Speaker 1: Right from that very young age when they first start
Speaker 1: getting into it as teenagers. They pour their feelings into
Speaker 1: pop songs, and they were very intense young men. They
Speaker 1: were of a generation where you didn't.
Speaker 2: Talk about your feelings that much.
Speaker 1: You didn't go around kind of gushing, right, let's put
Speaker 1: it that way, and you certainly didn't go to therapy.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a thing.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4: At different points in my life, I've been anywhere from
Speaker 4: just loving the Beatles to being unhealthily obsessed with them
Speaker 4: as a recovering heroin Addict At twenty four, I bought
Speaker 4: into the whole. John Lennon is troubled genius, with Paul
Speaker 4: McCartney sort of his shallow sidekick narrative. But what if
Speaker 4: those stories we tell ourselves about people are just that stories?
Speaker 4: What if the truth is always more complex, more human,
Speaker 4: and ultimately more beautiful. Today I'm talking with Ian Leslie
Speaker 4: about his wonderful book, John and Paul, A Love Story
Speaker 4: in Songs. We'll explore how two young men from Liverpool
Speaker 4: created something together that neither could have made alone. Not
Speaker 4: just music, but a share consciousness that changed culture forever.
Speaker 4: John and Paul's story isn't just about music. It's about
Speaker 4: how we all navigate loss, love and connection. So join
Speaker 4: me as we have a conversation about the Beatles that's
Speaker 4: really about all of us. I'm Eric Zimmer and this
Speaker 4: is the one you feed. Hi, Ian, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hi Eric, Very nice to be here.
Speaker 4: I am really excited to have you on. We're discussing
Speaker 4: your latest book, which is called John and Paul, A
Speaker 4: Love Story and Songs, and it's about John Lennon and
Speaker 4: Paul McCartney and I have been at different points in
Speaker 4: my life anywhere from just loving the Beatles to unhealthily
Speaker 4: obsessed with the Beatles. And so this book I really
Speaker 4: wanted to read, and I've really really enjoyed it. It's
Speaker 4: one of my favorites that I've read in a while.
Speaker 4: It's a great subject matter. You're a great writer, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to be tasked with making this an interview
Speaker 4: that appeals to people, well who don't even love the Beatles.
Speaker 4: So we'll see how we do with that. But before
Speaker 4: we start, we'll do the parable, like we always do.
Speaker 4: And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 4: his grandchildren and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 4: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 4: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 4: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 4: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 4: the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, and
Speaker 4: they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 4: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 4: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 4: the work that you.
Speaker 1: Do well in the work that I do, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons, or it makes me think
Speaker 1: about a couple of different strands of my work. My
Speaker 1: last couple of books have been about human behavior. It's
Speaker 1: human psychology. So I read a book about curiosity and
Speaker 1: how that works. The book I wrote after that, my
Speaker 1: last book is a conflict and disagreement, and I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in the dynamics of disagreement and how we have better,
Speaker 1: more productive disagreements and more productive conflicts. So immediately, these
Speaker 1: two wolves, which are kind of opposed to each other
Speaker 1: in which kind of struggle for domination of a person's
Speaker 1: soul at any one time rings bells with me. And
Speaker 1: then the other reason is, of course, because I'm writing
Speaker 1: this book, or I have been writing this book about
Speaker 1: two very strong personalities who are very very close but
Speaker 1: also often in conflict with each other. It also makes
Speaker 1: me think about how sometimes we externalize our internal struggles,
Speaker 1: So that conflict that we have within us between our
Speaker 1: drive to be kind and empathetic and our drive for
Speaker 1: jealousy and fear to pull people towards us and to
Speaker 1: push them away, you can see it playing out in
Speaker 1: the drama of these two guys, but I think you
Speaker 1: often see it dramatized in groups and externalized within people,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a really interesting dynamic.
Speaker 4: Yeah. The other thing I was thinking about as I
Speaker 4: thought about this question and about the book is, in
Speaker 4: many ways the parable is exactly that it's a story
Speaker 4: that loosely maps onto reality. And I would use the
Speaker 4: term loosely there. And I was thinking about how people
Speaker 4: like to divide things into this and that, and one
Speaker 4: of the points you make throughout the book is we've
Speaker 4: done that with Lenin and McCartney. We've made those guys
Speaker 4: very binary in a public consciousness kind of way. You know.
Speaker 4: John Lennon was the brilliant, tortured artist and Paul McCartney
Speaker 4: was the cute commercial success who was very light. And
Speaker 4: while through one lens some of those things are true,
Speaker 4: the book does a really good job of pointing out
Speaker 4: that they are both far more multi facinted than that
Speaker 4: easy character of each other. And that really struck me
Speaker 4: because I'm someone who had bought into that narrative at
Speaker 4: one point in my life about the Beatles.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're absolutely right, that was a sort of central
Speaker 1: concern of my book was to, if you like, get
Speaker 1: over this culture war that we've invented around John Lennon
Speaker 1: and Paul McCartney, where you're meant to before one or
Speaker 1: for the other one of them is either the great
Speaker 1: genius of the band and the other one is a
Speaker 1: lesser being of some kind. As you say, it's more
Speaker 1: often than not it's been presented as John Lennon being
Speaker 1: the great creative genius and Paul being his accomplished but
Speaker 1: shallow sidekick. That's clearly completely wrong what I think. So anyway,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to write a book which overturned
Speaker 1: that and just switched the binary around and just said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, Paul McCartney was a real genius. John was angry,
Speaker 1: difficult guy who happened to be on Paul's coattails. Of course,
Speaker 1: neither of the binary interpretations are true, and the most
Speaker 1: wonderful and most complex and interesting and fascinating and beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about this relationship was that they both supported and
Speaker 1: effectively created each other through their intimacy, through their friendship.
Speaker 1: You know, John is as much a product of as
Speaker 1: Paul is as much a product of John. So actually
Speaker 1: trying to break it down into John versus Paul, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 4: Yep, you won't know this about me, but listeners do.
Speaker 4: I was a heroin Addict at twenty four, so I
Speaker 4: was very much drawn into John Lennon and that whole narrative,
Speaker 4: and McCartney was sort of the you know, shallow so
Speaker 4: I had bought all that hook line and sinker at
Speaker 4: one point in my life. I've reversed a lot since then,
Speaker 4: and your book really helped me. Also, I knew John
Speaker 4: Lennon really well, but I did not know Paul McCartney
Speaker 4: as well, And I think you do a great job
Speaker 4: of giving him more depth than at least the public
Speaker 4: narrative usually has.
