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Latest Posts by chetthedog1904 - Page 2
Oh my!
Some pictures of the Beatles with each others’ children
Mirabelle: George Harrison tells his own life story. (October, 1963)
Hi girls, George Harrison here, lead guitar.
I’m not taking any notice of course, but the other three are skipping around the room, saying, “Hi girls! George Harrison here, lead guitar.” Well, I’ve got to introduce myself some way, haven’t I?
One thing about us Beatles is that we’re just as nutty now as we ever were. Our chart success hasn’t changed us, thank goodness. I remember the first time I ever met Paul was on the bus home from school. He was sitting laughing to himself. I thought, “We’ve a right case here,” and then I realised he could see his own reflection in the window. Well, I thought, that explains it!
John, I recall, was eating fish and chips, but his hair being so long kept getting in the way! Ringo, who I met in a club, looked moody. Then when we started talking he explained he’d been talking hard and the effort was too much for him. He can’t help it, poor lad.
I was never officially introduced to myself. In accordance with the natural custom I was born, at the time being fairly small (about twenty inches long). My mother insists that I was brought into the world singing and playing a guitar, but I think she’s joking.
Keep reading
“‘You see,’ he says, snuffing out his cigarette with a defiant jab, ‘what I have to combat is the original image of me as the downtrodden dummy. It’s still in everybody’s minds. you don’t know how hard it is to fight that tag. I’ve been caught in this trap for almost twenty years now. But it hasn’t ruined my life. I know what I am, I know what I can do. But what am I going to do, take out a newspaper ad or a billboard and say, “I’m not really like that”? People always latch on to the first image and refuse to let go. ‘It was the same with John. Because he had this rapier wit, they said he was nasty and things like that. But John was the kindest person I ever knew. He was the only one of the four of us who would give his soul. The three of us would hesitate, but John would give you anything without hesitation. And I loved the man dearly. We were friends all the time. ‘I love the other two, you know. We’re friends, and there’s no real problem, but we have arguments and little fights. We did when we were touring, and we do now. But nothing like the newspapers make it out to be.’ […] For Ringo, the enforced intimacy created bonds of camaraderie that no amount of time or litigation can break. ‘They are my brothers, you see. I’m an only child, and they’re my brothers. I’ve always said that if I ever spend all my bread, I can just go live with one of them, and vice versa, ‘cause we all love to spend it,’ he chuckles.”
— Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone: Ringo in the afternoon. (April 30th, 1981)
I agree with this except I think it is very likely there was a physical relationship, although who can say. Well I wish someone could say. But I know it's none of my business. But still ...
Discussing McLennon's opponents arguments
Disclaimer: By writing McLennon in the title of this post, I made a simplification. I understand "believing in McLennon" as believing, or even contemplating / leaving a window to the possibility that John and Paul's relationship was not purely platonic. This includes variations: that John was unhappily in love with Paul, that they were secret lovers, and - most likely in my opinion - that their feelings for each other were (at least in part) romantic, but they didn't do anything about it. Often, especially in general (non-Mclennon) Beatles groups, I am faced with disbelief or even outright dislike when someone starts this topic. Today I will try to look at what the opponents of our thesis say.
"You're just sexualizing everything! There may be a close friendship between men" (in a more ridiculous and nasty version that I saw in the comment on YT: "Only women and gays believe in McLennon because straight men know that there can be close friendship between men") Well, we start with a difficult topic. There are two different harmful points of view in society. The first is amatonormativity, according to which the only important relationship in a person's life is a romantic one, and friendships are less important. In this context, our critics might be right. BUT! There is also another harmful mechanism that must not be forgotten - homophobia. According to it, being an LGBTQ person is something wrong and a disgrace. Therefore, we cannot think of our idols (e.g., musical idols) as having (or contemplating) romantic and / or sexual relationships/feelings with people of the same sex. Homophobia permeates society as a whole, including historians who often interpreted two men who were close to each other as "just friends" (for example, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion). We are dealing with the same at McLennon. So we should be prudent and, where possible, fair when trying to judge any relationship considering the existence of both homophobia and amatonormativity.
