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Have you read the Ian Leslie book about John and Paul? If so, I would love to hear your take on it!

I am very hesitant to read it because Ian Leslie did a very weaselly admission in the introduction that he lifted his ideas and conclusions from "women" on the internet, AKA us. As far as I can tell Leslie plagiarized Beatles tumblr as well as Beatles fujoshis on Twitter. Add in the fact that Leslie is a very unpleasant TERF who lives his entire live on Current Year Twitter being a JK Rowling reply guy and I'm not really comfortable with the idea of reading it. He's a guy who pretends to be all in on "women's rights" but when it down to making a quick buck off of McLennon, he shamelessly ripped off those same women that he claims he's standing up for. I haven't seen any proof that he had the decency to talk about which social media accounts that lead to him becoming "enlightened" which means he isn't citing anything which means he is a filthy fucking plagiarist. And I have a long history of dealing with plagiarists in this fandom and I'm not about that life.

I'm not going to say I'll never ever read it but if I do then it's because I borrowed it from the library or got a second hand copy. And there are other Beatle books I want to read first.

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Me and John, we’d known each other for a long time. Along with George and Ringo, we were best mates. And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away…

There’s something disturbing about it. You ask yourself, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t. After that you’ve got to get trepanned or you’ve got to meditate for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make a decision which way you’re going to go.

I would walk out into the garden – ‘Oh no, I’ve got to go back in.’ It was very tiring, walking made me very tired, wasted me, always wasted me. But ‘I’ve got to do it, for my well-being.’ In the meantime John had been sitting around very enigmatically and I had a big vision of him as a king, the absolute Emperor of Eternity. It was a good trip. It was great but I wanted to go to bed after a while. 

I’d just had enough after about four or five hours. John was quite amazed that it had struck me in that way. John said, ‘Go to bed? You won’t sleep!’ ‘I know that, I’ve still got to go to bed.’ I thought, now that’s enough fun and partying, now… It’s like with drink. That’s enough. That was a lot of fun, now I gotta go and sleep this off. But of course you don’t just sleep off an acid trip so I went to bed and hallucinated a lot in bed. I remember Mal coming up and checking that I was all right. ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, I could feel every inch of the house, and John seemed like some sort of emperor in control of it all. It was quite strange. Of course he was just sitting there, very inscrutably.

— Paul McCartney, c/o Barry Miles, Many Years From Now. (1997)

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As a thank you to all the lovely people who’ve already responded to my last post, given me suggestions, and otherwise expressed general interest in the fanmix, an embarrassing glimpse! Into the work-in-progress. Nothing is on stable definitive ground, and I’m still at a loss for how to present everything, but that should go without saying. 

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Your last post was so perfect I want to frame it and hang it over my bed

Print it out and put it into your commonplace book instead!

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Thank you for your refreshingly honest comments about Yoko Ono. I find people’s sycophancy towards her and refusal to examine her behaviour a bit sickening, to be honest. There’s clearly an unspoken rule that Yoko is off limits, which is very strange, given that no other person or subject is. Anyway, what I would like to ask you is this: to what extent, if any, do you think Yoko was herself a victim? Did she simply find herself surrounded by bad people who manipulated her (the Sams, John Green, Fred Seaman, etc), or did she seek those people out to do her bidding? From what we know of the plan she made at the start with Tony and the fact that Dan Richter (a very unsettling character in the whole sordid tale) was an old friend who she brought in as part of that plan, I think the latter. But most people on here think she’s great and that she couldn’t help being mentally ill, so hey, maybe it’s just me and my cynicism that says she’s every bit as wicked as her ex-employees claim. What do you think?

When it comes to how Yoko is treated, there's genuinely a lot of nasty history there so fans on tumblr try to tread carefully. It's not an exaggeration that Yoko faced a lot of horrible racism when she was with John and there were even moments when John had to shield her from physical harm. And she was a lightning rod of criticism for lots of other reasons. Once John died she was essentially put in the role of "grieving widow" and boy howdy she milked that forever but it also meant that people were suddenly less willing to criticize her because they didn't want to add to her troubles.

Not to mention John and Yoko worked very hard to network with up and comers once they realized old hands like Ray Connelly wasn't going to play ball with them since they were too experienced. They created a lot of journalistic careers by making the right friends in the 1970s. Many media personalities feel indebted to them and would happily throw themselves in front of a car if Mommy Yoko and Daddy John don't suffer even a whiff of a papercut. When you read Eliot Mintz's book you realize that John and Yoko very deliberately targeted emotionally vulnerable people with empty lives and no strong parental figures so that they could become a quasi-family to them. That's what happened to poor Mintz, John would scream racial slurs at him (because Mintz is Jewish) and Mintz would just kind of. Stand there and take it while John screeched and squalled trying to pretend he was still a bigshot and not a drunkard in his 30s abusing his personal assistant. So much of the public bubble you've noticed is a result of John and Yoko's recruiting tactics. Celebrities usually get a level of protection but John and Yoko cynically courted and elevated the right people to wrap themselves in adamantium.

