Title: A Moment in 1974
Fandom: Beatles RPF
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I don’t know these people, I don’t know their lives, I just listen to their music and read their interviews
"We didn't know you were going to be recording today," Linda said, fooling no one - not John, not his young companion May Pang, not any of the session musicians. That the McCartneys had shown up on the very first evening that John was recording his new album was not a coincidence.
John made Paul come to him. Paul had a happy marriage and three daughters he was devoted to, and brilliant, trustworthy managers, and a band that was finally achieving critical as well as commercial success. John had a manager cheated him and a marriage that fell apart and a girlfriend he hurt whenever he's drunk, and a son he ignored for years, but he still had his pride. If Paul wanted to make this work, he had to play the adoring courtier, which he did, and gladly. He came up to John eagerly, with a kind of uncertainty that may have be genuine, or may have been a pose. It's hard to tell, with Lennon and McCartney, where show biz ends and reality begins. Sometimes they can't tell the difference themselves.
The conversation was casual, May marveled later.
“All I ever wanted was for you to be happy,” John said suddenly, in the middle of Paul talking about the weather patterns in Scotland.
Paul looked at him sideways. “You have a funny way of showing it,” and returned to describing the smell of damp grass on a September day of light rain.
They never went back to the topic again.