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selenakIt’s one of those questions fans did and will speculate without ever reaching a definite conclusion: could there ever have been a Beatles reunion, with a little tweaking of real life circumstances?
Without beating around the bush, I don’t think so. Ringo is the only one of the four who I could see wholeheartedly agreeing to a reunion in the mid-70s (which is the one time period where the usual reunion rumours in the press were fuelled by more than hot air and there were actually some circumstances not adverse to it). He had his taste of independence, but he wasn’t dealing too well on his own right then; his first marriage had ended, he didn’t know his second wife yet, the alcohol was starting to become more than a social vice, he really loved the other three and he didn’t feel he had to prove something. So, if the others had suggested it, he’d have been game at once.
But George? Not unless he was really broke, which he wasn’t. He had been the first to get impatient with the trappings of Beatledom. Why exchange George Harrison, respected and admired solo artist (and Monty Python patron) again to George Harrison, eternal younger brother and junior songwriter to Lennon/McCartney?
John was a more complicated case than you’d think. For all the “I started the group, and I ended it” bluster, the entire Lost Weekend phase had rendered him pretty mellow towards all things Beatles, more than at any other point during the entire decade, including his re-emergence in 1980. The same man who started the decade with declaring “I don’t believe in Beatles” (along with a whole lot of other things not to believe in, except for Yoko and himself) now gave interviews like the 1975 one to Melody Maker with statements like: “I’ve lost all that negativity about the past and I’d be happy as Larry to do ‘Help!’ I’ve just changed completely in two years. I’d do ‘Hey Jude’ and the whole damn show, and I think George will eventually see that. If he doesn’t, that’s cool. That’s the way he wants to be.” (He also seems to have told at least three people – May Pang, Derek Taylor and Art Garfunkel – he was thinking about writing with Paul again, but I’ll get to that later because it’s not exactly the same thing like a Beatles reunion.) And let’s not forget the whole locking-himself-in-the-bedroom-instead-of-signing-the-final-divorce-papers thing mentioned my earlier Lennon contradictions collection. (He did finally sign in Disneyworld, Florida, where he spent Christmas 74/75 with Julian and May Pang.) But I still don’t think he would have been emotionally capable of really, seriously re-start the group. Aside from everything else, it would have gone directly against the version of his life he’d just spent the last five years telling himself and the rest of the world at infinitum, the tale of the artist enslaved by belong to the world’s most successful pop group until he finds true love and through it his artistic soul and breaks free, finally becoming his true self. On a more pragmatic level, the question that had driven the final nail in the coffin back in 1969/75 would have been on the table again – who should manage the group? I can just hear the argument starting. (“So, let’s recapitulate. The last time you picked a manager and persuaded George and Ringo to go along with you, it turned out to be a crook you three are still entangled in law suits against. Meanwhile, Eastman & Eastman have made me one of the richest men in the country. Gee, John, who do you think I want to manage us, son?” “I am not getting managed by your in-laws!” Rinse, repeat.)
Paul was the one who had been most emotionally invested in being a Beatle, the one who had fought the hardest to keep the group together, but I still doubt he’d have gone for a reunion in the mid-70s; the odds would have been at least 50/50. He had spent years painstakingly building up Wings as a group with its own fannish following and at this point, it finally paid off both not only commercially but at last critically. He was touring again and having a blast at it. The man does love to play to a live audience. He was the last Beatle to agree to stop touring and only after it truly had become unbearable under the 1966 conditions, the first to suggest they start it again, and he still tours in 2010 with no sign of exhaustion (three hour non-stop gigs that could make younger artists blanch with envy). By contrast, George’s 1974 tour, on the other hand, had been a disaster and he was tour-shy, John had been incredibly nervous at his one time only appearance with Elton John in 1974, and I very much doubt either them if reunion plans had even reached that point would have agreed to tour anymore than they did in 1969. Plus as with John, there was a credibility issue at stake. A Beatles reunion would have been a declaration that this solo career/other group thing had never been more than a place holder. And what if John, king of mood swings, changed his mind again after a month or so and called the whole reunion off? Then Paul would have been without a band again, without either bands, having to start at point zero once more. Plus, see above above, that vexed old manager question. So no, I don’t think he’d have yelled “hooray, of course!” if any of the others had seriously suggested a reunion in 1975.
