I'm Sorry So So So Sorry

What was missed

Early days

enter rat-boy george

George Harrison met Paul McCartney at school in 1954. McCartney was a year older, but the two bonded over their love of the "skiffle" genre of music, according to Ian Inglis' 2010 book "The Words and Music of George Harrison."

enter rat-boy george

“Separated in their daily activities, Paul and Ian James lost the closeness in their friendship and it became Paul and George instead. Ian was surprised by this. ‘They seemed totally different personalities. George always seemed a bit moody, morose, whereas Paul was light-hearted - he probably could have been a comedian if he’d wanted, he can tell a tale so well. George was nothing like that. I found it really strange that they were friends.’ […] Paul and George’s friendship was not a perfect fit. Paul had a need to remind George, one way or another and often without much subtlety, that he was ‘nine months older’, ensuring George didn’t forget who held the aces.”

for girls or for john?

The Village Fete

"Though the summer of 1957 was a gloriously hot, sunny one in Britain, Saturday, 6 July, turned out cloudy and humid. Paul arrived for the rendezvous by bike, wearing his silver-flecked oatmeal jacket and the narrowest black drainies he’d yet smuggled past his father. He later admitted he was thinking less about meeting John Lennon than his chances of picking up a girl afterwards."

for girls or for john?

The Lyrics Book:

"Would John and I have met some other way, if Ivan and I hadn't gone to that fete? I had actually gone along to try and pick up a girl." BUT THEN "[John and I] were introduced by a mutual friend named Ivan Vaughan, who took me to see John play at the Woolton Village Fete."

Ian James

"Paul went to his school friend Ian James, who helped Paul to learn the guitar. Ian, from the Dingle, spent hours teaching Paul to play – Paul was a natural. I interviewed Ian for my book, The Fab One Hundred and Four: The Evolution of The Beatles, and he told how he helped Paul to prepare for meeting John at St. Peter’s Church on 6th July 1957, as well as Ian’s memories of being there at Woolton that momentous day."

for girls or for john?

The Village Fete

"I’d seen him a couple of times [before the fete] and thought, ‘Wow, you know, he’s an interesting looking guy.’ And then I once also saw him in a queue for fish and chips and I said, ‘Oh, that’s that guy off the bus’. I’m talking to myself, in my mind I thought, ‘I saw that guy off the bus, oh he’s pretty cool looking. Yeah, you know, he’s a cool guy.’ I knew nothing about him except that he looked pretty cool. He had long sideboards and greased back hair and everything. […] This ted would get on the bus, and I wouldn’t stare at him too hard in case he hit me.”

for girls or for john?

The Village Fete

“Paul already knew John Lennon by sight; with homes only a quarter of a mile apart, they could hardly miss each other [..] ‘This Ted would get on the bus,’ Paul was later to remember. ’I wouldn’t stare at him too hard in case he hit me.’ But now [at the church fete] at last Paul could inspect the tough guy of the 86 bus at leisure without fear of reprisals."

hooking up with john lennon

heheheh

“The last week in August, Paul McCartney returned to Liverpool, tanned and noticeably slimmer. In addition to starting school, he came back to begin a relationship he seemed destined for: hooking up with John Lennon.“

Elvis

After listening to Paul play, John recalled, "I had thought to myself, 'He's as good as me.' Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? It went through my head that I'd have to keep him in line if I let him join [the band]. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him."“[John] kept looking at Elvis’s picture on the cover and saying, ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’"

(He did not)

Start again

“Paul was very good,” said Eric [Griffiths, of The Quarrymen]. “We could all see that. He was precocious in many ways. Not just in music but in relating to people.” […]His charm also worried John, according to Eric. “We were all walking down Halewood Drive to my house to do some practising. I was walking ahead with John. The others were behind. John suddenly said: ‘Let’s split the group, and you and me will start again.’ We could hear Paul behind us, chatting to Pete [Shotton] as if he was Pete’s best friend. John knew we were all his pals, but now Paul was trying to get in on us. Not to split us up, just make friends with us all."

Paul... Dominating

“I’m sure that was all it was, but to John it looked as if Paul was trying to take over, dominate the group. I suppose he was worried it could disrupt the balance, upset the group dynamics, as we might say today. I said to him: ‘Paul’s so good. He’ll contribute a lot to the group. We need him with us.’ John said nothing. But after that the subject was never mentioned again.”

the quarrymen are fed up

"Say the wrong thing, contradict them, and you were frozen out. A look would pass between them and afterwards it was as if you didn't exist.--Colin Hanton "After a while, they'd finish each others' sentences. That's when we knew how strong their friendship had become. They'd grown that dependent on each other."-- Eric Griffiths

✨🧚Remember this?🦄✨

"Something special was growing between them," says Colin Hanton, "something that went past friendship as we knew it."

caterwauling

"Mimi remained resolutely unimpressed by anything her nephew composed with his ‘little friend’. John would say, 'We’ve got this song, Mimi, do you want to hear it?' she recalled. ‘And I would say, "Certainly not… front porch, John Lennon, front porch." What she overheard that clearly wasn’t ‘caterwauling’ became another way of discomfiting John. ‘[He] got very upset with me when I mentioned one night that I thought Paul was the better guitar player. That set him off, banging away on his own guitar. There was quite a bit of rivalry going on there.’"

eleanor rigby

"I thought, I swear, I made up the name Eleanor Rigby like that. I remember quite distinctly having the name Eleanor, looking around for a believable surname and then wandering around the docklands in Bristol and seeing the shop there. But it seems that up in Woolton cemetery, where I used to hand out a lot with John, there's a gravestone to an Eleanor Rigby. Apparently, a few yards to the right there's someone called McKenzie. It was either complete coincidence or in my subconscious, because I would have been among those graves knocking around with John and wandering through there. It was the sort of place we used to sunbathe, and we probably had a crafty [cigarette] in the graveyard."

Couple of bob innit

"When John and Paul got down to their earlier collaborative songwriting sessions together, Mike would be bribed with “a couple of bob to go to the pictures” so that he didn’t interfere."

i'll get you

"This song was written on Menlove Avenue, in Liverpool, where John still lived with his Aunt Mimi...In general, though, the sentiment in these early songs is pretty straight up. Not a lot of irony. And that's why people liked, and like, these songs. They say what they mean. 'It's not like me to pretend / But I'll get you. I'll get you in the end'. Mind you, I think it's fair to say there might be a little bit of schoolboy humour hovering over the idea too."

west side story

“John in particularly hated musicals. He liked ‘West Side Story’, we liked ‘West Side Story’ a lot because that was like innovative, it grabbed us and it’s really good. But, things like, John and I one afternoon went to see ‘South Pacific’ and we actually walked out ’cause he just couldn’t stand it. I mean I would have sat and just watched it ’cause I had paid my money and I would watch anything. But he’d go, ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ you know, because what happens is, they start—you know the girl in it, Mitzi Gaynor, I think it was—going, ‘I wonder if he’s looking at me. Can he really see me?’ And we’d go, ‘Oh no!’ And he starts like, ‘Oh, I think she’s looking at me, I don’t know.’ And we’re going, ‘Oh, stop it!’”

