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Mark Lewisohn understanding Paul McCartney

Only Mark Lewisohn really understands the Beatles. Only he can comprehend their true motivations. Only he can see behind their veneers. Especially Paul McCartney's. He truly understands Paul.

I cut down this clip from an amazing new interview of Lewisohn repeating how if he doesn't write his books the Beatles' story will be “wrong forever” to just the bit where he says “it's only through my immersion in [the Beatles] that I can comprehend at least nearly right.” This is our thesis statement. 😏

“It's a drag”

Lewisohn: “I'm quite an astute watcher of Paul McCartney,” and so I know that his “It's a drag” line after John's murder was all about Paul's irritation at John Lennon's lionization. “John was being promoted and Paul was being relegated, and he didn't like it.”

Paul doesn't say his last name on the phone because he wants to screw with you and put you on the back foot. And definitely not because he just figures you'll know who he is.

(I've posted this one before, but it is needed here, with Lewisohn claiming he's the only one who can truly understand the Beatles and Paul.)

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This is a friendly reminder that none disabled people often do benefit from the same accommodations disabled people benefit from.

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HELLOOOOOOOO????

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I deleted that. It was stupid and I don't mean it that way and I have never wished anything bad for him. I think he's a decent guy who has mentored a lot of people and is a good friend to many more.

On the other hand my intellect abhors the academic part. It really offends me on a deep level. But the personal part, the human part, thinks about him a lot. I wrote him an email, not yet sent, but in it suddenly I was just talking to him like I'd known him all my life. But I do feel like I know him from studying him so closely. After one podcast where he talked about his son I couldn't write for like a week. It weighed on both of us. I didn't hate him. Neither of us ever did.

I didn't mean him, personally, but I do mean we kicked out the whole foundation of Beatles' historiography and we've got serious cleanup to do. We can't leave everything just lying there in ruins. Do you know how many books cite Lewisohn as a source? Like, ALL OF THEM. (That's only slight hyperbole.)

And that's what has brought me back to deal with this. That was always the draw for me. Taking that seriously.

My dream is every Beatles Con with a booth or two uploading Beatles' treasures to the web. My dream is books and magazines and ticket stubs popping up online and Beatles scholarship changing and growing in ways we can't even imagine, all accomplished while the conference goes on. And as far as where it will be uploaded to, my dream—(since we're on the subject)—is a Beatles' archive accessible to anyone with an internet connection—and I'm sure Paul McCartney would fund the hell out of it. But until then archive.org exists, is awesome, and made our work possible. (And makes all my work possible.)

This has been a hit to the whole community and a serious hit to Beatles' historiography, but it can be an opportunity as well. Peter Jackson got a lot of Beatles' scholars and fans licking their chops about what could be, created a lot of new fans and showed how much life there still was left. Showed us, really, that we were just getting started. It built new connections, got people talking and thinking and exchanging records. It also made me a fan of Robert Rodriguez (SATB) who cannot stop talking about Beatles' scholarship either. He is intensely focused on it.

I wrote “History cannot be hoarded,” but I want to be clear, I don't think that's what's happening. Not in the Beatles community as a whole. But it is siloed, and that's an obvious problem. Thankfully it's one with the easiest solution on earth. It's one we know how to solve with scanners.

It has been my experience that Beatles' fans will share anything you ask for, no questions asked. Early on listening to the Nagras I suddenly needed to know—just absolutely had to know—what Doug Sulpy had written about this particular day and I put out an SOS tweet saying

I desperately need to see what Sulpy wrote about January 14th 🙏🙏

but unfortunately like only two of my followers happened to be Beatles' fans back then. Within an hour and a half Joe Wisely of Beatles Books had DM'd me the pages.

*I would have screenshotted the tweet but unfortunately Musk has destroyed one of the best things about Twitter: the accessible record it provided.

Anyway, from now on I will always separate the man from the work. I stand humbled on that front and don't know what in the hell I was thinking.

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"John gave me half his chocolate bar"

I’m sitting in the front seat of a red Range Rover. The driver, who picked me up from John Lennon Airport in Liverpool, is Paul McCartney. He’s taking me and Jimmy Iovine on a magical mystery tour through his hometown, showing us the neighbourhoods where the Four grew up. He’s pointing here, there, and everywhere. And apologising. As he drives, he points out the window.

