My dear one

Paul's Early Resolution

“I really remember looking around the estate where I lived and thinking what's the main problem here cause I'm gonna have to face it. And it was lack of money. Nobody had money, you know, and they were always arguing husband and wife over that. I thought if I can avoid that, this will be good.” Paul McCartney, 2012

And I remember thinking very consciously, ‘Okay, I’ll solve that; I will try to get money.’ That set me off on the ‘Let’s not have too many problems with money’ trail. – Paul McCartney, 2020

The Chocolate Bar

Paul says, ‘That’s where the Beatles started. That’s where John gave me half his chocolate bar.’ And now Bono’s like, ‘What chocolate bar? I’ve never heard of any chocolate bar.’ And Paul says, ‘John had a chocolate bar, and he shared it with me. And he didn’t give me some of his chocolate bar. He didn’t give me a square of his chocolate bar. He didn’t give me a quarter of his chocolate bar. He gave me half of his chocolate bar. And that’s why the Beatles started right there.’ – Matt Damon, 2022

The First Shared Dream

[I once had] one really big one about thousands of half-crowns all around me, and finding lots of money in old houses and just as much of the stuff as you could carry. I could never carry enough. I used to put it in my pockets and in my hands and in sacks, only I could still never carry as much as I wanted. -- John Lennon, 1966

I remember when John and I were first hanging out together, I had a dream about digging in the garden with my hands. I’d dreamt that before but I’d never found anything other than an old tin can. But in this dream, I found a gold coin. I kept digging and I found another. And another. The next day I told John about this amazing dream I’d had and he said, ‘That’s funny, I had the same dream.’ So both of us had this dream of finding this treasure. And I suppose you could say it came true. -- Paul McCartney, 2012

Jam etc.

I can still see them now; Paul and John having toast and John wanting jam on the toast and Paul telling him off: 'John, you must be mad! It's a penny extra.’ – Allan Williams 2019

It always struck me as odd that Paul is having a panic attack over John's penny. I know he's crazy money-conscious, but still. It's John's penny. What, did they have a shared bank account or something? Don't be ridiculous. But lately I've been wondering if maybe there was something like that going on.

Every Tuesday, Paul and I used to go to the pictures. One night, John, Paul and I went out for something to eat to a little cafe. We had nearly finished the main course and they both winked at each other and then they started to have this terrible row across the table. I'm thinking, what's going on? They were shouting at each other until we all got thrown out so we didn't have to pay. – Iris Caldwell 2012

Paris

And so he said "what are we gonna do?" so I said, "we could hitch-hike. And then, you could spend the money as we go, you know." So we did. -- Paul McCartney, 2026

Why is Paul so confident here in spending this huge windfall John got so frivolously? He's never frivolous with money ever once in his life, and before, he was shouting at John for spending a penny on jam for toast. What was up?

And Paul and I also did the same thing, once. We just cancelled. . . . Paul and I just cancelled all the engagements, and left for Paris . . . — John Lennon, 1976

Northern Songs and other Companies

Under Northern Songs, first organized in 1963, John and Paul each held 750k shares exactly.

Under The Beatles Ltd., first organized in 1963, all four Beatles were "individuals sharing their income."

Under Lenmac Ltd., their royalties company, NEMS owned 20%, John owned 40%, and Paul owned 40%.

Under Maclen (music) Ltd., their publishing company in America, first organized in 1965, NEMS owned 20%, John owned 40%, and Paul owned 40%.

Under The Beatles and Co., the Beatles became "apart from songwriting royalties, which would be paid directly to the authors of the individual songs, all the money earned by the group would be" pooled into the company.

Under Apple Corps, each Beatle owned 5% of the company separately, and then jointly they held the other 80% together. All their money from recording and performing went straight into Apple. Songwriters would be paid individually for royalties, and as Lennon/McCartney were a partnership, they would be paid together for their royalties.

The Family Way

I copped money for Family Way, the film music that Paul wrote while I was out of the country making How I Won the War," said Lennon, laughing. "I said to Paul, 'You'd better keep that', and he said, 'Don't be soft.'

A Few Extra Shares

According to Peter Brown, "Paul and John had always had an unwritten agreement that neither of them would own more shares than the other in their music publishing company. It was that simple."

So when John found out that Paul had bought a thousand extra shares (remember, they each owned 750k shares, so in the grand scheme of things, this is tiny), Peter Brown says John "felt he'd been betrayed," and "became enraged, no doubt egged on by Klein." Brown remembers John "slamming a table" as "Barbs were exchanged."

“You bastard!” John spit. “You’ve been buying up stock behind our backs!” Paul blushed and shrugged limply. “Ooops, sorry!” he smiled. “This is fuckin’ low!” John said. “This is the first time any of us have gone behind each other’s backs.” Paul shrugged again. “I felt like I had some beanies and I wanted some more,” he said.

Peter Brown then says John stormed out of the meeting.

