Hi everyone,
This week, I was going to answer to a question that came in about “Little Lamb Dragonfly,” but we’ll need to do that next week, because —
In doing some tidying up, I discovered that the footnotes for episode 1:4 “Are You Afraid Or Is It True?” were out of sequence (to say the least). It took me the better part of the working day to sort it all out, but the footnotes are fixed now.
My deepest apologies for anyone who was thrown by that problem, which is presumably a fair number of you, since “Are You Afraid Or Is It True?” is the most read/listened to episode.
This sort of problem happened in part because I was still finishing writing Part One of Beautiful Possibility whe nI started recording and publishing it — how hard could it be… I’m almost done with the writing…. surely I can start recording/publishing it while I finish… And as a result, without a second pair of eyes to proofread, there wasn’t always time to go back and double-check things like footnotes — which I’m now working my way through doing, albeit slowly.
As it usually is with ventures like this, the learning curve was steep with Part One — and thank you to all of you for being patient while I learn to navigate said curve. The good news is, lesson learned — Part Two will (hopefully) get itself recorded and published only when the writing is 100% complete, so I’ll (hopefully) have time to check those things before they’re published.
But I don’t want to leave you with nothing other than fixed footnotes this week, so here’s one of my favourite pieces of research, from ‘60s impresario Simon Napier-Bell.
“So much of [The Beatles’ appeal] had depended on that fantastic intimacy they projected in their stage act which made all the kids in the audience long to know what they were saying to each other, what secrets were behind those intimately exchanged glances. But the main secret The Beatles shared was how four tough working-class lads had come to accept the benefits of acting coquettishly for a wealthy, middle-class homosexual. People said their image was that of the boy next door, but it wasn’t. To anyone who’d seen it before, their image was instantly identifiable. It was the cool, cocky brashness of a kid who’s found a sugar-daddy and got himself set up in Mayfair.”
There are, of course, many, many things to unpack about this quote, and we’ll get to that in Part Two.
For here, notice his reference to the collective longing to know the meaning of The Beatles’ mysterious “intimately exchanged glances.” With this reference, Napier-Bell is — consciously or not, it’s hard to tell with him — acknowledging what we talked about at length in the Rabbit Hole on how the possibility of John and Paul as lovers gives us what seems to be, so far, the only coherent explanation for Beatlemania.
As for the book You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, take Napier Bell’s stories for what you will — but I think it’s one of the best reads in all of BeatleBookLand. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, I don’t think you’ll regret hunting down a copy.
Till next week.
Peace, love, and strawberry fields,
Faith ❤️