#Jim McCartney

[m1ssunderstanding]

The Psychology of Paul McCartney in Quotes

I think I'll go ahead and post these as they are and invite people to please send in quotes that you think might add something to these because I know they're definitely not complete! Or if you have other Paul Issues TM that you think I should do a compilation on let me know!

As it stands, the docs have the quotes organized chronologically so they tell a story. Some quotes made it into more than one doc because there is a lot of overlap, but I tried to keep it as organized as possible. I think it's pretty head-spinning reading some of these things in the order that they are. It makes him make more sense to me.

[beatleswings]

THE MCCARTNEY FAMILY. 1974. Photos taken by CURT GUNTHER.

[javelinbk]

I bet Jim would love to know that he's not included in the list of notable McCartney's, but Paul's fictional grandfather is...

McCartney (surname)

[thefab4archive]

Grandpa Jim McCartney (Paul’s father) holding newborn granddaughter Mary Anna McCartney in 1969. Photo by Linda.

[underthecitysky]

I finally watched the Rupert and the Frog song (We all Stand Together). I still see people (mostly older, mostly on Facebook) dunking on “the frog chorus” and it’s just so clearly an outdated notion for it to be lame for a musician to make content explicitly for children. It’s so common now for artists who’ve become parents to make something their kids will enjoy. Jack White sang a song with the muppets on Sesame Street because he loves his fucking kids. It’s so normal now.

I get where Mary Had a Little Lamb released as single by a rock band went down wrong .. but this is creative, whimsical content explicitly *for* kids. The SONG, in particular, is beautifully composed, imaginative. Lovely! I keep listening to it.

He was 20 years into his career. The Beatles were never Led Zeppelin. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around people still being so weird about this. He such a well rounded musician; it’s all like an exploration in another part of his creativity. There are elements of the classical composing that would come later… and the playful, experimenter who made Robber’s Ball (my beloved), McCartney II, the Fireman records.

But anyway, watching this today reminded me of this moment from Behind the Scenes of BBC Radio where someone presented Paul and Mike with their childhood Rupert book. The title page filled in by their parents reads “This book belongs to Paul McCartney and Michael McCartney”.

It was either Paul or Mike who said they didn’t get many gifts as kids and for Christmas they’d usually get one toy addressed to Paul and Michael from Father Christmas. It makes me really consider why this Rupert project was so important for him that he held onto it for 15 years, always sort of considering ideas for it. There were those RAM era songs that were specifically for the “Rupert project”. It comes up so much in the McCartney legacy book.

Then there’s the element of the frogs and his history with frogs, from growing the tadpoles in his own hand made frog pond in the backyard and checking on them every day until one day they were frogs that hopped away. Then there was the dark, frog killing episode that shocked his brother and he probably felt some shame about.

But here, in this story, there are guard frogs on duty protecting their mostly undisturbed world. Happy and content, it’s the frogs that create this magical chorus.

There’s even a father and son frog pair who’ve come to see this event that only happens every couple of hundred years.

The father is rather Jim McCartney-esque with his pipe and 1940s style hat and manner. There’s a moment where the son inadvertently annoys his father and instantly recoils like he’s about to get hit and momentarily it looks like the father is considering it but gets a hold of himself.

But later, wrapped up in the music together, the father hugs his son.

I don’t know what I’m saying exactly but I think there’s some exploration of his childhood here and something about Rupert and the frog chorus that’s particularly meaningful to him.

Maybe he’s reconciling the dark, frog killing episode of childhood with the vegetarian, animal lover he’d become by giving the frogs their own hero’s story. Rupert, Jim, the threat of violence, the presence of love, the frogs he loved but also was violent toward.. and music at the center of everything. Unifying, healing. We all stand together.

For anyone interested, the full BBC clip is here

The full Rupert short is here

[paulandjohn]

John’s Birthday + Paul & Nancy’s Wedding Anniversary (Reddit)

Can’t believe I only just found out about this today (😭)

Screenshot from the article (of course Paul would deny it 🙄)

A funny comment at the end lol

[beatlepaul4ever]

Just look at them, two innocents, standing there smiling, so proud of their newborn.

They have absolutely no idea what they have unleashed on the world!

[torchlitinthedesert]

Julia at Quarrymen gigs

...the only time I remember seeing Julia in the audience after the church fete in July 1957 was when we played a club on Penny Lane...

We could all see that John was really pleased when his mum turned up that night. The rest of us were too - for one thing her presence almost doubled the size of the audience. As I looked out from my drums she was siting almost at the front on the right hand side of the stage quite close to where we were while other members of the audience were dancing. John acknowledged her from the stage and played up to her quite a lot - as if he was performing just for her. Every time we finished a song Julia clapped very loudly and enthusiastically which was great because not many others were. She was clearly pleased and proud to see and hear John performing with his group.