hitchhiking trip of 1959

julia baird

"He was jubilant and buoyant, he played the major role buttressing John, but he wasn't the only one influencing John. There was Rod Davis. Rod left the band because of Paul, but also because his parents pulled him out to get ready for higher education. John loved Rod. There was later Stu Sutcliffe whom John loved. Paul understood that and let that friendship play out. Although Paul was present, he stayed away from that and from John's obsession with Cynthia. It was like a little ménage à trois with Cynthia, Stu, and John. Paul was smart; he knew when to distance himself."

ticket to ride

“It’s a bit crude, but it’s fair to say that, in general, I’d had a good life and John hadn’t. His life had been tougher, and he had to develop a harder shell than I did. He was quite a cynical guy but, as they say, with a heart of gold. A big softy, but his shield was hard. So that was very good for the two of us. Opposites attract. I could calm him down, and he could fire me up. We could see things in each other that the other needed to be complete. When it came to writing rock and roll, we were on the same page. You don’t want to write, ‘She said that living with me is upsetting.’ It’s just not rock and roll. It’s too front parlour and lace curtains. That’s why it has to be ‘She said that living with me is bringing her down’. John and I always liked wordplay. So, the phrase ‘She’s got a ticket to ride’ of course referred to riding on a bus or train, but – if you really want to know – it also referred to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, where my cousin Betty and her husband Mike were running a pub. That’s what they did; they ran pubs. He ended up as an entertainment manager at a Butlin’s holiday resort. Betty and Mike were very showbiz. It was great fun to visit them, so John and I hitchhiked down to Ryde, and when we wrote the song we were referring to the memory of this trip. It’s very cute now to think of me and John in a little single bed, top and tail, and Betty and Mike coming to tuck us in.”

Royston ellis

Ellis’s bisexuality was an eye-opener for the Beatles, as he remembers: “There was an expression, ‘Do you still love me?,’ and I think I must have said it to John because all the eyebrows went up ‘What?!’ And I gave them a lecture about the Soho scene and said they shouldn’t worry, because one in four men were queer although they mightn’t know it.” The remark bit deep. As Paul says, “We looked at each other and wondered which one it was. ‘It must be one of us, because there’s four of us…Oh fucking hell, it’s not me, is it?’”

Teddy boy ringo appreciation

Beatlemania

Jane songs✨

And I Love Her (1964)

I give her all my loveThat's all I doAnd if you saw my loveYou'd love her tooI love herShe gives me everythingAnd tenderlyThe kiss my lover bringsShe brings to meAnd I love herA love like oursCould never dieAs long as IHave you near meBright are the stars that shineDark is the skyI know this love of mineWill never dieAnd I love her

Carole King

“Early in their career Paul and John reportedly had said that they hoped to become the Goffin and King of the United Kingdom. I had taken this to mean not that they hoped to marry each other and live in New Jersey but that they aspired to be successful songwriters."

Tony barrow

Beatles Publicist

“Call it what you will, a razor-sharp rivalry or a professional lust for supremacy, electricity almost visibly crackled between the pair. John and Paul were very much like brothers, they often shared the same hotel rooms, not only in the early days when the group was too poor to afford suites but even later on when we were touring the world and staying in five-star places. They changed around; it wasn’t always Paul sharing with John…”

john

Cynthia Lennon

“He was closest of all to Paul, but their relationship was more complex. They spent a great deal of time composing together, one sitting at the piano, the other jotting down lyrics or strumming a guitar, both calling out for vast amounts of sarnies and tea, totally immersed in what they were doing. The time they spent working together was intense, and when it was over they needed to let off steam and relax apart.”

in conjugal with paul

“Literary parody was still Lennon’s inspiration in this brief ‘story’, which according to the credits in In His Own Write was written “in conjugal with Paul”

norther songs

Sir Joseph Lockwood

"I constantly saw Lennon and McCartney together because Paul came along to see that I wasn't rude to John—who I can't say I got on with. Paul didn't want me to upset John.

Pyramus and thisbe

“In the great tradition of pantomime dames, Lennon played the leading female role of Thisbe, which allowed him some highly camp flirtation with Paul ‘Pyramus’ McCartney.”

pete shotton

Years later, after John composed the first of his truly poignant and heartfelt Beatles songs, "In My Life"—with its lines about "friends I still can recall/some are dead and some are living"—he revealed to me that the two people he had had uppermost in mind were myself and Stuart Sutcliffe. And then he stunned me with a statement that I'd never heard him address to anyone—least of all to another man."You know, Pete," he said softly, "I do love you. But," he quickly added, "I loved Stuart as well."

playboy 1965

PLAYBOY: “Do you stick pretty much together off-stage?”JOHN: “Well, yes and no. Groups like this are normally not friends, you know. They’re just four people out there thrown together to make an act. There may be two of them who sort of go off and are friends, you know, but…” GEORGE: “Just what do you mean by that?” JOHN: “Strictly platonic, of course. But we’re all rather good friends, as it happens.

london life magazine

"I don’t read as much as John does. My main thing is, I’ve got to be settled to read. The times I would read are on a holiday, or in bed at night. The other day I took John to the Times Bookshop. I’d been there before and bought a copy of The Emperor Jones signed by Eugene O’Neill which really knocked me out, and the fellow there showed me the original manuscript of “Under Milk Wood”. The great thing about the Times Bookshop is that nobody’s going to bother about who you are. Well, John spent an hour there, and £150. It was a good day for the Times Bookshop and a good day for John."

london life magazine

One afternoon in late March 1966, Paul arrived at Indica with John Lennon. John wanted a book by what sounded like 'Nitz Ga'. It took Miles a few minutes to realise that he was looking for the German philosopher Nietzsche, long enough for John to become convinced that he was being ridiculed. He launched into an attack on intellectuals and university students and was only mollified when Paul told him that he had not understood what John was asking for either, and that Miles was not a university graduate but had been to art college, just like him. Immediately friendly again, John talked about Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, laughing about his school magazine the Daily Howl: 'Tell Ginsberg I did it first!' Miles found him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and John began to scan the shelves. His eyes soon alighted upon a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, Dr Timothy Leary's psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. John was delighted and settled down on the settee with the book. Right away, on page 14 in Leary's introduction, he read, 'Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.' He had found the first line of 'Tomorrow Never Knows', one of the Beatles' most innovative songs.

The Beatles backstage at the Queen's Hall in Leeds, England | 28 June 1963 © Brian Lawton

Jane songs✨

I'm Looking Through You(1965)

I'm looking through you,Where did you go?I thought I knew you,What did I know?You don't look diff'rent,But you have changed.I'm looking through you,You're not the same.Your lips are moving,I cannot hear.Your voice is soothing,But the words aren't clear.You don't sound different,I've learned the game.I'm looking through you,You're not the same.Why, tell me why did you not treat me right?Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. You're thinking of me The same old way, You were above me, But not today. The only diff'rence is you're down there. I'm looking through you and you're nowhere. Why, tell me why did you not treat me right? Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. I'm looking through you, Where did you go? I thought I knew you, What did I know? You don't look diff'rent, but you have changed. I'm looking through you, you're not the same. Yeah! Well, baby, you've changed. Ah, I'm looking through you...

Jane songs✨

I'm Looking Through You(1965)

You're thinking of meThe same old way,You were above me,But not today.The only difference is you're down there.I'm looking through you and you're nowhere.Why, tell me why did you not treat me right?Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight.I'm looking through you,Where did you go?I thought I knew you,What did I know?You don't look diff'rent, but you have changed.I'm looking through you, you're not the same.Well, baby, you've changed.

Jane songs✨

For No One (1966)

Your day breaks, your mind achesYou find that all her words of kindness linger onWhen she no longer needs youShe wakes up, she makes upShe takes her time and doesn't feel she has to hurryShe no longer needs youAnd in her eyes, you see nothingNo sign of love behind the tearsCried for no oneA love that should have lasted yearsYou want her, you need herAnd yet you don't believe herWhen she says her love is deadYou think she needs youYou stay home, she goes outShe says that long ago she knew someoneBut now he's gone, she doesn't need himYour day breaks, your mind achesThere will be times when all the things she said will fill your headYou won't forget her

Yesterday

Tony Barrow

Beatles Publicist

Barrow describes an incident from 1965 where McCartney ran through a dress rehearsal of “Yesterday” for a live evening performance on Blackpool Night Out.“Beatles Book editor Johnny Dean sat in the stalls close to comperes Mike and Bernie Winters and the other three Beatles, and watched Paul in solitary rehearsal on the stage, singing the song to his own guitar accompaniment. At the end, everybody heard John’s loud and decidedly sarcastic comment.”

Tony Barrow

Beatles Publicist

He made no secret of the fact that he thought ‘Yesterday’ was a slice of sentimental rubbish, and this led to several heated exchanges between John and Paul in the privacy of the group’s dressing room after the rehearsal.

Tony Barrow

Beatles Publicist

The sparring between John and Paul continued while they were getting ready for the final recording. John and Paul continue their heated discussion with George as piggy-in-the-middle.The two-handed gesture clearly reveals the mood John was in, but Ringo and Brian still refused to join in the argument.Ringo poured himself a fizzy drink before the final show but John clearly decided he needed something a bit stronger before they went into the television studio

Tony Barrow

Beatles Publicist

Throughout the Beatles’ 1965 summer concert tour of North America, Paul avoided doing the number on stage, partly in order to avoid further unpleasant conflict with John [and partly because nobody would be able to hear it in open air stadiums full of screaming fans].it was the danger of giving added strength to the ‘Paul is leaving’ rumour that helped to prevent ‘Yesterday’ from being released there and then as a single in the UK. As Paul knows, it could have been a smash hit at home as well as all over the world but it would have annoyed the rest of the group, and their hostility in such circumstances would have caused him a lot of personal grief which he didn’t need.

it's for you

I'd say some dayI'm bound to give my heart away When I doIt's for you love, true loveSeems to be all I'm thinking ofBut it's true it's for youThey said that love was a lie told me that INever should try to findSomebody who'd be kind kind to only meSo I just tell them they're rightWho wants a fight?Tell them I quite agreeNobody'd love meThen I look at youAnd love comes love showsI give my heart and no one knows that I doIt's for you

The day the beatles almost fucking died because their plane caught on fire

beatles and children first

Each of the Beatles acted in his own different way. Ringo simply stared at the fire. Paul tried to act cool, but Kane noticed he was biting his lip. George ran to the back, saying, 'Beatles and children first.'John, on the other hand, could not hide his terror. He looked at the fire, said, 'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,' ran to the emergency door at the back, and began tugging at the handle. Kan grappled with him, pulling his hands off and pushing him away, saying 'Are you fucking crazy? You'll get us all killed. At that point they were flying at a height of 22,000 feet. But John was not to be put off by logic. He charged at the door again, but the burly Mal Evans stood in his way.

Accepting their fate

"The inevitable black smoke finally alerted other passengers. John totally freaked. He went to the emergency door and attempted to open it. (...) It turned grim in the cabin as the pilot struggled to maintain control of the plane. John took a seat next to Paul, both of whom "sat silently, with fixed, serious expressions," as the airport loomed into view."

domestic bliss and the death

skywriting by work of mouth

The Smutty Paris Story

“Written in its author’s much-imitated, never-duplicated voice, populated with his own illustrations, full of the wit and honesty that helped make him one of the most iconic, polarizing figures of the 20th Century, Skywriting by Word of Mouth is the lost and recovered, posthumously published autobiography of John Lennon."

skywriting by work of mouth

The Smutty Paris Story

“An assignment in Jamaica had brought out the best in him. His interest in methodist acting had led him to a cloakroom at the Church of Latter Day Sadists. He had been commissioned to write a piece of shit. The pay was good, and it contributed to his children’s hospitalization. He was known for his chins and an unerring nose for newsboys. A cable had arrived for him that very morning stating the obvious: ‘Come too quickly. Stop. Try again. Stop. Am waiting in Paris. Stop me if you’ve heard it. Stop. Stuff yourself with artichokes and live. Stop. Don’t stop. Stop.’ He knew it was from Amie L'Nitrate. Her style was a little obstruse. He put on his oilcloth and caught the crabs.

Which paris trip was it?

Paris 1961

Met up in Paris?

Paris 1966

Met up in Paris?

Paris 1969

Met up in Paris?

time to tinhat

Poppers

Amyl Nitrite

Character: Amie L'Nitrate

French Fries

"Let me tongue yer Pommes Frites."

"Pommes Frites"

time to tinhat

"Light in the loafers"

A Homosexual Man

"He stepped lightly on some French loafers..."

'Und then … God Only Knows by the Beachboys!’

Paul McCartney's Favourite Song

Lizzie bravo

Apple Scruff

“For someone like me, who used to hang around Paul's house and EMI studios on a daily basis at the time, this is a fairly normal photo. Many days, John went to Paul's house in the afternoon and left from there to go to the studios later on. That day Paul drove his mini cooper to the studios and John was with him. For us 'regulars,' seeing them together was very normal.“

strawberry fields/penny lane

"Paul wasn’t planning to write about Liverpool – until he heard 'Strawberry Fields' and it lit up his competitive edge. These memories were something he and his dearest friend still shared – Paul remembered Strawberry Field, and he knew John well enough to know what it meant to him. But he also knew what Penny Lane meant to John – that was the street where he lived with his mother, Julia, before she left him. Strawberry Field was down the road from his Auntie’s house; the place he’d go to contemplate his exile from the home he’d known on Penny Lane. These twin songs went together as a concept single. 'Strawberry Fields' and 'Penny Lane' are their most famous combo, linked together forever though it’s been decades since they’ve existed in that form. They play off each other as a John/Paul dialogue. While Paul does his people-watching on Penny Lane, John is a mile away, hiding in the tall grass of Strawberry Field."

Girl w h a t

“We nearly always went up to his little music room that he’d had built at the top of the house, Daddy’s room, where we would get away from it all. I like to get away from people to songwrite, I don’t like to do it in front of people. It’s like sex for me, I was never an orgy man. So John and I would sit down and by then it might be one or two o'clock, and by four or five o'clock we’d be done.”

