Beatlebits - Tumblr Posts

“Paul then got a bug about tadpoles. “Is it possible to make a pond, Dad?” he asked one day.

“What for, son?” asked Dad.

“To raise tadpoles,” replied Paul.

Dad was always very good at trying to supply anything we wanted – particularly if he thought it would be of an informative or educative nature. A few days later he dug a big hole in the back garden and sank a beer barrel in the space. Then he left us to fill it with water.

Paul got a lot of frog-spawn from somewhere and dumped all this into the barrel. For weeks he lived for nothing else but that spawn. The moment he came home from school, he’d be out into the garden, stuffing his face down into that spawn to see how it was getting on.

“They’re getting tails!” he’d yell at me and then I’d go and look at the messy stuff. I couldn’t understand what was exciting him.

“Look, there’s one with a body!” he’d point. All I could see was stuff that looked like a whole lot of dirty marmalade.

Then one day he ran into the house yelling blue murder.

“They’re getting away!” he was shouting. “They’re running off into the fields!”

Mum and I ran out and there was a horde of frogs jumping and leaping about all over the place. We managed to grab one or two and hold on to them for a moment or so but the minute we set them down again, off they went, into the bushes and hedges. In a very short time, Paul’s pond was completely empty! You should have seen his face! It would have made you laugh and cry at the same time. He had never counted on his spawn turning into real live frogs – neither had the frogs!”

Mike McCartney for Woman Magazine, Saturday, August 21, 1965.

When Paul first invited the Quarry Men to rehearse at his house - and to meet his dad - he met them in town to walk them over. On the way back they ran into a sailor returning home on leave, who was really excited to meet a band, and insisted that they come to the pub and play him a song.

Colin Hall (the book's narrator) writes:

"It was an offer the boys could not resist, although Paul's face immediately dropped. This was the last thing he needed. He was reluctant to accept the invitation because he knew his dad was waiting to meet the Quarry Men for the very first time. To turn up at home with a bunch of lads about whom he'd told Dad so much, and whom Jim was keen to meet, but who were now likely to arrive 'half cut' was Paul's worst nightmare."

Colin Hanton explains how they had a couple of pints and sang the guy a song as they left. He then says:

"Paul was clearly anxious that his dad would smell the beer on our breath and frustrated that there was nothing he could do about it. John reassured him we would be alright, it was half a mile at least to number 20 and the walk in the fresh air would take away the smell of the pub and beer. Reassured, but not entirely convinced, Paul walked ahead of us while we followed."

I know it's nothing but I love Paul being "clearly anxious" around these early days and John being okay about it instead of awful.

The meeting with Jim and Mike went fine though, and Colin mentions: "We also learned that their mum, Mary, had passed away a few years earlier."

"After about an hour, as would become the norm for our many rehearsals at Paul's, the glass doors opened and Jim popped his head round to ask if we were ready for a cup of tea. He was very obliging like that and always struck me as a very pleasant, sociable, and friendly man. After Jim served us tea, we carried on for another half hour before calling it a day. I think, despite the beery breath, we had passed the audition. Jim certainly didn't throw us out or make any comments about the smell of beer, he couldn't have been more hospitable. Indeed we were invited back many times to rehearse. Being a musician himself and a former band leader, Jim understood the importance of a good rehearsal space in which you felt at ease. Rehearsing at Paul's house was always enjoyable, Jim was always encouraging, and his warm welcome allowed us to relax and focus on the music."

Pre:Fab! by Colin Hanton and Colin Hall

Paul McCartney, the one member of the Beatles Mimi felt closest to, started to telephone her on occasion to assure her that John was all right, while at the same time commiserating with her on the worry John was causing them both. Paul was sure it was merely a fleeting affair and Lennon would be back to his old self before long. Mimi wasn’t quite so sure. In the meantime, she considered Yoko “a thoroughly bad influence on him”.

[...] Yoko Ono wasn’t the only woman connected to the Beatles that Mimi felt suspect of. She had adored Jane Asher and recalled the first time Paul had introduced her. It had been at a Beatles concert. Mimi could tell he was proud of her and completely besotted. She watched as she and Jane both stood backstage watching the Beatles in concert and noted how often Paul looked over at Jane with a look of love.

Mimi felt that Paul and Jane were destined to be together forever so was quite shocked when Jane appeared on television and announced that their engagement was off. Yet she didn’t connect the two, when she dropped in at the Apple Offices in London with her niece, Liela, and went into the recording studio. They watched the rehearsal for the new album, but she found the noise deafening and there was an annoying blond woman who moved about thrusting a camera in her face every time she turned around.

It wasn’t until shortly thereafter that the news of Paul’s marriage broke that she realized that the blond photographer was now Mrs. Paul McCartney. She thought it strange that Paul hadn’t made any move to introduce them when she’d been in the studio the week before. And how ironic it was that Paul had spewed his distaste for Yoko, hoping John would never marry her because at the very least she was a divorcee with a child. John, for his part, simply said Paul had finally met his match.

The Guitar’s All Right as a Hobby, John, Kathy Burns (2014)

When We Was Fab: Inside the Beatles Australasian Tour 1964 by Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong

I’ve stolen this off a Facebook group but feel it needs to be seen on tumblr.

me whenever paul talks about how he slept with john in the same bed:

i love this old man so much, he really likes telling interviewers about it 😌

Does Paul expect us to Surprise-Pikachu every time he brings up sleeping with John now? Top-and-tailing it like innocent children... lol Okay Paul. I love him too, ridiculous man, I swear he does this sort of thing on purpose. He can’t be so oblivious or naive of what he says when talking about him and John... I refuse to believe that lol

File it next to the other memorable instances of Paul bringing up about how he slept/shared a bed with John, a lot:

[x]

“John and I grew up like twins although he was a year and a half older than me. We grew up literally in the same bed because when we were on holiday, hitchhiking or whatever, we would share a bed. Or when we were writing songs as kids he’d be in my bedroom or I’d be in his. Or he’d be in my front parlour or I’d be in his, although his Aunt Mimi sometimes kicked us out into the vestibule!”

September 26, 1997, “Paul McCartney - Meet The Beatle” by Steve Richards

“But, then rather than dwell on [the circumstances of John’s death] I immediately go to the fantastic times we had and how lucky and privileged I feel to be one of the people who spent the most time with him during his life, having met him as a teenager. People start these rumours: ‘He was this, he was that.’ I say: ‘Look, I’ve slept with him.’ We’ve done hitch-hiking holidays and we’ve had to top and tail it because there was only one bed. I say: ‘I knew him’. And, we’d get drunk together and do all those kinds of things that you find out about people. The bottom line, I think what everybody already knows, he was a fantastic man, really fantastic guy. Just as a man, as an activist, he is one of the great men of the 20th century. I’m just very proud to have known him so intimately from when we were kids to virtually the end all the way through. I do (have a connection) and I don’t expect it to go even though we are separated by death. It’s just something I will always feel, some sort of link with John. That’s for sure.” 

Paul McCartney, Interview with Steve Wright, Radio 2, December 9, 2005

And my favorite...

Paul McCartney answers questions for Q magazine, 1998

“If John Lennon could come back for a day, how would you spend it with him?” 

 “In bed.”

photo by Mike McCartney showing Paul after a Cavern All-Nighter, 1961.

"I mainly watch Lennon. He's like a caged animal, never mind a Beatle. Not that I've got anything against my brother, but he's just a brother (you know, the one who picks his nose and won't come off the toilet 'cos he's playing his guitar or reading those nudy books). Lennon just stands there, legs apart, defying you to come up an' hit him, with the odd, razor sharp intro and mongol movement, but Paul gets the girls (and some of the musical lads) going with Till there was you. It' s a most unusual, Dad orientated, melodic song in the middle of all the rock 'n' roll screamers. Then he finishes 'em off with a more than passable Long Tall Sally.

         When it's all over and the magic Sesame Street door to the drezy finally opens and SLAMS behind me (to keep out the fans), the inevitable 'the Coke's warm' follows . . . usually from George. After stripping off the dripping black T-shirts and leathers and towelling down their sweat saturated bodies, they dress in blue jeans and black polos. Then the 'Cavern Conga' snakes back through the girls once more and down to the pints of bitter. This procedure continues ad infinitum till the pubs close and then we all sit it out in the drezy till morning.

         At daybreak Paul and I climb our weary legs out of the all night cave and headed, tireder but somehow wiser (and certainly happier) for the number 86 bus stop, where we look at the latest winkle pickers in shoe shop windows or sit on pillar-boxes with the wind whipping up from the Mersey, and wait for the first bus home... magic days." from: Mike McCartney, "The Macs: Mike McCartney's family album" (1981)

"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.

“It was really quite funny,” remembers fellow passenger Pang, who was about to celebrate her 31st birthday. “John goes: ‘Oh my God.’ And he looks in the cab next to him, and who’s in the cab? Paul and Linda! And he rolls down the window and he’s yelling: ‘Hey, Paul! We tried to get you this morning.’ Paul says: ‘We’re on our way to see Lee,’ his father-in-law. And John goes: ‘Yeah, we’re on our way to Capitol.’ Paul goes: ‘Maybe we’ll have dinner later.’” As the two taxis start to move once the traffic begins to flow, Paul and John attempt to keep their conversation going, sticking their heads out the window as they try to make arrangements for later that evening. It is a comical incident and a poignant one. This happened to be one of the last times they’d see each other before Lennon became a father for the second time the following autumn.

— John and Paul in New York, October 1974.

Source: Come Together: Lennon & McCartney in the Seventies, Richard White (2016).

Oh, for what it’s worth, no less than John Lennon loved the song. I spent a long time talking to [photographer] Bob Gruen once, it was great as we talked about a lot of stuff that he doesn’t usually get grilled on. One of the things that came up was the times he spent with John listening to the radio. Bob singled this song out as one he and John would listen to and how much John loved the song. John took the song quite personally, and saw it as Paul sending a message to him: ‘Yeah, I know you think I only write silly love songs, but I love you.’ Bob said John specifically mentioned the ‘I love you’ refrain as being a message from Paul to him. We can speculate all we want, but I have no reason to doubt the word or memory of a guy who sat in the Dakota bedroom with John and listened to this song with him.

— gswan, c/o Steve Hoffman Music Forums. (October 28th, 2010)

This angelic quality [of Paul’s face] was not necessarily always reflected in Paul’s behaviour.  Hoffman noted that though in terms of verbal wit he could give as good as he got, Paul’s replies lacked the caustic edge of John’s words: “There was never really any bitterness in Paul.” 

Yet it seemed to the photographer that the vicious vitriol John would pour on often undeserving victims was quite evidently to Paul’s pleasure.  “In a way Paul wallowed in it, because John always played up to his requirements. It’s a useful thing to have somebody like that, who’s capable of putting down people you don’t like.”

 - Dezo Hoffman, photographer of little baby beatles

“‘Uh, I need another drink, baby,’ says John. Paul goes to the phone. ‘Hello? Yeah, send us six single Scotches - No, make it doubles, yeah, doubles.’”

— Michael Braun (Love Me Do!: The Beatles’ Progress)

Drawn by Paul for Klaus

What Happened In India?

(or around that time...)

Before

Shortly before we were due to leave for India John spent the weekend with Derek Taylor, a former journalist who had become the Beatles' press spokesman and a good friend to us all. He, his wife Joan and their five children lived in a big country house where they seemed incredibly contented. When he came home after that weekend John put his arms around me and said, 'Let's have loads more kids, Cyn, and be really happy' Despite my increasingly strong feeling that John was slipping away from me, it seemed at moments like that as though nothing had changed. John was off drugs and seemed almost like his old self. 'We can make it work, Cyn,' he said. 'When we're in India we'll have time for us and everything will be fine.' I hoped he was right.

John (Cynthia Lennon)

Cyn hoped that Rishikesh would afford seclusion, privacy and an opportunity for her and John to rediscover each other and to revive their marriage. ‘Impossible hopes,’ she said sadly. ‘John said to me just before we went to India that he wanted us to have more children. Well that came out of the blue, I can tell you. I was really surprised, as he’d never said a word about that before.

Lesley-Ann Jones - The Search for John Lennon

Cynthia: “It was a time for us all to drop out for a while. The years of fame and fortune had taken their toll on our nerves and minds. John and I both felt closer. There seemed to be a greater possibility of our finding a solution to personal difficulties. If our trip to India wasn’t going to solve our emotional problems, then nothing would.”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

That letter made it crystal clear that they [John and Yoko] had been in contact. How well had they got to know one another? I tackled John, who told me she'd written many times, both letters and cards, but said, 'She's crackers, just a weirdo artist who wants me to sponsor her. Another nutter wanting money for all that avant-garde bullshit. It's not important.' I had no way of knowing whether he was telling me the truth. He sounded genuine, but a sixth sense told me there was more to this than he was admitting. I tried to put it to the back of my mind. We were going to India, and I wanted that to be a special time for us.

John (Cynthia Lennon)

John panicked at the accumulating threats from the Princess of Darkness. That was when he decided to go to India with Cynthia to put some distance between himself and Yoko. If he stayed away long enough, he could hope Yoko would just go away. Maybe she’d go back to America, or vanish in a puff of smoke. Her scissors act might go horribly wrong, or while she was bagged up one day the Royal Mail might frank the bag and deliver it to anywhere but India. Yes, a long trip to the ashram, where he could meditate and learn how to be calm and in control, give up drugs and spend romantic moments with Cynthia and glue his crumbling marriage back together, seemed opportune.

Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell

“I don’t like the unhappiness she [Yoko] caused. She was horrible. John wanted to avoid her at first. He said, ‘Get rid of the bloody woman!’ But after India, he saw her differently — perhaps filtered through an exotic mindset.”

Tony Bramwell - the band’s ex-road manager

During

“The pressure of being the Beatles had driven a wedge between them individually and that had all percolated in the months leading up to their visit to Rishikesh,” he said. “Once they got there, and they unburdened themselves from all of that, they reconnected with their songwriting and their creativity. It just flowed forth.”

Bob Spitz to the New York Times

 “I was in a room for five days meditating,” said Lennon in The Beatles Anthology. “I wrote hundreds of songs. I couldn’t sleep and I was hallucinating like crazy, having dreams where you could smell. I’d do a few hours and they you’d trip off, three- or four-hour stretches. It was just a way of getting there, and you could go on amazing trips.” Cynthia Lennon said in Bob Spitz’s book The Beatles that for John, nothing else mattered when it came to mediation, adding “John and George were [finally] in their element [at the ashram]. They threw themselves totally into the Maharishi’s teachings, were happy, relaxed and above all found a piece of mind that had been denied them for so long.”

The Beatles in India: 16 Things You Didn’t Know

I was right in the Maharishi’s camp writing “I wanna die” you know. I’m So Tired and Yer Blues where they were pretty sort of realistic, you know, they were about me

Lennon Remembers

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da was born on the steps of one of the low slung cottages where the entourage lived. One day, remembers Saltzman, he was passing by the cottage when he saw Lennon and McCartney sitting on the front steps and strumming the tune on their acoustic guitars. He ran back, picked up the camera and took pictures of the two with a pensive-looking Starr sitting on the side, from outside a wicket gate. Saltzman remembers the two were singing the first two lines of the song "over and over again, going fast and slow, having fun". "That's the riff we have," McCartney told Saltzman, "but no words yet".

filmmaker Paul Saltzman

Jenny Boyd, Patti’s sister “I sat with John a lot, since he didn’t feel well, either from terrible jet lag, and insomnia. He would stay up late; unable to sleep, and write the songs that would later appear on The Beatles’ White Album. When I was at my lowest, he made a drawing of a turbaned Sikh genie holding a big snake and intoning, ‘By the power within, and the power without, I cast your tonsil lighthouse out!’ Sometimes, late at night, I can still hear John singing those sad songs he wrote during those evenings, like ‘I’m So Tired.’”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

John “I went to the Maharishi and, regardless of what I was supposed to be doing, I did write some of my best songs while I was there. It was a nice scene. Nice and secure and everybody was always smiling. The experience was worth it if only for the songs that came out. It could have been the desert or Ben Nevis. The funny thing about the Maharishi camp was that, although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth, like ‘I’m So Tired’ and ‘Yer Blues.’”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

Meanwhile, I was not having the second honeymoon I'd hoped for. John was becoming increasingly cold and aloof towards me. He would get up early and leave our room. He spoke to me very little, and after a week or two he announced that he wanted to move into a separate room to give himself more space. From then on he virtually ignored me, both in private and in public. If the others noticed they didn't say so. I did my best to understand, begging him to explain what was wrong. He fobbed me off, telling me that it was just the effect of the meditation. 'I can't feel normal doing all this stuff,' He said. 'I'm trying to get myself together. It's nothing to do with you. Give me a break.' What I didn't know was that each morning he rushed down to the post office to see if he had a letter from Yoko. She was writing to him almost daily. When I learnt this later I felt very hurt.

John (Cynthia Lennon)

And because the Beatles didn’t know anything about ashrams and they haven’t seen anything before because they went for Maharishi, not for the ashram. Maharishi didn’t allow men to stay with their wives. John was delighted with the idea. He loved it, actually. I think it made Cynthia very unhappy. She wanted to stay with John, everybody had his own problems. My great interest was with John. I was very happy because I found John much healthier. The color in his face was different and he was happier and he took the whole thing very seriously, and he was trying hard and he was so excited when I arrived because perhaps I was part of the reason he was there.

Magic Alex in All You Need Is Love – Peter Brown & Steven Gaines

We all went through a depression after Maharishi and Brian died; it wasn’t really to do with Maharishi, it was just that period. I was really going through the “What’s it all about?” type thing – this songwriting is nothing, it’s pointless, and I’m no good, I’m not talented, and I’m shitty, and I couldn’t do anything but be a Beatle. What am I going to do about it? It lasted nearly two years and I was still in it during Pepper. I know Paul wasn’t at the time; he was feeling full of confidence, and I was going through murder during those periods. I was just about coming out of it around Maharishi, even though Brian had died – that knocked us back again. Well, it knocked me back.

John Lennon, interview w/ Barry Miles, (partially) unpublished. (September 23rd, 1969)

By spending two months in deep meditation in India, John brought his deepest problems to the surface but he was unable to resolve them: the contradiction between his family life and his life as a rock star with all the drugs and groupies was too great. Had he stayed with the Maharishi until the end of the course, he might have avoided some of the pain, but by terminating the instruction abruptly, he was left hanging in thin air. During the weeks at the camp, he had been receiving daily letters from Yoko, though nothing sexual had yet happened between them. He was very attracted by her but he felt tremendous guilt about breaking up his marriage: doing to Julian what his own parents had done to him, repeating the pattern.

Many Years From Now - Barry Miles

He [Mick Jagger] told me with amusement that the real reason why the Beatles left the Maharishi was that he made a pass at one of them: “They’re simple north-country lads; they’re terribly uptight about all that.” Am still not sure if I believe this story.

