#beatles meta

[bambi-kinos]

I have been thinking about this ask since I got it and as to the question of why John treated people the way he did, especially Paul. My take on this situation is that John Lennon was not allowed to grow up by the environment and people he was surrounded by and so he could not envision the future consequences of his actions the way that the average adult can. This with the addition of his constant drug use (which in all likelihood left him with significant brain damage) meant that he could not function the way an adult should.

John actually did have periods of emotional growth where he looked inward, changed, and tried to do better. These moments took place before he got famous, when he was faced with adversity and he rose to meet it.

IMO Hamburg 1960 was such a time. John partied, he found new pills to take, he experimented with kissing and shagging men, he discovered transgender people (and shagged them), and had a lot of ups and downs with his boyfriend(s) and his group. It is easy to dismiss this as mindless hedonism but as a retired hedonist myself (though I never pushed as hard as John did) I will tell you: hedonism can lead to introspection and self knowledge. John really pushed it to its limits and he almost lost Paul because of it but I think the Great Unknown that happened in Hamburg pushed John to actively change. He cleaned himself up a bit especially once Stuart left to be with Astrid. Once he came back to Liverpool (after enduring the trauma of his bandmates being ripped from him, yet another violent separation that no doubt would have left him in an emotional tailspin) he rested, hooked up with Cynthia, and then went looking for Paul knowing that he needed him to make this band thing work. Like, John spent a few weeks in his bedroom not speaking to anyone once he went home. He didn't want to be seen, he wanted to sleep and eat hot food, and think. He was considering whether he should continue with the band or not, if this was really worth it. Which implies there was a precarious moment where John was thinking of just ending The Beatles. He decided that the plan still had merit, ran into George, and then went to fetch Paul. A few months of light groveling and nagging later, Paul was his again. John committed to The Beatles and therefore committed to Paul. Paris was the culmination of this change and John's reward for putting in the work, and from what we can gather, Paul made every inch worth John's while.

The Beatlemania years leading up to Sgt. Pepper and psychedelia. This was period is more like 1961-1965 Shea Stadium. From here it was an upward climb and subsequently the most intense period of his relationship with Paul. I don't think this was just youthful enthusiasm and the flush of a new relationship, I think John was learning and growing as a person thanks to this adversity. He bonded even closer to Paul which resulted in their intimacy deepening; John's songwriting matured and culminated in "Ticket to Ride" which is a brutal self evaluation of his own faults and how he drives his loved ones away from him. You don't write a song like "Ticket to Ride" because you have no idea what it's like for your lover to get fed up with your moodiness and leave you. John was much more self aware than he's given credit for. This continued onward, them thinking they've reached the summit only to find there's a new height to climb. John said something to the effect of "I saw the top of the mountain" as a result of the first Shea concert. (They would do a second Shea concert in 1966.) That was when he realized that The Beatles were it and that they were not vacating the number one spot any time soon. What else was there to strive for?

And I think after that, a lot of John's emotional development kind of...stopped. Or was held up. Or slowed down to a snail's pace, whichever you prefer. The LSD had a hand in this, tripping constantly takes a lot out of you. Yesterday played its part, John emotionally retreated out of fear of losing Paul (which of course ensured that he lost Paul forever). Success becomes your enemy sometimes; John had so much success that he no longer had to face adversity, no longer had to grow because everything he wanted was on tap. As someone somewhere said, fame ruined the Beatles in this way.

That's the crux of it, I think. He just stopped maturing. It was childish the way he slagged off Paul -- not just Paul but other people as well. Sean said that John spent the rest of his life apologizing to everyone he ran into because of Lennon Remembers, which implies he burned a lot of bridges with that one. John had a habit of doing that and his fame as a Beatle enabled him to do it without consequences. No one was willing to stand up to him so he didn't get to learn a pattern of "don't do this or else this will happen." He was mentally damaged from his drug usage and I also wonder if he had a genuine learning disability of some kind because he simply could not make the connection between cause/effect: "If I do X then Y might happen so I shouldn't do X." His mother was not a drug user like John but she exhibited many of the same behaviors he did. Namely the "inability to visualize consequences" thing.

John did care about Paul, especially when it was starting out. I think the love was pure then because his mental aesthetic of who and what Paul was had not yet been distorted. John knew who Paul was, he knew who John Lennon was, they were in love and everything was possible.

But then John's untreated mental illness begins to take its toll, he's self medicating with drugs which does more harm than good, his mental aesthetic of Paul distorts more and more because Paul will not let him in. The media did this to John too, all of them reporting on how cool Paul was and how amazing Yesterday is and John is shitting himself internally because he can feel the split already forming between them musically. John is unable to stop himself from manipulating Paul in response, which is a bad move because Paul is the ultimate contrarian and bolts in response. Which sends John into deeper panic etc. And oh yes, the entire world is watching them while this happens and nitpicking their every move. We live in the age of social media, we know what this is like.

Over time that love became mixed in with anger and resentment. John could not tell fantasy from reality. He did what he always does and he imagined something, tricked himself into believing it, and then got mad about something that didn't exist. If he did reach out to Paul then Paul responded badly, which understandably devastated John's feelings.

When you show someone your real feelings and they dismiss you or trivialize your vulnerability because they want to Win At Being Right...your relationship crumbles with that person. A common bug in Paul's relationships is that he needs to Win At Being Right even at the expense of people loving him. We don't know this for sure but I'm convinced he did this to John plenty of times. Frankly, a relationship cannot survive that behavior. Lack of mutual respect kills marriages all the time. I absolutely believe that Paul disrespected John and trivialized his feelings (even if by accident) and that this caused John to become bitter over time since Paul took him for granted. Who wouldn't become bitter under those circumstances?

