#Philip Norman

[torchlitinthedesert]

I was writing about how Paul started writing with John, and how that story has been told. Once you’ve noticed that Paul wrote songs first, you can’t unsee it. And you can’t help spotting which writers just haven’t noticed, and who is actively going LOOK OVER THERE A SQUIRREL when they have to mention Paul bringing songwriting into the group. (I’m curious to see how the new Ian Leslie book handles this; the first review I’ve seen says the partnership “began in earnest in 1962”, which suggests Leslie has at least looked beyond the usual “they met at Woolton Fete and almost immediately started writing together” take.) Anyway, here’s a LOOK OVER THERE A SQUIRREL compilation, because some of these are outrageous

During the 1960s, the official band narrative presents JohnandPaul as a unit, keeping their contributions carefully balanced. Here’s Hunter Davies, the jumping-off point for most later accounts:

[Paul] played a couple of tunes to John he had written himself. Since he’d started playing the guitar, he had tried to make up a few of his own little tunes. The first tune he played to John that evening was called ‘I Lost My Little Girl’.

Not to be outdone, John immediately started making up his own tunes. He had been elaborating and adapting other people's words and tunes to his own devices for some time, but he hadn't written down proper tunes till Paul appeared with his. Not that Paul's tunes meant much, nor John's. They were very simple and derivative. It was only them coming together, each egging the other on, which suddenly inspired them to write songs for themselves to play.

After the breakup, rock journalism tended to take John’s side, and downplay Paul. Here’s Philip Norman in Shout! (1981), doing a virtuoso hatchet job:

Paul McCartney had always used his guitar to help him make up tunes. His main objective in the Quarry Men, however, was to oust Eric Griffiths from the role of lead guitarist. One night at the Broadway Conservative Club, he prevailed on the others to let him take the solo in a number. He fluffed it and, later, in an attempt to redeem himself, played over to John a song he had written, called I Lost My Little Girl. John, though he had always tinkered with lyrics, had never thought of writing entire songs before. Egged on by Paul - and by Buddy Holly - he felt there could be no harm in trying. Soon he and Paul were each writing songs furiously, as if it were a race.

Did you think, dear reader, that writing your own songs might be a significant artistic breakthrough? No, no, it’s just a backup weapon in Paul’s Machiavellian plot against poor Eric. This is his “main objective”, and he’s manipulated the others into letting him grab a solo. Norman has, by the way, already admitted that the Quarrymen all recognised that Paul was a stronger musician than the rest of the group. Is it reasonable for the best guitarist to want to play a solo? Clearly not.

For maximum whiplash, compare Norman telling the same story 27 years later, in John Lennon: The Life (2008).

The idea of writing original songs to perform, rather than merely recycling other people’s, was firmly rooted in Paul’s mind well before he met John. He had begun trying it virtually from the moment he acquired a guitar, combining melodic gifts inherited from his father with a talent for mimicking and pastiching the American-accented hits of the moment. His first completed song, “I Lost My Little Girl,” had been written in 1956, partly as a diversion from the trauma of his mother’s death, partly as an expression of it. Around the time he joined the Quarrymen, he had something like a dozen other compositions under his belt, mostly picked out on the family upright piano, including a first draft of what would eventually become “When I’m Sixty-four” (which he thought “might come in handy for a musical comedy or something”).

For a fifteen-year-old Liverpool schoolboy - indeed for any ordinary mortal - this was breathtaking presumptuousness. In Britain’s first rock’n’roll era, as for a century before it, songwriting was considered an art verging on the magical. It could be practiced only in London (naturally) by a tiny coterie of music-business insiders, middle-aged men with names like Paddy or Bunny, who alone understood the sacred alchemy of rhyming arms with charms and moon with June.

Just imagine if Norman had published that second version in 1981. Shout! was one of the most influential Beatles books, shaping the narrative for decades to come. Even Norman now admits its extreme bias, but you can still see its lingering influence. (Also, what a natural-born hater Norman is. When he puts his Paul-bashing on hold, he makes up some fictional songwriters to despise instead.)

Next up we have Mark Lewisohn, who doesn’t write Paul as the Evil Grand Vizier, but keeps shuffling the pack to put John front and centre whenever a breakthrough happens. His prologue to Tune In is a snapshot of John and Paul writing together at the very beginning of their partnership:

Towards the end of 1957, John wrote Hello Little Girl and Paul came up with I Lost My Little Girl; the similarity in their titles was apparently coincidental but both were steeped in [Buddy Holly and] the Crickets’ sound…Buddy Holly was the springboard to John and Paul’s songwriting. As John later said: “Practically every Buddy Holly song was three chords, so why not write your own.” Stated so matter-of-factly, it could seem that writing songs was an obvious next move, but it wasn’t. Teenagers all over Britain liked Buddy Holly and rock and roll, but of that great number only a fraction picked up a guitar and tried playing it, and fewer still, in fact hardly anyone, used it as the inspiration to write songs themselves. John and Paul didn’t know anyone else who did it, no one from school or college, no relative or friend… and yet somehow, by nothing more than fate or fluke, they’d found each other, discovered they both wrote songs, and decided to try it together.

