Paul McCartney: I’ll Leave My Message In My Song

something going on in the post-Beatles songs of Paul McCartney

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Where every memory we shared brought us closer together

“We would sit up at Cavendish Avenue until 3.00am and he would talk about what a prat he had been. 'I had everything and I threw it away, he would say. 'Jane wasn't just my woman, she was my closest friend. I've told her everything inside me. She knows what makes me tick down to things that happened as a kid. I went right through all the stuff about my mother dying and how I dealt with that. With Jane, I could just relax completely and be myself and that seemed to be what she wanted.”

Alistair Taylor ‘With The Beatles’

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

7th July 1968- Emotional moments, you left in a rage….dramatic performance, direct from the stage

Tuesday 18 June 1968 : Paul drives up to Oxford to see Jane for the opening night of ‘Summer’ at the Oxford Playhouse. it’s my birthday, too, yeah

Friday 28 June 1968: possibly - Paul goes back to Oxford to see Jane for the first time since getting back from LA? Free day before that evening’s session for Good Night. Picks up a vibe between Jane and director Bob Kidd, which he first noticed on 18 June? I've been feeling blue since Friday… you came in with him again and, suddenly, I knew it wasn't my day

Sunday 7 July 1968: possibly - Jane comes back to Cavendish from her two day run of ‘Summer’ at Saffron Walden? Is this the day she catches Paul with Francie? emotional moments, you left in a rage…dramatic performance, direct from the stage

Wednesday 10 July 1968: Paul, thinking the situation is retrievable, attends the London opening of ‘Summer’ at the Fortune Theatre. According to Gyles Brandreth who was there and was a friend of Jane, Paul doesn’t realise it’s over and that Jane is now with Bob Kidd. I saw the look she gave, they must think I just got to town…love come tumbling down

Saturday 20 July 1968: Jane appears on prime-time Saturday night tv show Dee Time and says her and Paul are over “I haven’t broken it off but but it is broken off, finished”. According to Francie, Paul is watching the show with her and his family at his dad’s house. she’s going to make you suffer tonight, to turn you from a playboy into a man

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“Tell me now, you know the answer, yeah

Is it going to be all right or is it going to be all wrong?

Oh, you tell your sister, go and listen to her soul

You know what she wants and you know you agree”

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Even when it’s raining inside, something tells me it’s alright - First Star Of The Night

A gorgeous song and that guitar line really elevates it, like George’s riff on ‘And I Love Her’.

Lyrically, it’s in a line of Paul songs, going back to the Summer and Autumn of ‘68, where rain represents deep sadness. Here he makes it explicit that it’s a state of mind:

Even when it's raining inside, something tells me it's alright

The next lines remind me of ‘Why Did It Die?’, the original title of ‘For No One’:

Positive emotions that died

Seem to come back shining bright

In ‘For No One’ there was finality. Here there’s hope.

Along with the rain songs, he has a number of songs where the sun comes out, making everything alright. Here, the comfort is more modest. Sunlight banishes the dark. Here the starlight offers a little bit of hope in the darkness.

One brilliant point of light guiding a weary heart.

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Nothing else is keeping us apart - Come Inside

It’s been pointed out that, having given a pretty detailed account of the meaning of most of the songs on Dungeon Lane, Paul had very little to say about ‘Come Inside’. His comment to Billboard that there’s ’ not a lot I can say about it. Just play it” reminds me of his answer at a Q&A when asked about ‘Demons Dance’: “Heaven knows what that’s about!”. Maybe there are certain songs that, for reasons of discretion, he can’t openly discuss and, when asked, he’ll quickly bat it away.

Like in ‘Demons Dance’, ‘Struggle’, ‘Hosanna’, ‘Sixty Second Street’ and others, the narrator in ‘Come Inside’ - and on such a personal album, there can’t be much doubt that it’s Paul himself - is reaching out to someone appealing for some contact, some communication.

As with those other songs, it feels like he’s addressing someone from his past. On an album that focuses so much on time and memory, that doesn’t feel out of place.

