#i Gasped

I love when Mo walks under his arm like he’s not even there. Go Mo!

JANUARY 30, 1969 “I love when Paul jumps up and down on the plank, to see if it’s going to hold his weight. He comes across being as hard as nails. They’re all complaining about the cold, but he’s wearing less clothes than anyone else. He’d like to do a two-hour set—impervious to any temperature whatsoever.”— Giles Martin

Peak Paul behaviour, tbh

Paul McCartney talking about wanting to get arrested at the Beatles rooftop concert, The Beatles Anthology (1995)

This is a treasure trove. 🙌

The Beatles & Noël Coward

The songwriting ambitions of Wooler and the Lennon-McCartney team provided a rich topic of conversation. "I used to discuss this chiefly with Paul," said Wooler. "I did discuss songs with John, but he wasn't interested in my kind of songs. Whereas Paul McCartney was interested in what I had to say about songs, and Noël Coward, for instance. I talked to him about Noël Coward and how clever and how witty he was. And this is what I miss about rock'n'roll songs, the absence of wit. There's so very few of them have any wit about them. Which is very sad. They're all rather long-suffering, these songs. And all this pall rather appalled me. 'When I'm Sixty-Four' is really, I think, the only witty Beatles song, which is essentially a McCartney number. When I used to announce Paul at the Cavern, occasionally I'd say, 'Now Paul's going to sing a song of his own he's written; he's the Noël Coward of rock'n'roll!' I think he liked that appellation, that description."

- Gillian G. Gaar, 'I AM THE DJ: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CAVERN'S BOB WOOLER', Goldmine (8 November 1996)

John and Paul meet Noël Coward at Alma Cogan's party at her London apartment, 1-4 June 1964.*

[Coward] found them 'pleasant young men, quite well behaved and with an amusing way of speaking'. [...] Though [Coward's] background was not so very different from the Beatles' - his father was an impoverished piano salesman - he swiftly assimilated into high society, readily adopting the mannerisms and accents of the English upper classes. Small wonder, then, that the current rise of working-class culture held so little appeal for him. [...] Coward made the mistake of relaying his encounter with John and Paul, in derogatory terms, to David Lewin of the Daily Mail. It never occurred to him that Lewin would quote him in print complaining that the Beatles were 'totally devoid of talent. There is a great deal of noise. In my day, the young were taught to be seen but not heard - which is no bad thing.'

- Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (2020)

(*Craig Brown dates this meeting as 6 June, however the Beatles - minus Ringo - were in Amsterdam on this date, and the party was in London. Lewin's article is published on Friday 5 June 1964 and refers to Coward's 'last day' of his visit to Britain 'this week' - therefore more likely 1-4 June.)

A year later, Coward sees the Beatles in concert at the Teatro Adriano in Rome, 27 July 1965, and afterwards goes to meet them at their hotel.

PAUL: Brian came and said, 'Noel Coward would like to meet you boys.' We all said, 'Oh, fucking hell, no! No, no, no. I'm going to bed.' Nobody was really keen, we were better just casually interacting with people. Once you actually had to meet them, it became a bit official and our black humour would kick in and we'd try and counteract the fact that four of us were going to have to line up to meet the great man, so piss-takes would come fairly readily. No one was going to go, and Brian said, 'You can't, you just can't!' So I went down and met him. But then he said some not too pleasant things about us after that, so fuck him anyway.

- Paul in Barry Miles, Many Years From Now (1997)

...I was told that the Beatles refused to see me because that ass David Lewin had quoted me saying unflattering things about them months ago. I thought this graceless in the extreme, but decided to play it with firmness and dignity. I asked Wendy [Hanson, the Beatles' publicist] to go and fetch one of them and she finally reappeared with Paul McCartney and I explained gently but firmly that one did not pay much attention to the statements of newspaper reporters. The poor boy was quite amiable and I sent messages of congratulation to his colleagues, although the message I would have liked to send them was that they were bad-mannered little shits.

- Noël Coward's diary entry for 4 July 1965, referring to 27 June. (x)

A boxing stance in that footwear. So Paul.

Just look at those girly sandals Paul’s wearing.

#john play-acted with a beard you say #who knows yoko

(Monthly Book, November 1963)

Did Alun Owen spy these beard play-acting and put it into screenplay?

Hot as sun

Anyway. What in the devil is going on here boys?

“Not telling the truth.” Was that a message, was he telling John he wasn’t telling the truth in India, and neither were you.

this part of let it be makes me want to sell my soul to the devil to have been with them in India. What the fuck sort of meta conversation is going on between J&P

P: “It’s incredible yknow just to sort of see us. What we’re doing, it’s incredible…”

?: “What were you doing?”

J: “yes, what were we doing?”

P (stuttering, pulling his hair): “well, y— err, I don’t really know, you know, but it’s like, we totally sort of put our own personalities on there […]”

Ringo laughing, cut to John grinning

Genuinely a bit scary.

Little welcome treat.