Hello

Yellow Linda With Piano by Paul McCartney, 1988. 

“The party was at Auntie Gin’s house in Huyton. By now, Paul could afford a marquee in the garden. This is inside the house, where my comedy group, Scaffold, are performing for the guests. John Gorman and Roger McGough are onstage, and I’m photographing reactions to the act. The jokes are going well with Paul, his girlfriend Jane Asher, and an old school chum, Ivan Vaughn, but John Lennon was so pissed he kept shouting, ‘That’s not funny’ (until Paul told him to ‘Shhh!,’ which he did)…”

[Mike McCartney]

“Despite the fact that Paul was earning more money than we’d ever dreamed about, you can tell it’s a working-class party from the sauce bottles on the table. No pretensions here. Standing with John is Cynthia, trying to keep him in order, but he was so drunk that he even beat up Bob Wooler (a friend!), breaking his ribs. In those days John’s marriage was kept strictly secret from the fans, and it was rare to see him with Cynthia in a photograph. The lady in the middle is George’s mum, next to her is Harry Graves, Richie’s stepfather, and Pete Shotton is peeping around the post on the right.”

[Mike McCartney]

“Trying to look as though they were frequently at parties in grand marquees are, from left to right, my first girlfriend, Celia Mortimer, Harry and Elsie Graves (Richie’s mother and stepfather), and Harry Harrison, George’s dad.”

[Mike McCartney]

Photos taken by Mike McCartney at Paul’s 21st birthday party on the 18th June, 1963. This was the party where a very drunk John beat up Cavern DJ Bob Wooler after he insinuated things about John and Brian following their recent holiday to Spain together. 

Happy birthday to Paul today! We love you! x 

↳ excerpts from: How Does a Beatle Live? written by Maureen Cleave (p. March 25, 1966; I, III-VI) and Barry Miles’ interview with Paul from the International Times (p. Jan 16, 1967; II)

And then proceeds to * ❤️/like” a comment that says:

“anybody opposed to this obviously doesn't realise john and paul were exploring each others bodies” 🫡🥹🙌💪

👇 This is the way ✨

The Beatles outside EMI Studios in London, England | 1 July 1963 © Terry O'Neill (II)

I: Let me ask you about one of your new songs, ‘This One’. About a marriage?

P: A relationship, yeah.

I: And about not expressing emotions and feelings. 

P: You get those moments where you always think; “I’m saving it up. I’ll tell him one day.” And you know what happens. A lot of people, John for instance, getting back to that subject. He died. Um.. I was lucky. The last few we- months that he was alive we’d managed to get our relationship back on track. We were talking, having real good conversations. Real, nice and friendly. George, actually, didn’t get get his relationship right. I think they were arguing ‘till the end, which I’m sure is a source of great sadness to him. And I’m sure in the feeling of this song that George was always planning to tell John he loved him, but time ran out. That’s what the song’s about. Like, there could never be a better moment than this one. Y’ know now. Take this moment to say… “I love you”

Hi!

Sigh. To be honest, reading that interview has always made me cringe a little because, in my opinion, Paul is obviously projecting his own feelings onto George. (Btw, I think I should make a post about that. He's done this many times, and even John did it once when he was trying not to mention Paul directly, lmao). That whole theme of not telling someone you love them—or not saying it enough—appears countless times throughout Paul's songwriting. So I highly doubt that, every time this theme comes up, he's simply writing about how George felt about John and regretting that he never got the chance to tell him he loved him. But this is also a very typical Paul answer. Over the years, Paul has clearly struggled with talking openly about songs that are highly likely to be about John. He either avoids discussing them altogether (Call Me Back Again, Oh! Darling, We Two, Get Enough, Never Know), gives rather ambiguous or cryptic explanations (Arrow Through Me, I'm Carrying), is hesitant to acknowledge any intentionality while admitting there are parallels (Tug of War), downplays them at first before later acknowledging them (Dear Friend), or completely denies any connection before gradually opening up over time (Let Me Roll It). All of these songs that have emotionally loaded lyrics, it's no wonder he often seems cagey or hesitant to discuss them. Paul is a very private person who doesn't like exposing too much about himself. As he once said:"Why should anyone know my innermost feelings? [...] But in a song you can put it." But when you keep seeing the same theme appear throughout his songwriting:

"She never knew how much I loved her..." "Words couldn't get my feelings through..." "If I never did it, I was only waiting for a better moment that didn't come..." "We used to hide away our feelings..." "I was scared to say 'I love you'..." "The simplest words won't come out of my mouth..." "I can't tell you how I feel..."

And the list goes on. I think it's fair to say this is something deeply personal that has haunted him for years. And it's not just the songs. We also hear him saying very similar things in interviews over and over again, and he does it every time he performs Here Today. So seeing him frame This One as though it he was kind of talking from George's POV is kind of funny, but also understandable. I just don't think he was ready at the time to openly admit how personal the song really was.

One subtle thing that has always stood out to me is the verse, which to me doesn't in any way sound like he was speaking from George's POV:

"What opportunities did we allow to float by, feeling that the timing wasn't quite right? What kind of magic might have worked if we had stayed calm? Couldn't I have given you a better life?"

If you listen to that part, it sounds rather wordy and rushed just to fit the rhythm of the song. Because of this, I have always gotten the feeling that these lyrics are something so personal that Paul felt he had to express them anyways, even if they didn't really fit with the flow of the song and ended up sounding a bit clunky. You can interpret those lines however you like, but I've always thought they reflect the conflicts between him and John in the late 60s: how everything seemed to go downhill so quickly, how they both acted impulsively, made rushed decisions, drifted apart, and became increasingly bitter. It sounds like Paul wondering how different things might have been if they had slowed down, communicated better, and talked things through. Another thing I almost forgot to mention from that interview excerpt is the way Paul says that he and John had sorted things out and that he was "lucky," before immediately shifting the focus to George being the one who didn't get the chance to patch things up with John. To me, again, that also feels like a clear deflection. Because if you read Paul's interviews from the early 80s, even though he says they were on better terms, he also explicitly admits that they hadn't sorted everything out. He says there was still a lot left unsaid, and that he wished they had talked more and resolved their remaining issues. So the later narrative that he has repeated over the following decades—that everything was basically back on track—doesn't completely align with what he said much closer to John's death. But I actually think that's understandable. Paul himself admitted that he didn't know how he would have coped if John had died while they were still on bad terms, that it would have been the worst thing in the world for him. I think, over the years, he's naturally gravitated toward remembering the positive side of those last months, emphasizing that they had fully reconciled, because that's simply an easier memory to live with. Now, I do think they were on the right path by the very end, given how John was speaking very warmly about Paul during the last days of his life, and if Carl Perkins' account is accurate, they even met a few weeks before John's murder. But I don't think they had worked through everything. There were still conversations they needed to have, old wounds they never got the chance to fully heal. And I think that's exactly what has haunted Paul ever since. Not that they were on bad terms, but that there was still so much left unsaid. And that's why this is one of the recurring themes in his songwriting ever since. It's a regret that never really went away.