THE BEATLES Are Officially Number 1 In The Charts!!!!

@dumbcloud And now the DILF:John Edition.

Yes, I’m aware most of these are from the same couple of days but he looked good on those days

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.

I agree! The reality is that all these authors have bias but if it’s in favour of Paul McCartney it’s ok because he’s seen as being victimised by the rock journalists of an earlier era. Erin Torkelson Weber has a quote I’ve often seen here that just because something came later it’s not necessarily untrue. But the important thing to keep in mind is it’s not necessarily true either. Paul McCartney has a huge advantage over John Lennon in that when he tells his story, the emotions of the situation have settled which makes him seem like a more rational source, unlike John who was still working through his emotions in the 70s as the events were still in recent memory. Paul has also had time to think about how to make his story palatable to today’s audiences where times have changed, which John never had given he died 40 years ago. He also has his legacy to preserve and of course will twist things to his advantage as who is going to challenge him? Yoko is ill and Sean doesn’t know the full story as he was only 5 when his dad died. I just think people need to think critically about this and realise that just because this is the latest version of events doesn’t necessarily make it true. The truth is always something in between

“Some of those who eulogised Lennon seemingly could not do so without denigrating McCartney, Harrison and Starr or devaluing their contributions to the Beatles. “He [Lennon] stood for a mixture of tough minded realism… wit and intellect. Paul on the other hand was a pretty boy.” The most famous example of this came from the Village Voice’s Christgau, one of America’s most powerful rock critics. In a piece shortly following Lennon’s death, Christgau referred to the three remaining Beatles as “hacks” and blamed their refusal to accept Ono into the band for the breakup. He also repeated a number of misconceptions about Lennon that, while widely accepted, were untrue. This included praising Lennon, the only middle-class born Beatle, as a “working-class” hero and declaring that Lennon had always been the only artistic, avant-garde Beatle because “the others just didn’t have the stuff.” His obituary of Lennon stated that the wrong Beatle had been killed. “Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn’t it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney?”

Erin Torkelson Weber, The Beatles and the Historians

John & Paul 🥰

Yup which is why George found him so annoying lol

Paul mccartney has the unique ability to mansplain to other men

I love (eye roll) this generation of writers who think they are being edgy by going in the other direction by trashing John because he didn’t want to be best buddies with every single person. It reminds me of Fred Seaman’s book where the captain who took John to the Bahamas insisted on moving himself and his family into johns rented apartment, forced John to sleep in the floor and pay for all their outings and meals for a month while the captain pretended he was Johns’ best friend. Fred thought John was being petty for not wanting to be best friends with this clear user and wanting to get away from him. Just silliness

Shevey could have just said ‘I was intimidated by his confidence, wit and physical appeal’ but instead she decided to write a whole slanderous trashy book. 

I always love this because due to Paul’s narcissistic tendencies? Arrogance? Insecurity? All of the above? he can’t even be honest about his own feelings of sadness about not telling John he loved him before he died. See it is really GEORGE who made this error and he was so moved abut GEORGE’S mistake that he had to write an entire song about it

Did paul really say THIS ONE was about john? First time I know!

being paul, he didn't say that directly, but he said this: "When you get those moments, and you always think, 'well, I'm saving it up, I'll tell them one day', and what happens with a lot of people, something like John for instance, he died, and I was lucky that for the last few months that he was alive we'd managed to get our relationship back on track [...] but George actually didn't, I don't think, get his relationship back, I think they were arguing right up until the end, which I'm sure is a source of great sadness to [George]. And I'm sure, in the feeling of the song, that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. So that's the song is about, it's like, 'there could never be a better moment than this one', now. Take this moment to say... I love you." (source)

I somehow have the feeling if John was alive and didn’t turn up at the Hall of Fame for whatever personal reason, people would have no problem calling him petty and immature. The media had no problem throwing him under the bus for years. Once again the daily reminder Paul at a human being and it’s ok to criticise him. And yeah taking more than his cut makes him the asshole. These weren’t his solo songs, this was music he made as part of a group. It doesn’t matter how much cash he thought he earned, he can’t pull a surprised pikachu face when he gets sued.

This is probably a weird question so apologies, but do you think Paul should have gone to the Beatles Hall of Fame award show? I know he didn't and I've seen it described as the petulant act of a child and understandable given the legal situation and hurt feelings. I would love to know what you thought of it?

Not a weird question at all!

I don’t think Paul should ever do anything he doesn’t want, to be honest. He’s earned being as petty as he wants. Not that I think that’s what he was doing, but even if he was, so what? I wouldn’t want to hang out with three people that were all suing me either. I’m sure he felt it was The Breakup 2.0 and I can’t imagine how shitty that must have felt. Also, this should have been such a special moment for him and then they sued him right before and ruined it. I doubt that was on purpose (the timing) but… I can see how it might have felt pointed.

I don’t know if George’s speech should be taken at face value. Personally it seems a little… disingenuous of him to suggest he’s surprised. But, perhaps he genuinely assumed Paul would always just roll over and put a brave face on/wasn’t capable of being hurt by that sort of thing/there was no reason for him to take it personally because really they were suing EMI/Capitol and not him.

Do I think Paul should have gone to make himself/The Beatles look better? Maybe? They had sort of been suing each other and everyone else for nearly two decades by that point, so perhaps they should have all just carried on like it was business as usual and that would have stopped some of the backlash. But it is also possible that people would have slagged him off for daring to be there when he was shitting all over their legacy for ‘stealing their money’.

I guess the other question is if Paul was trying to get one over on them with the royalties and therefore should have been there (or not been there) to apologise. I mean, if Capitol was just giving him more out of its own profits and it wasn’t taking anything from the others, he certainly had less to feel bad about. Of course I’m sure they all thought (and John almost certainly would have felt) there was a gentleman’s agreement not to take more. But, who can say. Paul was making a lot of money for Capitol and obviously it’s his right to negotiate whatever he wanted. I do get why people would feel that a) he didn’t need more money and b) The Beatles should be a completely separate thing and it’s almost petty to ask for a bigger cut of that because he (arguably) can’t deserve more of it now than he did before. I say arguably because there’s something to the idea that Paul being as successful as he was, was keeping the Beatles more in the public eye and therefore selling more. But how you figure out THAT I have no idea because John dying did as much as anything for that, and obviously Ringo and George released music too (along with other things).

But in summation, Paul often couldn’t win in the eyes of the press so it was almost certainly just better for him to do what made him personally happiest.

Always happy to hear other’s thoughts though.

Yes let’s perpetuate the myth that one of the greatest songwriters of all time didn’t know how to work hard. I know it’s supposed to be cute but John produced his own albums in the 70s. He contributed the majority of songs on the Beatles early albums. John wasn’t a workaholic like Paul but he was a hard worker. He learned those chords because he was determined to learn the guitar properly. Music was his passion too you know

John learning to play upside down for Paul... Something about that always gets me, John is the guy who allegedly didn't like work and wouldn't stick to anything. But he learned to play upside down because he would need to borrow Paul's guitar or to learn how to play something... he put that extra effort in just because Paul is left handed...

It's a small gesture but it means so much

🥺

I know Anon, he really did that.

It was love 💕

♪ And you know what it's worth ♪

John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards from The Dirty Mac performing Yer Blues (1968)