This is how they got into the "fuck you/no, please, fuck you/no no no fuck YOU/I absolutely insist, you must go fuck yourself" cycle. Which John really just expanded on during the 1970s with his bitching about Paul, it was just another level of the "fuck you bitch" cycle that started between them with Yesterday. And John's immaturity and brain damage from drug usage and his inability to understand consequences meant that he didn't fully comprehend what he was doing. He didn't want to think that Paul was vulnerable because Paul had rejected John's vulnerability. He didn't want to imagine he was hurting Paul deeply because Paul had hurt him deeply. He wanted revenge on Paul more than he wanted to keep his relationship with Paul because he thought Paul wouldn't be too damaged by it. I think John had gotten comfortable with the idea that no matter what he threw at Paul, Paul would not only survive it but that he'd rub John's face in it. I don't think John ever considered the idea that he could actually succeed in what he was doing, he never imagined that he would actually win the argument and that he would damage Paul's image and John's relationship with Paul forever. That sense of "I'll lose no matter what" enabled him to act out however he wanted because it wasn't like any of it would matter anyway, right? Paul can survive anything. He's invincible.

Right?

John did love Paul, I believe that. I think he loved Paul deeply and sincerely. I think if he actually understood what Paul was thinking and feeling then John would have changed tactics immediately or even stopped what he was doing. But John's drug usage, years of slights and disrespect from Paul, being unable to visualize consequences, and immaturity caused him to act out in a childish way. He stopped listening to Paul and started listening to his resentments and grudges. Lashing out at Paul was the only outlet he had and John didn't know how to do anything else. He had no incentive to learn otherwise and grow up, deal with Paul on adult terms.

Funnily enough I think it's actually losing George that finally set something into motion inside John. Like, George cut John off, an extremely big deal. In my neck of the woods its called "severing" and its probably the most difficult thing you can possibly do with any sort of relationship. George ignored John; he cut John out of his autobiography; he stopped talking to John; he did not mention him in public. He knew this was the most brutal punishment he could devise for John Lennon and it worked. John wrote "lost" by George's name in the word association game. John went too far bitching about Bob Dylan and not apologizing for hanging George out to dry. George had enough and did the right thing. He severed his relationship with John because John was toxic and dragged George down. Of all the people in John's life, George is the one who willingly served consequences to John when he was surrounded by enablers and errand boys.

That, more than anything, seems to be what set John on the back foot. I sincerely believe that George cutting him off forced John to do some introspection and that is part of what he was doing in the Dakota after Sean was born. Asking himself what he did to make George cut him off; and then John slowly started to grow and mature again. Because you see, George provided what Paul couldn't: he gave John adversity to meet, which forced John to grow as a person. And so we got the song "Woman" which is not just about the women in John's life but is also a letter to all the people he hurt with his thoughtlessness and immaturity, where he finally starts taking responsibility for his actions:

I can hardly express, My mixed emotion at my thoughtlessness, After all I'm forever in your debt,

I will try to express, My inner feelings and thankfulness, For showing me the meaning of success,

hold me close to your heart, However distant don't keep us apart, After all it is written in the stars,

please let me explain, I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain, So let me tell you again and again and again,

It's on par with "Ticket to Ride" and "I Know, I Know" in John showing introspection and discussing his own flaws. Something that he notably was not doing during his peak "fuck you Paul" era.

John loved Paul but also resented him due to their circumstances. He wanted to hurt Paul but didn't think he could actually do so because his mental aesthetic of Paul was so viciously distorted. He dehumanized Paul by putting him on a pedestal, made him an object John could degrade at a moment's notice to make himself feel better. You can do that to objects without consequences; when you do it to people, you get pushback.

Losing George and Paul keeping him at a distance for years is what made John finally realize that he had hurt them and that he could hurt them to the point that he would never see them again. It took years of self examination for John to come to this realization which indicates how disordered and muddy his thinking was.

#john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #mclennon #my meta #beatles meta #the beatles #talktalktalk

[ohblahdo]

Coming Up/Starting Over

Thinking about the dialogue between Paul and John in McCartney II and Double Fantasy: 'Coming Up' is a song addressed to a friend who wants "a love to last forever" (a reference to Don't Let Me Down) as well as "peace and understanding" (Give Peace a Chance, etc.), in which the speaker is offering reassurance: I am that friend, I want to help, hang in there and things will get better. "Never fade away" could be construed as a Buddy Holly reference (to "Not Fade Away"), and while 'searching' is a common verb, it's also the name of the song Paul always refers to when talking about the Cavern days. There might be other references I'm missing, but it's very much a song about music, which is underlined by the video, in which Paul plays different musicians (including himself as a Beatle), as well as by the extra lyrics in the live version ("I know if we could get together, we'd make music endlessly"), and the fact that Paul talks about 'coming up' as a radio reference ("coming up on the hour" - also in the live version).

Put that together, and I think it's both a friendly message to John - hi, I'm still your friend - and an invitation to make music together again. If you see it as a more romantic relationship, then obviously there could be other subtext there, but the basic idea is the same either way. (Invoking "Don't Let Me Down" to say "actually, ours is the love that lasts forever" ten years later can be seen as both bitchy and wildly romantic in a way I find kind of charming.)

This isn't a new idea, but it's interesting to think about John's songs as a response to that. First, there's "I Don't Wanna Face It", which the Beatles Bible says he started in 1977, but which clearly had a pretty overt musical reference to Coming Up incorporated into it when he reworked it in the summer of 1980. It was apparently the first song he recorded for Double Fantasy, and no matter which way you read it, if Coming Up is a question, I Don't Wanna Face it answers it with either "no" or "no, and fuck you".

