In Seven Levels, we talked in detail about the impact of the song “Yesterday” on the musical history of The Beatles. And we also talked a lot about how the critical and popular acclaim bestowed on “Yesterday” from the time of its first release seems to have been pivotal in shaping (and ultimately fraying) the relationship between John and Paul.

This week, I want to share a few more bits from the radio interview archive I’ve been going through — because “Yesterday” surfaces frequently in press coverage of the 1965-66 era. [🚨ALERT: Much of this update probably won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t yet listened to/read Seven Levels, or at the least, Unscrambling Yesterday.]

First up is this clip from a 1966 interview with John on the set of “How I Won The War”—

Interviewer: “You know, it’s marvelous, John, the last couple of years, the wonderful wonderful songs that have come out of you and Paul, and that really have established you in the complete universal audience as what you always were — great songwriters, you know. “Michelle” and “Yesterday,” you know, just wonderful standards. As you know, everybody’s done them from Count Basie to Ella Fitzgerald. It must be a great satisfaction for you. [NOTE: “Yesterday” is, of course, generally said to be entirely written by Paul. And while John contributed to “Michelle,” it, too, seems to have been primarily composed by Paul. Despite this, John is gracious in his reply—]

John: It is, you know. It’s great. It’s— it’s great doing them. See how they do it, too.

Interviewer: Because you know, I remember the first time we met, and as always when a new group cracks through, the skeptics, the doubters and so on. But finally, the proof which was always there, finally everybody realized, hey wow, these guys really are great songwriters, something that you knew all the time.

John: Well, we didn’t know. You don’t know till— till it happens.

[The interviewer then pushes his point with—] Interviewer: But nobody thought you could write songs like “Michelle” and “Yesterday.”

John: No, because they were too busy just looking at the Beatle image, you know.

Interviewer: More ballads like that coming out, you think?

John: Yeah, there’s usually— they’re always there, you know. They just come out. [John’s “they just come out” is likely a reference to both Paul’s having dreamed the melody for “Yesterday” and also more broadly, the prolific creative unfurling that Paul is in the midst of, that we talked about in Seven Levels.]

Interviewer: You like the soft things like that or—?

John: Yeah. I like it—

Interviewer: Getting romantic in your old age.

John: Always had a bit of romantic in me, y’know.

Interviewer: They’re so haunting, y’know. And I believe it’s only the beginning, isn’t it, John? For songwriting.

John: I hope so. We’re both still fairly young, especially as musicians, or songwriters.

Interviewer: Where’s the inspiration come from? Or is it just craftsmanship? Can you just sit down at a given time and say we have to write now, and out it comes? [Remember here that when this interview takes place, John is struggling with his own creative process, so this question is almost certainly landing quite differently for John than the interviewer presumably intends.]

John: Well, sometimes it comes out, you know, sometimes they say, now you must write and now we write. But it doesn’t come some days, and we sit there for days, just talking to each other, messing around, not doing anything.1

[John’s either not letting on that his line of questioning is (almost certainly) painful for him, or the interviewer isn’t Grail-fluent enough to notice, because he continues with—] Interviewer: How was “Michelle” written?

John: (audible sigh) Well, Paul had this idea about writing a bit with some other language, with French in it. and he just sort of had a bit of a—I don’t know, a verse, and a couple of words and the idea. I— I think we had some other name or something. Oh, we used to call it— we used to talk double-dutch French (sings in faux French) like that. So we had that and he just brought it along and we sort of started fiddling around trying to get a middle eight, and we pinched it a little bit from somewhere and stuck it in the middle eight and off we went.

Interviewer: What about “Yesterday”?

John: “Yesterday” is Paul completely on his own, really. We just helped finishing off the rhythms around it, you know, tidying it up.2

This interview is an especially blatant example, but it’s part of a larger pattern. Over and over again in 1965-66, when journalists and critics talk about the extraordinary leap in the songwriting craft of Lennon/McCartney during this period, it’s Paul’s songs they bring up — "Michelle” and “Eleanor Rigby,” and always, always, “Yesterday.”

There is, of course, nothing at all wrong with this. It’s beyond dispute that all three of those songs are masterpieces. The problem is that with an occasional exception of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Norwegian Wood” (where they ask only about George’s sitar), I’ve yet to encounter an interview from this time period in which John is asked about a song for which he was the primary composer. And it’s not like there isn’t a wealth to choose from, including “In My Life,” “Girl,” and, well, virtually everything else John wrote on Rubber Soul and Revolver.3

What I’m suggesting here is that once upon a time in 1965-66, it was in a small way the opposite of the distorted narrative of “John/more vs Paul/less” that we talked about at length in Part One of Beautiful Possibility. Instead, it was the opposite — at least from John’s point of view, it must have felt like “John/less vs Paul/more.”

But unlike the way the press fueled the distorted “John/more vs. Paul/less” narrative during the breakup, in 1965-66, the media’s interest in Paul’s songs was almost certainly benign ignorance, and thus done with the best of intentions. Certainly the journalist who interviewed John on the set of “How I Won the War” thought he was offering John the highest respect for his craft.

This is because up until after the breakup, John and Paul faithfully honoured their covenant to share co-credit for every song, regardless of who contributed what. Because of this, unless they were told otherwise by either John or Paul, journalists would have no way of knowing that the three songs they continually cited as the best of Lennon/McCartney were primarily written by Paul.

As we also talked about in Part One of Beautiful Possibility and especially in episode 1:7 (“The Measure of a Man”), this model of partnership/collaboration was a very good thing for the world — John and Paul’s fidelity to their shared credit was the antithesis of the distorted, “John vs Paul” narrative of competition and bitterness and rivalry that came in the aftermath of the break-up.

But while the shared credit was in many ways beautiful and transformative, it was in some ways maybe not such a good thing for John, at least not in 1965-66. Because now’s a good time to point out that this interview and many similar interviews took place during the same time period we talked about in Seven Levels, when John was struggling to keep pace with Paul’s (possibly cannabis-fueled) creative unfurling, and when his best plan for that was to hurl himself into a dangerous spiral of drug abuse and other self-destructive behavior as a way to supercharge his own creative process.

There’s no reasonable way that the press coverage of “Yesterday” (and “Michelle" and “Eleanor Rigby") didn’t add fuel to that toxic cocktail.

There’s more, too. Later in the same interview on the set of “How I Won the War,” there’s this exchange—

Interviewer: When are you gonna be doing another tour, do you know?

John: No idea. I know we’ve got music to write soon as we get back. And Paul’s just signed us up to write the music for a film. So I suppose it’s off the plane and into bed and knock knock knock, get up and write some songs.

Interviewer: A film that’s not your own?

John: Yes.

Interviewer: Very exciting.

The film that the interviewer is referencing here is almost certainly “The Family Way,” a 1966 romantic comedy starring John and Hailey Mills. But as far as we know, Paul had not, in fact, signed up the “us” of Lennon/McCartney to write the score, as John seems to believe. Quite the contrary — Paul (along with George Martin) was already writing the score — without John — while John was away filming “How I Won The War.”

John doesn’t seem to know this, though, based on his answer in this interview. And that means that this part of the story is yet another piece that doesn’t quite add up, because here’s Paul’s version of events, from a 1995 interview—

Interviewer: [The Family Way soundtrack] was actually the first time you would officially compose outside the Lennon-McCartney tandem.

PAUL: Yes, and you know, it’s funny. That’s true. It’s funny because talking to Yoko recently, you know, you talk about all these things that happen way back in history. It turns out John was not pleased; but I didn’t know ‘til a year ago that he wasn’t pleased. He always told me, “Fine.” ‘Cause he’d been acting in a film – he did a film called How I Won The War – so we started to do little solo thing, just for a change, just for a break, and so I assumed, I asked him, “Is it okay with you?” He said, “Yeah, fine, fine.”

But Yoko told me that he was actually a little bit put off by that, because he hoped probably that I would say Lennon-McCartney will write this together. But to me it seemed a good opportunity to get away of what I did normally. But Yoko just told me apparently John was a little bit hurt about that. Which is sad. But we did actually talk about it. He just never told me at that time. He probably just covered up.

Interviewer: Because that was the first time we could read: music composed by Paul McCartney?

PAUL: Yeah, that’s right. For me it was very interesting, because it allowed me something of my own. You know, like women these days want to get away from their husbands, get a life of their own. It was a bit that. Because with The Beatles, it was a bit like a marriage. It was quite good to just get away do something of my own. I think if I’d known John was disturbed, I would have just asked him to join me. We could have done that.4

We’re getting John’s version of the story contemporaneously as it happened, but as we’ve discussed, John is an unreliable narrator — though somewhat less so during the Beatle years than after. We’re getting Paul’s version three decades after the fact (and through Yoko, who as we’ve also discussed, is also an unreliable narrator). All of which means we’ll probably never know for sure how the invitation to write “The Family Way” score went down or to whom it was extended.

What we can be very confident of is that John had no hand in writing the score itself — if he had participated, it’s certain Paul and George Martin would have mentioned that, and equally certain that the score would be credited to “Lennon/McCartney” rather than just Paul.

However it happened that Paul (and George Martin) wrote the score, the relevant point here is that given the “Paul McCartney wrote the score!” publicity surrounding the film — not to mention that the love theme from the movie went on to win the Ivor Novello 1968 Best Instrumental Theme — this whole situation would inevitably have added more fuel to John’s creative insecurity. And exponentially more so, if John truly thought “The Family Way” was a Lennon/McCartney project, only to return from the wars (so to speak) to find Paul (and George Martin) having composed the music without him. As with Paul’s dreaming of the melody to “Yesterday,” it seems all-but-certain that John interpreted Paul’s writing the score on his own — along with the Novello Award — as “proof” that McCartney didn’t need Lennon.

You know what else maybe added fuel to John’s “Yesterday”-fueled creative insecurity?

Shortly before the “How I Won The War” interview, journalist Jerry Bishop asked George (Harrison) to name his favourite Beatles song of all time. George’s answer? You guessed it —

“‘Yesterday.’ Which is the one where Paul sings with violins and it’s very lovely.”5

It’s not completely clear if George is being ironic here (“Opportunity knocks for Paul McCartney of Liverpool…”6), but even if he is, the audio suggests that John may have been present to hear George’s answer — and it’s not at all clear that John, in the shape he was in at the time, would have recognised it as irony. I’ll leave you to contemplate the effect that might have had on John’s creative confidence — but I will suggest that it’s perhaps not a coincidence that John spent much of his time on the set of “How I Won the War” working on “Strawberry Fields Forever.” He likely felt he had something to prove — to the world, to Paul, and perhaps most of all, to himself.

And finally there’s this, from a March 1967 BBC interview for the Ivor Novello Awards (for which “Yesterday” won song of the year)—

Interviewer: Give us the inside story on “Yesterday,” John Lennon.

John: Uh, this is John saying I don’t know anything about that one. Hand you over to Paul—

[But contrary to John’s claim, here’s what Paul tells the interviewer—]

Paul: This is Paul taking up the story. Staying in a holiday villa in Corsica, strumming away on a medieval guitar. I thought (sings) “scrambled egg...”. but I knew I could finish it. And eventually I took it back and with the ancient wisdom of the East, John came up with (sings) “yesterday...”. and I thought, that’s enough of a story for that one.7

Is this Paul doing some damage control for John’s benefit by suggesting — at an awards ceremony for the song — that it wasn’t a solo composition? Maybe — we’ve talked a lot in both Beautiful Possibility and Seven Levels about Paul’s role as the John Whisperer. But I’m not convinced.

First, John would obviously know it wasn’t true if it wasn’t true, so it’s hard to see how Paul telling the press John contributed to a song he didn’t contribute to would do anything but make John feel worse. And second, this isn’t the only suggestion we have that “Yesterday” might not be as solo a composition as it’s evolved to be in the traditional story. Here’s John in 1965—

“[“Yesterday”] was around for months before we finally completed it. Paul wrote nearly all of it, but we just couldn’t find the right title. Every time we got together to write songs or for a recording session, this would come up. We called it “Scrambled Eggs” and it became a joke between us. We almost had it finished, we had made up our minds that only a one word title would suit — and believe me, we just couldn’t find the right one. Then one morning Paul woke up and the song and the title were both there — completed. I know it sounds like a fairy tale — but it is the plain truth.”8

I don’t have an explanation for these two quotes — both contemporaneous to the time period, one from John and one from Paul, and both saying the identical thing. Did John — perhaps in his distressed, creatively insecure, drug-addled state of mind — somehow forget that he contributed to the lyrics for “Yesterday”? And did Paul forget, too, in the years after that infamous line in “How Do You Sleep?” and after being on the defensive about it for decades prior?

I don’t think it’s likely we’ll get the answer to this mystery. And I don’t think we’ll ever know for 100% sure who wrote what relative to “Yesterday” — and indeed, any other Lennon/McCartney song. And I’m grateful for that — while it makes tracing their story in their lyrics that much more challenging, I nonetheless think that’s the way it ought to be, when it comes to the sacred dance of creative partnership.

