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Delicate Dynamics: A Fresh, Female Look at the Breakup at the Core of the Beatles

Tim Knight

1. Introduction: The Beatles Today

The Beatles, the most famous pop group of all time, broke up fifty years

ago. Fifty years before that was just after the Treaty of Versailles which

ended the First World War, before the Roaring Twenties, and way before the

infamous Wall Street Crash of 1929. The Beatles, in other words, broke up a

long time ago. They released new recordings for only eight years, between

1962 and 1970. They stopped performing concerts four years before that.

One of their leaders, and founder, was killed forty years ago, and another of

the four members died nearly twenty years ago. Pop music in the 1960s was

all about the present, the latest fashion, the latest musical idea. However, the

best-selling album around the world in the first decade of the 21st century

was a compilation of the Beatles’ hit singles from the 1960s, called simply, 1.

Hundreds of books have been published about the group since they broke

up, and continue to be published; some of them are best sellers. Countless

websites devoted to, or related to, the group are maintained, while on

YouTube fans make documentaries about the band, swap comments about

their songs, and analyze and deconstruct them with audio software. Podcasts

about the group, the individual members, and their music are being made

and downloaded by growing numbers of devoted listeners on various

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platforms, such as iTunes, Apple’s Podcasts app, Google Podcasts, and

Podbean. Social media is awash with Beatles-related accounts. There are

about 70 Facebook groups devoted to the band. One, which started four

years ago, now has well over 100,000 members; another, which started only

two years ago, has over a third as many already. About 60 accounts on

Instagram focus on the band as a whole, or as solo artists. On Twitter, as

well as the of ficial accounts, both for the group and for the individual

members, even the dead ones, there are dozens of accounts run by fans.

One, called the Teatles, is devoted (“mostly,” it avers) to the Beatles drinking

tea!1

All this output on a pop group that lasted less than ten years and ceased to

exist fifty years ago is extraordinary. Along with many people who want to

celebrate their music and personalities, a large part of the continuing

interest is focussed on debating the reasons why they broke up when they

did, and a fascination especially with the relationship between the two

acknowledged top-tier members, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the

writers and singers of the large majority of their songs. They were, David

Hepworth writes, “two lost boys who somehow transformed their differences

into the greatest creative dividend of all. Unlike most partnerships where

creative tension is allegedly at work, they managed to avoid discouraging

each other. While clearly capable of loathing from time to time, it was the

contributions each made to the other’s ideas that struck the sparks” (loc.

161-166).

One interesting development recently has been a critical examination of

how the group’s story has been told over the years, and especially at that

relationship between the two major figures, who “at their best,” argues

1 @Teatlemania.

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Hepworth, “were like magnets in balance, holding the iron filings of the

Beatles’ music in perfect suspension” (loc. 166). The recent, fresh analysis

has largely come from at least two quarters with four common threads. The

first three are, that they are second or third-generation Beatles’ fans; female;

and American. The fourth is that their analysis broadly tips the balance of

much of the historiography of the Beatles away from what they argue is a

bias towards John Lennon, and back towards supporting Paul McCartney, or

at least giving his side of the story equal weight. This paper outlines this new

development and sets it in context.

2. Female Power in the Beatles Story

Girls were a big part of the phenomenon known as Beatlemania in the

early-mid 1960s. Barbara Ehrenreich, the feminist author, pointed out that

for the teenage, or even younger, female fans, it was “rebellious to lay claim

to the active, desiring side of a sexual attraction: the Beatles were objects;

the girls were their pursuers” (qtd. in Gould 181). What was perfect about

the Beatles as objects, too, was that the four different individuals attracted

their own ardent fans, as Gould writes,

For the adventurous, John; for the conventionally romantic, Paul;

for the motherly, Ringo; and for those who couldn’t quite make

up their minds, perhaps George, who couldn’t quite make up his.

The sharp-tongued, intimidating one, the pretty, personable one,

the unassuming, homely-but-cute one, the vague, handsome one

– around and around it went (183).

To some extent this has happened with other bands since, but not to such

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an intense and widespread degree. Beatlemania swept Britain in 1963, and

the United States the following year, as has been documented many times,

for example, in books by Braun; Gould; Norman; and recently, and

humorously, by Craig Brown. The band even apparently helped people in

America move on together to a cheerier story and happier frame of mind

when they visited the USA three months after the violent death of President

Kennedy (Lewis). The films, A Hard Day’s Night (Lester) and the more

recent Eight Days A Week (Howard) show teenage girls screaming so loud,

the Beatles could hardly hear themselves play in concert at that time. Film

of the Beatles’ famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan television show during

their first visit to the United States in early 1964 also shows this. Brown

describes, “Screaming, screaming and yet more screaming. The camera cuts

to the audience – virtually all girls between twelve and fifteen years old”

(154). Brown also reports that at a concert at the Southend Odeon in

England, one policeman, “armed with a noise meter recorded the screaming

at 110 decibels, the equal of a sustained artillery barrage” (126). The

policeman was just one authority figure who did not know what had hit him.

Gould describes the phenomenon and the power the screaming girls

wielded:

The screams that first arose spontaneously when a few girls were

undone by their proximity to these chimerical heroes soon

became established as a signature of the fans, turning the girls

into active participants in the phenomenon of Beatlemania.

Screaming set a lofty standard of participation… The girls had

stumbled onto a brilliant tactical gambit. There, inside a frenetic,

shrieking mass of Beatlemaniacs, the voice of adult authority was

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utterly still (184).

Once the Beatles stopped touring and playing live concerts – after a last

performance at Candlestick Park, San Francisco in the summer of 1966 – for

the next few years, women ostensibly played quieter roles in the developing

story. John Lennon was already married, to Cynthia, and two members,

Ringo Starr and George Harrison, soon joined him, in getting married to

Maureen, and the model Patti Boyd, respectively. The four th, Paul

McCartney, remained single, but had a steady, glamorous girlfriend, the

actress Jane Asher. The Beatles were famously active in the clubs and social

nightlife of London, but it was their work in the studio that drew most

attention as they continued, and developed, their songwriting and recording

at an astonishing rate.

Not so well known to observers in the early years of the Beatles, though,

was the key role played by the absence of two females in the relationship of

the duo at the heart of the band. Lennon and McCartney had, it was noted,

different personalities, but they bonded over a desire to write songs, and, on

a more personal level, because they had both lost their mothers. Paul’s

mother died of cancer when she was 47 and he was 14; John’s more

bohemian mother farmed him out to be raised by his aunt from the age of

five and, tragically, when he was 17 and while he was re-building a

relationship with her, she was run over by a car and killed. Both later wrote

Beatles songs featuring their mothers: first, John’s eponymous Julia, while

in Let It Be, Paul refers to “Mother Mary,” Mary being the name of his

mother. Then a year after the Beatles broke up, as a result of “primal scream

therapy under Arthur Janov,” (Norman, “John Lennon”), Lennon released a

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song simply titled Mother.

The absence of their mothers helped draw John and Paul together. The

sudden absence of a man in 1967 then created a gap into which others

eventually moved and helped pull them apart. In the summer of 1967, only a

couple of months after their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club

Band, grabbed the attention of the pop and rock music world everywhere,

their manager, Brian Epstein, died from a drugs overdose. By this time, John

Lennon was much more mellow, but also more lethargic, as a result of taking

copious amounts of the drug LSD, and later an addiction to heroin (Doggett

55-56; Hamelman 128). Into the vacuum, Paul McCartney spearheaded

various projects, including a film for television that was badly received, and

even George Harrison for a while took the lead in taking them all to India to

do a course in meditation. The Beatles, led in this case jointly by McCartney

and Lennon, also set up Apple with a stated aim of fostering creative types

ever ywhere to bring their music or ar t to greater attention. Notably,

however, by then, May 1968, something had changed and the press

conference given by John and Paul in New York City to promote Apple was

irritable, devoid of the fun and joy for which the band’s press conferences

four years earlier had been (Brown 456-8).

The band’s creativity continued apace, but the various ventures were all

troubled in different ways. The quiet and effective management of Epstein

was missing, and the relationships among the four members of the group

started to fray after many years of intense work and socializing.

Into this increasingly delicate environment, writes Sheffield (“And in the

End”), “four brash New Yorkers entered the Beatles’ inner circle,” a circle

that had hitherto been only open to friends and colleagues from their

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hometown Liverpool. In 1967-8 their authorized biographer Hunter Davies

had detailed this over four pages (338-341). Even their essential record

producer George Martin, and recording engineer Geoff Emerick, were

excluded from the more intimate times in the recording studio, such as

when it came to meal breaks (Emerick and Massey 217). By early summer

1968, though, the dynamics among the group themselves were changing.

