This Was THE Moment Of Get Back For Me.

I wonder if he ever looked at John like that.

Paul McCartney photographed by Linda in 1968.

This is, by no means, original thought. However, after the release of Beatles ‘64, I just want someone to make a Beatles film that is for us. Forget the mainstream and do what Cynthia said had never happened - people getting the emotion right instead of just the facts. The Beatles story isn’t a success story, it isn’t a rags to riches story, it isn’t an even a story about genius, it’s a story that has the power to change the world and one that will be told for ever. We are living in an era where we get to witness a myth being made and so in tribute to the oral tradition, we need to be the myth-makers. Someone needs to tell the story. I hope it will be Paul. I fear it won’t. Perhaps he can’t or shouldn’t, perhaps he won’t be believed. He definitely won’t be if everyone, including him, keeps recycling the same tropes. We know there’s no new stuff to be created, but there is a new light to be shed on what we know is there. This is beginning to sound a bit like the discovery of the Book of Mormon. No one needs another religion, but we do need is for someone to actually attempt to approach this seismic cultural event with an honest and open perspective.

Yoko allowed John to believe he was the genius. John’s canonisation (his manufactured image does him no favours) means that we can forget that Paul was the revered one in the 60s. He was the chosen one - in every way. John clocked it at their very first meeting.

“I half thought to myself, He’s as good as me, I’d been kingpin up to then. Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen?”- John

He took a risk, he made his choice and then never again believed in his own ultimate superiority. The story he’d told himself growing up, was that nobody was capable of spotting his genius because they were all below him. Surely a trauma response to being abandoned by his parents. Never could stand to be ignored, forever desperate to be seen and yet incapable of taking off the armour of cruelty. Look at me! Paul was the same, not armour but a wall of charm. Underneath John was soft and Paul is that almost impenetrable wall. They let each other in, and each betrayed the other. Those instincts of self-preservation that John spoke about.

Anyway, he took the chance on Paul, because he wanted to be somebody and Paul and him together made that a real possibility. Also, Paul was fucking hot and clever and talented. He was also a non-conforming weirdo who made everything look effortless and wouldn’t join John’s gang and wouldn’t let him lead. I wonder if this was Paul knowing, from the first moment of seeing John as was then confirmed by subsequent sightings and (I suspect) recces, strategically carried out to observe John (oh that bus worship carries some significance beyond an appreciation for public transport), that he knew how to handle John. Handle and manage John, in order to make him his very own.

(Is it him? Does it matter, because Paul has told us he “noticed” John many times, even before the chocolate bar.)

But, all the Paul adulation, especially John’s own uncontrollable, unconditional veneration, got to be too much. He couldn’t keep his jealousy in check. No quantity of material objects, women, money, food, fame soothed the ache for long enough. He thought Yoko, and because I am sure this is what Yoko promised him, was the only person who would always be in awe of him. She wasn’t, and the really tragic part is that Paul was from the jump, he still is and his faith never waivered.

If only they’d been able to maintain the connection and never lose the ability to read each other’s minds.

They burned too brightly. They loved too hard.

CBS News' London correspondent Alexander Kendrick witnesses one of the most awkward moments between John Lennon and Paul McCartney ever captured on film. The Beatles appearing on CBS News, 22nd November 1963 (x)

Make it stop. Ouch.

“Even the little peripheral things become interesting. And I love hearing that, because it’s my story. All these little things, like you say, things that you thought had gone away. There’s one thing, I don’t know whether they used it somewhere, but I was on a very early Beatles session when we were downstairs and the producer was upstairs. I’d forgotten to bring my pick to the session. We used to call it a “plec,” like a plectrum — just a little thing between me and John. And I said, “Oh God, I forgot my plec.” He said, “Where’d you leave it?” I said, “Back in the hotel. It’s in my suitcase or something.” And he’d go, “Oh, soft head.””

— Paul McCartney, Rolling Stone (2021)

they're so annoying....... like ur in the middle of an interview.....

Make it stop.

“John never looked at anyone the way he looked at Paul.” -an actual quote said by Cynthia Powell.

It’s too much to bear.

This is the kind of thinking that only tumblr delivers.

The transition in Paul's attitude from 66' to 67' freaks me out a little and I think should be talked about more. In 66' he's full on ready for independence and spouting off in magazines like ''I'm my own person, I want to grow up, do my own thing, maybe only work with the Beatles when we feel the need to'' etc. Contrast that to 67' and he's full-blown May Queen from Midsommar "Leaving? Why would you say that?? I'm staying forever and ever and ever with the Beatles, financially handcuffing ourselves to each other just feels good y'know, so what if I'm psychically fused with John whats the big deal?" enmeshed. Sure he's got Jane but even she leaves partially because Paul's first and foremost part of the four-headed monster.

Like Paul, what happened??? Did they lock you in a room clockwork orange style with a shit ton of LSD and the Beatles cartoon? Did John sneak into your room at night and start playing a menacing arrangement of the Beach Boys at a subliminal frequency? Did you get spooked by independence and taxes and run back to the loving embrace of the emotional polycule? It frankly makes the LSD peer pressure thing come across as vaguely sinister/j.

The Beatles don't get enough credit for being the weird microcosm of in-group/out-group pack mentality behaviour that those little freaks were. Seriously, it should be studied.

The Beatles + Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend