Monday's child has learned to tie his bootlegs...
George: "We laughed a lot. That's one thing we forgot about for a few years - laughing. When we went through all the lawsuits, it looked as if everything was bleak, but when I think back to before that, I remember we used to laugh all the time."
70s George (complete with perm, though not the moustached edition) watches "This Boy", an early performance, when the lot of them weren't used to the cameras so much, and it's adorable (both the original performance and George's reaction to it in the 70s):
More George laughing, this time in the set of Help! with Paul:
And then there was the nosepoking incident while John was belting his lungs out on Twist and Shout:
This is probably my favourite early George and Paul photo:
(Mind you, George's sense of humour re: bandmates could be pretty dark long before certain arguments started. The one and only time the Beatles tried using an Ouija board was during 1962, just on the brink of fame, and as Iris Caldwell (sister of Ringo's old bandleader Rory Storm, dated George when they were both 14nish and briefly Paul some years later) reports, the pointer started to spell out a message from the late Mary McCartney. Paul was trusting right until it said "congratulations... son... number one...in NME", at which point he realized George had been pushing it the whole time, and George collapsed, laughing. "Bad Boy," commented Paul, a few decades later.)
This is what happens when you let a couple of Brits loose in Miami after their first American tour:
A not so minor hobby of John's while they were touring was to get Paul to crack up on stage during performance. Here he succeeds by virtue of doing an impromptu dance while playing:
And let's not forget the ever popular back pats:
Headpokes:
Stealing John's glasses and goofing around with same:
And more impromptu dances:
Then there's this interview after John and Paul won three Ivor Novello awards (= awards for songwriting and composing) for the year 1966. What boggles the mind and has to be kept just there when reading the following quote are the songs they won the Ivors for: Yellow Submarine, Michelle and Yesterday. I'm fond of the first two and love the third, but seriously, in 1966, the year of Rubber Soul and Revolver, they wrote some more award-worthy stuff. It also can't have been lost on John that these were mainly (Michelle, Yellow Submarine) or exclusively (Yesterday) Paul songs. (BTW, even among McCartney only songs I think "Eleanor Rigby" or "For No One" would have been more... never mind.) And he went on to develop a serious hang-up about Yesterday in the years to come. Back in the 60s, he could have felt with some reason that several of mainly John songs like Norwegian Wood or Tomorrow Never Knows would have been more deserving. So was he grumpy or snide? He was not. Behold:
Q: "Apart from being the runner-up in the 'most performed' section, I think (Yesterday) must have been the most recorded number last year... must've been about 400 versions of it. You must have heard some of them. Is there any one that you think is a standout performance?"
JOHN: "Uhh, one by a young fellow called Paul McCartney had a sort of plaintive approach."
PAUL: (laughs)
Aw. Now for something to smile about that happened more on the Beatles periphery. Paul's younger brother Mike (who had some success of his own under the alias Mike McGear) about meeting Jane Asher for the first time on the outset of Beatlemania:
Back in 1963 one of the highlights of BBC TV’s weekly Juke Box Jury was the presence on the panel of a London actress called Jane Asher. She was young, beautiful, black and white haired (well on our telly she was), had a well-cultured, Dad-admired accent, and when she smiled, the set lit up… in fact it can now be disclosed that Paul and I both fancied her. You can imagine, then, how knocked out I was when Paul broke the news he was ‘going out with Jane Asher’! I couldn’t believe it. But not only that- he was bringing her up from London that night! It was all too much for a young teenager and working class Liverpool cotton salesman to take in at once. So we went to bed in our holes in the carpet, flaky bathroom ceiling, terraced Forthlin home. When they eventually arrived in the very early hours of the morning, Dad was asleep and I was tucked in but wide awake… like Christmas. Paul brought ‘my present’ upstairs and whispered, ‘Mike, are you awake?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’ve got someone to meet you.’ And there in the half-light of my tiny back bedroom was Jane Asher! I felt such a fool. Well, wouldn’t you, lying there snuggled down in a hot water-bottled bed in your pyjamas, with an international film star kissing your hand. But there was no need for first-night nerves. Jinny was calm, natural, fun-loving, fab-looking and her black and white hair had turned red. (It must have been the excitement of meeting me.) She whispered something about… ‘It’s you I really love Michael, but I’ve got to go along with your brother and all this Beatles business for the moment…Can we get together later on in life?’ and was gone, just like that.
Time for some Ringo-centric fun. He always said the U.S. tour was where he finally stopped feeling like the new boy and instead felt as one of the gang. Here, at the end of the first US tour, is everyone "helping" him to pack:
Ringo published a book called "Postcards from the Boys" some years ago, of which he received a lot. Here's one that proves even 1969 didn't make them lose their sense of humour entirely (well, not when dealing with Ringo), from Paul (and Linda and Heather):
And one from Paul during Ringo's 1968 brief White Album walkout (circumstances described here):
If you're curious what the other side of the card looks like:
And thus it is fitting to end with a Ringo quote from 1998:
Ringo: They became the closest friends I'd ever had. I was an only child and suddenly I felt as though I'd got three brothers. We really looked out for each other and we had many laughs together. In the old days we'd have the hugest hotel suites, the whole floor of a hotel, and the four of us would end up in the bathroom, just to be with each other. Because there were always pressures. Someone always wanted something: an interview, a hello, an autograph, to be seen with us, to speak to my dog, whatever. So the four of us were really close. I loved it. I loved those guys.
We took care of each other and we were the only ones who had that experience of being Beatles. No one else knows what that's like. Even today, when the three of us get together, Paul and George are the only two who look at me like I am - not with the view: he's that and a Beatle. Everyone else does that; even all our friends do that, there's always that underlying current.