Fans try too hard to handle her lightly as a result of all the heat she took after marrying John, especially since a bit more is now known about her life and how she grew up and how her dad didn't treat her very well. I also think that there's an element of disbelief, like Yoko's crimes are insane and outlandish, no one wants to believe that they are true. And I know from personal experience that if you try to bring outlandish but true things to someone's attention about their favorite celebrity, you immediately get screaming and hysterics. Cult think is strong.

I don't think Beatle fans on tumblr necessarily buy in to excuses about mental illness and trauma but I do think that they're scared of being criticized or being accused of racism if they're too hard on Yoko. Tumblr users are uniquely vulnerable to that sort of thing because of this website's history and demographics so they take the easy route. I don't really blame them tbh, you never know when something is going to blow up in your face and who wants to court that trouble? There's no benefit to talking about Yoko's problems and abuse of John and Sean in depth since most people are just here for the fanart.

But to move on to your question: I think Yoko was an experienced con artist and manipulator with a genuine artistic vision but I also think she got in way over her head. Yoko's thing appears to have been that she and Tony would scam John with art pieces and that's why they did insane shit like making a contract to split the earnings they got from John 50/50. Get him to buy some plastic crap (that was quite literally all the rage in the 60s "zomg plastic!!!!") and then take the money and run. But I think Yoko sensed early that John was an easy mark and that he was someone she could pump and dump. I think that Yoko started seeing dollar signs and pursued John to get a bigger and bigger payday, she was chasing that dragon.

When it comes to the people Yoko was surrounded by, it's another case of her walking in with her eyes wide open but not realizing how completely in over her head she was. She very deliberately surrounded herself with con artists just like her because she thought it would be easier to control John and fortify her power over him. There were outliers like John Green/Charlie Swan where she believed his bullshit (the man is a masterful con artist) but she was convinced that she was much smarter and savvier than she really was and that she would see through any scams. She was blinded by her pride and never realized just how many rides she was taken for. Like IIRC Charlie Swan helped someone fence a fake painting to her that she paid millions for lol. They realized that she was an easy mark specifically because of her conviction that she was a worldly and experience player. Reader, she is not.

You can see this mindset during her life with John, they were hiring people off the street to work for them and never noticed they were being robbed blind. Like she and John were hoarders to the Nth degree, they bought all those extra condos in the Dakota specifically so that had storage units for all the useless shit they bought. Hundreds maybe thousands of shirts, pants, dresses, coats, scarves, jewelry, never worn and never catalogued, never looked after. Paintings and ancient artifacts stolen from Egypt on the black market, Yoko may have purchased as many as two different Egyptian mummies. Those people that they brought in from the street learned quickly that they could steal whatever they wanted and John and Yoko would never notice. A few of them were caught but there was one case where someone lifted 5 Hermès scarves from Yoko and she didn't notice for over a month and then dragged her heels on filing the police report. Because the Hermès scarves were not actually important since she had dozens of them in the storage apartments. I imagine the staff that stayed on learned quickly that they could steal freely so long as they were smart about it. God knows that's what I would do lmao.

But the point is that Yoko knowingly took in people who were willing to steal from her because she thought she could outsmart or control them, she had no idea how to defend against complicated tactics like "I'll put this in my bag and walk out with it at the end of my shift." I have the feeling John took the theft a lot more seriously than she did. Not that he was willing to do his bit and look after their collection of high end junk, I can't imagine what all their expensive clothes looked like after 10 years in that storage unit since neither of them protected them from pests.

Yoko willingly took these people on and invited them into her home. She and John thought they could use the likes of Charlie Swan and Fred Seaman and the Sams the same way they used journalists like Jann Wenner. What John and Yoko did not realize is that journalism is Hollywood for ugly people, that journalists are uniquely deficient in character or backbone and that journalists are always on the look out for a new Daddy and Mommy to pat them on the head and say "good job son!" Journalists and Hollywood actors are the same, they have holes in their chests were Mom's love and Dad's pride should be.

The problem for Yoko is that the scam artists she hired were extremely skilled, experienced, and ice cold. I love Charlie Swan's book Dakota Days and I believe every word of it (I can repost my review of it if you like) but especially because he coldly shows how childish and self absorbed John and Yoko really were. While they were faffing around doing rich people shit like flying around to random cities based on one guy's bespoke numerology, Charlie Swan grew up having to work for a living before getting into the astrology business. He knew what it was like to work difficult jobs for little money and even attended university and earned a degree in a time before universities became diploma mills. He was savvy and educated and lived an entire life before meeting John and Yoko, got spiritual fulfillment and assurance from his magickal practice. Charlie Swan did not have a hole in his chest where Mom's love and Dad's pride should be. Which meant he simply could not be manipulated the way a journalist can be manipulated. And Yoko Ono could not comprehend this and could do nothing about it. Nothing she said or did had any power over Charlie. She couldn't do anything to him and he frequently scammed her out of millions all while laughing up his sleeve. She thought she could control him but the truth is he had her completely under his thumb. Kind of amazing actually.

The thing that has always baffled me about Yoko is how easy it is to kick her around and stand up to her. John Lennon too as a matter of fact, I don't understand this handwringing and moaning and fear around his "great wit." I grew up on 4chan, I know people who could turn John inside out with a well placed photoshop. It's genuinely baffling to me that Yoko and John were not savagely and relentlessly bullied. They should have been. It lead John and Yoko to develop inflated egos where they thought they were genuinely intimidating. They never realized how pathetic and easily taken in they were because everyone else found it more useful and lucrative to scam them. It's fascinating that Yoko willingly brought these people into her life with John and never once realized that there was a problem.

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In interviews they stress over and over again the obvious facts: they have been at the game seriously just over six years; that much of their early work was adolescent and imitative; that they can hope to live and create for another forty years; and that they have total financial freedom to develop in any way they please. “None of us has barely started,” Paul says. “At first we wanted to make money, now we’ve got it, a fantastic platform of money to dive off into anything. People say we’ve had a fantastic success and that is all. We don’t look at it that way. We look at our lives as a whole, think in terms of forty more years of writing. I wouldn’t mind being a white-haired old man writing songs, but I’d hate to be a white-haired old Beatle at the Empress Stadium, playing for people. We might write longer pieces, film scores – I know we want to write the whole score of our next film. We might write specifically for other people, write for different instruments – you name it, and it’s possible we could do it.” Their development has already, in fact, brought them fully around one circle: Marshall Chess, head of Chess Records which records Chuck Berry, has asked John and Paul to write songs for Berry, who until now has written all his songs himself. The boys now influence their influences. John and Paul like to write songs and so far they have hardly had to work at it. “I’d never struggle writing a song till it hurt,” John says, “I’d just forget it and try something else.” The direct sense of their own enjoyment comes through in the songs. Each one, from the first to the last, is a direct statement of a simple emotional idea. Perhaps in some cases the emotion is a juvenile one. They would be the first to admit that. Yet each song is honest. None has the syrupy sentimentality of the songs written by adults for teenagers. This transparent honesty is the key to both the appeal and quality of songs. In that way their work is a perfect mirror of themselves, the boys whose candid simplicity has baffled and annoyed their elders. “One thing that modern philosophy, existentialism and things like that, has taught people, is that you have to live now,” says Paul. “You have to feel now. We live in the present, we don’t have time to figure out whether we are right or wrong, whether we are immoral or not. We have to be honest, be straight, and then live, enjoying and taking what we can.”

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, interview w/ Michael Lydon for Newsweek: Lennon and McCartney: Songwriters — A Portrait from 1966 (March, 1966). (unpublished)

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January 13th, 1969 (Twickenham Film Studios, London): John contends with how the force of his partnership with Paul and his relationship with Yoko has negatively affected George and perhaps directly contributed to George’s walkout on the group three days prior. (Note: Follows shortly after this clip. My apologies for the vagueness; this is a very difficult excerpt to interpret, and I change my mind about it constantly, as the emotional nuances of what is being conveyed shift significantly depending on whom you presume John is speaking to (Paul or Yoko) about whom (Paul, George, or Yoko) and whom it is in reference to or is directed towards (Paul, George, or Yoko), word to word. I did initially try to indicate who’s who in brackets next to the relevant pronouns, but the transcript got dreadfully cluttered, and as I said, I have hardly nailed myself to a mast. Basically, this is a fannish Rorschach test and Your Mileage May Vary.)

JOHN: And it’s just that, you know. It’s only this year that you’ve suddenly realised, like who I am, or who he is, or anything like that. But the thing is—

PAUL: But I still haven’t realised that. What I’m – the process.