Jane's complaints about paul

Ray Connolly

"Jane appeared on the BBC Simon Dee television show and admitted that her relationship with Paul was over. A few months later Jane told me how naïve she'd been so far as other girls were concerned. But there were other problems. She was also unhappy about drugs, which were as common among rock stars then as they are now, and definitely not thrilled by Paul's friendship with some of the Rolling Stones. [...] And more important to Paul than his relationship with Jane, was his partnership with John Lennon, whom he'd met shortly after his mother died of breast cancer when he was 14. In his emotional vacuum, Paul had turned to music and joined John's skiffle group the Quarry Men. And when John's mother was also to die just over a year later, the friendship had intensified with a shared sense of loss. And so it was to remain as adulthood and fame arrived, and the girls came and went. And, in John's case, a wife as well."

india/1968-69

Before

Cynthia

"Shortly before we were due to leave for India John spent the weekend with Derek Taylor, a former journalist who had become the Beatles' press spokesman and a good friend to us all. He, his wife Joan and their five children lived in a big country house where they seemed incredibly contented. When he came home after that weekend John put his arms around me and said, 'Let's have loads more kids, Cyn, and be really happy'Despite my increasingly strong feeling that John was slipping away from me, it seemed at moments like that as though nothing had changed. John was off drugs and seemed almost like his old self. 'We can make it work, Cyn,' he said. 'When we're in India we'll have time for us and everything will be fine.' I hoped he was right.

Before

Cynthia

That letter made it crystal clear that they [John and Yoko] had been in contact. How well had they got to know one another? I tackled John, who told me she'd written many times, both letters and cards, but said, 'She's crackers, just a weirdo artist who wants me to sponsor her. Another nutter wanting money for all that avant-garde bullshit. It's not important.' I had no way of knowing whether he was telling me the truth. He sounded genuine, but a sixth sense told me there was more to this than he was admitting. I tried to put it to the back of my mind. We were going to India, and I wanted that to be a special time for us.

before

Cynthia

“It was a time for us all to drop out for a while. The years of fame and fortune had taken their toll on our nerves and minds. John and I both felt closer. There seemed to be a greater possibility of our finding a solution to personal difficulties. If our trip to India wasn’t going to solve our emotional problems, then nothing would.”

before

Cynthia

John panicked at the accumulating threats from the Princess of Darkness. That was when he decided to go to India with Cynthia to put some distance between himself and Yoko. If he stayed away long enough, he could hope Yoko would just go away. Maybe she’d go back to America, or vanish in a puff of smoke. Her scissors act might go horribly wrong, or while she was bagged up one day the Royal Mail might frank the bag and deliver it to anywhere but India. Yes, a long trip to the ashram, where he could meditate and learn how to be calm and in control, give up drugs and spend romantic moments with Cynthia and glue his crumbling marriage back together, seemed opportune.

Before

Tony Bramwell- Publicist

“I don’t like the unhappiness she [Yoko] caused. She was horrible. John wanted to avoid her at first. He said, ‘Get rid of the bloody woman!’ But after India, he saw her differently — perhaps filtered through an exotic mindset.”

During

Bob Spitz

“The pressure of being the Beatles had driven a wedge between them individually and that had all percolated in the months leading up to their visit to Rishikesh,” he said. “Once they got there, and they unburdened themselves from all of that, they reconnected with their songwriting and their creativity. It just flowed forth.”

During

“I was in a room for five days meditating,” said Lennon in The Beatles Anthology. “I wrote hundreds of songs. I couldn’t sleep and I was hallucinating like crazy, having dreams where you could smell. I’d do a few hours and they you’d trip off, three- or four-hour stretches. It was just a way of getting there, and you could go on amazing trips.” Cynthia Lennon said in Bob Spitz’s book The Beatles that for John, nothing else mattered when it came to mediation, adding “John and George were [finally] in their element [at the ashram]. They threw themselves totally into the Maharishi’s teachings, were happy, relaxed and above all found a piece of mind that had been denied them for so long.”

During

John “I went to the Maharishi and, regardless of what I was supposed to be doing, I did write some of my best songs while I was there. It was a nice scene. Nice and secure and everybody was always smiling. The experience was worth it if only for the songs that came out. It could have been the desert or Ben Nevis. The funny thing about the Maharishi camp was that, although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth, like ‘I’m So Tired’ and ‘Yer Blues.’”

During

Cynthia

Meanwhile, I was not having the second honeymoon I'd hoped for. John was becoming increasingly cold and aloof towards me. He would get up early and leave our room. He spoke to me very little, and after a week or two he announced that he wanted to move into a separate room to give himself more space. From then on he virtually ignored me, both in private and in public. If the others noticed they didn't say so. I did my best to understand, begging him to explain what was wrong. He fobbed me off, telling me that it was just the effect of the meditation. 'I can't feel normal doing all this stuff,' He said. 'I'm trying to get myself together. It's nothing to do with you. Give me a break.' What I didn't know was that each morning he rushed down to the post office to see if he had a letter from Yoko. She was writing to him almost daily. When I learnt this later I felt very hurt.

During

And because the Beatles didn’t know anything about ashrams and they haven’t seen anything before because they went for Maharishi, not for the ashram. Maharishi didn’t allow men to stay with their wives. John was delighted with the idea. He loved it, actually. I think it made Cynthia very unhappy. She wanted to stay with John, everybody had his own problems. My great interest was with John. I was very happy because I found John much healthier. The color in his face was different and he was happier and he took the whole thing very seriously, and he was trying hard and he was so excited when I arrived because perhaps I was part of the reason he was there.

During

By spending two months in deep meditation in India, John brought his deepest problems to the surface but he was unable to resolve them: the contradiction between his family life and his life as a rock star with all the drugs and groupies was too great. Had he stayed with the Maharishi until the end of the course, he might have avoided some of the pain, but by terminating the instruction abruptly, he was left hanging in thin air. During the weeks at the camp, he had been receiving daily letters from Yoko, though nothing sexual had yet happened between them. He was very attracted by her but he felt tremendous guilt about breaking up his marriage: doing to Julian what his own parents had done to him, repeating the pattern.

After

Geoff Emerick

So much had changed since I’d last seen the Beatles just a few months previously. They had come back from their trip to India completely different people. They had once been fastidious and fashionable; now they were scruffy and unkempt. They had once been witty and full of humor; now they were solemn and prickly. They had once been bonded together as lifelong friends; now they resented one another’s company. They had once been lighthearted and fun to be around. Now they were angry.

After

Geoff Emerick

The rage that was bubbling inside John was the most obvious sign that something was seriously wrong. There was new tension between John and Paul, and even between John and Ringo, in addition to the often strained relationship that Paul had with George and the resentment that Ringo sometimes exhibited when Paul coached him too much on drum parts. In fact, the only two Beatles who seemed to get along during the White Album sessions were John and George. Perhaps that came from the experience they had shared at the ashram—after all, they were the two who had stuck it out, staying on long after Ringo and Paul had gone back home. Maybe they felt deserted by their bandmates, or betrayed. The undercurrents between the four Beatles were so complex at that point, it gave me a headache just thinking about it.