And finally, before we sign off for the week…

As I mentioned in a footnote in Seven Levels, John’s quote above re: the origin story of “Yesterday” suggests that the story about Paul dreaming the song in the attic bedroom of the Asher house might also be not quite accurate. Here’s an edited version of that footnote—

I’m not planting a flag on this, but there’s an intimacy in John’s casual use of “Paul woke up,” and an easy way of talking about “Yesterday”as a joint composition that hints — ever so subtly — at the possibility that Paul was with John when he woke up from his dream — and that the “attic of the Asher house” version might be a bit of mythologizing “to protect wives and girlfriends” — which Paul has cited as the motivation for The Beatles having fictionalized a third to a half of their story.9

Like I said, it’s a subtle inference on John’s part, and not something I’d draw any conclusions from or suggest with any kind of certainty whatsoever.10

Nonetheless, something to ponder, on a Monday morning.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Hi everyone,

Winter is coming here in Maine — and all too quickly, given I don’t yet know where I’ll be spending it. Before I settle in for a long winter’s write, I’m going to do my best to answer the backlog of far-too-long-unanswered questions y’all have sent in. Thank you for your patience and I’m so sorry it’s taken so long.

This week, let’s finally address this question about “However Absurd,” a song from Paul’s 1986 album, Press To Play—

I agree that ‘However Absurd’ must be about John. But I’m curious about the suggestion that the lyric is not “something special between us,” but rather “something SPARKS OFF between us.”

For what it’s worth, I also hear “sparks off,” but to me, that doesn’t implicitly change the meaning of the lyric, especially with the added context of “when we made love, the game was over” (though it’s definitely curious that Paul would misquote himself if he didn’t have a reason to do so). I’d appreciate if Faith could elaborate on the significance of this swap.

We have yet to do a deep dive into the lyrics of “However Absurd,” but we did talk about the song in some detail in Part One of Beautiful Possibility, both in episode 1:5 (“He Said He Said Part 1”) and in the Playlist Commentary Rabbit Hole.

Here’s the passage from the Playlist Commentary Rabbit Hole that motivated the question—

Before we move on from “However Absurd,” I want to mention that when looking for traces of the lovers possibility in their songs, it’s always a wise idea to pay attention to what they actually sing on the recording, rather than the official printed lyrics — and certainly rather than the crowd-sourced lyric sites or Google search results — all of which often differ significantly from the actual song and are often incorrect, even on otherwise reliable websites.

The most blatant example of this is that all-important bridge in “However Absurd,” where Paul sings “something sparks off between us, when we made love the game was over.” But the lyrics are inevitably printed incorrectly as “something special between us,” even on websites that usually take care to get lyrics right — probably because even Paul has quoted this one wrong at least once.1

It’s easy to hear that the line in “However Absurd” is clearly “something sparks off between us” and not “something special between us.” And this matters, because there’s a big difference between the two lines — enough so that Paul’s “misremembering” of it might not be an accident so much as a misdirect.

“Something special between us” is a generic comment on the relationship — and of course, whether they were lovers or not, it’s undeniable and safe to say that there was indeed “something special” between Paul and John. But “something sparks off between us” is very specific in referring to a flashpoint moment when the relationship being described turns from friendship — or perhaps from just fooling around as teenage boys sometimes do — to a serious, acted-on love affair.

Still, the difference between “something special” and “something sparks off” becomes largely irrelevant in the latter part of the verse, where the erotic nature of the relationship becomes unambiguous and explicit. So rather than a misdirect, it’s more likely Paul simply misremembered an earlier version of the line — and that misquote spread through the interwebs to the point where everyone now thinks the line is what it self-evidently isn’t, if you actually listen to the song.2

We don’t have the space in this update to repeat the extended reasoning/research re: why “However Absurd” seems highly likely to be about Paul’s relationship with John. We already did a lot of that work in episode 1:5 (“He Said He Said Part 1”) where we took a lot of time to step through in detail — with a great deal of supporting research from Paul himself — that when Paul expresses in a song his difficulty in sharing his feelings or a regret that he didn’t share his feelings, he’s highly likely to be writing that song about and for John.

If you aren’t familiar with that chain of reasoning or the extensive research that supports it, I encourage you to read/listen to episode 1:5 to get caught up. For this update, we’re going to assume that “However Absurd” is indeed written to/for John.

Okay, so on to the question. Here’s the relevant part of the lyric, in its context—

Something sparks off between us

When we made love the game was over

I couldn’t say the words

Words wouldn’t get my feelings through

So I keep talking to you

However absurd

However absurd it may seem

As the questioner points out, what makes “However Absurd” so significant relative to the lovers possibility is the line “when we made love, the game was over” — and now is a good time to remember that Paul has specifically given us permission to consider anything in his songs as fair game for scholarly inquiry and respectful speculation, presumably including the obvious erotic implications of this line3.

Assuming that “However Absurd” is indeed written about Paul’s relationship with John, it’s with “when we made love” that Paul seems to be telling us that his relationship with John was acted on — a piece of information we get nowhere but in this song — which is why “However Absurd” is uniquely important to understanding the relationship between John and Paul, and thus uniquely important to understanding the story and music of The Beatles and why it’s that much more important to get the lyrics right.

“When we made love the game was over” is supported in its explicit erotic meaning by the line that comes just before — “something sparks off between us.”

As I suggested in Beautiful Possibility, there’s a crucial difference between “something sparks off between us” and the way it’s often misquoted as “something special between us.” Here’s that section again—

“Something special between us” is a generic comment on the relationship — and of course, whether they were lovers or not, it’s undeniable and safe to say that there was indeed “something special” between Paul and John. But “something sparks off between us” is very specific in referring to a flashpoint moment when the relationship being described turns from friendship — or perhaps from just fooling around as teenage boys sometimes do — to a serious, acted-on love affair.

To extend this line of reasoning a bit further, consider that there’s an element of urgency to “something sparks off between us” that’s completely absent in “something special between us.” And it’s that quality of urgency that makes “However Absurd” especially and uniquely useful to our understanding of the relationship between Paul and John.

Assuming he is indeed writing about John, “something sparks off between us” is Paul telling us not just that he and John acted on their desire for one another, but that there was a specific moment/flashpoint when things between them “sparked off.” Paul is giving us a remarkably specific detail about their relationship — he’s telling us that the physical expression of their relationship was a flashpoint rather than a gradual evolution, and that making love changed their relationship in an abrupt and significant way from how it was before to how it was after.

We don’t get more detail than that — Paul doesn’t seem to tell us how or when this happened or what the specific change was — but again, that’s a remarkably candid and specific detail — and again, it’s a detail we don’t get from any other source.

In contrast, the misquote — “something special between us” — is a lovely (and obviously true) sentiment, but it completely misses the all-important “flashpoint” element. Instead, “something special between us” offers us only a vague assessment of the overall quality of the relationship. As such, it erases the “flashpoint” detail — and thus erases one of the most specific and revelatory clues Paul has ever shared about the arc of his relationship with John (again, assuming the song is indeed about John).

As for why Paul might have misquoted his own line, that is indeed odd — especially given it’s near-certain importance to him. Maybe he was recalling an earlier version of the lyric. Maybe given his stated reluctance to share innermost feelings outside of song, he felt that “something sparks off between us” was too revealing to talk about in interview.4 Or maybe it was some whole other reason we’re not privy to. We’ll probably never know, since these aren’t the kinds of questions we ask Paul McCartney. We’re too busy asking him about his favourite pair of shoes.5 🙄

Before we wrap for this week, I want to offer what (for me) is by far the most important reason to quote this lyric accurately, well beyond its value as a unique piece of research, and that’s simply that “something special between us” isn’t what Paul wrote.

We’re human and imperfect, and we’re going to misquote songs sometimes no matter how careful we are. But making the effort to quote a song lyric exactly as it was written is perhaps the most basic gesture of respect we can offer a writer — whether that writer is Paul McCartney or anyone else.

It’s easy to forget that a song — and especially a song like “However Absurd” — is deeply meaningful to the artist who wrote it. When a songwriter shares their work with the world, they’re offering us a piece of their innermost selves — and usually the best piece. So while Paul (and any writer) gets to misquote himself all he wants, I think the least we can do in return for the gift of the song is to make the effort to quote him (and any writer) accurately, as the artist intended.

(YouTube link: https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wk02XbAtwU)

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Hi everyone,

Given my lack of dexterity over the past month, I decided to take the the opportunity to listen through an extensive online archive of Beatles radio interviews. Among them was this September 1964 interview between Beatles manager Brian Epstein and journalist Larry Kane —

Larry Kane: Brian, how did the discovery of the Beatles come about? How did they enter into your life?

Brian Epstein: I heard about them through, ah, a lad who was asking for a record by them at one of my stores, or my family’s stores, in October 1961. And uh I took up this matter to find out whether they had in fact recorded anything, and in the course of this I found out they’re a Liverpool group that I had actually heard of, ummm, sometime before. And I went down to see them, ah, in Liverpool at the Cavern Club. And it was there that I, ah, first saw them.1

The story Brian is telling here opens with an allusion to what has become a Beatle folktale — that Brian was completely unaware of The Beatles until a customer by the name of Raymond Jones came into his NEMS record store in search of a copy of “My Bonnie,” which the Fabs had recorded in 1961 with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg. And (so the folktale goes), it was that request by Raymond Jones that brought the Fabs to Brian’s attention and motivated his fateful visit to the Cavern to see/hear them play.

We won’t go into the primary research on this folktale here. Suffice to say that — just as with the story of Dylan turning The Beatles on to pot at the Delmonico Hotel that we did a deep dive into in Seven Levels — the first person accounts of the Raymond Jones story are wildly contradictory. One witness claims to have personally known Raymond Jones. Another claims to have made Raymond Jones up, writing up a fictional request so as to have a reason to order the record. Another version insists there was never a Raymond Jones — real or fictional — at all. And so on the Raymond Jones story goes, in various permutations.

Raymond Jones, it turns out, is a real person, and you can read an interview with him on the Beatles Bible website.2 But that’s not why I’m singling out this interview quote. The more significant part of the story is that — and I’m far from the only person to point this out— it’s beyond implausible that Brian hadn’t heard of The Beatles until a customer came into the shop in search of the record.

NEMS was a major outlet for Mersey Beat, which featured so much Beatle content that it was reportedly informally referred to as the “MerseyBeatle.” What’s more, The Beatles were frequently featured on the cover.

By absolutely all accounts of those who worked for him, Brian was a micromanager who was obsessive about detail. Thus, it seems doubtful he wouldn’t have noticed who was on the cover of a popular magazine about pop music that he sold in his store which was largely dedicated to pop music. And more than that, Brian wrote a column for Mersey Beat, so it’s doubtful he didn’t flip through the pages — to make sure they got it right and maybe also for the ego gratification of seeing his name in print.

For these reasons, among others, the notion that anyone needed to inquire about the record for Brian to find out who The Beatles were seems very far-fetched indeed, in Liverpool in 1962.

Which brings us back to Brian’s Sept 1964 interview. Here it is again, so you don’t need to do the arduous work of scrolling up—

Larry Kane: Brian, how did the discovery of the Beatles come about? How did they enter into your life?

Brian Epstein: I heard about them through, ah, a lad who was asking for a record by them at one of my stores, or my family’s stores, in October 1961. And uh I took up this matter to find out whether they had in fact recorded anything, and in the course of this I found out they’re a Liverpool group that I had actually heard of, ummm, sometime before. And I went down to see them, ah, in Liverpool at the Cavern Club. And it was there that I, ah, first saw them.

This is the only version of the story I’ve found where Brian tells the events in quite this way. His telling of the story to Larry Kane appears to resolve the implausibility of Brian having first learned about The Beatles from Raymond Jones.

In this interview quote, Brian acknowledges that he had, in fact, heard of The Beatles before the Raymond Jones inquiry (“I found out that they’re a Liverpool group that I had actually heard of, ummm, sometime before.”).3 In the passage, Brian also shares that — here’s the key piece of information — it was only the recording in question that he hadn’t heard of until customers begin to ask for it.

Unlike the folk tale, this version of the story makes all kinds of sense.

“My Bonnie” was recorded in Germany in 1961. In 1962 — which is when the Raymond Jones story takes place — the record had been released only in Germany, where it made only minor inroads into the national charts. What’s more, The Beatles weren’t even the artists-of-record — it was a “Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers” release, with the name “The Beatles” appearing (at the time) nowhere on the record.4

In other words, being familiar with The Beatles wouldn’t in any way guarantee that Brian would know about the existence of “My Bonnie,” or that it was The Beatles backing Sheridan. And there’d be no need for him to know, until a customer requested the record.

This is another example of the way in which a story evolves from history into mythology — the details blurring, the less interesting parts shunted aside in favour of the parts that make for the best story (however implausible). Over time, Brian not having heard of the recording or known that it involved The Beatles morphed into Brian not having heard of The Beatles at all. And because that’s such an odd and improbable story, it’s more interesting than the actual story, and thus it became the story — but really the folktale — that has become part of the mythology.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS — With regard to the Sheridan/Beatles recordings, there’s also a whole thing about Polydor having hired a session musician overdub Pete Best’s drum parts because they weren’t up to standard. (This is the Bernard Purdie story that we talked about briefly in the footnotes of Seven Levels.)

What I haven’t been able to determine is which version of “My Bonnie” is on Anthology — the one with Pete Best or the one with the session drummer.

The Beatles paid royalties to Best for the Anthology tracks he played on, but I don’t know if “My Bonnie” was one of those tracks.5 If anyone knows the answer to this — and more than that, if anyone has a link to the Sheridan recordings that are verifiably the session player overdubs rather than Pete Best — please do email Robyn. I’d be interested in comparing the overdubbed version with the Pete Best version — and I’m also happy to share both versions in a future update if anyone wants to do the same comparison.

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I’m back, with all ten fingers once again fully functional — which means a resumption of regular Monday scruffy updates.

Last week, I took a break from my hippie hideaway search for a quick road trip to the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, to see the Linda McCartney Retrospective, From the Light.

Some of you know firsthand that even if you’ve seen a piece of visual art hundreds of times before in a book or online, it’s an entirely different experience to see it in real life.

Like, for example…

And this one…

And this one…

And this one, which I have not, in fact, ever seen before anywhere, and which might be the single most beautiful photograph I’ve ever seen of Paul McCartney (and that’s saying something, given we’re talking about Paul McCartney)…

And this one, which I’d also not seen before and which so perfectly captures so many things about Paul and the culture he helped to create…

As some of you might also know from your own experience, encountering a piece of visual art in real life rather than online or in a book frequently changes our experience of the art — and of the artist.

The most notable insight I came away with was that Linda McCartney was an extraordinarily brilliant photographer. It was obvious even seeing her work online that she had talent, but it took seeing her work in real life for me to understand just how talented she was, especially in her use of light and shadow — and how much she was not just an enthusiastic amateur whose work only matters because of the subject matter and because she was Mrs. Paul McCartney (as I think is often the perception).

The exhibition also reminded me of how big a role Linda McCartney’s camera — and photography in general — has played in shaping the mythology of The Beatles and the Sixties.

Whether coincidence or #Beatlemagick, it’s notable that from their earliest days, The Beatles were never without the presence of a gifted photographer on hand to document their story.

Paul’s brother, Mike McCartney — also an accomplished photographer — was there from the earliest days, and serious and accomplished enough even as a young teenager to have converted his bedroom closet into a darkroom. In Hamburg, pioneering photographer Astrid Kirchherr gave us the first modern photos of the first modern rock band, and Jurgen Vollmer did much the same when photographing their live shows at the Top Ten and Star Club.

Once The Beatles became the Fab Four, they attracted the lenses of the top photojournalists of the day, as well as master portrait photographers like Richard Avedon and Annie Lebowitz.

And then came Linda, whose images shaped our perception of the breakup and especially Paul after the breakup. And after Linda, there’s Mary McCartney, who has inherited her mother’s eye for portraiture. And let’s not forget that Paul (along with Ringo and George) has an excellent amateur’s eye and an unmatched insider perspective.

The Abbey is mostly about words, and The Beatles are mostly about music — but pictures, too, are a significant part of the story. Of the mythology. So this week, I want to use my words to thank all of the photographers — master and amateur — who have, over the decades, lent their talents to immortalizing this story, so that those of us who weren’t blessed to be there when it all unfolded in real time can nonetheless share in the magick. 📷❤️

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS — While in Cooperstown, I stayed at a beautiful 18th century New England convent, because as some of you know, I have a thing for convents (and monestaries), and would happily have lived my life as a cloistered nun — were it not for the pesky requirement to believe in all kinds of things in which I do not believe (no offense to those who do).

So staying at a convent is sort of Nun Fantasy Camp for me, and this particular convent especially so — probably in part because it was built in the eigtheenth century which, when it comes to architecture (and convents) here in the US, is very old indeed.

I mention all of this here only because there was a prayer displayed in the entranceway, and I couldn’t help but notice that it applies as much to Beatles scholarship as it does to professed nuns—

So mote it be.

I had an unfortunate encounter with a circular saw this weekend. Fortunately, all my fingers are still attached and all will be well, but as you might imagine, typing is somewhat difficult and will be for the next few weeks.

In light of this unplanned development, I hope y’all will understand if I suspend Monday updates for a bit until I once again have ten functional fingers. I expect to pick things up again (literally and metaphorically) beginning the first Monday in September.

Peace, love and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS Speaking of fingers…

Hi everyone,

This week, a piece of research that I wanted to find room for in Seven Levels, but wasn’t able to.

As part of our discussion of the “acid wars,” I suggested that the pressure on Paul to try LSD extended beyond internal band peer pressure to the culture as a whole — that Paul needed to have the experience of an acid trip in order to maintain his cultural credibility/power as a co-leader of the Love Revolution.

British social scientist Paul Willis offers an intriguing perspective on this—

“A comment Les [one of Willis’ interviewees] made remained opaque to me for a long time, but it gives a lead towards understanding the special distinctiveness of drug use by hippies. He said that it was ‘possible to take acid and not ‘trip’, and possible to ‘trip’ without taking acid; there were many ‘heads’ in ‘straight’ society.’ In fact, the importance of drugs did not lie in their direct physical effects, but in the way they facilitated passing through a great symbolic barrier erected over against ‘straight’ society.

“The ‘head’, a more recent title for hippy, derived from the more specific ‘acid head’, more exactly represents the elements of drug experience in the culture. He is defined not simply by drug use, but by his existential presence on the other side of this symbolic barrier. It was symbolic and not actual, so that individuals with a ‘beyond the barrier consciousness’ could be ‘real’ ‘heads’, even though they did not take drugs. [emphasis added] On the other hand, those who took drugs, but without feeling their symbolic significance, were not ‘heads’: they were just experimenters.

On the ‘straight’ side of the barrier was the world of personal responsibility, grey colours, gaucheness and lack of style, on the other side was the world of freedom, lack of responsibility and stylishness – ‘the hip’. The drugs did not intrinsically contain this second world: they should not be thought of as microfilms of experience surreptitiously slipped on to the deep projector of the mind. They were merely the tripswitch to bring about an entry into areas which were essentially self-created.”1

What Willis (but really his interview subject “Les”) is suggesting here is that given his status as a Beatle, Paul would not have needed to trip on LSD (or for that matter, cannabis) to maintain his power as a co-leader of the Love Revolution — that he would have continued to hold that power simply by virtue of being Fab. Put another way, even if none of the four had chosen to partake of mind-altering substances, the unique cultural power of being a Beatle would have been more than sufficient to put them “beyond the barrier consciousness.”

There’s some truth to this, I think. Just as Dylan assumed that The Beatles were already turned onto pot before he met them, it’s likely that had the Fabs never tripped on LSD, it would nonetheless have been assumed that they had, simply by virtue of their extraordinary countercultural stature.

But of course, there’s a big difference between being perceived as being “beyond the barrier consciousness” and actually crossing that barrier. And that’s where — in the case of Paul and LSD/cannabis— this line of thought folds in on itself.

As we talked about in Seven Levels, Paul’s psychedelic experience of cannabis seems to have transformed his creative consciousness so radically that it set in motion a series of events that fundamentally altered The Beatles’ music and thus the Love Revolution and thus Western culture. I don’t think that series of events happens without Paul’s cannabis-induced “seven levels” experience.

So while Paul may not have had to experience substance-induced higher consciousness to maintain his cultural power, he probably did need to experience substance-induced higher consciousness to unfurl the full breadth of his musical genius — which is, of course, the most obvious source of his cultural power.

A pretzel-twisting example of perception shaping reality shaping perception.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

1

Paul E. Willis, “The Cultural Meaning of Drug Use,” Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, Routledge, 2006.

NOTE: Willis’ research was conducted in 1971.

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This week included a quick trip to Vermont, where I am in search of a smaller, simpler hideaway in which to write Part Two of Beautiful Possibility. And more than that, it’s a very specific kind of hideaway I’m in search of.

As some of you probably know (maybe even firsthand), Vermont was the east coast epicentre for the “back to the land” movement — a collective reaction to the collapse of the Love Revolution that began in the late ‘60s and ended (sort of) in the early 1980s, in which young people rejected contemporary Western culture and sought to build the new and better world the Sixties had shown them was possible.

As part of my research into that part of the story, I recently read Kate Daloz’s 2016 book We Are As Gods. Daloz was the daughter of back-to-the-landers, and she writes a vivid and gorgeously honest (and often laugh-out-loud funny) account of the back-to-the-land community in northeastern Vermont that her parents were part of.

I was especially struck by this observation in Daloz’ book—

“The 1970s remain the only moment in the nation’s history when more people moved to rural areas than into the cities, briefly reversing two hundred years of steady urbanization. But despite the huge numbers, the decision to go back to the land felt so personal that many had no idea others were doing the same. “Only afterward was it called a movement,” wrote Robert Houriet, one of the period’s keenest observers. “At the outset, it was the gut reaction of a generation.”1

When Daloz describes the back-to-the-land movement as “the gut reaction of a generation,” she’s not exaggerating. Some estimates suggest that at its peak, almost two million young people were actively part of the movement.2

My parents were two of those young people. Despite their hard-won college educations, they traded a life in the city with all of its conveniences and economic advantages for 15 acres in rural Oregon, where they raised chickens, grew their own vegetables (along with their own weed), taught history (my father) and made pottery (my mother).

All of which brings us back to my trip to Vermont — because many of the houses and cabins that the back-to-the-landers built during the 1970s are still standing and are occasionally for sale. For example, this one that I went to see this week—

Because, you see, I have fallen in love with the romantic notion of writing the next parts of Beautiful Possibility in one of those cabins, enfolded in the living expression of one of the most profound and beautiful chapters of the Love Revolution (and a chapter from my own history as well, albeit on the opposite side of the country).

We’ll see how the story unfolds. (meanwhile, if you happen to know of a back-to-the-land era house/cabin for sale, rent or loan, in Vermont or elsewhere, please email fab research assistant Robyn).

As for the back-to-the-land movement, we will, of course, talk about that story when we get there in Beautiful Possibility. First, because it’s an important — and powerfuly mythological — part of the story of the Sixties. And second, because it’s an important part of the story of The Beatles — Paul and Linda were early pioneers of the back-to-the-land” movement, and easily its most high-profile participants, and that had major implications for the relationship between Paul and John.

And as for my parents, that story ended more or less the way most back-to-the-land stories ended—

‘Most of the back-to-the-landers] had intended to live simply and stay with the basics, [but] kept advancing to more complicated systems…They started with outhouses and ended up with composting toilets, or started with wood heat and ended up with solar panels. One-room homes grew into five-room homes as additions popped up over the years. Kerosene lanterns gave way to electricity, and hand-dug wells were retired in favor of motorized pumps from deep wells. Either all of us had been irreversibly socialized by American culture to seek the next greater stage of comfort, or we could not escape our atavistic impulses to invent and explore, taking the simple and transforming it into the complex. Or possibly most of us, unlike truly impoverished people, simply had the wherewithal and connections to raise the capital necessary for home improvements if we wanted them.”3

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

3

Back From The Land: how young Americans went to nature in the 1970s, and why they came back, Eleanor Agnew, Ivan R. Dee Press, 2004.

full quote: “As I reflect on the log cabin’s plumbing, as well other areas of our lives, I find it revealing that Kent and I, who had intended to live simply and stay with the basics, kept advancing to more complicated systems. This is true for most people who went to the land. They started with outhouses and ended up with composting toilets, or started with wood heat and ended up with solar panels. One-room homes grew into five-room homes as additions popped up over the years. Kerosene lanterns gave way to electricity, and hand-dug wells were retired in favor of motorized pumps from deep wells. Either all of us had been irreversibly socialized by American culture to seek the next greater stage of comfort, or we could not escape our atavistic impulses to invent and explore, taking the simple and transforming it into the complex. Or possibly most of us, unlike truly impoverished people, simply had the wherewithal and connections to raise the capital necessary for home improvements if we wanted them.”

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I wish I had a splendiferous update with which to honour the occasion, but alas I do not. Life interfers.

My little house in the Maine woods isn’t quite as “little” as I’d like it to be, so I’m in the midst of significantly downsizing to something much smaller and much simpler. The good news is that this downsizing will free up a lot more time and focus for work on Part Two of Beautiful Possibility. The bad news is that for the next couple of months, updates are liable to be fairly simple — probably mostly just little pieces of research and such that caught my eye.

So this week, let’s take a quick look at one of those pieces of research.

In the Wrap-Up to Seven Levels, we saw that when it comes to reliable primary research, exact language matters a lot — and especially relative to the emotional truth of their lives, it matters maybe more than anything else. And I suggested that the best source of that exact, unedited language from John and Paul is, of course, their lyrics. And I also pointed out that we can find exact, unedited language/thoughts on their lives from John and Paul — with no adjustments whatsoever by anyone else — in John’s books, letters and artwork, and Paul’s books, poetry and paintings.

This list is mostly accurate — but it’s a bit of an overgeneralization, relative to John’s books.

For example, here’s John’s original manuscript for “Liddypool,” one of the pieces in his first book, In His Own Write1 —

Notice the piece continues, but that whatever follows is crossed out. That’s not John’s pen doing the crossing out — it’s the pen of the editor at the publishing house. Here’s the description of further editorial changes —

In 1964, when this was written, John did not yet carry enough weight (as it were) to insist on his words being printed exactly as he wrote them — “Liddypool” as published cuts off exactly where the editor’s mark suggests it should.

This tells us that even In His Own Write and Spaniard in the Works are not necessarily John’s exact words just as he intended them to be read.2

John’s third book, Skywriting By Word Of Mouth, was presumably not subject to the edits of the publishing house because, of course, by then John was John Lennon and no editor at any publishing house would likely have altered so much as a single word. But without John there in person to oversee its publication (if indeed he chose to publish it at all), Skywriting was posthumously edited by Yoko Ono. So that book, too, is not John’s exact words exactly as he intended them.

None of which is to say that looking at John’s prose writing doesn’t yield valuable insights — of course it does. But it does mean that — except in cases like “Liddypool,” where we have access to John’s original manuscript — there’s no way to know for sure if what we’re reading in the published books is exactly as John intended it to be read. And that, in turn, means that while parts of John’s books can be taken as exact language, much of it can’t be. And that makes those books significantly less valuable to us as primary source material than they might otherwise be.