“The Sixties,” the second volume of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries

After

And I was slowly putting myself together after Maharishi, bit by bit over a two year period. I destroyed me ego and I didn’t believe I could do anything. I let Paul do what he want and say, them all of them do what they want, I was just nothing, I was shit. And then Derek tripped me out at his house after he got back from LA, and he sort of said you’re all right and pointed out which songs I’d written, and ‘you wrote this and you said this, you are intelligent, don’t be frightened’. And then next week I went down with Yoko and tripped out again and she filled me completely to realize I was me and it was alright.

Lennon Remembers

So much had changed since I’d last seen the Beatles just a few months previously. They had come back from their trip to India completely different people. They had once been fastidious and fashionable; now they were scruffy and unkempt. They had once been witty and full of humor; now they were solemn and prickly. They had once been bonded together as lifelong friends; now they resented one another’s company. They had once been lighthearted and fun to be around. Now they were angry.

Here, There and Everywhere - Geoff Emerick, Howard Massey

The rage that was bubbling inside John was the most obvious sign that something was seriously wrong. There was new tension between John and Paul, and even between John and Ringo, in addition to the often strained relationship that Paul had with George and the resentment that Ringo sometimes exhibited when Paul coached him too much on drum parts. In fact, the only two Beatles who seemed to get along during the White Album sessions were John and George. Perhaps that came from the experience they had shared at the ashram—after all, they were the two who had stuck it out, staying on long after Ringo and Paul had gone back home. Maybe they felt deserted by their bandmates, or betrayed. The undercurrents between the four Beatles were so complex at that point, it gave me a headache just thinking about it.

Here, There and Everywhere - Geoff Emerick, Howard Massey

Our first night back in the studio began, as usual, with small talk and catching up. “So how was India?” I asked. “India was okay, I guess… apart from that nasty little Maharishi,” John replied, venomously. Harrison looked deflated, as if it were a conversation they’d had many times before. With a deep sigh, he tried to calm his agitated bandmate. “Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad,” he interjected, earning a withering glance. Lennon’s bitterness and anger seemed almost palpable. Ringo tried deflecting things with a little humor. “It reminded me of a Butlins holiday camp, only the bloody food wasn’t as good,” he said with a wink. I glanced in Paul’s direction. He was staring straight ahead, expressionless and weary. He didn’t have much to say about India that day, or any other. I sensed at that moment that something fundamental in them had changed. They were searching for something, but they didn’t know quite what it was; they had journeyed to India looking for answers, and they were disappointed that they hadn’t found them there… but it seemed to me that they didn’t even know the questions.

Here, There and Everywhere - Geoff Emerick, Howard Massey

“By all accounts, John had hit an all-time low [after India]. “John was in a rage because God had forsaken him,” George recalled. “Then he went and completely reversed himself. He turned from being positive to being totally negative.” According to Pete Shotton, who was spending time with John at Weybridge, there was an overriding feeling of humiliation—from the Maharishi, from the Apple Boutique shambles, from his deteriorating marriage, from what he felt was his shrinking position in the Beatles. “He was more fucked up than I’d even seen him,” Shotton remembers. “It seemed like everything was going to the dogs. He’d been desperately grasping [at] straws, as far as I was concerned, and there wasn’t even a straw there.”

the beatles: the biography, bob spitz

JOHN: How can two women split up four strong men? It’s impossible. You know, The Beatles were disintegrating slowly after Brian Epstein died, it was a slow death, and it was happening. It was evident in Let It Be – uh, although Linda and Yoko were evident then, but they weren’t when it started, I don’t think. It was evident in – in India, when George and I stayed there and Paul and Ringo left.

October, 1971 (St Regis Hotel, New York)

There was little need for me to repeat my instructions. As soon as we got there, it was obvious that things were not hunky-dory with the Beatles. Their recent month-long meditation retreat with the Maharishi didn’t seem to have helped their relationships very much, and the estrangement was definitely having an effect on their work. I don’t think any actual recording got done that night. Paul, George and Ringo were rehearsing some new songs, trying different ways of playing and singing them. Meanwhile, John spent most of his time sitting on the floor next to Yoko, chatting privately with her as she stroked his hair. He seemed no more involved in the proceedings than me and Lawrence, who watched the uncomfortable tension building from the other side of the studio. “Hey John.” Paul turned around to face him at one point. “Are you in this band or what?”

Leslie Cavendish, The Cutting Edge: The Story of the Beatles’ Hairdresser Who Defined an Era

Back at Kenwood John continued to be distant towards me. Now that we were away from the others and the charms of India, I felt increasingly afraid and depressed. John and I were back in the same bed, but the warmth and passion we had shared for so long were absent. John seemed barely to notice me. He was little better with Julian and was more likely to snap at him than give him a hug. There was just one moment of real warmth between us and that was, ironically, when John confessed to me that he had been unfaithful. We were in the kitchen when he said, out of the blue, 'There have been other women, you know, Cyn.'

John (Cynthia Lennon)

On the flight back from India, he had gotten very drunk and, for some reason, decided to confess all his affairs to Cynthia. Brutally, he ticked off a very long list, which included groupies, models, prostitutes, the wives and girlfriends of his and Cynthia’s friends and, possibly cruelest of all, Cynthia’s own girlfriends. Cynthia felt totally betrayed.

Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell

The shattering of his faith in the Maharishi, meanwhile, had left John spiritually adrift once more; his instinctive response was to return with a vengeance to his former drug habits. (Like the other Beatles, John had totally abstained from alcohol and drugs while in India.) In retrospect, it's easy to see how wide open John was, at this particular juncture, to anything—or anybody—that might conceivably lift him out of his rut.

The Beatles, Lennon, and me - Pete Shotton

PAUL: I gave myself a set period, and then if it was gonna be something we really had to go back for, I was thinking of going back. But at the end of my month I was quite happy and I thought… this’ll do me. This is fine. If I want to get into it heavy, I can do it anywhere. That’s one of the nice things about it, you don’t have to go to church to do it, you can do it in your own room. So I was quite happy.

RINGO: I left just a little disillusioned, and John was a little disillusioned when he came back, and Paul was. [pause] George just loved it.

1993 rough cut of the Anthology series

Although Paul was the first to leave [India] disillusioned, John left in the mind of, ‘OK, well, we tried, we surrendered to God but it wasn’t God, it was Maharishi and this God thing is proving itself to be a total fallacy’ - and then went back to being The Beatles.

I left Rishikesh with John. Alex [Madras] had been the naughty boy who’d stirred everything up. John went in a rage because God had forsaken him (although it was nothing to do with God, really). Then he went and completely reversed himself. He turned from being positive to being totally negative.

I went to South India […] and everything that happened to me went wrong to the point that I felt, like John and Alex, that the Maharishi had put the heeby-jeebies in me.

George Harrison, c/o Derek Taylor, Fifty Years Adrift. (1984)

JOHN: I’ve got no regrets at all, ‘cause it was a groove and I had some great experiences meditating eight hours a day—some amazing things, some amazing trips— it was great. And I still meditate off and on. George is doing it regularly. And I believe implicitly in the whole bit. It’s just that it’s difficult to continue it. I lost the rosy glasses. And I’m like that. I’m very idealistic. So I can’t really manage my exercises when I’ve lost that. I mean, I don’t want to be a boxer so much. It’s just that a few things happened, or didn’t happen. I don’t know, but something happened. It was sort of like a click and we just left and I don’t know what went on. It’s too near—I don’t really know what happened.

John Lennon, interview w/ Jonathan Cott for Rolling Stone: The first Rolling Stone interview. (November 23rd, 1968)

Cynthia Lennon “John had taken acid once more and enthused, ‘Cyn, it was great. Christ Cyn, we’ve got to have lots more children. We’ve got to have a big family around us.’ At this point, I burst into tears … All I could blurt out was that, in no way, could I see us as he did. I was so disturbed by John’s outburst, that I even suggested that Yoko Ono was the woman for him. John protested at my crazy suggestion and suggested that I was being ridiculous. Although life went on as usual, my fears grew and I felt nervous and depressed. John was aware of my depression and suggested that, as he had to work for long hours in the recording studios for a few weeks, I should accompany Jenny, Donovan, Gyspy and Alexis on a holiday to Greece. The very thought of sun and sea really brightened my outlook.”

The Beatles Off the Record (Keith Badman)

During the spring of 1968, John was as confused, lonely, and unhappy as I'd seen him in years. Though his relationship with the other Beatles was still free of serious strain, he was seeing increasingly less of Paul and George, both of whom were now pursuing independent lives and interests of their own.

In My Life, Pete Shotton

The resentment might have been coming from a different place. With his marital problems still unsettled and Cynthia gallivanting around Greece, drugs continued to govern John’s fitful moods. He dosed himself continuously with LSD, tweaking its random effect with any spare pills he happened to find lying around the house. In the right company, it plunged John into a deep, unfathomable trance that altered between indecipherable rambling and deadpan silences. At Weybridge, into which Pete Shotton had moved in order to keep his friend company, he stayed up nights, tripping and battling wave after wave of incendiary rage. One night, after the usual snack of hallucinogens, Shotton says he noticed John moving his arms around very slowly in a circle. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” recalls Pete, “but John couldn’t explain it. He said, ‘I can’t stop. There’s something making me do this. I can’t help myself.’ ” Tears followed, uncontrollable rivers of tears, intermingled with hideous laughter. When Shotton tried to comfort him, John resisted. “I’m not crying,” he insisted peevishly, wiping his eyes with the back of a hand. Suddenly John declared that he was Jesus Christ, back from the grave. “He was convinced of it,” Pete recalls, “saying… ‘This is it, at last—I know who I am.’ ” The next day the Messiah convened an emergency meeting at Apple to announce his identity to the other Beatles. Unimpressed, they said: “Yeah, all right then. What shall we do now?” After someone suggested lunch, the matter was dropped.

