In Another World (Old Man Devastation Tour)

Why Promoters Won't Stop Chasing a Beatles Reunion (And Why They Should)

Rolling Stone, November 1979

There's a particular species of industry parasite that's been making the rounds lately, and they all want the same thing: the Beatles. Not separately, though. They can get that. McCartney's been touring stadiums with Wings, Ringo will show up to open a shopping center if you pay him enough, and George occasionally emerges from his estate to play for causes he believes in. But that's not what the parasites want. They want all four, on stage, playing the hits, printing money.

Reunion tours are the music industry's favorite con right now. Drag aging rockers back on stage to play songs they wrote when they still had hair, fans paying premium prices for the privilege of pretending it's ten years ago. It's nostalgia as commodity, repackaged and sold at a markup. The Beach Boys keep breaking up and reforming like it's a competitive sport. Even Simon and Garfunkel can't stay away from each other despite clearly wanting to.

The economics are simple and obscene. A reunion tour costs roughly the same as a regular tour but commands five times the ticket price. Fans will pay anything to see the original lineup, and promoters know this. They can smell desperation and disposable income from a mile away.

The formula is proving too lucrative to resist: take a band that meant something twenty years ago, add time and distance, shake well, and watch the money pour in.

But here's the thing about reunions: they're almost always embarrassing. Not musically. Most of these bands can still play. But there’s something about watching middle-aged men pretend to be their younger selves, performing songs about teenage rebellion while their accountants wait backstage, feels less like a concert and more like a very expensive funeral.

Which brings us to the Beatles.

In the nine years since their breakup, the offers have only gotten bigger. A promoter in Japan reportedly offered $50 million for a single reunion concert in 1976. The Beatles declined, and Paul got arrested there for pot possession instead.

An American promoter offered $30 million for a ten-city tour in 1977. Another $40 million for a televised special. The numbers keep climbing because the promoters know what they'd make back: easily double, maybe triple the investment. A Beatles reunion tour would be the highest-grossing concert series in history. No question.

So why hasn't it happened? Simple: the Beatles can't stand each other.

Most reunion tours work because time softens things. You hated your bandmate in 1968, but by 1978 you've both got mortgages and kids in college and maybe playing together doesn't seem so bad if the price is right.

But for The Beatles, it’s personal. Let’s not forget, Paul sued the other three. John called Paul's music "Muzak." George said working with them was like being in prison.

But that hasn't stopped promoters from trying, even if their attempts are doomed to fail.

Everyone wants this except the people who matter. Fans want it. Critics want it. The music industry wants it. There's a whole generation of people whose first concert memory could be seeing the Beatles play together again, and they're willing to pay any price for that ticket.

The Beatles already lived through being the Beatles once, and it nearly destroyed them. Why would they do it again?

McCartney has a life with a wife he seems to actually like and children who weren't raised by nannies and press handlers. He's making music on his own terms, even if Wings will never be the Beatles no matter how many stadiums they fill.

Lennon's been a recluse for four years, apparently quite content baking bread and raising his son in his Dakota fortress. He walked away from music, from fame, from all of it. Getting him back would require either an enormous amount of money (which he doesn't need) or an emotional incentive (which, given his relationship with Paul, doesn't exist).

George has been the most vocal about not wanting a reunion. He's spent the '70s trying to establish himself as a serious solo artist, and while the results have been mixed, at least they're his. Why would he go back to being the junior Beatle?

And Ringo—well, Ringo would probably do it. But three-fourths of a Beatles reunion doesn't quite have the same ring.

So the promoters keep calling, keep increasing the offers, keep believing that eventually there will be a number big enough, an offer sweet enough, a moment right enough.

But they're wrong. The Beatles reunion is the white whale of rock and roll. Everyone's chasing it, no one's catching it, and the pursuit is making everyone involved look increasingly desperate.

But they won't stop. Can't stop. Because imagine being the person who finally made it happen. Imagine that payday. Imagine the legend.

The Beatles have been dead for nine years. The promoters are still trying to resurrect them.

Someone should probably tell them: some things are meant to stay buried.

—Ben Fong-Torres







****

Paul

The call came through at half past two, between the school run and dinner prep. A rare pocket of time in which Paul actually stopped moving.

Paul wedged the phone between his shoulder and ear, reaching for the kettle “Alright?”

“Quick one.” John Eastman’s voice came crackling down the line. Paul readjusted the receiver next to his ear, reaching for a mug with his other hand.

"Go on then." He didn’t usually get time to himself, and if he was being honest, he’d been rather looking forward to reading the paper with a steaming mug of tea before the kids came crashing out of their rooms.

"The Japan thing is sorted. Charges dropped, officially. You're clear to travel, though I'd give it a year before you try going back."

Paul made a noise of agreement. The Japan arrest was four weeks old and he'd finally stopped thinking about it. "Right. Good."

"Merchandising royalties came through. Beatles, not Wings. I'll send the breakdown."

"Fine."

"And there's a writer from Melody Maker who wants an interview about the new album, but they're asking about the break-up again, so I'd skip it."

"They're always asking about the break-up." Paul poured water over the tea bag, watched it bloom dark. Nine years since the band had ended and somehow it was still the most interesting thing about him. "Anything else?"

“Two things. First, don't forget you've got business in New York next week. The contract signing for the publishing deal."

Paul had forgotten. "Right. When?"

"Thursday afternoon. 2pm at the offices on West 71st."

“West 71st?"

"Yeah. Near Central Park West. Nice offices, apparently."

Paul didn’t reply right away.

"Paul?"

"Yeah, I'm here. That's fine."

"You want me to see if we can move it somewhere else?"

"No. It's fine." Paul swirled the tea absently in his mug "What's the second thing?"

"Right." Eastman’s voice shifted slightly, the way it did when he was delivering news he expected Paul to dislike. "Someone's been trying to reach you. About a tour."

Paul frowned at the window. "I've just done a tour."

"I know. This isn't about Wings."

The tea bag sat in the cup, steeping too long. Paul watched it and didn't move. "I—"

"I know what you're going to say."

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Because they're persistent. Called three times this week. Wanted me to pass along that they're serious, well-funded, and willing to accommodate schedules.”

Paul closed his eyes and let out a deep, exhausted sigh. He’d built this life very deliberately, brick by fragile brick, after everything had fallen apart. All he wanted was to enjoy the simplicity of days that didn't require him to be capital P, capital M Paul McCartney except in the ways that mattered—husband, father, the person who made tea and drove to school and sheared the sheep and cooked supper sometimes.

He'd had the other thing. The screaming, the stadiums, the adoration of the world. He’d had the experience of being the most famous band in the world and then the most famously broken-up band in the world. He'd had a partnership that felt like a marriage, and a marriage that felt like the only way to prove the partnership hadn't been one.

"I don't care if they're willing to accommodate the Queen herself." Paul pulled the tea bag out and dropped it in the bin with more force than necessary. "It's not happening. It's never happening. Tell them I'm retired, tell them I'm dead, tell them whatever you want, but I'm not doing a bloody Beatles reunion."

"I didn't say it was a Beatles reunion."

Paul’s brows knit in slight confusion. "What else would it be?"

"They didn't specify. Just said they wanted to talk to you about a tour. Wouldn't give details without speaking to you directly."

“It’s not a Beatles reunion?” Paul repeated, as if it mattered.

“They didn’t say it was.”

"Doesn’t matter. I’m not doing it,” he said again, quietly. “Not now. Not ever.”

Eastman didn’t argue. “Alright.”

Paul carried his tea to the table, sat down harder than he meant to. Outside, a bird landed on the fence post, stayed for three seconds, left. "I'm not interested in dealing with anybody who think they can dangle a carrot."

"Understood. I'll tell them no."

"Tell them fuck off, if you want to be more accurate."

Mr. Eastman laughed, brief and dry. "I'll stick with a simple no. More professional."

Paul nodded, though his attorney couldn’t see.

“Thanks.”

“Alright,” Eastman said again.

“Alright.”

Paul set the receiver back in its cradle. He sat with his tea but didn't drink it. The house was full of small sounds that meant people were home and living: Mary's radio crackled upstairs. She was probably doing homework, or pretending to, which at this point in the afternoon amounted to the same thing. Stella was talking to herself in that running narration she'd been doing since she learned to speak, there was the click and whir of Linda's darkroom timer.

Through the window, Scotland looked the way Scotland always looked in February: gray, but beautiful in a morbid kind of way.

Linda eventually came out of the darkroom smelling like chemicals, wiping her hands on her jeans. "Who was that?"

"Your father. Business stuff."

She kissed the top of his head on her way to the sink. "You look annoyed."

"Someone wants me to do a tour."

“You’ve just done a tour.”

“That’s what I said,” Paul reached out to grab her wrist as she passed by, kissing the top of her hand. “But he said it wasn’t about wings.”

Linda ran a hand through his hair and cocked her head slightly, confused. Paul gave her a meaningful look, and realization dawned slowly across her face. “Ah,” she nodded, “of course.”

Paul shrugged, dropping her hand.

At the sink, Linda ran water over her hands methodically. She had beautiful hands, Paul thought. He'd thought it the first time he saw her and he thought it now, nine years later, watching her scrub developer from under her nails. "What did you tell them?"

"Told him to tell them no."

"Good." She dried her hands, draped the towel over the sink edge. "Unless you want to?"

"Christ, no." He scoffed.

"Then why do you look like that?"

“Like what?”

“Like you’re considering it.”

Paul straightened out his expression and looked at Linda with surprise. "I’m not."

She studied him for a moment, then let it go. That was one of the things he loved about her—she knew when to push and when to leave him alone. "Kids need to be picked up from riding lessons after supper."

"Right. Yeah. I'll get them."

After she went back to the darkroom, Paul sat with his cold tea and the gray window and the quiet house and breathed a deep sigh.

Paul dumped the rest of his cold tea in the sink. He had kids to pick up, supper to prepare, and a life that worked precisely because it didn't involve poking old wounds.

The answer was no. It had always been no.

It would stay no.

*****

John

The only reason John knew it was Thursday was because Sean's piano lesson was on Thursdays. Yoko had written it on the calendar in her precise hand: Sean—Suzuki—10am. This was what his life had become, tracking days by a three-year-old's schedule.

Not that John had ever been good with days. Even in his 20s, he couldn't have told you if it was Tuesday or Saturday without checking a schedule someone else had made. But at least back then the days were different from each other. Different cities, different crowds, different women. Now every day looked exactly the same. Thursday felt like Wednesday felt like Monday, all of them blurring together, and the only way he knew it was Thursday was because otherwise he'd forget to get the kid to Suzuki method on time.

And that was fine. Better than fine, actually. Because now when the days blurred together, it was because he was actually living his life. Sean's morning routine, lunch at noon, nap at two, Yoko home by six. It was a rhythm he could follow which meant he was doing the whole family thing right.

They'd already been to the music lesson. Sean had banged on the Paino keys while John tried not to fall asleep in a chair made for someone half his size. Now they were home, and John was on the floor with Sean, pouring over a train set that had somehow colonized the entire living room.

The Dakota apartment was dark even at midday. It was something about the angle of the building, the way it sat heavy and Gothic on 72nd Street like it was sulking. John had lived here for five years and still wasn't used to it. Or maybe he was used to it and that was worse.

"Daddy, the bridge goes here." Sean was three and a half and apparently had strong opinions about engineering.

"Does it?"

"Yes. The train can't go over the water without the bridge."

"Right you are, then." John fitted the wooden bridge into place, watching Sean's face light up with the specific satisfaction of being correct about something. He had Yoko's eyes, which was a blessing. John's eyes barely worked anymore, and besides, they’d seen too much to wish them on anyone else.

Yoko was in the other room on the phone with their art handler, her voice low and measured. She'd been on the phone a lot lately—business, art acquisitions, meetings John wasn't included in. Not that he minded. She'd been tracking some Cy Twombly piece for months, though she hadn't mentioned it to him directly. He'd overheard her talking about it last week. Something about lines and her current conceptual phase.

John had stopped trying to understand Yoko's art around 1975. He just made space for it, the way she made space for his bread-making and his journals and the fact that most days he didn't bother getting dressed until three in the afternoon. They'd settled into a marriage that might not be full of passion or romance, but a marriage that worked for them. Most of the time.

Just then, the mail came through a slot in the front door with a soft thud. John left Sean with the trains and went to gather it. He leafed through the stack of mostly bills, although there was an invitation to a gallery opening, and at the bottom, a letter with Harry Nilsson's handwriting sprawled across the envelope.

John carried it to the kitchen, poured coffee that had been sitting in the pot since eight that morning, opened the letter standing at the counter.

Johnny,

I'm writing this from the Chateau, which should tell you everything about where I'm at mentally. Sober though, if you can believe it. Forty-two days. Una's got me on vitamins and therapy and all sorts of LA nonsense that I'm pretending to hate but secretly think might be working.

I miss when you were here. Not the drinking! I know you'll say I'm lying, but I’m not, not really. I just miss it. You and May trying to keep me from climbing onto the roof. You being here, even when you were being a complete bastard. Especially then, maybe.

LA's different now. Everyone's sober or dead or moved to Palm Springs, which might be the same thing. I saw Ringo last week, he looks good. Healthy. Distressingly healthy, actually, like he might start jogging. He asked about you. I told him you were hibernating in New York with your kid and your art wife and you were probably happier than any of us.

Are you happy? Don't answer that. I know you won't.

Anyway. The reason I'm writing, besides general maudlin nostalgia:

Some business type keeps trying to get hold of you. Called me twice, sent a letter to my manager. Very persistent, very polished. Something about wanting to discuss "a serious opportunity worth your consideration”. Their words, not mine. Wouldn't give details, just kept asking if I could pass along their contact information.

I threw the number away because I'm not your secretary and also because it smelled like bullshit. But they called again yesterday and said it was urgent, so I figured I'd mention it. So. Consider it mentioned.

Probably just another vulture trying to squeeze money out of the Beatles corpse. God knows there's enough of them. But they seemed unusually cagey about it, which makes me think maybe it's not the standard reunion shakedown. Then again, what do I know? I'm just the messenger.

Write back sometime, you difficult bastard. Or at least call. Una keeps asking about you and I'm running out of excuses for why you never call.

—H

John read it standing in the kitchen with the cold coffee, Sean's voice drifting in from the living room narrating the train's journey to some imaginary station.

He folded the letter, slid it back in the envelope, dropped it on the counter.

Yoko appeared in the doorway, her footsteps so quiet he hadn't heard her coming. She had a gift for materializing when he least expected it.

She fingered at the torn envelope, face up on the counter.

"Harry?"

"Yeah."

"How is he?"

"Sober. For now." John picked up his coffee, remembered it was cold, drank it anyway.

"Good for him." She sat in the chair by the window, tucked her legs under her in that way she had that made her look impossibly small. "What does he want?"

"Someone's been trying to reach me. Through him."

"About what?"

"Tour opportunity." He made the words sound like a disease.

"What kind of tour?"

"Didn't… specify." He said, in a loaded tone of voice.

Yoko's expression didn't change. "You're not interested." It wasn't a question.

"I spoke with George last week, you know. Made it pretty clear it’ll never happen."

"What did he say?"

"That he'd rather eat glass than get back in a room with Paul." John leaned against the counter.

"Mm." Yoko was watching him carefully.

"And anyway, George is happy with his own thing."

Yoko set her book down. "You’re telling me an awful lot about what George thinks."

"Because George thinks it's a terrible idea."

"And what do you think?"

John felt something in his chest pull tight. "It's what I think too. Obviously. Why the hell would I want to get back with Paul?"

"I didn't mention Paul." Yoko said, calmly.

"Well, that's who we're talking about, isn't it? A Beatles reunion, that means Paul. And George. And Ringo, even if he’d just do it to keep the peace." He was talking too much, he knew he was talking too much. "But it doesn't matter because George won't do it, so it's not happening."

John stared at her and he stared back as patient as stone.

"So, it’s a no." She said in confirmation.

“I'm not interested, alright? That's the end of it."

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"I believe you." She picked up her book again. "Sean needs lunch soon." Subject closed. Just like that. She'd made her point and now she was done.

John wanted to say something else—what, he didn't know—but she'd already turned back to her reading, and Sean was calling from the other room about the train needing more track.

"I'll make something," John said.

Yoko didn't look up.

John had done his time. He'd earned the right to sit on his living room floor and build train tracks with his kid. He wasn't going back.

He wasn't going back. Not for Harry. Not for George. Not for anyone. Especially not for Paul.

"Daddy, watch!" Sean sent the train through the tunnel at top speed.

"Very fast," John said.

"The fastest train in the world!"

"Absolutely."

Paul

The publishing offices were on West 71st. Paul knew that when he booked his flight.

Sure, it was a bit irregular that they weren’t in Midtown like every other publishing office in New York, but he tried not to think about that. Afterall, midtown was a nightmare, what with all its concrete canyons and honking horns. The Upper West Side was nice, he told himself. It was quiet and walkable and close to the park. A lovely spot for an independent publisher, really.

Also, if it happened to be blocks from the Dakota then… well, that was just a coincidence of geography.

New York was a small island, after all. Everything was close to everything else.

He'd told Linda he'd call her when he landed, but because Eastman had booked him on the earliest possible flight from England, leaving barely enough time for breakfast, he’d headed straight from the tarmac to the backseat of a car then to a stuffy conference room on the upper west side.

The meeting turned out to be three interminable hours on the third floor of a brick building on west 71st street spent hammering out the terms of what would hopefully become MPL's acquisition of the Eddie Cochran catalog. That was, of course, if the estate didn't get cold feet and if they could all agree on a number and if any of the one million things that could go wrong didn't go wrong.

It was nowhere near a done deal.

He'd been after the Cochran catalog for a little over two years.

It was a smart business move, for one thing. His lawyer had keyed him into the fact that the catalog was criminally undervalued, poorly managed and had enormous commercial potential. But that wasn't really why he wanted it, if he was being honest with himself.

Cochran had been twenty-one years old when he died, and Paul had been eighteen when he’d read about it, nauseous and dumbfounded in some sticky German cellar, and… he wasn’t sure what it was about the whole thing. Maybe it was the absolute meaninglessness of it all, but he had never quite gotten over the inexplicable tragedy of it. Buying the catalog felt like… he wasn’t sure, maybe like he was doing something? He couldn't say what exactly, but definitely something.

Much later than he’d promised, he called Linda from a payphone outside after the meeting was over, slipping inside the accordion door with his bag between his feet. He dragged the familiar numbers around in a circle, then plugged one ear once he heard the click that meant Linda had picked up. They talked for a few minutes, just long enough for Paul to feel buoyed by the smooth tone of her voice and laugh at Stella negotiating bathtime in the background. The meeting went well, he told her. He was just about to walk back to his hotel because the weather was nice and he needed the air after being cooped up all afternoon. That’s what he'd told her, and it was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. She'd said wrap up, it's still cold, and he'd said he would, and none of that was a lie.

Now he was out on the street in the late afternoon with his collar turned up and the whole city moving around him and nowhere to be until tomorrow morning.

He loved New York like this, all hustling and bustling, like a living breathing thing. He felt so anonymous here, among the blaring sirens and shouting buskers, just enough that it made him imagine what it might be like to be just another man in a coat walking fast. He didn’t usually bother himself with pointless thoughts like that, but something about New York pulled the wistfulness out of him like a loose thread. London occasionally had a similar effect, but ultimately it felt too small these days. Everyone fucking knew him there, and the place held too much history. New York didn't care, though, New York was too busy to care.

He turned north on Central Park West without really thinking about it. The park stretched out on his right, oak trees still bare, the last of the thin afternoon light glowing gold through the branches. Paul stuffed his hands in his pockets and watched as a flock of pigeons took to the air, their wings punching at the sky. He peered in shop fronts, smiling to himself at the knicknacks and clothes he saw displayed there. He did all the things a normal person might do when simply walking around and not looking for anything in particular. Because he was just walking, he definitely wasn’t looking for anything, or anyone.

72nd Street appeared ahead of him and he slowed. There it was, the Dakota, sitting on its corner, all Gothic and disapproving. He stopped dead and felt himself swallow hard. Paul had always found the building a slightly absurd place to live, amongst all that gloom, all those gargoyles. When he thought about it, though, it all was very John.

There was absolutely no reason for Paul to stand on the corner of 71st and Central Park West for any longer than it took to look both ways and cross the street, but his feet weren’t cooperating. He tried to walk but found himself glued to the spot. He squinted towards the Dokota’s canopied entrance, trying to make out if he recognized the doorman. He couldn’t see who it was, but he could make out the small cluster of people standing on the pavement, all of whom looked slightly glazed from waiting all day.

John was in there somewhere. Four floors up, or six, or wherever he'd put himself in that vast dark building. He was probably making bread or taking home videos with the kid or doing whatever it was he did all day in his self-imposed exile.

Paul could go up. That was a thing he could do. Walk to the doorman and say he was there to see John Lennon and no doubt he’d be let in. He'd done it before, back when doing it seemed reasonable, back when–

“It's not 1956, Paul. It isn't the same anymore.”

He could still hear the exact register of John’s voice when he’d said it.

Fine. Paul turned and walked south.

He was halfway back to the hotel when he saw him… Or he thought he did.

There was a man exiting a deli on 69th, slight and narrow-shouldered hunched under a long coat. A tuft of dark auburn hair curled at the collar, and when Paul saw that, his entire body froze before his brain even knew what was happening. His heart seized and the cold lurch of adrenaline coursed through him.

Then the man turned and he was nobody. Well, nobody to Paul at least. Based on the contents of his bag: milk, cereal, orange juice, he was no doubt somebody to a wife or a kid or a family of some kind. He was maybe a young forty, with a beard John didn't have and a face that was unremarkable. His eyes glazed over Paul from across the street, unseeing, before he walked the other way.

Paul stood on the pavement and reminded himself to breathe. He waited dumbly for the feeling to pass, which took longer than he would have liked, and then straightened his collar and kept walking.

He shrugged his shoulders, rolled his neck and squared his eyes forward. So what? He’d seen a man with dark hair and glasses in New York City. There were probably ten thousand of them within one square mile, statistically speaking. His nervous system was being dramatic like always, an irritating design flaw he'd been meaning to sort out for years now.

Besides, he wasn't even thinking about John. He definitely hadn't been thinking about John. He'd been thinking about the Cochran catalog and the lawyers and whether he fancied something to eat before getting back to the hotel, and if a small part of his walk had taken him four blocks further north than was strictly necessary then that was just… that was nothing. That was him enjoying the city. He was allowed to enjoy the city.

All around him New York buzzed on. Taxis honked, pedestrians scurried, a woman argued rather loudly with a pretzel vendor. The City didn't care what was happening inside his chest.

He was fine. It wasn't him. Everything was fine.

Back at the Hotel he found the private lounge someone had told him about. There was no sign, no nothing, just a room off the lobby that looked more like a coat closet than anything else, so you really had to know to look for it. Inside was all dark wood and low lighting and leather couches that had been worn in pleasantly over the years. There was a film actress Paul vaguely recognised who was holding court in the far corner of the room with two uptight looking entertainment lawyers. Near the bar, a record producer he'd met once at a Grammy dinner sat nursing a drink alone. A practiced bartender moved skillfully, refilling glasses before they were even empty, then retreating before anyone acknowledged him.

Paul had been there twenty minutes, and was halfway through sipping something scotch-adjacent that had been recommended with great conviction. He felt comfortably anonymous among people who were also trying to be anonymous. Nobody looked at anybody else. That was the agreement.

Then Mitch appeared at his elbow.

"McCartney." He said it like he'd won the lottery, and before Paul could say a word, the man had already pulled out the adjacent barstool and settled into it, completely oblivious. The man had clearly never once felt out of place anywhere in his life. "I thought that was you."

"Mitch." Paul said into his drink, trying not to look him in the eye.

Mitch Abrams was charming, well-connected, and always slightly more informed than he had any right to be. He worked in artist management, or at least, he said he did. For all the times they’d met, Paul could never quite remember who he was managing at any given moment because every time they spoke, it seemed to change. What didn't change, though, was his ubiquity at every industry event, every after-party in every city, and apparently, every private hotel lounge.

Paul had known him for the better part of a decade without ever quite knowing him. They ran into each other frequently, had exchanged numbers once, (Paul never called), but he still approached him with the same caution he might have reserved for a mountain lion.

"What are you drinking?" Mitch asked him, cozying right up.

"Whatever this stuff is," Paul raised his tumblr skeptically, “tastes a bit like a car tire, but it’s not half bad.”

Mitch signaled the bartender, ordered two of something Paul didn't catch, then turned back towards him, his face lit up with the warmth of a man who was, Paul suspected, three drinks in and very glad to have someone to talk to.

"What brings you to the city?"

"Business."

"Same. Always." Mitch looked around the bar approvingly. "Good trip?"

"Fine, yeah."

"How's Linda?"

"Great."

"Kids?"

"Great."

"Scotland treating you alright?"

"It's Scotland." Paul accepted the drink that appeared in front of him. "Lots of shoveling shit."

Mitch laughed as though this were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Paul chuckled along half heartedly.

They talked for a while about nothing in particular, if you could call it talking. Mitch sort of rambled on about industry things, mutual acquaintances, a festival in the summer that everyone was apparently going to, while Paul nodded and gave vague noises of agreement. It’s just that… he wasn’t paying attention to a word the man was saying. He was thinking about the man outside the deli on 69th Street who hadn't been John.

“–which is why I think the whole thing is going to collapse by autumn," Mitch was saying. "You can't keep inflating ticket prices and expect people to… anyway." He waved his hand. "That’s a whole different conversation." He took a long sip of his drink and set it down. He shifted in his seat and Paul got the distinct sense that he’d finally arrived at the thing he’d actually wanted to talk about. "You hear anything interesting lately?"

Paul regarded him suspiciously. "About what?"

"Oh, you know." Mitch turned his glass in a slow circle on the bar. "Just. The usual chatter."

"I've been in Scotland, Mitch. I don't hear much chatter."

"Right, right." Another sip. "Must be nice, actually. Getting away from all of it."

"It is."

"Quiet."

"Very."

"Nobody bothering you."

"Nobody bothering me," Paul agreed, and watched Mitch nod thoughtfully as though this were a fascinating piece of information rather than the painful irony that it was.

They sat in silence for a moment and Paul was beginning to think he'd misread the energy entirely, that Mitch was just drunk and sociable. But then Mitch said, so casually it almost sounded unrehearsed:

"Funny thing. Heard a rumour this week."

Here we go. He thought. Paul picked up his glass.

"Oh yeah?"

"About Lennon, of all people."

Paul choked on his drink, coughed loudly and put his glass down on the counter. Clearing his throat, he managed to croak, "What about him?"

"Word going around he's been approached about a tour." Mitch shook his head with a kind of delighted disbelief, like he was describing a unicorn sighting. "Seriously approached. Not the usual circus."

"John doesn't tour," Paul said, massaging his chest where he could feel another cough building. "John doesn't do anything. John makes bread."

"I know,” Mitch said, leaning in towards Paul like this was some kind of secret they were in on together, “that's what makes it interesting."

Paul decided he didn’t care, but that he should at least find out more. In case, you know, it came up.

"Where did you hear this?"

"Here and there." Mitch shrugged, then winked. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? "You know how it gets around. Someone hears something, someone else hears something slightly different, and by the time it gets to me it's probably half wrong. But." He paused. "The half that's right is interesting."

"Which half is that?"

Mitch looked at him. "That it's not solo."

Paul said nothing. The cough was about ready to burst out of him, and his eyes were stinging trying to hold it in.

"That's the part nobody can figure out," Mitch continued, "new project, maybe. New music. Though with what new music, right? Man hasn't released anything in years."

"No," Paul tried to talk through the tickle in his throat. "He hasn't."

"Makes you wonder what he's been sitting on."

"Does it."

"Well." Mitch turned his glass again. "Doesn't it?"

Paul looked at him for a long moment, and then let out a loud series of coughs. Mitch looked slightly surprised, and hit him on the back with an open palm several times. The coughing finally subsided, and Paul raised a hand to let him know he was ok.

"You heard anything?" Mitch asked.

"Me?" Paul almost laughed. "Why would I have heard anything?"

Mitch smiled into his drink. The answer to that question was obvious and they both knew it.

"I haven't heard anything," Paul said.

"Right, right. Of course." Mitch signaled for the bill. "Well. If you do."

"I won't."

"No." Mitch stood, buttoned his jacket, clapped Paul once on the shoulder. "Give my love to Linda."

"Yeah," Paul said. "Will do."

He watched him go. Then he sat at the bar for a while longer, watching his ice melt, and tried to decide what exactly had just happened.

He finished his drink in one gulp, then took the freight elevator to his floor and stood in the middle of his hotel room for a long time.

He walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. Somewhere north of here, four blocks or five, John Lennon was in his Dakota apartment building trains definitely not thinking about Paul McCartney, definitely not secretly writing more music and definitely not going on a bloody tour.

Paul lay back on the hotel bed, still in his coat, and stared at the ceiling.

It was nothing. Industry gossip was like the weather forecast, unreliable and mostly wrong. Not to mention, Mitch was exactly the kind of man who repeated things without bothering to verify them, just to stir the pot.

Who was he kidding? John wasn’t going on tour. John hadn’t made music in years. The idea that someone had gotten to him was the kind of rumour that circulated every eighteen months and never amounted to anything.

And yet…

There had been that call from Eastman. Paul tried to arrange this information into a shape that had nothing to do with John Lennon and found that he couldn’t quite manage it. Two and two was four. That was just arithmetic.

Although, he reminded himself, one and one didn’t always equal Beatles. That particular equation had stopped working a long time ago.

McCartney Spotted Near Dakota- Is The Ice Finally Melting?

The Industry Eye, November 1979

Paul McCartney was spotted last Thursday evening on Manhattan's Upper West Side, looking "relaxed and normal" according to eyewitnesses. The sighting, near 69th Street and Central Park West, has predictably sent the rumor mill into overdrive. And that address should ring a bell: it's a stone's throw from the Dakota building, where John Lennon lives out his days in self-imposed exile.

It's been nine years since the Beatles officially called it quits, and the subsequent Cold War between Lennon and McCartney. It's hard to fathom now, watching old Beatles footage, just how close these two were. But, now? They can barely manage a civil word in separate interviews, let alone the same room.

Since the split, the four have scattered to their separate corners of the world. McCartney's been touring the world with Wings, proving he doesn't need the other three to pack a stadium. Between tours, he's retreated to Scotland with wife Linda and their three children, playing gentleman farmer and recovering from that unfortunate Japan arrest last month. (All charges were dropped, for anyone wondering, but one imagines Paul won't be visiting Tokyo again soon.)

After a strong start to the decade– Imagine, Mind Games, the critically acclaimed Walls and Bridges– Lennon went radio silent around 1975, retreating into domestic life at the Dakota with wife Yoko and son Sean. Rumors swirl about what exactly Lennon does all day (baking bread, apparently, which seems aggressively normal for a former Beatle), but whatever it is, it doesn't involve making music. Or giving interviews. Or being seen in public. The man who once said the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" is now, it seems, quite happy being as small as a mouse.

George Harrison continues releasing albums with admirable consistency if not commercial success. His tours have been "intimate" – which is either code for spiritually fulfilling or poorly attended, depending on who you ask. Ringo's decamped to LA, dabbling in acting, but he remains the Switzerland of the breakup.

Here's what makes the McCartney sighting particularly interesting: most of the Beatles have worked together since 1970. Ringo with everyone. George with John. Even George with Paul at mutual friend Eric Clapton’s wedding. But the iciest relationship is between the two who were once closest: Paul and John. The songwriting partnership that defined a generation has been replaced by stony silence and occasional barbs in the press.

Which brings us back to last Thursday. Paul McCartney, in New York City, a hop skip and a jump from the Dakota building. Coincidence? Perhaps. McCartney does have business interests in Manhattan, after all.

This sighting comes just four years after the much talked about non-reunion of April 1976. The two apparently spent the evening watching Saturday Night Live, where Lorne Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show.

Legend has it they considered going down to the studio before deciding they were too tired. It was the last confirmed time they were in the same room.

Could history be repeating itself? Is the ice beginning to crack?

Probably not. Both Lennon and McCartney have been emphatic that a Beatles reunion will never happen. "You can't go home again," Lennon said in a rare 1975 interview. McCartney has been only slightly less definitive: "We said what we had to say. Why ruin it?"

So Paul was in New York. Maybe he visited John. Maybe he didn't. Maybe they talked. Maybe they didn't. Maybe the ice is thawing. Maybe it isn’t.

Either way, we'll be watching.

—Cameron Blackburn

John

The sourdough hadn't risen properly.

John stood in the kitchen staring at the dough like it had personally betrayed him. Three days of feeding the starter, precise measurements, the right temperature, and the damn thing had barely doubled in size. It sat on the counter, dense and lumpy.

"Mr. Lennon?" Helen, one of Sean's nannies, appeared in the doorway. She was new, still nervous around him, like he might suddenly start throwing furniture. He'd only done that once, and it had only been a vase, and it had been three years ago. "I wanted to check about Sean's schedule today."

John pulled his attention away from the bread. "What about it?"

"He has art class at two, but Mrs. Ono mentioned possibly moving it to Thursday?"

"Did she."

"She said to check with you."

Of course she did. Yoko had been doing that lately—deferring to him on things she'd normally just decide herself, like she was testing whether he was paying attention. Or maybe she genuinely didn't care about Sean's art class schedule. Hard to tell these days.

"Thursday's fine," John said. "Anything else?"

"His lunch. He didn't finish yesterday and—"

"Give him whatever he'll eat. If he's hungry, he'll eat it. If he's not, he won't. It's not that complicated."

Helen nodded, retreated. John could feel her discomfort. He hadn't meant to be sharp, but Christ, did every decision about a three-year-old require a committee meeting?

He looked back at the bread dough and picked it up. Put it down. Picked it up again.

The problem was probably the water temperature. Or maybe he'd overworked the dough. Or the apartment was too cold, or too warm, or the Dakota's ancient radiators were tricky this time of year, or…. Or he was spending too much time thinking about bloody bread.

John grabbed his jacket. "I'm going out," he called to no one in particular.

***

They were waiting when he came through the Dakota's entrance, same as always. Four of them today: two girls who looked about nineteen, a young man with a camera, and a kid who couldn't have been more than fifteen. They straightened like meerkats when they saw him.

John didn't slow down. The girls fell into breathless step beside him holding out albums and pens. He took the first one and signed it without looking, then handed it back. The second girl had Imagine. He signed that too.

"John!"

It was Paul Goresh, twenty-something, camera perpetually raised, and a fixture outside the Dakota so reliable that John had started factoring him into his exits the way you factored in whether or not it was raining. He was already grinning.

"Goresh."

"Beautiful morning."

"Is it?" John squinted up at the sky. "Looks the same as yesterday."

"Yesterday you didn't stop for a photo."

"I stopped."

"You waved and kept walking."

"That's stopping." John turned, let him take the shot. "How many photos do you have of me at this point, Paul?"

"Not enough."

"How will you know when it is enough?"

Goresh lowered the camera and thought about it genuinely for a moment. "I'll let you know," he said finally.

"Comforting." John started walking again, then stopped. Just beyond Goresh, half hidden behind a lamp post, was the kid John had seen, he’d pressed himself up against the wall like he was hoping the building might absorb him, a battered copy of Revolver clutched to his chest. He'd clearly been there a while.

John sighed heavily, for the benefit of anyone watching.

"Ey." He raised his voice just enough and the kid's head snapped up. "Yeah, you. Come on then, I haven't got all…" he checked his watch, "…morning."

The kid stumbled forward on legs that had apparently stopped working properly and thrust the album out with both hands. John took it and as he held it, he felt something warm move through his chest that he didn't let anywhere near his face.

"You wait long?"

"No," the kid said immediately. "Not really. Like, an hour maybe."

John looked at Goresh.

"He was here before me," Goresh said. "And I got here at seven."

John looked back at the kid, who had gone the color of a tomato.

"An hour," John repeated back to him, skeptically.

"Maybe two."

"Right." John handed it back to him, grinning. "Good album."

The kid looked down at it like he'd forgotten what it was. "Yeah," he managed.

"Don't tell anyone I said that," John said. "I'll deny it."

The kid laughed nervously.

"You skip school for this?"

"N-no. Fall break."

"Right." John glanced back at Goresh. "They get younger every year."

"You get older every year," Goresh said. "It evens out."

"Charming." John turned up his collar and kept walking. "Same time tomorrow, Paul."

"Wouldn't miss it."

Satisfied, and John kept walking toward the park. New Yorkers had a way of being excited about celebrities without being insane about it. One of the reasons he stayed. Nobody grabbed, nobody screamed. They just waited, as patient as monks.

Central Park in November was half-dead, trees bare and the grass that sad brown that meant winter hadn't quite arrived, but it was around the corner. John walked with his hands in his pockets, head down, watching pigeons scatter ahead of him on the path.

A woman with a dog did a double-take as she passed but kept walking. Two joggers slowed, one of them pointing, but they didn't stop either. Near the fountain, a man in a business suit approached, polite and apologetic. John signed his newspaper. The man thanked him three times and left.

He really didn’t mind these quick transactions with minimal contact, everyone got what they wanted and moved on. It was the standing around talking that John couldn't handle anymore: the questions about the Beatles, about whether he was making music again, about whether he missed it. He didn't miss it. He missed parts of it sometimes, but mostly he didn't miss it, and explaining that to strangers in Central Park felt like pulling his own teeth out.

By the time he looped back toward the Dakota, it was past noon and he was thinking about what to do with the bread. Maybe toast it, see if that salvaged it. Maybe throw it out and start over. Maybe give up entirely and buy bread like a normal person. Maybe–

He passed a newsstand on the corner littered with gossip rags. Usually, he barely glanced at such things, waste of trees in his opinion, but something this time caught his eye. A word in a headline.

John stopped and backed up two steps. He scanned the rack of papers and magazines until he found it again.

Industry Eye. Small article, bottom corner of the cover teaser: "McCartney Spotted in Manhattan—Is the Ice Finally Melting?"

John's stomach did that thing it always did when he accidentally happened upon any news about Paul. There was a tightening and then a sharp cold, similar to when he missed a step on the staircase. Fucking ridiculous. Nine years and his body still reacted to Paul's name in print like a trained dog hearing a whistle.

This was pathetic. He knew it was pathetic. For pete’s sake, Paul's name appeared in magazines every other week, whether it was tour reviews, album releases, or that imbecilic Japan arrest. He'd trained himself not to care. He'd been doing so well, actually. Months without so much as a twitch.

John stared at it but didn't pick it up. People were walking past him, the newsstand owner was watching him, and for God’s sake he was John Lennon standing on a street corner staring at a magazine like it was announcing the start of world war three instead of just another article about his ex-bandmate doing very regular ex-bandmate things.

His heart was doing something annoying in his chest. This whole thing was annoying. Paul was annoying. The fact that John still gave a shit after all this time was annoying. He turned and walked away as fast as he could without looking conspicuous.

***

Back at the Dakota, John went straight to the phone in his study. Fred picked up on the third ring.

"Fred. I need you to pick something up for me."

"Sure, John. What do you need?"

"The latest Industry Eye. Today's issue."

Pause. Longer than it should have been. "The gossip magazine?"

"Is there another one called The Industry Eye?"

"The one with the Springsteen interview?"

"I don't know what the fuck interview is in it, Fred. I just need the magazine." This was childish. He didn't need to read it. Paul had been in New York, so what? New York was a big city.

"I just—okay. When do you need it?"

"Today."

"Today like this afternoon, or—"

"Today like I called you, so I need it today. Is that a problem?"

"No, no problem. I can grab it. It's just—it's kind of a rag though. Not really your—"

"Did I ask for your editorial opinion?"

"No, I just—"

"I don't pay you to editorialize, Fred. I pay you to do things when I ask you to do them."

"Right. Yeah. Sorry." Fred sounded wounded, which made John feel like an asshole, which made him even more irritated. "I'll grab it and bring it by in a couple of hours?"

"Fine."

"Is there… do you need anything else?"

What John wanted to say was: Can you explain why I care if Paul McCartney was three blocks away from my building last week? Can you tell me why my heart is pounding right now? Can you explain why it’s been nine years and the sight of his name still sends me into a state?

What he said was: "No."

"Right. I'll bring it by this afternoon."

John hung up. Sat in his chair. The study was dark even with the lamp on, the Dakota's windows seemed designed to block out as much natural light as possible. He could hear Helen talking to Sean in the other room, Yoko on the phone somewhere else in the apartment, the building's pipes clanking like they did every afternoon around this time.

He was pathetic, this was pathetic, asking his assistant to fetch a magazine like some junkie sending someone out for a fix because he couldn't be seen doing it himself. At least a junkie had the dignity of wanting something that actually made them feel good. John just wanted to read a three-paragraph column in a tabloid about a man he didn't even like anymore, after which he’d most definitely get a stomach ache.

John had spent the past five years rebuilding a life that had nothing to do with Paul McCartney. Five years since he'd almost gone to New Orleans. Five years since Sean had been born and given him something to hold onto, that wasn’t music, or the past, or Paul. He'd almost relapsed once, but he hadn't, and the walls had gone back up, even stronger this time. But now, just one mention of Paul's name in a magazine and he was right back to being twenty-five and neurotic and wondering what Paul was doing every second Paul wasn't in the same room with him.

The phone rang. John stared and let it ring three times before picking up.

"Yeah."

"John, it's Fred. I'm at the newsstand now. they've got last week's issue and this week's. Which one do you want?"

John closed his eyes. "What's the date on the McCartney article?"

"Uh—hold on—" John heard him put the payphone down, then scuffle back a moment later. "This week's. Cover says 'McCartney Spotted in Manhattan.'"

"That one."

"Got it. I'll be there in twenty."

John hung up before Fred could say anything else.

Twenty minutes. He could do something productive in twenty minutes. Write something. Practice guitar. Check on Sean. Make another fucking loaf of bread.

Instead he sat in his chair and watched the clock and tried not to think about Paul walking past the Dakota, maybe looking up at the building, maybe thinking about stopping by. Or worse—not thinking about it at all.

***

The doorbell rang around three, and Yoko answered. John heard her voice from the study all polite and distant, it was the way she talked to people who worked for them. He should have met Fred at the door. Should have thought of that.

"Hello, Fred."

"Hi, Yoko. Is John around?"

"He's in his study. What's that?"

John was out of his chair and in the hallway before Fred could answer. "It's for me," he called. "Thanks, Fred."

Fred looked at him, then at Yoko, then back at John, his hand extended with what John could only assume was the Industry Eye wrapped in a paper bag, like some dirty porno. "Right. Yeah. Here you go."

"What is it?" Yoko asked. She wasn't looking at the bag, she was looking at John, and John could feel a burn starting at the back of his neck.

"Nothing" John took the bag from Fred and held it snug against his torso like it might escape. "Just something I asked him to pick up."

Something shifted behind her eyes that let John know she knew he was lying but wasn't sure yet about what.

Fred was still standing there, watching this exchange with barely concealed nervousness. He'd brought John plenty of things over the years (records, books, art supplies, that one time a specific type of Japanese pen that John had become infatuated with) and Yoko had never asked about any of it.

"Looks like a magazine." Yoko asked.

"Does it matter?"

"You're being strange about it."

"I'm not being strange, I just asked Fred to pick up a magazine. Is that strange? Is that a strange thing to do?"

Fred cleared his throat. "Should I—do you need anything else, or—"

"No. We're good. Thanks." John was already backing toward the study, the paper bag crumpled in his fist.

"Okay. I'll just—I'll call later about the thing with the accountant."

"Fine. Yeah. Later."

Fred left. Yoko stayed in the hallway, arms crossed, watching John like he was a stubborn child..

"John."

"What."

"Let me see." She extended her hand.

"No."

"Why not?"

Because it was The Industry Eye, which Yoko would recognize immediately as tabloid trash. Because the second she saw Paul's name on the cover she'd know exactly why John wanted it. Because then she'd ask whether he was okay, whether he needed to talk about it, whether this meant something. And John didn't want to talk about it, and it didn't mean anything. He just wanted to read the stupid article and throw it away and pretend he couldn’t care any less about the whole damn thing.

"It's research," he said again.

"For what?"

Christ. "I don't know yet. Hence: research.”

They stared at each other. Yoko didn't blink. She never let him get away with his bullshit. Usually that was good, but right now it was excruciating.

"Fine," she said finally. "Don't tell me."

She turned and walked back toward her studio disappointed. Like John was being childish and she was too tired to fight him on it.

John waited until he heard her studio door close. Then he went into his study, shut the door, locked it.

Sat down at his desk. Set the paper bag in front of him and stared at it.

His heart was doing that annoying thing again. Pounding really, really hard. Fred bringing him a gossip rag shouldn't feel like a covert operation. Lying to Yoko about why he wanted to read it shouldn't make his stomach hurt.

But here he was. Forty years old, hands shaking, about to read a tabloid article about his ex-songwriting partner like it was the fucking Dead Sea Scrolls.

He pulled the magazine out of the bag and flipped to the article page.

Paul McCartney was spotted last Thursday evening on Manhattan's Upper West Side, looking "relaxed and normal" according to eyewitnesses.

John kept reading. The article went through the usual bullshit—Beatles history, the breakup, everyone's solo careers, the fact that he and Paul hadn't spoken in years. Then:

The sighting, near 69th Street and Central Park West, has predictably sent the rumor mill into overdrive.

69th and Central Park West. That was—what, two blocks away? Three?

Paul had been three blocks from the Dakota. John read it again.

Could history be repeating itself? Is the ice beginning to crack?

John threw the magazine across the room. It hit the wall, pages fluttering, and landed in a sad heap by the bookshelf.

John got up, walked over to the magazine and picked it up. He smoothed out the page,staring at a glossy photo of Paul from some recent concert with a bass slung across his back. He looked good. Obnoxiously so. There was a sheen of sweat on his face that caught the stage lights, and his hair looked damp at the temples. His face was beginning to show its age, the lines deepening around his eyes, and John could not for the life of him explain why that made it worse rather than better. Frustrated, he crumpled the magazine in both hands, shoved it into the waste bin beside his desk. Hard. Then harder, pushing it down until his knuckles hit the bottom.

He sat back down at his desk. Pulled out his journal and tried to write something, but couldn't think of anything that didn't involve writing about Paul.

The magazine sat in the bin, pages crumpled, Paul's face somewhere in the mess of it.

Three blocks.

John slammed the journal shut and went to check on Sean.

Paul

There was a hole in the roof, and it was getting bigger.

He’d thought the old farmhouse indestructible, until one morning when a patch of ceiling the size of a dinner plate fell onto the kitchen table in the middle of his cornflakes. Mary had screamed, Stella had cried and Linda had simply looked at him and said, that's not good.

It was not good.

Paul had called a contractor, like a responsible adult and homeowner, which he felt he was. He’d found the man in the yellow pages and made his best attempt at anonymity by giving a false name, which had lasted precisely as long as it took the man to reach the front door and look him in the eye. From there the contractor waltzed into the kitchen with his arms folded, sucking his teeth, doing very performative arithmetic, before he delivered a number Paul found personally offensive.

Not that they couldn’t afford it. Obviously they could afford it. It was the principle. He’d always been reasonably self-sufficient on the farm, if imperfectly. He’d built their kitchen table himself, even if it was slightly wobbly, and Mary’s first crib, even if Linda had told her friends it was a bit ‘rustic looking’ when she thought he couldn’t hear her. A roof was just a table, but bigger and higher up. How hard could it be.

He’d laughed the contractor off the property.

That had been three weeks ago. The hole was now considerably larger, at least the size of a pothole, maybe bigger, and Paul stood on the roof with his hands on his hips, squinting down through sunken thatch and torn plaster at the cardboard boxes blinking up at him from the attic below.

He'd gotten up that morning before the kids, almost before the sun. He’d pulled on long underwear under his oldest jeans, a torn flannel he’d found in the barn years ago and never returned, and a wool sweater over the top of that. It had seemed like enough in the kitchen. It was not enough on the roof. The December air had teeth and Paul’s nose was going numb and the Scottish sky couldn’t decide what colour to be, so it had settled on all of them at once, a thin grey light over the hills that made his eyes sting.

He looked down at his bucket of materials. A hammer, some nails, plaster, thatch: tools he had selected with great confidence two hours ago and now regarded with mounting suspicion. At the bottom of the bucket, mercifully, was the flask of scotch he’d had the foresight to include. That, at least, he knew how to use.

He was underdressed, underprepared, and it was increasingly unclear what he’d thought was going to happen up here. But the view was brilliant. You had to give it that.

He let out a long sigh. He loved it up here. Not on the roof specifically, although there was something to be said for being the highest point of your own property. But here, in Scotland. He wasn’t sure what the word was for what he felt looking at it. Satisfaction, maybe, though that wasn’t quite right either. He’d built none of this, strictly speaking, given that the farm was four hundred years old.

But he had set out ten years ago to prove his life could go on after he’d lost the best thing that had ever happened to him. That Paul McCartney without the Beatles was still worth something, still capable of writing songs and getting out of bed in the morning. And low and behold, it had. Spectacularly, in fact. And now here he was, on the other side of everything with a wife he adored and children who were growing up way too fast and a farm that was falling apart.

So, why didn’t he feel more… satisfied? Why couldn't he seem to stand still?

He reached into the bucket and found the flask. One thing at a time.

He took a long swig and the burn in his throat jolted him to life. If it wasn’t touring it was recording, and if it wasn’t recording it was traveling and if it wasn’t traveling it was watching the kids, and if it wasn’t watching the kids it was meetings with lawyers, and if it wasn’t meetings with lawyers, it was repairing the bloody roof. For once he’d love to sit down and read an entire book, from cover to cover and not ditch it halfway through because something distracted him.

For most of his life, there had been that relentless forward lurch that had propelled him forward like a windup toy: more albums more tours more more more. This, though, didn't feel exactly the same. It wasn’t as intense. But there was still a flutter of restlessness in his gut. He was done with one thing and not yet started on the next.

Wings had quietly dissolved over the last year, and Paul had let it happen without grief, which probably should have told him something. He'd seen it coming and the only thought he remembered having was: fair enough. He'd needed the band at one point in time, and now he didn't anymore. He shifted his weight on the roof tiles and squinted down into the attic once more, he thought he saw a shoebox full of letters from up here but it was too dark to tell.

For my next trick, he thought, I’ll make this whole thing disappear.

"Paul." Linda's voice rose up from the garden below.

He jumped slightly at her voice, but turned to face the sound of it. "Up here."

A pause, then he heard her footsteps on the ladder. Her head appeared over the eave, strawberry hair tucked under a knit cap, camera strap around her neck. She was holding two mugs in one hand, which was technically very impressive.

"You're going to fall through."

"I'm not going to fall through."

"You're standing directly on the damaged section."

Paul looked down at his feet. He moved six inches to the left.

Linda handed him a mug and settled herself on the ladder with ease. Paul had always admired how she was permanently comfortable in her own body. She looked at the hole, then at the bucket of materials, then at Paul.

"How's it going?"

"Alright."

"Is it?"

"It's fine. It's a roof. I know what I'm doing."

"You said that about the plumbing."

"And might I point out that the plumbing is fine."

"We had no hot water for four days."

"And then it was fine. Four days and then fine. That’s basically fine.”

“That’s not what fine means.”

“In Liverpool it is.” Paul sipped his tea. Below them the farm was waking up. He could see a thin line of smoke from the chimney, Mary's light on in her bedroom window. "I just need to find out what kind of thatch they used originally and then I’ll know what I’m dealing with."

She handed him her empty mug to hold without asking whether he minded. “The hole’s bigger than last week.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

“I measured it.”

“With what?”

“My eyes.”

“Very scientific.”

Paul laughed despite himself.

"There was a letter," Linda said. Just like that, no preamble, like it was something she’d been wanting to say for a while. "Arrived last week. I put it on your desk."

Paul shifted, taken aback. “A letter?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s it from?” He didn’t know what else to ask.

"Don't know. No return address."

Paul made a noncommittal noise. Letters with no return address were usually dull legal things, or publishing things, or something to do with the endless administrative machinery of being Paul McCartney.

Usually.

Except that one time, about five years ago. He'd left the unmarked envelope on his desk for two weeks before opening it, and what was inside had led, eventually, to a trip to Los Angeles that he preferred not to think about too hard.

"Why haven't you opened it?"

"I've been busy."

Linda looked at the hole in the roof.

"I've been busy," Paul said again. He took a sip of the tea, which was still too hot, but he drank it anyway, knowing his tongue would be raw and irritated for the rest of the day.

Below them, Stella's light came on in her bedroom window and a sow moved leisurely along the fence.

"Paul," Linda said.

"I'll open it later," he said.

“Ok.” She climbed back down the ladder. He heard her cross the yard, the back door, the kitchen. Then the farm went quiet again.

He stayed on the roof for another twenty minutes, not fixing anything.

He didn't open the letter that day…. or the next three days.

Instead it just sat on his desk acquiring dust. Then a seed catalogue, a drawing James had made of a horse that far more resembled a table, two guitar picks, and an apple core he should have thrown away stacked on top of it. Each morning he walked right past it because, well, he was busy. The roof wasn't fixing itself.

But that wasn't it, and he knew it.

It was just that… John didn't write letters. John barely made phone calls. And they were in a place now where if John wanted something he could just ring. They could just ring each other. That was allowed. That was a thing that could happen.

So it wasn't from him.

But what if it was? What if he'd decided to… what, exactly? Reopen the lawsuit? There was nothing left to litigate, surely. Or maybe John had found something, some old contract, some grievance he'd been quietly nursing for years and had decided now was the moment to unearth it. That would be very John, actually, sitting on a bomb for years and then deploying it during peacetime without any warning.

When he finally did open it four days later, he'd done such a thorough job of convincing himself of what it was that the reality of what it wasn't stopped him cold. There was no mention of John. No mention of anything, really, beyond the vague promise of a business opportunity and a number to call. He stood there for a moment, letter in hand, feeling faintly ridiculous.

It was nothing. Probably the same thing Eastman had been on about last month, and whatever Mitch had been hinting at in New York. Some misguided soul with touring ambitions. Paul set it down on the desk and stood there for a moment, not quite sure what he was feeling, which was annoying because obviously he felt nothing. There was nothing to feel, it was a form letter from a stranger about an opportunity he had absolutely no intention of pursuing.

And he would have forgotten about it entirely, except that several days later Linda appeared in the doorway while he was on the phone and pointed at the answering machine with one finger, eyebrows raised.

Paul nodded, finished his call, and crossed to the machine without thinking too much about it. He was expecting his brother, maybe, or someone from MPL about the Cochran business, or one of the kids' school ringing about something he'd forgotten to sign. He pressed play.

Hello, Mr. McCartney. I'm calling on behalf of a client who's been attempting to reach you.

He frowned slightly. Not Mike then.

You may have received some correspondence.

Paul's eyes involuntarily slid to his desk where the letter was still sitting, under the seed catalogue.

We'd very much like to speak with you directly about a professional opportunity. Please do call us at your earliest convenience.

The machine clicked off. Paul stood there with his hand still resting on the button. He played it again. The accent was American, smooth and nobody he recognized, which shouldn't have been that strange on the surface. People rang him all the time, managers and lawyers and industry people he'd never met. But this was the Scotland number, and the letter had come here too. This wasn’t a number that was listed. His brother had it, his lawyer. A few selected others. It wasn’t a number you just stumbled across, no. Someone had given it to this person deliberately, which meant someone Paul trusted had decided, for whatever reason, that this was fine.

He played it again, as though a second listen might tell him who. Either someone had gone to considerable trouble, or someone he knew had handed it over.

Neither possibility was particularly comforting.

Linda was in the armchair by the fire when he came through, feet tucked under her, book open on her knee. She looked up.

"Who was it?"

"Don't know," Paul said, which was true and also, he was realizing, the problem. "Same people, I think. The ones who sent the letter."

Linda's eyes didn't leave her book. "They're persistent."

"They usually are." Paul sat down in a huff. "But they’ll lose steam eventually."

"Mm."

"Always do."

"I know." She turned a page. "So you're not worried."

Paul was quiet for a moment. "They called here, Lin."

He watched her take this in, the small shift in her expression as she closed her book.

"Who would give that out?" she asked.

"That's what I'm trying to work out."

There was a beat of silence before Linda set her book down properly, finger still holding her place out of habit. She thought about it for a moment, head tilted. "Numbers get out," she said finally. "You know how it is. Someone passes it along without thinking, someone's assistant writes it down somewhere it shouldn't be written."

"I know."

"If it keeps happening we'll call the phone company. Get it changed." She picked her book back up. "In the meantime we can change the voicemail to something vague. Throw them off."

Paul looked at her.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing." He reached across to squeeze her thigh. "That's actually a very good idea."

"I have them occasionally." She found her page again. "Dinner in twenty."

***

It was the accumulation of things that got to him eventually. The letter. The voicemail from the American he didn’t recognise on a number nobody was supposed to have. Eastman’s tone on the phone. And then Mitch in the hotel bar, watching Paul’s face for any flicker of a reaction.

And then the Industry Eye, which he'd seen in the café on the village high street, against his own will, half in the bin, open to page four.

Through The Grapevine

The Industry Eye, November 1979

There's a rumour making the rounds in industry circles this week, and unlike most rumours it hasn't dissolved after the third or fourth retelling. If anything it's getting more specific.

The story goes like this: a well-funded and so-far unidentified party, most likely American money, we're told, had been making quiet, sustained overtures toward members of a certain band. The band in question broke up a decade ago, sued each other comprehensively, and have spent the years since making it abundantly clear that the whole thing is finished. You'll know them. Everyone knows them. There are only four of them and one of them is Ringo.

Here's where it gets interesting. Two of the four have reportedly already passed. The sensible thing at this point would be for our mystery promoter to fold and find someone easier to work with, which would be almost anyone alive.

But they haven't.

Which raises a question our sources can't quite answer: was a full reunion ever really the point? Because someone with this kind of money and this kind of patience doesn't keep pushing after two rejections unless they were after something more specific. Something that doesn't require all four. Something that perhaps only works as two.

We won't speculate further. We don't need to. If you've followed this band at all (and who hasn't) you already know which two we mean. The ones who haven't shared a stage or a studio or, as far as anyone can tell, a civil conversation in the better part of a decade.

Apparently someone thinks that can change.

We'll be watching.

—C.B.

He tilted his head slightly to one side because he was definitely not reading it, he was merely glancing at it since it was in his bloody line of sight. It was half in the bin, for God's sake. If that wasn't perfect symbolism he didn't know what was.

On his way out he stopped at the newsagent next door, as he always did, and picked up his usual stack of papers: the Guardian, the Times, a farming periodical he told himself he’d read but probably wouldn’t. He was at the till, stack in hand, when he saw it.

The Industry Eye. He stared at it, it stared back.

He grabbed it, slid it into the middle of the stack, as though he were someone who bought gossip rags every day of his life and it really was no big deal, thank you very much. He set the whole lot on the counter and the woman behind the till didn't bat an eye, and he took this as a sign that this was a very normal thing to do.

He walked back to his car with the stack under his arm, the Industry Eye buried safely in the middle where nobody could see it, least of all himself. When he sat down in the driver's seat he couldn’t help himself, he scrambled for it and read the article again. Then one more time once he’d arrived home, sitting at the kitchen table with his coat still on. Then he went to his study, closed the door, and called George.

It rang six times. Paul was about to hang up when George picked up, slightly out of breath.

"Yeah."

"It's me."

"Oh, hello then." A rustling sound, something being set down. "Hang on." More rustling. "Right. Sorry. I was in the garden."

"In December?"

"I'm in Henley, Paul, not the Arctic. What do you want?"

"Charming. How are you?"

"Fine. Olivia's got me doing something with the rose beds that I don't fully understand but apparently it can't wait until spring. How are you?"

"Fine. Kids?"

"Good. Dhani's walking now, did I tell you?"

"You didn't."

"Yeah, just started. Terrifying. You forget how fast it goes." A pause. "How's Linda?"

"Good. She's good. She's been shooting a lot, got a whole series she's working on. The kids are, yeah, they're great." Paul leaned back in his chair. "Listen, have you seen the Industry Eye this week?"

A short silence. "Which bit."

"Page four."

"Yeah," George said, and something in his voice settled, like he'd been waiting for this call. "I've seen it."

"’One of them is Ringo’," Paul said.

"I noticed."

"Subtle as a brick." Paul looked out the window at the grey Scottish afternoon.

"So, the rumors are true?”

“Hm?”

“You've been contacted."

“Yeah.”

“How many times?”

Paul counted briefly. “A few letters. Message on the answering machine. Eastman’s had a call. They've got the Scotland number, George."

Another, longer silence. “That’s funny. I got one letter,” George said. “One lonely letter six weeks ago. No signature, vague as anything.” He paused as though something had just clicked for him. “Wait, they’ve called your Scotland number?”

“Yeah.”

"Christ." A pause. "How?"

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

George was quiet for a moment in the way he got sometimes. Paul waited.

"That's, that's not good, that."

"No, it’s not."

"Have you changed it?"

"Linda's sorting it."

"Good." George went quiet for a moment. In the background Paul could hear wind, the distant sound of birds. "I rang Ringo when I got my letter," George said. "He'd gotten the same one. We both said no and that was the end of it. Haven't heard a word since."

"Not a peep?"

"Not a peep. One no and they were gone." He paused. "Which is interesting, isn't it."

"I suppose,” Paul said slowly, “so they've gotten nos from both you and Rich, and fold immediately. But with me they're– "

"Letters, calls to your private number, Eastman." George's voice was careful. "It’s just odd, y’know. Not how you run a Beatles reunion. You know as well as anyone. If they were following the usual playbook, they’d be going hardest at me and Ringo. We’re the easy ones aren’t we? You'd wear us down first and use us as leverage for you two."

"So you’re saying it's not a Beatles reunion."

"The article says as much." George paused, and Paul could hear him working his lower lip. "Has he been contacted?"

“Has who been contacted?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just ask me that.”

Paul was silent on the other line, chewed on a fingernail.

"I’ll take that to mean, you haven't asked him."

"No."

"Right." George let that sit without comment, which was its own kind of comment.

Outside Paul's window Scotland had gone the colour of old pewter. "I'd be careful," George said finally. "Whoever this is, they've done their homework. I have a feeling they know we'd say no. Maybe even banked on it." He paused. "Which means… our nos weren't a setback. They were part of the plan.”

Paul stared at the letter on his desk.

"Yeah," he said. "That's what I'm thinking too."

He paused. “Make of that what you will.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

After he hung up he sat in the study for a long time, not making anything of it at all.

Paul McCartney: After Wings, Before What's Next

Melody Maker, December 1979

Interview by Angelica Bridges

I meet Paul McCartney in the lobby of a London hotel on a Tuesday afternoon. He is late, cheerful about being late, and arrives carrying a cup of tea he's brought from somewhere else. He is wearing a dark wool coat over a soft silk shirt, jeans, boots that have seen better days. He has no entourage, no assistant hovering. He comes through the door like he knows exactly where he's going and has been here before. He sits down, looks around approvingly, and says: "I like this place. We stayed here once. Or somewhere like it. Linda will know." He does not elaborate.

