mythserene

[mythserene]

READ THIS. At least the Alf Lennon/Billy Hall part. Because it is quite a bit of fun as well as truly brilliant in dissecting how Mark Lewisohn manipulates a story. It's what I see all the time but have not ever quite been able to translate. Have a little faith and just jump down to the Billy Hall story about Alf and John. It doesn't matter if we believe Alf or not—or believe that Lewisohn has another credible narrative—it is Lewisohn's dishonest presentation of the new and the old evidence. @wingsoverlagos very masterfully reveals the incredibly deceptive ways that Lewisohn shifts his framing to bolster one narrative and discredit another. Presenting Billy Hall's story is not the problem, but Lewisohn has a duty to relate opposing evidence truthfully instead of setting up a straw man to debunk.

...Lewisohn makes the detail Hall contradicts (his parents involvement) central to the story as a whole (“[e]very account….has turned on...”) He’s moved the goalposts by framing a detail he can debunk as crucial to the story, when that detail wasn’t present in the primary source to begin with.

(He really does do this all the time. All. The. Time.)

Mark Lewisohn and the No Good, Very Big Scoop

A few weeks ago, I made a post showing that Kim Bennett, the crucial interviewee who provided the crux of Mark Lewisohn's "debunking" of a classic Beatles myth, was not, as Lewisohn has suggested, completely absent from Beatles history. Kim Bennett had been quoted in an issue of Beatles Book Monthly, in which Mark Lewisohn, aged 10 1/2, also made a brief appearance.

That was a teaser, and now that any interest it may have stirred has had time to die out, it's time for a proper introduction to what has become an unwieldy examination of Tune In's biggest scoop.

I came across Kim Bennett in that issue of Beatles Book Monthly while I was working on a "Lewisohn vs." post focusing on George Martin's memoir, All You Need Is Ears. Checking those citations went off the rails before the train had left the station. It led me to take a closer look at the way Lewisohn tells the story of how the Beatles signed their contract with Parlophone. This section of Tune In represents the biggest Beatles "myth" that Lewisohn busted, and it has been discussed in any number of reviews and interviews since the book's release. Yet the evidence given for Lewisohn's biggest scoop was thin, and relied disproportionately on the word of Kim Bennett, a man whose story only saw the light of day because of Mark Lewisohn--or so he would have us believe.

I did some digging. I found the aforementioned quote from Bennett. Then I found another one, in another issue of Beatles Book Monthly. Then I found him in the pages of a prominent book of Beatles history. Then another book, and another.

Kim Bennett's evolving story was the first red flag, but the more I dug, the more problems I found with Lewisohn's choice to present the Bennett version as definitive. The other supporting evidence Lewisohn brought to the table was, at best, thin. Evidence supporting the classic narrative went unaddressed. His heavy-handed authorial choices evinced a man trying to overturn a narrative to further his own reputation and book sales, not a historian using his best judgment to parse conflicting accounts and come to his best assessment of the truth.

My intention here isn't to attack Kim Bennett or to defend George Martin from an unflattering portrayal of his role in the Beatles' contract signing. Nor do I think Kim Bennett's account should be stricken from the record entirely. My focus is on Lewisohn's choice to present Kim Bennett's story as an undeniable Truth in the story of the Beatles. At best, his historical judgment utterly failed him, at worst--and far more likely, in my view--Lewisohn put forward a substandard work of history solely for the sake of grabbing headlines by disrupting a traditional narrative.

There's a lot to discuss with the Bennett/contract story, which I'll discuss in future posts. My ~tentative~ table of contents is:

0. Mark Lewisohn’s Star Witness 1. An Introduction and Primer >You Are Here< 2. The Evolving Story of Kim Bennett, Pt. 1: Before Lewisohn 3. The Classic™ Contract Story, and Why Lewisohn Distrusts It 4. The Evolving Story of Kim Bennett, Pt. 2: Tune In 5. Lewisohn’s Other Sources 6. Lewisohn’s Portrayal of Kim Bennett & George Martin

For now, I'll set Kim Bennett aside and briefly address another Busted Myth in Tune In: the story of young John Lennon, forced to choose between his mother and father.

Alf Lennon and Billy Hall: A Lewisohnian Microcosm

Along with the story of the Beatles’ Parlophone contract, Tune In’s new take on the traumatic custody dispute over John Lennon is one of the book’s most discussed “revelations.” This story plays out over a few pages (unlike the Kim Bennett/Contract narrative, which sprawls across several chapters), but it demonstrates many of the same heavy-handed writing choices Lewisohn makes to prop up a “definitive” version of events without adequate evidence or analysis. The tactics Lewisohn uses fall into three broad categories: (1) misrepresenting opposing evidence and (2) inflating the credibility of supporting evidence, and (3) creating a false dichotomy between two accounts.

I'm sure you're familiar with this classic tale. It’s been written in nearly every Beatles biography starting with Hunter Davies’ The Beatles (1968), as told to Davies by John’s father, Alf Lennon. The story goes like this:

Alf Lennon took five-year-old John to Blackpool, ostensibly as a holiday, though he planned to keep his son. They lived with a friend of Alf’s for two weeks. That friend planned to emigrate to New Zealand; Alf decided he should emigrate as well, with John in tow. These plans were foiled by the arrival of Julia, and a custody dispute ensued. At an impasse, Alf asked John who he wanted to stay with. John at first picked Alf, but when his mother started to leave, he ran after her.

The story has been embellished over the years, but those are the core facts as related by Alf. Mark Lewisohn doesn’t believe it happened this way. He tracked down the friend Alf and John stayed with in Blackpool, Billy Hall, and asked for his version of events. Hall’s testimony would form the basis for one of Lewisohn’s major MythBusting moments.

I’m not going to dissect these events in depth here. What I want to illustrate is the way Lewisohn sells the reader on his interviewee, Billy Hall, and Hall’s version of events. From Tune In Ch. 2:

Lewisohn starts by introducing Billy Hall as the "only living witness" and "the only person to relate the events impartially."

I’ll give him “only living”, but Lewisohn does nothing to demonstrate his impartiality. Generally, one would assume a guy relating the story of a disagreement his friend had with his ex would have some degree of bias. Lewisohn knows this, but to overturn this classic narrative, he needs the reader to trust Billy Hall. He can’t show Hall’s impartiality, so he must tell the reader.

“Witness” is also doing some heavy lifting here. More on that soon.

Before jumping into Hall's version of events, Lewisohn tells us how how “[e]very account” of the story has been told to date. With this phrasing, Lewisohn purposefully obfuscates opposing evidence; rather than acknowledge that Alf Lennon himself gave this story, he presents it in the vague terms of "[e]very account." Acknowledging that these accounts arise from a primary source would give them strength, so Lewisohn portrays it as another old chestnut in the pile of oft-repeated Beatles stories. It might seem like a simple turn of phrase here, but we’ll see this tactic pop up again soon.

Framing aside, the passage highlighted in blue is in keeping with Alf’s story as told to Davies. That changes once we get to the phrase in pink. According to Lewisohn, “[e]very account…turned on the vital fact” that John would first emigrate with Billy Hall’s parents. This is just a lie. I have read multiple accounts that do mention Hall’s parents involvement in the plan, but, crucially, they play no role in the story Alf Lennon told Hunter Davies. Davies writes, “The friend he was staying with in Blackpool was planning to emigrate to New Zealand. Fred decided to go with him. All the preparations were made, when one day Julia arrived at the door.” (Davies 1968, p.8)

Hall’s testimony doesn’t contradict the premise that Alf wanted to take John to New Zealand (“…Lennie said he might [emigrate to New Zealand] too…and at some point it was mentioned that it would be a great place to raise Johnny”), but says definitively that his parents had no intention to emigrate. To present this as a proper MythBusting, Lewisohn makes the detail Hall contradicts (his parents involvement) central to the story as a whole (“[e]very account….has turned on...”) He’s moved the goalposts by framing a detail he can debunk as crucial to the story, when that detail wasn’t present in the primary source to begin with.

Then, in yellow, Lewisohn lets us know that the classic version of events "is fantasy." Or rather, Lewisohn lets us know that Billy Hall says its fantasy. It's a heavy-handed introduction. Hall is never given any pushback, and we're left with the impression that Lewisohn wants the reader to believe Hall's conclusion.

Hall goes on to say that Alf couldn’t have emigrated anyway because Alf, “had to go back to sea. He had to go back. We were only on leave.” This is a blatant example of Lewisohn refusing to question or push back against an account he wants the reader to believe. Alf Lennon already had a history of going AWOL, so “It couldn’t have happened because Alf wouldn’t go AWOL” isn’t convincing evidence. Lewisohn doesn’t bring this up, though, and indeed provides no comment on this section of Hall’s testimony. He lets it stand unquestioned.

Here's how Lewisohn introduces us to the custody dispute between Alf and Julia:

Lewisohn describes the well-known version of events as “painted vividly in John Lennon docudramas.” Again, Lewisohn neglects to inform the reader that this story comes from from Alf Lennon - one of the three people in the room where it happened. The “docudramas” didn’t make up this chapter in John’s life—they based it on the words of his father, and accounts of people close to John (e.g. Cyn.) We would expect Alf to have some bias in the matter, but that’s no reason to complete discount his story.

Also note Lewisohn’s use of charged language to highlight how melodramatic the “docudrama” version of events is. Silly of you to believe such made-for-TV sensationalism, reader! Luckily, Lewisohn has found someone who “recalls what actually happened.”

How Lewisohn knows this is “what actually happened”, he doesn’t say. But trust him—this isn’t just another version of events, it’s the version of events. Billy Hall says:

(The “Terry-Thomas character” mentioned here is Bobby Dykins, Julia’s boyfriend)

Right off the top, Hall says that the conversation happened in a different room. THIS is Lewisohn’s decisive witness—a guy who didn’t see things go down. Have you ever lived with someone, readers? Ever had a college roommate who got into a fight with their significant other in the other room? Even if you did your best to eavesdrop, would you be able to confidently say what happened if you were asked to recount it sixty years later? Would you weigh your word more heavily than the people in the room itself?

