dadswithipads

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"Their interest in each other was deeper and more complex than it appeared to anyone watching the encounter. There was instant recognition, a chemical connection made between the two boys [...] For all the circling, posturing, and checking out that went on, what it all came down to was love at first sight.”

— Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography

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“An overheard dialogue between John and Paul just after John and Yoko had first slept together and recorded Two Virgins in May 1968. ‘Do you hate me?’ John asked repeatedly. ‘I’m crazy, you know.’ ‘No, I don’t hate you.’ McCartney spoke with his face partly averted from Lennon’s rapt gaze. ‘Aren’t you pissed at me now, Paul? Not even a little bit?’ ‘I’m very proud of you.’ John eased off. ‘Maybe I won’t split.’”

— Bio: McCartney, by Christopher Standford (via bewaremylove)

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If I Fell lyrics written by John Lennon

Autograph manuscript for “If I Fell”, from “A Hard Days Night”, aboard a U.S airline, c. late February, 1963. Written on the back of a valentine which had been given to Paul, and which was apparently the only suitable writing surface available at 30,000 feet, the manuscript is 1 page, written on the verso of the unfolded valentine on one half of the sheet, approximately 11 ½ x 6 in. “If I Fell” is one of John’s most powerfully poignant ballads, and one of the most important and early songs to appear at auction. Ostensibly written while the Beatles were in America for a famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, John, sitting in the plane seat next to Paul suddenly got the inspiration for one of the best songs which would be released on 1964’s landmark “A Hard Days Night.” By the cadence and subtleties of the lyrics you can tell that John already has the music in his head as he fits it with the perfect words. Time stands still, something very special is coming to life as he sits working on the back of Paul’s valentine.

[Intro] If I fell in love with you Would you promise to be true And help me understand /Cause I’ve been in love before And I found that love was more Than just holding hands. 1. If I gave [changed to give] my heart to you I must be sure From the very start that you’re Gonna love me more than her 2. If I trust in you oh please Don’t run and hide If I love you too oh please Don’t hurt my pride like her. (she) Cause I couldn’t stand the pain / And I would be sad / If our new love was in vain / 3. So I hope you see that I / Would love to love you / I hope that she will cry / When she hears that we are two /

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international mclennon day

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ABBEY ROAD STUDIES

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Beatle events.

how Paul and George met

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Beatle events 6

Send in your favorites true beatle events to be turned into a mini comic

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“The lyrics to ‘Hey Jude’ originally went: Hey John, don’t eat my cum. Lick it up, then spit it out. Remember, that cum is bad for you, Especially mine, so spit it out. It was just a silly thing between him and me, y’know, figuring it out and all that. I almost didn’t want him to change it.”

- John Lennon, the Esquire interviews with Todd Roland, 1977 (x)

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paul is literally so competitive that he once challenged active members of the yakuza in a japanese prison to a game of "try to touch the ceiling" because he knew he would win. who does that. WHO does that

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Fuck do you guys think if John had lived we would have gotten some late 90s/early 2000s ish tell all interview where he was suddenly all like "I mean yeah obviously I'm queer. I've known I'm bisexual since the sixties I just couldn't say it before because of how things were. Yes I was in love with Paul, obviously." and then just proceed to tell us all the shit that in this timeline we just have to speculate about and write fanfictions and shit to fill in and like UGH I think about this constantly. Maybe I'm being ridiculous (probably (?) he never would have confessed to the Paul thing lol) but I do feel strongly that we were fucking ROBBED of openly queer John AND I AM SO MAD ABOUT IT.

Obviously that's not the only reason it's sad that he was murdered, OBVIOUSLY. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm saying that. Just something I think about a lot though

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maaaddd day out

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so Fred Seaman, John’s last assistant, in 1981, stole John’s diaries (from 1975,1979,1980) and entrusted them to Robert Rosen, Fred’s friend

When asked about what was in the diaries in an interview, this is what Robert says:

bonus:

source: understanding Lennon/McCartney vol.5 on YouTube

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who has the quote or quotes where john is talking about paul and essentially saying “fuck his wife and his kids (that he cares about for some reason) can’t wait until he’s living in new york with me in a couple of years”

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john on stage thinking about how paul’s close enough to kiss vs paul in the studio forgetting to play because he’s staring at john. whatever

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youve probably answered this before but what DO you think is the most realistic version of what went down?? like do you think paul misinterpreted john's hints or that john never made it clear enough to paul how he felt? i know theres no way to know but you have such a good grasp on their personalities and this seriously might haunt me forever lkadjf

i actually don't think i have ! i wrote a lil speculative Thing about what things would look like if paul were queer and closeted (which is what i think) and that interpretation but never specifically this question but...

this is long and rambly but have my thoughts lmfao

basically To Me i do think they had some sort of sexual relationship. to me it's honestly the most likely scenario given the..... everything. their interactions with each other, some of their songs about each other ("i used to hold you in my arms"), the way things blew up so spectacularly, etc. and my reasoning there is mostly that. we know already that they had really loose sexual boundaries with each other. they jerked off together, they fucked women in the same room together & allegedly together as well. and already just those two/three things constitute as a sexual relationship, but not smth they would've seen as one.

but i do think they did more than that. i mean, it doesn't really matter if they did more than that, the rest of what i'm gonna speculate stands even if all they ever did was jerk off together and fuck women together, but like... aside from the like Mountains of evidence that there was something there, i just think it makes sense w their personalities. john isn't the type of person to have self-restraint and i don't think paul, especially when he was younger, would've turned john down. i think if john was into men (which he was, we know this) and if he was into paul (incredibly likely) then he would've made a move. and i think if he made a move and got rejected he would have raised hell, and that never happened.

