In Honor Of 1967, Here Are Some Of Paul's Favorites From The Year. (worn Often)

This is where you can really see tough Paul. The Paul that MLH would not like to meet in a dark alley. Especially, the third gif.

Paul McCartney admits to using LSD, ITN evening news, 19th June 1967 (video here)

More proof that Paul is hot when he’s pissed off

John and Paul, Hey Jude recording season; 30th July, 1968.

Can you imagine looking at that year after year?

The times they are a-changin.

This hurts my heart.

I didn’t expect impending tyranny to generate so much creativity and wit so quickly. I knew about it from history. Artists and musicians and writers are the first to be persecuted because they are the truth-tellers. Still, it’s been so fast and it buoys my spirit. It’s inspiring and I think people are creating magic. We all have such instant access and ability to disseminate information everywhere. We are crowdsourcing a revolution. People will be studying these slogans one day. The enormity of it. Massive it is. Cheers to the OG hammer legends. They are one of the still points in my turning world.

So, recommendation info…

Check out Elis James and John Robins. Right now they are on the BBC in a totally not confusing great reset podcast only format that is recorded once a week, podcasted twice a week and the highlights broadcast as a pre-recorded show on Friday afternoons on BBC5.

But go back to the earliest radio x/xfm unproducable days. Be a retro oner pcd.

See we did understand the great reset. We also now understand why ticket pricing, dynamic or static, is a dance. Nesta James is the best of eggs and is responsible for everyone in South Wales having a career. Toasties should never cost more than 4 euros. Sat Navs are a minefield Lynn. RIP Sat Nav Dad, seemed like another good egg. Stat Man Ross deserves only good things. Vin. Also, thanks Vin for introducing me to Vulfpeck. In the paddock.

So, listen to them. It’s a journey. It’s a good one. 🛎️

This is a treasure trove. 🙌

The Beatles & Noël Coward

The songwriting ambitions of Wooler and the Lennon-McCartney team provided a rich topic of conversation. "I used to discuss this chiefly with Paul," said Wooler. "I did discuss songs with John, but he wasn't interested in my kind of songs. Whereas Paul McCartney was interested in what I had to say about songs, and Noël Coward, for instance. I talked to him about Noël Coward and how clever and how witty he was. And this is what I miss about rock'n'roll songs, the absence of wit. There's so very few of them have any wit about them. Which is very sad. They're all rather long-suffering, these songs. And all this pall rather appalled me. 'When I'm Sixty-Four' is really, I think, the only witty Beatles song, which is essentially a McCartney number. When I used to announce Paul at the Cavern, occasionally I'd say, 'Now Paul's going to sing a song of his own he's written; he's the Noël Coward of rock'n'roll!' I think he liked that appellation, that description."

- Gillian G. Gaar, 'I AM THE DJ: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CAVERN'S BOB WOOLER', Goldmine (8 November 1996)

John and Paul meet Noël Coward at Alma Cogan's party at her London apartment, 1-4 June 1964.*

[Coward] found them 'pleasant young men, quite well behaved and with an amusing way of speaking'. [...] Though [Coward's] background was not so very different from the Beatles' - his father was an impoverished piano salesman - he swiftly assimilated into high society, readily adopting the mannerisms and accents of the English upper classes. Small wonder, then, that the current rise of working-class culture held so little appeal for him. [...] Coward made the mistake of relaying his encounter with John and Paul, in derogatory terms, to David Lewin of the Daily Mail. It never occurred to him that Lewin would quote him in print complaining that the Beatles were 'totally devoid of talent. There is a great deal of noise. In my day, the young were taught to be seen but not heard - which is no bad thing.'

- Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (2020)

(*Craig Brown dates this meeting as 6 June, however the Beatles - minus Ringo - were in Amsterdam on this date, and the party was in London. Lewin's article is published on Friday 5 June 1964 and refers to Coward's 'last day' of his visit to Britain 'this week' - therefore more likely 1-4 June.)

A year later, Coward sees the Beatles in concert at the Teatro Adriano in Rome, 27 July 1965, and afterwards goes to meet them at their hotel.

PAUL: Brian came and said, 'Noel Coward would like to meet you boys.' We all said, 'Oh, fucking hell, no! No, no, no. I'm going to bed.' Nobody was really keen, we were better just casually interacting with people. Once you actually had to meet them, it became a bit official and our black humour would kick in and we'd try and counteract the fact that four of us were going to have to line up to meet the great man, so piss-takes would come fairly readily. No one was going to go, and Brian said, 'You can't, you just can't!' So I went down and met him. But then he said some not too pleasant things about us after that, so fuck him anyway.

