Hi! One question about this - https://www.tumblr.com/sgtpeppers/794739292365815808/so-i-was-standing-there-in-my-school-cap-and?source=share
Was Paul wearing his school cap... at Butlins?
Heey! Even better - he had his entire school uniform with him because they were the nicest clothes he had 😭
One memorable thing of importance happened when I was about eleven. My mum and dad and my brother and I went to Butlins holiday camp. I have a photograph of me there in short trousers and school blazer - a chubby little kid. (You would never wear your school uniform going on holiday, but I think it was all I had - my posh gear.) My brother took the picture. I'm in front of a hot-dog corner, which we thought was dead hip: an American hot-dog stand!
Such improvements, and more, helped lasso the Beatles their first fan. Pat Moran was an intelligent 16-year-old Catholic girl from Wallasey who went to the Grosvenor most Saturdays. Her mother died when she was nine and she was raised solely by her disciplinarian Irish father. 'He wouldn't let me wear any make-up and I couldn't wear trousers, only a skirt, and he'd knock hell out of me if I misbehaved. One time, I came home late from seeing the Beatles and he'd locked me out. He stood in the bathroom above the front door and shouted "You're late" and wouldn't let me in.' Such was Pat's passion for the Beatles, it was all worthwhile.
"I loved their music and the way they played it. My favourites were Tutti Frutti, Long Tall Sally, Cathy's Clown and Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On- oh and Red Sails In The Sunset was beautiful. I can't say they were great musically because I don't know - my idea of music at that age was inexperienced - but they were certainly entertaining. They played music we knew, that we'd heard on the radio, but to hear them doing it was different: when John and Paul sang a rock and roll song together we'd all be dancing. John was the leader. He used to talk to Paul and then they'd play something, but Paul was also the leader in a way because he was very much part of it. Certainly it was between Paul and John as to who took the lead. Paul was my favourite. I can still picture him at the front with his guitar, left-handed. He was on the left side of the stage, then George alongside him, then John, and Stuart on the right."
Something in the Beatles touched Pat Moran deeply, in a way she'd never experienced or expected. Chatting to Paul at the Grosvenor, she gathered they had hardly any money and spent weekends in John's flat at Gambier Terrace, not always with much to eat. She had a job and wanted to give something back to them for all the pleasure they gave her, so every Sunday morning after church she took the ferry across the Mersey and the bus up from the Pier Head with a wicker basket of food for them.
"Friends went with me, I wouldn't have dreamed of going on my own, and we'd arrive about midday. They were always up - we never arrived to find them unclothed - but the flat was horrible. There weren't even chairs to sit on, so we'd either sit on a bed or stand leaning against the window. We'd just talk for a while, then I'd pick up the empty basket and go home to Wallasey. This happened maybe half a dozen times.
They were so friendly and pleasant, no massive egos. Stuart was lovely: very quiet, gentle, a really nice guy, small with dark glasses, and with fairer hair than Paul. John was nice but very different. I got the feeling he wouldn't have bothered having us there if Paul wasn't friendly with me. So John accepted that - he opened the door and let us through. Cynthia was there once but I can't say she spoke to us. George didn't really say anything. He wasn't unpleasant, he used to say 'Hello' and 'What did you think of us last night?', but that was about it.
I mostly spoke to Paul. He was friendly and there was no unpleasantness about him at all - he didn't stand off or anything, he was just a nice boy. There was no sexual relationship between us, we were simply mates and I was a good girl, still a virgin when I married in my twenties. I'm sure others were willing to give themselves to him. He'd give me a hug when we met and we held hands when we walked together, but he treated me right. We occasionally met at the Jacaranda for a tea or coffee. I paid and that was right: I had a job and he didn't.
He was very chatty - he told me he was really McCartney, not Ramon, he talked about his songwriting and we laughed because it seemed such 'a teenage thing'. He talked a lot about the Beatles: how hard they needed to work to earn money and how they hoped to become famous. I always felt the Beatles were determined."
