banjoandthepork

[banjoandthepork]

the revolution wasn't bad we hit the streets with all we had

#so good #this should have been the Now & Then video #the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr

[banjoandthepork]

Ron Kass interview: "One of the first things I was asked to do at Apple was to fire Peter Asher. Paul asked me to fire him because he said, "I'm breaking up with Jane, and it's embarrassing having her brother [Peter] around." I stalled him. I said, "You know, Peter really has a good ear. He's a musician, and I'd like to have him." Paul grumped a little bit and said he really preferred getting rid of him. He thought I had fired him, and Paul started to see Francie Schwartz, and enough time went that Paul forgot all about Peter. One day, Paul said to me, "Did you sack Peter Asher?" I said, "No." Paul just grumbled and walked away and that was the end of it."

-All You Need Is Love, Peter Brown & Steven Gaines

#OMG I have always wondered how Peter Asher stayed at Apple after Paul and Jane broke up. #the beatles #paul mccartney #peter asher

[banjoandthepork]

Both Paul and John visited Salem in the 70s. Love that for my spooky little city.

From Instagram:

"A conversation about Paul McCartney brought up a #Salem connection that I had not previously been aware of.

According to a fellow Salem native that I recently met, Denny Laine had inlaws in the area. The McCartneys stayed in Salem when performing in Boston during the 1976 Wings tour and were seen playing pinball at the Willows.

Part of the story has Mr. Laine having the door shut on him at a Canal St. car dealership by a salesman who found his appearance unbecoming, claiming they were closed for the day. A second salesman on his way to work recognized Laine on the street and welcomed him inside, selling him not one, but two, Mercedes. I'm sure the first salesman was looking for a new job by the end of the week.

After a bit of googling, I found the obituary for Denny's wife at the time, Jo Jo Laine, a Danvers native."

#paul mccartney #the beatles #wings #linda mccartney #denny laine #salem

[banjoandthepork]

DRUGS COST MONEY (MARK LEWISOHN, DRUG BUDDY)

I'm late, but I'm here, and this is something I've thought about since I read Tune In the first time.

First of all, Lewisohn's definition and description of what Preludin was is wildly underplayed and misleading, so I have to just get out a few quick Preludin facts. They're helpful.

Lewisohn:

Preludin was an appetite suppressant, an anorectic drug introduced into West German society in 1954, when commercial pressures were making women become more image-conscious. Users maintained an appetite but quickly felt full when eating, and the reduced intake brought about weight loss. Preludin’s primary ingredient, phenmetrazine, was not an amphetamine but an upper, giving the user a euphoric buzz. It was soon sold internationally and used recreationally, and though available in Germany only with a doctor’s prescription...

- “Tune In” - Chapter 19; Piedels on Prellies

(Oh, those women and their obsession with weight.)

I know Lewisohn's not a chemist and I don't expect him to have done extensive study before writing “not an amphetamine but an upper”—which, first of all is just a weird, grade school sounding statement about any stimulant in general that no scientist would ever say or write—but also he makes it sound like it's a fizzy little pill that gives you the sillies.

But definitely not an amphetamine or anything bad like that.

Look, even Wikipedia says right at the top, “[i]ts structure incorporates the backbone of amphetamine,” and although I didn't spend more than a few seconds there, I saw it because it came up first in the search like Wikipedia always does. Just saying it's basically impossible to miss.

And whether he was trying to hide the ball or not, since he wrote so much about them I am going to quickly set the "not amphetamine" record straight before I go on.

“Methamphetamine hydrochloride (Desoxyn) and phenmetrazine hydrochloride (Preludin) are two variants of the amphetamine structure.”

- “Amphetamine Abuse”, Sidney Cohen, MD, JAMA

“The experience in Sweden seems to indicate that phenmetrazine (e.g. Preludin) has the highest potency, and the greatest risk of psycho-toxic, acute and chronic effects (Rylander 1966). Amphetamines and methylphenidate seem to show less dependence-producing and psycho-toxic effects than phenmetrazine.”

- (United Nations Bulletin; Vol XX, No. 2)

Basically, Preludin was synthesized by taking an amphetamine skeleton and boosting tf out of it by adding a very common sort of chemical scaffolding to it called a morpholine ring, allowing them to tweak it by sticking on a nitrogen group. But morpholine rings by themselves also increase potency and usually bioavailability.

