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itsnotmymindJohn Lennon blamed Paul McCartney for the fact that the Beatles never made the recording he wanted of Across the Universe.
In 1980, he told Playboy interviewer David Sheff: The Beatles didn't make a good record of 'Across the Universe.' I think subconsciously we... I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like 'Strawberry Fields,' which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn't what it could have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little, detailed cleaning up on Paul's songs, but when it came to mine... especially a great song like 'Strawberry Fields' or 'Across the Universe' ...somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up.[...]Subconscious sabotage. I was too hurt... Paul will deny it, because he has a bland face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to think, Well, maybe I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute truth. The same thing happened to 'Across the Universe.' The song was never done properly.
It's worth noting that when John was directly asked about Strawberry Fields at another point in the interview he said not a word about sabotage, subconscious or otherwise. Which makes me think his paranoia about Strawberry Fields was a retcon of sorts. John decided Paul deliberately sabotaged Across the Universe, and projected that paranoia backwards to Strawberry Fields.
In the 1970 interview Lennon Remembers, John came across as slightly less paranoid about the recording of Across the Universe, although still blaming Paul. John had just seen the Let It Be movie, so he had a remind of the events of the creation of the album: It was just like it was in the movie; when I got to do "Across the Universe" (which I wanted to rerecord because the original wasn't very good), Paul yawns and plays boogie. I merely say, "Anyone want to do a fast one?" That's how I am. Year after year, that begins to wear you down.
There is only one problem with this statement: I've seen the Let It Be movie, too. In the scene where Paul yawns and John suggests they play a fast one, the song they are recording is not Across the Universe.
It's Dig a Pony.
Now, I love Dig a Pony. It's a simultaneously ridiculous and passionate song. John expresses his love for Yoko passionately in the lines: "All I want is you / everything has got to be just like you want to do". But it is not Across the Universe. The quality is on completely different scales. John Lennon himself described it as "literally a nonsense song" in 1972, and "another piece of garbage" in 1980.
Wait a minute.
Did John ever actually say that this song was about Yoko?
In fact, I can think of only two other songs in that 1980 Playboy interview that John dismisses so briefly on such absolutist terms. One was Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox), his love song for May Pang, which he described as "just a piece of garbage". The other was I Know (I Know), which John dismisses as "just a piece of nothing". I Know (I Know), may I remind you, was written during the time John and Paul were mending fences after the break up, and contains the lines: "And I know it's getting better (all the time) / As we share in each other's minds" and "Today I love you more than yesterday".
So the pattern here seems to be: love songs for people who are not Yoko.
Is Dig a Pony about Yoko?
It must be, right? John said in Lennon Remembers about: It was another one like Magical Mystery Tour. In a nutshell, it was time for another Beatle movie or something; Paul wanted us to go on the road or do something. He sort of set it up, and there were discussions about where to go, and all of that. I had Yoko by then, and I would just tag along. I was stoned all the time and I just didn't give a shit. Nobody did.
John didn't care about the Beatles anymore. He was an heroin, and madly in love with Yoko, whom he had become inseparable from. During the making of Let It Be, he barely spoke and was generally dispassionate and uncooperative. He didn't want to be there. He wanted to be with Yoko.
But. "All I want is you / everything has got to be just like you want to do". Did Yoko Ono want to be at Twickenham Film Studios? I doubt it. Everybody hated her there, and expressed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. When she first started hanging out with the Beatles, Yoko seemed to want to be there (early on, she said of Paul: And I feel like he’s my younger brother or something like that., a pretty intense statement to say about someone she barely knew). But by Let It Be? I doubt. If "everything has got to be just like you want to do", well, why wasn't it?
Because maybe the song wasn't about her.
But then, why did John behave the way he did? Why insist that he didn't want to be there, that he wanted to be with Yoko, be uncooperative and mean to Paul?
It's been noted by other fans, watching public interviews with Paul, that every now and then, Paul talks about his relationship with John as if he were talking about a casual acquaintance. The example I can think of right now was on some TV show where the interview gave some whole crazy fannish theory about John lusting after Paul. I mean, there was more to it than that (John lusting after Paul is at least plausible). It was nuts. But Paul's response was kind of interesting. He indicated one of the interviewers co-workers and said, you can say anything about anyone, you could say that she's lusting after you. As if John was just some co-worker. Now, of course, this doesn't make me doubt the depth of the Lennon/McCartney relationship in the slightest. But I was born after John's death. I got my first hardcore dose of Beatles history from The Beatles Anthology. I came of age in a world where Paul reminded the world again and again and again and again just how much he loved his ex-songwriting partner. Paul McCartney wasn't doing that in the 1960s. And for someone like John, who struggled with intense paranoia and abandonment issues, the contrast between their moments of deep emotional intimacy and the moments where Paul acted as though there were nothing deep between them must have been been bewildering and scary.
And this dynamic still occurred during Let It Be. Take this little moment from the sessions: Lennon changes the subject by bizarrely asking Paul, "Hey, did you dream about me last night?" Paul doesn’t remember his dreams. Lennon had a "very strong dream–we were both terrified! Different dreams but you must have been there. I was touching you." Paul does his best to ignore this as everyone goes back into "Octopus’s Garden." (source)
In the years following John's death, Paul has expressed in both music and words a lot of regret and guilt about never telling John outright how much John meant to him. Back in 1969, Paul expressed his words in a song. "Oh! Darling, please believe me / I'll never do you no harm" "When you told me you didn't need me anymore / Well you know I nearly broke down and cried". In a conversation with John, he pointed out the lyrics of Oh! Darling and of Don't Let Me Down ("And if somebody loved me like she do me", with no end that sentence) were connected..."It's like a story".
It's obvious, isn't it, what Paul was saying. But he didn't say it outright. And John paranoia was exacerbated by heroin - and Yoko. I am in a minority with Paul McCartney in thinking that Yoko was in many ways very good for John, but they both had tendencies towards paranoia, and in that, they brought out the worst in each other. John didn't know with certainty if Paul was actually communicating with him in "Oh! Darling". So he put it to the test. When Paul (likely assuming Dig a Pony was about Yoko), yawned at John's passionate declaration, John had to doubt. When the the lyrics of Oh! Darling didn't come true, when Paul survived John's dumping him with apparent easy, with a woman whom John likely knew was better for Paul than John was (note that even in bitchy 1971, when John dissed Linda's career and her looks, John never denied that Linda was good for Paul, never denied that she was a good person, never gave voice to any of those fannish rumors that she was some kind of stalker)...well, maybe Oh! Darling wasn't about John at all. Maybe John's paranoia was justified.
I remember Paul saying that he chose not to learn to read music because he felt that it took away the magic for him. I wonder if that was a factor in the poor communication between Lennon and McCartney. Their intimacy was based on creativity. They communicated through creativity. Maybe that was part of their magic, but if so, it was part of why they fell apart, too. That kind of intimacy is hard to maintain. A love that is not voiced, a love that has to be seen ("maybe when you look to hard, dear boy, you never do become aware"), a love that intense but that elusive...that is a love that is hard to be close to.
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selenak, I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on this, since you are the main person I talk to about Beatles these days. Pretty please?)
In 1980, he told Playboy interviewer David Sheff: The Beatles didn't make a good record of 'Across the Universe.' I think subconsciously we... I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my great songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like 'Strawberry Fields,' which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked, but it wasn't what it could have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little, detailed cleaning up on Paul's songs, but when it came to mine... especially a great song like 'Strawberry Fields' or 'Across the Universe' ...somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up.[...]Subconscious sabotage. I was too hurt... Paul will deny it, because he has a bland face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to think, Well, maybe I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute truth. The same thing happened to 'Across the Universe.' The song was never done properly.
It's worth noting that when John was directly asked about Strawberry Fields at another point in the interview he said not a word about sabotage, subconscious or otherwise. Which makes me think his paranoia about Strawberry Fields was a retcon of sorts. John decided Paul deliberately sabotaged Across the Universe, and projected that paranoia backwards to Strawberry Fields.
In the 1970 interview Lennon Remembers, John came across as slightly less paranoid about the recording of Across the Universe, although still blaming Paul. John had just seen the Let It Be movie, so he had a remind of the events of the creation of the album: It was just like it was in the movie; when I got to do "Across the Universe" (which I wanted to rerecord because the original wasn't very good), Paul yawns and plays boogie. I merely say, "Anyone want to do a fast one?" That's how I am. Year after year, that begins to wear you down.
There is only one problem with this statement: I've seen the Let It Be movie, too. In the scene where Paul yawns and John suggests they play a fast one, the song they are recording is not Across the Universe.
It's Dig a Pony.
Now, I love Dig a Pony. It's a simultaneously ridiculous and passionate song. John expresses his love for Yoko passionately in the lines: "All I want is you / everything has got to be just like you want to do". But it is not Across the Universe. The quality is on completely different scales. John Lennon himself described it as "literally a nonsense song" in 1972, and "another piece of garbage" in 1980.
Wait a minute.
Did John ever actually say that this song was about Yoko?
In fact, I can think of only two other songs in that 1980 Playboy interview that John dismisses so briefly on such absolutist terms. One was Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox), his love song for May Pang, which he described as "just a piece of garbage". The other was I Know (I Know), which John dismisses as "just a piece of nothing". I Know (I Know), may I remind you, was written during the time John and Paul were mending fences after the break up, and contains the lines: "And I know it's getting better (all the time) / As we share in each other's minds" and "Today I love you more than yesterday".
So the pattern here seems to be: love songs for people who are not Yoko.
Is Dig a Pony about Yoko?
It must be, right? John said in Lennon Remembers about
John didn't care about the Beatles anymore. He was an heroin, and madly in love with Yoko, whom he had become inseparable from. During the making of Let It Be, he barely spoke and was generally dispassionate and uncooperative. He didn't want to be there. He wanted to be with Yoko.
But. "All I want is you / everything has got to be just like you want to do". Did Yoko Ono want to be at Twickenham Film Studios? I doubt it. Everybody hated her there, and expressed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. When she first started hanging out with the Beatles, Yoko seemed to want to be there (early on, she said of Paul: And I feel like he’s my younger brother or something like that., a pretty intense statement to say about someone she barely knew). But by Let It Be? I doubt. If "everything has got to be just like you want to do", well, why wasn't it?
Because maybe the song wasn't about her.
But then, why did John behave the way he did? Why insist that he didn't want to be there, that he wanted to be with Yoko, be uncooperative and mean to Paul?
It's been noted by other fans, watching public interviews with Paul, that every now and then, Paul talks about his relationship with John as if he were talking about a casual acquaintance. The example I can think of right now was on some TV show where the interview gave some whole crazy fannish theory about John lusting after Paul. I mean, there was more to it than that (John lusting after Paul is at least plausible). It was nuts. But Paul's response was kind of interesting. He indicated one of the interviewers co-workers and said, you can say anything about anyone, you could say that she's lusting after you. As if John was just some co-worker. Now, of course, this doesn't make me doubt the depth of the Lennon/McCartney relationship in the slightest. But I was born after John's death. I got my first hardcore dose of Beatles history from The Beatles Anthology. I came of age in a world where Paul reminded the world again and again and again and again just how much he loved his ex-songwriting partner. Paul McCartney wasn't doing that in the 1960s. And for someone like John, who struggled with intense paranoia and abandonment issues, the contrast between their moments of deep emotional intimacy and the moments where Paul acted as though there were nothing deep between them must have been been bewildering and scary.
And this dynamic still occurred during Let It Be. Take this little moment from the sessions: Lennon changes the subject by bizarrely asking Paul, "Hey, did you dream about me last night?" Paul doesn’t remember his dreams. Lennon had a "very strong dream–we were both terrified! Different dreams but you must have been there. I was touching you." Paul does his best to ignore this as everyone goes back into "Octopus’s Garden." (source)
In the years following John's death, Paul has expressed in both music and words a lot of regret and guilt about never telling John outright how much John meant to him. Back in 1969, Paul expressed his words in a song. "Oh! Darling, please believe me / I'll never do you no harm" "When you told me you didn't need me anymore / Well you know I nearly broke down and cried". In a conversation with John, he pointed out the lyrics of Oh! Darling and of Don't Let Me Down ("And if somebody loved me like she do me", with no end that sentence) were connected..."It's like a story".
It's obvious, isn't it, what Paul was saying. But he didn't say it outright. And John paranoia was exacerbated by heroin - and Yoko. I am in a minority with Paul McCartney in thinking that Yoko was in many ways very good for John, but they both had tendencies towards paranoia, and in that, they brought out the worst in each other. John didn't know with certainty if Paul was actually communicating with him in "Oh! Darling". So he put it to the test. When Paul (likely assuming Dig a Pony was about Yoko), yawned at John's passionate declaration, John had to doubt. When the the lyrics of Oh! Darling didn't come true, when Paul survived John's dumping him with apparent easy, with a woman whom John likely knew was better for Paul than John was (note that even in bitchy 1971, when John dissed Linda's career and her looks, John never denied that Linda was good for Paul, never denied that she was a good person, never gave voice to any of those fannish rumors that she was some kind of stalker)...well, maybe Oh! Darling wasn't about John at all. Maybe John's paranoia was justified.
I remember Paul saying that he chose not to learn to read music because he felt that it took away the magic for him. I wonder if that was a factor in the poor communication between Lennon and McCartney. Their intimacy was based on creativity. They communicated through creativity. Maybe that was part of their magic, but if so, it was part of why they fell apart, too. That kind of intimacy is hard to maintain. A love that is not voiced, a love that has to be seen ("maybe when you look to hard, dear boy, you never do become aware"), a love that intense but that elusive...that is a love that is hard to be close to.
(
selenak, I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts on this, since you are the main person I talk to about Beatles these days. Pretty please?)
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I. Quotes!
Date: 2016-11-20 06:10 pm (UTC)Having recently browsed through Amoralto's tumblr again, here's her transcription of the "I dreamed about you last night" conversation:
JOHN: Hey! Did you dream about me last night?
PAUL: [long pause] I can’t remember.
JOHN: Very strong dream. We both dreamt about it. It was amazing! Different dreams, you know, but I thought you must’ve been there. [inaudible] I was touching you. [inaudible]
PAUL: Nothing to worry about, though?
JOHN: Nothing to worry about, no.
Well okay then, lads. It also plays into John's expectation that Paul (and Yoko!) should be literally able to read his minds. Again, courtesy of
HINDLE: What do you think about language?
JOHN: I think it’s a bit crummy, you know? It is a drag form of communication, really. We’ll get – we’ll get telepathy. I believe that.
HINDLE: You believe that?
JOHN: Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure as anything I believe. It’s too… Because now we need it so much. […] There are – there’s people everywhere of the same mind and it’s just… even amongst ourselves we can’t communicate. Which is the hard bit, you know.
HINDLE: Yeah.
JOHN: Amongst the people that sort of really agree.
HINDLE: Just ’cause of words?
JOHN: Just ’cause of words, and upbringing, and attitude, and how you express your… Well it’s, it’s just some – you’ve got to find a mutual sort of language to express yourself, you know? And my language is that—
HINDLE: Unless you fall in love it’s impossible to communicate like that.
(See, this is one reason why I got inspired by that Lennon/McCartney: Telepathy prompt. Also because I came to the conclusion it would not have solved a single thing between them.)
Anyway, a third quote you could add is of course John's outburst about Paul asking other people for input re: Eleanor Rigby. Quoth the Lennon:
"Rather than ask me to do the lyrics, he said, ‘Hey, you guys, finish up the lyrics,’ while he sort of fiddled around with the track or the arranging or something at another part of the giant studio at EMI. I sat there with Mal Evans, a road manager who was a telephone installer, and Neil Aspinall, a student accountant who became a road manager, and it was the three of us he was talking to. I was insulted and hurt that he had thrown it out in the air that way. Actually, he meant for me to do it, but he wouldn’t ask…and, of course, there isn’t a line of theirs in the song, because I finally went off to a room with Paul and we finished the song…That was the kind of insensitivity he had, which made me upset in the later years. It’s just the kind of person he is. It meant nothing to him. I wanted to grab a piece of the song, so I wrote it with them sitting at that table, thinking, ‘How dare he throw it out in the air like that?'"
I'm sure I'm near the 5000 letters limit now, so off I go to another comment.
II. More quotes! This time with interpretation
Date: 2016-11-20 06:32 pm (UTC)remains my favourite "OMG Paul DIDN'T REALLY LOVE ME AT ALL!" outburst of John's. Complete with "how dare he desecrate our partnership by openly asking OTHER PEOPLE'S INPUT!" (and note Aunt Mimi's nephew in the descriptions of Mal and Neil). All this being said, you don't have to be needy, paranoid John Lennon to note Paul McCartney has/had a problem with saying the L word, and a tendency to downplay rather to act out emotion, which is a neat irony for a songwriter often described as sentimental. In later years, he 'fessed up to it a couple of times. I found what he wrote in the leaflet for Ecce Cor Meum, the classical piece he wrote after Linda's death, to be as open as he gets on the subject: what I'll leave behind me will be music, and I may not be able to tell you everything I fell, but you'll be able to feel it when you listen to my music. I don't have the time or the articulation to be able to say it all, but if you enjoy composing you say it through the notes.
And of course there's the statement about "The Long and Winding Road" in Many Years from Now:
I like writing sad songs, it's a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It's a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist. Songwriting often performs that feat, you say it but you don't embarrass yourself because it's only a song, or is it? You are putting the things that are bothering you on the table and you are reviewing them, but because it's a song, you don't have to argue with anyone.
Now when they were teenagers and in their early 20s, this non verbalizing, communicating through music thing seems to have mostly worked for John and Paul (or for Paul more than for John, even then?), but from their mid 20s onwards, cracks started to appear. I'm also reminded of Tony Barrow mentioning the Liverpool saying "Don't get real on me" as something that boys did when someone got emotional. So you have Paul subscribing to that newsletter of Northern Retinence, no matter how gushy he gets in song, and doing absolutely anything to avoid a "let's discuss our feelings" conversation. (Not just with John. I'm also thinking of Pete Townshend's quote re: Paul's and Linda's marriage, and it needing Linda for him to experience Paul as accessible.) And you have John, who, the older he gets, the more actually does want to discuss feelings, in prose, song, and anything in between, and wants to know MORE MORE MORE about his partner(s), to the point of telepathy, and there's a crisis in the making.
So basically: I agree to your theory re: Dig a Pony, and shall wrap up this comment with another McCartney quote, this time from his song This One (which is about... George. Totally. Yes, we believe you, Paul):
If I never said it, I was only waiting, for a better moment, that didn't come.
III. Addendum
Date: 2016-11-20 07:31 pm (UTC)I heard Paul’s messages in Ram – yes there are dear reader! Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can’t be wrong? Huh! I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can’t all be hearing things. So to have some fun, I must thank Allen Klein publicly for the line, “just another day”. A real poet! Some people don’t see the funny side of it. Too bad. What am I supposed to do, make you laugh? It’s what you might call an “angry letter,” sung – get it?
And of course it had to be a song, because that way, he can be absolutely sure Paul will get the message, indeed. This being John, he makes sure the rest of the world gets it, too, but mainly How Do You Sleep? is such a vicious masterpiece - complete with George's solo, which they both knew Paul would recognize before even checking out the credits - because John wanted to make sure Paul would get it, on every level, and would not be able to get over it.
More intriguing collected by
Which of course begs the question: just whom did Paul carve up? Stu comes to mind, but usually when John references Stuart he mentions him by name, plus what Paul did re: Stu was more like constant complaining about Stu's bass playing, plus "when he's pushed"? Stu didn't push Paul. Otoh, you know who did in 1965? John, wanting Paul to take that shiny new drug LSD.
And lo! I found
January 29th, 1969: John and Paul work carefully on their vocal harmony for the refrain of ‘Dig A Pony’. John, whose voice is tired and strained, is self-deprecating about his own efforts. Paul, perhaps attuned to it, is quick to profess his admiration for the song.
JOHN & PAUL: All I want is you…
JOHN: But see, now we get into adding a little bit more paint, you know.
PAUL: It’s alright, yeah. No, that’s good, that one.
JOHN: Okay, tick it.
PAUL: [sincere] I love that one.
JOHN: [reticent] Thank you.
PAUL: [insistent] I really really do.
JOHN: Thank you. [quiet] I enjoy it too. Sometimes. [pause] So that’s done.
PAUL: Um—
JOHN: Next, please.
IV.Return of Addendum
Date: 2016-11-20 08:08 pm (UTC)Oh, and then there's also this bit of John and Cynthia dialogue from the Hunter Davies biography:
‘I do find I suggest something and [John] just ignores it at the time, or says it’s wrong. Then a few weeks later Ringo suggests the same thing and he’s all for it. But I don’t worry. I can’t put it into words, but I feel strong. It’s a sense. I understand things. What I would like is a holiday on our own, without the Beatles. Just John, Julian and me.’
‘You what?’ said John, smiling. ‘Not even with our Beatle buddies?’
‘Yes, John. Don’t you remember we were talking about it last week?’
‘What did we say?’
‘We said the three of us could just go off somewhere, not with your buddies.’
‘But it’s nice to have your mates around.’
‘That really offends me. He does think it’s not enough just to go with his family.’
He smiled at her. She shook her head at him.
‘They seem to need you less than you need them,’ she said.
"They", hm. Presumably not the two who were living next door in the suburbs, I'd guess.
Next, George's immortal summing up in May 1970:
SMITH: So you don’t think there’s any great anger between Paul and John?
GEORGE: No, I think there may be what you’d term a little bitchiness. But, you know. That’s all it is. It’s just being bitchy to each other. Childish. Childish.
Have ever read
V. Son of Addendum
Date: 2016-11-21 06:23 am (UTC)PAUL: [trying] If all of you were for sale on a shop, I’d want you as, you know, that, but I really don’t want you as that!
JOHN: Yes.
PAUL: But I want you as that! I don’t want him as that. You see, I want you to want yours. You’re [inaudible]. Ringo wanted— When I say those things, you know, I can hear myself sort of – but I don’t know what it is you want me to do! In period and in fact, I want you all for whatever you are. Because I’m placing it – after all the bests, and all it bloody does, and what’s best, is that what you are is alright. Because if it isn’t, then it’s just stupid of me [inaudible], you know? Because it’s what you are, and I would [inaudible] anywhere! So I’m placing all the money, all the fame, and everything, on what you are.
/The audio is here. Boldening is mine,)
Response to Comments 1
Date: 2016-11-21 10:22 am (UTC)Here are some from me:
First of all, re: John's "sabotage" accusations, ever since Other Mark (not Lewisohn, can't remember the last name right now) brought up his theory of John deliberately sabotaging "The Long and Winding Road", I wondered whether "Paul sabotaged "Across the Universe" and/or "Strawberry Fields" wasn't another case of Lennonian projection.
Or maybe other Mark had the cause and effect wrong? When did John first consider and take seriously the thought that Across the Universe was deliberately sabotaged? Maybe it was a lot earlier than 1980. Maybe his sabotage of The Long and Winding Road was intended as 100% fair payback…for something Paul never actually did. Oops. Awkward. Easier to hold onto the Paul-the-saboteur story.
Having recently browsed through Amoralto's tumblr again, here's her transcription of the "I dreamed about you last night" conversation
That version of the conversation does have a few significant differences. It starts out the same - Paul's "I can't remember" is neither acceptance or rejection, the kind of ambiguity that I'm sure drove John insane. But then Paul checks in with John at the end of the conversation. Which is very sweet.
Re: Response to Comments 1
Date: 2016-11-21 01:48 pm (UTC)Looking up the date: Across the Universe was first recorded on February 4th, 1968. It was originally planned for a single release, then dumped in favour of Paul's "Lady Madonna", then given to the World Wild Life Fund, then to Phil Spector to flesh out the Let It Be LP. All in all, that means it was making the rounds for almost two years. So John thinking that Paul would have/could have worked harder on it and made it into something releasable if not for "subconscious sabotage" actually sounds less paranoid than claiming the same thing about "Strawberry Fields Forever" (which got instant attention and contributions and acclaim and hard work from everyone, George Martin and team and Pau alike, and of course was the A-Side of the single, with Penny Lane as the B-Side). Incidentally, it also says something about John seeing Paul as much as a producer as as a musician at this point if he thinks the (not) shaping up of "Across the Universe" is due to Paul and no one else. (Like, oh I don't know, himself?)
Of course, Across the Universe wasn't the only Beatles song recorded but not produced/further worked at during the endless White Album sessions. Unless I'm mistaken, a good deal of George's first solo album was originally debuting there, plus some of Paul's "McCartney" songs like "Junk", plus the future "Jealous Guy" with a completely different lyric. Which pushes John's assumption of the non-release of "Across the Universe" for eons as proof of Paul having it in for that song into the paranoia region again. Though now I'm curious what Paul actually thought about "Across the Universe" - I can't remember a single quote, and it's not one of the Beatles songs he ever played in the decades later (and he does play some John songs). Huh.
On a tanget, nothing to do with "Across the Universe": while looking for quotes last night, I came across this new to me dialogue between John and George about Millie (Mother of Stu) Sutcliffe here. Gulp. Fellows, this is pretty cold. Though interesting in terms of Albert Goldmann getting his "Stu's head injury was actually the result of a fight with John" story from Pauline Sutcliffe (with no other corroborating witness), because if John's reply was anything tone-wise like his conversation with George here, mother and daughter probably hated his guts.
Response to Comments 2
Date: 2016-11-21 10:24 am (UTC)I think what happened is that in the early days, their physical goals were in perfect keeping with their emotional goals, if that makes sense. They were trying to get to the toppermost of the poppermost, and that kept them together without having to communicate much about the emotional crap. They were together all they time because of their careers.
But then they stopped touring, and things started to change. John I think assumed they would still live together. I'm actually surprised I haven't seen slashers talk more about the fact that they didn't live together post-touring. I mean, if they were really in a conventional romantic relationship, wouldn't that? John thought they would. Paul, apparently, didn't. I think that was one of the things that really led John to doubt that Paul felt as strongly as John did, as strongly as John had thought Paul felt. But he couldn't talk about openly to Paul. Even if Paul had been willing to have the conversation, what married man is hurt because his best male mate doesn't want to live with him? And what if he did confess this desire to Paul, and Paul laughed in his face because it was so ridiculous? Had John overestimated the intensity of their relationship?
I know Paul was afraid John would laugh it him it Paul admitted the intensity of his feelings (see: Here Today). And I would bet you John was, too.
So John stewed, over that and many other things, and doubted, and fretted, and Paul had no clue.
One thing I've noticed about the exchanges you posted for the Let It Be sessions is how ambiguous they are. By which I mean to say: There's plausible deniability. Maybe they're talking about their relationship, maybe they aren't. In the moment you believe it, 'cause it's true. But once you step out of the moment…how do you know if it was real or not? How do you explain it to someone else? How do you know if you just wanted it be true? Or if it wasn't a form of paranoia, that this communication happened? A lot of Paul's songs were about John, but…was Hey Jude? I don't think so, and as of the 1980 I don't think John thought so, but when he heard it, he thought it was. He thought it was a communication from Paul to him, and it wasn't. How could he know which if any of Paul's songs were really about him?
Re: Response to Comments 2
Date: 2016-11-21 11:57 am (UTC)I suspect it's mostly because moste write Cynthia permanently "visiting her mother" when setting their tales at John's house, and have John practically living at Cavendish, ignoring the fact that the only time we know he did so was that disastrous Edward Albee-esque interlude co-starring Yoko and Francie. And I haven't read many stories taking into account that Paul spent his first few years in London living with the Ashers, not at Cavendish,
Whereas the fact he did so is pretty telling. Brian first rented a London flat for all four Beatles, then an extra home for John and Cynthia, but Paul apparantly took one look at said flat and the idea of rooming with the rest of the gang there, said "no", and moved in with the Ashers at Wimpole Street. And when the other three moved to the stockbroker's belt in close proximity again following Brian's suggestion, he bought a house near Abbey Road. Which probably is what Pete Shotton - arguably someone with a claim on greatest closeness to John among people who are neither Yoko nor a Beatle - meant by "independence" when talking about John and Paul in his book: Paul was the one Beatle who posed any challenge to John’s authority and preeminence within the group. Much as John might have found it easier to handle those who—like George and Ringo—seemed to take it for granted that he was the king of the castle, Paul was the only one he considered more or less his equal. John particularly admired and respected—yet at the same time slightly resented—Paul’s independence, his self-discipline, and his all-round musical facility: all qualities in which John felt relatively lacking.
We could also throw in John's long rant about Jim McCartney and Paul's family thing from the McCabe interview for good measure. I think what was plagueing John was the idea that Paul didn't need him (either musically or emotionally) as much as he needed Paul, that Paul always had a non-Beatle, non-John space for people in his life whom he was close to, and was in fact actively seeking such a space. Which wasn't exactly all John's imagination; that description of Paul's from his second LSD trip, the one with John, is incredibly telling in its simultanous experience of complete closeness and need to get out of the house where John "The Emperor of Everything" was. I think while John was alive, this profound ambiguity - wanting closeness, but wanting a safe non-John space, too - continued. (Which is another reason why my guess is that if John instead of going back to Yoko would have shown up in New Orleans not just for a work session but with the announcement he wanted to move in, Paul would have taken a look at Linda and the kids and said, um, no. And they both knew that at that point. Whereas Yoko might also have had her own space - literally, with her office being a floor down in the househusband years later -, but he could be sure there he was, in fact, the most important person in her life.)
The ironic counterpoint to this is that as it turned out, the emotional fallout of the breakup - both of the Beatles as a group and of the Lennon/McCartney partnership - was far worse for Paul than for the other three. For all that "independence", he seems to have defined himself more as a Beatle than as anything else in his life, and even at the start of Beatlemania, when they were still expecting it to end soon and he was asked what he would do later in his life, his idea of being a middle aged songwriter for other acts or for a musical always included John. George was more than ready for independence and had pretty clear ideas about how to be George Harrison as opposed to be Beatle George, Ringo was ambigous but also ready, and John had thrown himself into becoming JohnandYoko. But Paul in the last two years of the 60s and through most of 1970 really seems to have had no idea about who the hell he could possibly be if not a Beatle.
Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-21 10:25 am (UTC)But, my point. The point is, I think what was wearing John done was the expectation of faith. I don't think Girl is about Paul or anything, but: When I think of all the times I tried so hard to leave her, she will turn to me and start to cry, and she promises the earth to me and I believe her, after all this time I don't know. Because I think John did know how much Paul loved him…how could he not? I've seen the photographs, man, it was in both of them. But things kept happening. Big things, little things. Maybe Paul wanted to live in the city. Maybe he decided to do a musical on his own. Maybe he asked a group of people to help with song lyrics, instead of just John. Maybe when John decided to put a passionate declaration of love for Paul in song, Paul yawned.
Being paranoid is exhausting. It's scary, it's overwhelming, and it's hard to voice it when you know it will just make you look crazy. It can end up being the kind of thing that you put up with until you can't. John as a little boy had had his paranoia confirmed in the worst way possible, and Paul's apparent expectation that he just go on trust was just too much. It was more than John was capable of.