But that isn't actually where the conversation ends, because John decided not to put that song on the album. Instead, one of the last songs he wrote for Double Fantasy was "(Just Like) Starting Over". I don't discount the idea that the song reflects his feelings for Yoko, or that he wrote it to better fit the narrative of the album, but I'm always a fan of the idea that a song or a work of art can say more than one thing at a time. I do not think that John, in the late 70s or 1980, would accidentally reference Paul's band and two of his singles in his lyrics without realizing it ("it's time to spread our wings and fly, don't let another day go by, my love"). Also, just as Coming Up is a meta song, so is Starting Over: I see your Buddy Holly, and I raise you an Elvis. And where I Don't Wanna Face It is a 'no', Starting Over feels like a 'yes' - the whole song is him asserting that he doesn't want to give up on a relationship. And maybe the yes has nothing to do with romantic love and everything to do with music - that would certainly make sense, both in relation to the songs themselves and to where John and Paul were musically and personally (both making albums that were, on some level, about recapturing their love of music, and allegedly considering working together on Ringo's album). Or maybe they were having wild sex in motels all over Long Island, idk. But the existence of the dialogue itself interests me, and it's nice to think of it ending on a positive note given what came next.

#mccartney ii #double fantasy #beatles meta

[heartsinthebasement]

I’ve been thinking about Dear Friend and how Paul said about it “I don’t write anything consciously.”

I'm in love with a friend of mine.

Really truly, young and newly wed.

Mostly I think Paul is insane for writing this lyric and additionally then claiming he didn’t write it consciously. But after many listens to this song, well it hit me that these lines could hold another layer, could be harking back to a different time.

Paul cleverly doesn’t identify exactly who is young and newlywed. It could be John or Paul or both, as they were both recently married. I think that is intentional. Vagueness abounds! It could be either, and/or it could be referring to an earlier time. That feeling is strengthened by Paul’s vulnerable, high vocal that he uses in other songs about earlier days, like ‘Carrying’.

Because this isn’t the first time John’s been newlywed. He was actually truly young and newlywed in 1962 when he married Cynthia.

Paul standing in the registry office, dying inside as the friend he is in love with gets married. JUST A THOUGHT.

This specific scenario is such a trope in Mclennon fic: John’s marriage to Cyn is crushing in terms of John and Paul exploring their sexuality and relationship. And here it is, so easily surfacing in Paul’s John-centric love song.

I was in love with you then, back before we were famous.

#mclennon #dear friend #paul mccartney #john lennon #the beatles #song analysis #song analysis ruining my life #beatles meta #john and paul

[dovetailjoints]

Sometimes I wonder what must have been running through Paul’s mind during the recording sessions for Keep Under Cover.

Love, I'm going to pick you up in the morning / Love, I'm going to take you out on a journey / I don't know where I'm going to / But I know what I've been going through / Without you by my side

Keep Under Cover came out on Pipes of Peace (1983), but was demo-ed in August 1980 and recorded during the 1980-81 Tug of War sessions. According to the Paul McCartney Project, the exact dates were November 30, December 7-8, February 11, and March 23 (Chip Madinger’s Eight Arms to Hold You also cites March 30 as a recording day). There’s also footage of him and George Martin doodling with the song in early 1982.

What good is butter if you haven't got bread? / What good is art when it hurts your head? / Might as well be in bed / Keep under cover 'til the battle has ceased / Keep out of trouble 'til the prisoners are released

I don’t know if Paul’s ever spoken about this song, but I can imagine (if this isn’t too on the nose) that the inspiration came from his imprisonment in Japan earlier that year, and the resulting forced separation from Linda. The singer knows he’ll be reunited with his lover soon, but not quite yet - so he must grin and bear their absence a little longer, keep his head down ‘til the worst is over.

What good's a puzzle when you haven't a clue? / What good is me when I'm not with you? / Might as well stay in bed / Keep under cover till the clouds disappear / Keep out of trouble till the weather is bright and clear

Here’s what keeps me up at night though: what must it have felt like for Paul to continue working on this song in the immediate aftermath of John’s death? It must have been an absolute headfuck, surely. On December 8 he’s singing a lament over being severed from one’s partner, in seemingly dangerous circumstances, but it’s okay, he’ll be seeing them in the morning... And then he wakes up in the morning, and John is gone.

Love, I'm going to pick you up / I'm going to take you out / I don't know what I'm going to do / But I know what I've been going through / Without you by my side

Certainly the shift in tone from the August demo to the final recording is unmistakable. This is hardly unusual of course, demos are only rough sketches of an idea - but somewhere along the line, all traces of levity vanished from Keep Under Cover. The whole song leaves me feeling anxious and uneasy.

What good is tennis when there isn't a ball? / What good's a curtain without a call? / Might as well be in bed / Keep under cover till the battle has ceased / Keep out of trouble till the prisoners are released

As the song draws to a close, the titular phrase sounds less and less like a personal mantra and more like an entreaty, as if he’s now pleading to someone else - please, for the love of God, keep under cover and stay safe, stay out of harm’s way. The penultimate repetition descends into a howl of frustration, as if such a thing isn’t even possible anymore.

Keep under cover / Keep under cover, yeah / Keep under cover, ooh / Keep under cover, ah ah ah ah / Keep under cover

I don’t really know where I was going with this, but yeah, the many shades of his grief are palpable with this one and you may end up drowning in it.

#paul mccartney #pipes of peace #keep under cover #beatles meta #tug of war #my posts #Paul's grief songs man...... man. #and he’s never performed it since #1980 #1981

[mydaroga]

the point you made in your recent tags about how the metaphors j&p use in discussing their relationship are informed by a lack of language and habit for talking about non-sexual relationships as having the same depth/importance is so good!!! thanks for articulating this

Thanks Nonny! This is a very dear topic to me so I will try to articulate it here as well, in case it is of interest to anyone else.

The original post was excerpts from the interview with John and David Sheff from 1980, where he repeatedly likens his relationship with Paul and the Beatles to sexual or marital one. And naturally a lot of the comments and tags (and discussion in this fandom!) revolve around both John and Paul's use of marriage and sex as metaphors for their relationship. So I said, #the thing I've thought since i first got here is that the reason they are SO WEIRD about how they describe their relationship #is that we lack the language and the habit of talking about non-sexual relationships with the same level of importance as conventional ones #so you fall back on an imperfect metaphor so people will at least have a hope of understanding #the primacy and importance of the thing between #you this doesn't rule out the sexual when it comes to these two #but it highlights the compulsory monogamy/heteronormativity/what have you of our society

I think this is one of the most fascinating things about the J&P dynamic, this need to reach for something apart from "friend" or even "brother" to describe what they were. As I said above, this doesn't preclude there being a sexual element to it as well, but in my opinion it doesn't actively suggest it, either. I'm not subtweeting right now, there's no one I'm thinking of who says this, this is just me on my own journey from "wait he said what?"