That night at Weybridge, in the middle of another drug-induced reverie, the TV flickered off, whereupon John, already chastened and in a self-abasing mood, asked Pete if it was okay if he invited a woman to the house. Shotton, who had no intention of staying up another night with his friend, was relieved. “Well, I think I’ll call up Yoko,” John said.

The Beatles – Bob Spitz

What happened that night can only be left to the imagination, but since it patently wasn’t the coming together of two virgins for the very first time, did Yoko do her hypnotism thing, as some of John’s friends thought she had, or did she have a powerful new drug in her arsenal? Nobody really believed that John fell in love overnight, because why hadn’t he done so before? He’d been kicking Yoko in and out of his life for over a year. Mostly, he had given the impression that he resented and despised her. So it must have been something pretty potent that made John fall headlong out of his casual affair with her into a mad obsession. Perhaps it was that he really was mentally ill and like many schizoid personalities, got religious mania. If he really did believe that he was Jesus, Yoko would probably have convinced him she was the Virgin Mary. A virgin at any rate. John was shortly to tell the world that they spent the night at the top of the house in his bloodred music room, recording the Two Virgins tape. They say that a moose in heat can waken the dead and achieve the impossible with his bellows. John and Yoko spent the night screaming.

Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell

Whatever her reasoning, Cynthia remained determined to see the marriage through [after finding John and Yoko together]. Convinced that John still needed her, she returned to Kenwood, mollified by his apparent denial that anything improper had occurred. “For a while, everything was wonderful,” she recalled. “We could speak more openly and honestly with each other, and there really was a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.”

But the tunnel was short, and the light soon faded. Within weeks their life together had disintegrated into a revolving state of solicitude and withdrawal, resignation and despondence. Following a stretch when John became disturbingly incommunicative, Cynthia packed once again, escaping on still another vacation to Pesaro, Italy, with her mother, Julian, and a favorite aunt and uncle.

The Beatles – Bob Spitz

No sooner were they back from India, than Jane returned to her work at the Bristol Old Vic, and Paul launched into what was probably the most relaxed time of his life. He opened wide the doors of Cavendish Avenue and the groupies, who had camped as faithfully outside as they had in Wimpole Street during the years that Paul had lived there with the Asher family, were astonished to find they were now invited in. Not only were they invited into the house, but also into Paul’s bed. Whenever I went up to see Paul, the house was filled with giggling, half-naked girls, cooking meals, walking Martha, or glued to the phone for hours on end, calling the world.

Magical Mystery Tours My Life with The Beatles by Tony Bramwell

It came as a welcome relief that John and Paul, along with Neil Aspinall, planned a quick trip to New York on May 11, where several press events had been scheduled to announce Apple Records in the States. Friends agreed that getting John away might do him a world of good; being alone, with just Paul to steady him, might have a calming influence. But Paul was grappling with his own set of anxieties. “We wanted a grand launch,” Paul said, “but I had a strange feeling and was very nervous.” Drugs, he later admitted, may have been at the root of his problem; there was a lot of dope-smoking before takeoff and even during the transatlantic flight. But Jane Asher also helped spike Paul’s mood. The grudging engagement between Beatle and actress had been ticklish at best. But since traveling together in India and a subsequent ten-day trip to Scotland, Jane’s eccentricities rankled. Paul was having serious second thoughts about the relationship, which had reached a kind of critical, now-or-never stage.

Between John’s attitude and Paul’s paranoia, the Beatles were a PR nightmare. “It was a mad, bad week in New York,” recalled Derek Taylor, who met the two Beatles there to chaperone a round of press conferences, followed by interviews. Taylor had fashioned himself into a debonair drug aficionado since the Beatles first dosed him at Brian Epstein’s housewarming party, and now he and John gorged themselves on speed and a “mild and extremely benign hallucinogen” called Purple Holiday, courtesy of their New York chauffeur. The effect of it came through in the interviews. John was gallingly withdrawn and dismissive, Paul unusually distracted—which made them come off as two rich, snooty rock stars peddling another product.

The Beatles – Bob Spitz

+ a couple of extra things

A quick timeline

December 25 Paul and Jane announced that they were engaged to be married.

February 15 George, Patti, John and Cynthia flew from London Airport to India.

February 19 Paul, Jane, Ringo and Maureen flew from London Airport to India.

March 26 Paul, Jane and Neil Aspinall flew back to England from Rishikesh, leaving George and Patti, John and Cynthia and “Magic” Alex who had come out to join them.

April 12 John and Cynthia, George and Patti and “Magic” Alex left in a hurry from Rishikesh, India, after “Magic” Alex convinced John and George that the Maharishi was using his position to gain sexual favours from at least one of the female meditators.

May 11 John and Paul, accompanied by “Magic” Alex, Neil Aspinall, Mal Evans, Ron Kass and Derek Taylor, flew to New York to launch Apple in the US.

May 15 Accompanied by Linda, Nat Weiss drove John, Paul and “Magic” Alex to the airport for their flight back to London.

May 19 With Cynthia taking a short holiday, John called Yoko Ono and invited her out to Kenwood. They made a random sound tape, which was later issued as Two Virgins with the notorious sleeve showing them both naked.

May 26 Cynthia returned home from a brief holiday in Greece, to discover Yoko Ono in residence with John.

May 31 Abbey Road. The White Album sessions. Work continued on ‘Revolution 1’ and the last six minutes was removed to form the basis of the chaotic ‘Revolution 9’. Yoko screamed on the track, her first appearance on a Beatles recording.

June 4 Paul began seeing Francie Schwartz.

June 22-23 On this day Paul McCartney addressed a sales conference attended by executives from Capitol Records, where he announced that all future Beatles records would be released through the group’s Apple Records label. The day after they fell in love in Los Angeles, Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman spent much of the day together at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was staying as part of an Apple promotional trip.

July 20 Jane Asher, appearing on Simon Dee’s BBC Television show Dee Time, said that her engagement to Paul was off – but that it was not she that had broken it. She told Dee that they had been engaged for seven months, after knowing each other for five years. (She had arrived back at Cavendish Avenue one day to find Paul in bed with a girl named Francie Schwartz.)

The Beatles Diary Volume 1 The Beatles Years (Barry Miles) & https://www.beatlesbible.com/

A comment from Heydullblog, which I find interesting and think sums up how insufficient & unsatisfying most explanations are for how John changed during this period:

Michael Gerber November 25, 2021 at 4:31 pm

What, in all that, makes you HATE Cyn, and divorce her in the most abrupt and vicious way, even attempting to get her to commit adultery so you can give her (and your own son) as little as possible? Why not a quick and amiable divorce from a woman who, let’s be honest, knew she was getting cheated on pretty constantly since 1961.

What, in all that, makes you HATE Paul McCartney, who has been your closest professional collaborator since 1957, and engage in a five-year campaign to smear and demean him in the press? Why do you insist your millions of fans choose you or him? Why not simply pause the group, and everybody goes solo and remains friends, as was predicted at the end of touring?

What makes you DETERMINED to bust up your rock group, the most popular group in the world, the source of all your fame, money, and power?

What makes you pick Yoko Ono IN PARTICULAR out of all the groupies, hangers-on, and even sensible appropriate partners within your current circle? Eighteen months ago you were attracted to Maureen Cleave, Sonny Freeman, Alma Cogan, etc — pretty much the type of women you always picked — but now, you pick a conceptual artist offering total submersion into someone else’s ego?

And what makes you spend the rest of your life pretending all this was the greatest thing ever, the fullest flowering of your genius?

It’s not that John Lennon looked around at his life in early 1968 and thought, “I don’t want this anymore. This isn’t for me.” It’s that he lashed out incredibly fiercely, in every direction, made no distinction between friend and foe, demonstrated a huge amount of resentment and bitterness towards the very people who it would seem had helped him the most, and spent literally the rest of his short life at least arguably LESS happy than he’d been before. He didn’t dump his wife for the nanny and live happily ever after; he started a process of picking things up and throwing them away with great force that, if he’d been that way in 1957, would’ve kept any of his genius from ever emerging.

He changed, fundamentally, in a short time. Why?

Midlife crises happen, they are to be expected, but this one gets more singular the more you look at it. And the thing about post-India Lennon is how he’s no more happy, no more productive, no more self-aware, no more comfortable in his own skin, than pre-India Lennon. What does the guy in August 1980 have to be angry about? Really? It was only after I reached middle-age and went through my own version of crisis (crises) that I thought, “How strange.”

Allen Klein is a businessman. He has had dealings with a guy called Tony Calder who worked as a partner for Andrew Oldham. The three of them managed the affairs of the Rolling Stones. Oldham & Calder left the Stones scene, but Klein stayed. … Tony has something on his mind that is why he is taking me to work in his Morgan. He says: ‘Allen Klein says you are in his way. Allen says you are blocking him from meeting the Beatles and doing business with them.’ I am amazed. I say, ‘I never give Allen Klein a thought from one year to the next. What is the guy talking about, me being in his way?’ … So I tell Tony if Klein thinks I am in his way, and as I’m not in his way, I’d better show the guy I’m not, by moving out of the way anyone else who might be in his way. I tell Tony to tell Klein I am (a) not in his way, and (b) if anyon I tell Tony to tell Klein to call. I go into work at Apple and I see Peter Brown, Brian’s old pal, mine, the Beatles, Apple’s and so on. Peter knows many things. I say, ‘Allen Klein wants to meet the Beatles.’ ‘Does he ever,’ says Peter. I ask: ‘Is there anyone in his way?’ Peter says, ‘Only the Beatles.’ He explains Brian didn’t like Klein and the Beatles had never heard anything about him that attracted them either. … I say there is this guy Klein who badly wants to see them. John says yeah, Klein’s been trying to reach him but he won’t take the call. I do some hype for Klein and say he is a strange cat, hated by some of the people who met him and also by some of the people who have only heard of him. George says, ‘he sounds really nice’, and I say that if they want someone to run their money scene then Klein may be the man. But I also say they had better look at him very hard and ask around Jagger and Donovan and the others he handles. I mean really check Klein out. But see him too. See him face to face. John says OK, I’ll see him and the others rhubarb a bit and that’s the lunch over. I call Les Perrin and tell him tell Klein to call and Klein does and then he flies over really fast, like yesterday. He meets John, they talk all night and boy do they dig each other. John comes into the office and says, ‘Don’t care about the others, don’t give a shit … but I’m having Klein, he can have all of my stuff and get it sorted out.’ John says there is too much fear around, everyone must stop being frightened, everything is going to be fantastic, like Klein is going to be the genie of the lamp. Paul, George and Ringo get to meet Klein and he begins to act as if he is half-hired but maybe not. He says he will save Northern Songs from the wicked Lew Grade. He says he will buy NEMS Enterprises. He says he will take EMI to the cleaners. In the end he doesn’t save Northern Songs and he doesn’t buy NEMS Enterprises, but takes EMI and Capitol to the cleaners and to hell and back… …

It is 1970. Paul still doesn’t like Klein but John digs him more than ever and George digs him more than that and Ringo doesn’t mind him. Paul? He is so uptight about Klein he only leaves the Beatles, that’s all. Klein and me meet the press and TV and all that; together we sit on a sofa and talk about Paul. Mr Klein, why doesn’t Paul like you? Mr Taylor, why doesn’t Paul like Mr Klein? I don’t know, don’t ask me, man, don’t ask me. Paul releases his album and Klein releases the Beatles’ album and they both make a million and Klein has had Phil Spector remix Paul’s song ‘The Long and Winding Road’, adding a women’s choir and some violins etc. Paul thinks this is the shittiest thing anyone has ever done to him and that is saying something, but Klein laughs up his silk sleeve and releases ‘Long and Winding Road’ as a single anyway and still with Phil’s new arrangement. Up there in Scotland, Paul McCartney, one of the four owners of Apple, the company formed to give total freedom, artistic control, to struggling performers and writers, wonders what went wrong, when even he can’t control his own work. I am wondering too. Everyone is wondering. But Klein isn’t wondering. He knows, he knows. …

Money is pouring into Apple so I guess you could say that Allen Klein straightened Apple out as the Beatles wanted it. The only thing is … where is Apple and where are the Beatles? If you find out, please let me know, I haven’t seen them in a long time. The way I see it, Klein is really bringing a whole lot of people down, including me sometimes and I have a deal which keeps me at home writing stuff like this so what am I whining about? Well, being as how I brought Klein to Apple, by making sure the way was clear, I owe someone, somewhere something, that’s for sure. What is it and what have I done? Our Apple is all chewed up. It is the most ungroovy place I ever knew and I have to say it, we have all let it happen, all of us, but me, I told Tony Calder to tell Klein to call and if I am going to make any more mistakes about Allen Klein, then let it be writing this, let it be.

(Derek Taylor, As Time Goes By, 1973)

Paul and Ringo's conflict in 1969/70

SG: Then, what happened? You finally got to meet with John and Yoko, and there was an all-night session at the Dorchester hotel. And something happened in that all-night session at the Dorchester that totally won their allegiance to you. AK: John said, listen, the Beatles are represented by the Eastmans, will you represent me and Yoko? SG: The Beatles’ legal affairs were represented by the Eastmans? AK: You see, you have to read that piece of paper. SG: The piece of paper the Eastmans had with the boys? AK: Oh yes. All signed. SG: All of them signed it? AK: Yes. And Apple. It never used the word management, but it didn’t have to. If you represent all the negotiations throughout the world of Apple and the Beatles, you have it. The import of that particular piece of document was that everything would have to flow through them.

(Allen Klein, 1980, interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love, 2024)

John comes into the office and says, ‘Don’t care about the others, don’t give a shit … but I’m having Klein, he can have all of my stuff and get it sorted out.’

(Derek Taylor, As Time Goes By, 1973)

AK: …We were just trying to get to know one another… Lennon and Yoko, I would rather not say what won them over for me. I would think that a principal thing was the fact that they really wanted someone for themselves. Apart from the Beatles. That’s really what it was. John is a very practical human being and the conflict was there, and it was his band and he was losing control, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to be protected. It was as simple as that. That first evening that I met with John, he said, “Do you want to represent us?” I said yeah.

(Allen Klein, 1980, interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love, 2024)

When the four of us entered into our partnership agreement in 1967, we did not consider the exact wording or give any thought to the agreement's legal implications. We had thought that if one of us wanted to leave the group he would only have to say so. On the way in which the four of us had sorted out our differences in the past, I deny that it had been on a three-to-one basis. If one disagreed, we discussed the problem until we reached agreement or let the matter drop. I know of no decision taken on a three-to-one basis. I deny that the Eastmans and I obstructed Mr. Allen Klein in the preparation of accounts. Nor had the Eastmans been contenders for the job of manager for the group. I wanted them as managers but when the rest of the group disagreed, had not pressed the matter. Mr. Lennon had challenged my statement that Mr. Klein had sowed discord within the group, but I recall a telephone conversation in which Mr. Klein had told me, "You know why John is angry with you? It is because you came off better than he did on Let It Be.' Mr. Klein also said to me, 'The real trouble is Yoko. She is the one with ambition.' I often wonder what John would have said if he heard the remark.

(From Paul McCartney’s affidavit, Feb 26 1971, The Beatles Diary. Volume 2. After The Break Up. 1970-2001. Keith Badman)

I was very upset when they said I was just trying to bring in Lee Eastman, because he’s my in-law. As if I’d just bring in a member of the family, for no reason. They’d known me twenty years, yet they thought that. I couldn’t believe it. John said, ‘Magical Mystery Tour was just a big ego trip for Paul.’ God. It was for their sake, to keep us together, keep us going, give us something new to do…

(Paul McCartney, Private Call with Hunter Davies, May 1981)

Klein keeps saying that I don’t like him because I want Eastman to manage the Beatles,’ he said. ‘Well, this is how it really happened. I thought, and still think, that Linda’s father would have been good for us all. And I decided I wanted him. But all the others wanted Klein. Well, all right, they can have Klein, but I don’t see that I have to agree with them. ‘I don’t think I need a manager in the old sense that Brian Epstein was our manager. All I want are paid advisers, who will do what I want them to do. And that’s what I’ve got. If the others want Klein, well, that’s up to them, but I’ve never signed a contract with him. He doesn’t represent me. I’m sure Eastman is better for me.

(Paul McCartney, interview, Evening Standard, April 21-22, 1970)

In fact, there was one classic little meeting when we were recording Abbey Road. It was a Friday evening session, and I was sitting there, and I’d heard a rumor from Neil or someone that there was something funny going around. So we got to the session, and Klein came in. To me, he was like a sort of demon that would always haunt my dreams. He got to me. Really, it was like I’d been dreaming of him as a dentist. He came round to the session, and he said, “I gotta have this thing signed, I gotta get you guys on a contract,” and then so I said, “Wait a minute, c’mon, it’s Friday night, what’s the hurry? Give us the thing over the weekend, and we’ll let ya know Monday?” Fair enough? And everyone said, “Uh-huh, there he goes.” ... John said, “Oh, fucking hell, here you go, stalling again.” I said, “I’m not stalling, I want it checked out. It’s a big movement, going with a new manager, you know, and maybe we don’t want to go with this guy. What’s the hurry? Why can’t he wait?”

(Paul McCartney, 1980 - All You Need Is Love: The End of the Beatles by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, 2024)

‘Security is the only thing I want. Money to do nothing with, money to have in case you wanted to do something.’

(Paul McCartney (1964) in Love Me Do! The Beatles’ Progress by Michael Braun, 1964/1995)

They said, “Oh no, typical of you, all that stalling and what. Got to do it now.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to. I demand at least the weekend. I’ll look at it, and on Monday. This is supposed to be a recording session, after all.” I dug me heels in, and they said, right, well, we’re going to vote it. I said, “No, you’ll never get Ringo to.” I looked at Ringo, and he kind of gave me this sick look like, Yeah, I’m going with them.Then I said, “Well, this is like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!” It’s the first time you realize in our whole relationship that whenever we voted, we never actually had come to that point before—three were going to vote one down. That was the first time, and they all signed it, they didn’t need my signature.

(Paul McCartney, 1980 - All You Need Is Love: The End of the Beatles by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, 2024)

Steve Miller happened to be there recording, late at night, and he just breezed in. ‘Hey, what’s happening, man? Can I use the studio?’ ‘Yeah!’ I said. ‘Can I drum for you? I just had a fucking unholy argument with the guys there.’ I explained it to him, took ten minutes to get it off my chest. So I did a track, he and I stayed that night and did a track of his called My Dark Hour. I thrashed everything out on the drums. There’s a surfeit of aggressive drum fills, that’s all I can say about that. We stayed up until late. I played bass, guitar and drums and sang backing vocals. It’s actually a pretty good track. It was a very strange time in my life and I swear I got my first grey hairs that month. I saw them appearing. I looked in the mirror, I thought, I can see you. You’re all coming now. Welcome.