Speaker 1: The truth about people who are as talented and complicated
Speaker 1: as these two is always much more interesting than the myth.
Speaker 1: So the myth of Paul McCartney that he's just this
Speaker 1: at best, is this kind of like slightly idio several
Speaker 1: kind of figure, just like has these amazing melodic talents,
Speaker 1: but is otherwise rather kind of shallow and dull and
Speaker 1: tweet and sentimental and all these other things that get
Speaker 1: attributed to him. The truth is much more interesting. He
Speaker 1: is both tougher, maybe a little meaner at times than
Speaker 1: that suggests, but he's also more thoughtful, more generous, more loving,
Speaker 1: and he's also just this kind of relentless torrent of creativity, Lenin.
Speaker 1: We know that he's difficult, and he's often tortured and
Speaker 1: self torturing. We know that he could be very mean
Speaker 1: and sort of amusingly sardonic and witty. Perhaps we are
Speaker 1: less familiar with how uncertain he was, how vulnerable he was,
Speaker 1: and how sentimentally he could be at times, and how
Speaker 1: warm and loving and empathetic he could be. So I
Speaker 1: really kind of enjoyed painting these much more fine drawn
Speaker 1: portraits of these guys in the book.
Speaker 4: And I think that the next thing that happens in
Speaker 4: the book, at least for me, that I really enjoyed was,
Speaker 4: let's first move away from seeing them or anyone as
Speaker 4: sort of these characters of a person.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's I think good. We can apply that in lots
Speaker 4: of areas of our lives. The second was how clearly
Speaker 4: these two influenced each other, and as you said, they
Speaker 4: were the product of each other, and you even say
Speaker 4: at a certain point they almost share the same consciousness.
Speaker 4: The two of them come together into this thing. And
Speaker 4: I think again, sort of applying that to us in general,
Speaker 4: it shows how in all of our relationships, the thing
Speaker 4: that is created between us is different than each of
Speaker 4: the people individually, and that were actually different people to
Speaker 4: different people, meaning John and Paul were a certain way
Speaker 4: with John and Paul and a certain thing got created there.
Speaker 4: But John and Ringo might have created a different thing.
Speaker 2: That's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And I think the extraordinary thing about the John well,
Speaker 1: one of the many extraordinary things about John and Paul's
Speaker 1: relationship is that, let me put that literal truth about them,
Speaker 1: which is that their voice is blended beautifully. It's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary fact that you get these two melodic geniuses living
Speaker 1: about a mile and a half from each other. Both
Speaker 1: turned out to be great songwriters right once they start
Speaker 1: working together. That's one thing. But the fact that they
Speaker 1: also happened to be two of the greatest singers of
Speaker 1: all time. I mean, people kind of underrate that, you know,
Speaker 1: that needn't have happened, right one or neither of them
Speaker 1: could have been a mediocre singer, you know, just or
Speaker 1: a terrible sing No, they're both great songwriters, great musicians,
Speaker 1: and they're great singers, and their voices blend in a
Speaker 1: perfect manner, so they sound really good together. They sound
Speaker 1: just similar enough to blend and just different enough so
Speaker 1: that the blend is much richer than they're just sort
Speaker 1: of singing double tracking themselves, and so you end up
Speaker 1: with just these incredible metaphors. I don't know even if
Speaker 1: they're metaphors, because it's just really part of the same thing,
Speaker 1: which is when they're singing harmonies, just that two of them,
Speaker 1: you get this third voice, which is the two of
Speaker 1: them together, which isn't something that exists with just one.
Speaker 2: It couldn't be.
Speaker 1: And this third voice, which is even bigger and more
Speaker 1: beautiful than either of them alone, is part of the
Speaker 1: reason that they take over the world. They sound so
Speaker 1: good together. And of course that was two of them
Speaker 1: as a whole, that the sum was much much greater
Speaker 1: than the past. This is two of all four. But
Speaker 1: just because those two were so close and because their
Speaker 1: talents was so immense, they're kind of at the center
Speaker 1: of the group. That's why I wanted to write about them, right.
Speaker 4: And regards to that vocal, you tell a story how
Speaker 4: early on their producer George Martin had them switch vocal parts.
Speaker 4: I don't remember who it was, but they found out
Speaker 4: that John sang better lower in the range, Paul sang
Speaker 4: higher in the range, and so they switched vocal parts.
Speaker 4: And you say, the effect was two men who share
Speaker 4: the same eye, the same consciousness. It became an expression
Speaker 4: of the group's camaraderie that also evoked how two people
Speaker 4: can slip in and out of each other's subjectivity, the
Speaker 4: way we internalize the voices of those we know and love.
Speaker 4: I just love that.
Speaker 1: I think it was a very unusual thing for the group,
Speaker 1: for anyone to do. Really, the Beatles were very unusual
Speaker 1: to begin with because there were almost no other groups
Speaker 1: like them at the time for several different reasons, but
Speaker 1: one of them was that almost all groups had a leader.
Speaker 1: There weren't many groups full stop. But when you did
Speaker 1: have groups, they tended to be Johnny and the Beatles.
Speaker 1: You know, there would be Cliff Richard and the Shadows,
Speaker 1: there would be X and the Wy's Okay, so there
Speaker 1: was always a lead. People always thought there needed to
Speaker 1: be a focal point because you have pop stars like Elvis.
Speaker 1: If you're going to have a group, it's got to
Speaker 1: be the singer plus the guys around them, and the
Speaker 1: Beatles right from the beginning always refused that model. John
Speaker 1: and Paul were always equals. Neither of them wanted to
Speaker 1: step out and say no, actually it's me because they
Speaker 1: saw themselves as a pair. And when they were first
Speaker 1: recording songs, they start to sing these love songs. And usually,
Speaker 1: you know, in a love song, you sing I love you,
Speaker 1: I'm this, you love me do. Right, you're singing in
Speaker 1: the first person, I am this, you are there, I
Speaker 1: love you. And to have a song like love Me Do.
Speaker 1: And then they do it with others as well, where
Speaker 1: two different singers are singing the song that's not harmonizing,
Speaker 1: but they will take different lines in the song, right.
