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Beatles at the Indra, uncropped version!

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Thinking about John’s final interviews and specifically his thoughts about him/Paul. Of his final three interviews, two (Newsweek and Playboy) were pretty negative. And it’s always interesting to see Paul’s reaction during the actual time period. But John did express regrets, and they talked it out in this particular instance:

For his part, around the same time, in the press John dismissed the notion of a Beatles reunion as  “an illusion.” As ever, Lennon’s feelings toward McCartney were highly erratic. He confessed that he’d liked “Coming Up” but said he thought Paul “sounded like was depressed” on “Waterfalls.” “I don’t follow Wings,” he curtly told Newsweek. “I don’t give a shit what Wings are doing.” The journalist then apparently quoted Paul as saying that, in his opinion, Lennon had gone to ground because he had done everything else in his life “apart from be himself.” At this Lennon exploded. “What the hell does that mean?” he roared, accusing Paul of knowing nothing about his life during his-house-husband years. “He was as curious as everybody else was. It’s ten years since really communicated with him. I know as much about him as he knows about me, which is zilch.”

This wasn’t entirely true, since the pair would still sometimes talk. On October 9, John’s fortieth birthday, Lennon and McCartney spoke for the last time on the phone. John had just completed most of his return album, Double Fantasy. Paul called in the evening, and the pair — Lennon perhaps regretting his most caustic comments — discussed how they were always being baited to put each other down in the press.

“Do they play me against you like they play you against me?” John wondered. “Yeah, they do,” said Paul.

— Man on the Run

After this sweet phone call, John’s final interview in Rolling Stones has that well-known quote about working with Paul:

“Throughout my career, I’ve selected to work with – for more than a one-night stand, say, with David Bowie or Elton John – only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. I brought Paul into the original group, the Quarrymen; he brought George in and George brought Ringo in. And the second person who interested me as an artist and somebody I could work with was Yoko Ono. That ain’t bad picking.”

Hey sweetheart, have you seen an interview with Paul and Linda in which the TV host rudely mentions John's latest criticisms of Paul and Paul fucking loses his composure, his eyes full of tears, reddened nose, nervously biting his nails, making Linda sigh and holding his hand tightly. It's fucking incredible the power that John had in Paul's emotions, I had never seen him lose his composure like that. It's a long interview, about 15 minutes, but the part I'm talking about is at the very end.

I think i know what interview is that. Well, at least the part i’m thinking is very similar to the Good Morning America interview, i edited only this part to upload, is this it? 

Because in this Paul has a hard time holding himself together, he was very shaken and teary, he had talked about John positively and the reporter just went and crushed him with that. 0:49 he’s trying very hard not to cry, that ‘’smile’’. Yes, John is one of the few people, perhaps musically the only one, whose opinion Paul took to the heart. He seems lost, not knowing what he could say. I think Paul usually didn’t answer to John’s words to avoid making things worse because when they talked only the two of them it was one John but in the media and specially with Yoko by his side, it was another John. But it’s undeniable it hurt Paul. I wish John had had the time to fix it. 

If this is not the interview or part of the interview that you are talking about, send me more details and i try to find. :)

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thinking about this tonight

excerpt from John Lennon: In My Life by Pete Shotton

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Paul McCartney’s former teachers/Dezo Hoffman on how he was shy/insecure/sensitive and also, according to his teachers, a born leader who had a charm that was “absolutely natural, quite extraordinary, and quite irresistible” (McCartney bio 66):

Jack Sweeney: “Paul is a very complex person…Paul had this extraordinary dualism: at any given moment he could be so easygoing and so casual, yet there was also this toughness: he would hold the class entranced. He was a born leader, so gregarious, so popular (Salewicz McCartney bio p. 66)

Sweeney also observes that: “[Paul] was always insecure.” Chris Salewicz then goes on to say “Jack Sweeney is not alone in noting the insecurity and sensitivity behind Paul McCartney’s breezy facade. Alan Durband saw it also, and traces its first appearance to around the time of Mary McCartney’s death. But perhaps it was also the sense of inadequacy he felt as a boy from a housing project in this academic environment” (Salewicz McCartney bio 64)

And then photographer Dezo Hoffman: “A difficulty with which Paul always grappled, [Hoffman] detected, was a shyness that he had worked hard to eradicate but that nevertheless rose almost irrepressibly. ‘He was never sure of himself,’ says Hoffmann, echoing Jack Sweeney, Paul’s form-master in his sixth year at Liverpool Institute. ‘He pretended to be–it was all pretense. That’s why he was able to give such fabulous interviews later, because he covered up his inadequacies the only way he could–by joking, by pretending to jump ahead of anybody who asked him a difficult or intimate question. He would give serious interviews when he was on his own, but when he was answering questions with the others, Paul was unable to really reveal himself at all–though admittedly they’d all be joking at such times anyway” (Salewicz McCartney bio 140). 

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yes. what @marmaladeskies​ said.  (I’m linking instead of reblogging b/c I don’t want to hijack OP’s post)

Re: the Saint versus Devil versions of John Lennon

The fascinating thing is that on tumblr I see a lot of people bemoaning John’s “reputation” and complaining about all the internet randos calling him a racist abuser wife-beater and yet I have never ACTUALLY seen any of these internet randos!  I only see the John-is-a-God people (who are mostly boomers, apparently). 

That tells me I must be in the “wrong” (right?) online/fan spaces, which I’m realizing is most likely due to my age (over 30). It’s worth noting though that the SAINT version of Lennon is the one that dominates most “official” (i.e. monetized) forms of media - i.e. books, movies, and podcasts.  Anything that contradicts this version is highly unusual and met with hostility. It’s interesting to me that the Devil version is allegedly rampant with younger people… makes me think that these older forms of media are becoming less and less relevant.

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January 8th, 1969: After John dismisses all of the songs he’s come up with for the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, Paul asks John if he has written anything new to make up for it. He hasn’t. No one is thrilled about this.   

PAUL: Haven’t you written anything? JOHN: [defiant] No. PAUL: [tense] Haven’t you. [pause] We’ll be faced with a crisis, you know. JOHN: When I’m up against the wall, Paul, you’ll find I’m on my best— PAUL: Yeah, I know, I know, but I just wish you’d come up with the goods. JOHN: Now, look. I think I’ve got Sunday off. PAUL: Yeah, well, I hope that you can deliver. JOHN: I’m hoping for a little rock ‘n’ roller. PAUL: [sarcastic] Yeah, I was hoping for the same thing, myself, you know. JOHN: [mocking] “Sammy loved his mammy, she hammy dammy dammy…” 

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So we all know that John got £100 for his 21st and spent it on the Paris honeymoon holiday with Paul. And we all go, “yeah, yeah, £100.” but. 

WAIT

ARE YOU KIDDING ME 

YEAH I GUESS HE REALLY MUST HAVE LIKED YOU PAUL 

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Kaiserkeller by Klaus Voormann

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January 13th, 1969 (Twickenham Film Studios, London): Over lunch, the remaining Beatles touch on George’s resignation from the band on the 10th, as well as a group meeting held the previous day which ended in less than desirable circumstances (with George leaving the room, frustrated by John’s persistently Yoko-filtered standard of communication). While Yoko contends that it would be easy for John (and Paul) to regain George’s favour, John points out that this is a more deeply-rooted issue than it may seem, compounded over the years by John and Paul’s treatment of George and his defaulted status within the group. Upon this problem of overriding egos, however, Paul suggests (passive-aggressively) that it isn’t just the Lennon-and-McCartney tandem that is causing George upset and consternation. 

PAUL: [bleak; joking] So where’s George?

RINGO: It smells like George is here. 

YOKO: [to John] Well, you can get back George so easily, you know that. You know, Paul and—

JOHN: But it’s not that easy, because it’s a festering wound—

PAUL: Yeah. 

LINDA: Yeah. 

JOHN: —that we’ve allowed to – and yesterday we allowed it go even deeper, but we didn’t give him any bandages. And it’s only because George, uh, when he comes up, when he is that part of him… We have egos. We can’t help but have—

RINGO: Well, it can be a burden on him. 