Re: Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-21 12:13 pm (UTC)I think what was wearing John done was the expectation of faith.
Yes, I can believe that. The summation of things, and how they appeared to John. Btw, Pete Shotton's description of the Eleanor Rigby writing is different yet again (not least because he places himself there, contributing parts of the lyrics), but it includes these gems:
Oddly enough, the song on Revolver whose composition I was most intimately involved in, and most vividly remember, was Paul’s “Eleanor Rigby”. Though John (whose memory could be extremely erratic) was to take credit, in one of his last interviews, for most of the lyrics, my own recollection is that “Eleanor Rigby” was one “Lennon-McCartney” classic in which John’s contribution was virtually nil. (...) Fully caught up in the creative process, I was seized by a brainwave. “Why don’t you have Eleanor Rigby dying,” I said, “and have Father McKenzie doing the burial service for her? That way you’d have the two lonely people coming together in the end—but too late.”
Not a bad suggestion, if I thought so myself—but then John piped in with his first comment of the entire session: “I don’t think you understand what we’re trying to get at, Pete.”
That little remark proved enough to stop the creative juices dead in their tracks. It was so unlike John to disrupt one of the Beatles’ songwriting sessions—let alone insult me in front of Paul, George, and Ringo—that all I could think of to say was “Fuck you, John.” Paul packed his guitar away, and we all wandered out of the room. Even after George produced a joint to lighten up the mood, I continued to feel more than a bit uptight about John’s unwarranted sarcasm.
Note the complete absence of Neil or Mal in Pete's description, and the presence of George and Ringo. We're left to guess whose memory is more erratic. (Though it's worth pointing out that in any case "Eleanor Rigby" wasn't composed in one session - William S. Burroughs has described listening to an early version of the song in the same paragraph where he calls Paul "a very industrious young man", Lional S. Bart remembers Paul playing a rudamentary version at Alma Coogan's, and at any rate, you can make a case that George Martin is Paul's most important collaborator on this particular song: using strings was, undisputed by Paul, his idea, and the song is unthinkable without the classical musical element.) But if you take these nearly completely different descriptions together, the one shared element remains that John is actively resenting anyone but himself making suggestions for a Paul song, even if the people providing imput are either their trusted roadies or his childhood bff. And of course it's fascinating that in John's version, he doesn't blame the others (whoever they were) for the intrusion, he blames Paul for letting them/actively asking for their input.
Re: Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-22 12:20 pm (UTC)ETA: Oh wait, they had a safe word, didn't they? An open declaration of love. But they were both too scared to say it, so they kept trying to get the other one to do so. Which just made them both even more scared, because it was harder to trust each other.
Re: Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-22 01:26 pm (UTC)...It's also John asking for a gesture of faith, if you think about it, of Paul not just prioritizing him over Jim but being ready to bank his existence on them having a future together. So yes, probably the turning point.
Re: Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-23 12:38 am (UTC)Maybe during Sgt. Pepper's? At this point, Paul was working full time to put the record together, while John was off being depressed in the suburbs. I remember you once talked about how Paul relied on John to fall apart in order to hold himself together, and vice versa. During Sgt. Pepper, they were at extremes: Paul working hard, John doing nothing. As John said in Lennon Remembers, If Paul and I are sort of disagreeing, and I feel weak, I think he must feel strong, you know, that's in an argument. Not that we've had much physical argument, you know. They were both contributing to the relationship, but in different ways. It was too extreme...and yet, that is considered by many to be their best album.
But I do wonder. Paul doing all that work, he must have been stressed. If John falling apart helped him hold it together, he may have very much needed John in falling apart mode. I can just imagine a highly stressed Paul gaslighting John in a lot of little ways constantly, just to get John to lose it. I think it wasn't just John who wanted too much emotionally - it was Paul. He took too much of John's sanity for that album, and it didn't end well for them. So maybe if they had had a safe word the music would be less awesome?
Paul couldn't have realized he was going too far. It must be a little scary to feel responsible for someone else's sanity. But John may have thought Paul knew, even though Paul didn't. And that would have upset him.
The more I think about it, though, the more I am appalled by how Paul treated Julian. Yes, Julian. Hear me out. I suspect that John banishing Cynthia and Julian was in part a gesture to Paul - I'm guessing Paul was pushing John to be a good husband and father. I think John was practically daring Paul to define the ban. Which he did. Went to see Cynthia and Julian, was his charming self, a flower for Cynthia, a song for Julian, and then walked out of their lives. Fuck you, John, I'm not taking care of your family for you. And yet, he comes out smelling like a rose: The song is heartfelt, and Paul wasn't the kid's dad so he doesn't have any technical responsibility. So Paul's the saint who wrote a song for his friend's little boy. But I notice Julian doesn't look too happy when people ask about Hey Jude. The fact that the warmth in the son and photographs isn't present in his actual modern relationship with Paul. Paul even says Hey Jude was mostly by himself...and I'm starting to wonder: Was Paul singing to Julian in reassurance because John had left him...or was it his own abandonment of Julian he was talking about? It's a little cruel. John deserved the mindfuck. Julian did not.
Re: Response to Comments 3
Date: 2016-11-23 05:49 am (UTC)1.) Julian today - the main reason why Julian today isn't happy re: Hey Jude imo is pretty obvious, it's his non-relationship with Paul several decades onwards, the fact that Paul seems to get along with and spend more time with Yoko who gets invited to the wedding while Julian does not, etc. But that is only tangentiantially to do with John, and certainly not with John and Paul in 1968/69/70. The Julian-Yoko disaster (with occasional patch up as a few years ago for Julian's exhibition) and the Paul-Yoko enigma are far more relevant here, imo. But deserving their own posts.
2.) Paul, John and Julian in 1968, and what Paul was thinking with Hey Jude. Actually, I'lll put Hey Jude in 3), come to think of it, because it deserves its own point. I think you could be on to something with John practically daring Paul to defy the ban on Cynthia and Julian, and he might even have been, consciously or subconsciously, expecting Paul to take care of Julian for him, but then again it's just as possible that Mr. Jealous Guy would have seen that as the ultimate ursurpation and betrayal, which would be one reason not to do it if you're simultanously engaged in trying to rescue that relationship. In any case, Paul as of the spring of 1968 was starting to show signs of cracking up in ways he'd never done before. You have him, during the White Album sessions, lashing out at George Martin, of all the people, which seems to have been unprecedent (from Paul) and unrepeated, unless nobody has ever mentioned it. Then there's the way his relationship with Jane ended, which yes, had been coming for a while, and was retrospectively good for both of them, since they both clearly worked out better with other people. Not to mention that Paul seems to have done something similar to John letting Cynthia find himself with Yoko at breakfast, to wit, be spectacularly indiscreet with lots of other women in ways he wasn't before, practically daring Jane to find him. But it was still the longest relationship he had had until that point with a woman, and it was now over, and unless Alistair is making things up in his memoirs, which I don't think Alistair is, Paul might have been playing it cool (ha!) with the other Beatles about that but for a while kept showing up at Alistair's for tea and sympathy and talking about Jane which he couldn't with the mates on a regular basis. Then there's the Francie Schwartz story about that weird visit in Liverpool (not with his father, who wasn't living there anymore at that point, with the larger McCartney clan) where Paul goes from doing his usual play the piano for everyone stick to getting drunk and having a crying fit. Not to mention the housesharing interlude from hell immediately after John left Cynthia. Linda was already on the horizon as something other than a one night stand, yes, but no more so than Maggie McGivern or Francie, for that matter; I think when he asked her to come in the summer, he had no idea yet it would evolve into something more permanent. The visit to Cynthia and Julian happened before Linda came to London (according to Cynthia, who is the only one providing something of a date) in just that time. This does not sound like Holding It Together Paul by any means. (Though he seems to have been his usual Public Polite Self for all PR occasions for the Beatles plus in Apple to the employees, if Chris O'Dell - firmly in George's camp, and thus not an Paul-uncritical witness - who worked at Apple during that time is anything to go by; she describes Paul during that period as pretty much the perfect boss, encouraging and patient, though in vain telling everyone not to have champagne at work or charge the taxis to Apple.) That he didn't continue visiting Cynthia and Julian to me was probably less a calculation or gesture or anything and more as a by result of Paul being in emotional freefall throughout spring and summer, and being a replacement dad for Julian would probably have been one thing too many. By the time it's autumn, two things happen: - (next comment)
Re: Response to Comments 3 continued
Date: 2016-11-23 06:13 am (UTC)3.) Hey Jude: I don't think the Julian connection went beyond the melodie and first verse coming to Paul en route to Kenwood. If I recall correctly, Julian himself didn't know about it until the 1980s, though at the very latest he must have found out via John's Playboy interview, where John says "He says it's about my kid, but I know..." etc. I honestly have no idea where and when Paul mentioned that inspiration first (in public) - the description usually quoted is from "Many Years from Now", and that was published in the 90s. Presumably he must have mentioned it in the 1970s for John to know? Anyway, note that this particular song is one of the few late Lennon/McCartney songs where we know Paul asked for John's input and no one else's (George gets his head snapped off in the rehearsal for Let It Be badness on film when he suggests something musical for that song), and the "it's about me"/"no, it's about me" exchange is confirmed by both parties, also not as an argument, but as a moment of "hey, we're going through the same thing" realisation. It's a comfort/encouragement song, whatever else it is. Since Paul composed and worked on it during his emotional freefall time (i.e. May/June of 1968), I can well believe that consciously, it was meant to deal with his own issues. (Especially since this is a man incapable of talking about said issues or to openly plead for help, except for Linda a bit later.) How much it was still tied to John, or Julian, or both, subconsciously - no idea. But then the other song expressing where Paul was emotionally during that time is probably Helter Skelter, so - who knows.
