The McLennon Thread: what were The Beatles really about? (evidence presented for consideration)

God bless the kids on tumblr for coming through and documenting all this material while the rest of Beatledom steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the most important and interesting thing about this band!

John: Hey! Did you dream about me last night?
Paul: I can’t remember.
John: Very strong dream. We both dreamt about it. It was amazing! Different dreams, you know, but I though you must’ve been there. (inaudible speech) I was touching you. Nothing sexy, though.
Paul: Nothing to worry about, though?
John: Nothing to worry about, no?

(Peter Jackson chose to exclude this exchange from his film)

"There was a deeper love there that neither of us could admit to." - McCartney

"John never looked at anyone the way he looked at Paul." - Cynthia Lennon

"I’m sure that if [Paul] had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat – because there’s something definitely very strong between John and Paul.” - Ono, 1968

"Lennon himself was alleged to have had affairs with both men and women, and although he never openly admitted it to me, his condemnation of Britain as a land which feeds on a homosexual subsculture persuades me at this late stage that he was speaking from experience. I am sure that the break-up of the Beatles, or, more specifically, of John and Paul, must have been more traumatic than any of us suspect." - Sandra Shevey

"I used to say to him, 'I think you're a closet fag, you know.' Because, when we started to live together, John would say to me, 'Do you know why I like you? Because you look like a bloke in drag. You're like a mate.'" - Ono, 1981

"An overheard dialogue between John and Paul just after John and Yoko had first slept together and recorded Two Virgins in May 1968: ‘Do you hate me?’ John asked repeatedly. ‘I’m crazy, you know.’ ‘No, I don’t hate you.’ McCartney spoke with his face partly averted from Lennon’s rapt gaze. ‘Aren’t you pissed at me now, Paul? Not even a little bit?’ ‘I’m very proud of you.’ John eased off. ‘Maybe I won’t split.’" - Christopher Stanford

"Indeed, John’s wounded anger was more that of an ex-spouse than ex-colleague, reinforcing a suspicion already in Yoko’s mind that his feelings for Paul had been far more intense than the world at large ever guessed. From chance remarks he had made, she gathered there had even been a moment when — on the principle that bohemians should try everything — he had contemplated an affair with Paul, but had been deterred by Paul’s immovable heterosexuality. Nor, apparently, was Yoko the only one to have picked up on this. Around Apple, in herhearing, Paul would sometimes be called John’s Princess. She had also once heard a rehearsal tape with John’s voice calling out “Paul… Paul …” in a strangely subservient, pleading way.'I knew therewas something going on there,' she remembers. 'From his point of view, not from Paul’s. And he was so angry at Paul, I couldn’t help wondering what it was really about.'" - Philip Norman

"John said that no one ever hurt him the way Paul hurt him." - Ono, 1981

"It’s just handy to fuck your best friend. That’s what it is. And once I resolved the fact that it was a woman as well, it’s all right. We go through the trauma of life and death every day so it’s not so much of a worry about what sex we are anymore." - Lennon, 1971

"It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists. [faltering] An artist – it’s more – it’s much better to be working with another artist of the same energy, and that’s why there’s always been Beatles or Marx Brothers or men, together. Because it’s alright for them to work together or whatever it is. It’s the same except that we sleep together, you know? I mean, not counting love and all the things on the side, just as a working relationship with her, it has all the benefits of working with another male artist and all the joint inspiration, and then we can hold hands too, right?" - Lennon, 1972

"To find somebody that you can go and get pissed with, and have exactly the same relationship as any mate in Liverpool you’d ever had, but also you could go to bed with him, and it could stroke your head when you felt tired, or sick, or depressed. It could also be Mother. And obviously, that’s what the male-female – you know, you could take those roles with each other." - Lennon, 1971

"I mean, I think really what it was, really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away. And I understood that. I mean, I couldn’t stand in the way of someone who’d fallen in love. You can’t say, 'Who’s this?' You can’t really do that. If I was a girl, maybe I could go out and… But you know I mean in this case I just sort of said, right – I mean, I didn’t say anything, but I could see that was the way it was going to go." - McCartney, 1985

"Brian was very hard to live with, y’know, to take. He had a lot of tantrums and things like that—like most fags do, y’know, they’re very insecure." - Lennon, 1970

"And [Wooler] was saying, 'Well, come on, John, tell us,' something like that, 'Tell me about you and Brian, we all know,' like that. And obviously, I must have been un– uh, f– frightened of the fag in me to get so angry at that. You know, when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man, and all that." - Lennon, 1972

"The Beatles’ first national coverage was me beating up Bob Wooler at Paul’s 21st party because he intimated I was homosexual. I must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual to attack him like that and it’s very complicated reasoning." - Lennon, 1980

“[John and Janov] talked…about Brian Epstein…‘He knew Brian had adored him, and there was a lot of guilt there about the way he’d depended on Brian yet mistreated him,’ Janov recalls. They talked about John’s notorious Spanish holiday with Brian in 1963 and the (to John) insignificant physical encounter that had resulted." - Philip Norman, 2008

"We don’t advertise and make outrageous claims about homosexuality or anything else. We have 'cured' some homosexuality. We didn’t start out to cure anything but two or three of them came to me after some time in therapy and said, 'My orientation has changed.' I said fine. If it makes them happy so much the better" - Arthur Janov, 2009

"So if homosexuality is normal it cannot ever be treated and changed? I have found that not to be true. A few of my homosexual patients do change after many many months of therapy and very deep probing into the brain and the unconscious … If patients could be helped back into their remote history we would see the pain involved into homosexuality." - Arthur Janov, 2012

"I felt resentment, so I used that situation the same as I used withdrawing from heroin to write Cold Turkey, I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and the Beatles to write How Do You Sleep?" - Lennon, 1980

"I hope [my new music] is for workers, and not for tarts and fags." - Lennon, 1970

"In the early days, we didn’t count lyrics at all. As long as it had some vague theme – she loves you, he loves him, and they love each other – it was the hook and the line and the sound that we were going for." - Lennon, 1980

"It’s like a love affair. When you first meet, you can have the hots twenty-four hours a day for each other. But after fifteen or twenty years, a different kind of sexual and intellectual relationship develops, right? It’s still love, but it’s different. So there’s that kind of difference in creativity too. As in a love affair, two creative people can destroy themselves trying to recapture that youthful spirit, at twenty-one or twenty-four, of creating without even being aware of how it’s happening. One takes to drugs, to drinks, to knock oneself out… [...] it was fertile in the way a relationship between a man and a woman becomes more fertile after eight or ten years. The depth of the Beatles’ songwriting, or of John and Paul’s contribution to the Beatles, in the late Sixties was more pronounced; it had a more mature, more intellectual – whatever you want to call it – approach. We were different. We were older. We knew each other on all kinds of levels that we didn’t when we were teenagers. The early stuff – the “Hard Day’s Night” period, I call it – was the sexual equivalent of the beginning hysteria of a relationship. And the “Sgt. Pepper–Abbey Road” period was the mature part of the relationship. And maybe, had we gone on together, maybe something interesting would have come of it. It would not have been the same. It would have been a different thing. But maybe it wouldn’t either. Maybe it was a marriage that had to end." - Lennon, 1980

"In a marriage, or a love affair – when the seven-year-itch or the twelve-year or whatever these things that you have to go through – there comes a point where the marriage collapses because they can’t face that reality, and they go seeking what they thought they should be having, still, somewhere else. I get a new girl, it’ll all be like that again; I get a new boy… But for all marriages, all couples, it’ll all be the same again. But what you lose is what you put into that… relationship." - Lennon, 1980

"I’ve only selected to work with – for more than a one night stand, say with an odd thing with Bowie, or an odd thing with Elton, or anybody who was hanging around – two people. Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono. Okay?" - Lennon, 1980

"Actually it was really nice after John died, Yoko was quite kind in telling me that he did really love me. Because it looked like he didn’t.’" - McCartney, 1987

"She volunteered the information that he had… really liked me." - McCartney, 1984 (interviewer's ellipsis)

"In the week after Lennon’s death, Andy Peebles (who had interviewed John just prior to his death) was contacted by George Martin. 'I got a phone call from George, who I’d never met before, asking me to come round to Air Studios in London as Paul would like to meet you,' recalls Peebles. 'Forgive me, Paul, if I got this wrong but what Paul wanted me to tell him was that John still loved him. And Paul? Well, call me crazy, but he lost the wife. I’m certainly not implying anything of a carnal nature here, but to almost all intents and purpoises (as John would have put it), what they had was a marriage" - Ruth McCartney

"The sad thing is that John and Paul both had problems and they loved each other and, boy, could they have helped each other! If they had only communicated! It frustrates me no end, because I was just some chick from New York when I walked into all of that. God, if I’d known what I know now…. All I could do was sit there watching them play these games…” - Linda McCartney

"It has been insinuated that John was drawn to Epstein. I believe there was no such relationship between them. John was macho. But if John was a homosexual, it would have made no difference to me. I’ve asked Paul McCartney, who laughed and said: ‘Why not me? I’m handsome.’" - Julia Baird, 1988

"I just saw a girl who said she saw John Lennon walking down the street in New York wearing a button that said, 'I love Paul.' She asked him: 'Why are you wearing an ‘I love Paul’ button?', and he said: 'Because I love Paul.' [...] In a late wee-hour-of-the-morning talk, he once told me: ‘I’m just like everybody else, Harry, I fell for Paul’s looks.' - Hary Nilsson

"…It’s me remembering walking down the street, dressed in black, with the guitars across our back. I can picture the exact street. It was a place called Menlove Avenue. Someone’s going to read significance into that: Paul and John on Menlove Avenue. Come onnnnnnn." - McCartney, 2014

"John had beautiful hands.” - McCartney

"Well, that’s another thing. John and I had a big talk about it, saying, basically, all of us must be bisexual. And we were sort of in a situation of thinking that we’re not because of society. So we are hiding the other side of ourselves, which is less acceptable. [...] I think he had a desire to, but I think he was too inhibited. No, not inhibited. He said, ‘I don’t mind if there’s an incredibly attractive guy.’ It’s very difficult: They would have to be not just physically attractive, but mentally very advanced too. And you can’t find people like that.” - Ono, 2017

“John is a central figure in my life. I will always be grateful for having so much intimate time with him. The more distant his stuff becomes, the greater he seems. I used to do caricatures of John. He was the only person I knew with an aquiline nose. When I painted him recently, I found myself saying: ‘How did his lips go? I can’t remember.’ Then I would think: ‘Of course you know, you wrote all those songs facing each other.’ ” - McCartney

"[If I Fell] That’s my first attempt at a – at a ballad. Proper. That was the precursor to ‘In My Life’. [...] And uh, it’s… semi-autobiographical, but not that conscious, you know. It’s really about – it’s not about Cyn, my first wife. If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true… " - Lennon, 1980

"After a late lunch, Linda launched into a long paean to the joys of living in England. When she was finished, she turned to John and said 'Don’t you miss England?', 'Frankly', John replied, 'I miss Paris.'" - May Pang

"We just got it on. We were hot. You can’t replace someone like John, and I don’t think he could’ve replaced someone like me." - McCartney

"in mid-January 1973 Lennon and Ono quarrelled publicly at another party. 'I wish I was back with Paul,' Lennon reportedly said." - Peter Doggett

"John didn’t want to fuck Linda, he wanted to fuck Paul!" - Harry Nilsson

"John Lennon built a mosaic of what looked like an alien in the garden which was surrounded by roses named after Paul McCartney" - Derek Mann

John: I was trying to put it 'round that I was gay, you know– I thought that would throw them off… dancing at all the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with the boys… but it never got off the ground.
Q: I think I’ve only heard that lately about Paul.
John: Oh, I’ve had him, he’s no good. [Laughter]

Q: If John Lennon could come back for a day, how would you spend it with him?
McCartney: In bed.

are you being sarcastic? because discussions about this have happened for eternity.

of course and the usual responses are things like it's bullshit, it's slander, it's trivial, it's an interesting thought experiment, or maybe it's true but it's never taken seriously as *the* major factor in the story of the band

don't tell me that this is already widely accepted, I know what lennon fans are like and how they react when people bring up this stuff

you'd think a queer love story driving in the biggest band in the world would be a big deal but apparently people just like to brush it off if they're not denying it

The Tufnel/St. Hubbins Thread should make interesting reading.

it's weird what fans think is important, what john pretended to think of some song in 1980 or how loud the bass is on the latest remix are subjects worthy of serious discussion, but this topic is treated as inherently unserious even by people who are willing to entertain it. I think people are afraid to take it seriously

Maybe that's because it really is just bullshit.

did you fucking read the quotes

Yes, and none of them support your bizarre theory.

tldr lennon couldn't handle his feelings for mccartney, tried to use ono to provoke or upset or make mccartney chase him, it backfired and mccartney left, lennon went into primal scream therapy which was conversion therapy, then went on a PR blitz furiously rewriting his history, asserting his heterosexuality and attacking his ex, the rock press and fans mostly bought it until fairly recently when some prominent people started questioning it but he did such a good job that his narrative still dominates and people still get very defensive when it's questioned

it's all fairly transparent but the beatles fandom is so fucking conservative that everyone refuses to see what's right in front of them

"In a marriage, or a love affair – when the seven-year-itch or the twelve-year or whatever these things that you have to go through – there comes a point where the marriage collapses because they can’t face that reality, and they go seeking what they thought they should be having, still, somewhere else. I get a new girl, it’ll all be like that again; I get a new boy… But for all marriages, all couples, it’ll all be the same again. But what you lose is what you put into that… relationship." - Lennon, 1980

"I’ve only selected to work with – for more than a one night stand, say with an odd thing with Bowie, or an odd thing with Elton, or anybody who was hanging around – two people. Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono. Okay?" - Lennon, 1980

"Actually it was really nice after John died, Yoko was quite kind in telling me that he did really love me. Because it looked like he didn’t.’" - McCartney, 1987

"She volunteered the information that he had… really liked me." - McCartney, 1984 (interviewer's ellipsis)

I've read this before, many times, and guys in bands say shit like this often. It's homoerotic and fun to speculate about because when you're 19 or 21 or whatever you're full of ambition and sperm and suddenly after a few beers your best mate next to you in the touring van looks like you'd want to jump in. John might've been bisexual. It doesn't change a thing.

it changes a hell of a lot about the narrative of the band and the meaning of the songs if lennon was in love with mccartney, how could it not?

every quote I included has plausible deniability to it for sure but if the pattern isn't obvious then I don't know what to say

the tumblr teens get it and this newer narrative isn't going away

it changes a hell of a lot about the narrative of the band and the meaning of the songs if lennon was in love with mccartney, how could it not?

― Left,

You mean they could've titled the song "He Loves You"?

sure except the one thing i'm not sure of is how reciprocated it was

No mention of "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" yet?

that's too obvious

"girl" could also be titled "paul" and probably captures their dynamic to some extent

so does "i'll be back"

"i'm a loser" became much more relevant retroactively

You know, I'm gay. When 98 percent of art isn't created for me, I learned early how to queer the art. I don't give a good goddamn whether John was queer. I don't care about biographies, motives, intentions. If you do, awesome.

ok well this thread is about those things

i'm not particularly thrilled to have john lennon as "one of us" myself, that's not what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to understand the real story of the band because the big name beatle writers tend to be emotionally clueless and brush over all this stuff as if it's nothing like most fans do

also come on art is way more than 2% gay

i'm more than willing to believe john was bisexual, but i don't understand how it changes "the narrative" of the band. who cares? what is the current narrative, anyway? that they wrote a lot of awesome music together? and now, it would be totally different because what if john had a lot of feelings for paul the whole time? is the thought that there are lots of references to this embedded in the lyrics and it would change how many of the songs are understood? or is it that who john wanted to sleep with led to the beatles breaking up or something?

i remember reading some john bio a long time ago, forget who wrote it, but it talked a lot about john's potential bisexuality. i kind of just forgot about all of that, because again, who cares? how is it more important than, say, lsd? or even just weed? marijuana was 100x more important to the beatles music

why isn't everyone talking about how the beatles were high

my narrative is that tomorrow never knows happened because they were high, not because of how the boners happened

I’ve been listening to the early Beatles a lot lately and the girl group factor / “feminization” of rock/noise really can’t be overstated wrt to their revolutionary sound and energy

it's a pity they never made Joe Orton's 'Up Against It'

I liked this article which charts the history of John and Paul talking about beating off together:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbnmx4/the-beatles-have-been-talking-about-jerking-off-together-since-the-60s

iirc, in 'Many Years From Now' McCartney also reminisces about being turned on when his mother would walk past his bedroom in her underwear when he was a child, think you can make the case that the 'real story' of the band is oedipal desire rather than homosexual desire

"it would be totally different because what if john had a lot of feelings for paul the whole time? is the thought that there are lots of references to this embedded in the lyrics and it would change how many of the songs are understood? or is it that who john wanted to sleep with led to the beatles breaking up or something?"

