Q: How do you feel about all the animosity between you and Oasis right now?
Paul: There is none as far as I'm concerned. What happened was I'd said, Good group, good singer, good songwriters. But people asked me about it so much that one time I decided to take it further and say they don't mean anything to me. I am not related to Oasis. I wish them good luck and everything. But my kids mean something to me, John Lennon means something to me, but Oasis...
Q Magazine, 1998 (https://lennons.tumblr.com/image/151821698483)
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i’ve never believed in soulmates but…
there’s something two motherless boys from liverpool—of all places—stumbling upon one another like lighting catching in a bottle and instantly having this connection.
people blabber about post-war england and pre-civil rights america and how at just right the time in just the right place two teenagers miraculously met and maybe they didn’t fall in love with eachother but they fell in love with the others minds, brains and words… enough to create the biggest band on earth from just a couple of guitars and a dream.
and they were so close, attached at the hip, staring into one another’s eyes as they wrote, sang and performed. their own hands being mirrors of one another, like two halves of one soul was split into two boys and their dominant hands were the looking glass into their hearts.
“bigger than elvis” they’d say… and they were.
until eventually, people came along and two little motherless boys from liverpool grew up and one person saw that no matter how badly they needed john, as long as paul was in john’s life john could never be fully devoted to anyone.
and so they were split apart. blame it on what or who you want but it doesn’t matter,
they were split apart.
people go their entire lives searching for their soulmate and many never find them but these two souls found one another and we’re taken from the other.
years go on of pain and frustration and anger and betrayal and it isn’t until the souls start to rekindle again that john is killed.
not just passing away… but brutalized.
perhaps that’s why paul can find a way to bring john up in every interview because even forty years later he is still living with the grief that his soulmate was taken from him not once but twice and horrifically murdered. perhaps paul feels guilt… like it should have been him. he’s lived more of his life without john than he did with john. and i can imagine how that haunts him in his old age. how there’s a hole there that can never be filled.
i’ve never believed in soulmates…but if anyone were to convince me, it’d be john lennon and paul mccartney.
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Tony Bramwell on John
- People gravitated toward John
- John was okay, considered crazy maybe, but not violent. [...] “If you hang out with that John Lennon,” mums—including mine—would warn their sons, “you’ll get into trouble!”
- He was the rebel we longed to be.
- At a young age John saw and heard things that nobody else did. Voices in his head and faces reflected in mirrors would talk to him.
- He was a born leader, a wild, yet charismatic boy
- You never knew if he was telling the truth, and it didn’t much matter. He was simply mesmerizing.
- In later years when we grew close, John told me how he used to think he was going crazy. At home he said he would gaze into the mirror and ask when he would become rich and famous. “Soon John, soon,” the mirror would seductively reply.
- The visions were huge and all-encompassing and instilled in John the absolute conviction of his own greatness. He often said he was different from the rest of us—probably from another planet.
- I used to sometimes see him staring into the mirror in dressing rooms [...] the other lads would preen and fix their hair without thought, like we all did, but John would seem to go into a trance.
- He was like the Fonz before the Fonz existed.
- He could well have been psychic, or even the genius he was later thought to be, but to adults he was always just a pain in the arse
- He portrayed himself as a natural rebel, but I think he was quite unhappy
- In fact, you could never really get close to John. Even when he was talking to you there was always a sense of isolation
- There was something about the way John looked and stood and even walked that spelled sex and trouble
- he dressed like [the Teds], but didn’t live the life or fight the fights. He just walked the walk. They also despised the fact that he came from a middle-class home and went to a grammar school, while they were genuinely tough working-class navvys
- He was funny, as well as being irreverent and totally insecure
- Despite being a brilliant songwriter, John wasn’t as deep as people thought he was, but he was an original
- John was a notoriously lousy drinker. Two of anything was his limit, but he always demanded large Scotches and Coke.
- [John] was the first to start worrying about money. The more they had, the more he worried it would suddenly vanish
- People deferred to John because he looked the peacenik part. He was shortsighted and wore glasses, which made him look political and academic. He looked concerned. He probably was concerned. He looked deep, but he was not Socrates
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