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 consummated/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 consummation 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 🍓
Paul quoted the line incorrectly in a 1986 interview in his official fan club magazine, which is almost certainly the source of the confusion—
“In the middle it explains itself a bit…(sic) ‘Something special between us…(sic) Words wouldn’t get my feelings through’. That’s taking off into The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran – there’s a line of his that always used to attract me and John, which was ‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you.’” Interview with Paul McCartney, Club Sandwich #42, Autumn 1986. (Club Sandwich, btw, was edited by Mark Lewisohn, which may or may not be relevant here, relative to the reliability of quotes)
“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.” — Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, Liveright, 2022.
Again, see episode 1:5 (“He Said He Said Part 1”) for detailed consideration/research on Paul’s reluctance to share his innermost feelings outside of song.
This is an exasperated reference to Paul’s recent TikTok Q&A, because seriously, y’all? It’s like we’ve come full circle back to the German reporter who asked The Beatles — who had just released Rubber Soul and were about to release Revolver — whether they wear long pants in the winter. We’ll come back to that infamous press conference in a future update, but… shoes? Really?