After we had finished Julia came over and told us how much she had enjoyed our set. As ever she was great to be around: one of the few parents who appreciated what we were doing. Jim McCartney was another. However, there was something special and engaging about Julia. All these years later I still feel privileged to have known her and to have witnessed the musical bond between she and John: it was very loving and very strong.

Pre:Fab!, Colin Hanton and Colin Hall.

[beatleskinkmeme]

paul trying to please mimi vs john trying to displease jim

.

[strwbryfeels]

[m1ssunderstanding]

what quotes do we have about Jim not liking John besides John talking about Paul picking John over Jim? I’m sure that was John’s emotional read on the situation especially in the 70s when he thinks Paul chose family (Linda) OVER him is that legit what was happening?

Okay I took forever to answer this because I feel like if I get too deep in the Jim McCartney swamps, I have to leave for a minute so people don't start thinking that's all I do here on Tumblr dot com. So, here we finally are.

Let's start with the part of the anti-Jim rant from John where he claims Jim didn't like him. "And his dad was always trying to get me out of the group behind me back, I found out later. He’d say to George: “Why don’t you get rid of John, he’s just a lot of trouble."

My takeaways from this quote are the following: Jim liked George enough to both want him as Paul's friend and to confide in him and ask him to take action on his behalf. This is potentially going on behind Paul's back as well as John's. Just from this quote, if we trust John's account, we can safely conclude that Jim really did not like John. It's not just a feeling John got. He was actively trying to remove this boy from his son's life.

There is also the fact that, according to Mark Lewisohn, Jim forbade Paul from spending any time with John outside of official gigs and practices for the band, so to write together in the early days, they'd skip school and go back to Paul's house while his dad was at work. Not just for the fun of skipping school, which actually would've been a risk and a sacrifice for Paul, but because this was the only way they could be together.

Also, while we're here, as I was going back through for this ask, I realized Lewisohn doesn't mention that Jim threatened to kick Paul out if he didn't get a job. So when John says he and George 'couldn't understand it', no. Of course you couldn't. Neither of you were facing threats of homelessness so it was easy for you both to stand up to any pressures on that end (I don't know if George got any at all). And that means when Paul chose the band, it really was choosing John over Jim.

"I started working at a coil-winding factory called Massey and Coggins. My dad had told me to go out and get a job. I'd said, 'I've got a job, I'm in a band.' But after a couple of weeks of doing nothing with the band it was, 'No, you have got to get a proper job.' He virtually chucked me out of the house: 'Get a job or don't come back.' So I went to the employment office and said, 'Can I have a job? Just give me anything.' I said, 'I'll have whatever is on the top of that little pile there.' And the first job was sweeping the yard at Massey and Coggins. I took it."

[paulic]

Fuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

[tavolgisvist]

A rush of unstoppable wordplay was one of Lennon’s inherently Liverpudlian facets, for the city can scarcely express itself in any other way. In the background noise of his childhood, it might be football terrace jeering:

Holy, holy, holy, Ten full backs and a goalie.

Or maybe playground taunts: Oompah, oompah, stick it up yer jumper.

Nautical coarseness: The Mersey banks Was made for Yanks And little girls like Ivy, Yd twiddle with Ivy's flue, wouldn't you?

Or else the ‘sky blue pink’ Surrealism of ordinary conversation. There is a very old Liverpool rhyme (from at least the 1900s), entitled ‘I Went to a Chinese Laundry’. This is how it goes: * I went to a Chinese laundry, I asked for a piece of bread, They wrapped me up in a table cloth And sent me off to bed. I saw an Indian maiden, She stood about ten feet high, Her hair was painted sky blue pink And she only had one eye. I saw a pillow box floating, I jumped in rather cool, It only took me fourteen days To get to Liverpool.

Singing: Ah, Black Sam the Negro, Abajou, abajou, jay, Carder Bungalow Sam.

That was collected by the folklorist Frank Shaw off a man in Woolton. I don’t know if John Lennon ever heard all of those rhymes. But in them, whether by coincidence or influence, are premonitions of so many better-known songs: ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘I Am the Walrus’, ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’, ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’, ‘Across the Universe’ . . . And, as to music, the rolling, hymn-like piano chords of ‘Imagine’ recall Lennon’s earliest roots, for long before Elvis Presley and rock’n’roll, there was Church of England Sunday school. Aunt Mimi remembered him as ‘a nicely-spoken boy attending church three times on Sunday of his own free will, in the church choir.

The echoes of Anheld and Goodison, church parades and strike rallies, back alley chants and market traders: Lennon’s songs resound with all the din of urban Liverpool. But he also grew up surrounded by the serenity of park lands. In his district there was an extraordinary abundance of green. Calderstones, Sefton, Princes, Reynolds, Woolton Wood, Strawberry Field, even Allerton 'Golf Course - these supplied him with silence and beauty to nourish his imagination.

Around themall, beyond the docks, there was the graceful swveep of the Mersey river’s rustic stretch: a river with nothing to do but mirror the heart-stopping vastness of the sky. This was not the side of his childhood that he often acknowledged. He preferred to say things like, ‘We were the first working-class entertainers that stayed working-class and pronounced it and didn’t try and change our accents.’

Back in Menlove Avenue, though, John’s Aunt Mimi took a more sceptical view: ‘Until John met Paul and the others,’ she told the Sunday People, ‘John spoke what I call the King’s English without a trace of a Liverpool accent. One day I complained when he lapsed into broad Liverpudlian. He turned on me, saying he felt embarrassed by his accent and suddenly ran upstairs in a fit of temper. Leaning over the banisters he yelled “Dat, Dese, Dem and Dose”.’

...

Now, as Paul attains what his father used to call ‘my great venereal age’...

(Liverpool - Wondrous Place by Paul Du Noyer, 2002)

Part (I), (II), (III), (IV), (V), (VI), (VII), (VIII), (IX), (X), (XI), (XII), (XIII), (XIV), (XV), (XVI), (XVII), (XVIII), (XIX), (XX), (XXI), (XXII), (XIII), (XV), (XVI)

[javelinbk]

Poor Jim, always treated so unfairly in fic...

From time to time John and I would also drop in on Paul's lovely dad. We would never fail to receive a warm welcome from Jim... The warmth I experienced whenever I entered the modest home of this talented family, which was in Forthlyn Road [sic], Allerton, was wonderful. Jim was a father in a million. The cheerful way he coped with a situation that many a man would have run away from was admirable. Usually Jim would greet us at the front door with a tea towel in one hand and a saucepan in the other, his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up around his elbows and an apron tied around his waist. In the kitchen we would be confronted with chaos, a wonderful homely chaos. The chip pan would be on and the tempting smell of bacon and eggs would fill our nostrils. Jim had only to look at our faces and the extra potatoes would be chipped and more bacon and eggs would sizzle away in the pan. Before we knew it we would be sitting down to what was for us a right royal banquet. I always enjoyed my visits to Jim.

Cynthia Lennon, A Twist of Lennon (1978)

[crepesuzette2023]

What is your opinion on Jim McCartney?

Thank you for asking! A lot of deep thinking has been done about Jim and his character and its influence on Paul. My own take is still muddled, not quite settled.

I know their relationship wasn't always easy, and Paul was pretty open about the painful aspects of his relationship with Jim: hearing him cry after Mary's death, being beaten. I don't feel I know enough to speculate about the extent of the abuse Paul endured at the hands of Jim, but it's pretty clear to me that Jim represented the kind of power and authority Paul hated in some ways, and a shameful weakness in others (I think Paul ultimately saw that violence was an expression of weakness, and felt contempt, as children eventually do when they grow up). His worries about Jim's ability to support the family come through in his question, "what are we going to do without her money," after Mary McCartney's death. So, not a shining father figure by any means (are there any in Paul's life? George Martin?) All of that said, Paul never banished his father from the place most precious to him: his music. His love for the kind of music he associated with Jim never wavered, and he was quite open about the association with his father, the influence of music on the family life, etc. (as was Mike). Paul even recorded one of Jim's songs, "Eloise," and had it cut as a record. I just read in The McCartney Legacy Vol 2. that he called Jim and asked him to play the tune on the piano to help him remember!

There's the fact that Paul didn't go to Jim's funeral, and I'm sure the reasons were complicated™. I don't think it's an expression of hatred or anything dark—I think it's a mixture of not doing well with grief, and not wanting to be mobbed by the press during the funeral, which I think is understandable.

It's late where I am so I can't look up exact quotes—but isn't it the case that John called Paul when he heard Jim had died? I see this as an acknowledgment of Jim's importance to Paul.

In the end, I'm glad Paul never felt compelled to cut ties with his father, which also would have meant cutting his ties with music—or, to put it differently: I'm glad Paul never appeared to have played music to spite Jim (that "yes yes yes" anecdote sounds harmless enough). Maybe that lack of rebellion looks weak to some, but I think it's a source of great artistic freedom as well, one John and the Beatles supported, by the way.

[beatlesdiscord]

[1957] Paul: apparently my dad thinks you turned me gay

John: I did. sorry :/

John: tell him he's next