YOKO: [inaudible]

JOHN: Yeah yeah, but you realise that some – like you were saying, like George was some other part. But up till then, you’d had a – your thing that carried you forward. [pause; Yoko speaking?] I know, I’d adjusted before you. Alright, that would make me hipper than you, but I know that I’d adjusted to you before that – for selfish reasons, and for good reasons, not knowing what else to do, and for all these reasons. I’d adjusted to all these and allowed you [inaudible] – you know, if you wanted to let me— [inaudible] —very, very… whatever it is. But this year, you’ve seen, you’ve seen what you’ve been doing, and what everybody’s been doing, and not only did we feel guilty about it, the way we all feel guilty about our relationship to each other, because we could do more… 

YOKO: [inaudible]

JOHN: I know, the thing is that I’m – I can’t – I’m not putting any blame on you for only suddenly realising it, see, because it’s [inaudible] our game, you know; it might have been masochistic, but the goal was still the same, self-preservation. And I knew what I liked about that. I know where the – even if I didn’t know where I was at, you know, the table’s there, and… let him do what he wants, and George too, you know…

PAUL: I know. I know—

JOHN: And I have won.

PAUL: But this thing has been—

JOHN: But I think you—

PAUL: You have—

JOHN: I feel it’s you.

PAUL: Whatever it is, you have. Yeah, I know. Well, I’ve had [inaudible]—

JOHN: Because you – ’cause you’ve suddenly got it all, you see.

PAUL: Mm.

JOHN: I know that, because of the way I am, like when we were in Mendips, like I said, “Do you like me?” or whatever it is. I’ve always – uh, played that one.

PAUL: [laughs nervously] Yes.

JOHN: So.

PAUL: Uh, I’d been watching, I’d been watching. I’d been watching the picture.

YOKO: Go back to George. What are we going to do about George?

JOHN: Yeah, I’m – yeah, sure. But this year, suddenly, it’s all happened to you, and you sort of go – you’re taking the blame, suddenly, as if, uh… Oh, he’d say, “Oh yeah, you know [inaudible],” as if I’ve never known it. And then he thought, “Fucking hell. I know what he’s like. I know he used to kick people. I know how he connived with Len, Ivan. I know him, you know? Fuck him.” And then, oh, but, but right, I’ve done such things… all that. So you’ve taken the five years that [inaudible], you’ve taken the five years of trouble, this year. So half of me says, alright, you know I’ll do anything to save you, to help you. And the other half of me says, well serves him fucking right. I’ve chewed through fucking shit because of him for five years, and he’s only just realised what he was doing [to her?]. So, and that’s something – we’ve both known it, you know? [laughs] And it is incredible. [pause] PAUL: Yeah.

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FRICKE: In your work with younger artists like Kanye or Dave Grohl, do you feel the challenge that you had within the Beatles, especially from John? Has that ever been replaced in any way? PAUL: No. I don’t think it could be. At some point, you have to realize, some things just can’t be. John and me, we were kids growing up together, in the same environment with the same influences: He knows the records I know, I know the records he knows. You’re writing your first little innocent songs together. Then you’re writing something that gets recorded. Each year goes by, and you get the cooler clothes. Then you write the cooler song to go with the cooler clothes. We were on the same escalator – on the same step of the escalator, all the way. It’s irreplaceable – that time, friendship and bonding. FRICKE: Are there people you can turn to now for advice about a new song or album? PAUL: In music, no. I rely on the experience and knowledge of what would have happened if I’d brought it to the Beatles. That is the best gauge. FRICKE: What about life in general? PAUL: I have some very good friends. Lorne Michaels and I are pretty close. I can always go for a drink with him – we can talk pretty genuinely. I have relatives, my brother and my wife. Nancy is very strong that way. But music, no. It’s very difficult. You can’t top John. And John couldn’t top Paul.

Paul McCartney, interview w/ David Fricke for Rolling Stone: The Paul McCartney Interview. (August 11th, 2016)

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Maharishi is not a religion. It is merely a system for meditation. We used to talk to him about that: ‘Well what about God?’ we’d say and he’d say, ‘I’ll leave that up to you. What I’m offering is a system of meditation.’ And it was essential at the time, with acid posing all these questions of eternity. With acid you get like a Woody Allen film – asking all these questions: what is the meaning, why am I doing it? India was suggested by the fact that we heard the music first of all. It slotted very interestingly into our framework of music because Western music is arranged in a certain way by Bach, Beethoven – the old boys – who we are still echoing with the framework as set down by these Europeans. All based on different chords. Indian music is different: it’s all on one chord and that’s an essential, very interesting difference for us, because there’s nothing greater than not having to bother with a bunch of bloody chords … ‘What’s this? F sharp, H flat minor … Oh my God!’ whereas in Indian stuff there’s one. And you can go ‘Nyahhh’ [imitates sitar] for twelve hours if you like. So that started to expand our interest, particularly George Harrison. He met Ravi Shankar through that. We got friends with some of the Asian Music Circle and the Commonwealth music and that kind of expanded into, ‘Well, if you like the music and you like Ravi Shankar, they have all these great festivals and these guys run round naked with mud on them and why they do that is cos they believe in this religion …’ and you started to hear of the Bhagavad Gita and stuff like that. And it was all a little bit hazy because it wasn’t like an official religion, you were chucking in bits of Khalil Gibran and this sort of stuff, Siddhartha, which wasn’t necessarily to do with it, but all seemed the same kind of thing. We’d all been brought up as Sunday school kids or whatever, traditional religious beliefs, and it hadn’t really worked for most of us because we’d say, ‘Why is there then suffering in the world?’ and the vicar said, ‘Just because,’ and we said, ‘Oh yeah … that’s a great answer.’ So none of us had been able to be totally convinced in prayer until meditation. Then you started to get the idea: one note, one concentrating, one lessening of stress, one reaching of a sort of new level did seem to get you in contact with a better part of yourself. It was a very hectic world one was living in and this inner peace seemed to be a better thing. If nothing else, what Maharishi was suggesting was a pleasant relief from all that in order to recharge your batteries – that basically was all he said. They’ve expanded it now, they’re interested in flying, actual levitation now. The joke was that when we were out in Rishikesh, that was one of the things we were interested in … we were almost throwing in the Indian rope trick too. It was all part of a new thing and we would ask him, ‘Did they do that? Was that just a magic trick? Do they really levitate, Maharishi? What about levitation, is that actually possible?’ and he said, ‘Yes it is, there are people who do it,’ but he took it as, ‘Oh, you wanna see some levitation, well there’s a fellow down the road, he does it. We can have him up, he’ll do a little bit for us if you like,’ and we said, ‘Great,’ but he never actually showed. I say, ‘Give me one photograph and I’ll have you on News at Ten tonight and you’ll be a major source of interest to the world and your organisation will swell its ranks.’ The whole thing about love and peace was suggested by meditation: sitting in a room on your own doesn’t suggest war.

Paul McCartney, c/o Jonathon Green, Days in the Life. (1988)

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John in interviews seemed most focused on being in control of a narrative to the point that it’s hard to discern his true thoughts and feelings. When it comes to comments on Paul he comes off aggressively dismissive and self righteously defensive over perceived wrongs done to him and Yoko. He all but insists he creatively outgrew Paul and finds Paul’s creative default to be lacking in depth and sometimes when he tries really hard, he churns out something of worth (he really nailed that specific brand of backhanded compliments). It’s like he pities Paul for wanting the band to go on and then condescends him for taking the measures to dissolve their partnership. Paul seemed to have taken a more or less neutral stance where he jabbed back but didn’t hit back nearly hard enough—makes me wonder how John would’ve reacted had Paul been just as intentionally hurtful or whether he just went fully cold and totally silent on any thoughts on John. What do you make of it all?

Paul's attitude is that he learned a long time ago not to try and compete with John with insults. He considers John to be a great wit and capable of saying very cruel and hurtful things. Paul doesn't have that kind of killer instinct and there's discussion buried in my blog about it, because Mike McCartney made a comment many years ago that he and Paul shared this with James McCartney, that they don't have the ability to just be cruel to someone that way. And because John was famous, no one was willing to form a fist and slam it into the top of his skull to flatten him into an accordion, Tom & Jerry style. And truthfully I think Paul knew that John was full of shit and lashing out.

The thing is John isn't actually that cutting or insulting? Like apparently one of the """""""witty""""""" jokes that he had in Hamburg was that Stuart was a Cancer sign or something and that meant LOL YOU'LL DIE OF CANCER and other such lame as fuck attempts at being funny. For some bizarre reason everyone was scared of John so no one was willing to tell him to his face that he was a dumbass and should stick to music.

So frankly I've always been confused as to how Paul ever got offended over the shitty things John said about him in the 1970s because 70s John's utterances are comedy gold. He just didn't see it because he was such a turd and he forged a mini media empire from fatherless brown nosers who desperately sought his approval. (Because THEN they could go "Fuck you father, John Lennon is my new dad!!!!!!!!!" Jann Wenner would 100% of be photoshopping his face over Sean's in the Ono family photos on Instagram if this were taking place in the 21st century. And he would proudly display them on Twitter with some "blessings from our family <3" caption.)