BTW, Paul’s introduction to In His Own Write, in which he briefly recounts meeting John at the Woolton Fete, was also subject to the publisher’s editorial pen. But interestingly, the introduction was ultimately printed exactly as Paul intended it, despite the suggested changes on the original draft below —

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS — In the spirit of the day, here’s an account of my experience standing on the very spot John and Paul met—

2

Whether the editor was correct in his assessment that “Liddypool” is a stronger piece without whatever follows isn’t relevant here — for our purposes, what matters is that John’s words as published have been altered by someone other than John.

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It was supposed to be a bit of simple research — but I should know by now that nothing about researching the story of The Beatles is simple.

Like tugging at a loose thread, the more I researched, the more the canonical story of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Delmonico Hotel began to unravel — revealing another, more complex narrative hidden beneath the surface.

This deeper narrative of the events and after-effects of August 28, 1964 is a story that — as far as I can tell — is untold in both mainstream and countercultural Beatles writing. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes absurd, sometimes heartbreaking, it’s a story that I’ve come to believe is essential to our understanding of Lennon/McCartney — and of John and Paul.

I’d like to share that story with you.

Seven Levels

What really happened at the Delmonico Hotel on August 28, 1964?

A bridge between Part One and Part Two of Beautiful Possibility

Preface

Chapter 1: Midnight at the Riviera Idlewild Motel

Chapter 2: Of Emperors and Princes

Chapter 3: A Taste of Acid

Chapter 4: Dangerous Speculations

Wrap-Up: Why This Series?

Hi everyone,

Thank you to all of you for being patient with me while I struggle to adjust to a life without my best girl. I’m taking it one day at a time. And thank you to all of you IRL who have been gracious about my grouchiness and mood swings and many other less than lovely things. Despite what poets and fanfic writers might have us believe, grief is not romantic. It’s messy and ugly and there is no graceful way through it.

But I am finding my way back, and this week, I want to share a few very scruffy initial thoughts on “Days We Left Behind,” in case they might be helpful to those of you who are deconstructing the lyric.

Specifically, I thought it might be useful to take a close look at the part of the song that’s (rightly, imo) getting the most attention — the so-called “middle eight” that Paul has explicitly told us is about him and John—

"Songwriters, you know, and writers in general, what else can you draw on besides the past? I mean you could do the present, but still a lot of the past in that. So anyway, this is the past. It's just a lot of memories of Liverpool for me, and that involves a little bit in the middle about John, Forthlin Road, which is where I — the street I used to live on."1

Before we do that, though, a caveat—

I haven’t yet taken a close look at — much less considered — the full lyric of “Days We Left Behind,” or the wealth of imagery in the two videos released alongside the song.

Analyzing part of a song without considering the whole song is, obviously, less than ideal. Generally speaking, any individual part of any song is best considered in the context of the whole song (and ideally the whole album and even more ideally, the whole of an artist’s work). This avoids what Grail scholar Jessie L. Weston calls “criticism by isolation” — aka, interpreting the meaning of a single element of a larger work on its own without considering its relationship to the larger work.

What’s more, even a surface listen/watch suggests that “Days We Left Behind” is a piece of sophisticated lyrical work. I suspect there’s enough subtext, metaphor and symbolism in it to justify the kind of deep dive we did for “Bless You.” Alas that will have to wait until another day, since I don’t have quite the bandwidth to do that just now (which is also why the question about “However Absurd” is still pending, my apologies to the person who asked it 326 years ago…).

All of which is to say that — to paraphrase Shakespeare — discretion is the better part of valor, and I should probably keep my lyrical interpretations to myself until I’ve considered the whole song. And mostly I’m going to do just that.

But while there are hard limits to what we can do without considering the whole song, I think there are a few things we can notice about the middle eight, just based on how language works.

So this week — perhaps because I’m a bit addlepated by various things — I’m going to cast scholarly prudence to the wind and give it a go.

Okay, then. Here’s the “middle eight”—

We met at Forthlin Road

And wrote a secret code

To never be spoken

I stand by what I said

The promise that I made

Will never be broken

As per usual with McCartney and/or Lennon, the wordplay here is tricky to parse and not at all as simple as it might appear on first glance.

My initial thought was that the promise…that will never be broken is directly related to the secret code to never be spoken. Essentially, “I, Paul, promised you, John, that I would never reveal our secret code, and I will never break that promise.”

That fits grammatically. And John has acknowledged at least once that The Beatles used a secret code to communicate in public—

'We talk in code to each other as Beatles. We always did that, when we had so many strangers round us on tours. We never really communicated with other people. Now that we don't meet strangers at all, there is no need for any communication. We understand each other. It doesn't matter about the rest.”2

The existence of a secret Beatles code isn’t especially revelatory or conspiratorial, nor is it unique to the Fabs.

Public figures often have a system of verbal and nonverbal signals that they use to communicate with their inner circle while in public. There’s no reason to think The Beatles would be an exception to this — though I’d guess/hope a Fab code would be a bit more inventive than the usual “if I scratch my nose, it means I’m bored with the person I’m talking to so please come interrupt me” sort of code that high-profle people usually use with their teams.

The thing is, though, I doubt this is the kind of code that Paul is referring to in “Days We Left Behind.”

The “secret code” Paul writes about is self-evidently personal to Paul and John, and clearly holds a deep emotional significance for Paul and presumably for John. Whatever the secret code is, it seems all but certain it refers to something just between the two of them, rather than a more general “Beatles thing.”

And indeed, there are clues in the research that suggest that John and Paul had a separate secret code of their own.

There are, for instance, oblique references from those who spent time with them that John and Paul together often seemed to inhabit a world from which everyone else was excluded. For example, here’s what one of their teenage friends in Liverpool once observed about Paul and John together—

“On one occasion that still resonates for those involved, the Quarry Men went to a party in Ford, a village on the outskirts of Liverpool, out past the Aintree Racecourse. ‘John and Paul were inseparable that night, like Siamese twins,’ says Charles Roberts, who met them en route on the upper deck of a cherry red Ripple bus. ‘It was like the rest of us didn’t exist.’ They spent most of the evening talking, conducting a whispery summit in one corner, Roberts recalls.” 3

Roberts’ recollection certainly suggests that Paul and John’s relationship was intimate and exclusionary enough to inspire the creation of that sort of code, starting in the early days in which “Days We Left Behind” is set.

Obviously, given Paul has specified that this code was secret, we probably wouldn’t recognise the use of such a code if we heard or saw it in action. That’s rather the point of having a secret code. But it might be that we get occasional glimpses of it.

We’re probably witnessing a bit of the John/Paul code in Get Back — in those cryptic exchanges between the two of them that they seem to understand just fine, but that those around them (including us) don’t. These cryptic exchanges include inside references, nonverbal gestures and lots of eye contact — and perhaps most notably, snippets of song, which we’ll come back to in a minute.4

We might also be seeing an example of a secret John/Paul code in the “spider hands” clip from the June 1964 Adelaide press conference, where it’s obvious that a silent conversation is going on between John and a somewhat reluctant Paul.5

Watch their hands, their body language, and their eyeline. (Beyond the obvious, it helps if you turn down the volume.)

And, of course, Paul wrote a whole song about just such a secret code in 1986 —which could be about Linda, except it’s not clear why Linda would need a secret code to tell her lawfully-wedded husband that she wants some private time.

(YouTube link)

All of this is to say that it seems highly likely that Paul and John did indeed have a literal secret code between them. And it’s possible that the Forthlin Road promise in “Days We Left Behind” is simply Paul’s promise never to reveal that secret code to the world.

That is certainly possible. But I’m having all kinds of trouble buying it, because it seems more than a little lightweight, given the context.

In the middle eight, Paul is making a promise to John — and more than a promise, essentially a life-long vow — originally made in private and now, sixty years after the fact, reaffirmed in public. And that promise — that vow — is the emotional centerpiece of the song Paul chose to feature on what looks to be his most personal and confessional album — an album that promises “new revelations” about “the story before the story.”

Whatever this promise is, it’s clearly an important touchstone in Paul’s relationship with John. Maybe even a defining one, given it’s a life-long vow. So is Paul really telling us that the most important promise he made to John — the vow he made and is now reaffirming with the whole world as his witness — was never to tell anyone what spider hands means?

I mean, maybe, but…

Another possibility is that the secret code isn’t so much a literal code as a euphemism for their romantic relationship (assuming there was one) — “I, Paul, promise you, John, that I’ll never tell anyone about our secret love affair.”

This is, I think, the interpretation we’re most likely to reach for if we’re considering the middle eight through the frame of the lovers possibility. But I think this interpretation might be a bit of confirmation bias — seeing what we’re expecting to see, rather than what’s really there. And that confirmation bias/expectation is probably due to the presence of the word “secret” alongside the words to never be spoken in the overall context of a (possible) hidden love affair.

The problem is that to get this interpretation to work, we have to ignore the “code” part of “secret code.” Because “code” doesn’t fit this interpretation, if what’s being promised is never to reveal a secret relationship. Two people in a relationship might have a code, but the relationship itself isn’t a “code” — it’s, well, it’s a relationship.

To get the “I promise I’ll never tell anyone about our secret love affair” interpretation to work requires turning a blind eye to this discordant use of the word “code.”

But I hope it’s self-evident that ignoring words in a lyric just because they don’t fit our interpretation of the song is a bad idea. And it’s an especially bad idea to ignore words in lyrics when we’re dealing with Paul McCartney — one of history’s most accomplished songwriters, who’s been playing with double meanings and misdirection in lyrics (and in interviews) since before most of us were born.

What helps us out here is the word “wrote,” as in we wrote a secret code.

In this context, “wrote” initially seems an odd word to pair with “code.” Yes, technically one can write a code (and here Paul’s obviously talking about a cipher rather than computer code, although you can of course write that kind of code, too). So is Paul telling us that he and John literally sat down one afternoon at Forthlin Road with a notebook and wrote out a list of words and signals with which to communicate covertly in public?

Again, maybe. But it seems beyond unlikely that this kind of literal secret code would carry so much emotional weight sixty-plus years after the fact that Paul is reaffirming his promise to keep it secret.

Paul and John writing out a literal secret code also seems unlikely just for its formality.

If there was a “talking privately in public” kind of code between them — and probably there was — it seems far more likely that such a code would have developed organically over the years, as with any two people who’ve been in a relationship for a long time. The code would likely be the result of a shared history of inside references and experiences, rather than a deliberate “let’s sit down and write out a code” situation.

But of course, there’s a whole other meaning of “wrote,” when we’re dealing with Lennon and McCartney at Forthlin Road (along with the “cheap guitars” of the opening verse). And that meaning isn’t odd at all. In fact, it’s iconic.

So iconic, in fact, that the image of John and Paul writing together at Forthlin Road is perhaps the single most iconic image of the Lennon/McCartney partnership.

The context in which Paul has set his reference to the secret code — Lennon, McCartney, Forthlin Road, cheap guitars (in the opening verse), and writing — suggests to the point of certainty that the “secret code” Paul’s referring to is — obviously — in their songs.

This wouldn’t be a particularly big revelation. We talked at length in Part One of Beautiful Possibility about how there is overwhelming research to suggest Paul and John used their songs as a way to have a private conversation in public — which is exactly the function of a secret code.

And as we also talked in Part One, Paul and John seem to have communicated through song not just during and after the breakup, but throughout the entire history of their relationship — and still today, given we’re talking about Paul’s latest song written for John.

The next line — to never be spoken — makes it even more certain likely that the secret code refers to the songs of Lennon/McCartney.

Here’s that line in context—

We met at Forthlin Road

And wrote a secret code

To never be spoken

I stand by what I said

The promise that I made

Will never be broken

One interpretation of to never be spoken is the one we already talked about — Paul is promising isthat he will never reveal the secret code. But, again, I’m not sure that’s what’s actually happening here, for the reasons we already talked about, and also because within the structure of the middle eight, to never be spoken isn’t referring to the promise — it’s referring to the secret code.

And if the “secret code” is the songs of Lennon/McCartney — which it seems virtually certain that it is — then to never be spoken takes on a whole different meaning — because generally speaking, songs aren’t spoken, they’re sung.

It’s possible that to never be spoken is Paul is telling us (but really singing to us) that he and John immortalized their love story in their songs, and that the “secret code” is the truth of their story in those songs — a code that’s never spoken, but only sung. And more than that — a code that’s relatively easily decipherable for anyone motivated to look carefully at the deeper meaning and subtext of the songs of Lennon/McCartney.

And further, it’s possible that in this middle eight, Paul is letting us know that he’s decided to share some “new revelations” — whatever they might be — not in a spoken interview or a book or a documentary, but in the way that Paul McCartney has told us for decades is his preferred way of sharing the details of his life — in his music. And this is perhaps why he’s chosen “Days We Left Behind” as the introductory song for The Boys Of Dungeon Road.

So what then of the promise never to be broken?

Well, obviously, if the secret code is concealed in the songs of Lennon/McCartney, then by definition, the promise…that will never be broken can’t be to never reveal the code — it’s already been revealed in the songs. And it’s not like Paul’s steering us away from that code — he’s explicitly directed us to look for the truth of his life in his songs.

Here he is in 2002 in his introduction to The Lyrics—

“Over time I came to see each song as a new puzzle. It would illuminate something that was important in my life at that moment, though the meanings are not always obvious on the surface. Fans or readers, or even critics, who really want to learn more about my life should read my lyrics, which might reveal more than any single book about The Beatles could do.” (emphasis added)

If the promise Paul made to John was that he wouldn’t reveal the secret code, and if the secret code is in the songs, then telling us to go look for their story in the songs would be breaking that promise. And Paul tells us explicitly in the middle eight that he’ll never break that promise.

