Rabbit Hole: Playlist Commentary

All the episodes of Beautiful Possibility in sequence are here.

This Rabbit Hole works pretty well on its own, but it works a lot better if you’ve listened to the two-part episode “He Said He Said” (1:5 and 1:6) which covers in depth the support in the songs of Lennon/McCartney for the possibility that John and Paul were lovers.

Welcome to this week’s Rabbit Hole. Before we start, the usual reminder that Rabbit Holes — even when they’re longer like this one — are scruffier and much less polished than the main episodes, so please adjust your expectations accordingly.

In the main episode, we focused deeply on one exchange of “whispers through the wall” between Paul and John, because there was so much to say about “No Words” and “Bless You.” And also because I wanted to give you a sense of the deeper layers of meaning and complexity the lovers possibility makes visible in the songs of Lennon/McCartney, when we look with a softer gaze.

But of course in focusing deeply on two songs, we obviously left out the vast majority of possible JohnandPaul songs — songs likely written for and about one another. There are many more, and there is also more to say about some of the songs we did talk about in the main episode. So in this week’s Rabbit Hole, we’re going to do an extended commentary on the playlist I shared with you at the end of that two-part episode—

This playlist is still nowhere near a complete list of possible JohnandPaul songs. The songs on the playlist are the ones that we can talk about a bit more concisely than we did with “No Words” and “Bless You,” and that don’t require much additional context for the traces of the lovers possibility to be visible in their lyrics.

You may have already noticed that almost all of the songs on the playlist are from after the breakup. That’s not intended to suggest that John and Paul didn’t write about and for one another during their Beatles years — they very much seem to have done. But it’s obviously much harder to discern their individual voices when they’re actively writing together, which is why it’s easier to see the support for the lovers possibility in their solo songs.

Before we get to the playlist, though, let’s start with a quick look at what Paul remembers as the very first ever Lennon/McCartney composition — a song called “Just Fun.”

There’s not much to “Just Fun”— we only have a single four-line verse and a basic melody. Here’s the opening couplet. It’s not available on streaming, so the audio is from a YouTube interview with Paul¹—

They say that our love is just fun

The day that our friendship begun

Okay, so... even geniuses have to start somewhere, and “Just Fun” is clearly a beginner’s effort. All the way at the very beginning, actually. If Paul’s memory is correct, these are the first words he and John ever wrote together — in 1957, not long after they met.

Clumsy and self-conscious though this couplet is, you probably see right away that the lovers possibility gives it new complexity.

Only months into their relationship — out of every possible theme in the world available to them, including all of the usual tropes of love songs — the first-ever songwriting theme that Paul and John reach for is the blurring of lines between friendship and romantic love.

You might recognise the “Just Fun” couplet as an early iteration of the line in ‘All Together Now,” “black, white, green, red / can I take my friend to bed?”,² as well as “I’m in love with a friend of mine” in “Dear Friend,” which by the way, we know for sure is a JohnandPaul song because Paul told us so, and there’s really never a reason to doubt Paul when he says a song is about John.³

What keeps “Just Fun” from being a “moon/June baby I love you” song is the tension in the word “fun,” in the young lovers’ frustration and pain at having their love trivialised by those around them.

If John and Paul are already writing autobiographically — even if maybe subconsciously — I wonder if the “they” warning the young lovers not to take things so seriously might be Paul’s father and John’s Aunt Mimi, both of whom actively discouraged Paul and John’s friendship, maybe — and of course this is just speculation — because Mimi and Jim noticed that from the earliest days, what was between the two boys was more than “just fun.”⁴

While we’re hanging out in the earliest days, let’s take a quick look at another Lennon/McCartney first — the first original song Paul and John (along with George) ever recorded in a proper recording studio.

Paul wrote “In Spite Of All The Danger” in early 1958, and it has the distinction of being what seems to be the earliest known Lennon/McCartney lyrical magpie. “In spite of all I’ve been through” is borrowed from the 1955 Elvis record “Tryin’ To Get To You,” though Paul makes a subtle adjustment to the metre of the original line.

Lyrically, though, that’s where the similarity between the two songs ends.

“Tryin’ To Get To You” is a gospel-tinged song about asking for God’s help to overcome obstacles to love. There is no mention of danger — the word doesn’t appear in the song. That association is Paul’s original contribution.

Here’s the first verse—

In spite of all the danger

In spite of all that may be

I'll do anything for you

Anything you want me to

If you'll be true to me

It’s an unusual comparison to reach for — love and danger — and maybe the only danger Paul’s referring to is the heartache referenced in the second verse, which begins with “in spite of all the heartaches that you may bring me.”

But the insistent and repeated way “in spite of” is used suggests the “danger” Paul is worried about is not the vague future danger of a possible broken heart, but a specific, explicit threat looming on the horizon that he can already sense and has already factored into his decision to love the person he’s singing the song to, in spite of the possible consequences.⁵

Obviously, given the danger of an illegal love affair in 1957, this suggests the lovers possibility. But it also suggests something else that we’ve talked about in prior episodes.

It’s possible that despite having known John only a short time, Paul has already sussed out John’s self-destructive capabilities — his anger, his tendency towards depression, his creative insecurity. As we talked about in a prior episode, even in the earliest days, Paul is already the John Whisperer — the one who already understood John’s inner life better than anyone else seemed to. And it’s not as if John’s damage was hidden — he arrived in Paul’s life with a bad reputation, after all.

So in addition to the danger of an illegal love affair, it’s possible Paul is sensing that being with John — as a friend and creative partner, but perhaps especially as a young lover who has given his heart to John — is going to be emotionally dangerous. The “in spite of all the heartaches” is perhaps as much about the heartache that comes from seeing the person you love engaging in dangerous behaviour and not being able to completely prevent it, as about the danger of a broken heart in love.

This second possibility becomes more likely, given the couplet later in the song—

I'll look after you

Like I've never done before

This is, once again, an unusual choice of words for a 15-year-old boy. It’s certainly not the language of carefree new love — or even of a teenage crush. It’s an acknowledgement that the person the singer is in love with is going to, for whatever reason, need special care. And given all of his insecurities, personal demons and difficult home life, John — by his own admission — was always in need of special care.⁶

Often with the death of a parent — and especially a mother — in childhood, the oldest child takes on an unspoken obligation towards protective caretaking. Maybe that was the case for Paul, and maybe that bled over into his relationship with John.⁷

Regardless of where it came from, “In Spite of All The Danger” certainly suggests that Paul realised right from the start that being close to John — becoming John’s “special someone” that he always needed in his life — was going to require looking after him (and if you’re interested in thinking more about that possibility, there’s an extensive footnote about it in episode 1:6, relative to John’s drug use.).

This equating of love with danger is not a one-off. Paul extends the theme and makes it both explicit and literal in “A World Without Love.”

Paul wrote “A World Without Love” around the same time as he wrote “In Spite Of All The Danger” — both songs not long after having met John. The Beatles didn’t record it, but “A World Without Love” became a #1 hit for Peter & Gordon in 1964, and it opens with this verse—

Please lock me away

And don't allow the day

Here inside

Where I hide

With my loneliness

I don't care what they say

I won't stay in a world without love

Unlike “In Spite Of All The Danger,” the imagery here is not ambiguous. When Paul writes “please lock me away,” he’s not writing in metaphor about a prison of the mind or the fear of a possible broken heart. He’s writing about preferring to be literally, physically, locked up away from society, rather than abandoning love.

And as you may have noticed, Paul also goes to a darker place, with "I won't stay in a world without love,” with its suggestion of suicide that echoes the lurking danger of” I’ll look after you" in “In Spite Of All The Danger.”⁸ ⁹

Equating love with danger is an unusual theme in a pop song. Equating love with the danger of being physically imprisoned in the name of love is an extremely unusual theme for a pop song by any artist, let alone a 16-year old boy. I’m hard-pressed to think of another song that deals with that theme — other than maybe the classic murder ballads in the country and folk tradition, and murder doesn’t seem to be a factor in “A World Without Love.”

And yet, teenage Paul seems preoccupied enough with the risks of loving someone that he wrote two of his earliest songs about it. And while Paul tells the story of John making fun of “please lock me away”¹⁰ — the opening line of “A World Without Love” — the song “I’ll Cry Instead,” written mostly by John, includes a similar line about choosing to be locked up rather than foregoing love.¹¹

Now is a good time to remind us that in England until 1967, the physical expression of love between men was illegal and punishable by a term in prison.¹²

Of all the songs from their “mop top” era that we could talk about relative to the lovers possibility — and there are a lot of them — I’m singling out “I Want To Hold Your Hand” because for all its iconic status, it’s sometimes commented on as being a little silly — a whole song about wanting to hold hands, as if that was some kind of a big deal.

That’s a luxurious opinion to have, if you’re fortunate enough to be allowed to hold hands in public with the person you love.

Much attention is given to the anecdote about Dylan having misheard the refrain of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” as “I get high I get high I get high” and thus assuming The Beatles were already turned on to pot. That's a titillating side story, but it misses what might be the far more significant and profound meaning of the actual words — “I can’t hide I can’t hide I can’t hide.”

Two young men in love in 1963 expressing their simple wish to hold hands in public is far from silly. Two young men singing their desire to hold hands in public is a deeply poignant and subversive act of cultural defiance in a way that singing raunchy songs about sex is not.¹³

In the context of the lovers possibility, simple lyrics like—

I'll tell you something

I think you'll understand

When I say that something

I wanna hold your hand

—become a plea to the mainstream culture to understand that love is universal. And that the desire to hold hands with one’s beloved in public is shared by all lovers everywhere, regardless of the specifics of the couple.

The theme of secret love affairs and hiding — along with a longing not to have to hide and the imagined joy of being able to love openly — appears so frequently in the songs of Lennon/McCartney that it inspired a bit of forensic research.

I asked my fab research assistant Robyn to search for references to secret love affairs, secrets, hiding, and a desire not to hide in the song catalogues of six other artists who wrote their own material and who influenced, or were influenced by, or had similar influences to Lennon/McCartney. Robyn searched the first five albums by the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and Donovan, along with the entire catalogues of Buddy Holly, Simon & Garfunkel, and of course, George Harrison’s solo work.

We confined the search to direct references — no subtext, no metaphor. But we cast a wide net, looking for any overt reference to these themes, regardless of how trivial.

In the combined catalogues of these six artists, the grand total of songs dealing with secret love is—

Zero.

While it’s possible there are subtextual references we didn’t find, there doesn’t appear to be a single song in any of these artists’ catalogues that overtly mentions a secret love affair, a need to hide an expression of love, or desire not to have to hide.

We found five songs that deal with hiding feelings, three of which are by George Harrison in the early years of his solo career when he was most heavily influenced by the interpersonal dynamics of the band. The most explicit of these is “Behind That Locked Door,” reportedly written about his friendship with Bob Dylan. The remaining two of the five songs are the Beach Boys’ “In My Room” and Donovan’s “To Try For the Sun,” both of which contain only generic, passing references to hidden feelings and absolutely nothing about hiding an actual love affair.

Conversely, on The Beatles’ first five albums (and including their pre-Please Please Me songs and songs they gave to other artists), there are at least fifteen songs that mention secrecy, hiding and a desire not to have to hide love — from passing references to whole songs in which secrecy is a major theme.¹⁴

Fifteen songs on five albums is what my statistician friends might call “statistically significant” But could be it’s just a coincidence.

We could certainly talk a lot more about those fifteen songs, as well as others in their early catalogue — songs like “If I Fell” and “In My Life,” which even some less Grail-phobic mainstream Beatles writers occasionally suggest are written about and for one another, though they tend to “miss” the obvious romantic theme of those songs.¹⁵

And more broadly, whether John and Paul acted on their love for one another or not, there’s a reasonable chance that virtually all of their love songs are about and to one another in some sense, because I’m not sure it’s possible to write a song about being in love — especially if you’re writing it with the person you’re in love with — and have that song not be at least partly autobiographical.

It’s also worth mentioning here that while both John and Paul occasionally tell us that a particular love song isn’t about their public partners, they virtually never tell us who the song is about, even as they tell us — as we talked about in the main episode — that those early love songs were autobiographical.¹⁶

While it’s true all love songs are songs for all lovers, it’s also true that even the simplest love song reflects the individual truth of the songwriter’s life. Songwriters tend to write love songs that reflect our individual experience of love — “longing” songs when we’re wishing for love, “falling in love” songs when we’re falling in love, happy songs when things are going well, sad songs when they’re not, and heartbreak and regret songs when everything falls apart.

It’s this correlation between the personal experience of love and the way that experience is reflected in their songs that forms the basis for what I suggested in the main episode — that the emotional arc of their songs matches the emotional arc of their relationship with one another better than it does their relationships with their public partners, whether that’s Cynthia, Jane, Yoko or Linda.

Which brings us to “Oh! Darling.”

Paul wrote “Oh! Darling” during the Get Back sessions — we hear him working on it in the first episode when they’re still at Twickenham. This is a time period in which Paul and Linda were a few months away from getting married, and Linda was pregnant with Mary — one of the phases of a relationship in which two people usually feel the least alone and the most connected to one another, the most paired.

But “Oh! Darling” is Paul in obvious autobiographical torment at the looming threat of being left alone, begging his beloved in raw-throated desperation not to leave him — which is why it matters that “Oh! Darling” was also written during the time when John was turning his creative and romantic attention to Yoko.¹⁷ And both the lyrics and Paul’s vocal performance reflect that — in his heartbreak of being told he’s no longer needed, in his plea for his beloved not to leave him and his fear that he won’t make it on his own, in his desperate reassurances to “please believe me, I’ll never do you no harm.”

But we don’t actually need any of that backstory to know that the darling in “Oh! Darling” is probably John.

I promised those of you who’ve discovered that the deeper story of Beautiful Possibility is being told in the footnotes the answer to which love song it is, in which Paul calls out John’s name and (almost) no one notices. And the answer is “Oh! Darling.”

If you listen closely and without the confirmation bias of expecting to hear “oh darling” at 1:42 and possibly also at 2:48, you’ll hear a sharp puff of air you get when you sing a “j” but that you don’t get when you sing a softer “d”, and also a distinct short “o”and “y” as in “Johnny” rather than the flat “a” and the “ing” of “darling” — as Paul subtly replaces “darling” with “Johnny,” knowing full well that everyone (save he hopes, one person) will hear what they expect to hear and not what’s really there.

It's a subtle shift from “oh darling” to “oh Johnny”— don’t expect anything dramatic here. It’s meant to be missed by everyone but one person. And oddly, it’s a bit more audible in the finished track than on the various fan-created vocal isolation tracks available on YouTube — suggesting that perhaps Paul brought it out a bit more in post-production (or just that the iso tracks were poorly done).

But though Paul’s “oh Johnny” is subtle even on the finished track, it’s also unmistakable once we know what to listen for. It requires listening beyond what we expect to hear — but like the edit point in “Strawberry Fields Forever” where the two versions were spliced together, once you hear “oh Johnny” instead of “oh darling,” you’ll probably never not hear it.¹⁸

Beatles studio engineer Geoff Emerick writes in his book about the recording of “Oh! Darling” that the vocal was so demanding that Paul could only do one take before it blew his voice out. And that because Paul was so focused on getting it just right, he went into the studio early every day for days on end — before the others arrived — and recorded a single take of the song until he got the vocal he wanted. Emerick finishes the anecdote by saying—

“Every day we’d be treated to a hell of a performance as McCartney put his all into singing the song all the way through once and once only, nearly ripping his vocal cords to shreds in the process.”¹⁹

I don’t doubt for a minute that Paul recorded “Oh! Darling” this way, and you probably don’t either. That kind of intense devotion and care to the music is emblematic of Paul’s creative process. And as a singer myself, I know that “Oh! Darling” is a vocally demanding song, especially the way Paul sings it. Belting an entire song at the top of a singer’s vocal range is one of the most difficult and also one of the most dangerous (and sometimes painful) techniques for any singer, even Paul McCartney.²⁰

But I wonder if maybe the reason Paul gave Geoff Emerick for starting each day singing “Oh! Darling” isn’t quite the whole story.

“Oh! Darling” is a vocally demanding song, but it’s also an emotionally demanding song — perhaps more so than anything The Beatles had recorded up to that point. It’s right up there with John’s primal-screamed vocal on “Mother” on Plastic Ono Band.

As we talked about in detail in a prior episode, Paul has said songwriting is therapy and that songs are the only place he can express difficult emotions. I wonder if his “one take before every session” ritual was at least as much about catharsis as about performance.

This daily ritual was during the Abbey Road sessions — when John had a hospital bed moved into the studio for Yoko and her tiara, and of course what came along with that was all the tension between Paul and John because of the whole bizarre situation.

So I wonder if maybe in light of all of that — and this is just speculation, of course — Paul was giving himself four minutes of daily primal scream therapy, before John and Yoko and the bed and the tiara and the whole catastrophe arrived in the studio²¹ — four minutes to scream at the top of his lungs, telling John everything he longed to tell him but didn’t know how to say outside of song, calling out his name — “oh Johnny!” — day after day, his voice echoing off the walls of the empty studio.

There’s no probably no way to know if the “oh Johnny” was deliberate on Paul’s part, absent Paul telling us so. Given he was — deliberately or not — doing some primal scream therapy of his own, it might have just slipped out in a moment of the sort of vocal improvisation Paul is inclined to do in the studio. He may not even have realised he’d sung it that way — it’s possible he still doesn’t. But it might be why he selected that take as the final, whether he consciously noticed it or not.

And speaking of songs as therapy during Abbey Road, the next song on the playlist is “Goodbye,”which Paul wrote for Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin, whose career Paul launched when he produced her first album, Postcard. The version of “Goodbye” on the playlist is the demo that Paul recorded, featured on the 2017 Super Deluxe re-remix of Sgt. Pepper.

“Goodbye” is a simple song of, well, goodbye, sung to a lover who has left — although perhaps not permanently. Overall, it’s a relatively non-specific love song — except that it’s not.

First, it once again matches the emotional arc of Paul and John’s relationship, rather than their relationship with their public partners — in this case, Paul’s new relationship with Linda.

In 1969, Paul could easily have written a happy “I’m so in love” song for Mary Hopkin, and that would have suited her voice and her image beautifully. But Paul chose instead to write about being left behind by a lover who has gone away — and about his memories of that lover being intertwined with the songs he’s sung in the past that remind him of their time together, and about listening for his absent lover’s song to sing them back together again.

But none of that is why “Goodbye” is on the playlist.

“Goodbye” earns a spot on the playlist because it’s the only song in which Paul sings to a lover using masculine pronouns. He’s not singing to a woman, the absent lover in the song is a man.

Now, obviously Paul recorded the song using masculine pronouns because it’s a demo, meant to show Mary Hopkin how to sing the song for real when they record it. But for me at least, it’s especially poignant and powerful to hear Paul sing his hope that his lover will return to him without the possible misdirect of a feminine pronoun—

Far away, my lover sings a lonely song

And calls me to his side

Where the sound of lonely drums invites me on

I must be by his side

And if Paul did write it about and perhaps to John, it’s the only time — as far as I know — that Paul has sung masculine pronouns in a publicly-released recording.²² And I wonder, again, if that might have provided Paul a bit of therapy, given it was recorded as he and John were working on Abbey Road, their final album together.

Other likely JohnandPaul songs from this era include about half The White Album,²³ “The Long And Winding Road,” “Let It Be” “Come and Get It” (for Badfinger) “Golden Slumbers/You Never Give Me Your Money,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy"),” and of course, “Two Of Us,” the only song other than “How Do You Sleep?” “Too Many People” and “Dear Friend” that virtually everyone in Beatle Land agrees is a JohnandPaul song.

Everyone apparently, except Paul.

“Two Of Us” is on the playlist because I have no clue what’s going on with it and that intrigues me and I thought maybe it would intrigue y’all as well.

It’s the only song Paul regularly and proactively goes out of his way to tell us is not a JohnandPaul song — without his customary wink and nudge suggesting the opposite, as he does with songs like “Tug Of War.”

As late as 2021, the companion book to the Super Deluxe remix of Let It Be makes a point of insisting — even though no one asked — that “Two Of Us” is about Linda, which is both a non sequitur in the book and also complete nonsense and we all know it.

“Two of Us” is, therefore, a very good illustration of how no songwriter — and especially not Paul and John — should be taken at their word as to what a song is about.²⁴

“Two Of Us” is self-evidently autobiographical. And if you understand how a calendar works, you know that Paul and Linda do not, in 1968, have “memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And if you know your Beatles history, you know that Paul was not, in 1969 or at any other time, chasing paper and getting nowhere with Linda — but he was doing all of that with Apple and with John. And if you’ve been keeping up with goings-on at Forthlin Road, Paul’s childhood home in Liverpool, you know Paul and John did literally write letters on Paul’s wall, as the lyric describes.²⁵

And then there’s that plaititive, almost-whispered “goodbye” at the end. Not something you’d say — and certainly not that way — to a new love you were about to marry and build a family with.

But really, if you’ve got even a basic grasp of the language of the Grail, all it takes to see that “Two Of Us” is a JohnandPaul song is watching John and Paul work on it together — obsessively — throughout the entire eight hours of Get Back, the two of them focused only on one another, to the exclusion of absolutely everyone else (including Linda).

The other reason “Two Of Us” is on the playlist is because it’s a good example of how the inspiration for a song is not always what the song is about — which is something even artists themselves get confused about, when asked about the meaning of their art.

When asked about “Two Of Us,” Paul tells the story of how he wrote it while on a drive in the country with Linda, and there’s no reason to doubt this as the song’s origin story. We even have photographic evidence — a photograph by Linda of Paul with his guitar, sitting in the car working on the song.

Paul McCartney writing “Two Of Us.” photo by Linda McCartney

Where things get tangled is that the inspiration for a song and the meaning of the finished song are not always the same thing. Just because a Sunday drive with Linda gave Paul the idea for “Two Of Us” doesn’t mean that’s what “Two Of Us” ended up being about.

