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WYCOTP's First Annual "Your Story, Your Pride" Digital Zine!

A collection of essays from queer Beatles fans for the month of Pride! Coming out on June 16!!

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Code

We met at Forthlin Road And wrote a secret code To never be spoken I stand by what I said The promise that I made Will never be broken

Paul McCartney - Days We Left Behind

A lot of what we, The Beatles, did was very much in an enclosed scene. Other people found it difficult - even John's wife, Cynthia, found it very difficult - to penetrate the screen that we had around us. As a kind of safety barrier we had a lot of 'in' jokes, little signs, references to music; we had a common bond in that and it was very difficult for any 'outsider' to penetrate. That possibly wasn't good for relationships back then.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

There was no point asking if they [the Beatles] really got on together. It’s obvious they do. When one makes a joke, the others roar with laughter. They have their own “inside” language when they want to keep something private. Mrs. Lennon says they tease her with it all the time. And they’ve been together so much, sometimes they don’t even have to talk in code. As Paul says, “we can just read each other’s thought waves.”

Steve Brandt, “7 DAYS and 7 NIGHTS WITH THE BEATLES.” Photoplay Magazine (July 1964)

JOHN: We have met some new people since we've become famous, but we've never been able to stand them for more than two days. Some hang on a bit longer, perhaps a few weeks, but that's all. Most people don't get across to us. We can't go around with anybody for a long time unless they are a friend, because we're so closely knit. We talk in code to each other. We always did when we had strangers around us...

THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY

PAUL: If there was someone disastrous in the dressing room (because, occasionally, someone would get in who was a right pain and we didn't have time for all of that) we would have little signs. We'd say 'Mal...' and yawn, and that would be the sign to get rid of them. It was a very 'in' scene.

THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY

Malcolm Searle would be the last to complain - he, too, had fine moments with them as the tour progressed. His is a name that stays with me, because I made it a code-word for breaking up interviews. In order to protect the visitor’s feelings and also to relieve Paul (for it was usually Paul, the most consistently willing to undertake public relationships) of all responsibility for termination of the interview, I would say: ‘Paul, I know you could go on talking for hours/till the cows come home/till goats learn to play the tenor sax - but Malcolm Searle is still waiting for the interview you promised him. He's being very patient [as indeed he always was] but he has a deadline...’

Fifty Years Adrift, Derek Taylor (1984)

I’m a smoke-screen expert since John got shot. I lie all the time. It’s the price of fame. I used to laugh at that, but there’s a price for everything. We have code names in the family for places we own or like to go to, and you’ll never see photographs of my kids.”

Interview for Evening Standard The Gospel According to Paul

The Beatles were about humour, we had a great humour between us. There was an 'in' side to the track of humour that we would use as a protective thing.

Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

"We've a very tight school, the Beatles. We're like a machine that goes boom, boomchick, chickboom, each of us with our own little job to do. We're just like dogs who can hear high-pitched sounds that humans can't. We can be talking to some character and, suddenly, if he becomes a drag, we can all put the shutters up, freeze him out and he would never know. It's amazing. Like radar. I can pick up Ringo's mood just by looking at him. It's our own mutual protection mechanism. If we didn't have it, we'd fall apart."

The Daily Mirror: The one that bites – Donald Zec dissects Mr J. Lennon. (March 1965)

Music

JOHN: Well, because of the situation we’re in, and I often express myself through song, or mainly through song, somebody can have – let’s call it— Let’s say he’s a brother of mine, in the family. Now, if two brothers argue and fight, for whatever reason, or even – write, the only way they can express themselves, because they’re not artists, is either through letters or through dialogue. One brother goes away to sea, not because they had a fight, but because he was going away to sea anyway. The last thing they did was have an argument. He, the brother away at sea – let’s call that me, ‘cause I went to America – might write to his brother…

...

Paul, you could say, his lyrics are very sort of... non-specific – if one knows the person, one knows what is coming down. You know, you can read what’s being said—

John Lennon, April 16th, 1973 (Beverly Hills Hotel, Los Angeles)

"Though thinking of Paul caused John pain, he could never get McCartney out of his head; Pau's music was everywhere, and it always made him jealous, even the songs he enjoyed. In Bermuda, John was listening to all kinds of things on the radio, not just the Muzak and classical he listened to in New York. "Coming Up," Paul's hit single from McCartney II, was unavoidable. Every time he tuned in the BBC or one of the local stations, there it was. It began to drive John crackers. Paul was calling for a Beatles reunion, and every word of the song was addressed directly to him. Ultimately, he came to admire it and draw inspiration from it. The small room next door to the master bedroom had been converted to a two-track recording studio complete with rhythm box. To get into gear for the demo tape, John played "Coming Up" on his guitar over and over, sometimes improvising his own words, sometimes singing Paul's words, which spoke of peace and the possibility of again playing music together."

Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon

“But it was very painful, a bad period, there was a lot of deep messages in all the stuff we did then. I was really writing a lot of songs to John.”

Paul McCartney, 2001

"I’m quite private. Why should people, know my innermost thoughts? That’s for me, their innermost. But in a song, that’s where you can do it. That’s the place to put them. You can start to reveal truths and feelings. You know, like in ‘Here Today’ where I’m saying to John “I love you”. I couldn’t have said that, really, to him. But you find, I think, that you can put these emotions and these deeper truths – and sometimes awkward truths; I was scared to say “I love you”.

Paul, BBC 4’s Mastertapes (2016)

Oh, for what it’s worth, no less than John Lennon loved the song. I spent a long time talking to [photographer] Bob Gruen once, it was great as we talked about a lot of stuff that he doesn’t usually get grilled on. One of the things that came up was the times he spent with John listening to the radio. Bob singled this song out as one he and John would listen to and how much John loved the song. John took the song quite personally, and saw it as Paul sending a message to him: ‘Yeah, I know you think I only write silly love songs, but I love you.’ Bob said John specifically mentioned the ‘I love you’ refrain as being a message from Paul to him. We can speculate all we want, but I have no reason to doubt the word or memory of a guy who sat in the Dakota bedroom with John and listened to this song with him.

gswan, c/o Steve Hoffman Music Forums. (October 28th, 2010)

JOHN: Because I’m human, and I get irritated, and I get angry. And I got so furious when I heard Ram the first time that I just wrote the song.

REPORTER: You were furious because you don’t think the level of music is—?

JOHN: No, I was furious because of – there’s messages to me and the others in it! Uh, the ‘Too Many People’—

YOKO: “You made the first mistake.”

JOHN: —“You made the first mistake”, all those lines are directly to us. It ain’t paranoia, it’s directed to us. Like, I think ‘Dear Friend’ is it… But we met the other week and we decided to stop it all, you know? Because we’d both had enough. The four of us have – I mean, including the wives. Yes, sorry?

February?, 1972: At a press conference to announce plans for a possible tour backed by Elephant’s Memory

Telepathy & Dreams

HINDLE: What do you think about language? JOHN: I think it’s a bit crummy, you know? It is a drag form of communication, really. We’ll get – we’ll get telepathy. I believe that. HINDLE: You believe that? JOHN: Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure as anything I believe. It’s too… Because now we need it so much. […] There are – there’s people everywhere of the same mind and it’s just… even amongst ourselves we can’t communicate. Which is the hard bit, you know. HINDLE: Yeah. JOHN: Amongst the people that sort of really agree. HINDLE: Just ’cause of words? JOHN: Just ’cause of words, and upbringing, and attitude, and how you express your… Well, it’s just some – you’ve got to find a mutual sort of language to express yourself, you know? And my language is that— HINDLE: Unless you fall in love it’s impossible to communicate like that. JOHN: I mean, I wasn’t in love last year, but I was communicating quite well with people. Not as well, or maybe not as powerfully. ’Cause now there’s two of us, doing that, brrmmm, whatever it is. Sending out a vibration or whatever. But before it was me and… or me and George, alright, or whatever it was; we weren’t in love, but. You know. There’s enough in you to shove it out. It is just that bit. If you – if somebody comes in a room and he’s uptight and that, he can make the whole room uptight.

John Lennon, interviewed by Maurice Hindle (December 1968).

JOHN: [‘How Do You Sleep’]’s not serious. Like, if Paul was really, really hurt by it, I’ll soo– I’ll know by the vibes, come round. Even if he doesn’t call, well, I’ll explain it to him. I’ll even write to him, you know. If he really really thinks it’s – thinks it’s really really serious.

September 9th, 1971 (St Regis Hotel, New York)

KANE: Do you ever have any, uh – this is another controversial question – any internal problems within The Beatles? Let’s say the four guys, you’re bound to have differences. Have any serious internal problems ever upset you? JOHN: [pause] Um… We get plenty of— KANE: It’s a tough question to ask. JOHN: It isn’t tough, because we can manage them. Because we have plenty of arguments, but we’re also so attuned to each other, and we know each other so well, through the years, that an argument never reaches a climax. Or it never reaches the point where somebody goes off ‘cause they’re done talking, you know. KANE: In other words, it’s forgotten. JOHN: It’s not forgotten. But we know each other so well, it’s like sort of mind-reading. If an argument’s building up between Ringo and I, say, there comes to a point where we know what’s coming next and it’s all – everybody packs in. Or something – some, “Okay, he wins,” you know. So we have ordinary arguments, like other people, but we don’t – there’s no sort of conflict. All the people who have conflict in show business either get married about nineteen times, they leave the group they’re in and go solo… and nothing ever happens.

John Lennon and Ringo Starr, interviewed by Larry Kane (2 September 1964).

NEIL: I’d just rather not say anything. It’s one of those situations. PAUL: Yeah. [pause] Well, that’s – that’s the trouble you see, there, ‘cause that’s it. It’s like, with our – heightened awareness, the answer is not to say anything, you know. But it isn’t. ‘Cause I mean, we screw each other up totally if we don’t do that. ‘Cause we’re not ready for your heightened… vows of silence. [laughs; hapless] We’re really not! Like, we don’t know what the fuck each other’s talking about, when that – we all just sort of get— NEIL: I think it’s just between the four of you, that get it. That’s what I’d pretend. PAUL: Oh yeah, right, yeah. But you see, that’s it, that’s why John doesn’t say anything. ‘Cause he, you know, he just… There was something the other day, when I said, “Well, what do you think?” And he just stood there and didn’t say anything. And then – and I know exactly why, you know. I mean, I wouldn’t, if… [long pause] Somehow. You know, there’s nothing really much to be said about it. You just – we all just have to do it, and all that, instead of like talking about it. But – but if one of us is talking about it, it’s a drag if the other three aren’t. Because then it sort of throws you off. [inaudible; voice marking tape slate] I mean, we’ve just been talking about it now for a few years, you know. Like this…

From the Get Back sessions (13 January 1969).

JOHN: Hey! Did you dream about me last night? PAUL: [long pause] I can’t remember. JOHN: Very strong dream. We both dreamt about it. It was amazing! Different dreams, you know, but I thought you must’ve been there. [inaudible] I was touching you. [inaudible] PAUL: Nothing to worry about, though? JOHN: Nothing to worry about, no.

January 26th, 1969

PAUL: I remember when John and I were first hanging out together, I had a dream about digging in the garden with my hands. I’d dreamt that before but I’d never found anything other than an old tin can. But in this dream I found a gold coin. I kept digging and I found another. And another. The next day I told John about this amazing dream I’d had and he said, ‘That’s funny, I had the same dream’. So both of us had this dream of finding this treasure. And I suppose you could say it came true. I remember years later talking about it – ‘Remember that dream we had?’; ‘Yeah, that was far out’. So the message of that dream was: keep digging lads.

Completely unedited thought dump mostly so I can remember as much as possible (I’m v tired so I’m gonna apologise for the typos before I even make them)

The most important info first: paul was in his usual hoodie and shirt combo which is NOT snazzy BUT he was wearing some snazzy socks and MOST importantly they were Wings socks

Second most important info: it was Rob fucking Brydon interviewing him which is so funny to me and honestly he was a great choice! Paul seemed pretty relaxed and even though it was all the same stories we’ve heard during the other interviews etc for the album, it was lovely to be in the same room while he told them and Rob managed get his silly side out as well

Because it was Rob Brydon (do I need to do a cultural explainer on Rob for non-brits? is he known elsewhere?) they had a bet on how many impressions Rob would do which ended up including Paul himself, Ringo, Ronnie Corbett (obvs) and Michael Cain (also obvs) all of which seemed to delight Paul

There was also a sweet moment where Rob was saying that people doing impressions of paul are doing it because they love him so much and that made the whole crowd erupt and Paul seemed genuinely touched and grateful and took a moment to formulate a reply 😭

