[tavolgisvist]

(Monthly Book, November 1963)

[eppysboys]

[pizzaandfairytales]

“Certainly, I’d never envy George’s predicament of being caught in the competitive, psycho-sexual crossfire of Messrs. Lennon and McCartney nor question the sincerity of the pain he expresses about it in this song.”

— Alan W. Pollack on “Only A Northern Song”

[aceonthebass]

I love everything about Alan W. Pollack’s musicological analysis of every Beatles song (!), and if you’ve never read them, you should.

But especially this. The phrase “psychosexual crossfire” to describe John and Paul being Like That is such an integral part of my mental dialogue when consuming Beatles content, it’s not even funny.

Thank you for that, Alan

[muzaktomyears]

stop

[groovybananastarfish]

[bugscholar]

beatles biopic casting means nothing to me. i simply look away if i see a picture of those guys

[pauls1967moustache]

you know how being songwriting partners is like marriage and songwriting is like sex and making an album is like being pregnant and songs are like your children. i don't even have anything to add to this it's just like. ok! yeah! what more can any of us do with this? you said it, man. sure!

[pauls1967moustache]

People were reblogging this like it applies to other people. No, listen. This is about a specific guy. One guy in particular said all of this. This isn’t me romanticising music - Paul McCartney is mpreging himself with songs. He literally said this. He songwriting married John Lennon and then they had songwriting sex together in John’s attic which Paul called “Daddy’s Room.” Do you understand? I am barely even paraphrasing the words that came out of his mouth. This isn’t about the art of creation, it’s about inventing a pseudo-marriage with your best friend when you are 15 because it’s the 1950s and you’re repressed and British and they haven’t invented bisexuality yet and this is the only way you can have sex with him and have his babies, and then you spend the rest of your life Saying Things instead of admitting you think your friend’s hands are sexy and you want to suck his fingers. But you do still call his hands beautiful. You say this with words that are in the bible. And by you I mean just this one (1) guy (Paul McCartney) who did in fact say this about the guy he wrote songs with (John Lennon). It was a specific instance of these words coming into existence from the vocal cords of Sir Paul McCartney. No one else said all of this.

[bobdylanyaoi]

the beatles invented sex the rolling stones figured out you could also do it with women

[zilabee]

the thing is if you're writing a beatles book, you'd want to know basically nothing about anything. it's a fine tradition of beatles books. you wouldn't want to bring too much 'knowing things' to a 'ridiculous assumptions' party.

the whole of it is that men's books will never be anything in comparison to women's understanding, because in actual fandom, you don't hide all your working and then put out a ridiculous standalone thing that feels important. You just put stuff out there for other people to see, and then you take your feelings and some other feelings, and sort of smudge them up, and together you all create a cob house of possible feelings, with a vaguely plausible layout, which you're not saying is absolute, but which you are saying is wonderful and possible and which smells like home. And then sometimes someone comes over and adds some detailing to the mantelpiece, or builds a little annexe, or someone else is like 'well that window doesn't make sense there!' and you're like 'yeah I know - but we had all this rumour and conjecture and we had to put it somewhere'.  And then they take it out and put a three word quote from a 1975 magazine article in its place and everyone gathers to look at the lovely new thing with better flow, and have a cup of tea. 

and meanwhile men are building fucking standalone square houses from a flatpack, and pretending they fit in the space, pretending they're new or interesting or even fucking functional, when they've not even built foundations and the whole thing would blow over in the slightest wind, but they're too busy lauding each other as design geniuses to actually care.

this is not about ken womack* specifically who I know nothing about and I'm sure is fine.  it's not even about anyone specifically.  it's about how much better the internet is at understanding beatles than books.  and how much more I value fandom than authorship, and how hilarious it is that books are taken more seriously than any decent blog with a functioning tagging system.

* a post I wrote when Ken Womack brought out his book about Mal's diaries, and confidently decided that little cartoon was Paul, and a post which the whole Ian Leslie stuff has reminded me about so I went into drafts to find it.

[thedissenters]

John Lennon & Ringo Starr at EMI Studios in London, England | 30 March 1967 © Frank Herrmann

[whitealbum]

it’s still so crazy to me that the guy who wrote this john and paul a love story book is a transphobe like ok dude if you showed up to mclennon monday we would kill you with hammers

[whitealbum]

sorry im still mad bc how are you gonna say “love story” “and i love him” “how two lost boys from liverpool fell for each other” when you have so much hatred for queer people i hope he dies. profiting off us when you can probably find more in depth analysis written by 26 year olds on tumblr for free

[monkberries]

#a love story in songs is such an overdone idea anyway like oh does it come with an 8tracks playlist? get a job (x)

[pommedefemme]

[whitealbum]

1 YOU are terf and he is too 2 yes it is deserving of that 3 i wasn’t even talking about the beatles in that sentence i was talking about trans women 4 even if i was talking about the beatles i’ll call john lennon queer if i want. people born in the 40s were capable of being bisexual 5 any normal person reading that blog post or his twitter would understand that he is unsympathetic to lgbt people you’re just insane

[chickadeethoughts]

too many people IS so much meaner than how do you sleep in hindsight bc hdys is just a group project of “let’s write the most clever rhyming couplets we can about how paul sucks” but too many people is paul smiling as he leans in to whisper into john’s ear that “you may think you’re hot shit now but i’m going to come out of this so much happier and more successful than you will ever be and you will wake up to realize you ruined your own life.” and wouldn’t you know that’s exactly what happened. can’t you just imagine that song haunting john as he sat in the dakota during the late 70s, cursing his writer’s block and deciding to throw paul with his guitar out of the house rather than concede that he had been right?

[m1ssunderstanding]

i think from John's perspective this is exactly true. But the thing is, how do you sleep (and the rolling stone interview, and John's whole pr game) permanently ruined Paul's public perception. So while too many people (and some of the other ram tracks, and Paul's refusal to acknowledge anything) tore John up personally, how do you sleep tore Paul up publicly. And imo neither is worse. They both just knew perfectly how to hurt each other. Paul knew John would be more hurt by a private cut, and John knew Paul would be more hurt by a public humiliation.

[lisamarie-vee]

[friendofgeorgeharrison]

49 yo George said "hehe"

from Interview at Royal Albert Hall (April 6, 1992, MTV footage)

[sgtpeppers]

Paul McCartney in the In The World Tonight documentary for Flaming Pie, 1997.

[jeanritchie]

basically if you think yoko is wire mother bc shes mean and scary and paul is cloth mother bc hes nice and cute you are both wrong and hate women. yoko is obviously cloth mother bc she would hold and cuddle john (baby monkey with no mommy obviously) but let him starve. paul has john's nourishment (creative partnership and understanding) but is a cold robotic little freak. so john (again, baby monkey with no mommy) chooses cloth mother. its simple

[carolsturka]

1990 Paul my beloved :’-)

[toovirgins]

I am absolutely losing my mind at Paul gatekeeping John like this