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WOOOOW you weren't kidding about this interview! Good lord. Full transcript of the first audio clip, because it is a lot:

"What could happen is that if I don't write these books, it will be wrong forever. It will be misunderstood forever. The myths will pertain. There are a lot of myths around the Beatles, hundreds, thousands of them. And it's only really me who's really out there trying to get it right. I mean, I've got over 600 books on the Beatles, and there's a lot of rubbish in them. And I read them and I shudder when I read them. And it's not just about the factual detail, it's about comprehending something wrongly. And it's only through my imersion in it that I feel I cam comprehend it at least nearly right. So it's very important that these books are done because otherwise its going to be misunderstood and wrong forever. The music will live, but the story will be wrong, and the story needs to be right in order for it to be understood at its fullest."

Humble king.

He has relationships with so many other Beatles biographers - how must they feel when they hear something like this?

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.)

[wingsoverlagos]

[wingsoverlagos]

Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984)

If I ever get out of here If we ever get out of here

[wingsoverlagos]

Hi, wingsoverlagos! Love your blog from The Bruce McMouse Show' Paul to your posts on magic Lewisohn. Thank you a lot! And not that it matters but I thought about you when read this comment on youtube (by @DrAnne-mc8er, who tells nice and seems truely stories about her family, especially on her unkle worked with The Beatles in 1969, and her own childhood near Paul, John, George and Ringo),

'… I've kept written diaries my whole life, which our youngest daughter is in the (necessarily) very long process of putting in date order with my help. These go way back to the early 50's, and include things which (now) seem so innocent and naive. Like when John knocked me off a swing in the local park, and when John and Paul had a real fight over a pair of £2 roller skates, both refusing to give up the one skate they each were holding on to for dear life! LOL Obviously this was when we were all still teenage kids fooling around.

Yes, I was contacted by a lady well over a year ago from "the office of" Mr Lewisohn in London, which to be quite honest, I thought was an arrogant way of him going about things, and I said so to the lady. Anyway he called back to "personally apologise". I should probably clarify that I'm now well into my seventies, and have a number of health issues. Yet rather than come up and see me at home in Liverpool, Mr Lewisohn assumed that I would be so keen to be in his book, that I would take the 3 hour train journey, to go and see him (or an assistant) in London, stay overnight if necessary, and then "hope" that anything I would say about the early days, might make it into his planned book. ALL at my own personal expense!

Needless to say I told my husband what Mr Lewisohn expected, and I also phoned Paul to tell him (in no uncertain terms) what I thought of the man. Frustratingly, our daughter who's here now, has just said I can't say what Paul said to me over the phone, here in a public forum. So that's as much as I can say. Well, other than I chose NOT to take the delightful Mr Lewisohn up on his offer! (I'm angry with him now all over again, just recalling what the arrogant sod expected me to do!) But anyway greenatom, you now know the story behind all that.

PS - Our daughter's gone home, so I'll quickly tell you that Paul said he'd talk to Richie (Ringo) about everything, and would phone me back. Anyway in the meantime, Barb phoned me and said Richie was furious with this Mark Lewisohn about what had happened, and that he should "stick his effing book where the sun don't shine!" LOL Then Paul phoned me back the same evening, and said he'd been round to Richie and Barb's (which of course I knew after chatting with Barb earlier), and said it was entirely up to me. but that he and Richie, both felt that I should tell Mark Lewisohn to "eff off". So I don't know for certain, but I think Paul and Richie might have temporarily fallen out a bit with Mr Lewisohn. Not just because of how he spoke to me, but mainly because as Paul said over the phone, the book is supposed to be about The Beatles. Not what the lads got up to as kids individually. Sorry for writing such a stupidly long reply, but take care anyway, and please stay healthy and wear a mask x' From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hv2EkzqUb8&lc=Ugy-Dnq03NdsYhh6xTB4AaABAg&ab_channel=YouCan%27tUnhearThis

Thank you so much for reading my posts, and for sending this message along! The comment thread in question is very interesting and sent me down quite the rabbithole. I wanted to believe! But I fear this person's story doesn't line up on close inspection.

The thread in question is at the top of the comment section on this video on the You Can't Unhear This Youtube channel. It's from the user "DrAnne-mc8er" who claims to be the neice of Bob Moog, of synthesizer fame. The thread is over 100 comments long with many replies by Dr. Anne. In addition to being the neice of Bob Moog, she claims to have known Paul and George as kids, being a couple of years younger than them, and to still be friends with them to this day. She says she has many handwritten journals starting in the 1950s and, most pertinently, she claims to have been contacted by the office of Mark Lewisohn. Her story goes that a research assistant of Lewisohn contacted her; Dr. Anne thought it was rudely done, and Lewisohn then conteacted her personally to apologize. She came away with the impression that he was full of himself, and then spoke to Paul & Ringo, who confirmed that Lewisohn was bad news.

Obviously, this story was like catnip to me. Having beef with Mark Lewisohn is such a specific thing to lie about, I thought, would anyone bother to add this detail if they were simply LARPing as someone celeb-adjacent? Still, there were some details that gave me pause. Dr. Anne said, for instance, that John was a devout christian at the time of the Maureen Cleave interview, which...lol. But one very wrong assumption doesn't necessarily invalidate her entire story. She also said that George Harrison had done uncredited backing vocals on London Town, which sounds improbable, but idk, you never know???

So I decided to dig in to see if anything she said held water. First, I image searched her profile picture (crazy how using a basic google function makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes), and the results were somewhat encouraging: the picture was indeed of a Dr. Anne Cremona, a psychologist. Further digging showed that the real Dr. Anne and the commenter Dr. Anne both professed to have at least four children. On the flip side, Commenter Dr. Anne purports to live in Liverpool, while Actual Dr. Anne practices in London. Not a realistic commute, eh?

But the story truly fell apart once I looked into Bob Moog, who I previously knew nothing about aside from the fact that he was the Synthesizer Guy. Commenter Dr. Anne said that her mother was Bob Moog's younger sister, who had moved to the UK in 1938. She named her grandfather as Robert Sr. There are claims with all of these problems, not the least of which is the fact that Bob Moog seems to have been an only child. I read the first few chapters of a biography of Moog--(Switched On by Albert Glinsky)--which provides plenty of detail on Moog's family going several generations back, but doesn't mention any siblings.

The second issue is the timing: based on this commenter's story, she would have been born around 1944 or 1945. Bob Moog was born in 1934. If he somehow had a younger sister who went unmentioned in his biography, she would have been at most three years old in 1938, when she purportedly went to Liverpool--with a non-parent guardian, as Bob Moog lived with both his parents. This sister would have been ten at the oldest when "Dr. Anne" claims to have been born.

Then we have her grandfather, Robert Sr. Bob Moog was actually the first Robert in a long line of Georges. His dad was George, his grandfather was George, and his great-grandfather was, I think, Georg. There may have been another George thrown in there.

So it seems like this commenter is just doing some high effort LARPing. The thing I'm left wondering is whether or not this commenter is actually Dr. Anne Cremona. If it isn't, they didn't just pick a random picture for their troll account, but used her name as well, all while incorporating details that seem pulled from her life. There's the number of children for one, but the commenter also sprinkles in some psychology talk.

What's the deal? Is this an actual psychologist doing some dedicated trolling (the comment chain spanned a time period of more than a year) with her actual name and picture? Or is this a troll impersonating an actual psychologist as part of their neice-of-Bob-Moog routine?

Thank you for sending this my way, @tavolgisvist! It may not be the genuine article, but I had a lot of fun digging into it. The Mark Lewisohn Tipline (my askbox) is always open!

[wingsoverlagos]

Wings; Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, Jimmy McCulloch, Denny Laine and Geoff Britton. 1974. Photo taken by Michael Putland.

[wingsoverlagos]

some of the letters quoted in Love Letters to the Beatles (selected by Bill Adler), 1964

[wingsoverlagos]

Lewisohn's Little Mysteries

I should be posting the next piece dissecting the Mark Lewisohn/Kim Bennett/Parlophone contract saga--it's in the works, I promise! @mythserene and I are typing and scheming and typing some more--but most of my time has been put towards checking a zillion citations, and I wanted to share a little something before my next proper piece. The zillion-checked-citations will hopefully be available in some form soon; enjoy this as a snack to hold you over 'til dinner.

As we know, Mark Lewisohn likes to bust a myth, tear down our preconceived notions, and shed light into the murky corners of Beatles history (source: Mark Lewisohn.) But there's another pattern I've noticed while checking his citations: he likes to inject a little ambiguity every now and then where perfect clarity is possible.

I've run across a few cases of this--I'll try to dig those out and add them later--but I was struck by this example from The Best of Fellas (2002), Spencer Leigh's biography of Bob Wooler. Lewisohn sets up a little mystery, writes that there's something we simply don't know--all the while, the source is perfectly clear.

Tune In 18-46 vs. Leigh 2002 p.147

This section discusses the Beatles' plans to not pay Allan Williams a percentage for their second string of gigs in Hamburg. From Tune In:

Paul tells Bob Wooler they won't be paying Allan Williams commission; Paul adds that he suspects Wooler will tell Williams, as the two are friends. Wooler agrees--yep, he's going to tell Williams. Then Lewisohn introduces his petite paranthetical mystery: "(It isn't clear if or when Wooler did, however.)"

Now, from The Best of Fellas (this, like much of the book, is told through a quote by Bob Wooler himself):

To quote Wooler, "I did tell Allan and he was fuming about this." If you're struggling with the subtlety and intricacy of this quote (hi, Mark!), I'll reiterate the key phrase: "I did tell Allan." Sure, he doesn't give an exact date or anything, but from the general context, we can assume it occurred around the same time.

Why? Why does he do this? He had to actively write out that it "wasn't clear" if Bob told Allan about the Beatles' financial scheme. It would have been simpler (and more correct) to not write that. This is very strange behavior! Though I have a better understanding of Lewisohn than when I started, I still don't get why he does things like this--why introduce this ambiguity to the record when the answer is in your source, in the very same paragraph?

Also strange: that bracketed "to me" at the start of the quote. “Paul said [to me], ‘I suppose you’re going to tell your mate…’” Using brackets to clarify ambiguity in a quote is fine, but where is the ambiguity here? If someone says, “Paul said, ‘You’re going to…’” it is understood that Paul is talking to the speaker. Lewisohn even says, in the sentence before the quote, “Bob Wooler later related how Paul told him that…” There isn’t a shred of ambiguity here. Don’t amend a quote if you don’t have to! Let the words speak for themselves!

Sources:

Leigh S. 2002. The Best Of Fellas: The Story of Bob Wooler, Liverpool’s First D.J. Liverpool: Drivegreen Publications Ltd. 264p. Accessed online 2024 Apr 23. Available from: https://archive.org/details/bestoffellasstor0000leig/mode/2up

Lewisohn M. 2013. The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1: Tune In. New York (NY): Crown Archetype. [ebook]

[wingsoverlagos]

I love how stressed he looks in these screencaps. diva.....you weren't doing anything that warranted that 😭

[wingsoverlagos]

I think Alex wanted to be a very loyal friend to John. He wanted John's attention. There were enough men that wanted his attention at that time. It wasn't physical, it was mental. They were almost desperate, the heterosexual ones.

Pattie Boyd on "Magic" Alex Mardas and John Lennon, interviewed in 1980. Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love (2024)

[wingsoverlagos]

John Lennon singing You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (1965)

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can’t reblog with a video but @pauls1967moustache’s post made me think about paul talking about how he loves to smell paper during the wide prairie promotional livestream 😭

[wingsoverlagos]

Scan - reading fan mail, Paris, January 1964

Photo: Harry Benson

“When I was with the Beatles in Paris, I found it interesting that Ringo received the greatest volume of fan mail, followed in diminishing order by George and then John, with Paul a distant fourth.” - Harry Benson

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[wingsoverlagos]

john lennon getting married in 1969 be like

[wingsoverlagos]

God i'm in love with those stripes🍏🌈😭 I should draw more John of that era🌚💕 I hope u like it!

[wingsoverlagos]

ohhh save me green shirt … save me …..

[wingsoverlagos]

Paul, Linda & Stella 1972🌼🌼🌼

Via @lindalouiseeastmanmccartney on Instagram🌼