So no return of the Beatles. On the other hand, given that all of them in various combinations collaborated with each other – just not all four at the same time on the same project – through the post-Beatles years, would there have been a serious chance for a Lennon/McCartney songwriter team reunion, without the pressure of this being combined with a Beatles reunion? This is somewhat more likely and at least debatable. They could have done it without giving up their solo existences. Given that both of them already did write songs for solo Ringo separately, writing a song for him together would have been an obvious starting point, though perhaps too Beatles-related, but they had always given songs to other artists, so a single or album for some of the many active in the 70s they were on good terms with would have been viable. (Also a good way to avoid too much hype and expectations – the singers would not have been the Beatles and thus those hypothetical Lennon/McCartney compositions would not have been expected to sound like them.) This being said, it still would have been an emotional minefield. Beginning with the question as to which of them, after all the “I don’t need you anymore” declarations of the early 70s, would cave first and ask directly “do you want to write together again?” On the pro side, you have the following statements by women with a front view:
May Pang ( in this interview, among others): He wanted to write with Paul again. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea. I told him I thought it was a great idea, "because you two want to do it. There are no contracts, no pressure. Just the most amazing songwriting team ever getting together to create some musical magic." Solo they were great, but together they were unbeatable. He thought about it and he said, "You know what? Let's go down and visit Paul and Linda. Later that week on a Friday afternoon, Yoko called John to say, "today was the day, the stars are right. Gotta come today, we've gotta do this 'cure' to get you to quit smoking." My gut feeling was telling me he shouldn't go. It didn't sit well with me. John saw that I was really upset. He goes, "Let's not fight about it - I'll be home for dinner. Whatever place you wanna go for dinner. And then let's make the plans to go down to New Orleans." And I knew…when he walked out. You know you have a gut feeling? I knew something was going to change.
I told Paul - about 15 years later when I had a chance to see him in England. I said to him, "Listen, for what it's worth, I just want you to know that John really loved you." He said, "Oh, I know that." Then I said, "You know, we were going to come down to New Orleans because he wanted to write with you again." He looked at me and said, "Oh yeah…that would have been great." Now I know he didn't even want to entertain that thought. Coming down to New Orleans? I could tell that he thought I was just being nice.
A year had gone by and I get a call from Paul's office to invite me to his annual Buddy Holly party in New York. So I went and I waved as they came in - and Paul rushed over and said, "Linda, tell her, tell her!" I said, "Tell me what?" "You know how Derek Taylor always sells memorabilia? Well, we got one of his postcards from John." And I said, "What was it?" On the postcard, John wrote "thinking of visiting the Macs in New Orleans". It was then that Paul believed it. (…) rAnd I didn't even know the postcard existed. And Paul got it. John had written to Derek, he always used to write notes and letters to his friends. Wouldn't that have been great?
(Sidenote: Derek Taylor reprinted the postcard in question in one of his books, which of course only proves that John was thinking of going to New Orleans to visit Paul, not anything more than that. However, people from Art Garfunkel to Jack Douglass, who produced Double Fantasy, went on the record in claiming John asked them “so would you think if I said I wanted to write with Paul again?” So one can make a case that John at least entertained the possibility now and then in his mind.)
As for Paul, Linda McCartney stated in 1985 in an interview:
Linda: "I was just going to say that I think if John had lived, he might still be saying, 'Oh, I'm much happier now..."
Int: "And you don't believe it?"
Linda: "The sad thing is that John and Paul both had problems and they loved each other and, boy, could they have helped each other! If they had only communicated! It frustrates me to no end, because I was just some chick from New York when I walked into all of that. God, if I'd known what I know now... All I could do was sit there watching them play these games."
Int: "But wasn't it clear that John wanted only to work with Yoko?"
Linda: "No. I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write. Desperate. People thought, Well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a househusband and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him... easily."