For one thing, Lennon, who had let McCartney shape the ‘Pepper’ album

largely through inertia, came back to the studio to dominate the early weeks

of recordings for what became known as the White Album (Emerick and

Massey 246). The differences in personality had always been there; now

there were increasing musical differences, too. At one level, this contributed

to the richness of the Beatles’ output, but it also caused an increasing

tendency of band members to work alone, or largely alone, in the studio. As

tensions festered, the “four brash New Yorkers” appeared. Sheffield (“And in

the End”) explains the New Yorkers’ impact:

Different as they were, all four had confidence. None of them

were intimidated by the band. None were crippled by British

manners. Their rough edges appealed to the Beatles and made

them easier to trust. All four had a massive impact on the

Beatles’ chemistry.

Two of the people Sheffield is describing were men – Phil Spector the

record producer, and Allen Klein, the businessman, who became their

manager, crucially at the behest of only three of the four Beatles, McCartney

being the one opposed, and – on this matter at least – more and more

estranged (Brown and Gaines 301-8; Norman 371-4). By extension, later, in

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1970, McCartney also found himself the odd man out when tapes of what

were known as the ‘Get Back’ sessions were handed over to Spector for

mixing and overdubbing for release as the album Let It Be (MacDonald 270-

3).

Spector is the least controversial of the four. Doggett prefers to call the

other three “the intruders… whose names can still provoke a sharp intake of

breath from true adherents of the Beatles cult” (64-5), and who also, Weber

points out, “seemed to render much of Davies’ work obsolete” (loc. 864).

Klein is the most vilified of the three still and it is now more interesting to

note the influence of the other two New Yorkers, both women from that city

– “a Tokyo-born avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono, [and] a photographer

named Linda Eastman” (Sheffield, “And in the End”). In the phrases of

Hamelman, Klein and Ono were two of the forces “pulling… John out of one

socket” (127), while among those “Yanking Paul was… his relationship with

Linda Eastman” (128). Internal forces - resentments among the band

members themselves - were also pulling them apart, but the entry of these

women helped to upset the delicate dynamics even further.

Both Eastman and Ono were artists in their own right, which appealed to

the two Beatles. The couples got married little over a week apart (John and

Yoko following Paul and Linda) in April 1969. Soon after, Paul helped John,

but without George Harrison and Ringo Starr, record a song about John and

Yoko to release as the Beatles’ next single. The wives were artists, but not

musicians, and yet both wives also sang on future records in Lennon’s and

McCartney’s solo careers. Both John and Paul suffered criticism among fans

and writers for recording and even performing with their wives, but it did

not stop them.

― 49 ―

As Rob Sheffield (“Dreaming”) points out, the Beatles did not just invent

“most of what rock stars do” (21). They “also innovated things other rock

stars don’t do… Here’s a big one: John and Paul both quit the Beatles to

start new bands with their wives” (21). When set in the context of other pop

and rock stars and bands, it is hard to disagree with Sheffield’s description

of this as “weird” (22). He goes on to argue that “the weirdest twist wouldn’t

be knowable for another decade - both couples still together ten years later,

still married and making music until death did them part… Choosing

women as artistic collaborators over the band, well, that’s a case where they

had no imitators” (22). He amusingly asks the reader to consider the idea of

other famous names in rock bands splitting to make music with female

partners.

3. The ‘new’ analysis

3a. The Podcast

Let us now turn to the female Americans who have been recently

examining the Beatles story, and in particular, in how the Beatles story has

been told. Another Kind of Mind (AKOM) is a podcast with average 4.5

ratings (out of 5) on Apple Podcasts, with associated website and Twitter

account. It started in 2019 and is run by three women. Two of them host

each episode. In the first one, the host Thalia Reynolds said she had long

been fascinated by the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership and

personal relationship which is, she says, “at its heart a love story, equally

beautiful and tragic. I’ve always felt it hasn’t been told with the nuance and

sensitivity that it deserves. The two men are often, either pitted against one

another, or their affection for one another is framed as lop-sided” (AKOM,

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“May I Introduce to You”). She goes on to say another imbalance is the way

biographers of the band had presented John as the only Beatle with an

interesting backstory, and not given enough weight to the backgrounds of

the other three members. With that comment in mind, it is interesting to

note that of the following eighteen episodes, one is devoted to Ringo Starr,

and one to George Harrison’s role in playing on a John Lennon song which

criticized Paul McCartney. Fourteen of the other sixteen episodes are

devoted to Lennon and McCartney, twelve of them in what they call their

“Breakup Series.”

In the first of these, one of the presenters claims the reason for the

breakup of the band fifty years ago “remains mysterious” (AKOM, “The Big

Bang”). She says “the traditional narrative is steeped in biases and

predicated on unchallenged post-breakup spin. These tropes are so

ingrained in our collective conscientiousness that they may be obscuring a

more realistic, more logical version of events.” She says the podcast will

apply “sensitivity and emotional intelligence to our analysis” of the Lennon-

McCartney relationship, “the core issue” of “the divorce.”

The presenter goes on: “In a nutshell, we believe this was a high stakes

game of chase that spun out of control. The end game was never to end the

Beatles, or for Lennon and McCartney to separate as a creative partnership.

And while we are the first to suggest the breakup was a negotiation gone

awry, we don’t see this as primarily a battle for dominance within the band,

but rather an elaborate play for respect, love, appreciation and commitment.

We believe this attempt to renegotiate the terms of their par tnership

ultimately, and unintentionally, resulted in the demise of the Beatles. Join us

for this radical re-telling of the breakup” (AKOM, “The Big Bang”). Whether

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or not their re-telling is really ‘radical’ is a matter for debate, but certainly

this writer has not heard in other Beatles podcasts or discussions claims that

‘nuance,’ or ‘sensitivity,’ or ‘emotional intelligence’ will be applied.

Among many positive reviews of the podcast2 was one that said it felt

“new,” wondering, “Perhaps it’s because they’re women, and women have

been largely shut out of these types of discussions in the past? Maybe.” The

presenters concentrate mostly on events in the period from late 1967

onwards, after Epstein’s death and through to just after the breakup. There

is not space in this paper to rehearse all the arguments they put forward or

all the evidence they examine, but there is no doubt they have done copious

research, quoting from famous and more obscure books and newspaper

ar ticles. They also play audio clips of inter views given by Lennon,

McCartney, and others around this time. As one would expect from their

stated aims, they do not merely state the known facts, but delve into the

possible reasons for the behaviour of the main players. Naturally, this leads

beyond facts into speculation, often into the minds of John and Paul. One

negative reviewer of the podcast criticized the presenters for their “dime

store psychology and rank speculation.”

The thrust of the podcast is that most of the writers of the Beatles story

hitherto have been heavily biased towards John Lennon, regarding him as

the leader, visionary, and genius with the most talent, while casting Paul

McCartney as a scheming villain who was just a support act. Instead, they

argue, McCartney was at least equal to Lennon in all those positive attributes

and behaved better. One of the presenters, called Phoebe, derides the male

2 The comments by reviewers come from reviews left by listeners via the Apple Podcasts app.

― 52 ―

music writers and biographers who supposedly hang on Lennon’s every

word and tell the anti-McCartney story as “jean jackets” for their alleged

propensity to wear denim. The presenters argue that their re-telling actually

recognizes Lennon as more emotional and vulnerable, and consequently, as

a more sympathetic man, than how he comes across from the traditional

narrative. They say writers have used words like ‘angry’ about John to show

his strength, as opposed to ‘hurt’ for Paul to stress his more feminine, softer

side. They argue that Lennon has usually been portrayed as the ‘male’ in the

partnership, powerful and with agency, in contrast to the ‘female’ McCartney

and dispute that. Interestingly, in one episode they make much of the

comment reportedly made by Yoko Ono to Philip Norman, that John “had

contemplated an affair with Paul, but had been deterred by Paul’s immovable

heterosexuality” (“John Lennon” 669).

In episode 8 of their ‘Breakup series,’ the presenters take issue with John’s

claim in interviews with Jann Wenner in 1970 that he was ‘done’ with the

Beatles by 1969. They argue that the evidence actually suggests that he was

as much invested in the Beatles and his relationship with Paul as McCartney

was with him and the group. To give some flavour of the podcasts, let us

look at some of their actual discourse.

Diana Erickson: Paul was a force to be reckoned.

Phoebe Lorde: He’s not just feeling depressed and pitiful. He’s

angry.

D: Right, Paul’s anger is ignored. But is very much present when

you dig into things.

P: Paul is not allowed to be angry in the Beatles story.