But I'm getting off track. The point of all this is that yeah, John was a narcissist and Paul didn't hit back as hard as he deserved. John was extremely reactionary, he was willing to say absolutely anything if it hurt Paul no matter how idiotic or contradictory. Remember that he could do this because he deliberately recruited journalists who were willing to print whatever he said and never challenge him ever, he didn't want anyone with a backbone that was willing to say "wait a minute, that doesn't make sense."

At the end of the day I think Paul had to make a decision. Did he want to punch back, hard, at a guy with notorious anger issues that was hopped up on drugs and willing to shit out lies on demand? Or did he want to say "shut the fuck up John" and pump out six brand new albums in the time it took for John's limo to reach the Rolling Stones news desk lmao. Paul seems to have understood that John's interviews only really amounted to a bunch of hot air and that what really mattered was the musical output. And that is where Paul excels and eventually John folded up into the fetal position while Paul dominated the entire world with Wings. At which point John magically stopped giving so many interviews, had a kid, and started puttering around his house in his robe and hair curlers reading the Dear Abby and astrology sections of the newspaper. Lmao.

The important thing to remember about John during the 1970s is that he was a drunk dumbass that was walking around high all the time. Junkies are black holes of selfishness and cruelty. Paul doesn't have to waste his time with an insult war on a guy who tried to murder his girlfriend in a hot tub and then sniveled about it the next day. Objectively speaking. What exactly is the difference between John and the poor bastard on Skid Row? The fact that he has money?

John's words were hurtful as all get out but Paul won the war. He had a beautiful wife who loved him, children who he was present for, a nice home that he had tons of fun renovating himself, a London property, experiences traveling all over the world, and he could pick and choose his substances and didn't struggle with addiction. At the time John was just another washed up remnant of the 1960s who couldn't hack it in the 1970s and on top of that he helpfully contributed to the Nixon campaign by being such an loudmouth pest the he helped polarize the American public into voting for Nixon in a landslide. Nice job breaking it hero.

If I were Paul then I wouldn't waste time with putdowns either. He already knew he had won in every conceivable avenue and that John's words were meaningless wind. He and eventually George, conceived of the most brutal punishment imaginable for a man like John Lennon: they ignored him. Paul did not spend every minute of the 70s fretting over John, he got on with his life and focused on his children and music. I imagine there were stretches of weeks and maybe even months where he simply did not think about John because John was not doing anything noteworthy or important. I suspect part of the reason why John gave those interviews in the first place was because he was trying to get Paul's attention and couldn't be civil over a phone call.

The simple fact of the matter is that John played well with the media but the tastes of the masses side with Paul every single time. He consistently outsells the other Beatles, put out tons of new music that mostly every body loves, and makes a specific point of putting his thumb in the eyes of critics who have to review his albums knowing they'll be successful lmao. John had plenty of mass success but it just wasn't a competition since Paul broke that standard over his knee. Liking John is more of an ideological point now rather than a musical one. Paul has won the music war which was the only one that actually mattered. And they both knew that.

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John Lennon on the roof of his East 52nd Street penthouse, New York, photographed by Bob Gruen. (August 29th, 1974)

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“Writing songs,” says Paul McCartney, “is like following a trail – and you never know where it will lead you.”

Today, the trail has led us to McCartney’s studio in rural Sussex. Rabbits snuffle around the garden and the English Channel shimmers in the distance. There are worse places to work. A quick scan of the studio kitchen reveals a copy of Mary McCartney’s recipe book and a John Lennon calendar; March’s pin-up is “Moody John” in sunglasses posed against the New York skyline.

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Mark Blake for Q: Songs in the key of Paul. (May, 2015)

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November 26th, 1984 (Soho Square, London): On British television show The Tube, Paul is asked about the recently published biographies of John and the Beatles and his and John’s respective portrayals. Paul answers tangentially. (Note: The interviewer would have been referring to Philip Norman’s Shout!, Peter Brown’s The Love You Make, and Ray Coleman’s Lennon: The Definitive Biography.) 

INTERVIEWER: Have you read any of the books that have been written about John?

PAUL: Yeah. A couple of them.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think about all of those books? How do you think they portray you?