So to me, this is another lace curtains, burnt condom type moment. Paul is extremely hurt when John says his vote against Klein doesn't matter. To him, that was when he knew it was over. (so I think that must have to do with the promise too). So what does Paul do? he's got this thing, where he can get his revenge. He knows it will hurt John, but it will just look like this little tiny thing. No one but them two will know what a big deal it was.

Paul Only Cares About Money

PLAYBOY: "You're talking about records, of course."

LENNON: "Yeah, to churn them out because I was expected to, like so many people who put out an album every six months because they're supposed to."

PLAYBOY: "Would you be referring to Paul McCartney?"

LENNON: "Not only Paul. But I had lost the initial freedom of the artist by becoming enslaved to the image of what the artist is supposed to do.

John's Dropout

PLAYBOY: "Why did you become a househusband?"

LENNON: "There were many reasons. I had been under obligation or contract from the time I was 22 until well into my 30s. After all those years, it was all I knew.

The Beatles, even after they publicly broke up, were contractually obligated to continue the Apple arrangement of pooling their money until the divorce papers were signed, at which point, they could all take their piece of the pie and go as Paul put it. AKOM points out, without really digging into the money issue, that John's disappearance from his career as a popular musician happens directly after the papers are signed. As soon as he is no longer pooling his money with Paul, he loses all motivation to be a contributing member, pulling his weight. He stops putting out albums to make money. ((((I am not saying this is the only reason. John's mental health and his baby would've also played huge roles. I am saying it could be part of it.)))) And then he reemerges when he feels that Paul has invited him back. When he thinks they're ready to "start over" again.

SOURCES

The Paul McCartney Project

John's 1980 Playboy interview

John's 1971 Rolling Stone interview

Peter Brown and the Beatles Bible

My own quote doc which compiles lots of interviews

welcome!

this blog is dedicated to transcribing the nagra reels: 97 hours of bootlegged audio from the beatles' get back sessions

John and Paul during the Beatles' Time Magazine photoshoot, Hyde Park, 1967

We all know about John's Sword Swallower and featured-on-a-gay-magazine "Down With Pants" pins of 1967, but the eagle-eyed @gobnaits recently spotted another interesting one! The picture above is from a photoshoot the band did for Time Magazine on 18 May 1967 (Full picture here). John is wearing a pin on his scarf and there is writing on it, but I'd never looked closely at it until @gobnaits noticed a comment by Lizzie Bravo on the (now defunct) Beatle Photo Blog website. Lizzie Bravo was one of the superfans who used to keep vigil outside Cavendish, and she also kept a journal where she wrote about her Beatle sightings. She consulted the journal and noted in her comment what John and Paul were wearing that day:

With that information, when you look closely at John's badge, you can just about make out the words "Camp Here":

"Camp Here" isn't among the slogans on the badges featured on the cover of the December 1966 issue of Tangents magazine (where we find "Down With Pants"), but the use of the word "camp", especially in the 60s, is VERY suggestive.

Tangents LGBT magazine, December 1966

In the 1960s, "Camp" could have a similar meaning to what it has now, but it was also used as a synoymn for "gay". A report published in 1960 called A Minority: A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain (quoted in Some Men in London vol. 2 by Peter Parker) said:

Camp is an example of a word in which the change of usage has amounted to a change of meaning. The word is said to come from the Italian campeggiare meaning ‘to stand out from a background’, and so it came to mean in turn, ‘theatrical’, ‘ostentatious’, ‘effeminate’, and now sometimes it is used as a synonym for ‘homosexual’.

In Some Men in London, several of the interview subjects refer to themselves or other gay men as "camp". And of course, John would later get into mild trouble with Melody Maker when, in his angry letter to Paul Linda, he responded to Paul's wish to meet without their wives by saying "I know you're camp! But let's not go too far!" When Melody Maker excised that part from the letter before publication, John made a note on the text asking "What was libel about saying Paul was camp?"💀

Combined with "Sword Swallower" and "Down with Pants", I for one am fairly confident adding "Camp Here" to the Gay-Themed Pins John was Wearing in 1967 List.

"I knew nothing about him except that he looked pretty cool. He had long sideboards and greased back hair and everything."

"I’d seen him around a couple of times, because I realised later what it was, my bus route, he would take that bus, but he would be going to see his mum who lived kind of in my area. And then he’d take the bus back up to his Auntie Mimi’s. So I’d seen him a couple of times and thought, ‘Wow, you know, he’s an interesting looking guy.’ And then I once also saw him in a queue for fish and chips and I said, ‘Oh, that’s that guy off the bus’. I’m talking to myself, in my mind I thought, ‘I saw that guy off the bus, oh he’s pretty cool looking. Yeah, you know, he’s a cool guy.’

"John was extremely attractive...not physically I mean...though he was very cool looking."

"I remember John looking... we used to think that John looked pretty cool. He was a bit older than us and he would do a little more greased back hair than we were allowed… so John was quite groovy. He looked like a Ted then - he had a drape. He had nice big sideburns."

"There was a guy up on the platform with curly, blondish hair, wearing a chequered shirt-looking pretty good and quite fashionable - singing a song that I loved: the Del-Vikings ‘Come Go With Me’."

