I am reading English singer Marianne Faithfull's autobiography, Faithfull: An Autobiography (with David Dalton; Little Brown, 1994). She and her husband John Dunbar were friends of Paul.
There is a story floating around that Paul had a romantic relationship with Maggie McGivern, who was, supposedly, a nanny for Faithfull and Dunbar's infant son, Nicholas. Their son was born in November, 1965 and McGivern, according to the story, would have become the Dunbar's first nanny soon after that, because the story talks about Paul and McGivern's relationship turning serious during The Beatles' recording of the Revolver album, six months after Paul and McGivern's first meeting.
Interestingly, Faithfull never mentions McGivern in her memoir. Since there are later photos with McGivern and the Paul replacement, who McGivern did have a relationship with, you wonder whether she pushed back the time of the relationship to give a continuity between Paul and the replacement.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
The Lost Beatles (continued)
In the last post, I described the Bob Bonis photograph collection book I read. Again, I don't think Paul or John came to America on the last Beatles tour of 1966.
In my December 7, 2010 post, I told you about the website that has photographs from the book. It's at: http://www.nfagallery.com . (And, again, this isn't an advertisement for the site or book.)
They've changed some of the photographs, but if you take a look at the Paul McCartney labeled photos [click on photographs on the left of the site and then click on Paul McCartney], you can see in photos #6 and 15 from Cincinnati; #17 from Philadelphia; and #25 from Detroit (all from the 1966 tour, although the Detroit photos are mislabeled at first as 1965), the subtle differences in the facial features of "Paul." It wasn't Paul.
In my December 7, 2010 post, I told you about the website that has photographs from the book. It's at: http://www.nfagallery.com . (And, again, this isn't an advertisement for the site or book.)
They've changed some of the photographs, but if you take a look at the Paul McCartney labeled photos [click on photographs on the left of the site and then click on Paul McCartney], you can see in photos #6 and 15 from Cincinnati; #17 from Philadelphia; and #25 from Detroit (all from the 1966 tour, although the Detroit photos are mislabeled at first as 1965), the subtle differences in the facial features of "Paul." It wasn't Paul.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Lost Beatles
I recently read The Lost Beatles Photographs The Bob Bonis Archive 1964-1966 by Larry Marion (!t [HarperCollins] publ., 2011). Bonis was the tour manager for all three of The Beatles' U.S. tours. He loved photography and took almost 900 photographs of John, Paul, George and Ringo. I pored over the photographs and have grimly concluded that Paul (and John) never made it to America on the 1966 tour.
In the mockumentary about The Beatles, The Rutles All You Need Is Cash, they interviewed Mick Jagger. He said that The Beatles played so far away from the fans that they could have put anyone on stage and who would know the difference? I believe that is what happened to Paul (and John) in 1966.
The common timeline of Paul disappearing has been sometime in September, 1966. From what I saw in these photographs, I would push back the date to AUGUST, 1966.
In the mockumentary about The Beatles, The Rutles All You Need Is Cash, they interviewed Mick Jagger. He said that The Beatles played so far away from the fans that they could have put anyone on stage and who would know the difference? I believe that is what happened to Paul (and John) in 1966.
The common timeline of Paul disappearing has been sometime in September, 1966. From what I saw in these photographs, I would push back the date to AUGUST, 1966.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
A Interesting Song from Madeline Bell
I mentioned in my post of August 10th. the possibility that Paul had a relationship with the American-turned-English soul singer Madeline Bell. I found a song she sang for her first album, Bell's A-Poppin that I (intuitively) feel was about Paul. The album was released in the UK in 1967 and the song has the heavy-handed orchestration that was typical of the post mid-1960's B/Featles. Listen to the song on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzgHIUZ81w . Here are the lyrics:
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Before time can draw the line
And cut you down to her size.
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Tell me how long will it take
Before you finally realize
That the carnival is over
And you've seen much better days.
You have wasted too much time
In too many different ways.
You denied a possibility of
Growing old.
You are filled with false humility.
Oh, much too bold.