On the con side, there is an elephant in the room that neither woman mentions. Which is that while Lennon and McCartney were a functioning partnership, they prioritized each other over any other relationship in their lives, including their marriage in John’s case and long term romance in Paul’s. This just would not have been possible anymore in the 70s, and not simply because of Yoko. Say that Yoko instead of taking John back in 1975 decides she’s sick of being seen as Mrs. Lennon and not as an artist in her own right and divorces him instead, or say John instead of returning to Yoko at the end of his Lost Weekend does go to New Orleans and quotes Sam Gamgee on Paul (“well, I’m back”). Paul is still happily married to Linda and by now father of three children. Pre-Sean John, on the other hand, is the neediest rebel whoever needed and absolutely incapable of having a serious relationship with anyone who doesn’t make him the most important person in their lives. (Cynthia did, Paul did until the break-up, Yoko did and May Pang did.) He also has hang-ups galore about families and hates feeling guilty or inadequate. To quote Ms. Pang once more, this time on why it took John nearly three years to see Julian again: ”The very concept of fatherhood unnerved him terribly. He could he play the role of father when he felt it was essential for his survival that someone always be there to take care of him? In addition the fact that he had ignored Julian made him feel guilty. His preference at that point was never to see Julian and, therefore, to avoid the bad feelings his own behaviour conjured.” Early 70s John himself on the subject of Paul and Paul’s fondness for family life sounds like an odd mixture of jealous of Paul for having a family and various members of Paul’s family for having him: “Paul always wanted the home life, you see. He liked it with daddy and the brother . . . and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. (…)And with Linda not only did he have a ready-made family, but she knows what he wants, obviously, and has given it to him. The complete family life.”
All of which is why I really can’t see mid-70s John going from occasionally hanging out with the McCartneys to moving in (symbolically, not literally) and not be immediately irritated, annoyed and jealous at the prospect of now coming after three girls and Linda in the emotional hierarchy, plus also, ever-competitive as he was, feeling shown up as a lousy father, no matter how unintentionally. As I said: emotional minefield. I also can’t see Paul, much as he never got over John (not in the mid-70s and not today decades later – only this weekend there was an article in the Observer wherein he was asked whether he misses working with John and replied “Are you kidding? Of course I bloody miss it. I’m sitting in the room with John, him with me. Believe me, we’re both pretty good editors. We were young turks. We were smartasses. And we did some amazing things. I would love him to be here now, saying, ‘Don’t bloody do that!’ – or, more wonderfully, ‘That’s great!’ So yeah, I really had the greatest writing partner”), being ready to sacrifice his family on the Lennon altar. Actually I suspect mid-70s John didn’t think he would, either, which might have been one reason why he didn’t go to New Orleans, and told other people, but never Paul himself, that he missed working with him and wondered about doing it again.
Post-Sean John was different bit of kettle (he had finally figured out how to take care of another human being instead of being the one taken care of, for starters, and presumably also how to have relationships where more than one person at a time was the focus of emotional attention), and provided his Double Fantasy comeback would have been a great success (it was still a mixed affair when he died, early bad reviews along with the good ones – the death changed everything in this regard, of course), encouraging him to keep being active as a musician again, who knows what would have happened? But I feel uncomfortable speculating about John beyond 40, what he might or might not have done. All those possibilities died with him. There is, however, a story the late, great Carl Perkins told about a song he wrote in 1981 after recording Get It for Tug of War with Paul in Montserrat, My Old Friend, as a thank you to his host. The song is called My Old Friend. When he played it for the first time for the McCartneys, Carl Perkins was in for a somewhat spooky surprise: "After I finished, Paul was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and Linda said, ‘Carl, thank you so much.’ I said, ‘Linda, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ She said, ‘But he’s crying, and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.’ And she put her arm around me and said, ‘But how did you know?’ I said, ‘Know what?’ She said, ‘There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. But now there’s three, and one of them’s you, you know it.’ I said, ‘Girl, you’re freaking me out! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ She said that the last words that John Lennon said to Paul, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’ (...) McCartney really feels that Lennon sent me that song, he really does.”
