo were sitting around saving the day and the wayward children of John and George. Ringo quit the band first. Paul was off trying to get his biased in laws to be the bands manager and was more and more disconnected from the band in terms of the creative process. In other words all band members contributed to the break up and there was no hero. Agree it was a tragedy though as it could have been resolved and with communication

What breaks my heart (though a lot breaks my heart about these two) is that, whatever had transpired between John and Paul during the escape-hopefully-this-fixes-it trip to India, it's that neither had wanted the outcome of it to be what ended up happening.

I mean even with John clearly spiraling out of control of his mind and emotions, trying to deal with it all from childhood to then and now with drugs and alcohol and sex—I can't bring myself to believe he wanted to have the falling out, the divorce, the interpreted separation of connection from the soul, from Paul.

All complicated and dramatic and bluffing and lying to himself evidently points to no, he didn't.

He burned down the temple he loved so much because he loved it so much. He burned down the Beatles—and with it, he burned down what he and Paul essentially created together (as George said, it was in 1967 that John and Paul became a duo... That is, not super on the nose dig at apparently the innate dynamics of the Beatles George was privy too... Or at least believed he'd witnessed become the inevitable outcome of his band in 1967. Remember, 1967 was like, peak John and Paul attached-at-the-hip proximity probably similar to that of when they were just teenagers in Liverpool together)

Not to exclude the other two, because John was so desperate and in need of his friends, the people he had grown up with, he'd wanted them to buy an island and live together on it, just them, houses connected through tunnels.

But, as harsh as it sounds, John could live not working with or necessarily having George and Ringo... But Paul.

Now Paul and him, in many interviews, confidently proclaiming once The Beatles went bust, then that's alright—it'd be John and Paul, Paul and John, still writing music together, still creating together. Paul helping John with his books, John and Paul writing music together as old farts to so graciously hand off for younger musicians to play; John and Paul even having the audacity to mention maybe dabbling in creating a musical play, even when John apparently had no interest in musicals whatsoever.

It was John and Paul, JohnandPaul, and it was since 1957. George was just speaking the truth of it all out loud:

HADDAD: Then, your musical ambitions didn’t really begin to take form until the two of you joined with John Lennon?

GEORGE: Paul and John were the spark that ignited The Beatles. Of course, we weren’t The Beatles then, and we didn’t have Ringo, but that was the start. The air was filled with excitement, and even though we went through silly names like The Quarrymen Skiffle Group, The Moondogs, The Moonshiners, and The Silver Beatles, before evolving into that group everyone grew to know and love, the crucible was in 1967 [sic; 1957] when John and Paul became a duo.”

— George Harrison, interview w/ M. George Haddad for Men Only. (November, 1978) [X]

John and Paul were the spark that ignited The Beatles. The Beatles were John and Paul's, and George was simply aware of it. By 1967, John and Paul were a duo, at least in George's viewpoint: the inevitable happened, what George suspected to be, anyway.

So to tell me that John had actually wanted to burn it all down and destroy this Thing that was in fact his and Paul's, essentially burning Paul (and himself) in the proces, because he loved them, it, him, too much. He wanted that.

I refuse to believe it.

I refuse to believe it because even John couldn't buy in to his own lies about why he had actually been the one to finally bring an end to Lennon-McCartney. Yoko's validation of his lies and encouragement of letting go of the past and all those that hurt him (Paul) might've enabled him, but it didn't make the lies of it all stick. He couldn't justify it in the end, he couldn't let go.

It's heartbreaking to think how neither of them wanted it to go the way it did.

Paul probably didn't even fathom it. He's gotten into enough rows with John, and while this one could've definitely been different, been worse, been something that even stable and strong and level headed and perfectly centered Paul McCartney couldn't even withstand, he couldn't control, he couldn't neatly deal with. What he couldn't do for John. What he might not have been able to understand, for John, for whatever reason.

But they've had fights, they've had their trials and tribulations together... What's another one? Why wouldn't they be able to climb over it or sweep it under the rug? Or even come to a compromise, at some later date.

Paul certainly didn't want what ended up happening, with The Beatles, with John.

It damn near tore him up and left him a pitiful, pathetic, alcoholic of a man. He agonized over this impending doom of another loss he couldn't stop.

Of course the main strain between John and Paul after the India excursion was only made worse and exacerbated by other outside forces and John's dwindling psyche and general stability.

No matter how hard he tried, truly fought for it all, it was set up for failure by the inside out.

Ringo was the only one trying at points and Linda was literally his saving grace.

Paul felt he had to divorce The Beatles (divorce John) because he felt he had no choice. John tapped out. George was angry. John wasn't even trying, after all Paul did was try and try and try.

What I'm trying to say is, and not just beat this potential dead horse: what is truly heartbreaking, is that John and Paul since the time of their boundless partnership, friendship, collaboration, and essentially finding their soulmate in each other (Paul's word, not mine) they had it set it would be them, together, forever, creating and inspiring and being together, during and after The Beatles.

You could say it was unrealistic, that it was just the faulty and frivolous daydreaming boyish promises young men barely in their twenties make in the heat of the hour of that day and week and month and year.

