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Among Quarrymen memoirs, Vaughan’s book Ivan: Living with Parkinson’s is unusual because it’s about his experience with the illness, mentioning the Beatles only in passing.

And when I say Beatles, I really mean John. (Nothing at all about George or Ringo.) There’s a whole chapter about John, mostly sweet memories from primary school days, with a glimpse of Apple-era madness, and John’s caring reaction to the news of Ivan’s diagnosis. Many of the books published after John’s death play up the author’s intimacy with John. Ivan goes the other way, writing “John had lived in New York for years, and contact between us had been sparse.”

He downplays his friendship with Paul even further, though they were close through the Beatle years and beyond. Paul provided a blurb for this book, and Ivan thanks “Paul and Linda” - without surnames - in his acknowledgements. But there are no cute stories, no “how I met Paul”. Ivan does nod to their friendship (including an amazing line not-quite-admitting that his wife didn’t like John):

“My attachment to both John and Paul ran deep and occasionally I would go to great lengths in order to see them at a moment’s notice. Maybe Paul saw our continuing friendship as a way of maintaining simple values he held dear. Jan liked Paul, though she did not see much of John. She was not the least bit mesmerised by their fame. She enjoyed eating at expensive restaurants and sampling London’s nightlife, into which Paul took us from time to time. But, should the effort become too great, she was willing to let the relationship fade.”

Ivan and Paul’s friendship didn’t fade, as Jan’s own account makes clear. Ivan is choosing not to talk about it.

A page from fan Sue Houghton’s scrapbook, a photo of her with George’s parents (Louise and Harry), a letter from George, and a photo featuring fan presents displayed inside the Harrison home at Mackets Lane in Liverpool.

Why do you think there was this surge of mclennon content and interest? I'm kind of expecting a boom in fanarts and fanfictions and posts after the biopics, it wouldn't surprise me, but it does indeed surprise me that so many new people are jumping onto this train now.

Ps: since we're on the topic, do you have info about how mclennon was perceived in the '60? I know women created a whole shipping fandom for Kirk and Spock in those years, I get that it was illegal until 1967 but I also find it hard to believe there wasn't shipping content/speculation going around.

I think it is a combination of several things that have happened over the last decade. The Understanding Lennon & McCartney YouTube series was released in the mid-2010s and then reuploaded many times afterward, and it ended up getting a lot of views. Even skeptical people were surprised by how much they learned about John and Paul's relationship just from watching it. The creator didn't really have to argue for anything; they simply laid out real quotes and videos and let people draw their own conclusions. Then, around the late 2010s, you also had the OSD and AKOM podcasts, and of course, the Get Back documentary. I remember reading a lot of discussions about Get Back on the Beatles subreddit, and there were countless comments along the lines of, "I now know they were just friends, but not gonna lie, there were some scenes that made me think, 'Wait... were John and Paul ever...?'" I've also seen many people across social media share similar experiences, saying that friends or relatives who knew nothing about mclennon noticed the intensity between them while watching the documentary. That isn't really surprising because there are quite a few "WTF" moments in Get Back, especially during the conversations about India (not to mention the intense eye contant between them). Then you have Now and Then, with people involved in the project—like Giles Martin and Peter Jackson—describing it as a love letter from John to Paul, and even Paul himself saying that he prefers that interpretation. And, of course, Ian Leslie (who was heavily influenced by the OSD podcast)'s book became a bestseller and generated a lot of discussion in both the media and among celebrities. So it doesn't surprise me at all that mclennon has been attracting more curiosity from both Beatles fans and the general public after everything that has happened over the last decade.

Now, regarding your question about how McLennon was perceived in the 60s, the main things we have are insiders making suggestive comments, as well as people questioning John and Paul's sexuality. Yes, I do know about that magazine where fans listed the things they liked about each Beatle, and under Paul's section someone wrote, "his looks at John." But personally, I don't think that necessarily means they were "shipping" them or interpreting it romantically. I think they simply found it endearing and thought the way they looked at each other was cute. It's also important to remember that vast majority of young fans at the time were incredibly naive about homosexuality. Some people genuinely didn't even know what it was. Freda Kelly (who was the secretary of the Beatles Fan Club) is a good example. She said that when people were saying Brian Epstein was gay, she didn't even know what that meant until John explained it to her. On the other hand, many Apple Scruffs, such as Lizzie Bravo, noticed how intensely close John and Paul were, how in sync they seemed, and how often John went to Paul's house compared to the others. Yet Lizzie herself only saw them as friends and even expressed disgust when she heard people suggesting there was something romantic between them. Now, there is also an interesting anecdote shared by the user @mclennonwasreal. He said he had been in contact with a woman who had been an Apple Scruff, and she told him that she and her friends definitely noticed there was something unusual about John and Paul's relationship, but they didn't really understand what they were seeing at the time. It was such a taboo subject that they simply didn't discuss it until many years later, when they began looking back and wondering whether what John and Paul had really fit the definition of a purely platonic relationship.

The Last Days of John Lennon by Fred Seaman was published in 1991, after several years of legal fighting between Seaman and the Estate, including a criminal conviction for Seaman. He's still persona non grata from the Estate and many observers' POV, with some good reason, though the Estate's hands don't seem to be clean either. You can read about it all here.

Seaman worked as a personal assistant to John, and in the Dakota Studio One office, in 1979 and 1980. He got the job via his uncle and aunt - his uncle was friends with Yoko and his aunt was Sean's nanny for a while. He stayed on for a while after John's death, until the Drama unfolded and he was gone. Apparently he was trying to get the book published for many years before it finally came out, and he's been known to pop up on Beatles forums with various takes (including getting into fights with Francie Schwartz, lmao).