So in the narrowest technical sense, Phenmetrazine (Preludin) is classified as a morpholine instead of an amphetamine, but in every way it is an amphetamine on speed. (And every description of it anywhere says so right up front.) It was Amphetamine Plus. The little added synthetic kicker the pharmaceutical company figured out how to attach to the amphetamine made it stronger—gave it the Preludin "kick"—made the high feel better in general (according to all this crap I spent way too much time reading) and also made it way more addictive. It increased dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake, and the compound itself displayed “some entactogen properties more similar to MDMA." It made Preludin far more psychoactive than straight amphetamines. Made smells stronger, sensations more intense, and made you horny and "increased performance." It was taken off the market in 1980 because it was so hyper-addictive and the “psycho-toxicity” was so extreme. People reported doing things they barely remembered, including to a kind of freakish degree, like a lot of users committing crimes for the very first time in their lives. And so the company tried to replace it with a similar drug called Prelu-2, which is apparently still available but also almost never prescribed because even that was excessively addictive compared to non-boosted amphetamines.

And also, it made you feel body odors?

"...perfumes and flowers get a stronger smell, and body odours are felt more strongly than under normal conditions."

- (United Nations Bulletin; Vol XX, No. 2)

What are normal conditions? Maybe my normal conditions are different from everyone else's because I don't normally feel body odors?? But tbh I would literally try this drug just to see if I could.

Okay.

So... John was feeling some serious body odors because my man took a lot of them. Usually with lots of booze.

And apparently they made him more awesome.

George spoke graphically of how they would be “frothing at the mouth … we used to be up there foaming, stomping away.” John, as always, dived straight in, wholeheartedly grabbing another new experience with an open mouth and no thought of tomorrow. The Beatles called them “pep pills”—the commonly used British term of the period—and also “Prellies.”

...Two pills a night were more than enough for most but John frequently took four or five, and in conjunction with hour after hour of booze he became wired, a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity.

- “Tune In” - Chapter 19; Piedels on Prellies

Yeah, he sounds like a blast. Good thing you got a quote there, my guy. I'm sure the first description that would’ve come to his roommates’ minds would be “hilarity.” Or second, after “hero.” (Sorry, I don't want to be hard on John. I have a lot of bandwidth and patience for drug indulgences, especially in a situation like this, but Lewisohn is unbelievable.)

Ruth Lallemannd, a St. Pauli barmaid who knew the Beatles from 1960, recalls an occasion when “They crushed ten Prellies to powder, put them in a bottle of Cola and shared it between them. They were always wound up.”

Drugs cost money

Amazingly enough though, these prescription-only pills didn't just magically get from people with nice doctors to John’s hands. Someone sold them to someone else and they ended up with “the toilet lady,” Tante Rosa, who sold them.

They looked like little white sweets … but these were no mint drops.

- Chapter 19

So cute!

Preludin small-print advised against its being taken less than six hours before bedtime, in case of sleep disorders.

- Chapter 19

So if Lewisohn is reading the small print of a drug that was discontinued 44 years ago he did not miss the Wikipedia page and must know that “not an amphetamine but an upper” is wildly misleading. Technically true in the chemical classification sense, but not in the medical or pharmacological sense. And true in the same way that “fentanyl isn't morphine” is true.

But that's not my point.

My point is that these “little white sweets” were strong, had wild “psycho-toxic” effects, John took a lot of them, and they weren't free.

Because drugs cost money.

Paul slept fine on just the one pill, John and George didn’t. George would recall “lying in bed, sweating from Preludin, thinking, ‘Why aren’t I sleeping?’ ” John simply took more: “You could work almost endlessly until the pill wore off, then you’d have to have another … You’d have two hours’ sleep and wake up to take a pill and get on stage, and it would go on and on and on. When you didn’t even get a day off you’d begin to go out of your mind with tiredness.”

Or, put another way, John was “a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity.” And Paul did uncool stuff like sleeping.

Also, what in the...

Tony, George, Paul, John and Pete, along with Rosi and perhaps some stray females, would stagger wearily and noisily up three long flights of wooden stairs...

“Stray females”??? Is he talking about cats? Don't call human beings “strays,” you self-important oddity.

THE GROWNUP

John was never much into paying for stuff. Like rent, for instance. But that's what friends are for.

John was blessed with a particular talent for frittering away his funds (the council grant designed to provide his working materials) and was rarely in a position to pay [rent]. As Rod remembers, “During the week I’d go and have a pint with him and he’d always have money for a beer, but when it came to the day to pay the rent he was always hard up. ‘Could I owe it to you?’ ‘Would you like this jacket?’ One time he paid me with a Mounties-type Canadian jacket he’d probably nicked from someone else.”

