Reblogging Because Of Bob Spitz Being Yet Another Person Who Has No Idea What Working Class Hero Is About.

Reblogging because of Bob Spitz being yet another person who has no idea what Working Class Hero is about. In the song when John says “a working class hero is something to be” he is being sarcastic. A working class hero is a sucker who believes the lies of the upper classes that if they keep working harder and harder that corner office will be theirs when of course the upper classes have no intention of ever giving them “room at the top”. Not only is John not saying he’s a working class hero, he’s criticising people who are. If you post things about Paul being the “true working class hero” it shows you have no idea what the song is about. I’m not referencing the original OP for this post when I say this but rather similar quotes I’ve seen around here. Listen to the song! It’s very powerful and it helps to educate yourself

No doubt about it, they were tuned to the same groove. But aside from a musical passion and amiability, they filled enormous gaps in each other's lives. Where John was impatient and careless, Paul was a perfec-tionist-or, at least, appeared to be- in his methodical approach to music and the way he dealt with the world. Where John was moody and aloof, Paul was blithe and outgoing, gregarious, and irrepressibly cheerful. Where John was straightforward if brutally frank, Paul practiced diplomacy to manipulate a situation. Where John had attitude, Paul's artistic nature was a work in progress. Where John's upbringing was comfortably middle-Class (according to musician Howie Casey," the only claim he had to being a working-class hero was on sheet music"), Paul was truly blue-collar Where John was struggling to become a musician, Paul seemed born to it.

And John gave Paul someone to look up to. Their age difference and the fact that John was in art college- a man of the world! - made John "a particularly attractive character" in Paul's eyes. There was a feral force in his manner, a sense of "fuck it all" that emanated great strength. He had a style of arrogance that dazed people and started things in motion. And he scorned any sign of fear. John's response to any tentativeness was a sneer, a sneer with humbling consequences.

John occasionally felt the need to reinforce his dominance, but he never required that Paul cede his individuality. He gave the younger boy plenty of room in which to leave his imprint. The Quarry Men would try a new song, and John would immediately seek Paul's opinion. He'd allow Paul to change keys to suit his register, propose certain variations, reconfigure arrangements. "After a while, they'd finish each other's sentences," Eric Griffiths says. "That's when we knew how strong their friendship had become. They'd grown that dependent on one another."

Dependent--and unified. They consolidated their individual strengths into a productive collaboration and grew resentful of those who questioned it. Thereafter, it was John and Paul who brought in all the new material; they assigned each musician his part, chose the songs, sequenced the sets-they literally dictated how rehearsals went down. "The rest of us hadn't a clue as far as arrangements went," Hanton says slowly. "And they seemed to have everything right there, at their fingertips, which was all right by me, because their ideas were good and I enjoyed playing with them." But the two could be unforgiving and relentless. "Say the wrong thing, contradict them, and you were frozen out. A look would pass between them, and afterwards it was as if you didn't exist.

Even in social situations, the Lennon-McCartney bond seemed well defined. The unlikely pair spent many evenings together browsing through the record stacks in the basement of NEMS, hunting for new releases that captured the aggressiveness, the intensity, and the physical tug about which they debated talmudically afterward over coffce. Occasionally, John invited Paul and his girlfriend, a Welsh nurse named Rhiannon, to double-date.

To John's further delight, he discovered that Paul was corruptible. In no time, he groomed his young cohort to shoplift cigarettes and candy, as well as stimulating in him an appetite for pranks. On one occasion that still resonates for those involved, the Quarry Men went to a party in Ford, a village on the outskirts of Liverpool, out past the Aintree Racecourse.

"John and Paul were inseparable that night, like Siamese twins," says Charles Roberts, who met them en route on the upper deck of a cherry red Ripple bus. "It was like the rest of us didn't exist." They spent most of the evening talking, conducting a whispery summit in one corner, Roberts recalls. And it wasn't just music on their agenda, but mischief. "In the middle of the party they went out, ostensibly looking for a cigarette machine, and appeared some time later carrying a cocky-watchman's lamp. The next morning, when it was time to leave, we couldn't get out of the house because [they] had put cement stolen from the roadworks into the mortise lock so the front door wouldn't open. And we had to escape through a window."

