Why Paul McCartney Still Tours: Part 3 - A Tinge of Sadness

Another Essay

A Daily Mail article (see article here) about McCartney’s continued touring prompted some reader comments.

Part 1 (here): One reader’s granddad ties McCartney’s happiness on stage to his memories of Linda.

Part 2 (here): I mused on granddad’s opinion and found merit in it from McCartney’s own words.

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While describing Linda’s photos and the memories they evoke, McCartney said that the main emotion of joy can be “tinged with sadness because you lost that person…” (The Times 2011)

These essays are well-written (and I appreciate the sourcing, though some of the sources seem problematic) but I suppose I just have an issue with the thesis. Paul still tours (though at a greatly reduced rate) because he's a musician and loves playing music and a performer who loves interacting with an audience. That's it. There's no complicated math behind it.

Performers stop performing (speaking about those for whom finances aren't an issue) when they need to. Sometimes it's because of age (Michael Caine), or a health issue (Judi Dench, Bruce Willis) or they've accomplished what they wanted to (Daniel Day-Lewis), or have family concerns (Rick Moranis) or just don't want to do it anymore because it's not enjoyable (Britney Spears). Retirement is a personal choice for those who don't have to worry about money.

Paul is 80+ but still healthy and still enjoys performing. The notion that he (or any older performer) should stop, or have to justify it, seems to come from a small group that has problems with their own aging. They would prefer older performers disappear because if you see someone you grew up with and they (gasp!) are older, it confirms for you that time is passing by for you, too.

You can see that reflected in some vociferous Daily Mail comments, who want Paul (or insert celebrity here) to vanish once they're no longer at their peak. "How dare you age publicly," is the undercurrent. "How dare you rub it in my face that it's no longer 1977 and I'm not a kid anymore."

The pricing of Paul's concert tickets weed out those who don't want to be there. If you want to hear a 20something/30something/40something etc Paul perform a concert, there are plenty of options out there you can watch or listen to for free. If you don't want to see him now in concert because of his age, voice, whatever...then don't go. But there's something entitled about the people who demand he retire when there are thousands of others who want to see him live and willing to pay to do so.

Lewisohn vs. Shepherd

I'm still at work on the whole Kim Bennett thing, but here's a quick Lewisohn vs. post to spice things up. Actually, the book from which I was cross-referencing was due at the library, so I started work on this, quickly realized the source was also readily availble online, but decided to finish it anyway.

The source at hand is Jean Shepherd’s October 28th, 1964 interview with the Beatles, published in the February 1965 issue of Playboy. You can find a transcribed version here or a scanned copy here. It’s a great, quick read - seven pages sparkling with Beatles wit and a concerted effort by George to convince the interviewer he's in love with Ringo. Small tw for transphobia in the form of a tired pronoun joke at the expense of April Ashley.

Tune In pulls three quotes from Shepherd's interview. Two of them are below the cut - their are minor changes (one exceedingly minor) to those quotes, but the first quote I'll address is taken wildly out of context. It's not the most offensive distortion of history that Lewisohn has put forward, but its maddeningly blatant - and pointless.

Tune In 26-20 vs. Shepherd 1965, p.54

The quote of interest is highlighted in green, but I included the preceding paragraph because the context matters greatly here. The Beatles & Brian were down in the dumps, having struck out with every record company with any semblance of artistic merit. Lewisohn highlights that John and Paul in particular were down in the dumps, but that “their young friend George stayed optimistic. He rallied them, he showed them that while they might be thinking the worst, he was remaining hopeful.” His evidence for this is the quote highlighted in green, in which John says Brian and George knew they would make it big.

Well. Let’s check the source.

If you look at the quote, once again in green, it’s almost correct—Lewisohn drops “our manager”, but it’s close by Tune In’s standards. Take a look at what’s around the quote, and you’ll see it’s taken wildly out of context. John isn’t talking about George’s confidence in the Beatles ability to score a record contract in 1962; he is unambiguously referring to George’s confidence that the Beatles will succeed in America in 1964. And that confidence didn’t stem from “the Beatles’ mantra” that “Something’ll turn up”—George thought they’d be successful in the states because he was aware of their U.S. record sales.

The thing that gets me here is that it’s so unnecessary. As a historian writing for a general audience, the Beatles must be a dream: you have a core group of four complex, interesting, musically gifted people whose personal and artistic growth played out in the public eye, exhaustively documented. They were surrounded by a supporting cast of vibrant characters to root for or revile, who all played a role in a story brimming with friendship, romance, rivalry, wit, and tragedy. There's no reason to rewrite history for the Beatles - their story can be both factually correct and narratively compelling, yet Lewisohn joins a storied list of authors who have felt the need to gild the lily.

What does this add to the Beatles story? How does it benefit the narrative to portray George Harrison as a plucky kid from an afterschool special, cheering on his elders with unflagging optimism when things look bleak? It’s trite, and it’s fake. It's not the Beatles.

This isn’t the most earth-shattering act of historical revisionism Lewisohn has committed to print, but its brazenness is galling. In the introduction to Tune In, Lewisohn states, “I’ve wanted a history of deep-level inquiry where the information is tested accurate, and free of airbrushing, embellishment and guesswork, written with an open mind and even hands, one that unfolds lives and events in context and without hindsight, the way they occurred…” And yet we get this. He knowingly took this quote two years and a whole Atlantic Ocean out of context, and he had the audacity to tout his book as “tested accurate, and free of airbrushing, embellishment and guesswork.”

He's pissing on our feet and telling us it's raining, folks.

He's lying to our face again. He just lies. There's no other word for it.

Why does he do this?? (The first one: representing that this is before they got a record contract versus BEFORE AMERICA?) There are more shocking single examples, but these repeated contextual lies really matter. He just lies to us so easily, and in simple terms that's all this is. Nothing fancier than that. And it never gets easier to have someone lie to your face. Essentially:

LEWISOHN: Only George and Brian believed we were going to get a record contract, here's a quote of John telling you how that felt.

JOHN: Only George thought we'd make it in America.

(next line)

GEORGE: That's because I knew what our record sales were.

Wait, that seems like an important bit of contextual information, but George believing they'd get a record deal based on their record sales doesn't work AND YOU'RE JUST LYING TO MY FACE AGAIN.

This man has no shame.

And half his book or more is made up of "author interviews."

TAPES, OR THEY DIDN'T SAY IT.

The Interview || Episode Twenty-Four || Season Four

"If, somehow, I managed to get home again...

I'd spend the rest of my life in peace.”

I think the source nonny is referring to is possibly the alleged contents of Peter Cox's tapes?

Background for anyone who needs it: during the Mills-McCartney Divorce Clusterfuck™, shortly after HM's cross-petition, in which she made pretty serious allegations of domestic violence and generally abusive behavior against Paul, was leaked, Peter Cox emerged from the woodwork. He had worked with Linda on her first cookbook in the late '80s, in the period between the nadir of Press to Play and the renaissance brought about by Flowers in the Dirt, and informed the Daily Mail - which was in the tabloid vanguard during the Abuse Allegations Clusterfuck - that he had nineteen tapes of Linda whose content included her expressing unhappiness about her marriage. I cannot emphasize enough that no one has actually heard these tapes and that Cox at no time alleged anything about physical abuse. He also had a slew of the "usual" complaints about Paul, who he personally did not get on with. This is an Interesting pattern amongst men who fancy themselves as being close to Linda, but ANYWAY.

(As the article also indicates, Cox had a business relationship with the McCartneys that fizzled out and/or didn't end well, and he (rightly or wrongly) blamed Paul for that. Or at least did for the purposes of his story.)

Here's an archive version of the original article when this story broke: https://archive.fo/ZoH6J

Peter Cox acted fast to get his story out there/jump on the bandwagon/whatever, as this was barely over a week after the aforementioned cross-petition was leaked and therefore THE time to come forward with any aspersions to cast on the ~Perfect Marriage~ that served to buttress denials of HM's ~explosive claims~. I'm not saying he lied about his experience or about the putative contents of the tapes - in fact, I'm quite sure that Paul and Linda were going through a particularly rough patch during that period and Linda may well have been upset and unhappy on more than one occasion when she was talking to him (though I think she would also have been cognizant of being recorded? even if it was by someone she considered a friend or ally, I don't think she'd forget about the potential pitfalls of that scenario, but I digress). It's just that timing of his selling his story - but not, you'll note, divulging the precise contents of the tapes or allowing the journo to hear them for themselves - is... interesting. He's not shooting his entire wad, so to speak.

He then proceeded to sell the tapes to Paul. (There went the rest of the wad, lol.) Some people have deemed this suspect - and Paul definitely could have been trying to cover up his past misdeeds! - but it's also like... why would you want audio of your beloved, late wife having a bad day (or a series of bad days) floating around, or in the possession of someone who has clearly indicated that they're willing to air that dirty laundry for public consumption?

My hot take is that going to the Mail was a "warning shot" - an overture to getting a payday from Paul, who was already trying to put out a massive PR inferno.

Weirdly, his Wikipedia page - which feels very... self-penned, lol - makes absolutely zero mention of Linda OR the best-selling cookbook they wrote together.

I agree with OP that the negativity about Paul and Linda's relationship is massively overblown and tends to feel an awful lot like grasping at straws to forge a ~counter-narrative~. The thing is, Paul and Linda themselves never tried to sell their relationship as perfect - just as a love story that overcame all obstacles, including the ones from within.

Sorry for once again jumping on... but when the Mills-McCartney Divorce Clusterfuck™ is even hinted at, I am summoned and start word-vomiting.

Peter Cox recorded the tapes during his cooking sessions with Linda. It was definitely spun as Paul personally buying the tapes to hide them, when in reality, I think the McCartneys bought them once they knew of their existence because they have an extensive Linda archive, and with continuing her food empire would definitely want the "rough drafts" of her recipes. I doubt Linda spoke too much about her private life on the tapes, probably some asides, and mostly chatted about food.

Paul buys his own stuff at auction because he keeps a meticulous archive. He has professionals who handle his old clothing, equipment, documents etc and digitize and catalogue it. I'm there are plans eventually for all of it to go to an established museum or university. My guess is eventually much of both Paul and Linda's archives will go to LIPA after Paul's death. As with other historical figures and artists, most of it will be accessible only to researchers, but some famous items may go on display for members of the public.

They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it. Theory will take you only so far.

Oppenheimer (2023) dir. Christopher Nolan

Contender for my favorite tweet of all time

Paul McCartney on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 

season 1 mash is like A plot uh oh this guy needs a brand new surgical technique that we only know in theory! B plot trapper and hawkeye are gluing pennies around camp and goading frank into trying to pick them up. and season 11 mash is like A plot hawkeye and charles convince the entire camp that marilyn monroe is going to visit them next week! B plot bj kills a guy.

TAYLOR SWIFT and TRAVIS KELCE | "Love Story" Super Bowl LVIII afterparty

Just in case you didn’t know who he is.

Did Taylor Swift write "Sweet Nothing" about Paul McCartney and his wife's summer in Wicklow in 1971?

The song "Sweet Nothing" on Taylor Swift's Midnights has always stood out to me as a bit of an anomaly. Until this intriguing quote by Paul McCartney caught my eye:

In a 2001 ABC interview about his wife Linda, who passed away in 1998, Paul McCartney said:

This is a direct quote and exact same storyline as in "Sweet Nothing." There is NO WAY that is a coincidence. So I wanted to see if Paul and Linda had any connection to Wicklow - the place mentioned in the song. 

I think the McCartney family vacationed at the Luggala Estate in Co. Wicklow, Ireland in the summer of 1971 as an escape from the aftermath of the Beatles breakup.

A sweet Wicklow love story:

Paul McCartney has connections to Luggala going back to 1965-1966 when he partied at the estate with Guinness Brewing heir Tara Browne who was killed in a car accident a few months after his raucous 21st birthday, and inspired the Beatles song "A Day in the Life." Paul was close to Tara and his death deeply impacted him. This Rolling Stone article details their relationship and mentions that Paul has visited Luggala to visit Tara's gravesite since then on "numerous occasions." Paul had not met his wife Linda yet while Tara was alive, but this proves Paul's deep and personal ties to the family and their 5,000 acre private estate in the Wicklow Mountains, which continued to be a private retreat for celebrity guests until it was sold in 2019.

