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reflectismo · 4 days
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The following is an excerpt from the 1970 sworn affidavit of Paul McCartney, made in support of his Application to dissolve the Beatles. This passage pertains to the conflict that surrounded the release date of Paul’s first solo album. Some interesting insights here.
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reflectismo · 11 days
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Annette Tapper’s (Phil Spector’s ex-wife) recollection of meeting the Beatles:
I met them in March 1965, during the height of Beatlemania. A friend invited me to the Bahamas for the filming of the beach scenes in Help. After we arrived, I was told to contact Victor Spinetti, which I did. We met and he took me to a sandy beach where a scene was being filmed. All four Beatles were there and they were on a break. Spinetti said, 'I’d like you to meet somebody; this is Annette Spector, Phil Spector's ex-wife.'
John Lennon turned around, smiled at the other three, started conducting and counted '1-2-3-4.' Then they all sang (to the tune of "Happy Birthday"):
'Happy Mrs. Spector to you, Happy Mrs. Spector to you, Happy Mrs. Spector to you, Happy Mrs. Spector to you.' After they finished, I shook each one's hand, saying how nice it was to meet them and we all stood talking for awhile.
There were very friendly and cordial, but above all, so harmonious with each other. They were like brothers and didn't seem on guard either with each other or with me. Besides exuding warmth, they were very funny and humorous, exactly like in the film. The only other people around were the crew preparing a boat for the next scene. None of the Beatles' wives or girlfriends had come to the Bahamas.
Later that day, I went with Mal Evans, the Beatles' bodyguard, to buy cigarettes for them and then we went to a cabin where all the Beatles were resting. When we walked in, the room was very quiet; then George Harrison screamed hello and I didn't know if that was a welcome or a 'get away.' But I went in and sat down next to John Lennon, who was very quiet. Paul McCartney was on the phone having an argument with his girlfriend, Jane Asher. She was upset that he had been away so long and he was promising to call once or twice a day. I congratulated Ringo Starr, who had recently gotten married. George Harrison was playing the guitar. I noticed that they were called 'the boys' by everyone associated with them.
After awhile everyone went to another shooting location. A camera man was filming George swimming in an underground pool. John was joking around, pointing his index finger at different people and saying 'bop, bop, bop.' It was done in a funny way, not as if he had a gun. Then he made a motion signifying somebody is crazy (he'd make a circle around his ear with his index finger and then he'd point to a particular person). He put his finger on my stomach and poked me playfully.
That night there was a party and I danced with Ringo Starr. When the record 'Help' was played he said, 'Excuse me, I can't do this. I can't dance to my own music.' Paul McCartney was also there, surrounded by many women.
I saw them one more time, the next day, when I rode out on a bus with the entire entourage to another of the sets. The Beatles were all singing as we drove along and I felt, once again, the wonderful humor and harmony that they generated.
— Interviewed in 1990.
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reflectismo · 12 days
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Honestly, I really enjoy diving into Ringo’s earlier interviews, because I feel like out of the four, he showcased a vulnerability and a special ability for grasping and articulating certain emotional nuances that I think truly highlight the band’s dynamic. Take for instance, this quote below from a July 1988 interview of his. It stands as one of my favourite insights into the inner workings and relationships among those four boys in the band, and how these dynamics shaped their music.
INT: I would imagine it was an adjustment personally, but did you feel lost musically?
RINGO: Well, I'd never played with a better band, you see, so I think that's the loss I felt.
INT: Where does one go from the best?
RINGO: It's not even just the best. A lot of it was telepathy. We all felt so close. We knew each other so well that we'd know when any of us would make a move up or down within the music, and we'd all make it. No one would say anything or look at each other; we'd just know. The easiest word is telepathy. The band worked so well, and we were four good friends a lot of the time. But like any four friends, we had rows and shouted and disliked each other for a moment.
Then it ended, and I started playing sessions and had a really good time, but I was just playing. You can play with any band, but that band was something special to me, and it's never been like that again. I've had great sessions, great tracks, but it's never been like that, and you can't expect that if you walk into a studio and play someone's session. You're strangers.
We had all lived together so close; we knew each other so well that it crossed over into the music. We knew exactly what the other was doing. That's even the wrong way to explain it. We just knew that the chemistry worked! The excitement! If things were just jogging along and one of us felt, “I'm going to lift it here,” it was just a feeling that went through the four of us and everyone lifted it, or everyone lowered it, or what-ever. It was just telepathy. When I do sessions now, I'm playing the best I can, and some sessions are really great. But I've never played on anyone's album all the way through, because I always felt it was boring, so I'd do three or four tracks.
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reflectismo · 12 days
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George Martin, discussing John’s 1970 Rolling Stone interview:
INT: In his 1970 Rolling Stone interview, John made several disparaging remarks about Beatles recordings, what he called the "Dead Beatles sound." Did that hurt your feelings at the time?
GEORGE MARTIN: Very much! John went through a really crazy period. I was very incensed about that interview. I think everybody was. I think he slagged off everybody, including the Queen of England. I don't think anyone escaped his attention.
When I saw him back in L.A. some years later, and we spent an evening together, I said "You know, you were pretty rough in that interview, John." He said, "Oh, Christ, I was stoned out of my fucking mind." He said, "You didn't take any notice of that, did you?" I said, "Well I did, and it hurt."
He went through a very, very bad period of heavy drugs, and Rolling Stone got him during one of those periods. He was completely out of it. John had a very sweet side to him. He was a very tender person at heart. He could also be very brutal and very cruel.
But he went through a very crazy time. The tragedy of John was that he'd been through all that and he'd got out the other side. And he really was becoming the person that I knew in the early days again.
I spent an evening with him at the Dakota not long before he died, and we had a long evening rapping about old times, which was marvelous. That's now my happiest memory of him, because he really was back to his own self.
— Interviewed November 1993
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reflectismo · 13 days
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Carl Perkins describing the first time he played “My Old Friend” for Paul is truly touching, but I’m sorry the fact that part way through Carl goes into detail about how handsome Paul looks and how pretty his cheeks are will always be funny to me.
Scan of the story below:
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— Goldmine Magazine, November 1998
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reflectismo · 14 days
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Don’t mind me, just feeling emotional about the direct quote selected from this George Martin interview for the title:
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reflectismo · 14 days
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Paul, John and George, relaxing after a busy day during the height of Beatlemania.
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reflectismo · 21 days
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Paul and Heather, on holiday in Portugal, 1969.
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reflectismo · 29 days
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Forget the other three. Sir Richard Starkey in 1967 everyone.
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reflectismo · 1 month
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Hi ! John has refered to himself as the dreamweaver i’m wondering whats that about ? Do we have examples of Johns dreams ?
Hello Anon, I’m a bit confused by your question. Are you asking about John referring to himself as ‘the dream weaver’ in his song “God” and the concept behind that? Or just instances of John talking about dreams he’s had?
If it’s the latter, I can tell you right now that John’s dreams were vast and would probably take hours to list (as well as someone with a background in oneirology to interpret lol). I mean, they literally range from:
“The Beatles were on stage late one night in a smoke-filled, crowded, dimly-lit German club and John Lennon was belting out his version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”
Suddenly there was a thunderous explosion somewhere at the back of the room and John watched in horror as a huge aeroplane came crashing through the roof, bringing down a shower of broken bricks and splintered woodwork onto the heads of the young audience. Simultaneously, the place was plunged into darkness, except for a few stage lights.
The rest of the Beatles instinctively dropped their instruments to the floor and fled but John’s feet remained rooted to the spot. Sheer terror paralysed him from head to toe, he simply couldn’t move. He stared ahead of him as the aircraft broke into pieces. Finally, the twisted pieces of the aeroplane’s bodywork came to rest on the floor of the club in a great cloud of dust.
“That’s the point when I woke up,” said John blankly. “I always wake up at exactly the same stage of that story which is a bastard because I’d like to know what happens next.”
To:
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With a lot of things mixed in between.
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reflectismo · 1 month
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George Harrison’s Mum and Dad take delivery of just a few of the 52 sacks of cards and presents for his 21st birthday.
