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do you have any recent beatles fic faves? :) open to any ship I’m in a fic drought (loved your latest btw!)

Oh thank you! I’ve been so bad about reading fic lately, I’ve had a bunch of tabs open for ages. But here’s what’s in my recent bookmarks:

I’ve loved @planetaire two most recent ones monkey’s paw which has SUCH a good john, and also covers the Japan leg of the ‘66 tour which you don’t see often. Also don’t talk, take my hand about jpy 1968 yellow submarine chaos, a favourite topic of mine, as I’m sure dedicated readers well know.

your lucky break by @o-boogies - I feel like everyone’s read this, and of course why wouldn’t you!! Not only does it pay off on the inherent sex appeal of a jp may/december thing, but also has sublime world-building. What a delightful universe. Captures the mclennon mutual insanity perfectly!

Like I Please You by @eveepe - sexy with just the right brand of insane mclennon sexual escalation. Yeah just put his dick in your mouth paul, it’s nothing!

1969-headache by phyllistine - lovely little character piece about get back! Nails all the dynamics, the undercurrent of love as well as all the overwhelming normal current of tension and awkwardness.

Play me one of yours (been thinking about the scene where Paul’s aunt tries to take his guitar for several weeks now…) and the more recent Hurricaneville (dreamy and lovely and so richly textured) both by the always wonderful @crepesuzette2023

And The Story Continues @javelinbk ‘s hot follow up to beloved Our Version of Events. It’s got glorious smut! It’s got delicious angst! Can’t go wrong :)

Also, not a recent one but one I recently revisited while looking for a quote and realised I didn’t bookmark so quickly rectified that because it’s great - ageless children, animal sweat by @eyeball2eyeball

#to read later #i hate work i wanna read all the things

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All You Need is Love, 25 June 1967 │ © David Magnus

Many attendees had gone to some fuss with their clothes, not least Paul, who had stayed up all night applying psychedelic patterns to his shirt.

- 150 Glimpses of the Beatles by Craig Brown (ch. 99)

#the history of that shirt is super intriguing to me #and there are acutally not at all enough photos or info on it #only now I see its back #and even if it was a cocaine night it still looks like too much detail to be drawn in one night #it's really impressive that he drew this #and rather unfortunate that there's no knowledge what happened to it

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💘 paul on his last brain cell & george on his last nerve 💘

#they are so adorable #i think if George was alive now he would have finally become goofy #in the last picture he's so embarrassed by the situation but also succumbed to it #and Paul? cannot be even explained #he knows the meaning of everything #he can pretend eveything is cool even a blink with both eyes #and it kinda is

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"One of the reasons auntie Jin came down to visit me in London when I was about twenty-four or twenty-five was to talk to me about the sin of smoking pot. Her nickname was ‘Control’, and she had been sent down by the family as an emissary. I suppose the word had got back that ‘our Paul’ was going a bit wild in London, so someone needed to go and check in on him. Anyway, she came down to visit me in Cavendish Avenue, where I’d been living for a while. When your auntie comes to visit, you do some of the old things you did when you were younger. So I was sitting around, playing a bit of piano, having a drink, playing cards, and having a good old chat. It was a very warm atmosphere, and the song arose out of that sense of family"

— Paul McCartney on his aunt Jin and the song 'Your Mother Should Know' from The Lyrics, 2021.

#:D :D :D

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The Beatles interviewed in Memphis (August 19, 1966)

#i love this moment it's so obvious how much they're all affected by that #and they look so damn cool #only the wall behind them is ugly

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will you come to talk to me this night?

#this creates feels #god i wish i had the time to read more fanfic

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Paul McCartney and Nicola Hale (and the rest of the cast) in a deleted scene from Magical Mystery Tour, 1967

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I KNOW THEY LOVED EACH OTHER 💕💕💕

We will never know what happened, the truth, but they really loved each other.

#they so cute! #Paul and George

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I stumbled upon this in the mall once (lured over by a large Magical Mystery Tour poster in a clothing store window), and it's probably my favourite article of clothing. A $450 (CAD) band shirt that will most likely be identified as a band shirt by nobody, even without a jacket.

#this is so awesome

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Exclusive: Steve Holley reveals Linda would drunk-shame Paul from horseback

I don't know how interested any of you are in the Fest for Beatles Fans, which I've attended twice now, but I thought everyone needed to hear this story.

I attended a panel with Adrian Sinclair, Steve Holley, Laurence Juber, and Allan Kozinn. The two on the ends wrote The McCartney Legacy. The other two were in Wings during Back to the Egg.

Recording "Arrow Through Me," which I've confirmed with the McCartney Project was done in Campbeltown, Scotland, they finished up a long day and went out to the pub. According to Steve Holley, they both drank everyone else under the table and around dawn, they emerged, staggering, to the street. Paul stopped and said, "d'you hear that?"

"What?"

"Do you hear a horse?"

Steve did, in fact, hear a horse.

"It's my wife," Paul said. "I'm in trouble."

Indeed, Linda rode up on a horse, stopped in front of them, and looked down. "Look at the state of you two," she said. "You disgust me." Steve said something about asking her if she'd let that man marry her daughter, which I didn't quite get, though she said, "Yes, but that's not the issue right now."

And Paul got up behind her and they rode away.

The existence of this story heavily implies this was not the only time Linda had to pick up Paul on a horse. We imagine that, upon discovering Paul wasn't yet home, she merely had to step outside, whistle, and her steed appeared, ready to shame Paul McCartney.

#lovely story thanks for sharing #what else happened on the panel?

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the making of liverpool oratorio documentary is literally just paul in an alternate universe where he’s a divorced gay middle-aged english teacher turned classical composer and music director

#what a lovely video #I'm sorry but he's so charming #the kind and expressive faces he makes #the little jokes and his voice #the middle aged prettiness #the skill and the passion and the softness

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Question: What was your favorite part of Get Back?

Paul: There were quite a few smiles: me and John goofing around on ‘Two of Us’ acting like ventriloquists and singing through our teeth; me and John goofing around on ‘Bathroom Window’ where we start ringing Tuesday - “Hello Tuesday!” - that was nice. But the one that immediately comes to mind is John dancing - just seeing him dancing. It’s very cute, and he was actually a really good mover!

#I'm mostly reblogging because I love this gif so much #Paul's smile is so soft and he's smiling at John or at what John said #and his hand is rubbing where John just punched him #and this smiley softness is seconds after the tense little convo about how John should right more songs

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Let's worship at the church of Paul's private grief, feat. the McCartney brothers, fathers and sons

About 10 years ago Paul released the ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’ album. The cover was one of the evocative photos that you did in the early 60s. For me it’s the composition of the photo that makes it, taking it behind the window frames. Mike: It’s through me mum’s net curtains. She made them. She died when we were in Forthlin Road when I was 12 years of age. They are very important to me and our family. So my mum had died and there’s our kid sitting on the deck chair in our back garden with his guitar. He used to get lost in his guitar and there he is, miles away, sitting on a deck chair with the washing above his head. It’s such a lovely picture. I took it through the gap in the curtains.

In fact years later, James, our kid’s son. He’s a great musician and singer. He was up and said “Uncle Mike, can I see your’s and dad’s old house?” So I took him and there is the photograph on the wall. They’d put a deck chair in the yard and the washing on the line so you can look out and imagine our kid in the deck chair. I said to the guy running the house “Have you got a guitar?” He said “It’s an old one upstairs. It’s all out of tune.” Eventually he brought it down. I said “Here you are James. Look at the picture. See the way he’s holding it and looking.” You go be your dad.” So I sent him outside and took his picture, exactly the same way all those years later. I gave it to him and our kid as a present, the two of them together.

(Mike McCartney on the Strange Brew Podcast)

(photograph by Mike McCartney)

#I've always loved that photo but this backstory about the curtains makes it even better #It's kinda amazing how many professional photographers have taken pics of Paul and how Mike and Linda's photos of him are the best #not that they're not photographers too but you know what I mean #And just when I think about young teenage Mike having the sensitivity and the patience of taking such a photo #i mean how many wee boys would quitely take a pic of their brother through the curtains like that? #also it's noteable how much Mike is more willing to talk about his mother than Paul is #I'm glad we have at least Mike confessing how hard it was for them

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I see what you mean, that's an interesting point. However, I think HDYS being so public is not only mean because of the lasting reputational problems. Being public makes it everybody's business and it makes it more humiliating just by being seen by everybody and because Paul knew that John knew it would be seen by everybody. And when everybody knew it was about Paul, Paul had to report and measure his reaction to it for many people - like when Sean Lennon asked him about it years after or interviewers asking him about it and maybe friends and family and ohter musicians asked him about it and so on. And also, I don't know, when I imagine it happening to myself - I think if a friend sends me an offensive message just for me to understand it would be very hurtful, but it still probably would be less hurtful than if they posted a massive artistic/facebook post about me. And partly that would be because if they made it so public it would feel like they really hated me, like they decided it big and final. If they took any precaution for their message to me to be not understood by everybody, it would still be a conversation between them and me and on some level it would still feel like they still care about some part of their relationship with me, in order to at least make it private. I mean, if you send a cryptic/private message it's actually part of your relationship, part of the convo between you two. And if it's public it's kind of beyond that.  (and not that Too Many People is *that* private... but really it's miles more private than HDYS is) But anyway, maybe I'm wrong and your points make sense anyway. And indeed John couldn't be blamed for Paul's reputational problems that much and there's not enough proof that he really intended causing them. (though I guess he didn't mind Paul's reputation being knocked down a little, either :))

damn you’re last post about tmp is right im afraid. if i was john i would have done the same can’t lie

to be clear: I don't think HDYS was a measured response because getting The Entire World Involved had extremely… adverse, lasting effects. I also find HDYS not especially compelling as a piece of art because it just comes across as incredibly disingenuous (though it is kind of interesting as a vehicle to explore John's bravado, conceptually).

