#songwriting feud of the seventies

[tocrackerboxpalace]

January, 1972

Summary: In Paul's first interview since the breakup of the Beatles, things go slightly awry when a nosy reporter gets more out of him than she bargained for.

Part 1/3 (2, 3)

Paul flashed a blinding grin at the camera, hoping none of the looming anxiety beneath the surface would read. He quickly seated himself in the plushy chair, running his fingers up and down the smooth red velvet of the arms a few times to soothe his nerves. A tad self-consciously, he scratched his jaw, fingers twitching with unfamiliarity against the now smooth skin. This was his first interview in nearly two years.

He had been in a bad way since the breakup. It did no good to mull over it now, but it was hard to stop the same intrusive thoughts from popping into frame—the fuck-all, nothing-matters-anyway attitudes; the gnawing sensation of his own incompetency at the bitterness of feeling utterly lost; the desire to waste his fucking life away drunk out of his mind so he didn’t have to wake up in the morning and remember. What now?

Paul sighed inadvertently, ignoring the curious way the interviewer’s eyes danced over his form. What now? Now, this interview. One day at a time. A nice, simple discussion about the past year—about the success of RAM topping the charts in the U.K. and the slow but steady promise of Wild Life. Family and new beginnings. Peace.

Getting better all the time, right? His stomach did a violent flip at the thought.

Paul jumped a bit as the interviewer leaned forward, brushing a tentative hand across his knee. “Paul? Are you all right?”

Paul blinked. “What?”

She lowered her voice a bit, eyes flicking in the direction of the cameraman. Paul felt dizzy as the red light blinked back at him. “Should we—should we cut?”

Shit. Already off to a poor start.

Slowly, Paul came to his senses, breathing returning to normal (though he hadn’t realized it had been erratic). His chest felt tight as he gave a curt, polite nod, forcing a smile that, to him, felt borderline grotesque.

“No, love. Everything’s fine. Just a bit distracted, is all.” He shot her a wink, hoping to assuage her. Maybe a bit of flirting would do the trick.

He sighed in relief as the reporter flushed, a pleased grin sneaking onto her otherwise hard features. “Right. Well, if you’re ready, we can begin.”

“In earnest,” he beckoned, waving an inviting hand in her direction.

—

Half an hour later, Paul’s face felt utterly plastic from faking so much interest and expression. The poor girl was trying, for Christ’s sake, but Paul had to actually hold back groans at some of the painfully bland questions. Every goddamn thing reminded him of the Beatles, anyway, even if it had nothing to do with them. He felt surrounded by ghosts: the echo of George’s laugh, a flash of fangs; the dissipating vision of the way Ringo bit his lip real hard and furrowed his brow when asked any remotely difficult question; the trace of John’s fingertips on his arms or lightly thumping the back of his head. Things hadn’t been the same for a while, now, as far as those things went; but it was almost like they’d never changed. Everything was rushing back to him as if he’d just woken up from a long nightmare. Only to find that the nightmare was more pleasant than reality, of course.

Paul swallowed hard, fighting the urge to be sick. He wasn’t ready for this.

He wished Linda was there. Paul nearly kicked himself for agreeing to do this alone—he wasn’t sure why they had requested that, anyway, if they were just going to make him repeat the conception of “Yesterday” all over again. He needed her there, needed to distract himself by caressing her and leaning on her and whispering subtle inside jokes in her ear at inappropriate times. He needed to have her, just like—just like he needed—

“On your newest record with Wings, you have a particularly interesting track I’d like to touch on,” the reporter was saying, bearing down on him with a sudden insatiable gaze that should have been frightening, if Paul had literally cared one bit.

“Hmm?” He replied, noncommittedly.

“’Dear Friend’. It’s about John, no?”

Paul tensed.

The interviewer stared back at him, daring him to speak, the lust for truth plainly evident in her eyes, and Paul swiftly understood. Everything had been mere formalities or trust-building exercises up to this point. Everything to get him here: trapped, with nowhere to go, no one to turn to. His mind worked quickly, frantically, pushing the blossoming anger aside to make room for the desperate bid to save himself. He could only think of one solution, and one he was king at.

Paul began to laugh. Not loudly, not absurdly; just casual enough to where the audience would soon be able to read the feigned perplexity in his tone. “John?” He practically scoffed, cocking an eyebrow at the woman with a look that bordered on condescending. “No, love, it’s not about John.”

“Who’s it about, then?” Came the follow-up.

Paul answered too quickly. “Linda.”

“Ah,” the interviewer affirmed, leaning back in her chair slightly. “I see. So the bit about throwing the wine—”

“Celebration!” Paul interjected, his voice much too shaky for it to ring true. “Throw back the wine. Congratulations, and all that.” He mimicked a drinking glass. “Young and newlywed.”

“Mm.”

Paul’s heart was hammering in his chest, so violently he was sure the cameras could see it. He never should have put out the song. He had knownit was too transparent, but had convinced himself it was his own paranoia. The public was desperately searching for anything to drive the wedge between him and John deeper—even if the song really wasn’t about him, they would have found a way to make it so.

So, that’s what the story was. He felt a sudden angered hopelessness, offended by the audacity of the reporter. To coax him out of practical hiding, persuade him to do this huge press event for the “good of his album”, to pull him from Linda and thrust him into the spotlight he tried so desperately to escape, all so they could catch a hope of getting Paul to contradict and expose himself? Like she was some kind of Pharisee?

He could see her eyes working coldly, calculatedly, and he felt the sudden urge to run. His mouth felt sour, tongue acidic against his teeth that were clenched far too hard to be healthy. He had to get out of here.

“You say friend,” the interviewer started, almost cautiously.

“She’s my best friend,” Paul argued.

“What about the fear? What is Linda afraid of?”

“It’s a general fear,” Paul retorted, almost pouting, feeling more than fed up with the increasingly dangerous questions.

“Is what ‘true’, then?”

“All the things he said, of course,” he snapped.

It wasn’t until she responded that he realized his mistake. “He?”

Shit! Paul’s eyes shot wide as he stumbled for an answer. “I-what?”

The reporter narrowed her eyes. “You said ‘he’. All the things he said.”

Paul’s heart was in his throat. He struggled to breathe, mimicking the feeling of having your head barely above water as the ocean closes around your neck. “I most certainly did not.”

“But you did. You said, ‘all the things “he” said’. I presume you’re referring to Lennon’s more public digs, especially in response to RAM. He's far less subtle than you, you know. ‘Too Many People,’ though, that one’s about him to anyone who has ears to hear it and a brain to really listen. So he comes back with ‘How Do You Sleep’, and though you’ve been sitting on this one for quite some time, it feels right to put it out, a spitball to his face, an olive branch in the face of his fire. It doesn’t matter that it sounds like it’s to a lover. Because, in a way, it is—"

“No!” Paul all but cried out, wanting to press his palms so far into his ears that it would crush his skull. The beginnings of desperate tears well up inside of him. “No, that’s not—I’m not—”

“What happened in India?”

Paul froze.

The reporter simply stared back at him, almost expressionless. Paul’s brain had short-circuited at the question, leaving behind nothing but a dull buzz, his thoughts as comprehensive as television static. The buzzing of the studio lights was the only sound for a long time, save the soft pants escaping Paul’s lips as his chest constricted with the effort of not hyperventilating. When he finally spoke, his voice was dripping with a malice that shocked even himself.

“What the fuck do you know?”

Even the interviewer looked momentarily taken aback. She licked her lips almost hungrily. “Is there something to know?”

“No. It’s—nothing happened, all right?”

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

“What? No!” Paul was astounded, flabbergasted, so far past the point of shock he no longer had control over his ramblings. “Or—no. I don’t know. Nothing happened, it couldn’t—”

“Did you want it to?”

“He wanted—”

“What did Lennon want, Paul?” There was an edge to the reporter’s voice, a twinge of excitement at what may be perhaps the biggest story since their breakup.

Paul said nothing. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. A cloud came over him, blurring all thoughts of past and future. All implications and consequences. He was blissfully, numbly empty.

“Paul McCartney, were you in a… a physical relationship with John Lennon?”

The question went unanswered. He simply stared at the woman opposite him, cool and stony. He could tell by the slight waver in her expression that his intent was evident. It was a dare—turn the fucking interview off, or sit here in silence for the remaining half-hour. Give the viewers quite a special.

Her choice.

Eventually, the woman cleared her throat and shuffled the stack of notecards in her lap that Paul hadn’t noticed until now. He let his gaze trail over her lazily as she made to signal the camera cut. As soon as the little red light went dead, she shot Paul an aggravated glare and shuffled off the set.

He only winked, feeling much more hollow inside than before.

[binderclipdocs]

Review of Understanding Lennon/McCartney

I’m sharing this terrific post on ULM from Facebook user Mark Humphreys

(pictures and links added by me)

63 years ago today - right about now (afternoon in Her Majesty's realm), a mutual friend introduced Paul McCartney to John Lennon at a Quarrymen gig at a church fete in Liverpool. Like. Wow.

I can't remember ever posting the same thing twice on Facebook.

I'm doing it here because I've now finished watching the 10 hour, 3 minute, 37 second entirety of the weird, poetic, dazzling, spellbinding and emotionally draining "Understanding Lennon/McCartney" documentary series on YouTube - and I can't think of a more appropriate way to celebrate the moment the most influential songwriting team in the history of popular music first met than to STRONGLY recommend it...

...with the qualification, once again, that if you weren't alive when the Beatles were active (or perhaps just afterward) - or if you've never really followed or been interested in their story, the series is likely not for you.

But if, like me, the influence of Lennon and McCartney's absolutely magical, electric connection and the strange, sometimes vitriolic public post-Beatles feud portrayed in the press (and often played up by both men) have been part of your own internal history, "Understanding Lennon/McCartney" will captivate and move you beyond anything you could possibly expect.

This is a love story. Beyond friendship - beyond even romantic love (barely) - beyond the comprehension of both men, who clearly struggled to live with its primal force within them, and which McCartney clearly struggles with right now, and will until the day he dies.

But - and this is crucial - you have to commit to watch the entire thing to get the full impact. It's frustrating as hell to say this, but I can't tell you why - you just do.

It takes probably the first hour before the pace and the groove of the thing really catches the psyche. I'll be honest - I almost gave up on it within the first 30 minutes - it was like biting into an apple (pun intended) and tasting every rich, delightful, sweet, salty, bitter, tart flavor I'd ever experienced all at once.

In other words - it's freaky.

Originally posted on YouTube a few years ago by someone using the handle "breathless345," it was quickly removed due to copyright issues. Somehow these issues were resolved (I have no idea how, because Beatles music and lots of other artists' music is constant) and the series was re-posted last year. I found out about it last month when a friend pointed me to it.

The fact that I can't find anything about "breathless345" or anything else about the "who" in the "who made this?" question makes the whole thing even freakier.

It's a ten-hour fever dream in five volumes (there are six videos - for some reason Volume 5 is broken into two parts).

The soundtrack is often bathed in a heavy, almost mind-numbing reverb that contributes to the feeling of being inside a haunted memory - perhaps a longer version of seeing one's life pass before one's eyes before taking that last breath.

There is no narration. There are many written quotes (one must be willing to read a lot of on-screen text). And there are many, many - A LOT OF - interviews, most of which I'd never seen or heard, with both men over the years, as well as George Harrison and Richard Starkey, all detailing, in very clear relief, the fact that John and Paul NEVER (I repeat, NEVER, through ANYTHING) stopped being friends. They never lost communication with each other. They were like twins - completely attached to, and reliant upon, each other, a fact that quite demonstrably set Lennon into deep depressive fits and McCartney into becoming more driven to find his own independent success.

The one qualm - if I can call it that - with the series is that Yoko Ono once again gets painted too much as a calculating villain, which (who knows?) she may have been - but she also may not have been - and a fuller examination of Ono's quotes and interviews would have been helpful to fill out Lennon's behavior in the final decade of his life.

As a whole, the time passes like a hot knife through butter when viewing the series - I promise, you will not notice how much time you've spent watching it until you stop. It's simply mesmerizing. But you've got to commit when you start.

That's because the pacing, at first, seems incredibly haphazard and even lazy - the installments are set in a strict timeline, yet each episode drifts back and forth in time. At first, this was incredibly frustrating to me...

...until I got to Volume 3 - "The Seventies," which examines the decade after the Beatles split, and McCartney's rapid, determined rocket ship to a second wave of superstardom with a solo career while Lennon took a decidedly slow, decade-long slide into depression and even mild paranoia despite his continued output of recorded works. At the conclusion of Volume 3, any remaining sense of confusion or haze lifted, and the presentation became clear to me as a beautiful pastiche of facts cobbled into a permanent memory of something beyond description - a physical manifestation of what it feels like to live with a Great Love that can never be fully explained because it's impossible to fully consummate.

The ten-minute (!!) trailer is posted here. It'll give you a feel for what it's like to watch the whole thing. But you know what? Don't watch the trailer. Just dig in. All you need is love - and 10 hours you'll be glad you set aside.  

[tocrackerboxpalace]

January, 1972

Summary: In Paul's first interview since the breakup of the Beatles, things go slightly awry when a nosy reporter gets more out of him than she bargained for.

Part 3/3 (1, 2)

The doorbell rang.

Paul jolted awake. He was still on the couch, unsure of how long he’d been sitting there, but pale morning light seeped in through the cracks of the curtains.

In a half-daze, he struggled to his feet, trying to ascertain his surroundings. Why had he been on the couch? Who was at the door? Why were they bothering him at—he peered at the clock on the wall, startled to find that it was already 10:00 a.m.

He fumbled with the locks until the door finally creaked open, flooding the living room with bright daylight and making him wince.

“What the fuck did you do?”

Paul’s body froze at the figure in the doorway, clear as day despite a sloppy hat-and-sunglasses disguise.

“I—”

“I don’t want some bullshit excuse, Paul, because I woke up to reporters halfway up my arse and Rings on the line talking about some fucking interview you did last night. What did you do?”

“I-I’m sorry,” Paul stammered helplessly.

John pushed his way past Paul into the house, tossing his cover to the side with vitriol. He collapsed on the couch where Paul had been asleep only moments before and threw his head in his hands.

Paul sensed that it was his turn to explain himself, though nothing on earth quite sounded less appealing. “I might have… sort’ve… confessed.”

John raised his head, glaring at him wearily. Go on.

“I didn’t mean to. They cornered me. Wouldn’t stop asking about me new song, and it is about you, of course it’s about you, but I—I thought I was vague enough to—”

John laughed sharply, interrupting Paul’s train of thought. “Doesn’t matter anymore. I called you out on it, and now everyone’s lookin’ for cryptic bullshit in your songs.”

Paul pretended not to feel annoyed at the assertion. Suddenly, another memory came full force back to him, and his voice got quiet, eyes flicking away from John’s penetrative gaze. “They asked me about India.”

“They what? Paul, how the fuck could they know about India?”

Anger rose in his throat as he fought to defend himself in what seemed like an unwinnable case. “I don’t fucking know. No one actually knows but us.” There was an accusatory edge to his voice.

John was incredulous. “You think I had something to do with that?”

Paul crossed his arms, though he still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “It certainly wasn’t me.”

John was on his feet again in a flash of fury. His voice was saturated with sarcasm, but Paul didn’t miss the lingering of hurt in there as well. “Sure. You got me pinned, Macca. I’m such a little media whore that I went and spilled every little detail of the worst moment of my life to the press. And because I’m a selfish goddamn prick I encouraged them to ask you about it in an interview, so that I could laugh at your pain in my great new fuckin’ life without you. Because why? Because I like seeing you suffer?” In his effort to avoid John’s eyes, Paul noticed that the man’s hands were shaking. “I thought you knew me better than to believe in the goddamn press portrait of me.”