But they meant it. You can tell they meant it, you can tell, especially from Paul, that he meant it truly and earnestly and with shameless affection and fondness for his relationship with John, that he wanted to continue whatever this was with him, after The Beatles and on.

It's heartbreaking, because whatever was transpiring between John and Paul and which came to a head in India, whatever happened in India, they didn't want it to turn out and end in the way that it had.

John and Paul loved each other, indescribably so.

It's so heartbreaking when two people who clearly loved each other and are like soulmates, can't end up staying together, have a falling out or life finds a way to tear them apart because life isn't fair.

It's tragic.

There's an extra heaviness to it when you come to fully realize "Nobody wanted what happened to happen."

Neither John or Paul planned for it, for that kind of falling out, for a divorce. By all accounts and records, it hit like an agonizing and sudden septic natural disaster.

Sharing because I’m a John girl and I need to represent

This is adorable somehow. Why am I obsessed with these little moments?

a) Science boy johnny

b) something about the way paul responds at first…

It’s nice to see a music critic put into words how I have felt as some of these excerpts from the book have come out. As a John fan, I’ve had to scroll past people calling John an evil wifebeater on my dash, people diagnosing him with a variety of mental illnesses despite no diagnosis in his lifetime and then diagnosing people around him with mental health issues just for associating with him. They then use these mental health issues he may have had to discredit his thoughts and feelings or even worse infantilise him, particularly in relation to Paul. I haven’t called these things out as everyone has a right to their opinions. But when a few people have called out Paul for some of the hurtful things he has said regarding John, they have been shouted down, blocked or told they have no right to their opinions and aren’t being team players in the fandom. I think that due to Paul having a tough treatment after John’s death, there’s a need to put Paul on a pedestal as he is seen as needing defending and consequently either minimise John’s accomplishments or grossly highlight all of John’s flaws (while conveniently ignoring those of the other Beatles.) Paul, like john, is human and it’s should be ok to point out elements of his behaviour you find problematic and by the way many of John fans completely are aware of both John’s flaws and Paul’s wonderful points too. If we call out the Jean jackets who put John on a pedestal and treat him like a God surely we shouldn’t be encouraging that behaviour for the fans of the other Beatles. Ted talk over

McCartney, With and Without Lennon

In “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” Paul McCartney and the poet Paul Muldoon present the words to 154 of the former Beatle’s songs.

  Posting this, because it’s a pretty balanced review. The reviews have been generally pretty favourable, but they do (and rightly so) call out Paul for his (intentional?) inconsistency and revisionism. I’m not too familiar with the author, but a quick wikipedia search says he has been on the musicology/ music critique writing scene since the 70s. Some will probably say “oh he’s just one of those male rock journalists who favoured John and therefore his criticism of Paul is invalid”. But I think he makes some really excellent points about the flawed elements of this book. 

  “The best of the songs collected here (“For No One,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “When Winter Comes,” “On My Way to Work” and quite a few more) reflect eyes fixed on the small niceties and curiosities of everyday life and a mind that bounces freely, taking childlike pleasure in that freedom. “The Lyrics” makes clear that McCartney has written on a high level long past his Beatles years, and even the weakest lyrics in the books have a character all their own: a feeling of giddy playfulness and unguarded experimentation. They’re a joy to read because they exude the joy their maker took in their making.” “Over and over, McCartney shows how deeply he is steeped in literary history and how much his output as a songwriter has in common with the works of the likes of Dickens and Shakespeare. “John never had anything like my interest in literature,” he announces at the top of his commentary on “The End,” before pivoting to a mini-lecture on the couplet as a form. “When you think about it, it’s been the workhorse of poetry in English right the way through. Chaucer, Pope, Wilfred Owen.” Apropos of “Come and Get It,” the trifle he wrote and produced for Badfinger, McCartney notes, “When you’re writing for an audience — as Shakespeare did, or Dickens, whose serialized chapters were read to the public — there’s that need to pull people in.” Aaaah … we realize: Paul really is a word man, the more literary and cerebral Beatle.”  “As one would expect from the pop star who posed with his baby tucked in his coat on his farm for his first post-Beatles album, McCartney talks with ardor and respect for his parents, his extended family in Liverpool, and the traditional values of hearth and home in general. He attributes the buoyant positivity of his music to the happiness in his family life and, by extension, ascribes the bite and cynicism that distinguishes much of Lennon’s work to the domestic upheaval in John’s early years. To McCartney, a dark view of humanity is a failing and must be a mark of suffering, rather than an attribute of thought.”  “While pronouncing his love for Lennon as a longtime friend and creative partner, Paul is pretty rough on him at points in “The Lyrics.” His main crime is one of omission, passing on opportunities to point out Lennon’s signature contributions to songs they wrote collaboratively, such as “A Day in the Life.” In the context of conflicts between the two of them, McCartney describes Lennon as “stupid” or an “idiot.” Yes, we all know that McCartney can’t help defining himself in relation to Lennon. Still, as he shows convincingly throughout “The Lyrics,” you don’t have to make the other guy out to be an idiot to prove that you’re a genius.