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The Beatles in Plymouth (November 13, 1963)

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In the radio show’s usual ’Thank you for your honesty’ segment Paul finally gets some important questions, such as “Do you trim your downstairs?”, “Have you ever sent a d*ck pic?” and “Have you fed the chickens in the past month?”.

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Paul McCartney and John Lennon with Rory Storm.

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In the glow of a lamp, George nursed the hotel glass of scotch on the arm of the one, musty hotel armchair, and wondered where the fuck he was and why he felt so fucking far away from himself that he was no longer himself at all but someone else who he'd just woken up as that morning. Someone he’d heard on the radio. Someone out of the paper. He’d been on stage last night. He’d been to a club. He’d been to a party. And now he was here in some hotel, and he didn’t know who he was, but he wasn’t George Harrison. Then John began to speak. And that familiar voice perforated through the stale darkness of the room like a lighthouse, and a little of him came back. George stared at him as he absorbed it all, and didn't speak. Out of the sedation of drink and lack of sleep, the instinctive threat of danger rose, quivered, and then darted away as he realised he would have to reply. Talking to John in any state was like walking across hot coals. You had to keep an unflinchingly cool head to do it - or, as was the liberty of P, G and R, have the protection of walking on holy orders. But nevertheless, there was no one in the world who could walk across them with no danger of harm. George swallowed, and moved himself upright. He looked at John with a steady confidence he could just about muster through the fog. ‘I think we’re all scared of that,’ he sported. It wasn’t quite true, of course. Paul’s ambition was far the more fearsome beast. He had no wife or child or big country house to keep him shackled down to earth. But perhaps that made Paul’s the less formidable. No need to lash out against bonds that constrained it. As a result, Paul didn’t fear the mania that was closing in on them in the slightest. Blissful, like Ringo, in his ignorance of the chasm waiting beneath their booted feet that neither John nor George could guess the depth of, nor what lay in wait at the bottom. George was glad Paul wasn’t here to hear this. He could imagine him listening with a crinkled brow to one of these vulnerable confessions, and responding only with a scornful look of are-you-mad? - Which on the surface was true. They had all asked for this - when they had defied their roots, shaken hands with a jew in a pinstriped suit and let the money keep streaming into their bank accounts. Hundreds upon hundreds. Thousands. Now, a million. You don’t get something for nothing. George was beginning to lose himself again. He winced, and dragged himself suddenly back, back into the past where he was shielded by youth's naivety from all the shite of the present day. And in the silence, he could feel John doing the same. He could even sense the place. Slater Street. Ye Cracke, near the Art College. The smell of scallops. Fag butts and girls. And it had the pulsating, aching sense of a wound. George rose from his seat. Silently, he slipped out from the room and left John, returning holding something in his hand. He sat down again and looked at John. The stewed, melancholy eyes of a seal under that ridiculous shameful mop. He handed John the object. One of the combs John had Mimi send him, from Woolworth’s in Penny Lane. Because they were still the best, and they were still the only ones he wanted to use. He tossed it into John’s lap. John was a saint and he was heavy duty, with a generosity that was ready to offer you everything, his heart, his throat, his entrails. And George worshipped him. He would not let the world spill him like water in its thoughtless hands. ’You’re alright. I’ll make Brian book us a holiday the day these next six shows are over. Bring Pattie and Cyn. Sit on the beach and get fat. You’re alright, John.'

“ do you ever get scared ?”

“I get scared all the goddamn time,” John confessed, eyelids heavy from not having slept since fuck knows when. He’d said he didn’t feel like talking much, and sat there like a fat frog with his bottle of gin close at hand. George wasn’t drunk, or maybe he was, but somehow his presence felt necessary. Moral support, perhaps? Never mind the case, having a close friend near to simply listen felt as vital as the drink in John’s hand and the air in his lungs. One kept him dead, the other alive. “Scared of my own ambition, but what’s the use,” Lennon trailed off, reaching for a cigarette from the open pack on the counter. He didn’t light it, instead perching it up in the corner of his mouth and letting it dangle as he spoke. If only the world knew about half the thoughts that swirled about in his head. John had it all; the wife, a kid, wealth, and a fucking successful career, but every now and then he couldn’t help but reminisce on much simpler times. 

Every few seconds, his eyes darted towards his neat and tidy little Beatle suit, still hanging in the dry cleaner bag and waiting to be used for the fuckteenth time in just as many months. Lately, John resented wearing it because of what it represented. For him, a suit was reminiscent of funerals or weddings, neither of which he felt thrilled about attending. All of that sentimental shit made him feel moody and miserable and lonely. What’s worse, John felt that wearing that Beatle getup meant losing his edge. So he was getting drunk to stop thinking about his fucking suit. Navigating the cigarette out of the way with his tongue, he downed his fourth drink in two gulps and reached for the bottle again, now half-empty (and definitely not half-full). “The only trouble is that we think we’ve got time,” Lennon shrugged, “I doubt I’ll ever make it past forty.” The cigarette fell onto his lap. He stared down at the damn thing intently, but his gaze wasn’t focused, and he drunkenly contemplated it like cavemen must have gazed at the night sky. John wasn’t in the right headspace. It was clear to see in how he swatted the cigarette away and tore it in half, scattering tobacco across the hotel room carpet. 

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It’s Johnny’s Birthday - George Harrison

“Recorded as a gift from Harrison to Lennon to mark the latter’s 30th birthday”

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The Beatles at Brian Epstein’s house, 1964.

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Said by Ringo. Perhaps the most Paul and George thing I’ve ever seen.

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“I like trying to find as much speech as possible — it humanizes it. You hear John Lennon talk, then he suddenly starts singing, and you think: It’s that fucking simple? That’s all I have to do? He just starts singing and it makes the sound of John Lennon? There’s no process there? It’s the same microphone? There’s no switch being turned? I think that changes it. You listen to ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’, when they stop and start talking. Wait — these people are making that noise?”

— Giles Martin, Rolling Stone (August 8 2019)

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Some Beatles fans arriving for their concert at the Palais des Sports on June 20, 1965 in Paris

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˚ ∘ ○ 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔹𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕝𝕖𝕤 – 𝔼𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕪 𝟞𝟘'𝕤 ○ ∘ ˚

“We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs…’I Wanna Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing.” – Bob Dylan.

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“I only tuned five strings, and everybody used to laugh when they saw my sixth string flapping about.”

— John Lennon, recalling his banjo-influenced early guitar playing (via paulmccartneysexgladiator)

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“We once did a Ouija board thing when we were kids, it was just me, George… and John, I think… So we weren’t really into all that, but somebody just said, ‘Let’s do it.’

“So we’re touching the glass, you know, saying ‘OK, nobody push it, OK?’ So then, suddenly… whoa, it’s moving! Now, my mum had died a couple of years before and it says, ‘Congratulations… son…’ And we’re going, ‘NO!’ ‘Congratulations… son… number one… In NME!’ And so we were all, 'Oh, f**k off! There’s no way she would know what NME was’. And there’s George, you know (laughing). He’d been pushing it all the time! Bad boy!”

[Paul, NME, October 2010]

Pic: Mike McCartney.

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the beatles interviewed about their upcoming visit to america and some other general questions (1963)

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what's on ya mind george?

‘Nothing serious I suppose. Or- well, I don’t know. I miss everyone. It’s like they were just there beside me and now I looked back and they’re gone. Funny, how fast everything goes.’