Beatles New -and gay- Book: "John & Paul. A Love Story in Songs" by Ian Leslie

[quote]Paul McCartney and John Lennon met on Saturday, July 6, 1957 — 12 years after the war, 10 years before they released Sgt Pepper — amid the pageantry of a suburban English garden party in Woolton, Liverpool: brass band, fancy-dress parades, cake stalls and hoopla games. Paul, 15 years old, was over from Allerton, a mile or two across the golf course. He didn’t hang out in Woolton much — it was a posh neighbourhood, a little prissy — but a friend from school, Ivan, lived there, and had suggested they go to the fête.

[quote]At about 4pm, he and Ivan arrived at St Peter’s Church. The noise of Lennon’s group was billowing through humid air from the field next to the church. Paul had seen John around, on the bus, in the chip shop, and he was already fascinated by him. Paul was an intellectually hungry boy who was unconvinced by school and unimpressed by the prospect of an office job. Here was this older lad, nearly 17, a leather-jacketed, sideburned, vulpine rocker who seemed to have already made an irreversible break from workaday life.

[quote]Paul then took to the piano to sing Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally, his screams and whoops reverberating through the hall. Paul later recalled sitting at the piano and smelling beery breath over his shoulder, before realising it was John. John was struck by how well this lad could play, and by how handsome he was. (“He looked like Elvis. I dug him.”)

[quote]Two damaged romantics with jagged edges that happened to fit began to fuse into something new and packed with energy. “That was the day,” John Lennon said, ten years later, “the day that I met Paul, that it started moving.”

[quote] Book: "John & Paul. A Love Story in Songs" by Ian Leslie

ONO HE DI’INT!

John's mother was still alive when he and Paul first met.

I bet they had amazing sex

John was definitely gay, Yoko/R2. I mean, he married an Asian woman.

He loved him very much.

Yes, with 6.2 inches between them.

John made it pretty clear in Get Back what was going on between them in Paul's room :

John: "When we did....in your room"

Paul: "Yeah, right. I remember, yeah"

John: "I don't regret anything...ever" (looking your best friend dead in the eyes while attempting to deep throat a microphone………….. while recounting about the times you had before).

"If John Lennon came back for a day how would you spend it?"

"In bed."

I wonder the year the first time the Beatle went up in the Beatle

1961 during the trip to Paris.

[quote]Beatles New -and gay- Book

I thought they were just British.

[quote]"If John Lennon came back for a day how would you spend it?" "In bed." Paul really said that

Yes, he did.

In the demos for (Just Like) Starting Over, has John singing "The time has come the Walrus said, for you and me to stay in bed, all day." And in Glass Onion the lyrics says "The Walrus was Paul" so I guess this gives more proof of their more than friends relationship.

(Just like) Starting Over (1980) was about Paul (John manages to fit 3 references to Paul into a very tiny frame: "It's time to spread our WINGS and fly / Don't let ANOTHER DAY go by, MY LOVE...)

Also, it was reported that Paul locked himself in his music studio and listened to the song repeatedly after John died.

"John & Paul. A Love Story in Songs" is now #1 in Amazon.

[quote]I wonder the year the first time the Beatle went up in the Beatle

[quote]1961 during the trip to Paris.

John had been planing a long holiday with Paul for some time so they decided to cancel their gigs from the 30th of September till October15th 1961 (which the others did not enjoy much, being that they needed the money.)

They originally planned on going all the way to Spain, but eventually upon stopping in Paris, the pair decided to stop in Paris.

It seems that during this trip, Paul loved to take pics on John's bulge, John in bed - the tiny single bed they shared...

One of the many thousands published about The Beatles.

Am I the only one who side-eyes the lyrics of While My Guitar Gently Weeps in this context?

In the book, Ian Leslie gives a clear shoutout to the tumblr communities that have been talking about the John/Paul love relationship since years ago. And this has sparked a heated debate:

[quote]Ian Leslie can turn things around and get other historians, biographers, and fans to follow the same path. He won’t provide all the answers to the questions we have. He won’t make any big announcements. We won’t find out (at least for now) what really happened in Paris or India

[quote] It’s being released with the objective of introducing McLennon to the rest of the world. The point it’s Ian is bringing a new emotional perspective to John and Paul — a dependent, passionate, romantic view that many deny or refuse to accept.

[quote]The view that John and Paul were lovers and had an affair is relatively recent and only part of a new generation of fans. It’s still a niche “theory” that few people know about. Not everyone has contact with it. Only the youngest fans are aware of it.... the Beatles fandom is extremely sexist, misogynistic, and homophobic.

[quote]Unfortunately, some people will not deal well with the idea that John and Paul were lovers. Human beings tend to be frightened by the unknown and to create resistance to the new. We are talking about past generations and a cultural heritage.

[quote] You have to learn to dribble and gradually convince. All this movement has been happening since Get Back and the release of Now and Then

After reading some reviews, it's obvious that Ian Leslie is trying to pretend he's doing something new but he refuses to acknowledge anything queer happened. Is he afraid of NcCartney lawyers?

