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Swinging through the ivories

Last Saturday saw the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mary Lou Williams, jazz pianist, composer, arranger and, in later life, founder of an organisation devoted to help jazz musicians suffering from drug addiction. Williams, like the blues singer Memphis Minnie, was a person whose personality and talent helped her rise above the strictures imposed by gender and race at the time.

She cut her teeth in the 30s writing and arranging for Benny Goodman’s and Duke Ellington’s bands, and in the 40s she mentored Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk, among others. She wasn’t restricted to playing in bands either – her large-scale compositions include the Zodiac Suite, a series of musical sketches, the long hymn called Black Christ of the Andes and several masses (following her conversion to Catholicism in the 50s).

As pianist Billy Taylor remembers, when Williams was mentoring Thelonius Monk she helped him refine his playing style – basically, she stopped him battering the holy shit out of the keyboard! Monk’s style needed to be toned down a bit, and the end result was still characteristically muscular but infused with greater feeling. No doubt Monk had many different mentors. but Taylor’s story shows that Williams was not an insignificant one.

reblog w the song lyrics in your head NOW. either stuck in yr head or what yr listening to

In one ep she talks about emailing Philip Norman for info and he refused, so now we have the amazing meta possibility (beautiful possibility!) that he is having an argument with himself

Funniest thing for me about the Beautiful Possibility podcast is that someone can wank on for so long and so pretentiously about whether or not John and Paul touched dicks.

what is it with dezo hoffman and taking the most erotic photos imaginable of beatles. see also: the smoky hazy sleepy paul in paris 64 pics that john supposedly owned. also a p hot one of george from the same shoot

John Lennon backstage at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England | 4 April 1963 © Dezo Hoffmann

"At first neither John nor I liked this picture because it was contradictory to his tidy image. But his expression and the lighting were so good that we ended up liking it. It seems to sum up John at that time." ~ Dezo Hoffmann

Very astute and compassionate analysis. The vibe is very 'we have our problems but we present a united front to the world' which is fair enough but oh god Linda really got swallowed up in that mother role (both literal & metaphorical) at this time. They're both mired in codependence & clinging to family to keep going. I also detect a hilarious bit of Paul-competitiveness in the unspoken comparison of Linda to Yoko. "SHE is a distant mother with a million servants but MY WIFE is Supermum who does ALL the chores and LOVES it!" A competition that literally no one cares about but him lmao.

Paul and Linda Interview from Hellllllll

@slenderfire-blog as the patron saint of good sources sent me this interview and I thought I would write it up as it gives a worrying insight into the famed idyllic marriage and Paul’s mental state at the time.

Reader, it was not idyllic and he was not doing well.

Disclaimer: For context, this interview is in his Broadstreet era aka the grief/midlife crisis/I cant have a meltdown if I’m making a film period. I fully believe that Paul was having an extended emotional crisis/breakdown post John's death/successive unresolved and badly handled traumas. (As I was saying to @slenderfire-blog, let's just say if he feels like crying every damn day about John in 2021, imagine how it was in 1985.) So yeah Paul is having a time and I look forward to McCartney Vol 3. for potential confirmation and illumination on this.

At the same time JESUS FUCK PAUL THIS IS TERRIBLE.

Like so bad, bad to the point I now feel like contemporaneous Peter Cox account is 1000% more credible as this is essentially the PR version of what he said. So let's get into the greatest hits:

The happy, definitely-not-in-trouble couple

They do seem to adore each others company, be locked in with each other and Paul does rely on her a lot for support and approval:

As they talk, Paul constantly squeezes Linda’s arm reassuringly, strokes her hand or looks to her for approval or agreement whenever he makes a point. The two are inclined to talk at once or to finish each other’s sentences. At times, the link is so tight, they seem almost like different aspects of one person.

Though at the same time they both describe the relationship as 'rather volatile' and full of arguments where they go and sulk in different rooms. They lightly play it off but then Linda says a bit too seriously that shes usually the one who gives in first :/.

Paul built the house they live in and are sort of obsessed with cosplaying living the 'peasant' lifestyle with no help save one housekeeper Rose who is from Paul's bachelor days and the occasional babysitter (as far as I'm aware this is true).

The marrying thing in 68 was so intense he even asked lil HEATHER to marry him what the hellllll (of course he wasn't serious but it does feel like another way of indirectly pressuring Linda to commit). He also kept asking Linda until she gave in.

Random swipe in the baby name department at Zowie Bowie, lmao not friends with the Bowies then (good thing Duncan Jones happens to agree).

They romanticise the bickering and volatility as being like passionate young lovers

“My parents were married for 25 years and they were like young lovers,” says Linda. “Paul’s parents were the same. If you’re lucky, you get that in life. You see, those are the kinds of things that matter to me—not the diamond necklace.”

Paul:

Paul is clearly not okay and seems to be regressing by trying to recapture his childhood through his current situation. Throughout the interview Paul keeps going back to his parents marriage and his childhood as the ideal frame of reference. This is pretty standard but Paul takes it to the extreme of this meaning no friends, family only and the wife do all of the labour.

This (save the misogyny) is a far cry from his 60s revolutionary kick but I can see how this happened in the wake of the Beatles split, the trauma and complex grief from John's death and the press. In response and defense to the criticism and hurt, Paul seems to have retreated wholly within himself and his family sphere and is coercing Linda into fulfilling the role of the wife within that. Take for example, his portrayal of the housework and why Linda should like to do it:

“Linda really doesn’t like housework,” Paul explains, “because when she grew up, her family had maids and she wasn’t taught to do anything. But it’s something I’ve tried to tell Linda about because in the kind of family I’m from, housework is considered a pleasure—the smell of ironing and the laundry. Where I’m from, once a week, the women would sort of get the laundry out and smell the washing and feel it and see it and iron it all, and they’d be chatting or listening to the radio. It was like a peasant thing. It was an event, like treading on the grapes.

It's bonkers and infuriating and at first I was like I DONT KNOW PAUL IF YOU WANT THE PLEASURE OF SMELLING DETERGENT SO BAD YOU CAN DO THE BLOODY LAUNDRY. But then you realise how Paul connects it with comfort, especially with comfort after a bereavement:

“Growing up in Liverpool, that was always there for me. Even after my mum died, my aunties came around religiously every week and cooked and cleaned the house and did the laundry and provided that kind of atmosphere for us.”

It's romanticising the poverty he grew up in but also signifies to me how much it's a coping mechanism. He wants Linda to do the laundry and have that idealised maternal domestic atmosphere as in his head if you have that then you can carry on even in the face of cataclysmic loss.

Denny Lane's comments about Linda being like a mother to Paul feel really pertinent here. Reading all this has kind of reinforced to me this idea I've had for a while that Linda's maternal attributes was one of the foundational pillars of Paul's attraction to her and an essential part of their marriage. In another interview I'll post another time, he says they never went on holiday without the kids, with them taking tiny Heather on their honeymoon. It wasn't just tours, the kids really did go everywhere with them when they could and they made sure the children's bedrooms were just next door to theirs so they could be there all the time. It's great, wonderful parenting but also with the genesis of their relationship it's really hard not to see Linda and the promised family as the replacement to fill the hole from the Beatles. Not saying that he didn't go on to adore them and them be the pinnacle joy of his life but yh ... once you see it it's hard not to unsee. (Also the thing I've always been too scared to say/wild speculation again I don't know these people ... but I think they would have always had these problems until Paul actually reckoned with his mothers death/other traumas.)

Thinking about it all as well, it must be so hard to essentially cosplay the culture and background you grew up in with wealth and class separating you from everything you used to intimately know

Aggressive optimist Paul telling a very different story here (is he more honest here, more depressed, or maybe somewhere in the middle?)

“I’ve got all these contingency plans. I tend to look at the worst side of things. I’ll say, ‘If they turn us down, we’re going to do this.’ If anything hurts me, I want to fight it—so it doesn’t hurt me again.”

Nothing to add just ... ouch.

Reinforcement of John refusing to let Paul hold Sean because Paul 'didn't know him' ... which yh that is some bullshit its a baby. Paul goes onto mention how John wasn't great with babies as he had no experience whilst he had and somehow makes it borderline a competition lmao.

HALFWAY THROUGH I REALISED THIS WAS THE INFAMOUS PLAYGIRL 'JOHN SAID JEALOUS GUY WAS ABOUT ME' INTERVIEW. I NEVER REALISED LINDA WAS THERE.

Not him essentially saying 'in hindsight maybe Linda needed a lot of lessons' for Wings and admitting he just wanted her there. They both seem to accept it as something that wasn't fair to expect of Linda with no training.

He does this embarrassed little giggle like 'oh I may be a chauvinist YES YES YOU ARE SORT YOURSELF OUT.

Linda ohh my GOD Linda girl

She has rings around her eyes from exhaustion

Gets up at 7am to do the breakfast every morning despite going to bed late

Said she didn’t want to get married again initially as she had been controlled by men all her life until then

Says her kids are her best friends and that she never had a friend until she moved to Arizona later on (this is interesting to me that both Paul and Linda both saw themselves as 'loners' in childhood even though interviews from people in Paul's childhood repeat that he was popular. Maybe this was a narrative in their marriage or maybe Paul always felt internally lonely).

Qualifier here: I also don't think the best friend thing is true, there are a few people that pop up over the years who say they were very close to Linda and one did a lovely interview with Paul post Linda's death. I think the whole 'family is all you need schtick was part cope and part PR.

From apparent tradition Paul says that he doesen't tell her how much he's worth and their money situation as 'his dad didn't tell his mum' (even though his mum was integral to financially supporting the family may I remind you Paul). Linda girl listen I can make you happy I can give you a good life and treat you to nice things come with me Linda-

Theres one point where Linda PANICS because Paul mentions the supposed socialist uprising potentially taking all their money because HE WON'T TELL HER WHAT THE FINANCIALS LOOK LIKE. THIS FUCKER (also socialists Paul you're a northern liberal get a grip you class traitor)

They both romanticise living frugally with Linda not buying any nice fancy things ... its hard not to remember Peter Cox's account of Linda asking to borrow money when reading this :(((((

Linda's idea of a luxury holiday is not having to cook and clean and she can have fun :( Paul then interjects with 'yh that's great for a bit but not all the time as isn't it nice to have the family all in the kitchen!!' I'm sure Linda would agree if you actually helped Paul.

In summation: he needs help and a slap, she deserves a statue but would probably prefer a sit-down. Thank god there’s a lot to suggest that Paul has improved massively when it comes to his view on women and labour (wouldn’t have married a working businesswoman if they hadn’t) but this is still a difficult window into how things were in the 80s and the life that campaigners like Yoko were fighting against.

Good analysis of LJ. I don't remember overt Paul disike but I do remember a lot of Linda dislike. Tho that seems to have been part of a sort of reflexive lack of solidarity between women in the rock scene at the time, encouraged to see each other as threats or something. There's even a weirdly bitchy aside about Joni Mitchell of all people.

The Lost Weekend doco is prob more mature in that way & more positive to Paul+Linda, tho it seems revisionist in that John's violence & periodic dumping of May is played down, & the "paul bringing a message from yoko" forms part of her story by then even tho it's clear from the book that she knew nothing about this at the time. Not dunking on May or saying she's lying - it's just another example of how memories get softened with time, and augmented by stories from others.

Anyway my favourite part of Loving John is John and David Bowie queening out over Elizabeth Taylor, please someone put that in a fic

finished loving john and am turning it around and around in my head. may pang is not without her biases but it's pretty easy to flag where they are and what they're colored by. it is clear to me that she didn't like paul very much, and im not sure whether that's because of the way john presented him to her amidst the business troubles or because she perceived he didn't like her with john. the way may presents the johnandyoko reconciliation, it's entirely caused by yoko's hypnotherapist. but we know that's not entirely true and i dont know if at the time of writing she knew about paul telling john in LA that yoko wanted him back. there's a lot of instances where john and may are conspiring against yoko: keeping secrets and telling lies to pacify her. i dont know if may considered the two of them might have been doing the same to her. it seems easier for her to blame yoko for the whole thing, both the start and end of the relationship, and while she certainly deserves quite a bit of blame it's also john who won't take no for an answer when he first tries to sleep with her and it's john who chose to go back to yoko. yoko knew how to use the deepest parts of his psychology to convince him, but is was still HIS psychology. and honestly as an outside observer even though may had an incredible strength of character at such a young age i dont think anyone was really a match for the depth of trauma john had and it's entirely possible something worse may have happened had he stayed with her longer. and he did almost kill her.

Hollering at this description of Magic Alex at some pre-Apple planning meeting. John's weird little boyfriend, plotting away.

(Source: Magical mystery tours : my life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell)

Do you have any big opinions about rpf?

Not sure what we're counting as "big" here.

Aside from the standard "don't harrass the people it's about" take, I guess my opinion on rpf is that it does say something about its authors, readers and the broader fandom. Not in a moralistic "writing about bad things means you endorse them" sense, or even in the sense that you can conclude an author's historical takes from their writing. (I know a fair amount of people who will read or write McLennon without really buying into the theory of it being true)

But I think there's enough parallels between the trends in fic and the trends in analysis to see that these two things aren't neatly separable. As a fellow author, I can understand Cynthia being frequently brushed aside in fic, even if I don't love it – when it comes to analysing the real history though, I am less forgiving. However, because of the seeming link between the decentring of Cynthia in fic and her frequent exclusion from meaningful analysis, I find myself being (perhaps disproportionately) frustrated with her treatment in fic as a result.

Cynthia here is just an example among several, but I think the fact that she's not treated meaningfully better by the wider (generally more heteronormative) Beatles fandom speaks to the fact that what I'm describing isn't just attributable to the largely queer space of Beatles RPF fandom decentring straight relationships. (also any other lesbians fucking tired of people decrying any consideration to women as homophobia??)

I have also noticed that some people's takes on the history have a very literary bent – I'm thinking about times I have seen people call for symmetry between John and Paul, as though their relationship needs to be made up of perfectly mirroring feelings to be beautiful. There's an important distinction to be drawn here between descriptivism and prescriptivism – like, to be clear, there is something inherently literary in observing parallels between their lives, like say losing their mothers young, but I am specifically referring to people saying John and Paul should be analysed with the assumption of this symmetry existing, which feels like a limiting way of looking at real people.

That being said, I'm not sure how much engaging with RPF as such affects this sort of attitude. To some extent, we are all always trying to make sense of reality through narrative, but I'm not sure how aware of it people are.

With all that in mind,

I think RPF is a very cool way to express and explore thoughts related to the history (and, at least in my case, engage in discourse about the history as well as the fandom itself) that don't need to be fact-checked whilst being contained in an explicitly fictional realm. I also think that a lot of speculation people engage in about celebrities is actually kind of akin to fanfic and I sort of prefer the fact that RPF is upfront about its fictionality.

I like thinking about what RPF has in common with things like biopics and how it diverges from them, its strange but existing relationship with the concept of "truth" (which I think is somewhat distinct from the concept of "factualness"). I'm fascinated by adaption in general; I find the process of systematically pruning, supplementing and molding historical reality until it takes the shape of a narrative deeply interesting, and even when I don't love the product, I think there's meaning to be derived in understanding how we got from point A to B.

Hate that sneaky spotify tag bro I did not tag you

Stories from the city

In Our Time recently had a great two-part episode on the history of the city, charting the economic and political rise of cities from Ur to Bogota. Some of the information was familiar, and some quite unexpected. For example, after the fall of Rome heavily populated cities became a minority, and London didn’t reach first-century Roman population levels until the beginning of the 19th century. The political architecture of 18th century cities was illuminative – Hausmann’s wide boulevards were designed as much to prevent rebellious working classes from erecting barricades as they were for aesthetic reasons. The earliest ‘gated communities’ were the Georgian townhouses of 18th-century London and Dublin, where the mews at the back gave access to carriages, so that their inhabitants need never step on to the main street outside and encounter any of the ordinary inhabitants of the city. But cities were often reclaimed by the very people who they were designed to control – New Delhi was designed with Hausmann-esque boulevards after the Indian Rebellion of the 1850s in a concentrated effort to consolidate imperial power, however after independence in 1947 Lutyens’ architecture was celebrated and the city accepted as a key part of India’s history. Similar accomodations with the symbols of past conquest have occured in Dublin and Kingston. And there’s no doubt that a dense concentration of people, while often leading to poverty and disease, is a significant factor in the development of revolutionary ideals and a vision of a fairer society for all – Engels’ Manchester and early 20th century Paris and Moscow being key examples. Part of the second programme focused on the astonishing effect the development of the railways had on British cities, particularly London. One commentator referred to the light-speed adoption of railway travel as the equivalent of an ‘atomic age’ and the analogy is not exxagerated – within 30 years London and Paris had evolved from cities which relied on horse-drawn carriages to ones with mass under- and overground transit systems. This had the effect of finally bringing the rich into almost direct contact with the poor masses, as the engraving above by Dore reveals. Bridges ran directly over slum tenements, leaving the passengers in no doubt as to the conditions the inhabitants lived in. Many poor people were evicted from their homes without compensation in the early days of the railways, yet ironically it was the social mixture and opportunities for mobility brought about by those same railways that later helped increase employment opportunities, and subesequently, aspiration. Modern cities were analysed too, with a fascinating parallel drawn between the development of Los Angeles as a car city in the 1930s and its imitation by South American new cities like Mexico and Bogota. One contributor broke past the usual cliches about the relentless ugliness of modern cities – an argument that has been pitched against all new building since probably the days of Ur – and described how run-down slums in Bogota have evolved into respectable neighbourhoods after the introduction of good public transport. He seemed to be siding with the unfashionable but hopeful view that regeneration is always possible where people are concentrated together, even in desperate slums, and it is good planning, support and an understanding that millions in the developing world would rather live in cities than in the country that are needed to improve cities, not hand-wringing over their lack of beauty. Human life is messy and complex, therefore our cities are too, but that’s no excuse for neglect and doom-mongering. I would have liked more analysis of the cultural life of cities, and the greatest city of all, New York, was barely touched upon, but overall the series was extraordinarily comprehensive and informative. Above all, the history of cities is the history of humanity, a story in equal parts unequal, cruel, thrilling and wonderful. As Velutus says in Shakespeare’s Corialunus: ‘What is the city but the people?’ Listen to In Our Time: Cities here.