Paul McCartney has posted multiple family photos taken by his wife in the summer of 1971 that appear to be taken near the Luggala Estate in Co. Wicklow. He tweeted this photo on St. Patricks day in 2017 which a previous Reddit thread links to Wicklow in 1971. And recently on March 2022 he tweeted this photo which appears to be taken the same day judging by his shirt and his dog, and credits the photo as being taken by his wife (she was a professional photographer) in Ireland in 1971. Here you have a better view of the surrounding mountains and rocky streams (full of pebbles I'd imagine...) It's notable that the second photo was posted March 2022 around the time when Taylor would be writing and recording the Midnights album.

If you look at the aerial view of Luggala Estate (Now showing on Google Maps as Luggala Lodge), I believe that these photos were taken in one of the rocky streams that feed into the private lake...which is named Lough Tay. (I like to think it's an extra little wink from Taylor that this investigation literally led me to a lake named Lough Tay.)

This area is completely private and the closest public access is from a hiking overlook. This seems like a great place for one of the most famous musicians in the world to hide out with his two young children, 2 dogs, and Linda, who would have been pregnant with Stella McCartney (born Sept 13, 1971).

We know that the family and their dogs were in Ireland in the summer of 1971 from this newspaper article where they were photographed at an airport in August leaving Ireland, which means it's possible that they were in Wicklow a few weeks earlier in July.

Even though The Beatles broke up in 1969, it continued to be messy between members of the band and the financials involved for the next few years. During the summer of 1971 Paul McCartney and John Lennon were embroiled in a very public fight. There were lawsuits and scathing letters (dated 1971) and it's all very complicated so I won't go into it here, but this article has a good overview.

The lyric, "Industry disruptors and soul deconstructors and smooth-talking hucksters out glad-handing each other" could reference these incidents. I could see Taylor relating to Paul going through this public turmoil surrounding business with former friends, because it is similar to what she's going through with her masters.

The lyric "You're in the kitchen humming" could reference Linda's passion for cooking and vegetarian activism. She literally founded a food company and wrote a cookbook. This darling photo on her website shows her cooking at the family home in Scotland in the 1970s. Linda was also a singer and recorded many songs with Paul, so the idea that she could be "humming" makes sense.

Taylor Swift has been friends with the McCartney family for a while. She first met Paul in 2010. She collaborated with Stella McCartney in 2019 for a clothing line as part of the Lover era, and Stella also dressed her for the Evermore album cover in 2020.

Taylor and Paul McCartney famously interviewed each other for Rolling Stone's "Musicians on Musicians" in 2020. In this article they mention how they both like writing under pseudonyms.

But the most surprising thing I learned is that Paul actually wrote a song dedicated to Taylor and her relationship with her fans called "Who Cares."

Notably, the music video also features Taylor's longtime friend Emma Stone wearing rainbow makeup in an otherwise black-and-white world full of cartoonish bullies. It's notable that the music video was released Dec 2018, right before the Lover era would kick off a few months later. Perhaps Paul was showing a bit of preemptive support for Taylor as she embarked on what many of us believe was intended to be her coming out era?

Now to the William Bowery of it all:

Taylor clearly wants us to think Sweet Nothing is about Joe because of the Wicklow name drop, where Joe was papped in July 2021, which looks staged to me.

Interestingly, I can't find any photos of Taylor being seen anywhere near Wicklow, but for some reason she staged a whole photoshoot in Northern Ireland in July, where locals said she "arrived and left by helicopter in a fleeting visit."

She was also seen in several different locations in Belfast in fan photos. This article also says part of Red TV was recorded in Belfast.

Clearly she wanted to be seen and linked to Northern Ireland, and the lyric easily could have been "Does it ever miss Belfast sometimes?" (same number of syllables) but it's not.

"Sweet Nothing" does have a William Bowery co-writing credit. Would Sir Paul McCartney agree to a secret writing credit? Maybe.

