it’s 2005 somewhere🥂

guy who only experienced torture: i don't like this because it's too unlike the torture

Check out how much the story changed from Paul's words (below) to Brown's prose (the OP above):

PAUL: I went to New York, feeling like the bringer of good news. I rang him up. “Hello, John, how are you? Hello, how’s the kids? Oh, great. What’s all this about publishing? Yeah, great”—laugh laugh laugh—“What about Apple?” Tense. You know, that was the unfortunate thing in the last ten years. The moment you mention the word Apple, all of us go, eeeeep! Dread and horror and shock goes through all our systems. I said, “Look, as I understand it, you need this indemnity.” John said, “Fucking indemnity. Fucking this, fucking that. You don’t need to give me fucking indemnity, you fucking—” I think we ended up just sort of swearing at each other. I said, “Fuck you, ya big cunt,” ’cause I just couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t be sweet and reasonable anymore. I was shaking for an hour after that. Of course, the funniest thing was, I then meant to ring John Eastman and say to him, “No, no, it’s not gonna work, this whole thing. I tried to do the indemnity, it’s not gonna work.” Of course, I got the phone numbers wrong. I rang John Lennon back instead. [When the phone was answered, I said,] “Hello, John? Yeah, listen, I just—oh—yeah well…” But it was Yoko this time, and then I said, “Look, I didn’t mean for it to get like that—but, shit, you know, it seems to have got…” The funny thing was, they knew I was trying to ring John Eastman immediately after, so that would have reinforced their little feelings about me—double-dealing. I’ve hardly talked to him since.

Notice how many extremely liberal changes Brown undertook in order to add spice and fire to this particular anecdote:

Paul's short summary of his smalltalk with John is taken strangely literally, described as "not more than three sentences"

Overly hostile language is put in Paul's mouth when he thinks he's speaking to John Eastman ("That fuckin' asshole John Lennon")

John is stated to have answered the phone the second time, instead of Yoko as Paul reported.

Plus, based on earlier bits of Paul's interview, referring to the indemnity he wants to grant John as "tax" makes semantic sense to me, but the quote remains a strong paraphrase. See read more for details.

Now, Brown and Gaines also spoke to Yoko, and I haven't checked if she perhaps gave an account of this particular episode that ran contrary to Paul's, but even if this were the case, we would be left with two versions of events and Brown presenting only one of them as fact (the one that is more extreme and salacious).

All this to say, be very careful when considering Peter Brown as a source – he was an insider, but he had a verifiably flexible relationship with the truth.

I’ll be your father figure

GEORGE HARRISON AND HIS GUITARS, FRIAR PARK

He looked awful. I couldn’t get over it. Horrible. He had one eye open, and he just squawked all the time. They held him up and he looked like a piece of red meat. When I got home I cried, the first time for years and years.

But the next day, he looked more human. He turned out a lovely baby in the end.