I last interviewed him in 1975, in a different hotel, in a different city, at the height of the Wings machine when everything around him was bright and shiny. He was charming then (he is always charming) but there was something slightly frantic to it, like a someone who was performing relaxation rather than experiencing it.

He is now thirty-seven years old. The famous smile is still there but it arrives differently, less automatic, more considered, like he's decided to give it rather than simply producing it on cue. He sets his tea down on the table between us, leans back, crosses one ankle over his knee, and looks at me with the alert, slightly amused expression of a man who has done many interviews and has decided, for now, to enjoy this one.

We begin.

The tour wrapped up in the autumn. How are you feeling about it now that you've had some distance?

Good, yeah. Really good actually. It's funny, you know, when you're in it you can't really see it. You're just– you're on the bus, you're on the stage, you're in the hotel, and it all blurs together a bit. And then you get home and you sit in your kitchen and you think, right, that happened. And it was good. It was genuinely– it was good.

Linda and the kids were with you for most of it?

All of it, yeah. That's the only way I know how to do it now, honestly. I tried the other way and it doesn't work for me. Some people can compartmentalize, you know, here's my work life and here's my home life and never the twain. I'm not built like that. I need them there. Linda especially. She keeps me—she keeps me pointed in the right direction. Put it that way.

The kids on a tour bus. That must be chaos.

(laughing) Organised chaos. Linda's very good at that. I'm less good at it. I'm more the chaos portion of that equation. But yeah, Stella was running up and down the corridors of every arena we played and I thought, she's going to remember this. Whatever else happens she's going to remember being eight years old in a German arena at half eleven at night. Whether that's good parenting I'll let someone else decide.

Wings has been quiet since the tour ended. What's next?

That's a good question. I'm asking myself that too, if I'm honest. I think sometimes you have to let things breathe a bit. You finish something and you think, right, what's next, and actually the answer is sometimes just–nothing yet. Which is uncomfortable for me. I'm not naturally a nothing yet person. But I'm trying it on. See how it fits.

You've been spending time in Scotland.

Yeah. Yeah, we have the farm up there and it's good for that. For the ‘nothing yet’. There's always something to do on a farm, you know, so you're never actually doing nothing, but it's a different kind of something. More physical. Less—(waves hand)—less all this.

You've also been active on the business side of things. There are rumours about catalog acquisitions through MPL.

Where'd you hear that?

Industry talk.

There's always industry talk. Look, I'll say this. There are artists I love. Artists who meant something to me when I was coming up, who shaped– who shaped everything, really. And I think it matters who looks after that music. I think it matters that somebody cares about it properly. Beyond that I'm not going to say much because nothing's finalized and I don't want to– you know how it is. You say something and then it becomes a thing and then everyone's got opinions before you've even– yeah. Ask me again in six months.

Fair enough. Can I ask you about something else that's been circulating?

Oh dear, here it comes. No no, it’s alright, go on then.

There's a rumour that John Lennon has been approached about touring.

I hadn’t heard that?

There's been some industry chatter. That someone's been making serious overtures toward Lennon about a tour.

Hm… I mean. I don't– look, people are always– there's always someone trying to get John to do something. That's not new. That's been the case since 1970. Someone's always got a big idea about what John should be doing. John's very good at ignoring them.

You don't think there's anything to it?

Honestly? No. I don't think John's– look, John hasn't put out music in years. He's been very content doing his own thing, which is– good for him, genuinely. But a tour? You need material for a tour. You need– you need the appetite for it. And I just don't think John's got that right now. I don't think he's– I don't think he's got it in him, at the moment. No offense to John.

That's an interesting way to put it.

I just mean practically. Logistically. You can't tour on goodwill alone. You need songs. And John's– John's been very focused on other things. Which is great. Good for him.

There's also a suggestion that it might not be a solo tour.

I hadn't heard that, either.

You hadn't.

No.

Does that change anything?

Look, here's the thing about me and John. And I'll say this because people always want me to say something about me and John and I might as well just– here's the thing. I'm open to it. I've always been open to it. Playing with John again, doing something together, I think that could be– I think musically that could be extraordinary, actually, because whatever else happened between us the music was always– the music was always right. That was never the problem.

So what was the problem?

The timing's never right, is it. For us. You know, I'll be ready and he won't be, or he'll be in a place where maybe he's open to something and I'm off doing something else. We've never quite…. We've never quite managed to be in the same place at the same time. Emotionally speaking.

And now?

Now I'm fixing a roof in Scotland. Ask John.

John

By Friday morning John had read the interview four times, which was four times more than he intended to read anything Paul McCartney said in print ever again. He'd been fine. He'd been completely fine, going about his life, and then Fred had left the Melody Maker on the kitchen counter with his coffee like it was nothing, like it was just a magazine, like there wasn't a two page interview with Paul McCartney sitting in the middle of it that John was now reading for the fourth time with his jaw doing something that he really needed to stop if he did t want to lose a molar.

I don't think he's got it in him.

The nerve. The absolute nerve of that man.

John picked up the phone and called Ringo.

It rang three times, then a click to signal that Rich had picked up. John didn’t even wait for a greeting.

“He said I haven’t got it in me, the prick.”

“So you’ve seen it then.” Ringo replied, by way of hello. John supposed Ringo had come to expect these frequent calls from him over the years. It helped that he was only three hours behind instead of 6 hours ahead, and that he usually picked up.

“Did you hear me? He said I haven’t got it in me.”

A sigh. “I know.”

“Out loud. To a journalist.”

“I know, John.”

“In print.”

"John."

"I'm just—I'm noting that it's in print. For the record."

“Noted.” The sound of something being turned down in the background meant Rich was giving him his full attention, which under other circumstances would have been touching. “You know, he’s not wrong though.” John gawked.

"Whose side are you on, here, Rich?"

"I'm not on a side. I'm observing that you haven't made music in four years and Paul is—"

"I know what Paul is, Rich, thank you."

Silence, then from Ringo’s end: “How are you, anyway?”

“How am I? I’m—I’m annoyed, Rings, that’s how I am.”

“You do sound it a bit, yeah.”

“Because he said I haven’t got it in me. To a journalist.”

“You mentioned.” Ringo sounded as he always did, patient, warm, immovable, like a very cheerful wall. “You know how he is. He says something like he’s saying one thing and meaning something else entirely and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”

John opened his mouth but then snapped it shut, rubbed at his brow.

“He said he was open to it,” John said, which he hadn’t meant to say.

“Yeah.” A beat. “Very big of him.”

“You know what this is, don’t you? This is typical Paul. He says something that sounds generous so he can feel generous without actually having to do anything generous. He’s been saying he’s open to things since 1972 and nothing has ever once happened as a result of him being open to it.”

“Well—”

“It’s a non-statement. It’s a McCartney non-statement dressed up as an olive branch. I’m open to it. What does that even mean? Open to it like a slack jaw? Very convenient, being open to it when you don’t think the other person’s going to take you up on it.”

“Are you going to take him up on it?”

“No,” he said.

“Mm.” Another pause. “You called me to talk about the tour or to call Paul a prick?"

John opened his mouth then closed it. "What tour?"

"The one Paul very unconvincingly said he hadn't heard about in the same interview where he said you haven't got it in you." Ringo paused. "The tour, John."

"There is no tour," John snapped, then leaned against the counter, “why does everyone think there’s a bloody tour?”

“Because it’s everywhere right now,” Ringo’s voice was almost fond. “You have been contacted by these people, then?”

“I have—” John stopped, then backtracked. “Have you?”

A pause. “…yeah.”

“You got a letter.”

“Weeks ago. I said no and that was that, I didn’t think it was worth bringing up with any of you lot.”

John picked up the magazine again just to put it down. “And that was the end of it?”

“For me, yeah.”

John’s eyes narrowed. “For you.”

”For me.”

“As opposed to for someone else.”

Silence crackled down the phone line.

“Ringo…” John said threateningly.

“I may have spoken to George,” Ringo said quickly.

“George’s been contacted too?”

“He rang me when he got his letter.”

“He rang you but not me.”

“John—”

“No, that’s—” John stopped. Recalibrated. “That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. George rang you, you both said no, very good, moving on.” A pause. “What else did George tell you?”

“Nothing—”

“Ringo.”

A sigh. “He mentioned Paul’s been getting quite a lot of contact. More than us. Different angles.”

“Paul,” John repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Paul’s been contacted.”

“Apparently, yeah.”

“And George knows this.”

“Yeah.”

“And George told you.”

“John, I—”

“But not me.” John rolled up Melody Maker in his hands and bounced it against the edge of the counter. “George is out there conducting a whole—a whole information network, ringing everyone, very concerned, very informed, and it didn’t occur to him to ring me.”

“I think,” Ringo said carefully, “that George wasn’t sure you’d want to know.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

Ringo said nothing.

“Why wouldn’t I—” John stopped. The kitchen was very quiet. Outside a siren moved past on 72nd Street, dopplered away to nothing. “Im not some fragile delicate flower you know, I can handle some news about Paul.”

“John.”

“I’m fine. I don’t care. I’m just saying it’s odd that he’d ring you and then not me.”

“He didn’t want to poke at anything,” Ringo said simply. “You know how he is. He didn’t want to be the one to bring all this up with you.”

“Bring what up, exactly?”

Ringo waited.

“There’s nothing to bring up,” John said.

“Right.”

“There isn’t.”

“Whatever you say, John.”

“Paul said I haven’t got it in me. That’s the only reason I called.”

“Absolutely,” Ringo said, in the tone of a man agreeing with something he didn’t believe for a second.

Silence.

“And he said the timing’s never right,” John scoffed, he didn’t even plan on saying it, it just sort of came out. “Can you believe that? That’s what he said in the interview. Like it’s that fucking simple.”

“I read it.”

“The timing’s never right.” John looked at the magazine on the counter, Paul’s face caught mid-sentence, that awful, perfect smile. “Ten years and that’s all he can come up with.”

There was a long pause, a longer one than was comfortable. John could hear Ringo shifting around in his seat, maybe even standing up to pace.

“Can I ask you something?” Ringo finally said.

“I’m sure you will even if I say no.”

“Why do you care so much about this?”

John blinked. “Sorry?”

“This specific rumor, the tour people! This happens every eighteen months, John. You know that as well as anybody. Someone with too much money decides they’re going to be the one who finally cracks it, sends a few letters, gets laughed off, moves on. It’s par for the course. It has been since 1970.” A pause, John was chewing the inside of his lip now. “So why are you ringing me at—” the sound of Ringo checking something, “—half nine on a Friday morning reading me lines out of Melody Maker?”

John scrunched his eyebrows frustratedly, it was a good question, one he hadn’t bothered to ask himself yet.

“He— he made it personal,” is what came out.

“I see.”

“He said I haven’t got it in me. To a journalist. It’s libel, is what it is.” John’s voice had found an edge. “It’s personal, Rings.”

“Mm.” A beat. “Or it’s Paul being Paul. Rambling. Saying things he doesn’t even believe himself.”

“He believed it enough to say it.”

“Yes he did. He also said that he’s open to it and that the music was never the problem.” Ringo paused. “He said quite a lot of things, actually.”

John said nothing.

“Almost like he was talking to someone specific,” Ringo said, very carefully, “who he knew would read it.”

John didn’t answer immediately.

“Open to it.” He muttered more to himself than to Rich, “It costs him nothing to say something like that, doesn’t it. He gets to look like the good guy in print and nothing actually has to happen because I’m never going to—” he stopped.

“Never going to what?” Ringo asked, carefully.

John found his footing again. He straightened up, a sudden idea occurring to him.

“You know what I should do?”

“I don’t know, John, but I don’t like where this is going.”

“Shut it– no. I should do an interview. Yeah– ring up whoever will have me and say I’m open to it too. See how fast he backtracks. See how open he is when it’s actually on the table. Call his bluff. I say I’m open to it, he says I’m open to it, and then what? Then we’re both open to it and neither of us can back down without looking like the bad guy.”

“John—” Ringo paused. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Is it?”

“That’s genuinely one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had and you’ve had some bad ones.”

“Or it’s brilliant.”

“It’s not.”

“It exposes him, Ringo. It calls his bluff in public. He said the timing’s never right—fine, I’ll make the timing right and then we’ll see how open he really is.”

“And if he doesn’t back down?”

John hesitated for a fraction of a second.

“He’ll back down,” he said, with conviction.

“Will he, though?”

A beat.

“He always backs down,” John said.

“John,” Ringo said, very gently, “I don’t think that’s actually true.”

“I’m going to ring George,” he said.

