What A Time To Be Alive And A Beatlemaniac.

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 💕

If people want to say Mark Lewisohn is a John Lennon fan boy and to take everything he says with a grain of salt, it’s only right to say that Erin Torkelson Weber is the same for Paul McCartney. She’s often quoted on tumblr and she may use real life quotes but please understand that quotes, interviews and anecdotes can be arranged in a way to result in implicit bias toward a particular subject and excluding other anecdotes that contradict your version of events is a bias in and of itself.

“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

I’m now crying. He is killing me

Paul McCartney sings “I Got a Feeling” with John Lennon in first encore of the new tour!

April 28, 2022

Ah yes the typical tumblr experience. Thousands of posts where John is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his faults…crickets. One article about Paul that throws a few softball shots (in a sea of articles defending Paul’s every action as being completely justified) and the comments are full of essays defending Paul. And yet people around here keep saying that Paul is a victim that needs defending because of what happened back in the 80s when John had just been murdered and people in their horror may have gone too far one way. It’s kind of silly when you think about it.

Paul liked to keep his options open and this applied to friendship. Just when you thought you were getting to know him, to feel a commitment from him, he'd slip behind a smiling mask. Finally I came to accept this aspect of his nature and we worked together, travelled together in a relaxed fashion, but never with any developed contact.

Paul had a real appetite for life -- an exuberant optimism and a buoyant enthusiasm that was admirable even if at times it overwhelmed his sceptical partner, John.

...He lived in his head to create music or lived to create music in his head. This process or activity could account for a certain distance in his contact with people, however pleasant and engaging he might appear.

Robert Freeman, The Beatles: A Private View

George and Ringo: How friends wake up a friend.

Paul: How a darling wife wakes up her husband.

This is adorable somehow. Why am I obsessed with these little moments?

a) Science boy johnny

b) something about the way paul responds at first…

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

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.

Completely agree. This is why I’m not a Cyn fan. The woman wrote 2 exposes! The first because he husband at the time wanted a cash grab. Say what you will about Yoko and Sean but they’ve done an incredible job bringing John’s music to the next generation. That shows true love for John.

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.

Everyone reading this focussing on the fire when my first thought was how cruel Mimi was. Calling John fat. Making fun of his way of speaking. Putting down his musical interests. Discouraging him from going to Hamburg. Poor Johnny. Mimi’s impact on his mental health must have been severe

miss auntie mimi and little johnny starting a fire with his gang