James • he/him • adult • minors dni • Beatles brainrot • sparsely active
The original lyrics to "I Saw Her Standing There" are much more gay than McCartney claims. 💅
Paul had first tried out his disguise on the other Beatles, with complete success, during their July 1964 visit to Stockholm.
PAUL: We’d arrived in the afternoon and everyone was just settling in. I put on this disguise and picked up a camera and went around and knocked on the guys’ doors. I knocked on George’s and he came to the door, quite grumpy, you know, ‘Yeah?’ and I’d never seen him like that before. I said, 'Peresi, yea? Peresi?’ A made-up foreign language, like someone who couldn’t speak English. And he said, 'What d'you want? What d'you want?’ He was quite curt with me, he was getting quite nasty actually, so I just changed the accent, 'Paresi, George, paresi, can’t you tell, it’s Paul speaking. It’s me!’ and I went into my real accent. And he goes, 'Fuckin’ hell!’
Brian Epstein was in the bath with his door open when Paul wandered in.
PAUL: I had a camera round my neck so I looked like a guy pestering people for photos and I had a little card I was flashing. It was one I’d been given by Wesley Rose of Acuff and Rose, the music publishers, and I was impressed by it because it was see-through red plastic. So I pulled this out and said, 'Paresi, paresi?’ Brian said, 'Yes, can I help you?’ I said, 'Paresi? Mr Epsteini? Photo?’ He said, 'No, no, no, not now. Look, can’t you see I’m in the -’ 'No, no, no, Brian, can’t you tell it’s me?’ Freaked him out.
(Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles)
Tonight I’m thinking about how in the original lyrics for Here Today the lyrics weren't even "if you were here today" they were "if you were here with me" but Paul crossed it out ...
I get a similar feeling from the lyric development of 'The World Tonight'. I'm always struck that the original lyric in that almost carelessly sad, sultry Home Recording is:
I go back so far, he's in front of me
I mean, I know the change to "...I'm in front of me" is a cool twist but it always makes me stop and listen.
Hunter Davies bio - chapter 22: beatlemania
"The Daily Telegraph, on 2 November, produced the first leader criticizing the Beatles hysteria. It said the mass hysteria was simply filling empty heads, just as Hitler had done. The Daily Mirror jumped to the Beatles' defence. 'You have to be a real sour square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles.' They complimented the Beatles for not relying 'on off-colour jokes about homos for their fun'."
Lest you think the Internet invented inappropriate Nazi comparisons. Also, one has to wonder why such a low bar was being set.
"From 1963 onwards, millions of words were written by people trying to analyse the Beatles' success. It could take a separate book just to cover all the theories that appeared. The first phase of the analyses was based on their sexual attraction. Then the pundits decided the Beatles were of social significance, symbolizing all the frustrations and ambitions of the new emergent, shadow-of-the-Bomb, classless, un-materialistic, un-phoney teenagers. Then the intellectuals moved in, studying their words and music with great intensity, and coming up with some clever interpretations. All of it was true, and still is true. Any reason that anyone has for liking something is true."
I'm posting this for the last sentence, which is so funny to me that he has to point it out. Thanks, Hunter!
“I remember very early on apologising because I was so tired, I said, ‘I’m really tired, I’m sorry.’ [Linda] said, ‘It’s allowed.’ I remember thinking, Fucking hell! That was a mind-blower. I’d never been with anyone who'd thought like that: ‘It’s allowed.’ And it was quite patently clear that it was allowed to be tired. I think I’d trained myself never to appear tired. Always to be on the ball. ‘Sorry I’m yawning. I’m sorry,’ which is complete bullshit. It’s a Beatles thing, you had to be there, you had to be on time.”
— Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now
RingoStarr: Man, this beautiful day is getting better and better we were at the Stella McCartney rollerskating party. What a time we had go get them, Paul, peace, and love.
Ok this entire letter from PR Paul is gold:
'Dear Mr Low,
I am sorry about the time I have taken to write to you, but I hope I have not left it too late. Here are some details about the group.
It consists of four boys: Paul McCartney (guitar), John Lennon (guitar), Stuart Sutcliffe (bass) and George Harrison (another guitar) and is called ...
This line-up may at first seem dull but it must be appreciated that as the boys have above average instrumental ability they achieve surprisingly varied effects. Their basis beat is off-beat, but this has recently tended to be accompanied by a faint on-beat; thus the overall sound is rather reminiscent of the four in the bar of traditional jazz. This could possibly be put down to the influence of Mr McCartney, who led one of the top local jazz bands (Jim Mac's Jazz Band) in the 1920s.
Modern music, however, is the group's delight, and, as if to prove the point, John and Paul have written over fifty tunes, ballads and faster numbers, during the last three years. Some of these tunes are purely instrumental (such as "Looking Glass", "Catswalk" and 'Winston's Walk") and others were composed with the modern audience in mind (tunes like "Thinking of Linking", "The One After 909", "Years Roll Along" and "Keep Looking That Way").
The group also derive a great deal of pleasure from rearranging old favourites ("Ain't She Sweet", "You Were Meant For Me", "Home", "Moonglow", "You are My Sunshine" and others).
Now for a few details about the boys themselves. John, who leads the group, attends the College of Art, and, as well as being an accomplished guitarist and banjo player, he is an experienced cartoonist. His many interests include painting, the theatre, poetry, and, of course, singing. He is 19 years old and is a founder member of the group.
Paul is 18 years old and is reading English Literature at Liverpool University. He, like the other boys, plays more than one instrument – his specialities being the piano and drums, plus, of course ...'
--Written in 1959 to a journalist he'd met in a pub, before they'd decided on a name, as reproduced in Hunter Davies' The Beatles.
