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m1ssunderstanding · 9 months ago

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Understanding Lennon McCartney Rewatch Part 3.1

I thank my lucky stars every night that Yoko eventually got sick of playing secret-keeper.

Paul: I didn't leave the Beatles. The Beatles have left the Beatles . . . John said he wanted a divorce. Alright, so do I. See how they say “Beatles” and they mean each other sometimes?

Derek Taylor on John's position on the break-up: if Paul were to approach him and say “let's do it together again” he probably would; with no more words, he would probably do it. Which is an insane claim to make to a world full of people grieving the greatest band to ever exist unless you are very very sure of that probability. But if it's true that that's all it would have taken, and Paul didn't do it? That hurts my head a little. Do we think he was just hurt too bad to want it back? Do we think he didn't know he had that kind of power? Do we think he was glad to be free of the group?

Ugh my heart can't take it. I'd cry too, John, watching that. I mean look at how they are looking at each other. Look at everything they've lost in a year. I'd bawl like a baby too.

Paul sends John a long, thorough letter, begging for them to legally end their partnership outside of a court. John's run out of cards at this point, but he still doesn't want to lose Paul, so he's just going to play dumb.

This is how bad he doesn't want to lose him, actually: he goes along with Klein in tricking Paul this time. Calls him up and asks him to come to the studio for a jam session, because it'll hurt his case in court. But for multiple reasons – the Eastmans were knowledgeable lawyers, and Paul might not have even wanted to be in a room with John at the time anyway – Paul doesn't come. Which John would've been hurt and angry over, no matter his motives.

"They tell you to stop crying at about age twelve. Be a man. What the hell's that?" I'm so proud of John for his (albeit long and backsliding) journey out of his toxic masculinity and violence. Something I honestly don't see him achieving without Yoko.

And from that quote it transitions to Paul in Scotland, looking like the embodiment of depression, as the opening of “Isolation” plays. It's perfect.

“And don't try to come over here. Or you might get in some trouble.” The way he just froze when he saw them filming him and then the next thing we see is him threatening them? Get ‘em, babe!

John sounds so giddy about this one-upping competition with Paul. I'll scare him and then he'll scare me!

The whole Lennon Remembers era is such a terrible case of diarrhea of the mouth in general, but the amount of homophobic language is quite striking compared to how John talked before and after.

John, talking about George in Rolling Stone: "he was working with two fucking brilliant songwriters and he learned a lot from us." People read that quote and just parrot it like they do with everything John said in this period and act like George had nothing to be angry over. He had every right to be much angrier and hold a much bigger grudge than he did.

And about George's new record, which was phenomenal and brilliant, John is transparently jealous and so cruel. If he'd said that about me and then asked me to play on his new record I'd tell him to go to hell. Why did George do it?

See and everyone who knows John knows how much he loved Brian and to hear him speaking so crassly and cruelly about Brian must've been a sure indication to them to just take the entire interview through that lense of “oh he's just saying shit”. But that's only the people who knew him. Everyone else for the rest of time took this shit as constitutional. And it pisses me off. It should be locked away in a vault somewhere and no one is allowed to listen to it until they've passed some kind of Beatles and emotional intelligence tests.

This crushes my soul. How warped must his definition of love have been by that point that he genuinely believed Phil Spector and Allen Klein loved him more than Paul and George did? It's bonkers.

John in 1967: all you need is love! John in 1971: the point of life is to manipulate people. . . . What the hell happened to you, buddy?

I go back and forth as to who's the smarter PR person: John or Yoko? Because maybe she's right. Maybe they shouldn't divulge that they're master manipulators. But is this one of those times when it's good to be all “look how honest we are about this! We're not hiding anything! We're saying bad things about ourselves too! So you should believe us about everything else!”

Really this documentarian should be hired to make all the music videos for all the Beatles and solo songs. This one for “Too Many People” is perfect. Paul walking into court with a full beard and a confident stride, John and Yoko in bed, Paul horse riding overlayed on Linda's gorgeous face like she's some goddess, designing his fate. All of it is just pure brilliance.

I'm forever laughing at just the title of the song, too. Because to John and Yoko it was so important that they were Weird and Off-putting. Different. Revolutionary. And to say “no. You're not special. There's actually an excess of people like you.” Is so funny to me.

