Joshua Shenk

In a farewell letter shared with the staff [of Believer magazine], Shenk said his resignation followed “a dumb, reckless choice to disregard appropriate setting and attire for a Zoom meeting. I crossed a line that I can’t walk back over. I sorely regret the harm to you — and, by extension, to the people we serve. I’m sorry.”

The incident occurred during a video meeting in early February with about a dozen staff members of the Believer and BMI, according to three sources who were in the meeting.  According to Ira Silverberg, a literary agent and editor who is acting as Shenk’s advisor, Shenk was soaking in a bathtub with Epsom salts during the meeting to alleviate nerve pain caused by fibromyalgia. He had chosen a virtual background to mask his location and had worn a mesh shirt. When Shenk’s computer battery died, he got up to plug it in, believing the camera was off. But the video kept running. According to Silverberg, Shenk reported the incident immediately.

 

You wouldn’t believe the beating Shenk is taking on twitter over this.  

Repair

[On the Apple rooftop session], John forgot the words to the third verse and went into a nonsense refrain, pure gibberish, but then, literally without missing a beat, he and Paul turned to each other and picked up with the correct lyrics as though nothing had happened. John beamed. Paul bobbed his head up and down in primal affirmation. It’s hard to find a better illustration of what the marriage expert John Gottman calls “repair”—a return to the strength of a partnership that tempers the effects of its weaknesses.

Joshua Shenk, The Power of Two, The Atlantic

Double Helix

Distinctions are a good way to introduce ourselves to a creative pair. But what matters is how the parts come together. So it’s not right to focus on how John insulted reporters while Paul charmed them. John was able to insult reporters because Paul charmed them. Their music emerged in a similar way, with single strands twisting into a mutually strengthening double helix.

Joshua Shenk, The Power Of Two, The Atlantic

The Odd Couple

One reason it’s so tempting to try to cleave John and Paul apart is that the distinctions between them were so stark. Observing the pair through the control-room glass at Abbey Road’s Studio Two, [Geoff] Emerick was fascinated by their odd-couple quality:

“Paul was meticulous and organized: he always carried a notebook around with him, in which he methodically wrote down lyrics and chord changes in his neat handwriting. In contrast, John seemed to live in chaos: he was constantly searching for scraps of paper that he’d hurriedly scribbled ideas on. Paul was a natural communicator; John couldn’t articulate his ideas well. Paul was the diplomat; John was the agitator. Paul was soft-spoken and almost unfailingly polite; John could be a right loudmouth and quite rude. Paul was willing to put in long hours to get a part right; John was impatient, always ready to move on to the next thing. Paul usually knew exactly what he wanted and would often take offense at criticism; John was much more thick-skinned and was open to hearing what others had to say. In fact, unless he felt especially strongly about something, he was usually amenable to change.”

Joshua Shenk and Geoff Emerick, as quoted in The Power of Two, The Atlantic

John Could Only Be Himself

The irony is that John, who was more fractured and defiant, was by far the more social musician. His charisma came, as charisma usually does, from a bottomless need to be loved. And his ambition came from a sense that if he was going to have a world he liked, he’d have to make it himself. He had his boyhood buddies act out the stories from his favorite books, sent them on raids, orchestrated pranks. He was always running a gang. When rock ’n’ roll came into his life, he made his gang into a band. He insisted Pete Shotton join, though Pete protested he could hardly play. John didn’t mind. He could hardly play himself.

This rebellious impulse took him to dangerous places. By the time John met Paul, his boyhood hijinks had progressed to shoplifting. Had John not wound up in a truly outstanding band—which is to say, had he not met Paul—he said he would probably have ended up like his dad, a likable ne’er-do-well alternating between odd jobs and petty crime. “Even I sometimes worried that he seemed destined for Skid Row,” Pete Shotton remembered. Paul might have ended up teaching—this was one path he considered—or doing some other job where he could rely on his smarts and still live inside his own mind. He was studied and careful—even his abandon was more or less by the book. It’s telling that he had the Elvis look down far better than John did. He could also scream like Little Richard. Paul had the astonishing power of a mime, whereas John could be only himself.

Joshua Shenk, The Power of Two

You And I Have Memories

George and Ringo followed John and signed with Klein. Paul held out. But for all his defiance, his vulnerability came strongly into play, as well. He had never yielded his essential devotion to John—and the rejections devastated him. “John’s in love with Yoko,” he said. “He’s no longer in love with us.”

As Paul wrote in “Let It Be,” the light always shined on him, even on cloudy nights. But now, as a storm raged, he fell into a profound depression. He stayed in bed and drank through the day. “Boy, you’re going to carry that weight a long time”—this grew out of his despair, he said. But he also wrote, in what seems a plea to his partner, “You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches up ahead.”

Joshua Shenk, Inside the Lennon/McCartney Connection,  Slate Magazine

Lennon/McCartney

But no pair illustrates the fluidity of power—and the power of fluidity—better than John and Paul. At its worst, theirs was an alienating, enervating struggle. But at its best, the dynamic was playful and organic.

The tension between Lennon and McCartney was rooted in their distinct styles and personalities. As a boy, the precocious and creative John Lennon always needed, he said, “a little gang of guys who would play various roles in my life, supportive and, you know, subservient.” “I wanted everybody to do what I told them to do,” he said, “to laugh at my jokes and let me be the boss.” He needed both to connect and to dominate. “Though I have yet to encounter a personality as strong and individual as John’s,” said his friend Pete Shotton, “he always had to have a partner.” (John so entwined himself with Pete that he called them “Shennon and Lotton.”)

When John put a band together, he brought his mates in—often simply because they were his mates—but left no doubt about his status. Shotton, for example, didn’t have a particular talent for music and didn’t like it much. When he told Lennon he needed out of the band, John broke Pete’s washboard over his head. It’s not likely we could find a clearer display of power with primates on the savannah.

For some time after Paul joined, John stayed out front. Among the band’s many early names were “Johnny and the Moondogs” and “Long John and the Silver Beetles.” When “The Beatles” went to Hamburg, Germany, the contract named John as the payee. In the late 1950s, Paul pitched a journalist on the band; he began his description of the boys with John, “who leads the group … ” But the letter itself—a piece of Paul’s relentless promotion—speaks to his own power style. He was more social, more affable, more outwardly and consistently energetic. Where John oscillated between intense shyness and raw aggression, Paul had a knack for working people that was savvy as it was sweet.

What’s interesting, though, isn’t the question of who ran the show, but the subtlety of strength itself, the many ways power can be exercised between partners.

Consider the moment Paul’s brother Michael cited as an illustration of his “innate sense of diplomacy.” It was in Paris in 1963. The Beatles’ producer George Martin had arranged for them to record “She Loves You” in German. When the band missed their studio appointment, Martin came around to their suite at the George V hotel. They played slapstick and dived under the tables to avoid him.

“Are you coming to do it or not?” Martin said.

“No,” Lennon said. George and Ringo echoed him. Paul said nothing, and they went back to eating.

“Then a bit later,” Michael said, “Paul suddenly turned to John and said, ‘Heh, you know that so and so line, what if we did it this way? John listened to what Paul said, thought a bit, and said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ And they headed to the studio.”

How would we chart the lines of authority for this decision? You could say Lennon made the call to refuse the recording session, then reversed himself—the band following him both times. But it was actually Paul who shaped the course the band took. His move to avoid a direct confrontation—to let John stay nominally in control—only underscores his operational strength.

As the band rocketed to success, Lennon would increasingly acquiesce to Paul’s ideas, much as a king in tumultuous times will defer to his counsel. But he never gave up the idea that he could, when he wanted, return straight to his throne.

Joshua Shenk, The Power of Two, Slate Magazine

Not Closeted In The Usual Sense

The other thing I have to mention – it would be authorial malpractice not to – is the obviously not-typical heterosexual profile of John Lennon. This was a man who said of his lover, Yoko Ono, at the apparent height of his obsession with her: ‘It’s just handy to fuck your best friend.’

I don’t see John as closeted in the typical sense, but there was a weirdness between him and women, and he had a yearning for a certain kind of closeness with men that one feels in the pit. It’s not part of the project to discern the details of his sexuality. But the idea that John’s attention simply wandered from Paul and the band because of his other interests, that he just fell in love with Yoko in the traditional way, doesn’t ring true. It’s hard to believe, for example, that it’s mere coincidence that John’s Jesus freak out, immediately followed by his Yoko freak out, occurred just after he’d witnessed, at extremely close hand, a jolt of electricity between Paul and a woman named Linda Eastman … Two days after (Paul) brought his future wife in front of John, John found himself a new woman. He always had to top Paul.

Joshua Shenk speaking about John, The Power of Two