Beautiful Boys

Nice

Paul McCartney | September 1962 © Les Chadwick

Flying - Ch 9 Update

Summary: It’s August 1966, and The Beatles are flying to America for what would be the final tour. When the plane instead goes down over the Atlantic, the group has to struggle to survive.

hi all! kind of a quick turnaround from last chapter to this (less than a month! new record?), buttttt i was excited so i wrote it. this one’s about half the size of the last, but i’m excited to hear thoughts / feedback on it. thanks (as always) so much for sticking with it!

and, (as always), i hope you enjoy. if you do, leave a comment or a message to let me know. cheers <3

The man had some chutzpah (with good reason) to get up there and conduct an orchestra. Symphony musicians are so full of themselves.

“John Lennon was in a movie theater, crying. The image of Paul, singing from the rooftop in the final 10 minutes, had set him off. Jann Wenner shifted in his seat. In the darkness of a tiny movie house in San Francisco, the Beatle, Wenner’s hero, whose iconic spectacles and nose adorned the first issue of his rock ‘n’ roll newspaper, Rolling Stone, had tears running down his cheeks as light flickered off his glasses. And next to him was Yoko Ono, the bête noire of Beatledom, raven hair shrouding her porcelain face, also weeping. It was a Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1970, and John and Yoko and Jann and his wife, Jane Wenner, were watching the final scenes of Let It Be, the documentary about the Beatles’ acrimonious recording session for their last album. John and Yoko were deep into primal-scream therapy, their emotions raw and close to the surface, and the image of a bearded Paul McCartney singing from the rooftop of Apple Records, against a cold London wind, was too much to bear. For Wenner, the 24-year-old boy wonder of the new rock press, who worshipped the Beatles as passionately as any kid in America, this was a dream, sitting here in the dark, wiping away his own tears at the twilight of the greatest band of all time, elbow-to-elbow with “the most famous person in the world, for God’s sake. And it’s just the four of us in the center of an empty theater,” marveled Wenner, “all kind of huddled together, and John is crying his eyes out.””

— Joe Hagan (biographer), Vanity Fair: Jann Wenner, John Lennon, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever. (September 29th, 2017)

It’s such a feelin’ that my love                                   I can’t hide…

OK, but is 'The Long and Winding Road' for John? I don't know any story about the song, I only have lyrics that brings me a lot of mcln-feelings and tears. It was 1969 so I think lyrics match perfectly. It sounds for me like 'You broke my heart on Abbey road, you left me for her, I tried so hard to return to you and I don't know what to do now 'cuz I still love you'. Don't you tell me you've never cried over this song!

I’ll tell you a story about this song. I never actually loved it, it was never my favourite beatles song. When I went to Paul’s concert 4 years ago it was the song that hit me the most, I cried like a baby, it was so emotional. 

All the songs in the Let it Be and Abbey Road album written by Paul are about loss, separation and broken hearts. Paul was engaged with Linda in 1969 and seemed quite happy too, so WHY WOULD HE WRITE SUCH A SAD COMPILATION OF SONGS?

Because he was breaking up with John, he was losing him, and tried his best to have him back. He knew it was over and he could do nothing but sing his desperation away. ‘let it be’ is about dreaming his mother telling him that that’s life, that he had to let it happen, no matter if it hurted. ‘Oh!darling’ was a desperate scream of love. ‘The long and winding road’ is his resignation, he gave up, singing how much he tried to come back to him, to put the pieces together and start again.

Many times I’ve been aloneAnd many times I’ve criedAny way you’ll never knowThe many ways I’ve tried

He’s completely lost and desperate, still begging forgiveness from John, waiting for him to come back 

Don’t leave me standing hereLead me to your door

We all know that it will never happen. 

He didn't like being called "pretty" but this way of sitting doesn't exactly discourage it. I think he's gorgeous sitting like this myself, but just saying.

★SCAN 〜 Paul

Happy Birthday Ringo

When we got off the plane at some airport or another, Ed got off a plane there around the same time having never heard of us and not knowing anything about us. But he knew about thousands of kids standing on a roof screaming at us, and so he just booked us. Or maybe it was his assistant. We could have come to America and not made a big splash, but thanks to Murray The K and Cousin Brucie and early Beatles believers like that, they played our damn record and we had a #1 when we landed. Honestly, I don’t remember any big conversations with Ed. And in my eyes, the funny thing is that for all that, Ed kind of threw us away when he introduced us. It was just like, “Here they are…the Beatles.” NOT a lot of hype when you think back on it now. But for a pretty stiff guy, Ed sure gave us a very big shot.

-Ringo Starr (Lifted)

I like when Mimi stands up for John

‘“It makes me livid when people make snide remarks about John’s millions and ask what he ever did for Liverpool,” Mimi blasts. “To set the record straight, he gave away one-tenth of his income every year secretly to a charity for spastic children. He didn’t make a big fanfare about it. It was just something he wanted to do without a fuss. If people have the chance to make money, they would be mad not to. The secret is to make sure it doesn’t ruin your life and make you swollen headed. John still cared deeply about people and about the world. In his last letter to me, there was one paragraph that summed it all up. It read, ‘so many people are dying so young from getting cancer or some other such horror. I count my blessings, Mimi. Believe me.’ Sometimes it worried me that he cared so deeply about things.”’

- Aunt Mimi Smith on John Lennon (c. Feb. 5th 1981), from The Dream Is Over: Off The Record 2 by Keith Badman (pg. 288)

Note: While I think we all can recognise both the good and the bad side to john in the beatles fandom - I think theres a lot of sort of “outsiders” who’ll see Johns peace movements and charity work as a solely public facade. And yeah, it partly was and we’d be naive to say otherwise - but I still think there was something genuine about that image; and stories like this are evidence of that.

McCartney didn't give two hoots about being cool, about being a social rebel. In particular, he couldn't care less that he was not John Lennon.

We cringe to think that he can have fun making A Wonderful Christmastime with absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever.

How dare he not despise the world and not torture himself?

An almost Lennonesque arrogance, one might think, but carried out by McCartney with a sense of fun so guileless that he is hated for it.

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Imaginative storytelling is nothing less than the basis of all art and science.

McCartney's songs tend to be blown like bubbles and have a life of their own. He watches them at play with a certain detachment. [...] Even when profound they often have a sort of tenuous, weightless quality. This I believe is part of their peculiar charm.

The meringue-light medium is the message.

It is almost physiological. Prick him, and a song wells up.

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Truant Boy, by Martin Shough