golden age

liar

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[Paul] grieved properly for Linda, he says, something he didn’t do when his mother died from breast cancer. ‘I certainly didn’t grieve enough for my mother. There was no such thing as a psychiatrist when I lost her. You kidding? I was a 14-year-old Liverpool boy. I wouldn’t have had access to one and I do now. I saw one when Linda died and he said, “A good way to grieve is to cry one day and not cry the next, alternate days so as you don’t go down one tunnel.” I took his advice.’ McCartney has said that in the months following Linda’s death he thought he might die from grief; did he mean he considered taking his own life? “No. I was very sad. In deep grief. But never suicidal. I’m too positive for that. After a year… It was as if the seasons had to go right through, as if I had to feel like a plant. A couple of months after the end of that cycle I began to realise I was also having other feelings, that I was emerging…” That all you need is love? ‘Mmm. I am a romantic. I like Fred Astaire.’ Me too, I interject. ‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘Now I feel I can open up to you. I always say to young guys, “Be romantic,” because not only do women love it but you’ll love it, too. English men are so reserved, though. The idea of being caught with flowers on the bus! You hide them under your jacket.’ He mimes hiding a bunch and looking nervous. ‘Well, I’m not like that anymore.’

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Nigel Farndale for The Telegraph: Love me do. (May 17th, 2002)

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1987 (MPL Communications, London): Paul talks to Julia Baird about John in the wake of his mother’s death and their bond over a mutual loss.

PAUL: When you look back on it, all you can see is a word – like “TRAGEDY” or something, written in black. You just don’t see much more. And the only way we could help was that I had the same thing happen to me.

So I couldn’t really help him or say anything, but you know it’s a funny little thing, it’s not funny, it’s kind of cruel, but it’s boys and it’s teenage… The thing I really remember was that a year or so after it – when he was not getting over it because I don’t think you get over things like that, but the shell was returning, you know, he could bluff out of it better, the act was coming back together again – people would meet us together and they’d sort of say, “And how’s your mum, then?” And I’d say, “She died just a few years ago.” And he’d have that. And we knew that people would go, “Oh! Oh, I’m awfully sorry, oh my god…”

And we used to have a laugh about that. We’d kind of say, “Eh, watch out, look at this,” you know. It wasn’t cruel, it was a way of masking our real feelings. But that gave us a bit of a bond. We’d kind of say, “Oh god, here we go, look, he’s gonna ask…” “So how’s your mum?” And so on and so on and then, “Oh, I didn’t know…” And we’d both kind of laugh as the person wriggled with embarrassment. It was a thing we both knew about that – I don’t think you help each other with that, but it gave us some little link where we could have a little laugh and relieve our own pain, I suppose.

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The very name ‘Mimi’ to Paul suggested a Noel Coward world of fur stoles and long cigarette-holders (though her real name was Mary, like his late mother’s, and she too had once been a nurse). Mimi, for her part, regarded everyone John brought home as a potential bad influence, to be set alongside her special bête noire, Pete Shotton. Paul fell into this category simply because he’d once lived in the social no-go area of Speke. ‘When I caught sight of him, when John brought him home for the first time, I thought “Oh-ho, look what the cat’s dragged in,”’ Mimi later recalled. ‘He seemed so much younger than John–and John was always picking up waifs and strays. I thought “Here we go again, John Lennon… another Shotton.”’ Even Paul’s immaculate manners could not thaw her. ‘Oh, yes, he was well-mannered–too well-mannered. He was what we call in Liverpool “talking posh” and I thought he was taking the mickey out of me. I thought “He’s a snake-charmer all right,” John’s little friend, Mr Charming. I wasn’t falling for it. After he’d gone, I said to John, “What are you doing with him? He’s younger than you… and he’s from Speke!”’ After that, when Paul appeared, she would always tell John sarcastically that his ‘little friend’ was here. ‘I used to tease John by saying “chalk and cheese”, meaning how different they were,’ she remembered, ‘and John would start hurling himself around the room like a wild dervish shouting “Chalkandcheese! Chalkandcheese!” with this stupid grin on his face.’

Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life. (2016)

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John’s fellow student Helen Anderson remembers him ushering Paul in, with George, their tag-along junior, usually following a little later. The three would go into the cafeteria for a cheap lunch of chips, then take their guitars into an empty life-drawing room, which tended to be more spacious than others. Helen, being extraordinarily beautiful, was among the very few they allowed to watch while they rehearsed. ‘Paul would have a school notebook and he’d be scribbling down words,’ she says. ‘Those sessions could be intense because John was used to getting his way by being aggressive–but Paul would stand his ground. Paul seemed to make John come alive when they were together.’

Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life. (2016)

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Mimi remained resolutely unimpressed by anything her nephew composed with his ‘little friend’. ‘John would say, “We’ve got this song, Mimi, do you want to hear it?”’ she recalled. ‘And I would say, “Certainly not… front porch, John Lennon, front porch.”’ What she overheard that clearly wasn’t ‘caterwauling’ became another way of discomfiting John. ‘[He] got very upset with me when I mentioned one night that I thought Paul was the better guitar player. That set him off, banging away on his own guitar. There was quite a bit of rivalry going on there.’

Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life. (2016)

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Just then the side door opened and Ivan breezed in, panting for breath as though he had just run a marathon. “Hi there, fellas. Look, I’ve brought Paul along.” The next figure to step through the doorway was Paul McCartney carrying his guitar. I think I was the only person in the group to look up as Paul walked over. John, by this time, had gathered another chair for himself and had his feet up, intent on replacing the broken string on his guitar. I knew Paul from the Institute and he recognised me. “Hiya, Paul, glad you could make it,” I said. Paul’s face relaxed a little as he saw a face he knew. “Hiya, Len.” There was no response from John; he didn’t even look up. After Ivan had introduced Paul to the other members of the group, he then approached John, who was still engrossed in tuning up the guitar string he had just put on. He looked up as if to say: “What are you bothering me for now?” It was an impatient sort of look. “John, this is Paul. Paul McCartney, you know. I told you that I would bring him along.” John took his feet off the chair and said simply, “Hi Paul,” then carried on tuning his guitar. There was no shaking of hands, and he didn’t stand up to greet him. Paul just stood there. “Hello John,” he said in his polite manner. “Do you need any help with that?” John pulled up the now vacant chair. “Yeah, okay. Sit down.” Paul sat down, took John’s guitar and handed him the guitar that he had brought along. Paul’s guitar was left-handed and so his guitar was strung the opposite way to that of a right-handed guitarist, but that didn’t matter when it came to the simple tuning of a guitar. “Hey,” exclaimed John as he inspected Paul’s guitar. “It’s strung the other way round.” “Yes, I play left-handed.” Paul then took a pitch pipe guitar tuner out of his pocket, playing the first in an open manner and at the same time blowing into his tuner. “There, that’s better. I’ll just check that the other strings are in tune.” The rest of us looked on admiringly as Paul showed his dexterity with the guitar. “Hey fellas,” said John, looking at us, “he’s good – we’ll have to have him in the group.” As I explained previously, this was our joking response to anyone that ever showed musical talent, rather than a serious or literal proposition. He was not as yet officially inviting Paul into the group. Ivan looked on happily with an expression which seemed to say: “There, you see, I told you he was good, didn’t I?” “Thanks Paul, it would have taken me ages to do that,” said John sincerely.

Len Garry, John, Paul and Me: Before The Beatles. (1997)

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thinking of baby paul. deep thoughts

[carolsturka]

Recording Gimme Some Truth.

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2004/2007: In the BBC documentary The Beatles’ Biggest Secrets, May Pang, Tony Barrow, and Larry Kane talk about the Lost Weekend, John’s relationships with May and Yoko, and John’s tentative interest in writing with Paul again. (Note: For @sweating-cobwebs, who requested this. I understand that there is an audio clip from this floating around without a credited souce where Barrow is misidentified as Larry Kane; as a joyless pedant, all I can say is: credit and correct attribution wherever possible, please! There’s enough misinformation in the fandom as it is.) 