One thing I do see people occasionally express is a tacit disbelief in the notion of a special friendship, a platonic queerness that neither omits the past or future possibility of a sexual element but that feels under-represented by our common notions of "friendship." As someone who has been in more than one relationship I would describe as queerplatonic, this is a dear topic for me and I wish more people had words for this or the willingness to discuss it.

Anyway, to make a long story slightly shorter, this is not to say I don't believe there was a sexual element to John and Paul's relationship. It's separate from that. It would actually be a lot easier, I think, for them to talk about/around a more "traditional" homosexual affair. What they are both reaching for in various interviews, in comparing each other to their own spouses, in citing "marriage" and "fiancee" in reference to one another, is a way to get across a type of bond that just isn't named, or really even acknowledged as necessary and primal and powerful and important, in our culture. We don't value friendship on the level we do marriage, even today though we do have a slightly better vocabulary. So John and Paul are stuck using the language we'll understand to demonstrate that, no, this wasn't the same as their other relationships with lads. Because they've had those, too, so they know this isn't that--this is another thing, that isn't quite a marriage but is very much not covered by what most of us hear when we hear the word "friend."

I think a lot of us, and our relationships, and frankly the breakup of these two, would be/have been a lot healthier if we were able to actually talk about this with more clarity and emotional honesty.

#thanks anon! #you didn't actually ask anything but hey it's an opening and I will take it #the ask box #beatles meta #john and paul #kris talks a lot

[in-my-field-of-grass]

My review/analysis of fame, performative identity, and agency in A Hard Day’s Night.

#beatles #beatles meta #a hard day's night #beatles movies #a hard day's night review #4 guys trying very hard to enjoy a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room

[kirbyluvr69]

Some Thoughts™

About art, desire and John Lennon

If you're active on the Twitter side of The Beatles fandom you'd know that just yesterday a collage John made for Paul titled "I Only Have Eyes For You" made the rounds and scared people whom, I guess, don't think about visual arts very often. Unfortunately I don't use the word "scared" lightly. People really used the words "disturbing" and "concerning" to describe this piece, with a hint of a "What was Lennon thinking about our poor Paul to make this with him in mind" sentiment that I don't think it's quite fair.

I tried to search more about this collage´s context, but all I could find (without having to buy Julian Lennon's book in which the image was featured) was that it was made in the 50s, while John was still at art college, but to be quite frank, I don't think the exact date matters too much.

What I see in this image first and foremost is desire, plain and simple. Red is a sexual colour, we have naked women sprawled, the head with its mouth open in a orgasm-like fashion, the eyes symbolizing voyeurism. If anything, as a friend of mine also pointed out while we discussed it, this collage is proof of the way John and Paul were so close they were even free to be honest about their sexual desires to one another. Even if the collage was made for another purpose and gifted to Paul later, this sentiment still stands, because Paul was the person he thought would receive this part of himself with open arms.

Is the collage "disturbing"? I guess, in a way. The same way I think growing up in the 40s and 50s in a hyper-convervative protestant society like England and discovering yourself would be disturbing. Even more if you're not entirely straight as an arrow. But I don't think John's talking about this here. This is about his feelings for the opposite sex, and they weren't always nice. Red is also the colour of blood and guts, John was also known for having violent outbursts. Would it not disturb you that the object of your desire also brings up in you violence? I don't think we'll ever know why he felt that way, but here we see that he's aware of it. At least I think so.

I saw another analysis of this collage that somewhat agreed with me, but presented this argument as if this was a bad thing? I don't know exactly what made me think this way, maybe the verbiage, but I'll never think a person exploring the nature of their desire, be it disturbing or not, is wrong. Of course domestic violence is bad and I'm in no way excusing it, but if you're willing to engage with The Beatles, you have to bear in mind they were shitty to the women in their lives in varying degrees much like every man ever in general, and specially at that time.

As a self proclaimed John Lennon Scholar i.e. I Wanna Crack Open His Skull And Look At His Brain With A Microscope, I'm happy this exists, and I think I need a little more time with it myself.

All of this to say: I like it, I think John Lennon was a good visual artist and stop being weird about art.

To lighten up the mood, look at the gay as hell collage John made for Elton in 1975! This one deserved its own post with a lot of tin hatting on my part, but whatever! I love them so much (and yes, I WILL find a way to mention their friendship in every post I make, shut up. One day the Lennon/John masterpost will come).

#im psychoanalyzing john lennon thats what im doing #john lennon #paul mccartney #the beatles #meta #can you call real peoples lives meta?

[thecoleopterawithana]

Suicide

If when she tries to run away / And he calls her back, she comes / If there's a next time, he's okay / Cause she's under both his thumbs She'll limp along to his side / Singing a song of ruin, I'd / Bet he says nothin' doin' / I'd, I'd call it suicide

This is likely one of the first songs Paul ever wrote. It predates Rock 'n Roll washing up onto the Mersey shores and the tingles that started going up and down Paul's spine. Not yet acquainted with his "confidante", Paul's earliest compositions were done instead on his home piano.

This particular tune seems to have come about around Paul's fourteenth birthday, in mid-1956. It is not known how this song sounded at its genesis: did it already have the lyrics, or was it like the contemporaneous "When I'm Sixty-Four", for which he originally had only the tune?