Addendum re: John
Date: 2016-11-23 07:52 am (UTC)Divorced from the Hey Jude question, I'd like to go back to your statement in the post that John even when dissing Linda as a photographer and her looks in the St. Regis interview didn't deny she was good for Paul. That's a bit more positive than I'd phrase it, looking it up again:
Q: "So, John. You and Paul were probably the greatest songwriting team in a generation. And you had this huge falling out. Were there always huge differences between you and Paul, or was there a time when you had a lot in common?"
JOHN: "Well, Paul always wanted the home life, you see. He liked it with daddy and the brother... and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. (cutting fascinating Jim McCartney tirade.) So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me. But it was a long trip."
Q: "So you think with Linda he's found what he wanted?"
JOHN: "I guess so. I guess so. I just don't understand. I never knew what he wanted in a woman because I never knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted something intelligent or something arty. But you don't really know what you want until you find it. So anyway, I was very surprised with Linda. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd married Jane (Asher) because it had been going on for a long time and they went through a whole ordinary love scene. But with Linda it was just like -- boom! She was in and that was the end of it."
"I just don't understand" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. The impression you get as a reader is that (John thinks) Linda is neither intelligent nor "arty", but can offer "the home life", since John brings it up in reply to the question whether he and Paul ever had something in common; Linda as the successor not of Jane but of Jim, offering a family. And here the fiction writer in me wonders without any quotes to back me up whether John, being John, at one point or the other thought "what, my kid wasn't enough for you?"
Re: Addendum re: John
Date: 2016-11-23 03:01 pm (UTC)Paul, due to his magic with children, low-key gaslighting of John, and a desire to have whatever John has because they are so competitive, forms a close relationship with Julian.
John, upon getting together with Yoko, retaliates by banishing Cynthia and Julian.
Paul freaks, and feels really guilty, in part because no one but John knew about the low-key gaslighting. Paul decides the best thing he can do for Cynthia and Julian is to pull out of their lives before John does something even worse. He does so in a way that is both a gesture to John, and also as a goodbye to Cynthia and Julian. Unfortunately, Paul's guilty gesture of a flower and a song probably just left Cynthia and Julian even worse, because it becomes harder to articulate their pain and anger at him. They know that he wronged them, but maybe there is this sense that he wouldn't be able to handle it if this was openly acknowledged. Which makes the anger, and which makes what happened, an even bigger deal than it actually is.
So turn that anger on John and Yoko.
And of course, Paul then makes a big show of taking on LINDA'S kid. A kind of petty, "See, I would have raised your son for you if you had just TRUSTED me." And I doubt that was good for Heather. I think Paul loves Heather genuinely and deeply, and would do anything for her. But like Julian, she was a sensitive child. I'm sure she picked up on it if he made any kind of show of his relationship with her. I'm sure that was hard for her, especially after being abandoned by her biological father.
Part of the problem is the John and Paul were the princes of pop. They answered only to each other. They didn't have anyone who could stop and say, wait, WHAT? And ultimately, they were incredibly lucky they had each other. They didn't end up like Elvis. They were never alone. There was one other person out there who knew what it was like, who could make at least an attempt to check the other's behavior (even posthumously - John Lennon's words are remembered).
Tangent: princes and courtiers
Date: 2016-11-23 04:10 pm (UTC)Basically you're left with Pete Shotton's description of John as "King of the Castle" for people not Paul (including, presumably, Pete, who also didn't show up at Cyn's). (And Maureen Cleave's young Henry VIIII comparison for John from her January 1966 profile of "bigger than Jesus" fame.) Though the royalty aura holds true for the rest of them in their respective environments; Chris O'Dell describes herself as a "lady-in-waiting" to Pattie while Eric Clapton in the George docu by Scorsese actually makes the Arthur-Lancelot-Guenevere comparison for George, himself and Pattie and says that's how he saw George (as the King, and himself as the Knight - Eric "God" Clapton, mind). And certainly both Tony Bramwell's and Alistair Taylor's descriptions of Paul's dashings about have a lot of these royal tropes in them (in Paul's case, complete with the "royalty in disguise visiting the populace" trope), and of course Danny Fields memorably described him as "The Don" ("he just is"), as in Corleone, one presumes.
Perhaps it's something that happens inevitably once you've hit a certain level of fame, and even if you do manage to keep some of your old friendships outside the bubble (preferably not by hiring said friends, which automatically creates a dependence), it can't be the same as before because they don't share the same type of experiences. George made the Elvis comparison, too, emphasizing how lucky they were to have each other. And now off to answering non-tangentially the core of your reply. :)
Re: Tangent: princes and courtiers
Date: 2016-11-23 05:55 pm (UTC)Divorce Isssues
Date: 2016-11-23 05:12 pm (UTC)Maaaybe, but I think he was at least as much, if not more, motivated by the "Cynthia is a faithless whore and must be punished" mode he had psyched himself into at the time. I mean, whether or not he arranged things with Magic Alex (I really hope not!), he not only wanted to sue her for adultery, but told Mimi Cyn was a heartless cheat who'd practically driven im into Yoko's arms, and unless Peter Brown is making things up acted as the betrayed husband with his employees as well. Mind you, I think it's the good old "I know I'm behaving awfully to my soon to be ex, so this HAS to be somehow her fault! I know! She cheated, too!" mechanism hardly unique to John, but it was in full swing, and there was considerable bile. (I was pretty chilled when I found a sentence Cynthia mentioned John having said to her - "did you think you've won the pool?" re: divorce settlement - in that recent book about Mimi as a Mimi quote - "she thinks she's won the pool".) And of course he didn't want to see Julian at all because Julian made him feel guilty and inadequate, and as May Pang later observed, John wanted to be the rebellious son, not the responsible father. What I'm getting at here: the banishment degree to me looks mainly motivated by John's anti-Cynthia feelings at the time. Doesn't exclude that it was also meant as a loyalty test (for the rest) and/or as a dare (to Paul), but I don't see it as the main cause. (Sidenote: I don't remember in which discussion, but I remember someone once wrote if she'd been Cynthia and John had decided to be such a jerk about the divorce, she'd have used that visit from Paul to have sex with him, record it, and send the tape to John in retaliation. Which would presumably have been an even worse idea than having revenge/depression sex with Magic Alex.)