PANG: John had asked me, he said, “What would you think – would it be a good idea if I started to write with Paul again?” And if I could tell you, I thought – I felt like I was in The Exorcist where my head spun around so quickly and I said – I was so taken aback – and I said, “It would be great.”

BARROW: Lennon and McCartney, I claim, is like brothers – in other words, love and hate, going hand in hand.

…

PANG: Any thoughts of going to see Paul or writing with him just went out the window. I mean, it wasn’t there anymore. It was never encouraged. Yoko would always say to him, and I’ve heard him say it, is: “You don’t have to do this.” He used to tell me this himself. “Yoko told me I don’t need to this.”

BARROW: She was a very strong influence on John, and may well have been telling him that he could do best on his own, but I still think that on the back of John’s mind would be this sort of fascination with wanting to get back with the first girlfriend, if you’d like [laughs], and it was to get back with Paul that he had so much history with.

PANG: We could have had it. I’m just angry that it didn’t happen. Because I know that John wanted to do it. And I’m sorry for crying.

[carolsturka]

Take It Away music video.

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“Phil [Spector] wanted control,” May Pang says. “That’s basically what it came down to. And he kept holding John at bay—like, It’s my show, not yours. It was an ego trip. Fucking with John’s head. It was unbearable, because I could see the pain in John from this.” One night, Spector arranged to meet at Gold Star to do some vocal overdubs. Lennon arrived, only to pass the evening with Gold Star’s boss Stan Ross, waiting in vain for Spector to turn up. “We kept phoning saying, ‘Where are you?’” Ross remembers. “And Phil’d say, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ And an hour later it’d be the same thing—‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ At the end of the evening I said to John, ‘It’s been a pleasure and I’m sorry we couldn’t do anything.’ He said, ‘He’s a prick.’ Next day I called Phil and asked him, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘Oh, I had problems and couldn’t leave.’ So tell us! But that would be too simple for Phil.” At one stage in the evening, Lennon had a heated telephone exchange with Yoko back in New York and smashed the receiver against the mixing board, causing some minor damage. Spector later offered to pay Ross for the repair, but Ross decided to keep the desk in its damaged state, “as a souvenir.” On another night, Lennon became so drunk that Spector was obliged to abandon the session altogether. With George Brand’s help, he bundled Lennon into a car to take him back to Lou Adler’s house. “They got John upstairs into the bedroom,” May remembers. “John was going, ‘Come on, Phil, I love you’—in a drunken, melancholy way. And George was sitting on top of him. In John’s mind, I think he thought he was getting into some kind of three-way sex situation. He couldn’t tell what was happening. So he freaked out. They brought me upstairs and I was in shock to see that they’d tied John up. He was screaming at me. ‘This is it!’ I said. ‘What did you guys do?’ They said, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be okay, just let him sleep it off.’ “Phil and George left, with John upstairs screaming every awful thing you could imagine. Everything he wanted to say about Yoko was just coming out. It was just anger at everybody, Phil, Yoko, everybody.” In desperation, May summoned Tony King to help. By the time King arrived, Lennon had broken free of his ties and was standing at the front door, bellowing, King remembers, “like a mad bull. I got him in the house and he was a mess, sobbing, saying, ‘Why did they do it, how could they do that?’ Then all of a sudden he started fighting me. We were rolling around on the floor. Finally I got him where I was laying on top of him with his arms pushed out to the side, my face six inches away from his, and he was in some kind of blackout. He looked up and saw my face, and he said, ‘I didn’t know you were that strong, dear…’ We both ended up laughing. And that broke it. The house was just a wreck; windows broken, Carole King’s gold records were all over the floor, bent out of shape; Lou’s collection of silver-handled walking sticks were scattered everywhere. The next day we went off to breakfast, and John just kind of laughed it off. He said, ‘Well, that was a funny night, wasn’t it.’ I thought, All right for you to say—I’ve got to repair the bloody house.”

Mick Brown, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. (2007)

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1990: Former Beatles publicist Tony King talks about how John during the Lost Weekend was thinking about writing with Paul again, and sheds some insight on how John really felt towards Paul, beyond all the anger and bitterness he displayed in the throes of their public divorce.