He suggested at one point Rob had been watching porn

To the question ‘how do you put people are ease’ he answered ‘drugs’

Quite a few Nancy stories!!! I actually wanna hang out with her so bad

During the first song Rob had a moment of realisation that he and Paul were just gonna have to sit opposite each other while the songs played and he definitely didn’t know what to do with himself lmao

Paul really got into though and was doing that classic Paul wiggle and pretending to play the instruments

Paul just kept answering ‘I don’t know’ to most questions about how he writes songs, puts then together etc which made me giggle and tbh I believe him I do think he might just be magic

Hearing the album in such a great space just made me love it even more 😭

The first star of the night section was probably my fave bc I’d had a bit of stressful morning, but then from the moment I arrived in the queue I had such an amazing time and everyone was so friendly (shout out to Stephen who I spoke to for about 90mins in the queue and I really think I was supposed to meet him today 😭) ANYWAY my point was that being there with all the paul fans just made me feel so so happy and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and then they played first star and I just had a little cry because yeah. things are gonna be alright man.

Paul also joked that just playing the records and having a sit down might be the way forward lmao

He did play that weird chord at the start of as you lie there AND the opening of life can be hard on his guitar!!! And got a big cheer obviously

I feel like I’m forgetting things already 😩

Oh before playing Come Inside Paul’s only explanation was ‘it’s a banger’ and then said ‘So this is come inside…. And please do’. ok paul!

Overall it was just so special and went by SO quick and I wanna do it again right now but a version where it’s just me and paul and I can ask him whatever I like and he tells me everything

Okay I’m gonna sleep and hopefully not miss my stop good night

Oh please send me questions if you wanna know anything else!!!!

"Giggle?" He pondered it. "No. It's hysterics, we call it. It sounds like giggling to people, but it's leading up to hysterics. I laugh when I'm not serious. Right now I'm serious."

[...]

At this moment, to my relief, Paul strolled in. He was immaculately combed and groomed, with white shirt, black suit, black tie, even cufflinks. But he wore beach sandals on his bare feet.

John looked Paul up and down blandly, and said, "You got to wear socks."

Paul sat down, his handsome, cherub face genuinely disturbed. It was as though John were his elder brother, and bothersome. "Do I need socks?" he said. "What's wrong with no socks?"

He went out to put on socks.

Tell me that you got everything you want and your bird can sing, but you don’t get me

Caught up in thinking about this song that we have conflicting reports and opinions on what it’s actually about and ready to present my thoughts.

TLDR: And Your Bird Can Sing is about a cycle of torment (or cycle of abuse, but I prefer to be careful with usage of that word for various obvious reasons).

Disclaimer: It is not my intention for my take to be seen as the ultimate reading, you can agree or disagree and I will be happy to discuss!

WARNING: THIS IS GONNA BE LONG!

INSPIRATION

First person to claim they served as an inspiration for this piece is Marianne Faithful in her relationship to Mick Jagger (sorry Marianne, the song can’t be inspired by you, you and Mick weren’t even together when it was written - AYBCS was recorded in April 1966 and written probably earlier, Marianne and Mick got together in November 1966. That does not mean that she cannot identify with something in it though).

Then we have Cynthia who said it’s about a golden bird cage that she says she gifted to John and while this seems a bit absurd as Cynthia does not appear to match the person addressed in the song, I wouldn’t be quick to disregard her as a partial inspiration for this song. I will talk about it later when applying a plausible autobiographical reading.

There’s also a theory that it’s actually inspired by an interview with Frank Sinatra and his criticism of The Beatles. We know that there was some sort of a rivalry going on between him and the band, a representation of a generational clash between the old world and the new. I actually like this interpretation and as Paul once said, “most of our songs start as a newspaper article”. I do think that this news piece probably inspired some lines and in a way, it is also about that - you can actually view the lyrics that way - remember that a song can be about multiple things at once. But I don’t think this is the ultimate reading.

More under the cut.

In this week's article by @turnt-archives, they discuss twenty essential songs that exemplify George Harrison's and Bob Dylan's musical relationship as it evolved over a story of devotion, creativity, and enduring mutual admiration. The article also discusses the importance of these relationships by George, and how Bob Dylan impacted his life to where it was "romantic, in a sense". Click the link below to read! You won't want to miss it 😁