Does that image from the official lyric video suggest it’s a former romantic partner?

He’s telling them that there is no barrier to them reconnecting other than their willingness to do so:

Open up your mind, open up your heart

Nothing else is keeping us apart

He’s saying explicitly that he’s waiting on the word:

You got to let me know what you wanna do

There’s also a message we’ve seen before, that he can protect them if they want to reconnect:

There's not a single thing that you have to fear

If you come my way

We saw this in ‘Get Started’

…know you'll be protected as long as I'm around

To ensure there's no confusion, I would like to make it clear

If you need my help I promise I'll be here

Before that, too, in ‘Write Away’

You need attention, so I think it's worth a mention that if I can deliver

Well there wouldn't be no heavy price to pay

Part of the message of ‘Come Inside’ might also be to all of us:

Well, step right up and take a look, see what you can find

'Cause all my life's an open book

Come inside my mind

This aligns with what he said in his Lyrics book:

"Over time I came to see each song as a new puzzle. It would illuminate something that was important in my life at that moment, though the meanings are not always obvious on the surface. Fans or readers, or even critics, who really want to learn more about my life should read my lyrics, which might reveal more than any single book about The Beatles could do."

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That sound can take me back to the lost horizon - (Lost Horizon -contd)

Lost Horizon feels more impressionistic than some of the other songs on the album. Precise details but with the overall effect slightly blurred. Remembering a time and place but mainly remembering a feeling.

Yeah, whatever he may be recalling, I can imagine those Proustian auditory memories as the sounds drifting into his Wimpole Street attic bedroom.

Marylebone Road, 1963

57 Wimpole Street (photos from beatlesinlondon.com)

Can imagine him lying in his bed about to drop off and hearing the train whistles. The last days of London’s steam trains. In quieter moments, the clock ticking on the table in the hall. Or waking up late morning and hearing the sounds of kids playing, maybe from nearby Paddington Street Gardens. Sensory traces of a remembered world and the people who inhabited it.

Where every memory we shared brought us closer together

Is that referring to every memory ‘we’ (whoever ‘we’ includes) made together? Or referring to the sharing of very personal memories that brought him and another party closer?

“and every day we spent there was the start of the first day of forever”

The first flush, when the future feels endless. A future, though, that was never realised? That was lost?

“every day we spent there”. “There” is the lost horizon but, in this case, is he also placing it in a particular location?

This remembrance of things past can sometimes get too much:

That sound can lift me up, that sound can do my head in

This recalls ‘Deep, Deep Feeling’ and

Sometimes I wish it would stay, sometimes I wish it would go away (The deep, deep pain)

Then the payoff that you can only honour the past by living for now:

“You've gotta live for now, make every moment count. You've gotta live for now, along the lost horizon”.

the call of a train whistle cutting through the night…the purring of a car engine waiting at the light….laughter from a children’s playground…the chimes of a clock ticking on the table top…..the braking of a bus driver coming to a stop…. music from a distant fairground

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Lost Horizon - Day breaks along the lost horizon. Time makes every moment count

Paul’s given a description of a lot of the songs on the new album: the ‘story before the story’, songs, the Nancy songs, the Glastonbury song. There’s a couple, though, that, as far as I can see, he’s not gone into detail on.

In talking about one of them, ‘Lost Horizon’, he focused on the back story, how it had been written in the early 2000s and been rediscovered by his late engineer, Eddie Klein.

The title evokes, and is likely inspired by, James Hilton’s 1933 novel of that name. It’s the novel that gave us Shangri-La, a fictional, utopian valley hidden in the Himalayas where inhabitants live in peaceful harmony and near-immortality.

The idea of a ‘lost horizon’ is a boundary line or destination that can no longer be seen, mapped, or returned to. In the context of the novel, it is Shangri-La. For the protagonist, Hugh Conway, the "lost horizon" becomes the literal mountain range hiding Shangri-La. Once he allows himself to be talked into escaping the valley, he passes a boundary line he can never cross again. He spends the rest of his life in a broken, desperate search for a paradise he only realized he loved after he threw it away.

In Paul’s ‘Lost Horizon’ the verses give us a series of Proustian auditory memories:

The call of a train whistle cutting through the night, I still remember that sound

The purring of a car engine waiting at the light

Laughter from a children's playground

and

The chimes of a clock ticking on the table top, well I remember that sound

The braking of a bus driver coming to a stop

Music from a distant fairground

As this isn’t one of the Liverpool songs, it’s an open question what place and time is being remembered here. The London he encountered when he first moved there with The Beatles? Who knows but the soundscape of late ‘63/64 London would have included the last days of steam trains and their whistles. Wherever it is, it sounds very much like what you’d hear from a bedroom window, at night or when you’re just coming to at some point in the morning.

The chorus includes:

Day breaks along the lost horizon

Time makes every moment count

‘Day breaks’ rings a bell labelled ‘For No One’. In ‘For No One’, day breaks and the camera zooms in on the mundane details of a dying relationship. In ‘Lost Horizon’, the camera zooms out on the view of a golden past, one to which the protagonist can never return but which he can relive when he remembers those sounds.

That sound can shake me up, that sound can lift my spirits

That sound can take me back to the lost horizon

Where every memory we shared

Brought us closer together

And every day we spent there

Was the start of the first day of forever

Ultimately, I think, the song is about the Shangri-La he can’t forget but can never return to and the need to make the most of the here and now.

You've gotta live for now, along the lost horizon

You've gotta live for now, make every moment count

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

"Do I ever cross your mind as you lie there….As you lie across the bed, am I there inside your head?" - As You Lie There

Loving the new album. ‘As You Lie There’ has one of the quirkiest back stories. Jasmine, a boyhood crush that he admired from afar. He particularly remembers looking up at her window and seeing here there.

A UK tabloid has said they’ve tracked her down and have identified her as a Jasmine Howe (formerly Dodds), currently of Hampshire, who says she had no idea about his infatuation.

Speaking of the song’s inspiration at the listening party held at Abbey Road, he said: “Up in one of the windows, there was a girl I fancied called Jasmine. But I didn’t know how to approach her, I never spoke to her. The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed – I was on the toilet – so I missed Jasmine!”

That punchline is almost too perfect. According to Jasmine Howe’s family, she never went to his door. Mind you, it would have been about 70 years ago, so memories can be at variance.

This idea of being entranced by a girl he sees in a window does have a bit of a history with him. 1964’s ‘From A Window’, given to Billy J Kramer, describes a similar scene. ‘No Reply’, from the same year and largely John’s, is a more anguished take on the same idea.

Both songs were likely inspired by The Rays 1957 doo wop hit ‘Silhouettes’. John certainly cited it as an inspiration for ‘No Reply’.

Speaking of ‘From A Window, John said;

“That’s Paul’s. That’s his artsy period with Jane Asher. I’m not sure.”

Are ‘As You Lie There’ and ‘From A Window’ both inspired by the alluring Jasmine? May well be. I can’t help thinking, though, that some of the lyrics of ‘As You Lie There’ feel more like a reflection on an actual relationship than an unrealised boyhood crush:

"Do I ever cross your mind as you lie there….As you lie across the bed, am I there inside your head?"

“I like to think that we could be together forever”.

“Just say the word and we can be together forever”

Those last two lines in particular don’t feel like something you’d say to an unrequited crush, even allowing for poetic licence.

He has been known to conflate people and meanings in songs. Like ‘Hey Jude’ starting off inspired by Julian then going on to something else entirely. It’s well within his scope.

This is a very reflective album and he’s quite comfortable ascribing songs to his Mum and Dad, John, George, Nancy. What if there are others he wants to include in his reflections but he’s unable to discuss them openly? He’s also talked about some songs having a surface meaning and a below the surface meaning. Could this be one of them?

AS you lie tHERe JAsmiNE JA’smine

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Step into the misty mountains with your hair like ambered honey, to feeling warm and breezes

On April 6 1967, Paul, Jane and Mal took a trip to the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado.

From Mal’s diaries:

THURSDAY APRIL 6:

Took charge of Hertz rented car. Drove Paul and Jane up into the Rockies for what I can only describe as a real Magical Mystery Trip. Pulled off the road and parked amongst the so green trees. Down a rockygorge to river. Ended up paddling in the cold running water, trousers rolled up to the knees, with Jane. Warm lazy day. We walked bare-foot in the drifts of snow but didn't feel at all cold.

April in the Rockies with morning mists caused by melting snowdrifts, turning into an idyllic ‘warm lazy day’.

“step into the misty mountains with your hair like ambered honey”

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

The Days We Left Behind

Nothing stays the same, no-one needs to cry

Nothing can reclaim the days we left behind

Beautiful song. It looks like we might have a very reflective album on the way. John and George in this one. It also references his boyhood and his birdwatching hobby. Love this: In the skies the skylarks rise

Appropriately, the track starts off with a hint of ‘Mother Nature’s Son’. There’s also a bit of an ‘After The Gold Rush’ feel to the whole track.

Then there’s the ‘code’ :

We met at Forthlin Road and wrote a secret code, to never be spoken

He does love a code, doesn’t he? We know that he and his teenage pals had their own code words, particularly with Ivan Vaughan. Their ‘cranlock navel, cranlock pie’ malarkey.

“We had a few words and phrases that, if one of us said it, would amuse the others because it was like a secret code.”

In this song he seems to be referring to John and himself sharing a secret code. Is this something he does with his closest?

He’s referred to codes before, of course:

in ‘Press’ with ‘maybe we should have a secret code, before we both get ready to explode’

and in ‘Fuh You’ with ‘I could stay up half the night, trying to crack your code’

Then there’s: ‘I stand by what I said, the promise that I made will never be broken’, which is reminiscent of ‘Promise To You Girl’ with its ‘I gave my promise to you girl, I don't want to take it back’.

It ends with the conciliatory ‘cause nothing stays the same and no-one needs to cry. No-one is to blame for the days we left behind.’

Looking forward to the album. Should be interesting.

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Melancholy Macca: 4th of July……and 28th of June?

“Could it have something to do with the fact that I’ve been feeling blue since Friday? You came in with him again and, suddenly, I knew it wasn't my day” (4th of July)

‘4th of July’ is a song that Paul gave to John Christie, who released it as a single in 1974, though the song is said to date from 1970. Paul’s own demo is achingly sad. The lyrics contrast the celebratory spirit of the day with the narrator’s personal melancholy. Could just be a story, but it certainly feels real. So, let’s once again speculate madly and oscillate wildly and see where it takes us.

If in 1970 he’s writing this about something that actually happened, my money would again be on him referring to the Summer of ‘68, the fulcrum upon which his Beatles life with Jane starts to pivot to his post-Beatles life with Linda.

If the narrator is talking on 4th July about feeling blue since Friday, that day would be 28th June 1968. Of course, it’s a song not an affidavit, so maybe Friday just scans better than Wednesday but let’s look at what was going on around then.

Tuesday 18 June: Jane starts a 12 day run of ‘Summer’ at the Oxford Playhouse. Paul visits in the early evening for his birthday.

Thursday 20 June: Paul flies to New York then on to L.A. for the Capitol Convention. He meets up with Linda.

Tuesday 25 June: Paul returns to UK.

It seems probable that he would have tried to see Jane on his return. The Oxford run of ‘Summer’ was due to end on Saturday, so would he have driven out there before then? If so, what day? Can’t be sure but we do know this:

Wednesday 26 June: The Beatles had a recording session starting at 7.00pm. Paul was also playing on the George Harrison produced Jackie Lomax session that, probably, ran before it. So, would restrict his time in Oxford.

Thursday 27 June: The Beatles session started at 5.00 pm, so, again, less time in Oxford. There’s also a possibility that the Oxford Playhouse ran matinees on Thursdays.

Friday 28 June: A Beatles session for Good Night started at 7.00 pm, so a clear day to get to Oxford and back.

Friday seems a good bet, then.

We know from Gyles Brandreth’s diaries that Jane and ‘Summer’ director Bob Kidd were something of an item at this stage. Did Paul notice them walking in together when he got to Oxford and picked up the vibe? A vibe that he might have first picked up on 18 June (hence, “you walked in with him again” ) and that he confirmed when seeing them at the London opening night of ‘Summer’ on 10 July?

On the evening of Saturday 29 June, Paul travelled up to Yorkshire with Peter Asher, Derek Taylor and Tony Bramwell for the recording of ‘Thingumybob’ with the Black Dyke Mills Band.

‘Nothing Is Real’ podcast (Season 6, episode 7). has suggested that it might have been on the morning of that Saturday that he drove out to see Cynthia and Julian and started composing ‘Hey Jude’.

On the way home on the Sunday, the party stopped off in the town of Harrold where Paul performed ‘Hey Jude’ in a local pub.

That would be quick work if he had just written the song on the Saturday, but maybe performing it so soon helped him solidify it in his head? If it was written then, could the experience of the previous day have prompted the rumination in the song about the end of one relationship and the possible start of a new one (with Linda)? We don’t know for sure that the trip to Weybridge was that Saturday (in his memoir, Derek Taylor says Hey Jude was written ‘that week’) but it seems to have been around about then. If so, it would add an extra layer of meaning to the lyrics, once they move on from the Julian lines. It may also have given him added empathy for Cynthia’s situation?

28 June postscript:

On 28 June 1971, Paul got into an odd incident where he was charged with using obscene language to a woman member of the public in Wimpole Street, of all places.

On 28 June 2023, Paul’s exhibition ‘Eyes of the Storm’, which featured a section about his life with Jane and her family in Wimpole Street, opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

“Sunset's painting up the sky, there’s something in my eye. Why am I crying? It's the Fourth of July.”

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Gotta See Jane :

“He cruised Jane's house, and rang her from the phone in his Mini. She would say, "Sorry, I've got somebody here." He would creep home in a rage”

The forthcoming Sam Mendes biopics have encouraged us to see bits of the Beatles story cinematically. That description from Francie Schwartz’s memoir ‘Body Count’ is incredibly cinematic. Of course, the veracity of Francie’s book, or at least some of it, has been questioned. Who knows. This bit has the ring of truth as it’s very much downplaying her own place in the story.

As a movie scene it would need a soundtrack and what better fit could there be than R Dean Taylor’s ‘Gotta See Jane’.

Gotta See Jane was in the UK charts June-September 1968. GSJ lyrically depicts: driving at night, pounding rain, frantic pursuit of a lost Jane and regret and obsession. That narrative aligns uncannily with what Schwartz describes: Paul driving over to Jane’s, calling her from the car and returning in a terrible mood. As we’ll see, rain also features.

It’s very easy to imagine it coming over the radio in Paul’s Mini Cooper. At any rate, he would surely have been aware of it. On the Tamla Motown label, it’s a pulsating and danceable ode and, from Paul’s viewpoint at that time, very much a song with a point.

As mentioned, the ‘poundin’ rain’ of the song matches Francie’s account, too. Many mentions in her book of the inclement weather of Summer and early Autumn ‘68:

“After dinner, the rain came down. Paul was silent, then animated and weird. “You'll have to go. I've got to have this talk with Mrs. Asher."”

“lt was raining, and cabs were scarce.”

“The road back to London was slicker than a sealskin rug and the rain came in buckets”

“September was coming and the rain never seemed to stop”

It was from this time on that rain became a recurring metaphor in Paul’s songs, denoting a deep sadness and longing. He started writing ‘The Long and Winding Road’ that Autumn up at High Park farm, which, of course, at that point he associated with Jane.

The wild and windy night that the rain washed away

Has left a pool of tears crying for the day

Why leave me standing here? Let me know the way

Of course, this was also on the back of the tense White Album sessions. Maybe it was all feeding into the song.

