COFFEE & TV

Do you think you'd be interested in doing a recreation of this image

( • ̀ω ⁃᷄)✧ yes!

let's carry on making ripples in the pond

and we'll see how far it goes

Open up your mind! Open up your heart! Nothing else is keeping us apart!

"Well, he was standing there, and he was singing great and he was looking great." (1990)

"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." (1994)

"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’" (1995)

“My memory of meeting John for the first time is very clear. I can still see John now - checked shirt, and 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." (1997)

"And John looked a bit like a Teddy Boy. And he had sideburns..and, uh, which... attracted us to him. We thought, 'that's pretty cool!" (1997)

"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." (1997)

"John was extremely attractive...not physically I mean...though he was very cool looking." (late 90s)

"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." (2005)

"This Ted would get on the bus. You notice who's hip. I wouldn't stare at him too hard in case he hit me." (2013)

"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." (2015)

"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.’ (2020)

"I knew nothing about him except that he looked pretty cool. He had long sideboards and greased back hair and everything." (2020)

"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." (2021)

"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." (2021)

"The first time I ever saw John Lennon, he got on the bus. He was like this slightly older guy with this sort of rocker hairdo — lots of grease — black jacket, sideburns, sideboards as we call them. And I just remember thinking, 'Well, he's a cool guy. No idea who he is.' (2023)

You possibly had it posted already, and I just might have missed it - but do you have a compilation of rumours or/and unverified gossip? Definitely not trying to make them seem true and make decisive conclusions based on them, but I'm curious if there's any overlap in reports.

I don't think I've ever made a post exclusively about rumors/unverified gossip, but I do know quite a few that I've read or heard myself:

Paul and John were reportedly seen holding hands backstage during the filming of The Music of Lennon & McCartney TV special. Another person said their granddad worked on the special and claimed that John and Paul were extremely intensely close: if one sat down, the other did too; if one got up, the other did as well. They also said John and Paul would stare at each other for long periods of time, and that people working in production made jokes about it.

Someone who was friends with a celebrity who was once at an event where Paul was said that, at one point, Paul started talking about John and how much he missed him. That he went on and on saying that it bothered him that he missed John more as time went on, that it just didn't heal, and that he missed everything about John, even the arguments.

There are rumors that John and Paul were sometimes seen walking Martha around London while holding hands.

That one of the reasons Paul and Jane broke up was because Jane was uncomfortable with Paul and John's relationship (and, btw, they seem to have ended their engagement before Paul was with Francie, so it wasn't because she supposedly found them in bed together.) Ray Connolly (who knew Jane and spoke to her after the breakup, also hinted at this.

Someone claimed that his grandfather was a taxi driver in Liverpool, and that a few days after John's murder, Paul went to Liverpool and took his taxi. He supposedly wanted to visit many random places around Liverpool that seemed particularly memorable or important to him and John.

A woman claimed to be acquainted with a music producer who knew Paul. They started talking about John and Paul, and he said that Paul does believe Just Like Starting Over is about him. She then said to him that she believed John and Paul had been "a couple," and he replied, "Well, no shit!"

In the 80s, Paul apparently used to go to Liverpool a lot, according to locals, to take nostalgic walks around Merseyside (which, of course, is very reminiscent of the lyrics of Get Enough).

A fellow Tumblr user said that an acquaintance's father used to be a part-time driver for the Beatles, and that he heard rumors among the staff about John and Paul's relationship.

A person who claimed to have worked in the industry between roughly 1967 and 1970 said that Yoko gave a very watered-down version of the names the studio staff had for Paul, and that they also had a very derogatory nickname for John.

They also apparently used to make jokes about how much time John spent at Paul's house around 1967 (this is something I was told).

Diana Ross supposedly saw John and Paul together at a gay bar in Los Angeles around 1974. Tom Doyle's 70s book, Man on the Run, claims that John and Paul were seen together backstage at the 1974 Grammy Awards, also in LA, talking and laughing together.

An Apple Scruff said that she and her friends did notice there was something unusual about John and Paul's dynamic, but they didn't quite understand it at the time because they were quite naive about homosexuality.

That Ringo and George were supposedly uncomfortable with the subject if someone asked them anything, however indirectly, about John and Paul's relationship, and generally preferred to remain silent.

That John and Paul "being more than friends" is kind of an open secret in the music industry, and that this is why you see people like Howard Stern often pressing Paul about it. (Btw, something interesting I found is that Tony Manero—the guy who claimed John made advances toward him at a bar in the 70s and that he supposedly told him, "You're prettier than Paulie. You have a nicer mouth than him. Paulie's got a small mouth."—actually went to Howard's show in the 90s).

Eric Griffiths (who was there at the fete) supposedly said that when Paul started playing for John, he was visibly nervous and his voice cracked at one point, and that John (who was drunk) reached over and stroked his hair. He also allegedly called him "Little Elvis."

A person who claimed to know a woman who was one of Paul's assistants in the early 2000s said that Paul is bisexual and makes no secret of it within his inner circle. They also claimed that Paul often talks about John in the present tense (saying things like, "John thinks the music should be like this"). This, of course, reminds me of what Peter Cox said after meeting Paul in the late 80s: that Paul would say things like, "John thinks this," or "John says that."

Someone said they had a friend who met Paul at a party in LA. They chatted for a long time, hugged at one point, and Paul supposedly whispered to her, "Nobody has hugged me like that since John."

Supposedly, around 1966–1967, Paul hosted a lot of parties at Cavendish, and some guests were shocked by John and Paul's behavior there, saying they acted almost like a couple.

Paul was allegedly often overly concerned about where John was and what he was doing. When he couldn't reach him, he would sometimes theorize about what John was up to and become angry. If someone questioned his behavior, he would snap at them

Many girls who dated Paul allegedly questioned his sexuality, which bothered him greatly. That he hated being called "queer" and tried to compensate by dating lots of women (which, tbh, kind of fits with his later "I'm secure in my sexuality" and "I'm obviously ungay due to my hunting of female hordes" mantra that he kept bringing up, unprompted, for decades. He would also tell John Dunbar that there were a lot of rumours about him being gay).

A woman who worked on the Help! music video claimed that John and Paul's behavior behind the scenes was "cute," and that after spending some time with them, it became clear to her that they were deeply in love. She also said that George and Ringo would sort of wander away whenever John and Paul began "chatting up each other" (journalist Phyllis Batelle described a somewhat similar dynamic, with John and Paul always together and "turning out" the other two whenever "they were on").

💗 L is for love me.