TONY: Once we got through Mind Games or into Walls and Bridges, John wanted to write again with Paul. Because I said to him, “Do you ever wanna sit down and write with Paul again?” And he said, “Yeah, I’d love to, when the time’s right.” And I was sending those feelers in the other direction. I was trying to, you know, being the Mary Poppins that I am, but I was trying to encourage that. I’d come from the time when they were great friends, and I liked the thought of them still continuing that. People can beg to differ, but it doesn’t mean to say you don’t have to speak to each other for the rest of your lives. And yet now he was considering writing with Paul again. He wanted to work with him again. He just couldn’t – he just couldn’t work out the common ground at that time. There was still all that Apple stuff, you see. In a way. 

You know, John loved Paul. No doubt about it. I remember once he said to me, “I’m the only person who’s allowed to say things like that about Paul. I don’t like it when other people do.” He didn’t like if other people said nasty things about Paul. And he always referred to Paul as his estranged fiancé and things like that, like he did on that [live] record ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ with Elton in Madison Square Garden. And he knew that his relationship with Paul was very important to him. But you know, like all great friendships, they’d grown apart and married different people and had different lives. He knew what he didn’t like about Paul, but he also knew what he liked about Paul. 

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1989 (?): Musician Nicky Hopkins (who was a session pianist on the Imagine album) looks back on the recording of ‘How Do You Sleep’ and wonders about the underlying emotions of its closest collaborators towards the song’s subject.

HOPKINS: My first inkling of what the song was about was hearing John singing it through. As we were learning it I thought, “My god, you’re not really gonna record this.” Because it was obvious who it was about. I thought, “You can’t be serious, these are probably just joke lyrics and you’re going to modify it.” No he didn’t.

…

We were all just looking at each other. I don’t even think George commented on it, and I thought, “This is interesting.” Here’s George, playing along and taking great pains on the solo to get it right, and I thought, “Now this – how is this going to affect the relationship that George has with Paul, whatever that is or was?” I mean, I knew there was a rift obviously, everybody knew there was the rift between John and Paul at that point, but I thought, “Now, this is gonna surely reflect a little badly on George.” And I thought, “Is George going to refuse to play on this track?” But no, he didn’t. I guess he thought, “Well, this is John’s trip, and that’s up to him. It’s up to these two guys to sort their feud out.”

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January 28th, 1969 (Apple Studios, London): While Paul is away for an Apple business meeting, John takes a break from leading the ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ rehearsals in Paul’s absence to talk to George about the meeting he’s recently had with Allen Klein. John is effusive in his praise for Klein’s business knowledge (citing Klein’s insight into the Beatles’ undercover tax dealings) and perceptiveness (claiming Klein knows John in one night as well as George has ever known John). He also puts forth Klein’s concept for a benefit for Biafra and how he would have the acumen to execute George’s own idea for a concert featuring an entire line-up of musicians to be organised, performed, and filmed for charity.

GEORGE: What did you want to talk about?

JOHN: Well, I’ll talk about it when we do it, you know. Just that I saw Klein and that, you know.

GEORGE: Oh, Klein?

JOHN: Klein. Allen Klein.

GEORGE: Oh, I see.

JOHN: Yeah. And it’s very interesting. You know. From a lot of angles. [laughs] But I want to tell you all at once, you know, so that it’s not… But it’s just – I just think he’s fantastic.

GEORGE: Really?

JOHN: Yeah. But I mean, I’d just like you to see him, you see, and talk. It doesn’t matter – [inaudible], you know, it’s like that. A lot of interesting news that we don’t know half about, just about—

GEORGE: About us?

JOHN: Yeah.

GEORGE: Like what?

JOHN: Well, I’ll tell – he’ll tell you all that, ’cause it’s a lot. You know, he knows everything about everything. On everyone. [George laughs] You know, he’s that big, he’s that scale.

GEORGE: Yeah.

JOHN: It’s like, “Where’s your [inaudible]? I’ll get it.” I mean, so [Magic] Alex [Madras] is always like that too, but you’ve got to see him.

