Could Anybody Tells Me Where This Comes From?It Is Very Important For My Mclennon Theory I Think……

“On this program a few weeks ago someone said The Beatles haircut was going out because the fringe was so long you couldn’t see the birds, what do you think of that?”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono Bed-In for Peace 1969

It’s nice to see something about John on here. John and Sean had a beautiful relationship and I do think he and Julian would have gotten there. I’m sorry both of them were robbed of their father because of a madman.

My issue with this statement is that 1) there was no reason to mention John at all to make the statement Paul was inspired by literature 2) why did he single out John specifically? Presumably George and Ringo weren’t Shakespeare fans or if so I haven’t heard it. The only reason he did this was to take a pot shot at John being known as the “smart” Beatle. And it’s kind of unnecessary. After all Lennon never criticised Paul’s love of literature in the Lennon Remembers interview or in any interview in the 70s so it’s not like Paul is responding to anything from John. So why do it? It just seems kind of cruel and unnecessary and no I don’t think I’m being divisive in calling that out. This isn’t about giving Paul the benefit of the doubt or not. This is calling out crappy behaviour

“John never had anything like my interest in literature, though he was very keen on Lewis Carroll and, in particular, Winston Churchill. His Aunt Mimi had lots of books by Churchill in the front parlour. Not a bad basis for an education. In my case, I was always fascinated by the couplet as a form in poetry. When you think about it, it’s been the workhorse of poetry in English right the way through. Chaucer, Pope, Wilfred Owen. I was particularly fascinated by how Shakespeare used the couplet to close out a scene, or an entire play. Just taking a swing through Macbeth, for example, you’ll find a few humdingers, like: 'Receive what cheer you may: The night is long that never finds the day.’ or ‘I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.' This was Shakespeare’s way of saying, ‘That’s it, folks,’ and ‘The End’ was our way of saying the same. 'And in the end the love you take / Is equal to the love you make’ This is one of those couplets that can keep you thinking for a long time. […] I often muse upon what might have happened, had I not ended up in a band that rather took over my life. I wonder about the path I thought I was on with my A level in English literature and where that might have led me.”

— Paul McCartney, about “The End”. In The Lyrics (2021).

George and Ringo: How friends wake up a friend.

Paul: How a darling wife wakes up her husband.

Happy birthday beautiful Johnny! Because you deserve all the love on this day and every day

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN LENNON!

"I am a guy, yeah. That is true. But how do you know unless you see somebody? I am just some guy who did... Whatever. Always see me as me. I was always me, all the way through it... I love motels 'cause there is no reception area. I like hotels too. But I like motels as well. Just invisible places where you check in with a credit card, in the middle of the night, anywhere. Some guys in taxis now, old guys, they recognize the voice is English, but they don't recognize me. They don't know who the hell I am. They say, "Oh, you're English! I was over there in the war..." And they go on and on... And tell me amazing life stories.... They ask, "what do you do?" and I say, "I'm a musician," and they say, "Are you doing alright?" "Yeah, I am..."

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.

Reblogging for the link at the very end. I didn’t even know this existed! Thank you!

How are you finding the Lyrics book?

honestly - it's mostly what i have expected it to be. there are definitely a lot of very good and enjoyable parts in it, and i think in many cases it does provide a good insight into how paul constructs his lyrics, his thought-process, his inspiration for a particular song/line etc, these are all interesting to read through, the stories and the photos are lovely, and the inclusion of all the manuscripts and doodles does add a lot to it. and it’s paul. so if you love his weirdo brain and his music, you’re gonna enjoy it! and then at other times you'll want to tear your hair out because this man is the stupidest mfer on earth there aren’t any big revelations, but i didn’t really expect any, so in that respect i wasn’t disappointed. however, it’d have been nice if paul could have been at least a tiny bit more willing to explore the more personal aspects of some songs but i’d be lying if i said i was genuinely expecting him to drastically change the way he’s been discussing these things for the past however many decades...

and... the fact they went for this semi-autobiography route AND put it all in alphabetical order... it means it’s a bit eh sometimes, a bit all over the place. i sort get why this approach was chosen but i just think that overall, they could have done a lot more with the book, the concept and the opportunity were there. (+ it’s a pity that some lyrics, that are actually gorgeous and interesting (i’ve just seen a face, monkberry moon delight, footprints, my brave face, a certain softness, riding to vanity fair, alligator, scared, to name a few) were left out, while others were included basically just so the obligatory historical discussions could be carried out because you know, the book sometimes cannot make its mind up about whether it wants to focus on paul the artist or demand paul to be a quasi beatles historian) but i would think that for people who don’t know that much about these songs or paul’s life, the book could be more interesting to read through and they wouldn’t be so nitpicky about it lmao.

what i will say is that if you want a physical copy , i would buy it at a discount or if having the proper book isn’t that important you could just..... you know....... :)

So glad I’m not the only one thinking this. Let’s show equal respect to John and Paul for a change. It’s what they both deserve.

@bitchybillionaire yes that’s the one. I’ve had the same trajectory, honestly. I’m interested in some of what they’re saying, because some of it is also what I’ve been thinking for years. And I get the need to give Paul the credit and attention he is due, after so many books and articles overlook him or malign him. But a lot of this podcast does feel like okay, John was elevated beyond belief before, so we have to do the same for Paul now to balance it. And like, what if we just met in the middle with a true balance of the scales instead of it being like a seesaw where Paul is elevated now?

Also they really need to cite more sources. It bothers me when they say “NOBODY has ever talked about xyz” but like, you got that info from somewhere. Someone had to have talked about it! Or else you wouldn’t know about it!

John Lennon begins to realise that Paul McCartney is broken. The Beatles, interviewed by Jeremy James for Day By Day. Portsmouth Guildhall, 12th November 1963 - part 2 (part 1)