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Tell me how long will it take
Before you finally realize
That you're in this game the same as me
Although you think you're not.
When you try to lie above it all
You get just what you got.
Seems to me you're slipping
You seem slightly unnerved.
When you finally see yourself
You get what you deserve.
Bell sings the song in a such a clipped, tight way it definitely seems to be a song she was aiming at someone. That someone could have been Paul.
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Before time can draw the line
And cut you down to her size.
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Tell me how long will it take
Before you finally realize
That the carnival is over
And you've seen much better days.
You have wasted too much time
In too many different ways.
You denied a possibility of
Growing old.
You are filled with false humility.
Oh, much too bold.
Beat the clock.
Try to make it stop.
Tell me how long will it take
Before you finally realize
That you're in this game the same as me
Although you think you're not.
When you try to lie above it all
You get just what you got.
Seems to me you're slipping
You seem slightly unnerved.
When you finally see yourself
You get what you deserve.
Bell sings the song in a such a clipped, tight way it definitely seems to be a song she was aiming at someone. That someone could have been Paul.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Where Did All The Pauls Go?
When you start researching Paul McCartney's disappearance in 1966, you assume there was Paul and then there was his one replacement who shows up in November, 1966. It's a little unnerving at first as you delve into the mystery and find that there were several other Pauls who were photographed at various times from 1963-1966.
One was a Paul who appeared on the Beatles' 1966 tour, (see photo on right.)
And you start wondering, what happened to these "other Pauls"?
I was looking for photos of Paul in 1966 and I found a photo of what looks like the "Paul" on the right.
Check out the photo at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_first_rays/5468694697/
This photo is captioned Paul McCartney 1969. Not our Paul but a Paul.
And you start wondering, what happened to these "other Pauls"?
I was looking for photos of Paul in 1966 and I found a photo of what looks like the "Paul" on the right.
Check out the photo at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_first_rays/5468694697/
This photo is captioned Paul McCartney 1969. Not our Paul but a Paul.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Unforgettable
A cd was released in March, 2011 by the His Master's Choice label--HMC 011--that contains parts of Paul's Christmas gift to the other Beatles that Paul recorded in November, 1965. Paul reportedly had four acetate records made of the tape he recorded: three were for the other Beatles and one record was supposed to have gone to Jane Asher.
The His Master's Choice rerecording is taken from a tape of Paul and John's "recovered from the Lennon archives." The cd is called Unforgettable.
Paul and John used the tape to record song demos and John recorded over Paul's gift recording (see my last post about John's excerpt from Tales of Mrs. Tigglywinkle.)
The liner notes for the Unforgettable cd say that Paul was imitating a disc jockey and the cd had what survived of the original record--5 songs and Paul's introduction to them.
The songs give an idea of Paul's thinking at the end of 1965.
The songs are:
1.) Someone Ain't Right, cowritten by Doris Payne (a pen name for the singer Doris Troy. More about her later.) and Gregory Carroll. The song Paul played on the tape was Peter and Gordon's recording for their 1965 album, Hurtin' 'n' Lovin'.
2.) I Get Around, the Beach Boys' record.
3.) Don't Be Cruel, by Elvis Presley
4.) ( Love is Like a) Heat Wave, by Martha and the Vandellas
5.) Down Home Girl, by The Rolling Stones.
The lyrics of Someone Ain't Right describes Paul's relationship with Jane (?). It talks about how the girl is avoiding him and how she had better make up her mind to be his. The interesting part of the song is the lyrics that suggest that they weren't together "physically":
Don't think you're clever
Because you never
Oooooo me, ee.
Paul was supposed to have had a romantic relationship with Jane. So the song suggests that wasn't the case.
The I Get Around lyrics are interesting because they talk about how Paul is tiring of his current situation and how The Beatles are threatened:
I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip,
I gotta finda new place where the kids are hip.
---And---
My buddies and me are getting real well known;
Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone.
The Don't Be Cruel lyrics are similar in tone to the Someone Ain't Right lyrics:
You know I can be found
Sitting home all alone.
If you can't come around,
At least please telephone.