JOHN: I’ll have, you know—well, look, you do— [inaudible]

RINGO: [inaudible]

PAUL: Rosé.

YOKO: Can I have one too [inaudible]? But if you wanted it badly enough, you have to, you know—

MAL: What do you want, uh, Paul?

PAUL: Rosé, please, for me. Linda?

LINDA: No thank you.

JOHN: [inaudible] I wouldn’t say it’s my ego. It was yesterday, really – or, or even the day before when we went to George’s—

PAUL: I sure as hell know I wouldn’t like you to.

JOHN: What?

PAUL: Dig in your heels.

YOKO: Your ego’s great, by the way. 

PAUL: ’Cause if I’m to – if I’m to look at either of you, you know, I really don’t like to be smothered. You know—

YOKO: No, no no—

PAUL: You know, if I could – if you were in a shop on a shelf, I’d— [inaudible] —or whatever it is—

JOHN: I’m just trying to ask [inaudible] – do I want him back, Paul, I’m just asking, do I want it back? Whatever it is.

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There is *a lot* going on in George Martin’s With a Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper (for one, he quotes from Lennon Remembers way more than you’d expect!), but he also included a mild criticism of Mark Lewisohn’s reading of Paul’s work all the way back in the early ‘90s:

“I’m sure Paul wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ with his father in mind. Jim [McCartney] loved music-hall stuff, corny popular songs, the kind of thing Paul normally wouldn’t tolerate. Nevertheless, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ was not a send-up but a kind of nostalgic, if ever-so-slightly satirical tribute to his dad.

Paul got around the lurking schmaltz factor by suggesting we use clarinets on the recording ‘in a classical way’…This classical treatment gave added bite to the song, a formality that pushed it firmly toward satire. Without that, the song could have been misinterpreted–it was very tongue-in-cheek. It is rather like, say, putting a Gerald Scarfe cartoon into a gilded frame, and hanging it in the National Gallery. The form brings you up short, makes you think more carefully about the content…

Most people think of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ as a jokey song, a piece of tongue-in-cheek music-hall pastiche, which it is. Nor did the other Beatles take it seriously. The Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn describes it, accurately enough in so far as it goes, as ‘Paul’s vaudeville-style charmer.’

For my money, though, it has a little more to it than that…If you look at the lyrics you can see that underneath the jokiness they are saying, ‘Isn’t old age awful? Banality, tedium, nothingness, poverty, routine.’ It is Paul with his satirical tin hat on, a bit like, in film terms, Oh What a Lovely War. The bleak underlying vision is dressed up in this very gentle, rooty-tooty kind of charm…

When I heard ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ for the first time, I chuckled at the cleverness of the lyrics. They were so true. They reflected my own experience of family life, the  comfort and cosiness, so well…

The song, then, showed the other side of the Beatle coin on Pepper: it was not psychedelic, mystic, transcendental or any of those other things that have been leveled at the rest of  the album. It was an affectionate satire regarding old age from a young man’s point of view” (34-38).

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PAUL AND LINDA MCCARTNEY at Abbey Road, 1971

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1966

John: Let’s stop going on tour

Paul: What?

John: Yeah, you know that electrifying soul strengthening perfect connection we have on stage when we’re performing, let’s not have that any more

Paul: Okay.

John: And all that sharing a room and living in each others pockets and being as close as it’s possible for two people to be, let’s just not do that any more

Paul: Right.

John: It’ll be amazing, nothing will change except we won’t have any of the things that hold us together and help us understand each other and keep my feelings for you from overwhelming me and sending me crazy

Paul: Yeah.

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Profile on Paul McCartney, RAVE magazine, August 1965

“Criticism is meant to keep you alive and strenghten your talent,” the journalist pointed out. Paul shook his head. “It doesn’t keep me alive,” he said. “It hurts.”

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Can you imagine being John Lennon in 1974, and you’re about to see your ex-best friend/pseudo husband/songwriting partner for the first time in years, plus its a really big moment cause you’re tentatively thinking about working with him again, then the motherfucker shows up looking like this unironically: