Everyone Reading This Focussing On The Fire When My First Thought Was How Cruel Mimi Was. Calling John

I know a lot of people will say How Do You Sleep, but I’d love to see John’s reaction to Mother. I think 1964 John would be amazed he allowed himself to get so vulnerable and have it be so public

Beatle (John) Hypotheticals #15

If you could show John four of his solo songs in 1964, which one of the following songs do you think would most surprise him and why?

Mother

How Do You Sleep

Woman Is The Ni**er of the World

Watching The Wheels

Are there any songs not listed above that you think would be more shocking to John? If so, which ones?

Shout out to @odearjohn for the inspo!

This is the stupidity I know and love on tumblr. Ooo Paul. What a hero for sending a LETTER to Maggie Thatcher. Never mind the years he has kissed the ass of the royals and the establishment in general. Bonus points for throwing Johns name in to shit on him for no reason. No one in Johns camp ever compared the incident with the MBE to Paul’s no doubt slightly less than vanilla letter but Paul’s camp has to sling arrows that Paul is the true hero TM. Lol

“Did you know Paul sent a telegram to Margaret Thatcher in 1982? He did. It wasn’t friendly. He lost his temper over her treatment of health workers and fired off a long outraged message, comparing her to Ted Heath, the prime minister (tweaked in “Taxman”) felled by the 1974 coal strike. McCartney warned, “What the miners did to Ted Heath, the nurses will do to you.” This controversy is a curiously obscure footnote to his life—it seldom gets mentioned in even the fattest biographies. He doesn’t discuss it in Many Years from Now. I only know about it because I read it as a Random Note in Rolling Stone, not exactly a hotbed of pro-Paul propaganda at the time. (The item began, “Reports that Paul McCartney is intellectually brain-dead appear to have been premature.”) But the telegram was a major U.K. scandal, with Tory politicians denouncing him. In October 1982, Thatcher was at the height of her power, in the wake of her Falkland Islands blitz. Many rock stars talked shit about Maggie—Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Paul Weller—but Paul was the one more famous than she was. He had something to lose by hitting send on this, and nothing to gain. What, you think he was trying for coolness points? This is Paul McCartney, remember? He was in the middle of making Give My Regards to Broad Street. He could have clawed Thatcher’s still-beating heart out of her rib cage, impaled it on his Hofner on live TV, and everybody would have said, “Yeah, but ‘Silly Love Songs’ though.” Why did he feel so intensely about the nurses? He didn’t mention his mother in the telegram, but he must have been thinking of Mary McCartney’s life and death. So he snapped, even though it was off-message. (He was busy that week doing interviews for the twentieth anniversary of “Love Me Do”—the moment called for Cozy Lovable Paul, not Angry Paul.) He didn’t boast about it later, though fans today would be impressed that any English rock star of that generation—let alone Paul—had the gumption to send this. You can make a case that it was a braver, riskier, and more politically relevant move than John sending his MBE medal back to the Queen in 1970. Still, John’s gesture went down in history and Paul’s didn’t, though his fans would probably admire the move if they knew about it. He couldn’t win. He was Paul. All he could do was piss people off.”

—

Rob Sheffield, Dreaming the Beatles. (2017)

This is one of the best books I’ve read on them. Go get it.

Why was it John’s fault? He paid her the equivalent of a million dollars in the divorce and gave her half the proceeds from the house at Weybridge and of course child support for Julian. Was he supposed to pay fof her and her various husbands throughout the rest of her life? Cyn struggled with cash because of poor business decisions throughout her life including numerous failed restaurants and other ventures. That isn’t John’s fault. It also isn’t John’s fault he married the daughter of a banker who made solid business decisions that greatly increased his fortunes in the 1970s. At the point he divorced Cyn he actually didn’t have as much money as you would think due to contracts Brian Epstein signed that gave most of the money away for merchandising, etc. Cyn got 50 percent of his fortune at the time as she was entitled to. She was not a victim

I just realized something.

