Bass Player

Rick Rubin:  I want to read to you one little thing…it says: “Paul’s one of the most innovative players that ever played bass. Half of the stuff that’s going on now is a direct rip-off from his beatle period.  He’s always been a bit coy about his bass playing, but he’s a great musician.”

Paul (kidding:) did I write that?

Rubin:  That is John Lennon. 

Paul:  That’s John? [laughs with delight] Alright! C’mon Johnny! [Then serious] It’s beautiful. I never heard that before.  He never said that to me. It’s nice to hear that he said it to someone.  It’s amazing.

~From McCartney 3, 2, 1

[The quote is from John’s playboy interview with David Scheff, and here’s the exact quote: “Ringo is a damn good drummer. He is not technically good, but I think Ringo’s drumming is underrated the same way Paul’s bass playing is underrated. Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He is an egomaniac about everything else about himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. I think Paul and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians”.]

Paul and Double-Speak

Q:  Were you still close to him [referring to John, at the time of his death]?

PAUL: Yes, yes.  I suppose the story was that we were pretty close in the beginning when we were writing stuff together. We felt alot of sympathy for each other, although on a personal level, based on a lot of stuff that went down later, I obviously wasn’t that close to him. To me, he was a fella, and you don’t get that close to fellas. I felt very close to him, but from alot of what he said later, obviously, I was missing…the picture. But anyway, I felt very close to him then and when the Beatles started to feel the strain towards the last couple of years, it was getting to be a bit of a strain and we were drifting more apart. I think the kind of anchor that had held us together was still there. I think that we all, in a way, started to get really angry with each other, annoyed and frustrated, but we were still very keen on each other, loved each other, I suppose, because we had been mates together for so long. Like Ringo says, ‘We were as three brothers.’ It’s that kind of a feeling. I mean, I didn’t realize that, but Ringo would tell me later, ‘You are like my brothers, you lot.’ We all knew that there was some kind of deep regard for each other.

____________________

 At the beginning of his answer, we can see that Paul is reluctant to declare that he and John were close ( “I suppose the story is that we were pretty close”) because he is so full of self-doubt (“based on a lot of stuff that went down later, I obviously wasn’t that close to him.”) Then he inexplicably decides to buttress this view by adding in a little bit of macho defensiveness ( “he was a fella and you don’t get that close to fellas”). Immediately afterwards, however, Paul does a complete reversal (“I felt very close to him…we were still very keen on each other, loved each other”).  Paul, thy name is contradiction.

Julia

What we used to do, we’d play truant from school, this was like a safe house to go to…so one day he took me to meet her. She opened the door and this is the first meeting I had with her, and the door opened and there is this slight slip of a woman in her like early, mid 30’s or something, I dunno, very young, and she’s got a pair of knickers on her head. [laughs] Apparently this is something she used to do–she used to pick up anything that was handy while dusting. She used to flit around the house with a feather duster and sing away, and a record player and speakers in each room, which was a great thing for us in those days.

But I went into the room and she welcomed us ‘Great to see you!’–she couldn’t care less that I was playing truant, she wanted, in fact used to encourage us to come again–‘come tomorrow if you can lads’, you know–and I went in and John said ‘this is Pete’ and she went ‘Oh Pete oh fantastic!’ and she moved over to me, and I thought she was just going to shake my hand or say hello or something like that, and instead she ran her hands up and down me hips and said ‘oh, isn’t he lovely! Doesn’t he have lovely hips!’ [laughs] and I turned to John and said ‘hey’ right? She’s terrific [laughs].

You could see directly where John got his humour and love of life from. She was always saying to us ‘look, don’t worry about it; it’ll be ok–don’t worry about tomorrow just have a good time. That’s all that matters.’ It was her view of life, her philosphy about life–fun, a love of laughing.

[John] discovered a relationship he hadn’t had before, it was a relationship that had been developed not from a childhood thing but from a different level, and he was incredibly fond of his mother and very close to her. And of course it was a terrible blow–that day was dreadful when she was killed. I saw him the next day and there was nothing to say, you know his pain was obvious. But it was just a matter of saying–I just said to him ‘I’m sorry about your mum, John’ and he just liked shrugged and said ‘that’s ok.’ But there wasn’t anything more to say, there wasn’t anything–it was something that had to be allowed to go, but it was a big impact on him.