Billy Hall is only a “witness” in the loosest sense. He can tell us what happened around the fateful meeting, but he has no information on the actual event.

Billy tells us that Alf told him “I’m letting Johnny go back with his mother—she’s going to look after him properly.” Okay. Maybe Alf was broken up about events but wanted to save face in front of his friend. Maybe Alf wasn’t broken up, having just spent two weeks parenting after spending much of John’s life as an absentee dad. There’s nothing here that precludes a tense exchange occurring in the room. The room where Billy Hall wasn’t.

Finally, and damningly, “I really can’t remember if Johnny was in there too.” So Hall admits that he has no memory of the crucial detail of whether or not John was in the room, yet Lewisohn wants us to believe his account is “what actually happened.”

I commend Lewisohn for seeking out people like Hall, people peripheral to the Beatles’ story that may nevertheless add depth to it, but I seriously question his choice to present Hall’s version of events as definitive. He presents Hall’s story without question or criticism, outright telling us that a story told sixty years later by a man who wasn’t in the room where it happened is impartial and definitive. Meanwhile, Alf Lennon’s account isn’t attributed to him—it’s veiled behind catch-alls like “[e]very account”, or conflated with “docudramas.” Lewisohn clearly isn’t treating these accounts with equal scrutiny; he’s purposefully uplifting a version of events that contradicts accepted “myth.”

One final point that drives this home is Lewisohn’s choice to portray Billy Hall and Alf Lennon’s accounts as mutually exclusive. Rather than looking for how these two stories might dovetail, he creates a false dichotomy between them. This begins by framing the role of Billy Hall’s parents as crucial to the existing narrative, but it’s most clear in the utter absence of effort by Lewisohn to reconcile these two accounts. Aside from the point regarding his parents, what does Billy Hall contradict here? His portrayal is different from many dramatizations, but there’s very little that goes against Alf’s account. There’s no reason to completely throw out one or the other; there is every possibility these are two angles on the same story, not two mutually exclusive events.

But “Alf and Julia Lennon’s argument over John’s custody was maybe more sedate than sometimes depicted” isn’t getting headlines. It doesn’t make for a good talking point, and it certainly isn’t increasing Lewisohn’s prestige as the man finding out the True Story of the Beatles. Put simply, Mark Lewison chose to portray Billy Hall’s story as busting a Beatles’ myth not because a careful examination of the evidence supported that conclusion, but because disrupting a narrative would increase his profile and the profile of Tune In.

This isn’t an isolated example. We’ll see many of these tactics again with the story of Kim Bennett.

Sources:

Davies H. 1968. 2009 Edition. The Beatles. New York (NY): W.W. Norton & Company. 408p.

Lewisohn M. 2013. The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1: Tune In. New York (NY): Crown Archetype. [ebook]

#mark lewisohn #behind the curtain #how the trick is done #sleight of hand #john lennon #tune in #alf lennon #fine tuning

[mythserene]

Hi, wingsoverlagos! Love your blog from The Bruce McMouse Show' Paul to your posts on magic Lewisohn. Thank you a lot! And not that it matters but I thought about you when read this comment on youtube (by @DrAnne-mc8er, who tells nice and seems truely stories about her family, especially on her unkle worked with The Beatles in 1969, and her own childhood near Paul, John, George and Ringo),

'… I've kept written diaries my whole life, which our youngest daughter is in the (necessarily) very long process of putting in date order with my help. These go way back to the early 50's, and include things which (now) seem so innocent and naive. Like when John knocked me off a swing in the local park, and when John and Paul had a real fight over a pair of £2 roller skates, both refusing to give up the one skate they each were holding on to for dear life! LOL Obviously this was when we were all still teenage kids fooling around.

Yes, I was contacted by a lady well over a year ago from "the office of" Mr Lewisohn in London, which to be quite honest, I thought was an arrogant way of him going about things, and I said so to the lady. Anyway he called back to "personally apologise". I should probably clarify that I'm now well into my seventies, and have a number of health issues. Yet rather than come up and see me at home in Liverpool, Mr Lewisohn assumed that I would be so keen to be in his book, that I would take the 3 hour train journey, to go and see him (or an assistant) in London, stay overnight if necessary, and then "hope" that anything I would say about the early days, might make it into his planned book. ALL at my own personal expense!

Needless to say I told my husband what Mr Lewisohn expected, and I also phoned Paul to tell him (in no uncertain terms) what I thought of the man. Frustratingly, our daughter who's here now, has just said I can't say what Paul said to me over the phone, here in a public forum. So that's as much as I can say. Well, other than I chose NOT to take the delightful Mr Lewisohn up on his offer! (I'm angry with him now all over again, just recalling what the arrogant sod expected me to do!) But anyway greenatom, you now know the story behind all that.

PS - Our daughter's gone home, so I'll quickly tell you that Paul said he'd talk to Richie (Ringo) about everything, and would phone me back. Anyway in the meantime, Barb phoned me and said Richie was furious with this Mark Lewisohn about what had happened, and that he should "stick his effing book where the sun don't shine!" LOL Then Paul phoned me back the same evening, and said he'd been round to Richie and Barb's (which of course I knew after chatting with Barb earlier), and said it was entirely up to me. but that he and Richie, both felt that I should tell Mark Lewisohn to "eff off". So I don't know for certain, but I think Paul and Richie might have temporarily fallen out a bit with Mr Lewisohn. Not just because of how he spoke to me, but mainly because as Paul said over the phone, the book is supposed to be about The Beatles. Not what the lads got up to as kids individually. Sorry for writing such a stupidly long reply, but take care anyway, and please stay healthy and wear a mask x' From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hv2EkzqUb8&lc=Ugy-Dnq03NdsYhh6xTB4AaABAg&ab_channel=YouCan%27tUnhearThis

Thank you so much for reading my posts, and for sending this message along! The comment thread in question is very interesting and sent me down quite the rabbithole. I wanted to believe! But I fear this person's story doesn't line up on close inspection.

The thread in question is at the top of the comment section on this video on the You Can't Unhear This Youtube channel. It's from the user "DrAnne-mc8er" who claims to be the neice of Bob Moog, of synthesizer fame. The thread is over 100 comments long with many replies by Dr. Anne. In addition to being the neice of Bob Moog, she claims to have known Paul and George as kids, being a couple of years younger than them, and to still be friends with them to this day. She says she has many handwritten journals starting in the 1950s and, most pertinently, she claims to have been contacted by the office of Mark Lewisohn. Her story goes that a research assistant of Lewisohn contacted her; Dr. Anne thought it was rudely done, and Lewisohn then conteacted her personally to apologize. She came away with the impression that he was full of himself, and then spoke to Paul & Ringo, who confirmed that Lewisohn was bad news.

Obviously, this story was like catnip to me. Having beef with Mark Lewisohn is such a specific thing to lie about, I thought, would anyone bother to add this detail if they were simply LARPing as someone celeb-adjacent? Still, there were some details that gave me pause. Dr. Anne said, for instance, that John was a devout christian at the time of the Maureen Cleave interview, which...lol. But one very wrong assumption doesn't necessarily invalidate her entire story. She also said that George Harrison had done uncredited backing vocals on London Town, which sounds improbable, but idk, you never know???

So I decided to dig in to see if anything she said held water. First, I image searched her profile picture (crazy how using a basic google function makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes), and the results were somewhat encouraging: the picture was indeed of a Dr. Anne Cremona, a psychologist. Further digging showed that the real Dr. Anne and the commenter Dr. Anne both professed to have at least four children. On the flip side, Commenter Dr. Anne purports to live in Liverpool, while Actual Dr. Anne practices in London. Not a realistic commute, eh?

But the story truly fell apart once I looked into Bob Moog, who I previously knew nothing about aside from the fact that he was the Synthesizer Guy. Commenter Dr. Anne said that her mother was Bob Moog's younger sister, who had moved to the UK in 1938. She named her grandfather as Robert Sr. There are claims with all of these problems, not the least of which is the fact that Bob Moog seems to have been an only child. I read the first few chapters of a biography of Moog--(Switched On by Albert Glinsky)--which provides plenty of detail on Moog's family going several generations back, but doesn't mention any siblings.

The second issue is the timing: based on this commenter's story, she would have been born around 1944 or 1945. Bob Moog was born in 1934. If he somehow had a younger sister who went unmentioned in his biography, she would have been at most three years old in 1938, when she purportedly went to Liverpool--with a non-parent guardian, as Bob Moog lived with both his parents. This sister would have been ten at the oldest when "Dr. Anne" claims to have been born.

Then we have her grandfather, Robert Sr. Bob Moog was actually the first Robert in a long line of Georges. His dad was George, his grandfather was George, and his great-grandfather was, I think, Georg. There may have been another George thrown in there.

So it seems like this commenter is just doing some high effort LARPing. The thing I'm left wondering is whether or not this commenter is actually Dr. Anne Cremona. If it isn't, they didn't just pick a random picture for their troll account, but used her name as well, all while incorporating details that seem pulled from her life. There's the number of children for one, but the commenter also sprinkles in some psychology talk.

What's the deal? Is this an actual psychologist doing some dedicated trolling (the comment chain spanned a time period of more than a year) with her actual name and picture? Or is this a troll impersonating an actual psychologist as part of their neice-of-Bob-Moog routine?

Thank you for sending this my way, @tavolgisvist! It may not be the genuine article, but I had a lot of fun digging into it. The Mark Lewisohn Tipline (my askbox) is always open!

[mythserene]

Honestly, I really enjoy diving into Ringo’s earlier interviews, because I feel like out of the four, he showcased a vulnerability and a special ability for grasping and articulating certain emotional nuances that I think truly highlight the band’s dynamic. Take for instance, this quote below from a July 1988 interview of his. It stands as one of my favourite insights into the inner workings and relationships among those four boys in the band, and how these dynamics shaped their music.

INT: I would imagine it was an adjustment personally, but did you feel lost musically?

RINGO: Well, I'd never played with a better band, you see, so I think that's the loss I felt.

INT: Where does one go from the best?

