My Favorite Beatles Lyric + Thoughts on Lennon/McCartney during the Let It Be Sessions
My favorite Beatles lyric is from Girl. Well, for pure emotion, I go with "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" from Two of Us. But for a lyric as a lyric, it's Girl
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It was part of the reason, yes. I mean, he did get another job again later (and let's not forget, actually gave John some pocket money now and then after, which Lewisohn also notes, noting that for two people who didn't like each other much, they held on to the vestiges of a family relationship amazingly long after Julia had died), but at the time of Julia's death, he was unemployed and completely unable to cope emotionally as well. But that he didn't fight for his daughters after being employed again, well, search me. I mean, Younger Julia, Julia Baird, blames the Stanleys, but that's an easier emotional out than blaming her dead father, so who knows.
I wonder who they would have handled it has Julia lived. What would they have told John?
There isn't really a good way to say "Bobby's been sacked, please don't show up again until he's got another job, we can still meet at Mimi's", but it would have been some variation thereof, one assumes. As for the effect on John - nothing good comes to mind, either. And again, given how Mimi took John having contact with Alfred Lennon again in 1967-1969 as a personal insult and rejection of her parenting and had plenty of words to say about John's supposed ingratitude etc, I just can't imagine she kept the Julia conversation a secret from him. Especially since Mimi, at the time, did choose John over an alternative - let's not forget, Philip Norman unearthed she had plans for emigrating to New Zealand with her young lover the subletter. Which would have been Mimi's chance for a life where she wasn't the aunt, the responsible head of the clan, but simply a woman with no responsibilities other than to herself. Which Julia's death put an end to, because John could not be left alone in such a state.
(Obvious song connection: John contributing the lines of the parents in She's Leaving Home, which he did say was was "the kind of thing Mimi used to say".)
I wonder if this was a factor even as far on as when John refused to sign the contact to dissolve the Beatles, as the stars weren't right?
Oh, could be. I mean, John evidently did like that Paul was basically wooing him/making efforts for him during 1974, seeking him out in Los Angeles and New York. And he (John) in a very high school kind circumventious kind of way asked several people in the business what they would think of him working again with Paul, my favorite being the two "my Paul, your Paul" conversations, one public and one private, he had with Art Garfunkel. BTW, speaking of Simon & Garfunkel, I had an odd sense of deja vu yesterday when due to Carrie Fisher's sad death, I googled her and Paul Simon and got an essay on his relationships containing this quote:
"During this time we were singing together, I made a solo record. And it made Artie very unhappy. He looked upon it as something of a betrayal. That sense of betrayal has remained with him. That solo record that I made at the age of 15 permanently colored our relationship. We were talking about it recently and I said, ´Artie, for Christ´s sake, I was 15 years old! How can you carry that betrayal for so many years? Even if I was wrong, I was just a 15-year-old kid who wanted to be Elvis Presley for one moment instead of being the Everly Brothers with you. Even if you were hurt, let´s drop it.´ But he won´t.... He said, ´You´re still the same guy.´ And I think he thinks I am."
(In conclusion, guys in musical partnerships = eternal high school, for real.)
To get back to the point, I think John was testing the waters, but testing the waters also meant he didn't want to lose the emotional upper hand, which in his view he might have if it looked like he was more interested in getting back together than Paul was, and thus the "the stars aren't right" stunt was a fall back on what had worked (in a negative way) in "Let it Be". And yes, poor George, having his own relationship dramas going on at the same time, AND a career crisis, and only wanting to finally put an end to the Beatles business mess, and here's John again playing hard to get with Paul, condemming the rest of them to Greek Chorus existence once more.
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I've always suspected that John blamed Bobby Dykins for the fact that he went to live with Mimi (which, if the whole story about him being removed because Julia was keeping him in the same room as her and Bobby is true, that's true, as well). I do think This Boy was written by someone who blamed his stepfather for taking his mother away from him (and then he turned around and did the same thing with Yoko and Julian...). But that doesn't mean he didn't feel some connection to Bobby Dykins on a personal level.
(Sidenote: I've sometimes wondered if maybe part of the reason John abandoned Julian at age five was because at age five was when John's mother left him. And Julian had a mother who put him first. And according to May Pang John really didn't like it when Cynthia came with Julian to the states. Maybe in addition to his own issues with Cynthia, he also didn't like seeing Cynthia was Julian.)
here's John again playing hard to get with Paul, condemming the rest of them to Greek Chorus existence once more.
I suspect that George was angry at Paul for indulging John's hard-to-getness than at John for doing it. Hence retaliating by siding with John against Paul.
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