yes, yes, maybe sort of to some extent

if no one cares then stop replying, if you don't think it's a big deal you don't need to keep asserting that it isn't and implying that it's stupid or pointless to care about. that's about as convincing as lennon saying he didn't care about mccartney and hated his music

the current narrative is messy and transitional - it it used to be john lennon's hero origin story which people of a certain generation (along with younger fans who buy the lennon mythology) are still very attached to but that's been chipped away at for a while. there's still a lot of crap about how desperate mccartney was to keep the band together and how desperate lennon and harrison were to leave, although that's also being challenged. the narrative i'm promoting explains a lot including why everything changed (music, band dynamics) so radically in 1968, which other narratives either ignore, attribute to superficial things, or treat as somehow inevitable

john and paul both wanted to fuck their dead mothers it's true

John and Paul may have “come together”, but did the Beatles ever think to name an album GASMS? I rest my case.

i think this points to a larger truth that strong homosocial bonds & energy are a creative driver for like .. maybe almost all .. bands that are all men.

there's some interesting stuff in Lennon's 1980 Playboy interview where he gives the impression that McCartney wanted the two of them to have the same relationship they did when they were teenagers, but Lennon felt he'd moved past that (I sometimes get the impression that for McCartney it never got any better than those early days and he kept trying to recreate them, I think he semi-explicitly talked about 'Get Back' and forming Wings and touring small venues in terms of attempting to recreate the early days of the Beatles)

PLAYBOY: "Were falling in love with Yoko and wanting to leave the Beatles connected?"

LENNON: "As I said, I had already begun to want to leave, but when I met Yoko is like when you meet your first woman. You leave the guys at the bar. You don't go play football anymore. You don't go play snooker or billiards. Maybe some guys do it on Friday night or something, but once I found the woman, the boys became of no interest whatsoever other than being old school friends. 'Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.' We got married three years later, in 1969. That was the end of the boys. And it just so happened that the boys were well known and weren't just local guys at the bar. Everybody got so upset over it. There was a lot of shit thrown at us. A lot of hateful stuff."

LENNON: "Oh, yeah. Paul and I were together watching [Saturday Night Live]. He was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired."

PLAYBOY: "How did you and Paul happen to be watching TV together?"

LENNON: "That was a period when Paul just kept turning up at our door with a guitar. I would let him in, but finally I said to him, 'Please call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door isn't the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.' He was upset by that, but I didn't mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day and some guy turns up at the door... But, anyway, back on that night, he and Linda walked in and he and I were just sitting there, watching the show, and we went, 'Ha-ha, wouldn't it be funny if we went down?' but we didn't."

Two of us riding nowhere

because of how the boners happened
the girl group factor / “feminization” of rock

cool title. am interested to read the whole book.

why isn't everyone talking about how the beatles were high

― Karl Malone, Sunday, January 29, 2023 12:46 PM

...excuse me???? surely by "high" you mean "high on life", right?

xps you have to read lennon against himself, he's projecting when he says mccartney was desperate to get back to how things were. maybe he was, but the implication that lennon was too cool and progressive to want that and was more interested in sitting at home "baking bread" is more bullshit mythmaking

lol I had somehow missed all the Beatles wanking stories until now, so this thread has delivered that at least. But Lennon's repeated use of relationship and marriage metaphors don't mean anything much I don't think, that's how lots of people talk about long-running collaborative relationships. (Because there are a lot of similarities. But also differences, like probably not having sex with each other.)

also to not be a complete jerk and address the subject—

it's possible for a man to experience, and express, romantic feelings towards another man but never have the confidence / ability / desire to act on those feelings in a physical / sexual way. it's probably a lot more normal than what has been anecdotally shared, especially in a white male dominated society (which i'm assuming most beatles fans originate from). it's possible that something like that was happening between john and paul, just as it's possible that john was even higher on drugs than paul and acting accordingly. like the rest of us, i do believe john had been a bit mad since at least his early teens. so that, compounded by drugs+touring+fame weirdness, probably drove him absolutely gone to the point that his worldview became something that may have been in great contrast with others; even those very close to him.

they were obviously very close friends and shared an uncommonly strong bond for several years. of course at least one of them was emotionally in love with the other. did it influence their music? sure, why not?