- “Tune In” - Chapter 13; “Hi-Yo, Hi-Yo, Silver–Away!”

He paid rent with a jacket? Landlords take those?

I'm not gonna lie, the only real issue I've ever had with Paul—the things I have the most confusion and hesitancy about—are when he seems inexplicably cheap. Like paying the Wings band so little for so long. There's only a few cases that come to mind, but they're my weak point with him.

Still, having done my share of experimenting—as well as dating a guy who became a high-functioning addict before becoming a non-functioning addict before becoming an ex who died of an overdose—I know very well how it feels to see money flow through your hands like water and into someone else's bloodstream. And what happens then is you either both starve or you are the only one eating. In the end, someone has to have money to live, and the more drugs my ex took the more I was forced into being a walking, talking, pissed off safety net.

Stu supposedly got in a fight with Paul because Stu owed Paul money. (Although that doesn't explain attacking Paul out of nowhere on stage half as well as a three-days-awake-Prellie-binge psycho-toxicity does.)

It does, however, mean that at least one guy in the band who was taking Preludin was running out of money between paychecks. (And if it was Astrid's loan, same thing, because Stu wouldn't have gone to Paul if he'd had it.)

And there's no way that if Stu was running out of funds that John wasn't too. And faster. And according to Lewisohn, George was eating a lot of Preludin, too. Because he was also cool.

That leaves Paul.

John was notoriously bad with money even when he had a lot, and when everyone is living and working together it's almost impossible to be the only guy eating or the only guy smoking. But at the same time if you know you can't do anything to stop your friends from going hard and never thinking at all, it tends to make you more careful. Because you're all you've got and all they've got. You didn't ask for the job, but you drew the short straw. So you hide some cigarettes and share too many, and get increasingly sick of it and resentful, but there's no good answer.

John heaped a ton of spice into the mix by suddenly moving back into Mendips. He’s unlikely to have told Mimi of the Gambier Terrace eviction, but Rod Murray knew little of this hasty departure: John left most of his possessions in the flat and several weeks’ rent unpaid—to the tune of about £15. He just scarpered.

- “Tune In” - Chapter 15; Drive and Bash

“Spice.” Dude really said “spice.” That John, so spicy. And fwiw, that's £300 today.

Maybe John had another jacket to pitch in.

Paul says he's more cautious by nature and I'm sure that's true, but also you know they all relied on him because they knew he wouldn't be as stupid as they were. Who knows what he would've done—whether he would have lived a more libertine life in Hamburg—if he'd felt like that was an option and he didn't have to be the grownup. Who knows what he would have done if anyone else gave a shit whether they ate or smoked.

I'll end by repeating the freakishly weird way Lewisohn told a John psycho-toxicity story that the AKOM ladies pointed out in Ep 8: No Greater Buddy, since it's almost impossible not to talk about John and Prellies without it.

“PAUL AND GEORGE’S HERO-WORSHIP STAYED FULLY INTACT”

George was second only to John in the swallowing of Prellies and knew better than most the sum effect of taking too many for too long, how the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct. He’d describe one occasion when he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep, only for John to barge into the room in a wild state. “One night John came in and some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe. Everybody was lying in bed thinking, ‘Oh fuck, I hope he doesn’t kill me.’ [He was] a frothing mad person—he knew how to have ‘fun.’ ”

Handling John was something his friends were well used to doing. If he didn’t murder them in their beds there was no greater buddy. They might fear for their lives but they loved him still. No way would they walk out and join another group. John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.

- “Tune in” - Chapter 28; You Better Move On

Mark Lewisohn knows nothing about drugs or drug culture. Which is fine. Good. Great, even. But the thing is, it doesn't stop him from knowing everything about it. He has confidently and emphatically stated that John and Yoko weren't doing heroin in the daytime during the Get Back sessions. He even claims that they weren't on heroin during the Two Junkies interview. Even repeating this paraphrase makes me feel ridiculous, but he says that was a hangover from the night before, and that they were too lucid to be high. Which, first of all, is not how heroin fucking works. They were blasted. The aftereffects would be them being antsy and jumpy, not going in extra-slow motion and puking. Blows my mind, the hubris this guy has. To confidently state something he unquestionably pulled out of his ass without even a moment's hesitation. Not only is that not how heroin works, but it is the drug that people wake up to do. Not wake up and do. Wake up to do.