My Old Friend
Without beating around the bush, I don’t think so. Ringo is the only one of the four who I could see wholeheartedly agreeing to a reunion in the mid-70s (which is the one time period where the usual reunion rumours in the press were fuelled by more than hot air and there were actually some circumstances not adverse to it). He had his taste of independence, but he wasn’t dealing too well on his own right then; his first marriage had ended, he didn’t know his second wife yet, the alcohol was starting to become more than a social vice, he really loved the other three and he didn’t feel he had to prove something. So, if the others had suggested it, he’d have been game at once.
But George? Not unless he was really broke, which he wasn’t. He had been the first to get impatient with the trappings of Beatledom. Why exchange George Harrison, respected and admired solo artist (and Monty Python patron) again to George Harrison, eternal younger brother and junior songwriter to Lennon/McCartney?
John was a more complicated case than you’d think. For all the “I started the group, and I ended it” bluster, the entire Lost Weekend phase had rendered him pretty mellow towards all things Beatles, more than at any other point during the entire decade, including his re-emergence in 1980. The same man who started the decade with declaring “I don’t believe in Beatles” (along with a whole lot of other things not to believe in, except for Yoko and himself) now gave interviews like the 1975 one to Melody Maker with statements like: “I’ve lost all that negativity about the past and I’d be happy as Larry to do ‘Help!’ I’ve just changed completely in two years. I’d do ‘Hey Jude’ and the whole damn show, and I think George will eventually see that. If he doesn’t, that’s cool. That’s the way he wants to be.” (He also seems to have told at least three people – May Pang, Derek Taylor and Art Garfunkel – he was thinking about writing with Paul again, but I’ll get to that later because it’s not exactly the same thing like a Beatles reunion.) And let’s not forget the whole locking-himself-in-the-bedroom-instead-of-signing-the-final-divorce-papers thing mentioned my earlier Lennon contradictions collection. (He did finally sign in Disneyworld, Florida, where he spent Christmas 74/75 with Julian and May Pang.) But I still don’t think he would have been emotionally capable of really, seriously re-start the group. Aside from everything else, it would have gone directly against the version of his life he’d just spent the last five years telling himself and the rest of the world at infinitum, the tale of the artist enslaved by belong to the world’s most successful pop group until he finds true love and through it his artistic soul and breaks free, finally becoming his true self. On a more pragmatic level, the question that had driven the final nail in the coffin back in 1969/75 would have been on the table again – who should manage the group? I can just hear the argument starting. (“So, let’s recapitulate. The last time you picked a manager and persuaded George and Ringo to go along with you, it turned out to be a crook you three are still entangled in law suits against. Meanwhile, Eastman & Eastman have made me one of the richest men in the country. Gee, John, who do you think I want to manage us, son?” “I am not getting managed by your in-laws!” Rinse, repeat.)
Paul was the one who had been most emotionally invested in being a Beatle, the one who had fought the hardest to keep the group together, but I still doubt he’d have gone for a reunion in the mid-70s; the odds would have been at least 50/50. He had spent years painstakingly building up Wings as a group with its own fannish following and at this point, it finally paid off both not only commercially but at last critically. He was touring again and having a blast at it. The man does love to play to a live audience. He was the last Beatle to agree to stop touring and only after it truly had become unbearable under the 1966 conditions, the first to suggest they start it again, and he still tours in 2010 with no sign of exhaustion (three hour non-stop gigs that could make younger artists blanch with envy). By contrast, George’s 1974 tour, on the other hand, had been a disaster and he was tour-shy, John had been incredibly nervous at his one time only appearance with Elton John in 1974, and I very much doubt either them if reunion plans had even reached that point would have agreed to tour anymore than they did in 1969. Plus as with John, there was a credibility issue at stake. A Beatles reunion would have been a declaration that this solo career/other group thing had never been more than a place holder. And what if John, king of mood swings, changed his mind again after a month or so and called the whole reunion off? Then Paul would have been without a band again, without either bands, having to start at point zero once more. Plus, see above above, that vexed old manager question. So no, I don’t think he’d have yelled “hooray, of course!” if any of the others had seriously suggested a reunion in 1975.
So no return of the Beatles. On the other hand, given that all of them in various combinations collaborated with each other – just not all four at the same time on the same project – through the post-Beatles years, would there have been a serious chance for a Lennon/McCartney songwriter team reunion, without the pressure of this being combined with a Beatles reunion? This is somewhat more likely and at least debatable. They could have done it without giving up their solo existences. Given that both of them already did write songs for solo Ringo separately, writing a song for him together would have been an obvious starting point, though perhaps too Beatles-related, but they had always given songs to other artists, so a single or album for some of the many active in the 70s they were on good terms with would have been viable. (Also a good way to avoid too much hype and expectations – the singers would not have been the Beatles and thus those hypothetical Lennon/McCartney compositions would not have been expected to sound like them.) This being said, it still would have been an emotional minefield. Beginning with the question as to which of them, after all the “I don’t need you anymore” declarations of the early 70s, would cave first and ask directly “do you want to write together again?” On the pro side, you have the following statements by women with a front view:
May Pang ( in this interview, among others): He wanted to write with Paul again. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea. I told him I thought it was a great idea, "because you two want to do it. There are no contracts, no pressure. Just the most amazing songwriting team ever getting together to create some musical magic." Solo they were great, but together they were unbeatable. He thought about it and he said, "You know what? Let's go down and visit Paul and Linda. Later that week on a Friday afternoon, Yoko called John to say, "today was the day, the stars are right. Gotta come today, we've gotta do this 'cure' to get you to quit smoking." My gut feeling was telling me he shouldn't go. It didn't sit well with me. John saw that I was really upset. He goes, "Let's not fight about it - I'll be home for dinner. Whatever place you wanna go for dinner. And then let's make the plans to go down to New Orleans." And I knew…when he walked out. You know you have a gut feeling? I knew something was going to change.
I told Paul - about 15 years later when I had a chance to see him in England. I said to him, "Listen, for what it's worth, I just want you to know that John really loved you." He said, "Oh, I know that." Then I said, "You know, we were going to come down to New Orleans because he wanted to write with you again." He looked at me and said, "Oh yeah…that would have been great." Now I know he didn't even want to entertain that thought. Coming down to New Orleans? I could tell that he thought I was just being nice.
A year had gone by and I get a call from Paul's office to invite me to his annual Buddy Holly party in New York. So I went and I waved as they came in - and Paul rushed over and said, "Linda, tell her, tell her!" I said, "Tell me what?" "You know how Derek Taylor always sells memorabilia? Well, we got one of his postcards from John." And I said, "What was it?" On the postcard, John wrote "thinking of visiting the Macs in New Orleans". It was then that Paul believed it. (…) rAnd I didn't even know the postcard existed. And Paul got it. John had written to Derek, he always used to write notes and letters to his friends. Wouldn't that have been great?
(Sidenote: Derek Taylor reprinted the postcard in question in one of his books, which of course only proves that John was thinking of going to New Orleans to visit Paul, not anything more than that. However, people from Art Garfunkel to Jack Douglass, who produced Double Fantasy, went on the record in claiming John asked them “so would you think if I said I wanted to write with Paul again?” So one can make a case that John at least entertained the possibility now and then in his mind.)
As for Paul, Linda McCartney stated in 1985 in an interview:
Linda: "I was just going to say that I think if John had lived, he might still be saying, 'Oh, I'm much happier now..."
Int: "And you don't believe it?"
Linda: "The sad thing is that John and Paul both had problems and they loved each other and, boy, could they have helped each other! If they had only communicated! It frustrates me to no end, because I was just some chick from New York when I walked into all of that. God, if I'd known what I know now... All I could do was sit there watching them play these games."
Int: "But wasn't it clear that John wanted only to work with Yoko?"
Linda: "No. I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write. Desperate. People thought, Well, he's taking care of Sean, he's a househusband and all that, but he wasn't happy. He couldn't write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him... easily."