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D: The reason we are specifically flagging this issue is that for

the story to make sense, we need to get beyond the trope of Paul

being desperate and appreciate his power as an adversary, and

his confidence in his own ar tistr y at this time. And that’s

important because a lot of John’s actions during this time are

directed at a person he sees as pig-headed, in control of

everything, stubborn, controlling, domineering, and someone

who doesn’t care about him, and is insensitive, and so, when you

realise this, that John’s actions make a little bit more sense.

The presenters discuss Lennon’s supposed insecurities and paranoia

towards the end of the Beatles, and wonder how he and confident Paul could

be partners for so long. Presenter Diana Erickson mulls: “How close and

deep they must have been, for John, who’s that paranoid to feel completely

safe with him being his partner. It’s sweet and it’s sad, actually. That we’ve

got the world’s two most competitive men a hundred per cent trusting each

other. Until they didn't.” A common theme throughout is to suggest that

Paul was an equal to John not just in terms of talent, but also in terms of

being an individual with agency, who was no more or less ready to walk away

from the Beatles as Lennon, the man who had demanded “a divorce” from

the others in September 1969. They argue that McCartney, already musically

and creatively more independent, was just as well-placed to leave and start

afresh with his own new wife and burgeoning family. They suggest that

Lennon was feeling competitive for Paul’s attention, but failing to get it, and

worried that he was losing his partner. Replacing Paul with Yoko Ono was, in

essence, a defence mechanism.

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One question that arises from these points and others in the podcast is,

how ‘radical’ is this re-telling really? The question has certainly occurred to

some listeners. One reviewer writes, “Maybe it’s because of my generation,

but I never got fed the narrative that Paul was inferior. So the constant

pushback from the hosts here seems a bit too much, and can often fall the

other way despite their assurances that they ‘love John too.’ I’ve caught

many moments where they definitely imply that Paul is the artistic genius

and John is an inferior artist” (firenze721). Another reviewer commented

that it often sounded as if they were arguing against a Rolling Stone article

from the 1980s. This frequently does, indeed, seem to be the case, and in

support of their arguments, they often cite authors of recent works, such as

Doggett, Hamelman, Shenk, and Womack, who take a far more even view of

events and actions by key individuals.

3b. The Historian

To help answer the question posed towards the end of the previous

section, let us turn to a historian from the United States, Erin Torkelson

Weber, who has published a book of historiographical scholarship called The

Beatles and the Historians. She also maintains a blogsite, in a clever reversal

called, The Historian and the Beatles. She analyzes the way the Beatles story

has been told in the years from they were together as a band until just before

publishing the book in 2016. Like the podcast presenters, she has examined

a huge body of literature on the Beatles, but she adds an extra dimension by

also examining the telling of the Beatles story in the context of what various

professional historians argue is the way to write history. She demonstrates

that a lot of the writers about the Beatles fail to measure up as reliable

― 55 ―

chroniclers of the group’s story.

Weber divides the approximately fifty-five years between the beginning of

the band’s emergence into the public domain and when she published her

book into four main narratives. First, the “Fab Four Narrative” from 1962 to

1970; second, the “Lennon Remembers Narrative” from 1970 until 1980; third,

the “Shout! Narrative” in the wake of Lennon’s death and Norman’s book;

and fourth, the “Lewisohn Narrative” which has developed in recent years,

resulting “in a new Orthodoxy” (loc. 49). Weber goes into impressive,

detailed analysis of many publications, and there is space only to summarize

her main points on the major works briefly here. It is a highly recommended

study, however.

Weber writes that “the first major narrative in Beatles historiography,”

promoted by the band and their management and people around them in the

1960s, “consisted of three major themes” (loc. 253). First, that the members

of the band were the best of friends with no serious tensions; second, that

certain aspects of their existence which might have damaged their popularity

(especially relating to drugs or sex) were “whitewashed”; and third, the

“promotion of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership” (loc. 253).

Included in this narrative is “the only authorized biography” of the band,

written by Hunter Davies. The first edition was published after the death of

manager Brian Epstein and after their first mauling at the hands of the press

(over the Magical Mystery Tour film), but just before Apple got going, before

Yoko Ono and Allen Klein appeared in the story, and tensions within the

band became serious, some of which were captured on film during the

making of what became the Let It Be documentary. Davies witnesses and is

able to describe several hours Lennon and McCartney spent composing the

― 56 ―

song, “With a little help from my friends,” (345+) one of the rare occasions

by then when they really did write together.

The second narrative, throughout the 1970s follows not only the demise of

the Beatles but the destruction of the Fab Four “myth,” as he put it, by John

Lennon in his interviews with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine. In a

pre-internet world, Lennon’s comments may have faded from consciousness,

but they were published as a book entitled Lennon Remembers. Although

Lennon has a dig at McCartney for being “a good PR man, Paul… he really

does a job” (61), the influential San Francisco-based Rolling Stone firmly fell

in with Lennon’s version of events leading to the breakup of the Beatles.3

Wenner failed to challenge Lennon on many contradictory statements and

patently false claims, but John’s comments were so iconoclastic and his voice

so strident and, for a time, seemingly ubiquitous, that they held great sway

among many fans and on the writers on the music press, the “jean jackets,”

in the phrase of Phoebe of the AKOM podcast. Ironically, it seems in

retrospect that it was Lennon who had ‘done a good PR job.’

The intense story of Lennon and McCartney continued, despite the band’s

breakup. As Shenk points out, the reason “we can’t assign a date to when

John and Paul definitively split is that it never definitely happened” (loc.

3890) because they bickered in print and in their songs in the early 1970s,

then they called a truce, and met quite often during a rapprochement in the

middle of the ‘70s, then had a more physically distant but strong speaking

relationship on the telephone in the latter part of the ‘70s. They also often

talked about each other in interviews during those years, and in the case of

3 The magazine had featured Lennon on its inaugural issue in 1967, and the co-founder and early editor Jann Wenner maintained a close relationship with the Lennons into the 1970s and, with Ono, also after Lennon’s death.

― 57 ―

the still alive Paul, well beyond. Clearly, they were never indifferent about

each other.

In December 1980 John Lennon was murdered. Weber’s third section is

the “Shout! Narrative,” which follows that shock. She writes, “The official

Fab Four narrative which had controlled the Beatles’ story in the 1960s and

the Lennon Remembers narrative of the 1970s had also overlooked

contradictory facts, but following Lennon’s murder there was now an

emotional motivation on the part of some writers to do so” (loc. 2354). She

writes that, “it was very dif ficult, if not impossible, for some writers to

employ the detachment and distance required in order to produce an

accurate accounting of the Beatles’ stor y. That cer tain facts went

undiscovered or were ignored following Lennon’s death, while not

uncommon in histor y, had enduring consequences for Beat les

historiography” (loc. 2354).

By chance, Philip Norman, an English journalist, was ready to publish

what was soon touted as the “definitive biography” of the Beatles just before

Lennon’s death. He did not attempt to hide his preference for John Lennon

over the other members of the band, and even claimed on American

television in a promotional interview for the book that Lennon “was three-

quarters of the Beatles” (loc. 2507). As many people’s emotions were so raw

following Lennon’s death, the idea that he was the one genius in the band

and the only one of real interest gained wide acceptance. Weber writes that,

“Norman later retreated from his assertion that Lennon was 75 percent of

the Beatles, but Lennon’s story consumes 75 percent of Shout!” (loc. 2515),

largely ignoring Harrison and Starr and using McCartney “mainly to serve

as Lennon’s foil.”

― 58 ―

McCartney made valiant attempts to argue his case, for example, to Hunter

Davies in a telephone call in 1981, which Davies reported and included in a

new edition of his authorized Beatles biography. However, the view of

Norman, not only that Lennon was great, but also that McCartney was

manipulative, shallow and a social-climber, held greater influence in the

historiography of the Beatles, despite its flaws. Not until the 1990s did the

world seem more receptive to McCartney’s side of the story, in Barry Miles’

Many Years from Now. While praising his vivid and dramatic prose, Weber

criticises Norman for adopting a “novelistic approach” (loc. 2451) and certain

misplaced emphases which “skew[s] the narrative” (loc. 2451). She writes

that the book’s “lack of documentation” (loc. 2459) damages its credibility,

and she argues that the “author’s evident and admitted bias” (loc. 2480) is so

strong, it calls “into question the work’s methodology, analysis and

conclusions” (loc. 2493). In 1988 an American professor Albert Goldman

wrote a notorious biography which portrayed Lennon in a completely

dif ferent light, but it was so extreme that McCartney dismissed it as

“trash,”(Coleman 31) and although its salaciousness helped it sell well, it

was never taken seriously enough by many to dent the prevailing view of

Lennon, especially during his time with the Beatles as outlined in Shout!

Weber cites various historians throughout this section to support her view

that Norman’s book lacks credibility as a reliable history. To quote one

occasion: “Partisanship,” as Garraghan reminds us in A Guide to Historical

Method “and good histor y do not mix” (loc. 2493). Having personal

preferences in writing history is not an inherent flaw, Weber writes, citing

another historian in support, but “deliberate authorial bias” (loc. 2564) can

lead to problems. Norman, she argues, allowed his admitted strong

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preference for only one of the Beatles to choose evidence and arrive at

conclusions to fit his theories, and to apply “moral judgments unevenly” (loc.

2564). She points out that some writers on the band more recently, such as

Doggett, have avoided that.

The fourth section of Weber’s historiographical examination is called “The

Lewisohn Narrative.” Mark Lewisohn was a researcher helping Norman on

Shout! but he continued his research following the publication of that work.

He was even granted access to all the log books at the Abbey Road studios in

London, where the band had recorded most of their output. Weber dates “the

onset of the Shout! narrative’s decline” (loc. 3160) to 1988, when Lewisohn’s

compendium of the band’s recording sessions was published. This cleared

up some of the disputed claims, such as who did what on which track. His

essential role is, perhaps, more as a chronicler than as an interpretive

historian, and for general readers, his books, such as Tune In, can be too big

and dense. His work, however, has been, and continues to be, invaluable.

Because of what he has uncovered and because his credibility as an

impartial researcher is so high, recent, insightful biographers of the Beatles,

such as Brown, Coleman, and Gould, or tellers of certain aspects of the

group’s story, such as Doggett, MacDonald, and Shenk, cite Lewisohn as a

key source. Their books are far more even-handed than Norman’s. Another

beneficial influence is that these books and others include a list of sources,

which Shout! does not.

Weber credits Lewisohn with changing “the answers to the two major

debates in Beatles historiography - who was responsible for the group’s

breakup, and whether Lennon or McCartney deserved the most credit for

the band’s greatness” (loc. 3166). The two previous narratives had provided

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the answers ‘Paul,’ and ‘John,’ respectively. However, in Lewisohn’s “revised

narrative Lennon and McCartney were more or less equals; both men were

musical geniuses, and it was the unique combination of their personalities

and skills, cooperation and competition, which drove the Beatles artistry”

(loc. 3173). Weber points out, too, that the critical reputations of Harrison

and Starr were also improved. Since the Lewisohn narrative’s ascendancy,

writers with musical knowledge, such as Gould and MacDonald, have been

offering new insights. In the early 1970s, the musicologist Mellers had

analyzed the songs in a still fine book, but he chose not to attempt any

biographical context. MacDonald’s superb Revolution in the Head, does

include it, and is able to boast on its cover the comment, ‘the finest piece of

Fabs scholarship ever published’.4

Weber points out that there has been some resistance to the narrative

prevailing in the wake of Lewisohn and Macdonald, but it has been declining,

and “Lewisohn, widely acknowledged as the undisputed Beatles authority”

(loc. 4336) is now at work ‘cementing’ his new Orthodoxy. Having published

Tune In in 2013, he is researching and writing two more mammoth volumes

in what will surely be ‘the definitive Beatles biography.’

4. Discussion

Let us return to the question about the podcasters’ claim to be re-telling

the Beatles story in a “radical” way. As one of the reviewers quoted earlier

pointed out, it seems that they protest too much that McCartney has not

been given his due, or that Lennon’s flaws have not been acknowledged.

They often refer to John’s emotional instability in the late 1960s, but the

4 From Mojo, a British music magazine.

― 61 ―

group’s recording engineer Geoff Emerick writes about his “wild mood

swings” (303) and Doggett argues that “Lennon’s insecurity was almost

instinctive” (266). In support of their points, they draw on books and papers

of recent writers such as Shenk, Hamelman, and Womack. Most of their

attacks on the way the Beatles story has been told relate to what Weber has

shown to be the narratives from 1970 to the early 1990s. It is true that there

has been some resistance to the idea that John and Paul were creative

equals. It is also true that although Norman states that he has softened his

opinion about McCartney, Shout! has been published in new editions

virtually unchanged. Some ‘facts’ which have been strongly disputed, and

virtually refuted by Lewisohn’s research, have remained unaltered. However,

the flaws of the book are now widely acknowledged, which they used not to

be. Lewisohn’s volumes are on their way to becoming the new ‘definitive

biography.’ Furthermore, in recent years, even those responsible for the

earlier, partial narratives have softened their stance. Norman himself has

written a balanced biography of Paul McCartney, while in Rolling Stone,

Gilmore has written: “The Beatles in their death throes were one of the most

mysterious and complicated end-of-romance tales of the 20th century, as well

as the most dispiriting. The Beatles hadn’t just made music - they had made

their times, as surely as any political force, and more beneficently than most.

Why, then, did the Beatles walk away?” (“Why the Beatles Broke Up”). That

final question is significant because it recognizes that the delicate dynamic

among the four was breaking; it was not that Paul alone quit, or that John

walked away without a look back, or even that Harrison and Starr had

nothing to do with the group’s end.

Interestingly, ‘Phoebe,’ the most forceful of the trio of Another Kind of

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Mind podcasters and the most avowedly pro-Paul of the presenters, has

made disparaging remarks about Lewisohn. It could be that his approach is

not enough in tune with the podcast’s more emotional discussion and

analysis, or that he is too even-handed in his analysis. From the members of

the band themselves, it is fair to acknowledge that with Lennon and Harrison

both dead, and Starr not so interested in tackling the contentious issues, the

only voice that has been heard this century is McCartney’s, and he has been

an influence on the new narratives. We do not know what Lennon would say

about his old partner now, but McCartney’s most forceful adversary in the

“squabble over their joint legacy” (Doggett 321) remains Lennon’s second

artistic partner, Yoko Ono. The podcasters devoted one episode to her, and

although they recognize her impact in both negative and positive ways, they

are, perhaps rightly, keen to promote Linda Eastman as an equal partner for

Paul. To this listener, at least, the emphasis on intense emotions at play in

the Lennon-McCartney dynamic does seem fresh. The podcasters can be

very repetitive in making their points, but it is a mark of their dedication to

the subject, and even compelling, that women who became fans of the

Beatles in the mid-1990s are moved to discuss so passionately the

relationship of two rock stars fifty years after their band broke up, and forty

years since one of the two died. However, as they continue to rail against the

older narratives, new books which are much more attune to the new

Orthodoxy are being published, being praised, and proving people will

always buy books about the Beatles. Books in 2017 by Shef field

(“Dreaming”) and in 2020 by Brown, who celebrates and makes fun of

everyone with equal measure, are two light-hearted, but also insightful

examples. The podcasters, as mentioned, have drawn on other recent works

― 63 ―

by Shenk, Womack and others. Weber has shown that the older narratives,

while an essential par t of the historiography, have lost a lot of their

credibility. The prevailing narrative could, of course, change again in the

future because, as Weber points out, citing another historian, historians

“relish revisionism and distrust Orthodoxy” (Gaddis qtd. in Weber loc.

4465), partly, of course, because they need to justify their existence, and

writers need to sell books.

5. Conclusion

This paper has explored examinations of Beatles historiography emanating

from two quarters in the USA. One is a work of historical scholarship by a

university history professor called Erin Torkelson Weber. The other analysis

started in 2019 and is available in episodes of a podcast that are still being

released. Weber’s analysis reveals four prevailing narratives over the

decades since the band burst onto the music and cultural scene in the early

1960s. The first lasted until the band broke up in 1970; the second trailed in

the wake of John Lennon’s iconoclastic interviews immediately after the

breakup; the third was dominant for about ten years after Lennon’s violent

death, but then gradually lost its predominance to a new Orthodoxy that

emerged as a result of new research and distance in time from the events.

The presenters of Another Kind of Mind are a trio of American fans, who,

while clearly being in the McCartney camp regarding the Beatles’ story, are

bringing a genuine freshness to their discussion as to the emotions involved

between John and Paul. They do not only view the relationship as a love

stor y, as others have done, but also discuss it, with evidence-based

speculation, in those terms. The present writer speculates that one thing

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Weber may criticise the podcasters for is not allowing more time for the

stories of Harrison and Starr, which aligns the podcast series in one respect

closer to Norman’s Shout! Narrative than they would like. All these people,

podcasters and historian, are women who would know the Beatles more

from the time of their Anthology series in the mid-1990s than when the band

actually existed. Debate about the Beatles has been dominated for so long by

male writers and male fans on various internet outlets, and it is both

welcome and refreshing that female fans and historians are of fering a

different perspective on the band, especially as it is resulting from sharp

analysis.

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