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seeing everyone else's photo selections makes that so much funnier. chose the most godlike photos of george possible and then everyone else got wikipedia photos or the worst picture you've seen in your life. look. george is hot you don't have to rig the game like that

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weird question but if the beatles got matching tattoos, what would they be, where would they be, when would they have got them done and why would they eventually regret it? thanx!

not weird at all, very cute!

my first thought was tattoos in Hamburg bc that'd very much be a prelllies and pints sort of night. and it'd be laughably on-brand to leave Pete out and get a tattoo with the bloke who isn't even your drummer yet.

but! my decided answer is a tattoo for the Sgt. Pepper launch. I'm imagining the logo on the inner forearm they're never beating the cult allegations with this one but nothing too huge and garish. they'd come to mean more after Brian's death, and feel like a physically unifying grief.

years later, there would be mixed reactions on the decision.

George will regret it bc "I don't want to go on the roof" and in a year he'll prefer something more religious anyway - something as religious as wishing he had no tattoos at all. at a certain age he becomes too old and content to care about it, though.

in that way, he'll finally be catching up to Ringo, who laughs about it now as he laughed about it when it seemed like an ironic commitment in 1970. it could've been worse anyway. at least the design is a drumhead and they didn't permanently stick him with an instrument he doesn't even play.

Paul, on the other hand, will get nit-picky about the design, the placement, the shading, but he won't regret the tattoo. with time the lines will fade as their youth does - as their friends do - but in their old age he and ringo will always see it while playing at a piano or drum kit, and they'll smile that a piece of their old bandmates should still be there with them, if not in the flesh then on the flesh.

John spends a decade oscillating between his fondness and disdain for it, all dependent upon his status with Paul at the time. after the split, he'll say it was all paul's daft idea and at the very least, they'd all imagined something different, better. but that's only bc now it stings as if it were as fresh and inflamed as when he got it. by the last half of a long decade, though, it'll always be the only thing that stays up with him through sleepless nights at the Dakota. and he'll remember that it's not so bad - things weren't always so bad. when he touches it, can Paul feel it too...as in a dream? hm, regret seems like such a strong word.

(oh, and John and Paul already have matching ones that they got in Paris but never told anyone about.)

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Hi!

I have some rather detailed stuff I'm hoping you can help me with, since you know the Beatles so well.

I'm confused about the details with George's songwriting royalties. Were Paul and John actually making more money on his songs than he was? And why on earth would he agree to that? I get he was young, but wouldn't common sense tell him it was a bad deal?

My one thought is it was JUST that lucrative to hitch his star to John and Paul's wagon. But then it also feels a bit like "your songs wouldn't be successful if they weren't being released under a brand built by John and Paul," which is potentially true? I guess? Except that George and Ringo contributed the brand too, and it's not entirely nice to act like they should be cowtowing to a brand they contributed to. Still, this deal wouldn't have happened if it didn't make some kind of financial sense.

Anyway, I'm sure you know more about this than I do, and more about the context at the time. Thank you for reading!

Hi! Sorry for taking a while to get to this, I'm rather busy these days. Please take everything with a grain of salt because I'm speaking from a slightly limited understanding myself.

I believe there were two parts to the earnings from the song publication rights: 1) the songwriting royalties themselves and 2) the earnings on the shares of the publishing rights. Since John and Paul owned a much greater stake in Northern Songs than George did, it panned out that they made more money off his songs than he did.

It seems George agreed to it because he was convinced he would get a bigger tax advantage out of it, I suppose because there weren't plans to turn Harrisongs into a public company. That's why Northern Songs went public in 1965.

For what it's worth, here's George speaking about the situation to Billboard magazine in 1996:

Now, nobody ever sat down with me, no manager or lawyers—we never had any lawyers, and nobody ever gave us any advice, that was the thing. And in a way, Brian Epstein was slightly in cahoots with Dick James. But James never actually sat down and said, "I'll publish your songs, and when you sign this piece of paper, I will be stealing your copyrights; I will own it for the rest of my life." Billboard Magazine: March 9 1996 p. 89

So he basically jots it down to him not really knowing better. He also doesn't appear to blame John or Paul, though the fact they were making more money than him probably made him slightly resentful.

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the thing about yoko ono is like. is she a good person? oh absolutely not. but we're all beatles fans so I think you can deal with a woman being a little evil when every single one of your pet white men is like the devil incarnate but we're all collectively calling them our pookies

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On the anniversary of his death, Olivia and Dhani mounted a wonderful memorial concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Never have I seen so many grown men in tears. George had a capacity to reach in and take your heart.

-- Eric Idle, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography

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in the heart of the country

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I don't know if it's the religious trauma or the dead mom trauma but the conservative christian insistence on not teaching children about their bodies in school and insistence that this knowledge should be private in all circumstances with no exceptions should be seen as suspicious at best and criminally malicious at worst

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Like I saw a very sweet post recently that was lauding Ringo for refusing to participate in HDYS as the only one of the Beatles with the strength to stand up to bullying, and that's a very nice sentiment, but you are literally talking about someone who by his own admission spent decades beating women. I'm not saying he doesn't also have a very nice and kind side to him, but the idea that he doesn't abuse power when given the chance is pretty misguided. I think the takeaway from HDYS isn't so much that he's incapable of participating in this passive aggressive back-and-forth or that he would never abuse power if he had it, but that he has a very, very keen sense for when 'misbehavior' will have consequences and when it won't.

I love talking about how nice Ringo is but also if we're being real his ability to appear sweet and calm and aw-shucks despite being so thoroughly known is proof that he has incredibly good media instincts

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I love talking about how nice Ringo is but also if we're being real his ability to appear sweet and calm and aw-shucks despite being so thoroughly known is proof that he has incredibly good media instincts

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I’m not sure “manipulative” is the correct term. Art is literally for the purpose of making you feel something, and especially music. Maybe “manufactured” is the correct term, or “disingenuous”.

That's a solid note. I think disingenuous and manufactured are also correct, but I do stand by manipulative because the nature of manipulative art is literally that it manipulates your emotions without earning them. There's a difference between feeling something because your emotions are being manipulated and feeling something because your emotions have been seen, captured, and understood by a piece of art.

Also, I know this is nit-picky, but I wouldn't say that the purpose of art is to make you feel something. Good art is telling the truth about things that matter. Cultivating an emotional reaction is secondary to this. Or, rather, it is in service of it.

It's the difference between killing the dog at the end of your story so people will cry and have big feelings and think you wrote something amazing, and killing the dog at the end of your story because you are genuinely allowing yourself to delve into the emotional experience of love and loss and share this with your audience. The former is disingenuous and manufactured, but I'd say it's also manipulative to instill an emotional response in people that is ultimately hollow, just so they'll care, or think they care, about your story. It's not manipulative in a malicious or calculating way, but for me the term still applies.

That being said, there's definitely a place for manipulative art. Anyway, thank you for sharing your perspective! It's a really interesting and valid note.

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June 18th 1942 • Happy birthday, Paul McCartney!

I got lots of good things to do Like hear the high clear robin sing

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Happy Birthday, Paul McCartney (b. 18th June 1942)

And when I think that all this stuff, Can make a life, it's pretty hard to take it in, That was me.

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Hi!

I have some rather detailed stuff I'm hoping you can help me with, since you know the Beatles so well.

I'm confused about the details with George's songwriting royalties. Were Paul and John actually making more money on his songs than he was? And why on earth would he agree to that? I get he was young, but wouldn't common sense tell him it was a bad deal?

My one thought is it was JUST that lucrative to hitch his star to John and Paul's wagon. But then it also feels a bit like "your songs wouldn't be successful if they weren't being released under a brand built by John and Paul," which is potentially true? I guess? Except that George and Ringo contributed the brand too, and it's not entirely nice to act like they should be cowtowing to a brand they contributed to. Still, this deal wouldn't have happened if it didn't make some kind of financial sense.

Anyway, I'm sure you know more about this than I do, and more about the context at the time. Thank you for reading!

Hi! Sorry for taking a while to get to this, I'm rather busy these days. Please take everything with a grain of salt because I'm speaking from a slightly limited understanding myself.

I believe there were two parts to the earnings from the song publication rights: 1) the songwriting royalties themselves and 2) the earnings on the shares of the publishing rights. Since John and Paul owned a much greater stake in Northern Songs than George did, it panned out that they made more money off his songs than he did.

It seems George agreed to it because he was convinced he would get a bigger tax advantage out of it, I suppose because there weren't plans to turn Harrisongs into a public company. That's why Northern Songs went public in 1965.

For what it's worth, here's George speaking about the situation to Billboard magazine in 1996:

Now, nobody ever sat down with me, no manager or lawyers—we never had any lawyers, and nobody ever gave us any advice, that was the thing. And in a way, Brian Epstein was slightly in cahoots with Dick James. But James never actually sat down and said, "I'll publish your songs, and when you sign this piece of paper, I will be stealing your copyrights; I will own it for the rest of my life." Billboard Magazine: March 9 1996 p. 89

So he basically jots it down to him not really knowing better. He also doesn't appear to blame John or Paul, though the fact they were making more money than him probably made him slightly resentful.

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decades of paul mccartney 🪞

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we all need to start giving a fuck about ringo starr. fascinating man