After

Leslie Cavendish-- Hairdresser

There was little need for me to repeat my instructions. As soon as we got there, it was obvious that things were not hunky-dory with the Beatles. Their recent month-long meditation retreat with the Maharishi didn’t seem to have helped their relationships very much, and the estrangement was definitely having an effect on their work. I don’t think any actual recording got done that night. Paul, George and Ringo were rehearsing some new songs, trying different ways of playing and singing them. Meanwhile, John spent most of his time sitting on the floor next to Yoko, chatting privately with her as she stroked his hair. He seemed no more involved in the proceedings than me and Lawrence, who watched the uncomfortable tension building from the other side of the studio. “Hey John.” Paul turned around to face him at one point. “Are you in this band or what?”

After

Cynthia

Back at Kenwood John continued to be distant towards me. Now that we were away from the others and the charms of India, I felt increasingly afraid and depressed. John and I were back in the same bed, but the warmth and passion we had shared for so long were absent. John seemed barely to notice me. He was little better with Julian and was more likely to snap at him than give him a hug. There was just one moment of real warmth between us and that was, ironically, when John confessed to me that he had been unfaithful. We were in the kitchen when he said, out of the blue, 'There have been other women, you know, Cyn.'

After

Tony Bramwell

On the flight back from India, he had gotten very drunk and, for some reason, decided to confess all his affairs to Cynthia. Brutally, he ticked off a very long list, which included groupies, models, prostitutes, the wives and girlfriends of his and Cynthia’s friends and, possibly cruelest of all, Cynthia’s own girlfriends. Cynthia felt totally betrayed.

After

Cynthia

“John had taken acid once more and enthused, ‘Cyn, it was great. Christ Cyn, we’ve got to have lots more children. We’ve got to have a big family around us.’ At this point, I burst into tears … All I could blurt out was that, in no way, could I see us as he did. I was so disturbed by John’s outburst, that I even suggested that Yoko Ono was the woman for him. John protested at my crazy suggestion and suggested that I was being ridiculous. Although life went on as usual, my fears grew and I felt nervous and depressed. John was aware of my depression and suggested that, as he had to work for long hours in the recording studios for a few weeks, I should accompany Jenny, Donovan, Gyspy and Alexis on a holiday to Greece. The very thought of sun and sea really brightened my outlook.”

After

Pete Shotton

During the spring of 1968, John was as confused, lonely, and unhappy as I'd seen him in years. Though his relationship with the other Beatles was still free of serious strain, he was seeing increasingly less of Paul and George, both of whom were now pursuing independent lives and interests of their own.

After

Pete Shotton

The resentment might have been coming from a different place. With his marital problems still unsettled and Cynthia gallivanting around Greece, drugs continued to govern John’s fitful moods. He dosed himself continuously with LSD, tweaking its random effect with any spare pills he happened to find lying around the house. In the right company, it plunged John into a deep, unfathomable trance that altered between indecipherable rambling and deadpan silences. At Weybridge, into which Pete Shotton had moved in order to keep his friend company, he stayed up nights, tripping and battling wave after wave of incendiary rage. One night, after the usual snack of hallucinogens, Shotton says he noticed John moving his arms around very slowly in a circle. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” recalls Pete, “but John couldn’t explain it. He said, ‘I can’t stop. There’s something making me do this. I can’t help myself.’ ” Tears followed, uncontrollable rivers of tears, intermingled with hideous laughter.

After

Pete Shotton

When Shotton tried to comfort him, John resisted. “I’m not crying,” he insisted peevishly, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. Suddenly John declared that he was Jesus Christ, back from the grave. “He was convinced of it,” Pete recalls, “saying… ‘This is it, at last—I know who I am.’ ” The next day the Messiah convened an emergency meeting at Apple to announce his identity to the other Beatles. Unimpressed, they said: “Yeah, all right then. What shall we do now?” After someone suggested lunch, the matter was dropped. That night at Weybridge, in the middle of another drug-induced reverie, the TV flickered off, whereupon John, already chastened and in a self-abasing mood, asked Pete if it was okay if he invited a woman to the house. Shotton, who had no intention of staying up another night with his friend, was relieved. “Well, I think I’ll call up Yoko,” John said.

After

Tony Bramwell

What happened that night can only be left to the imagination, but since it patently wasn’t the coming together of two virgins for the very first time, did Yoko do her hypnotism thing, as some of John’s friends thought she had, or did she have a powerful new drug in her arsenal? Nobody really believed that John fell in love overnight, because why hadn’t he done so before? He’d been kicking Yoko in and out of his life for over a year. Mostly, he had given the impression that he resented and despised her. So it must have been something pretty potent that made John fall headlong out of his casual affair with her into a mad obsession. Perhaps it was that he really was mentally ill and like many schizoid personalities, got religious mania. If he really did believe that he was Jesus, Yoko would probably have convinced him she was the Virgin Mary. A virgin at any rate. John was shortly to tell the world that they spent the night at the top of the house in his bloodred music room, recording the Two Virgins tape. They say that a moose in heat can waken the dead and achieve the impossible with his bellows. John and Yoko spent the night screaming.

After

Cynthia--Bob Spitz

Whatever her reasoning, Cynthia remained determined to see the marriage through [after finding John and Yoko together]. Convinced that John still needed her, she returned to Kenwood, mollified by his apparent denial that anything improper had occurred. “For a while, everything was wonderful,” she recalled. “We could speak more openly and honestly with each other, and there really was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.” But the tunnel was short, and the light soon faded. Within weeks their life together had disintegrated into a revolving state of solicitude and withdrawal, resignation and despondence. Following a stretch when John became disturbingly incommunicative, Cynthia packed once again, escaping on still another vacation to Pesaro, Italy, with her mother, Julian, and a favorite aunt and uncle.

Jane songs✨

Honey Pie (1968)

She was a working girl North of England wayNow she's hit the big time in the U.S.A.​And if she could only hear me, this is what I'd sayHoney Pie, you are making me crazyI'm in love, but I'm lazySo, won't you please come home?Oh, honey pie, my position is tragicCome and show me the magicOf your Hollywood songYou became a legend of the silver screenAnd now the thought of meeting youMakes me weak in the kneeOh, Honey Pie, you are driving me franticSail across the AtlanticTo be where you belongHoney pie, come back to meWill the wind that blew her boat across the seaKindly send her sailing back to me?