And you can tell from the way he talks about John on Prellies—“a high-speed gabbling blur of talent, torment and hilarity”—that he has never experienced anyone who's been up a few days. And I still have a more daring nature than most of my friends, and am in no way shocked by the drug use. Me and my friends in Houston used to take Fastin and go midnight bowling every Saturday. The memories are good and I regret nothing. But the naive way Lewisohn romanticizes John and low key mocks Paul—as if Lewisohn was the ultimate drug buddy and Paul a total prude—is so weird. It's freakishly, embarrassingly, weird. Like he wants to be the cool guy. Like he thinks he can be the cool guy, and is being the cool guy, but to me it's painfully embarrassing and nothing else makes him look more desperate and delusional.

#akom #tune in #the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #this is extremely super interesting

[banjoandthepork]

Just saw this post, it's a pub in Liverpool and they have David Bailey's portrait of John and Paul on display next to their christmas decorations. #inspiration #christmasdecor

Source

#that's the Philharmonic pub #on my Liverpool pilgrimage I sat at the table right next to the John and Paul photo #and had to pretend that I was Totally Normal about it through dinner with my family #dinner was after a full day of Beatles sight seeing so it was very obvious I was Not At All Normal #the beatles #paul mccartney #john Lennon

[banjoandthepork]

Oh I’d like to go back in time to this evening please:

#I love everything about this #Early Beatles must have been SO MUCH FUN #the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #ringo starr

[banjoandthepork]

“Now and then, I miss you / Now and then, I want you to be there for me / Always to return to me,” (...) It’s a passage where Lennon’s yearning for McCartney intertwines with Paul’s mourning for John, a shared grieving for the partnership that defined both their lives. link

"Now and Then" is 81-year-old Paul McCartney finishing a song of John Lennon, who has been gone for almost 43 years.

But it is also 15-year-old Paul finishing a song of the boy who wandered around Liverpool with him, talking about their future and love of music.

It is 18-year-old Paul finishing a song of the guy who picked him as his partner and took him to play nightclubs in Hamburg.

It is 20-year-old Paul finishing a song of the lad who wanted to write song after song with him.

It is 23-year-old Paul finishing a song of the man he made history with.

It is 24-year-old Paul finishing a song of the soulmate who shared his visions.

It is 26-year-old Paul finishing a song of the person who serenaded him eating a cupcake.

It is 31-year-old Paul finishing a song of John, who loved him in his own way.

And it is 39-year-old Paul finishing a song of the friend he just lost.

gif source

#I can't handle the anticipation for this song and I'm definitely not going to handle actually hearing it #the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #ringo starr #now and then

[banjoandthepork]

https://www.goldminemag.com/news/director-peter-jackson-initially-reluctant-to-make-beatles-now-and-then-video

"Paul and Ringo shot footage of themselves performing and sent that to me. Apple unearthed over 14 hours of long forgotten film shot during the 1995 recording sessions, including several hours of Paul, George and Ringo working on Now And Then, and gave all that to me. Sean and Olivia found some great unseen home movie footage and sent that. To cap things off, a few precious seconds of The Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of The Beatles and never seen before, was kindly supplied by Pete Best."

#screaming #the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #now and then #peter jackson

[banjoandthepork]

“I went to school with Paul McCartney in Liverpool nearly 50 years ago, and we have remained friends, albeit distant, ever since. I joined the school a few months after most of the boys in my class. Alan Durband, our form master, asked Paul to make me feel at home. And he did just that. It was an act of kindness I remembered long after. I knew how boys could be.”

A political Paul: The Beatle talks about schooldays, the 1960s, 9/11, FR Leavis and the responsibilities of wealth and celebrity with his old schoolmate Jonathan Power

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/apoliticalpaul

This was great ☝️

#paul mccartney #the beatles #great interview

[banjoandthepork]

This is REALLY interesting, I'd never thought about the Mike and Tara angle, I'm rotating that around in my brain.

A possibility that I feel may be likely but overlooked, because it doesn't imbue Paul's decision with meaning, is that maybe Paul was just at the party, acid was on offer, and he just did it. Maybe he was having a really fun time and thought fuck it, I'm having fun, let's try it. Or maybe the party was a drag and he thought maybe this will liven it up.

I've had the personal experience of being a 20-something around a lot of drugs, with my own personal lines about substances that I thought I'd never do, but then crossed those lines on a whim because I just wasn't thinking much one way or the other about it in the moment. I think it's very possible that Paul just did the acid in the moment, but it's become a bit of a talisman about his feelings about John. Also, I bet John and George bullying him about acid was incredibly annoying, and I could see a certain amount of stubbornness in not wanting to give in to them about it.

