Macca messages me

Some of my firends do Facebook, some don't. For a few It's the only way I can raise them, they've given up on email. Oh I'm fairly paranoid too - I don't give Zuch my real date of birth and I don't post personal info or family photos and definitely not those things that some folk post - "here I am at the airport", "here I am on a cruise ship" or whatever, d'oh! Nor politics as a general rule. You'll find lots of snaps of places we've been, on holiday or walking but never till after we've got home. 

I do follow a few sites but I rarely comment (ok, Democracy Man, your page might be an exception to that, you probably feel my finger twitching as soon as you've posted something). And it's always better for one's mood not to get into an online spat.

One of the sites I follow is a Beatles site called Abbey Road Tribute. It's actually to promote a USA based tribute act but does much more than it says on the tin, ranging across all matters Beatles related. There's a chap called Boris, a Russian living in Russia, who has access - I don't know how - to an enormous archive of rarely seen photos. For example, recently there was a batch from Paul McCartney's 21st birthday party, held at his Auntie Gin's house. It must have been a fairly large house, though there was also some kind of large tent in the garden, as the Fourmost played and the Shadows and Billy J Kramer were there as well as all sorts of friends and relatives. Here's a photo of Macca with Jane Asher that day:

Another showed him blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.  I've learned a lot of stuff from the site; it's very well curated. 

Recently there was a tribute - well more of a critical review - of the Abbey Road album. It caught my attention partly because of its starting proposition - that the Beatles were hoping to bounce back after the "serious downer" of the Get Back sessions and wanted to make "one more like we used to" as Paul phrased it to George Martin. But also because it said, as commonly held, that the band still weren't getting along, their musical interests continued to diverge, John didn't really want to continue with the Beatles and while Paul did, only on his own terms which meant setting the pace and getting what he wanted. Which was all pretty much the received wisdom from the well known arguments between the band at the time.

The review went on to say, if this was really to be the end, "what a finish...a band still in its prime, capable of songwriting and recording feats other groups could only envy". Lauding many of the tracks, even the two "silly, childlike" songs Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Octopus's Garden the only track that didn't hit the spot for the reviewer was Lennon's I Want You (She's So Heavy), saying

"..if you've never seen the attraction of [John's song] and sometimes find yourself skipping ahead to George's... "Here Comes The Sun"...[it] is certainly a singular item in the Beatles discography with its extreme repetition, stark simplicity.... it requires a certain kind of mood to appreciate"

So what did I make of that? Having recently watched the full 468 minutes - just shy of eight hours - of Peter Jackson's Get Back it was clear that, while there were still tensions, the relationship between the Beatles at that time was much more complex than the daggers drawn story usually held to be the case and indeed shown that way in the original, heavily edited 80 minute long Let It Be film of the same sessions, leading up to the famous rooftop concert. So this time I did comment, on the following lines:

"Having watched all of Get Back it's not clear to me that John didn't want the Beatles to continue in some way. He was still firing ideas off Paul and was pleased to record Ballad of J & Y with him. George was also pondering how they could do solo and joint projects. After all, they were back in the studio recording Abbey Road within a month or so of the end of the Get Back sessions. Recruiting [Allen] Klein probably soured it permanently, though it's not clear that was John's intention. Be that as it may (or not) I'm grateful that they made Abbey Road, my favourite album of theirs (and probably of anybody's) even though I've never liked Maxwell's SH. It's in the tradition of Beatles songs though. I Want You isn't but I've always LOVED it."

Soon afterwards my phone pinged and there were several "likes" for my comment. Including a "heart" emoji from - er, Paul McCartney (see third on the list here):

Oh yeh, I thought, why do they let someone use that as a pseudonym? Except on checking it came from Macca's official Facebook page, which is definitely pukka and features well curated material on his current activities, solo career and the Beatles:

Now I'm not daft enough to think that Sir Paul McCartney, the first British musician to be a billionaire according to this year's Sunday Times Rich List, was reading my comment at 9am, wherever he was in the world that day, and messaging me. He no doubt has a large PR team who carefully monitor what's being said about him and are delegated to reply, perhaps to encourage any rewriting of history that suits their current message, maybe that he and John were aways really friends and quite possibly would have worked together again one day had John lived. 

But it was curious to see a response from "Paul McCartney" pop up on my phone. Especially as I don't like Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

P.S. I may get round to writing a review of the Get Back film to save any of you having to sit through all 8 hours of it though, for keen Beatles fans, it's a must; absolutely fascinating. The biggest surprise to me, given the received wisdom above about Lennon wanting to end the Beatles, was his attitude and demeanour. Oh there were tensions alright, mainly between Paul and George. But Lennon was generally Tiggerish in his enthusiasm, had boundless patience (well you obviously have to in a studio, especially one that hasn't been set up properly, while engineers fuss around you) and permanently constructive. There was little if any of the biting sarcasm and scepticism that I'd expected. And his face frequently lit up in delight when he liked something Paul came up with, sometimes bouncing off his seat (Yoko sitting silently next to him on his amp of course) to join in with a guitar riff, for example. Or fooling around filling in time (and having loads of fun) doing silly accents with Paul on endless runs through of the song Two Of Us. Indeed George's face lit up many times in similar fashion, especially once they got out of the ridiculous film hangar at Twickenham and repaired to the (part built) recording studio in the more familiar surroundings of the Apple Savile Row offices. But there was so much more to report on, so maybe I will get round to my write up. And my personal theory of why the Beatles break up became so acrimonious after Abbey Road was in the can.

The Abbey Road Tribute site is on Facebook here (https://www.facebook.com/AbbeyRoadTribute?locale=en_GB)

Paul McCartney's official Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/PaulMcCartney/?locale=en_GB)

My "official" (haha) Facebook site is here (https://www.facebook.com/phil.holden.7758). It's great if you like photos of Anglesey in particular. You don't need to have a Facebook account to view it