Did I Ever Take You In My Arms
[Another instalment in the ‘Touching Is Good’ series, following themes previously explored in ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.]
The gesture of holding someone or being held in their arms is one of the best-known forms of physical affection. It is no wonder then that the concept makes frequent appearances in romantic songs, including the ones where our young Beatles express their idea of being loved:
Hold me tight
Tell me I'm the only one
And then I might
Never be the lonely one
So hold (hold) me tight (me tight)
Tonight (tonight), tonight (tonight)
It's you, you you you
And if Paul was asking for cuddles in 1961, by February 1963 both John and Paul were offering them, in one of those back-of-the-bus, truly conjoined writing sessions.
I've got arms that long to hold you
And keep you by my side
I've got lips that long to kiss you
And keep you satisfied
So, I think we’ve established “holding” as one of their idyllic expressions of love. And if John seemed to establish “holding hands” as a shorthand phrase for his desires of physical affection, the next step to a proper full-on hug came to be invaluable in the communication of what they couldn’t say in words:
To Taylor's dismay, the three Beatles greeted them with hugs and kisses. "This is the new thing!" Lennon told him. "You hug your friends when you meet them and show them you’re glad to see them. Don’t stand there shaking hands as if everyone’s got some disease! Get close to people!"
— John Lennon, picking up Derek and Joan Taylor at the airport, 28 May 1967. In Joe Goodden’s Riding So High: The Beatles and Drugs (2017).
John dives deeper into the subject some months later, in a heart-wrenchingly raw examination of his feelings of depersonalization, of becoming adrift “alone on a draft in the middle of the universe”, and how contact (and of the physical kind) with the other Beatles – specifically Paul – helps anchor him to reality:
If I am on my own for three days, doing nothing, I almost completely leave myself. I’m at the back of my head. I can see my hands and realize they’re moving, but it’s like a robot who’s doing it. I have to see the others to see myself. Then I realize there is someone like me so it’s reassuring. We were recording the other night, and I just wasn’t there. Neither was Paul. We were like two robots going through the motions. We do need each other a lot. When we used to get together after a month off, we used to be embarrassed about touching each other. We’d do an elaborate handshake just to hide the embarrassment… or we did mad dances. Then we got to hugging each other. Now we do the Buddhist bit… arms around. It’s just saying hello, that’s all.
— John Lennon, interview with Hunter Davies (late 1967).
The “Buddhist bit” refers to the practice of “hugging meditation”, as observed by @monkberries in this post.
Introduced by Zen Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh in the late 60′s, it rose out of the need to adapt his teachings – mutual understanding as the way to spiritual intimacy – to the body language of the West, as he recounts in his book How To Love (2014):
In 1966, a friend took me to the Atlanta Airport. When we were saying good-bye she asked, “Is it all right to hug a Buddhist monk?” In my country, we’re not used to expressing ourselves that way, but I thought, “I’m a Zen teacher. It should be no problem for me to do that.” So I said, “Why not?” and she hugged me, but I was quite stiff. While on the plane, I decided that if I wanted to work with friends in the West, I would have to learn the culture of the West.
At the core of the practice is the very conscious choice to be aware of the presence of this other human being in your arms, and just how they make you feel. Necessarily, it involves a shedding of the usual “Northern men” hang-ups, in order to enter a state of true communicative openness and emotional honesty.
According to the practice, you have to really hug the person you are holding. You have to make him or her very real in your arms, not just for the sake of appearances, patting him on the back to pretend you are there, but breathing consciously and hugging with all your body, spirit, and heart. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person and she will be nourished and bloom like a flower.
And this phrasing made me wonder if John started to pick up on his idea that “Love is a flower and you have to water it” even back then.
Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to explain the specific procedures of the practice and the philosophy behind it:
Hugging is a deep practice; you need to be totally present to do it correctly. When I drink a glass of water, I invest one hundred percent of myself in drinking it. You can train yourself to live every moment of your daily life like that.
Before hugging, stand facing each other as you follow your breathing and establish your true presence. Then open your arms and hug your loved one. During the first in-breath and out-breath, become aware that you and your beloved are both alive; with the second in-breath and out-breath, think of where you will both be three hundred years from now; and with the third in-breath and out-breath, be aware of how precious it is that you are both still alive.
When you hug this way, the other person becomes real and alive. You don’t need to wait until one of you is ready to depart for a trip; you may hug right now and receive the warmth and stability of your friend in the present moment. (...)
When we hug, our hearts connect and we know that we are not separate beings. Hugging with mindfulness and concentration can bring reconciliation, healing, understanding, and much happiness.
