we'll walk in the sun

The next day [after being arrested] Linda called one of her old journalist pals, Blair Sabol, whom she hadn’t spoken to since 1969, being one of the media friends Linda dropped when she and Paul got together. Linda’s former best girlfriend, the reporter Lillian Roxon, had never forgiven her for this slight, getting her own back on Linda by writing a catty review of Paul’s 1973 TV special, shortly after which Lillian died. No chance of reconciliation there. Linda had long ago made her peace with journalist Danny Fields, but Blair hadn’t heard from Linda until now, and like Lillian she got her own back on Linda in print, writing a caustic article about their reunion in the Village Voice. ‘Now you must understand the last time I knew Linda was in her groping groupie days [when] Linda was into photographing stars with little or no film in her camera,’ Blair later wrote. I remember how impressed I was with her come-on talents as she sat in front of [Warren Beatty] in a mini-skirt and her legs in full wide-angle split for at least six rolls of Ectachrome. Warren ended up ushering me out of his Delmonico’s suite within 30 minutes and kept Linda for two days. Her pictures turned out to be mediocre to poor, but we became fast friends. When Linda invited Blair to the LA studio where Paul was finishing Venus and Mars, Blair encountered a woman who seemed to have become totally false since her celebrated marriage, speaking in a faux English accent, also affecting a lazy rock ’n’ roll manner. ‘I mean Mahhhhhhn, I cahn’t stand this town,’ she said of LA. Linda shrugged off the latest drug bust: ‘Well, you know it happens to everybody and it’s time-consuming with the lawyers, but we’ll get it taken care of.’ Then Paul came in, wearing a hideous black satin smoking jacket with a dragon stitched on the back. ‘Linda’s told me so much about you. Really glad to meet you,’ he said politely. Whether he meant it, he made the effort. Blair warmed to Paul, but found Linda a complete phoney whose ‘manipulation of Paul’ was ‘obnoxious’; as if she was using him to make herself a star, which Blair seemed to think Linda had always wanted to be, though most people don’t see Linda that way.

I think it's valuable, when trying to find the truth of the "Paul was controlling of Linda vs. Linda was controlling of Paul" conundrum, to recognize the biases of everyone involved. For instance, if Linda stops confiding everything to her gay BFF or whatever after she marries Paul, Danny is naturally going to assume that Paul is the one who, for whatever reason (homophobia!), doesn't like him and doesn't want him talking to Linda. Paul looks like the catalyst, and that's a nice, uncomplicated explanation that doesn't a) tarnish his idealized memories of his friendship with Linda and b) impugn his own behavior (or that of His Friend) in any way. The same is true for any people in Paul's circle who felt marginalized or dumped after he got with Linda. There's also an assumption that, if Linda's not friends with her pre-marriage friends (i.e. ME, to most of these folks), then she's totally isolated and HAS no friends. Like... it's not possible that she has some different friends who a) aren't music journalists and b) don't have this weird antipathy with her husband? Linda had friends. Linda had friends to whom she would complain about Paul when they were having issues. Paul liked these friends and vice versa, even if they were on Linda's "side" in an argument. (Paul's a slightly trickier case, I think, but not because of Linda Controlling Him - more like, he had an extremely hard time trusting friends Due To Recent Events. And, as Pete Townshend reports, his difficulty accepting that people aren't just being chummy with him at industry events, that they legit LIKE him - which it sounds like Linda actually helped him with by getting him to phone people.)

However, Danny's comments to Sounes do contradict his own book about Linda, which portray them as having a lifetime friendship which continued until Linda's death. I can believe Paul was not Danny's friend, but Danny always portrayed Paul as cordial to him.

“Will you return again? I believe, we can renew, and you can be my brother once again.”

Made this guy from my favorite Gerard Donelan comic