When Lewisohn disagrees with the accepted narrative, he’s usually very keen to show you all his evidence for why everyone else is wrong. Here he suggests John wrote Hello Little Girl first, without discussion. Then he quotes John on getting the idea to write songs, before discussing what an important innovation that was. Right at the end, he says they both wrote independently - but John is in prime position throughout.

As you read on, he acknowledges Paul’s pre-Quarrymen songs, framing them as juvenilia (“exceptional for a first attempt by a boy on the cusp of 14”). Giving I Lost My Little Girl a later date than everyone else, Lewisohn notes that when Paul performed it on MTV Unplugged, his “vocal includes a Holly hiccup, pinpointing its creation to post-September 1957”. (Because the way Paul sings something in 1991 must be exactly how he sang it from the beginning.) Lewisohn also ignores the many interviews in which John says he started writing after seeing Paul’s example.

Obviously, these distraction tactics sell Paul short. But I think they harm John, too. If you’re interested in him as an artist, don’t you want to know how he developed? What he learned, how he used those influences to shape his own voice? How he and Paul worked, together and apart? How they saw their partnership, how that fed into their competitiveness, ambitions, or insecurities? Mary Sue Blorbo Leader John is no good to me. And, more than 60 years on, memories have faded and sources have died; we’ve lost so many chances to look at how they really worked. John and Paul both deserve better.

[tavolgisvist]

‘When I caught sight of him, when John brought him home for the first time, I thought “Oh-ho, look what the cat’s dragged in,”’ Mimi later recalled. ‘He seemed so much younger than John–and John was always picking up waifs and strays. I thought “Here we go again, John Lennon… another Shotton.”’ Even Paul’s immaculate manners could not thaw her. ‘Oh, yes, he was well-mannered–too well-mannered. He was what we call in Liverpool “talking posh” and I thought he was taking the mickey out of me. I thought “He’s a snake-charmer all right,” John’s little friend, Mr Charming. I wasn’t falling for it. After he’d gone, I said to John, “What are you doing with him? He’s younger than you… and he’s from Speke!”’ After that, when Paul appeared, she would always tell John sarcastically that his ‘little friend’ was here. ‘I used to tease John by saying “chalk and cheese”, meaning how different they were,’ she remembered, ‘and John would start hurling himself around the room like a wild dervish shouting “Chalkandcheese! Chalkandcheese!” with this stupid grin on his face.’”

(Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman, 2016)

Q: "Why did you collaborate with Yoko on this LP?" JOHN: "It's like a play and we're acting in it. It's John and Yoko - you can take it or leave it. Otherwise (laughing) it's cows and cheese, my dear! Being with Yoko makes me whole. I don't want to sing if she's not there. We're like spitiual advisors. When I first got out of the Beatles, I thought, 'Oh great. I don't have to listen to Paul and Ringo and George.' But it's boring yodeling by yourself in a studio. I don't need all that space anymore."

(John Lennon, The September 29th 1980 issue of Newsweek)

[undying-love]

"This Ted would get on the bus,' Paul remembered. 'I wouldn't stare at him too hard in case he hit me.' But now [at the fete] at last Paul could inspect the tough guy at leisure without fear of reprisals."

-Paul Mccartney: The Life, by Philip Norman

[paulandjohn]

*credit goes to the tumblr user who made the post

[muzaktomyears]

Phil, babe, these are the people buying your books... they are your core audience

[omg-hellgirl]

“Neither of our boyfriends looked good on the beach,” Chrissie recalls. “Mick was terribly skinny and Charlie had a fat tummy and used to keep his socks on when he sunbathed. I remember Shirley saying ‘They don’t show up well in the sun. They look better in the evening.’ ”

Philip Norman, Mick Jagger.

[periodinteriors]

Philip Norman, Interior of Library of Chesterfield House, c. 1893, pencil, pen, ink, and wash on paper.

[strawberrylane]

philip norman trying to explain john and paul’s relationship and failing.

[bambi-kinos]

I just finished Philip Norman's biography of John, and I was left with the impression that John was almost ridiculously insecure all throughout his life. I've only just begun a deep dive into the Beatles beginning six months ago. Would you say that Norman's portrayal of John's insecurities is accurate, or exaggerated?

First of all it should be understood that Philip Norman is a company man. He does not write biographies that are records of real events + his personal analysis/thoughts and feelings of the subject. Norman receives assignments from his publisher or sponsor, in this case Yoko Ono, and then he writes what he is told to write. Philip Norman is otherwise a very hateful person that is not capable of the critical, skeptical, but also sympathetic eye that is required of a good biographer. If you want an example of a good John biography then the closest you will get is The Making of John Lennon by Francis Kenny. Kenny examines John's life and beliefs in the historical context of Liverpool, where Kenny himself grew up, and then talks about how he believes this influenced John's direction in life.

Once you compare this and other sources to Phil Norman you start seeing what a mouthpiece he is. Yoko Ono wanted to tell a specific story about John and she ensured that happened. Norman does have occasional flashes of insight but then retreats into boomer jean jacket bullshit like when he desperately buries May Pang during the section on The Lost Weekend, because Yoko needed to minimize May's role as it made Yoko looks remarkably awful in comparison. John suffered immensely as a result of being partnered to Yoko and May Pang is a blatant demonstration of how quite literally anyone else would have been a better choice for him. The Norman biography was one of Yoko's desperate attempts to cover this up. It is only recently that the people who still love John have been able to start fighting back like May getting her documentary out.

When it comes to John Lennon himself: "insecure" is a good word for it, yes. John was fought over as a status marker from pretty much the moment he was born. His mother was unable or unwilling to invest in him and happily abandoned him for years at a time; his father was too cowardly to make a stand as a father and take care of him properly, preferring to run around in a perpetual midlife crisis for decades; his aunts including Mimi hated his mother Julia and only took John in as a way to get back at her since Julia was the golden child of their family; Mimi Smith had very mixed feelings about John that she often took out on him; and then John catapulted into the viper's nest that is the entertainment industry which is tailor made to destroy people like him. Pick any celebrity that has gone off the rails and self destructed in public and you will find someone with a similar upbringing that tried to find consolation by becoming a public figure.

John had a massive sucking hole in his chest after a life time of being used and betrayed and shuffled around as a chess piece by his own flesh and blood. It is not overstating the issue to say the only people in the entire world who loved John for being John were the other Beatles and Brian Epstein. That marked him and left him perpetually frightened and paranoid of everyone around him. It's no wonder John was a basket case.

Norman's portrayal of John is 'accurate' in that it at least it chronologically lays out the events of John's life. These are a matter of public record so it's hard to fuck that up. The primary issue with Norman is the same issue with pretty much all of John's biographies: Yoko Ono has her fist so far up the writer's ass that you can see her fingers moving every time a word goes down on a page. You can get a lot of interesting detail out of Norman (like Tim being a lost Persian that followed John home) but everything in John's life is framed through Yoko's lens. And she despises Paul and hates The Beatles. As far as I'm concerned Philip Norman's book is just another hit job against everyone who actually loved John (and notably Yoko was not one of those people.) Therefore I cannot recommend it to anyone.

The problem is that there is no real credible John biography yet. Maybe after Yoko passes away and Sean decides that he doesn't have to defend the indefensible anymore. When it does happen, Paul is going to have to step very firmly on the back of the author's neck to make sure that no Yoko worship happens inside the book and that John is portrayed fairly.

[kaiserkeller]

“Funnily enough, Paul has turned out the real black sheep of the whole trip. Everybody hates him and I only feel sorry for him.” — Stuart Sutcliffe in a letter to Rod Murray, late 1960.

Drawing by Klaus Voormann.

[anotherkindofmindpod]

Sex, Death & Progressive Nostalgia: AKOM Talks w/ Dr. Richard Mills

SUMMARY: Dr. Richard Mills joins Phoebe and Daphne for a chit-chat about all things fandom: slash fiction, Beatle novels, murder, conspiracies, tribute bands, horny editors, biopics, superfan authors and anything else that pops up!

Listen HERE

[torchlitinthedesert]

It’s weird how narratives stick around, even after they’ve been debunked. Philip Norman’s Shout!, hugely influential as the first “serious” Beatles bio, is now seen as biased. Norman himself has climbed down, admitting that as a John stan he was unfair to both Paul and George. (I don’t think he’s apologised to Ringo yet, but no doubt that will come when he needs the money and decides to do a Ringo biography.)

