eyes of clara bow

I don't think we talk enough about John's boat trip in 1980. I've only ever really seen it discussed as a crazy story or as what got John over his writer's block. But I think it probably had a much greater impact on his life and if he hadn't been murdered there's a good chance he'd be talking about it as a major turning point in his life. He was on a boat in the middle of the ocean during a storm and all of the crew got sick so John had to steer the boat all by himself, he thought for sure he was going to die but he managed to steer the boat though the storm safetly. Like this was a man who up until this trip was relying on Yoko and his tarot card reader to run his life and tell him what to do but, then he gets put in a situation all on his own where the only thing keeping him from dying is himself, and he manages to get through it and keep everyone alive.

Remember that quote from Yoko where she said John had told her he'd been riding on a boat called Paul and now he was riding on a boat called Yoko, John always counted on someone else to run his life and keep him alive, and safe but now he had proof that he could literally steer his own ship, and keep himself alive no matter how dire the situation was. He comes back from this trip and makes a lot of major life changes/ decisions, he says he's finally going to leave the US to go back to England for a visit, he writes 2 albums' worth of songs, he makes plans to divorce Yoko, he makes plans to work with Paul again, and he makes plans to go see Julian. It definitely seems like John was finally trying to take charge of his own life. Like, obviously, we don't know what would have happened going into 1981 he could have backpedalled or messed some of this stuff up, and I'm by no means saying that this one experience magically fixed all of John's mental health problems, but it definitely seemed to be transformative for him, but he just didn't get a chance to act on it.

If you’ve watched “The Music of Lennon & McCartney,” you know the Beatles’ songs were sometimes adapted into other languages. French was one of them, and the one I want to talk about today is “Toi l’ami” by Richard Anthony (the one you can hear in the special).

Now, this song the adaptation of “All My Loving,” and let me tell you… it is wild. This isn’t just a “let’s translate this into French” version. Oh no. The lyrics were completely reworked, and while the melody and sense of longing remain, the story is different.

It’s about a man singing about a friend from his youth who is now gone, and who he will never be able to see again.

This song (who, mind you, was released in 1964) sounds like Paul talking to John after their breakup, and then after John’s death. I’m not joking, I can’t think about anything else whenever I listen to it.

Here’s the song:

Translated lyrics (I tried to keep the meaning rather than doing a literal translation):

You, the friend from our twenties, Tomorrow you will be leaving With a lover on your arm, But don’t forget your friends from before Remember us from time to time

Among us who remain here, We will often talk about you And the joy of the good old days You will, despite everything, still be with us For your name lives on in our childhood memories

Everything disappears As soon as love arrives Life passes by Each one in turn

You are far away now, so far, and everything has changed Our hearts are too heavy to sing It feels like, with you, a part of our lives has gone And it’s true, because our twenties are slipping away

Everything disappears As soon as love arrives Life passes by Each one in turn

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is often about Paul’s current perspective on the events of his past (and I love the sense that he’s done a lot of processing in the past few years, hello Days We Left Behind and Momma Gets By). But it’s also about seeing his life as a whole. For me, Mountain Top has a lot of fun with that: a present-day festival with its roots in 60s psychedelia.

It’s a playful song, opening with baroque pop harpsichord before layering in lots of changes in instrumentation and tempo. I’ve been surprised to see people link it to his Emperor of Eternity trip with John, because to me this is very explicitly not an acid song. Both because the lyrics name magic mushrooms, and because the whole vibe is basically the opposite of how Paul talks about acid.

I don’t think he’s ever suggested he regrets taking acid, but he’s unusually ready to acknowledge negatives. He makes it sound heavy, for good and ill, and irrevocable. “You ask yourself, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a normal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t.” The Emperor of Eternity trip matters very much to him as a moment of deep connection with John, but there’s still a lot of fear in his account: fear of losing himself, of loss of control, of not being able to stop. (The moment where he tries going to bed because he’s had enough, but the trip keeps going.) And that chimes with other accounts of Paul on acid - hating that his sleeves were dirty when he tripped with Tara, not being able to let go of the wall and take George’s hand. (The dentist dosing George and John without consent, and the peer pressure on Paul to take acid, add to the general atmosphere of loss of consent/choice).

In Mountain Top, tripping is something much gentler. There’s togetherness, with (mostly) a sense of safety and always a sense of choice. Those magic mushrooms “seem to want to talk and say ‘hello’” - they’re properly introduced! The trip, the festival, the second bus are all something to do “When you’ve got some time to spare”. And even as the chorus takes us into a trip, there are still choices: “Need to get a grip and slip away / Or do you want to stay?”

He puts a lot of musical space around that question (pause before, sparser instrumentation). These words matter. How far do you want to go? Are you ready to go further? Each “Do you want to stay” is followed by a musical break, as the “you” of the song *does* choose to stay, and dips deeper into the trip. The first starts out with chugging guitars and this tiny sprinkling of synths that remind me of 90s rave - they just sort of sparkle for a moment. There’s still some darkness, some risk, as the harpsichord and guitar slow down and descend. While this is an idealised view, it’s not completely fluffy: even if you’re choosing it, you don’t quite know what you’re going to find in the trip.

Musically and lyrically, the song keeps blending past and present. Harpsichord is obviously a 60s baroque pop characteristic, but it’s also something Paul has made a trademark in the 2000s (Ever Present Past, New, Kiss of Venus). And the trip is modern, too. Paul describes Mountain Top as a festival song: “It’s like Coachella and Glastonbury … kind of people going off for the weekend to trip out and get stoned. And we go to quite a few festivals these days… I was trying to get that feeling of a young girl at the festival, tripping out.” (Paul did literally go to the mountain top when he last played Glastonbury - other festival goers spotted him there, admiring the sunset with Nancy.)

In the 1960s, there was a lot of disdain for “weekend hippies” who hadn’t committed to the lifestyle. Given his love of the ordinary, I’m not sure Paul ever shared that. Even in the unhinged So Far Out It’s Straight Down interview, he’s trying to build bridges, rather than sneering at the normies. As rave culture shifted, from around the late 1980s, it really valued the short-term escape - emphasising the pleasure of the moment, and how it could help you connect with other ravers. Which is how Mountain Top feels to me, especially in the big guitars of the second instrumental break.

Compared to other drug songs Paul has been involved in, it’s a lighter, less all-in approach: not a heavy trip. There’s a warmth and ease to it, with Paul having fun, feeling safe and connected. (Obviously, there are other dark sides he’s not touching. He’s framing his own drug use as benign, when we know he’s got a history of self-medication and sometimes dependency. This song is not opening that can of worms.) But I think it’s interesting that he’s writing about drugs from a place of such emotional safety.

In the 90s and 2000s, Paul could be tense and defensive around countercultural themes, feeling he had to prove his experimental credentials, citing his past to defend his present. Even a buoyant, confident song like Vintage Clothes does some explaining of his position (“what went out is coming back”). In this song, 1960s to now feels like an unbroken flow. It’s all there for him to play with.

"[I use] pencil and paper. I’m not a typist. Funnily enough, John became a red-hot typist towards the end of his life. He had always had this “Arts Correspondent in Kowloon” kind of dream. But for me it’s pencil and paper." (2001)

"He might have become a novelist. That's something he wanted to do." (1989)

Just posted my first Beatles fic!! :)

All about John and Paul in August of 1960, getting ready to leave for Hamburg for the first time, and distracting themselves from their anxieties by reading poetry to one another and being lazy together at their favourite haunts.

a dreaded sunny day - ao3

Inspired by this song, of course: