Paul In 1983.

“I will tell you my first and my last memories of The Beatles.”

“The last was in 1967. Brian Epstein had hired me to shoot some record sleeves. It all happened in February during the recording of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I had to build a photo studio inside the Abbey Road studio building, in a room next to their recording studio. I stayed there for one week. They needed group pictures of the four, so I had to wait a long time since it seemed there was always one of them hanging around somewhere – talking to the angels!”

— French photographer Jean-Marie Perier.

fuck love except whatever that doe eyed bass playing twink and that big nosed blind rhythm guitarist had

NOW AND THEN (2023): The final Beatles recording-

Atlantic City: Bruce Springsteen / P.S I Love You: The Beatles / Photograph: Ringo Starr / Mind Games: John Lennon / I'll Be Seeing You: Billie Holiday

eras that have irreparably damaged my psyche:

part 2

old man john

Top: John, Paul, and George on the set of Help!, Nassau Beach Hotel, New Providence Island, Bahamas, photographed by Henry Grossman. Above: John sets about combing Henry Grossman’s hair into a Beatles coiffure, photographed by Ringo Starr. (February, 1965)

John Lennon and George Harrison on the train back to New York City from Washington, D.C., February 12, 1964

gay

Paul wasn’t planning to write about Liverpool – until he heard “Strawberry Fields” and it lit up his competitive edge. These memories were something he and his dearest friend still shared – Paul remembered Strawberry Field, and he knew John well enough to know what it meant to him. But he also knew what Penny Lane meant to John – that was the street where he lived with his mother, Julia, before she left him. Strawberry Field was down the road from his Auntie’s house; the place he’d go to contemplate his exile from the home he’d known on Penny Lane. These twin songs went together as a concept single. “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” are their most famous combo, linked together forever though it’s been decades since they’ve existed in that form. They play off each other as a John/Paul dialogue. While Paul does his people-watching on Penny Lane, John is a mile away, hiding in the tall grass of Strawberry Field. – Rob Sheffield, Dreaming the Beatles

McCartney / Lennon