That Paul meant his visit, the rose and the song as a farewell, otoh, makes sense to me and fits with what happened next. (BTW Cynthia's second book about her marriage includes the other McCartney gift she got, two decades later, when a letter from John to her was put on auction, and Paul bought it and gave it to her. As it was a tender letter, John at his best - and rather late in the game, written during the tour from hell in 1966 America -, the gift was "much appreciated", she wrote.)
And of course, Paul then makes a big show of taking on LINDA'S kid.
Here I'm divided again. I mean, I'm absolutely certain Linda herself was in the studio (both during the later White Album sessions and during Get Back/Let It Be) because Yoko was, in a petty tit for tat way on Paul's part. But Heather (who was only there during Let It Be in January 1969, and had arrived in London together with Linda and Paul at the end of October 68)? Aside from everything else, there was the practical side: Heather was new in London, Linda didn't have any friends there who could babysit, and while they had found a school for Heather, the first weeks of January would still have been the holidays. Yes, they could have simply paid someone to babysit when both Linda and Paul were at Twickenham, but the very fact that Heather was a sensitive child, in a strange new place where a lot of strange girls and women were shouting abuse at her mother whenever she left the house, would argue against leaving her with yet another stranger there.
- tbc-
Re: Divorce Isssues
Date: 2016-11-23 05:59 pm (UTC)But Brian?
Date: 2016-11-24 06:16 am (UTC)Mind you: given that John had no problem aquiring some Irish place he never went to, and for a time hatched that crazy plan of the gang, collectively, moving to a Greek island (once Magic Alex had started to be an influence), one would think he'd have had no problem at least getting himself a bachelor pad in the city, which is what Ringo did. (The one Yoko and John moved into after moving out of Paul's house.) But no. He does talk about wanting to buy a house in inner London if Cavendish works out for Paul in a 1966 interview, I think, so he must have at least thought about it. It might not have been more than pure laziness (amplified by LSD) that prevented him from doing so; you have that life long pattern of John needing someone else (first mainly Paul, then mainly Yoko, with various friends and hangers-on occassionally providing also enough stimulus in between) to push him to see a plan through.
(After all, you CAN make a case that the Greek island scheme never got beyond holidays in Greece because while travelleling along for the holidays, Paul's real attitude to the idea of moving to a Greek island according to Marianne Faithfull was "hell no!", though he didn't make an argument about it but bet on John losing enthusiasm before it got to a real stage. Again, according to Marianne, but since her comments get quoted by Barry Miles in the authorized biography, I read that as Paul admitting to it.)
Maybe he was amazed?
Date: 2016-11-23 05:13 pm (UTC)Another aspect: that Linda was a mother was part of the attraction - I don't have MYFN at hand, but I seem to recall that watching Linda in action with Heather in New York impressed Paul a lot. Complete with "this is a woman, the previous ones were girls" conclusion. There's another difference - Paul had close relationships with Margaret Asher and before that with Iris Caldwell's mother Vi, insert obvious pop pyschology here, but Linda's mother was dead. She was the first serious girlfriend to completely embody the mother role herself, as opposed to still having a mother. John wasn't the only one with hang up about mothers, or if you want to phrase it more seriously, a loss that left a life long imprint. He was just more overt about it with Yoko.
Re: Maybe he was amazed?
Date: 2016-11-23 06:04 pm (UTC)In most of the photos of Kyoko and John and Yoko that I have seen, John was holding Kyoko. Kyoko said of him that he was nice to her. Given John's general lack of interest in other people's children, I find that...interesting.
And Yoko and John have said that it was John and Allen Klein, not Yoko herself, who were most determined to get Kyoko away from her father. Would John have adopted her, if he could have?
Re: Maybe he was amazed?
Date: 2016-11-23 06:28 pm (UTC)John and Kyoko: my guess is he would have adopted her. On the one hand, interesting, especially since Yoko was still ambiguous about how she felt re: being a mother at this point (in the most interesting Yoko interview I've read, in the Spiegel, she talks in detail about this), so it was probably not her idea. BUT: Yoko and John by then already had made this weird pact that the respective other was the only one allowed to communicate directly with their exes, i.e. John with Tony, Yoko with Cynthia. As long as there was shared custody between Yoko and Tony or Tony as the main parent, this would hardly have been possible to maintain. We're talking about John Lennon in his possessive, jealous guy stage in a new relationship, after all. Kyoko living with him and Yoko would have ensured there was no need ot interact with Tony.
Mind you: if I think about John and Yoko in 1969/70, as described by pretty much everyone, the mind boggles at the idea of the two of them raising a child (or several, if Yoko hadn't miscarried). Then again: they managed in 1975, so maybe there would have been earlier sobering up in several senses? Or not. Am reminded of what happened to the Anita Pallenberg/Keith Richards offspring.
Anyway, back to the main subject, all what I just said not withstanding, do I think John wanted also to demonstrate he could be just as good a father to his new love's daughter as Paul could? Sure. And that this ambition turned into a clusterfuck with kidnapping and disappearing as the endgame while Paul was unembarrassed to release "Mary has a little lamb" for his latest child probably added injury to insult. (I mean, as late as 1980 you can hear the note of irritation in John re: younger McCartneys, existence of same, as in "He's got 25 kids, when does he have time to talk?")
BTW, why was Allen Klein so invested in getting Kyoko? Can't see the advantage for him there, so was this about keeping John happy?
Re: Maybe he was amazed?
Date: 2016-11-23 08:54 pm (UTC)Paul McCartney's mother was Catholic, correct? But his parents had a mixed marriage. Wasn't Paul in a Catholic choir or something? I know John's religious beliefs were all over the place throughout his life, but I'm spacing on what his mother and aunt believed.
Re: Maybe he was amazed?
Date: 2016-11-24 06:26 am (UTC)Yes, Mary McCartney was Catholic. I think both Paul and Michael were baptized Catholic (which would fit the times -my grandparents had a mixed Catholic/Protestant marriage as well, and one of the conditions was that any children would be Catholics, which my father and his sister were). But the choir interlude was not for a Catholic church, but for a Church of England one if it was the big Liverpool Cathedral - I have conflicting memories here, one version I recall is that he auditioned but wasn't taken as a choir boy when he was ten, and one that he briefly was one but it didn't last beyond two months or so. Considering a sine qua non for a choir boy is the ability to read notes, and Paul famously couldn't until those few lessons as an adult which he then stopped for fear of losing the magic, I'm going with version A. Anyway, I may be confusing actual quotes with fiction but I think Paul said he stopped praying after Mary died.
(The Catholic thing usually comes up when discussing "Let it Be", the song not the movie, for obvious reasons. Also Jonathan Gould in "Can't buy me love" points out that St. Jude is the patron saint for lost causes.)
Mimi and Julia were Church of England, though I don't recall something said about either one's attitude towards it.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-24 09:30 am (UTC)I played this song in the far for my mother awhile back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RObwY8Pf4Sk. I was hesitant to play it, because she can get a little mean about the music my sister and I like it. But I told her I was nervous about it, and she listened to it quietly, and heard me out.
Then some days later, my parents and my sister and me were at the house. I played the song for everyone (my sister was familiar with the song - I discovered P!ink after listening to my sister play Don't Let Me Get Me all the time when were teenagers). Then my sister said she had a sad song to play, and played this one: https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=LqCqYP7hDWI
Response to Comments 4
Date: 2016-11-21 10:26 am (UTC)Ah, and here's where I disagree with you. John wasn't absolutely sure. Because John knew he was paranoid. Take a look at this quote (which I googled to find, and it brought up a comment of yours on
Okay, my current take on How Do You Sleep? is a little different from yours, and little weird, but here's what it is: John Lennon listened to Ram and heard all the little messages and vacillated between thinking there were there and thinking he was paranoid, and blaming Paul the whole time. But here's what I think: I think what John was really scared of was not that the messages were there, but that it was paranoia on his part. That the messages weren't there. That these messages, that Paul was personally furious with John, that John had broken his heart (Dear Boy), were in John's head. And if they were really there, then Paul was being cruel by making them subtle and playing on John's paranoia. And John being John, he went with his first impulse. The impulse to show Paul EXACTLY how much Paul meant to him. John cared so much that he listened to Ram in depth, wrote, recorded, and released a five-and-half-minute long song passionately attacking Paul, and made sure to include Paul's closes friends in the recording and announce publically that the businessman Paul hated had contributed a lyric. This is how much you mean to me.
I mean, he could have written a love song, but that would have been scary and not allowed for plausible deniability.
Unfortunately, I think John chose not to think about long-term consequences. Judging by how he reacted to questions about How Do You Sleep? in later years, I don't think he had thought about it. And he never took responsibility for it. John couldn't have known that he would be murdered and martyred, but he should have known there would be long term consequences for Paul.
(And now Paul's in the position of having to explain to people: But he loved me! Really! He thought I was amazing! Even when he seriously doubts it himself.)
Re: Response to Comments 4
Date: 2016-11-21 01:14 pm (UTC)John cared so much that he listened to Ram in depth, wrote, recorded, and released a five-and-half-minute long song passionately attacking Paul, and made sure to include Paul's closes friends in the recording and announce publically that the businessman Paul hated had contributed a lyric. This is how much you mean to me.
I mean, he could have written a love song, but that would have been scary and not allowed for plausible deniability.
John really could be such an Edward Albee character. BTW, I haven't read Philip Norman's Paul biography yet, but at the Frankfurt book fair I got as far as the foreword, which amused by by essentially saying, as an explanation for "Shout!" and "John Lennon was three fourth of the Beatles", lightweight Paul etc.: "So when I was interviewing Yoko shortly after John's death, she told me that John said nobody had hurt him deeper than Paul. That amazed me, because I had thought they were just business partners and it sounded like there'd been an actual intimate connection. Also, I felt like he was directly speaking to me via Yoko, urging me to avenge him." (His other explanation for "Shout!"'s portrayal of Paul is that he desperately wanted to be him, what with the musical abilities and the girl-pulling abilities, and thus hated him. That did surprise me in as much as I thought the rock journalists like Norman and Wenner all wanted to be John, or one of the Rolling Stones, but it's...an amazingly honest admission.) Since reading that, I can't get the image of ghostly John urging rock journalists to avenge him a la Hamlet & his father out of my head.
Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-21 10:27 am (UTC)But the issue that bothers me more is portraying George as a kid. Especially where Paul is concerned. John was being a bit grandiose in saying George saw him as the Daddy who left home, but George did at least look up to him as an older and cooler male. Paul was only nine months older. One of my childhood best friends, friend from toddlerhood was nine months younger than me, and that didn't make the slightest bit of difference (which actually bothered me a bit, but that's another story). And, really. Paul and George met as, what, teenagers? They were both teenagers at that point, right? John and Paul were over a year apart in age. But that didn't seem to matter.
Actually, I think I've said this before, but I noticed in the 1980 Playboy interview that when John was talking about his adolescence with Paul, he spoke as if they were the same age. But when he talked about George joining the group, he felt the need to point out not only that George was young - but that Paul was young, too. I don't have it handy, but I know there's some quote when John says something like, "George looked even younger than Paul, and Paul looked about ten with his baby face." We're getting into speculation territory, but I think that is the #1 reason why the nine month age gap was such a big deal. Paul wanted to be John's equal, not the kid brother, so he didn't want to appear to be treating George as an equal. I suspect that in the early days in particular, he treated George differently when John was not around then when John was. It's not an uncommon dynamic among kids - but one that is likely to create resentment. Make Paul out to be George's mother erases that.
but I don’t know what it is you want me to do! In period and in fact, I want you all for whatever you are.
Wow, I had not seen that quote before. Yeah, it does sound like a reference to Dig a Pony.
I think that John thought he was more see-through than he actually was. "Everybody knows, I'm sure," he sang in Yes It Is, as if everyone else were thinking about his relationship humiliations (paranoia again). And hello, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. And I think he went so over-the-top in trying to cover it up that he didn't notice he had become even harder to read than Paul. And anyway, Paul was perfect and could clearly read his mind. :)
Re: Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-21 12:52 pm (UTC)I get your point, especially re: Paul and George and those measly nine months, more about that in the minute. Mind you, the whle "dysfunctional family" metaphor (complete with casting George as the surly teenage son) has its origin not with us fans but with Ray Connolly, who at least counts as a contemporary witness. (But also admits that he knew George the least of the four. Plus of course he hadn't known them as actual teenagers.)
Yes, Paul and George were both teenagers. Young ones, but teenagers. (They met when the McCartneys were still living in Speke, before Mary McCartney was transferred as midwife and district nurse to Woolton, so someone with a Beatle time table could probably look up the year.)
Paul wanted to be John's equal, not the kid brother, so he didn't want to appear to be treating George as an equal. I suspect that in the early days in particular, he treated George differently when John was not around then when John was. It's not an uncommon dynamic among kids - but one that is likely to create resentment.
Oh quite. One of the things which fascinated me when I read my first non-Norman or Davies biography was that something I'd always assumed to be the case, that George and Paul had their hiking trips before Paul became tight with John, wasn't true, they had them well into 1959. So the idea that Paul took a big brother attitude towards George when John was around whereas before they'd been equals, and also continued to be when John was absent, sounds extremely plausible. All the while George did have an instant hero worship thing for John, which seems to have been the reaction of pretty much everyone who met teenage John Lennon, And a simultanous awareness that however much John and Paul liked him, they were closer to each other.
Mind you: while nine months is indeed a ridiculously small gap, George's rueful "he's still nine months older!" in Anthology does underline that once it became a factor, it never stopped. Wasn't also in Anthology Paul makes it one and a half or even two years? Which is the age gap between him and Mike, not him and George, which is also pretty telling, because I do think of the Beatles, Paul and George had the most sibling like relationship, including the resentment part but also the awareness that no matter the quarrell, sooner or later you'll reconcile because while you can divorce your partner, you can't divorce family. (On a tangent, Mike McCartney has a lot in common with George, including instant hero worship for John Lennon and finding Paul overbearing at times. George, though, once described him as a mere kid. What with the age gap.) One last thing, speaking of Mike: Paul was an older brother, George a youngest brother in their respective biological families. Having been a big sister, I can certify this does imprint on you, not always in ways you are aware of until called out on them, and I assume it's the same for little brothers.
Re: Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-22 12:41 pm (UTC)Ha. George probably looked down on Mike because he wanted Paul to see him as an equal (and John).
You seem like an older sister to me. And I have an older sister, so I would know.
Re: Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-22 01:10 pm (UTC)Re: Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-23 12:52 am (UTC)Re: Response to Comments 5
Date: 2016-11-23 06:22 am (UTC)Addendum: How many years ago again?
Date: 2016-11-21 04:57 pm (UTC)But you know, I went to school with Paul. He was a year older than me. I met him when I was 13 [sic; 11] and we were together for 17 years until we split. People in America think that we got together around 1964 and split up in 1968. But from 1956 [sic; 1954?] I was hanging around with Paul and, a little bit after, John.
When you’re so close, you tend to lock each other up in pigeonholes. […] It was a part of our splitting up. But at the same time I have a tendency to defend Paul—John and Ringo too—if anyone else said anything without qualification about them. After going through all that together, there must be something good about it.
Re: Addendum: How many years ago again?
Date: 2016-11-25 12:05 am (UTC)Re: Addendum: How many years ago again?
Date: 2016-11-25 05:53 am (UTC)Re: Addendum: How many years ago again?
Date: 2017-01-03 02:30 am (UTC)