// »we got very drunk and cried about, you know, dunno, about how we loved each other or something, I don’t know« – Sir Paul McCartney // I’m just a Beatles obsessed girl in her 30s // Life goes on, brah //
"Why don't we take off alone?
Take a trip somewhere far, far away
We'll be together all alone again
Like we used to in the early days"
(Just Like Starting Over)
"At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey
To a much better place
And this wasn't bad
So a much better place
Would have to be special"
(The End of the End)
Q: There is a very beautiful song called "The End Of The End", the way you talk about your whole ending, and the lyric goes: "It's a start of a journey to a much better place." You mean, better than England?
Paul: It's basically a start of a journey to France. Or Spain through France. Yeah, that's what it is. It's a much better place, Paris.
"That is one of the things that intrigues me about a life. I just have a general sort of feeling of: I'm here now talking to you and this is this bit of life, a little while ago I was getting divorced and that was that weird bit of life, and before that I was living 30 years and raising a family with Linda, that was that bit of life, I'm now married to an American, Nancy, lovely girl, that's this bit of life. And so if you keep rolling back, you go through Wings, you go through the Beatles, and then you get back to this wild territory which is youth, when you weren't famous and you could get stopped in the street, or you're in school and you were being abused — not in a sexual way but just in teachers being the mad nutcases they were and having that control over you and you had to go along with it. So there's so much stuff been going on, and then I roll back before that, and I'm a really little kid. And I can almost feel that I remember things from my birth. I don't know if this is true, this is probably just pure speculation, but I have a vision of a sort of white-tiled room, and chrome clinical instruments, and the clanking noise of those things on chrome trays…" (McCartney stops himself at this point and offers a commentary in the third person—"Come on! Is he crazy or not?"—before continuing.) "That couldn't be me being born, could it? What I'm saying is, to me it's a vast panoply of a wonderful legendary tapestry, life. There's just so much in this story, and it's still going on, it's still changing, it's still evolving. My feeling is that as long as I'm managing to proceed through it with some sort of pleasure, then that's always been enough. Sometimes it's been more than enough—it's been vast prizes, vast satisfaction. I couldn't really describe what it is, but it's just time stretched out and all these millions of little occurrences that have happened, and that's me. So yeah, I'm still that little kid. I really do still feel embarrassingly like that, because I know how old I am, and I look in the mirror, I see how old I am. It's this ever changing thing, and I sort of vaguely find myself quite satisfied with it. I wouldn't say totally, because that's Valhalla. That's asking for possibly too much. But, yeah, I have a lot of good things going on in my life and I generally have a pretty good time.”
So after I posted those photos of Linda and Paul yesterday, taken by Allen Ginsberg, I started doing some digging into their relationship with Allen. Maybe this is all old news to everyone, but I found some cool stuff, so thought I'd share!
So Allen first met the Beatles on his 39th birthday, although at this point it was just John, Cyn, George and Pattie (x):
"At the party Allen got completely drunk and stripped off his clothes, putting his baggy underpants on his head and hanging a hotel ‘Do not disturb’ notice around his cock. It was at this moment that two of The Beatles arrived: John with Cynthia, and George with Pattie. John and George quickly checked that no photographers were present. Allen kissed John on the cheek, and John told him that he used to draw a magazine at art school called the Daily Howl [in reference to Ginsberg’s poem Howl]; they were friendly enough and accepted drinks, but then made quickly for the door. I asked John why he was leaving so soon. ‘You don’t do that in front of the birds!’ he hissed in my ear."
Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
Despite this interesting first meeting, it looks like they went on to be friends with all of them, including Paul. In 1967 Allen gifted Paul an early copy of his book 'TV Baby Poems', with the following inscription:
“For Paul McCartney
That
all fantasies
harmonise sweetly &
also Hari Krishna!”
(x)
In the same book, Allen actually name drops John and Paul, in the poem Middle of a Long Poem on These States: Kansas City to St. Louis.
You can read the full poem here, but also... here's the section that they're mentioned in:
Paul later goes on to use the phrase 'Electric Arguments' as the title of his 2008 The Fireman album. And I'm just gonna... leave that there.
It seems like they became closer friends in the 90s, and Allen talks about his friendship with Paul in this interview:
I had been talking quite a bit to [Paul] McCartney, visiting him and bringing him poetry and haiku, and looking at Linda McCartney’s photographs and giving him some photos I’d taken of them.
And around this point, Allen and Paul collaborated on an accompanied version of Allen's poem The Ballad of the Skeletons.
Here's Paul talking about how he got involved, but the TLDR is that Allen called him asking if he knew a guitarist that would accompany him at the Royal Albert Hall, and after recommending a couple of people, Paul assumed it was Allen's round about way of asking him.
The performance is so so good, you can watch the full thing here:
Paul just looks so happy doing it!
They also went on to record a version of this as well, which had a more complicated instrumental composed by Paul and then recorded with Allen on vocals, Philip Glass on keyboards, Paul on guitar, drums, Hammond organ and maracas, Lenny Kaye on bass, Marc Ribot on guitar and David Mansfield on guitar. - you can read more about it here.
And I just love this quote from Allen about working with Paul (from this interview again):
He reacts to the words in an intelligent way. You can hear it on the tape. Like if I say on the recording, “What’s cooking,” all of a sudden he brings in the maracas to get that really funny excitement. When I say, “Blow Nancy blow,” he blows on the Hammond organ. He added a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interpretation.
And sometimes, when I made a flub, he covered it. He left his lead sheet in his guitar case, so we had to share my lead sheet [at Albert Hall], which was fun.
I just love finding out all these random little things Paul has been involved in, he gets everywhere!
Allen also (tried) to give Paul advice on his poetry (x), and Allen's comments about Eleanor Rigby were one of the things that lead Paul to publish his own poetry in Blackbird Singing.
I used to hang out a bit with Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties, and later on during the last couple of years of his life we became good friends. And he said to me “That Eleanor Rigby is a f- good poem, man.” So I thought, well, he’s no slouch, and so, with Adrian pushing me, I looked at them again, and thought, yes, some of them could be read.
(x)
Allen Ginsberg unfortunately passed away on the 5th April 1997, about a year before Linda, but it seems like those last few years of Allen's life included a really beautiful, collaborative friendship with them!
Paul McCartney talking about failing to complete Now And Then as part of the Beatles Anthology project. From the newly released episode nine of The Beatles Anthology (2025)
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the newly released episode nine of The Beatles Anthology (2025)
I love everything about this. Seeing Paul in the background and thinking ‘of course he’s on the bloody drums’. Knowing that Ringo is thinking ‘of course he’s on the bloody drums’. Paul turning away when Ringo looks at him like a dog who’s been caught chewing a slipper. Ringo's 'what have I told you?'. Paul’s fake crying. My boys 🥰
I don’t care about Barbara and Nancy, we need to get Paul and Ringo to move in together and make an Osbournes-style reality show. Life With The Pringos: Once You Pop You Can’t Stop
“What is for you the ideal of earthly happiness?” John Lennon, May 1965 /José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, 2009 / Boston, September 1964 / New York, May 1968 / Hope of Deliverance, 1992 / Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity / Nova, 1999 / Now and Then, 1977-1995-2022
John: Paul and I churned out a lot of songs in those days, and, uh, it was easier because it was the beginning of-of our... uh, bussi- you know, uh... rela-"
Yoko (interrupts): Career.
John: Relationship and career.