We hear "Suicide" for the first time in the Get Back sessions, with complete lyrics and John joining in right from the first verse. From Paul's comments on the song, it does seem like he had the lyrics in mind from the get-go:

That was a song I’d had forever, since I was about 16. I had my Dad’s old piano at home, that I used to tinker about on when there was no-one in the house. And my feelings were, then, that if you were ever going to be a songwriter, the height of it all was Sinatra. That would be the greatest stuff that you could do, really a little bit before rock ‘n’ roll, so you were thinking of standards and things. So around that time I wrote “When I’m 64” and this other thing. I thought it would be a bit of a Rat Pack, smoochy, with words like “When she tries to, run away, uh-huh…” Boom! And stabs from the band, you know.

— Paul McCartney, in the McCartney - Archive Collection (2011) liner notes.

I'm curious about the timing because, in usual McCartney fashion, we have quite dark lyrics being camouflaged by a jaunty little tune (à la "Maxwell Silver Hammer", "Another Day", etc.) And they are made even darker if they were written by a fourteen-year-old boy.

When I first heard of this song, I assumed, based on the title, that it'd been written after Mary's death. So I was quite surprised when I saw its origin dated to potentially even earlier than that (although I don't really know what information these estimations are based on).

Regardless of the exact date of origin, this song had been on my mind since I heard it brought up in @anotherkindofmindpod's Fine Tuning: Ep 2 Shoulder to Shoulder. Together with Ep 4 Shells & Barriers and the wonderful analyses that emerged from it, I've been wondering about what influenced teenage Paul to write a song about a woman trying (and failing) to escape an abusive marriage. From @bidisasterhawkeye's contribution to the aforementioned post:

For those unaware, Paul's mother had a quite tragic background. The second of four children, her younger sister Agnes died at age two (cause unknown) when Mary was around eight years old. When Mary was ten, her mother died giving birth to another baby girl (who also died). At that point, Mary's older brother left their home in Liverpool to join the army and Mary's father took Mary and her toddler brother, Bill, back to his home country of Ireland. In Ireland, they apparently lived in extreme poverty as Mary's father tried and failed to become a farmer. Ten year old Mary was apparently not enrolled in school there because she was given the role of homemaker and mother to her baby brother. When Mary was around 13, her father went to Liverpool and acquired a second wife with children of her own, and this new stepmother was apparently "cruel" enough that Mary ran away at age 14 (as did Bill later).

I might have seen it mentioned somewhere around here recently (please let me know if you know where!), but it's curious that Paul wrote about women running away in "Suicide" and "She's Leaving Home", when his own teenage mother went through the same. The latter song seems to apply better to Mary's situation at fourteen. Whose story is Paul telling in "Suicide"?

Maybe it's not that deep, and "Suicide" is indeed only a joke song. Paul certainly seems to want us to believe that:

It was a real early song of mine, and I used to do it as a joke, really. […] So I never did anything with it but around the time of McCartney, I was just goofing around on piano and at the end of one of the takes there was a little bit of tape left, so I just did it and didn’t think to use it because it was Rat Pack, tongue in cheek. But I used that little fragment at the end of one of the tracks, ‘Glasses’.

Haha, good ol' Paul, goofing around with a meaningless little tune called "Suicide" right around the same time stuff like this was happening:

I was going through a bad time, what I suspect was almost a nervous breakdown. I remember lying awake at night shaking, which has not happened to me since. One night I'd been asleep and awoke and I couldn't lift my head off the pillow. My head was down in the pillow, I thought, Jesus, if I don't do this I'll suffocate. I remember hardly having the energy to pull myself up, but with a great struggle I pulled my head up and lay on my back and thought, That was a bit near! I just couldn't do anything. I had so much in me that I couldn't express and it was just very nervy times, very very difficult.

— Paul McCartney, in Barry Miles' Many Years From Now (1997).

I'll leave further ruminations on the emotional implications of "Suicide" to your discretion. Or we can take a page out of Lewisohn's book and simply conclude:

But though the words wanted work (and didn’t get it), ["Suicide"] was a charming little tune, a dance-band piece with a dash of modernity, light, engaging and original … quite exceptional for a first attempt by a boy on the cusp of 14.

#Suicide #Paul McCartney #The Beatles #Mother Mary McCartney #jim mccartney #when you were young and your heart was an open book #every day I don't want to get up get out of my bed #1956 #1969 #1970 #meta #my stuff

[follows-the-bees]

Rewatching Yesterday and I am conflicted between two things.

One, while I know it's a romcom about Jack and Ellie, the way they placed Rocky in some of the scenes, especially at the end, is just fueling my poly headcanon of the three of them.

On the other hand though, I love that Rocky is included in all of these shots showing he is ever present in their lives. As the single, childless person with married friends who I hang out with sometimes feeling like a third wheel, I really feel represented by Rocky and how they embrace and create this family.

#yesterday #yesterday movie #the beatles #meta #joel fry #himesh patel #lily james #it's so nice to be represented

[starboundsingularities]

something something, uh, BEATLE ability am i right guys

...guys?

#kirby #meta knight #king dedede #bandana waddle dee #beatles #beatles crosswalk image #im never leaving this image alone btw.

[bambi-kinos]

I really enjoy your meta and look forward to more mclennon analysis. Out of curiosity, you mentioned that you think they started being physical in 1964 - is there a reason why that year specifically? Personally, I've always thought they started sleeping together in 1963, and my reasoning for that is they seem much closer in videos/photos, not to mention it was the year they "broke through", so to speak.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that!

Hmm well I guess it depends on how they, and we, define their sex life. John and Paul were sexually intimate starting since they were teenagers because John brought Paul into the group wanks. (tbh it's a miracle Paul didn't brain John with something heavy thanks to all that Winston Churchilling.) There's really no telling how it progressed from there, anything is possible with these two. Until Paul tells us the details (and I do not put it past him) then he and John could have been hooking up at literally any point in their relationship. When I think of them getting physical with each other, I'm thinking of them getting each other off with intent and purpose, and considering the style of the time this would mean penetration. Everything else can be handwaved away.

I pick 1964 because of this post: https://www.tumblr.com/got-ticket-to-ride/739464905120497664/its-the-anniversary-day-of-john-and-paul-in-paris?source=share

It's just something about it, y'know. John and Paul are in their city. They stayed up all night and well into the morning and then slept deep into the afternoon, almost evening. And then as GTTR says, "And then they emerge from their hotel room looking like a newlywed couple."

