#i was second guessing this for a hot sec and the pulled up the nyc pics and zoomed in on his lapel

[get-back-homeward]

i keep being struck by the labyrinths in the beatles history. specifically john and paul rituals.

i mean, you take the 1968 NYC trip with their matching white sports coat jackets. that’s just one snapshot in time.

but then you add that the first synchronized band outfit the quarrymen ever did (november 1957) was a result of paul joining and convincing john to wear matching white sports coats. so then you understand in the absolute clusterfuck that is the 1968 nyc trip somehow they decided to harken back to that moment, where they started, first became a team, and wear matching white sports coats to announce their company to america. everything that goes wrong on that trip aside. without that history its completely missed as an active dialogue.

the labyrinths are the language they have for their layers of history. john saying let’s wear white sports coats in 1968 doesn’t mean a random color of unity. its speaking to that shared history. a color paul favored because of the 1957 british cover of an american country song about a white sport coat, which he wears to the woolton fete and later that year convinces john to adopt for the band.

but then after the nyc trip, he wears it with yoko. like the yellow submarine premiere. and its this very loud bullhorn to paul. i’ve replaced you. what are you going to do about it.

there’s also echoes from the 1957 cover that started it all:

now you've changed your mind it seems someone else will hold my dreams

the labyrinths are most often played out through their shared history of songs, which become their own kind of language.

like paul playing twenty flight rock during get back sessions (jan 23, 1969, the day after Billy Preston gives them that much needed lift and they start really kicking again), harkening back to the song that impressed john at the 1957 fete. he doesn’t remember the chords or the words as well as he used to. but its the language of a dusty memory. a delicate remember when. it still matters to me. does it matter to you?

like john jumping into a line of elvis’s it’s now or never in the fall 1968 live special is its own language to paul. the song is elvis’s first after returning from the army, when john always thought he sold out. its not him just playing an elvis song, it’s playing *that* elvis song as a dig. like saying this is the swan song. but it’s also a challenge: unless you do something. in many ways, get back can be seen as an answer to that challenge.

but it doesn’t end there either. because the last elvis song before he returns from the army is 1958 now and then (a fool such as i). in 1978, john writes his own now and then for paul.

these labyrinths are what makes watching get back so impossible. you feel like you’re missing an entire book because you probably are. of the layers and layers of history they have between them by 1969, we know very little.

#the ​labyrinths #john and paul #white sports coat (and a pink carnation) is the song btw #in absolute madman fashion pauls wearing a carnation with his white sports coat in nyc #just in case you doubt it as a clear callback #get back #meandering thoughts #jp code #white sports coat #my text #rewatching get back #reading tune in #the volume of shared history does me in #i was second guessing this for a hot sec and the pulled up the nyc pics and zoomed in on his lapel #my howling laughter was heard from outerspace #my point is we know a sliver of these from j&p but even less among the others #btw george answers pauls twenty flight rock callback by asking mal to find neck ties like the ones they wore early on #so theres a shared language among all of them #j&p are just the easiest example #paris being the biggest labyrinth of them all