Nice

Scary!

When the band was out drinking one evening in a nightclub [during the 1972 European tour], things turned disturbingly nasty. A young man in a green jacket sidled up to Paul and calmly informed the ex-Beatle that he had a revolver in his pocket and planned to kill him. Having coolly revealed this threat to McCartney, the youth swaggered over to the bar and stood there staring and grinning at the singer. McCullough and Laine arrived not long afterward. McCartney, clearly shaken, whispered to his bandmates, telling them what had just happened and gesturing toward the stranger. The guitarists, particularly the streetwise McCullough, who had begun his musical career as a showband player in the rough Northern Irish dance halls of the early 1960s, quickly took control of the situation. Pulling a knife out of his boot, and with Laine in tow, he wandered over to the bar. The pair flanked the now flustered wannabe thug, who began to protest his innocence, claiming it had all been a misunderstood joke. Laine and McCullough quickly wrestled him to the floor and searched him, producing no weapon. As soon as they let him go, the youth scrambled to his feet and took off into the night. In McCullough’s opinion, it was “one of those incidents that happens a thousand times on a Saturday night in any given city. I felt very protective of Paul because of his vulnerability. … He needed a strong helping hand from whoever was around him.”

[—from Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s, Tom Doyle]

“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)

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 McLennon day! 60 years since John met Paul at the Woolton Church Fete on the 6th July 1957 and started this whole thing off… 

“I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me. Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member; all the rest kind of slipped away.”

[Paul, talking about his first impressions of John, Record Collector Magazine, 1995]

“I was on a battered old guitar, which hadn’t cost much. A bloke named Rodney was on banjo, Pete Shotton was on washboard, I think Eric Griffiths was on another guitar and Len Gary [sic] was on box bass. 

“There was a friend of mine called Ivan who lived at the back of my house and he went to the same school as Paul McCartney - The Liverpool Institute High School. It was through Ivan that I first met Paul. Seems that he knew Paul was always dickering around in music and thought that he would be a good lad to have in the group.

“So one day when we were playing at Woolton he brought him along. We can both remember it quite well. We’ve even got the date down. It was June 15th 1955 [sic]. The Quarrymen were playing on a raised platform and there was a good crowd because it was a warm sunny day.”

[John, talking about how he and Paul met, quoted in Beatles Monthly No 2, September 1963 - and obviously getting the date really wrong - on purpose or not?!]

Pics - top - the first (?) photo of John and Paul together. The Quarrymen, including Paul, playing at New Clubmoor Hall, Broadway, Liverpool on 23rd November 1957. Photo by Leslie Kearney.

Photos on truck taken by James Davis - Rod Davis’ dad, who is the Rodney on banjo that John’s talking about. Photos taken on 6th July, 1957. (John with his eyes closed in the centre of the first photo, he’s obscured by Pete Shotton in the second).

Bottom 2 photos - The Quarrymen playing on 6th July, 1957, the day John met Paul. (Last photo - Geoff Rhind, other photo - Unknown but maybe Geoff Rhind?).

Happy McLennon Day Beatle fans everywhere!

Looks like rehearsals just after Ringo joined

Young Beatles at the Cavern Club

I agree with this except I think it is very likely there was a physical relationship, although who can say. Well I wish someone could say. But I know it's none of my business. But still ...

Discussing McLennon's opponents arguments

Disclaimer: By writing McLennon in the title of this post, I made a simplification. I understand "believing in McLennon" as believing, or even contemplating / leaving a window to the possibility that John and Paul's relationship was not purely platonic. This includes variations: that John was unhappily in love with Paul, that they were secret lovers, and - most likely in my opinion - that their feelings for each other were (at least in part) romantic, but they didn't do anything about it. Often, especially in general (non-Mclennon) Beatles groups, I am faced with disbelief or even outright dislike when someone starts this topic. Today I will try to look at what the opponents of our thesis say.

"You're just sexualizing everything! There may be a close friendship between men" (in a more ridiculous and nasty version that I saw in the comment on YT: "Only women and gays believe in McLennon because straight men know that there can be close friendship between men") Well, we start with a difficult topic. There are two different harmful points of view in society. The first is amatonormativity, according to which the only important relationship in a person's life is a romantic one, and friendships are less important. In this context, our critics might be right. BUT! There is also another harmful mechanism that must not be forgotten - homophobia. According to it, being an LGBTQ person is something wrong and a disgrace. Therefore, we cannot think of our idols (e.g., musical idols) as having (or contemplating) romantic and / or sexual relationships/feelings with people of the same sex. Homophobia permeates society as a whole, including historians who often interpreted two men who were close to each other as "just friends" (for example, Alexander the Great and Hephaestion). We are dealing with the same at McLennon. So we should be prudent and, where possible, fair when trying to judge any relationship considering the existence of both homophobia and amatonormativity.

"Who cares? What does it change if these two guys were in love?" Well, it changes a lot. If we accept that Lennon and McCartney were in love, we adopt a slightly different view of the breakup of the Beatles. That would explain (at least to some degree) why John was so ostentatious about his relationship with Yoko, why they got married just eight days after Paul, why he disliked Linda so much, and, most of all, why he attacked Paul so fiercely in 1970 and 1971. Of course, anger, jealousy, greed and insecurity can cause different behaviors (e.g. Gilmour and Waters fighting), but John and Paul fought each other like lovers. They wrote songs for themselves. In one of them, Paul, wanting to ease the battle, writes: "I'm in love with a friend of mine." Why? And why, for instance, does Lennon mention fucking McCartney in 1970s interviews? Broadening your horizon and accepting that the two guys had a romantic friendship would help with the analysis. Isn't that what being a historian/scholar is all about?

"It's impossible because they were both straight" This is something I wrote about above - plugging your ears and shouting: "Lalalala, my idol can't be gay!". Even if you don't think it is likely that two people had a non-platonic relationship, please be at least open to that eventuality. As for John not being straight - I'm preparing a masterpost on it, which will be released this month. Of course, I'll link it here later. As for Paul, the case is more difficult. I think I'll also make a post about it. I suspect (and would like to emphasize that this is only my interpretation, which may not be true) that Paul has been and is attracted to women all his life, and that the only man Paul has looked at romantically is John. It's like in this meme: "I'm straight but John Lennon is John Lennon" :D

"How can you discuss this? Isn't that interfering with their private lives?" Firstly: In my opinion, we can discuss the private life of celebrities, especially if they themselves decide to share it with us. John, Paul and those around them have largely decided to do so. Anyway, people have always analyzed the private life of the Beatels. Here, for example, we see a girl asking Paul in 1964 about his relationship with Jane Asher. And the most important thing: I've noticed that McLennon's opponents are quite okay with analyzing the private lives of the Beatles until the topic of homosexuality / bisexuality comes up. Only then do they say: "Leave them, it's their business!", not before. Do you know what it's called? Queerphobia. Secondly: Just read this post. That's all for now. What do you think? Feel free to comment.

Sweet

"We did the Shirelles’ “Soldier Boy,” which is a girl’s song. It never occurred to us. No wonder all the gays liked John. And Ringo used to sing “Boys.” Another Shirelles number. It was so innocent. We never even thought, Why is he singing about boys? We loved the song. We loved the records so much that what it said was irrelevant, it was just the spirit, the sound, the feeling" - Paul McCartney

More ✨McLennon✨!!!!

This song by Paul was just too perfect not to use!

🎉 1 MORE DAY UNTIL MCLENNON WEEK! 🎉

Friendly reminder that McLennon Week begins tomorrow Monday July 4th!

(For more info check the guidelines and the prompt list posts.)