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reflectismo · 1 month
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“I remember I had a girlfriend called Celia. I must have been sixteen or seventeen, about the same age as her. She was the first art-college girl I’d ever been out with, a bit more sophisticated. And we went out one evening and for some reason John tagged along. I can’t remember why it was. I think he’d thought I was going to see him, I thought I’d cancelled it and he showed up at my house. But he was a mate, and he came on a date with this Celia girl, and at the end of the date she said, ‘Why did you bring that dreadful guy?’ And of course I said, ‘Well, he’s all right really.’ And I think, in many ways, I always found myself doing that. It was always. ‘Well I know he was rude it was funny, though, wasn’t it?’”- Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now with Barry Miles
Photo: Mike McCartney; scanned from Remember by Mike McCartney
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reflectismo · 2 months
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Rewatching parts of Get Back and I am once again asking—why does John only direct his comment regarding Yoko’s divorce coming through to Paul? Like not even a glance at George or Ringo or Billy? Excuse me, what is going on?
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reflectismo · 2 months
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The fact that in this small quote, John manages to mention Paul THRICE.
(Interview from January 1975).
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reflectismo · 2 months
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Q: What was it like being one of the four most wanted men in the world by virtually the entire teenage female population in existence?
PAUL: Terrific! You can’t deny it – we were four normal fellas!
Q: Did you all take advantage of it?
PAUL: Oh Yeah, definitely – we had a great time! That’s half of being in a group – or it was then. I remember my dad saying ‘I wish I’d had as much experience as you, son.’ We used to talk about it – he’d say that in his day, VD was the big scare, ‘cos by the time I was older they had a jab for it. It was definitely the biggest perk of touring – I can’t deny that. It was only later I started thinking ‘Shit – I probably broke somebody’s heart there.’ You don’t think about that at first, but a little later you realise… they are real people. But yeah, there was a lot of ladies about.
— Interviewed in 1983
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reflectismo · 2 months
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Paul McCartney’s thoughts from 1983 on Phillip Norman’s ‘Shout!’, marketed as the supposed ‘True Story of The Beatles’:
“My problem is to me, I come over as this very together guy, always got his finger on top of everything: the man with no problems. School – a doddle, got all the exams. This is the sort of image of me. Actually, I had murder getting through exams, like I was saying about being on tour during my GCEs. I was like the kid who was getting the cane. Just like John was, but he [Phillip Norman] makes me the very shrewd, always-going-to-succeed guy, and John is the kind of cute, working-class hero. In actual fact though, John was just as shrewd and ambitious as I was. What does me in is he adds to this image I’ve got; I resent that, because I know I’m not that, and I know I’ve never been that.
Like in the book, I almost kill Stu Sutcliffe. The way it comes over is that I used to really put Stu down, whereas in actual fact, I had a little bit of a thing against Stu, but that was for one reason – he couldn’t play bass. I had a purely musical thing about it ‘What are we going to do about a bass player who can’t play bass?’ And the other great legend is Pete Best – ‘Why did they get rid of this poor lad?’ Because George Martin told us – ‘Your drummer can’t drum. Get rid.’ What are we gonna do, try and pretend he’s wonderful drummer? We knew he wasn’t as good as what we wanted in the group, so we got another drummer that we wanted. He was called Ringo. It had got to the stage that Pete was holding us back.
You can’t help it, if there’s somebody in the group who doesn’t click. Like Stu. Stu was a great guy, a lovely guy, and I didn’t understand him, it’s true. There’s a lot of people in my life I haven’t understood; I’m not the world’s most psychic person. I make a lot of mistakes, and I misread people, I’ve read a lot of stuff about Stu since that I didn’t know about; I was taking him all wrongly. But it certainly wasn’t just me who was getting at him, everyone had their little goes. But I suddenly come out as the ‘go-getter’ and the ambitious one in the group. And John’s portrayed as the kind of nice guy who always falls into situations. And he has George standing there with his plectrum always waiting for a solo. Now that does George an injustice there’s a lot more to George – than just this idiot waiting for a solo.”
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reflectismo · 2 months
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Beatle fanboys from the June 5, 1964 TV appearance in the Netherlands, you will always be famous.
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