Robert Fraser’s interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need is Love
Some highlights:
Robert Fraser: Peter Asher was Jane’s brother. I think he brought Paul over to my place. He made me sorry because he saw a sculpture in my apartment and said, “I want that.” It was quite a lot of money for those days, it was like 2,500 quid. Paul never asked the price until he decided to buy something. If he liked it, he wanted it.
Steven Gaines: I guess they didn’t have to think about the price
Robert Fraser: No, but most people, even if they don’t have to think about it, they want to know the price. Paul was very, very open-minded, but he was also more…Well, John was too, but I mean John was sort of very difficult to…He was more difficult to…He was very shy in a way, and it comes out in an aggressive way.
Steven Gaines: It’s an odd decision Paul made to live at his girlfriend’s home with her parents.
Robert Fraser: Paul was a very domestic sort of personality. He liked the idea.
Peter Brown: I didn’t think twice about it, but looking back on it now, it was pretty ahead of its time to move in with your girlfriend’s family.
Robert Fraser: Even now, he’s done exactly what he wants. He’s not really like…He never really lived a rock star’s life.
you know how being songwriting partners is like marriage and songwriting is like sex and making an album is like being pregnant and songs are like your children. i don't even have anything to add to this it's just like. ok! yeah! what more can any of us do with this? you said it, man. sure!
George Harrison visiting Bob Dylan in Woodstock, New York (Nov. 1968)
I heard someone walk into the room and, assuming it was Barry Imhoff or Gary Shafner, I kept pounding away at the keys of the electric typewriter.
“Hi,” Bob Dylan said, pulling a chair over to my desk and slumping into it. “So have you seen George lately?”
Startled by his voice, it took a few seconds for me to respond. “Not since his tour a year ago,” I said.
“I really like George,” he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a cigarette.
I nodded my head. I liked George, too.
“So, I was thinking about it. I remember you from the Isle of Wight.” He turned his head and smiled at me, sideways. “I can’t believe I forgot my harmonicas. That was cool when you flew in on the helicopter.”
“Yeah, that was pretty cool,” I agreed. I wasn’t really sure how to talk to Bob, so I just followed his lead.
“That was a weird show,” he said. “I hadn’t performed in a long time, and I was pretty nervous.”
“You didn’t seem nervous,” I said, hoping to reassure him.
“Yeah?” he turned his head to the side and looked at me, narrowing his eyes, measuring my honesty. Then he seemed to relax. “Well, that’s good. But I sure felt it.”
He laughed, then, almost shyly, and averted his eyes. “I’m glad you’re on the tour,” he said. “Any friend of George’s is a friend of mine.”
- Chris O’Dell, “Santana (September - October 1975)”, Miss O’Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved
Q: “Was it heartbreaking to fall out of love with George Harrison? I mean, to fall in love with him is an amazing story.” Pattie Boyd: “Oh, it was heartbreaking, of course it was. You know, it was like… I was losing someone who was my best friend and who I adored, and we learnt an awful lot of very important things, issues, during our time together. We learnt them together. So this is something one will never forget.” Q: “What did he teach you, and what did you teach him?” PB: “No, we both learnt together. We learnt, you know, about art, about film making, about meditation, about all sorts of things.” - BBC Radio, September 2019 “I think probably the memory that will always remain with me is when he came to see me not long before he passed away. And he came over to my cottage and wanted to see the garden and wanted to see my darkroom because I’d been doing some printing, and, um, he wanted to see the flowers. And he said — he saw some flowers, tiny little flowers that were growing in a crack in the pavement, and the wind was blowing them. He referred to them as ‘shivering flowers,’ and I thought, ‘Oh God, that’s so sweet.’ He just had a wonderful view, and he used such a different language to describe what he was feeling or thinking. And, you know, he brought me a little gift, a little something for my studio, a little Krishna. And, you know, he was just always generous and kind and sweet and always had a good sense of humor.”
Pattie Boyd (on how she best remembers George), Every Little Thing With Ken Michaels, February 2019
the paper copy is even more ridiculous lmAO
Oh my god it's John
we as a fandom really underexamine how often crushing loneliness is a recurring theme in paul’s songwriting
"paperback writer" is a song about a guy who wants to be a paperback writer who is writing a fictional book about a different, unrelated guy who also coincidentally wants to be a paperback writer, and I feel that we've been neglecting how well this captures paul's approach to songwriting
i mainly use twitter but their beatles fandom is nothing compared to this so here i am
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