[Going to art college] was turning out to be something he hated. He used to say to me ‘Pete, it’s dreadful, it’s like math at school. I spend most of me time measuring out letters’…there’s no artistic freedom at all. So he was having a bad time…he was short of money as well, he was hitting the skids kind of thing at that time. It all came together, it was the lowest time of his life. With his mother getting killed that topped it. And he started drinking alot during that time, it was a very bad period for him. In fact I remember finding him on a bus one night and he’d been–I was coming home late and he’d been laying on the back seat of the bus upstairs just like out of his head unconscious. He’d been on this bus for like two hours [laughs] backwards and forwards to the terminals. I just carried him off the bus and carried him off to Mendips and got him up to bed and put him in. Yeah it was a bad time for him, but you see he never allowed anybody to see it. He always fought, he always–I never remember him ever complaining or moaning about anything in his life. He always took it like a man, folks, you know what I mean? Right? He was that type. He was strong, he wouldn’t give up, show any weakness of he could help it, but he came through with incredible strength as he always did.

Pete Shotton interview about John Lennon

PERSONAL NOTE:

As a mental health professional, I find it sad, annoying, and a little horrifying that Pete’s later recollections of Julia’s immaturity as a parent, and her entirely inappropriate, sexualized behaviour with her son’s teenage pal, are a source of amusement.

It’s equally sad and horrifying that Pete categorizes John’s drunken, depressive withdrawal following Julia’s death as ‘not moaning’ and a sign of ‘strength and manhood’.

Ironic that John himself publicly denounced this warped interpretation of strength and manhood in his music. Was Pete not listening?

John did “come through” with incredible strength, but not for the reasons Pete thinks. To normalize disenfranchised grief and then pat someone on the back for enduring it is the most obscene form of compliment, Pete, god rest your soul.

My mummy’s dead
I can’t get through my head
Though it’s been so many years
My mummy’s dead
I can’t explain, so much pain
I could never show it
My mummy’s dead

 

 

Always A Laugh

Q: With the nature of McGough & McGear being more surrealistic and absurdist in nature, was John Lennon a fan? What did he think of you, because your work seems very similar to the sorts of books he published.

A: John, he was always supportive. He used to come round to our flat and hang out, and would love to listen to our comedy records, things like Peter Sellers’ Songs For Swinging Sellers. He loved that record, he loved the Goon Squad. And it’s so interesting to me, now that I’ve been talking to you, about how things just seem to influence each other, simply by being there and around each other—not intentionally doing something, like, say, teaching a chord or working on something actively—but just by sitting in a cramped little bedroom listening to music that you liked. And that record—I’ve still got that record, it’s upstairs in my record shelf—it’s funny. It’s so dark. Like, you’ve got a tree, and you have a record player, and you see a pair of feet hanging down from the tree, and a rope hanging down beside the legs. John used to cackle at that, he thought it was one of the best album covers ever.  (Laughs) I was a little kid, and I just thought John was great, he was always a laugh when he came round, a big influence, even though I might not have realized it at the time.

Mike McCartney, Interview with The Recoup, 2016

I’m Only Sleeping

JOHN LENNON OWNED PHOTOGRAPHS – HARRY BENSON. Four original 1960s studio prints of images taken by Harry Benson in January 1964, depicting The Beatles. All to measure approx 20 x 30cm. Provenance: originally given to Bernard Brown (Apple publishing manager) by John Lennon when John moved to New York. The current owner was a good friend of Bernard Brown and purchased them approximately 35 years ago. They have been in his private collection since then. Includes letter of provenance from the vendor along with copies of correspondence between the vendor and Bernard Brown.

I have a feeling that this photo was taken at the same time:

#John’s collection of sleeping Paul photos

That Time In Mississauga

Q: OK. But how did you come to hook up with John and Yoko in Dec. 1969?

A: I first made the contact from England by a writer from Rolling Stone named Ritchie Yorke. He said he was in England with John Lennon and Yoko. who were looking for a place to stay, because they didn’t want to do the hotel thing any more. Yorke brought up my name and they called me to ask if it would be OK if they stayed at the house, at that time in Mississauga, not to far from Toronto, where he could still do his business and stuff. So they styed with us and we went on that peace train, to see Prime minister Trudeau. We went to Montreal. We went to Ottawa, and whereever John and Yoko wanted to go. I didn’t know that much about the Beatles at that time because my world was playin’ in bars and that was it. And so it took me two or three years after John and Yoko had left that they were ahead of their time.