i think they probably started doing shit together (again, the extent of that is debatable) and they absolutely did Not think of it as being anything queer. i couldn't tell you the mental loops they tied themselves in there, but i have Some thoughts just based on who they are. i think john probably passed it off as like "a hand's a hand, a mouth's a mouth" type of thing (which is hilariously something yoko talks about him saying in her audio diary during the white album sessions). and i think paul probably saw it (& any other things he was doing with men, if he did) as something fun that feels good and isn't something he needs to like look into deeply. i think neither of them would've thought of themselves as queer, bc they probably thought of queerness as very binary- you're either gay or you're straight. and they both were into women (.....ostensibly) so they couldn't be gay. i think john like realized, on some level, that he was queer and Hated it about himself for a very long time and only started coming to grips with it towards the end of his life. i think paul eventually came around to it but by that time he was married to linda (& if rumors are to believed, possibly having threesomes with her and men lmfao) & i don't think he would Ever want to come out publicly even if he's out privately (which i do think he is).

so why didn't they get together? why is paul so insistent that john was straight and not in love with him? i think they just genuinely never talked about it. ever. like i don't think they had that conversation. if neither of them were gay and their sexual relationship was just john and paul things, there wasn't any need to talk about it. queerness was more acceptable for the young. not in an open sort of way, absolutely not, but in the way that they could tell themselves they'd grow out of it, they were just messing around, etc.

i think things got harder when brian died- he died queer, alone, and in a situation that a lot of people thought was suicide. and ofc, we know the band didn't think it was suicide, and i don't think it was either, but that's the kind of thing that sticks in the back of your mind. esp if you're like john who had a lot of mystical/magical thinking. i think it was a bit of a wake up call. time to grow up. i think they both thought they were each the Only one dealing with actual queer feelings & attraction to the other and were soooo sure the other one was just straight and fucking around. which probably hurt, quite a bit, but wasn't something they wanted to look at anyway.

and when john got with yoko and got serious with her, i think that was the bubble bursting. cynthia was different. they got together so young, he never made her a priority, he cheated on her constantly, belittled her, didn't have a place for her by his side bc he carved that space out exclusively for paul. and you can tell that just by the amount of quotes paul has about john marrying yoko being the catalyst, about it being time to grow up, etc which is insane considering he was already married and so were george and ringo. for years. so it was something deeper than that. and it's bc he was actually taking yoko seriously. paul's spot as john's primary partner got filled by a woman. who john was genuinely in love with, not like cynthia which was a marriage fueled by the age old tale of an unplanned pregnancy and comphet. and paul can't argue with that. like....... if he viewed what they were doing as messing around as kids, with john being straight and him being the one pining, he wouldn't want to fuck up john's chance at a Normal Straight Love. if he were a girl, he could, but he wasn't. what he Could do was match him and grow up too. cue the immediate pivot to get married and have children, eventually fulfilled in linda.

but i don't think he expected the band to implode just bc they stopped being so close in whatever manner. but it did. along with other reasons, obviously- there's a million reasons the band broke up, but i think they could've weathered it if they had kept the closeness they'd had at the beginning. or if they'd been single or even if they'd just kept viewing each other as their primary partner aside from their wives.

i think they both came to terms with what they actually meant to each other in the 70s, but they never actually... told each other. what we have from john is jealous guy, which paul was allegedly told was about him, and that demo version of real love that paul never even heard where he laments about him having a baby/farm and how he used to hold him. there's also (just like) starting over, but that one's easy to see as being for yoko too and paul wouldn't have thought twice about it. then you have now & then and real love, which were on that damn tape for paul :( like he literally didn't hear them until after john died and we know he likes the idea that now & then is about him but even then he doesn't sound totally convinced

for paul we have a lot. but a lot of his like more vulnerable songs were only released after john died. like here today, obviously, but there's also some pretty telling ones that john never would've heard (like best friend, which he played live, but wasn't on any album until 2018. or a more of a Stretch of one but i 100% think is about john, hey diddle, which was kept off ram and only released in 2001).

so like i think they very much both came to grips with the fact that they had been in love with each other, but they never really.... thought that could be returned. so ofc paul's going to say shit like how he likes the theory that john was in love with him or wrote now & then about him. but he doesn't believe it, because to him john was Genuinely straight and he was the weird one. and vice versa. i think i saw a more recent thing from him coming around more on the idea of john being bi, but honestly i think that's just hard for him to come to grips with bc what the hell are you supposed to do with that? like yeah, he was into men, possibly even romantically, on a genuine level, just not him? that's hurtful. i don't think he wants to think of that option. bc that's more likely to him than the idea that john was in love with him and hiding it the whole time. which is also heartbreaking. bc then it's just a tragedy of circumstances and missed chances- which is what i think it was. and neither of those routes are something i think he wants to consider, so john has to be straight in his mind.

but if he's coming around on that, he's probably coming around on one of those two options. i hope it's the latter bc the idea that he'd think even now that john never loved him is just so fucking sad. and considering his comments about now & then, as well as the lyrics video for now & then, i really do think the latter is more likely.

anywayyyyy tl;dr i think they fucked around sexually in Some Way, never said a single thing romantically, both came to terms w their feelings in the 70s but by then it was too late and they didn't think the other one would reciprocate anyway, and now paul's been trying to come to grips w the ambiguity of their relationship for the last 40+ years.

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“I was trying to put it ‘round that I was gay, you know - I thought it would throw them off… dancing at the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with boys… but it never really got off the ground.”

- John Lennon, Hit Parader

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Reanimated a silly little clip from the Beatles cartoon (I may have spent literally a week making this, and it's not even 10 seconds long 😭)