Speaker 1: George Marshall was the first to make them do this
Speaker 1: and love Me Do, and they and then they kind
Speaker 1: of develop it from there. So you see, you take
Speaker 1: different lines in the same song and you're both singing
Speaker 1: I So that means you're the same person inside the song,
Speaker 1: do you see what I mean? So inside the song,
Speaker 1: the consciousness of these two individuals merge and they're kind
Speaker 1: of different expressions of the same consciousness, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's a really beautiful thing. And once they discover
Speaker 1: this trick almost by accident. The reason they do it,
Speaker 1: just to quickly say, is that in love Me Do,
Speaker 1: just as they come to the end of the chorus
Speaker 1: please love Me Do, there's a mouth organ solo, right,
Speaker 1: and John had been singing the song, and when he
Speaker 1: says love Me Do, he's got a straight into the
Speaker 1: mouth organ solo, and it just sounded really too abrupt.
Speaker 1: I mean, it didn't work. So George Martin said to
Speaker 1: them when he first heard them play, it, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: make sense if Paul comes in and says love me
Speaker 1: do at that point and they go, yeah, okay. And
Speaker 1: I think the reason they hadn't done that until that point,
Speaker 1: because it makes sense, is that they maybe thought it
Speaker 1: was a bit odd to have one person singing love
Speaker 1: me to earlier on the song and then another person coming.
Speaker 1: And from that point on they realized that actually, this
Speaker 1: is a really interesting trick. They could kind of swap
Speaker 1: the eye in inverted commas between them in a song,
Speaker 1: and actually it sounds even cooler and there's something amazing
Speaker 1: about it. And you hear it in say a Hard
Speaker 1: Day's Night, right. So John sings that hard driving verse.
Speaker 1: So the verse is like, you know, it's been a
Speaker 1: hard day's night and I've been working like a dog.
Speaker 1: And then Paul comes in on that middle age.
Speaker 2: And when I'm home. So it's the same guy.
Speaker 1: In the song, it's the same narrator, but you're hearing
Speaker 1: that same narrative consciousness expressed by these two similar bit
Speaker 1: different voices, and that is kind of a thrilling effect
Speaker 1: for anybody who's obviously nobody's going to express it like
Speaker 1: the way I did it, but you hear how special
Speaker 1: and strange that is. I think when you hear Hot
Speaker 1: Days Night, I really think it only works because John
Speaker 1: and Paul are so close in every way, and that's
Speaker 1: what gives it its power.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is sort of thrilling. One of the best
Speaker 4: parts of the book. It's in the title. You're exploring
Speaker 4: John and Paul through songs, and so you know, every
Speaker 4: chapter is a song. And I have to say, I
Speaker 4: think I said this to you in the email I
Speaker 4: sent you part way through the book, where I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm loving this is Listening to their music is joyful
Speaker 4: enough for me, but then reading some of the ways
Speaker 4: that you describe it as I'm listening to it was
Speaker 4: just overwhelming emotionally for me. There's something about the way
Speaker 4: you're describing certain parts of their songs. You talk about
Speaker 4: how and she loves you, how it goes from the
Speaker 4: relative minor and then through two majors, and of course
Speaker 4: everybody's like, yeah, okay if you don't know what music
Speaker 4: that is, but you talk about how it's sort of
Speaker 4: dizzying and disorienting, like tumbling down a hill without being
Speaker 4: sure when you've hit the bottom. I really enjoyed that
Speaker 4: part of the book a lot. And unfortunately this is
Speaker 4: just a me and you talking. We're not really hearing
Speaker 4: their music, but adding that into it makes all the
Speaker 4: difference in the world.
Speaker 2: That's great to hear.
Speaker 1: And I want to say a couple of things about that.
Speaker 1: One is why I wrote it like that, and the
Speaker 1: other is how I went about it, so as you know,
Speaker 1: but in case you'll listen this with like a quick
Speaker 1: summary of how the book works. I basically tell the
Speaker 1: story of their friendship chronologically from when they meet as
Speaker 1: teenagers in nineteen fifty seven, through the Beatles and then
Speaker 1: beyond right, so we take it right until nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: when John is killed. And so I wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of make it accessible both to Beatles fans who know
Speaker 1: this story well but are looking for a fresh version
Speaker 1: of the story. There's millions of people out there who
Speaker 1: know a little bit about the Beatles but don't know
Speaker 1: much and maybe kind of intrigue, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: write the book for them as well. So we've got
Speaker 1: these kind of two audiences in mind. I tell the
Speaker 1: story in a way that feels fresh for people who
Speaker 1: know the story well, but it's also accessible to everyone else.
Speaker 1: And why do I do it through songs? So each
Speaker 1: chapter in the narrative is a song that's meaningful to
Speaker 1: both of them.
Speaker 2: And I did it that.
Speaker 1: Way because these two guys lived their life, especially their
Speaker 1: emotional life, in music in songs, right from that very
Speaker 1: young age when they first start getting into it as teenagers.
Speaker 1: They pour their feelings into pop songs. And they were
Speaker 1: very intense, emotionally intense young men. They were of a
Speaker 1: generation where you didn't talk about your feelings that much.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the dune thing. They were English from the
Speaker 1: north of England. It was a bit you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't go around kind of gushing, right, let's put it
Speaker 1: that way. And you certainly didn't go to therapy. That
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing, right, So where did they put all
Speaker 1: these incredibly intense feelings, including their feelings for each other.
Speaker 1: They pour them into the lyrics of pop songs, and
Speaker 1: of course pop songs are full of love and loss
Speaker 1: and yearning and desire and anger sometimes, right, they're very
Speaker 1: emotional little vessels. Somebody described them to me as an
Speaker 1: emotional panic room. You can put all your emotions into
Speaker 1: that three minute container, right, and they're kind of safe there.
Speaker 1: And these guys learned to do this right intuitively and
Speaker 1: almost compulsively, from when they were teenagers. So it struck
Speaker 1: me when I was thinking about telling the story of
Speaker 1: the relationship. You cannot tell this story except through the songs,
Speaker 1: because the songs say so much about what's going on
Speaker 1: in their heads and in their hearts. Equally, you can't
Speaker 1: understand the music without understanding the relationship between these two guys,
Speaker 1: And you cant understand the relationship without the music. And
Speaker 1: then how did I do it? It's interesting that you mentioned
Speaker 1: the major in the miner itself, so there is some
Speaker 1: sort of musical analysis of the songs. But again, I'm
Speaker 1: really writing it in a way where you don't need
Speaker 1: to know any of that in order to understand what
Speaker 1: I'm saying about the song. So I do want to
Speaker 1: make people understand or help people understand why these songs
Speaker 1: are special, why they work so powerfully on you, and
Speaker 1: to highlight the creativity and the innovation of these guys.