It's hard to establish how reliable Seaman is. His history with the Estate, his taking of John's diaries and his strong bias against Yoko all work against him. He's also been accused (by Mike "Tree" Medeiros) of passing off other people's experiences and conversations with John as his own. I would say he is a less reliable source than John Green, but is not totally unreliable either.

A little anecdote by Neil Apsinall I just had to share because I somehow never heard about this 😭

The first comes closest to making sense imo but still gets basic facts wrong lol.

Brian was the worst cruiser in the world. He could never pick up anyone. People used to ask me about his gayness, [and] I would say, "Не was the worst homosexual in the world." I mean, he really was the least predatory homosexual I have ever met.

So it’s strange to go back to 1960s sources, where Jane is by far the most visible Beatlemania-era partner. And she took up space! Leaving her out means there’s a big piece of the jigsaw missing.

Pete Townshend remembers Jane as “well-bred, polite and astonishingly pretty; behind the demure exterior simmered a strong personality, making her the equal of her famous beau.” Which is pretty much how everyone describes her. When Paul, Jane, Ringo and Maureen went on holiday to Greece in 1963, Ringo said, “I remember we walked around the Parthenon three times, probably to please Jane”.

You can see that assertiveness in interviews. Here she is, telling Michael Braun in 1963 that Paul was an idiot to encourage her to hide away in a Paris hotel, rather than going out sightseeing (plus frank commentary on his personality flaws): “‘That’s typical of Paul,’ she remarked. ‘It’s so silly of me to stay at the hotel. It’s just that he’s so insecure. For instance, he keeps saying he’s not interested in the future, but he must be because he says it so often. The trouble is, he wants the fans’ adulation and mine too. He’s so selfish; it’s his biggest fault. He can’t see that my feelings for him are real and that the fans’ are fantasy.’”

This is the period when the Beatles were hiding John’s marriage from fans, and smuggling Pattie and Cynthia out of hotels in maids’ uniforms and laundry baskets. Jane: not putting up with this shit.

I’d guess that some of Jane’s confidence came from class privilege and a successful career (though Pattie had those too). Unlike Pattie, Jane had a very supportive family background, particularly her mother. Which made me think of George, who also had a very supportive mum, and of Paul’s fond description of George taking no shit, refusing to do things he didn’t want to do. (It was from the Carpool Karaoke filming - I’ll add the link if I can find it.) He does seem to admire people who can cut to the point without getting tangled up in verbal or emotional knots. And, given how conflict-avoidant he could be, it’s striking that he had a long-term relationship with someone who spoke her mind this much and this bluntly. It makes me wonder about Paul’s various argument songs with Jane: what did she think of them? Because I am 100% certain that she told him.

Here she is, photographed by Dezo Hoffman in 1963:

It’s a photograph that shows her as one of the gang, in on the joke with the glasses, relaxed and casually dressed. It reminds me of George Martin’s account of coming round to get them to record in Paris, and finding Jane pouring out tea. She’s hanging out with them, not waiting on the sidelines.

Refusing to give up her career is probably the best-known thing about Jane - but from a 21st-century perspective, it’s easy to overlook how unusual she was for doing it. This isn’t just about Paul, or the sexist pop world, or the “Northern men” stereotypes usually invoked here. I recently saw a 1960s documentary asking a group of successful young women how they saw work, sex, and relationships - including journalist Maureen Cleave, actress Sarah Miles, ballerina Moira Shearer. It was very clear that second wave feminism hadn't happened yet. Most of them said they expected to stop working when they marry, to prioritise their husbands’ careers and wishes, to marry men who would take the lead and make most of the decisions. But Jane wasn’t doing any of that. Again, she credited her family for it, telling Hunter Davies: “I've been brought up to be always doing something.” (At 80, she is still working.)

Other rock star wives and girlfriends seem to have found her slightly intimidating. Maureen called her “such an intelligent person” but noted: “Paul is such an assertive fellow (you know) he knows what he wants and Jane is that way too.” In her second book, mentioning Jane prompts Marianne Faithfull to consider all the ways she downplayed her own career to accommodate Mick Jagger. Pattie remembered Jane as “the girlfriend with whom I felt most at home,” since they were both posh Londoners, “but because we both had heavy work commitments she was also the one I saw least.” (Incidentally, Jane wasn’t too busy to become good friends with Cilla Black, one of the few women in this circle who emphatically prioritised her own career.)

Pattie told Hunter Davies that the four Beatles “all belong to each other… It used to hurt me at first, as I slowly began to learn there was a part I could never be part of. Cyn talked to me about it.” According to Tony Barrow, Jane wasn’t having that: “She said that Paul acted differently towards her when he was with the boys: ‘I don’t want to be part of a gang. I want to feel that it’s the two of us going through life together.’”

I have mixed feelings about those two quotes! Jane’s is a valid thing to want from a long-term romantic partner, but realistically, it’s very very difficult to do that when he’s a Beatle. Pattie’s “they all belong to each other” reminds me of the four Beatles saying how glad they were they had each other, that only four people in the world had this experience. Once they’d gone through that, they did all belong to each other. So it’s complicated, and they both have a point. But after reading Pattie, Cynthia, even Marianne’s accounts of making themselves smaller, holding their tongues, it’s a joy to see Jane refusing to let Beatledom govern her life.

She took up space. She stuck to her guns. As Davies puts it, “Paul and Jane have more time together, on their own, than probably the other Beatle couples. They do get away together, to places like their Scottish home, thanks to Jane.”