mclennon tinted analysis

i love them sm

pov hes about to quit your band and immediately drop the most earth-shattering album of all time

another couple of versions under the cut bcs i couldnt decide what looked better <3

"Well, Pete," John asked as soon as Paul left, "what do you think of him?". "I liked him." "And what do you think about to accept him into the group?". "I don't mind," I replied. "If you want it and he wants it too, then…". During that first meeting, I didn't pay much attention to Paul. He seemed very quiet to me, but that's what always happens when a person meets a group of unfamiliar guys for the first time. I wasn't jealous of him, at least not that first time. He was so much younger! I didn't see him as a future rival. John and I were close friends. I've always been friends with him. Only because I loved him.

Of course, it never occurred to John then that he and Paul were destined to become close friends. On the one hand, John was almost two years older than Paul, and this only reinforced his sense of superiority. In this kid, John himself was attracted by musical competence. Simply put, Paul had to stay at the Quarryman just as long as it took John to learn all these chords.

It soon became clear that Paul would remain in John's band for a long time. Although outwardly their characters seemed completely opposite, both were united by a fanatical obsession with rock and roll. John and Paul were absolutely fascinated by everything – from chord harmonies to models of electric guitars of their idols. In addition, they were both very attracted to joint performances for the audience. Before, both John and Paul devoted almost all their free time to the guitar, sometimes they even took it with them to the toilet, so it's not surprising that they started rehearsing together whenever possible. Gradually their self-defense reflexes disappeared and they became real friends.

Paul wouldn't have been able to hold out in John's band, even if he was worthy of a place in the Philharmonic orchestra, if John hadn't loved him as a person. All the other members of the first line–up gradually "dropped out" - not so much because of musical futility, but because they bored John.

ref

thank you anon! literally all the tags on that post are hilar and made me audibly laugh out loud but here is a compilation of the standouts:

Thinking about the Beatle habit of sharing clothes - because it's so striking, and because culture, fashion and consumerism have changed so much.

The brilliant @reflectismo posted a great excerpt from George Harrison's I, Me, Mine on his teenaged fashion sense. He had a waistcoat Paul had given him: "I think he got it from John, who got it from his stepfather Mr Dykins. I also had one of our Harold's sports jackets dyed black and you could see the checkered design underneath. I wore black trousers made into drainpipes..."

From a 21st century perspective, what jumps out is the intimacy of sharing clothes. And yes, that's there, but it would read differently in the 1950s.

Clothes were scarcer and much more expensive. No fast fashion (which developed in the 1990s). The Beatles were war babies. They grew up with rationing, hand-me-downs, make do and mend. Clothes rationing didn't end until 1949. For years after that, post-war austerity meant consumer options remained limited.

So it's standard practice to pass on clothes. You'd probably get them from family and friends, but that doesn't guarantee emotional closeness. John didn't get on with his stepfather, but still took that waistcoat.

That means baby George had limited choice when it came to clothes, but he went all out in imposing his personality on them. As the youngest in both his family and the band, he clearly had a lot of hand-me-downs. But he's ready to customise: dyeing a jacket, changing the cut of the trousers. These are fashion alterations, not just making something the right size. And he wants to impress and keep up with his friends. It's not long before they'll start having matching stage clothes, trying to build a collective identity.

(I wonder if George made his own alterations? When John and Paul went to Paris in 1961, they bought wide-legged trousers, then lost their nerve when they put them on. They "must have been about fifty inches around the bottom and our drainpipe trousers were something like fifteen or sixteen inches... we couldn't handle it." The solution was to alter them: "So it was back to the hotel at a run, needle and cotton out and we took them in to a nice sixteen..." Paul takes this level of dressmaking competence for granted, but I think it would be quite unusual today. How many people do you know who could take in a trouser leg by 34 inches, on the spur of the moment?)

I'm fascinated by how they went on sharing and borrowing clothes all through the 1960s. They're rich, austerity is over, but they still get into each other's wardrobes - and those of other people they're close to. Get Back is a good example. George got those embroidered boots from Paul. John wears Yoko's fur coat, and Ringo borrowed Maureen's red raincoat for the rooftop concert.

Again, they're not alone in doing this. Glyn Johns, Get Back's fashion god, remembers that a lot of his amazing wardrobe came via the Rolling Stones.

The crocodile skin jacket was made for Keith Richards, but when it didn't fit, he passed it on to Glyn. Glyn also remembered getting "a fabulous shirt" from Mick Jagger, and going shopping with Brian Jones in Carnaby Street.

So clothes are much more available, but they're not disposable. They're both valuable in themselves - that crocodile jacket won't have been cheap - and a way to bond with people, either by passing on special garments or by buying the same things. There's plenty of fashion chat in Get Back; they're into it, they like talking about it.

And they like sharing and influencing each other - whether that's transcendental meditation or Beatle boots. In the early days, building the stage image meant matching suits and boots and haircuts. As time goes on, they got less matchy-matchy, but they're still keeping pace with each other. Sometimes they're literally sharing shirts, or buying matching capes; elsewhere, it's more about a vibe.

(Did they all have those cloaks? There are pictures of John wearing one: is it his own, or is he borrowing Paul's?)

But they're making this happen. I loved @lenetaylor's fabulous deep dive into Beatles wearing Henleys, and the amount of effort someone must have gone to to get so many shirts in so many colours: they weren't a readily-available basic. Some photographs suggest that Paul and John aren't just wearing matching Henleys, but might literally be swapping the same shirt.

We're way past the point of thrift or convenience. The Beatles can send out for almost anything - a velvet bow tie, an anvil - and expect it to arrive the same day. Ringo and John could certainly have got hold of their own warm coats, without borrowing from Maureen and Yoko. George and Paul are bonding over those boots - both Paul sharing the actual boots, and George sharing his vision of embroidered boot perfection. The overlapping ownership is a way to connect.

Paul: In fact, he was I think about one and a half years younger than me. That’s quite a big age difference at that time, so I suppose I used to talk down to him a little bit, as you do to a sort of kid who’s one and a half years younger than you. When he’s sort of fourteen and a half, and I’m sort of sixteen, you know. Might have been a failing of mine, to tend to sort of talk down to him, because I’d known him as a younger kid.

George: He was always nine months older than I. Even now, he’s still nine months older than me.

See also:

The boys’ slightly different reactions to Paul’s LSD bombshell