“When she wants an A side, that's when we start fighting.” Oh gosh. Remember how I said he backslides a lot in his feminism journey? Yeah…

Insanity quote Hall of Fame. Yeah, I know he meant to say it's weird to be best friends with a woman. But it sounds like he's saying it's weird to fuck a woman. Which maybe he subconsciously means both idk.

Paul: we need to legally dissolve the partnership because it's the only way we're attached anymore. Ouch. Okay it's true. It's deserved. But that must've stung for the guy who was terrified of losing people. Must've sent him into fight or flight.

I think the point of this framing is to say that if they'd had facetime back then, instead of just crackly phone lines, HDYS would not have been written. Not with those puppy eyes staring him down like that.

Interviewer: the song wasn't even funny though. John: well I think it's hilarious. Interviewer: hmm. Lol I love hearing interviewers talk to John about his lyrics like he's a real guy doing a real job, though. Imagine a music critic now saying John Lennon wasn't clever in his lyrics. You can't, yeah. Me either.

What a slap in the face to Cynthia. Guess she wasn't Cool Girl enough. Should've gone girled him. That would be an excellent fic. Cyn and Jane gone girl their idiot bfs and John and Paul realize they're in love on death row. But anyway, yeah. If Paul would've just pet John's head . . .

Another absolutely bonkers thing to say. That's something the Rockstar’s ex wife says in a documentary ten years after he's dead, not something a songwriting partner says, completely unprompted, in an exiting the band interview.

And then he goes off on what I see as a self-soothing diatribe on Paul the family man. You can see the hoops he jumped through to get himself there. What did Paul want that I couldn't give him? A family. And is that justified? Absolutely not, only pussies and conservatives want families.

Allan Klein: were you and Paul ever really close, then? John: no. John: not that I didn't love him. I did. It's just that every time I let my guard down, he hurt me. Holy shit. At this point, after getting hit in the face with so much of John's Paul-made pain with nothing from the other side but pictures of the happy McCartney family, I'm genuinely feeling quite angry at Paul. Me. An extremely biased Paul girl who knows it's far more complicated and multi-dimensional than this. No wonder the uninformed public fucking hated his guts.

And as they're showing this quote, “I didn't want to hurt you,” plays mournfully in the background. They really are so twisted up in each other there's no separating individual identities.

Okay so he's a psychopath. So what? He's the sexiest man that ever was or ever will be. He's allowed to be a horrible person. No, but really. He's Get Back Paul but healthier. He's done with his depression drinking and he's been spending a lot of time proving he's still useful enough to exist by building fences and shearing sheep.

And this is how Paul talks about George to interviews. John said Klein made ATMP a success but Paul disagrees. "George recorded it all, wrote it all, did it all, wasn't anything to do with [Klein]. It was George's victory, wasn't it?" Compare that to how John does it and tell me again why the hell George is Team John?

What is Paul's obsession with daddies? Actually I know exactly what the obsession with daddies comes from, but we won't get into that here. I do find it interesting that in ‘69 he's saying “we do need a sort of central daddy figure.” And in ‘71 he's deriding John needing one and won't let John's daddy of choice touch him with a hundred foot pole.

I tend to think Paul chafes against authority in general, but that's actually not right. He never had a problem with George Martin. I think it's just abusive authority or authority he doesn't trust yet.

#paul mccartney #the beatles #john lennon #mclennon #ringo starr #george harrison #yoko ono #linda eastman #understanding lennon mccartney #ulm

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tavolgisvist · 19 days ago

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The trial for the dissolution of The Beatles’ contractual partnership

"And I've changed. The funny thing about it is that I think alot of my change has been helped by John Lennon. I sort of picked up on his lead. John had said, 'Look, I don't want to be that anymore. I'm going to be this.' And I thought, 'That's great.' I liked the fact he'd done it, and so I'll do it with my thing. He's given the okay. In England, if a partnership isn't rolling along and working -- like a marriage that isn't working-- then you have reasonable grounds to break it off. It's great! Good old British justice!