"I know how I saw John. He was just a ted, on the bus – greasy hair, long sideburns, shuffling around like he was Mr Hard. And I saw him on the top deck of the bus often, before I met him. Saw him in the queue at a chip shop once. And I thought, “He looks cool.” Turned out my best friend from school knew him. We went and met. I happened to know this song, ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. John admired that."

"Up on the stage there were a few lads around, and there was one particular guy at the front with a checked shirt, sort of blondish kind of hair... a little bit curly, sideboards, looking pretty cool. [...] He was playing Come Go With Me."

"This Ted would get on the bus. I wouldn't stare at him too hard in case he hit me."

“I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me.’ Of course he had his glasses off, so he looked really suave…He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.”

"My memory of meeting John for the first time is very clear. … I can still see John now - checked shirt, slightly curly hair [...] I remember thinking, ‘He looks good - I wouldn’t mind being in a group with him.’ … Then, as you all know, he asked me to join the group, and so we began our trip together. We wrote our first songs together, we grew up together and we lived our lives together. And when we’d do it together, something special would happen. There’d be that little magic spark. I still remember his beery old breath when I first met him that day. But I soon came to love that beery old breath. And I loved John."

"Would John and I have met some other way, if Ivan and I hadn't gone to that fête? I'd actually gone along to try and pick up a girl. I'd seen John around - in the chip shop, on the bus, that sort of thing - and thought he looked quite cool, but would we have ever talked? I don't know."

"The first time I ever saw John Lennon was on the bus. I didn’t know him then, so he was just this slightly older guy with a sort of rocker hairdo, lots of grease, black jacket, sideburns (‘sideboards’ as we called them; ‘sideburns’ was American). And I just remember thinking, ‘Well, he’s a cool guy.’ When we did meet, I recognised him as that strange Teddy Boy from the bus. John always managed to be a little bit older than me; I never caught up. I had no idea who he was at the time, but I’ll always remember that very first image."

19 February 1963, the Cavern, photo by Michael Ward

Photo by Mike McCartney

August 13, 1966, photo by Bob Bonis

We wrote with two guitars, John and I. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, the joy of that was that I was left-handed while he was right handed, so I was looking in a mirror and he was looking in a mirror. We would always tune up, have a ciggie, drink a cup of tea, start playing some stuff, look for an idea. Normally, one or the other of us would arrive with a fragment of a song. ‘Please Please Me’ was a John idea. John liked the double meaning of ‘please’. Yeah, ‘please’ is, you know, pretty please. ‘Please have intercourse with me. So, pretty please, have intercourse with me, I beg you to have intercourse with me.’ He liked that, and I liked that he liked that. This was the kind of thing we’d see in each other, the kind of thing in which we were matched up. We were in sync.

(Paul McCartney, about Please Please Me in The Lyrics, 2021)

I was in Hamburg this week and got to see the exhibition of a letter that Paul and John sent to Mike on 9th May 1962, during their stay in Hamburg. It's written by Paul and contains sections dictated to him by John. There was no full scan of the original, only the two sections I took photos of, so unfortunately we have to trust the transcript provided - which I don't, because the transcript of the partial scan we do have is not entirely accurate!! It's literally missing an entire sentence. I fixed that the transcript below, but hopefully we'll get to see the fully scanned letter one day! According to the exhibition the letters shown were excerpts, which might explain the amount of ellipses in the provided transcripts (unless Paul just writes Like That).

Dear Mike and Dad, ...Roy Young (who's playing with us, as you know) went to England recently and he's signed Gene Vincent and Sounds Inc for here in August and Johnny Kidd for a bit earlier. Roy's convinced that he can get Jerry Lee Lewis out here too, and Chuck Berry. I doubt it, but if he can get them we've already put in a claim to back him... We still haven't seen any more of (Bert) Kaempfert yet; he just came one night and said he wants to record us but that's the last we heard... ...Oh Yes!!! The best bit of news... I've ordered a Rollei. Exactly the same as Astrid's! It's dear*, but it's a fab one...Astrid's shown me how to work the camera. I had a look at all her photos, they're fab gear** photos - but the thing is, there's a gear one Stu took of himself and it's been enlarged... We've got some of Astrid's and her bosses photos of Stu stuck on the wall. I'll ask John if he has any news. He says: "However black the clouds may be, Michael In time they'll pass away, Michael, Have faith & trust and you will see, Michael God's light make bright your day, Michael." He says "remember that, Michael" St. John. v. 23. Ch. 8. page 45. Platform 9. And various other... Dear Michael, Seriously now, to hit a serious note, with regard to your hair-drying application, I'm happy to inform you, you've lost the job, remember that Michael, 'However black the.' 'Believe me Michael'... Believe when, when I say its true, after all I've been good to you. However black the man may be, good old Michael, a friend from us. Platform 9. Yours simply, Rod Lennon P.S. A big Hi from Rod (dictated to me by Rod)

*dear is sometimes used in British English to mean expensive, costly, valuable