“There’s the 86 bus. Myself and John used to ride there, just gone by. You sure you don’t mind me telling you this?”

“Oh no, I don’t mind. Please go on.”

“See over there? That newsagent? It’s changed a bit, but that’s where I had my first real conversation with John.”

“But I thought your first conversation with John was when he was in the Quarrymen and they played at that fete in St. Peter’s Church.”

"I’m talking real, insightful stuff, not just ‘What sort of guitar do you use?’ or ‘What sort of tunes are you listening to?”

“Insightful? How do you mean?”

“Well, John bought a bar of chocolate, Cadbury’s chocolate, and when he came out of the newsagent’s he broke it in half. Gave me one half. I was amazed because, you know, back then, chocolate was really something. Most boys would break off a little square, but John gave me half his bar.”

I was musing on this as Paul put his foot on the accelerator and we moved off.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you that”

Surrender, by Bono (2022)

======================================

That newsagent is very important to Paul. It appears in the music video for Fuh You (filmed in Liverpool), as the boy in the video sings, "on the night that I met you""

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Paul and Linda McCartney on Good Night America, June 28th 1976

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Me when I see a song by John and Paul written after the Beatles break-up:

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I think it really did take women. I learned some deconstruction tips from AKOM and we just built on that. When I first started looking at him I would just get frustrated, but over time—with Sharon @wingsoverlagos doing her stuff and constantly increasing the dataset that kept widening the bird's eye view and making it easier to spot patterns and see his MO—forcing myself to write stuff so I wouldn't disappoint her, I began to get better at showing his duplicity.

I'll never forget the night on here where I figured out how as I wrote. I was fist-pumping in my own living room. It was so silly and yet it felt like a ocean that had been dammed up in my brain had finally been set free.

I know he did wrong. He really did. And it all went to his head which only made him worse. I can still get angry with him, and when I read any of what I wrote I remember how bad it was, but it's still sad to think of him now. He did it to himself, but it's sad anyway.

This is why I couldn't be a cop. Or one reason, at least. There were many days when I felt that hunter instinct. Where I wanted to take his ass down. Then I'd hear him say something about his kids or his wife and start to feel sick. In the end, the rush you get from hitting someone hard just leaves a bad aftertaste.

But it's better than listening to him lie on five podcasts a month and wanting to scream every time some fawning fan interviewer marvels at his attention to detail and exquisite citations.

We killed Mark Lewisohn

I've thought a bit about writing something on how @wingsoverlagos and I killed Mark Lewisohn... because we did, but this is tumblr so of course I'll just randomly post something from my phone.

It was hell, but we did bury him. The hate I got in the month after my last two posts was unbelievable. I shut everything out.

But of course I was getting Mark Lewisohn Google alerts. I was investigating him, so of course I did. Every week. And they all looked the same. Six or so big papers quoting him for whatever Beatles' crap they had going on that week, then some combo of appearances and old book stuff would shuffle towards the top.

But after the posts on his accuracy that all changed.

Now the Google alerts are the alerts of a dead man. Whatever the lag time within the fandom, his credibility was wiped out almost instantaneously on the broader scale. No one is seeking quotes from him any more. Every week it's just a regurgitation of his books. Get a free PDF here. An old message board post. If you Google “Mark Lewisohn+accuracy” or anything like it you'll get us. Me and Sharon.

It's kind of sad. When I was trying to finish my last two pieces my biggest issue was that I felt like I would be killing him. Destroying him. His whole life and image was completely wrapped up in the Beatles, and destroying a human was difficult. I had to keep myself angry at him because otherwise I would begin to think about what it meant for us to succeed. I didn't want him to be able to continue his mythology-as-biography, but also it was scary to think about what the truth would do to him.

I thought—we both thought—that the biggest problem would be getting people to see what we had uncovered, but in the end Phoebe @anotherkindofmindpod saw it before I'd even recovered from writing it and within 24 hours it had blown up and I was getting hate mail. There was no time to process anything. We went from a tumblr oddity to a nuclear bomb overnight.