"Who cares? What does it change if these two guys were in love?" Well, it changes a lot. If we accept that Lennon and McCartney were in love, we adopt a slightly different view of the breakup of the Beatles. That would explain (at least to some degree) why John was so ostentatious about his relationship with Yoko, why they got married just eight days after Paul, why he disliked Linda so much, and, most of all, why he attacked Paul so fiercely in 1970 and 1971. Of course, anger, jealousy, greed and insecurity can cause different behaviors (e.g. Gilmour and Waters fighting), but John and Paul fought each other like lovers. They wrote songs for themselves. In one of them, Paul, wanting to ease the battle, writes: "I'm in love with a friend of mine." Why? And why, for instance, does Lennon mention fucking McCartney in 1970s interviews? Broadening your horizon and accepting that the two guys had a romantic friendship would help with the analysis. Isn't that what being a historian/scholar is all about?
"It's impossible because they were both straight" This is something I wrote about above - plugging your ears and shouting: "Lalalala, my idol can't be gay!". Even if you don't think it is likely that two people had a non-platonic relationship, please be at least open to that eventuality. As for John not being straight - I'm preparing a masterpost on it, which will be released this month. Of course, I'll link it here later. As for Paul, the case is more difficult. I think I'll also make a post about it. I suspect (and would like to emphasize that this is only my interpretation, which may not be true) that Paul has been and is attracted to women all his life, and that the only man Paul has looked at romantically is John. It's like in this meme: "I'm straight but John Lennon is John Lennon" :D
"How can you discuss this? Isn't that interfering with their private lives?" Firstly: In my opinion, we can discuss the private life of celebrities, especially if they themselves decide to share it with us. John, Paul and those around them have largely decided to do so. Anyway, people have always analyzed the private life of the Beatels. Here, for example, we see a girl asking Paul in 1964 about his relationship with Jane Asher. And the most important thing: I've noticed that McLennon's opponents are quite okay with analyzing the private lives of the Beatles until the topic of homosexuality / bisexuality comes up. Only then do they say: "Leave them, it's their business!", not before. Do you know what it's called? Queerphobia. Secondly: Just read this post. That's all for now. What do you think? Feel free to comment.
John & Paul
“John Lennon was in a movie theater, crying. The image of Paul, singing from the rooftop in the final 10 minutes, had set him off. Jann Wenner shifted in his seat. In the darkness of a tiny movie house in San Francisco, the Beatle, Wenner’s hero, whose iconic spectacles and nose adorned the first issue of his rock ‘n’ roll newspaper, Rolling Stone, had tears running down his cheeks as light flickered off his glasses. And next to him was Yoko Ono, the bête noire of Beatledom, raven hair shrouding her porcelain face, also weeping. It was a Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1970, and John and Yoko and Jann and his wife, Jane Wenner, were watching the final scenes of Let It Be, the documentary about the Beatles’ acrimonious recording session for their last album. John and Yoko were deep into primal-scream therapy, their emotions raw and close to the surface, and the image of a bearded Paul McCartney singing from the rooftop of Apple Records, against a cold London wind, was too much to bear. For Wenner, the 24-year-old boy wonder of the new rock press, who worshipped the Beatles as passionately as any kid in America, this was a dream, sitting here in the dark, wiping away his own tears at the twilight of the greatest band of all time, elbow-to-elbow with “the most famous person in the world, for God’s sake. And it’s just the four of us in the center of an empty theater,” marveled Wenner, “all kind of huddled together, and John is crying his eyes out.””
— Joe Hagan (biographer), Vanity Fair: Jann Wenner, John Lennon, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever. (September 29th, 2017)
Happy Birthday Ringo
When we got off the plane at some airport or another, Ed got off a plane there around the same time having never heard of us and not knowing anything about us. But he knew about thousands of kids standing on a roof screaming at us, and so he just booked us. Or maybe it was his assistant. We could have come to America and not made a big splash, but thanks to Murray The K and Cousin Brucie and early Beatles believers like that, they played our damn record and we had a #1 when we landed. Honestly, I don’t remember any big conversations with Ed. And in my eyes, the funny thing is that for all that, Ed kind of threw us away when he introduced us. It was just like, “Here they are…the Beatles.” NOT a lot of hype when you think back on it now. But for a pretty stiff guy, Ed sure gave us a very big shot.
-Ringo Starr (Lifted)
Happy McLennon day! 60 years since John met Paul at the Woolton Church Fete on the 6th July 1957 and started this whole thing off…
“I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me. Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member; all the rest kind of slipped away.”
[Paul, talking about his first impressions of John, Record Collector Magazine, 1995]
“I was on a battered old guitar, which hadn’t cost much. A bloke named Rodney was on banjo, Pete Shotton was on washboard, I think Eric Griffiths was on another guitar and Len Gary [sic] was on box bass.
“There was a friend of mine called Ivan who lived at the back of my house and he went to the same school as Paul McCartney - The Liverpool Institute High School. It was through Ivan that I first met Paul. Seems that he knew Paul was always dickering around in music and thought that he would be a good lad to have in the group.
“So one day when we were playing at Woolton he brought him along. We can both remember it quite well. We’ve even got the date down. It was June 15th 1955 [sic]. The Quarrymen were playing on a raised platform and there was a good crowd because it was a warm sunny day.”
[John, talking about how he and Paul met, quoted in Beatles Monthly No 2, September 1963 - and obviously getting the date really wrong - on purpose or not?!]
Pics - top - the first (?) photo of John and Paul together. The Quarrymen, including Paul, playing at New Clubmoor Hall, Broadway, Liverpool on 23rd November 1957. Photo by Leslie Kearney.
Photos on truck taken by James Davis - Rod Davis’ dad, who is the Rodney on banjo that John’s talking about. Photos taken on 6th July, 1957. (John with his eyes closed in the centre of the first photo, he’s obscured by Pete Shotton in the second).
Bottom 2 photos - The Quarrymen playing on 6th July, 1957, the day John met Paul. (Last photo - Geoff Rhind, other photo - Unknown but maybe Geoff Rhind?).
Happy McLennon Day Beatle fans everywhere!
They are so perfect
John Lennon and Paul McCartney behind the scenes of Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
Agree
find it kind of odd how people throw the term "immoveable heterosexuality" back in pauls face as if hes the originator of that phrase?
Get Back Narrative
I’ve received a couple of asks seeking clarification regarding my earlier post about how the Get Back documentary was redefining the Beatle narrative.
I’ll try to summarize.
1. Media articles like this, this and this regarding Ono’s presence. While it’s obvious that the band was heading toward dissolution with or without Ono’s presence, Ono’s continued presence in the studio, her unsolicited participation in band business (no, she didn’t just sit there and read, as some would claim), and her willingness to speak on John’s behalf is hardly exculpatory. Even Time magazine, which at least attempted a more considered analysis of the Beatle break-up era, claimed, after watching Get Back, that ‘Yoko’s presence was not a huge negative factor, and that none of the band members appear much bothered by her constant presence; they joke and talk with her comfortably”. This is a shocking claim, given that a) the documentary clearly depicts the deleterious effect of Yoko’s presence upon band members during the failed meeting at George’s house, and b) George, Paul, and Ringo have all gone on record regarding their discomfort in Ono’s presence and the disruptive nature of her involvement in band business.
(As an aside, I would also like to know in what workplace, no matter how creative or unorthodox, it would be acceptable to bring your lover or spouse to work everyday and insist that the presence of that person was absolutely benign.)
2. The exclusion of information which would provide context to behaviour, such as John and Yoko’s heroin addiction. “By the advent of the “Get Back” sessions, Ono openly joked about taking heroin being the couple’s form of exercise”). This was excluded in the Get Back documentary and, as a consequence, from mainstream media. Obviously the inclusion of this information would more accurately contexualize John’s behaviour in the band, including his insistence on Yoko’s presence.
Another compelling piece of information that was not included in the documentary was that Patti Harrison briefly left George around the time of George’s departure from the band. Since there was no mention of this event during filming, Peter Jackson decided not to share it, claiming he didn’t want to make any “moral judgements.” To whatever extent his brief estrangement from Patti affected George’s judgement we’ll never know (George didn’t even mention it in his diary of that day), but its exclusion in the documentary is regrettable.
3. Editorial Choices by the filmmaker. Peter Jackson has gone on record that he was not influenced by Ringo or Paul, and nor by Olivia or Yoko at any point in the making of the Get Back Documentary. And there’s no reason not to believe him. But: the Get Back documentary reflects his editorial choices–what he believed was important to leave in, and what he believed was acceptable to leave out. As Erin Torkelson Weber indicated in this earlier post, “the reality is that, without unrestricted access to the hundreds of hours of actual audio and visual tapes Hogg and Jackson used to make their films, fans are still being offered only someone else’s interpretation/vision/translation of the primary source material…so we have to rely on evidence that has already been framed and filtered.”
And that reality–that we are watching someone’s else’s version of the truth, has escaped mainstream media and a certain cohort of Beatle fans who either find the Get Back version of the Beatle break-up era more commensurate with their own beliefs, or simply don’t know any better.
“The last time John Lennon set foot on a concert stage, it was Thanksgiving 1974, making a surprise appearance with his friend Elton John at a sold-out Madison Square Garden. When he and Elton cut “Whatever Gets You Thru” together, Elton proposed a bet - if it hit Number One, John would sing it with him live. John agreed, never thinking he’d get called on it. But he was. The performance sounds shaky - John’s all nerves after a few years of hiding from live shows - but he steps up there to mach shau with Elton, doing the hit as well as Elton’s remake of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.“ John announces, “We thought we’d do one last number so I can get out of here and be sick. This is a number of an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul.” They do “I Saw Her Standing There,” their big finale. Even in the raw recording Elton released as a B-side, you can hear John get caught up in the crowd’s excitement. It’s his night to shine - onstage in New York, for the first time in years and the last time ever. Why is he doing a Paul song? Why is he making this moment about him and Paul, when all anybody wants is to cheer and shower John with love? But in the middle of the crowd, he calls Paul’s name.”
— Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield
McLennon
Fic: not like me to pretend
Prompt: John makes up a fake nude drawing assignment and convinces paul to be his model. lots of waxing lustful poetic about paul from if from john’s pov or if it’s from paul’s pov have him try and not get aroused but fail :)
AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40072173
Scary!
When the band was out drinking one evening in a nightclub [during the 1972 European tour], things turned disturbingly nasty. A young man in a green jacket sidled up to Paul and calmly informed the ex-Beatle that he had a revolver in his pocket and planned to kill him. Having coolly revealed this threat to McCartney, the youth swaggered over to the bar and stood there staring and grinning at the singer. McCullough and Laine arrived not long afterward. McCartney, clearly shaken, whispered to his bandmates, telling them what had just happened and gesturing toward the stranger. The guitarists, particularly the streetwise McCullough, who had begun his musical career as a showband player in the rough Northern Irish dance halls of the early 1960s, quickly took control of the situation. Pulling a knife out of his boot, and with Laine in tow, he wandered over to the bar. The pair flanked the now flustered wannabe thug, who began to protest his innocence, claiming it had all been a misunderstood joke. Laine and McCullough quickly wrestled him to the floor and searched him, producing no weapon. As soon as they let him go, the youth scrambled to his feet and took off into the night. In McCullough’s opinion, it was “one of those incidents that happens a thousand times on a Saturday night in any given city. I felt very protective of Paul because of his vulnerability. … He needed a strong helping hand from whoever was around him.”
[—from Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, Tom Doyle]
🎉 1 MORE DAY UNTIL MCLENNON WEEK! 🎉
Friendly reminder that McLennon Week begins tomorrow Monday July 4th!
(For more info check the guidelines and the prompt list posts.)
What in the world were all the people involved in this even thinking? Wonderfully outrageous.
The Beatles | 1965 © Robert Whitaker
Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison performing as Japage 3, photographed by Mike McCartney on March 8, 1958. This was taken at Paul's Aunt Gin's house during the wedding reception of his cousin, Ian Harris. The person standing next to Paul is Dennis Littler, a friend of Ian's.
I'm so sorry that my timing's off
But I can't move on if we're still gonna talk
Is it wrong for me to not want half?
I want all of you, all the strings attached
Oh, I'm good at keeping my distance
I know that you're the feeling I'm missing
You know that I hate to admit it
But everything means nothing if I can't have you
I can't write one song that's not about you
Can't drink without thinking about you
Is it too late to tell you that
Everything means nothing if I can't have you?
-If I Can’t Have You (Shawn Mendes)