The Heat Wave lyrics describe a love relationship, but with Paul it was also talking about other things that were happening to him:
Sometimes I stare in space
Tears all over my face.
I can't explain it, don't understand it:
I ain't never felt like this before.
But that doesn't mean it has me amazed,
I don't know what to do, my head's in a haze,
But the last song--Down Home Girl--is the most interesting. The lyrics talk about a girl whose perfume smells like turnips and kisses taste like pork and beans. Is that Jane Asher? The song describes a girl who dances in clubs:
Everytime you monkey [note: a 1960's dance] girl
You take my breath away.
But the most unusual lines are:
I'm gonna take you back to New Orleans
Down in Dixieland
--And--
I can tell by your giant step
You been walkin' through cotton fields . . . [!]
This is clearly not Jane Asher. The song suggests that she was a black girl. Who was she?
It could have been Doris Troy. She wasn't a Southerner but she was an American. She cowrote and sang the 1963 pop hit, Just One Look. She first visited England in 1965 where she sang back up vocals to Dusty Springfield's song, In The Middle of Nowhere. (Remember The Beatles' Nowhere Man? I connected the song with the contents of a play I think was used to menace Paul. See my post of April 23, 2011.) Troy moved to England in 1966 (or 1969, depending on the source) and made a career of singing background for The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Dusty Springfield and others. She also was signed to Apple records by George Harrison in 1969, which suggests she had a past connection with The Beatles.
But I'm thinking the black woman Paul apparently had a relationship with had a stronger personality than Troy because of Paul's 1966 interview with journalist Maureen Cleave where speaking of America he said, "And it's a lousy country where anyone who is black is made to seem a dirty n*gger. There is a statue of a good Negro duffing his hat and being polite in the gutter. I saw a picture of it." Paul might have been wanting to sour the future of the replacement Beatles (he knew he was leaving the group and that the "powers that be" had plans to keep the group going with look-alikes), but I also think his statement sounds like a man in love who was trying to impress the woman he was in love with.
There's a possibility the black woman was Madeline Bell. She is a soul/r and b singer from New Jersey who toured England and the rest of Europe in 1962 and 1963 in the Langston Hughes' play, Black Nativity. She stayed in England after the close of the play and worked singing back-up gigs. With Doris Troy, she sang back-up to In The Middle of Nowhere. She became a close friend of Dusty Springfield and lived with her in several flats in 1965 and 1966. It's interesting that in the 1966 French film that I think was about Paul--Masculin Feminin--the Paul character's love interest is a singer named Madeleine. Madeleine in the film might be a composite of Ms. Bell and a (yet to be identified) French ye-ye singer that Paul was apparently in love with. Also suggesting a connection, Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas was a close friend of Dusty Springfield. (Springfield was credited (as they say) with helping popularize Motown record music in England when she convinced the producers of Ready, Steady, Go, the British TV music show she hosted, to film a special featuring Motown music. She met Martha Reeves on the special and sang with her.) So there are two direct connections in Paul's choice of songs--Doris Troy and Martha Reeves--and the possible indirect connection of Madeline Bell.
And, again, this opens up a new avenue to explore in finding out what happened to Paul.
The His Master's Choice rerecording is taken from a tape of Paul and John's "recovered from the Lennon archives." The cd is called Unforgettable.
Paul and John used the tape to record song demos and John recorded over Paul's gift recording (see my last post about John's excerpt from Tales of Mrs. Tigglywinkle.)
The liner notes for the Unforgettable cd say that Paul was imitating a disc jockey and the cd had what survived of the original record--5 songs and Paul's introduction to them.
The songs give an idea of Paul's thinking at the end of 1965.
The songs are:
1.) Someone Ain't Right, cowritten by Doris Payne (a pen name for the singer Doris Troy. More about her later.) and Gregory Carroll. The song Paul played on the tape was Peter and Gordon's recording for their 1965 album, Hurtin' 'n' Lovin'.
2.) I Get Around, the Beach Boys' record.
3.) Don't Be Cruel, by Elvis Presley
4.) ( Love is Like a) Heat Wave, by Martha and the Vandellas
5.) Down Home Girl, by The Rolling Stones.