In some of his more recent songs, rain seems like an emotional trigger:

Though she haunts me like the sound of the rain

Or a river running down to the ocean

I hate to complain but it's happening again

(Looking At Her)

Now every time it rains it sometimes gets too much

You know I feel the pain

(Deep Deep Feeling)

Can’t help noticing, too, how some of the lyrics from Gotta See Jane have echoes in Paul’s own songs, maybe coincidentally, maybe subconsciously:

red light, green light from GSJ with red lights, green lights from Venus and Mars (GSJ was reissued in the UK in September ‘74)

Speeding through the dark night, drivin’ through the poundin’ rain with both Getting Closer and Driving Rain.

GSJ’s Windshield wiper splashing with Getting Closer’s watching my windscreen wipers

GSJ’s Turnin' the wheel of life to yesterday, when love and happiness were mine with Let Me Roll It’s I can’t tell you how I feel, my heart is like a wheel, let me roll it

Possibly, Jane was in her new Paddington Street flat at this time. Back in Marylebone.

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

The Fool

“Too late he found out he loves her, so much he wants to die

So drink to a fool, a crazy fool who told his baby goodbye”

‘The Fool’ is not one of the Paul’s better known covers - not a ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ or ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ that he’ll pull out at the drop of a hat - but it’s a song that Paul has played on camera at least three times. Perhaps it has a particular significance for him.

It was written by Naomi Ford and Lee Hazlewood and performed by Sanford Clark. It was later covered by Elvis Presley. Paul and the Beatles played the song during the Get Back sessions on 21 January 1969.

Paul returned to the song for his MTV Unplugged show in 1991, although it didn’t make the album. With the exception of a few upbeat rock and roll numbers to get the party going, the whole Unplugged set reads as an exploration of love found, love lost and, as a consequence, being left singing the blues. As Paul himself described it:

“We’d rehearsed a bunch of songs and tried to keep it a kind of unusual selection so that there was a slightly historical interesting angle to the stuff we were playing.”

Paul plays the song again on the set of the video for ‘Ever Present Past’ in 2007.

He’s just been describing what they wanted for the backing dancers saying, seemingly apropos of nothing at all, “Then, of course, then the problem came, where are you going to get 16 red haired dancers..". (6.41)

Being the star of the video and being involved in every creative decision, you’d think he would have had enough to do, but he brings an acoustic guitar on set and performs ‘The Fool’ to camera (8.31). Director Phil Griffin dances up to Paul as he’s singing, goofing about, but Paul doesn’t join in and Phil leaves him to it. You definitely get the feeling that this performance is important to Paul.

So what’s with ‘The Fool’? If the song does have a particular resonance for him, does it evoke a situation in his past where he left a partner but pretty quickly deeply regretted doing so? Might be a situation where the common assumption was that he was the one that had been dumped?

Could this make some sense of him performing The Fool on the set of the Ever Present Past video?

“Gather round me buddies, hold your glasses high

And drink to a fool, a crazy fool who told his baby goodbye

Too late he found out he loves her, so much he wants to die

So drink to a fool, a crazy fool who told his baby goodbye

He needs her, he needs her so

He wonders why he let her go-oo-oo

She's found a new love, buddy, he’s a lucky guy

So drink to the fool, 'cause I'm that fool who told his baby goodbye

He needs her, he needs her so

He wonders why he let her go-oo-oo

She's found a new love, buddy, he’s a lucky guy

So drink to the fool, 'cause I'm that fool who told my baby goodbye

My baby goodbye

Who told my baby, who told my baby...”

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Struggle/We Can Work It Out

“We can work it out together, we'll get through this somehow” (Struggle)

Having another look at ‘Struggle, this time to compare and contrast it with ‘We Can Work It Out’, a song ‘Struggle’ references lyrically.

We know the received wisdom about WCWIO: it reflects Paul’s ebullient optimism tempered by John’s impatience and cynicism. This is a take that was propagated by John himself in 1980:

“In ‘We Can Work It Out’, Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you’ve got Paul writing, ‘We can work it out, we can work it out’ – real optimistic, y’know, and me impatient.”

As Ian MacDonald pointed out, though, this is only true up to a point. The couple can work it out but only if she sees it his way. Time is of the essence, too, as “there’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long”. In that respect, Paul’s contribution shares John’s impatience and, to a degree, cynicism.

In his Lyrics book, Paul said of the song:

“It was 1965. Things were not going so smoothly between Jane Asher and me. Everyone has mild arguments where you think, ‘God, I wish they could understand where I’m coming from’…it was just normal boyfriend-girlfriend stuff…Most of the time we got on really well, but there would be odd moments where one or other of us would get hurt.

Time has told me that millions of people go through these little squabbles all the time..but this particular song was not like that; it was, ‘Try to see it my way.’ When you’re a songwriter, it’s a good thing to just go off and get your point of view in a song…If you wanted to say it in one line, it would be, ‘Let’s not argue’. If you wanted to say it in two lines: ‘Let’s not argue/Listen to me’. Obviously that is quite selfish, but then so is the song.”

2013’s ‘Struggle’, while referencing WCWIO, comes from a position of maturity and realism. The narrator of the earlier song had certainty and the arrogance of youth. The narrator in ‘Struggle’ knows that it doesn’t work like that. The whole point of WCWIO is to address the volatility in the relationship and to say it can’t go on if the relationship is to survive. The narrator in ‘Struggle’ says:

“If you want to love, if you want to fight

It doesn't really matter, I want you tonight”.

He accepts that maybe it just comes with the territory.

The narrator in ‘Struggle’ wants to reconnect emotionally with a former lover/partner: “Want to get you in my heart again, want to love you once more”

Unlike in WCWIO, the narrator here doesn’t demand all of their attention: “All I want is loving, anything will do”. There’s also an erotic drive here that doesn’t demand permanence necessarily but definitely wants the moment:

“When I get you home, what I wanna do

Babe, I want to sample everything with you”.

It does address the idea of going beyond the moment, though. He can live with the fighting but, ideally, they can have harmony. The narrator of WCWIO demands harmony, here it’s a preference:

“Yes, I want to love you, I don't wanna fight”.

Then he steps back and places the relationship or his desire for one in a bigger context, addressing it like a preacher:

“It's the same old song

Being sung in the background, being sung up front

But if you want to get it right, you got to listen

Heed my words, listen to me!”

We then find out that these words are meant literally. There are words in the background, words not included in the published lyrics. Give or take, they sound to me like:

“Tell me now, you know the answer, yeah

Is it going to be all right or is it going to be all wrong?

Oh, you tell your sister, go and listen to her soul

You know what she wants and you know you agree

Oh, is it going to be (incredible……?), listen to me,

Or are you going to ignore the message everyday?

Come on honey, you can do it

Everybody pray!

Oh yeah, oh yeah, now you know it’s true.”

Is the narrator telling the subject of the song that his message is everywhere if they would only listen, if they could only communicate?He’s saying that he doesn’t have agency here, it’s all with them. So much so that he even calls on a third party to intervene - “you tell your sister”. In complete contrast to the narrator of WCWIO, he has no control. So much so that he can only pray for a happy ending.

A final thought. Beatledom is full of odd little coincidences or synchronicities and, perhaps, there’s an odd one that links the subject of WCWIO with ‘Struggle’.

Asked about Somerset Maugham’s play, ‘The Circle’, which she starred in in 2023, Jane Asher described it as:

"An extremely funny and touching story of betrayal, love and human fallibility, written by a master of comedy and sensitivity, which, like all great plays, still resonates today as it considers the eternal question of life that we all struggle to answer - and which lead us to go round and round in endless circles of behaviour, generation after generation in our search for the answer - what is it all about?"

This resonates very much with these lyrics from ‘Struggle’:

“Yeah, you know what you got here

You got the same old story happening again

The eternal struggle, the destiny of man

It's the same old story, it's happening again

Life's eternal struggle, the destiny of man”

Specifically:

“the eternal question of life that we all struggle to answer”- Jane

“life’s eternal struggle, the destiny of man” - Paul

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

“You have always been my inspiration”

Many have noted a guiding feminine principle in Paul’s work (perversely, some have used this to try to diminish him). In the Camera Obscura scene from his ‘Beautiful Night’ video, this female figure (above), unexplained in the narrative of the video, watches over him.

