Hollering At This Description Of Magic Alex At Some Pre-Apple Planning Meeting. John's Weird Little Boyfriend,

Allan Williams & Rod Murray with friends at Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, England | July 1960 © Harold Chapman (I) (II) (III)

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.

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.

16 year old Pauline Blackburn is queuing for tickets to see The Beatles at The Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead, England | 17 April 1963

Gotta work it out

An interesting report in Saturday’s Irish Times examined the phenomenon of Irish graduates’ unwillingness to work at low-skilled jobs, and how the gap is being plugged by foreign workers. The overall impression was that many in Ireland would prefer not to work at low-skilled jobs when they receive the equivalent money from the dole, as many of the foreign interviewees noted. The information  was presented neutrally, and could be interpreted in any way, but the response of one of the interviewees indicated what response is expected from the public. Andrew, a postgraduate economics student, commented ‘Personally, I didn’t study for five years to work in McDonald’s’, and at the interview’s end requested that his last name not be printed. When asked why, he said: ‘I don’t want to be portrayed as a student stereotype who’d prefer to bum around rather than work.’ A later interviewee stated: ‘I’d rather be cleaning toilets than on the dole,’ indicating what is likely to be the commonest media and public reaction to the piece – that people should always work, in whatever jobs are available, rather than take social welfare.

The problem with this reaction is that it assumes that work – any kind of work – has intrinsic moral value. It can be argued that a job keeps people focused and helps maintain a healthy timetable – but it’s a bit of a jump from that to assert that cleaning toilets and flipping burgers is morally superior to staring at the wall. It seems strange that educated graduates should feel guilty for admitting that they think themselves too good for certain jobs. From an educational and experience point of view, they are too good – yet that is not the assessment they are perceived to be making. Instead, it’s seen as a moral question – do you think yourself too good for work, which in all its forms is inherently good? Such moralising seems to lose sight of the real issue – that a First World economy with a small population such as Ireland cannot provide jobs for its graduates.

It’s over 70 years old, but Bertrand Russell’s In Praise Of Idleness still has highly relevant things to say on this matter. The social rigidity of his England has loosened up somewhat, so it’s not the case anymore that the idle landowners preach the validity of ‘the Slave State’, but his statement that ‘….the necessity of keeping the poor contented…..has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect’ still rings true. Opinion makers and business people (and it’s not just the usual-suspect loudmouths like Bill Cullen and Michael O’Leary that pass judgement based on their own experience) may have spent the requisite years waiting tables and cleaning toilets, but nobody with aspirations to influence is prepared to make an unskilled job his or her career. The work experience of the currently well-employed does not validate their arguments in favour of the morality of work, because for them, low-skilled work was always a means to an end, while in the current climate it is the only option for the foreseeable future for too many people.

The argument that we are ‘palming off’ our menial jobs on foreigners because we’re too lazy and immoral to do them ourselves doesn’t carry any great weight outside of simplistic moralising. It avoids the key, difficult question – why do we still live in a world where there a yawning chasm between skilled and unskilled work, between the professions and the trades? Carpenters and painters often made big money during the Celtic Tiger, but without the advantages of higher education and connections many of them have come crashing back to square one. Foreign workers from poorer countries tolerate working in monotonous, uninspiring and difficult jobs here because they’ll make more money and enjoy a better quality of life than they do back home. Much is said about certain groups’ unwillingness to go on the dole and it’s implied that this makes them morally better than other groups. Yet surely the fact that trained accountants and lawyers from abroad work in Irish hotels and shops should be seen as a worldwide injustice, rather than a reason to celebrate moral worth?

Too many humans all over the world, even in 2010, still labour endlessly just to survive. Thousands flee the Indian countryside every year to live in the hellish atmosphere of city slums, just for a chance to escape the grind of subsistence living. Those people would consider western fetishising of work insane. Of course, the plight of Indian slum-dwellers and that of European graduates facing into a career making coffee are not the same at all; the latter is still infinitely more fortunate, but it’s objectionable to dismiss today’s graduates’ unhappiness with the current lack of work as expressions of their ‘pampered’ nature. Supposedly ‘pampered’ students often work two or more part-time jobs to put themselves through college, and university in Ireland and England has broadened immensely over the last couple of decades to include a wider cross-section of society than at any time in history. Graduates today are not the Daddy-fleecing sybaritic stereotypes of old.

The budget will probably see a cut in social welfare, which many comfortably employed people will welcome as an ‘incentive’ to get people back to work. The delusion that depriving people of welfare leads to a magic upsurge in employment shows no sign of dying out since the days of Norman ‘Get on your bikes’ Tebbitt. The dole needs some overhaul and savings could certainly be made by limiting the amount given to single people under 25, for example. But debate on unemployment and welfare, in the media and the public echo chamber at least, seems to be short on sense, compassion and practicality, and high on moralising. The government is frantically drawing up a budget which will improve the country’s standing in the eyes of the unelected speculators that control the international financial market, whose morality is rarely questioned, while on the ground easy answers are sought by passing judgement on what isn’t,. nor should ever be, a moral matter.

Ask anyone who works in a menial or low-skilled job, and they will not tell you that they think their work has moral worth. The foreign people interviewed in the Irish Times article had varying opinions on the issue of the Irish and work, but none indicated that they enjoyed the work they have to do to survive. Perhaps Russell summed it up best when he described how a menial worker should describe their work according to the morality of the rich, and added his own response:“’I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.’ I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.”

Like something that looks very like something else.

On Instagram

Master of a new medium

Eadweard J. Muybridge, Yosemite Creek: Summit of Falls at Low Water, 1872, mammoth-plate albumen print. California State Library, Sacramento

Tate Britain’s latest exhibition is an exploration of the work of the oddly named but immensely talented Eadward Muybridge, whose Studies in Animal Locomotion explored the idea of the moving image two decades before cinema was invented. Born Edward Muggeridge in Britain in 1830, he first emigrated to America in 1855 and built his career photographing San Francisco and the Yosemite national park in the years after the Civil War. He proved in 1878, using a sequence of photographs, that a horse’s hooves do indeed all leave the ground during a gallop, and he used the same technique to explore human movement in his seminal work in the 1880s, for which he remains most famous.

The Studies in Animal Locomotion remain interesting, revealing a particularly Victorian combination of science and voyueurism; attractive male and female models performed endless movements for Muybridge who captured the images using multiple cameras, since shutter speeds were not up to the task in the 1880s. Plenty of the ‘studies’ have no apparent scientific purpose, including one curtly titled ‘[Model] 8 pouring bucket of water over 6′, which shows one naked woman dumping a chilly stream over her squealing companion. Though indicating that Muybridge’s intentions were not always in the name of pure science; the more whimsical studies are still charming, especially one of a model leaning back in a chair smoking a cigarette and looking utterly relaxed.

Less ground-breaking, but frequently more beautiful, Muybridges’s earlier images of Yosemite and the lighthouses of the Californian coast form a substantial part of the exhibition. The photographer was hired to collect images of lighthouses in the 1860s for a federal authority, but the results are far from dry documentary: gorgeous albumen prints reveal sea spray turned to smoke by slow shutter speeds and cliff faces leaping out in almost 3D clarity. Elsewhere, he reveals the lives of people in transition; the exhibition contains photos from new coffee plantations in Guatemala and of rebellious Native Americans in California. San Francisco is captured in all its pre-1906 earthquake glory in a 17-foot panorama made up of several large photographs laid painstakingly end to end. The effect is somewhat distorted by the flatness of what should be a 360 degree view, but this aberration, along with the seemingly empty streets (the long exposure could not capture moving people in the photographs) gives the view an unearthly beauty a more accurate image would lack.

Muybridge’s work indicates a photographer who succeeded in bridging the gap between scientific accuracy and painterly aesthetics in the new medium. Even where the beauty of his images is unintentional, their preservation indicates an appreciation on his part of perfect imperfection. His motion studies and the zoopraxiscope, a prototype of the film projector he invented, have assured his place in history, but his landscape work and photojournalism are what really stand out for the modern viewer.

May 16th 1968 - John and Paul arrive home🎸🎸🎸

On May 11th, 1968, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, joined by 'Magic' Alex, Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans and Derek Taylor, travelled from London to New York to promote their newly formed company, Apple Corps🥀

Following a day of business meetings on May 12th and interviews on the 13th, a press conference was held at 1:30 pm on the 14th at New York's Americana Hotel🌵

There, John and Paul shared their vision and aspirations for Apple. After the press conference, they recorded an afternoon interview with New York's educational TV station WNDT / Channel 13, and made a special appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, hosted by Joe Garagiola🍃

On the evening of May 15th, John, Paul, and 'Magic' Alex returned to London, arriving in the early hours of the 16th. Nat Weiss, who had hosted them at his New York apartment, and Linda Eastman, upon Paul's request, accompanied them to the airport🍀

Paul was set to return to the US in June 1968 for promotional activities with Apple. This trip would also provide another chance for him to spend time with Linda💐

“It was at the Apple press conference [on the 14th] that my relationship with Paul was rekindled. I managed to slip him my phone number. He rang me up later that day and told me they were leaving that evening [sic - on the 15th], but he'd like it if I was able to travel out to the airport with him and John. So I went out in their limousine, sandwiched between Paul and John.” - Linda McCartney - from "Linda McCartney's Sixties", 1992🌼

Via Beatles and Cavern Club Photos on Instagram🎍

The Way to Santiago

Anyone who undertakes all or part of the Camino de Santiago will be familiar with the question 'Why are you doing it?', implying that everyone who laces on a pair of hiking boots and shoulders a heavy backpack for the long tramp across Northern Spain has a clear-cut mission in mind for undertaking this 1,000 year old pilgrimage. In reality, few have one concrete reason for doing it, or even any reason, and those who set out with one intention in mind nearly always have a completely different experience than what they expected. Particularly for those who expect some kind of miraculous 'road to Damascus' moment, the sheer banality of the trudge, during which few thoughts more profound than 'I'm hungry' or 'My feet hurt' tend to occupy the mind, can be a rude surprise. But sticking it out does lead to a strangely satisfying experience, both more ordinary and more transcendent than what the enlightenment-seekers expect: the sense of wholeness that comes from perseverance. 

This ordinary extraordinariness is the subject of Emilio Estévas' film The Way, clearly a labour of love for the director and his father Martin Sheen, who plays the lead role. Sheen is Tom Avery, a taciturn California opthamologist with few interests outside work and golf at the country club. Tom's son Daniel (played by Estévas himself) is the exact opposite, a wanderer who abandons his doctorate studies to travel the world, much to his father's disapproval. A flashback scene shows Tom telling Daniel 'My life may not look like much to you, but it's the life I chose', to which Daniel responds 'You don't choose life Dad, you live it.'

Daniel's living of life takes a tragic turn when he embarks on the Camino in southern France, and ignoring warnings about inclement weather, is caught in a storm in the Pyrenees and killed. The story of the film follows a shellshocked Tom as he travels to France to identify his son's body, has the remains cremated and in an uncharacteristically spontaneous decision, continues the walk himself, depositing handfuls of Daniel's ashes along the way. Like all peregrinos (pilgrims) Tom encounters cranky alburgue (hostel) wardens, crowded dorms filled with snoring fellow walkers, sore feet and even sleeping rough on his journey. Along the way he is first annoyed by, and eventually forms a grudging friendship with, a party-loving Dutchman, a neurotic Canadian and an loudmouth Irish travel writer. The foursome encounter various obstacles, including robbery, arguments and even an arrest, but finally reach the cathedral of Santiago, each having learned far more than they intended or expected to.

The Way is filmed along the real Camino route and is wonderfully accurate about the day-to-day realities of doing the walk - the beautiful countryside, the physical privations and the un-pilgrim-like behaviour of many fellow travellers. Eccentrics abound, and one of Tom's biggest challenges is learning to tolerate people he'd never meet in his ordinary life. In a way, the walk teaches him to understand Daniel's waywardness, by revealing how stimulating it can be to talk to people (even annoying, half-crazy people) that one would normally never encounter.

All the characters are profoundly sad in their own way, yet their capacity to appreciate the absurd carries them along and saves them from complete self-absorption. The uniquely communal feeling of the walk, where people join up, drift apart and reunite along the road without the need for mobile phones or internet is perfectly evoked. There are frequent lapses into sentimentality and some clunky dialogue, but the characters (with the possible exception of James Nesbitt's over-the-top Jack) are believable and humanly flawed, and the brotherly friendship they form over three months, full of humour and bickering and understated affection, is beautifully shown. A character tells Tom halfway through 'This walk is nothing to do with religion', meaning that while many may expect miracles, it is the very non-miraculous nature of the characters' development that is the point of the Camino. Like so many peregrinos, Tom reaches the end of the route fundamentally the same person, but touched by a profound sense of acceptance, kindness, love and wonder, a state that comes at him obliquely while his intentions are elsewhere.

Probably not.