PAUL: Oh, I know they portray me as the villain. What’s happened with John with me is it’s like, once, we were equal. Lennon and McCartney. While we were working together, it was kind of equal. We were considered pretty equal, really, because we were just producing equal amounts. Um, but when the split of the Beatles happened, and John moved away to New York, and the business stuff made us very bitchy with each other. What happened is John then became the sort of tough one, the hard one, with the experimental edge, and I became just the soppy one, just writing the odd ballad and stuff. And John of course contributed to that by slagging me off and calling me Engelbert Humperdinck and stuff. [laughs] Thanks a lot. Which was at the time, it was like oh god, who needs all this… But I didn’t really want to come back at him and say, “Ah, let me tell about you,” because I knew we’d just have a big media row and I just wasn’t up for that. I’m really glad now that I didn’t get into all that.

…

INTERVIEWER: I’ve just been reading the Ray Coleman book—

PAUL: Mm. That’s the same kind of thing, you know—

INTERVIEWER: —and there’s a tendency because he’s dead he’s a genius, and you’re alive and so you’re not, a bit.

PAUL: The day John was killed, on the radio, I was listening to all, like everyone, listening to all the news bulletins trying to find out, and there was an interview with him saying, “I don’t want to be a martyr, don’t worry, I’m not sticking myself up as a martyr,” and so forth. But of course, you can’t help it, it’s what’s happened, he’s sort of become a martyr. I don’t think he would have liked that, I don’t know… Um, with somebody – see, what it is is like, somebody like Ray Coleman’s got his opinion. You know, he’s entitled. I sort of know why he thinks that, and why he thinks that I’m just a songwriter and John was the genius. I know why it is. John was a very forceful personality. Mostly – I mean, if we had arguments within the group, I remember George would turn to us, “Oh, he’s won again. John’s won again.” Just because he shouted loudest. And that often used to happen. “Ah, I’m not bloody doing that—” “Alright then, alright alright.” So there was a lot of that going on. So you do tend to get forced into another position, you know, if somebody’s very loud and very – I mean, I’m not saying he was just loud, he was a wit. He was a funny man, John, he was a clever guy, I loved him, you know. But somehow we got this anti position.

It all started – I didn’t like Allen Klein. And they wanted to go with him. I figured that was a really bad thing to do and would lose us everything we’d gained. Later, that turned out to be true, you know, everyone got rid of Allen Klein and said thank you to me for it. But while I was trying to get rid of him, I had to go through through all this craziness, and it seemed like I was pitted against them for my own gain. It was actually for the common good. But you know, as I say, so you know… what can I tell you. 

INTERVIEWER: Most of the books, though, even the ones like the Coleman one where he is bending over backwards to make him sound as good a person as possible—

PAUL: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: —by virtue of illustrating his incisive wit, show him as incredibly cruel to the people who he apparently loved most, like you—

PAUL: Yeah, no—

INTERVIEWER: —and Yoko and Cynthia.

PAUL: It’s right, it’s right. You know, that’s the thing. It’s like, I mean, I don’t really like to go on too much about somebody who can’t defend himself and stuff, but that is the truth, you know, is that like… None of us was the genius. None of us. John and I did most of the writing, but you know, George wrote ‘Something In the Way She Moves’, and that’s the one Sinatra does. Do you know what I mean? After all the Lennon-McCartney… [Interviewer laughs] No, do you know what I mean? That’s the one Sinatra does. So even George was writing great stuff. So I think we were all equal. And Ringo, although he didn’t really contribute to the writing and stuff, he was a very equal force in it all. So that – I mean, what I’m saying is that John isn’t just the wonderful picture that begins to get painted because he sort of gets martyred. Um, he had his down side, that’s for sure. Anyone who knew him knew he could be really mean. But that doesn’t mean to say he was a mean person. He could actually be very very warm as well, you know. So he sort of balanced it up. He was a bit of both, and I think I am too. I think what comes over – what they all say in the books is I’m ruthlessly ambitious, you know, really, ooh, sweep everything out me way…

INTERVIEWER: J.R.

PAUL: Ooh, really, you know. J.R. But it’s just not true. I mean, I’m not like that. And if I am, John was every bit as ruthlessly ambitious as I am. But you can’t help your image.

[bambi-kinos]

May 14th, 1968 (New York): Mitchell Krause talks to John and Paul about culture, business, politics, and the Maharishi. (Note: I feel bad for not having posted anything on @amoralto in a while, so here’s a full half-hour interview! Until I gather myself to type up a comprehensive transcription, a rough transcript is available here. If there are any playback problems, a d/l link is available here.)

[bambi-kinos]

2012: In the BBC documentary Mr. Blue Sky, Paul describes Jeff Lynne as a producer.

PAUL: Working together was great. ’Cause you want someone who can control the situation without appearing to. And that comes from his character. He just is that kind of guy, you know. He gets things done, but you wouldn’t know he was pulling the strings.