Speaker 1: So it's to show amazing things they were doing really
Speaker 1: from very early on. So I'm glad you brought that up,
Speaker 1: because weaving together the narrative and music was really the
Speaker 1: kind of central challenge of the book.
Speaker 4: So the book is also very much oriented, as you said,
Speaker 4: around this incredible friendship between these two guys, and friendship
Speaker 4: is something that we've had, you know, whole episodes on
Speaker 4: this show dedicated to friendship. This show started because my
Speaker 4: best friend Chris and I started it as something together
Speaker 4: and so, like male friendship has been really really important
Speaker 4: to me over the years, and it's something I think
Speaker 4: a lot about. And you're exploring, how, you know, to
Speaker 4: talk about John Paul as just a friendship is in
Speaker 4: some ways perhaps to misunderstand it, or our term that
Speaker 4: we generally glom onto friendship is insufficient to talk about
Speaker 4: how intense and how big such a thing can be
Speaker 4: particularly we don't talk about it in regards to men
Speaker 4: in the same way.
Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I think we find these relationships and they're quite unusual,
Speaker 1: these kinds of relationships, very intense, passionate, almost romantic relationships
Speaker 1: between two men that aren't homosexual affairs.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, I mean some people speculate did Lennon McCartney have
Speaker 1: a sexual I don't think so, and I certainly don't
Speaker 1: argue that in the book. And I think people ask
Speaker 1: the question almost because they're confused about what this is
Speaker 1: because this relationship, and there's a few other examples we
Speaker 1: can talk about one or two, doesn't fit any of
Speaker 1: the normal boxes, right. They weren't just normal friends, you know,
Speaker 1: two blokes, you know, having a bit beer down the pub. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: Paul sometimes talks about it like that. It's not, no, Paul,
Speaker 1: it was not like that coming. It's a lot more intense.
Speaker 1: And they weren't brothers, they said, oh, they were like brothers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, it's nothing like the relationship
Speaker 1: I have with my brother, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: there were many brothers who have this kind of relationship.
Speaker 1: And neither were they competitors and rivals, because that's the
Speaker 1: other place people go to where they're like, oh, they
Speaker 1: must have really hated each other and that's been incredibly
Speaker 1: competitive with each other. Well, no, not really, not in
Speaker 1: that sense. I don't think they wanted to do each
Speaker 1: other down, but it that way, so we could talk
Speaker 1: about the competition between them, But it wasn't like that.
Speaker 1: So because it didn't fit any of those boxes, we've
Speaker 1: misunderstood it. And I think that's a big part of
Speaker 1: the reason it's turned into this silly kind of oh
Speaker 1: John is better than Paul, Paul's better and the John
Speaker 1: kind of culture war because it kind of blurs the
Speaker 1: boundaries between love and romance and friendship and everything else.
Speaker 1: And of course it's also bound up with creativity. You know,
Speaker 1: the creating stuff together wasn't just a thing they did
Speaker 1: at work, you know, it was absolutely central to every
Speaker 1: aspect of their relationship. It's what they found so exciting
Speaker 1: about each other. It's what really kind of turned them
Speaker 1: on about each other, if you like. And it was
Speaker 1: this very intense and very inherently volatile relationship and the
Speaker 1: fact that they ended up falling out towards the end
Speaker 1: of the Beatles career should not be a surprise because
Speaker 1: they were very willful, headstrong, emotionally engaged young men. And
Speaker 1: you know, when creativity is evold, you know that adds
Speaker 1: another level of kind of volatility.
Speaker 4: And money and fame, and you know, all those things
Speaker 4: add levels of volatility. Yeah, you talk about relationship between
Speaker 4: the essays Montaigne. He's talking about a friendship he had
Speaker 4: with someone, and he says something along the lines of
Speaker 4: we found ourselves so taken with each other, so well acquainted,
Speaker 4: so bound together, that from that moment on, nothing could
Speaker 4: be as close as we were to one another. And
Speaker 4: when I talk about my friend Chris, that's how that
Speaker 4: felt when we met. It was just this intensity of
Speaker 4: friendship that was very different than most of what I
Speaker 4: had experienced. And there's a line also that Montagne goes
Speaker 4: on to say, and I love this when he was
Speaker 4: trying to sort of talk about like why what was
Speaker 4: it about it? And I just think this is beautiful.
Speaker 4: He says, because it was him, because it was me,
Speaker 4: And I think that speaks to John and Paul so
Speaker 4: much too, Like why was it the way it was?
Speaker 4: It's because of it was John and it was Paul
Speaker 4: and what they were to each other.
Speaker 1: It is beautiful, and it's beautiful because it acknowledges the
Speaker 1: essential mystery at the hag of a relationship like that.
Speaker 1: You know, Montaigne was great sixteenth century writer and philosopher.
Speaker 1: He was good with words, right, and he tried to
Speaker 1: define what it was because his friend died that he
Speaker 1: was heartbroken by this, and he wrote this essay to
Speaker 1: try and work out what it was that made their
Speaker 1: friendship so special and so intimate and so intense, and
Speaker 1: he found that he couldn't articulate it. Kept trying to
Speaker 1: write this piece and he couldn't quite define the essence
Speaker 1: of the relationship, and he had a few goes and
Speaker 1: he kind of crusted things out, and at the end
Speaker 1: he just settled on that formulation, why did we love
Speaker 1: each other because it was him, because it was me?
Speaker 1: And I think it's something beautiful and sort of humble
Speaker 1: and accepting about that. So I wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: weave that into the book because you know, I said,
Speaker 1: we find these friendships hard to categorize as a society, right,
Speaker 1: we don't quite know what to do with them. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine being in that friendship you sund like you're part
Speaker 1: of one of yourself. It's hard for the people in
Speaker 1: it to understand as well because society isn't helping them.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of baffling and confusing. And so that's
Speaker 1: what that is about.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: I think today's day and age is very different. Like
Speaker 4: I think that that intensity of friendship between men is
Speaker 4: better understood. I'm not saying it's well understood. I'm saying
Speaker 4: it's better understood today than it was. However long ago
Speaker 4: it was. I met my friend twenty thirty years ago.
Speaker 4: And let alone go back to McCartney and Lenin right
Speaker 4: a general before that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see the insecurity about it and the
Speaker 1: bafflement about it in Lenin in particular. I mean McCartney
Speaker 1: was always less insecure generally as a person. Lenin partly
Speaker 1: because he had a very difficult upbringing, was full of insecurities,
Speaker 1: and one of the things he was insecure about was
Speaker 1: whether or not his feelings for McCartney meant that he
Speaker 1: was gay. It wasn't just the McCartney here. He was
Speaker 1: slightly kind of baffled and confused by his sexuality throughout
Speaker 1: his life. And I think the evidence suggests he was
Speaker 1: predominantly heterosexual, perhaps with some homosexual feelings.
Speaker 2: Now I think today it's much.
Speaker 1: Easier to accept that, and even you know, to say
Speaker 1: that it would not be a big deals, particularly for
Speaker 1: a musician an artist. But for Lenin, I think he
Speaker 1: was kind of tortured by it and just didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with it and worried about it.
Speaker 4: At one point you describe as the friendship between them
Speaker 4: becomes more strained. You make a point about communication in
Speaker 4: general between people, and the point is more or less
Speaker 4: and you put a finer point on it after I'm done.
Speaker 4: Here is that we form impressions of other people early
Speaker 4: in relationships, and we build sort of a model of
Speaker 4: that other person and of our relationship, and then time
Speaker 4: passes and those models don't get updated in the same
Speaker 4: way as people are changing, and so we end up
Speaker 4: with trying to apply an old model of who you
Speaker 4: are or how our relationship is to a different version
Speaker 4: of you, let alone a different version of me. And
Speaker 4: that's where we end up in a lot of communication trouble.
Speaker 4: Say more about.
Speaker 2: That, you put it very well.
Speaker 1: I'm actually during on research I looked at for my
Speaker 1: last book, which is about disagreement and conflict, and as
Speaker 1: part of that, I looked at how couples argue and
Speaker 1: how they handle conflicts and why they argue. And when
Speaker 1: I was writing about John and Paul, of course, a
Speaker 1: lot of that became very relevant again because in some
Speaker 1: ways it did resemble a very kind of torrid marriage.
Speaker 1: And there was this interesting research to the show that actually,
Speaker 1: couples who've been together for a long time, they become
Speaker 1: more empathetic in the first couple of years. In other words,
Speaker 1: they can kind of read each other's minds better and
Speaker 1: better and really well, and then they become oddly counterintuitively,
Speaker 1: perhaps sort of less intuitive in the years after that,
Speaker 1: they start to misread each other. And the underlying theory
Speaker 1: is the one you just laid out very well, which is,
Speaker 1: as you're getting to know someone, and you're getting to
Speaker 1: know them fast and intimately, you build this incredibly sophisticated
Speaker 1: model of their mind, of how they think, and you're
Speaker 1: able to kind of predict what they're going to feel
Speaker 1: and what they're going to think about something. And that
Speaker 1: often means that you don't need to communicate very much
Speaker 1: because you just kind of get it, or you're talking code.
Speaker 1: You know, you're talking your kind of private language, or
Speaker 1: they just say a couple of words and actually you
Speaker 1: know the rest of the sentence right, which is a
Speaker 1: wonderful and incredibly impressive feat of human communication. It's still
Speaker 1: a marvelous thing. But over time, people change, right, and
Speaker 1: they change slowly perhaps, but each member of the couple
Speaker 1: has different experiences and has their own thoughts, and their
Speaker 1: mind's kind of developed, still somewhat in alignment, but in
Speaker 1: different directions. But you don't necessarily update the model because
Speaker 1: you have this sense that, oh, I know this person
Speaker 1: really well.
Speaker 2: I don't need to update the model.
Speaker 1: So you're still working with this kind of five ten
Speaker 1: years into the marriage, with a model you developed in
Speaker 1: the first year, and it's really bad, you know, or
Speaker 1: at least it's it's developed, lots of faults and a
Speaker 1: lot of arguments and difficulties in conflicts them from us
Speaker 1: misreading each other at that point, because I'm saying things
Speaker 1: that you're missing to and you're saying things that I'm
Speaker 1: misinterpreting because our models are outdated. It's like we need
Speaker 1: to upgrade the software. You know, we're still working with
Speaker 1: some old version of Windows. You can see this happening
Speaker 1: with John and Paul. Both stages at extremes. So in
Speaker 1: that first stage, they really are extremely close. They really
Speaker 1: do communicate extremely quickly and intuitively. They just kind of
Speaker 1: have to look each other at each other, glance at
Speaker 1: each other and know what's going on. So the people
Speaker 1: around them will talk about this, you know, they say
Speaker 1: John and Paul dising each other's sentences. They had this
Speaker 1: telepathic connection, that's often how people described it.
Speaker 2: And then they.
Speaker 1: Particularly in the mid to late sixties, as they grow up,
Speaker 1: you know that we move into their mid and late
Speaker 1: twenties and they meet their partners, you know, Linda and Yoko.
Speaker 1: They're changing, right, which is completely natural, But the two
Speaker 1: of them are still working with this model. And that's
Speaker 1: where the real kind of damaging rouse and damaging conflicts
Speaker 1: starts to creep in because they're just miscommunicating and by
Speaker 1: the end, really a lot of what they're saying is
Speaker 1: just kind of hitting the other person, and the real
Speaker 1: white it becomes very difficult. They have to kind of
Speaker 1: takes a long time to get over that.
Speaker 4: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 4: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 4: back lately. You know that it's there. You've tried to
Speaker 4: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 4: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 4: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 4: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 4: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
Speaker 4: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 4: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 4: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 4: oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step
Speaker 4: towards getting back on track. You know you talked earlier
Speaker 4: about how they didn't know how to talk about emotion.
Speaker 4: Most people didn't in that day and age. That it
Speaker 4: all kind of went into their songs and came through
Speaker 4: their songs. And we are all the beneficiaries of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a.
Speaker 1: Sense, we're all the beneficiaries of emotional male repression. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot for screwing us up Second World War and
Speaker 1: everything else than the victorians, because you know, these guys
Speaker 1: what used to talk about their emotions, they put it
Speaker 1: into the music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, but you read some of it now, and
Speaker 4: I couldn't help but thinking like, if these guys could
Speaker 4: have just articulated a point or two of what they
Speaker 4: were feeling for each other, things might have gone very differently, right,
Speaker 4: But that just wasn't in either of their skill set, right,
Speaker 4: and it didn't work. But it doesn't seem like it was,
Speaker 4: you know, by any stretch, irreconcilable differences, right, It was
Speaker 4: an inability to talk about this strange thing they had between.