On the con side, there is an elephant in the room that neither woman mentions. Which is that while Lennon and McCartney were a functioning partnership, they prioritized each other over any other relationship in their lives, including their marriage in John’s case and long term romance in Paul’s. This just would not have been possible anymore in the 70s, and not simply because of Yoko. Say that Yoko instead of taking John back in 1975 decides she’s sick of being seen as Mrs. Lennon and not as an artist in her own right and divorces him instead, or say John instead of returning to Yoko at the end of his Lost Weekend does go to New Orleans and quotes Sam Gamgee on Paul (“well, I’m back”). Paul is still happily married to Linda and by now father of three children. Pre-Sean John, on the other hand, is the neediest rebel whoever needed and absolutely incapable of having a serious relationship with anyone who doesn’t make him the most important person in their lives. (Cynthia did, Paul did until the break-up, Yoko did and May Pang did.) He also has hang-ups galore about families and hates feeling guilty or inadequate. To quote Ms. Pang once more, this time on why it took John nearly three years to see Julian again: ”The very concept of fatherhood unnerved him terribly. He could he play the role of father when he felt it was essential for his survival that someone always be there to take care of him? In addition the fact that he had ignored Julian made him feel guilty. His preference at that point was never to see Julian and, therefore, to avoid the bad feelings his own behaviour conjured.” Early 70s John himself on the subject of Paul and Paul’s fondness for family life sounds like an odd mixture of jealous of Paul for having a family and various members of Paul’s family for having him: “Paul always wanted the home life, you see. He liked it with daddy and the brother . . . and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. (…)And with Linda not only did he have a ready-made family, but she knows what he wants, obviously, and has given it to him. The complete family life.”
All of which is why I really can’t see mid-70s John going from occasionally hanging out with the McCartneys to moving in (symbolically, not literally) and not be immediately irritated, annoyed and jealous at the prospect of now coming after three girls and Linda in the emotional hierarchy, plus also, ever-competitive as he was, feeling shown up as a lousy father, no matter how unintentionally. As I said: emotional minefield. I also can’t see Paul, much as he never got over John (not in the mid-70s and not today decades later – only this weekend there was an article in the Observer wherein he was asked whether he misses working with John and replied “Are you kidding? Of course I bloody miss it. I’m sitting in the room with John, him with me. Believe me, we’re both pretty good editors. We were young turks. We were smartasses. And we did some amazing things. I would love him to be here now, saying, ‘Don’t bloody do that!’ – or, more wonderfully, ‘That’s great!’ So yeah, I really had the greatest writing partner”), being ready to sacrifice his family on the Lennon altar. Actually I suspect mid-70s John didn’t think he would, either, which might have been one reason why he didn’t go to New Orleans, and told other people, but never Paul himself, that he missed working with him and wondered about doing it again.
Post-Sean John was different bit of kettle (he had finally figured out how to take care of another human being instead of being the one taken care of, for starters, and presumably also how to have relationships where more than one person at a time was the focus of emotional attention), and provided his Double Fantasy comeback would have been a great success (it was still a mixed affair when he died, early bad reviews along with the good ones – the death changed everything in this regard, of course), encouraging him to keep being active as a musician again, who knows what would have happened? But I feel uncomfortable speculating about John beyond 40, what he might or might not have done. All those possibilities died with him. There is, however, a story the late, great Carl Perkins told about a song he wrote in 1981 after recording Get It for Tug of War with Paul in Montserrat, My Old Friend, as a thank you to his host. The song is called My Old Friend. When he played it for the first time for the McCartneys, Carl Perkins was in for a somewhat spooky surprise: "After I finished, Paul was crying, tears were rolling down his pretty cheeks, and Linda said, ‘Carl, thank you so much.’ I said, ‘Linda, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.’ She said, ‘But he’s crying, and he needed to. He hasn’t been able to really break down since that happened to John.’ And she put her arm around me and said, ‘But how did you know?’ I said, ‘Know what?’ She said, ‘There’s two people in the world that know what John Lennon said to Paul, the last thing he said to him. But now there’s three, and one of them’s you, you know it.’ I said, ‘Girl, you’re freaking me out! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ She said that the last words that John Lennon said to Paul, ‘Think about me every now and then, old friend.’ (...) McCartney really feels that Lennon sent me that song, he really does.”
My Old Friend
no subject
Date: 2010-11-15 01:30 pm (UTC)OK, but seriously... the song is a lot more complicated and just prettier than that (yelling?). Love the posts, but this seemed to be a little misrepresentative.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-15 01:39 pm (UTC)