The lyrics of Someone Ain't Right describes Paul's relationship with Jane (?). It talks about how the girl is avoiding him and how she had better make up her mind to be his. The interesting part of the song is the lyrics that suggest that they weren't together "physically":
Don't think you're clever
Because you never
Oooooo me, ee.
Paul was supposed to have had a romantic relationship with Jane. So the song suggests that wasn't the case.
The I Get Around lyrics are interesting because they talk about how Paul is tiring of his current situation and how The Beatles are threatened:
I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip,
I gotta finda new place where the kids are hip.
---And---
My buddies and me are getting real well known;
Yeah, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone.
The Don't Be Cruel lyrics are similar in tone to the Someone Ain't Right lyrics:
You know I can be found
Sitting home all alone.
If you can't come around,
At least please telephone.
The Heat Wave lyrics describe a love relationship, but with Paul it was also talking about other things that were happening to him:
Sometimes I stare in space
Tears all over my face.
I can't explain it, don't understand it:
I ain't never felt like this before.
But that doesn't mean it has me amazed,
I don't know what to do, my head's in a haze,
But the last song--Down Home Girl--is the most interesting. The lyrics talk about a girl whose perfume smells like turnips and kisses taste like pork and beans. Is that Jane Asher? The song describes a girl who dances in clubs:
Everytime you monkey [note: a 1960's dance] girl
You take my breath away.
But the most unusual lines are:
I'm gonna take you back to New Orleans
Down in Dixieland
--And--
I can tell by your giant step
You been walkin' through cotton fields . . . [!]
This is clearly not Jane Asher. The song suggests that she was a black girl. Who was she?
It could have been Doris Troy. She wasn't a Southerner but she was an American. She cowrote and sang the 1963 pop hit, Just One Look. She first visited England in 1965 where she sang back up vocals to Dusty Springfield's song, In The Middle of Nowhere. (Remember The Beatles' Nowhere Man? I connected the song with the contents of a play I think was used to menace Paul. See my post of April 23, 2011.) Troy moved to England in 1966 (or 1969, depending on the source) and made a career of singing background for The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Dusty Springfield and others. She also was signed to Apple records by George Harrison in 1969, which suggests she had a past connection with The Beatles.
But I'm thinking the black woman Paul apparently had a relationship with had a stronger personality than Troy because of Paul's 1966 interview with journalist Maureen Cleave where speaking of America he said, "And it's a lousy country where anyone who is black is made to seem a dirty n*gger. There is a statue of a good Negro duffing his hat and being polite in the gutter. I saw a picture of it." Paul might have been wanting to sour the future of the replacement Beatles (he knew he was leaving the group and that the "powers that be" had plans to keep the group going with look-alikes), but I also think his statement sounds like a man in love who was trying to impress the woman he was in love with.
There's a possibility the black woman was Madeline Bell. She is a soul/r and b singer from New Jersey who toured England and the rest of Europe in 1962 and 1963 in the Langston Hughes' play, Black Nativity. She stayed in England after the close of the play and worked singing back-up gigs. With Doris Troy, she sang back-up to In The Middle of Nowhere. She became a close friend of Dusty Springfield and lived with her in several flats in 1965 and 1966. It's interesting that in the 1966 French film that I think was about Paul--Masculin Feminin--the Paul character's love interest is a singer named Madeleine. Madeleine in the film might be a composite of Ms. Bell and a (yet to be identified) French ye-ye singer that Paul was apparently in love with. Also suggesting a connection, Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas was a close friend of Dusty Springfield. (Springfield was credited (as they say) with helping popularize Motown record music in England when she convinced the producers of Ready, Steady, Go, the British TV music show she hosted, to film a special featuring Motown music. She met Martha Reeves on the special and sang with her.) So there are two direct connections in Paul's choice of songs--Doris Troy and Martha Reeves--and the possible indirect connection of Madeline Bell.