We can see how this technique might have been crucial in helping John come down and become aware not only of others but especially of himself; how it helped him heal and become more confident than usual in the notion that he is indeed loved and not alone.
For Paul, it was perhaps a difficult, but nonetheless essential exercise in emotional frankness and vulnerability, where he really had to come to terms with his own feelings, and more importantly, open up his heart enough to accept that same love back.
But the perfectly in tune state of ‘67 would soon be disrupted (sadly, but not surprisingly) by a breakdown in communication.
On the advantages of the new “boat”, John had this to say:
It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists.
— John Lennon, interview with Sandra Shevey (June, 1972).
So it appears that at some point, John’s need for physical intimacy had been left unsatisfied (due to internal or external pressures remains to be known).
Though earlier, on March of that same year, Paul had made a cover of Gerald H. Nelson and Fred B. Burch’s song “Tragedy”, popularized Thomas Wayne and the DeLons in 1959. It ended up not being included in Wings’ Red Rose Speedway (1973), but the chorus goes as follows:
Oh, come back
Have me here
Hold me, love
Be sincere
You've gone from me, oh, oh, tragedy
What did come out on Red Rose Speedway was a second “Hold Me Tight”:
I've waited all my life for you
Hold me tight
Take care of me and I'll be right
Hold me tight, hold me tight
Hold me tight, hugga me right
Hold me tight, squeeza me tight
Hold me tight, hugga me right
Hold me tight, Hold me tight, Hold me tight
Eventually, when re-approaches were made, John and Paul would take up hugging again as a show of affection.
When I opened the outer door, I saw it was actually Paul and Linda. They’d been singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” I was really surprised and said, “I think you’re looking for the guys in the bedroom.” As they came in, everyone was really happy to see each other. John and Yoko jumped up when Paul and Linda walked into the bedroom. They were obviously excited to see each other again. There was a lot of hugging and catching up, and we had a round of tea.
— Bob Gruen, John Lennon: The New York Years
They [John and Paul] seemed like giddy school chums. Hugging, patting each other on the back… like high-school buddies who hadn’t seen each other for a long time and really liked each other.”
— Bob Gruen, on the Christmas meeting between the Lennons and the McCartneys (December 1975).
But there was still an ocean between them, and sometime in 1976, John seemed to be in an especially wistful mood, as he sang on a demo of “Real Life”:
Was I just dreaming or was it only Yesterday
I used to hold you in my arms
And now a baby, and a another on the way
[Indescernable] in a farm
If it don’t feel right, don’t do it
If it don’t look right, look right through it
If it don’t feel right, don’t do it
Just call him on the phone
But in the end, just when tentative steps where being taken for there to be more open communication again, the possibilities were ripped from their arms:
If I had known John was going to die, I would have made a lot more effort to try and get a better relationship with him. But when he started slagging me off I was not prepared to say ‘Well, you’re quite right’, because I’m human. My big regret was that I could have told John to listen and put my arms round him.”
— Paul McCartney, interview for the Titbits Magazine (November 1983).
This and other regrets Paul explores in the beautiful song “This One” (first demo recorded on 29 December 1986), where he deals with his past reticence to more clearly demonstrate his love:
Did I ever take you in my arms,
Look you in the eye, tell you that I do,
Did I ever open up my heart
And let you look inside.
Did I ever touch you on the cheek
Say that you were mine, thank you for the smile,
Did I ever knock upon your door
And try to get inside?
What opportunities did we allow to flow by
Feeling like like the timing wasn't quite right?
What kind of magic might have worked if we had stayed calm,
Couldn't I have given you a better life?
Did you ever take me in your arms,
Look me in the eye, tell me that you do?
Did I ever open up my heart,
Let you look inside?
If I never did it, I was only waiting
For a better moment that didn't come.
There never could be a better moment
Than this one, this one.
Paul would go on to continue using the promise of hugging and physical affection as a demonstration of love in his music, as heard in the chorus of Flaming Pie’s (1997) “Calico Skies” (written in August 1991):
I will hold you for as long as you like
I'll hold you for the rest of my life
Overall, this lesson in bodily affection as a clear expression of your love is one Paul would indeed treasure for the rest of his life, as he fondly recollects:
You remember little things about people. I remember sort of seeing [John] and he comes in and gives me a hug and says 'Touching is good.' I'll never forget that. Touching is good. So I do a lot of hugging now.
— Paul McCartney, interview with Jim Axelrod for CBS News (17 September 2005).