Q: What were your first impressions when you met John?

A: Well, I didn’t know too much. I did know that Yoko was super intelligent. She was supposedly be able to speak five or six or seven languages. I know she could call anyone. She put 16 lines in my house and she could pick up and phone the ambassador to Japan, Princess Elizabeth, Peter Sellers. All those people, she just picked up and talked to everyday.

Q: Literally 16 telephone lines?

A: Yeah. they negotiated on a Saturday night, and daylight Sunday morning 16 lines came across the fields into my house. Usually, you have to wait six months for one phone, but this is what happens when you have authority.

Q: At first you saw John as being weak and subserviant to Yoko?

A: Well it was different for me. John was a quiet, good cat. She did all the talkin’. It looked kind of different to me, but I came to understand it as I came to understand John’s background.

Q: Did you have a moment alone with John?

A: Oh yeah. We went out several times, alone but then she got a little hot and started leaving notes. We went outside snowmobiling, and I also had those six-wheel jiggers out there (ATV’s) and John had never played in the snow or anything. Right after that, John ordered a few for his farm in New York. Remember at that time they were doing that together thing and he asked a few times if it was OK to go out and play in the snow and she didn’t say anything and she was kind of hot at him for a day or two.

Q: What about the famous bathtub story?

A: What happened, I guess, is that they went upstairs to draw a bath and laid down, and the bathtub went over. They fell asleep and our new ceilings came in on us. That’s one of many things. There was a fire in my barn. All those little old papers that were between the lithographs that he was signing — thousands of them — and they stacked out there and something set them on fire because it was rice paper or something. there was a wind and it started settin’ everything on fire. John came runnin’ out with a pail for kids to put that fire out.The papers were blowin’ out in the fields. And to top it off, the phone bill was never paid.

Q: In Albert Goldman’s book, “The Lives Of John Lennon,” he said that you had “suffered every sort of insult, from seeing (your) children pouring over the muff-diving imagery of Lennon’s erotic lithographs…” Any truth to this charge?

A: No, no. They didn’t see any of that stuff until later, when they were old enough to see it. John had scratched out nude pictures and stuff of Yoko, and everything, and we still have a bunch of that stuff.

Q: Goldman also said that the limo carrying John and Yoko “crashed” through your gate when they first arrive, and that John Brower, who had brought John to Canada for the “Live Peace in Toronto” gig, three months earlier, became enranged and punched out a photographer. True?

A: No. And that was Heddy Andrews (in the scuffle). John Brower had hired security to keep people from comin’ over the wall. One of the photographers climbed over the wall and was sneakin’ in and it ended up in a scuffle.

Q: Talk about the “peace train.”

A: It was planned all along. You’ve got to remember that it was going to be the peace festival. At that time, it was still goin’ strong. I was told Trudeau was going to supply the security for the concert with the military and have a big one. At first it was going to be the greatest thing that ever happened and then some people started sayin’ weird things to the press and something happened.

Q: What are some of your best memories of your time with John?

A: When he got out of the limo from the airport and I met them at the house, the first thing he said was “I’m going to give you forty days to get back home.” He knew all of my records. He knew most of them better than I did.

Q: Did you jam?

A: Oh yeah, we did a lot of that piddlin’ around.

Q: Anybody record it?

A: Yeah. One of them English cats did. I don’t know if it ever got out or not. That was kind of a wild time. Everybody was runnin’ around playin’ ski-doos and, writers and cooks . That was microbiotic times. You know it was exciting.

Q: What were your personal feelings of John and Yoko.

A: Well John, he was just nice. Yoko was who I didn’t understand because she was super intelligent. She was above a bar-act, which I was. At that particular time, I thought I was doin’ them a favour. I didn’t know that anybody was that powerful. I thought the Beatles were an English group that got lucky. I didn’t know a lot about their music. I thought Yoko’s was (silly). To this day, I have never heard a Beatle album. For 10 billion dollars, I couldn’t name one song on “Abbey Road.” I have never in my life picked up a Beatle album, and listened to it. Never. But John was so powerful. I liked him. He wasn’t one of those hotshots, you know, all those other heavy metallers, you know how they act. John was a gentleman. Quiet, humble and polite. He wasn’t out of control.