(Paul McCartney, Life Magazine, April 16, 1971)

‘I don’t mind being bound to them as a friend. I like that idea. I don’t mind being bound to them musically, because I like the others as musical partners. I like being in their band. But for my own sanity, we must change the business arrangements we have…’

(Paul McCartney, interview, Evening Standard, April 21-22, 1970)

From my point of view, I was getting done in. All the decisions were now three against one. And that’s not the easiest position if you’re the one: anything I wanted to do they could just say, ‘No.’ And it was just to be awkward, I thought. … I got so fed up with all this I said, ‘OK, I want to get off the label.’ Apple Records was a lovely dream, but I thought, ‘Now this is really trashy and I want to get off.’ I remember George on the phone saying to me, ‘You’ll stay on this fucking label! Hare Krishna!’ and he hung up – and I went, ‘Oh, dear me. This is really getting hairy.’

(Paul McCartney, The Beatles Anthology, 2000)

'Eventually,' McCartney recalled, 'I went and said, "I want to leave. You can all get on with Klein and everything, just let me out." Having not spoken to Lennon for several weeks, he sent him a letter that summer, pleading that the former partners 'let each other out of the trap'. As McCartney testified, Lennon 'replied with a photograph of himself and Yoko, with a balloon coming out of his mouth in which was written, "How and Why?" I replied by letter saying, "How by signing a paper which says we hereby dissolve our partnership. Why because there is no partnership." John replied on a card which said, "Get well soon. Get the other signatures and I will think about it.” Communication was at an end.’

(Peter Doggett, You Never Give Me Your Money, 2009 - P.88)

I thought, “This is crazy, no one likes me enough to just let me go, give me my little bit of the proceeds and let me split off.”

(Paul McCartney, 31 January 1974, interview with Paul Gambaccini for Rolling Stone)

A draft of an undated letter in John Lennon‘s hand that essentially bars Paul McCartney and his new manager, Lee Eastman, from accessing The Beatles’ recordings without authorization.

THE HEAD OF Media Sound.

Please do not release hand over any Apple Record Tapes to anybody other person except either John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, or someone bearing a letter with one or more of their signituer [sic].

John Lennon, President, Apple Records George Harrison, Director

(from thebeatleaesthetic)

…Not that I didn’t see the others. I did, and kept asking them to let me out and they said, “No, Allen says there would be tax complications.” I said, “I don’t give a damn about tax considerations, let me go and I’ll worry about the tax considerations. I didn’t want to be an ABKCO-Managed Industry.” It was weird. My albums would come out saying “An ABKCO Company,” and he wasn’t even my manager. … [Growing more emotional] My back was against the wall. I’m not proud of it. But it had to be done. To him [Klein], artists are money. To me, they’re more than that.

(Paul McCartney, Jan 1974, interview with Paul Gambaccini for RollingStone)

I do think if it were just up to the four of us, if we were totally unencumbered, we would have had a dissolution - I hate these heavy terms - the day after John said he was leaving. We would have picked up our bags - these are my shoes, that's my ball, that's your ball - and gone. And I still maintain that's the only way, to actually go and do that, no matter what things are involved on a business level. But of course we aren't four fellows. We are part of a big business machine. Even though the Beatles have really stopped, the Beatle thing goes on - repackaging the albums, putting tracks together in different forms, and the video coming in. So that's why I've had to sue in the courts to dissolve the Beatles, to do on a business level what we should have done on a four-fellows level. I feel it just has to come. We used to get asked at press conferences, 'What are you going to do when the bubble bursts?' When I talked to John just the other day, he said something about, 'Well, the bubble's going to burst.' And I said, 'It has burst. That's the point. That's why I've had to do this, why l had to apply to the court. You don't think I really enjoy doing that kind of stuff. I had to do it because the bubble has burst - everywhere but on paper.' That's the only place we're tied now. <…> You see, there was a partnership contract put together years ago to hold us together as a group for 10 years. Anything anybody wanted to do - put out a record, anything - he had to get the others' permission. Because of what we were then, none of us ever looked at it when we signed it. We signed it in '67 and discovered it last year. We discovered this contract that bound us for 10 years. So it's 'Oh gosh, Oh golly, Oh heck,' you know. 'Now, boys, can we tear it up, please?' But the trouble is, the other three have been advised not to tear it up. They've been advised that if they tear it up, there will be serious, bad consequences for them. The point, though, to me was that it began to look like a three-to-one vote, which is what in fact happened at a couple of business meetings. It was three to one. That's how Allen Klein got to be the manager of Apple, which I didn't want. But they didn't need my approval." <…> I first said, 'No, we can't do that. We'll live with it.' <…> The build-up is the thing - All these things continuously happening making me feel like I'm a junior with the record company, like Klein is the boss and I'm nothing. Well, I'm a senior. I figure my opinion is as good as anyone's, especially when it's my thing. And it's emotional. You feel like you don't have any freedom. I figured I'd have to stand up for myself eventually or get pushed under. <…> So then we began to talk again about the suit, over and over. I just saw that I was not going to get out of it. From my last phone conversation with John, I think he sees it like that. He said, 'Well, how do you get out?' <…> My lawyer, John Eastman, he's a nice guy and he saw the position we were in, and he sympathized. We'd have these meetings on top of hills in Scotland, we'd go for long walks. I remember when we actually decided we had to go and file suit. We were standing on this big hill which overlooked a loch - it was quite a nice day, a bit chilly - and we'd been searching our souls. Was there any other way? And we eventually said, 'Oh, we've got to do it.' The only alternative was seven years with the partnership - going through those same channels for seven years.

(Paul McCartney, April 16th 1971, interview with Richard Merryman for Life Magazine)

John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr have accepted Paul McCartney’s decision to leave the group and will not appeal against the recent court decision to appoint a receiver to look into their affairs. Mr Morris Finer, QC, representing Apple Corps Ltd, Lennon, Harrison and Starr, reported to the Apple Court on Monday that his clients considered in the circumstances that it was in the best interests to consider means whereby McCartney could disengage himself from the partnership. His clients felt that prosecution of the Appeal would be hostile to the atmosphere best suited for negotiations – and accordingly asked for their appeal to be dismissed. McCartney’s QC, Mr Jeffrey Hirst, welcomed the suggestion to drop their appeal. The decision of the other three to allow McCartney to go his own way strengthens the likelihood that Lennon, Harrison and Starr may record together again – possibly with Klaus Voorman playing bass.

(Melody Maker – May 1, 1971)

…on “Wild Life” there’s a line that refers to “a lot of political nonsense in the air.” Later, he was talking about political nonsense, all the trouble between him and the others, between the McCartney’s and Linda’s father, John Eastman, and Allan Klein. Politics, Paul called it, and he didn’t like it. All he wanted was to be out of the whole thing, to own the copyright to his own songs, forget the Beatles, sign a piece of paper saying we’ve split up, everything’s going to be shared by four. “And John said, “Yeah, but that’s like asking us to stop the bombing in Vietnam.” We eventually decided that we were all Vietnamese, so that’s all right… “But I keep wanting to send him postcards saying ‘The war’s over if you want it’ – tell him what he’s saying. It’s just crazy, I’m sure the truth’s a whole lot more simple than it’s made out.”

(Paul McCartney, Nov 1971, interview with Steve Peacock for Sounds)

Maybe there's an answer there somewhere, but for the millionth time in these past few years I repeat, 'What about the TAX?' It's all very well, playing 'simple honest ole Paul' in Melody Maker but you know damn well we can't just sign a bit of paper. You say, 'John won't do it.' I will if you indemnify us against the tax man! Anyway, you know that after we have OUR meeting, the fucking lawyers will have to implement whatever we agree on, right? If they have some form of agreement between THEM before WE meet, it might make it even easier. It's up to you, as we've said many times, we'll meet whenever you like. Just make up your mind! <...> If you're not the aggressor (as you claim), who the hell took us to court and shit all over us in public?

(John Lennon, Dec 1971, a letter of reply to Melody Maker)

Some context:

9th September 1971 (US) and 8th October 1971 (UK) - release Imagine (with How Do You Sleep?) 13 September 1971 Stella McCartney was born (by emergency caesarean section, Paul prayed for her (and Linda) and got his daughter, wife and the name for new group). 10 (11) November - interview with Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker, published 20th November. 4th December - Melody Maker publishes John's furious letter to Paul and Linda. In November 1971 Lennon Remembers (the interview with Jann Wenner) releases as a book.

