Paul's bass playing on I Want You is brilliant. Maybe George's guitar on Hey Jude would have been too, we can't know. But fact is Paul just knew how he wanted the song and it didn't include those fills. He was totally within his right. I do wish they had done a take with them though. If Paul didn't like them, he could pick the version without them. It would have eased tension, and we'd have a cool outtake.
We know quite a bit about what happened with John after leaving the Maharishi, how the hours of meditation led him to want to confront his past and be honest with Cynthia about his affairs, which led to a real rollercoaster of emotions and unleashed a lot of aggression. Exit Cynthia, enter Yoko. But Paul seemed to have a similar experience through 1968, and we really don’t know a lot about the details. He really seemed to get on a lot of people’s nerves that summer, through smugly indulging himself, blowing up a handful of relationships or pushing John’s buttons about Yoko. He ended his relationship with Jane quite passive-aggressively, and then Francie, and his relationship with John never recovered. Paul seemed really pretty angry himself in 1968. What happened? What was going on behind the scenes that made him so suddenly disagreeable to people?
He wasn't honest with Cynthia unless that includes having someone seduce her and then suing her for adultery. (Sorry to be that guy.)
Yes, though that was later. On the plane home from India he told her about the affairs he’d had, including with some of her best friends. Rather than deal with the fallout from that, he ran to Yoko instead. I think that ended his brief experiment with full honesty.
Not that it answers your question, but one of the main reasons we know so much about the details of the John situation here compared to Paul is that Cyn spoke and wrote about the nitty gritty of it many times, whereas of course Jane never has (and never should if she doesn’t want to, I admire her holding out against the weight of Beatledom demanding she give up her memories). In addition John was by his very nature more outspoken and directly self mythologising about private matters whereas Paul has always been a lot more discreet.
Cyn probably needed to sell her story after she and her son got so well screwed. I think of her as being the most civil and best person of the whole lot of them,
On a lot of people's nerves? Like who? I'm not sure what you mean. I don't think we know how his relationship with Jane ended. Or even who ended it.
The song is better off without the ones you imagine. But George may have beaten your expectations, ya never know. And we'll never know.
What if someone "else" had checked out the book "John Lennon: One Day At A Time" and it wasn't on the shelf the day MDC happened down that aisle?
Why doesn’t Paul have any psychedelic songs? I made this playlist, A Collection Of Beatles Psychedelia, and was surprised with how little Paul I could fit in: Hey Bulldog It’s All Too Much Strawberry Fields Forever I Am The Walrus Only A Northern Song Something / Blue Jay Way Octopus’s Garden Glass Onion Revolution 9 Flying Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds A Day In The Life Sgt Pepper (Reprise) Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite Got To Get You Into My Life Wild Honey Pie Can You Take Me Back? https://link.tospotify.com/DdE8H9hICbb
Or I’ll just add it in somewhere: I’m taking a bit of license by almost always picking the Love album versions to psych-it up a bit. FYI, I’m going for the Anthology 2 version of Got To Get You Into My Life, which seems more druggy to me
“I don’t think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Paul in the summer of 1968.” - Beatles press officer Derek Taylor
I'd often said how the overall psychedelic 'feel" of Sgt. pepper was primarily due to the songs which were primarily John's. But a couple of the paul songs you have included, would stylistically and in terms of production qualify a few other Paul songs as well..Penny Lane. Getting Better, Fixing a Hole, Fool On The Hill, and Hello Goodbye come to mind. While they are not overtly "psychedelic", they have that "aura" in terms of self-reflection and as I said, the "color" of the prodection. But any of that aside, it has to be greatly considered that while most of these songs are easily classified as "John songs", the way they turned out in terms of a finished product (psychedelic ir otherwise) have a lot to do with McCartney's input in terms of textural arrangement. The best example of this is their most psychedelic song of all, Tomorrow Never Knows which you overlooked.
A few questions for anyone who can answer. If these have already been answered, any direction as to where I can find this info would be greatly appreciated! 1. The Beatles signed a new recording contract during the Allen Klein period. Once the breakup happened, was there a set number of albums to be delivered by each individual ex-Beatle? Or did their contract only stipulate a set number of albums through 1975/76? Just wondering how that got divided up between them. 2. How did the Nagra tapes make it out of the hands of Apple? Were they thrown out or stolen from Apple? Best wishes , folks!
Not quite sure what rules you're basing 'psychedelic' on? For me 'Fixing a Hole' has some rather hallucinogenic lyrics, whereas Sgt Pepper's reprise doesn't really strike me as 'Psyche' at all. Likewise, some of Penny Lane's lines (i.e. "The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray, and though she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway...") are fairly trippy! I do agree that perhaps sonically, Lennon and Harrison generally captured the feel of the period better than Paul.
. That quote is always used to show what an ass Paul was in the summer of 1968, and he probably was to en extent. But I think it is worth remembering that he was also trying to save Apple while Derek held the "longest cocktail party" there.
I’d also include Yellow Submarine as Paul psychedelia. Paul’s psychedelic songs aren’t as obvious as John’s, but they are drug influenced (marijuana more than LSD perhaps). And as you point out, many of the psychedelic touches on John’s songs were from Paul - the mellotron playing on Strawberry Fields, the orchestra crescendos on Day in the Life (and middle 8 about smoking and falling into a dream), tape loops on TNK, the Lowery organ figure on Lucy in the Sky (besides writing some of the lyrics!), guitar solo on Good Morning. I’d also rank Baby Youre a Rich Man and All You Need is Love as psychedelia.
It could be. I don't think it's hugely unlikely that George had an affair with her, given his history.
Not just him! Paul : "John warned me off Yoko once. You know, "look, that's my chick", as he knew my reputation. We knew each other rather well. I just kind of said "yeah, no problem". (1986).