And for a few months we both felt like it had all been for nothing. Like everyone hated us but to no purpose. The feedback we saw was all negative, and from the most vehement Lennon/Lewisohn freaks imaginable. It colored everything. And it was a while before I even managed to look at the Google alerts again.

But once I did it started to sink in.

Sharon, I think we won. I think we actually did it.

It's too bad that “winning” meant hurting a human. I wish it didn't. But this last month I've gone back and read my last two big posts and I realize that we were right. We were righteous. It had to be done, whatever the costs. I wish it had been less painful, but it's not our fault that he misrepresented things. We just told the truth. That's all.

That can't be a sin.

I've missed my tumblr peeps, though. Sincerely. 💜

[mythserene]

We killed Mark Lewisohn

I've thought a bit about writing something on how @wingsoverlagos and I killed Mark Lewisohn... because we did, but this is tumblr so of course I'll just randomly post something from my phone.

It was hell, but we did bury him. The hate I got in the month after my last two posts was unbelievable. I shut everything out.

But of course I was getting Mark Lewisohn Google alerts. I was investigating him, so of course I did. Every week. And they all looked the same. Six or so big papers quoting him for whatever Beatles' crap they had going on that week, then some combo of appearances and old book stuff would shuffle towards the top.

But after the posts on his accuracy that all changed.

Now the Google alerts are the alerts of a dead man. Whatever the lag time within the fandom, his credibility was wiped out almost instantaneously on the broader scale. No one is seeking quotes from him any more. Every week it's just a regurgitation of his books. Get a free PDF here. An old message board post. If you Google “Mark Lewisohn+accuracy” or anything like it you'll get us. Me and Sharon.

It's kind of sad. When I was trying to finish my last two pieces my biggest issue was that I felt like I would be killing him. Destroying him. His whole life and image was completely wrapped up in the Beatles, and destroying a human was difficult. I had to keep myself angry at him because otherwise I would begin to think about what it meant for us to succeed. I didn't want him to be able to continue his mythology-as-biography, but also it was scary to think about what the truth would do to him.

I thought—we both thought—that the biggest problem would be getting people to see what we had uncovered, but in the end Phoebe @anotherkindofmindpod saw it before I'd even recovered from writing it and within 24 hours it had blown up and I was getting hate mail. There was no time to process anything. We went from a tumblr oddity to a nuclear bomb overnight.

And for a few months we both felt like it had all been for nothing. Like everyone hated us but to no purpose. The feedback we saw was all negative, and from the most vehement Lennon/Lewisohn freaks imaginable. It colored everything. And it was a while before I even managed to look at the Google alerts again.

But once I did it started to sink in.

Sharon, I think we won. I think we actually did it.

It's too bad that “winning” meant hurting a human. I wish it didn't. But this last month I've gone back and read my last two big posts and I realize that we were right. We were righteous. It had to be done, whatever the costs. I wish it had been less painful, but it's not our fault that he misrepresented things. We just told the truth. That's all.

That can't be a sin.

I've missed my tumblr peeps, though. Sincerely. 💜

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When you are cool af but your bandmate is an embarrassment on an international scale

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We killed Mark Lewisohn

I've thought a bit about writing something on how @wingsoverlagos and I killed Mark Lewisohn... because we did, but this is tumblr so of course I'll just randomly post something from my phone.

It was hell, but we did bury him. The hate I got in the month after my last two posts was unbelievable. I shut everything out.

But of course I was getting Mark Lewisohn Google alerts. I was investigating him, so of course I did. Every week. And they all looked the same. Six or so big papers quoting him for whatever Beatles' crap they had going on that week, then some combo of appearances and old book stuff would shuffle towards the top.

But after the posts on his accuracy that all changed.

Now the Google alerts are the alerts of a dead man. Whatever the lag time within the fandom, his credibility was wiped out almost instantaneously on the broader scale. No one is seeking quotes from him any more. Every week it's just a regurgitation of his books. Get a free PDF here. An old message board post. If you Google “Mark Lewisohn+accuracy” or anything like it you'll get us. Me and Sharon.