That being said, I get how, to John, it may have seemed measured at the time. He alluded to the fact that Ram almost made him feel… gaslit? In that it included jabs at him that only he was supposed to get (and to be clear: it's also entirely possible that John read more into Ram – and TMP specifically – than Paul had intended) and the fact everyone else acted like it "meant nothing" was part of what John hated so much about all of it. Him retaliating with hitting "Paul where it hurts" and the thing that hurts Paul the most being his general image and artistic integrity makes a twisted kind of sense in that way. It's not right but I think I see why it felt right at the time.

I also am not sure it's fair to fully hold John responsible as if he knew how consequential the song would end up being. Like, it's not Not his fault but it's also unfair to discount all the narrative mechanisms that reinforced his subjective sentiments. But it's also kind of hard to tell how much this one song contributed to Paul's lasting reputational problems.

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These are all cool. What do you think ''The minutes are crumbling away'' mean in that instance though? I'm not a native English speaker and I've always wondered if some reference isn't escaping me or a subtlety of meaning. Does it mean something like ''these are some of the last good moments'' or ''time together is crumbling away'' or something?...

Your top 5 favorite Mclennon quotes?

Hi Anon, thank you for asking! The following aren't quotes I'd construct into any kind of 'proof' (whether I'm into this or not is another set of footnotes, which I'll spare you), but quotes that illustrate that John and Paul's relationship was fascinating and intense, and puzzling to themselves and others (incl. yours truly). 1.) “Meeting Paul was just like two people meeting. Not falling in love or anything. Just us. It went on. It worked.” — John Lennon - The Beatles by Hunter Davies

2.) “Lennon had attitude, and, taking his lead from Lennon, McCartney could be similar. At times, they reminded me of those well-to-do Chicago lads Leopold and Loeb, who killed someone because they felt superior to him. Lennon and McCartney were ‘superior human beings’.” — Bob Wooler in Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In

3.) “John and Paul paired off - only to find themselves stuck together for life. For John, Paul was the boy who came to stay; for Paul, John was the song he couldn’t make better” — Rob Sheffield, Dreaming The Beatles

4.) TELL ME WHO HE IS. Early song by Paul McCartney, included in The Lyrics (2021). Written in the late 50’s/early 60’s, according to the caption. (photo of journal page)

Tell me who he is Tell me that you’re mine not his He says he loves you more than I do Tell me who he is

Tell him where to go Tell him that I love you so He couldn’t love you more than I do Tell me who he is

5.) John Lennon's word association list from 1976 New York: great Elvis: fat Ringo: friend Yoko: love Howard Cosell: hum George: lost Bootlegs: good Elton: nice Paul: extraordinary Bowie: thin MBE: shit John: great

BONUS TRACK: “I had signs that the group was gonna break up, because… I mean, I think really what it was, really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away."— Paul McCartney (1985), link to interview here

PLAY IT BACKWARDS: "LONDON (AP) — John Lennon wrote vitriolic comments about fellow-Beatle Paul McCartney in a picture biography of the famed pop group, providing new evidence of the tensions between them, the Observer newspaper said Sunday. [...]

"Lennon marked almost every one of the 76 pages with corrections and comments, including one that the Observer took as an indication the group already was experimenting with drugs in the 1960s. [...]

"In an entry noting McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, Lennon crossed out “wedding” and wrote “funeral”, the Observer said. [...]

"But in a final tender moment, the Observer said, Lennon wrote under a photo of himself with McCartney: “The minutes are crumbling away.” (full article.)

#John and Paul #otherwise I've always loved the extraordinary one especially much too #and the one by Paul about how John couldn't have two intense relationships is imo pretty major #because Paul said it and because unlike most of the other comparisons to marriage quotes it is NOT really a marriage comparison #so it cannot be dismissed as a joke or a methaphor #it's an earnest attempt to explain things #and he's talking specifically about them two and not about the Beatles and John

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#the way she takes his arm and not even his hand #the way he looks so worn down by that question and reaching for her support #and how ready she is to give it #the idea that Paul was depressed and low in confidence only in that period in 1969 often seems very unlikely to me #and anyway they are so lovely #i wish i could see the whole awkward interview again

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THE BEATLES in Germany (1966).

#1966 was not only misery maybe #it was a handsome misery if it was misery that's for sure