[bambi-kinos]

1967/January 1968? (Kenwood, Weybridge, Surrey): John plays the piano as he listens to the radio and old records (noticeably, ‘Girl Of My Dreams’). 

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Although John enjoyed debunking older music, particularly show tunes, which he told Paul he hated, buried deep in him was a sweeter person than he wanted to exhibit, particularly in the Beatles years. ‘The thing about John was that he was all upfront,’ Paul says. ‘Most people stayed up late and got drunk with him and thought they were seeing John. You never saw John! Only through a few chinks in his armour did I ever see him because the armour was so tough. John was always on the surface tough, tough, tough.’

There were contradictions in Paul’s partner that gave him away, however. ‘He didn’t like many musicals, although he enjoyed West Side Story. Yet one of his favourite songs was “Girl of My Dreams”. And he loved “Little White Lies”. He also went on to write the lullaby “Good Night”, which Ringo sang. That side of John he’d never dare show, except in very rare moments.’

— Paul McCartney, c/o Ray Coleman, McCartney: Yesterday and Today. (1996)

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McCartney’s interest in the “different mindsets” of other songwriters greatly intrigues him, and has led him on a new and unexpected path. “Recently I’ve been thinking about the signs of the zodiac,” he says. The Beatles spent time with a spiritual master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in the late ‘60s. But soon after, McCartney’s interest in mystical matters seemed to wane. “I’ve never been into the zodiac before, because in the ‘70s it was always [slips into a stoned-sounding drawl], ‘Oh ma-a-n, what sign are you?’ And Linda used to say, ‘No Parking’. But just recently I’ve started to think about this wheel of life, and how, at certain points in the year, people get thrown off – and are born.” He pauses. “I don’t even know why I’m saying this…” McCartney goes on to suggest that those born at the same time of the year do share certain characteristics that might, say, make them good songwriters. “I’m Gemini, which is supposed to be artistic, and there are two sides to Gemini. And if you listen to my stuff there are two sides to some of it – Ebony and Ivory, Hello Goodbye… So I never used to believe all this, but now I’m thinking, ‘Maybe there’s something in it.’ People share characteristics. George Harrison was a Pisces and a very different character from me. George was more serious. He could be very un-serious, but there was a core in his character that was serious.” Can he tell people’s star signs just from talking to them? “No, no, no.” Have a go at telling mine, Paul. “I can’t.” OK, I’m Taurus on the cusp of Gemini. “I was going to say that,” he laughs. “I did vaguely think Gemini.”

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Mark Blake for Q: Songs in the key of Paul. (May, 2015)

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One in particular rings true, and that’s ‘Here Today’,” Mr. McCartney’s song for John Lennon. It’s typical of his self-critical attitude that he wanted to use a string quartet behind his acoustic guitar and vocal and then hesitated because he had used a string quartet on ‘Yesterday’,” probably his most celebrated recording. “Finally George Martin and I had a talk about it,” Mr. McCartney said, “and I told him I’d come to the conclusion that I don’t have to stop doing something because I’ve done it once. And he said, ‘You’re right, it’s stupid, we’ve been avoiding using a string quartet ever since ‘Yesterday’, and this song is just screaming out for a string quartet.’ So we worked out the arrangement – I can tell George I want a big ‘C’ chord or something, but he has to work out the voicings because I can’t read music – and we really liked it. “And that was a revelation to me. Because with the Beatles, we always changed our sound on every single track. These days, if you get a good drum sound, you’ll probably use it for the whole album. With the Beatles, after we’d recorded one song, we had to change the drum sound - get a new drum kit, hit a packing case, anything but repeat what we’d done on the previous track. I’d set those kind of expectations for myself. But you can keep changing for change’s sake for just so long – until you run out of good ideas. I could have tried a Mongolian yak quartet on ‘Here Today’ and it would have been very different, everyone would have talked about it. But it probably would have sounded bad.” The song’s lyrics are addressed to Mr. Lennon, who denigrated Mr. McCartney’s post-Beatles music in several interviews and in one of his own songs and who once remarked that although he and Mr. McCartney collaborated for a number of years, they never really knew each other. “And my response to that,” Mr. McCartney said, “is that even though he put me down, I’m not going for it. We were friends, and we got it on, we got a lot on. Songwriting is like psychiatry; you sit down and dredge up something that’s inside, bring it out front. And I just had to be real and say, John, I love you. I think being able to say things like that in songs can keep you sane.”

Paul McCartney, interview w/ Robert Palmer for the New York Times: Music View; Paul McCartney’s latest is exquisite but flawed. (April 25th, 1982)