Can you please open up your Paul lexicon to me and tell a bit more about how he thinks and acts.
The first one. Why does he lie to himself, for us anyways, about things that happend in his life that wasn't good. Like his childhood? and his way of turning ad things into little things, minor things? What type of trauma is behind that?
Two: Just why is John still so important to him, that it in some ways it seems like he's selling it- I don't think he does. I do believe he was that important to him.
But why? Why is it so important to him to call John back to his side years after his death.
Paul don't need John to make music. Paul don't have to make John sound sweeter than he was. Paul don't need John to own his music, he's got his name frist on his Beatle songs, or to get money.
Actually. Even after a secret love affair.. He don't owe John that after all the horrible thing John did to actullay destroy his career and reputations for most of his life.
I'm concerned if John Lennon is just another part of him lying to himself in the public way...
Why does Paul minimize or straight up lie about bad things that happened in his life?
Here's a quote from Denny Laine that I absolutely love.
He likes to stay positive, because if he gets negative he gets really negative, and he knows it, so he tries to rise above these things, and not have other people reminding him of too many negative things, or hurtful things, because of who he is. He has to be out there looking like he’s Paul McCartney, happy-go-lucky, and not bothering the world with his problems. – Denny Laine, 2010
So he's drawn this hard line in the sand for himself because he's scared of ending up in a dark place. He doesn't know how to be in the middle and process things in a healthy way, so he stays well away or else he'll end up at the bottom of a well. But even in 1969-70 when things were really really bad for him and he dropped his optimism, he still didn't tell the truth about that time until decades later. So there's even more to the issue than that.
Paul learned very early on that:
1. Lying, cajoling, manipulating, people-pleasing, etc. were necessary tools to avoid serious consequences.
‘I was once hitting Michael for doing something. Paul stood by shouting at Mike, “Tell him you didn’t do it and he’ll stop.” Mike admitted he had done it, whatever it was. But Paul was always able to get out of most things.’ – Jim McCartney, 1968
Paul was very much the diplomat. You would never get a quick answer off Paul. He would always think about what was the right answer; not what the answer should’ve been, but perhaps what you wanted to hear. – Colin Hanton, 2013
John wouldn't do anything he didn't want to do, but Paul even in those early days could've earned a living in public relations. He would work his back-side off in potentially explosive situations in order to keep things on an even keel, unless of course he was the instigator, which was rare. – Cynthia Lennon, 1978
2. His needs should be suppressed in favor of others' wants.
Jim's gambling came before Paul's access to food and shelter. Jim gets to spend, spend, spend, on the horses, the slot machines, and the football poles, and on buying tons of alcohol for everyone in the bar, everyone at parties, etc. Paul fantasizes about milk and isn't allowed to come home after school in case he cooks some unauthorized eggs. After Mary's death, that house was physically falling apart. Paul sends so much money back to his dad from her Hamburg and comes back looking like a skeleton. On and on and on.
Jim's mental health came before Paul's ability to express any emotion regarding Mary's death. Jim is suicidal, and shouting about it, and bawling his eyes out, and Paul gets sent to live with relatives and then told he can't look sad because he needs to think of others. "There was none of this sitting around crying in those days." Not for the kids anyway. Meanwhile, Jim...
3. Putting on an external show of not being someone to worry about, being put together, dependable, respectable, successful, etc. was of utmost importance.
Jim rang me up that afternoon and said ‘I’m bringing the boys to see you, Dil. I’m taking them to see Mary for the last time. I’ve put clean shirts on them. They’ve got on their best clothes, their school ties. Their fingernails are clean. So are their teeth. Would you look them over for me? If they pass inspection with you, they’re alright.’ – Auntie Dil
His mother’s death certainly didn’t have the effect of making him become noticeably difficult. I vividly remember on the day it happened, him coming into the class in room 32 and going to his desk, which always used to be under a window. He was still very nice, very polite, and always softly spoken. – Alan Durband
He’d idolised his own mother. It was like losing a limb when she died, and he’d had to rebuild himself. He felt he had a responsibility to his mother’s memory, to say to her ‘I’m still me’. He had to show her he was a survivor. He couldn’t let his mum or his dad or brother see him going to pieces. He had to block her death out as a matter of self-preservation. He hadn’t been able to put any pressure on his dad - in fact, his dad, for all his exuberance, was leaning on him. So Paul had to prove that he was strong. -- Iris Caldwell, 1986
Is John included in that? Does Paul minimize the bad in John?
Absolutely. And it's also different and complicated.
1. He does protect John because he loves him.
Pauline Sutcliffe named Paul as a witness to John's beating up Stu and leaving him in an alley. Why would she name a witness who is perfectly capable of shutting down the story if she's lying? And Paul does not deny it, which is something he has no trouble doing. "Never happened." Is something he's very capable of saying, when something actually never happened. Instead, he vaguely admits that something like that might've happened. But he also does not confirm it when that is objectively a story that makes him look good. Not only does it show a dark side to a relationship biographers and fans love to idealize to diminish mclennon, but it also shows Paul being compassionate toward a person he is supposedly constantly one-sidedly awful to. And yet, Paul does not confirm it and in all the years of being bullied about the imaginary JohnandStu vs Paul beef he never told the story, even though as a man he would've been granted much more credibility than Pauline. He doesn't want that story -- along with the Pete Shotton story, the Thelma Pickles story, the Cynthia account, George's wardrobe story, rumors about beating a baby out of Yoko, and May's account -- to add to the portrait of John's violence.
He knows John has gained a reputation for domestic violence and being a negligent father and a drug addict with the younger generation. He knows they hate him, generally, and it breaks his heart. So what does he do? He trots out the "I had a perfect life unlike John. John had a terrible life, so he gets a pass." Stories in every goddamn interview. He's got that story, too, which I actually think is valid, excusing John's inability to play pirates with Julian with the fact that John didn't have parenthood thrust upon him as a child. John just never learned. But Paul frames it in a "oh isn't that so heartbreaking for John" way. Very very cleverly done.
He lies and lies and lies about John's sexuality and has done for decades to protect John from the other half of the fandom. The first gay John allegations were leveled as weapons against him and Paul has absolutely stonewalled them all with a firm stance that looks absolutely ridiculous once you know all the ways John showed Paul clearly that he was into men but Paul is determined to protect John.
So yes. He lies to protect John. Even at his own expense. John's needs come first.
2. He knows he hurt John and he doesn't want to cause any more harm.
💬 2 🔁 79 ❤️ 269 · Paul hurting John · Link to masterpost of quote compilations
And any mention of Paul brought a wintry bleakness to her
3. He is a lot more open and honest about John and his fighting than about his childhood or, in fact, about his most tender moments with John.
The fact that Paul has never himself told the chocolate bar story publicly, that he won't give details on things like "the night we cried", that he says John complimented him once and yet we have footage of John complimenting Paul multiple times during their most insecure and bitter time together in the studio, that most of our stories about how loving and attentive John was to Paul come from third-parties and cameras, that Paul says his letters from John are personal and won't be shared, that the "it's only me" story only rarely includes the mention of the word "love", that he will not tell us what the promise was or the code, that he's cagey about their final years together, is very important.
He's not out there going "yeah one time I was sick and John stopped everything to make sure I was okay because he loved me so much." You know? He'll say John was actually a sweetheart most of the time and he'll leave it at that.
Because he wants those tender memories for himself. So much of their relationship is and will always be sacred to him.
Whereas Paul has no issue talking about their fights in detail with lots of accounts of his jealousy, hurt, and anger at their mind games and lashing out. He recently called John a crazy son of a bitch and he said if "Dear Friend" had an honest title it would've been called "What the fuck, John?"
With his childhood, he's not so comfortable. It took Howard Stern telling him his life seemed "charmed" and "perfect" after Paul had just done therapy to get the little "well, he did used to, sort of, you know ..." thing, and I think he'd die before he said anything that wasn't glowing about Mary. Because John was a very different relationship. Does that make sense? It's like how your middle class friend could tell her mom to shut up because she wasn't scared of her and your brain would be like short circuiting. John is Paul's middle class mommy. They yell at each other and fight and Paul feels much more safe to clap back compared to his parents.
Why is it so important to Paul to keep calling John back to his side even years after his death?
To lose your mum at fourteen is, you know, not easy. So, erm, it was just very difficult for a few years just trying to come to terms with it. But then I found music. And John. – Paul McCartney, 2016
Howard Stern: were you considered a prodigy I mean when you at fifteen sit down and write– Paul: No. No way! Nobody was remotely interested in this idea of I wrote songs. Until I met John. And it was like. Ach! Someone's interested at last! – 2018
John had a chocolate bar, and he shared it with me. And he didn’t give me some of his chocolate bar. He didn’t give me a square of his chocolate bar. He didn’t give me a quarter of his chocolate bar. He gave me half of his chocolate bar. And that’s why the Beatles started right there. – Matt Damon quoting Bono quoting Paul
“And I was always saying, "Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can't hit you. You can kill him. He's an old man." I used to say, "Don't take that shit off him.” – John Lennon 1971
There were, of course, arguments, though never anything violent. There’s even a movie out there in which John’s character punches my character, but the truth is that he never punched me. -- Paul McCartney, 2021
2. Their relationship was unmatched and remains precious to him.
Obviously. Not going to beat the horse corpse that the entire mclennon fandom continues to bludgeon. (Not that I'm not THRILLED that other people do it. Just that no one needs that from me, that's not my job.)
3. He wants the Beatles legacy not to be shrouded by the pain of the breakup but to be a story of the power of love and collaboration.
This one I'm just inferring, honestly. John said he resented that sentiment of the breakup overshadowing the joy. He complained about people pointing out that the "all you need is love" philosophy didn't work for the Beatles themselves and he firmly maintained that "nothing [would] ever break the love [they] have for each other." What they were able to do together -- despite everything pulling them apart -- out of the strength of their devotion to each other is infinitely more important than the fact that they divorced. Paul, I'm sure, wants to make sure everyone knows that that powerful, beautiful love never died and never will and never can.
