For No One

I like the Beatles, okay?

[waveofahand]

Different fics for different folks

Someone suggested that I should make a post describing some of the different sorts of stories and series I've written, all involving the Beatles in different ways, some funny, some very dramatic. And I thought, why not?

"Yes," they say, "Why not?" So, in no particular order or plan... ROMANTIC MCLENNON:

"The French Kiss" (Paris, 1961)

"Bed Wresting & Secrets of Spun Glass" (Paris, 1961)

"Time to Put Paulie to Bed" (Adorably drunk)

"Paul, Not Strong, Leans on John" (Post Manila)

"I really, really wanna hold your hand!" (Sweet) MCLENNON ROMANTIC BUT TRAGIC AND SAD:

"Angel Eyes Comes for John Lennon"

MCLENNON HEAVY ANGST, DEEP LOVE, REAL PROBLEMS:

"Carry That Weight"

"Hello, Goodbye: Carry That Weight Part II"

"Here, There & Everywhere (Part III, still in progress)

FUNNY BEATLES HIJINKS & STUFF: "Paul is Dead, or He Soon Will Be" (Texting AU but based on true story)

"John and Paul Introduce the McSeamus to your Mum" (More texting. John can’t text.)

"Paul's Got John's Thigh, and He's Not Letting Go" (Early Beatles game show)

"Herr McCartney, about that piano you broke..." (In Austria, during Help!)

"Now, look Paul, I'm not taking 'no' for an answer!" (A Hard Day’s Night)

MCLENNON FIGHTING:

"I"m taking you home, John!" (A big fight in 1965)

MCLENNON IN INNOCENCE & YOUTH:

"Mums, Yer Boys are Cryin'" (Paul helps John when Julia dies)

"Bunny McCartney, Secret Subversive" (Why did he write “A World Without Love”)

JOHN IS HELPLESS ABOUT PAUL:

"Killing me Softly, With His Cuteness"

"John has no discretion and even less self-control"

"Help, Paul is Teasing Me!"

"I Promise, I won't let you down!"

"John and Paul discern a surprising new year!"

"John says 'yes'" FUNNY GENDER-NEUTRAL READER INSERTS: (Dating Paul Series) "You Know His Name & He's Got Your Number"

"Adventures in Lockdown: Paul Finds Bananas!"

"Waking up with Paul, in Lockdown"

"Temporary Secretary"

JOHN IS INSUFFERABLE:

"Hocus Focus: John Offers Paul Up to a Hypnotist"

"There's a line, and John has come right up to it"

"John takes his vengeance upon Paul"

FRIENDSHIP:

Paul and Ringo: "Life is Short but Scars are Forever." (Paul and Ringo, early roommates) RANDOM ONE-SHOTS: With Jane Asher: "Paulie Nibbles Has Left the Building" (Jane seducing…)

With Ciggies: Beatles and Butts: What the Ciggie Carton Saw! (Just what it says)

Sad reader insert: "Macca, the Stranger on the Train" (Short and sad)

RIngo: "Ringo, always the grown up!" (We love Ringo!)

There's more but... that's enough! As ever, I thank you for reading anything!

[thetryhardartist]

Paul’s lyrics for Hold Me Tight (with a doodle of John—possibly).

The Beatles Lyrics by Hunter Davies, pg. 55

[waveofahand]

He was and is obsessed. Epic. It's you, you, you Hold me tight, let me go on loving you tonight, tonight, making love to only you And a doodle of... well, if that's not John, it's certainly not poor Dot.

[waveofahand]

Good Omens meets John and Paul

Am I right or am I right? 

I mean, this video of the ineffable husbands of Good Omens is so McLennon it’s killing me.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO-VfTg440Q

[waveofahand]

Cracking McCartney's "secret code"...

A while back I wrote here of the "monumental moment" when Paul and John decided that anything they wrote, it would carry both their names: Saying "Anything I write I will put both of our names on," is like saying "we will be together FOREVER." It's pretty much akin to a marriage. It's a suggestion of the idea that in marriages partners become "one flesh". ... It might be a very hinge upon which this whole relationship should be researched and understood. A claiming of co-creation and co-custody of the fruit of their commingled sense of their selves -- their "marriage." With the release of the The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and of course the these lines: We met at Forthlin Road and wrote a secret code To never be spoken I stand by what I said, the promise that I made Will never be broken

I’ve been thinking, what if that secret code was the marriage of their names, the fact that they would present anything they created as from both of them, because they felt very much like a united couple, publicly declaring themselves in a committed relationship with each other, LEGALLY and OPENLY the only way boys could do that, back then? “My partner, my co-creator, my friend. Anything that comes from me, comes from him, too, because we are one.”

I wonder if it was not exactly that decision and promise that was behind Paul writing “World Without Love” when he was only sixteen years old. A while back I wrote wondering whether "World Without Love" was in fact the pro-gay anthem of a young man who realized that he was in love with a guy, and would not be abiding by the rules, that if gay love were illegal and he was meant to live without his relationship to John, then he would not be living in that world. Seen that way, the song is a nervy and brave thing for a boy to write. But, as usual with Paul, he took a serious thought and surrounded it with a jaunty tune and in that way distracted attention away from it. People liked the tune, barely heard the words which are so different from them. (I actually wrote a fanfic with exactly that being the case and with John mocking it for having serious words with a skippy tune. Not my best work but if can be found here.) I’ve long been agnostic on whether McLennon was real, figuring that if so it was their business and since Paul didn’t seem to want to admit it, that was his choice and there it was. But then I saw the lyrics to “Friends to Go” and realized: He has something he wants to say, is dying to tell, but he’s waiting, because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Specifically, he’s waiting for Yoko to pass, but the years were moving and who knew who would outlast who?

I've been waiting on the other side For your friends to leave so I don't have to hide I'd prefer they didn't know So I've been waiting on the other side For your friends to go

I've been sliding down a slippy slope I've been climbing up a slowly burning rope But the flame is getting low I've been waiting on the other side For your friends to go

These are such poignant lyrics, so full of longing and frustration and patience. And after I read them I really hoped he’d come out, that he’d find the peace of just saying what he wanted to say, in his own way, and finally be free. I think Dungeon Lane has been his declaration. In interviews he seems so at ease, so happy, so free. With these songs it seems like he’s saying “I’ve had three great loves, and I sing about all of them, here, but the longest love started in my youth and has never waned. I am a bisexual man and I love him. And I love them. And if you can come inside and hear it, you’re welcome to. And if you don’t, oh, well, you’ve been invited." He’s told his story, fully and finally, and he seems at peace, and he didn’t have to wait anymore, for someone to die, to tell it. I think when he married Nancy on John’s Birthday, in the same office where he married Linda, it was a way of putting all of his three great loves into the same heart-shaped shelf and saying: these are equal, these are real: I love John; I love Linda; I love Nancy. Do not mistake that, or think Heather ever came anywhere near into what my loves have been.

As usual, as he’s done all his life, stubborn Paul McCartney did what he thought was right and he did it in his own way, period, exclamation point.  I like it. I’m happy for him.

[waveofahand]

Preposterous. Completely unreasonable.

And so much leg fur...

[waveofahand]

I know you know. Still, though.

Yes, we have all seen this picture, and it’s a wonderful picture.

Still, though. Just look at that idiot and his beautiful face and preposterous body!

Stupid, stupid Angelface with his corporeal weirdness! How does he still make me gasp?

I’m like everyone else, Harry. I fell for his looks.

[waveofahand]