George martin

"If you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row - there's a tension, an atmosphere. And you wonder whether you are making things worse by being there. I think that was kind of the situation we found with Ringo. He was probably feeling a little bit odd because of the mental strangeness with John and Yoko and Paul."

francie schwartz

13 Slides Basically About Paul Being Mentally Ill—Can Skip if Desired

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

He poured us a drink, and began to unwind, talking, almost melodramatically, about himself. It all seemed to lead inevitably to the writing of his saddest and most beautiful song, the one about his fiancee who wouldn't give him what he wanted most of all. Now he had chosen me to confirm his doubts about her love. “That's not where it’s at.” I said. His eyes searched mine a in a tender helpless way.“Where is it then, do you know?”“If I were your lady, nothing would be more important to me than your happiness, I mean that, and that’s where it should have been for her.” He hardly paused, “Do you think you could take care of of me?"“I don’t know . . . we are so different, I'd be glad to try.”He stood up, smiling, and held out his hand. He led me up the stairs to the giant dark room, and we flopped on the immense lonely bed. “I bet she’s with someone else right now,” he sighed.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

The phone rang occasionally. Sometimes it was easy to tell Jane was on the other end. He would get very uptight, very awkward and phony. I simply gritted my teeth, and realized that this wasn’t a one or two week shack-up now. I didn’t know what he wanted next, or why I was slaving at keeping him happy. He would look at me sometimes as if he believed I might perform a miracle on him.... After dinner, the rain came down, Paul was silent. then animated and weird. “You'll have to go. I've got to have this talk with Mrs. Asher.”

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

He talked about everything but Mrs. Asher until we went to bed. I couldn't take it anymore. “Come on Paul, what happened?” He was sad, but a little proud. He sounded as if he had turned over these words in his head many times before. “l've told her that I've met a girl who's offering me something Jane never could, that’s all.” It sounded like enough. It was what I needed, and at that moment I began to trust him.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

"He wasn't happy. But the big things that were driving him mad were beyond me. He kept on working and writing, but when John came over, all he could talk about was how much he loved Yoko. That disturbed Paul. In spite of John’s obvious happiness, Paul stifled his jealousy with not-very-cute bursts of racist crap.He cruised Jane’s house, and rang her from the phone in his Mini, She would say, “Sorry, I've pot somebody here.” He would creep home in a rage, and take it out on me. He never hit me, but he didn’t have to. He could be harder than a diamond in solid granite, and just as cold.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

I never had any advance warning about those trips, He'd just come home and shout, “Pack a basket, and my bag, we're going to the Pool!” His father missed him so, and begged me to make Paul telephone more often. When we finally made it to his home city, we acted very proper, sleeping in separate rooms. But the first trip was painted black with Jane's public announcement of their broken engagement, Uhe reporters swarmed the house, and I had to hide while Paul got rid of them. It put him ina poisonous mood, and so did the hundreds of pictures of Jane that were spread all over the dining room table, We hardly spoke. He sang and played for his father, a salty old guy who seemed tremendously sensitive. In the afternoon, Paul would work on “Jude,” making the house ring with melancholy.He had a hard time staying sober up there, and we traipsed under the Mersey to the city to drink with his cousins and pals, Singing in a Liverpool Pub could be fun, Even the autographs he gave were in good spirits, But he wasn’t wearing it well. He Just wanted to be one of the boys, but he wanted to be the one man band as well.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

"The next time we went back, the trip was full of pain. He was drunk as hell, playing the piano at a party given around him in a shabby little house. He slipped away to a pub one of his cousins owned, without my seeing. His cousin came to me sweating bullets. “You had better fetch your fella, Clancy.” (That's the way Paul had introduced me.) I walked down the street smelling disaster. He was backed up against the mirror behind the bar, red and swollen with self-pity, self-contempt. A bewildered crowd of cousins surrounding him. “You don't treat me like I was me, you treat me like I’m Him, and I'm not Him, y'know. I'm just me!” I took his hand as gently as possible. “Come home, love. Come home.”

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

When we reached the cobbled street, he fell down on his hands and knees, pounding his fists into the pavement.“IT’S JUST TOO FUCKIN’ MUCH, THATS ALL. I CAN'T TAKE IT.” He was hysterical.“What can’t you take?”“THE MONEY. ITS THE DAMNED MONEY. I'VE GIVEN THEM A FORTUNE AND THEY NEVER EVEN PAID ME BACK A SHILLING, THEY EXPECT IT!"... When we got back to Birkenhead, where his father’s house beckoned sleepily, he sobbed hopelessly on the floor, while the dogs climbed all over him. I waited till he was tucked in bed, completely asleep before leaving him.In the morning he pretended not to remember, and wouldn't let me remind him, to get it out clean and straight. His trouble was deep, and nothing I said could set him straight.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

The road back to London was slicker than a sealskin rug, and the rain came in buckets. We had saved some grass, which I'd cleverly rolled up in the garden before we left. We got totally zonked, and I asked him some wild questions, like “Do you ever think consciously of the power you have to communicate with millions of young people?” His eyes stared ahead, blanks. He stepped down hard on the gas, as if he could speed away from his demons. I though for sure we would run right off the road and die right there. Paul was so full of changes, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least. Fortunately, a cop pulled us over and tried to write out a speeding ticket while Paul tried to charm him out of it.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

One consolation: Yoko Ono Lennon. She and John moved in with us while their story was still something to hide. As the two of us cooked breakfast for our respective men, she'd rap with a kind of new, feminine wisdom about how hard it was to make them happy. She was fighting her own battle staying sane amidst racist attacks from the Apple cock-and-cunt garden. She was also opening up her wealth of strength and determination to John. All the same, she confided in me that she didn’t believe any relationship could last more than seven years. John, Yoko and I would watch the “telly” through the evenings When Paul was out raving and drinking and getting it up for God knows who. The three of us felt young and weird and relaxed, and talked about how we could save the company if only it could change direction, motivation. | was amazed that John never said a bad word about Paul’s management capabilities. Especially when Paul put thumbs down on Two Virgins.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

If there had been something John and Yoko could do to help me get Paul’s head straightened out, they surely would have done it. I asked John why Paul didn’t do a solo album. It would've seemed the logical outlet for all the ego crap he was laying down at the studio. John half laughed and said, “We thought of it a long time ago. It was point to be called Paul McCartney Goes Too Far. But he wouldn't do it. He’s too hung up about us bein’ Beatles, y know.” John obviously loved Paul enough to let him run wild if it would help ease the tension Paul was creating in the studio and at home. Yoko could see it, too.But Paul was treating them like shit too. He even sent them a hate letter once, unsigned, typed. It brought it in with the morning mail, Paul put most of the fan mail in a big basket, and let it sit for weeks, but John and Yoko opened every piece. When they got to the anonymous note, they sat puzzled, looking at each other with genuine pain in their eyes “You and your jap tart think you're hot shit,” it said. John put in on the mantle, and in the afternoon, Paul bopped in, prancing much the same self-conscious way he did when we met. “Oh, I just did that for a lark...” he said, in his most sugarcoated accent.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

In the evening I'd chase away the groupies, who were, for the most part, a twenty-four-hour drag. When a bunch of them chased me down the street as I was walking home, I understood at last the ambivalent feelings of the Beatles. To be chased down the street when you're tired, or trying to think something out, can be more than a little annoying. You have little to give them. Paul let two of them sleep in the garage one night, and in the morning they walked me to the bus stop. “How is he, how is he?” they asked in funny Brooklyn accents. “Moody as hell, A bitch in the morning, mostly.” “Ohhh, love it, love the MOODS.” said the pudgy one. She reassured me that the house groupies liked me better than Jane, who was snotty and wouldn't talk to them at all.

