Sunday, September 11, 2016

Paul's Reference At The 7/1/66 Concert To Being "Relocated"

I watched the entire July 1st. 1966 concert The Beatles gave at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan.  I'm convinced that this was our Paul at this concert and at the evening concert given on June 30th. 1966.  You can hear the full concert on YouTube at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhYh4PDMA-Y  and watch it on Dailymotion at:  http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2v24z7_1966-07-01-beatles-budokan-full-concert_music .

Near the end of the concert--right before they sing "I'm Down"--Paul says the following:  "Well, yes, thank you, this, this next song, now, ah, will have to, well, be our last song for this afternoon.  And, so, before we go we'd like to say to everybody:  Thank you for coming.  Thank you very much and we hope you've enjoyed it.  [his voice drops]  And, uh, yeah, so as we say in Runcorn:  [with emotion] sayonara."

What is this reference to Runcorn?

Runcorn was one of the towns designated a "new town" by the English government after World War 2.  These towns were either entirely concocted from scratch or--as in the case of Runcorn, for example--were relocations of old existing towns.  So there was an OLD Runcorn that had existed since ~A.D. 913 and a NEW Runcorn east of the old town that began its existence by decree of the English Government in April. 1964.  For information sake, the purpose of the new towns were to relocate poor people out of bombed-out or run-down housing or to house poor people of larger cities in smaller towns close to those cities.

Paul was aware of an old Runcorn and a new Runcorn* and I believe was making a rueful comment about being moved out of the old town {read, band) to a new town--in other words, being ousted from the group.  So he was saying good-bye in JAPAN to being a member of The Beatles.

          *Possibly because Brian Epstein's personal assistant, Alistair Taylor, had been born in Runcorn.  There is also the possibility that Paul was thinking about "retiring" to the new farm he had bought in Scotland, two weeks' prior.  Alistair Taylor had helped negotiate the purchase of the farm for Paul. 

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