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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A collection of out of context quotes from Off-Book: The Improvised Musical Podcast because it is criminally underrated and more people need to know about it:
"Relax, you're at the lake-[WHEEZE]"
"My name's not Vanessa, it's Li'l Fossil!"
"Who do I gotta eat to be king of this town?"
"I'm an empath, but I'm not good at it."
"It's hard to be married to a guy that everyone respects."
"I'm going to smoke several packs of cigarettes!"
"Congratulations, you successfully stole that baby!"
"Everyone get your sweaters off."
"I was about to be inwardly sad, but outwardly brave."
"What do you mean "he's fine"? He's dead!"
"She's as stupid as that Sally Fields!"
"We're all gonna die soon."
"Buy a stupid little sack for your baby!"
"When you're looking at a microwave, that's not a microwave, it's basically dirt!"
"It's you!....say what you are!"
"When you were born, you came tumbling out."
"You can't just call upon a Ratatouille, like, a Ratatouille has to happen to you, you know?"
"Which war was it?"
"Tombathy, if I wanted a silver gear, I would have been born a poor person!"
"I don't know you anymore. I'm famous now."
"I gotta take a sip of liquid death-"
"But honestly, you know what might solve that?: patricide."
"How does a hot chocolate man have his own camera?"
"You can't stop the war that's about to begin!"
"My best friend is a 6 foot tall mouse!"
"I haven't heard you call me 'treasure' since 1992." "Yeah, that's probably when you started calling me John."
"Julia Roberts knows how to not upstage."
"Yeah, fuck you pigeon, I don't like you at all."
"Which came first? My dreams or these eggs?"
"No, it's because my father broke everything that started with K in the house one Christmas."
"No one's ever seen your face except for your wife? How did you grow up?" [....QUEUE SONG]
"I now pronunce this high school...dead."
"Stop that baby! She's headed to the stairs!
"You wanna know the story with Santa and his marriage?"
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