Well, there's just a certain satisfaction radiating off them isn't there?

But I do see your point: why wouldn't they be hooking up earlier? Why wouldn't it escalate physically before this? Why would they wait until Paris 1964?

I have a few reasons, they are admittedly flimsy but since we are all just making shit up then it's fine, right?

Julian was born in 1963. I've read bits and pieces of Beatles 1963 by Rees and that book is full of little chunks about John running home to see Cynthia and the baby (usually not even for a full night/day because he was so busy.) Their schedule is also packed, they are constantly on the move especially during the night because this is where they had to start being smuggled out of theaters and such. So I genuinely think that John and Paul did not have the time or the space to have sex with each other. I know I am saying this when they had time to hook up with groupies between shows but considering who John and Paul are, and what they mean to one another, I just struggle to imagine them acting that way with one another. They would want to take their time with one another and get it right. They're hopeless romantics at heart, they're both deeply enamored with the idea of "you're special, you're different" so I genuinely think they would want to take their time with each other physically and do it right. I don't think they had that time in 1963 with the way they're running all over the UK.

Then there's the Absolute State of John and Paul's relationship in 1963. Remember that the halcyon days of Paris are way in the rearview mirror at this point. In 1962 Stuart died, Cynthia got pregnant, and John had to get married to save her reputation. I can't imagine Paul reacting well to any of this though I'm sure he put his cheery stoic mask on. Then in 1963, Julian is born. Barcelona happens and John seduces Brian to get the songwriting credit that he wanted and screws Paul out of their deal. Considering this is something Paul is still angry about to this day, I can't imagine how he blew his fucking top at John when he found out that May:

I don't think Paul was in the mood for any hooking up in 1963. John has a baby with a woman, is married, then he fucks off to have a gay experience with their manager and then when he comes back he's screwed Paul's side of the business on the downlow? I would be on the fucking six o' clock news lmao, John would not have escaped my wrath. It's really no wonder Paul made a specific point of hooking up with Jane Asher isn't it? He was making a point to John specifically and John seethed about it.

However I do think that something happened in 1963 that healed the rift in the Lennon-McCartney relationship:

Paul got sick from the gastric flu and he fainted dead away in the dressing room. John was very upset and was seen pacing the room when the doctor arrived to check on Paul. This is how we know that Paul actually fainted for real, if he was just feeling feverish John would be concerned but maybe not like that. @james-winston has a pair of really fantastic posts about the aftermath of the fainting incident that I have taken as gospel and I fully apply this to any McLennon analysis I write about this period. The key point though is this:

I have a headcanon that Paul being sick caused something to happen between John and Paul that left them both feeling awkward around each other. I don't think it is was sexual, I think it was more likely that John (who thought he was cursed to have all the men he loved die on him) was afraid something might happen to Paul, and reacted emotionally to it.

This all took place in November, after the Wooler thing, after the burn from Barcelona has had a chance to soften, after they both have had time to get used to the idea that Julian exists and has a place in their lives now. I think this was enough to mend things between them. And you know what else happened the night Paul fainted? Brian secured The Beatles their spot on Ed Sullivan:

So once Brian comes back and tells them the news, John and Paul flip right back into the honeymoon phase. The wounds of the past are forgotten (for now) and they're right back in each other's pockets. I think it's around this time period that Paul was taking photos that now make up Eye of the Storm.

TBH I can imagine John and Paul hooking up at this date. If someone looked at this and said "well this looks like a prelude to sweet love making to me" then that's perfectly reasonable. There's some suggestive photos in Eye of the Storm where Paul is taking John's picture from what looks to be a bathtub while John makes faces at him. It could have been then, absolutely.

But I like the idea that Paul wanted to wait until the next year. 1963 was rough on all of them and he and John are both big on getting new starts. Wait for 1964 to roll around. Brian says we're going to Paris in February. I can wait until then.

And just this once, it was worth it.

#mclennon #anonymous asks #talktalktalk #my meta #beatles meta #this was a really fun ask anon thank you

[ohblahdo]

I guess my overall take on Paul is that I think he actually is a fairly normal guy in many ways and a complete space alien in others, and I find that contrast quite interesting. He's kind and charming, stubborn and passive-aggressive, confident and insecure - full of contradictions, like most people, and all the more difficult to get a grip on because we only see him through the funhouse mirror of interviews and media appearances (which are public performances and marketing propaganda) and the Rashomon lens of other people's publicly-recounted memories (which are often no less agenda-driven).

Like I was thinking more about the idea that he's this very reserved, aloof guy who's hard to get close to, which I know people have said. But then I was also thinking about all the stories of him crying in the studio. Or the guy in Get Back who's biting his nails and climbing the walls, talking about how they're struggling without Brian and he's scared of being the boss and he hears himself annoying George and he doesn't want to annoy people and he's worried they might break up and he can't write songs with Yoko there because he gets hung up on trying to impress her and - he doesn't really seem that reticent, does he? So, who knows, really. Part of the fun of this kind of fandom is looking at all the data from one angle and another and making different kinds of stories out of them and seeing what fits, or what just entertains us. I do think that, while everyone can do fandom however they want, getting mad at other people for liking people/music/shows/whatever too much is probably one of the less rewarding ways. But to each their own.

#beatle meta

[butterflyslinky]

Going to do this here rather than take up someone else's post, but this is RE: The Winchesters and Hey Jude since @pumpkinspicesammy asked. Under the Read More because this will get lengthy:

First, a brief history lesson: John Lennon married and had a son just as the Beatles were starting to take off, and his son was named Julian, after his dead mother. However, as he was becoming one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the label did their best to keep Lennon's marriage a secret, which took a toll on the relationship. Eventually, the label gave up and just put "sorry, girls, he's married" in the captions on broadcasts.

