#kris reads myfn

[mydaroga]

It was only me that sat in those hotel rooms, in his house in the attic; it wasn't Yoko, it wasn't Sean, it wasn't Julian, it wasn't George, it wasn't Mimi, it wasn't Ringo, it wasn't Miles. It was me that sat in those rooms, seeing him in all his moods and all his little things, seeing him not being able to write a song, and having me help, seeing me not able to write a song and him help me.

The truth of the matter is, John and I were kind of equal. It really did pan itself out about equal. That's one of the amazing things about it. People can say, 'Oh, well, it wasn't Paul, it was John, or it wasn't John it was Paul,' but I who was there know that's not true, the other Beatles know that's not true. So much of it was team effort, joint effort, there really was so much of it.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

I had to fight at EMI even for things like the thickness of the cardboard. EMI were always trying to give me less and less thick cardboard. I said, 'Look, when I was a kid, I loved my records, the good ones, and I wanted to protect them and thick cardboard would keep my records. That's all I want to do is give the kids who buy our stuff something to protect our records.' 'Well now, Paul, we can't do it, the volume you boys sell at. If we can save point oh oh pence ... And you can't tell the difference.' 'I bloody can! That's a thin piece of cardboard!' But I got my thick cardboard. I was always arguing for things like that. It somehow fell to me. Later people put me down for that, 'Oh, he was always the pushy one, the PR one.' The truth was, no other fucker would do it! And it had to get done, and I was living in London and I could hop in a taxi and go down Manchester Square and say, 'I'll be down in ten minutes to talk to you about the cardboard.'

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

When we saw him with May Pang, I remember him coming up to me and hugging. He said, 'Touching is good. Touching's good,' and if I ever hug anyone now, that's a little thing that sticks in my mind.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

George Harrison's elder brother Harry had been to Christmas Island and arrived back with a gorgeous tan in his army uniform and we thought, My God, he's been made a man of. You used to see this quite regularly, people would be made a man of.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

Even though it was forced on me, it is interesting that I'm a bass player. I certainly didn't pick it because my grandfather had played bass. My dad, presumably because of his dad, would point out the bass on a radio. He'd say, 'Listen to that. You hear that, dum duuum dum dum? That's called the bass.' ‘Oh.' My dad would take us to brass band concerts in the band shell in the park, and we would sit and listen, and I would always like that. It was very northern. I did work later with the Black Dyke Mills Band, and made a record called 'Thingumybob' with them which was quite fun. I still have a very soft spot in my heart for brass bands, it's a roots thing for me. And no wonder if my grandfather's semen had a load of bass genes in it, my dad must have passed them on to me.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now (emphasis mine)

[mydaroga]

I was a Boy Scout and I remembered Baden Powell's saying ‘People never look up,' so I would go in the woods and sit in a tree and watch people go by underneath.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

It's a wonderful memory: I don't often get nostalgic, but the memory of sitting listening to records in John's bedroom is so lovely, a nice nostalgic feeling, because I realise just how close I was to John. It's a lovely thought to think of a friend's bedroom then. A young boy's bedroom is such a comfortable place, like my son's bedroom is now; he's got all his stuff that he needs: a candle, guitar, a book. John's room was very like that. James reminds me very much of John in many ways: he's got beautiful hands. John had beautiful hands.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

With Jane no longer even nominally resident, Cavendish Avenue rapidly collapsed. In the living room a big jar of pot sat on the mantelpiece, books and records piled up all over the floor and the plywood model of the meditation dome became chipped and scarred with cigarette burns, tiny tangles of dog hair sprouting from the corners where Martha had pushed past. Miles recorded a visit some time in 1968 in his journals. He and Paul had been discussing Zapple, the proposed spoken-word label that Apple Records were going to launch. At one point he and Paul were laughing loudly:  

A beautiful girl looked in to see what the laughter was about, but Paul said we were talking business and she left. There were several semi-clad girls walking about the house. 'It's terrible,' he said, gesturing. 'The birds are always quarrelling about something. There's three living here at the moment.' The jostling for position must have been something to see. 'And there's another one, an American groupie, flying in this evening. I've thrown her out once, had to throw her suitcase over the wall, but it's no good, she keeps coming back.' He gave a resigned look and laughed.

Barry Miles, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

But recently, another theory [for the "Beatles" name] has emerged. We were into the Marlon Brando film The Wild One, particularly John and Stuart, and in that they use the word beetles, and we think that kind of clinched it. It was John and Stuart one night at their art-school flat. I remember being told next day the new idea for the name. It definitely wasn't my idea. I said, 'Oh, great, marvellous.' So in examining this question for the Beatles Anthology, we looked at the film:

LEE MARVIN (to Marlon Brando): You know I've missed you. Ever since the club split up I've missed you. Did you miss him?

MOTOCYCLE GANG: Yeah!