And, again, this opens up a new avenue to explore in finding out what happened to Paul.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Lucy
The name Lucy (or the variant, Lucie) is mentioned by Paul, John and replacement John [the man who replaced John Lennon beginning in 1966] from 1965-on:
1965: On the tape that had Paul's Christmas gift recording for the other Beatles (called Unforgettable), John recorded over it with a reading from children's author Beatrix Potter's book, The Tale of Mrs. Tigglywinkle which is about a little girl named Lucie who loses handkerchiefs and a pinafore and goes looking for them. (A passage from the book): "Lucie climbed upon the stile [a set of steps for passing over a fence or wall] and looked up the hill behind Little-town - a hill that goes up-up into the clouds as though it has no top!"
1966: Paul's quote from John Micheline's short story, "In the Bronx": "Lucy had no panties on." [Mispelled as "Lucie" in the article.] The boy in the short story goes to a playground and finds Lucy swinging on a swing. The air pushes her dress aside and she has no underwear underneath. He describes her as a wild girl. The boy takes her to a park and kisses her. She pulls away from him and tells him she will tell her boyfriend that the boy raped her. The next day, the boyfriend finds the boy and beats him up.
1967: Replacement John's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds about someone on an LSD trip and a girl named Lucy who appears and disappears throughout the experience.
1973: Replacement John's Bring on the Lucie (Freda People) which was supposed to be an anti-war song but has more personally-directed lyrics like:
[spoken word intro]: Alright boys, over the hill! . . .
We don't care what flag you're waving;
We don't even want to know your name.
We don't care where you're from or where you're going;
All we know is that you came.
You're making all our decisions . . . [This passage suggests that the B/Featles were not fully aware of who was behind the things happening to them; akin to Faul's Maybe I'm Amazed's lyric: "Maybe I'm a man, maybe I'm a lonely man who's in the middle of something that he doesn't really understand."]
Well, we were caught with our hands in the air . . .
We understand your paranoia,
But we don't want to play your game.
It's difficult to speculate how all the references connect, but it appears that Paul met a girl--or thought he did when he was in a hallucinatory state--possibly in a park--and something happened between them. An incident--or virtual incident--that could have been used against Paul.
1965: On the tape that had Paul's Christmas gift recording for the other Beatles (called Unforgettable), John recorded over it with a reading from children's author Beatrix Potter's book, The Tale of Mrs. Tigglywinkle which is about a little girl named Lucie who loses handkerchiefs and a pinafore and goes looking for them. (A passage from the book): "Lucie climbed upon the stile [a set of steps for passing over a fence or wall] and looked up the hill behind Little-town - a hill that goes up-up into the clouds as though it has no top!"
1966: Paul's quote from John Micheline's short story, "In the Bronx": "Lucy had no panties on." [Mispelled as "Lucie" in the article.] The boy in the short story goes to a playground and finds Lucy swinging on a swing. The air pushes her dress aside and she has no underwear underneath. He describes her as a wild girl. The boy takes her to a park and kisses her. She pulls away from him and tells him she will tell her boyfriend that the boy raped her. The next day, the boyfriend finds the boy and beats him up.
1967: Replacement John's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds about someone on an LSD trip and a girl named Lucy who appears and disappears throughout the experience.
1973: Replacement John's Bring on the Lucie (Freda People) which was supposed to be an anti-war song but has more personally-directed lyrics like:
[spoken word intro]: Alright boys, over the hill! . . .
We don't care what flag you're waving;
We don't even want to know your name.
We don't care where you're from or where you're going;
All we know is that you came.
You're making all our decisions . . . [This passage suggests that the B/Featles were not fully aware of who was behind the things happening to them; akin to Faul's Maybe I'm Amazed's lyric: "Maybe I'm a man, maybe I'm a lonely man who's in the middle of something that he doesn't really understand."]
Well, we were caught with our hands in the air . . .
We understand your paranoia,
But we don't want to play your game.
It's difficult to speculate how all the references connect, but it appears that Paul met a girl--or thought he did when he was in a hallucinatory state--possibly in a park--and something happened between them. An incident--or virtual incident--that could have been used against Paul.
