Based On This [X]

Paul McCartney signing autographs for a fan in a Liverpool bookshop, February 1963.

Here’s some Lennon-McCartney action for anon! Thought I’d go with them messing around in their Day in the Life outfits, because it’s 1967 again!

“I will tell you my first and my last memories of The Beatles.”

“The last was in 1967. Brian Epstein had hired me to shoot some record sleeves. It all happened in February during the recording of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I had to build a photo studio inside the Abbey Road studio building, in a room next to their recording studio. I stayed there for one week. They needed group pictures of the four, so I had to wait a long time since it seemed there was always one of them hanging around somewhere – talking to the angels!”

— French photographer Jean-Marie Perier.

paul mccartney daily affirmations

Boyfriend John

Lennon-McCartney in (some of) the Beatles dramas

Paul wasn’t planning to write about Liverpool – until he heard “Strawberry Fields” and it lit up his competitive edge. These memories were something he and his dearest friend still shared – Paul remembered Strawberry Field, and he knew John well enough to know what it meant to him. But he also knew what Penny Lane meant to John – that was the street where he lived with his mother, Julia, before she left him. Strawberry Field was down the road from his Auntie’s house; the place he’d go to contemplate his exile from the home he’d known on Penny Lane. These twin songs went together as a concept single. “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane” are their most famous combo, linked together forever though it’s been decades since they’ve existed in that form. They play off each other as a John/Paul dialogue. While Paul does his people-watching on Penny Lane, John is a mile away, hiding in the tall grass of Strawberry Field. – Rob Sheffield, Dreaming the Beatles

“I told John to close his eyes because I could feel this tension between him and Paul. I did them (together) afterwards; I got them looking different ways because there was such a tension.”

ㅡ David Bailey about John Lennon and Paul McCartney  photoshoot in 1965

What things do you like best about Ringo?

Anon!!!!

I cannot emphasise enough how much I love Ringo. I just adore him. First of all, I love how much the other three loved him. I love Paul going "Ringo was like a GI!" and even John being tongue-tied and dippy about him having a car and a beard and a proper career when they were just stupid little boys. I love his low, gorgeous voice and his lovely teeth and his incredible blue eyes and the way his expression can go from "Catholic stained glass window saint" to "your cousin's cheeky ex-boyfriend who will fuck you into oblivion behind the offy" in two seconds flat. I love how supremely self-confident and secure he always was about loving other people, his propensity for giving and receiving cuddles, his devotion to his friends. I love his redemption arc! He had a shit start in life, he identified that he was an alcoholic and he dealt with it. Happy 35 years Ringo! I love the way he refused to throw Paul under the bus and insisted he'd always love George no matter what legalese was chucked at him from that quarter, and the way he looked after John when nobody else did. I love him insisting flatly and with northern sincerity that he's seen John twice since he died. I just love him so much, the metronome, the heartbeat of it all, I AM THE FUCKING CLICK TRACK

The Beatles: a summary