LEE MARVIN: We all missed you. (Points to the girls in the gang.) The beetles missed yuh, all the beetles missed yuh. C'mon, Johnny, let's you and I ...

So I got this terrible thought, Fuck me, it's biker's molls. I had to make notes for the Anthology and I was watching the video and I wrote in my notes, 'Does "beetles" mean girls or guys?' The director looked it up and found that in forties American slang 'beetles' are girls. It's like 'chicks'. We were actually named after girls, which I think is fabulous. None of us noticed it.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

'You'd come up with a 'Magical Mystery Tour'. I didn't write any of that except 'Walrus'; I'd accept it and you'd already have five or six songs, so I'd think, 'Fuck it, I can't keep up with that.' So I didn't bother, you know? And I thought I don't really care whether I was on or not, I convinced myself it didn't matter, and so for a period if you didn't invite me to be on an album personally, if you three didn't say, 'Write some more 'cause we like your work', I wasn't going to fight!

John Lennon in a taped conversation between John and Paul in September 1969, recorded in Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

DAVID: That organ is exactly how I used to see him. I used to picture him as a maniac from the seventeenth century: one of those brilliant composers who'd suddenly been reincarnated into this century, let loose with modern technology. A lot of people thought Paul McCartney was shallow. I didn't see him as that at all, I saw him as very very deep. He had this open fire with a big settee in front of it, there would be no lights on, and he'd be playing music at top volume. I used to sit there watching him for hours. I think that's the real him; this real deep, dark ... I thought, Who knows what he could do if they'd leave him alone for a bit? Because he could absorb a lot without encountering any mental block, he could express that Machiavellian, European horror.

David Vaughn, part of the group who commissioned Paul to create "Carnival of Light", Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

I like writing sad songs, it's a good bag to get into because you can actually acknowledge some deeper feelings of your own and put them in it. It's a good vehicle, it saves having to go to a psychiatrist. Songwriting often performs that feat, you say it but you don't embarrass yourself because it's only a song, or is it? You are putting the things that are bothering you on the table and you are reviewing them, but because it's a song, you don't have to argue with anyone.

I was a bit flipped out and tripped out at that time. It's a sad song because it's all about the unattainable; the door you never quite reach. This is the road that you never get to the end of.

Paul McCartney on "The Long and Winding Road," Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

On "I'll Get You":

I liked that slightly faggy way we sang. 'Oh yeah, oh yeah,' which was very distinctive, very Beatley.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

We did the Shirelles' 'Soldier Boy' [1962], which is a girl's song. It never occurred to us. No wonder all the gays liked John. And Ringo used to sing 'Boys' [1960], another Shirelles number. It was so innocent. We just never even thought, Why is he singing about boys? We loved the song. We loved the records so much that what it said was irrelevant, it was just the spirit, the sound, the feeling.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

[mydaroga]

However, when I was a kid, living on the outskirts of Liverpool, I didn't know [National Service would be abolished] so I had to be prepared. In my mind I would imagine myself with a bayonet, because that was the symbol of it all, and imagine myself running someone through, and I thought, Jesus Christ! That is not going to be easy. Fuck me! What's the look on his face going to be like if I do it? Having quite a vivid imagination, I'd follow all that shit through. So when I went out into the woods, I thought I'd better get some practice in. So I thought, Frogs. That'll do, because all my mates killed frogs anyway. They used to blow them up sticking a straw up their ass. That was the way to kill a frog. I didn't fancy that, I thought that was a little bit pervy. I thought a straightforward killing with a bash, hold the legs and just smash 'em on me head. You feel that you've got to learn to kill, like a farmer's boy who grows up and learns to kill that goose and wring that chicken's neck. But I didn't have the farm, so there was no other way to learn.

I felt very conscious that I was going to shit out completely when this National Service arrived. I was going to be one of the guys who said, 'Sorry, sir, I'm a pacifist, I can't kill,’ and I'd have to go to jail. I was in a dilemma in my mind. So I used to kill these frogs. There was a spot in the woods where there was some barbed wire and I used to stick 'em on the barbs of the wire. I had quite a little gallery. I used to call 'em Johnny Rebs, these were the rebels from the Civil War. I had six or seven of them, and I remember taking my brother down there once. He was completely horrified.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

Yes, it's the infamous frog killer Paul McCartney story but that's a bit more context here I think is essential. Other versions include the National Service anxiety but not,I think, this pronounced. He got into his head that he was going to get in trouble, possibly with the law, if he couldn't 'be a man' about it.

[mydaroga]

That creative moment when you come up with an idea is the greatest, it's the best. It's like sex. You're filled with a knowledge that you're right, which, when much of your life is filled with guilt and the knowledge that you're probably not right, is a magic moment. You actually are convinced it's right, and it's a very warm feeling that comes all over you, and for some reason it comes from the spine, through the cranium and out the mouth.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

I've actually talked about this before. And I didn't even have this quote to support it yet! And I get what he means, actually.