Paul called Pat Moran 'our number one fan', accepting her as both their first and their keenest, but her enthusiasm led to some sorry consequences at home. Her father demanded to know what-the-devil a good Catholic girl was doing chasing boys who played filthy rock and roll. And when these same boys began to shape her vocabulary - she started to say 'fab' and 'gear' because they did - he almost hit the ceiling (but hit her instead). In the end, she drove him so mad with her non-stop chattering - Beatles for breakfast, dinner and tea - that he pronounced it a sin and ordered the first Beatles fan to seek almighty God's forgiveness at confession. 'I had to tell the priest, "I spend too much of my time worshipping the Beatles." He just ignored me and said, as he always did, "Remember your prayers. Say five Hail Marys and four Our Fathers and you'll be forgiven."'
Tune In, Mark Lewisohn (2013) pg. 342-344.
***
Saddened as she was at no longer having the Beatles rock her every Saturday night, the main concern of Pat Moran, their first fan, was for the boys themselves. 'I knew they were hard up, that they weren't earning much or had jobs, and because I had a proper job I sent them money. I folded pound notes in such a way that they couldn't be seen through the envelope, and I also sent stamped addressed return envelopes so Paul would reply. He did, and he wrote Beatles in script on the back of them.' Pat had all sorts of plans: she offered to start a petition to get the Beatles more bookings; she offered to have a word with her uncle, Bill Gregson, who led the resident dance orchestra at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton, to ask if he'd put the Beatles on; she even started to organise them a holiday at a little cottage in Rhyl, for which secrecy from her father was paramount ('He'd have most probably lynched me if he'd found out').
Two of Paul's letters back to Pat reveal pretty much what was going on for the Beatles at this moment. The first was written on Sunday 7 August and posted late on the 8th:
"If it's OK; George (Carl) and I might be able to come - we fancy the idea of a holiday.
Oh yes! I hope your uncle can fix us up - we fancy the idea with something, anyway if he can't it'll make us get around and look for some good bookings ourselves - it works both ways. I hope.
Have you got your embroidered sweater yet, No. 1 fan?*"
The second letter chased the first into the mailbox late on the Monday:
"This note is to let you know that I think everything you're doing for us is great.
I've seen John since I wrote the first letter and he says he can come too if you don't mind. This is very nearly definite. See - we were promised some tours of Scotland, road shows, trips to Hamburg & everything but we don't believe any of them, & a couple of promises have been broken already, so we'll probably be able to come; we can hitch-hike down there. It's not far - is it?
I think it's a great idea about the petition.
You ask me if I'm offended by your giving me all these gear things; well, I'm not - I'm flattered and I don't know what to say! I don't know how can do all this for us, you must think we're not bad, or else you're just a kind hearted type."
*Pat liked embroidery and she and Paul joked that she might make a sweater with Beatles and No. 1 Fan sewn into the front. (It never happened.)
Tune In, Mark Lewisohn (2013) pg. 349-350.
Magneto, Titanium Man, and Crimson Dynamo art shown during live performances of Magneto and Titanium Man.
Yes, that’s about Marvel Comics. When we were on holiday in Jamaica, we’d go into the supermarket every Saturday, when they got a new stock of comics in. I didn’t use to read comics from eleven onwards, I thought I’d grown out of them, but I came back to them a couple of years ago. The drawings are great. I think you’ll find that in twenty years time some of the guys drawing them were little Picassos. I think it’s very clever how they do it. I love the names, I love the whole comic book thing.
Paul McCartney In His Own Words, Paul Gambaccini
In 1975, around the time I wrote ‘Magneto And Titanium Man’, I was reading and looking at a lot of comic books, and as far as I was concerned, that was real art. It took some skill – not to mention perspective and imagination – to pull off these illustrations. So, I decided it would be nice to bring these two comic book characters into a song. Magneto is the archrival of the X-Men. Michael Fassbender has been playing him in the recent Marvel films. Titanium Man is one of Iron Man’s enemies. And the Crimson Dynamo turns up as well; he’s a bad guy too. So we have three baddies, and I made up a story that could have been in one of these comic books.
The Lyrics, Paul McCartney & Paul Muldoon
So this song is my nod to comic books being high art.
The Lyrics, Paul McCartney & Paul Muldoon
Left: Linda McCartney in a Magneto shirt. Right: Paul McCartney in a Titanium Man shirt.
The McCartneys meeting comic book artist and Magneto's co-creator, Jack Kirby, backstage at a 1976 Wings show in LA.
Original art by Jack Kirby, depicting the band fleeing Magneto.
Incredible Hulk Vol 1 271: Now Somewhere in the Black Holes of Sirius Major There Lived a Young Boy Name of Rocket Raccoon! (1982)
‘Rocky Raccoon’ is quirky, very me. I like talking blues so I started off like that, then I did my tongue-in-cheek parody of a western and threw in some amusing lines. I just tried to keep it amusing, really; it’s me writing a play, a little one-act play giving them most of the dialogue. Rocky Raccoon is the main character, then there’s the girl whose real name was Magill, who called herself Lil, but she was known as Nancy.
Many Years from Now, Barry Miles
Paul & The Dandy
Paul McCartney in The Dandy (2012)
Text reads:
Dear Dandy,
The Dandy was a favourite comic of mine when growing up in Liverpool and each week I would look forward to the exploits of Desperate Dan and his other comic book colleagues.
I feel a little sadness that I see its final issue is appearing in December.
In 1963, in the NME, when asked what my personal ambition was, I replied – to have my picture in The Dandy!
I hope it’s not too late!
Thank you, Dandy, we loved ya!
Paul & DC
Superman comics featured on the organ Paul plays in Help! (1965) (x)
Batman and Superman: World’s Finest (2022) featuring Paul McCartney.
After the set Wooler said, 'Come on, I'll take you to meet the lads.' It was so exciting. He grabbed us and we threaded through the audience backstage where George Harrison was standing in the corridor talking to a very good-looking blonde girl. He was wearing a fantastic black leather coat, and later walked out of the Cavern with her, already like a rock star. In the dressing room John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their undies, getting changed. They were drying themselves with towels because they had just come offstage and were dripping with sweat. They were very handsome. Apart from our brothers, we'd never seen men in underpants before, so us four teenage girls just stood there staring at them.
They were very down to earth, and Paul was particularly kind. 'Hiya girls, y'all right?' he said, while John sat there looking at us in a way that was direct and penetrating.
Bob Wooler told them, "This is the Liverbirds, they're gonna be the first all-girl group."
'What a great idea,' said Paul, but Lennon was sarcastic. 'Girls don't play guitars,' he said.
After we left the dressing room we huffed, 'The cheek of it! We're going to prove him wrong.' Years later we found out more about Lennon, that although he often made sardonic comments he was also sensitive and intelligent, an artist who regretted his disdainful treatment of women in his early career. 'We can't have a revolution that doesn't involve and liberate women. It's so subtle the way you're taught male superiority,' he said in 1971, in an interview with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn for the underground paper Red Mole. It's clear his feelings about women evolved, but we also wonder if what he said that day in the Cavern dressing room was meant to test us, provoke us into making a success of the band. If so, it certainly worked.
The Other Fab Four by Mary McGlory & Sylvia Saunders
Paul in the "Meet Paul McCartney" interview to promote McCartney II, 1980 (x).
"I don't really feel like a lyricist. But I think at certain times I've done some good words. Erm, I feel easier with music, it's just the way I am, you know? It comes easier, it comes quicker."
"There's a song there called Nobody Knows, which... there's no way you could look at it as a set of lyrics and think 'that is strong lyrics'. But for me, actually- But still for me, I like the words on that. I mean, they're very simple, a lot of them have been done before, they don't actually say an awful lot except they say nobody knows. And actually, the more you think about that, and the more you think about all the millions of experts we have on the telly every night, everywhere, telling us how to do it, and a year later they're wrong or they're out of office, or the world isn't flat after all, and so I attach a lot of importance to just that idea of Nobody Knows and that's the way I like it, you see what I mean? It wouldn't be seen as a really good lyric but, you see the way I'm thinking about it, it is a good lyric, but it's- I approach a lot of stuff in that funny, kind of round about way, you know? Rather than just looking at it and saying that's a great bit of poetry. There's like, other reasons I think things make good words."
"I suppose if I'm being brutally honest, I wouldn't think I was getting better. But I put a lot of that down to just...paranoia. I think, like, always, if I go to the moment, like when I was writing what I think might be better songs, I know then I still didn't think I was much good. So I've never really thought I was much good, it's kinda what keeps me going really."
The Linda McCartney Instagram account posted this photo of Paul from 1979 today, and I was curious what the book was, so did some digging and it looks like Jule: The Story of Composer Jule Styne by Theodore Taylor which came out in January of that year.
Styne was mostly known for his Broadway musicals, notably Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl. He and lyrical collaborator Sammy Cahn wrote many songs for stage and film which became numbers ones and won Oscars.
It also seems like the 'Post No Dreams' thing was part of this which had been painted over by February 1979, so the photo would have been taken pretty close to the release of the book!
This is peak Paul for me, he's so funny. A whole paragraph explaining how he decided he didn't care about being academic because of Elvis. And then in the next breath explaining how he hated the teachers because they wouldn't just lie on his school reports and say he was a good student.
I nearly did very well at grammar school, but I started to get interested in art rather than academic subjects. Then I started to see pictures of Elvis, and that started to pull me away from the academic path. “You should see these great photos…” Then you’d hear the records - “But wait a minute, this is very good!” - and then the tingles started going up and down your spine, “Oh, this is something altogether different.” And so the academic things were forgotten.
The words they used in their end-of-term reports: “If you would only buckle down…” and you’d go, “No! No! Get out of my life! I hate you. You should say I’m great. I’ve got to take this home, you know.” If I had buckled down, it could have worked out that way, but I’m glad it didn’t of, course. There was always the great pull of the other stuff: show business, music, art, the other stuff…
Paul McCartney, interview for Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
The way the Paul vs Stu stuff is written in Many Years From Now is making me laugh because it's just sooo Paul.
It starts with Paul describing it as a 'deadly rivalry' which was rooted in two things; his jealousy about John's attention and the fact Stu wasn't good enough on bass:
PAUL: He and I used to have a deadly rivalry. I don't know why. He was older and a strong friend of John's. When I look back on it I think we were probably fighting for John's attention. He was older and John was a year older than me, and that year makes a hell of a lot of difference at the age of eighteen. So I wasn't such a big friend of Stuart's. I was always practical, thinking our band could be great, but with him on bass there was always something holding us back.
Then the way Barry Miles tees up the next quote from Paul is by saying this:
There has been a lot made of the supposed animosity between Paul and Stuart but most of it is rumour, exaggerated and amplified by time.
Which (to me anyway) sounds like Paul's going to try and soften it, 'Me and Stu did mostly get along fine' or something, but then the quote is:
PAUL: It wasn't just me. Legend so often divides these things neatly down the middle: John was hard, I was soft; John loved Stuart, I didn't. But John was perfectly aware that Stuart couldn't play and it wasn't just me telling Stu to turn his back to the camera, it would often be John saying that. We used to ask him to turn away and do a moody thing looking over his shoulder so no one could see that his fingers weren't in the same key as the rest of us. It wasn't a good thing for a group to have someone who was such an obviously weak link. I think John felt a sense of relief when Stuart stayed in Hamburg. In a way, it was actually very convenient. Nobody wanted to sack him; it would not have got to that because of his personal friendship with John. But nobody was that sad to see him stay in Hamburg. It seemed right that we all had to move on and I quite easily got into bass.
So not that the rivalry between him and Stu was overblown, but that people have forgotten John also thought he was shit on the bass and was probably relieved to have him out of the band.