I’ve been listening to the early Beatles a lot lately and the girl group factor / “feminization” of rock/noise really can’t be overstated wrt to their revolutionary sound and energy

― not too strange just bad audio (brimstead),

otm

Really not understanding the fuss here, anyone with even a passing interest in the Beatles as people knows that John and Paul were in love and that Macca was jealous of Ono. Trying to work out whether they did anything sexual has no bearing on the importance of that relationship to the group, seems more like wanting a license to imagine them doing it. Which if that’s your thing go ahead, but don’t act as if it’s the great undiscovered truth about a band whose emotional dynamics have been dissected to the atomic level.

yeah but think of the kids on the interwebs discussing it

the tumblr teens get it

i have identified a key issue with your analysis

next you'll be telling me that they've elaborated about it on Tik Tok

OK go back to talking about the latest mix of dig it if this emotional stuff is too squishy for you

I think these quotes matter, that they absolutely should inform how we see lennon and mccartney's relationship and that lennon was likely queer. absolutely.
but I also think the brusqueness and statements like ""girl" could also be titled "paul"" aren't gonna help make the case. no offence intended.

I'm confident the story will be told eventually (maybe paul and yoko have to die first) so I'm not too bothered about overreaching

it’ll be told, but it’ll be told by people who were not present and that will be a huge barrier to it becoming the general consensus.

other relevant songs, a non-exhaustive list: and your bird can sing, the fool on the hill, I'm so tired, I want you, don't let me down, I will, here there and everywhere, hey bulldog, I don't want to spoil the party, look at me, helter skelter, nowhere man, best friend, I know I know, starting over, instant karma, jealous guy

the songs aren't literally about one thing, they never are, they're about many things but they all touch upon relevant themes

It's already been told by people who were there, and other primary sources (eg john lennon) are full of shit anyway. I don't trust lewisohn with this stuff either

and what's the evidence for all of those songs being relevant to this?
otherwise I mean it's just "revolution in the head: mclennon edition"

I want to hear the new guy's take on this (no, I do not).

I don't expect you to understand after you've caused so much pain

like all this time I thought we really had something but it turns out you were just leading me on with your tunes and your jokes and your eyes. well I don't believe in us anyway how about that. in fact I never did and I'm going to tell that to jann wenner

Paul is a concept

opening yourselves up to each other creatively is an incredibly intimate thing to do and it's surprising it doesn't cross into romantic or erotic all the time, unless it does, I haven't really been in those relationships. even if it does maybe for some people that's enough (like creating together *is* the sex for them?) but for a specific type of person it may imply or suggest or demand more and it eventually somehow seems fake or a lie to them if it never actually comes to anything else?

makes sense to me

maybe unrequited is not the right word or concept to use, it's a bit too simple, but intense relationships like in which there are strong mutually shared feelings *as well as* different expectations or understandings or desires between parties about that relationship it can become v painful without anyone necessarily doing anything wrong (in this case people involved did do things wrong but those things are not necessary for the rift to happen). there's something so lopsided about lennon-mccartney in the 70s (in much more complex ways on either end than is typically presented) which to me what I have been gesturing at is the most plausible explanation for but there can be others. the dynamic that a lot of fans and writers seem to love in which lennon is above it all and mccartney is desperate to reconcile is transparently *not* it though

I have seen this situation close at with two nominally straight guys who almost kind of modelled themselves on Lennon & McCartney and, yes, there was something going on there that everybody else was excluded from, including girlfriends, maybe especially girlfriends! The fact that they used to take lots of acid together was a major factor too. When one of the guys left it was definitely treated like a betrayal. At one point, years later, when a radio station wanted to play some of their music the "betrayed" guy sent in a tape of one their songs where he had edited out the bits the other guy wrote!

When acid heads sing about all night pillow fights with their flatmates they are being literal. LSD relationships like that are about trust not sex.

Xpost so by that reckoning, Rog Waters was incredibly close to his PF band mates once...

opening yourselves up to each other creatively is an incredibly intimate thing to do and it's surprising it doesn't cross into romantic or erotic all the time, unless it does
― your original display name is still visible (Left), Wednesday, February 8, 2023 4:16 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry to say this a little crudely, but this kind of assumption bordering on fantasy dismisses more than it helps your case ? People open up to each other all the time without fucking, of course people also fuck all the time, I just don't see the overlap that leads to the weird fallacious conclusion that "of course they did, because how could they not".

I don't think there's any "of course they did" about any of the posts itt. It's "they might have", at most.

Indeed. Personally love when people repeat a point I already made in a worse way, too!

There is some speculation being disguised as a "thought experiment".

op explicitly rejects thinking of it as a thought experiment, why's everyone's reading comprehension so shot these days

Indeed. Personally love when people repeat a point I already made in a worse way, too!
― here you go, muttonchops Yaz (gyac), Thursday, February 9, 2023 10:29 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great. I shall appoint you as my spokesperson on ILM and you shall provide me with weekly talking points.

xp I know what Left is saying but that's how the thread ends up.