RINGO: It's not even just the best. A lot of it was telepathy. We all felt so close. We knew each other so well that we'd know when any of us would make a move up or down within the music, and we'd all make it. No one would say anything or look at each other; we'd just know. The easiest word is telepathy. The band worked so well, and we were four good friends a lot of the time. But like any four friends, we had rows and shouted and disliked each other for a moment.

Then it ended, and I started playing sessions and had a really good time, but I was just playing. You can play with any band, but that band was something special to me, and it's never been like that again. I've had great sessions, great tracks, but it's never been like that, and you can't expect that if you walk into a studio and play someone's session. You're strangers.

We had all lived together so close; we knew each other so well that it crossed over into the music. We knew exactly what the other was doing. That's even the wrong way to explain it. We just knew that the chemistry worked! The excitement! If things were just jogging along and one of us felt, “I'm going to lift it here,” it was just a feeling that went through the four of us and everyone lifted it, or everyone lowered it, or what-ever. It was just telepathy. When I do sessions now, I'm playing the best I can, and some sessions are really great. But I've never played on anyone's album all the way through, because I always felt it was boring, so I'd do three or four tracks.

[mythserene]

Signature Lewisohn move. He does this quite a bit in the sections I'm obsessed with, and I think I know why he does it here. In this case he overrides conflicting information about the band setting up their next Hamburg gig themselves, and by also making it seem like perhaps no one told Williams and he was expecting to be paid for booking the gig and getting them an extra £8, even after his fee, stiffing him looks much worse. And who does it look worse on? Paul. Because aside from Stu's letter, Paul is at the center of it—“of course” he was the one who went to the lawyer, says Lewisohn—and so the higher Allan Williams' expectations were of being paid, the colder the knife in the back is. If it looks more like getting stiffed and less like a misunderstanding, the worse it looks for Paul, because Paul is clearly the one handling it and the character who is singled out in the action. The Beatle who ran to a lawyer. Hmm, foreshadowing.

A good, quick example on my end:

“...it might have been at this point that Brian first learned John and Paul had written some songs. ... It's clear from a letter Brian wrote five days later that he now knew this detail and there's nothing to indicate he knew it before”

In the early Epstein/Beatles section Lewisohn makes it seem like Epstein found out they wrote their own songs for the first time on the night they agreed to let him manage them, and that after that they started performing Lennon/McCartney originals for the first time. Presumably at the suggestion of Brian. But Alistair Taylor, one of Lewisohn's mostly concealed sources—he relies heavily on him for this section, leaving no citation for lots of details that come straight from Taylor's book—describes how when he and Brian first saw the Beatles at the Cavern Paul ended the set by saying, “We'd like to finish now with a number that John and me have written.” It was ‘Hello, Little Girl.’ Taylor writes, “Brian and I exchanged a glance. So they could write songs as well as perform them.”

But Lewisohn goes even further, and following his constant MO—as laid out in the “Where could Paul be?”/Designing Lewisohn post—he doesn't actually say that Brian Epstein was the impetus for the band starting to perform their own songs, but he intimates it in every way. First, Brian must have learned about it on this particular night, says Lewisohn, because “there's nothing to indicate he knew it before”. Then for the hell of it he goes on to make up the song of theirs that they first played in public—(Lewisohn chose “Like Dreamers Do”)—and then does a signature Lewisohn “Just Asking Questions” move. With Paul after Julia's death it was “It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.” Here it's “Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not...”

Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps not, but it was here and now, in the last month of 1961, that John and Paul finally set their old reservations aside and the Beatles started playing Lennon-McCartney songs on a regular basis. The first was "Like Dreamers Do"...

And jic you want to see the “there's nothing to indicate he knew it before...” paragraph, I'll throw it in before signing off. This is where Lewisohn says Brian may have found out on December 3rd that they sang their own songs, even though Alistair Taylor says it was Paul singing “Hello Little Girl” at the Cavern that “cinched it” for Brian.

At seven o'clock the pubs opened and they left the shop and went for a drink. The conversation relaxed, and it might have been at this point that Brian first learned John and Paul had written some songs. It was a while back, but they still had them. It's clear from a letter Brian wrote five days later that he now knew this detail and there's nothing to indicate he knew it before—and, given that he enthused about the quality of one of the songs, he must have heard it in the interim, probably in the Cavern the night of December 6.

Small thought. It's Stu and Paul, together, who borrow money and sign the IOU to Williams before the first Hamburg trip, and they seem to be working together, here, as well.

Lewisohn's Little Mysteries

I should be posting the next piece dissecting the Mark Lewisohn/Kim Bennett/Parlophone contract saga--it's in the works, I promise! @mythserene and I are typing and scheming and typing some more--but most of my time has been put towards checking a zillion citations, and I wanted to share a little something before my next proper piece. The zillion-checked-citations will hopefully be available in some form soon; enjoy this as a snack to hold you over 'til dinner.

As we know, Mark Lewisohn likes to bust a myth, tear down our preconceived notions, and shed light into the murky corners of Beatles history (source: Mark Lewisohn.) But there's another pattern I've noticed while checking his citations: he likes to inject a little ambiguity every now and then where perfect clarity is possible.

I've run across a few cases of this--I'll try to dig those out and add them later--but I was struck by this example from The Best of Fellas (2002), Spencer Leigh's biography of Bob Wooler. Lewisohn sets up a little mystery, writes that there's something we simply don't know--all the while, the source is perfectly clear.

Tune In 18-46 vs. Leigh 2002 p.147

This section discusses the Beatles' plans to not pay Allan Williams a percentage for their second string of gigs in Hamburg. From Tune In:

Paul tells Bob Wooler they won't be paying Allan Williams commission; Paul adds that he suspects Wooler will tell Williams, as the two are friends. Wooler agrees--yep, he's going to tell Williams. Then Lewisohn introduces his petite paranthetical mystery: "(It isn't clear if or when Wooler did, however.)"

Now, from The Best of Fellas (this, like much of the book, is told through a quote by Bob Wooler himself):

To quote Wooler, "I did tell Allan and he was fuming about this." If you're struggling with the subtlety and intricacy of this quote (hi, Mark!), I'll reiterate the key phrase: "I did tell Allan." Sure, he doesn't give an exact date or anything, but from the general context, we can assume it occurred around the same time.

Why? Why does he do this? He had to actively write out that it "wasn't clear" if Bob told Allan about the Beatles' financial scheme. It would have been simpler (and more correct) to not write that. This is very strange behavior! Though I have a better understanding of Lewisohn than when I started, I still don't get why he does things like this--why introduce this ambiguity to the record when the answer is in your source, in the very same paragraph?

Also strange: that bracketed "to me" at the start of the quote. “Paul said [to me], ‘I suppose you’re going to tell your mate…’” Using brackets to clarify ambiguity in a quote is fine, but where is the ambiguity here? If someone says, “Paul said, ‘You’re going to…’” it is understood that Paul is talking to the speaker. Lewisohn even says, in the sentence before the quote, “Bob Wooler later related how Paul told him that…” There isn’t a shred of ambiguity here. Don’t amend a quote if you don’t have to! Let the words speak for themselves!

Sources:

Leigh S. 2002. The Best Of Fellas: The Story of Bob Wooler, Liverpool’s First D.J. Liverpool: Drivegreen Publications Ltd. 264p. Accessed online 2024 Apr 23. Available from: https://archive.org/details/bestoffellasstor0000leig/mode/2up

Lewisohn M. 2013. The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1: Tune In. New York (NY): Crown Archetype. [ebook]

#mark lewisohn #he is SO full of shit #it's not clear #who could possibly know #if you come for the king... #tune in #epstein #the beatles #paul mccartney #allan williams #signature lewisohn move #just asking question

[mythserene]

John Lennon during a press conference for How I Won The War in Hannover, Germany | 5 September 1966 © Günter Zint

#i see brian #john lennon #the Beatles

[mythserene]

[mythserene]

What is a Liberty Bell? 🤔 (Mark Lewisohn on Fab4Cast pod)

I don't think it's especially important that he didn't know, I just thought it was funny and needed a little video.

(The reason it's so low-res is I posted it on Twitter two years ago and forgot to save the original so I had to screen record it from there.)

#mark lewisohn #look it up #what is a liberty bell #i think it's this great big bell on a ship #that you would clang #lewisohn #beatles #the beatles #expertise at work #tune in #fab4cast #beatles podcasts

[mythserene]

!!!! I think this is the single most revealing Mark Lewisohn ever is in one place. I didn't have it in me to do this, though, so I'm very glad you did, and I'll throw in a couple of the clips because the tone of his voice is incredible. When he says, “...and I'm someone's agenda” it sounds to me like he's literally gritting his teeth and almost snarling. And in the cowardice clip the guttural sound is enlightening.

Fine Tuning further listening

Mark Lewisohn Podcast and Interview Recs

Audio for most of these interviews can be found on Mark Lewisohn, a Beatles Historian, a beautifully maintained fan-made YouTube channel that has archived almost all of the interviews on this list. 

Interviews are linked directly to Apple podcasts, when possible. (YouTube links also included when applicable.)

Interview with Jean Louis-Polard, 2014 Topics of note: Neutrality and lack of bias

Fabcast podcast, 2017 013 MARK LEWISOHN (YouTube) Topics of note: The 80s and Paul McCartney’s solo career

Humans in Love podcast, 2018 #1 (Part One) Beatles Authority Mark Lewisohn Topics: Paul’s reaction to John’s murder

Fab4Cast podcast, 2019  Talking to Mark Lewisohn: #1 Writing The Beatles' History and #2 Spring 1969 (YouTube links: #1, #2) Topics: Heroin; Allen Klein; the Liberty Bell; John and Yoko’s wedding; Paul and Linda’s wedding

Nothing Is Real podcast, 2019 The Mark Lewisohn Interview #14 Part One and #15 Part Two  Topics of note: Tensions with Apple

Interview with Giljs Groenteman, 2019 Topics: Unbridled enthusiasm for John

I Am the EggPod podcast, 2019 The Star-Club tapes (YouTube) Topics: John’s leadership; intention to make all his research accessible after the books are published

From Me To You podcast, 2020 Mark Lewisohn In Conversation w/ Richard Courtney (YouTube link) Topics: Philip Norman; today’s “anti-John stuff” 

Let It Roll podcast, 2020 Mark Lewisohn in Conversation w/Nate Wilcox (YouTube) Topics: The “no greater buddy” incident; Lewisohn defending Paul

Let It Be Beatles podcast, 2020 Mark Lewisohn - The Complete 2020 Let It Be Beatles Interview Podcast (YouTube) Topics: The benzedrine incident; John’s threesome with Royston Ellis; the 444 meeting and Geoff Emerick.