I read an interesting twitter thread from a lawyer (who is a Gaylor) that discusses how William Bowery could be a name under which Taylor commissions writing "for hire." Meaning it could be Joe or multiple other people writing under that pseudonym, as opposed to the "Willam Bowery" (spelled different) which is listed as a U.S. Citizen.

Even if Paul wasn't involved in writing the song, I believe he inspired "Sweet Nothing."

---

Note: This theory was originally posted on the R/GaylorSwift subreddit Dec 22, 2022 which is currently set to private. I am the original author of the Reddit post (u/-periwinkle), and am reblogging it on my Tumblr because this theory has been gaining traction and I wanted to create a public version. This version has been slightly expanded and updated with better images. Also, I was not the first person to uncover the "what a mind" quote, and the original person who found it is tagged on Reddit.

LEWISOHN: Let's crowdsource this bastard.

Check a footnote.

Whether you heroically tear straight into him like @wingsoverlagos or you find one thing like @delightfullyatomicfest did, it matters! What I hoped for and imagined from the beginning was some sort of crowdsourced work. There is too much for any one person, and one of the biggest problems with Beatles' sources is that they're not all equally easy to get to for everyone. And although this has become personal for me, it is an objectively huge problem for all Beatles fans and scholars that the man who has collectively been called the Beatles historian has—and I cannot say this clearly enough—BEEN JUST MAKING SHIT UP.

He literally ends ‘Tune In’ with a fabricated line that he sources to John Lennon. (!!!)

(Which I might not have realized for ages—if ever—if not for this @wingsoverlagos post)

Lewisohn has no shame.

And while it may seem like we are screaming into the void right now, I will tell you that we are not. I fear jinxing anything so I won't say more now, but our work is not in vain. People are paying attention. How can they help but pay attention? It's too shocking a betrayal. Too great a breach of trust. It has become overwhelming and impossible to ignore, and it has happened so quickly. Just by a few people taking the time to do the work.

And what is obvious now is that if you take a piece of source material that's referenced and go through it you will find butchered and fabricated quotes. And whether you do it that way or just check a footnote that interests you PLEASE TELL ME what you find! 🙏🏻

I am trying to gather all this up in one place. An ammo dump, if you will. If you want credit, tell me how you want to be credited, linked to, and any combination thereof. (I don't like taking credit for things I don't find, anyway.) But either shoot me a message or @ me or all of the above so we can collect all together and it can have the cumulative effect it deserves. (I will respond, but sometimes I am gone for a few days at a time, and occasionally for up to a week. I always come back, though.) #crowdsourcelewisohn

I have also set up an email for collecting funky footnotes: exactwords.lewisohn@gmail.com (At this point I'm only checking this once a week.)

If you look, you almost certainly will find.

If you have any Beatle magazines or Pete Best's book, "Beatle!" you could be a superhero. (One chapter of Best's book is available online, but I haven't been able to find the rest.) Or if you have any less-available source material I am urging you—begging you—to jump in and check some footnotes. With Lewisohn as bold as he is in the easily searchable things just imagine the license he's taking in the rest. But whether hard to find or commonplace, check a source. It adds up and it kind of feels good to uncover some bullshit.

For your edification and motivation I am adding a clip — lightly edited to take out some Lewisohn devolutions (so here's the queued up link) — of Mark Lewisohn bragging and basking in the praise of being called a historian who should be ranked alongside the great LBJ biographer Robert Caro, of him saying that the Beatles should appreciate anyone writing a biography of this high a standard about them, and a momentary lapse into deep resentment that they don't appreciate him. And then he gives his little speech about the Beatles being about “truth with a capital ‘T’” and how he is writing a biography to match that truth.

“Truth” is a word Mark Lewisohn needs to keep out of his mouth. If you feel like he should be struck by lightening for uttering it, that is exactly what I am talking about.

We are that lightening.

Honestly, what AKOM started is so awesome. It gave this an outlet. (And I still go back and listen for both source material and motivation.)

It's sickening to listen to this now. Sickening because Lewisohn has been making us all his dupes for far too long. We have been his marks, and there's almost nothing I hate more than being conned.