If you’ve ever created anything, you probably know that the initial idea almost inevitably changes during the creative process — sometimes so significantly that the final result has little or nothing to do with the original inspiration. But the artist’s confirmation bias towards their first inspiration often gets in the way of being able to see that the final result has morphed into having a different meaning. And so they continue to insist on the original inspiration as the meaning.

Given Paul’s vivid memories of his teenage road trips with John, it seems likely the Sunday drive with Linda reminded Paul of the times he and John did similar things. Remember this quote, from a prior Rabbit Hole—

“John and I used to hitch-hike places together, it was something that we did together quite a lot; cementing our friendship, getting to know our feelings, our dreams, our ambitions together. It was a very wonderful period. I look back on it with great fondness.”²⁶

And given that those times seemed to be clearly over, with John spending all of his time with Yoko, it’s hard not to think that Paul was feeling sad for what they’d lost. And that’s exactly the sort of experience that would inspire an artist to create a song — especially if songwriting is therapy, a place where Paul can express feelings he can’t express anywhere else.

But none of this explains Paul’s unusual and singular insistence that “Two Of Us” is about him and Linda. Or why he’s so adamant about it being about Linda that an explicit insistence that it’s about Linda and not about John ended up in the official companion book to the Let It Be Super Deluxe box set.

The lovers possibility reframes “Two Of Us” as a bittersweet song of farewell between two people still deeply in love and letting go with regret and reluctance — which describes Paul and John in 1969 and does not describe Paul and Linda in 1969. But unlike “No Words” or “However Absurd” or “Oh! Darling,” every line in “Two Of Us” could just as easily describe the end of a deep friendship as the end of a love affair.

I’d love to tell you I have the answer to why Paul continues to insist that “Two Of Us” is a song about Linda when virtually the whole world recognises it as being about John. But I don’t. And “Two Of Us’ is on the playlist as a reminder that we’re never going to recognise most of the meanings in their songs.

Not just because art is complex and we rarely have access to all of the meanings, but because most of the history of any couple, lovers or not, famous or not, happens in private. It’s likely that “Two Of Us” contains many of those private references — references we may never recognise, unless Paul or John chooses to tell us what they are. And so far, both of them have chosen to remain silent about “Two of Us.”²⁷

John, of course, also uses songwriting as therapy, which brings us to the next song on the playlist— “Isolation” — which makes the playlist not so much for the song itself, but for the studio outtake.

Most of “Isolation” is John singing about how lonely he feels in his new life with Yoko — which is and of itself worth noticing, given how happy John was claiming to be at the time and how much he and Yoko were performing their supposed happiness for the world’s media.

Here’s the first verse—

People say we got it made

Don't they know we're so afraid

Isolation

We're afraid to be alone

Everybody got to have a home

Isolation

“Isolation” initially sounds like it’s sung in the third person, to the listener — to us. Until the bridge, when John reveals that he’s singing to a specific person, a “you” —

I don't expect you to understand

After you’ve caused so much pain

But then again you're not to blame

You're just a human, a victim of the insane

As pissed off as Breakup John is with the world, it’s unlikely he’s yelling at us in this verse. He’s singing to a very specific “you” — and in 1970, in the middle of John’s angry Breakup Tour, there’s really no one other than Paul whom John would be accusing of having “caused so much pain.”

“Isolation” doesn’t usually get mentioned as a song written to Paul, which is actually a little odd, because it’s a harsh and bitter song, written as part of the distorted breakup narrative John was so aggressively advancing at the time. And anger and bitterness is what we’ve been conditioned to expect from John in 1970.

But "Isolation” wouldn't make the playlist, any more than “How Do You Sleep?” does, were it not for the studio outtakes that give us a very different take on that bridge.

Here’s a sample—

I don’t expect you to understand

After I’ve caused you so much pain

John changing the “you” to “I” isn’t a one time thing. He sings the bridge this way — shifting the blame onto himself — multiple times, as if he’s testing out where to put the blame, and how it feels to take it onto himself.

It’s only in the final vocal that John changes the line from “after I’ve caused so much pain” to “after you’ve caused so much pain.” And even when he does change it to “you,” after one such take, he adds “ye git” and laughs — not the cruel, mocking laugh we might expect from 1970 John, but a warm and affectionate, and loving laugh — exasperated by the foibles of a friend — or maybe a lover — but not audibly angry.²⁸

It’s painful for me, to realise Paul probably didn’t hear that laugh, and that he probably wasn't aware of these outtakes at the time. He likely only heard the final released version of “Isolation” containing John’s angry accusation. But Ringo was the drummer on “Isolation,” and in his breakup role as mostly neutral go-between, I like to think maybe he passed the word on to Paul. And I also like to think that John knew Ringo would pass along the message, although that might be a wishful reach.

The outtakes of “Isolation” once again suggest that the story we’ve been told about the breakup may not be as clear-cut as it’s been sold to us in all those books. Even in 1970 during the worst of their estrangement, John (at least off-the-record) considers taking the responsibility for the pain onto his own shoulders rather than putting it onto Paul’s. Whether he and Paul were lovers or not, John’s already on a path to forgiveness and reconciliation — even in the middle of the “bursting abscess” John later described his breakup interviews to be.²⁹

Let’s move on to the next song on the playlist — a song that shares an album with “Isolation” — titled simply “Love.”

“Love,” is not a love song in the traditional sense, despite its title and despite being written during the time when John is most aggressively performing his love affair with Yoko for the public. But although “Love” appears to be sung to Yoko, it’s not a song about being in love, it’s a song of searing, crippling loneliness, a cry in the dark asking in a broken, desperate whisper to be loved — easily on par with “Yesterday,” if only in its desolation.

More than the song as a whole, though, it’s a single line — “love is knowing we can be” — that points to “Love” being at least partly a song directed at Paul, as well as a song for Yoko. Because the simple reality was that in 1970 when the song was written, there was nothing keeping John from being with Yoko. They were legally married and arguably the world’s most public couple. There’s no reason whatsoever for John to plead for the right to have his relationship with Yoko exist. The world already acknowledges that it does — John and Yoko made sure of that with their bed-ins.

But of course, John and Paul’s relationship would have been an entirely different situation in 1970. Even with the changing social mores of the Sixties, two men still wouldn't have been free to love openly, not the way John could with Yoko. During the entire span of John and Paul’s relationship, their love would not have been — as John writes in “Love”, free to be.

“Love” hints at what might be the deeper reasons for the breakup. And we’ll get there in time. For now, let’s move on to the next song on the playlist.

“Little Lamb Dragonfly” seems as obviously written to John as “Isolation” is to Paul. It’s also another example of how the inspiration for a song is often different from what the song ends up being about.

Paul has said that the inspiration for “Little Lamb Dragonfly” came from an injured baby lamb that Linda was trying to save. But obviously from the lyrics, that’s not what the song ends up being about, because there is virtually nothing in this song that’s about a lamb, other than the title.

There is, however, plenty in “Little Lamb Dragonfly” to suggest it’s about John. Here’s an example—

Dragonfly you've been away too long

How did two rights make a wrong

Since you've gone I never know

I go on but I miss you so

In my heart I feel the pain

Keeps coming back again

“Little Lamb Dragonfly” is yet another example of how the emotional arc of John and Paul’s songs matches the emotional arc of their relationship with each other better than it does with their public partners.

In 1973, when “Little Lamb Dragonfly” is written, Paul is married to and living with Linda in England, while John is in New York. They’ve not yet reconciled and are still speaking only through song.

When Paul writes “Little Lamb Dragonfly,” his and John’s estrangement is clearly extreme enough that it may have motivated Paul to worry in an earlier verse that “we may never meet again.”

And given the pain that John was in at the time, I wonder if maybe Paul was wishing someone — maybe Paul himself— could care for John the way Linda was caring for the baby lamb. And I wonder if maybe the helplessness that Linda and Paul felt in trying to save the baby lamb was a metaphor for the helplessness that Paul felt in not being able to honour his pledge in “In Spite Of All the Danger” to “look after” John “like he’d never done before.”

“Little Lamb Dragonfly” concludes with what might be Paul’s aching plea to John to come back to him. The intimacy of the lyrics and the pain in Paul’s voice as he sings makes it self-evidently autobiographical—

Dragonfly the years ahead will show

How little we really know

Since you've gone it's never right

They go on, the lonely nights

Come on home and make it right

We’ve already talked at length about “No Words,” “Love Is Strange” and “Bless You,” but we only briefly mentioned “I Know (I Know),” mostly to point out that it includes the line “I know it’s getting better all the time as we share in each other’s minds.”

Given John’s tendency to put quotations from Lennon/McCartney songs in songs written for Paul, the quotation of “it’s getting better all the time” suggests “I Know (I Know)” is one of those songs. And it seems especially unlikely that John would be communicating a heartfelt and intimate apology to Yoko using lyrics that he wrote with Paul — and more than that, lyrics that are famously used to illustrate the creative tension and the “each half completes the other” magick of his and Paul’s partnership.

“I Know (I Know)” was written in 1973, just before John left Yoko for his 18-month long “Lost Weekend,” and shortly after John admitted on national TV that Paul may have been right to distrust their new manager Allen Klein, who was (surprise, surprise...) not turning out to be the working class hero John had thought he was.³⁰ This pairs with the observation from those who were there, including Paul in Many Years from Now, that the courtiers surrounding them attempted to play Paul and John against one another in order to gain leverage and power with one or the other of them.³¹ And both of those in combination point to the line “I know what’s coming down and I know where it’s coming from” in “I Know (I Know)” being written to Paul — as John gradually begins to wise up to what’s been going on, and how the two of them have been played against one another.³²

There’s more support for the lovers possibility in the grammatical phrasing of “I’m sorry, yes, I am, but I never could speak my mind” and its twin — another split couplet — “I’m guilty, yes, I am, but I never could read your mind.”

It’s a little tricky to parse the grammar of that split couplet, but it goes something like this — “never” used on its own refers to the past or the future, and “could” used on its own refers to the present or future. But by some mysterious grammatical magic, “never could” together refers only to the past — and not the recent past, but the more distant past — and also to a long-standing pattern of past failure, rather than an isolated or recent incident.

I don’t pretend to understand how this dark grammatical sorcery works, but I do understand intuitively — and you probably do, too — that when John says “I’m guilty, yes, I am, but I never could read your mind,” he’s not referring to something happening in the present, but to something that happened in the past, and not the immediate past of “yesterday” or “last week,” but the actual past. And in 1973, John is still with Yoko — albeit about to leave — and not yet reconciled with Paul. And so the present and the recent past is Yoko and the more distant “never could” past is Paul.

Finally, on a personal note, “I Know (I Know)” includes what, for me at least, is one of John’s most romantic lyrics — “Today I love you more than yesterday” — and there’s a good chance that line is sung for Paul.