Speaker 2: Them beautifully put. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And you know, particularly towards the end of the group
Speaker 1: and the kind of rupture in the friendship that accompanied it,
Speaker 1: they thought each other wanted different things. Paul thought that
Speaker 1: John was trying to reassert his control over the group,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of eager to give that to him.
Speaker 1: You see some of the conversations that are recorded right
Speaker 1: towards the end, Paul is saying, you know, you should
Speaker 1: absolutely be the leader, you know, you should be driving
Speaker 1: things forward.
Speaker 2: Don't let me kind of get in the way.
Speaker 1: And John, although he doesn't say it, it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: I think from the way he behaves and the way
Speaker 1: he acts, is not actually interested in leadership if he
Speaker 1: ever was very much. He wants Paul to acknowledge him
Speaker 1: and that he needs him emotionally, I think, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to say that. Paul doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to give it either, and so you get this kind
Speaker 1: of fundamental miscommunication, is fundamental clash. I think, as I
Speaker 1: put it in the book, that Paul thought John wanted power,
Speaker 1: but what John wanted was love. And so you know,
Speaker 1: they go their separate ways effectively.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you make another point in the book I think
Speaker 4: is very interesting is that Paul seemed to be to
Speaker 4: everyone else the really put together one, the driven one.
Speaker 4: He was clearly the most sort of across the board
Speaker 4: in all different ways of musical genius, like he could
Speaker 4: play all the instruments better than most anybody could play them,
Speaker 4: like he was at a slightly different level. And that
Speaker 4: the thing that John never could really understand, and maybe
Speaker 4: even the other Beatles had a hard time, was how
Speaker 4: their behavior towards Paul could make Paul feel bad. They
Speaker 4: almost thought he was impervious to that, and that's also heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the worst part of the rupture of the
Speaker 1: friendship this is after the group have split up, they
Speaker 1: start recording solo albums and solo songs, and John records
Speaker 1: this really horrible song about Paul, and it's pretty clearly
Speaker 1: about He doesn't say Paul in the song, but it's
Speaker 1: very strong hints that it's about Paul, and it becomes
Speaker 1: clear to everyone that it is. It's called how Do
Speaker 1: You Sleep? And it is a full on, pretty mean
Speaker 1: assault on his friend or his former friend at that time,
Speaker 1: and you could interpret it different ways. But one of
Speaker 1: the questions I had about it as I was thinking
Speaker 1: about it was how could John have done that? Why
Speaker 1: would you want to do that to anyone in public?
Speaker 1: It's such a horrible thing to do. How do he
Speaker 1: stopped liking or loving Paul? And the other thing about
Speaker 1: it was that George Harrison played on this track and
Speaker 1: was around there when John was writing it. Ringo was
Speaker 1: around two, and I just thought, how could any of
Speaker 1: them do this to their former bandmate and their former friend.
Speaker 1: What a thing to do. And I think the reason
Speaker 1: why is that what you just said, which they thought
Speaker 1: Paul was invulnerable. So actually, you know when kids are
Speaker 1: mean about their parents is because they can't imagine their
Speaker 1: parents would ever care. They can't imagine their parents would
Speaker 1: be hurt by something like that because their parents are
Speaker 1: the authority figures. You know, parents are always going to
Speaker 1: be okay. And Paul played a similar role in the Beatles,
Speaker 1: at least in the last couple of years. He was
Speaker 1: that invulnerable figure who was always going to be okay.
Speaker 1: It's brillianto everything, pick up any musical instrument and make
Speaker 1: it sing. He was the most organized, the most thorough,
Speaker 1: the most relentless and methodical, the most energetic. He was
Speaker 1: good at everything. He could play cards really well. He
Speaker 1: used to beat them all cards, you know, he could
Speaker 1: make furniture things like that.
Speaker 4: He was just that that guy.
Speaker 1: He's just like good everything. And so for them, I
Speaker 1: just thought we could throw anything we wanted. This guy,
Speaker 1: it's going to roll off him anyway, so why not
Speaker 1: just have some fun. And of course it's not true.
Speaker 1: You know, it was really hurtful to Paul, very hurtful.
Speaker 1: And the things, the other things that John said about
Speaker 1: him in the press and interviews, again some of them
Speaker 1: quite mean. Paul was really really hurt by that. You know,
Speaker 1: he wasn't invulnerable at all. Yeah, I think there's just
Speaker 1: a lesson there about how sometimes you think those people
Speaker 1: who were just always going to be fine. You should
Speaker 1: be careful of them too, because they're always fine.
Speaker 4: As the book went on, as I was reading it,
Speaker 4: I had a vision of how it ends. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 4: I know Lenin gets assassinated in nineteen eighty. Obviously we
Speaker 4: all know that's kind of the end of a story
Speaker 4: that's got John in it. But I had another view
Speaker 4: of it, and it was how hard they fell out
Speaker 4: and that they really hated each other. And so as
Speaker 4: I was reading the book, I was getting sad as
Speaker 4: I went in anticipation of what was coming. And one
Speaker 4: of the things that I really liked about the book
Speaker 4: was that it wasn't exactly as clear that they hated
Speaker 4: each other. They had had some degree of reproachment, maybe
Speaker 4: not a ton, but there was still warmth and love
Speaker 4: in that relationship, and they expressed it to each other.
Speaker 4: And this is going to be melodramatic, right because it
Speaker 4: just is going to sound that way, but it healed
Speaker 4: something in me that was so saddened by the fact
Speaker 4: that in my mind, the story was Lenin died before
Speaker 4: they ever got to have any sort of approachment. And
Speaker 4: it sounds like based on what you're saying, is there
Speaker 4: was some of that. It's not as bad as I
Speaker 4: thought it was.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, And you don't have to apologize for being
Speaker 1: emotionally engaged in it, because me too, you know, that's
Speaker 1: where I read the book. Yeah, and so I know
Speaker 1: exactly how you feel and where you're coming from. And
Speaker 1: I too felt that when I kind of found out
Speaker 1: about what happened in the seventies. So, yeah, they fall
Speaker 1: out pretty badly in the early seventies, but they never
Speaker 1: stop being interested in each other, even even at the
Speaker 1: worst times. Right, there are relationships that end because one
Speaker 1: or both of the partners are just tired of the
Speaker 1: other one. Right, they're just bored, exhausted, see this person thing.
Speaker 1: Life is going to be a lot simpler and I
Speaker 1: don't have to deal with this person anymore. And it
Speaker 1: often happens in pop groups when they split up. That's
Speaker 1: often the reason why that was never the case with
Speaker 1: Lennon and McCartney. They were never bored of each other.
Speaker 1: They were never cold, really in their hearts towards each other.
Speaker 1: They were really angry at each other and very confused
Speaker 1: by the other one, and they were always feelings and
Speaker 1: they had the foresight to kind of fix the relationship,
Speaker 1: to patch it up to some degree. So they meet
Speaker 1: kind of quite early on nineteen seventy two or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they have dinner with their wives and
Speaker 1: they basically say, let's just stop being meanly back to
Speaker 1: each other in public, and let's try and be friendly again.
Speaker 1: Now you can't restore the closeness and the intimacy and
Speaker 1: that special chemistry that they had quickly, if you could
Speaker 1: do it at all. And they spend the rest of
Speaker 1: the decade friendly, but it's quite a fragile relationship and
Speaker 1: they're sort of walking on eggshells a bit. The nice
Speaker 1: thing about it is that when they talked on the phone,
Speaker 1: they really did get on well. It was just the
Speaker 1: two of them. When they met in person, it was
Speaker 1: always with their families, and it was just a little
Speaker 1: bit different. But there's a really great anecdote of somebody
Speaker 1: who worked on one of Lennon's albums in the mid
Speaker 1: to late seventies and there'd be a phone call in
Speaker 1: the studio and it was, oh, it's Paul, and John
Speaker 1: would just stop the session and go.
Speaker 2: And talk for like a couple of hours. It's kind
Speaker 2: of annoying for the other musicians.
Speaker 1: But he said, you know, we could hear laughter, we
Speaker 1: could hear this constant stream of chatter, and Joe was
Speaker 1: telling stories, and you know when they talked on the phone,
Speaker 1: they were still getting on really well, right, And they
Speaker 1: were also writing songs about each other. John wrote some
Speaker 1: actually very in contrast to how Do You Sleep? Some
Speaker 1: songs that John wrote were pretty clearly veiled messages of
Speaker 1: affection towards Paul.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Yoko Ono, because there's a certainly popular
Speaker 4: narrative that Yoko broke up the Beatles. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to ask your opinion on whether that's true. I just
Speaker 4: want to read something that you wrote and then let
Speaker 4: you elaborate. And you said, it's not that John and
Speaker 4: Paul split up because they found the loves of their
Speaker 4: lives so much as they found the loves of their
Speaker 4: lives in order to split up.
Speaker 1: Explain that, well, this is really kind of one of
Speaker 1: the surprises for me anyway of looking in more depth
Speaker 1: and detail at the timeline of what happened with regard
Speaker 1: to their respective spouses. Right, you know, Paul gets together
Speaker 1: with Linder and that's it, right until unfortunately Linda dies
Speaker 1: if cancer. The end of the twentieth century, John gets
Speaker 1: together with Yoko. They have a bit more of an
Speaker 1: updown relationship, you know, and kind of split up for
Speaker 1: eighteen months so on, and.
Speaker 2: Get back together.
Speaker 1: But certainly she is the love of his life, really,
Speaker 1: and there's certainly still very much together. When John is killed,
Speaker 1: in typical, like weirdly symmetrical fashion, they both meet these
Speaker 1: women at the same time, get married within two weeks
Speaker 1: of each other, you know, early that nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: And it's always been presented as, oh, the reason they
Speaker 1: split up is that John fell in love with Yoko,
Speaker 1: and then to a lesser extent, Paul fell in love
Speaker 1: with Linda, and therefore they couldn't be in the band anymore,
Speaker 1: they couldn't be with each other anymore, so that they
Speaker 1: left each other for these women. And actually, when you
Speaker 1: look at it, it's not quite like that, because Yogo
Speaker 1: had been around John and Yoko been friendly for quite
Speaker 1: a while since late ninety sixty six, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of years, and so it wasn't this kind of
Speaker 1: great kudufoudra, as they say in France. You know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't this great instant love affair where John was like, oh,
Speaker 1: now I've got to be with this woman. It's more
Speaker 1: like he got to a point in his relationship with
Speaker 1: the Beatles with Paul where he was like, this isn't working.
Speaker 1: This is almost psychologically damaging for me. I think he
Speaker 1: felt it was just too intense in a way and
Speaker 1: he needed to kind of escape. And I think he
Speaker 1: then to Yoko effectively and said, right, let's go. I
Speaker 1: want to be with you now. And she was around
Speaker 1: and she was up for it, and they do and
Speaker 1: she becomes the love of his life. But it's almost
Speaker 1: like he chose her to be the love of his
Speaker 1: life rather than just sort of falling for her and
Speaker 1: then saying, well, I've got to go now she do
Speaker 1: you see what I mean? And similarly with Linda Paul, again,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a kind of complete break from what was
Speaker 1: going on he'd been seeing. I mean, Paul saw a
Speaker 1: lot of women all the way through the Beatles' creer.
Speaker 1: You know, he's extremely promiscuous guy until he suddenly became
Speaker 1: very monogamous. But there was this period in between where
Speaker 1: he was seeing Linda, he was also seeing other women,
Speaker 1: like other girlfriends. They were seeing regularly. Linda was one
Speaker 1: of them, and when John gets together with Yoko in
Speaker 1: a big way, then Paul makes his move for Linda
Speaker 1: and says, right, okay, it's you and me now, and
Speaker 1: this is going to be exclusive. You know, he didn't
Speaker 1: use those words, obviously, but that's basically the gist of it.
Speaker 1: And so again he was reacting. He was kind of
Speaker 1: finding a way to kind of push himself away from
Speaker 1: John and towards Linda, as John was pushing himself away
Speaker 1: from Paul and choosing Yoko. Yeah, I just thought that
Speaker 1: was a really kind of fascinating dynamic. I think they'd
Speaker 1: got to the stage where they were like, we've got
Speaker 1: to make quite a hard break from each other because
Speaker 1: at the moment we're just sort of too entangled in
Speaker 1: each other and it's not sustainable.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to wrap us up with the place
Speaker 4: that you both begin and kind of end the book,
Speaker 4: which is McCartney and how he reacts after he finds
Speaker 4: out that Lennon has been shot. And I'll let you
Speaker 4: tell that however you would like.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: So there's quite a famous interview that the press do
Speaker 1: with Paul the day after John's murder. He comes out
Speaker 1: of a building he's been recording all day and there's
Speaker 1: a group of journalists. They stick microphones in his faces
Speaker 1: and turn the lights on and they say, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about John being killed?