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

The nature of The Beatles’ management deal with Allen Klein remains a source of annoyance to McCartney: “I kept saying, ‘Don’t give Allen Klein 20 per cent, give him 15, we’re a big act!’ And everyone’s going, ‘No, no, he wants 20 per cent’. I say, ‘Of course he does, he wants 30, really, but give him 15. It’s like buying a car. You don’t give the guy what he asks for.’ But it was impossible in the end, because it became three to one and I was like the idiot in the corner – trying, I thought, to save the situation.” “And to Klein it looked like I was trying to screw the situation. He used to call me the Reluctant Virgin. I said ‘Fuck off, I don’t want to fucking marry you, that’s all.’ He’s going, ‘Oh, you know, he may, maybe he will, will he, won’t he, that’s a definite maybe.’

(Paul McCartney, Dec 2003, interview with Paul Du Noyer for The Word)

Q: He was once quoted in New York magazine as saying he was going to roast your ass. А: Yeah, well, he never did, you know, and that’s cool. He wouldn’t get near my ass to roast it, anyway. Punk.

(Paul McCartney, Jan 1974, interview with Paul Gambaccini for Rolling Stone)

[Allen] Klein came to London with the sole objective of closing the deal, and having had an unsuccessful meeting with Paul in the morning, he left for Heathrow to return home to New York. Paul and I were working together in Olympic that afternoon, and there was a noticeable sense of relief when he heard that Klein had left for the airport. However, Klein had second thoughts about leaving and decided to have one more attempt at changing Paul’s mind face-to-face. Unannounced, Klein walked into the studio, and very quickly it became apparent that as voices were raised a private conversation was taking place. I turned off all the mics in the room and left them to it. The control room of a studio is isolated from the recording room where the musicians play, but even all that acoustic treatment was not enough to prevent me hearing Paul McCartney defend himself against Allen Klein’s attempt at bullying him into submission. It was extremely unpleasant to witness.

(Glyn Johns, Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, the Faces…, 2014)

I never much liked authority. I didn't like school teachers or critics telling me what I could do. Or myself telling me. I'm alive - do it!

(Paul McCartney, March 2001, interview with Nicci Gerrard for the Observer)

And the thing is, of course, you know that when you’ve got a daddy, it is nice. If you’re a little bit sort of worried as to what to do next, and your daddy says, [claps hands] “What are you worried about? Hey John, what do you want, son? You want a house? [claps hands] You got it.”

(Paul McCartney, November 11th, 1971, interview with Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker)

They talk Klein’s script. John Lennon once said to Allen Klein, “So what do I do now, Allen?” You know, I mean, these are all – I’d say there are certain little things, you know, and… brought together in one big thing, it does look a bit sort of heavily that way. It’s not [inaudible]. But it’s all true, you know. It’s not… John did say that. And it indicates something that he’s just turned to Allen and said, “Well, what do I do now?” And that’s the kind of role that Klein is playing for them all now.

(Paul McCartney, November 11th, 1971, interview with Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker)

The build-up is the thing — All these things continuously happening making me feel like I’m a junior with the record company, like Klein is the boss and I’m nothing. Well, I’m a senior. I figure my opinion is as good as anyone’s, especially when it’s my thing. And it’s emotional. You feel like you don’t have any freedom. I figured I’d have to stand up for myself eventually or get pushed under.

(Paul McCartney, 1970, interview with Richard Merryman for Life Magazine, published in April 16 1971)

When the Bea­tles were falling apart in 1969, he suffered from depression – staying in bed, forgoing shav­ing, drinking too much, taking consolation in little beyond his marriage to Linda Eastman.

(Paul McCartney, Nov 2013, interview with Jonah Weiner for Rolling Stones)

PAUL: As far as I was concerned, yeah, I would have liked the Beatles never to have broken up. I wanted to get us back on the road doing small places, then move up to our previous form and then go and play. Just make music, and whatever else there was would be secondary. But it was John who didn’t want to. He had told Allen Klein the new manager he and Yoko had picked late one night that he didn’t want to continue. … PAUL: And he said, “I wasn’t going to tell you until after I signed the Capitol thing, but I’m leaving the group.” And that was really it. The cat amongst the pigeons. … PAUL: We weren’t going to say anything about it for months, for business reasons. But the really hurtful thing to me was that John was really not going to tell us. I think he was heavily under the influence of Allen Klein. And Klein, so I heard, had said to John – the first time anyone had said it – “What does Yoko want?” So since Yoko liked Klein because he was for giving Yoko anything she wanted, he was the man for John. That’s my theory on how it happened.

(Paul and Linda McCartney, interview for Playboy, December 1984)

For the first time in my life, I was on the scrap heap, in my own eyes. An unemployed worker might have said, “Hey, you still have the money. That’s not as bad as we have it.” But to me, it didn’t have anything to do with money. It was just the feeling, the terrible disappointment of not being of any use to anyone anymore. It was a barreling, empty feeling that just rolled across my soul, and it was… I’d never experienced it before. Drugs had shown me little bits here and there – they had rolled across the carpet once or twice, but I had been able to get them out of my mind. In this case, the end of the Beatles, I really was done in for the first time in my life. Until then, I really was a kind of cocky sod. It was the first time I’d had a major blow to my confidence. When my mother died, I don’t think my confidence suffered. It had been a terrible blow, but I didn’t feel it was my fault.

(Paul and Linda McCartney, interview for Playboy, December 1984)

“At a certain point I asked myself, ‘Are you going to sit around doing nothing, or are you going to make some music again?’ So I’d be at home sitting around, doing some­thing on guitar, and Linda would say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do that!’ Then I’d be drumming – ‘I didn’t know you could do that!’ So I got back into it just to impress Linda, really. I wanted to prove my usefulness again.”

(Paul McCartney, Nov 2013, interview with Jonah Weiner for Rolling Stones)

"The thing about Paul," George says, "is that apart from the personal problem of it all, he's having a wonderful time. He's going riding and he's got horses and he's got a farm in Scotland and he's happier with his family. And I can dig that."

(George Harrison, 1970, interview with Al Aronowitz)

Paul was already thinking about recording again. Never happy unless he was making music andwiththe Beatles not functioning, probably extinct, Paul began recording tracks for a solo album… Paul had been given a release date by Neil Aspinall [April 10, 1970 at first and April 17 later when Paul agreed to one week delay for help sales of Ringo Starr’s album “Sentimental Journey“, scheduled to be released on March 27] and he built the project around meeting the various deadlines that entailed: handing in a final mix tape, designing and proofing the cover art, approving test pressings and so on. Working with the artist Gordon House and the designer Roger Huggett, whom he still uses, Paul and Linda put the entire thing together at home. Paul: "I was feeling quite comfortable, the more I went on like this. I could actually do something again. Then I rang up Apple one day and said, "Still okay for the release date?" and they said, "No, we're changing it. You got put back now. We're going to release Let It Be first.""

(Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)

GEORGE: "But it's more of a personal thing, you know. That's down to the management situation, you know, with Apple. Because Paul, really - It was his idea to do Apple, and once it started going Paul was very active in there. And then it got really chaotic and we had to do something about it. When we started doing something about it, obviously Paul didn't have as much say in the matter, and then he decided… you know, because he wanted Lee Eastman his in-laws to run it and we didn't. Then that's the only reason, you know. That's the whole basis. But that's only a personal problem that he'll have to get over because that's… The reality is that he's out-voted and we're a partnership. We've got these companies which we all own 25 percent of each, and if there's a decision to be made then, like in any other business or group you have a vote, you know. And he was out-voted 3 to 1 and if he doesn't like it, it's really a pity…"

(George Harrison, May 1th 1970, interview with Howard Smith at WABC-FM radio in New York City)

Paul: They eventually sent Ringo round to my house at Cavendish with a message: "We want you to put your release date back, it's for the good of the group" and all of this sort of shit, and he was giving me the party line, they just made him come round, so I did something I'd never done before, or since: I told him to get out. I had to do something like that in order to assert myself because I was just sinking. Linda was very helpful, she was saying, "Look, you don't have to take this crap, you're a grown man, you have every bit as much right …" I was getting pummelled about the head, in my mind anyway.

(Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)

Dear Paul, we thought a lot about yours and the Beatles LPs – and decided it’s stupid for Apple to put out two big albums within 7 days of each other (also there’s Ringo’s and Hey Jude) – so we sent a letter to EMI telling them to hold your release date til June 4th (there’s a big Apple-Capitol convention in Hawaii then). We thought you’d come round when you realized that the Beatles album was coming out on April 24th. We’re sorry it turned out like this – it’s nothing personal. Love John & George. Hare Krishna. A Mantra a Day Keeps MAYA Away.

(The letter from John and George to Paul, March 31th, 1970)

As a director of Apple, he had had to sign a letter that he wrote with John ordering Paul not to release his McCartney album on a day that would conflict with the release of the next Beatles record, Let It Be. When the letter was finished, Ringo had volunteered to deliver it because he didn't want Paul to suffer the indignity of having it handed to him by some impersonal messenger. At Paul's house, he gave the letter to Paul and said, "I agree with it."

(George Harrison, 1970, interview with Al Aronowitz)

“I went to see Paul. To my dismay, he went completely out of control, shouting at me, prodding his fingers towards my face, saying: 'I’ll finish you now’ and 'You’ll pay.’ He told me to put my coat on and get out. I did so.”

(Ringo, during 1971 Beatles court proceedings)

Ringo Starr said in his statement: “Paul is the greatest bass guitarist in the world.” But he added that he thought Paul had behaved like a spoiled child.

(Daily Mirror, February 24, 1971 - about the third day of the Court Case for the dissolution of The Beatles’ contractual partnership)

Then he had to stand there while both Paul and his wife, Linda, screamed at him. When Ringo returned from delivering the letter, he was so drained his face was white.