GEORGE: Oh yeah, okay.

JOHN: Very interesting guy. I was there till two in the morning, just—

GEORGE: Oh, you went last night?

JOHN: I went there thinking oh fucking hell, well, I’ve got to see him, I put it off last time. But I was sort of half-thinking all that time, you know – you keep hearing about him all these years, you know, but so what? So somebody says he’s this or that. What, said what, about who? What did they say about us? What did they say about Brian? But he – fucking hell, he knows about [James] Isherwood, Bahamas, [Walter] Strach…

GEORGE: Yeah, but—

JOHN: Things that you just can’t believe, you know.

GEORGE: [laughs; inaudible] Yeah.

JOHN: The same old news, but down to where it’s gone. [laughs] And how to get it. So I – well, I didn’t really want to say it sort of half[-hearted]. I sort of – he’s gonna look after me, whatever, you know. It’s just like that. And he knows – and he even knows what we’re like, you know! Just from the pick-up. I mean, he said he had to see me to know exactly if he was right or not, but the way he described each one of us, and what we’ve done and what we’re gonna do and that, what – just like I know you, you know.

GEORGE: Yeah.

JOHN: He knows me just as much as you do! Incredible guy, you know. We were both just stunned. And it was just like, he was one of those guys when he was talking – I mean, so I got the same bit with Ronan [O’Rahilly] and that, but it was never like this, you know what I mean? But I got a very big high. I was just very heavy after the night, and I had to go watch some film after I’d been here, and I was thinking, oh god, I mustn’t let him down anyway, you know, he’s not – he won’t understand that. And he just starts in. I sat down, sort of had a peanut. “Do you want a drink?” I had a drink. He says, “I don’t drink… Uhuhuh.” [vocalises impression of Klein’s spiel] I was looking at [Yoko] to see if I was getting, seeing, hearing different words. [continues impression of Klein’s spiel] “Tom, Dicky, fucking…”

YOKO: He’s just [inaudible] businessman. He owns half of MGM, so he doesn’t need the—

GEORGE: He owns half of MGM?

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GLAZER: Did you get any feedback from John or Ringo or anybody, saying, ‘Congratulations’ [for All Things Must Pass]? GEORGE: “I remember John was really negative at the time, but I was away and he came ’round to my house, and there was a friend of mine living there who was a friend of John’s. He saw the album cover and said, ‘He must be fucking mad, putting three records out. And look at the picture on the front, he looks like an asthmatic Leon Russell,’ there was a lot of negativity going down. You know … Ringo played on almost the whole album. I don’t care about that. Fuck it – we’ve been through the thing. I felt that whatever happened, whether it was a flop or a success, I was gonna go on my own just to have a bit of peace of mind. GLAZER: So you weren’t apprehensive about how it would go over? GEORGE: No. Not at all. I felt it was good music, whether people bought it or not. I was concerned that the musicians who played on it were concerned. It was good. GLAZER: By the time it was finished, you were confident it was good? GEORGE: Even before I started I knew I was gonna make a good album because I had so many songs and I had so much energy. For me to do my own album after all that – it was joyous. Dream of dreams.

George Harrison, interview w/ Mitchell Glazer for Crawdaddy. (February, 1977)

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Paul had every right to moan about Stuart. Stu really wasn’t interested in the band and he never practised the guitar. Paul, at eighteen, was a perfectionist. He just wanted the band to be great – but there was this Stuart bloke, just standing there, looking good, looking very, very cool. And that was good enough for John but it wasn’t good enough for Paul. Stu wouldn’t have stayed in the band. He was an artist and he would never have let the band get in the way of his painting. If the bass had been his first love and he’d wanted to learn, he would have practised and he’d have learnt very fast. But he just wasn’t interested. He was only interested in going up on to that stage and posing.

Astrid Kirchherr, The Independent: Pop. (May 5th, 1994)

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November, 1983: In his interview with DJ Roger Scott, Paul has less than favorable things to say about Beatles biographer Philip Norman, and gets heated about Norman’s insinuations re: John’s sexuality.

PAUL: Philip Norman is the same kind of – or Norma Philips, as I prefer to call her – is the same thing, really. ’Cause I met him at a reception, Guinness Book of Records thing, and he said, “I’m doing a book, Paul, and I’ve talked to all the kind of people up in Liverpool, Bob Wooller and all of them,” and I said, “Yeah, oh, great,” you know. And I didn’t really like the look of him. I didn’t think he – he would have a great thing. He didn’t seem like the man to me, to go and do the big story. So I had a lot of stuff on, and I, um, wasn’t keen to be interviewed by him – as the others weren’t, either. Nobody agreed to be. So he turned it all ’round and tried to do that clever thing at the end of his book he says, “Unfortunately, I asked to see The Beatles but they wouldn’t see me, but I think – and people have told me – I’ve got a better book because of it.”

It’s rubbish, you know. He’s taken some very accurate moments, and written them well, because he’s probably quite a good writer – he’s Sunday Times and all that, he better had be – so he’s got a little bit of class attached to his name. So people tend to believe anything that’s the Sunday Times is generally – you just believe it, because it’s the Sunday Times, you know. “It’s not like the Sun, love.” It’s all that, you know. He’s a respectable writer. And he just put some stuff in there that is just crazy, you know. But the thing is, it’s – it’s couched, uh, or it’s – it’s—

SCOTT: It’s written so well.

PAUL: It’s – it’s set – it’s written very well, it’s written very cleverly, and it’s also set in a lot of true facts. Occasionally, this little fact like, you know, virtually, he’s got – well, I mean, Brian Epstein, that hitman, mafia [associations]? Well I think that’s a load of crap. I really do. I don’t know where he’s got it from, and the evidence is all about the merchandising set up in the book or something. I just think he’s made it up.

SCOTT: It’s more about the myths. More of it is myths.  

PAUL: I think it’s sensationalism. And I really do think it’s myths. And I do think all this stuff… “John was gay.” Right? That’s in the book. I – I just think they’re old fruits, these guys. They’re just old fruits, and they’re out to make a buck. John – and I know exactly where he’s got it from. When the group was being formed, John was a smart cookie. Brian Epstein was going on holiday to Spain, and Brian was gay. Brian was going on holiday, and Brian invited John along. John, not being stupid, saw his opportunity to impress upon Mr. Epstein who was the boss in this group. And I think that’s why John went on holiday. It’s since – and I think good luck to him, too, ’cause you know, he was that kind of guy – he wanted Brian to know— [audio glitch] —not always, but he was – he was into that kind of stuff. And so now, this fella’s just decided to say, “Oh, well, he went on a holiday with somebody who was known to be gay, and therefore I think he’s gay.” [pause] I mean, I don’t know what to make of it, myself. I mean, I knew John for—  

SCOTT: [commiserating] Oh, who cares.

PAUL: Well, who cares, I suppose, yeah. I mean, well – I care, ’cause as much as, like… [distracted] All I care about is that if he isn’t, then it’s a naughty [on Norman’s part]. I mean, if John was – the trouble is, see, is he’s not here to fend for himself, and we can’t ask him, “’Scuse me, John, are you – have you ever been gay?” I mean, he’s the kind – I remember people used to ask that. There were lots of people asking cheeky questions, and they were always saying, “Well, why – have you ever tried homosexuality, John?” You know, they always used to ask all that kind of stuff. I remember John saying to them, “No, I’ve never met a fella I fancy enough.” And that was his kind of opinion. You know, “I may go – I may be gay one day, if some fella really turns me on.” He was – he was that open about it. But as far as I was concerned, I slept in a million hotel rooms, as we all did, slept in a million places with John, and there was never any hint of it. So I suspect that it’s just a – it’s just something to sell a book. The guy will say that I’m a hopeless romantic, and I’m naive, and I’m an idiot, and I’m cloaking stuff behind this mask of secrecy, and I’ve got a great front and I’m really a wicked person behind it. But you know, you can say all that stuff, but I just don’t think it’s true. I think he just made it up.