Francie schwartz

Paul's Girlfriend

The only time he ever mentioned Linda, the girl he later married, was during a discussion of how hard it is for “people” to make contact with each other. He said he had “made contact” with her right after he met me.“So why isn’t she here when you're so fucked up? Why don't you send for her?”“I want to try it with you,” he said, a little wistfully, knowing he had not given me the evenest of breaks. ... One evening soon after Harrie had left, I was watching television, alone and mindless. Paul and Linda’s wedding flashed on the screen. I watched them pushing their way through the crowd of sobbing groupies outside the registry office. If he could treat her like a human being, even with her lousy American accent, I thought, then he might make it after all. This was the third time. He had to make it work, or else he'd go raving queer and kill himself.

maggie mcgivern

Rewind

1966

One day when the buzzer rang on the intercom for the flat, she didn’t recognise the voice from the ground floor. The young man asked if John was around. ‘Who is it?’ said Maggie. ‘Paul McCartney,’ said the voice. ‘Oh — come up…’‘Paul ran up the stairs and came in,’ she recalls. ‘Very casually I told him John wasn’t really in — and that sent us both into hysterics. We were laughing and chatting. ‘I had made a nice lunch for Marianne and a bunch of her friends but they never showed up. Paul and I sat together and ate it instead. I’ll never forget the meal — it was chicken casserole. It was such a funny introduction that it threw us both off guard. It could have been very embarrassing, but there was an immediate rapport and we just couldn’t stop talking.’

Rewind

1966

‘It was a gradual thing,’ says Maggie. ‘From that point on Paul kept coming up to the flat. He was very good friends with John but I knew he was coming to see me. He would ring and ask if anyone was there and if there wasn’t, he would come up. We used to talk about lots of things but it was obvious to both of us that our other relationships were not going well.’ ‘When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him,’ she says. ‘He used to find me wherever I was, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me. ‘Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regent’s Park or go for drives in the country. ‘We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become an overnight superstar — I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.’

Rewind

1966

‘Throughout the relationship we never met in obvious places. We would go to places like auction rooms in South Kensington, and say “whoops — fancy meeting you here”.’By this point, Maggie saw Paul as a permanent fixture in her life, but gave no serious thought to marriage or children.Maggie was 20 and McCartney 23 when they met. At the time, she says, she had no conception of the enormity of the scene in which she was involved. ‘I know it really sounds strange but I didn’t really regard it as a big deal. They were mad times and the world was changing. People look back on it now as an era — but all we were doing was living in it.‘I knew in my heart that Paul was a real family man — when I was working at Marianne’s we used to spend hours just looking at little Nicholas. It was obvious Paul wanted children but, at that stage, I was in no way ready for it. I was a free spirit.’

maggie mcgivern

Girlfriend

One day the couple went to the Indica Gallery in London with a group of showbiz friends, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono. ‘We spent more time with John and than we did with George and Ringo — we hardly saw them at all.’ In the summer of 1968, McCartney’s engagement to Jane Asher ended. Later, it emerged that she had arrived back at their house to find him with another woman — not Maggie, but an American called Francie Schwartz.

maggie mcgivern

Girlfriend

Maggie says: ‘By September 1968 I had rented a flat on my own in Fawcett Street, Chelsea. I really wanted to live alone. I hadn’t been there long when one day I got a telegram at my flat from Paul. It said: “Flying to the sun. Car picking you up at 8pm. Love Paul.”‘I was so excited because I had no idea where we were going. A car drew up and we went to pick up Paul at St John’s Wood. As he came out he took an Instamatic camera from a fan, who was camped outside his house, and told us he was borrowing it to take on holiday.‘Paul had hired a private jet so no one would spot us. There was a proper lounge, no rows of seats — we were drinking champagne and laughing and joking with a male cousin of Paul, and his American girlfriend. I kept asking him where we were going, but he refused to tell me.’The plane landed in Sardinia but Maggie had no idea where she was until she spotted a sign. They had a hotel suite overlooking the ocean.

maggie mcgivern

Girlfriend

Much of their time was spent in restaurants where, she says, they were ‘treated like royalty’. At one banquet in their honour, they walked into a room full of women dressed in ballgowns. Maggie had a T-shirt dress. ‘Paul and I just collapsed in giggles,’ she says. ‘We thought it was hilarious.’ "We were lying on the beach just being young and in love. Paul turned to me, smiling, and out of the blue he just said: ‘Have you ever thought about getting married?’ I said, ‘Yes, I suppose, one day…’ and I thought nothing more of it. Looking back, it was obviously the wrong answer. When I said one day I meant in six months, maybe, but not never. But Paul was always slightly insecure and probably saw me as such a free spirit that he thought I was never going to settle down… I suppose I assumed that we would end up together but at the time I was just enjoying it all. In the sixties there was just so much going on that I didn’t have time to sit and think about the future. I suppose that, with the pressures of fame, Paul was craving security.”‘On the journey home we were singing Those Were The Days and falling around laughing. I went back to Paul’s house with him — I distinctly remember waltzing around the room with him.’

Maggie mcgivern

Paul's Girlfriend

“One day, a little after we returned from Sardinia, I rang Paul – and Linda answered the phone. I had seen a newspaper story about him having lunch with her before that, but I wasn’t the type to ask questions or get jealous. I remember Paul telling Linda to get off the phone and I asked him who she was and what was happening. He said: ‘I don’t know the scene, man. I don’t know what’s going on.'”

Maggie mcgivern

Paul's Girlfriend

A while later Maggie received a very late night and peculiar visit from Paul. “He was really down and I couldn’t seem to get a word out of him. He was crying and I knew he had been stressed. I stood and held him and asked him to tell me what was wrong. Then suddenly he jumped up and said he had to go. Somehow I knew when I closed the door that night I wouldn’t see him again.” Only two days had gone by before Maggie discovered that Paul and Linda had married when she saw the headline on a newspaper billboard on King’s Road.

anyway

AUTHORS BEING CRAZY

“His partnership with Lennon was non-sexual, but it ran deeper than anything he had experienced with a woman... Seeing Lennon focus on Ono rather than him [Paul] was as devastating as it would have been for Cynthia Lennon to witness the couple making love.” “With Yoko present, Paul McCartney’s reign as Lennon’s princess was doomed.” "John’s in love with Yoko,” Paul confessed to a reporter from the ‘Evening Standard’, “and he’s no longer in love with the three of us.” But for all intents and purposes, he might as well have been talking about himself.

Danny fields

Friend of Linda

“It was clear to Paul by this point that Yoko had become by far the most important person in John Lennon’s life; even were she to somehow vaporize, John would not come running back to Paul after that unfortunate disappearance.”“The Beatles were having severe problems then, with Yoko Ono apparently having driven a wedge between Paul McCartney and the most important person in his life, John Lennon.” “The wedding [of Paul and Linda] was front-page news all over the world […] Girls wore the black of mourning for weeks afterwards, and, like an answering move in a chess game, John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar eight days later.”