(George Harrison, 1970, interview with Al Aronowitz)

[John Lennon and George Harrison] didn’t send me round. They, as directors of the company, wrote a letter to him, and I didn’t think it was fair that some office lad should take something like that around. I was talking to the office, and they were telling me what was going on, and I said, ‘Send it up, I’ll take it round’. I couldn’t fear him then. But he got angry, because we were asking him to hold his album back and the album was very important to him. He shouted and pointed at me. He told me to get out of his house. He was crazy; he went crazy. He was out of control, prodding his finger towards my face. He told me to put my coat on and get out. I couldn’t believe it was happening. I had just brought the letter. I said, ‘I agree with everything that’s in the letter’, because we tried to work it like a company, not as individuals. I put my album [Sentimental Journey] out two weeks before [released 27 March 1970, in compliance with the original schedule], which makes me seem like such a good guy, but it wasn’t really, because I needed to put it out before Paul’s album, else it would have slayed me!

(Ringo Starr, 1971, from “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman)

‘Strictly speaking we all have to ask each other’s permission before any of us does anything without the other three. My own record nearly didn’t come out because Klein and some of the others thought it would be too near to the date of the next Beatles album. I had to get George, who’s a director of Apple, to authorise its release for me. ‘Give us our freedom which we so richly deserve.

(Paul McCartney, April 21-22, 1970, Interview for the Evening Standard)

On the radio, they're playing Paul's album now. George may be the youngest of the Beatles but his attitude toward Paul is the same as a big brother trying to wait out a kid's tantrum because the kid can't get the candy he wants. He talks about the last time Paul spoke to him on the phone. "He came on like Attila the Hun," George says. "I had to hold the receiver away from my ear." It was as if the whole world was waiting for Paul's album and George was standing in its way. "I don't want to say anything bad about Paul," George laughs, "but I can be egged on."

(George Harrison, 1970, interview with Al Aronowitz)

From my point of view, I was getting done in. All the decisions were now three against one. And that’s not the easiest position if you’re the one: anything I wanted to do they could just say, ‘No.’ And it was just to be awkward, I thought. … I got so fed up with all this I said, ‘OK, I want to get off the label.’ Apple Records was a lovely dream, but I thought, ‘Now this is really trashy and I want to get off.’ I remember George on the phone saying to me, ‘You’ll stay on this fucking label! Hare Krishna!’ and he hung up – and I went, ‘Oh, dear me. This is really getting hairy.’

(Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology, 2000)

PAUL: I didn't want to do a press conference to launch the album because whenever I'd meet a journalist, they always floored me with one question: they'd say, "Are you happy?"' and it almost made me cry. I just could not say, "Yes. I'm happy," and lie through my teeth, so I stopped doing interviews. Peter Brown, who was at Apple at that time, said, "What are you going to do about publicity?"' I said, "I don't really want to do any." He said, "It's a new album. You'll kill it. Nobody'll even know it's out at all. You should do something." I said "Well, how do you suggest we do it?"' He said, "Maybe a questionnaire?"' I said, "Okay, look, you write some questions that you think the press wants to know. Send 'em over to me and I'll fill it out but I can't face a press conference." So the questionnaire came, and Peter Brown realised that the big question was the Beatles so he put in a couple of loaded questions and rather that just say, "I don't want to answer these," I thought, Fuck it. If that's what he wants to know, I'll tell him. I felt I'd never be able to start a new life until I'd told people.

(Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)

It is 1970. Paul still doesn’t like Klein but John digs him more than ever and George digs him more than that and Ringo doesn’t mind him. Paul? He is so uptight about Klein he only leaves the Beatles, that’s all. Klein and me meet the press and TV and all that; together we sit on a sofa and talk about Paul. Mr Klein, why doesn’t Paul like you? Mr Taylor, why doesn’t Paul like Mr Klein? I don’t know, don’t ask me, man, don’t ask me. Paul releases his album and Klein releases the Beatles’ album and they both make a million and Klein has had Phil Spector remix Paul’s song ‘The Long and Winding Road’, adding a women’s choir and some violins etc. Paul thinks this is the shittiest thing anyone has ever done to him and that is saying something, but Klein laughs up his silk sleeve and releases ‘Long and Winding Road’ as a single anyway and still with Phil’s new arrangement. Up there in Scotland, Paul McCartney, one of the four owners of Apple, the company formed to give total freedom, artistic control, to struggling performers and writers, wonders what went wrong, when even he can’t control his own work.

(Derek Taylor, As Time Goes By, 1973)

Q: "The album was not known about until it was nearly completed. Was this deliberate?" A: "Yes, because normally an album is old before it even comes out. (A side) Witness 'Get Back.'" … Q: "Is it true that neither Allen Klein nor ABKCO have been nor will be in any way involved with the production, manufacturing, distribution or promotion of this new album?" A: "Not if I can help it." Q: "Did you miss the other Beatles and George Martin? Was there a moment when you thought, 'I wish Ringo were here for this break?'" A: "No."

(Paul McCartney, April 9th 1970, press release 'McCartney')

Derek Taylor, the Beatles' press officer, is with us, talking about how unexpected Paul's attack had been. "He was only supposed to write out information explaining how he made the album,? Derek says. "Instead, he hands us this interview in which he asks himself questions, such as would he miss Ringo? It was entirely gratuitous. Nobody asked him that question. He asked that question of himself."

(George Harrison, 1970, interview with Al Aronowitz)

We’re beginning now to only call each other when we have bad news. The other day Ringo came around to see me with a letter from the others, and I called him everything under the sun. But it’s all business. I don’t want to fall out with Ringo. I like Ringo. I think he’s great. We’re all talking about peace and love, but really we’re not feeling peaceful at all. ‘There’s no one who’s to blame. We were fools to get ourselves into this situation in the first place. But it’s not a comfortable situation for me to work in as an artist.’

(Paul McCartney, April 21-22, 1970, Interview for the Evening Standard)

We all started on a bus and small clubs and things like that, but Paul is that type of person. Paul wanted to do it all over again, and he did. And he went through hell. He went through hell. I mean, now he’s not talking to me and that’s too bad, but he started again from the bottom to do the Paul McCartney show. I don’t wanna do it anymore. I did it once.

(Ringo Sarr, 1980, interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love, 2024)

I’m a repeat anon, sorry for asking so many questions, you’re obviously free to ignore, I’m kinda new here (long time Beatles fan, new mclennon enthusiast) and desperately trying to catch up on 67 years worth of information, do you happen to have the source for when John calls Paul gay for wanting 1 on 1 emotional connection or whatever? (As referenced in this post https://www.tumblr.com/menlove/755478280011972608 ) I love all these little tidbits and there are just so many to discover, I’m trying to piece everything together. Many thanks!

you're good! i love answering stuff haha

and yes lmfaooooo it's so fucking funny. it's from his letter to melody maker dragging the fuck out of paul in 1971 when they were publicly feuding

this was the original unedited version (source here):

which got edited to this in the publication (source):

and to make it EEEEVEN FUNNIER this was his response to them editing it out (the source of this is apparently from the hunter davies' book the john lennon letters)

"p.s. what was libel about saying paul was camp?"

i quote this constantly i love asking what was libel about saying paul was camp

as far as i can tell the original unedited version was lost to time for a While & so people just had to guess at what the fuck he was talking about when he said "what was libel about saying paul was camp?" & even hunter davies was unable to track it down, but it looks like the original draft was auctioned off in 2022 finally & in that preview you can see the unedited version lmfaooooo

“Whoever slept with George woke up with him wrapped around them.”

— Paul McCartney  (via harrisonstories)

“I knew George long before the others. We were good chums despite his tender years as it seemed to me then. We were always together.” – Paul McCartney 

“It used to be PaulnGeorge… as one word. They were the kids from the grammar school. That’s how we referred to them. For ages we didn’t even know George really, he was just ‘Paul’s mate’.” – Len Garry 

“In Liverpool, Paul would come round my house and we’d play in the living room. Paul knocked me out with his singing especially, although I remember him being a little embarrassed to really sing out, seeing as we were stuck right in the middle of my parents place with my whole family walking about. He said he felt funny singing about love and stuff around my dad.” — George Harrison

“As the days stand up on end you’ve got me wondering how I lost your friendship.” - George Harrison (Run of the Mill)

“Did I ever take you in my arms? Look you in the eye? Tell you that I do? Did I ever open up my heart, let you look inside? If I never did it, I was only waiting for a better moment, that didn’t come.” - Paul McCartney (This One) 

"Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass — You know his faults — Then let his foibles pass. Old Victorian Proverb. I’m sure there’s enough about me that pisses him off, but I think we have now grown old enough to realize that we’re both pretty damn cute!" - George Harrison

"Those guys’ inability to express love for one another was classic. The exception is Ringo, who says [in the film], ‘I love George, and George loved me.’ That wouldn’t have been so easy for Paul. (..) Paul had to admit that he didn’t know ‘All Things Must Pass,’ and that was an awful thing to confront. It was huge humble-pie stuff for Paul to be among these people who he may have thought had a better relationship with George than he did. But I believe Paul missed George as much as — if not more than — anybody.” - Eric Clapton.

“George told me once that I smelt like home. I got all paranoid, you know, thinking I smelt of fish and chip shops or dirty bars or something. But he said no, I just always smelt of home.” — Paul McCartney

“‘George was mixing something down in his studio and McCartney came in,’ says Geoff Wonfor. ‘He said, “Ah that sounds nice, George. When the fuck did you learn to do all this?” George looked up and said, “Remember me? I was second on the right”.’ It was not a one way street. With Lennon no longer around, Harrison felt obliged to take on the role of agent provocateur; he was heard to utter heretical views about the quality of the raw material they were working with, and hoped that 'someone does this with all my crap demos when I’m dead.’ McCartney, pulling rank on baby Beatle, 'personally thought that a little presumptuous.’”

— Graeme Thomson, George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door

I’d love for you guys to have Mark Lewisohn on your show just to grill him. As someone who’s experienced workplace bullying and sexual assault, that he would go so far as to paint Klein as “heroic” when he said things like “reluctant virgin” is just so devastating to me. It makes me feel ill. I do NOT want this man to have a say in Beatles history. I love the Beatles. I don’t want that tainted by people who will paint over abuse just to feed their own self importance.

We vehemently agree, Listener!  Thank you for writing in.

Our list of grievances with Mark Lewisohn is long, but in a nutshell we believe his intent is to publicly “redeem” John Lennon and we have seen copious evidence that he will go to whatever lengths he has to in order to do this. 

That includes, but is not limited to: 

Claiming that readers of his Tune In Series may consider Klein the “hero” of the Beatles break-up

Deliberately spreading the demonstrably false lie that John (and Yoko) did not have a significant heroin problem in the late 60s and early 70s (Lewisohn suggests Cold Turkey is just John playing make believe)

Displaying unapologetic favoritism by using glowing terms to portray John and Yoko as the world’s most perfect romance, as opposed to Paul and Linda, whose 29-year marriage he dismisses as “conventional” and motivated by appearances (namely Linda’s pregnancy, even though it was planned) and Green Card needs

Stating that he could tell from watching the infamous “it’s a drag” clip that Paul was kind of sad, but primarily annoyed at how much positive attention John was getting on the day of his murder

Apparently suggesting to an audience of his Power Point Show that Paul maybe stole a leg off Yoko’s bed (the bed she had delivered and built in the Beatles’ recording studio, mind you), a personal “theory” which is based on the fact that Paul later wrote a song called “Three Legs” (you know that song: “My dog, he got three legs, like the bed you inappropriately brought into Abbey Road 2 years ago which I secretly vandalized behind your back because I have nothing better to do, am certainly not busy writing the Beatles Swan Song and don’t have a fucking 7 year old at home or anything”)

This isn’t even to mention Tune In, which could be a whole separate post and episode. Suffice it to say, this book often reads less like a Beatles biography and more like John Lennon Fanfiction to us.

Lewisohn managed to distinguish himself by doing (some) research and unearthing some original documents. That he had some skill in research is not surprising given that he started his career in Beatledom as a researcher for Norman, on his book Shout — which Lewisohn still contends is a good book. Norman, on the other hand has evolved his opinion of his own work and thinks Shout was flawed, so has written a whole biography on Paul to make up for what he sees as the failure of Shout, which is his underestimation of Paul. Unfortunately, Lewisohn does not seem to have made this same journey. He pays lip service to John and Paul being equal, and then spends all of his time and energy trying to prove otherwise. Norman says that he has created a monster in Lewisohn. We take his point.

One of our biggest issues with Lewisohn is that he vigorously promotes himself as an unbiased truth teller, and his calm manner seems to telegraph this. But it is not true. The research that Lewisohn does and the spin that he applies to his findings are all heavily biased. As we mentioned in one of our episodes, he travelled to Gibraltar simply to experience where John and Yoko got married. Yet when Paul calls the May 9th meeting over management the metaphorical cracking of the Liberty Bell, Lewisohn doesn’t even bother to Google it so he can understand the metaphor.

What he chooses to research is also a form of bias. For example, we at AKOM are very interested in Paul’s relationship with Robert Fraser during the Beatle years — since Paul has commented that Fraser was one of the most important, influential people in his life. Paul McCartney was the concept artist behind Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Magical Mystery Tour film, the iconic Apple logo, and he co-designed the covers of the White Album and Abbey Road.  All of these are pretty defining moments in the Beatles’ career.  As Beatles fans, we’d like to know more about Paul’s art education and influences. But we would be shocked if Lewisohn dug into Fraser at all beyond his relationship as John and Yoko’s gallerist/curator (and heroin dealer, but since that isn’t a thing in Lewisohn’s world then maybe he will be ignored).

We think Lewisohn benefits massively from the fact that Beatles authorship was like the Wild West since its inception, when everyone with a connection to the Beatles (plus or minus a personal axe to grind) wrote a book about their experience. It was absolute chaos, with no rules, no checks and balances, uncredited sources, etc. Just an absolute shit show.  What Lewisohn did was bring some order to the chaos with some proper documentation. But again, what he chooses to dig into often reflects bias. And this certainly does not mean that he is intellectually or emotionally equipped to interpret his findings. Doing this takes social intelligence and insight, which is a very different skill. As a creator of myths, he is no better (and no more insightful or original) than many of the others who came before him; he worships John Lennon and freely admits it. He is not even close to being unbiased.  But in this dumpster fire of a fandom he has at least checked some boxes and done some digging.  The fact is, the bar has been so low for so long that Beatles fans don’t even know how to expect or want better.  But WE certainly expect better.  We expect some breakthrough, fresh thinking.  Not just Shout with Receipts.

We think it’s significant that Lewisohn was deeply disliked by George Harrison, who lobbied to get him kicked him off the Anthology project. He was fired from Paul’s fan club magazine, and yet no one seems to think he might hold a grudge about that, too?  Lewisohn so distorted John and Paul’s relationship in Tune In that he believes he is the target of the lyrics in Paul’s song “Early Days.“  And he either thinks that’s flattering or funny, because Lewisohn seems to truly believe he knows John Lennon better than Paul McCartney does.  We find it almost tragic that Paul is so bothered by the way his experience and relationship is being portrayed by authors (perhaps Lewisohn) that he wrote a song about it. In it, he conveys his frustration and heartache about how everything is misconstrued and we find it absolutely outrageous that Lewisohn would not take this to heart.  Perhaps Lewisohn thinks Paul should listen to him for a change? And if he doesn’t like it, then tough, because Lewisohn knows better? We think Lewisohn should do some serious soul-searching about “Early Days” because if one of his main subjects is saying, “you are getting it wrong and it is breaking my heart”….maybe, just maybe, he should listen and rethink things.  Maybe apply a little creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and empathy. This is what his heroes did.

Meanwhile, Jean Jackets are SO BUSY complaining that Paul McCartney doesn’t like Lewisohn because he “tells the truth!” that they fail to notice that Lewisohn has become a mouthpiece for Yoko Ono.  He has already started white-washing John Lennon’s history, promoting John and Yoko as the true and only geniuses versus Paul as the craven, small-minded Lennon disciple who (through no virtue of his own) was born with the ability to write some nice tunes.  Lewisohn’s version of John, on the other hand, is ALWAYS a sexy, visionary genius on the right side of every issue.  He even went out of his way to recently trash Paul’s early 70’s albums, which -in addition to being obnoxious and we believe wrong (since we love them)- is totally outside his purview.

Lastly, to address your original point, Lewisohn’s claim that Klein may be viewed as the “hero” of his Beatles History reveals that he hasn’t shown sufficient empathy or interest in Paul’s experience.  This claim at best ignores and at worst condones the fact that Klein was an abusive monster to one of the two founding members of the Beatles.  As we discussed in Episode 4, Klein was a criminal who bullied Paul in his creative workspace, disrespected Paul in his own office in front of his own employees and actively pitted Lennon against McCartney for years.  It’s hard to imagine ANYONE who inflicted more damage on the Beatles and Lennon/McCartney than Allen Klein.  In addition to the wildly inappropriate “reluctant virgin” nickname, he verbally threatened to “own Paul’s ass” (to which Paul responded “he never got anywhere near my ass”). Klein was so disrespectful to Paul and Linda’s marriage he pitched the idea of procuring “a blonde with big tits” to parade in front of Paul to lure him away from Linda and destroy their relationship.  Let’s also never forget that Klein contributed lyrics to the song “How Do You Sleep.”  Allen Klein literally gave Paul nightmares.  Anyone who so much as pretends to care about Paul’s break-up era depression (including his alcohol abuse, his inability to get out of bed and his terrifying sleep paralysis) would not champion Allen Klein.

Yes, Klein is a human being and therefore has his own POV, same as anyone else.  But a Beatles biographer is beholden to four points of view only: John, Paul, George and Ringo.  And when an outsider is openly hostile to one of the Beatles and damaging long-term to all of the Beatles, it is beyond inappropriate to portray him as a hero.  This type of comment, made publicly to an audience of Beatles fans, invalidates and seeks to erase the real trauma inflicted on Paul McCartney by Allen Klein, and we think Lewisohn should apologize for his comments.

Instead, Lewisohn’s current buddy is Peter Brown, whose book, The Love You Make so offended and angered Paul and Linda that they literally burned their copy (and photographed it burning for good measure).  This information doesn’t appear to bother Lewisohn in the least. Why not?

George referred to Norman’s Shout as “Shit.” But Lewisohn thinks it’s a great book.  Why?

How any Beatles or Paul or even George fans tolerate Lewisohn is baffling to us; we don’t recognize a real human being in his version of Paul, and his version of John is a superhero rather than a man.  We suspect that fans have come to accept the traditional story and at least appreciate some properly-documented facts. 

But as we are constantly trying to demonstrate on our show, just because the story has always been told one way, doesn’t mean it’s right.  Because in the end, Mark Lewisohn has no special insight. He wasn’t there. He is a guy who bought into a narrative during the Shout era, and is cherry picking his findings to support it.You can find a discussion of Lewisohn here