The English Class System

In 1966, filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker filmed a documentary of Bob Dylan that was later called Eat The Document.  On May 27, 1966, Pennebaker covered a limosine ride that Dylan and John Lennon  took.  Dylan was sick--he complained about a pain in his side and was on the verge of throwing up.  John Lennon,  who had been making droll, casual comments before he heard Dylan's health complaints, leaned forward and delivered this very direct and deliberate lecture, using an upper-class accent:
     "Come, come, boy, it's only a film, come, come.  Pull yourself together.  Another few dollars, eh?  That'll
      get your head up.  Come on, come on.  Money, money."   (at 4:15-4:22 in the video.  See the whole video at:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=695_AAQUmLk.

This sequence was not in the official cut according to the Youtube poster.

Brian Epstein carefully managed The Beatles' image, but every once in a while a photo surfaces of one of The Beatles looking tired and sick as this photo I found of Paul at http://www.acephotos.org/ shows:


In Andrew Loog Oldham's memoir, Stoned  A Memoir of London in the 1960's, Oldham talks about an English group who made it big in France:  Vince Taylor and the Playboys.  Oldham compared the social class attitudes of France and England (p. 118):
     "The refreshing thing about rockin' on the Cote d'Azur was that, in France rock and pop were celebrated, whereas in
England they were merely tolerated.  In England the warnings
were muted but persistent:  do not get above your station.  In  France an entertainer's success was welcomed and applauded, not scorned.  France had a completely different notion of class society to England."

Lennon thought the Dylan/Pennebaker documentary would be seen across America and Europe and he wanted, no doubt, to make a public statement to show the relentless exploitation that The Beatles were suffering under.  As they became popular, The Beatles started to fight back.  And I think the "butcher" cover and John's Jesus statement were part of the fight.  It remains to be shown if Paul and John successfully separated themselves from the disdainful exploitation.  But as I've been exploring in my blog, there are all kinds of red flags that Paul got tripped up somewhere in his attempt to exit this unprecedented situation.

The Beatles, I Think, Were In Dylan's Tree

The March 9, 1968 issue of Rolling Stone magazine had an article about the cover photograph of Bob Dylan's album, John Wesley Harding.  They said the photograph contained hidden images including the faces of The Beatles.  The tree directly behind Dylan when turned upside down has The Beatles faces in it.  John Berg, the man who took the photo for the cover, "acknowledged their presence" and "also spoke about the 'hand of God,' which he said was nestling along the right-hand side of the tree."
The album was released December 27, 1967.  The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album was released June 1, 1967 and their Magical Mystery Tour album was released November 27, 1967.  For all of the big-time denials of hidden images on the Beatles' albums, it's clear that Dylan was aware that the Beatles were hiding secrets on their albums and he followed suit.
As I said in my post of November 12th., Dylan met with Paul (and the other Beatles) extensively in May, 1966 and was obviously clued in to things happening to them.  He must have been told about problems in the group and he took this to heart as a poet and reflected it in at least one song, I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.
So for all the nay-sayers who doubt hidden images and song allusions, check out the tree in Dylan's 1967 album.

Here, There, and Everywhere

For everyone who was an original Beatles fan, you know what a thrill it was to get and play and discuss their albums.  I remember getting Revolver and poring over the tracks and, as usual, getting what the Brits call "value for money": 9 or 10 of the 11 American album tracks were excellent.

I remember originally hearing Here, There, and Everywhere and puzzling over it because it was supposed to be Paul singing lead, and it did NOT sound like Paul.

Listening to it now, I agree with my confusion as a kid:  I don't think it was Paul singing lead.  I believe it was either JOHN or George.

Listen to the track on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8THouU576WY  and compare it with the track of For No One that was clearly Paul on the lead:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6iAykoKLog .  The voices are definitely different.

Shattered Glass Revisited by The Rolling Stones' Manager

In Stoned  A Memoir of London in the 1960's by The Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham (St. Martin's Press, 2000), Oldham describes a conversation between Paul and John in 1964 when he rode with them back to London after The Beatles played a one night stand in Liverpool:
     "The humour took a macabre turn as John and Paul started to trip on what would happen if the windows
      of the Phantom V [note: John's new Rolls-Royce] zooming south suddenly shattered and splintered in
      their faces, turning them into unacceptably scarred and disfigured moptops, unable to carry on as part of
      the Fab Four now recognised the world over.
      'We'd have to be a fucking vaudeville act,' whooped John.
      'We'd have to have bear suits or masks . . . nobody could see us,' Paul harmonised."
Oldham's interpretation of the conversation was:
     "I watched and listened to this thrust and parry between the two writers and found it a little bit chilling to
      realise just how much they relished the idea of anonymity.  To the point of almost welcoming a shattering
      shower of glass that would splinter The Beatles and force them from the spotlight.  It was apparent that,
      for all the triumphs of the breathtaking past year . . . part of the dream was already over in early 64.  The
      eventual end of The Beatles was even then on the agenda of their informal bored meetings."

Oldham is suggesting, I think, that either:  1.) If Paul was in a car crash, it might have been a deliberate act
to take himself out of The Beatles; or 2.) That The Beatles staged an elaborate hoax to convince people that
Paul was dead in order for Paul to establish a lasting anonymity.

Neither theory makes sense because:  1.) Paul had many times expressed a desire to keep writing after The
Beatles stopped touring.  He wouldn't have needed a car crash or a hoax to get his wish; 2.) Oldham was
hinting that there might very well have been an incident involving shattering glass that disfigured Paul (and John?)  But there is too much anecdotal evidence in more recent books and contemporary (at
the time) lyrics by people who knew The Beatles that injuries that happened to Paul were not his doing.

But given Oldham's "telling" tale, I'm surprised the model car on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album wasn't
a Rolls-Royce.
    

Dylan's "St. Augustine"

There has been alot of discussion about the Paul-is-Dead allusions in the song Saint Paul by Terry Knight.  The song was released May, 1969, before the extended PID discussions in the fall of that year.

Bob Dylan recorded a song called I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine for his John Wesley Harding album in 1967 that, I believe, is very much a PID (or Paul was injured) song.

Some background.  The Beatles and Dylan were admirers of each others' music before they first met in New York in September, 1964.  Later, they met up in London in May, 1965 when Dylan was playing there.  In 1966, they--and particularly Paul and Dylan--were together in London in May:
     May 2, 1966-- Paul, Dylan, and Neil Aspinall visited Dolly's Nightclub.
     May 3, 1966-- Paul and Dylan went to Blaise Nightclub to see John Lee Hooker's performance
     May 26, 1966-- Paul was at the Dylan concert at the Royal Albert Hall
     May 27, 1966-- Paul was at this Dylan concert also at the Royal Albert Hall and after the performance,
                               Paul, Neil Aspinall, Keith Richards and Brian Jones met Dylan at Dolly's Nightclub
     May 28, 1966-- Paul met Dylan at the Mayfair Hotel to hear pressing of Dylan's most recent studio
                               sessions.
     May 29, 1966-- He spent another day with Dylan.

Dylan had a motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966, and--according to one of the books I've read--wrote I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine while he was recuperating from the accident.

The relevant lyrics are:

     I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
     Alive as you or me.
     Tearing through these quarters
     In the utmost misery.
     With a blanket underneath his arm
     And a coat of solid gold:
     Searching for the very souls
     Whom already have been sold.
           .       .       .
     I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
     Alive with fiery breath.
     And I dreamed I was among the ones
     That put him out to death.
     Oh, I awoke in anger
     So alone and terrified:
     I put my fingers against the glass
     And bowed my head and cried.
    
  "St. Augustine" was carrying a blanket as he moved through the "quarters" which suggests a hospital setting.  His "coat of solid gold" could be suggesting that the man was rich or that he was covered in flames.  And that idea is reinforced by the line about his being "alive with fiery breath."  The second to last line about Dylan putting his "fingers against the glass" could be his visualizing the scene where "St. Augustine" died or was injured:  an automobile windshield or the "glass onion" top of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber? (See my post of May 7th. for a photo of the chamber.)

I read the Wikipedia interpretation of the song in their article about the John Wesley Harding album (at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki./John_Wesley_Harding_(album)  .  The writer said the opening couplet of the song paraphrases the song, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night which was a folk song about a union organizer who was framed and executed for a murder.  The writer said the last line of St. Augustine was taken from Woody Guthrie's folk song, Ludlow Massacre, a song about violence at a strike by unionists in a Colorado mining town.  The important lyrics in this song are:

     That very night, you soldier waited
     Until us miners were asleep.
     You snuck around our little tent town
     Soaked our tents with your kerosene.
     You struck a match and the blaze it started . . .

Dylan is strongly suggesting in the song that St. Augustine was attacked deliberately.  If the song is about Paul, Dylan is saying he was killed--or severely injured in 1966.

[------Also suggesting a fiery "accident" was the Beatles' song, Revolution no. 9 played backward.  Hear the song at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG0wksBzKSc .  At 2:35-2:40, you hear the sound of fire crackling.  At 2:13-2:15 and 5:36-5:42, someone is screaming, "Get (or Let) me out!"  Also, at 5:19-5:20, the video poster interprets the talking as:  "I would say once the bed problems last long."  There are also car horns played intermittedly throughout the backmasked song.  The Vickers hyperbaric oxygen bed was nicknamed the Lotus bed (as I pointed out in my post of May 7th.) because it resembled that automobile.]

Paul's Broken Tooth

The official line on the broken tooth that showed so prominently in the Rain and Paperback Writer videos of May 19 and 20, 1966 was that Paul had been riding a moped on December 26, 1966, fell off, and broke his tooth and gashed his lip.
In a  New Musical Express magazine interview of June 16, 1966 (published 6/24/66), Paul discussed the accident and said it had happened "not long ago."  Paul elaborated on the explanation:
     "What about all this 'Didn't Paul McCartney look ill on TV,' then?" he went on, referring to Mama Cass'
     remarks in NME's 'America Calling' last week [would be the week of June 5-11th].  "I haven't been ill.
     Apart from the accident, I'm dead fit.  I know what it was though.  When we filmed those TV clips for
     'Paperback Writer' I'd only just bashed my tooth . . . "

If you take a look at the infamous "Butcher" cover photo [above] which was taken on March 25, 1966, Paul very obviously did NOT have a broken tooth.  So he would have broken his tooth sometime between the end of March and the middle of May, 1966.  Why is this significant?  Because Paul was making a nervously lame public attempt to explain something that was so glaringly out of place and character with Paul.  And, again, I think he wanted to alert the world public that something was VERY wrong in The Beatles' lives and his in particular. 

The "Past Masters" Love Me Do

Listen to two versions of Love Me Do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed_2W_KO_zI

                      AND:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KARfxYcF7W0

Notice that they are  both Paul but are significantly different.  In the first version, the chorus "Someone to love, Somebody new" is smooth with Paul's voice sounding appropriately young and in sync with the backing vocals.  Paul's voice in the chorus of the second version sounds old, his voice is shaky and the backing vocals (which include Paul himself) sound younger.  What is going on?

The first version is from the British Please Please Me album.  The second version is from The Beatles Past Masters Volume 1, released in 1988.  I've read discussions of Paul's "nervous" voice, and where the second version came from.  On Doug Sulpy's 910 board, one poster said that EMI realized or was informed in 1982 that another version of Love Me Do existed and a new master was made of it.

Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You were the only two songs that John and Paul could buy back ownership of because those two songs were published by EMI's own publishing house, Ardmore and Beechwood, while all their other songs were published by Northern Songs.

It's very likely that Paul recorded this song at a much later date--certainly later than 1962.  By the sound of his voice, he could not sing in tune or even articulate the words well.  If Paul had an accident that left him severely disabled, this mysterious version of Love Me Do could signal that he lived past the time he disappeared in mid-September, 1966 and that that version was a record of his disability.  That's what I think.