Everyone knows that Paul and John were close friends, that is not new information. Leslie says that they were “intense friends” but also, he compares them to Achilles and Patroclus ,who were lovers???

From Chapter 25: Look At Me

New York Post.- John Lennon and Paul McCartney had ‘erotic component’ to friendship, were ‘turned on by each other’. [quote]The Post reached out to McCartney's rep, who had no comment on the book.

[quote]“Ian Leslie: My feeling about their relationship has always been that it was remarkably intense and close and complex,” Leslie told The Post. “What it seems to be most like is a romance … in the sense that it was, you know, tempestuous and jealousy-ridden and loving and tender as well. It’s a love story.”

[quote]While Leslie believes that there was “an erotic component” to Lennon and McCartney’s relationship, he stressed, “I don’t think they were sleeping together.”

[quote]“I don’t think they had any sexual contact,” he said, “but I think John sometimes worried that maybe he might be gay or have gay feelings towards Paul … The first time they meet, John talks about how struck he was by how good-looking Paul was.

So the author repeats over and over again that the John/Paul relationship may have an erotic or physical component to it and that they were turned on by each other, but didn’t involve sex?? How could he possibly know it wasnt sexual??

I think that Leslie either he’s terribly afraid of Paul’s lawyers/ and bigots reactions or he’s absolutely blind…

I miss the Steinman Insider from The Beatles Were Bi old threads.

Stella McCartney has posted this adorable video for Father's Day.

She's like 'I love my gay dad so much'...

Why make up fairy stories when British pop is full of legitimate boy band sexual harassment love stories like Culture Club or Kajagoogoo?

In your dreams, R20.

I don’t think they even spent a lot of time together outside of recording sessions once the band got rolling. Young modern fandoms are obsessed with friendships between bandmates because they’re projecting their own awkward fantasies onto their parasocial target of preference.

R21 R23 , this is not Larry or any of those fairy ships made up by modern fandoms. This is a very deep, complex, troubled and documented relationship. You should read the "The Beatles -John ad Paul- Were Bi" old threads here in DL, which have lot of info.

In 1967, John Lennon moved on to Paul's home in Cavendish Av. Here's a pic of them walking Paul's dog, Martha.

Well on the one hand, there's actually ample evidence for the powerful emotional connection between them, and at least on John's side there was probably a sexual element. He was obsessed with McCartney up until his death -- that's attested to by people who saw his diaries and people who knew him. And -- the Ian Leslie book is quite good; really well-written.

The problem here is that OP et al., is trying to run tumblr scripts on DL, where they just don't work.

Those 'tumblr scripts' that you seem to despise so much, have been working here in DL for years. In "The Beatles Were Bi" multiple threads. Do a search.

And the author, Ian Leslie, has just admitted in a recent talk about this book that "there is the Mclennon community on tumblr and he basically says "has many long posts of John and Paul looking lovingly at each other and I'm very into it."

I love my dead gay Beatle!

What about me?

Simmer down, r26. I don't "despise" tumblr; I enjoy it. And being a Beatles obsessive who's halfway on the John&Paul bandwagon myself, I find some of the participants in the discussion there insightful. Some of them. What I said was that tumblr scripts don't work here. Why would they? Tumblr is predominantly young women; DL is predominantly older gay men. Of course these two groups are going to have different takes and different ways of talking about fundamental things.

Take that Stella McCartney post linked above. It shows 70s Paul McCartney in swim trunks goofy-dancing with 3- or 4-year-old Stella. The notion that posting this video is tantamount to outing him would be unremarkable on tumblr, and read as not-really-serious-but-maybe-sorta-serious. But I don't think you can find a plurality here who agree that the sine qua non of gayness is playing with your kid and wearing swim trunks at a pool.

As for that "The Beatles were Bi" link -- I read those threads ages ago, and also saw how they were construed on tumblr. Again, different cohort, different ethos. Tumblr fandoms maintain a "serious research" ethic, whether the topic is plausible or absurd, while I think here people comfortably assume that some participants are just making shit up.

Today, it's Paul McCartney's birthday.

A good momment to remember what the John Lennon official state posted on IG for Paul's birthday 3 years ago.

The lyrics of "In My Life" (one of Lennon's most personal songs) along with several pics of him with Paul:

"But of all these friends and lovers There is no one compares with you And these memories lose their meaning When I think of love as something new

Though I know I'll never lose affection For people and things that went before I know I'll often stop and think about them In my life, I love you more"

I don't necessarily think anything physical happened but I think Paul regrets that it didn't.

I find really hard to believe that nothing physical ever happened between those two, seeing their personalities and seeing their context. They were not afraid of anything, why wouldn't they have sex? I can definitely see Paul and John exploring their relationship beyond labels and taboos or any bs society pushed back them as illegal.

John said "Paul and I know each other in a lot of different ways that people don't know about" and I think they knew each other intimately in every possible way.

One example. India. See R8. The conversation in Get back, John's blowjob on the microphone, "What WERE we doing?", "In your room..."I don't regret anything...ever." clearly suggest that something physical happened.