The whispers through the wall continue after “I Know (I Know)” and “No Words” and “Bless You,” in Paul’s songs like “Call Me Back Again” — written during a time when Yoko was refusing to put Paul’s calls to John through. And “Arrow Through Me” and “I’m Carrying. ” And also in a handful of a struggle-to-share-feelings songs — though not nearly as many as during the breakup (for example, “Love Awake”). And there’s also “Cafe on the Left Bank,” which Paul has said was inspired by his trip with John to Paris in 1961,³³ and that pairs with the home recording of John around the same time singing a parody of an old French love song in which he calls Paul’s name and riffs about his romantic — and explicitly erotic — memories of Paris and a “cafe on the Left Bank.”³⁴

And then at the end of the ‘70s, for no visible reason, Paul writes a small collection of optimistic songs suggesting a new beginning — “With A Little Luck,” and “On the Way” and “Coming Up.”

And John writes “(Just Like) Starting Over.”

In many ways, “(Just Like) Starting Over” is the most obvious of all of John’s possible songs to Paul — far more obvious than “Bless You,” although it uses many of the same lyrical devices.

To fully understand “(Just Like) Starting Over” as a JohnandPaul song requires —and I’m so sorry to keep saying this, but — far more context than we can lay out here, because it’s so dramatically contrary to everything we’ve been told about John and Paul in the late ‘70s and in 1980, even by John and Paul themselves. And thus the contention that “(Just Like) Starting Over” is a song for Paul may be unpersuasive for many of you, and understandably so.

So what’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” doing on the playlist, if we can’t talk about it yet and if you might not believe me if we did?

Well, it’s here because it’s such an important — and joyful — JohnandPaul song that it would be malfeasant to leave it off entirely. And while we can’t yet fully get into the context that seems to make it a near-certain JohnandPaul song, we can at least mention the magpied references to Paul’s songs “Another Day” and “My Love,” and the reference to Wings — all of which as we talked about, relative to “Bless You” — seem to be tells that a song is about and for Paul.

Here’s the verse — and on the recording, notice not just the magpies themselves, but the way John places those magpies at the points of lyrical emphasis in the song, so that when he sings them, they particularly stand out. John is careful to make sure that they’re noticed.

Everyday we used to make it love

Why can't we be making love nice and easy

It's time to spread our wings and fly

Don't let another day go by, my love

It'll be just like starting over.

That’s two references to Paul’s songs and a reference to Wings in a single verse. “My Love” on its own is generic enough that it could be a coincidence, but this is the second time “wings” has appeared in a song probably about Paul. And the third time “Another Day” has appeared, and neither of those — especially placed in a single verse — are likely to be coincidence. And even more especially, strategically placed as they are for emphasis in the lyrical line. And because of the proximity to “wings” and “Another Day,” it’s unlikely that “My Love,” which gets the biggest emphasis of all in John’s vocal, is a coincidence either.

Even more interesting than the bridge in the finished song is the outtake, which I can’t play for you because the audio on the only bootleg I’ve found is too low to be audible. But the lyrics are—

Everyday we used to make it, love

Why can’t we be making love nice and easy

The time has come the walrus said

For you and me to stay in bed again

It’ll be just like starting over.

³⁵Now, if you know your Beatles lore, you know that after 1968’s “Glass Onion,” the Walrus went from being a reference to John to being forevermore a reference to Paul.

We’re not going to go down the whole “I Am the Walrus”/”Glass Onion” rabbit hole because if we do, we might never find our way back out. But regardless of the details of how Paul became the Walrus, after 1968, the walrus is Paul. And John is well-aware that any reference he, John, makes to walruses pretty much forever will be taken as a reference to Paul. That’s not in any way at all ambiguous.

We talked about Paul’s song “However Absurd” as especially significant, because it’s the song in which he most overtly pairs his regret at now having said “I love you” to John with a specifically erotic reference — “when we made love, the game was over” — apparently telling us explicitly that his relationship with John was both romantic and sexual. “(Just Like) Starting Over” is John’s version of the same thing.

While others have noticed and suggested that the lyrical quotations and the mention of Wings suggests the song is for Paul, it’s interesting — and telling — how most people don’t go on to notice the line, “everyday we used to make it, love/why can’t we be making love” as an explicitly erotic description of the relationship John’s using all those Paul song titles to describe.

There’s more to notice in “(Just Like) Starting Over.”

The “early days” reference in “why don’t we take off alone like we used to in the early days” would certainly apply more to John and Paul’s hitchhiking trips, like Paris and the Nerk Twins trip, than to the very public and performative travels of John and Yoko.³⁶

And then there’s the Elvis reference in the intro on the stripped down version, as well as the Elvis-like style of John’s vocal — which at the very least doesn’t suggest a song for Yoko, who famously banned John from playing early rock and roll at home.³⁷ And as we talked about relative to “No Words” in episode 1:5, Elvis is never just Elvis when it comes to John and Paul, because Elvis seems deeply associated with Paul in John’s mind — and seems to have been since the day they met.³⁸

There’s a lot more we can say about “(Just Like” Starting Over” when we have more context. And if “(Just Like ) Starting Over” is written for Paul — as it seems to be — then that puts a whole other spin on the promotional campaign for Double Fantasy, and on John and Paul’s relationship in 1980, that’s very different from what we’ve been led to believe.³⁹

We have a long way to go before we have the context to talk about all of that, but if “(Just Like) Starting Over” is indeed for Paul, then it — along with Paul’s “With a Little Luck,” “On the Way” and “Coming Up” and some intriguing primary source research — points to what might have been planned as a new beginning for both of them.⁴⁰ We’ll talk more about all of that when we get there in the story. But for now, let’s pause a minute and imagine what might have been, were it not for one horrific day in December of 1980.

Unsurprisingly, the theme of regret at not having been able to say “I love you” in the way it needed to be said returns to Paul’s songs following John’s murder, and remains a central theme to this day, both in interviews and in his songs — beginning with his 1982 official ‘love song to John,’ “Here Today.”

Paul — and to a lesser extent, John — was significantly influenced by the Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson’s response to the groundbreaking songwriting and musical arrangements on Rubber Soul. And Paul has often cited Pet Sounds as a major creative inspiration for the arrangements on Sgt. Pepper.⁴¹ And he’s also said that he played Pet Sounds for John “so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence.”⁴²

One of the songs on Pet Sounds is a song called “Here Today.”

This isn’t a random coincidence. First, Paul is unlikely to have somehow forgotten that his ‘love song to John’ shares a title with a song on an album that features so prominently in his musical life. But the main way we know for sure it’s not a random coincidence is the final line of Brian Wilson’s “Here Today” —

I'm not saying you won't have a good love with her

But I keep on remembering things like they were

And its striking similarity to this line in Paul’s “Here Today”—

But as for me

I still remember how it was before

And I am holding back the tears no more

Maybe this is just an homage to an album that had a huge impact on Paul. But it seems unlikely, in Paul’s public tribute song to John, Paul would be thinking about honouring Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. There are other songs in which that would be more appropriate.

Instead, “Here Today” seems to be Paul’s version of a shadow song. The lyrics of Paul’s “Here Today” point us to a shadow song of the same title, not written by Paul, but that perhaps expresses something that Paul really needed to say in the wake of John’s murder — to someone other than John. But maybe couldn't say publicly in a song of his own.

Paul’s “Here Today” is a ‘love song to John,’ but Brian Wilson’s “Here Today” is not a love song. It’s an accusatory song directed to the person his lover left him for.

Brian Wilson’s “Here Today” is a little hard to untangle, given the pronoun situation in the lyrics, and I won’t take us down the pronoun rabbit hole again, especially for a song not even written by Paul or John.

But given Paul’s perpetually-strained relationship with Yoko — and maybe you’re starting to see why, if there is truth to the lovers possibility, it was perhaps even more strained than we’ve always thought — it’s hard not to think that Paul’s flashing musical arrow pointing to the other “Here Today” is a message for Yoko.

Here’s the first verse of Brian Wilson’s “Here Today”—

It starts with just a little glance now

Right away you're thinkin' 'bout romance now

You know you ought to take it slower

But you just can't wait to get to know her

A brand new love affair is such a beautiful thing

But if you're not careful think about the pain it can bring

Addressed either to John or to Yoko, this sounds an awful lot like Paul’s referring — through Brian Wilson’s lyrics — to the way John made Yoko his whole world overnight without either him or Yoko taking even a moment to consider the consequences and what they’d be destroying in the process.

And here’s the final verse of Brian Wilson’s “Here Today” —

Right now you think that she's perfection

This time is really an exception

Well, you know I hate to be a downer

But I'm the guy she left before you found her

I'm not saying you won't have a good love with her

But I keep on remembering things like they were

Again, a verse that seems directed to Yoko and maybe also to John — anger at a loved one who’s died is, as we’ll talk about in a future episode, also part of the grieving process.

It’s not a perfect match, since it’s a retro-fit lyric and not an original custom-crafted for the occasion. But the overall sentiment of the song is clear. If Paul’s reference to Brian Wlson’s “Here Today” is indeed meant as a message to Yoko, then that message is that in his grief over losing John, Paul is also struggling with his anger that if not for Yoko, John would still be alive. And perhaps — given the possible new start hinted at in “(Just Like) Starting Over” and “Coming Up” and “On My Way” and “With A Little Luck” — here with him.⁴³

Before we move on, it’s important to point out that Paul has said he regrets one line in his “Here Today.”

“Here Today” is framed as a dialogue between Paul and John, not unlike their exchanges in “Getting Better” and “We Can Work It Out.” In one such exchange, Paul wonders what John would say if he were — well, here today, and he answers on John’s behalf with, “you’d probably laugh and say that we were worlds apart.”

Paul has said he does not believe that line is true, or that John would have said or believed that⁴⁴ — and there is, again, no reason to doubt his assessment, given everything we’ve seen about his and John’s mutual obsession and musical ‘whispers through the wall’ with one another throughout the ‘70s. And it’s certainly not true if there was some kind of new start planned between them, as “(Just Like) Starting Over” and “Coming Up” suggest.

We’ll talk more in a future episode about the effect that the distorting of the story away from the closeness between John and Paul had on Paul. But for here, it’s enough to remind us again that in the years following John’s murder, the distorted breakup narrative surged back into the public consciousness — thus motivating the first round of Grail-phobic books that insist that Paul and John weren’t even friends.

Paul has said that during those dark times, he had to constantly remind himself that he hadn’t somehow imagined his whole relationship with John and how close they’d been.⁴⁵ The “worlds apart” line — now unfortunately enshrined into lyrical history alongside “How Do You Sleep?” — is, based on what Paul has said about his regrets about having written it, the result of that insecurity and self-doubt.

This is the damage the Fisher King wound of the breakup does, and the pain it inflicts on everyone associated with it, when love is stripped out of the story— on all of us, on the story, on the music itself — and especially and most intimately and directly, on Paul.

So in counterbalance, let’s close our discussion of “Here Today” with the most important line in the song — Paul’s “I love you” — his gift to John in his effort to make right his regret about not having been able to tell John he loved him the way it needed to be said while John was alive.

But as for me

I still remember how it was before

And I am holding back the tears no more

I love you

Of course, as we’ve seen, Paul has said “I love you” to John many, many times and in various ways in his songs, many of them prior to 1980. And there’s little to no doubt John heard every single one of those pre-1980 songs. And we also talked about “No Words” as having the distinction of being the first time Paul said “I love you” in a song that seems pretty obviously to be written for John.

But in “Here Today,” for the first time, he tells John “I love you” in a way that’s not disguised beneath wordplay and pronoun shifts and games with songwriting credits — and in a way that (one might think) not even the most Grail-phobic writer could deny, even if they persistently brush aside the implications and the larger context.

Of course, despite this, the Grail-phobic music press did indeed continue to deny the love between John and Paul, and we’ll talk more about that in an upcoming episode. For now, let’s talk about what might be the truer “love song to John” on the Tug of War album — the title song.

We talked briefly about “Tug of War” in the main episode, but it’s worth taking a closer look at the lyrics we skipped over, to see why it’s a likely JohnandPaul song.

Here’s 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

There’s nothing ambiguous here. Who but John Lennon was ever — or could ever — be in a creative tug of war with Paul McCartney?⁴⁶

Here’s Paul’s bridge on “Tug Of War,” painting the vision of the world denied to both of them, not just by John’s murder, but by the intolerance of the time—

In another world we could

Stand on top of the mountain

With our flag unfurled

In a time to come we will be

Dancing to the beat played on a different drum

⁴⁷ Whether Paul and John acted on their love for one another or not, it’s hard to hear “Tug Of War” as anything less than a passionate song of regret and longing, and a call for the freedom to openly love whoever we love in a more beautiful, more inclusive world.

The final verse of “Tug of War” pairs with the final verse of another song we looked at briefly in the main episode — “However Absurd” — in its regret that it’s too late for Paul and John to have what they might have had, in that better world Paul and John both imagine so often in their songs—

Custom made dinosaurs,

Too late now, for a change.

Everything is under the sun,

But nothing is for keeps

We already talked about “However Absurd” as being among the most significant possible JohnandPaul songs, because it explicitly links Paul’s regret relative to not having been able to tell John he loved him with an erotic relationship—

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 it may seem

“When we made love, the game was over” also calls back to “Just Fun,” in its realisation that erotic love has turned friendship into something deeper and more intimate.

We haven’t talked at all about the absurdist parts of “However Absurd” — or much about both Paul and John’s love of absurdist lyrics in general. And we really don’t need to, to see that the overall lyric seems to be Paul telling, in very broad strokes, the story of their relationship.

“Living dreams with mouths ajar” would seem to reference The Beatles reaching the toppermost of the poppermost, while “with our hands on our ears” may refer to them trying to block out the deafening screams of Beatlemania that forced them to stop performing live. And in the final verse, “custom made dinosaurs” seems to be a self-deprecating (if falsely modest) reference to The Beatles as being part of the distant past when Fabs freely roamed the earth. And of course, “too late now for a change” may be referencing John’s murder.

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.⁴⁸

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.⁴⁹

It’s not hard 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, any ambiguity in 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.

The point here is, when it comes to lyrics, whether it’s “Oh! Darling” or “However Absurd,” or any other of their songs, believe what you hear, not what you read — even if what you read comes directly from Paul or John themselves.

Before we move on from “However Absurd,” a brief mention of the line in the opening verse — “this is not a lie.”

“This is not a lie” seems to be a reference to a painting by Dutch surrealist artist René Magritte, who’s, over the years, been a significant influence on Paul in both his songwriting and his painting.

Magritte’s most famous painting, titled “The Treachery of Images,” is of a smoking pipe, with the words “this is not a pipe” written underneath.

“This is not a pipe.” The Treachery of Images, Rene Magritte, 1929.

Art critics have been squinting their eyes at Magritte’s this-is-not-a-pipe painting for almost a century without any definitive conclusions as to its full meaning, and I don’t claim to have any new insights into Magritte’s intentions here.

But what does seem clear is that at the very least, Magritte is inviting us to think about the relationship between art and reality. We’d normally look at a picture of a smoking pipe and describe that painting simply as “a pipe.” But in reality, “The Treachery of Images” isn’t a pipe at all, but a painting of a pipe — and these two things are related but fundamentally different.

“The Treachery of Images” seems to be reminding us that art can only ever be a depiction of truth and not the truth itself.

Given Magritte’s influence on Paul’s creative life, Paul was almost certainly aware of the parallel between “this is not a pipe” and “this is not a lie” when he referenced it in the opening verse of “However Absurd.” And Paul was also almost certainly aware that he’s referencing a revolutionary work of art that challenges the distinction between art and reality — between art and truth — and that he’s doing so in a song in which he seems to be revealing his romantic and erotic relationship with John.

It seems clear that “However Absurd” is Paul’s version of the Magritte painting, relative to the lovers possibility. And that he’s posing the same question Magritte asked, about the nature of reality and truth, in this story he’s about to tell — a story in which Paul seems to explicitly tell us that he and John were lovers.

“However Absurd” seems to be Paul’s invitation to us to consider that question, and the complexities of revealing truth through art in a world that’s been taught by our collective fear of softness not to see that truth.

To close out this playlist, while of course our focus has been on the songs that Paul and John have written, it would be a mistake to overlook the traces of the lovers possibility in their cover songs, which also frequently seem to be selected relative to the emotional arc of their relationship.

And as we saw with “Love Is Strange,” John and Paul often make small but significant lyrical changes to their versions of cover songs that shift the meanings of those songs to be more personal and autobiographical.

The example of this that, for me, is most moving is “More I Cannot Wish You,” a song from the stage version of the musical Guys and Dolls. Paul covered “More I Cannot Wish You” on Kisses On the Bottom, his 2012 album of Great American songbook standards.

I chose the live version of “More I Cannot Wish You” for the playlist because it’s one of the only two songs Paul performs live in which he tears up while he sings it — the other being “Here Today.” (the live version of “Here Today” on the playlist is chosen for that reason as well)

On the recording, Paul attributes his emotional reaction to performing “More I Cannot Wish You” to it being about “a parent giving advice to their kid and wishing them the best for the future.” I’m not a parent, so it’s hard for me to speak to that reaction. But I do know that “More I Cannot Wish You” includes these lines—

But more I cannot wish you

Than to wish you find your love

Your own true love, this day

Standing there gazing at you

Full of the bloom of youth

Paul then goes on to make slight adjustments to the lyrics.

The original lyrics of the next section are “with a "With a sheep’s eye / And a lickerish tooth.” But in Paul’s version, he’s changed the lyrics to—

With a sheepish eye

And a look of the truth

And the strong arms

To carry you away

The lyrical changes — “with a sheepish eye and a look of the truth” — paired with a reference to “music, merry music while you're young” and “gazing at you full of the bloom of youth” makes it a tender and accurate description of a young and irreverent John Lennon. And it’s hard not to think maybe Paul’s tearing up is because of these lines, and the way they call back up into being his memories of John during their early days together, and his imagining of what might have been.

Spotting the traces of the lovers possibility in their songs is a joyful, beautiful, life affirming pastime — even as it’s sometimes so heartbreaking it’s hard to bear.

Before we close out the playlist, I want to make a quick mention of the art of John and Paul that extends beyond their songs — John’s books and Paul’s paintings and poetry. There are traces of the lovers possibility throughout all of that art. In John’s books, including the first ones “written” (in John’s words) “in conjugal with Paul.” And as we talked about in episode 1:4, the Paris story in Skywriting by Word of Mouth.⁵⁰ Paul’s book of poetry, Blackbird Singing,⁵¹ includes several poems that might be about John, including “Toy Store,” Black Leather Jacket,” “This Is the Way,” Fly By Night” and most notably (if more playfully and tongue-in-cheek), “Rocking On.”

Then there are Paul’s paintings, which I’d love to talk about but I’m not enough of an authority in visual art to do that effectively. But I will point out that Paul does paint portraits of John, and at least one painting of John’s bedroom, and that he’s said in a 2000 interview that if he’s going to see a face in one of his paintings, it’s going to be John’s. Not Linda’s. Not his mother’s. John’s.⁵²

“John’s Room,” Paul McCartney, 1990.

⁵³ The songs on the playlist are, again, just a small sampling of songs that contain traces of the lovers possibility. It was an exercise in extreme self-restraint not to cram all of them in here. But we’ll continue to notice them as they come up, and the way the songs follow the emotional arc of their relationship, when we re-tell the story in the second part of this series. And we’ll also continue to look at the way that fluency in the language of the Grail reveals deeper and more complex meanings and lyrical mastery that isn’t visible without the lovers possibility.

Obviously, fair use means that I can only play the relevant clips here and not the complete songs. But I hope you take the time to listen — or re-listen — to these songs in their entirety on the playlist, especially Paul’s solo songs like “Tug of War” and “However Absurd.” Those are “big” Paul McCartney songs, unfolded in the full glory of his — and, in the case of “Tug of War,” George Martin’s — orchestral arrangements. It’s as if Paul hopes by making the songs big enough, he can penetrate the thickest wall of all and reach John, as he did the first day they met and every day thereafter, with his music.

And more than that, I wonder if making those songs big and lush and important is Paul’s way of trying to penetrate the wall of our collective Grail-blind obliviousness to the lovers possibility, signaling to us that — hey, look over here for who I am and what I care about, not at what I say in those interviews where I don’t share my innermost feelings, and not at what you read in those books that say John and I didn’t even like each other. Look here — listen here — to my music, where I keep telling you to look for the truth of my life, hoping someday you might pay attention.

Until next week, when we’ll do something a little different—

Peace, love and strawberry fields,

Faith

1. “Just Fun”

2. — which by the way, ends with “I love you”

Black, white, green, red

Can I take my friend to bed?

Pink, brown, yellow, orange, and blue

I love you

3. The way the pronouns are used in “Dear Friend,” as well as the lyric as a whole, also suggests in much the same as in “Bless You,” that the friend Paul is in love with in the song is not Linda, as is usually assumed.

4. Quarry Man drummer Colin Hanton writes in his book Pre-Fab (Book Guild, 2018, co-written with Colin Hall, the long-time caretaker of Mendips) that Paul’s father, Jim McCartney, was concerned enough about John’s influence on Paul that he made a rule that John couldn't visit Paul at his house unless Jim was present to chaperone. Paul and John seem to have ignored this rule, sagging off school and spending time at Paul’s house when his father and brother were away. (Mike McCartney also remembers Paul giving him money to go to the movies so Paul and John could have the house to themselves.)

Others who were a witness to the early days of Paul and John’s relationship consistently mention that Jim wasn’t happy with the friendship between John and Paul, and that — obviously — he didn't like Paul sagging off school to spend afternoons with John. But to my knowledge, only Colin mentions the rule that John was not permitted to be alone with Paul at Paul’s house.

It's possible that Colin is mis-remembering — it was over sixty years ago, after all. But of all of the people who have written memoirs of the early days, Colin is far and away most careful. In his book, he’s meticulous about acknowledging when he doesn’t know or remember something, which is why his book is far and away the most credible account of the early days I’ve found.

I was fortunate on a research trip to Liverpool to spend an afternoon with Colin, and I asked him about Jim’s rule. He was confident that his memory was accurate — which is why he included it in his book.

5. The line in “In Spite Of All The Danger” — “I’ll keep all the others from knocking at your door” — is the first hint of the mutual possessiveness, personal and creative, that (as we’ll explore more in the future) appears as a recurrent theme in many of the songs that seem to be written for an about one another, and that seems to have defined and troubled much of their relationship, and that without a doubt was a major factor in the breakup.