If the “secret code” is in the songs — which it very much seems to be — then the promise can’t be to never reveal the secret code. It’s already been revealed — for those who are willing — and Grail-fluent6 enough — to look.

So what is the promise that Paul is standing by?

Well, Paul doesn’t tell us that — at least not in the middle eight. And much as I would love to know, that’s probably how it should be because, of course, the promise is in all likelihood a private matter between Paul and John. Paul is already generous in even telling us of its existence.

But an artist can’t help but reveal themselves in their art, whether they intend to or not. And it seems virtually certain that a promise so consequential that Paul is reaffirming it sixty years after the fact is going to find its way into his songwriting. And that means that there are almost certainly more clues to the nature of that promise in other Paul McCartney songs. And Paul has directed us to look at his songs for the truth of his life, which means anything we find there is something Paul has given us permission to find.

Again, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to do a thoughtful search to see how the promise might appear in Paul’s catalogue of work — though that’s now been added to the “to do” list for researching Part Two of Beautiful Possibility. But the song that comes to mind immediately is “Get Enough” from the 2019 Explorer version of Egypt Station.

Here’s the opening verse—

There was a time when we walked by the docks

I told you I’d need you all of my life

And watching the chugs rolling by, together

Do you remember?

Do you remember the lights on the shore?

How they reflected the rain on the road

I believed that you loved me alone, it was real

Do you remember?

The docks were Liverpool’s defining geographical feature during Paul and John’s teenage years when Paul lived at Forthlin Road — certainly they were how Liverpool was most known to the rest of the world (before the Fabs, that is). Given Paul has not , to my knowledge, made a home in a city in which working docks are even a noteworthy feature since leaving Liverpool in 1963, it seems likely he’s writing about and to John.

While there are lots of reasons one might make a lifelong promise to someone we love, erotic and romantic fidelity is by far the most common motivation for such a promise. If “Get Enough” is indeed written about/to John, it suggests that Paul’s promise to John may simply have been, “I’ll love you forever” — which, of course isn’t a simple promise at all, and even more so if you’re a teenage boy in love with another boy in Liverpool in the 1950s.

And to push speculation just a step further, a pledge of fidelity and eternal love is, of course, the vow most commonly pledged in our culture, the only vow most people ever formally make — usually in the form of a wedding vow.

And while a legal wedding vow wouldn’t have been available to Paul and John at any point in John’s lifetime and for the majority of Paul’s lifetime, lovers — even secret ones — have throughout history pledged eternal love to one another in serious, binding ceremonies, whether that union was sanctioned by society or not.

Again, just speculation, for the beauty of it, and because Paul has invited us to do so.

Given Paul’s promise of a confessional album, they may well be more clues to the nature of the promise on The Boys of Dungeon Lane. We’ll need to wait to see what other revelations Paul chooses to share with us.

Whatever the specific meaning of the promise, one thing is sure—

This middle eight, all on its own, ought to dispel any lingering doubts that Paul and John’s relationship — romantic/erotic or otherwise — was intense, committed, long-term, and emotionally intimate.

In Part Two of Beautiful Possibility (and maybe even a bit sooner than that…😉), we’ll continue to explore the way in which that shared intimacy shaped the story and music of The Beatles, and thus our world and all of us.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Oh, and also—

And about “Now And Then”—

We’re gettin’ there. Now let’s just put 1 + 1 together…

I was hoping to resume normal updates this week, but I’m going to take a bit more time away — probably the rest of March. For twelve years, River and I were rarely apart, and the daily rhythms of our lives were so deeply intertwined that I’m struggling to find my footing without her.

But I am still faithfully at work on Part Two of Beautiful Possibility. And I’m increasingly hopeful that I’ll soon have an unexpected and quite substantial offering for y’all — not yet Part Two, but a substantial offering nonetheless.1

For now, here’s a favourite photograph of John and friend, from the filming of Magical Mystery Tour, when John, too, was struggling to find his footing.

Thank you for your patience, while I adjust to life without my best girl.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓🐾

Hi everyone,

This week’s update will be scruffier than usual, because a few days ago, I had to say goodbye to my beloved dog River.

This isn’t something I’d normally share on The Abbey. But this is a special circumstance — River was an important contributor to The Abbey and I probably should have credited her long ago. So I’m going to attempt to do so here, and I hope you’ll forgive me if my words are clunky.

I am, of course, grieving, but I also know that River’s passing is not a tragedy — she was 13 years old and she and I spent 12 of those years together, and she lived a life full of joy and adventure and love. She had what they’d call in Liverpool “good innings,” and then she was ready to go — even if I wasn’t ready to let her go.

River was a complex sensitive, joyful dog — part husky, part pittie, part coyote. Like me, she needed freedom and open spaces, and she inspired me to create a life for both of us in which she (and I) could have those things in abundance. Our journeys together took us from Southern California’s iconic Topanga Canyon to the stormy Oregon coast to the high desert of New Mexico, and finally, to the woods of Maine. It’s tricky to pin down an exact chain of cause and effect, but a credible case could be made that my willingness to take the risk of writing Beautiful Possibility happened because she taught me to see horizons rather than obstacles, to value curiousity more than security, and to choose love over fear.

I wrote much of Part One of Beautiful Possibility talking into my phone recorder while hiking with River on some forest trail. I edited all of Part One with her sleeping next to me. If you listen closely, you can hear her paws clicking across the wood floor in the background of more than one episode. I could have edited her footsteps out, but why?

So this week, with the clunky words that I’m able to find, I simply want to acknowledge River’s contribution to the work of The Abbey. She was more than my inspiration, she was… well, as so often happens, the English language doesn’t have good words. But some of you maybe know what I’m not finding the words for, because maybe you’ve loved a dog this way, too.

I also hope you won’t mind too much if I take next week off from updates, and maybe the week after as well. River’s passing was not a tragedy, but I nonetheless need some time to grieve and to begin to find my footing now that my best girl is on the other side of the veil. But whether it’s one week or two, be assured I will be back very soon.

In another lifetime, I was a professional photographer, so I have many, many “professional” photos of River from our 12 years together. But tonight, the one I love the most isn’t especially “professional.” It’s just River and her best friend looking out over her land, that she loved so much.

Thank you for indulging me this week. Until the week after next or the week after that.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Hi everyone,

A few months ago when last I was in London, I came into possession of what I’m told is the only copy in existence of the agreement assigning US/Canadian publishing rights for “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to Duchess Music, for the price of one shilling (that’s about a quarter, I think, in 1964).

I don’t pretend to have enough understanding of the labyrinthian ways of cross-border music publishing to know how this worked or the implications thereof for Lennon/McCartney. But I can say that it was certainly a thrill — as it always is — to hold in my hands an original piece like this, and I’m grateful to have had the experience of doing so.

But as much as I love holding a piece of Beatles history in my hands, I also recognise that this document is in, an important way, not mine to keep — especially given it’s directly related to Paul and John’s lifelong quest to regain what should be their rightful control of the songs they wrote together.

Sadly, I don’t have the power to undo the damage done by exploitative publishing contracts — would that I did. But over the past week, I’ve completed arrangements to put this document into the hands in which it more truly belongs. I hope its rightful owner finds a tiny bit of healing in its return, even if it doesn’t change the overall situation.1

This is not a story I’d normally publish on The Abbey. I’m telling you about it only because there’s a second moral imperative to be considered.

Documents like this are part of our shared history. As such, I believe that this publishing agreement should be accessible to scholars, researchers, and anyone else who might be interested. So while I’m still officially its keeper, I’m posting the photographs of the document here.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Hi everyone,

This week, I thought I’d bring your attention to a quote from a 1982 interview with Paul McCartney, in answer to an interview question about whether or not “Tug Of War”— the title song from his 1982 album of the same name — is about John.

Before we get to the quote, let’s just notice that it would be a difficult case to make that “Tug Of War” isn’t about John. There are a number of reasons for that, most obviously the title and the opening verse—

It’s a tug of war

What with one thing and another

It’s a tug of war

We expected more

But with one thing and another

We were trying to outdo each other

In a tug of war

Which is probably why the journalist asked the question in the first place—

Q. Did you have John Lennon in mind [when you wrote “Tug of War”]?

PAUL: No. But halfway through it, John was killed. I can’t believe it to this day, I can’t even say those words... But “Here Today” is the only song specifically about that. Obviously, “Tug of War” ties in. And so does “Somebody Who Cares.” I remember being aware of John’s death while writing it.1

You may have noticed that recent updates have been usually Paul-focused. That’s because I’ve been working my way through the interviews with him in the research from the Northwestern archive. And this quote especially caught my eye because while Paul frequently hints indirectly that “Tug Of War” is about John, this is the example I’ve found in which he most explicitly acknowledges it.

On first glance, it might not seem that Paul is explicitly acknowledging that “Tug Of War” is about John, given the “no” at the beginning of it. And that’s the other reason this quote caught my attention — because it’s a good example of the sort of thing Paul routinely does when talking to the press, especially about the meanings of his songs, and especially about the meaning of his songs that might be about John.

Here’s what’s happening in this quote—

By starting with a clear and unqualified “no,” Paul establishes that “no” as his definitive answer to the question. And that means that anything Paul says after the “no” is in essence cloaked with an invisibility shield — because the “no” means that confirmation bias will cause the interviewer (and the reader) to hear what they expect to hear rather than what’s really there.

The net result is that Paul starts out denying that “Tug of War” was written for John, and ends up acknowledging that it was. No, he didn’t have John in mind, but yes, it ties into “Here Today,” which is, of course, without question written for John.

Paul has said that he likes to lie in interview, but it might be more accurate to say he likes to misdirect. This quote is a masterful example of that misdirection — though in this case, it’s hard to say if Paul’s misdirecting intentionally or just struggling to figure out how to talk about John post-1980. This was in 1982, and the interviewer opens the article by commenting that when talking about John’s murder, Paul “refers haltingly to ‘the event,’ to ‘John’s thing.’”2

Either way, I’m far from the first to point out that Paul has a remarkable ability to give one answer and make it seem like he’s giving another, or to give no answer at all and make it seem as if he’s been very forthcoming. One interviewer noted in 1986 that, “part of McCartney’s agility as a communicator has frequently been the paradoxical mastery of revealing nothing whatsoever of himself to journalists.”

This “Tug Of War” quote reveals quite a bit — though nothing that’s not obvious if you’re even a little bit Grail-fluent and willing to see what’s actually there rather than what we expect to see.

Paul’s answer to the “Tug Of War” question is an example of why researching Paul’s interviews is brain-twisting work. It’s also an example of why there hasn’t yet been a truly substantive interview with Paul McCartney and probably never will be, from this man who is reluctant to reveal his innermost thoughts outside of song.

Paul’s answer is also an example of why exact language matters. And why the editing of quotes, and worse, the gluing together of different quotes from different interviews and presenting them as a single quote — all-too-common in Beatles writing, even beyond Mark Lewisohn’s monkey business in his books and in Anthology — is so damaging to our ability to understand this story.

And it’s also maybe a good example of why Paul has explicitly told us that the truth of his life is not in books or interviews, but in his songs — like for example, “Tug Of War.”

(YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txBuoR3DzI4 )

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS — We talked briefly about “Tug Of War” in Part One of Beautiful Possibility — at the very end of episode 1:5 (He Said He Said Part 1) and in more detail in the Playlist Commentary Rabbit Hole.

2

If it was unintentional, it’s an approach he’s stuck with. Exactly four decades later, Paul uses the same technique, albeit a bit more obliquely and in longer form, in his discussion of “Tug Of War” in The Lyrics (Liveright, 2022).

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Hi everyone,

This week, I thought I’d share a little collection of unrelated things that caught my attention as I continue to research Part Two of Beautiful Possibility.

First, this quote, from music writer Jeff Fitzgerald—

Jazz in the 1950’s was to society as a negative is to a photograph, born of the same elements but quite different in makeup and appearance. The music began to take on a restlessness, reflecting an undercurrent of trepidation lying just beneath the surface. Jazz became more cerebral, more introspective, more likely to get you some leg from a Vassar College undergrad. It was the music of a generation in transition, searching for its identity in a world populated by increasingly invisible, intangible perils. In a world living under the shadow of the atomic bomb and the creeping menace of Communism (not to mention the constant threat of Rock Hudson movies), and an increasingly automated society feeling the control of its own daily existence slipping away with the push of every button, it is perfectly logical that the music should reflect that nameless angst. And that’s as close to real insight as you’re likely to get out of me.1

We didn’t talk much about how jazz fits into the musical/mythological timeline that we laid out in Part One of Beautiful Possibility, but this is more or less what I might write, if I were to write backwards into that era — minus the Rock Hudson reference.

What the above passage hints at is the likely reason the beatniks connected much more deeply to jazz than to rock-n-roll — jazz was popularized initially as the direct expression of the lived fear/death trauma of two world wars, whereas early rock-and-roll was more the reaction to that trauma from the children born to into the post-war world. Put another way, one might say jazz was the expression of the fear/trauma and rock-and-roll was (among other things) the distraction from the fear/trauma.2

And this, in turn, causes me to wonder if we might be on the cusp of a resurgent interest in jazz, or if there’s something else happening in popular music today that’s expressing collective, widespread fear/trauma in the same way jazz did back then.

I for sure wouldn’t plant a flag on my off-the-cuff analysis of Fitzgerald’s quote — I’m not researching jazz for Part Two (or for any other reason), and I only happened on this quote in a book about the advertising revolution of the 1960s (The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising, Andrew Cracknell, Running Press, 2012.). But it’s an interesting passage that brings up interesting thoughts for me, and I hope maybe also for you.

In addition to reading about 1960s advertising, I’ve been working through Paul McCartney interviews from the Northwestern archive.

Here’s Paul in 1985 telling us that John told him that he wrote “Jealous Guy” for Paul. A not-insignificant moment of candor, given it’s the only time I can remember Paul revealing this.

[The breakup] was a weird time. The people who were managing us were whispering in our ears and trying to turn us against each other and it became like a feuding family. In the end, I think John had some tough breaks. He used to say, ‘Everyone is on the McCartney bandwagon.’ He wrote “I’m Just a Jealous Guy,” and he said that the song was about me. So I think it was just some kind of jealousy, I had to try and forgive John because I sort of knew where he was coming from. I knew that he was trying to get rid of the Beatles in order to say to Yoko, ‘Look, I’ve even given that up for you. I’m ready to devote myself to you and to the avant-garde.’ I don’t know if it’s true. One thing I’m really glad about is that I didn’t answer him back. It’s very difficult to do that when someone is attacking you. But I would have felt sick as a dog now if I had.3

We haven’t discussed “Jealous Guy” in detail yet, but as I suggested in Part One of Beautiful Possibility, given its context and when we consider the breakup through the softer gaze of the Grail (aka sensitivity to emotional subtext), it seems fairly obvious that John wrote the song for Paul.

And how lovely and telling it is, that “Jealous Guy” shares an album with “How Do You Sleep?”, showing us that even in the worst of their estrangement, things were far more complicated — and more loving — than the distorted “John vs Paul” narrative claims. Which, of course, is what both John and Paul have said about the post-breakup era, even in interviews at the time.

It’s curious that this is the only example I’ve found so far in which Paul explicitly acknowledges that John told him “Jealous Guy” is written for him, especially given what a powerful antidote that is to the distorted narrative. Then again, maybe it’s not so curious that Paul stopped telling this story, given “Jealous Guy” is a song about romantic/erotic jealousy.

(John’s personal jealousy of Linda is well-documented and discussed in detail in episode 1:6 of Beautiful Possibility. And John’s creative jealousy of Paul is discussed in “Unscrambling ‘Yesterday'.”)

For our next item, I just finished reading Beatles biographer Hunter Davies’ 2018 memoir, A Life in the Day: Memories of Swinging London.

Those of you who are familiar with Part One of Beautiful Possibility might remember our discussion of Hunter Davies in episode 1:8 — about how not long after John’s murder, Paul called Davies to express his distress at having to deal with the distorted “John/more vs Paul/less” narrative, thinking he was confiding in a trusted friend, but in actuality Hunter Davies was taking notes without Paul’s consent which he used to write a tabloid article entitled “The Private Pain of Paul McCartney,”4 after which he added his mocking and derisive account of the call as a coda to a new edition of what-was-supposed-to-be an authorized Beatles biography.

I was a little bit concerned when I shared that story that maybe my own confirmation bias meant I wasn’t giving Davies enough credit. Maybe I was assuming the worst relative to his actions. Maybe it was a misunderstanding — Davies thinking the conversation was on the record and Paul thinking otherwise. When you have a friend who’s also a journalist, it’d be easy for a situation like that to get confusing.

Well, here’s a quote from that memoir of Davies that I just finished reading, in which Davies shares his journalistic method when it comes to handling sensitive material—

When they say this is off the record, and then tell you something juicy, you nod and put down your pen. Then later, when they say they love children and always help old people across the road, instead of writing that down you write down the juicy bit they came out with earlier.5

So, not a misunderstanding. How do you sleep, Mr. Davies?

And finally, on a lighter note, as anyone who does any kind of deep research knows, sometimes we find little gems that we have absolutely no purpose for, but that are too good to let languish in a research folder.

Here’s Paul in 1997—

On our farm, I’ve got some woods. I’m being accused now of harbouring killer pigs. It turns out there are killer pigs from Ashford, thirty miles away. These wild boar got away from a zoo, and they’re flourishing. They have this thing called Chestnut Coppice, where you put it down every twenty years, and then you don’t go in there for twenty years, it just grows up — so the boar love it. Anyway, I won’t shoot ‘em. Because I don’t fancy shooting them. Plus I haven’t got a gun. I could snare them, but what you find is that local people get really crazy, like as if I’ve invented these pigs. They say they kill lambs, but I’ve got a lot of sheep and I don’t think they’ve killed any of mine… But a fox’ll kill a sheep. It’s nature. Even though I’m a veggie, I understand that a hawk kills something. I don’t go, oh you naughty hawk. It’s his gig. But it’s not necessarily mine.6

I don’t know if this is intended as a parable, a cautionary tale, or an existential meditation on the brutality of life. But I do know this — anyone who thinks Paul McCartney is anything less interesting than a wildly eccentric and iconoclastic genius really hasn’t been paying attention.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

I’m a little short on extra words just now, while I work on a larger project that I hope will benefit all concerned. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I once again borrow someone else’s words.

This week, I want to share with you a review of Revolver published in the November 13, 1966 issue of Punch magazine. I’m sharing it because it’s perceptive and Grail-fluent, and because it includes passages like this—

Whatever the complexity Brian Epstein and Nems Enterprises, Ltd., and of course they are vast, intricate and far-reaching, the songs themselves seem to have been conceived and brought forth in the pure, simple spirit of mystical innocence, like paintings by Chagall — and perhaps somewhat less like the philosophical happenings staged by Dr. Timothy Leary. The songs are honest, direct, imaginative, original, unique, and intimately universal.

A yellow submarine just is. Children readily understand, and so do gurus entranced by the sound of one hand clapping. There is something about that frivolously gaudy, escapist, anti-authoritarian, unwarlike warship that appeals to almost everybody. In my own small private world, Mr. Hathaway, a Gloucestershire gardener in his sixties, sings “Yellow Submarine” as he prunes the roses, in a voice neither worse nor very much better than Ringo’s; when the official recording is played, my one-year-old daughter seizes a hi-fi speaker with both hands and rocks herself and it in perfect non-verbal sympathy.

The full review is below.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

Would the Beatles’ music last if the Group split up? PATRICK SKENE CATLING talks to Paul McCartney about the Lennon/McCartney sound.

Paul McCartney, resting in his comfortable Victorian mansion in an electrically locked high-walled compound in St. John’s Wood, was patiently discussing the present state of the Beatles and their songs, which, in my opinion, is entirely admirable, enviable even, but difficult. So much has been achieved; so much is expected.

It is difficult, for example, when their public, the whole world, subjects their lightest, most casual utterance, musical or conver-sational, to searching critical analysis. What were the socioeconomic, political, psychological and religious implications of a yellow submarine? Did the disc jockeys approve? Did the Board of Trade? Did the Navy? Did God?

Whatever the complexity of the commercial considerations of Brian Epstein and Nems Enterprises, Ltd., and of course they are vast, intricate and far-reaching, the songs themselves seem to have been conceived and brought forth in the pure, simple spirit of mystical innocence, like paintings by Chagall — and perhaps somewhat less like the philosophical happenings staged by Dr. Timothy Leary. The songs are honest, direct, imaginative, original, unique, and intimately universal.

A yellow submarine just is. Children readily understand, and so do gurus entranced by the sound of one hand clapping. There is something about that frivolously gaudy, escapist, anti-authoritarian, unwarlike warship that appeals to almost everybody, in my own small private world, Mr. Hathaway, a Gloucestershire gardener in his sixties, sings “Yellow Submarine” as he prunes the roses, in a voice neither worse nor very much better than Ringo’s; when the official recording is played, my one-year-old daughter seizes a hi-fi speaker with both hands and rocks herself and it in perfect non-verbal sympathy.

“The idea was just to do a children’s song,” McCartney said, smiling calmly though perhaps a tiny bit peeved by people who insist on elaborate interpretations. “But there is a yellow submarine place, it’s real even if it is only a hallucination.”

Hallucinations have a reality and a genuine importance of their own. They can be powerfully persuasive. The idea obviously fascinates him and the others, and it has begun to show, in a carefully controlled way, in some of their music, most notably in the Lennon-McCartney composition “Tomorrow Never Knows.” To hallucinate, to wander in the mind, to perceive experience beyond the senses, may sombrely suggest morbid delusions. Positively, on the other hand, it represents total mobility and absolute freedom. No matter how far the rockets fly, the only way out of the world is inwards. The mind, and only the mind, can encompass the universe.

Saints have achieved hallucinosis by starving and scourging themselves and by hypnotically repetitiously praying. Madison Avenue executives have achieved it less successfully with vodka martinis and slogans. A distinguished London anaesthesiologist has told me that mescalin and certain other non-addictive hallucinatory drugs are as safe and as dangerous as one’s own existing psychic tendencies, an assurance that makes me want to try them, a warning that makes me dare not. The Beatles now provide an encouraging musical nudge in the direction of infinite personal liberation. Pop goes the ego. The sensation is not at all unpleasant. I think that Bernard Handelsman’s cover this week is profoundly significant.

I choose to detect a similar message in Klaus Voormann’s brilliant sleeve design, partly pen-and-ink drawing, partly photographic collage, for the Beatles’ latest LP, “Revolver.” It shows them on a dream safari through the jungle tendrils of their own famous hair. “Revolver” revolves, making one as dizzy as a whirling dervish, and in the blood-red daze appears a glint of happy enlightenment.

“Turn off your mind, relax and float down-stream,” the lyric of “Tomorrow Never Knows” urges you. “It is not dying…” In a letter to McCartney, Kenneth Tynan, the critic and Literary Manager of The National Theatre, has called the song, as the Beatles perform it, “the best musical evocation of LSD I’ve ever heard.’’ Judging it by the testimony of a friend who used the drug under medical supervision, I feel sure that Tynan’s reaction was justified.

The Beatles were not the first musicians to write a song of this sort. Murray Grand, a sensitive and witty New York lyricist who used to write in an urbanely Cole Porterish style, wrote a song called “Long Sweet Dream,” with music by Ralph Burns. But the Beatles carried the idea farther forward, using impressionistically exotic sounds, the uncanny buzzing drone of a tambura, a four-stringed Indian instrument that looks like a bloated outsize wooden barometer, the heavy blurred thump and hard rattle of drums, the moaning and honking of reeds, the Orientally nasal chanting of John Lennon’s voice filtered and distorted by an unimaginably cunning microphone. The music comes and goes in mysterious, vertiginous waves, creating a frightening but thrilling sense of warped space and time, like a supernatural unconscious vision in an operating theatre.

“When we wrote it,” McCartney said, “John had just read Leary’s book on psychedelic experience, a manual based on the Tibetan book of the dead. To us it was just great. It’s difficult to speak the truth, but there are these people around, the great people who speak the truth. Some of them are bums. It’d be nice to meet Leary before he’s God.”

But if they did meet him, McCartney acknowledged fatalistically, no doubt there would be an international outcry of protests that the Beatles were now taking drugs.

“Once we’ve done a song it goes out and that’s it.” he said. “We don’t want to argue about it. We don’t feel as though we’re answerable. If you don’t like our kind of thing don’t listen. The good thing is that actually we started out with the assumption that we’d never talk down. We hated people in gold lame suits. You can get caught up in the whole machine of it all and turn into Paul Getty in the end. Nothing but money. We like commercialism, but it can be something else as well. What we’ve always wanted to do is do what we want to do. At twenty-four I’m very lucky that I can do what I want. A lot of people expect us to live up to our Beatle mop-top image. But we’ve changed. We either had to adapt and try new things or else go potty.”

Accustomed to the round cherubic softness in early pictures of McCartney, I adjusted to recognition that he has changed visibly. The face today is leaner and firmer and more mature. There was really no need for the anarchic experimental moustache that he grew on last month’s holiday.

The Beatles have come a long way since 1955, when Lennon, a fifth-former at Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool, acquired an old guitar and formed a skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll group called The Quarrymen. McCartney joined the group that summer, George Harrison joined three years later, and Ringo Starr joined them as The Beatles in 1962.

“We had a lousy limiting range and we got fed up with it,” McCartney said.

He was expressing himself unduly harshly, perhaps, but it is true that nowadays some of the first records, “Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me,” “From Me To You” and “She Loves You,” sound primitively crude in comparison with recent inventions. But the enthusiasm, energy and imagination were overwhelming right from the beginning. Other musicians were quick to appreciate The Beatles. Ella Fitzgerald, after recording their song “Can’t Buy Me Love,” said: “Paul and John are perhaps even better as writers than you think. This song has almost a blues sequence in it. The words are good, but the jazz sequence is a gas — and that’s not even counting the beat.”

The more they succeed, the freer they feel to attempt daring innovations, the more they succeed. Rivals and imitators are repeatedly made to look flat-footed, ham-fisted, slow-witted, embarrassed and dull. Now they’re desperately trying to get that Indian sound.

McCartney enjoys playing with sounds. He has made tape-recordings of weird “space noises” and “electronic music” reminiscent of some of the stuff produced by the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. He once set up a line of tumblers containing different amounts of water to record the sounds made by wet fingers rubbing around the rims. He has made multi-track tapes of himself singing, playing the piano, lead guitar, bass and drums.

“But we don’t care so much about just pure sound,” he said. “We like notes.”

At the same time, Lennon’s words have gone far beyond the conventional limited scope of pop songs. After the fragmentary adolescent journal, “The Daily Howl,” after the dark thoughts of loneliness and insecurity expressed in the Joycean punning fables of “In His Own Write” and “The Spaniard in The Works,” he now seems to be confident enough, and certainly he is able, to write sermons and diatribes as well as today’s best love songs. There’s nobody else anywhere writing songs like “Dr. Robert,” about a mercenary National Health panellist, except, of course, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

When we had talked ourselves out, McCartney took me down to the basement and showed me some of his home movies, informally entitled “Till Next Spring Then” and “The Defeat of The Dog.” They were not like ordinary people’s home movies. There were over-exposures, double-exposures, blinding orange lights, quick cuts from professional wrestling to a crowded car park to a close-up of a television weather map. There were long still shots of a grey, cloudy sky and a wet, grey pavement, jumping Chinese ivory carvings, and affectionate slow-motion studies of his sheep-dog, Martha, and his cat. The accompanying music, on a record-player, and faultlessly synchronised, was by the Modern Jazz Quartet and Bach.

Having enjoyed the afternoon. I asked for a signed record. He got out a copy of “Revolver.” “To anyone special?” he asked, pen poised. “Oh, just anyone,” I said, dimpling coyly. I didn’t look at the inscription until I was in the taxi. The sleeve was inscribed:

“To Anyone, Kindly, James Paul Augustus McCartney of Britain.”

The Beatles have a deadly sense of humour.

“The Pop Guru: Patrick Skenne Catling talks to Paul McCartney about the Lennon/McCartney sound,” reprinted from Punch, Nov 23, 1966.

One of my first published pieces on The Beatles was a review of Revolver, written way back in the mists of time before Beautiful Possibility. I don’t know if I still agree with all of it, or if it’s any good, but it might be, and the link is here.

This week, I’ve been haunted by a 1991 article in Musician magazine — an in-depth exploration of Paul’s creative process in writing Liverpool Oratorio, his first full-length classical piece.

The article is centered around an extended and startlingly candid interview with his collaborator on the project, British composer/conductor Carl Davis. Davis’ interview is so candid, in fact, that I’m surprised that Paul still seems to have a good relationship with him.

It’s a two-part piece, spread over two issues of the magazine. And imo, the full piece — and especially part 2 (Oct 1991) — is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Paul McCartney after the breakup — and especially after 1980. Davis’ unique perspective as arguably Paul’s most serious collaborator since John provides a remarkable and poignant insight into the damage that the “John/more vs Paul/less” distorted narrative has done to Paul’s self-confidence as a collaborative partner.

(The evolution of “John/more vs Paul/less” and the damage that it’s done to our world — and especially to Paul — is a central theme of Part One of Beautiful Possibility, and especially episodes 1:8/1:9.)

There are download links to the full versions of both parts of the article at the end of this update. And below you’ll find an excerpt of the most relevant passages. (⚠️PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a continuous excerpt nor is it the full article — it’s a cut-up piece, constructed out of relevant passages, arranged into a coherent order.)

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

So what was the actual working process between McCartney and Davis that produced the Liverpool Oratorio?

“I began by playing some ‘Hey Jude’-style chords on the piano,” says Davis, “and he said, `No, no, no, absolutely not, forget it. I want more dissonance than that.’ So he started singing and tried to convey an aural picture to me of what he imagined. I tried to get it out of him, so that it would all be very McCartneyish. Then I said, ‘ I’ll take it home and flesh it out.’”

McCartney would have none of it: “I told Carl, ‘No, we can’t do it like that because it’s going to be too much input from you. Let me be with you through every little second.’ He said. ‘ It’s going to be really boring? ‘ It won’t be, I’ve done this before. I like it. I sat with George Martin arranging the string quartet for “Yesterday,” the strings for “Eleanor Rigby” and things like that.’ So I sat with Carl through eyerything—through the arrangements, through the texts, through the violin solo. I didn’t actually let him have one minute on his own. I thought if he did, it would start to become more his work. He was happy to do it that way. but he kept warning me how boring it would be. ‘You’ll have to just sit there while I write these 30 bars,’ he’d say. yeah, that’s great. no problem.’ It was very interesting to me and very educational, actually. I learned a lot.”

It became increasingly clear to Davis that his own role in the work was going to be larger than he had at first anticipated. Not only was McCartney largely unfamiliar with the classical tradition, but he didn’t read or write a note of music.

“The music I write I don’t actually write down,” McCartney says. “I don’t notate music. I can hear it, think it, orchestrate it. But when it comes time to actually write it out I have a sort of musical dyslexia. I just can’t associate those little dots with what I hear in my head; it just seems like two different worlds.”

“No big thing,” was Davis’ gung-ho response to McCartney’s reluctance to learn to read and notate. “I told him, ‘Look, I could teach you everything there is to know in about 48 hours; there are really only about 12 things to learn. It’s easier than typing.’ He wouldn’t have any of it and kept saying, ‘No, no, I really, really don’t want to.’ Why?’ ‘Well, I kind of want to preserve my innocence. I really want to wonder at all this.’

“I kept telling him, ‘But you’ll be able to express yourself so much more clearly,’ but he was adamant. I even thought of giving his 13-year-old son a few lessons in the hope that Paul would be lurking about and catch on. He’s absolutely fascinated by it, but terrified at learning it. That photograph in the program with us both at the piano is him riveted by my writing things down in notation, just riveted. I kept saying, it’s no process at all, it’s just five lines and this is the C, the E and the G on the lines, and between the lines are D, F, A and C. If you write an open note with a stem, it’s two beats, without one it’s four beats. It’s just a language.’ He’d say, ‘Oh no, no.’

“Paul frankly did get very uptight that because everyone knew that I was the one conducting, I was the one who [notated the score]. He got terribly worried — which comes over him in waves — that people will think that he did not play a major part in this and that it was all really me. But in fact, that is not the case. We tried to make it as much his work as possible.”

“We certainly didn’t want this to be thought of as ‘McCartney arranged by Davis,’” says Davis. “I let him take the lead, which was very difficult for him because he still suffers from the aftermath of the Lennon collaboration, of having this highly critical loved-hated friend and colleague. He feels that with the martyrdom of Lennon, Lennon is given the credit for all of the writing and innovation of the Beatles, and Paul suffers from this. I know, after spending two and a half years with him, that the McCartney songs are his own, and that he is his own man.

“I feel in his black moments,” [Davis said.] “he somehow dumps that on me, and I’m not really competitive in this situation. I’ll say, ‘How should this go?’ and push and pummel him. I did some really naughty things like, ‘Okay, Paul, it’s time for the hit single, right now.’ To see him back away looking extremely frightened while I was being sadistic was fun. That’s how I got ‘Save the Child.’ I hope the world thinks like I do, that it’s really something.”

As Davis’ role as McCartney’s collaborator grew, he assumed that they were writing the “Liverpool Oratorio” by McCartney and Davis. Here, Davis was in for a surprise. McCartney insisted that the piece be called ‘Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio’ by Paul McCartney and Carl Davis. “It’s something that Paul insisted on and that I’ve had to live with,” admits Davis. “It was, in a sense, the contract breaker. He felt that he had to be the primary element in it, that people had to perceive him as driving the vehicle.”

But doesn’t calling it that indicate a certain — ”Worry, I know,” [Davis agrees.] “I wish he hadn’t done it, because it hurts him as well. At the time when it came up, I didn’t see a way of arguing it, and of course, McCartney is a name to conjure with. McCartney above the title will attract more attention to the work and will make more noise commercially, so I live with it. He felt very strongly that that was how it had to go. It was a question at the contractual stage of there being no movement possible on that. It was really up to me. I’ve actually reached a psychological stasis: I live with it. But I can tell that in some ways it’s an equal worry for him, because he has to keep justifying the title. I think it’s a pity.”

“What I’m hoping is that the composing process was so joyous — and we did so enjoy working together — that we can actually get past this. It’s the only thing between us that is difficult. I think a lot of this is his reading, ‘Lennon was the interesting factor of the Beatles, it was Lennon that was innovative,’ which is really not the truth. He carries that wound, that burden in that nothing he does can now be equal with anyone, and people have to know that his was the decisive voice in all of this. So I’m patient about it. You have to let him come around, and realize that it’s not going to hurt the work. It’s very strange for a writer to use his own name in a title, except ironically. It’s very tricky, and it simply has to do with what he needs.”

“And,” adds Davis, with an obvious heartfelt affection, “I like him. That’s the other thing, I actually like him. Past all of this, he’s a good-hearted man. The causes he supports and the things he wants out of life are really very benign, helpful and civilized.

“The really courageous and wonderful thing about McCartney is that he strives to maintain a certain normality in his life: the family, his wife, the children, a day-to-day routine of living a very simple life. Sometimes, of course, when he’s rolling and you have the big tour going on or this kind of event, you are aware of the reserves he can draw upon professionally, and then it’s something else. But in his day-to-day life, it’s not grandeur, it’s simplicity. In a way, thinking about the work we’ve done, that is the message: family life and being together, a very simple basic appeal for normality. He is very entwined with being near the people that he loves, and can’t abide separation from them.”

[Jerry Hadley, who sang Shanty in Liverpool Oratorio, had this to say about working with Paul]—

“[Leonard Bernstein] was not afraid of sentiment, in the best sense of the word, and neither is Paul. I’m not talking about heart-on-the-sleeve, overly saccharine kind of sentiment, I mean real honest, human sentiment. Also, Paul has one of the keenest musical minds I have ever encountered. He has one of the most profoundly clear visions of what he is creating of anybody I’ve ever met, on a level equal to Lenny’s. In the essence of creativity, perhaps it’s the clarity that all the greats have had. West Side Story did not happen by accident. The ‘Liverpool Oratorio’ and the great McCartney pop songs did not happen by accident. These people don’t flail in the dark.”

What McCartney isn’t saying out loud, at the moment, is how much the climax of the piece is similar to what actually happened to him and his wife Linda (the Yorkville role of Mary Dee, sung by te Kanawa) as newlyweds immediately after the breakup of the Beatles. Those were the days when McCartney wouldn’t get out of bed, would go out on nightly drunken and drug rampages, all the while expecting his first baby. “I was the most miserable I had been since the death of my mother,” he says of that time.

Also not so obvious is that McCartney has penned a gorgeous black-spiritual-like piece for mezzo-soprano that intones the last words spoken to John Lennon as he lay dying of gunshot wounds in the back of a New York police car-”Do you know who you are?”

McCartney gets a bit choked up at one point when he reveals, “Not a day goes by when I don’t think of John. He would have loved the spirit of doing this after 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll; he would have loved the idea of risking such a huge gamble.”

[Davis recalls,] “One day we were passing by a church [near Penny Lane] when he said, ‘Here’s the Church of St. Barnabas — I sang there as a choir boy.’ There are hidden depths and things he does not admit to.”

McCartney may have been able to make St. Barnabas, but he couldn’t get into the Cathedral choir because he couldn’t sight-read. Thirty-eight years later, a much larger audition looms over him in the same building. And Paul McCartney, for the first time in many years, is again forced to face a novice’s fears.

Faith note: A big thank you to writer Dennis Polkow for his work here. Other than Davis’ unsettling comment about how “fun” it was to have frightened Paul during the creative process (which is Davis, not Polkow), this is an unexpectedly Grail-fluent — aka emotionally sensitive — article, especially given it was written in the darkest years of the distorted narrative.

Musician 1991 09

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Musician 1991 10

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Further reading/listening:

A Micro-Rabbit Hole on why it’s not unusual that Paul doesn’t read/write formal musical notation—

An exploration of the damage the distorted narrative has done to Paul McCartney (and how we can help to heal that wound)—

While researching Part Two of Beautiful Possibility, I recently discovered the poem “Portland Coliseum,” by Allen Ginsberg. I’m not sure how I missed it up until now, but such are the vagaries of deep research on a big topic.

Ginsberg wrote “Portland Coliseum” after attending The Beatles’ concert at, well, Portland Coliseum, on August 22, 1965. This week, I’m sharing it with you.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS — Weekly updates might be a little skint for the next month or so — but if all goes well, it’ll be worth your while.

PORTLAND COLISEUM
by Allen Ginsberg

A brown piano in diamond
white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
iron run wired
hanging organs, vox
black battery
A single whistling sound of ten thousand children’s
larynxes asinging
pierce the ears
and following up the belly
bliss the moment arrived
 
Apparition, four brown English
jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
white drums
Silent George hair patient
Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
with the guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
some tearful memory song
ancient-two years,
The million children
the thousand words
bounce in their seats, bash
each other’s sides, press
legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
become one Animal
in the New World Auditorium
—hands waving myriad
snakes of thought
screetch beyond hearing
 
while a line of police with
folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
wired roof.

– August 27, 1965

Shareable image for this update:

As most of you know, I stay away from the public discussion of Beautiful Possibility outside of The Abbey, mostly because I’m easly distractable and easily influenced by feedback (good and otherwise), and I need to avoid both of these things so I can stay focused on researching and writing the work itself. And since I lack both the bandwidth and the temperament to do any sort of self-promotion, I rely on all of you to share Beautiful Possibility with the wider world (and a huge thank you to those of you who are doing that. ❤️).

I’m aware, though, that sharing Beautiful Possibility can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, because people tend to prejudge the lovers possibility based on what they think is true rather than on the actual research.

Recently, one supporter of Beautiful Possibility mentioned to me that when he’s looking to persuade people of the credibility of the lovers possibility, he reaches for what he calls “the Paris excerpt.” This is the section from episode 1:4 “Are You Afraid Or Is It True?” that steps through much of the research related to John and Paul’s 1961 trip to Paris.

So to make it easier for those of you who are doing the invaluable work of sharing Beautiful Possibility with the often-sceptical wider world, I thought I’d lift the Paris excerpt out of the episode to make it more easily shareable. It works pretty well on its own, and this way, you have a single “this is the Paris excerpt” link to share when you’re engaging with people online about the lovers possibility.