In early 1973 Lennon, Harrison and Starr served notice that they would not be renewing Klein's management contract when it expired in March, Klein sue The Beatles, Apple, Lennon, Harrison… they sue Klein.

In 1974, Wenner received a mysterious cream-colored envelope in the mail, care of “Johann Weiner” and postmarked Los Angeles, California. Inside was a single Polaroid picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney hanging out on a garden patio with friends: Linda McCartney, hoisting a pool stick; Keith Moon, in shorts and Roman sandals; and May Pang, Lennon’s then lover, holding McCartney’s daughter Mary on her lap. On the white strip below the image, dated “Palm Sunday 1974,” was the message “How do you sleep???!!!”

<...>

What Wenner didn’t know was that the Polaroid captured a pivotal moment in the history of the Beatles—the period when John and Paul managed a degree of détente after the acrimony of the breakup.

(Joe Hagan for Vanity Fair, September 29th, 2017)

I’m going to be an ex-Beatle for the rest of my life so I might as well enjoy it, and I’m just getting around to being able to stand back and see what happened. A couple of years ago I might have given everybody the impression I hate it all, but that was then. I was talking when I was straight out of therapy and I’d been mentally stripped bare and I just wanted to shoot my mouth off to clear it all away. Now it’s different. When I slagged off the Beatle thing in the papers, it was like divorce pangs, and me being me it was blast this and fuck that, and it was just like the old days in the Melody Maker, you know, ‘Lennon Blasts Hollies’ on the back page. You know, I’ve always had a bit of a mouth and I’ve got to live up to it. Daily Mirror: ‘Lennon beats up local DJ at Paul’s 21st birthday party’. Then we had that fight Paul and me had through the Melody Maker, but it was a period I had to go through. Now, we’ve all got it out and it’s cool. I can see The Beatles from a new point of view. Can’t remember much of what happened, little bits here and there, but I’ve started taking on interest in what went on while I was in that fish tank. It must have been incredible! I’m into collecting memorabilia as well. Elton [John] came in with these gifts, like stills from the Yellow Submarine drawings and they’re great. He gave me these four dolls. I thought, ‘Christ, what’s this, an ex-Beatle collecting Beatle dolls?’ But why not? It’s history, man, history!’ I went through a phase of hating all those years and having to smile when I didn’t want to smile, but that was the life I chose and, now I’m out of it, it’s great to look back on it, man. Great! I was thinking only recently – why haven’t I ever considered the good times instead of moaning about what we had to go through? And Paul was here and we spent two or three nights together talking about the old days and it was cool, seeing what each other remembered from Hamburg and Liverpool. So y’see, all that happened when I blew my mouth off was that it was an abscess bursting, except that mine as usual burst in public. When we did a tour as The Beatles, we hated it and loved it. There were great nights and lousy nights. One of the things about therapy I went through a few years ago is that it cleans you by forcing you to get rid of the negatives in your head. It wasn’t all that pie and cookies being a Beatle, there were highs and lows, but the trouble is people just wanted bigmouth Lennon to shout about the lows. So I made a quick trip to uncover the hidden stones of my mind, and a lot of the bats flew and some of them are going to have to stay. I’ve got perspective now, that’s a fact.

(John Lennon, interview with Ray Coleman for Melody Maker: Lennon – a night in the life, September 14th, 1974)

HOUGHTON: You seem to attack McCartney in your first couple solo albums. How do you feel about Paul McCartney now? JOHN: Uh, we’re – haha. [laughs] This is like a joke: “We’re just good friends.” We’re – we’re pretty close now, like I was telling you before. Whenever he comes to America, he comes with Linda to see me, and we go eat, and we reminisce about old times, and we really have both – evolved out of whatever feelings we had when we first split. I think we were – I think it’s a case of, we were more scared than we thought. All of us. The fact – however the split happened, being suddenly on your own after ten years was a pretty scary thing for all of us.

(John Lennon, October, 1974, interview with DJ John Houghton)

Thanksgiving 1974, November 28, John joins Elton John on a Madison Square Garden stage: Whatever Gets You Thru The Night, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - and I Saw Her Standing There, which John announces, 'We thought we'd do one last number so I can get out of here and be sick. This is a number of an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul.'

December 20th 1974: the signing final Beatles dissolution papers and George's concert at Madison Square Garden.

We had a business meeting to break up The Beatles, one of the famous ones that we’d been having — we’re still having them 17 years later, actually. We all flew in to New York specially. George came off his disastrous tour, Ring of flew in and we were at the Plaza for the big final settlement meeting. John was half a mile away at the Dakota and he sent a balloon over with a note that said ‘Listen to this balloon.’ I mean, you’ve got to be pretty cool to handle that kind of stuff. George blew his cool and rang him up: ’You fucking maniac!! You take your fucking dark glasses off and come and look at us, man!!’ and gave him a whole load of that shit. Around the same time at another meeting we had it all settled, and John asked for an extra million pounds at the last minute. So of course that meeting blew up in disarray. Later, when we got a bit friendlier — and from time to time there would be these little stepping-stones of friendship in the Apple sea — I asked him why he’d actually wanted that million and he said, I just wanted cards to play with. It’s absolutely standard business practice. He wanted a couple of jacks to up your pair of nines. He was one great guy, but part of his greatness was that he wasn’t a saint.

(Paul McCartney, 1986, interview with Chris Salewicz for Q Magazine)

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May Pang: Originally when they were supposed to sign it in December (of ’74), before Christmas, it was that time period of George’s Dark Horse tour; at the last minute John didn’t want to sign it because there was one clause he felt uncomfortable with and he wouldn’t come to the meeting. SG: Which clause? May Pang: Since he was the only one of the group living in America that he would be the one responsible for the taxes. It would be over a million dollars. He did not want to shoulder that burden. So he wouldn’t come out to sign it. Paul and Linda had already set up cameras to take photos of everyone signing it, and George was there because of the show, and Ringo had signed it previously in England but was on the telephone to confirm his signature. All the legal counsels for the individuals as well as legal counsels for Apple both in the US and the UK were there waiting. As time went on, poor Harold Seider bore the brunt of everyone at the hotel asking “Where’s John?” He called John and me at home and I said, “He’s not coming.” And Harold said, “What?” and I said, “He doesn’t want to shoulder this tax burden.” Harold knew that they were gonna come down on him. And John was going, “Tell them the stars aren’t right, tell them anything, I’m not doing this.” So… when Harold hung up the phone, he had to face the crowd, and you had to know there was a big crowd in there, over thirty people. He said to them, “The stars aren’t right, John’s not coming to sign the agreement.” George called us immediately, and I said “Do you want to speak to John?” and he said “No, but you can give him a message from me. I started this tour on my own and I’ll end it on my own.” If I could tell you that we could hear George screaming through the rooftops… The next day Paul and Linda came over and they said, “What’s wrong? Let’s see if we can work this out.” SG: and..? May Pang: Paul and Linda dropped by and John explained the situation to them. Then we went off to see Paul’s father-in-law Lee Eastman to sort it out, and in the end we came out with satisfaction. At the meeting Lee kept saying to John, “George will never forgive you,” and Julian called at exactly the same moment and said to me, “George just told me to tell dad and to say ‘all is forgiven, and please come to the party after the show'” and I said ok, and walked back into the room. Lee was telling John off the whole time I was on the phone, as well as Neil Aspinall who accompanied us, going on about how George was never going to forgive him. So I repeated Julian’s message out loud, that all was forgiven, and it couldn’t have been a better set up. So then John said, “Well! Looks like we have a change in plans then. We’re outta here.” And if you could see the look on Lee’s face, that I had just upstaged him.

