1966 💭

I suspect that Paul was a lot like his mother. As you said, there's really no way to know what she was like, but I felt like I understood a little more about Paul after learning that Mary had grown up in abject poverty, and that she said nothing but made sure the house was clean and the kids' lunches were packed before going to the hospital to die. :(

Absolutely. Mary had it rough growing up, her mother died when she was young, her father moved the family to Ireland to try farming, had to move them back to Liverpool when he proved to be kind of bad at it, and then he got married to a stepmother that hated Mary. Mary reputedly ran away from home and signed on to be a nurse after her stepmother slapped her. She insisted on being her own person until she met Jim in a bomb shelter and they hit it off.

I think about that parallel a lot because Paul was also similarly furious about being struck by a parent figure (there's a fan interview from 1965 maybe? where Paul, with George as a witness, made a jibe that he'd had enough of being struck by his father). John has that quote about how "your dad can't do anything to you, you could kill him if you wanted to" or something like that which in hindsight really reads like John telling Paul not to put up with being kicked around anymore. And then there's the fact that Paul dropped out of school to run away to Hamburg with John which...

Paul has a lot in common with his mother. Paul and Mary shared a lot of hardnosed qualities where they are both willing to abandon unsalvageable situations and they don't put up with being disrespected. They even both ran away from home...though eventually Paul went back. His relationship with his dad was really shot through with a lot resentment and sadness.

And yeah, Mary looking after the kids and putting them over her health, and the way she said nothing the day she went to the hospital. Jim was a similar way, he couldn't verbalize his feelings either. It's easy to see why Paul struggles so much with putting words to his feelings, not just that he's uncomfortable doing it but that he doesn't know what he is feeling unless he uses music to access it.

John Lennon at The Beach Boys concert for UNICEF in Paris, December 16, 1967.

okay but can we PLEASE talk about the absolute LIES some of you spread about john lennon’s looks?? “ugly”?? “not handsome”?? are we LOOKING at the same man??

because let’s dissect this crime against humanity:

- that face is LITERALLY a medieval portrait come to life—aristocratic oval, sharp yet delicate, like someone carved him out of history itself

- the EYES. THE EYES. hypnotic almond shape, long straight lashes, the kind of gaze that could either seduce you or dissect your soul

- THE NOSE!!! (we don’t even need to elaborate. it’s a sculpture.)

- and his aura?? PURE SUNLIT CHAOS. a smiley, wild-haired ginger cat with the energy of a flaming comet. fire incarnate.

He had this magnetic pull that attracted everyone

this man was art in human form. if you disagree, i respect your right to be objectively wrong (and also fear for your vision).

...and yes, you could just fall asleep in those straight, bushy eyebrows of his...

ARIES RISING

JOHN LENNON

happy global beatles day here's a johnny :3

Sorry for taking so long on this post, I've been writing it in my head for weeks trying to figure out how to phrase everything. But umm I think Paul was in a bath tub when he was taking certain photos of John.

So the book itself is divided into sections based on location. There's a London section, a Paris section, then they go to New York and then on to Miami, etc. The London section is really interesting and the photos are very revealing IMO. I definitely recommend getting your hands on a physical copy, your local library may have it. This is something you should experience physically because uh. There's a lot of John in here. To me at least it's very obvious how deeply in love Paul was with John.

So imagine for a minute that you're Paul McCartney, and you're in London, England with your best mate.

The way that journalists are treating this set of photos makes me feel a little insane because so many of them are saying "this is John and Paul backstage!" Y'all, this is not John and Paul backstage. This is John and Paul in their hotel room. Alone.

First off let's look at this:

Here's John shaving the stubble off his face. Sunglasses still on; John had prescription sunglasses so if he's wearing these then his contacts are not in. Look at the background of this photo:

John's in the way here but that is a set of curtains in a hotel room! You can tell from the horizontal bar on top, those are to hold the black out curtains. And another thing: I think these are John and Paul's suitcases sitting on top of a wardrobe. Not entirely sure about that though since the image is so grainy.

At this point John has taken off his sunglasses, he's brushing his teeth and has washed his face. Again, look at the background:

This is a medicine cabinet, a storage feature in bathrooms to keep toiletries safe from the humidity caused by a bath and/or shower. I don't know how common these are anymore:

What I find interesting about this sequence of photos is that John first pulls a funny face for Paul:

But then something grabs his attention:

Spits out the toothpaste:

And then off John nyooms...making soft eyes at Paul no less.

Pay close attention to the background on this photo! We're seeing the hotel window from another angle, the horizontal strip at the top is the tell:

I outlined the horizontal strip on the curtain and then drew lines on the dips in the fabric so you can compare it to the OG photo:

Paul is utilizing an interesting run-and-gun style of camera shooting here, he's got John tilted and at an angle that puts John over Paul. Unconsciously signaling something? Let's move on...

According to this strip...

...this is the next photo in the sequence:

Again calling attention to more interesting details here:

John's tie is missing and his shirt is undone. And that looks like a towel in his hands. He's turning in for the night.

2. John is standing in front of a reinforced door which are common in hotels but are not common in dressing rooms:

3. This photo is itself a reflection of John's face that Paul has taken in a mirror, maybe a vanity mirror. Someone in the McLen discord server said it was too small to be a vanity mirror and I'm inclined to agree, so maybe it's a compact or hand mirror propped up on the sink.

So what does this mean? I think that John and Paul were getting ready for bed, someone knocked on the door, and John went to answer it. You'd think Paul would but for some reason he didn't. Oh and another thing...check out the four jackets in the mirror:

They're definitely hanging from something so John and Paul were looking out for the suits that night.

Next in the sequence, John is back at the sink washing up. Check out the hotel window curtain being reflected in the mirror there!

Then something kind of odd happens...John is seen coming back and re-entering the shot again? Through out Eye of the Storm Paul emphasizes a lot of duality with John, including a shot where John reflects on his own sculpted face. Paul was very interested in John doing performing the act of reflection on his own face:

But here's the really interesting bit and what makes me think Paul was naked in a bathtub when he took these last two photos:

Y'all, that's the fluffy fringe of a towel! You can tell that the threads are hanging down from it! These are very different from the clean lines of the curtain or the medicine cabinet or even the lines of their suit jackets! Paul was sitting in or on the edge of the bath tub when he took these photos of John! He wrapped a towel around his camera to protect it from getting wet! Cameras are generally made for right handed people so when Paul had his finger on the button on the right hand side. That means Paul keeping his finger on that button pushed the edge of the protective towel over the lens!

So I submit to you Paul McCartney's Eye of the Storm, where he submitted a film strip where he was staying in a hotel room with John and was most likely nude and bathing when he took John's photographs! Someone knocked on the door to get their attention while Paul was naked so John answered the door for them, while Paul followed him a little. John was enjoying having Paul right there for him too:

PLEASE get Eye of the Storm, it's such a great book and there's so much in it. Paul lets the pictures speak for themselves and wow they have one hell of a story to tell!

@perasperaadastratoday

paul mccartney

john lenny

A friend of mine just described his sexual fantasy to me — John Lennon in a fox kigurumi