However, the relationship did not recover. John was a rock star, and he lived like one, while his wife was left behind to raise their son. She was aware of his various affairs, but chose to ignore it for Julian's sake. This stopped working when John met Yoko Ono and began an affair with her. This time it was different, because he actually brought Yoko into their home, leading to Cynthia walking in on them the morning after and, having had enough, she revenge-cheated with one of John's non-Beatle friends, leading to a very acrimonious divorce.

Meanwhile, Paul McCartney was close friends with Cynthia, and very close to Julian, oftentimes more present as a father-figure than John was. Paul was not happy about John leaving Cynthia and giving custody of Julian over without much of a fight, and he could see the toll all of this was taking on Julian.

So he wrote "Hey Jude," originally titled "Hey Jules," to comfort Julian over his parents' divorce and his father's general shittiness (though Julian and John did manage to rebuild their relationship somewhat later on).

History lesson over, and here's why Mary Winchester singing that song specifically makes me crazy.

"Hey Jude" is a song to a kid telling him that while his dad (John) is a dick, all he needs to do is let his mother into his heart and life and that everything will be okay after his parents split up.

As we see in Dark Side of the Moon, John and Mary Winchester's relationship was not great--in Dean's words, it wasn't perfect until after she died. It's debatable on whether the marriage was merely dysfunctional or outright abusive, but we do know that John and Mary fought a lot and that John left at least once.

We know from My Bloody Valentine that John and Mary couldn't stand each other before they were shot with Cupid's Bow and forced into a relationship to have Sam and Dean. We know that their relationship was against the advice and wishes of Mary's parents (though what John's mother thought of it is never stated). We know that even after getting married, Mary was going out on hunts and lying to her husband about it.

So I find it interesting that Mary would choose "Hey Jude" as a lullaby to sing to her son when her own life is just as chaotic and dysfunctional and fucked up as the Lennons' was. It's not like the Beatles didn't write other soothing songs with less weight behind them.

Do I think the Supernatural writers meant to imply anything with that choice of song? Probably not; while all of this is public information, most people aren't that invested in 50-year-old celebrity gossip. It's more likely that "Hey Jude" was just the most popular soothing Beatles song the writers knew and they just rolled with it.

But it's still really interesting and could be interpreted that Mary knew just how chaotic her family was and that eventually, Dean would figure out his dad was a dick and would need to let someone else into his heart to make it better.

#supernatural #the beatles #hey jude #mary winchester #meta analysis

[dovetailjoints]

George: Do you regret having gone there? Paul: No, no. Oh no, no. John: I don’t regret anything... Ever. Not even Bob Wooler. Paul: No, I just think, what we did there... We didn’t take... We weren’t sort of really very truthful there. You know - it’s things like sneaking behind [the Maharishi’s] back and sort of saying, “It’s a bit like school, isn’t it?” But you can see on the film that it is very like school and that, really, we should have sort of said... John: You wanna call - you wanna call it “What We Did On Our Holidays.” Paul: Well, y’know. Yeah. John: [Laughs] Well, y’know. To get it over with.

Perhaps I’m just slow on the uptake here - all this time I thought John invented that quip on the spot. But he’s actually referencing Fairport Convention’s album of the same name, which came out that same month:

Maybe John simply liked the phrase and elbowed it in because he’s a wordsmith, as he was wont to do... But this is the infamous India conversation for chrissake, so it might be worth digging into the album and seeing what else could be going unsaid here.

For example, the album features a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Eastern Rain,” and I’m losing my mind over the lyrics:

Rain comes from the east one night We watch it come To hang like beaded curtains Till the morning sun Water dripping from our clothes You with raindrops on your nose Ask me sadly "Please don't go away now" Till the rain is done, I say "I'll stay now" Rain outside but inside we don't mind at all Shadows by the fire slowly climb and fall Kisses fade and leave no trace Whispers vanish into space The dawn will send me on a chase to nowhere Why cry as if I were the first to go there And I know I shouldn't be here Yes, I know I should go home But that eastern rain drones in my brain And I'm so all alone, so all alone Morning comes up from the east We watch it come And far away now rolls the ancient rain God's drum You with daybreak in your eyes Afraid to speak for telling lies I watch you search for some reply to lend me But when the rain is done There's no pretending / We’ll stop pretending And I know I shouldn't be here Yes, I know I should go home But that eastern rain drones in my brain And I'm so all alone, so all alone

#every time I think we've dissected this convo to pieces... in comes another piece #that last verse isn't included in the FC cover btw - they have an instrumental both times instead #but I included it for posterity's sake #and they sing We'll Stop Pretending instead of Joni's There's No Pretending #beautiful fuckin album good lord #john and paul #india #get back #1969 #beatles quotes #beatles meta #My posts

[mydaroga]

I know paul's well off but as a fan of his, i cant help but be a bit depressed & irked whenever i come across people belittling him

Like have you even heard any of his songs???? Most of the time, they haven't / make assumptions based on either wonderful christmas time, ebony & ivory, and the frog chorus (which are songs that i think that really don't deserve that much hate)

He was one of the most successful artists from the 70s for chrissake

And the continual canard that McCartney’s ‘stock was low’ in the 80s…it’s not remotely true, either creatively or commercially.

He was a bigger star in the 80s than yer Kershaws, Haywards, Howard Joneses, yet they’re the artists now synonymous with the decade.

It’s questionable how much the public genuinely give a toss about ‘cool’. I think a lot of the ‘his stock was low at this point’ stuff refers to what the music press (ie, a tiny coterie of gatekeepers) thought.

... And because of that I DESPISE JANN WENNER AND HIS CRONIES WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING.

Hello anon! I assume you're referring to the conversation going on in @pennielane's blog about Paul's rep and how various of us grew up thinking of him. I am going to babble a bit on this general theme because I am not sure if you're asking anything or need my clarification, but since I'm thinking about it and because I don't shut up, I'm going to. I invite you to let me know if I'm way off or if you are just venting, which I totally understand and is a-ok.

