Hi everyone,
I was hoping to post a Micro-Rabbit Hole about Elliot Mintz’s recent podcast interview, in which he shares an anecdote about John and Paul being together at the Dakota in December of 1978 — meaning that the story about John and Paul watching SNL together in 1976 was not, in fact, the last time they were together in person. (I’m stunned by this revelation — stunned, I tell you. Also, we really need an irony emoji.)
Turns out that untangling Mintz’s interview was like pulling a loose thread that ended up with me trying to fit most of Part Three of Beautiful Possibility into a single weekly update. So Mr. Mintz and his ‘revelation’ will have to wait for another day.
Suffice to say, “the last time John and Paul saw each other” is a far more complicated question than it seems, and we’d be wise to be sceptical of anyone who claims to have a definitive answer.
Instead , on a very related note — and in light of the upcoming re-release of Anthology — I’ll offer you with this little clip from Beatles biographer Bob Spitz.1
As we’ve started to explore in Part One of Beautiful Possibility, there are many, many places in the story of The Beatles as it’s currently told where things don’t seem to add up — contradictions, inconsistencies, gaps in the timeline, fallacies of cause and effect, and basic errors of human psychology. These glitches are likely in part the result of stitching together the fabricated 50% of the story that Paul warned Spitz about with the other, non-fabricated 50%. (I'm assuming here that Paul's percentages are approximate.)
As far as I can tell from the research, there’s no particular indication that Anthology fixed this 50% situation. If anything, it seems to have done the opposite. Presented as the Word of Fab and sent down from on high to lead the faithful out of the wilderness of confusion, it mostly seems to have (intentionally and otherwise) furthered the confusion by further entrenching the false 50% into the narrative as the official story.
Anthology is a gorgeous book, and I’m obviously thrilled it’s getting a re-release, even if it won't include *Carnival of Light.” But as with the “last time John and Paul were together” stories, we'd probably be wise to keep in mind that it’s a book of mythology, not a book of history. All of which we'll talk about in Part Two of Beautiful Possibility.
Until next week.
Peace, love, and strawberry fields,
Faith ❤️
Face Culture (a Dutch media company), 11/20/2006.