Q: Your best rememberance of Yoko?

A: Well, she knew so many people. She called so many people and was in charge of so many things and told the number one man in the world of the Beatles what to do. I couldn’t understand that.

Q: Did you ever ask John about that?

A: No. I figured that was his business. If he wanted her to talk to him like that…but what I couldn’t understand that he didn’t have about four or five of the most beautiful women in the world with him, because he could have.

Terry Ott’s National Post Interview with Ronnie Hawkins about John and Yoko’s visit to his home in Mississauga, Ontario (a mere few hours from my home!) in December, 1969.

Fatherhood

In those days, if your girlfriend got pregnant, it was quite simple — you got married. [John] wasn’t happy about the baby, although I knew he began months later to really love Julian. But the fact that he had to marry was disturbing to him. His decision to go to Spain, although very selfish, was a ‘f— you’ to all the things that were happening to him. It’s kind of ironic because months later at a West End pub called the Speakeasy, we were chatting after a recording session. Both of us sensitively talked about our infant children, and how good it felt to be fathers. John loved Julian, but he didn’t love the circumstances surrounding his birth.”

Tony Barrow talking about John and parenthood, via Larry Kane.

Suddenly On (My) Our Own

Q: Before I get to the heavy stuff here about the deportation, let me ask you a question…it’s the one thing that people always want to know. Are you ever going to play together again as a group?

A: It’s quite possible, [but] in what form we play together again I don’t know. It’s been a physical impossibility for the four of us to be at one place at one time. I wouldn’t leave here because I wouldn’t get back in. George and Paul also have problems coming…they have to ask a few months in advance for permission to come in. The most that’s ever been in the country at the same time is three. [The immigration problem] has kept us from even sitting in a room together to decide, or even say hello, although we’ve done it different combinations of the four.

Q: What about the celebrated feud between you and McCartney, and so on. Was that all blown out of proportion?

A: Well it was half and half, you know. If I get knocked down by a taxi cab, it’s a celebrated person being knocked down by a taxi cab. Or if I get married, divorced, it’s celebrated. So The Beatles had a divorce, and Paul and I were always sort of the out front ones, and so our celebrated feud, Lennon/McCartney [puts forefingers together] we wrote the songs, etc, and it was bigger, and I think we were…I put it down to probably we all were actually all pretty nervous of suddenly being on our own, although we all really wanted to get away from each other after living in a room together for ten years. And suddenly you’re on your own, you know? So there’s a little bit of that. But that’s all gone.

John Lennon, talking about his immigration charge and the possibility of a Beatles’ reunion.

*John’s account of the feud is remarkable, as is his use of the editorial “we.”

An Adopted New Yorker

I would have to say that John Lennon, without question–I mean there’s been so many wonderful things that has happened to me on stage, but him coming out on Thanksgiving 1975 at Madison Square Gardens, when he hadn’t appeared in New York since Shea Stadium with The Beatles, he had only appeared on stage at a peace concert in Toronto. He was so nervous. He threw up…we were doing three songs together. He came out to probably the most touching ovation I’ve ever heard for anyone. We all shed a tear on stage–a, because we were playing with John, but b, because the love from the audience–he was an adopted New Yorker, and he was there and they just loved him. So did we, but they loved him. So I would have to say that’s one thing–I’m getting tingles as I talk about it now. I’ll never forget that.

Elton John, talking about John Lennon’s last performance on stage after he won the bet with John that Whatever Gets You Through The Night would make it to number one.

I Don’t Know (Oh Johnny Johnny)

This song, purported to be a very early Lennon/McCartney demo with suggestive lyrics, has been kicking around the internet for so long now that I finally got intrigued enough to check it out.

I couldn’t find a copy of the audio from any “legitimate” source (that is, non fan-based), and it’s not listed in any official catalogue of unpublished Beatles’ demos.

Nevertheless, it’s cited in social media as a very early Lennon/McCartney song, likely recorded in 1960 at Paul’s home on Forthlin Road.

Anyone have any information about this song, and, if it’s not a Lennon/McCartney tune, what its true origins are?