(I didn’t forget about when John and Paul went to Paris in 1961! Sorry, it was in September 30, but I was busy this day haha So I decided to write this post for John’s 75th Birthday week)
John Lennon’s aunt gave him £100 for his 21st birthday. At that time, it was a lot of money. John could have spent it with new instruments, Elvis recordings, porn magazines, prostitutes, or even to take any person along in a trip (Like Stu, George, Cyn or any other girl) but he decided to take Paul as this person unhesitatingly.
“And Paul and I also did the same thing, once. We just canceled. We’d made it, in Liverpool. We were making good money, for those days. I can’t remember what it was – maybe a couple of hundred dollars a week – but enough that you’d have a little extra. You’d have it in your back pocket. And Paul and I just— A relative of mine gave me a hundred pounds, for my birthday, which I’d never seen that much money in me life. Paul and I just canceled all the engagements, and left for Paris… And George was furious, because he needed the money – to work, you know. But that was another time when the group was in debate as whether it would exist or not.” – John Lennon
(Source: Excerpt, Interview with Elliot Mintz, January 1, 1976)
Actually. their first plan was going to Spain but they ended up in Paris in a cheap hotel, sharing a very small bed.
“We planned to hitchhike to Spain. I had done a spot of hitchhiking with George and we knew you had to have a gimmick; we had been turned down too often and we’d seen that guys who had a gimmick (like a Union Jack round them) had always got the lifts. So I said to John, ‘Let’s get a couple of bowler hats.’ It was showbiz creeping in. We still had our leather jackets and drainpipes – we were too proud of them not to wear them, in case we met a girl, and if we did meet a girl, off would come the bowlers. But for lifts we would put the bowlers on. Two guys in bowler hats – a lorry would stop! Sense of Humour. This, and the train, is how we got to Paris.
“We’d never been there before. We were a bit tired so we checked into a little hotel for the night, intending to go off hitchhiking the next morning. Of course, it was too nice a bed after having hitched so we said, ‘We’ll stay a little longer,’ then we thought, ‘God, Spain is a long way, and we’d have to work to get down there.’ We ended up staying the week in Paris – John was funding it all with his hundred quid.
“We would walk miles from our hotel; you do in Paris. We’d go to a place near the Avenue des Anglais and we’d sit in the bars, looking good. I still have some classic photos from there. Linda loves one where I am sitting in a gendarme’s mac as a cape and John has got his glasses on askew and his trousers down revealing a bit of Y-front. The photographs are so beautiful, we’re really hamming it up. We’re looking at the camera like ‘Hey, we are artsy guys, in a café: this is us in Paris,’ and we felt like that.
(Paul McCartney - The Beatles, Anthology, 1995)
“Last night I heard that John and Paul have gone to Paris to play together - in other words, the band has broken up! It sounds mad to me, I don’t believe it…”
Okay, all this stuff sounds normal. ‘They’re really good friends’. Years later, though, more specifically in 1976, during the time John wasn’t with Yoko and went to live with May Pang, he received a visit from Paul and Linda.
“John, do you miss England?” asked Linda. “Frankly, I miss Paris”.
(You can find it in May Pang’s book about John)
And I finish it with a radio interview of John about 1961 Paris trip he gave in 70′s, I think.
“The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was 21 and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing. And they weren’t not mauling at each other, they were just kissing.”
NOW IMAGINE JOHN WITH PAUL IN PARIS LOOKING AT THOSE PEOPLE KISSING LIKE ‘OH LOOK AT THEM KISSING SO CUTE, AREN’T THEY SO ROMANTIC?’ ‘AWWW OH YEAH SO ADORABLE!’ *LOOK AT EACH OTHER* *THEY BLUSH* ‘I’D LOVE TO DO THAT WITH SOMEONE’, JOHN SAYS. ‘OH YES, ME TOO’.
P.S.: Paul took a pic of John sleeping during this trip. Now this pic is framed on a Paul’s home wall.
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