These Pictures Together Are Really Good!

“In May 1964, they shared their first screen kiss in a BBC TV special, performing a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s the kind of video nugget that fans like me used to shell out stupid bootleg money for; now it’s one click away for anyone with a phone. It’s bracing to see how mirthfully they act out the Pyramus and Thisbe scene. Paul is the boy; John plays the boy playing the girl, in a dress and a blond wig. (…) John and Paul rave about how pretty they both are—“ these lily lips, that cherry nose!”— and snuggle up for the death scene”

                                                   - Rob Sheffield, Dreaming The Beatles 

Note: in the video, they really don’t kiss… but i sure wish they had. Ha!Anyway, you can see the video here. Many thanks to @pivoinesque @vairemelde and @amoralto for helping me with a couple of questions I had about this quote. Apparently, in theatre, when a man and a woman touched palms it was considered a kiss. But what Rob probably meant with “their first kiss” was just a lyrical play of words. So, many thanks to those three blogs for helping me out with this. 

Can you imagine being John Lennon in 1974, and you’re about to see your ex-best friend/pseudo husband/songwriting partner for the first time in years, plus its a really big moment cause you’re tentatively thinking about working with him again, then the motherfucker shows up looking like this unironically:

“The really strange thing was that I went to work that morning somehow knowing Paul would ultimately show up — despite what had happened. Of course, from the point of view of his Liverpool upbringing, the best way to deal with something like that is to keep right on doing what you’d normally do. It helps to take your mind off it — being with friends, I suppose, even though it did occur to me that he might have just as easily rung up and cancelled the session. I remember the first thing he said to me was, “I just don’t know what to think.” He was obviously physically shaken, and even at the best of times wasn’t really too articulate when it came to expressing how he felt about things. After one of the takes Paul and I were just hanging out, leaning up against AIR [Studio]’s huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Oxford Circus, when I happened to notice this dark green truck going by that said LENNON FURNISHINGS or something like that. “Oh God, look at that,” I said, and he just sort of broke down, you know? “I’ll tell you one thing, man,” he said, “I’ll never fall out with anyone again in my life for that amount of time and face the possibility of them dying before I get a chance to square it with them.” After that I never consciously mentioned anything about it. If he wanted to talk about it he did, and if he didn’t, well, he didn’t. Everybody in the world was very hurt by John’s death, but especially Paul McCartney.”

— Denny Laine, interview w/ Geoffrey Giuliano, c/o Geoffrey Giuliano, Blackbird: The Life and Times of Paul McCartney. (1991)

So you mean to tell me that every song in the Gimme Some Truth Deluxe Book is accompanied by commentary on its inception, instruments used and musicians who played on the track and then you get to I Know (I Know) and they decide to forgo all of that and end up just including quotes from John about missing England, Paul, old friends, about trying to talk to each other after not seeing each other and having a hard time signing the Beatles dissolution papers?

The jig is UP.

“The Beatles is over but John, Paul, George and Ringo, God knows what relationship they’ll have in the future, I don’t know. You know, but they still, I still love those guys. Because they’ll always be those people that were that part of my life.”

GEORGE HARRISON and PAUL McCARTNEY in THE BEATLES: GET BACK (2021) dir. Peter Jackson

Martha spent a lot of her time snuffling after Thisbe the cat. In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, a group of Athenian workmen - the 'mechanicals' - led by Bottom the weaver, attempt to stage a play called Pyramus and Thisbe. The Beatles performed a short extract from this play within a play for the Jack Good TV show Around the Beatles in May 1964. John played Thisbe, Paul played Pyramus, George was Moonshine and Ringo appeared as Lion. Thisbe was to feature in a number of Paul's home movies, peering round doors and jumping down steps; she was soon joined by three more of her kind.

PAUL: I had a litter of cats called Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Jesus ran off, Joseph stuck around for a long time, and Mary had kittens. We put the kittens in this little box and I remember me and Brian Jones stayed up all night, looking at the kittens. I got the word 'God' from three symbols on the side of the box: one of them was a moon, the G; О was the sun, and the star was like the D. And somehow it read, 'God'. I had this live-in couple called the Kellys who would wake you up early in the morning like everything was just going normally and we had just stayed up all night and it was like, 'Go away please!' It was just amazing because we were actually watching what went on. Instead of saying, 'Oh yes, we've got kittens, ain't they marvellous? There they are, cuddly cuddly, now I'm going to go and do something important,' we took five hours with these kittens. Now they call it 'Stop and smell the flowers'. They say you should do more things like that in a stressful life.

— paul mccartney: many years from now, by barry miles

(in the Little Girl Tape starting from around 7:40 you can hear Paul talking about the kittens - who were born in May '67 - and their mom Thisbe)

Paul: When you told me John: When you told me Paul: You didn't need me anymore John: You'll never leave me Paul: You know, I nearly broke down and die

John and Paul: we did not have this conversation before. This song is totally fictional and not about us breaking up at all.

This soulful jamming reminds me of their "Oh Johnny, Johnny" "improvisations". Also John proceeds to talk about Yoko's divorce, sticking it in where it hurts. (Chap really knows how to rub it in).

yeah imagine