It's kind of sad. When I was trying to finish my last two pieces my biggest issue was that I felt like I would be killing him. Destroying him. His whole life and image was completely wrapped up in the Beatles, and destroying a human was difficult. I had to keep myself angry at him because otherwise I would begin to think about what it meant for us to succeed. I didn't want him to be able to continue his mythology-as-biography, but also it was scary to think about what the truth would do to him.

I thought—we both thought—that the biggest problem would be getting people to see what we had uncovered, but in the end Phoebe @anotherkindofmindpod saw it before I'd even recovered from writing it and within 24 hours it had blown up and I was getting hate mail. There was no time to process anything. We went from a tumblr oddity to a nuclear bomb overnight.

And for a few months we both felt like it had all been for nothing. Like everyone hated us but to no purpose. The feedback we saw was all negative, and from the most vehement Lennon/Lewisohn freaks imaginable. It colored everything. And it was a while before I even managed to look at the Google alerts again.

But once I did it started to sink in.

Sharon, I think we won. I think we actually did it.

It's too bad that “winning” meant hurting a human. I wish it didn't. But this last month I've gone back and read my last two big posts and I realize that we were right. We were righteous. It had to be done, whatever the costs. I wish it had been less painful, but it's not our fault that he misrepresented things. We just told the truth. That's all.

That can't be a sin.

I've missed my tumblr peeps, though. Sincerely. 💜

[mythserene]

We killed Mark Lewisohn

I've thought a bit about writing something on how @wingsoverlagos and I killed Mark Lewisohn... because we did, but this is tumblr so of course I'll just randomly post something from my phone.

It was hell, but we did bury him. The hate I got in the month after my last two posts was unbelievable. I shut everything out.

But of course I was getting Mark Lewisohn Google alerts. I was investigating him, so of course I did. Every week. And they all looked the same. Six or so big papers quoting him for whatever Beatles' crap they had going on that week, then some combo of appearances and old book stuff would shuffle towards the top.

But after the posts on his accuracy that all changed.

Now the Google alerts are the alerts of a dead man. Whatever the lag time within the fandom, his credibility was wiped out almost instantaneously on the broader scale. No one is seeking quotes from him any more. Every week it's just a regurgitation of his books. Get a free PDF here. An old message board post. If you Google “Mark Lewisohn+accuracy” or anything like it you'll get us. Me and Sharon.

It's kind of sad. When I was trying to finish my last two pieces my biggest issue was that I felt like I would be killing him. Destroying him. His whole life and image was completely wrapped up in the Beatles, and destroying a human was difficult. I had to keep myself angry at him because otherwise I would begin to think about what it meant for us to succeed. I didn't want him to be able to continue his mythology-as-biography, but also it was scary to think about what the truth would do to him.

I thought—we both thought—that the biggest problem would be getting people to see what we had uncovered, but in the end Phoebe @anotherkindofmindpod saw it before I'd even recovered from writing it and within 24 hours it had blown up and I was getting hate mail. There was no time to process anything. We went from a tumblr oddity to a nuclear bomb overnight.

And for a few months we both felt like it had all been for nothing. Like everyone hated us but to no purpose. The feedback we saw was all negative, and from the most vehement Lennon/Lewisohn freaks imaginable. It colored everything. And it was a while before I even managed to look at the Google alerts again.

But once I did it started to sink in.

Sharon, I think we won. I think we actually did it.

It's too bad that “winning” meant hurting a human. I wish it didn't. But this last month I've gone back and read my last two big posts and I realize that we were right. We were righteous. It had to be done, whatever the costs. I wish it had been less painful, but it's not our fault that he misrepresented things. We just told the truth. That's all.

That can't be a sin.

I've missed my tumblr peeps, though. Sincerely. 💜

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I miss Paul a lot. It's been a year since l've seen him. He came over with Linda to my place in New York. Of course I'd like to see him again.

He's an old friend, isn't he? At least we're talking and we're all happy with each other. If we got back together it wouldn't be for one last show, right? If we ever got together, my instincts tell me it would be more sensible to sit in a studio and get relaxed together and make some music before stomping out on dates. I'm not saying that's in the offing, though.

Mind Games Book 2024

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Phoebe and Daphne share the AKOM playbook of what they would ask if given the opportunity to interview Paul McCartney. 

We feel Paul’s responses would be illuminating and for the sake of Beatles history we encourage all media personnel to please STEAL THESE QUESTIONS! Listen Here

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omg can you speak more to your latest post about the reverse happening in 1980, I’ve never about the coherence of the narrative actually :O

Yeah an alternate universe would be crazzyy because our main narrator and star witness of the Beatles would be resident shit stirrer … John Lennon.

John

Fucking

Lennon.

The thing with Paul is that he’s kept to a pretty consistent narrative for the past 40 years or so: John broke up the Beatles cause he wanted to move on, army buddies, they loved each other etc. You can criticise it (I certainly do), but it’s coherent. It’s also one that has allowed John grace and promoted love and community as a core message, something that the other last surviving Beatle Ringo is more than happy to support. It works, we get it, it's a good message in many ways.

Whereas John … wooo boy. The only idea we have of what John would have been like is the 70s where he couldn’t even make a narratively coherent sentence.

If you take his comments and put them together, the Beatles break up was because the guys were blokes he got bored of but also the temple he loved too much but also a marriage that had to end but also a mistake in many ways. Simple, right?

And who was Paul again? Oh, well he was his closest friend ever but also someone he was never very close to and a genius but also artistically dead and yeah, he talks to him often but hasn’t spoken to him in a decade and could talk about him for days but also never thinks about him and is his dear one but also a straight and his ex-coworker who he didnt really work with much … wait no fiance/brother that he would do anything for. Whatever emotion John felt at that moment was his new forever truth/cope and that was the shit he was sticking to on record for those five minutes.

 And that’s John in normal factory mode. Now imagine the nuke that would be losing Paul, his Paul. Imagine every extreme feeling and every defense mechanism under the sun all going off at once and right in the interviewer's face like a deranged grief firework show. Then the added mess of Paul being seen as a saint and Paul the person not being there to reality check John’s view of him … chaos. On top of all that, if Yoko is right and John did contemplate an affair with Paul, you think he wouldn’t have spouted that at some point AMONGST OTHER THINGS WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT? 

Trying to work out the whole Beatles saga would be like trying to find Bigfoot but the compass is pointing in every direction and through several detours through an inexplicable amount of orgies, scandals and psychosexual drama.

 Who were the Beatles? God knows, apparently only the best band ever of bffs/coworkers who were so overrated and boring that John couldn’t wait to leave/never wanted to quit. Who the fuck was Paul McCartney? Duh, the most beautiful perfect wonderful genius man who had ever lived, one of the great loves of John’s life whose memory will stalk his dreams and waking hours until his dying day and has seances for on the reg. Oh he's also a sheep fucking devil who was hated and who intentionally and maliciously slept with half of London and wrote 'nogoodsongsshutup' in an evil plot to trick John to make music with him until Yoko freed him from his spell. What was their relationship? ????????? (okay maybe not everything would have changed lol but we would have so many more details on John’s side). There’d be no message from the Beatles tale, no story, no cohesion. Just a free-for-all pile of disparate tales of love, hate, treepanning and heartache to sift through.

In any case, I would love to see the madness that would be their version of Beatles tumblr.

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Delayed reaction: “Dedicated to serving him, but not in a bad way” ?

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN????

Mark Lewisohn telling funny Paul stories, haha 🤨

Give and ye shall receive, @wingsoverlagos. A few clips of Lewisohn casually denigrating Paul from Fab4Cast.

First, and perhaps the strangest. Q. Did you ever talk to Paul McCartney on the phone?

A. He only says his first name to get people on the back foot. He likes to do that *to* people.

Q. How did the work end?

A. Linda died and he stopped a lot of things, like the Wings fan mag. But also he was getting old and it was hard to find pictures he was happy with. (Literally his wife and keyboardist died! That's why there's no fan mag, not because he was old, you insensitive reptilian jerk.)

Q.How was Paul to work for?

A. I didn't get shouted at.