so it's come to this

tumblr old / wild honey pie enjoyer

[ohblahdo]

Having a real "Paul McCartney c. January 1969" month at work here. Might need to find some scaffolding to climb so the horrors don't consume me.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

opened twitter, they're stealing my talking points

[tangleduplnblue]

Happy 86th birthday, sir Ringo Starr! ✌️♥️

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Happy July 6th, here are my favourite JohnandPaul pics (no cut we scroll like men)

[epiphainie]

losing it

[whitealbum]

PATTIE AT THE WEDDING YAYYYY

[ohblahdo]

TCM's lineup for the 4th of July: 1776, Yankee Doodle Dandy, a bunch of other Americana themed movies, and... A Hard Day's Night? Are they trying to fit the British Invasion in under some kind of Revolutionary War theme?

[the-boney-rolls]

john saying that the clues in glass onion were making fun of people who read into the lyrics is actually some evil genius shit. because people love to take the word of john lennon as gospel and will forever more use that as solid gold proof that there's nothing to read into the lyrics and if you even hint that you're doing that you're crazy! well played, john lennon. protecting your secret gay code from 60 years in the past.

[motherlennon]

PAUL MCCARTNEY + fatherhood

[pennielane]

They were so tight it was like there was a telepathy between them…they’d look at each other and know instinctively what the other was thinking.

[adriennefrombrooklyn]

all my life's an open book come inside my mind

Happy Birthday Paul McCartney

[June 18th, 1942]

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Happy Birthday, Paul McCartney! [18.06.1942]

It was just after mother's death that it started. It became an obsession. It took over his whole life. You lose a mother – and you find a guitar? I don't know. Perhaps it just came along at that time and became an escape. But an escape from what? — Mike McCartney, quoted in The Beatles (1968) by Hunter Davies.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

"And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain" as in "you should bury your pain way down deep where no one can see it, because no one wants to deal with your issues" but ALSO "And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain" as in "you should sing a refrain to ease your pain because it will help, I promise"

[ohblahdo]

If I can be excused for Bob Dylan posting for a moment, I loved his answers to the NYT article asking what the best and worst things about being 80 were:

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country. You’re harder to program. You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it’s not, and also you’ve run out of illusions. People treat you like either you’ve solved something or you’ve lost something, and you haven’t. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move.

[i-am-the-oyster]

I wonder if the bicycle bells at the end of You Never Give Me Your Money are a reference to Paul’s paper round

[i-am-the-oyster]

Wait, bicycle bells and frog noises??

[ohblahdo]

I always think of the Abbey Road medley as a look back at their time as The Beatles, bookended by YNGMYM and the reprise in Carry That Weight, which are Paul reflecting on the current state of things:

Sun King: the early days when everything felt magical (which always makes me think of some of Paul's comments on Good Times Coming/Feel the Sun from Press to Play, where he talked about the summer of '63 and that photo shoot they did in old-fashioned bathing suits as representative of one of his own golden summers)

Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam: characters who represent their Liverpool roots and people they knew back then

She Came In Through the Bathroom Window: Beatlemania, the experience of having people trying to invade your life and privacy

Golden Slumbers: recognition that life has changed forever and that there's no going back

Carry That Weight: the price of fame and the acknowledgement that it's something they have to live with forever

So that sonic transition into Sun King is deliberately evoking those memories of youth and a more innocent time. It's almost the equivalent of Paul wearing his old Quarrymen shirt to one of their last photo shoots, and it makes me wonder, like always, about what John thought of all that - the yearning songs, the nostalgia, Paul literally writing The End. Did he notice, did he care, did he think Paul was just being a drama queen? Who knows, Yoko?

(I know a lot of parts of the medley weren't written for that purpose, but it's like a collage: ultimately, part of the meaning comes from the way in which you arrange things, not just in where they originated. And the transitions were deliberate and help to frame that.)

[fireringeddiva]

"Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine)"

John, Paul and George used this song to describe the Beatles breakup. Get Back revealed how the Beatles used songs that meant something to them as a way of communicating with each other, through connotation and association, privately in public. "Wedding Bells" is one of those songs. We know it means something to George, because of his demo tape for All Things Must Pass (below). Paul, in particular, likes to reference "Wedding Bells" to say that the breakup was the inevitable consequence of mature manhood; a quotation of the song he could have looked up in a Social Science textbook. John brought it up (for example) in 1980, screenshot, in a usage very similar to Paul's.

(Screenshot: "McCartney: My Love For Linda," Brisbane, AUS Courier-Mail, December 5, 1998)

Neither John nor Paul were ever service members nor played on a sports team. So what's up with all these goofy analogies? The situation that the song is actually describing, is one of loneliness and regrets, sentiments that run counter to the narrative they use it for. In fact, the song looks like a way for them to convey their honest ambivalence about moving on.

Listening to the song itself, it tells of a singer who feels lonely and sad, watching his male singing group partners get married, because they don't sing together anymore.

An American popular standard, it was written in the 1920s to appeal to nostalgia for a bygone era (specifically, late Victorian Barbershop quartet harmonizing of a generation earlier). It was first a hit in 1929 by the early crooner Gene Austin. Revived in the 1950s in a relentlessly cheery version by the Ink Spots in 1954, it was covered by Gene "Be Bop a Lula" Vincent, a bit more sombre in tone, on his 1956 debut album.

The Four Aces - Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine) (1954)

Charted at #26 in Billboard in May 1954. This great recording was overshadowed in the hit department by its #1 hit a-side, "Three Coins in t

(Racist language warning on the 1929 version)

[i-am-the-oyster]

Eddie Klein

This is a character in the cafe during Paul's conversation with Paul Mescal. He appears while Paul is discussing Lost Horizon, and the tape being found by Eddie Klein.

This is Eddie Klein.

The liner notes of McCartney III say

This album is dedicated to the memory of our friend Eddie Klein (1943-2020)

I think Eddie rediscovered Lost Horizon ages ago, and Paul included it on this album to honour him. And I think Eddie was more important to Paul than I ever realised.

[ohblahdo]

I feel like Eddie Klein most often gets name-checked when Paul talks about recording McCartney I, because he was the one who helped set up Paul's home studio - and then did it again when Paul was recording McCartney II. It's sad that he passed away while Paul was making McCartney III, since he played a big role in the whole trilogy's existence. The McCartney Legacy mentions that Klein had been working at EMI since 1967, and he was still working with Paul up to the late 2010s. It sounds like he was a good friend - there's more about him at the Paul McCartney Project, including a longer tribute Paul wrote on Facebook when he died.