My friend Margaret yesterday sent me a link to a YouTube film of Paul, George and Ringo sitting around the studio on Abbey Road, trying to remember who played what on the cut of an early song. “Did I play bass? No, maybe it was you, George. It was me on piano, wasn’t it?” said Paul. From there I trolled around, watching all kinds of Beatles’ stuff from TV interviews. There’s a hilarious one of John and Yoko smoking cigarettes as they chatted on the Dick Cavett Show. Dick asked John about the break-up of the band, and John said it was going to happen anyway. “I don’t want to still be singing ‘Yesterday’,” he said, “when I’m, like, fifty and have asthma and tuberculosis.”
And then he did an imitation of a croaking old man singing “Yesterday.” I guess it was a swipe at Paul, because of course it’s Paul’s song. Paul, who is way over 50 and still singing “Yesterday.”
If only John were still here; he’d be nearly 70, and he’d certainly still be singing. And I bet without asthma and tuberculosis. 50 seemed so very old, back then. Were we ever so young?
And … my dear W’son is here, doing some reading in a tranquil place. We were talking about writing, of course, and I confessed that I never lose myself completely in the work; my goal is to become so immersed that I forget the passage of time. “That happens to me often,” said Mr. Ch*y. “I get lost in the work. No, not lost. It’s in the work that I am found.”
