Decided to read through an ELT graded readers book about the history of the Beatles, and I enjoyed how they described the first meeting between Lennon and McCartney; simple and straight to the point. Unadorned prose with no need for hyperbole, ending it off quite simply with “Lennon and McCartney were together”.
“We like to say Apple is high and rising” says Lennon grinning, although his clashes with his song writing partner McCartney led to much publicised inevitable break-ups.
“Oh, I speak to Paul on the phone,” says John. “And someone told me Paul said we were only a decimal point from settling everything.”
“But I wish he would just send me a letter now and then…with all the legal stuff we’ll be tied together for a long time to come.”
I’ve seen this footage a few times but not in this quality so I’ve only just noticed…is that a painting of John and Paul behind Dick James in their Apple office?
I was dragged back here because… One thinks they’re over them and nothing about their relationship can surprise us anymore and then something like this comes up and it’s just…
It really hits you in the face how much and how loudlythey loved each other.
But also, how thoroughly in love they are with their own relationship? How enamored they are with the conceptof Lennon/McCartney?
Like, sometimes I get so lost in the otherwordliness of their whole merging with each other thing, that I forget that it wasn’t just them obsessing over their relationship. The whole world was idolizing it! This is the songwriting partnership that had a television special honoring it in 1965! These two twenty-somethings had a whole TV show, outside of their own very famous band, a mere two years into their official recording career!
If these ambitious boys were already infatuated with the romantic ideal of an artistic collaboration, of a great songwriting partnership, to then actually have those dreams realized and the gaze of the whole world as enthralled by it as you are? To have your relationship elevated out of the human realm and into the public consciousness?
Their marriage was public. Their marriage was a public good. Their marriage was the brand and the business they were building their life on.
And this is such an alien experience to the rest of us, that it only truly hits me every now and again, what it means to have a relationship become its own idolized thing, almost separate from its participants, and not just of their own doing but also boosted by the feelings of the entire world.
No wonder it was so hard to change and adjust within the dynamic. And no wonder it was so hard to get back together after it was publicly broken. The stakes are so high when the whole world is watching and holding your partnership to be this precious immutable thing. And I knew that this was one of the factors making any official musical reunion seem so hard. But sometimes it just hits you differently and you’re suddenly profoundly awareof what it means.
But basically, all of this to say that to understand Lennon/McCartney it bears remembering that in addition to being completely infatuated with each other, they were also infatuated with the idea of themselves, together, as a duo and partnership.
And if that can make the partnership more resilient — because you are valuing it and prioritizing it above many things, and working together to keep it going — it can also get so removed from the participants that they start resenting it and feeling that the partnership itself is being valued more than they are. Or it can get so idealized and static that it won’t easily accommodate changes in the dynamic. It is so valuable that any change is too high-risk. But the lack of change ends up breaking it anyway.
TL;DR: John and Paul have a painting of themselves in their own office and it brought me violently back to my old ramblings on Lennon/McCartney and how the partnership was idolized by themselves and the entire world.