In some scenes she appears beneath a ‘Future’ sign, labelled like in a Victorian cartoon.

She looks somewhat familiar (video is from 1997…) but the signage suggests this is not about dwelling on the past. Whatever, or whoever, the figure represents, she’s drawing him forward.

This contrasts with another female figure in his earlier ‘Only Love Remains’ video. In the narrative of the video, she (played by actress Pauline Yates) represents a future figure but the way she is placed makes her look much more like a memory. The set looks like the living room at Cavendish Avenue, at least how it appears in those photos from 1967. The table lamp is placed exactly so that the light falls on her hair, changing how it appears.

Unlike in the final shots of the video, Pauline is not identifiable here: her face is obscured by shadow and her hair is visibly transformed by light. As with the Camera Obscura woman, she seems more symbolic of something. The way the old Paul character (Gordon Jackson) is looking at her seems reflective. Does she represent an earlier feminine presence, one associated with feeling and creativity?

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

“Jane said Paul gets in touch with her most days….and that she has given him an identity bracelet”

Anthology inspired bracelet bump.

The id bracelet (or one very like it?), came out at the highest profile moments in the ‘90s.

Even when he went to see Her Maj:

Daily Record article (18 December 1963) below from the excellent beatlessideblog. Big shout out to the Daily Record picture editor for their choice of pics of the hottest couple du jour.

[illleavemymessageinmysong]

Macca: The Man With A Plan

“Take a ride out to the land of the free…don’t hurry, take your time…come and spend it with me”

The main purpose of this blog is to highlight a ‘presence’ in Paul’s post-Beatles songs. It’s a presence that is largely identifiable by repetition and consistency. It’s a presence that, to me, seems to be distinct from the ones that we all know about: John, Linda (of course), Heather and Nancy.

We have looked at how this presence can be identified by the ‘Again’ songs:

If I give my love again to you, will it be the same love that we once thought was true? (Same Love) / If you wanna love me again, I’ll take you for a ride in my Cadillac (If You Wanna) / want to get you in my heart again, want to love you once more (Struggle) / if you let me try again, I'll have a better attitude (The Other Me) / I wanna take you to my heart again (Hosanna)

Another recurring theme that’s worth a look is where the narrator has a plan involving this person:

And I wouldn't mind knowing, knowing that you wouldn't mind going, going along with my plan (Hope Of Deliverance)

So say yes, tonight, say yes if my suggestion is right (Home Tonight)

One specific thing that comes up a couple of times is the idea of them taking a road trip, specifically to the USA, perhaps to get more privacy and time to reconnect:

If you wanna love me again

I'll take you for a ride in my Cadillac…

When you're ready, let me know

I'll be waiting to make arrangements for the trip (If You Wanna)

Take a ride, take a ride out to the land of the free,

Don’t hurry take your time, take your time and spend it with me (Back In The Sunshine Again)

A frequently recurring element in the lyrics is the acknowledgement that meeting up like this would be very problematic for the other party, a bit messy. He points out, though, that he could help:

You're not expected to stand on hallowed ground

But know you'll be protected as long as I'm around

To ensure there's no confusion, I would like to make it clear

If you need my help I promise I'll be here (Get Started)

You need attention, so I think it's worth a mention that if I can deliver

Well there wouldn't be no heavy price to pay (Write Away)

I don't want to step on anybody's toes (Twice In A Lifetime)

If you don't mind some stormy weather, we’ll be together in our fantasy (Turned Out)

Going back to ‘Hope Of Deliverance’, that’s a song that I long thought of as one of his ones about this crazy world and its foolish ways, but it’s much more of a personal song. As Paul himself said:

“…it just became a kind of optimistic song, either to, perhaps, a girlfriend, or to a God-figure. I do like leaving things ambiguous – I’ve often done that in my songs, so that people say to me “I always thought it meant something else…”.