I know it's upsetting to keep hearing this trope, but I also think it is interesting that a lot of us grew up with it and I like to interrogate why. I think you're saying that that wasn't really the feeling amongst the general public (and it's true that he sold well, was popular, etc) but just the music gatekeepers. And I think you're right, but the reason I find this interesting is that it definitely (in my experience) bled into the general tenor of the conversation.

Like, growing up in the 80s, not a Beatles or a Paul fan, I definitely absorbed the notion that John was cool and Paul was not. (Which is why my current status is wondrously baffling to me.) That came from somewhere and I wasn't reading Rolling Stone or Lester Bangs. But I've always been inquisitive and absorbed a lot of the general conversation in the culture, so I think to some extent, there was that feeling. I think this is supported by the fact that that feeling did and to some extent still does exist within half-informed circles like musicians I know and people who aren't maybe fans per se but know enough about the Beatles to know about and parrot popular narratives.

As a counter, I have friends who are NOT Beatles fans, know nothing about the general narrative but know who Paul McCartney is, who don't at all remember a time Paul was on the "outs" and say to me, "I don't know what you mean, he was tremendously successful, what reputation?"

But the thing is, both are true. He was successful. The idea he wasn't creative or good or whatever is a myth, but it's definitely a myth that was circulated enough that child-me absorbed it from the general atmosphere, and I'm not the only one. So the canard "his stock was low in the 80s" is also true, from a critical POV that had repercussions at least in the minds of folks looking on.

So you're right. The general public doesn't give a toss whether he's cool, which we know because he's been very successful. But if it was just a small coterie of music writers who gave him a bad rap, that rap got transmitted to a lot of us anyway, and that's been such an interesting thing to discover in this journey of mine.

As always, please ignore if this is not what you meant or irrelevant to your message, I just wanted to expand on what I think we're talking about so my apologies if I got anything backwards.

#kris talks a lot #beatles meta #paul mccartney meta really #anon asks #the ask box

[kirbyluvr69]

Some Thoughts™

About control and other complicated things

As of late, my obsession with The Beatles and, specially, their inner lives and relationships has left me thinking...

We all know John Lennon was bisexual, or as Yoko put it, had 'desire' for other men, but, as she also put it, never acted on it. But I don't think that's quite true. I think the first thing that comes to mind when you're presented with this information is "Why would she say this?", why would she out a dead man that, from the looks of it, never wanted this part of his life to be public? Well.

We can all have varying opinions on Yoko, but I think we can all agree that she was a controlling force in Lennon's life, be it for better or for worse, it doesn't really matter. Just take a look at John's Spotify bio:

"But it was only after his marriage to artist Yoko Ono in 1969 that the figure the world now recognizes as 'John Lennon' truly came into being."

That's the important bit. She takes care of his estate, It'd be silly to think she wasn't involved in writing this. She's, also, telling the truth.

John Lennon was never just 'John Lennon'. He was first 'Lennon-McCartney' and later 'John & Yoko', and both times it was his own choice. He can say whatever he wants about being stifled by Paul, he wanted to be stifled, controlled, being told what to do, but at the same time he didn't. Control was how he showed love and how he received love, first from his aunt Mimi, then from Paul, and lastly from Yoko. He was also a deeply jealous and angry man, and what is jealousy if not the need to control?

It might seem paradoxal at first, his need to be controlled but also hating it. But it's actually quite simple. John was the type of person to believe he was worthless, that everyone that he loved was destined to leave him, that he would die alone. These types of thoughts make people, in general, lash out at their loved ones, test their limits, their loyalty "Do you really love me? Would you love me at my worst? Would you love me even if I hurt you? Why won't you believe that I'm a terrible person? I'll prove it to you." and so forth. We should also remember that he was a hopeless romantic, that believed in destiny and love at first sight. He was desperate.

I think Yoko fed him the exact type of control and liberty that he needed, wrapped around a veil of occultism and self improvement. And a very specific public image.

The first time John had his public image controlled was in the beginning of The Beatles by Brian Epstein, someone that John was also famously fond of and who's early death, in my opinion, was the beginning of the end for the band.

John and Eppie's Holiday in Spain is very well documented with some conflicting information on whether or not they actually had sex, but that doesn't matter in my opinion. John is also quoted as saying:

"I like playing a bit faggy, all that. It was enjoyable, but there were big rumours in Liverpool, it was terrible. Very embarrassing."

And I can imagine why being perceived as a 'homosexual' in the 60's in the UK would be terrible and embarrassing, even if he liked it. The problem in his mind was his image as a straight guy and not really what he was doing, whatever it is that he did while in Spain and away from everyone. Also, John was surrounded by a lot of gay men during his life, hence the picture that opened this post of John and Elton, one of his best friends, a godfather to Sean and the person that Yoko asked to complete John's music after he died, he refused and she later released them unfinished — you can find this tidbit on Elton's autobiography Me.

And so, why would Yoko say that his desires toward men were never consummated, and she cites specifically with Brian, if we have proof of the opposite?

It's about control. Not only control of John's image but control of her image as well. She knows more and more people are coming out and saying things about John's sexuality, things get a bit muddy and she has the opportunity to give a definitive answer, and she chooses the one narrative where she comes out as the good, free-spirited artist, the cool wife. He confided in her and she was supportive, but he also loved her too much to do anything. She could've said nothing. She could've said that this part of John's sexuality was none of our business, it was none of her business. But she chose to not only confirm it, but to say that he didn't to anything about it, not even with Brian.

If John had lived, I don't think he would've said anything about it, he was a ball of repressed feelings until the very end. Or maybe I'm wrong — I'll admit, he was getting better. But I doubt that their marriage would've lasted much longer anyway, who knows if she would still be on the Spotify bio.

John Lennon was a complicated man. That's all I'm saying I guess.

#meta #can you call real peoples lives meta? #im psychoanalyzing john lennon thats what im doing #im psychoanalyzing yoko ono thats what im doing #john lennon #the beatles #brian epstein