Yoko never wrote an expose about John. Cyn, May Pang and Pete Shotton did, but Yoko didn't.

exposes kind of rub me the wrong way. This is someone who trusted you with everything, and then you turn around and write a tell-all about them. As a fan I love them, but I'd feel so betrayed if a friend wrote one about me.

Pattie Boyd, George Martin and Pete Best wrote books, but they were more about themselves and their connection to the boys than a fictionalized version of the past.

Ivan Vaughn, Jimmie Nicol, Jane Asher, Peter Asher and Maureen Starkey never did. They didn't even write autobiographies from what I can find.

I think that all speaks volumes.

Especially Yoko. No matter what you think of her, that shows a strong sense of character and respect that we just don't talk about enough when it comes to her.

I agree-they both needed each other. What’s most frustrating in this fandom is that some people think saying Paul needed John or vice versa somehow takes away from their individual talents and achievements but surely it only enhanced it? There is nothing wrong with needing people in this life otherwise we would all be recluses living a nomadic existence. Both John and Paul were wildly talented on their own but with each other they went further then they would have alone not just musically but through giving each other the love, support and confidence to succeed.

I’m asking you this question because I really value your opinion. Judging from some people’s opinions;some without knowledge and some with knowledge seem to feel that Paul didn’t need John, that he never needed John. Paul was IT. My question is , do you think he was just humoring John or did Paul feel that they were equals? I find it interesting that Paul felt that John was being credited for everything after he was killed, but now,IMO, it has gone WAY overboard in the other direction. Your thoughts? Thanks.😎

This is a very in depth question ha! Sorry I have been M.I.A lately things have been a little crazy...

Anyways... We all know that once John met Paul, and Paul met John, something magic just clicked. They were discovering things within each other that no one previously had been able to bring out. Yes, Paul was more "musically talented" in technical terms at the time, but John added that special something that made them excellent. Even after John’s passing, Paul still says he “looks to John” for guidance when he's stuck with a song, melody, or whatever it may be he needs a trusted opinion on... John was virtually the other half of Paul’s brain in human form, as was he to John.

Moral of the post, to make it short and sweet, I do believe they needed each other to a point. Then after that point ended, hanging onto each other (musically) would have held them back. Both boys branched out to what they wanted to do after the split, however continued to be influenced by each other, they did their own thing and thrived while doing so. If John was alive today, I know we would have gotten loads of more beautiful music, and whatever else his unique mind came up with. John and Paul set eachother up for greatness, yet always had each other to fall back on if need be <3

Apologies for the quickly thrown together response, but thank you for writing in! I love sharing my thoughts and opinions on the 4 boys we love the most!

Reblogging because of Bob Spitz being yet another person who has no idea what Working Class Hero is about. In the song when John says “a working class hero is something to be” he is being sarcastic. A working class hero is a sucker who believes the lies of the upper classes that if they keep working harder and harder that corner office will be theirs when of course the upper classes have no intention of ever giving them “room at the top”. Not only is John not saying he’s a working class hero, he’s criticising people who are. If you post things about Paul being the “true working class hero” it shows you have no idea what the song is about. I’m not referencing the original OP for this post when I say this but rather similar quotes I’ve seen around here. Listen to the song! It’s very powerful and it helps to educate yourself

No doubt about it, they were tuned to the same groove. But aside from a musical passion and amiability, they filled enormous gaps in each other's lives. Where John was impatient and careless, Paul was a perfec-tionist-or, at least, appeared to be- in his methodical approach to music and the way he dealt with the world. Where John was moody and aloof, Paul was blithe and outgoing, gregarious, and irrepressibly cheerful. Where John was straightforward if brutally frank, Paul practiced diplomacy to manipulate a situation. Where John had attitude, Paul's artistic nature was a work in progress. Where John's upbringing was comfortably middle-Class (according to musician Howie Casey," the only claim he had to being a working-class hero was on sheet music"), Paul was truly blue-collar Where John was struggling to become a musician, Paul seemed born to it.

And John gave Paul someone to look up to. Their age difference and the fact that John was in art college- a man of the world! - made John "a particularly attractive character" in Paul's eyes. There was a feral force in his manner, a sense of "fuck it all" that emanated great strength. He had a style of arrogance that dazed people and started things in motion. And he scorned any sign of fear. John's response to any tentativeness was a sneer, a sneer with humbling consequences.

John occasionally felt the need to reinforce his dominance, but he never required that Paul cede his individuality. He gave the younger boy plenty of room in which to leave his imprint. The Quarry Men would try a new song, and John would immediately seek Paul's opinion. He'd allow Paul to change keys to suit his register, propose certain variations, reconfigure arrangements. "After a while, they'd finish each other's sentences," Eric Griffiths says. "That's when we knew how strong their friendship had become. They'd grown that dependent on one another."

Dependent--and unified. They consolidated their individual strengths into a productive collaboration and grew resentful of those who questioned it. Thereafter, it was John and Paul who brought in all the new material; they assigned each musician his part, chose the songs, sequenced the sets-they literally dictated how rehearsals went down. "The rest of us hadn't a clue as far as arrangements went," Hanton says slowly. "And they seemed to have everything right there, at their fingertips, which was all right by me, because their ideas were good and I enjoyed playing with them." But the two could be unforgiving and relentless. "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.

Even in social situations, the Lennon-McCartney bond seemed well defined. The unlikely pair spent many evenings together browsing through the record stacks in the basement of NEMS, hunting for new releases that captured the aggressiveness, the intensity, and the physical tug about which they debated talmudically afterward over coffce. Occasionally, John invited Paul and his girlfriend, a Welsh nurse named Rhiannon, to double-date.

To John's further delight, he discovered that Paul was corruptible. In no time, he groomed his young cohort to shoplift cigarettes and candy, as well as stimulating in him an appetite for pranks. On one occasion that still resonates for those involved, the Quarry Men went to a party in Ford, a village on the outskirts of Liverpool, out past the Aintree Racecourse.

"John and Paul were inseparable that night, like Siamese twins," says Charles Roberts, who met them en route on the upper deck of a cherry red Ripple bus. "It was like the rest of us didn't exist." They spent most of the evening talking, conducting a whispery summit in one corner, Roberts recalls. And it wasn't just music on their agenda, but mischief. "In the middle of the party they went out, ostensibly looking for a cigarette machine, and appeared some time later carrying a cocky-watchman's lamp. The next morning, when it was time to leave, we couldn't get out of the house because [they] had put cement stolen from the roadworks into the mortise lock so the front door wouldn't open. And we had to escape through a window."

Through the rest of the year and into the brutal cold spell that blighted early February -every day that winter seemed more blustery than the last-the two boys reinforced the parameters of their friendship. Afterschool hours were set aside for practice and rehearsal, with weekends devoted to parties and the random gig. It left little time for studies, but then neither boy was academically motivated anyway.

Lol! To be fair a group hug after throwing a brick through the window would make for a great story. I’m just protective of my Johnny. My husband says I collect broken people. Even at the pound I have to rescue the runt if the litter who looks the saddest. Hence why he love John and fight the good fight for him as even though he did so many annoying friends someone has to give him unconditional love you know? Yes I’m sad

Wholesome moment! ❤️ love to see it

(From McCartney by Christopher Sandford)

Photo shoots like this make me realise how good John looked again an autumn backdrop. With his pale colouring and the auburn in his hair, he looks amazing against the reds and oranges of the leaves. It makes me think of the Beatles were seasons, John would be autumn (going to the darker part of his nature but lots of light underneath the surface), Ringo is definitely summer (warm and enjoying the simple things in life). George is winter because he likes the idea of tearing things apart to rebuild and Paul is spring (trying to repress his darker side to focus on the light but still fighting that darkness underneath). It also explains why Paul and John were so similar yet different-both individuals with darkness and light but reflected in different ways)

Photo session for the “Beatles For Sale” album. Photos by Robert Freeman in London’s Hyde Park, in the autumn of 1964 .