(May Pang, 2008, interview with Shelley Germeaux for Dayrippin’)

gifs by pennielane

George and I are still good pals and we always will be, but I was supposed to sign this thing on the day of his concert. He was pretty weird because he was in the middle of that tour, and we hadn’t communicated for a while because he doesn’t live here. I’ve seen Paul a bit because he comes to New York a lot, and I’m always seeing Ringo in Los Angeles. <…> George was furious at the time because I hadn’t signed it when I was supposed to, and somehow or other I was informed that I needn’t bother to go to George’s show. I was quite relieved in the end because there wasn’t any time for rehearsal, and I didn’t want it to be a case of just John jumping up and playing a few chords. I went to see him at Nassau and it was a good show. The band was great but Ravi wasn’t there, so I didn’t see the bit where the crowd was supposed to get restless. I just saw a good tight show. George’s voice was shot but the atmosphere was good and the crowd was great. I saw George after the Garden show and we were friends again. But he was surrounded by the madhouse that’s called ‘touring’.” <…> When I did that charity at Madison Square Garden, I was still riding high on ‘Imagine’ so I was OK for material. But when I did ‘Come Together’, the house came down, which gave me an indication of what people wanted to hear. At the time I was thinking that I didn’t want to do all that Beatles—but now I feel differently. I’ve lost all that negativity about the past and I’d be happy as Larry to do ‘Help’. I’ve just changed completely in two years. I’d do ‘Hey Jude’ and the whole damn show, and I think George will eventually see that. If he doesn’t, that’s cool. That’s the way he wants to be.”

(John Lennon, interview with Chris Charlesworth for Melody Maker: Rock on! (March 8th, 1975)

Paul and Linda on George's Dark Horse Tour show at at Madison Square Garden 20th Dec 1974

George called just before his concert. 'Do you want to speak to John?' I asked. 'No.' George had heard about John's decision and he was livid. 'Just tell him I started this tour on my own and I'll end it on my own,' he snarled. Then he slammed down the phone. Later that night Paul calld, too. Unlike George, he was exceptionally even-tempered. John explained to Paul his feelings about the unfairness of the tax provision, and they both agreed that they would try to find a solution.

(May Pang, Loving John, 1983)

December 21st, 1974: John joins in on an radio interview George is recording in his hotel room and provides a suspicious explanation for the lack of meetings amongst the four former Beatles. John and George had actually just come from George's end-of-tour afterparty, where John, Paul, and George all hung out together and hugged.

In December 1974 John, May and Julian went to Orlando, Florida and went to Walt Disney World.

I met John Lennon at Disney World while working as a monorail operator. He, Julian and May Pang rode in the front of the monorail on two different occasions with me. I allowed him and Julian to operate the train. The second day John came out to the station and actually ask if I was working. He and Julian waited until I arrived in the train and again rode with me and drove the train. May Pang took a lot of pictures that day. As they left the train that day John ask if I would like to take some pictures and waited while I retrieved a camera. I have a great 8×10 of John Lennon and I together. (Cast Member Hal East)

May Pang:

Riding the Disney World monorail back to our hotel, I overheard a father tell his son he had heard a Beatle was visiting. “Which Beatle?” The father said, “George Harrison." I burst out laughing. John asked why. We then all started laughing so hard that the Dad turned around. It then registered which Beatle was at the park that day - and why we were laughing. “It’s O.K.," John jokingly said, "we all look alike.”

Photo and info from meetthebeatlesforreal

SG: So did they work out the tax thing? May Pang: Of course… It was worked out within the week. It was signed at the Polynesian Hotel at Disneyworld in Florida if you can believe that. <…> May Pang: … John putting his signature on one of the documents that he had to sign, for the dissolution of the Beatles. So I had the last photo, because the other guys had already signed it. SG: Actually signing the dissolution of the Beatles?! May Pang: Pen in hand as he’s signing his signature. Prior to that you’ll see pictures of him reviewing the contract. SG: And you thought to take a picture…? May Pang: John wanted me to take the picture. In fact he joked about it, saying “C’mon Linda, take the picture!”

(May Pang, 2008, interview with Shelley Germeaux for Dayrippin’)

Photo by May Pang, from her 'Instamatic Karma: Photographs of John Lennon'

May Pang: ...And then we came back (from Disneyworld) and we spent time with Mick (Jagger), and went out to the Hamptons, and Montauk where we picked out that house, and we saw the McCartneys, and David Bowie…

(May Pang, 2008, interview with Shelley Germeaux for Dayrippin’)

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#accidental divorce #the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #ringo starr #interview: paul #interview: john #john and paul #may pang

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