Fans on the Run podcast, 2022 Ep 73. Mark Lewisohn  Topics: Working for Paul; tensions with Apple

#mark lewisohn #nothing is real #apple #akom #fine tuning #unlikable #something i always remember now is that HE knows he's been lying #another kind of mind

[mythserene]

The dates are interesting in themselves and not insignificant. We know from Allan Williams that he had trouble getting John a passport, but to concoct a whole story around it is wild. And btw, everything else very much does not check out. It's just so deeply weird and wrong that there was no way out of doing it all at once. No, as far as the actual story goes, the alterations get worse, not better.

LEWISOHN: the delusional dimension

“And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told.”

Designing Lewisohn is the primary Lewisohn, but Delusional Lewisohn is definitely a thing.

@wingsoverlagos and I listen to a lot of Lewisohn podcast interviews and when she first shared this one with me I was only half paying attention, but when I played it again last week on one of my walks it came all the way home and helped me make sense of a chunk of text I’ve been bogged down in for weeks. Like most of Lewisohn’s fictionalizing, the narrative I’ve been untangling is almost all calculation, but there are also sprinkles of full-on Lewisohn Fanfic thrown in, and this clip turned out to be my Delusional Lewisohn Rosetta Stone.

DELUSIONAL LEWISOHN  “unearths” a heck of a story (by noting the dates on two documents)

On “Things We Said Today” in 2017, Delusional Lewisohn explained how he “unearthed” the never-before told story of Mimi hiding John’s birth certificate before the 1960 Hamburg trip. The confidence with which he recounts a series of events that only shows beyond all doubt that “the extraordinary story” he’s about to convey was not “unearthed,” but concocted—or dreamed—while clearly expecting the listener to see exactly how it fits together and proves his narrative seems inexplicable to me by anything but delusion. Or if there is a rational explanation, it lies beyond my earthbound grasp.

— TO CENTER LEWISOHN’S STORY IN TIME —

📍 Mendips opened to the public in 2003. 

📍 John’s Aunt Mimi died in 1991.

(Full transcript at end of post)

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office … and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine. And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told. —[Mark Lewisohn; Things We Said Today • Nov. 22, 2017]

Indeed, in Tune In Lewisohn tells an incredibly dramatic tale of Mimi hiding John’s birth certificate and refusing to give her permission for the first Hamburg trip, of everything going down to the wire, and of John finally racing to Williams’ van at the very last second and the group making it out of Liverpool as a unit by the skin of their teeth.

The details are gripping, and on the podcast he will even defend Mimi’s motives for supposedly hiding the birth certificate, opining that her reasons for doing this completely dreamed up thing were “perfectly understandable.”

Then Lewisohn reveals how he discovered that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate in hopes of stopping him from leaving England.

Lewisohn:

Documents tell these stories. I mean I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica– until I saw a passport on display in his house in Liverpool.

Upon seeing the passport on the wall at Mendips Lewisohn had a realization. The passport date was August 15, the day they left for Liverpool. And he had previously bought a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate at a Sotheby’s auction, so he knew that the birth certificate was dated August 12, 1960. 

“I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office”

A blinding light now overwhelms Mr. Lewisohn. He sees it all. And he tells us what this means. The great significance. The extraordinary drama. The tidbit of Beatles’ historical truth “unearthed” by loads of cash spent at a Sotheby’s auction combined with a visit to Mendips. And the way he tells it makes it seem as if it should be as obvious to everyone else as it is to him. The dates prove it: John’s aunt Mimi hid his birth certificate to keep him from leaving. (And who can blame her?) His explanation is short and to the point. Like skipping the parts of a complex math problem that should be obvious to all, he makes his case simply and confidently.

And obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate. So, he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport.

Okay, I’m with you so far… 

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had. She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it. … He’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck in all in and go off to Germany and play guitar? So she— so, her attempt to stop him going——which, actually from an adult point of view is completely understandable——was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport.

Whoa, what just happened?

Mark Lewisohn “learned” this from the dates on John’s passport and birth certificate. He “learned” that Mimi hid John’s birth certificate and wrote a whole colorful drama around it.

And no, there is literally nothing beyond the dates on the birth certificate and passport.

(Nope. Not in ‘Tune In’ either.)

That means that some time between 2003 and 2013—at a minimum over twenty years after Mimi’s death and over thirty after John’s—Lewisohn “unearthed” this incredible, “never been told” story by noting the dates on two documents. 

That is my short form Delusional Lewisohn exhibit. If you’ve listened to Lewisohn and read my bit of snark you are technically caught up. Especially since as soon as we look at the text Designing Lewisohn rears his ugly head again. Pulling back the curtain sure seems to show him deliberately trying to make it look as if he has actual support for his wholly fictionalized dreamscape.

I will be sidestepping an extraneous bit of color that Lewisohn claims John-told-Cynthia-who-told-Lewisohn. (Who tells us that for some inexplicable reason Cynthia never wanted to include the dramatic scene in her own books.)* But since that’s not directly related to the hidden-birth-certificate “revelation” I’m not going near that quicksand.

*Perhaps Cynthia was saving the story for Mark Lewisohn. But Mr. Lewisohn has the ability to put all these doubts to bed in an instant with his interview recordings.

All the sourcing we will be left with is one craftily placed unrelated Hunter Davies footnote—which I will add directly after the corresponding text—at which point you will be satisfied that there is zero support for the ‘Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to keep him from going to Hamburg’ melodrama. (Beyond John’s birth certificate date + John’s passport date which ≠  Mimi hid John’s birth certificate. 🫠 )

“TUNE IN” TEXT: (All emphasis is mine. All ellipses are Lewisohn drama dots.)

They all needed passports and were fortunate that Liverpool, as an international seaport, had a Passport Office open to personal callers and able to process applications fast. The provision of a birth certificate was compulsory with every application … and Mimi told John she didn’t know where his was. Now he was in trouble. They were leaving Monday morning, the 15th, and when he found this out it was already the 10th or 11th. A passport could be got quickly enough, but if John first had to apply for another birth certificate he mightn’t make it. As Cyn has said, Aunt Mimi’s view of John’s future “couldn’t have been blacker.” She was simply desperate he didn’t fritter away his prospects by going off to play silly guitar, and she was furious about his wanton sabotage of the college course she’d encouraged and supported him through. He’d defied her once too often, so when John did his best to fire her up about Hamburg, bragging his guitar would earn him “£100 a week,” she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate. (42) [“Tune In” p343 ❦ (42: “Davies, p79.”)]

But here we run into what looks like Designing Lewisohn propping up Delusional Lewisohn. In the sentence before the citation he has defied Mimi once too often, and so despite John’s £100 a week bluster “she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate.” Then we have the Davis citation, so in passing the reader assumes that there is a basis for the claim that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to stop him from running off to Hamburg.

Unfortunately for us, the citation is only for “£100 a week”.

“Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. ‘Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!‘”

And unfortunately for Lewisohn it also knocks the knees out from under what he claims as Mimi’s hide-and-seek motivation: John was three years through a four-year degree and she wasn’t going to let him waste it when he had only a year to go.

Then Hamburg came up. This was going to mean a proper severance, for a long time in a foreign country. Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. “Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,” he told her. “I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!” A slight exaggeration on the money, but still marvelous for five teenage lads. John, of course, jumped at the chance of having a good excuse to leave the College for good. He’d survived three years, just. Arthur Ballard, the lecturer who had most to do with him, saved him from being expelled several times. But John was now glad to get away, though he’d failed all exams and was leaving without any qualifications. [SOURCE: Hunter Davies (Lewisohn Footnote 42)]

BACK TO “TUNE IN”:

(Things are about to get “traumatic.”)

While racing around to get a second copy, John heaped a ton of spice into the mix by suddenly moving back into Mendips. [Lewisohn; p342]

John managed to get a “short copy” of his birth certificate on the Friday, by which time everything was becoming traumatic at Mendips. What scenes, what noise, what ferocity there must have been there that weekend. Written consent of a legal guardian was necessary for the issue of a passport to a minor, but no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it. After the way he’d treated her, and blown away everything she’d slaved for on his behalf? John now had no idea whether he’d even get a passport, and could only find out on Monday morning, when they were supposed to be leaving. At the moment of deciding to make the guitar his life, was he about to watch helplessly as the group he formed and led went off without him? [Lewisohn, p343]

Lewisohn’s story in the interview about realizing the significance of the dates on the two documents is a good one up until he goes off the rails. It’s not un-noteworthy. And in fact, we know from other sources that it was a close call because his mother was dead and his father was Nowhere Man. But it’s a long way from “it must have been a close call,” or even “it was a close call” to this entire sideshow and “literally” running from the passport office to Allan Williams’ van at the last minute because Mimi hid his birth certificate to stop him from going. 

I mean, “no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it”??  Are you mad?

This section cuts back and forth to the four different stories of the boys, and there is no other footnote relating to John’s passport until Lewisohn picks the action sequence back up on page 345, where we’re almost out of danger. (And where we will encounter our last—and one of my favorite—citations.)

But I’m ruining the, “er,” drama.

All would become clear after he’d rushed to Water Street, to the fifth-floor Passport Office in India Buildings, and waited as patiently as an impatient young man in a hurry could, praying the “brummercrats” would understand his situation: dead mother, absent father, er, how could he show adult consent? [Lewisohn, p345]

Continuing: “To John’s eternal relief…”

To John’s eternal relief, his passport application was processed once the office opened at 9:30. An official leniently considered the circumstances and granted dispensation without written adult consent, issuing a standard five-year passport but with a restriction that it expire after six months, in February 1961, unless the required document was produced. (54) John handed over his photos, signed where applicable, grabbed the precious blue-black document, ran for the lift, broke out onto Water Street, felt higher than that there Liver Building and hared up the hill to Slater Street. [Lewisohn, p346]

SOURCE – (54)

54: Courtesy of Yoko Ono Lennon, a facsimile reproduction of John’s first passport is on display at Mendips (now open as a National Trust property), accurately illuminating this and other facts.

