PAUL, Backstage After A Wings Concert, 1976, ©️ Harry Benson

What if this is the last image that flashes through my mind when I die?

PAUL MCCARTNEY  on the rooftop of 3 Savile Row, ahead of the Beatles’ final live performance ; January 30, 1969.

Bouncy

This is a treasure trove. 🙌

The Beatles & Noël Coward

The songwriting ambitions of Wooler and the Lennon-McCartney team provided a rich topic of conversation. "I used to discuss this chiefly with Paul," said Wooler. "I did discuss songs with John, but he wasn't interested in my kind of songs. Whereas Paul McCartney was interested in what I had to say about songs, and Noël Coward, for instance. I talked to him about Noël Coward and how clever and how witty he was. And this is what I miss about rock'n'roll songs, the absence of wit. There's so very few of them have any wit about them. Which is very sad. They're all rather long-suffering, these songs. And all this pall rather appalled me. 'When I'm Sixty-Four' is really, I think, the only witty Beatles song, which is essentially a McCartney number. When I used to announce Paul at the Cavern, occasionally I'd say, 'Now Paul's going to sing a song of his own he's written; he's the Noël Coward of rock'n'roll!' I think he liked that appellation, that description."

- Gillian G. Gaar, 'I AM THE DJ: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CAVERN'S BOB WOOLER', Goldmine (8 November 1996)

John and Paul meet Noël Coward at Alma Cogan's party at her London apartment, 1-4 June 1964.*

[Coward] found them 'pleasant young men, quite well behaved and with an amusing way of speaking'. [...] Though [Coward's] background was not so very different from the Beatles' - his father was an impoverished piano salesman - he swiftly assimilated into high society, readily adopting the mannerisms and accents of the English upper classes. Small wonder, then, that the current rise of working-class culture held so little appeal for him. [...] Coward made the mistake of relaying his encounter with John and Paul, in derogatory terms, to David Lewin of the Daily Mail. It never occurred to him that Lewin would quote him in print complaining that the Beatles were 'totally devoid of talent. There is a great deal of noise. In my day, the young were taught to be seen but not heard - which is no bad thing.'

- Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (2020)

(*Craig Brown dates this meeting as 6 June, however the Beatles - minus Ringo - were in Amsterdam on this date, and the party was in London. Lewin's article is published on Friday 5 June 1964 and refers to Coward's 'last day' of his visit to Britain 'this week' - therefore more likely 1-4 June.)

A year later, Coward sees the Beatles in concert at the Teatro Adriano in Rome, 27 July 1965, and afterwards goes to meet them at their hotel.

PAUL: Brian came and said, 'Noel Coward would like to meet you boys.' We all said, 'Oh, fucking hell, no! No, no, no. I'm going to bed.' Nobody was really keen, we were better just casually interacting with people. Once you actually had to meet them, it became a bit official and our black humour would kick in and we'd try and counteract the fact that four of us were going to have to line up to meet the great man, so piss-takes would come fairly readily. No one was going to go, and Brian said, 'You can't, you just can't!' So I went down and met him. But then he said some not too pleasant things about us after that, so fuck him anyway.

- Paul in Barry Miles, Many Years From Now (1997)

...I was told that the Beatles refused to see me because that ass David Lewin had quoted me saying unflattering things about them months ago. I thought this graceless in the extreme, but decided to play it with firmness and dignity. I asked Wendy [Hanson, the Beatles' publicist] to go and fetch one of them and she finally reappeared with Paul McCartney and I explained gently but firmly that one did not pay much attention to the statements of newspaper reporters. The poor boy was quite amiable and I sent messages of congratulation to his colleagues, although the message I would have liked to send them was that they were bad-mannered little shits.

- Noël Coward's diary entry for 4 July 1965, referring to 27 June. (x)

This is a lot of things. This is a thing, as David Lynch would say. What this also is, is fucking hot as fuck.

This is what they are talking about in that quote about Paul setting John on people he didn’t like and enjoying watching John eviscerate people.

This is leader of the gang level bullying and Paul was never in John’s gang. These two arrogant fucks knew they were special.

Paul McCartney & John Lennon photographed by fan Denise Werneck leaving the EMI Studios, on March 6, 1967

Here, there and everywhere.

ohhhh judas betrayed jesus with a kiss. ok i’ll do u one better. john lennon and paul mccartney morphed into one horrible tragic being that transformed western culture as we know it. paul has just been nominated for a grammy for a song that john wrote before he was murdered over forty years ago. john wanted a divorce and paul wanted to kill himself. they grew up together. they turned into each other. they weren’t gay they were something much much worse and whatever it was still lives and breathes in practically every song you’ve ever listened to. also they masturbated in the same room once or twice

Who was writing all them songs? In your room.

THE BEATLES WHERE THE FIRST BAND TO...

Be in the British Invasion (The started it).

Play a stadium concert.

Ever record a music video.

Do a worldwide satellite broadcast. 

Use feedback in a recording.

Use electric keyboard and synthesizers in songs.

Use sampling in their songs.

Use a sitar in popular music.

Have ALL members sing lead vocals. 

Have a radio single go over the standard 2-3 minutes in length.

Have their drummer sit on a higher platform than the rest in concerts.

Have one song dissolve into another. 

Make a concept album. 

Hold the #1 spot on American and British charts simultaneously. 

Debut in the top 10 on U.S charts. 

Release an album with more than 10 songs.

Write more than half the songs in an album.

Use a harmonica in a rock single.

Star in a feature film.

Record sound in their song only a dog can hear. 

Have their lyrics printed in the jacket of the record.

Release an album with a completely blank cover.

Use headphone monitors in the recording studio. 

Use backwards vocals in recordings. 

Use a full orchestra in popular music.

Use the guiro and claves in rock.

Do an album of all original songs.

Create experimental sounds in the studio.

Utilize psychedelic rock.

And the list goes on…

This is so future nostalgia coded. He DECIDED to do this. He made a conscious choice. What must it be like to live inside his mind?

If I had three wishes they would be for three conversations with him. The first would be on a cross country road trip. Playlists and chat. Can you imagine?

The Quarry Men with Arthur Kelly, George Harrison and John Lennon (circa 1958)

The Fritz Session, 9th April 1969, photo by Bruce McBroom

The cover of Rolling Stone №57 (April 30, 1970 with interview about Paul's first solo album McCartney), photo by Linda Eastman (McCartney)