That possessiveness appears next in more obvious form in an unfinished lyric by Paul titled “Tell Me Who He Is,” which Paul chose to include in his 2022 book The Lyrics, and which, though Paul doesn’t offer a specific date of composition, seems to date from around the time Stu Sutcliffe appears in John’s life, and Paul includes a band photograph that includes Stu Sutcliffe in his discussion of the song in his lyrics.

Tell me who he is

Tell me that you’re mine not his

He says he loves you more than I do

Tell me who he is.

Tell him where to go

Tell him that I love you so

He couldn’t love you more than I do

Tell me who he is.

6. Episode 1:4 includes an extended discussion of Paul’s (and according to John, Brian’s) ability to stabilize John’s emotional volatility and self-destruction behaviour. There’s also an extended footnote in episode 1:6 relative to the discussion of “Love Is Strange” about Paul’s concern re: John’s drug habit, relative to being his creative — and possibly romantic — partner.

7. From the 1964 tour of Australia—

“At the Sheraton, Malcolm Searle was given privileged access for his daily 3AK bulletins. Reporting from the kitchenette of the penthouse suite, he chatted to Paul, John and George, as Paul cooked steak and spuds for his and John’s dinner. The conversation turned playfully camp when Searle called Paul “a regular little housewife” and described the gingham apron he was wearing. “Does he cook for you very much?” John (indignantly): “Don’t say it like that, it sounds funny.” (Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong, When We Was Fab: Inside the Beatles Australasian Tour 1964, Woodslane Pty Ltd., 1964.)

I’ve referenced this in a footnote in a prior episode in the context of shared hotel rooms. It’s also relevant here.

And for Paul to do this for John in 1964 was beyond unusual. Even beyond a boy cooking for another boy, this is at the height of Beatlemania with room service as well as an entourage of helpers available to get them any kind of food they want, just the wave of a hand away. And yet, it’s Paul looking after John in maybe the most literal “look after you” way that we can offer another person — putting on an apron and cooking comfort food for him (and note that it’s only for John and himself, not George and Ringo).

We get another glimpse of Paul’s caretaking of John in a studio outtake of Paul and John working on “Yellow Submarine” included on the 2022 Super Deluxe Revolver re-issue, when we hear Paul... I want to use the word “fussing,” though I suspect Paul wouldn't appreciate it, over John to make sure he has everything he needs to be able to record the demo.

And on another outtake on another album (the specifics of which are currently AWOL in my brain, so I will update this when I find it back, apologies), we hear Paul telling the control room,’ hang on, John broke a string.” These are both tiny examples of Paul’s by-then-habitual focus on John’s needs. There are no examples that I’ve found where it goes the other way, or where this happens with George and Ringo, which suggests this was mostly a Paul looking after John situation, as the overall dynamic suggest

8. I realised after I wrote and recorded this episode that I probably shouldn’t have shortstroked the implications of suicide in “A World Without Love.” I debated whether to mention it at all, but it felt dishonest not to, and having mentioned it, I wish I’d elaborated a bit more.

When I’m suggesting here is that John’s self-destructive behaviour, including his heavy drug use, might have included suicidal impulses. I’m not a licensed psychologist, but I don’t think you need to be one to know that wouldn't be at all unusual in someone with his psychological traumas and without much in the way of healthy coping mechanisms or competent therapeutic support.

And John did have occasional thoughts of suicide, it’s at least possible he might have confessed this to Paul, given the intensely close nature of their bond. More likely, Paul may have sussed it out himself in some way, given (as we talked about at length in episode 1:4) Paul seems to have been so remarkably adept at reading John’s emotional cues.

However he noticed it, that risk of suicide might have weighed on Paul’s mind when he wrote “In Spite Of All The Danger,” “A World Without Love.” The theme of suicide also appeares on another early song written mostly by Paul which takes “Suicide” as the title, and on “That Means A Lot,” a 1966 joint composition written mostly by Paul that includes the lines (and which is, also, one of their many songs about hiding love) —

Love can be deep inside, love can be suicide

Can't you see you can't hide what you feel when it's real

That’s a lot of songs about suicide, and even more songs about danger, and more still about hiding love. And because art is where they’ve told us the truth of their story is found, I doubt any of that is a coincidence.

9. Peter & Gordon’s version of “A World Without Love” is one of the most jarring mismatches of musical arrangement and lyrics that I’ve ever heard in a pop song. The pairing of the soaring sunshine pop of the music and vocals against the dark themes of the lyric makes me wonder if the song is meant to be ironic.

10. “Now that Peter [Asher] had a record label, Paul gave him a song to launch his career. It was called "World Without Love", something Paul wrote when he was sixteen at Forthlin Road though he changed the words a bit for Peter and Gordon. Paul: "The funny first line always used to please John. ‘Please lock me away -’ ‘Yes, okay.’ End of song.”

Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

NOTE re: the reference to changing the lyrics. We don’t have the original lyrics, but given that the opening lines provide the hook, it’s likely those lines are from the original. And Paul’s reference to “always” suggests that John teasing him about the opening line dates from before Peter & Gordon. But either way, it’s nonetheless an unusual theme, whenever the “lock me away” reference appeared in the song.And whether Paul wrote it in 1958 or in 1964, it applies equally to the danger of same sex love during that era.

11

I've got every reason on earth to be mad

'Cause I just lost the only girl I had

If I could get my way

I'd get myself locked up today

But I can't, so I'll cry instead

12. The Wolfenden Report was commissioned by the British government, and it recommended an easing of the laws prohibiting same sex love between men. The report was released in September of 1957, just two months after Paul and John met. The Report made headline news in the UK, and sparked a national debate about the alleged social dangers of homosexuality. Feeding on the frenzy as the media always does, the news during this time period frequently included reports of men and boys being imprisoned for engaging in sex. Paul would almost certainly have seen at least some of these news stories. Even as a teenager, he would have understood that loving the wrong person in Liverpool in the 1950s was a dangerous proposition.

13. It’s been awhile since we’ve talked about it, so now is a good time to remind us that it was their clean-cut image that allowed them into the suburban living rooms and Royal Variety performances that in turn gave them the transgressive power to spark the Love Revolution. Had they sung more overtly about sex, it’s unlikely they would have had the cultural power to spark a revolution. One thing that often gets lost in the call for dramatic “change the world!” action is that in the initial stages of a revolution, it’s the artists who push the cultural boundaries more subversively are the ones who bring the revolution to the mainstream, where it has to go if it’s to become an actual culture-changing revolution.

Those who come after have the luxury of being openly transgressive only because they’re reaping the benefits of the original artists who defied the culture in more subversive ways — and yes, I’m talking to the Stones fans among you here. Mick and Company couldn't have behaved badly and gotten away with it if The Beatles hadn’t opened the door for them by behaving politely — and thus subversively — first.

14. Lennon/McCartney songs from 1957 through Help! that reference secrets, secret love affairs, hiding, a desire not to have to hide and joy in sharing love openly with the world — I’m In Love, A World Without Love, Do You Want To Know A Secret?, There's a Place, Thank You Girl, I’ll Get You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Little Child, If I Fell, And I Love Her, I Feel Fine, That Means A Lot, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, I’ve Just Seen A Face, It’s For You (CIlla Black)

Secret lovers is also a theme throughout Paul’s solo work, but it becomes impossible, especially after John’s murder, to untangle Paul’s regret at not having been able to tell John he loved him from songs that are more directly about secret love affairs, so it’s hard to get an exact count. Songs that fall explicitly on the side of lyrics about secret love affairs rather than hiding feelings/regret include “Press,” “Friends to Go,” “Secret Friend,” “Monkberry Moon Delight,” “Don’t Stop Running” (Fireman) and “Flaming Pie.”

John’s references to secret love affairs in his solo work are less frequent in part because, but this isn’t surprising given John’s solo career was brief and half of his solo songs were written during a time of his intense enmeshment with Yoko, his estrangement with Paul, and his mental breakdown, when he had other, more pressing emotional matters to write about. After their reconciliation, we really only have Walls and Bridges and Double Fantasy. On Walls And Bridges, we’ve already talked about the reference to secret love on “Bless You.”. As for Double Fantasy, we’ll get there eventually.

15. Whoever runs John’s Instagram page (I’m told it’s Sean, but I don’t have confirmation on that) may or may not have noticed the romantic nature of “In My Life,” when they posted this series of images in honour of Paul’s 80th birthday — but the people who commented sure didn’t—

John Lennon official Instagram page, June 17, 2022. Notice the pairing of "of all these friends and lovers "with the photo of John and Paul/

16. Here’s Paul about “I Want To Hold Your Hand”--

“I Want to Hold Your Hand" is not about Jane, but it was certainly written when I was with her. To tell you the truth, I think we were writing more to a general audience. I may have been drawing on my own experience with a person I was in love with at the time — and sometimes it was very specific — but mostly we were writing to the world.”

Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, Liveright, 2022.

And here’s John about “In My Life”--

“[If I Fell] is semi-autobiographical but not that conscious, you know. It's really about— it's not about Cyn, my first wife.”

John Lennon, interviewed by David Sheff, September 1980. quote taken from original audio.

17. In one of the appearances of “Oh! Darling” in Get Back, as Paul sings ‘Oh! Darling,” John and Yoko are canoodling off to the side. We can see Paul leaning into the vocal, his eyes going to John and Yoko as he does, paired with the tension in his body and his savage attack of his bass as he sings it. And you can also see that John’s attention is not entirely on Yoko as this is happening. (I’m not finding a clip of it on YouTube, but if I do, I’ll post it.)

Of course and as always, this isn’t proof of the lovers possibility, but it is an interesting editorial choice on Peter Jackson’s part.

18. This isn’t the first time Paul has sung something differently than the official lyric, knowing that no one other than the intended audience will notice it.

Here’s Paul talking about recording “Girl” with John—

“It was 'dit dit dit dit', which we decided to change in our waggishness to 'tit tit tit tit', which is virtually indistinguishable from 'dit dit dit dit'. And it gave us a laugh. It was to get some light relief in the middle of this real big career that we were forging. If we could put in something that was a little bit subversive then we would. George Martin might say, 'Was that "dit dit" or "tit tit" you were singing?' 'Oh, "dit dit", George, but it does sound a bit like that, doesn't it?' Then we'd get in the car and break down laughing.”

Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

Here’s Paul talking about recording “Day Tripper” with John—

“This was getting towards the psychedelic period when we were interested in winking to our friends and comrades in arms, putting in references that we knew our friends would get but that the Great British

Public might not. So "she's a big teaser" was "she's a prick teaser". The mums and dads didn't get it but the kids did.”

Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

And here’s Paul talking about “Too Many People,” his “diss track” written for John and Yoko in 1971—

“The first verse and the chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster, and when I did the vocal on the second line, ‘Too many reaching for a piece of cake’, I remember singing it as ‘Piss off cake’, which you can hear if you really listen to it.”

Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, Liveright, 2022.