So when Norman writes Paul joining the Quarrymen, he’s bitchy about it: carefully deploying quotes to say that Paul was big-headed, he was catty, he bitched about how the others played, he was a Machiavellian plotter. When you compare it to interviews or memoirs from the surviving Quarrymen, it becomes clear that Norman was cherrypicking; they’ve got good and bad things to say about John, Paul, George, and each other, including plenty of positive memories of Paul. I’ve certainly seen posts debunking Norman by comparing sources (or just by giggling over his image of Paul as bossy baby diva.)

But that still frames the early days in Norman’s terms: it’s still asking Precisely How Annoying Was Teenaged Paul McCartney? The story you don’t get, and which is surprisingly rare in Beatle narratives, is this one: Paul joined the Quarrymen, and transformed its musical standards (not least by bringing in George). He joined a ramshackle skiffle group whose lead singer couldn’t tune his guitar and whose two guitarists could only play in banjo chords. Next thing you know, they’re the kind of band whose members will go on multi-bus odysseys across Liverpool in search of a new chord.

Acknowledging that isn’t belittling John. Just the opposite: it shows just how exciting and inspiring he must have been. Paul and George were music nerds, and Liverpool was full of baby skiffle and rock’n’roll groups. They had plenty of other options. But no, John’s was the band they wanted to join. John’s charisma was enough to make Paul rebel against family expectations, and George accept a leader who was quick and slapdash about things that George would devote long, hard hours to getting exactly right. Paul and George’s talent and dedication were enough to make John buckle down and rehearse. And they all thought it was worth it.

It also set up a pattern for how they would work together. Just as they’d sought out that B7 chord, George and Paul went right on exploring new sounds - Indian music for George, electronic music for Paul. And having found them, they offered them to John. So George’s sitar first appears in Norwegian Wood, Paul’s tape loops in Tomorrow Never Knows.

Later still, when John’s insecurities kicked in, he was uncomfortable with that. He insisted to interviewers that he’d written the Norwegian Wood riff, or complained that he should have stuck with his original idea of chanting monks for Tomorrow Never Knows. But again, it doesn’t devalue John to recognise the others’ contributions. It shows how he inspired them, how the Beatles worked as a unit, how they made each other better. (Can you imagine George offering the sitar to Paul first, or Paul suggesting the tape loops made their first appearance on a George song? I can’t.) Ignoring what Paul and George gave John is to ignore a big chunk of what made John special.

Anyway, I’m almost tempted to read Shout!, just to see how often Norman’s spite is a distraction tactic to stop you noticing Paul, George, or Ringo doing something important.

[i-am-the-oyster]

Hi oyster could you tell me more about the apple executives calling Paul names like “Johns princess” ?and also I’m not sure if it was yoko who said this but I heard someone say that the other names were pretty mean and 100 times worse that “Johns princess”. Thank you !

Thanks for the question anon!

According Philip Norman* (in John Lennon: The Life) Yoko told him that she heard Apple staff calling Paul "John's princess". (Not Apple executives, I think that would be quite different.)

In fact, Paul's girlfriend Francie Schwartz called Paul John's princess in print in 1969. Francie was staff at Apple for a while, so I guess that proves that. (Though it doesn't say anything about how widespread it was.)

As to your second point: I know I've read that too, but I cannot remember where. Can anyone help us out with that?

* I only know this book from quotes on tumblr. I haven't read it, and don't intend to. This book is also the source for the rehearsal tape “with John's voice calling out 'Paul…Paul…' in a strangely subservient pleading way"

[undying-love]

"John was to be posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Paul was to give the induction address. This took the form of an open letter to his old soul-mate and arch-competitor, recalling their first meeting at Woolton fete [...], the 'little look' they'd exchanged before singing 'I'd love to turn you on' in 'A Day in the Life', knowing the consequences but not caring. The woman who'd come between them received only the briefest, most tactful mention. One day, 'a girl named Yoko Ono' had appeared, soliciting a Lennon and McCartney manuscript. 'I told her to go and see John,' Paul said, adding with masterly understatement: 'And she did.'

-Paul McCartney: The Life, by Philip Norman

[and-i-like-youuu]

"John's fellow student Helen Anderson remembers him ushering Paul in, with George, their tag-along junior, usually following a little later. The three would go into the cafeteria for a cheap lunch of chips then take their guitars into an empty life-drawing room, which tended to be more spacious than the others. Helen, being extraordinarily beautiful, was among the very few they allowed to watch while they rehearsed. 'Paul would have a school notebook and he'd be scribbling down words,' she says. 'Those sessions could be intense because John was used to getting his way by being aggressive---but Paul would stand his ground. Paul seemed to make John come alive when they were together.”

Paul McCartney: The Life - Philip Norman.

[muzaktomyears]

oh god he's not doing a Brian biog next is he???