- Paul in Barry Miles, Many Years From Now (1997)

...I was told that the Beatles refused to see me because that ass David Lewin had quoted me saying unflattering things about them months ago. I thought this graceless in the extreme, but decided to play it with firmness and dignity. I asked Wendy [Hanson, the Beatles' publicist] to go and fetch one of them and she finally reappeared with Paul McCartney and I explained gently but firmly that one did not pay much attention to the statements of newspaper reporters. The poor boy was quite amiable and I sent messages of congratulation to his colleagues, although the message I would have liked to send them was that they were bad-mannered little shits.

- Noël Coward's diary entry for 4 July 1965, referring to 27 June. (x)

This is so future nostalgia coded. He DECIDED to do this. He made a conscious choice. What must it be like to live inside his mind?

If I had three wishes they would be for three conversations with him. The first would be on a cross country road trip. Playlists and chat. Can you imagine?

The Quarry Men with Arthur Kelly, George Harrison and John Lennon (circa 1958)

The Fritz Session, 9th April 1969, photo by Bruce McBroom

The cover of Rolling Stone №57 (April 30, 1970 with interview about Paul's first solo album McCartney), photo by Linda Eastman (McCartney)

This is, by no means, original thought. However, after the release of Beatles ‘64, I just want someone to make a Beatles film that is for us. Forget the mainstream and do what Cynthia said had never happened - people getting the emotion right instead of just the facts. The Beatles story isn’t a success story, it isn’t a rags to riches story, it isn’t an even a story about genius, it’s a story that has the power to change the world and one that will be told for ever. We are living in an era where we get to witness a myth being made and so in tribute to the oral tradition, we need to be the myth-makers. Someone needs to tell the story. I hope it will be Paul. I fear it won’t. Perhaps he can’t or shouldn’t, perhaps he won’t be believed. He definitely won’t be if everyone, including him, keeps recycling the same tropes. We know there’s no new stuff to be created, but there is a new light to be shed on what we know is there. This is beginning to sound a bit like the discovery of the Book of Mormon. No one needs another religion, but we do need is for someone to actually attempt to approach this seismic cultural event with an honest and open perspective.

Yoko allowed John to believe he was the genius. John’s canonisation (his manufactured image does him no favours) means that we can forget that Paul was the revered one in the 60s. He was the chosen one - in every way. John clocked it at their very first meeting.

“I half thought to myself, He’s as good as me, I’d been kingpin up to then. Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen?”- John

He took a risk, he made his choice and then never again believed in his own ultimate superiority. The story he’d told himself growing up, was that nobody was capable of spotting his genius because they were all below him. Surely a trauma response to being abandoned by his parents. Never could stand to be ignored, forever desperate to be seen and yet incapable of taking off the armour of cruelty. Look at me! Paul was the same, not armour but a wall of charm. Underneath John was soft and Paul is that almost impenetrable wall. They let each other in, and each betrayed the other. Those instincts of self-preservation that John spoke about.

Anyway, he took the chance on Paul, because he wanted to be somebody and Paul and him together made that a real possibility. Also, Paul was fucking hot and clever and talented. He was also a non-conforming weirdo who made everything look effortless and wouldn’t join John’s gang and wouldn’t let him lead. I wonder if this was Paul knowing, from the first moment of seeing John as was then confirmed by subsequent sightings and (I suspect) recces, strategically carried out to observe John (oh that bus worship carries some significance beyond an appreciation for public transport), that he knew how to handle John. Handle and manage John, in order to make him his very own.

(Is it him? Does it matter, because Paul has told us he “noticed” John many times, even before the chocolate bar.)

But, all the Paul adulation, especially John’s own uncontrollable, unconditional veneration, got to be too much. He couldn’t keep his jealousy in check. No quantity of material objects, women, money, food, fame soothed the ache for long enough. He thought Yoko, and because I am sure this is what Yoko promised him, was the only person who would always be in awe of him. She wasn’t, and the really tragic part is that Paul was from the jump, he still is and his faith never waivered.

If only they’d been able to maintain the connection and never lose the ability to read each other’s minds.

They burned too brightly. They loved too hard.

Genuinely a bit scary.