With that said, then —

excerpted from 1:4 Are You Afraid Or Is It True

Before we move on to talking specifically about the credibility of the lovers possibility, there’s a caveat, and a big one — because one of the challenges here is that while there’s a substantial body of research to support it, most of the individual data points can be explained in some alternate non-lovers possibility way, if you’re motivated to do so and if you aren’t aware of the full scope of the research surrounding that data point.

So for example, I could tell you that in 1961, John and Paul took a trip to Paris, just the two of them, in honour of John’s twenty-first birthday. And while that might raise an eyebrow, you’d probably say, that’s interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything about the lovers possibility, and you’d be right about that.

Best friends do sometimes take trips together, just like Paul and George used to hitchhike places, just the two of them. Maybe John and Paul just wanted to go to Paris — you certainly don’t have to be lovers to enjoy visiting the City of Love. And maybe John took Paul because John had never been out of the UK before and he didn’t want to go on his own and he couldn’t take his then-girlfriend Cynthia because in 1961, no respectable middle-class Liverpool parent would let their young, unmarried daughter go to Paris alone with her boyfriend — especially if her boyfriend is John Lennon.

All those things are valid, and if you’re looking for a reason to discredit the lovers possibility, it’s easy to look at the Paris trip in isolation and simply choose the alternative explanation.

But individual data points can’t be considered in isolation, when they’re part of a larger story. And when we put the Paris trip in its full context, we get a very different picture.

When you also know that it wasn’t a mutual decision, but rather John inviting Paul to come with him to Paris, and that John paid for almost everything, and that they stayed there together for almost two weeks, just the two of them, in a little hotel in Montmartre—

—And when you know that John and Paul returned to Paris in 1964 on The Beatles’ first international tour at the beginning of global Beatlemania, and that they stayed in a luxury suite at the George V Hotel, which is as posh as it sounds, and that it was there that, in beautiful synchronicity, they learned that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” — a song about a longing to hold hands, presumably in public — had reached number one in the US, meaning they’d made it to the toppermost of the poppermost together, and that multiple people who were on tour with them, including George Harrison, have written about how John and Paul spent an unusual amount of time alone in their suite in Paris to the point that it became a problem,⁴ and that staying in that posh hotel, Paul to this day recalls thinking of their first Paris trip, staying in a cheap hotel with only a hundred pounds in their pocket.⁵ And when you know that when they at last emerged from their self-imposed seclusion in their posh 1964 hotel suite, they’d written the song “Can’t Buy Me Love”1 —

And when you know that a decade later, Linda McCartney asked John if he missed living in the UK, and John’s answer was, “I miss Paris,”2 and in a separate interview, said he loved Paris because of how people could be so openly affectionate and romantic, kissing and holding hands in public, and when you know that same-sex love was legal in France in 1961, so two boys could hold hands and kiss and show affection in public the way, if they possibly wanted to, they couldn’t in England3—

And when you know that in the ‘70s, John wrote a story about his memories of meeting his lover in Paris for a secret rendezvous4 and that there’s a home recording of John in the late ‘70s singing a parody of an old French love song in which he calls Paul’s name and riffs about his romantic memories of Paris and a “cafe on the Left Bank,”5 and when you know that in 1978 Paul wrote and recorded a song titled “Cafe on the Left Bank” inspired by their trip6 —

And when you know that the diary page Paul chose to feature in his Lyrics book and in his Eyes of the Storm exhibition (and I do mean featured, as in displayed in the centre of the room in a glass case) is from that original 1961 Paris trip, on which he and John wrote their names together in various configurations exactly like two teenagers in love, and that in 2007, Paul was interviewed on French television and asked what his idea of heaven was, and his answer was his trip with John to Paris in 19617 —

When you know all of that, the Paris trip starts to take on a different context.

Mainstream Beatles writing doesn’t put those pieces together though — if they even know this research exists. Instead, writers just mention that John and Paul met up with a friend from Hamburg in Paris and that he gave them what became the Beatles haircut — relevant information, to be sure, but it rather misses the larger point.

Whatever else happened between them in Paris, their first trip there together is clearly a significant and cherished part of their relationship story for both of them, and I don’t think it’s because they got their hair cut.

When a shared experience becomes deeply emotionally significant in a relationship, it becomes a shorthand for everything that experience represents about that relationship. And when it then appears in other contexts relative to their history, it carries all of that meaning along with it.

The most iconic example of this, of course, is from Casablanca. In the famous final scene at the airport, Humphrey Bogart’s character tells Ingrid Bergman’s character as she’s about to get on the plane with her husband that, “We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have... we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.”

When he says “Paris,” Bogart isn’t talking about the city, not directly. He’s referencing their shared emotional experience and memories of Paris — what Paris means to their love affair — and he shorthands all of that to just the name of the city where that experience happened and where those memories were made. And because the experience is so significant to both of them, she instantly knows what he means — and so does the audience.

Paul and John seem to reference Paris in the same way as Bogie and Bergman do in Casablanca.

Just like in Casablanca, Paris is never just Paris when it appears in this story relative to John and Paul — and without understanding that, we miss the significance of those references and what they might tell us about the story, as well as the music that was being written at the same time.

For example, events like John “honeymooning down by the Seine” with Yoko in 1969, as he wrote in “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and then asking Paul to help him record the song, become far more emotionally complex when we know that Paris is always more than just Paris between the two of them.

Without understanding the collection of experiences and emotional associations that’s referenced every time Paris appears in the story relative to John and Paul, I don’t think it’s possible to understand the meaning of that trip, or the meaning of “Can’t Buy Me Love” or “Ballad of John and Yoko,” or John taking Yoko to Paris,8 or John’s feelings about living in New York, or a host of other significant parts of the story. Without an awareness of the lovers possibility, the fuller context and meaning of those events remains invisible, and out of reach.

And without being sensitive to romantic and emotional subtext, you can’t put those pieces together. Paris becomes just a story about a haircut.

I’ve occasionally heard people protest that the problem with the lovers possibility is that it makes a complex relationship too simple. Putting aside that this isn’t in and of itself a reason to discount it — just because we don’t like what something does to a story doesn’t mean it’s not true — the Paris trip is an example of how it’s the other way around. It’s by stripping the lovers possibility out of the story that we oversimplify it — and miss the more beautiful story.

When we focus only on individual pieces of information without doing the work of putting together the whole puzzle in its broader context, we miss the bigger, more complete and complex — and more beautiful story. And this is why it’s difficult to present supporting research for the lovers possibility, because most of that research requires context to be fully understood.

THE FULL EPISODE (including the audio version) IS HERE:

And all of the episodes of Beautiful Possibility in sequence are here:

https://www.beatlesabbey.com/p/beautiful-possibility.

And here is a graphic if you’d like to use it to share—

This week, it’s back to answering your questions. (And yes, I still have a backlog and probably always will. I promise I’ll do my best to get to all of them eventually.)

Here’s a (streamlined) version of the question—

Do you have anonymous sources? If so, how do you handle the information they give you?

The answer to the first question depends on the definition of “anonymous sources”.

If an “anonymous source” means a source who has given me information with no indication or context as to who they are and how they might know this information, the answer is— no, I have no anonymous sources.

But I suspect that by “anonymous,” what the questioner really means is, do I have sources that I know the identity of, but who are giving me information that’s “off the record” — aka, information I can use only if I don’t share the identity of the source? And the answer to that question is — yes, I do have several sources like that.

These off-the-record sources are not people I’ve intentionally sought out, for reasons we’ll get to shortly. But as the only mainstream Beatles writer seriously exploring the possibility of John and Paul as a romantic couple (for now at least), I’m not a difficult person to find, for those who have information that they want to share. In other words, while I don’t go looking for them, these off-the-record sources sometimes find me.

As for the second question about how I handle information given to me by off-the-record sources, the answer to that question was covered in part in the Research Methodology Rabbit Hole —

In the course of my research, I’ve had people share information with me off the record. While that information has sometimes informed the direction of my research, none of it has been used in this series unless I was able to verify it independently through publicly available sources, and those publicly available sources are what I cite. I’ve also found and been told plenty of gossip, hearsay and rumour about the lovers possibility, some of it dating back to the 50s and ‘60s. None of that appears in this series because gossip and rumour is not what we’re doing here.

The reason I don’t use information from off-the-record sources on The Abbey is simple — doing so would violate both the research standards and the ethical standards I’ve established for The Abbey.

Here, also from the Research Methodology Rabbit Hole, is my research standard—

All the research cited in Beautiful Possibility is from publicly available material and from primary sources, verified by tracing the research back to the original source of publication.

And—

Basically what I mean by a primary source is that if someone said something, it has to be sourced at the original place where they said it — whether that’s an interview, a conversation, or a piece of their own writing. If something happened, the account of that event has to be sourced to someone who was there when it happened.

When I say verified at the original source, I mean pretty much this: if I can’t trace the quote or the information back to where it first came from — the first person who said it in the first place it was said, or to an account from someone who lived through the events firsthand, it doesn’t make the cut for Beautiful Possibility.

An off-the-record source would meet the “primary source” part of that research standard, assuming they were present when the events they’re describing happened.

As for the “publicly available” part, for our purposes here, what I mean when I say “publicly available’ is that the information must have been originally intended to be shared publicly — in other words, there was an expectation on the part of the person involved that the information would be made public.

So, for example, the Northwestern Beatles archive contains unpublished handwritten notes from interviews with Paul and Linda McCartney. Those interview notes weren’t published, per se, but they were written during an interview in which Paul and Linda (presumably) knew they were speaking to a journalist who intended to publish a story based on that interview. The information in those handwritten notes is, then, “publicly available” in that it’s information that was intended to be made public, even if it ultimately didn’t appear in the finished article.

Also, those interview notes are publicly available to qualified researchers who are willing to invest the time and resources to access the archives. That, too, makes those notes public — but again, only because Paul and Linda were speaking on the record in the interview the notes originated from.

An off-the-record source can rarely, if ever, meet the “publicly available” part of my research standard. First, because I can’t cite the original source of the information. And second, because the information wasn’t (generally) intended to be made public.

For example, if an off-the-record source were to tell me about a private conversation they had with Paul McCartney, the reasonable assumption would be that (absent information to the contrary) Paul did not intend for that conversation to be made public. And thus that’s not information I could ethically use on The Abbey, no matter how credible or valuable that information might be.1

And since I wouldn’t be able to publicly cite the source of the information. I’d have to say, “someone told me X, but I can’t say who, so you’ll have to trust that X comes from a credible source.”

This is, obviously, not how we do things on The Abbey. Given the overall carelessness with which research tends to be handled in Beatles studies (both mainstream and countercultural), no one should believe any scholar who can’t (or won’t) show you exactly where and from who their information came from — and this is, of course, especially true when dealing with a subject as sensitive as the lovers possibility.

All of this is why almost all of the research used in Part One of Beautiful Possibility comes directly from Paul and John — from on-the-record interviews that are (and are obviously intended to be) public, and from their music, because they’ve both explicitly told us that their music is where we should look for the truth of their story.

It’s also why, unlike most Beatles writers, I generally don’t seek out interviews with sources who knew John and Paul. I’d have to ask questions that aren’t mine to ask, in an attempt to obtain information that’s not theirs to tell, because John and Paul presumably never intended for that information to be shared with the world.

These guidelines got me safely (so far at least ) through Part One. But this all gets significantly trickier, when we set out to re-tell the story of The Beatles — and especially John and Paul — in Parts Two and Three of Beautiful Possibility.

For example, what do I do with the private letters between Stu Sutcliffe and Astrid that I’ve accessed in the archives of the Museum of Liverpool? Or what about John’s Dakota recordings, or the answering machine tapes that include Yoko and John’s voicemail messages that are also in the Northwestern archive? Does it make a difference if the information was never intended to be public, but already is because someone before me has made it so? Does it make a difference if that someone is in a position to grant that access — Stu’s mother, for example? Does the standard change when the person in question has been dead since 1967? What about when the person in question has been dead since 1980? Is it different if the information itself is beautiful and life-affirming or… less beautiful?

These are just some of the difficult questions, with lots of shades of grey, that I’m weighing as I research and write Part Two. All are legitimate questions for anyone writing about The Beatles, but they’re especially weighted and consequential when writing about the lovers possibility.

All of that said, even if the information can’t be cited in a published piece of work, off-the-record sources can still be valuable.

As I mentioned in the Research Rabbit Hole, if I’ve been given information from an off-the-record source that I think might be credible — meaning the source is who they say they are and they are/were in a position to know what they claim to know — I do sometimes use that information as a research guide, aka an arrow pointing in a possible direction. I can then follow that arrow to see if it leads anywhere — meaning is there credible, publicly available research to support the claim? If there is, it’s the publicly available research I’ll cite, not the off-the-record source.

In this way, off-the-record sources (as well as anonymous sources) can be valuable as waymarkers. But here’s the thing — they aren’t essential.

As I hope you’ve started to see in Part One of Beautiful Possibility, there is a significant — and even overwhelming — body of research in the public record to support the credibility of the lovers possibility. So much so that if it were any other topic, it would already be part of the accepted narrative. And in Part Two, we’ll continue to do the work of considering that research, when we attempt to re-tell the story of The Beatles through the frame of John and Paul as a romantic couple.

Until next week.

Peace, love, and strawberry fields,

Faith 🍓

PS This update was a little egg-heady, so for your entertainment, here’s a publicly-available, primary source photo of Paul McCartney in a coconut bra, published in NME, July 5, 1975. Photo and “biro jiggery-pokery” (aka doodling) by Linda McCartney.