Anyway, love how I've read a ton of Beatles books and literally no authors have produced a level of analysis that Tumblr users are putting out. This is interesting stuff!

if I was john lennon I would be soooooo pissed at paul mccartney for taking acid with tara fucking browne instead of me. like why the fuck would you do that?? it’s a stupid move. it’s petty. you’re making your first acid trip actively worse by not doing it with me and for what?? and like it’s egocentric on one level but on another level he’s totally right: paul’s first trip totally would have been better if he just done what john said. like he shouldn’t have been peer pressured into taking lsd in the first place but taking it was tara browne is the bitchiest move possible. like it’s so bitchy that it’s almost unbelievable.

#paul mccartney #mike mccartney #tara browne #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #the beatles

[banjoandthepork]

They're actually playing the audio diary, interspersed with commentary.

#gimme some truth podcast #the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #yoko ono #'I'm sure that if he had been a woman or something he would have been a great threat“ #Yoko's 1968 audio diary

[banjoandthepork]

What piece of music moves you the most? 

PAUL: Quite a wide range of music moves me and can make me cry, but what comes immediately to my mind is not actually a piece of music but a musical situation. We were in Africa once, listening to Fela Ransome Kuti, and when he and his band eventually began to play, after a long, crazy build-up, I just couldn’t stop weeping with joy. It was such a fantastic sound, to hear this African band playing right up your nose, because we were sitting right by them. The rhythm section was so hot, so unusual, that it was a very moving experience for me. 

Hearing the Oratorio done for the first time in public, at the Liverpool premiere, was another moving moment, especially the a capella ���Mother And Father’ section at the end of War, the first movement. 

—  The Club Sandwich Interview (1994)

#read the weeping with joy quote in The McCartney Legacy and had to hunt down the original interview #he just loves music so much 🥹 #paul mccartney #wings #club sandwich #The McCartney Legacy

[banjoandthepork]

A little PSA for Beatle People out there who pilgrimage to Liverpool. George's childhood home at Upton Green is an Airbnb, you can stay there. It's absolutely totally worth it. 

Also, tours of the Casbah is a hidden gem many people don't know about. Rory Best runs the tour, he's very engaging and personable, and the Casbah looks almost untouched from the 60s. It felt the most like stepping back in time out of every Beatles site in Liverpool, even more so than the tours of Mendips and Forthlin Road (which were also worth it). 

Finally, Paul's bedroom at 20 Forthlin was SMALL! 

#the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #Liverpool #Casbah Coffee Club #Mendips #20 Forthlin Road

[banjoandthepork]

(4:08 min) - Paul reflects on the drug bust and on his time in prison in Japan including the imagined accents of his raised-in-Japan children, communicating with the other prisoners through brand names and winning at being the tallest through 'his great western height'. 😂

( Reminds me: Ray Connolly, who read Paul's Japanese Jailbird text, also remembers another height based competition introduced by Paul to the other prisoners. He would have been kingpin in so time.)

#second time I've heard Paul sound like he's on Love Island with “oh you mug” #Paul McCartney #Paul's Japan drug bust

[banjoandthepork]

When Beatles history and fandom history collide

The Beatles’ music video for Strawberry Fields Forever inspired the first fan vidder, Kandy Fong, to combine Star Trek images and recorded music/audio to tell a new kind of fan story.

Fong says she got the idea to set images to music this way from the Beatles.

Well, the Beatles did a video called Strawberry Fields Forever, and they’re doing all kinds of very strange things like jumping out of trees, and they had this deconstructed piano that the wires just go up…And they’re just doing all sorts of unusual images. And to my mind I look at this, going, “Okay, we’re disconnecting the actual playing of the instruments and singing the song with the images we’re seeing. So I can take a song and use images from somewhere else to tell my story—oh, Star Trek, oh, of course, Star Trek!” And that’s where I got the idea.

From Francesca Coppa’s Vidding: A History (2022) | Chapter 2: Early Vidding and Its Precursors

#the beatles #strawberry fields forever #this is fascinating #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr

[banjoandthepork]

Happy Global Beatles Day 💕 I think we could all use this right now!

#the beatles #all you need is love #our world #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr #is that denny laine sitting near george???

[banjoandthepork]

Klaus saying some shit

From Jesse Tedesci on Twitter (x)

#interesting #i have always side eyed Klaus a bit knowing he asked to join the group and was rebuffed #he was REALLY happy to jump into Plastic Ono Band and play on How Do You Sleep #legit gasped at the line “I would have been better than Paul in a way" #klaus voormann #the beatles #paul mccartney #john lennon #george harrison #ringo starr