19. Geoff Emerick, Here There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles,Gotham, 2006.

full quote: “It was at around this time that Paul started getting in the habit of coming in early every afternoon, before the others arrived, to have a go at singing the lead vocal to “Oh Darling.” Not only did he have me record it with fifties-style tape echo, he even monitored the backing track over speakers instead of headphones because he wanted to feel as though he were singing to a live audience. Every day we’d be treated to a hell of a performance as McCartney put his all into singing the song all the way through once and once only, nearly ripping his vocal cords to shreds in the process.

“George Martin would frequently announce triumphantly, “That’s it; that’s the one,” but Paul would overrule him, saying, “No, it’s not there yet; let’s try it again tomorrow.” For all that—and he took many whacks at the song, over many days—I never sensed any real frustration in Paul, even though he was obviously having trouble getting the vocal the way he wanted it in his head. He knew what the ultimate goal was, and he knew that he was going to get it eventually.”

NOTE: Geoff Emerick’s book is unique in Beatles studies. Along with George Martin, he was present in various roles from their audition through their last session together. Also like George Martin, Emerick never socialised with them or became part of their inner circle. And even more than George Martin, Emerick had a “fishbowl” experience — observing them on the studio floor without the bias of watching friends or interacting with them directly. As a result, Emerick’s observations of their studio behaviour are second-to-none and imo it belongs solidly at the top of “Best Books About the Beatles” lists.

His interpretations of what he’s seeing, however, seem far less reliable. Being able to accurately observe behaviour does not mean one is fluent in the language of the Grail — and Emerick’s book is consistently Grail-illiterate. He also falls prey to the “John and Paul didn’t write together in the later years” misunderstanding that we talked about in last week’s Rabbit Hole— understandable given that he only saw what he saw and wasn’t working in an intimate creative relationship with a partner, and that he wasn’t seeing them at all outside of the recording studio where they actually lived their lives.

20. Before my fellow vocalists email me to correct my description, what Paul’s doing in “Oh! Darling” is belt singing at the top of his range in chest voice rather than head voice, and that’s what I was referring to as painful and dangerous. That was too much wonky detail for the episode, so I simplified it at the expense of technical accuracy.

21. As you can see, I’m a little fixated on the tiara situation — because it is so very bizarre, even for the Sixties and even for JohnandYoko. And as we’ll see when we get there in the story, it has some interesting mythological symbolism that’s relevant to the breakup in ways even beyond the obvious.

22. There wasn’t room for it on the playlist, but “Tight A$” — easily the most overtly erotic song John ever wrote (with perhaps the exception of “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”) also seems fairly obviously to be about Paul, because who else could it be about? And while I’m not 100% sure, it does sound like John occasionally sings a “he” instead of a “she” in the outtakes and even in the final recording. And more than that, the sexual double meaning of the lyrics, including the title, make it... unlikely... that it’s about a woman.

23. Possibly including “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” And while we’re here, it’s worth noticing that “inverted” was a British euphemism (though less popular by 1968) for homosexuality.

24. “The duet by John and Paul prompted many listeners to assume 'Two Of Us' was an expression of their friendship with 'memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead'. 'It was certainly about me and Linda,” Paul clarified, “'but anytime in The Beatles you ever said "two of us" or "you and me", it could often relate to the other guys and "Two Of Us" might, when John and I were doing our Everlys bit, seem like it was the two of us. This is what people did with The Beatles all the time - read into these things the significance. I always like to pull people back and say, "It actually wasn't meant like that." But then, at the same time, I like to give people the freedom and say, "But you can take it like that. It's kind of interesting like that.’”

Let It Be companion book, 2021.

NOTE Thing is, Paul doesn’t usually steer people away from various interpretations of his songs. That’s why “Two Of Us” is unusual. And he sounds almost annoyed here, despite having told us in The Lyrics a year later that it’s the songs we should look at for the truth of his life. Something is going on with this song, and I wish I knew what it was.

25. The writing is on the wall of the bathroom, which was apparently covered back in the day with graffiti, poems and drawings by Paul, John, Paul’s brother Mike and even Jim McCartney. The National Trust is attempting restoration efforts to uncover it, as the graffiti is hidden beneath layers of wallpaper from subsequent tenants.

26. Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

27. A reminder here, since it’s been awhile, that I’m choosing to refer to John in the present tense in these situations, not just because it makes the language more fluid, but because there’s always the possibility of a new interview or letter or something other communication from John surfacing that might contain additional information beyond what we already know.

28. “This outtake is on the playlist:

29. “Do you regret being a Beatle and having to live with it forever, John?”

JOHN: “No, no, no,” he answered and he meant it. “I’m going to be an ex-Beatle for the rest of my life so I might as well enjoy it, and I’m just getting around to being able to stand back and see what happened. A couple of years ago I might have given everybody the impression I hate it all, but that was then. I was talking when I was straight out of therapy and I’d been mentally stripped bare and I just wanted to shoot my mouth off to clear it all away. Now it’s different.

“When I slagged off the Beatle thing in the papers, it was like divorce pangs, and me being me it was blast this and fuck that, and it was just like the old days in the Melody Maker, you know, ‘Lennon Blasts Hollies’ on the back page. You know, I’ve always had a bit of a mouth and I’ve got to live up to it. Daily Mirror: ‘Lennon beats up local DJ at Paul’s 21st birthday party’. Then we had that fight Paul and me had through the Melody Maker, but it was a period I had to go through.

“Now, we’ve all got it out and it’s cool. I can see The Beatles from a new point of view. Can’t remember much of what happened, little bits here and there, but I’ve started taking on interest in what went on while I was in that fish tank. It must have been incredible! I’m into collecting memorabilia as well. Elton [John] came in with these gifts, like stills from the Yellow Submarine drawings and they’re great. He gave me these four dolls. I thought, ‘Christ, what’s this, an ex-Beatle collecting Beatle dolls?’ But why not? It’s history, man, history!’

“I went through a phase of hating all those years and having to smile when I didn’t want to smile, but that was the life I chose and, now I’m out of it, it’s great to look back on it, man. Great! I was thinking only recently – why haven’t I ever considered the good times instead of moaning about what we had to go through? And Paul was here and we spent two or three nights together talking about the old days and it was cool, seeing what each other remembered from Hamburg and Liverpool.

“So y’see, all that happened when I blew my mouth off was that it was an abscess bursting, except that mine as usual burst in public. When we did a tour as The Beatles, we hated it and loved it. There were great nights and lousy nights. One of the things about therapy I went through a few years ago is that it cleans you by forcing you to get rid of the negatives in your head it wasn’t all that pie and cookies being a Beatle, there were highs and lows, but the trouble is people just wanted bigmouth Lennon to shout about the lows. So I made a quick trip to uncover the hidden stones of my mind, and a lot of the bats flew and some of them are going to have to stay. I’ve got perspective now, that’s a fact.”

Interview with Ray Coleman, “Lennon – a night in the life,” Melody Maker, September 14th, 1974.

30. John Lennon interview, Weekend World, April 8, 1973.

“Interviewer: John, can you tell me what happened with Allen Klein? Why did you and the other two try to get-- decide finally to get rid of him?

John: Uh well, there are many reasons to get-- finally give him the push, although uh I don’t want to go into the details of it. Let’s say that possibly Paul’s suspicions were right, and uh the time was right.”

31. “When John and I used to meet during that period [of the early stages of the breakup], he'd say, "Do they try and set you against me like they try and set me against you?"' And I'd say, "Yes, often. People'll say, "Oh, did you hear that Lennon threw up before he went on stage in Toronto?"" They'd always tell me the juicy things, in case I wanted to go, "Did he? What a bastard! Well, serve him right, ha, ha, ha." We'd hear it just as gossip and derive some petty satisfaction from it, but on a deeper level it was like, "Yes, but the amount of drugs he was on, he would be throwing up just with the drugs, never mind anything else. He might have tried to not have his heroin that day and I guess you're going to throw up." The two of them were on heroin, and this was a fairly big shocker for us because we all thought we were far-out boys but we kind of understood that we'd never get quite that far out. I don't think people understand what was happening but there was a lot of affection still.”

Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

32. “I know, yes, I know” reappears as a line in “No. 9 dream,” also on Walls and Bridges, along with another reference to “strange” in the line “two spirits dancing too strange” and a reference to not being able to say more in the line “more I cannot say.” There are other things that also point to it as a possible song to Paul that we’ll need more context to talk about.

33. “When John and I hitchhiked to Paris in 1961, we went to a café on the Left Bank, and the waitress was older than us – easy, since John was turning twenty-one and I was nearly twenty. She poured us two glasses of vin ordinaire, and we noticed she had hair under her arms, which was shocking: ‘Oh my God, look at that; she’s got hair under her arms!’ The French would do that, but no British – or, as we would later learn, American – girl would be seen dead with hair under her arms. You had to be a real beatnik. It’s such a clear memory for me, so it was in my head when I was setting this scene.”

Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, Liveright, 2022.

34. Audio is from Episode 015 Lost Lennon Tapes.

https://www.theindiemusicarchive.com/Audio/Albums/LostLennonTapes/15.mp3 47:00

There isn’t a credible link to this online, so I’m linking to it directly here. I’ve had two different people — a native French linguist and a non-native French teacher — attempt to translate what John is singing — both said it’s a bastardization of an old French folk song and that John — not being a French speaker — is singing French-sounding gibberish and random words, so they weren’t able to provide a verbatim transcript. If anyone would like to give it a try, please share the results with me, if you would.

Note that John says Paul’s name multiple times while singing, and his reference to visiting a “cafe on the Left Bank,” matches Paul’s reference to the same thing in The Lyrics (Liveright, 2022, p. 53) specifically as a memory of the ‘61 Paris trip. Paul’s song “Cafe on the Left Bank” was released in 1978 on the Wings album London Town. It’s not clear when the recording of John was made, but either way, the proximity of the two — John’s recording and Paul’s song — suggests a much closer relationship in the ‘70s than either of them have described in interviews.

35. I am aware that there is another, perhaps even more revealing “little hotel in Montauk” outake) of the bridge of “(Just Like) Starting Over.” (which you can google if you’e not familiar with it). I chose not to highlight it here, partly because it requires more context than we currently have, and partly out of an abundance of caution because I’m not sure how Paul would feel about a discussion of it in. I’m avoiding as much explicit sexual imagery as possible in this series, out of a desire to keep the tone respectful and — even if that does mean, for now at least, leaving out some of the strongest research in support of the lovers possibility.

36. Paul may also be quoting John’s reference to “early days” in his 2013 song called, well, “Early Days,” which as the title implies, is about his and John’s, well, early days together in Liverpool.

37. “A few days later I was raving to John about the Chuck Berry show I'd seen the previous night. I noticed Yoko glaring at me and I wound up my description quickly.

"I would have liked to have gone," said John.

"There'll be other concerts," Yoko said icily.

Later, as she was prowling around the living room, she realized that we were playing a Chuck Berry album. He was John's favorite rock 'n' roll artist. She said, "Get that off. I don't want that played around here." Rock 'n' roll was banished from the suite.

May Pang, Loving John, Warner Books, 1983.