So Paul himself says this story never happened but we’re just going to post this story because it “makes sense” based on no data whatsoever except a “feeling”. Let’s not support fuelling the fire of stories that have been disproven

A Man Possessed

“Most days Paul would stroll the prettily opulent, peaceful streets that lay between his house and Abbey Road. One evening, after the other three Beatles had long since driven up in their expensive vehicles, John could be made out pacing up and down the front steps, gazing with increasing impatience along the route that Paul usually took.

Suddenly he was called to the phone by George. Then he was seen racing down the front steps and running as fast as his unfit body could carry him in the direction of the McCartney residence. Paul had called to say that he would not be coming to the studio that evening–he and Linda had realized it was the anniversary of their first meeting and had decided to have a romantic, candlelit dinner at home.

Arriving outside 7 Cavendish Avenue, John, like a man possessed, clambered over the tall security gate. When Paul responded to his thumping on the front door by opening it, John pushed him aside, rushing in and screaming at Paul for his thoughtlessness. 

“It’s the anniversary of me and Linda meeting,Paul reiterated lamely. ‘So what!’ snapped John contemptuously. ‘I don’t cancel studio bookings for my anniversaries with Yoko. How dare you inconvenience so many people!’ John glanced around him in furious frustration. Then his eyes alighted on something. Striding over to the wall, he removed a painting, one that he himself had done and given to Paul in earlier, genuinely loving times. It was Paul’s favorite painting, as John well knew. John stuck his foot through it and stormed back to Abbey Road.”

~McCartney, Chris Salewicz, 1986

Finally an acknowledgment that the Eastman dynamic was pretty toxic to the Beatles too, not just Klein. So many people think Paul was offering sone kind of reasonable alternative to Klein when in reality his management offer was his in laws who had no desire to represent the other Beatles and their interests. Klein may have been a bad choice but in my opinion the Eastmans would have been a disaster for the other Beatles in terms of representation

wait re your tags what do you mean by wives of two members having more influence. on the group? or on those two members?

Linda and Yoko were basically the other two Beatles for the remainder of 1969. Everyone talks about Klein and the fact he offered Yoko a successful career being the main reason John stuck with him at all, but Linda was the one who brought her dad into it, and the clash of titans between Eastman vs. Klein was just as big a reason the group broke up as the psychosexual crossfire of Lennon/McCartney, possibly an even bigger one. I’m not saying Linda was scheming in any way, but obviously her father was one of the best lawyers in American entertainment business, and her boyfriend was the biggest rockstar on the planet who was in a shitstorm of legal/money problems. Of course the two would meet, and Linda soon went from black sheep of the family to Golden Daughter.

But as the year went on, the JohnandYokoandKlein monster grew stronger against John Eastman’s aggressive and selfish business tactics. Sure, Klein and the others tried to pressure Paul into going with him, but Eastman wasn’t even remotely interested in taking on the rest of the band (was listening to a 71 Paul interview, and he said his father-in-law wouldn’t have managed the others if they paid him, and Paul still went with him. Hm). Yoko obviously tried to meddle in as much as she could, and John helped her do so; Linda found herself tangled in a web of shit that she originally wasn’t planning to get into, but she’s no pushover and so she went to meetings and was her husband’s only source of strength for the rest of these cockfights (to her own detriment as well).

My point was: where do George and Ringo fit into his? John didn’t turn to anyone in the studio for help except his wife, and Paul confided in no one else except his own spouse and her family of lawyers (who were managing Paul Solo from the start). George’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer that same year too, it was a hard time for him and he had no real voice (and I think patience) to deal with the whole Eastman vs. Klein debacle. George and Ringo went with John and Klein because they were the ones actually giving them what they wanted, not the Eastman-McCartneys.

Say it louder for the people in the back!

anti john lennon propaganda is so lame how is paul supposed to appeal to anyone can't a crazy air sign just have his greatest beatle status like he literally already paid for his crimes who cares. he wrote help so get over it