I cannot top “accurately illuminating this and other facts.”

So just to sum up, there are exactly two footnotes for this entire, brand new, never-been-told “Mimi hid John's birth certificate” story that Lewisohn “uncovered.” The first is John telling Mimi they'd make £100 a week and the second is precisely what Lewisohn told us on the podcast. He “learned” that Mimi hid John's birth certificate when he saw John's first passport on display at Mendips. I do not consider Mark Lewisohn a particularly truthful source, but on this one I think we have to believe him.

BUT... considering that cunningly placed single (actual source) “£100 a week” footnote from Davies, maybe I was wrong about Delusional Lewisohn all along. Perhaps he Exacto-knifes the story together first, and then gets caught up in it later?

And now I wonder what Allan Williams—the star witness for this section of Tune In—had to say about John's passport, the race to the van and the rushing off at the last minute? 🧐

###

Extra: a short clip I ran into of Williams saying Best and Lennon had trouble getting passports. “The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away” is more revealing, but you've probably guessed that nothing from Williams supports Lewisohn. [And not just regarding John's passport.]

Full piece:

THINGS WE SAID TODAY AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: For purposes of time I have cut from the audio two Lewisohn devolutions, both represented in the transcript. (…) The first is Lewisohn working through the intermediate itinerary between Liverpool and Hamburg, the second is him saying that on the second Hamburg trip Pete and Paul couldn’t get permits at first. I also haven’t transcribed the four or so host reaction sounds, but no questions were asked and I haven’t cut any of the direct narrative. (The Spotify link below it is timestamped to go straight there.)

LEWISOHN:

That was a heck of a story that I unearthed for ‘Tune In’ of John only getting his passport—his ticket to ride, as it were—his passport to leave Britain and into Germany (…) he only got his passport the morning of their departure, and they were going to go anyway, without him. It was John’s– the Beatles were John’s group, but they were gonna go, and if John couldn’t get a passport, he couldn’t get a passport. 

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office up to Allen Williams’ Jacaranda coffee bar, where Williams had his minibus—and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine. 

And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told. (…)

It– it was great. Documents tell these stories. I mean, I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica of his passport on display in his house in Liverpool. You know, it’s now open to the public, courtesy of the National Trust. And they have a display of some documents, and one of them is John Lennon’s first passport. And I looked at it and I could see that the date of issue was the 15th of August, ’60, and I knew that was the day they’d left.

Um, I also had– I had from years ago—it came up at Sotheby’s—um, a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate, dated the 12th of August 1960—the date of issue. Twelfth of August, ’sixty. So– and obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate, so he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport. 

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had. 

She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it.

For exactly the same reason as Ringo, which is, you know, he’s–he’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck it all in and go off to Germany to play guitar? So she– her- her attempt to stop him going—which actually, from an adult point of view is perfectly understandable—um, was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport. [END]

#we have to face the fanfic #Lewisohn is untrustworthy on every level #it's beyond shocking

[mythserene]

He's very good and so it's easy to miss. He's trying to shift our mental pictures and feelings on the closeness that bonded Paul and John—and as you say, that we know from their own mouths bonded them—but without outright lying. So much of the book is like this. Once you take it apart it is so patently contrived and cunning that it becomes impossible to see as just honest mistakes of phrasing. It's scalpel work.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this is my case.

(*next day* I definitely got a little ahead of myself with that statement, but I was so happy to get through a single paragraph of a mild example without getting lost in all the other falsehoods that it made me giddy. I do feel unstuck though, and that's worth a lot.)

--

This was supposed to just be a copy of my “Delusional Lewisohn” website post but I started talking and accidentally wrote what I've been trying to say for months.

It starts as my contrasting paragraph of “designing Lewisohn”—how he normally does things—so it's a little stiff and compact, but I spread out fast and while it's probably riddled with typos, this is what he does. It's just usually worse and about more nefarious things.

“It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.”

In “A BEATLE DIDN’T SAY THAT!” one of my examples was Lewisohn very designedly making it seem like Paul wasn’t around for John after Julia’s death using a combination of an altered quote from George Harrison’s mother and the contextual phrasing surrounding it. Many know of Mrs. Harrison reassuring George that she wasn’t going to die, but Lewisohn cunningly alters the rest of her words and his supporting sentences to make Paul seem unaffected and distant after John’s mother’s death, and to paint George and Paul both as relatively unconcerned, when what Louise Harrison specifically says is that she sent George around to John’s to bring him over so that he could play guitar together with Paul and George, and that “they always helped each other.” For Lewisohn to surgically alter the words that he does quote, chop off the rest, and then sew them back up with misleading insinuations to create not only a false—but opposite—impression of the boys’ closeness after John’s loss is unforgivable.

TUNE IN – Lewisohn

Asked  some years later to describe how he’d been able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, Paul could remember nothing of the period at all. It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958. John was working at the airport, and Paul and George went on holiday together—adventurous for boys of 16 and 17. But Louise Harrison would recall how she encouraged George to visit John at Mendips, “so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts.” The awful fact that both his mates had lost their mothers terrified George: the penny dropped that his might die any moment too. “He’d watch me carefully all the time. I told him not to be so silly, I wasn’t going to die.”

THE BEATLES – Davies (cited)

Mrs. Harrison, George’s mother, remembers the effect it had on John. They were still practicing a lot at George’s house, the only house where they got endless hospitality and encouragement. (…) “When John’s mother did die, he didn’t seem to go off his head, but he wouldn’t come out. I forced George to go round and see him, to make sure he still went off playing in their group and just didn’t sit and brood. They all went through a lot together, even in those early days, and they always helped each other. George was terrified that I was going to die next. He’d watch me carefully all the time. I told him not to be so silly. I wasn’t going to die.”

Lewisohn doesn’t outright say that Paul wasn’t around when Julia died, but he strongly infers it—deceptively altering and truncating a supposed-Mrs. Harrison quote—turning George's mom talking about how close the three were at that time and how they helped each other, into support for his inference that Paul barely saw John at this time. He then adds an introductory statement that makes it seem as if Paul was nowhere to be found, without actually saying that.

Yes, that's what I said. It is all lawyer-speak narration. Look at his first two sentences.

Asked some years later to describe how he’d been able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, Paul could remember nothing of the period at all. 

It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.

But we know the secret. We know what Mrs. Harrison actually said. And so does Mark Lewisohn, by the way.

Now, Lewisohn tells us that someone, somewhere, "some years later" asked Paul this "question" that I literally cannot even comfortably end with a question mark:

“Paul, describe how you were able to help John cope with the loss of Julia?”

Really?

I'm not going to lie, I don't believe him, but even if we give Lewisohn the benefit of the doubt— **excuse me i can't stop laughing. one sec**

—even if we give Lewisohn the benefit of the doubt that someone, somewhere, at some unnamed time, asked Paul to describe how he was able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, just what exactly would we expect Paul McCartney's answer to that to be? Honestly, try to imagine the look on Paul's face if he was asked to describe how he helped John to cope after Julia's death.

“Paul could remember nothing of the period at all.”

Did an appellate lawyer write this? No, this is contract law genius. I can find the holes in almost any contract, and Lewisohn's own words around a misused quote are a work of legal art. He never quite says what you think he said.

But on the quotes, themselves, Lewisohn swings for the fences. He is without shame or fear. He has no qualms about putting quotation marks around any old thing he wants to say. One cannot go too many pages without finding something that shocks the conscience.

These are not “mistakes.” They are a very deliberate cutting and pasting together of historical figures' words to make them mean something different—and often opposed to—what the speaker intended. He then surrounds the misquotes with carefully worded insinuations that don't really say what you thought they did.

THE ACTUAL MRS. HARRISON “QUOTE”

Davies is very good at weaving together information-heavy exposition together with the quotes from his interviews, and since he interviewed everyone himself, he can tell us a lot in his own words.

What that does for you and me is that we get the context from the guy who asked the questions and spent time with these people, and that makes it a lot harder to get away with using these quotes out of context. Like, before we even get to the direct quote from George's mom, Davies is telling us what she remembers from the time. And it's a lot. Because that's when the boys practiced at the Harrison's almost every day. And it's awesome because her memories almost always include what the boys were eating at the time. (Seriously.) Like, she'd “given them all beans and toast” a few months before Julia died when she heard John say to Paul, “I don't know how you can sit there and act normal with your mother dead. If anything like that happened to me, I'd go off me head.”

Davies also calls Mrs. Harrison “one of nature's ravers.” 🥹

Everyone seems to agree that during this time the three were always at the Harrisons, and it's certainly the picture we get from Mrs. Harrison.

Davies is telling us all this, and leads into her direct quote by telling us what she “remembers.”

Mrs. Harrison, George’s mother, remembers the effect it had on John. They were still practicing a lot at George’s house, the only house where they got endless hospitality and encouragement.

And I trust Mrs. Harrison's memory because I am a mom, and I remember every trauma of my children's friends because I was the local Mrs. Harrison. We love those kids with all our hearts and they're so connected to our own kids that nothing happens to one without all of them feeling it. And the mom seeing it all. So how do we need Paul's answer to “Describe how you were able to help John cope with the loss of Julia?” when Mrs. Harrison has twenty stories, all with corresponding menus?

And Mrs. Harrison is saying that she sent George to get John out of his house so they could all play guitars together “in their group.” Not, George and John and no one knew where Paul was.

Where's Paul? Who could possibly know? “It could be they didn’t see much of each other”—but could it? It could be that Paul went ice skating in Sweden, EXCEPT HE FUCKING DIDN'T. Why are you lying to me in legalese in a Beatles biography?