NOTE: This is around late September 1971, when John and Yoko are living on the 17th floor of the St. Regis Hotel in NYC. It’s almost certainly reconstructed dialogue, but I don’t think there’s much cause to doubt its overall accuracy. It would be memorable, to say the least, to witness anyone telling John Lennon he’s not allowed — in his own home — to listen to the music that inspired him to pick up a guitar.

Yoko is also on record — a lot — during this time in John’s breakup interviews saying how much she doesn’t like rock and roll. And it’s consistent with May’s observation elsewhere in the book that “Listening to rock 'n' roll was a passion that we shared. John rarely listened to rock at home, because Yoko did not like it or understand it.”

38. Episode 1:5 includes a reasonably detailed discussion of John’s association of Elvis with Paul, beginning with the day they met at the church fete.

39. For what it’s worth, for reasons we don’t know because unfortunately, as sometimes happens in live interviews, she was interrupted before she could tell us, May Pang shared in a 2023 podcast interview that she doesn’t think “(Just Like) Starting Over” was written for Yoko, either And she offers that comment in the context of being asked if John and Paul were planning a reunion at the time he was murdered—

DE: Do you think [John] would have gotten back together with Paul and worked with him again?

MP: If I was in the picture?

DE: Yeah.

MP: No two ways about it. Absolutely.

DE: But I mean like, in around ‘80. Because there was talk about that, too. And I personally think the song “Starting Over” seems to relate to Paul.

MP: It, it relates, yes. It wasn't about them, it wasn't about John and Yoko. Just— because that was 1980 already, let's--

DE: Yeah. And he drops a bunch of Paul song titles, which is why I think it's probably more about Paul.

MP: And it— yeah. I wanted that. So I knew that it was getting that close with yu- again, you know.

DE: Jack Douglas does talk about the fact that he thought that they were in the works.

May Pang interviewed by Diana Erickson, One Sweet Dream podcast, April 15 2023.

NOTE: Notice how May was about to say something about why 1980 was different, but the interviewer interrupts here, and they never get back to it. Which is a shame, because 1980 is the place in the story where the research goes the most gang-angly, as far as it matching with what we’ve been told about the story. And if May has insights about that, that’d be important.

40. I’m working on verifying this anecdote—

“Time passed. Paul locked the door of his home studio in Sussex and played (Just Like) Starting Over, the first single from Double Fantasy. Top volume. For days. Christmas came, with its inevitable reruns of Beatles films and other tributes. A fan brandishing a knife tried to break into the McCartneys' estate. Paul put up more barbed wire and floodlights. A month later, in February 1981, he went back to work.” (McCartney, Christopher Sandford, Century Books, 2006)

NOTE: If this is true, this is easily one of the strongest pieces of research pointing to “(Just Like) Starting Over” being about Paul — and to 1980 being different that what we’ve been told and for that matter, to the credibility of the lovers possibility as a whole. With the entire Beatles catalog to choose from, in terms of which song Paul might choose to play in extremis, it’s unlikely he’d choose a song written about starting over with Yoko.

Of all the pending research I’d like to verify, this one tops the list. Chris Sandford was kind enough to share that he thinks it’s from a news article, but he doesn’t currently have access to this research files to check. If you’ve seen this story anywhere other than in Sandford’s book, I’d be extremely grateful if you’d email Robyn and let her know.

41. “Paul regarded Pet Sounds as one of the greatest popular-music albums ever made and was effusive in

its praise, particularly for the way in which it proved that the bass player need not play the root note of a chord but can weave a melody around it of its own. He recommended the album to everyone he met.”

Barry Miles, Many Years From Now, H. Holt, 1997.[see prior footnotes on why Many Years From Now is a primary source for information related to Paul]

Here’s Paul again in 1997--

“It was later…it was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. First of all, it was Brian’s writing. I love the album so much. I’ve just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life—I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard that album. I was into the writing and the songs.

The other thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines on Pet Sounds. If you were in the key of C, you would normally use—the root note would be, like, a C on the bass (demonstrates vocally). You’d always be on the C. I’d done a little bit of work, like on ‘Michelle,’ where you don’t use the obvious bass line. And you just get a completely different effect if you play a G when the band is playing in C. There’s a kind of tension created.

I don’t really understand how it happens musically, because I’m not very technical musically. But something special happens. And I noticed that throughout that Brian would be using notes that weren’t the obvious notes to use. As I say, ‘the G if you’re in C—that kind of thing. And also putting melodies in the bass line. That I think was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded Pepper, it set me off on a period I had then for a couple of years of nearly always writing quite melodic bass lines.”

42. “I played it to John so much that it would be difficult for him to escape the influence. If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper. And my influence was basically the Pet Sounds album. John was influenced by it, perhaps not as much as me. It was certainly a record we all played – it was the record of the time, you know?”

Paul McCartney interview, The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, 1997.

NOTE: Paul playing Sgt. Pepper “so many times” for John is another indication of how much time they spent together outside of the studio. Another piece of research counter to the assertion that they didn’t spent time together outside of the studio.

43. Another lyric on Pet Sounds that Paul occasionally references as being particularly evocative for him is the song “That’s Not Me,” a song about the struggle of being alone after losing a partner. Here he is in 1997—

PAUL: “Lyrics to me are kind of secondary, but some of them are really spot on. ‘God Only Knows’ lyrics are great. Those do it to me every time. And [sings ‘just one girl’ from ‘That’s Not Me]. There’s something very touching about that little bit of lyric there.” (Paul McCartney interview, The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, 1997)

The lyric he’s referencing is this one—

I had to prove that I could make it alone

But that's not me

I wanted to show how independent I'd grown now

But that's not me

I could try to be big in the eyes of the world

What matters to me is what I could be to just one girl

44. “There’s one line in the lyric I don’t really mean: ‘Well knowing you /You’d probably laugh and say / That we were worlds apart’. I’m playing to the more cynical side of John, but I don’t think it’s true that we were so distant.”

Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, Liveright, 2022.

45. [re: a photo of Paul and John working together in the studio] “That's a very special picture for me actually because when The Beatles broke up a lot of the talk was that like I was the villain and that John and I didn't really get on well and it was a lot of down talk about it, because everyone was sad The Beatles are broken up. And I kind of bought into it. I still thought, ‘you were the villain a little bit,’ you know because when you’re called it enough, you start saying well, maybe I maybe I was you know so I I had to do a lot of sort of wrangling with, was I/wasn't I. I know John... were we friends, or anything, you know, knowing really we were, but there were so many rumors about it. And that photo when I saw that, it's like, yes, we were friends. And it's a beautiful photo for me, because it just reminds me of us working together and how cool it was.”

Paul McCartney, The Late Show With Stephen Cobert, Sep 24, 2019.

This seems to be the same photo that Paul had blown up to life-sized—

"McCartney tells me he treasures a six-foot-tall print of a photo he has of himself and Lennon, taken by Linda during the White Album sessions. "I've got the pad and I'm writing, and he's just looking over at me, and you can see the body language and everything: These guys love each other. That picture is just so emotional for me, because I'd started to think, 'Oh, we did argue…'—yeah, we'd argue, but the upshot of it was that we really, all of us, had a pretty deep love for each other."

Paul MCartney, “The Untold Stories of Paul McCartney,” GQ Magazine, September 2018.

46. There’s an often-quoted comment by George Martin: ““It was like a tug of war. Imagine two people pulling on a rope smiling at each other and pulling all the time with all their might. The tension between the two of them made for the bond.” But neither Robyn nor I have been able to trace it to its original source. If you happen to know, please let us know.

George Martin was the producer on the Tug Of War album — the first time he and Paul had worked together since “Live And Let Die.” If he made that comparison in the wake of John’s murder, talking to Paul, that might well have been the inspiration for the song — because I’m not certain Paul used that metaphor for him and John prior to Tug Of War.

47. The references to “flag unfurled” and “different drum” may have caught your attention as they did mine, both being associated with same sex love.

I haven’t researched the use of either in 1982 when “Tug Of War” was written as deeply as I’d wish, but from what I have researched, it’s not clear that the Pride flag was a thing in 1982 (Paul does now regularly fly the Pride flag at the end of his concerts). If someone has more information on that, please let Robyn know.

“Different drum” has also historically been used to refer to same sex love, but it’s also used more generally to other ways in which someone is out of step with the mainstream. That said, in context with the rest of “Tug Of War,” including the flag reference, it seems at least possible “dancing to a beat played on a different drum” references the use of the term to indicate same sex love.

48. PaulMcCartneyProject, can you please change this line.... pretty please?

49. Paul quoted the line incorrectly in a 1986 interview, which is probably the source of all the confusion—

“In the middle it explains itself a bit…(sic) ‘Something special between us… 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.

NOTE Paul’s mention of the magpie of Gibran for “Julia,” a song that’s written to Julia, to Yoko, and — in those first few lines — maybe also to Paul.

50. Footnoted in episode 1:4, but here it is again:

John Lennon, “The Importance of Being Erstwhile,” Skywriting by Word of Mouth, Harper & Row, 1986, p. 171-6.

There is a lot we could say about the Paris story in Skywriting, but most of it requires context we don’t have yet, so we’ll wait until we get to Paris in the next part of the series to look at it more closely. But I’ll mention here that it contains references to amyl nitrate (google “poppers”), “light in the loafers,” the George V Hotel where John and Paul stayed in 1964, and “God Only Knows,” a song that Paul has named as a favourite and about which there is a whole other story that we’ll get to when we get to the episode about their songs. “There was an underlying bastard to their relationship,” John concludes near the end of the story. “which was to hold them in good stead in later bouts. Neither of them held each other down. In fact, they took it in turns.”

51. Paul McCartney, Blackbird Singing: poems and lyrics, 1965-1999, WW Norton, 2001.

52. Paul McCartney - Interview by Diane Sawyer. ABC news, November 2, 2000.

“PAUL: If I’m going to see a face in a painting it’s highly likely to be [John’s].

INT: Do you think of him during the day or did this come, is this an unusual thing?

PAUL: I think of John a lot. Yeah. Because we were such good friends for so long. I also used to do little caricatures of his... (sic) him. It was quite easy to draw, this long aquiline nose and the sort of glasses and he used to have big sideburns, as you call them. Sideboards is what we call ‘em. Um, so I used to draw him quite a bit. When we were just sitting around I’d do caricatures.”

53. re: the painting —

“We'd often get in the little glass-panelled porch on the front door looking out on to the front garden and Menlove Avenue. There was a good acoustic there, like a bathroom acoustic, and also it was the only place Mimi would let us make noise. We were relegated to the vestibule. I remember singing 'Blue Moon' in there, the Elvis version, trying to figure out the chords. We spent a lot of time like that. Then we'd go up to John's room and we'd sit on the bed and play records, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry. It's a wonderful memory: I don't often get nostalgic, but the memory of sitting listening to records in John's bedroom is so lovely, a nice nostalgic feeling, because I realise just how close I was to John. It's a lovely thought to think of a friend's bedroom then. A young boy's bedroom is such a comfortable place, like my son's bedroom is now; he's got all his stuff that he needs: a candle, guitar, a book. John's room was very like that. James reminds me very much of John in many ways: he's got beautiful hands. John had beautiful hands.”

Paul McCartney quoted in Many Years From Now, Barry Miles, H. Holt, 1997.

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