Maybe it was all meditating and jamming with Donovan and luring Prudence out of her hut with a song. Maybe Paul left because he was pragmatic and heād sufficiently dipped his toes in the metaphysical world and he had a happening life in London to get back to. Maybe John fell apart afterwards because heād desperately needed to believe in the Maharishi and he never did things halfway, even when jumping in the deep end usually didn't serve him well. Maybe the Beatles fell apart because Yoko sat on an amp and the telepathy stopped working and Paul was just too fucking controlling in the studio.Ā
Or -- and I admit it may not make sense outside of my brain and Iāve had to construct a million-chapter fic to try to wrap my head around it -- maybe something did happen in India.Ā Ā
First off, India as a setting is important. It was the first time in years that Paul and John had daily access to each other without the demands of being Beatles. Even during the Sgt Pepper days when they were essentially cohabitating at Cavendish, they had recording deadlines, gate birds wanting autographs, interviews to give, everyone wanting a piece of them.Ā Even as they took Martha for walks and shared each others' clothes and cosplayed at being Victorian bandleaders, the Beatles tornado was still swirling around them. They couldn't get away from it for more than a few hours.
None of that existed in India. Insofar as they could ever put a pause on being Beatles, it was possible in Rishikesh. They were away from the media, surrounded by people they trusted. They could just be Paul and John and meditate and smoke pot and write songs, which was how they'd always said the things they couldn't say out loud.
I donāt mean to suggest that they both suddenly came to the realization that they were soulmates and in love, all starry-eyed heart emojis. Because they had functioned like a couple for many years, and thereās no way that two such emotionally intelligent men werenāt very aware of that.Ā Weāve all seen the way they looked at each other. And that was in public -- imagine the looks in private, huddled over half-written lyrics when no one else was there.Ā
What if itās less that something āhappenedā in India, and more that it became urgent to one of them (spoiler alert: John) that something previously unnamed needed to be named.Ā
Paul strikes me as someone who processed things by compartmentalizing, always keeping moving, always smoothing things over. So perhaps he didn't have good coping strategies when something was too big to file away. The Beatles machine in many ways kept him sane because it allowed him to put one foot in front of another, not having to sit with discomfort for too long -- especially since he was able to easily charm his way out of tricky situations, or at least dispatch Mal to sort them.
So what could have happened in India?Ā Oh, there are many options:
Perhaps it was crossing a physical line that hadnāt yet been crossed (though I suspect many lines had been happily navigated by then).Ā
Perhaps it was John who wanted to say the quiet part aloud. (If weāre to trust Paul, then they only told each other they loved each other once, arse-over-tit drunk, in a hotel room in Key West in 1964).
Perhaps John wanted them to leave their respective partners and finally make a proper go of it, everyone else be damned.
Itās even possible that they both wanted the same thing, but couldnāt get there at the same pace and neither could come to terms with where the other was.Ā
Iām not sure Paul would have reacted well to any of those scenarios. In fact, I think his nervous system would have short-circuited. Not because he didnāt reciprocate the underlying emotion -- cāmon, they were in love -- but because feeling it and naming it are two different things. Naming it means deciding what to do about it, which, if youāre two of the most famous people in the world, has particularly daunting consequences. (Not to mention deeply wounding Cynthia and Jane and the collateral damage to George and Ringo, none of whom signed up for any of this).Ā
John had spent his whole life being left by the people he loved most. So if this theory is correct -- that Paul couldnāt meet him where he was in India, wherever that was -- it would have landed as abandonment and rejection. And Paul, built to keep moving and smooth things over, couldn't stay still (or sit with the discomfort) long enough to convince John he wasn't leaving leaving. He was justā¦ leaving.
(And yes, I know he and Jane planned to depart after five weeks because she had a standing commitment in London. But he was Beatle Paul. There are five million excuses he could have used for why Jane should head back on her own while he stayed behind. No one would have blinked twice).
All of this is to sayā¦ I donāt know what happened. But you know who else doesnāt know what happened? All the Beatles biographers who casually gloss over India. (How many more times do we need to hear how Ringo brought a fucking suitcase full of baked beans? Youāre asking the wrong questions, biographers).Ā
I doubt weāll ever really know. Unless, of course, Paul is feeling very chatty and generous in the next few years. (Or Ringo. Cāmon, man. We know you know everything. I take it back about the baked beans if youāll spill the tea).Ā
And part of the reason that weāll never know is that we lost Johnās perspective 45 years ago when we lost him. His point of view is frozen in time, a series of interviews where sometimes he said things he meant and sometimes he said shit he mentally recanted five minutes later. Since then, we've been dependent on the recollections of those around him -- all of whom have an agenda -- and Paul increasingly seems content to reiterate the same few stories about John, which I respect because heās given us more than enough of himself.
But whatever actually happened in India, I don't know how to begin to understand the unraveling of the Beatles without accepting that at some point in February-March 1968, there was an emotional rupture between Paul and John. Something between them was damaged that was never properly fixed. We can see evidence in Get Back that they loved each other. It was like watching two ex-lovers awkwardly trying to find their way back. But we also know from history that they were never able to find a way to do that.Ā
Or, yāknow, maybe nothing happened in India. wHo KnOwS, yOkO?
excerpt from ch. 16: "A Pretty Nice Girl" of The Space Between Us
The next morning, John phoned him at Wimpole Street.
"Saw you on the telly," he said. "Did you come up with that speech on your own?"
"Course I did," Paul said, affronted, causing John to laugh.
"Were you really an hour late?" John asked.
"Forty minutes," Paul admitted. "Tony was furious."
"Tony can fuck off," John said dismissively.
"Derek would've taken it in stride."
"Good old Degs."
"Nah, he would have been furious too."
"Well, yeah, you fucking forgot and were forty minutes late."
There was a pause.
"Think Mick is right?" John asked. "Are we being soft by accepting the MBEs?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Mick can fuck off too."
"That goes without saying."
"Anyway, what would we do? Send a letter saying thank you very much, but no thanks just the same? What would the Queen think?"
"You're such a royalist, Macca."
"Seriously, though," Paul insisted.
"I don't think the Queen actually makes the nominations," John pointed out. "It's not like she's sitting there listening to Radio Luxembourg and thinking, oh, I quite fancy this song, let's give them a medal."
"I suppose not," Paul conceded. "My dad used to have a crush on her. He's chuffed we're getting to meet her."
"A crush?" John asked, amused. "On the queen? Good ol' Lizzie?"
Paul began to sing a little ditty about Her Majesty that had been running through his head for the past few days, which John riffed on. They then moved on to a tune about going to a bird's flat and sleeping in her bath tub. This occupied them for a few minutes until Cynthia came up behind John and reminded him that the line couldn't stay occupied all day.
"Alright, see you, man," Paul said into the receiver, fighting a grin.
"Her majesty's a pretty nice girl but she doesn't have a lot to say," John sang in a falsetto. "Alright, alright, I'm hanging up, Cyn, keep your hair on, Jesus--"
The line went dead and Paul hung up, still fighting a grin.
"The Beatles are not just any reasonably interesting band that just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The unprecedented reaction to The Beatles in the form of Beatlemania happened because The Beatles themselves were unprecedented, not in reaction to a single external event in a single country that was late to the party anyway."
look say what you will about RPF all iām saying is my guy says things like āiāll leave my message in my songā and āi can always deny it was ever written about himā so. i mean. fair game