There was a lot more that seemed to be said in John’s words than the words themselves.

“You’re still bitter,” Paul whispered. The wrong thing to say.

John’s eyes flashed dangerously. He was shouting now. “Of course I’m fuckin’ bitter, Paul! You turned me down. You said no to me. I loved you more than—”

“Don’t,” Paul pleaded hoarsely, tears suddenly buzzing at the brim of his eyelids.

“You don’t get to do this, Paul,” he continued without missing a beat. “I loved you more than I’d ever loved anyone in my life. A-and I couldn’t explain it, because it was a different love altogether, and I’m not sure if that made it true with you, or just better, but-but it was real. It was the most real thing that ever happened to me, and I was so certain that you understood that too.”

“John,” Paul begged.

“But you didn’t. At least, not on the same level, because if you had then we wouldn’t be here right now.” John waved a vague hand in the air, his cheeks bright with fury. Paul couldn’t bear to see it reflected in his eyes. “So you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to write songs and go on television talking about how much I hurt you.”

Paul only swallowed.

“Did you know how fuckin’ hard it was to listen to that song, Paul?” John said abruptly, his gaze straight out the window and his hands balled into fists. His lip was trembling in its place under his teeth. “To hear you say that you were in love with me?”

“I am–“

“Bullshit!” John yelled, and for a brief moment, Paul’s eyes were drawn up and he thought that John might actually hit him. When John slumped back in surprise at his own outburst, Paul felt a flood of rage overtake him, energy transferred from one to the other.

“You don’t fucking understand, John! You’re not like me! You’ve never given two shits about what the world thinks of you. You act like you do, with us, like you’re some poor misunderstood soul, but you don’t.” Paul began listing on his fingers, ignoring John’s protesting gape. “The Jesus comment, Yoko, Two Virgins, writing song after song knowing they’re going to be banned. You spew your bullshit and do whatever you please and sometimes it feels like you’re trying to give the world the finger and that’s fine, con-fuckin-gratulations for you, but I’m not like that.”

He suddenly felt very tired as John closed his mouth into a firm line. Paul recognized the expression. Understanding. “I’m not like that. It matters to me. And I don’t know what that says about me, or how to fix it. So simply the sudden legality of it all couldn’t magically change my mind. And now that’s something I have to live with, for the rest of my days, because I know now that it would have been worth it. And we could’ve handled it together. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. And I do love you.”

John rolled his eyes in helpless exasperation. “So what do you want to do, eh? Say fuck-all to our wives, our families? Our new lives? Just because you were too chicken-shit to say something four years ago?” He shook his head. “It’s too late for us, Paul. What’s that they say? Right person, wrong time?”

The polite smile John gave in closing made Paul feel sick to his stomach.

“Why did you come here, John?”

The defendant shrugged. He took a few steps backwards and sunk back onto the couch. “Honest?”

Paul hesitated. He might have had enough honesty for the day.

John sighed. “Wanted to see you.” He gave a sudden glare, shooting down Paul’s curious eyebrows. “Not because I missed you. I wanted to see you try and explain yourself. I hadn’t known what happened in the interview, but I’m not bloody stupid. I could tell it was something of this… scale. And I was so fuckin’ tired of trying to read you over the phone.”

Paul felt the strange urge to smile. And suddenly, he was laughing, undeterred even by the expression of utter bewilderment on John’s face.

“Christ, all that? Isn’t it, like, five in the morning there?”

“Well, yeah, I told you—Rings called, and you Englishmen have no bloody consideration for time zones.”

Paul let out a chuckle that felt far too relieving. His smile quieted as reality began to sink in. “I’m sorry.”

John met his eyes for only a moment. “S’not your fault. They do it to me, too.”

“What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “Deny. Deny, deny, deny. Don’t know what he’s talking about, must’ve gone mad, trying to frame me as a queer. Wanted to stir up a fight. I’ll think of something.”

Paul swallowed. He wasn’t sure what he expected.

John peered over his glasses, his mouth pressed into a firm line. He removed them slowly, folding them in his lap. When he looked up again, Paul felt a shiver travel down his spine at the familiarity of the amber eyes on his, unprotected, unveiled. They hadn’t looked that way to him in so long.

“It’s only me,” John said quietly. Paul could hear in the tone that it was meant to be soothing, but the words made his heart twitch violently. “You know…not to take everything I say about you to heart, yeah?”

Paul nodded, gaze cast downwards for fear of brimming tears.

“Sometimes I mean it. I’m allowed to mean it. But this?” He sighed. “Whatever happens, you have to know that we have to. They’ll believe us so long as we present it as another one of our publicized scraps.”

“I’ve got to be the bad guy,” Paul conceded.

John nodded a confirmation. “I’ll, erm… I’ll say that it’s an attack. That you’re trying to frame me as something that I’m not, because you’re still hung up on the breakup. And it’s my reputation you’re worried about. I’ll say you’ve been on a bender, and lucid-dreamed-up an idealized version of our partnership. I’ll make another offhand comment about how we hardly wrote together much less knew one another, and you… You won’t say anything. You’ll stay here with—” he suddenly seemed to choke on the words. “Linda. The kids. And you can talk to her about it, I don’t care. But that’s what I’m going to say, and you have to be okay with that.”

Paul only stared. He knew in the back of his mind that John was right, but that didn’t help the nausea coursing through his veins.

“You have to be okay with that,” John repeated, his voice trembling slightly. “For both of us.”

The words were so far from the truth in some ways and yet too close to the truth in others. John offered a hand to shake, but appeared to think better of it, withdrawing the deal almost immediately. He knew Paul would agree, anyway, of course he would. And neither of them knew if they could handle the contact, no matter how brief.

“I should be going,” John said after a moment.

“You could stay,” Paul offered, his mind frantically arranging a comfortable setup for John to spend a few days.

John pushed himself up off of the couch and gazed around the room briefly, looking for something he hadn’t left. “Why?”

The image of the pull out couch in the den crumbled to death in his imagination. “Yeah. Okay.”

John gave one last, awkward nod, both men standing helplessly in the middle of the room. He hesitated for another moment before shuffling over to the front door, grabbing up his hat and glasses beside it, and pulling it open.

Paul wasn’t sure what made him say it, but he couldn’t stop the words from flowing out. “I love you.”

John scratched the back of his neck before turning to go. “I–yeah. See you around, Paul.”

He shut the door behind him.

[tocrackerboxpalace]

January, 1972

Summary: In Paul's first interview since the breakup of the Beatles, things go slightly awry when a nosy reporter gets more out of him than she bargained for.

Part 2/3 (1, 3)

“That was… something,” Linda began tentatively, sounding far away.

Paul simply stared forward, forfeiting a response. His forearms rested on his knees as he watched the blank television with intensity. He elected not to notice that his fingers were still trembling.

In his peripheral, he could see Linda shoot him a contemplative glance before sighing and returning to the dishes in her hands. She hummed a vaguely familiar tune as she worked, the uncharacteristic silence of the house glaringly obvious with the heightened tension. With the thoughtful way she was scrubbing at the dishes, one would think it was the most intriguing task in the world. But the fashion in which her eyes darted up every few seconds in fruitless attempts to catch Paul’s gaze wasn’t lost on him.

She’d known, of course.

He could hardly fathom how—he had worked hard to render his emotions on the topic nearly impossible to read—but it seemed as though one day she had just… figured it out. He supposed it was an accumulation of things; Linda was an extremely intuitive woman and had likely had her suspicions for some time. Comments, phone calls, expressions, songs. Things over the years that he could only keep so private. It didn’t make the topic any more approachable, though.

The moment of realization had happened only recently, actually. The moment of knowing, when he knew that she knew, and she knew that she was right. Not that she’d asked, and not that he’d confirmed. There had been no need.

It occurred not long after the release of Imagine. She had eavesdropped in on him one afternoon when he hadn’t believed her to be home. He had been working on the piano in the living room, open and exposed. She’d entered too quietly and listened to the entire run-through, merely seconds after the song had been completed. The sight of her in the doorway as he’d jumped up to make some celebratory tea had been shocking, but not as much so as the look of recognition on her face.

The song was a theatrical tune, threaded with musical influence from his youth. The lines were accompanied only by a bright staccato piano melody that directly contradicted the bitterness of the lyrical tone, which felt conciliatory in a way—if the song sounded happy, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

It began with a polite spoken word phrase over a piano run before launching into the first chorus.

-

I sleep very well, thanks.

Didn’t know how low that you could go

But the things you’ll do for a spotlight!

Y’didn’t seem to mind that pretty face

As it got you up and hot, right?

-

Well, y’made me swear all up the town

Oh, darling, I’d never ever let you down

Till you went and did the same around

And now I know what it’s like to drown

-

Should’ve known how low my love could go

Oh, the things you do for a spotlight!

But I’ve just one thing before I go

Does the wife think it’s love and not spite?

-

He would end with a simple piano flourish and a wink.

It was exhilarating, his first complete run through, having never written a song with the cut-throat directness that John typically thrived in. It was simple, and short, and gaudy in presentation, but it worked. He had felt an eerie sense of pride too, mimicking the lyrical style of John’s infamous track in the choruses but integrating his own with the vaudevillian accompaniment and middle verse.

After a long, awkward silence, Linda had gently convinced him not to record the song. It had taken quite a bit of pushing, as Paul had been both thrilled and alight with residual anger. But as conniving as Lennon’s song was, they had agreed that it was probably best for all parties if Paul didn’t release a response in which he teased an ability to give his songwriting partner an erection and insinuated that said partner’s power-couple marriage was founded on fallacy.

That was the most direct and specific their discussions about John and Paul’s relationship would ever get.

But now, as he shifted away from penetrative glances, he could feel that she wanted to talk about it. By the time his flight had landed and he’d taken a cab back home, the interview had already been aired (disappointing, but not surprising). A small part of him had hoped that the reporters would take pity on him and destroy the footage, but a bigger part of him knew that desire was hopeless. They’d do anything for ratings nowadays, and he wasn’t a person to these people anyway. He was an icon, a Beatle, and always would be. Consideration of his own comforts, feelings, desires–none of it was necessary.

The whole world knew now, of course. Why shouldn’t she?

“Linda,” he began, his voice hoarse.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” she responded simply, eyes firmly on the dishes once again.

“I want to. N-need to.”

Her gaze met his, and her features were soft. Understanding.

He took a shaky breath. “It’s true.”

She nodded.

“It’s not that simple, though.”

She nodded again.

His heart slumped in his chest, and a bitter taste suddenly filled his mouth. Never before had he tried to find the words to explain the cataclysme that had been his relationship with John. Forming an explanation in the wake of everything suddenly seemed extremely taxing.

A loud sigh came from Linda’s direction. Exasperated, though he couldn’t tell with whom.

Paul looked up at her, feeling quite like a child. She set the last dish in the drying rack and wiped her hands on her apron before coming to kneel in between his knees. His eyes followed her all the way, and they began to well up with inexplicable tears when she brushed a lock of hair behind his ear and planted a soft kiss on his cheek.

“You’re going to be okay.” She stroked his thighs soothingly. “We’ll lay low for a while and not take any calls or conferences, all right? It was a mistake, I shouldn’t have let you go on by yourself, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. One day at a time, yeah?”

He could only nod, feeling as if he could unravel under her ministrations any second.

She wiped an escaped tear with her thumb and raised to her feet once more, placing a kiss on the top of his head. “I’m going to bed now. Don’t stay out here and think too much, okay? We’ll talk again in the morning.” She gave him one last comforting smile before turning away.

“Lin?” He croaked out.

“Hmm?” She answered, turning back towards him and leaning against the doorframe with an honest, gentle smile.

“I love you. So much,” he added.

“I love you too. Get some sleep tonight?”

He sighed. “I will.”