For all the hard work you do for us: thank you!! For this ask, just feel free to talk about any subject you’ve been dying to talk about <3
Thank you! This isn't anything dramatic or something that I really have been dying to discuss (in fact, I think I have briefly mentioned this before), but it is something I’ve been thinking about for a some time: the fact that we have we've heard so little from the lower-profile employees who worked in the studios and at Apple Corps. While we have books and interviews from people like George Martin, Geoff Emerick, and Peter Brown, the people further down the ranks have mostly kept their silence. Brian Epstein's personal assistant, Joanne Newfield, was set to publish a book in the 2000s titled There’s a Beatle in My Closet, but it was shelved for reasons never made public. Freda Kelly gave us a nice documentary and a few short interviews, but she was clearly not sharing everything she knew or experienced. She didn't say anything too revealing (other than hinting that she dated Paul). There is an entire entourage of secretaries, assistants, tape operators, studio engineers, and office staff who witnessed quite a lot, daily. I often find myself wishing I could sit down with some of them privately, where they might actually feel safe enough to open up (I have heard stuff indirectly, second- or third-hand, but it's absolutely not the same as talking to them personally). It would be great to be able to ask them about the specific, everyday dynamic they witnessed between John and Paul. Because based on the crumbs we do have, the people on the inside definitely noticed somethig, given the nicknames they gave them (and not just "John's princess," apparently); they didn't come up with them for no reason. Even Ray Connolly said he witnessed "revealing and bizarre" moments between John and Paul in the late 60s at Apple, which he didn't elaborate on. Also, as I've mentioned before, a part-time driver of the Beatles apparently claimed to have heard talk among the staffers of something going on between John and Paul. And I have the strong suspicion that the elevator kiss scene Michael Lindsay-Hogg included in Two of Us was because he didn't think it was out of character for John to do that. I think he must also have witnessed suggestive "jokes" or actions from John to other people at the workplace, potentially Paul. And we all saw their suggestive banter/flirting in both Get Back and even in the Rubber Soul sessions, with Paul even telling John to stop holding his hand. God knows what other things they did or said at Apple or the studio when their relationship was at its peak; we will never know because those sessions weren't recorded the way the Get Back sessions were. But just think about it: even in Get Back, when they weren't nearly as close as they were before 1968, their dynamic is still so intense that even many people (who are unaware of mclennon) who watched the film were like "wait a minute..." Even Yoko noticed it after a few weeks into the studio in 1968. Just imagine what it would have been like to see their dynamic during the Sgt. Pepper sessions, AHDN sessions, Help! sessions, etc., or pretty much the entire 1963-1967 period. So I just wish someone could speak privately (because that way they would most likely be willing to open up) to lower-profile people who were in their entourage at the time and get new anecdotes and things they witnessed between John and Paul that made them raise their eyebrows. Because based on what we saw in Get Back, as well as the jokes and nicknames people made up for them (which were well-known enough to be mentioned in a 1972 book written by journalists; the "John's princess" thing wasn't only mentioned by Yoko, btw), then we can almost certainly be sure that they must have seen some "Huh?/Wtf?!" moments that we have no idea of.