Just Another Day: Another Masterpiece

About a week ago "Just Another Day" came on the radio. I hadn't heard it in such a long time, and maybe had never really listened to it before, but that day I heard it and thought, "this is a wildly good song." And then I remembered John Lennon trying to hurt Paul about it in "How Do You Sleep" and realized, there is no way that John didn't recognize this song as a masterpiece along the lines of Eleanor Rigby, and Yesterday, and written entirely without John, without the Beatles, produced by McCartney alone, without the guidance of George Martin, and it HAD to sting the hell out of Lennon. And it's a classic McCartney effort. Whereas John was always happy to sing openly about his own feelings, Paul often hedged. He found a way to talk about his feelings by framing them as though he's talking about someone else. And when he's writing as an observer, he's capable of great compassion for his subject, as he is here for the lonely, used, unappreciated, basically UNSEEN woman in "Just Another Day". Paul sees her: he sees what the women of the first wave of the early 1970’s were going through: being used by men (like him) who didn't hang around, being used up at work in boring jobs that paid the rent but drained their energies and their spirits. Exhausted, lonely, desperate. Paul sees her. On some level he KNOWS her, and perhaps even has BEEN her at times in his life, and that's why he can identify with her enough to write something so effective. "Just Another Day" is like "Lady Madonna" in that respect: it sees the woman, sees the work of BEING, appreciates it and respects it with a flipping fantastic melody, bold, busy, intricate instrumental work (in JAD it also features a staggeringly beautiful chorus and bridge). Eleanor Rigby had the startling strings and the starkness of all that loneliness, but JAD and LM are like most of Paul's serious songs in that they have harrowing lyrics offered up on a bouncy, melodic tune, something so good (and so instantly familiar) that we don't listen to the lyrics enough. And that's sort of just like Paul too, right, a real "tell" about the man and his music: he'll give you his heart (as his crest says, Ecce Cor Meum) but he will make you hunt for it against the relentlessly cheerful, positive, happy facade. So much of his music is exactly like that: "I'm Looking Through You", "You Won't See Me", even "Yesterday" and certainly "Just Another Day" they all come down to: "I'm going to show you utter heartbreak, but I'm going to hide it behind something you whistle while you're doing housework." It's a McCartney hide-and-seek in a way. "If you want to get to the heart of my songs, or to the heart of me, you'll have to work for it." Anyway, I've got "Just Another Day" in my head all day, particularly that stunning bridge, the gorgeous melody joined by a chorus that just stuns (and let's give Linda some love for her contribution to those many-layered harmonies). There is no way that John Lennon listened to that song (and we know he listened to all of Paul's stuff, all the time) and thought that mentioning "Just Another Day" was a put-down. If anything it probably ate at him. And it explains something else John wrote: The sound you make is muzak to my ears You must have learned something in all those years It's only speculation, but I think John, maybe all subconsciously, is softening the insult of the first line with the second line, because Paul certainly did learn something (quite a lot, actually) in all those years, and there is no way John didn't know that. In the end "How Do You Sleep" is a mess of a song, and it ended up saying so much about John Lennon and so very little about Paul McCartney. In a way it was his own "Ecce Cor Meum" and his own invitation to "behold my heart". And I suspect eventually Lennon knew it and that's why he regretted it. I don't think poor John slept very well at all in the best of times, but especially not after landing those early punches and seeing how lasting they were. So stupid and tragic. All of it.

[waveofahand]

"How Do You Sleep": John Shows His Hand

Heard "Another Day" on the radio today. Forgot how great that song is? I had. You can find it here. John Lennon HAD to understand how what a great piece it was when he tried to denigrate it with "How do you sleep?" He's trying so hard to put Paul down, and he sings: “The only thing you done was yesterday And since you've gone you're just another day…” (Notice he doesn't say "since I left you," or "since the band broke" but "you've gone." Very telling. He's trying to slag off on Paul but the little boy who hates to be abandoned is showing his grief, even as he's trying to hide it behind bravado). “The sound you make is muzak to my ears…”

These lines reveal that what John Lennon was REALLY saying in his travesty of a song was something more like this: "How can you continue to sound so happy, when I know you must be miserable or I hope you're miserable, because you should be miserable, and you've gone and you've left me so you should be curled in a ball somewhere but you keep writing these songs that sound happy, with all these daydreamy breakaways and bridges and Eleanor Rigby stuff that falls out of your head with that pretty pretty face, all about depressed girls and Sargent Majors and making up other people who aren't even real in your life, like me, because you are such a mouth-breathing plummy-lipped social freak of awkwardness and dimples and you'll never be happy because they're not me and you've gone and how do you sleep when you're not doing anything musical if you want to call it music about real shit, like war and peace and karma, like I do no, you're too busy cosplaying Daddy Gentleman Farmer with dogs and babies and you SHOULD be a farmer because your muzak isn't any good and never was, even though I tried to teach you, after you taught me how to tune my guitar, and anyway, I'm ignoring you because you're not important but I know all your music down to the note and chord because I'm still listening to you every single fucking day that's how much I care even though you don't, and I don't either, and you should just RAM your shit songs up your own ample arse, see how little you mean to me you and your happy-granny love stuff of made-up people and cartoon drawings, even though you're not very important to me, at all, anymore and I never think about you really and you're still doodling inside your notes only you're doing it to something you think is music ...meanwhile I'm busy writing 800 page Russian Novels of human tragedy and you know, whatever else comes into me fuckin' head when I'm not doing very important protesting and performance art and also listening to your music to see how bad it is and to remind meself how much better off I am without you and with Yoko instead and no I'm not listening for messages or codes from you at all does Linda tell you what to write? Your old lady is a drag not that I'm projecting my shit on to you because I'm not but how do you fucking sleep, you freaking approval-needing boy scout and you shut up Ringo I'm not done, and it's not enough it will never be enough because this terrible music is here there and everywhere all over the fuckin radio but its for no one and no one is listening so good day sunshine shitstain because baby i'm amazed you still have a recording contract and you know what there is no one at home and I think I'm gonna reign and so I don't listen to your unimportant granny shite and you've gone and you're very very unimportant to me.

Yeah... John sure showed PAUL with that song, didn't he? Poor boys, the both of them.

[pennielane]

my favourite tags on my get back gifs  PART 6 (of many)

[waveofahand]

He never could pull off a hat...

[waveofahand]

If these fags could talk...

Yeah, so... Storytelling from the perspective of a carton of cigarettes, circa 1965: What was it like to be a cigarette in the mouth of a Beatle? Sorry. I don't know why. I had to write it. (Please recall that a "fag" in this time frame in England is a cigarette, no insult intended to anyone):

TO BEGIN:

Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang…

The first thing I noticed was that the one with the black hair was insane. He pulled Pack #1 out of me and began banging it against his hand. Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang...

Thirty times.

He did it thirty times.

The one with the blue eyes rolled them and said, “You know it doesn’t do what you think it does, right?”

“Sure it does,” Blackhair said. “Tap ‘em before you open ‘em and the tobacco packs tighter, and the fag burns slower.”

“I’ll burn you slower,” Blueyes snorted.

“You’d love to try.” Blackhair would flutter back at him.

“Don’t waste those eyelashes on me, son,” Blueyes would threaten, just like a man from Dingle.

And this is how it went, with Blackhair. Every pack he took from me was abused in the same way, bang bang bang bang bang… always thirty times. Not twenty-nine, not thirty-one. Thirty. Insane.

They smoked like mad, all of them, so I never expected to be around for long. Still, it was an entertaining time while it lasted, because these were four men who liked their flavorful butts. If there were butts to be had, they wanted their mouths on the butts, the butts in their mouths.

You can read the rest of this Beatles fanfic (as told by their ciggies) at AO3.

[waveofahand]

Is Ringo hinting McLennon?

I have no idea where I got this -- might have found it a few years ago on twitter back when it was twitter. Thought it was...interesting. Anyone recognize the fanart or know who the artist is? I know nothing about the pic, for all I know someone saw Ringo, handed him the tablet and asked him to pose?

[paulandjerm]

Hey I’m just curious, what book is the image in your header from?

Who the Hell's in It: Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Actors by Peter Bogdanovich

(I am so incredibly sorry for not having seen and answered this before)

That was the least insane thing I could have put actually

And of course the "homosexual thing"

(tw F slur — which given what he follows it up with is very bizarre)

[waveofahand]

"I asked Patty why she never said anything negative about Dean and she said that Dean was like a second wife to me and she felt he had no right to speak against him." The McLennon parallels...

[groovybananastarfish]

[waveofahand]

Let's face it, Paul has always been very unusual/strange. His brain does not work like most brains. Neuro-divergence is the man's defining feature.

[hamyilton]

Visit Original Link

"We were aware of all the kinda, the musical establishment. We were aware of them and we wanted them to be aware of us. Lennon-McCartney, the whole idea of calling it Lennon-McCartney instead of Paul Lennon and John McCartney, *sighs* the other way around"

[waveofahand]

Telling little slip.

[tonightweredrinkingfromthebong]

[waveofahand]

those first two give real McLennon vibes don’t they?

[jerrylevitch]

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis entertaining the US troops, circa 1953.