Speaker 2: And Paul is.
Speaker 1: Very weirdly matter of fact, he doesn't show any emotion.
Speaker 1: He's chewing gum and he says, yeah, it's pretty bad,
Speaker 1: isn't it. The phrase that made headlines was it's a drag.
Speaker 1: It's a drag, isn't it. It's a drag, says McCartney
Speaker 1: about death of his best friend. And it was a
Speaker 1: terrible moment for him just from a reputation point of view,
Speaker 1: because everyone said, oh, this is just what we thought
Speaker 1: about McCartney. Here's this weirdly, kind of like cold, ambitious
Speaker 1: individual and he's just not responding to his best friend's
Speaker 1: death in a human way. And actually, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to start the book with that because it's the question
Speaker 1: that people were raising, was whatever happened to John and Paul?
Speaker 1: You know, we saw these together. They seem to be
Speaker 1: so happy together, they did these wonderful things together, and
Speaker 1: did they hate each other at the end, because it
Speaker 1: certainly seems like that if you see Paul's reaction to
Speaker 1: John's death, and I leave it there, and then I
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning of nineteen fifty seven when
Speaker 1: they meet, and when they meet, Paul's mum is dead.
Speaker 1: She died just eight months before he met John Lennon
Speaker 1: and started making music with him. The year after they meet,
Speaker 1: John's mother is killed. Of course, So this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that bonds them together, is this terrible
Speaker 1: symmetry of bereavement. They both lose their mothers. They don't
Speaker 1: talk about it much. Another thing they don't talk about much,
Speaker 1: but my god, they know each other felt it, and
Speaker 1: it brings them closer together and makes the relationship even
Speaker 1: more intense. Now, I wanted to come back to that
Speaker 1: moment that when McCartney learns about John's death at the end,
Speaker 1: once we know everything we know about John and Paul
Speaker 1: as in the book, by the time the book ends,
Speaker 1: that Paul was not cold and that he never really
Speaker 1: hated John, you know, he still loved him, And so
Speaker 1: I wanted to kind of look at it in a
Speaker 1: new light, say, well, what do we know about it now?
Speaker 1: How can we understand it differently? And one thing it
Speaker 1: really kind of chimed with was the reaction that Paul
Speaker 1: had as a kid to his mother's death, which he's
Speaker 1: told and his brother has told. His aunts and uncle
Speaker 1: pull him aside and his brother aside, and they say,
Speaker 1: your mom's dead. It was a big surprise to them.
Speaker 1: She'd just gone into hospital died very quickly, and they
Speaker 1: didn't know what happened. Your mother's dead. And Paul says, well,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do about money? And again
Speaker 1: the anecdote is told because it's so oddly kind of
Speaker 1: like cold. Now, Paul loved his mother so much. You know,
Speaker 1: he wrote let It Be about Her. You can hear
Speaker 1: the love and his songs about her, and there's no
Speaker 1: question how much.
Speaker 2: They loved each other.
Speaker 1: So do we really think that when Paul says, you know,
Speaker 1: what are we going to do about money? He wasn't
Speaker 1: feeling anything inside. No, of course, he was absolutely shocked
Speaker 1: to his core, and he was trying trying to deal
Speaker 1: with that shot because the best way a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old kid knew how to deal with it. Right, So
Speaker 1: now let's go back again and look at what happened
Speaker 1: with Paul when he finds out about John's death, and
Speaker 1: he says, it's a drag, isn't it. Do we think
Speaker 1: that's because Paul had no feelings about his best friend
Speaker 1: being shot. No, of course it's completely the opposite. He's terrified.
Speaker 1: He's trying to avoid this shattering psychological blow. He's got
Speaker 1: microphones stuck in his face by people he doesn't know
Speaker 1: shouting at him. He is just trying to shut down emotionally,
Speaker 1: get out of there, get into his car. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: Linda says, when I saw him driving up the driveway,
Speaker 1: and I could tell as soon as he got out
Speaker 1: of the car he was absolutely broken, and he just
Speaker 1: falls into Linda's arms and is sobbing. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of bracket it that way, just because I
Speaker 1: think by the end of the book we have a
Speaker 1: much deeper and richer understanding of Paul and Johnicles and
Speaker 1: the relationship, and that was just a way of illustrating that.
Speaker 4: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 4: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 4: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe
Speaker 4: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 4: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 4: I created the six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 4: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 4: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 4: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 4: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 4: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 4: starting today, one you feed dot net slash ebook. I
Speaker 4: love that as a just a writing device in general
Speaker 4: is a good way, and also just to sort of
Speaker 4: show about how there still was a lot of love there.
Speaker 4: And you tell some other stories before that about McCartney
Speaker 4: at different points where you can see or someone else
Speaker 4: will tell an anecdote about just how shattered he was
Speaker 4: by John's loss and how long it stuck with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it haunted him and he was sad
Speaker 1: about it. I think he just missed his partner and
Speaker 1: his friend. Yeah, probably still does, you know. I think
Speaker 1: he's come to terms with it very slowly. But it
Speaker 1: was almost like his second self. It just disappeared because
Speaker 1: even when they went together, I think he was in
Speaker 1: dialogue with him, especially when he was making music, you know,
Speaker 1: And he said this himself, you know, he said even
Speaker 1: now I'll kind of go, well, what do you think
Speaker 1: about this John, you know, talking to his spirit. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's been a long process of coming to
Speaker 1: terms which you're not being there.
Speaker 4: Well. Ian, thank you so much. I loved the book.
Speaker 4: I think anybody who loves music will love the book,
Speaker 4: and anybody who loves good writing and a lot of
Speaker 4: emotional depth in a story is going to love the book.
Speaker 4: And you and I are going to continue in the
Speaker 4: post show conversation where we're going to change here and
Speaker 4: we're going to talk about does bean left wing make
Speaker 4: you unhappy? And maybe some of your rules for life
Speaker 4: your Okham's raisers. So listeners, if you'd like access to
Speaker 4: this post show conversation to add free episodes to a
Speaker 4: special episode that I record each week just for you
Speaker 4: called Teaching Song and a Poem, you can go to
Speaker 4: one you feed dot net, slash join, become part of
Speaker 4: our community and support the show again. Ian, thank you
Speaker 4: so much. It's been so fun reading your book and
Speaker 4: getting to talk with you.
Speaker 1: Eric, Thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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