I think it's speculation, no one's pretending it's anything else, and I think that's fine?

Left talks about it as being a big factor, with no thought about what is being dismissed.

So...this needs some work, is what some people are saying.

Nah.

Guys, it’s shorter just to post NO HOMO

op explicitly rejects thinking of it as a thought experiment, why's everyone's reading comprehension so shot these days

Lol @ how you are all happy with this bit of copy pasta sludge from Tumblr.

why's everyone's reading comprehension so shot these days

I know you love copy pasta. Yes.

I'm not pretending to be a historian or journalist here so I don't know what excuse people who are have for doing such a bad job with this material

I could have been clearer about what is assertion and what is speculation on my part but I hope people can think for themselves. whether the beatles fucked each other (ruling it out is as narrow minded as asserting it as fact) and the whole gay angle is not even the most important thing here though it's obviously the most salacious - but the default no homo attitude in beatleography does extend to a lack of consideration of love in general (including philia/storge/whatever) even though its the central message of the band if they ever had one

I think the One Sweet Dream gals have the right approach — building a narrative based on the emotional arc of the MacLennon relationship based on the available evidence and using emotional intelligence to ask questions like “what would that have felt like for them, at that time, in that situation?” — even if their execution is all fucked up.

they seem to really get things about lennon-mccartney (the individuals, the partnership, the relationship) that are too often ignored or misinterpreted. they spend way too much time trying to persuade the unconvinced (from my pov, im sure some people need it) and there are big gaps in their analysis so far (george, ringo, yoko, the early years) but I'd do a much worse job of it if i had a podcast- they/someone else could probably make a great 3-4 hour edit of the breakup series to streamline the narrative and make it more accessible

they definitely influenced me to take the lyrics more seriously and it's hard not to read too much into all of them now (is ISHST about john? of course not. but maybe?)

Yes! To the 4-hour edit of the series. I thought the same, and I wanted to take it on since I found the good parts so compelling… but I’m sure I couldn’t take listening to them (Phoebe in particular, the sneering interrupter) enough to actually finish the job.

I don’t know if it’s meant to be funny, or it’s just funny to me, that so many of the arguments in this thread are raised against “ruling it out” [that LenMac fucked] or a NO HOMO stance. Neither of which I can see in the thread. Instead the counter view, over and over, is that it doesn’t actually matter or that people don’t care. Seems hard to accept that it’s genuine indifference rather than erasure.

I don’t know why Beatle fans are so obsessed over whether the Beatles loved each other. To this day if someone posts a photo of John and Paul or modern day Paul and Ringo on Facebook, you can guarantee a high level of responses that “they really loved each other like brothers”.

I think Ringo has said recently that he’s not actually that close to Paul- and that they might meet for dinner if they’re in the same city, or join up to promote events, but they “don’t hang out”.

The greater mystery of the Beatles is why so many fans are obsessed and so vehement that they must have loved each other.

ITT: Tell The Beatles to Fuck

I'm sure they loved each other; like family they don't have to like each other.

Xpost I did, already, upthread

It’s pretty clear to me that SOMETHING HAPPENED prior to Rishikesh that John saw as a betrayal. It could have been as simple as Paul getting kind of weirded out by John’s neediness and turning a bit cold, or it could have been John making a pass at him & being rebuffed, or (I honestly don’t think it very likely) they fucked and it got awkward after… or none of the above or something else entirely. But mattkkk OTM.

*kkkk (!!!)

I don’t know why Beatle fans are so obsessed over whether the Beatles loved each other. To this day if someone posts a photo of John and Paul or modern day Paul and Ringo on Facebook, you can guarantee a high level of responses that “they really loved each other like brothers”.

I think Ringo has said recently that he’s not actually that close to Paul- and that they might meet for dinner if they’re in the same city, or join up to promote events, but they “don’t hang out”.

The greater mystery of the Beatles is why so many fans are obsessed and so vehement that they must have loved each other

I think there’s been a gradual realisation in the last few years from fans and so on that many musicians in many renowned acts past and present don’t really hang out as much as you would assume when not on band duty.