In the way that the astronauts who went to the moon shared that unique experience together, it's absolutely true of The Beatles. We three are now the only people who can sit and understand each other and understand it.
70s George (complete with perm, though not the moustached edition) watches "This Boy", an early performance, when the lot of them weren't used to the cameras so much, and it's adorable (both the original performance and George's reaction to it in the 70s):
More George laughing, this time in the set of Help! with Paul:
And then there was the nosepoking incident while John was belting his lungs out on Twist and Shout:
This is probably my favourite early George and Paul photo:
(Mind you, George's sense of humour re: bandmates could be pretty dark long before certain arguments started. The one and only time the Beatles tried using an Ouija board was during 1962, just on the brink of fame, and as Iris Caldwell (sister of Ringo's old bandleader Rory Storm, dated George when they were both 14nish and briefly Paul some years later) reports, the pointer started to spell out a message from the late Mary McCartney. Paul was trusting right until it said "congratulations... son... number one...in NME", at which point he realized George had been pushing it the whole time, and George collapsed, laughing. "Bad Boy," commented Paul, a few decades later.)
This is what happens when you let a couple of Brits loose in Miami after their first American tour:
A not so minor hobby of John's while they were touring was to get Paul to crack up on stage during performance. Here he succeeds by virtue of doing an impromptu dance while playing:
And let's not forget the ever popular back pats:
Headpokes:
Stealing John's glasses and goofing around with same:
And more impromptu dances:
Then there's this interview after John and Paul won three Ivor Novello awards (= awards for songwriting and composing) for the year 1966. What boggles the mind and has to be kept just there when reading the following quote are the songs they won the Ivors for: Yellow Submarine, Michelle and Yesterday. I'm fond of the first two and love the third, but seriously, in 1966, the year of Rubber Soul and Revolver, they wrote some more award-worthy stuff. It also can't have been lost on John that these were mainly (Michelle, Yellow Submarine) or exclusively (Yesterday) Paul songs. (BTW, even among McCartney only songs I think "Eleanor Rigby" or "For No One" would have been more... never mind.) And he went on to develop a serious hang-up about Yesterday in the years to come. Back in the 60s, he could have felt with some reason that several of mainly John songs like Norwegian Wood or Tomorrow Never Knows would have been more deserving. So was he grumpy or snide? He was not. Behold:
Q: "Apart from being the runner-up in the 'most performed' section, I think (Yesterday) must have been the most recorded number last year... must've been about 400 versions of it. You must have heard some of them. Is there any one that you think is a standout performance?"
JOHN: "Uhh, one by a young fellow called Paul McCartney had a sort of plaintive approach."
PAUL: (laughs)
Aw. Now for something to smile about that happened more on the Beatles periphery. Paul's younger brother Mike (who had some success of his own under the alias Mike McGear) about meeting Jane Asher for the first time on the outset of Beatlemania:
Back in 1963 one of the highlights of BBC TV’s weekly Juke Box Jury was the presence on the panel of a London actress called Jane Asher. She was young, beautiful, black and white haired (well on our telly she was), had a well-cultured, Dad-admired accent, and when she smiled, the set lit up… in fact it can now be disclosed that Paul and I both fancied her. You can imagine, then, how knocked out I was when Paul broke the news he was ‘going out with Jane Asher’! I couldn’t believe it. But not only that- he was bringing her up from London that night! It was all too much for a young teenager and working class Liverpool cotton salesman to take in at once. So we went to bed in our holes in the carpet, flaky bathroom ceiling, terraced Forthlin home. When they eventually arrived in the very early hours of the morning, Dad was asleep and I was tucked in but wide awake… like Christmas. Paul brought ‘my present’ upstairs and whispered, ‘Mike, are you awake?’ ‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’ve got someone to meet you.’ And there in the half-light of my tiny back bedroom was Jane Asher! I felt such a fool. Well, wouldn’t you, lying there snuggled down in a hot water-bottled bed in your pyjamas, with an international film star kissing your hand. But there was no need for first-night nerves. Jinny was calm, natural, fun-loving, fab-looking and her black and white hair had turned red. (It must have been the excitement of meeting me.) She whispered something about… ‘It’s you I really love Michael, but I’ve got to go along with your brother and all this Beatles business for the moment…Can we get together later on in life?’ and was gone, just like that.
Time for some Ringo-centric fun. He always said the U.S. tour was where he finally stopped feeling like the new boy and instead felt as one of the gang. Here, at the end of the first US tour, is everyone "helping" him to pack:
Ringo published a book called "Postcards from the Boys" some years ago, of which he received a lot. Here's one that proves even 1969 didn't make them lose their sense of humour entirely (well, not when dealing with Ringo), from Paul (and Linda and Heather):
And one from Paul during Ringo's 1968 brief White Album walkout (circumstances described here):
If you're curious what the other side of the card looks like:
And thus it is fitting to end with a Ringo quote from 1998:
Ringo: They became the closest friends I'd ever had. I was an only child and suddenly I felt as though I'd got three brothers. We really looked out for each other and we had many laughs together. In the old days we'd have the hugest hotel suites, the whole floor of a hotel, and the four of us would end up in the bathroom, just to be with each other. Because there were always pressures. Someone always wanted something: an interview, a hello, an autograph, to be seen with us, to speak to my dog, whatever. So the four of us were really close. I loved it. I loved those guys.
We took care of each other and we were the only ones who had that experience of being Beatles. No one else knows what that's like. Even today, when the three of us get together, Paul and George are the only two who look at me like I am - not with the view: he's that and a Beatle. Everyone else does that; even all our friends do that, there's always that underlying current.
In the way that the astronauts who went to the moon shared that unique experience together, it's absolutely true of The Beatles. We three are now the only people who can sit and understand each other and understand it.