“But Louise Harrison would recall how she encouraged George to visit John at Mendips” isn't true, but also isn't sane. If you pause and put as much thought into each sentence as was spent constructing them, you notice how many of them are patently ludicrous. Mrs. Harrison didn't encourage George to “visit” at Mendips because no child “visited” at Mendips. What are you even saying? To keep Paul and John away from each other you're talking nonsense. Visit? At Mendips? I can just picture John, Mimi and George sitting around having tea. But also, Mr. Lewisohn, those are not words that Mrs. Harrison said, and in fact, those words mean something completely different than the words she said.

What she said was she sent George over there “to make sure he still went off playing in their group and just didn’t sit and brood.”

And Nature's Raver Mom would see John not showing up like usual and would send her son out to make sure John knew he was wanted, and give him a little kick if necessary. She would want him in her house so she could feed him and make sure he was okay and to give him the comfort of playing music together with his friends.

They're the Beatles, and they got through it playing music. That's the real story, the true story, and a much better story.

And then she says “they all went through a lot together, even in those days, and they always helped each other.”

By cutting that out, leading into the quote you cut it from by speculating about where Paul was, and opining that maybe they didn't see each other much you are being purposefully deceptive and there simply is no other rational inference. None.

(I have tripled my website post now. I regret nothing.)

Let's take this baby home.

Because Mark Lewisohn completes the picture of John alone and ignored by George and Paul, and he does it by sneaking his own words into the mouth of George Harrison's dead mother.

I just want to make sure you got that. Like, let it sink in.

Mark Lewisohn changes Mrs. Harrison's actual words from “sit and brood” into “alone with his thoughts,” which further emphasizes the absolute absence of Paul and George. But he knows that John was not alone because he replaced Mrs. Harrison's words that said they were together playing music with his own words of John all alone. And then he has the nerve to even suggest that Paul and George are off together on holiday when John needs them most, while conjuring a parallel image of a traumatized John left separate and alone. (Except for his inner world.)

And I'm sorry, but I have to repeat it one more time: Lewisohn does all this by telling us that Louise Harrison said it. And although a lawyer could make a technical case that I am not being lied to here, I am.

Delusional Lewisohn is alive and well on my website. This has been Designing Lewisohn, signing off.

There's a lot, lot more and a lot, lot worse, but it's all of a piece. Not different in kind, just of degree. (But the degrees are significant.)

Tag 😏 @wingsoverlagos

#scalpel work #biography legalese #lewisohn #paul mccartney #john lennon #julia lennon #mrs harrison

[mythserene]

Have you ever even read Hunter Davies’ John Lennon-Julia's death section? Because if you haven't you're missing out.

(And perhaps not having enough compassion when judging subsequent biographers.)

“Twitchy” alone is catnip. (Full text at bottom.)

“spoke the same language, liked the same things, hated the same sort of people.”

“hated the same sort of people” **chef's kiss of all chef's kisses**

This line is one of many that makes me trust Davies’ picture of his subjects. I recognize these guys in his words. Every one of them. Davies’ access is undervalued on that score, because the picture he painted of the humans he witnessed has been confirmed over the years. That's John Lennon. That's the John Lennon we got to know after they broke up, so sanitized or not, we still recognize him. Davies’ characterizations were proven meticulous and exact, and that makes me trust him with the other people we didn't see as much. (Like, “one of nature's ravers,” Louise Harrison.)

“Twitchy took it worse than me. Then he said, ‘Who's going to look after the kids?’ And I hated him. Bloody selfishness.”

“And I hated him. Bloody selfishness.” That line. And he's talking about a guy named TWITCHY. Fuck me, I surrender.

“We'd caught up so much, me and Julia, in just a few years. We could communicate. We got on. She was great. I thought, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. That's really fucked everything. I've no responsibilities to anyone now.”

Are words even necessary? That's Oscar-stealing screenwriting. A work of art. (And the very next word in the quote is “Twitchy.” I mean.)

“I refused to go in and see her. But Twitchy did. He broke down.”

The perfect final line to a masterpiece that has been sucking biographers in since publication.

---

Full text:

Hunter Davies • The Beatles

p48 Julia, John's mother, whom he was spending more and more time with, still approved of the life he was leading. She had now almost taken over from Mimi in his life. He relied on her, because she spoke the same language, liked the same things, hated the same sort of people. “I was staying with Julia and Twitchy this weekend,” says John. “We were sitting waiting for her to come home, Twitchy and me, wondering why she was so late. The copper came to the door, to tell us about the accident. It was just like it's supposed to be, the way it is in the films. Asking if I was her son, and all that. Then he told us, and we both went white. It was the worst ever thing that happened to me. We'd caught up so much, me and Julia, in just a few years. We could communicate. We got on. She was great. I thought, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. That's really fucked everything. I've no responsibilities to anyone now. “Twitchy took it worse than me. Then he said, ‘Who's going to look after the kids?’ And I hated him. Bloody selfishness. “We got a taxi over to Sefton General where she was lying dead. I didn't want to see her. I talked hysterically to the taxi driver all the way, just ranted on and on, the way you do, just babbled on. The taxi driver just grunted now and again. I refused to go in and see her. But Twitchy did. He broke down.”

#it's got a guy named twitchy #hunter davies #the beatles #john lennon #biographers #beatles books #have mercy on their souls

[mythserene]

“Paul is my favourite musician. He plays great and is so supportive. I have other bass players on my records too, and I say to each one of them, “You’re my second favourite bass player.”” — Ringo Starr “It’s family. Sometimes we get pissed off at each other. I’ll want something from him and he won’t give it to me, and I’ll get pissed off. But then it passes. Brothers fight sometimes. There’s this revisionist history that it was all John and Paul. But it was four corners of a square; it wouldn’t have worked without one of the sides. Ringo was the right angle.” — Paul McCartney

[mythserene]

LEWISOHN: the delusional dimension

“And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told.”

Designing Lewisohn is the primary Lewisohn, but Delusional Lewisohn is definitely a thing.

@wingsoverlagos and I listen to a lot of Lewisohn podcast interviews and when she first shared this one with me I was only half paying attention, but when I played it again last week on one of my walks it came all the way home and helped me make sense of a chunk of text I’ve been bogged down in for weeks. Like most of Lewisohn’s fictionalizing, the narrative I’ve been untangling is almost all calculation, but there are also sprinkles of full-on Lewisohn Fanfic thrown in, and this clip turned out to be my Delusional Lewisohn Rosetta Stone.

DELUSIONAL LEWISOHN  “unearths” a heck of a story (by noting the dates on two documents)

On “Things We Said Today” in 2017, Delusional Lewisohn explained how he “unearthed” the never-before told story of Mimi hiding John’s birth certificate before the 1960 Hamburg trip. The confidence with which he recounts a series of events that only shows beyond all doubt that “the extraordinary story” he’s about to convey was not “unearthed,” but concocted—or dreamed—while clearly expecting the listener to see exactly how it fits together and proves his narrative seems inexplicable to me by anything but delusion. Or if there is a rational explanation, it lies beyond my earthbound grasp.

— TO CENTER LEWISOHN’S STORY IN TIME —

📍 Mendips opened to the public in 2003. 

📍 John’s Aunt Mimi died in 1991.

(Full transcript at end of post)

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office … and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine. And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told. —[Mark Lewisohn; Things We Said Today • Nov. 22, 2017]

Indeed, in Tune In Lewisohn tells an incredibly dramatic tale of Mimi hiding John’s birth certificate and refusing to give her permission for the first Hamburg trip, of everything going down to the wire, and of John finally racing to Williams’ van at the very last second and the group making it out of Liverpool as a unit by the skin of their teeth.

The details are gripping, and on the podcast he will even defend Mimi’s motives for supposedly hiding the birth certificate, opining that her reasons for doing this completely dreamed up thing were “perfectly understandable.”

Then Lewisohn reveals how he discovered that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate in hopes of stopping him from leaving England.

Lewisohn:

Documents tell these stories. I mean I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica– until I saw a passport on display in his house in Liverpool.

Upon seeing the passport on the wall at Mendips Lewisohn had a realization. The passport date was August 15, the day they left for Liverpool. And he had previously bought a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate at a Sotheby’s auction, so he knew that the birth certificate was dated August 12, 1960. 

“I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office”

A blinding light now overwhelms Mr. Lewisohn. He sees it all. And he tells us what this means. The great significance. The extraordinary drama. The tidbit of Beatles’ historical truth “unearthed” by loads of cash spent at a Sotheby’s auction combined with a visit to Mendips. And the way he tells it makes it seem as if it should be as obvious to everyone else as it is to him. The dates prove it: John’s aunt Mimi hid his birth certificate to keep him from leaving. (And who can blame her?) His explanation is short and to the point. Like skipping the parts of a complex math problem that should be obvious to all, he makes his case simply and confidently.

And obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate. So, he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport.

Okay, I’m with you so far… 

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had. She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it. … He’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck in all in and go off to Germany and play guitar? So she— so, her attempt to stop him going——which, actually from an adult point of view is completely understandable——was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport.

Whoa, what just happened?

Mark Lewisohn “learned” this from the dates on John’s passport and birth certificate. He “learned” that Mimi hid John’s birth certificate and wrote a whole colorful drama around it.

And no, there is literally nothing beyond the dates on the birth certificate and passport.

(Nope. Not in ‘Tune In’ either.)

That means that some time between 2003 and 2013—at a minimum over twenty years after Mimi’s death and over thirty after John’s—Lewisohn “unearthed” this incredible, “never been told” story by noting the dates on two documents. 

That is my short form Delusional Lewisohn exhibit. If you’ve listened to Lewisohn and read my bit of snark you are technically caught up. Especially since as soon as we look at the text Designing Lewisohn rears his ugly head again. Pulling back the curtain sure seems to show him deliberately trying to make it look as if he has actual support for his wholly fictionalized dreamscape.

I will be sidestepping an extraneous bit of color that Lewisohn claims John-told-Cynthia-who-told-Lewisohn. (Who tells us that for some inexplicable reason Cynthia never wanted to include the dramatic scene in her own books.)* But since that’s not directly related to the hidden-birth-certificate “revelation” I’m not going near that quicksand.

*Perhaps Cynthia was saving the story for Mark Lewisohn. But Mr. Lewisohn has the ability to put all these doubts to bed in an instant with his interview recordings.

All the sourcing we will be left with is one craftily placed unrelated Hunter Davies footnote—which I will add directly after the corresponding text—at which point you will be satisfied that there is zero support for the ‘Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to keep him from going to Hamburg’ melodrama. (Beyond John’s birth certificate date + John’s passport date which ≠  Mimi hid John’s birth certificate. 🫠 )

“TUNE IN” TEXT: (All emphasis is mine. All ellipses are Lewisohn drama dots.)

They all needed passports and were fortunate that Liverpool, as an international seaport, had a Passport Office open to personal callers and able to process applications fast. The provision of a birth certificate was compulsory with every application … and Mimi told John she didn’t know where his was. Now he was in trouble. They were leaving Monday morning, the 15th, and when he found this out it was already the 10th or 11th. A passport could be got quickly enough, but if John first had to apply for another birth certificate he mightn’t make it. As Cyn has said, Aunt Mimi’s view of John’s future “couldn’t have been blacker.” She was simply desperate he didn’t fritter away his prospects by going off to play silly guitar, and she was furious about his wanton sabotage of the college course she’d encouraged and supported him through. He’d defied her once too often, so when John did his best to fire her up about Hamburg, bragging his guitar would earn him “£100 a week,” she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate. (42) [“Tune In” p343 ❦ (42: “Davies, p79.”)]

But here we run into what looks like Designing Lewisohn propping up Delusional Lewisohn. In the sentence before the citation he has defied Mimi once too often, and so despite John’s £100 a week bluster “she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate.” Then we have the Davis citation, so in passing the reader assumes that there is a basis for the claim that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to stop him from running off to Hamburg.

Unfortunately for us, the citation is only for “£100 a week”.

“Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. ‘Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!‘”

And unfortunately for Lewisohn it also knocks the knees out from under what he claims as Mimi’s hide-and-seek motivation: John was three years through a four-year degree and she wasn’t going to let him waste it when he had only a year to go.

Then Hamburg came up. This was going to mean a proper severance, for a long time in a foreign country. Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. “Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,” he told her. “I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!” A slight exaggeration on the money, but still marvelous for five teenage lads. John, of course, jumped at the chance of having a good excuse to leave the College for good. He’d survived three years, just. Arthur Ballard, the lecturer who had most to do with him, saved him from being expelled several times. But John was now glad to get away, though he’d failed all exams and was leaving without any qualifications. [SOURCE: Hunter Davies (Lewisohn Footnote 42)]

BACK TO “TUNE IN”:

(Things are about to get “traumatic.”)

While racing around to get a second copy, John heaped a ton of spice into the mix by suddenly moving back into Mendips. [Lewisohn; p342]

John managed to get a “short copy” of his birth certificate on the Friday, by which time everything was becoming traumatic at Mendips. What scenes, what noise, what ferocity there must have been there that weekend. Written consent of a legal guardian was necessary for the issue of a passport to a minor, but no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it. After the way he’d treated her, and blown away everything she’d slaved for on his behalf? John now had no idea whether he’d even get a passport, and could only find out on Monday morning, when they were supposed to be leaving. At the moment of deciding to make the guitar his life, was he about to watch helplessly as the group he formed and led went off without him? [Lewisohn, p343]

Lewisohn’s story in the interview about realizing the significance of the dates on the two documents is a good one up until he goes off the rails. It’s not un-noteworthy. And in fact, we know from other sources that it was a close call because his mother was dead and his father was Nowhere Man. But it’s a long way from “it must have been a close call,” or even “it was a close call” to this entire sideshow and “literally” running from the passport office to Allan Williams’ van at the last minute because Mimi hid his birth certificate to stop him from going. 

I mean, “no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it”??  Are you mad?

This section cuts back and forth to the four different stories of the boys, and there is no other footnote relating to John’s passport until Lewisohn picks the action sequence back up on page 345, where we’re almost out of danger. (And where we will encounter our last—and one of my favorite—citations.)

But I’m ruining the, “er,” drama.

All would become clear after he’d rushed to Water Street, to the fifth-floor Passport Office in India Buildings, and waited as patiently as an impatient young man in a hurry could, praying the “brummercrats” would understand his situation: dead mother, absent father, er, how could he show adult consent? [Lewisohn, p345]

Continuing: “To John’s eternal relief…”

To John’s eternal relief, his passport application was processed once the office opened at 9:30. An official leniently considered the circumstances and granted dispensation without written adult consent, issuing a standard five-year passport but with a restriction that it expire after six months, in February 1961, unless the required document was produced. (54) John handed over his photos, signed where applicable, grabbed the precious blue-black document, ran for the lift, broke out onto Water Street, felt higher than that there Liver Building and hared up the hill to Slater Street. [Lewisohn, p346]

SOURCE – (54)

54: Courtesy of Yoko Ono Lennon, a facsimile reproduction of John’s first passport is on display at Mendips (now open as a National Trust property), accurately illuminating this and other facts.

I cannot top “accurately illuminating this and other facts.”

So just to sum up, there are exactly two footnotes for this entire, brand new, never-been-told “Mimi hid John's birth certificate” story that Lewisohn “uncovered.” The first is John telling Mimi they'd make £100 a week and the second is precisely what Lewisohn told us on the podcast. He “learned” that Mimi hid John's birth certificate when he saw John's first passport on display at Mendips. I do not consider Mark Lewisohn a particularly truthful source, but on this one I think we have to believe him.

BUT... considering that cunningly placed single (actual source) “£100 a week” footnote from Davies, maybe I was wrong about Delusional Lewisohn all along. Perhaps he Exacto-knifes the story together first, and then gets caught up in it later?

And now I wonder what Allan Williams—the star witness for this section of Tune In—had to say about John's passport, the race to the van and the rushing off at the last minute? 🧐

###

Extra: a short clip I ran into of Williams saying Best and Lennon had trouble getting passports. “The Man Who Gave the Beatles Away” is more revealing, but you've probably guessed that nothing from Williams supports Lewisohn. [And not just regarding John's passport.]

Full piece:

THINGS WE SAID TODAY AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: For purposes of time I have cut from the audio two Lewisohn devolutions, both represented in the transcript. (…) The first is Lewisohn working through the intermediate itinerary between Liverpool and Hamburg, the second is him saying that on the second Hamburg trip Pete and Paul couldn’t get permits at first. I also haven’t transcribed the four or so host reaction sounds, but no questions were asked and I haven’t cut any of the direct narrative. (The Spotify link below it is timestamped to go straight there.)

LEWISOHN:

That was a heck of a story that I unearthed for ‘Tune In’ of John only getting his passport—his ticket to ride, as it were—his passport to leave Britain and into Germany (…) he only got his passport the morning of their departure, and they were going to go anyway, without him. It was John’s– the Beatles were John’s group, but they were gonna go, and if John couldn’t get a passport, he couldn’t get a passport. 

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office up to Allen Williams’ Jacaranda coffee bar, where Williams had his minibus—and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine. 

And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told. (…)

It– it was great. Documents tell these stories. I mean, I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica of his passport on display in his house in Liverpool. You know, it’s now open to the public, courtesy of the National Trust. And they have a display of some documents, and one of them is John Lennon’s first passport. And I looked at it and I could see that the date of issue was the 15th of August, ’60, and I knew that was the day they’d left.

Um, I also had– I had from years ago—it came up at Sotheby’s—um, a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate, dated the 12th of August 1960—the date of issue. Twelfth of August, ’sixty. So– and obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate, so he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport. 

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had. 

She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it.

For exactly the same reason as Ringo, which is, you know, he’s–he’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck it all in and go off to Germany to play guitar? So she– her- her attempt to stop him going—which actually, from an adult point of view is perfectly understandable—um, was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport. [END]

#the beatles #mark lewisohn #lewisohn #delusional lewisohn #designing lewisohn #things we said today #aunt mimi #john lennon #he really sounds quite mad #hamburg #paul mccartney #tune in #footnotes #lewisohnology #Spotify

[mythserene]

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this is my case.

(*next day* I definitely got a little ahead of myself with that statement, but I was so happy to get through a single paragraph of a mild example without getting lost in all the other falsehoods that it made me giddy. I do feel unstuck though, and that's worth a lot.)

--

This was supposed to just be a copy of my “Delusional Lewisohn” website post but I started talking and accidentally wrote what I've been trying to say for months.

It starts as my contrasting paragraph of “designing Lewisohn”—how he normally does things—so it's a little stiff and compact, but I spread out fast and while it's probably riddled with typos, this is what he does. It's just usually worse and about more nefarious things.

“It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.”

In “A BEATLE DIDN’T SAY THAT!” one of my examples was Lewisohn very designedly making it seem like Paul wasn’t around for John after Julia’s death using a combination of an altered quote from George Harrison’s mother and the contextual phrasing surrounding it. Many know of Mrs. Harrison reassuring George that she wasn’t going to die, but Lewisohn cunningly alters the rest of her words and his supporting sentences to make Paul seem unaffected and distant after John’s mother’s death, and to paint George and Paul both as relatively unconcerned, when what Louise Harrison specifically says is that she sent George around to John’s to bring him over so that he could play guitar together with Paul and George, and that “they always helped each other.” For Lewisohn to surgically alter the words that he does quote, chop off the rest, and then sew them back up with misleading insinuations to create not only a false—but opposite—impression of the boys’ closeness after John’s loss is unforgivable.

TUNE IN – Lewisohn

Asked  some years later to describe how he’d been able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, Paul could remember nothing of the period at all. It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958. John was working at the airport, and Paul and George went on holiday together—adventurous for boys of 16 and 17. But Louise Harrison would recall how she encouraged George to visit John at Mendips, “so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts.” The awful fact that both his mates had lost their mothers terrified George: the penny dropped that his might die any moment too. “He’d watch me carefully all the time. I told him not to be so silly, I wasn’t going to die.”

THE BEATLES – Davies (cited)

Mrs. Harrison, George’s mother, remembers the effect it had on John. They were still practicing a lot at George’s house, the only house where they got endless hospitality and encouragement. (…) “When John’s mother did die, he didn’t seem to go off his head, but he wouldn’t come out. I forced George to go round and see him, to make sure he still went off playing in their group and just didn’t sit and brood. They all went through a lot together, even in those early days, and they always helped each other. George was terrified that I was going to die next. He’d watch me carefully all the time. I told him not to be so silly. I wasn’t going to die.”

Lewisohn doesn’t outright say that Paul wasn’t around when Julia died, but he strongly infers it—deceptively altering and truncating a supposed-Mrs. Harrison quote—turning George's mom talking about how close the three were at that time and how they helped each other, into support for his inference that Paul barely saw John at this time. He then adds an introductory statement that makes it seem as if Paul was nowhere to be found, without actually saying that.

Yes, that's what I said. It is all lawyer-speak narration. Look at his first two sentences.

Asked some years later to describe how he’d been able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, Paul could remember nothing of the period at all. 

It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.

But we know the secret. We know what Mrs. Harrison actually said. And so does Mark Lewisohn, by the way.

Now, Lewisohn tells us that someone, somewhere, "some years later" asked Paul this "question" that I literally cannot even comfortably end with a question mark:

“Paul, describe how you were able to help John cope with the loss of Julia?”

Really?

I'm not going to lie, I don't believe him, but even if we give Lewisohn the benefit of the doubt— **excuse me i can't stop laughing. one sec**

—even if we give Lewisohn the benefit of the doubt that someone, somewhere, at some unnamed time, asked Paul to describe how he was able to help John cope with the loss of Julia, just what exactly would we expect Paul McCartney's answer to that to be? Honestly, try to imagine the look on Paul's face if he was asked to describe how he helped John to cope after Julia's death.

“Paul could remember nothing of the period at all.”

Did an appellate lawyer write this? No, this is contract law genius. I can find the holes in almost any contract, and Lewisohn's own words around a misused quote are a work of legal art. He never quite says what you think he said.

But on the quotes, themselves, Lewisohn swings for the fences. He is without shame or fear. He has no qualms about putting quotation marks around any old thing he wants to say. One cannot go too many pages without finding something that shocks the conscience.

These are not “mistakes.” They are a very deliberate cutting and pasting together of historical figures' words to make them mean something different—and often opposed to—what the speaker intended. He then surrounds the misquotes with carefully worded insinuations that don't really say what you thought they did.

THE ACTUAL MRS. HARRISON “QUOTE”

Davies is very good at weaving together information-heavy exposition together with the quotes from his interviews, and since he interviewed everyone himself, he can tell us a lot in his own words.

What that does for you and me is that we get the context from the guy who asked the questions and spent time with these people, and that makes it a lot harder to get away with using these quotes out of context. Like, before we even get to the direct quote from George's mom, Davies is telling us what she remembers from the time. And it's a lot. Because that's when the boys practiced at the Harrison's almost every day. And it's awesome because her memories almost always include what the boys were eating at the time. (Seriously.) Like, she'd “given them all beans and toast” a few months before Julia died when she heard John say to Paul, “I don't know how you can sit there and act normal with your mother dead. If anything like that happened to me, I'd go off me head.”

Davies also calls Mrs. Harrison “one of nature's ravers.” 🥹

Everyone seems to agree that during this time the three were always at the Harrisons, and it's certainly the picture we get from Mrs. Harrison.

Davies is telling us all this, and leads into her direct quote by telling us what she “remembers.”

Mrs. Harrison, George’s mother, remembers the effect it had on John. They were still practicing a lot at George’s house, the only house where they got endless hospitality and encouragement.

And I trust Mrs. Harrison's memory because I am a mom, and I remember every trauma of my children's friends because I was the local Mrs. Harrison. We love those kids with all our hearts and they're so connected to our own kids that nothing happens to one without all of them feeling it. And the mom seeing it all. So how do we need Paul's answer to “Describe how you were able to help John cope with the loss of Julia?” when Mrs. Harrison has twenty stories, all with corresponding menus?

And Mrs. Harrison is saying that she sent George to get John out of his house so they could all play guitars together “in their group.” Not, George and John and no one knew where Paul was.

Where's Paul? Who could possibly know? “It could be they didn’t see much of each other”—but could it? It could be that Paul went ice skating in Sweden, EXCEPT HE FUCKING DIDN'T. Why are you lying to me in legalese in a Beatles biography?

“But Louise Harrison would recall how she encouraged George to visit John at Mendips” isn't true, but also isn't sane. If you pause and put as much thought into each sentence as was spent constructing them, you notice how many of them are patently ludicrous. Mrs. Harrison didn't encourage George to “visit” at Mendips because no child “visited” at Mendips. What are you even saying? To keep Paul and John away from each other you're talking nonsense. Visit? At Mendips? I can just picture John, Mimi and George sitting around having tea. But also, Mr. Lewisohn, those are not words that Mrs. Harrison said, and in fact, those words mean something completely different than the words she said.

What she said was she sent George over there “to make sure he still went off playing in their group and just didn’t sit and brood.”

And Nature's Raver Mom would see John not showing up like usual and would send her son out to make sure John knew he was wanted, and give him a little kick if necessary. She would want him in her house so she could feed him and make sure he was okay and to give him the comfort of playing music together with his friends.

They're the Beatles, and they got through it playing music. That's the real story, the true story, and a much better story.

And then she says “they all went through a lot together, even in those days, and they always helped each other.”

By cutting that out, leading into the quote you cut it from by speculating about where Paul was, and opining that maybe they didn't see each other much you are being purposefully deceptive and there simply is no other rational inference. None.

(I have tripled my website post now. I regret nothing.)

Let's take this baby home.

Because Mark Lewisohn completes the picture of John alone and ignored by George and Paul, and he does it by sneaking his own words into the mouth of George Harrison's dead mother.

I just want to make sure you got that. Like, let it sink in.

Mark Lewisohn changes Mrs. Harrison's actual words from “sit and brood” into “alone with his thoughts,” which further emphasizes the absolute absence of Paul and George. But he knows that John was not alone because he replaced Mrs. Harrison's words that said they were together playing music with his own words of John all alone. And then he has the nerve to even suggest that Paul and George are off together on holiday when John needs them most, while conjuring a parallel image of a traumatized John left separate and alone. (Except for his inner world.)

And I'm sorry, but I have to repeat it one more time: Lewisohn does all this by telling us that Louise Harrison said it. And although a lawyer could make a technical case that I am not being lied to here, I am.

Delusional Lewisohn is alive and well on my website. This has been Designing Lewisohn, signing off.

There's a lot, lot more and a lot, lot worse, but it's all of a piece. Not different in kind, just of degree. (But the degrees are significant.)

Tag 😏 @wingsoverlagos

#lewisohn #stop fucking lying #this isn't even a “bad” one #akom #fine tuning #it's time to see those “author interviews” #beatles #mark lewisohn #paul mccartney #john lennon #julia lennon #george harrison #louise harrison #guilty

[mythserene]

Oh I want to see?/hear? this Lewisohn comment now. @wingsoverlagos and I were just discussing how Lewisohn's full-time job has apparently turned into insulting Paul. In a generally dignified, plausible-deniability way, but it's slipping over the edge at this point.

And everything @wingsoverlagos said.

Also, thank you! 😊

I'm absolutely enjoying your's and mythserene's hard work! Mark Lewisohn is so embarrassing at this point. I'm thinking about the song Blackbird, with Beyonce's new cover, and I'm wondering if anyone has seen Lewisohn's commentary on that? Lewisohn said Paul changes the meaning of his songs after the fact, and used Blackbird as an example. So stupid since Paul has talked about the meanings of the song, even in studio audio. Mark sucks lmaooo. How can he just make up things??

Thank you so much for reading! I can't say how much I appreciate it; the reception here has truly been tremendous, and I'm grateful to everyone who's been following along in spite of my daunting word count.

I have also been thinking about Beyonce's Blackbiird (as has Serene :)) and the very silly response to it--it's a lovely, safe cover of a beautiful song by one of the greatest pop vocalists of the day, it's not like we're dealing with Bey's version of Jolene, lol

I haven't seen any reaction from Lewisohn and doubt he'll have any hot takes about the song itself, but maybe we'll be graced with an insinuation that Paul is fame-whoring for a young audience and/or re-writing history by letting Beyonce use the original stems. Who can say? Lewisohn has an immense capacity for taking things Paul does in bad faith, but every now and then he surprises me by being normal about Paul.

Side-ish note, but I'm so happy that the Paul/Donovan Blackbird discussion is on tape to shut down people incapable of taking Paul at his word.

And while I'm here, it makes a lot of sense that Paul wouldn't discuss the civil rights message of Blackbird after the Tate-LaBianca murders and the popularization of the Helter Skelter scenario. The White Album as a whole, and Helter Skelter in particular, were inextricably tied with a horrific crime, and Manson's interpretation (or at least the prosecution's version of it - idk how accepted the Helter Skelter theory is anymore) framed Blackbird as a call for a violent uprising. Maybe he avoided discussing the song's inspiration (based on the timing/the mention of seeing riots in the papers, possibly the Holy Week Uprising) becayse he wanted to distance a song which drew influence from the civil rights movement from a madman's vision of an apocalyptic race war.

#lewisohn is too busy being a mean girl to write #lewisohn is a petty bitch

[mythserene]

mediocrewhiteboy6988 is going to let you in on a little secret, McCartney: Blackbird has meaning because it's about everyone and is "non-racial." It's right there in the title and if every song is not about me I am going to be very unhappy ☹️

"regardless of how you composed it" 🍒🏆

#blackbird #beyonce #paul mccartney #beatles #dumb boys #paul the original DEI king #idiots online #i need to work and quit fucking around

[mythserene]

You've probably already read it, but I would just like to say that @wingsoverlagos is now officially a contributor to my site. 🥳

(I don't know how to stop the bastard from putting my name on the shares, but it shows up right on the post.)

#the beatles #lewisohn #beatles #tune in #historiography #mark lewisohn #kim bennett #george martin #real research