I think it’s also key that most examples probably aren’t from antipathy but that the band takes up enough time as A Job and it doesn’t really occur to those on the inside to socialise outside of it; said job - which they may love - takes enough of their time already.

well they were inseparable for long periods in the 60s including years after touring. they considered various forms of communal living (paul seems to have been the biggest holdout). the beatles were much closer than most bands, that's what attracted people to them and why people care about their feelings more than other bands, especially as their feelings are basically our feelings because of cultural saturation

Minor diversion for self-indulgence:

I think the public’s view is often at odds with the reality. During the Blair Labour Party years, Tony and Gordon had an infamously difficult or torturous working relation (the “TBGBs” as it was named by informed commentators )

It’s amused me when Labour pollsters reported that the public really didn’t like to see such obvious tensions and disagreements - and labour polled much better when it was thought they got on well.

To the horror of both, they were promptly despatched together on the campaign trail for visits and media interviews to show just how how well they were getting on. And I seem to recall some completely cringeworthy media footage of them buying ice cream at the seaside with fixed smiles and fake bonhomie as if in holiday mode.

the beatles were much closer than most bands, that's what attracted people to them and why people care about their feelings more than other bands, especially as their feelings are basically our feelings because of cultural saturation

Not convinced any of that is true btw. Mind you, Beatles fans are weird, especially in the US.

I don’t know if it’s meant to be funny, or it’s just funny to me, that so many of the arguments in this thread are raised against “ruling it out” [that LenMac fucked] or a NO HOMO stance. Neither of which I can see in the thread. Instead the counter view, over and over, is that it doesn’t actually matter or that people don’t care. Seems hard to accept that it’s genuine indifference rather than erasure.

― assert (matttkkkk), Friday, 10 February 2023 bookmarkflaglink

This is quite OTM. Though I am not indifferent otherwise I wouldn't post. I do think the material is not without interest but it would be one of many moving parts in their story. So my question is one of integration into the rest of the story.

And as talked about its something that is often happening with bands so where you end up is something very tabloid-y, or a possibly dark place. It might explain why no one has done as much with it (or it could end in a place where lawyering happens too, I don't know).

I wonder if it has something to do with the music as well. If you compare this to the similar questions surrounding the Stones and the Jagger/Richards partnership, I'm much more invested in Mick Jagger's feelings for Keith Richards than Lennon's feelings for McCartney, because those feelings - whatever they were - are everywhere in the songs. It feels like an essential part of who the Rolling Stones are as a band. Whereas, for all the pop love songs the Beatles wrote, there's something sort of chilly and intellectual and aromantic about their music in my mind, so that the question of who loved whom, and how, and how much, feels almost separate from the music to me, a question for biographers more than for listeners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb1BHc7aG10

*kkkk (!!!)

also great post as always Lily Dale

_the beatles were much closer than most bands, that's what attracted people to them and why people care about their feelings more than other bands, especially as their feelings are basically our feelings because of cultural saturation_

Not convinced any of that is true btw. Mind you, Beatles fans are weird, especially in the US.

i'm the most normal beatles fan in the US

just yesterday for me, what a track!

I have zero problems with the idea that perhaps the most famous and celebrated songwriting partnership in recorded history may have been more than a couple straight as an arrow lads "opening up to each other"

why anyone would care or if it matters at all is another question, but again, I do think that great music is very often hampered by interpersonal relationships that may or may not be sexual but are certainly very intimate in a way that is difficult to describe beyond swingers or a polygamist cult if it was also a public entertainment and a job and didn't necessarily involve genitalia...or something like that?

rock n roll is hard, sometimes VERY hard, wink wink also I am asexual so I hope this comes off more exasperated and tired than creepy

why anyone would care or if it matters at all is another question

You haven’t spent much time around Beatles fans nuts, have you? There’s a huge tendency to treat the music and the story as an intertwined whole (which they are ofc), especially when you get past the basic received narrative of like The Compleat Beatles or whatever. And for those people (of which I’m one, albeit not an obsessive partly due to the fact that I have a shit memory & so can’t keep all the nerdy details properly filed & partly because I know it doesn’t really matter & that nothing’s more of a drag than someone who bangs on & on about the goddamn Beatles) the knowledge that there’s a story behind the story — or multiple stories behind the story — that there’s more to discover about a band we thought we knew everything about — that matters & we care.

When the Let It Be doc came out, I tried texting a little about it with my uncle, who is a huge Beatles fan… I couldn’t really get him to engage with talking about the music, he was solely interested in all the little relationship details, the “flowerpot conversation,” etc.