Powers of Two

Joshua Wolf Shenk

“John had broken Paul’s heart, but, for a time, Paul still had John to make music with him about it.”

peter brown

Brian Epstein's assistant and temporary manager of the Beatles

"One week and one day after Paul married Linda, I received a phone call from John. He and Yoko were at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris and wanted to get married, immediately. People believe that John's desire to get married so soon after Paul's marriage was a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps it was psychologically about breaking up with Paul. When things were at their worst between them, John once said to Paul, "I want a divorce from you like I got from Cynthia."---"'Why her? John could have had the most beautiful or intelligent woman in the world—why this odd little Japanese lady?' The reason, many people believed, was that more than a trophy wife, a model or an actress, John needed a chum. His love affair with Paul McCartney was ending. According to Yoko's interview, her relationship with John was platonic for a long time.

AUTHORS BEING CRAZY

“No matter how much he loved Yoko, the Gibraltar ceremony seems like something close to an on-the-rebound reaction to the loss of his first great love, Paul McCartney.”

AUTHORS BEING CRAZY

Paul Saltzman (met the Beatles in India)

“It was a divorce. It was, no doubt, both classic and inevitable–unless they had all refused to grow up into their adult lives. It was certainly hardest for Paul. He and John were emotional partners in a powerful, creative and loving way."

70s

marriage

Ray Connolly

“It’s like a marriage. These two broke up. And it took Paul a long time to get over it. John too, but he was just too macho to show it. But they had a marriage before Yoko arrived, although they both had girlfriends before.”

Paul's depressed arc

Paul McCartney knew he was in trouble the morning he couldn't lift his head off the pillow. He awoke facedown, his skull feeling like a useless dead weight. Day by day, his condition had been worsening. His sleepless nights were spent shaking with anxiety; his days were characterized by heavy drinking and self-sedation with marijuana. For the first time in his life, he felt utterly worthless. Everything he had been since the age of 15 had been wrapped up in the band. Now, he was 27, and even though he couldn't tell the world, that period of his life was almost certainly over."

Yesterday

"After a particularly heavy session with the lawyers (he was also fighting deportation) Lennon would flop into his music room, pick up a guitar and tear into a primal-scream version of ‘Yesterday’. Sometimes he tried a little writing of his own. Usually he just sank further into the one Beatles song he never quite got over. Friends would find him sitting in the dark, lost in Paul’s ballad."

imagine

John came to my loft and he was all excited," Smith recalls. He said, 'I think I finally wrote a song with as good a melody as Yesterday.' Yesterday drove him crazy. People'd say, 'Thank you for writing Yesterday, a beautiful song...' He was always civil, but it drove him nuts. "Sat at Smith's piano, Lennon revealed a title - Imagine - but only a smattering of lyrics. For the rest he sang 'scrambled eggs' - just as McCartney had when inspired to write Yesterday. He played it through and asked me what I thought. 'It's beautiful.' 'But is it as good as Yesterday?' 'They're impossible to compare.'So he played it again. And again. And he said, 'You'll see, it's just as good as Yesterday."

"just because"

Drunk Version

Just because you left and said goodbye / Don’t you ever think I’m gonna sit here and cry / Even if my body should tell me so / Darling I would never never never let you go / Just because you think you’re so smart / Just because you think you break my heart / Because I let your mind tell me so / Well listen now darling I would never let you go. Well you think you’re so smart / Breaking everybody’s, everybody’s heart / I need some excuse to be doing this / I need some relief from my obligations / Just because you’re so sweet / Just a little cocaine will set me right on my feet / Whenever I’m so blue… / Yes sir that’s my baby / No sir I don’t mean maybe / You know I like it just like my mama and my papa used to do / I like it the same old way / Just go from the head, from the top…

"Just because"

Drunk Version

I know you love me / I just wanna know / Just tell it to me baby / It’s all I got to know / Once more / Any time you, you feel like / I couldn’t / I just wanna hold you / I just… / Just because you left and said goodbye / Don’t you think I’ll ever ever say goodbye / Even if my heart should break in two / Darling I would never / I’d never make nothing without you. Just because you think you’re so goddamn smart / And even if my heart said, “Come on John, get it” / Before I let you, and before I let you get a grip on me / Darling I would beg on my bended knee / Baby you’re so smart / I want permission from you / All those mothers don’t know what they’re doing / Little by little by little / I need your love so bad it hurts me…

but why

“Lennon could have abandoned the (US) immigration case and returned to Britain, and possibly even to McCartney, but that would have meant accepting that his relationship with Ono was over.” “What happened at the Dakota in January 1975? Various biographers have suggested that Ono might have drugged Lennon or hypnotized him, or used her esoteric knowledge of witchcraft. More intriguing, in retrospect, is Ono’s rationale. Did she choose this moment for a reunion because the numbers were right, or was she afraid that she might lose him forever if he reunited with McCartney?”

paul noooo

Peter Brown

“Going through the transcripts reminded Gaines of the long shadow cast by Lennon. “I didn’t realise how sensitive the other Beatles were to John’s opinion. Paul worried about what John would say and was still longing for his friendship. […] Those interviews were done before John’s death and Paul’s heart was broken, even then. It wasn’t just the break-up of the Beatles. It was more personal than that.”

birth of the beatles

1979 (Pete Best was the Technical Advisor)

Random

sir

“I’ve never been the kind to go down to the pub with my buddies. John was really my only male friend, if only because of proximity."

ruth mccartney

“Paul and the world had just lost someone very dear to them. I had lost my Uncle John, the myopic, misunderstood, manipulative, mystifying Mop-Top who had helped me to learn to ride a bicycle; Julian and Sean had lost a father; Cynthia, her knight in shining armour; Yoko, a fellow artist, contemporary and house husband...and Paul? Well, call me crazy, but he lost the wife. I’m certainly not implying anything of a carnal nature here, but to almost all intents and porpoises (as John would have put it), what they had was a marriage. Mark David Chapman’s selfish quest for his Warhol-esque fifteen minutes of fame was the fatal wound to an injured relationship that had lasted almost 23 years.

Ruth mccartney

This unconventional partnership, much like a paradigmatic marriage, had endured its sundry situations...its honeymoon period; its seven year itch; the adoption of its offspring by Northern Songs and some time foster parent Michael Jackson; the tender temptations of Jane, Cynthia, Yoko, Linda, May Pang and others. […] On the February 9, 1964, Ed Sullivan shone the proverbial light on the viewing public. The long night was over. The Beatles had conquered America. For the next two and a half years, John and Paul, (together with George and Ringo), would travel, eat, rehearse, write, play, record and 'sleep' (again, not literally) together.”

sure

“When I look back and think, I have to say, 'Wow' – we did all that, and we were just kids from Liverpool. And here it is in the photographs. Boy, how great does John look?”

rock bottom

"Angela Lucia McCartney was born in Liverpool UK in November of 1929. She married her first husband Eddie in 1956 and daughter Ruth was born in February 1960. Sadly, Angie was widowed in '62, and in '64, her old friends Mike and Bette introduced her to their Uncle Jim McCartney. They married in November and spent 12 loving years together."

sean needs to get off of social media ❤️❤️❤️

/Sean getting harassed about mclennon :(((