Through the rest of the year and into the brutal cold spell that blighted early February -every day that winter seemed more blustery than the last-the two boys reinforced the parameters of their friendship. Afterschool hours were set aside for practice and rehearsal, with weekends devoted to parties and the random gig. It left little time for studies, but then neither boy was academically motivated anyway.

A Man Possessed

“Most days Paul would stroll the prettily opulent, peaceful streets that lay between his house and Abbey Road. One evening, after the other three Beatles had long since driven up in their expensive vehicles, John could be made out pacing up and down the front steps, gazing with increasing impatience along the route that Paul usually took.

Suddenly he was called to the phone by George. Then he was seen racing down the front steps and running as fast as his unfit body could carry him in the direction of the McCartney residence. Paul had called to say that he would not be coming to the studio that evening–he and Linda had realized it was the anniversary of their first meeting and had decided to have a romantic, candlelit dinner at home.

Arriving outside 7 Cavendish Avenue, John, like a man possessed, clambered over the tall security gate. When Paul responded to his thumping on the front door by opening it, John pushed him aside, rushing in and screaming at Paul for his thoughtlessness.

“It’s the anniversary of me and Linda meeting,Paul reiterated lamely. ‘So what!’ snapped John contemptuously. ‘I don’t cancel studio bookings for my anniversaries with Yoko. How dare you inconvenience so many people!’ John glanced around him in furious frustration. Then his eyes alighted on something. Striding over to the wall, he removed a painting, one that he himself had done and given to Paul in earlier, genuinely loving times. It was Paul’s favorite painting, as John well knew. John stuck his foot through it and stormed back to Abbey Road.”

~McCartney, Chris Salewicz, 1986

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tasryn1

3 years ago

Say it louder for the people in the back!

You’re right to gatekeep John. What are the worst takes on him you tend to see? Or your own takes your particularly attached to?

I typed an entire answer and tumblr deleted it so I'll keep this one brief: the worst takes are the ones involving his addiction. To see people disregard his entire work and being the driving force behind the White album (and Help! and AHDN! and Rubber Soul!) recorded months earlier only because he wasn't an obsessive workaholic but a depressed, grieving, worn out man suffering from a heroin addiction is unreal. Seeing motherfuckers like Barry Miles talk about how they were all relieved he was on it because it got him off LSD shows you the way people talk about John differently than anyone else.

The ask I got days ago where someone proudly claimed to have no empathy for John & Yoko (and was glad that Kyoko was kidnapped never to be seen again) because of their addiction shook me up quite a bit. Not because I'm surprised, because I'm grown enough to know 98% of people have no empathy for addicts, but because another couple in the Beatles also claimed to be proud potheads while taking care of their 4 kids was ? Some drugs are funny & cool to be addicted to while others are not, I guess.

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tasryn1

2 years ago

Why was it John’s fault? He paid her the equivalent of a million dollars in the divorce and gave her half the proceeds from the house at Weybridge and of course child support for Julian. Was he supposed to pay fof her and her various husbands throughout the rest of her life? Cyn struggled with cash because of poor business decisions throughout her life including numerous failed restaurants and other ventures. That isn’t John’s fault. It also isn’t John’s fault he married the daughter of a banker who made solid business decisions that greatly increased his fortunes in the 1970s. At the point he divorced Cyn he actually didn’t have as much money as you would think due to contracts Brian Epstein signed that gave most of the money away for merchandising, etc. Cyn got 50 percent of his fortune at the time as she was entitled to. She was not a victim

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.

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tasryn1

2 years ago

Paul McCartney on hearing ‘Free As A Bird’ for the first time and working on it for The Anthology. Interview for Access Hollywood, 24 May 1997.

Paul: I heard it and I was very emotional. Sort of: “Wow! Yeah! The boy, Johnny!” You know, I loved- ‘Cus I loved him, you know. And I spoke to Ringo on the phone and I said: “Better keep your hankie handy for this one, ‘cus it’s pretty emotional when you hear it!”

It was fantastic for me! Having John in the headphones? It was like he was here! ‘Cus when you’re working, he’d be in a booth over there and you’re not necessarily looking at him. He’s here in the headphones…

Disclaimer: I’ve seen this quote float around but never the corresponding clip. If someone has made it available before, I apologise. If not, please enjoy, like I did, another addition to the tag #then you were here today, where Paul talks about feeling John’s presence.

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tasryn1

3 years ago