“He’s not going to tell you any different.”

“Don’t tell him I’m ringing, alright?”

“John, he’s going to tell you the same thing I did.”

“Don’t tell him.”

“Christ.” He could hear Ringo getting more and more exasperated. “Listen, give my love to Yoko. And John—”

“Don’t do anything stupid, I know.”

“Do you? Because it doesn’t seem like you do.”

“Goodbye, Ringo.”

“Bye, love.”

John hung up. Stood in the kitchen. Picked up the magazine, turned it face down, and immediately picked it up again.

Open to it.

Right. He’d see about that.

Paul

The hole was smaller. Marginally.

If you stood at a specific angle in the right light and tilted your head slightly, there was a case to be made that the hole was, in fact, smaller than it had been a week ago.

He’d made some progress in the sense that the cardboard boxes in the attic were no longer being rained on, which had been the primary objective, and the thatch he’d sourced from a man in the village (after a conversation that had required him to pretend, for twenty minutes, to be someone called David) was holding. Mostly.

There was one corner he wasn’t entirely happy with, and there was a section of the eave that would need attention before spring, but the hole itself was smaller. Yes, definitely smaller.

He climbed down the ladder in the thin December light, pulled off his gloves, and stood back to look at it from the garden. From this distance the gaping maw in the roof was almost invisible, you wouldn’t know anything had ever been wrong with it at all.

Linda appeared in the back doorway with the cordless phone extended toward him.

“My dad,” she said.

Paul peeled off his other glove. “How does he always know when I’m on the roof?”

“I think he just calls at random and gets lucky.” She handed him the phone and went back inside.

Paul leaned against the garden wall. “Hi then.”

“How’s Scotland?”

“Cold. How’s New York?”

“Also cold.” Eastman’s voice sounded like he was tense, Paul didn’t like that. “And how’s the hole? Linda tells me it’s bigger”

“Well it’s smaller.”

“Well that’s good.” A pause. “I read the Melody Maker piece.”

“Good interview, wasn’t it.”

“It was definitely something.” Paul could hear Eastman settling back in whatever chair he was in, three thousand miles away in New York.

“Sorry,” Paul straightened up his eyebrows disappearing behind his fringe, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, I just— I had a few questions.”

“Go on then.” Paul said, a bit reproachful.

“The bit about John.”

Paul looked up at the roof and at this angle he could still see the corner of thatch he wasn’t happy about lifting slightly with the wind. “What about it?”

“Well you lied, for starters.”

“I did not,” Paul scoffed

“You said you didn't know anything about the tour.”

“I don’t.”

“Paul.”

“I’d heard industry gossip. That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s not the same as not knowing anything either.” A pause. “And the line about him not having it in him.”

Paul pushed off the garden wall and started to pace. “I was just being honest. He hasn’t released music in years. It’s a factual observation.”

“You’d think,” Eastman said, like a man who had been doing this for a long time, “that after everything that’s happened you’d have developed some sense of how easily that man takes offence.”

“John’s a big boy.”

“What I want to know is, were you trying to get a rise out of him?”

“No,” Paul said, a bit too quickly, “I was trying to give him an out, if anything. If I say I don’t think he’s up for it then nobody expects anything from him. He can just agree with me and get on with his life.”

“Well, I doubt he’s going to take it that way.”

“Look, I was asked a direct question and I answered it. That’s how interviews go.”

“Mm.” Eastman didn’t sound convinced. “What does Linda think?”

Paul glanced toward the kitchen window. Linda was inside, moving around, doing something with her Nikon or the kids or the general business of the day. She’d read the interview then handed it back to him without comment. “She doesn’t make much of anything. She trusts me to handle it. That’s—” Paul smiled despite himself, “—that’s one of my favorite things about her, actually.”

“Very healthy,” Eastman said, in a tone that suggested he personally found it somewhat inconvenient. “Look,” a beat. “Can I ask you something? Why do you think these calls haven’t stopped?”

Paul frowned. “What do you mean?”

“George and Ringo said no months ago and they haven’t heard a peep since. I got curious, so I rang their managers last week just to check. Both of them—one letter, one no, complete silence afterwards. But here we are, two months in, and I’m still screening calls for you every few days.”

Paul was quiet.

“Sometimes more than once a day,” Eastman added.

Paul straightened, “you didn’t tell me that.”

“Because I knew it would only cause you grief and I was hoping they’d tire themselves out.” A pause. “I’m telling you now.”

“Every few days, you say?”

“Sometimes more.”

“why didn’t you—”

“Because I was handling it. I still am. But, I dunno, I thought— I thought maybe you should know.”

Paul said nothing for a second and then a flush of rage climbed up his neck. “Why are we even still talking about this?” he finally snapped, and he heard the anger in his own voice before he could stop it. “It’s been two months. This shite should have died by now. These things always die. Why hasn’t this one?”

“I don’t know,” Eastman said, which was not something he said often. “I genuinely don’t know.”

There was a long silence in which Paul continued to pace back and forth in front of the stone wall of this cottage, wearing the grass thin.

“Listen, Paul. Have you spoken to John about any of this?”

The corner of thatch lifted again in the wind. Paul watched it sail with a sinking feeling in his stomach. “He doesn’t want to hear from me about this.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Paul rubbed the back of his neck. “I really thought I was doing him a favor.”

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“Alright! Listen, all I’m saying is that someone’s been very clever about this. And whatever they’re proposing…” A pause. “I don’t know. And you can’t convince me you didn’t do that interview thinking he wouldn't read it.”

“Everyone reads the Melody Maker.”

“Paul.”

A long pause. The grass was getting really worn down underfoot now. He longed to walk further away from the house, really move his legs, but knew that if he tried to, the phone signal would immediately start to cut out. He kicked at the ground instead, throwing up small chunks of dirt.

“I don’t care what you think, that interview was me putting all this to bed. I said I didn’t think he was up for it, I said the timing’s never right, I said—look, nobody reading that comes away thinking anything is happening. That’s what I wanted.”

“And yet.”

“And yet nothing!” Paul could hear the frustration in his own voice and didn’t particularly try to hide it. “This is a nothing rumor about a nothing tour that nobody is doing and somehow it just keeps—” he gestured at the air, uselessly, “—floating around. Why is it still floating around? I practically laughed it off.”

“You also said you were open to playing with him again.”

“But that was just a general statement. That wasn’t a fucking invitation.”

“Mm.”

Paul pushed off the wall, irritation bristling at him. “Next time they call, and apparently they’re calling constantly, which is, frankly— insane.” He stopped, gathered himself and took a deep breath. “Next time they call, tell them we’ll be forced to pursue legal action. That’ll do it.”

A long pause.

“Are we?” Eastman asked, “pursuing legal action?”

“We will be if they don’t stop.” Paul looked up at the roof one last time. “I just want this to go away.”

Eastman said nothing to that.

“Look, thanks for letting me know about all this. I’ll talk to you next week,” Paul said.

“Talk to you next week.” Eastman responded, just before he hung up. The corner of thatch flapped loose in the wind. Paul stared at it for a long moment, then went to get the ladder.

John Lennon Speaks

Rolling Stone, February 1980

Interview by Andrew Cott

John Lennon called Rolling Stone on a Tuesday morning in January. He did not explain why. He said he wanted to talk, named a date, and hung up. When we arrive at the Dakota, he is already in the sitting room, barefoot with a steaming mug of coffee in his hands.

The sitting room is enormous and cluttered in equal measure—art on every surface, Sean’s train tracks colonizing the far corner, Yoko Ono’s business correspondence stacked on the low table by the window where she now sits, largely silent, occasionally feeding him a word when he loses one, occasionally nodding when he looks to her for confirmation. She is, as always, watching everything.

Lennon is in a white linen shirt and jeans, hair longer than recent photographs suggest. He looks younger than he did in 1975, which seems improbable and is nonetheless true. He folds himself into the armchair across from me, pulls his knees up and we begin, though in retrospect it is clear he has already begun.

You haven’t done an interview in almost five years. Why now?

Why not now?

(To Yoko) Why not now?

(To me) Well, I had things to say before and I said them and then I didn’t have things to say and so I didn’t say them. That seems logical to me. Most people talk when they have nothing to say. I thought I’d try the other way around and see how it felt.

How did it feel?

It felt good to be quiet for a while.

And now?

Now I feel like talking.

What’s changed?

Everything changes. Nothing changes. Sean’s walking, which is (to Yoko) how old was he when he started walking?

(Yoko says something)

Fourteen months. Fourteen months old and already headed places. That’s changed. I make better bread than I did five years ago. That’s changed. The view from this window is exactly the same. That hasn’t.

You’ve been described as a recluse.

I’ve been described as a lot of things. Most of them by people who’ve never met me. A recluse is someone hiding from something. I’m not hiding. I’m just– here. There’s a difference.

Are you happy here?

That’s a more complicated question than it seems, isn’t it. Happy. I’m—yeah. I think so. I’m something, anyway.

(To Yoko) Are we happy? (Yoko nods)

We’re happy. There you go. Official.

You’re not making music.

No.

Does that bother you?

Next question.

That’s a yes?

That’s a ‘next question’. Look, I bake bread now. That's what I do. I know how that sounds and I genuinely don't care.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. You called us. That doesn’t happen. John Lennon doesn’t call Rolling Stone and ask for an interview. What’s really going on?

I told you. I had things to say.

After five years of having nothing to say.

After five years of having plenty to say and choosing not to. There’s a difference.

Can I ask directly— did this decision to call have anything to do with the rumours circulating about you?

Now Andrew, whatever could you be talking about? I don’t keep up with gossip. Like you said, I’m a recluse.

Fair enough– well. I’m referring to the rumors that have been circulating since autumn and don’t seem to be going away, about the possibility of you going on tour.

Look— someone’s always making serious overtures about something. That’s what someone’s always doing. Very serious, very funded, very keen to discuss an opportunity. (he does a voice) “Mr. Lennon, we’d love to speak with you about a very serious opportunity.” I get letters. Everyone gets letters.

Have you gotten letters?

I get a lot of correspondence.

That’s not a no.

No, it’s not.

So it’s a coincidence? Five years of silence and then you call us in the same month those rumours hit the front page of the Industry Eye?

I think coincidences are underrated. I also think people see patterns where they want to see them. It’s a very human thing, really. Very understandable.

Usually these kinds of rumors go away after a week or two. Does it surprise you this one hasn’t gone away?

Well it’s very flattering, is what it is. We broke up ten years ago and apparently that’s still the most interesting thing happening in music. Which probably says something about the state of music. No offense to anyone.

So there’s nothing to it.

I didn’t say that.

What are you saying?

I’m saying I haven’t made music in four years. I haven’t toured in—God, when did I last tour? (to Yoko)—

Yoko: six years ago

John: Right. I haven’t toured in years, I have no new music to speak of, and the only songs I’ve got are ten years old at minimum. You can’t build a tour on ten year old songs.

People would argue you absolutely can.

HA! Well, the only thing I would do at this point is hobble out there and— (he does a face) “yesterday…”

Is that a hint?

God, no. No. Don’t print that as a hint. That is explicitly not a hint.

(To Yoko) That’s not a hint, is it? (Yoko shakes her head no.)

Not a hint.

Let’s pivot.

Yes, let’s.

The music world has changed a lot in five years.

Has it? How?

Punk. New wave. The whole landscape—

Right, right. I like some of it. Some of it sounds like what we were trying to do in Hamburg in 1960 before we knew what we were doing.

We talk for a while about Hamburg, about the early days, about Liverpool. He is more forthcoming on this than expected, specific and funny and occasionally sharp. Then, without any particular transition, he says:

I read Melody Maker last month.

It’s important to note that he is looking at the middle distance when he says this, not at me.

I thought you said you don’t keep up with gossip.

I’m not blind, Andrew. I see things. I saw that Paul did a piece. You probably saw it, everyone saw it, it’s the Melody Maker, that’s the whole point isn’t it?

I suppose.

He said things. Quite a lot of things, Paul, when he gets going. You know how he is. Or maybe you don’t. He’s got this way where you’re never entirely sure if he even knows what he’s saying. It’s maddening, actually. (to Yoko) It’s always been maddening. Hasn’t it?

Anyway, he said the timing’s never right. For us. Which is—look, I’m not going to argue with that. The timing has never been right. There’s always been something: an album, a lawsuit, someone not speaking to someone else, whatever. The timing has been consistently terrible. That’s accurate. Full marks for accuracy, Paul.

He also said he’s open to it. Playing together, that is. He said that. In print, in the Melody Maker, he said he’s open to it. Which—you know, I’ve heard Paul say he’s open to things before. Costs nothing for him to say. Very Paul, actually.

You sound skeptical.

Well, I’m not sure. The thing he said about the timing’s never right, I keep thinking about that, because—right now I’ve got nothing going on. I mean that literally. And from what I can tell Paul is on a farm in Scotland also doing nothing, Wings has— whatever’s happened there.

But?

But— the timing, for once in ten years, isn’t actually the problem.

Are you speaking to each other?

We’re not not speaking.

That’s a complicated answer.

It’s a complicated question.

Where are you going with this?

I’m open to it.

Wow, really?

I’m open to it, the timing’s not the problem, so. There you go. Print that.

That’s—did you come here today planning to say that?

Who knows. I don’t think that far ahead.

But you said it.

It needed saying.

Do you think Paul will respond?

I think Paul reads Rolling Stone. I think most people read Rolling Stone, that’s rather the point of it.

And if he doesn’t?

Then he’s not as open as he said he was, is he.

John Lennon walks us to the elevator himself. In the hallway he stops, apparently remembering something. “The bread thing—when you write this up, don’t make the bread weird. It’s just bread.” We tell him we’ll do our best. In the elevator going down, I check my notes. He brought up Paul McCartney himself, twelve minutes in, like he was just waiting to.

—Andrew Cott

John

John saw Andrew Cott to the elevator at half past eleven. He made a stupid remark about bread, one that he immediately regretted, then watched the doors close and stood in the hallway for a moment longer, listening to the quiet.

When he reentered the apartment, Yoko had, as he suspected, absconded to her studio. That wasn’t good. She usually went there to sulk. Nervous, he went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. He sucked at his teeth and straightened some things on the counter that didn't need straightening, drummed his fingers against the counter and waited.

She didn't come out.

He went to check on Sean, who was down for a nap, then came back to the kitchen. He washed the mug he'd used for the interview, then dried it and put it away.

Still nothing.

John leaned out the kitchen archway and looked down the hall at her studio door, which was mostly closed with a crack of light underneath it. There was no music playing, which meant she wasn't working. Just sitting in there in the silence.

He pushed off the doorframe.

"Yoko."

Nothing. Timidly, he padded down the hall, tapped twice at her door. She didn’t answer, so he pushed the door open a few inches with two of his fingers.

She was sitting there, reading a book on her favorite green velvet armchair. She was still in what she'd been wearing during the interview, (all black, as always) and her expression was the one he privately thought of as her gallery face, very carefully neutral.

"The interview went well, I thought."

She unfolded herself, put down her book and walked past him into the kitchen.

John turned and followed her, walking quickly to keep up. "Cott's good. Doesn't push."

"No," Yoko said, opening the refrigerator and looking into it without taking anything out. "Not that he needed to."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

She closed the refrigerator door and turned to face him. Then she leaned against the counter with her arms folded and looked him straight in the eyes.

"You told me," she said, measured and slow, "that you called Rolling Stone to let people know you were still alive. That's what you said to me."

"That's, yeah, that was part of it–"

"Still an artist, still a person, still—" she gestured vaguely, "—with us. That's what you told me the interview was about."

"It was about that."

"And then you sit in that chair," Yoko said, pointing to the one he’d been sitting in only an hour ago, "and you tell Andrew Cott that you’re open to working with Paul?"

John scoffed, then crossed his arms. “Oh please, don’t tell me you fell for it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, I didn't mean it, did I?"

Yoko raised her eyebrows skeptically, then let out a short scoff of her own.

"It was a tactical thing," John pressed, gesticulating wildly now. "He's been going around telling journalists he's open to things and then doing nothing about it. I thought I'd put it back on him. Call his bluff."

"Let me get this straight.” Yoko pressed two fingers to her temple, and rubbed small circles there. “You called Rolling Stone, for the first time in five years, to say something you don’t even mean."

"To make a point."

"Are you serious, John?"

"I didn't know I was going to do it until I did it."

"John." She said his name like she was scolding Sean.

"Don’t believe me all you like, but it's the truth."

"That," Yoko said, "is what you say when you don't want to examine why you did something." She was still leaning against the counter, arms still folded, watching him with a look that chilled him. It wasn't quite anger, but something more controlled than that, which made it all the more terrifying.

"I mean, alright, I've been thinking about calling his bluff for months," he said, which was as close to honest as he was going to get right now. "The rumor wouldn't die, he kept being vague about it, and I just—I thought—"

"You’ve been thinking about him," Yoko said slowly, repeating his words back to him like a child. "For months."

"Not about him– Oh, for Christ's sake, the situation– the rumor– "

"You had Fred fetch the Industry Eye in a paper bag, John."

He opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out, only a pathetic little squeak.

"I saw it in the bin," she cocked her head, examining his face. "I didn’t think much of it. A moment of curiosity. That's allowed." A pause. "But nothing is, when it comes to him, is it?"

"It's not… I'm not—" John stopped. Ran a hand back and forth through his hair. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Because I was waiting to see if you'd tell me." She said it so simply and without accusation. "You tell me everything. That's what we do. You tell me everything and I help you think through it and we decide things together. That's—" she paused, "—that's how we work."

"I didn't—"

"You should have told me," she said. "Before you said it to a journalist. I should have known first." A pause, precise and deliberate. "I always know first."

Usually he'd fold here. Apologize, explain himself, give her the access she was asking for. It was the path of least resistance and he knew it well. But for some reason, he turned back to the kettle.

"It wasn't planned," he pressed. "It just came out. That happens sometimes, you know."

A long, uncomfortable silence.

"Janov would have something to say about this, you know." Yoko finally said, coldly.

John laughed despite himself, short and humorless. "Oh, don't start."

"The things that came up in those sessions. About him specifically."

"That was a load of crockery," John said firmly. "All of it. We sat in a room and screamed and a man with a degree told us what it meant and half of it was nonsense dressed up as—"

"You cried for three days," Yoko said quietly.

"People cry in therapy, Yoko, that's rather the point of it. A man with a degree told us what our feelings meant and charged us an enormous amount of money for the privilege. I don't think it constitutes—"

"I was there, John," Yoko said. "That's what you don't seem to–" she stopped herself and then looked out the window as a pigeon swooped by. When she looked back at him it looked like she had resigned herself to something. "I'm not stupid," Yoko said, finally.

"I know you're not stupid."

"Then don't treat me like I am." She unfolded her arms just to cross them again. “And, I'd appreciate," She pushed off the counter and moved toward the hallway, "being told things before Andrew Cott."

"Yoko."

She kept walking and didn’t turn around.

"I called his bluff," John called after her, a note of desperation in his voice. "That's all it was."

“Whatever, John,” she called over her shoulder, then marched back into her studio and slammed the door.

Paul

Paul had been asked, by his count, five times in the past three weeks about John Lennon's comments in Rolling Stone.

Which was particularly galling because he’d genuinely believed, for a brief and lovely stretch of time, that the whole thing was finished. The phone calls to Eastman had stopped. The magazines he read ran actual news, talked about things happening in the world that had nothing to do with him or John or the question of whether two former Beatles were or weren’t reuniting.

The legal threat had worked, or the story had run out of steam. Whatever the reason, it was over. He’d been so sure.

He’d even stopped avoiding the music press, which in retrospect had been his first mistake. He’d picked up the Rolling Stone at the newsagent almost without thinking about it, had stood there in the shop and read the first three pages feeling completely fine, and then he’d turned to the Lennon interview and hot tea had gone straight up his nose.

The next day, Paul had business in London, which meant a long drive in the car, which meant that Linda came with him (she always did when he had to be Paul McCartney rather than just Paul).

Even before the car stopped outside MPL offices in Soho square, that’s when he saw them. There was a small crowd of journalists standing there, all shifting and restless, recording equipment poised like weapons.

It wasn’t the usual scattered press, not just an odd photographer hoping for a shot. No, this was more of a coordinated swarm.

As much as he hated to admit it, he could understand, objectively, why this looked like big news. Every possible combination of Beatles had happened across the decade except this one. So of course the press had lost their minds. Two men who’d spent ten years refusing to acknowledge each other were suddenly, possibly, maybe, under the right circumstances, open to… something.

He could see how that played. He could see exactly how that played. But that, in itself, was the problem.

The thing they didn’t understand was, the thing Paul could have explained if anyone had let him finish a God damn sentence was that it was all a crock of shite. George was a no. Ringo was a no.

Whatever vague, unspecified thing John had been gesturing at in that interview, it wasn’t a Beatles reunion, because a Beatles reunion required all four of them and all four of them were never going to agree. That, if he was being honest, was partly why he’d said it in the first place.

Except then John had gone and said it too. Which… complicated things slightly.

But he knew better.

He’d known John Lennon for twenty three years, and if Paul knew one thing about him it was that he said things. Grand, sweeping, definitive things, delivered with total conviction, that he would then walk back six seconds, or six months later as though he'd never said them at all. Paul had watched him do it his entire adult life. He'd said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. He'd said he didn't believe in Beatles, and he’d said a great many things in between that he’d very much meant in the moment and very much did not when asked later on.

"Want me to tell them to go away?" Linda’s voice brought him back to the present, as he blinked out the window. He turned towards her and patted her leg.

"They won't, even if we ask nicely." Paul watched warily as they spotted his car, straightened up and converged. "Best just get on with it. I dismiss it now, firmly, and it's done by the weekend." He almost believed himself as he said it.

Linda’s hand found his in the back seat and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze. The car rolled to a stop, he opened his door, and a barrage of voices, camera flashes and recording devices hit him all at once.

"Paul—"

"Mr. McCartney—"

"Paul, what's your response to John Lennon's comments in Rolling Stone—"

Paul smiled the smile that had been doing most of the heavy lifting since 1963.

"John says a lot of things," he said pleasantly, already moving, all breezy and unbothered. "Always has. Excuse me."

He was inside before they could follow up.

***

A week passed.

Paul made a point of not reading anything that might contain his own name near John's. No Industry Eye, no Rolling Stone, no Melody Maker, no nothing. He fixed the roof, which was coming along, really. He helped Stella with a school project about dinosaurs. He called his brother. He very purposefully lived inside of the life he'd built, and by the end of the week he'd done a great job of convincing himself the whole thing must have blown over.

But he did have another business meeting, which meant going back to London.

He saw them from the end of the street, before the car had even turned the corner, and his stomach dropped.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

His driver, Ed, glanced in the rearview mirror. "Been here every day, Mr. McCartney. Since last week."

Paul looked at the cluster of them outside the offices. A week.

"Every day?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yes sir."

Paul slouched back into his seat with a sigh, looked out the window and understood, for the first time properly, that this was not going away quietly.

Linda stayed in the car this time, watching him through the window protectively as he climbed out. They turned as one when they heard the door open, and the familiar surge and press of them sent his heartrate into overdrive. All their recorders up, questions already shooting towards him like bullets.

"Paul—has Lennon been in touch?"

"Paul—is a tour actually happening?"

"Paul—are you open to it the way John said he was?"

Paul held up both hands.

"Alright, alright." He waited until the noise settled slightly. He plastered on that same old, reliably charming smile, with slightly more effort this time.

"Look. Here's what I'll say and then I'm going inside and we're done." He looked around at them, making sure he had their attention. “If something were ever actually going to happen– a tour, a collaboration, whatever you’re calling it– John and I would need to actually sit down and have a real conversation first. We'd have to talk. Properly. In the same room." He paused for emphasis. "That hasn't happened. Right? We haven't spoken. So, right now I genuinely don't have anything to tell you." He looked around at them, he shook his head, almost laughing, “alright? That's all I've got."

Then he turned back towards the car, fetched Linda and jogged inside. He sat down at the conference table thinking: right, that's clear. I’ve said what I needed to say. Nothing is happening. They'll run that.

They didn’t.

***

A few days later, Paul and Linda went out for dinner to a quiet place in Mayfair that he'd been going to for years precisely because they left him alone: corner table, nobody making a fuss. It had been Linda's idea, a proper night out to get his mind off of things, just the two of them. It was a good idea. Really good, actually. Two hours of talking about nothing important, just the kids, the farm, a book Linda was reading, an idea she had for a new photography series. Paul had eaten well and drunk a glass of wine and had almost forgotten to think about John and Rolling Stone.

But low and behold, they were waiting for him outside.

Not as many this time, four, maybe five. They materialized from the bushes the instant Paul and Linda came out of the restaurant. Linda, to her credit, walked straight towards the car with the calm of a woman who had ten years of experience dealing with this type of attention, and had decided a long time ago not to give it the dignity of a reaction.

They came forward all at once, a wall of noise. Paul did his best to ignore them, leading Linda carefully to the car with one hand on the small of her back. He opened the door for her, ushered her in, and stepped one foot inside the car.

"—Paul, John said—"

"—Lennon this morning—"

"—what John—"

"—response to Lennon—"

"—John Lennon said—"

John John John John John.

He stopped, took a breath, then turned around.

"I'm trying to have dinner with my wife," he said, very pleasantly, very clearly, in a way that meant the exact opposite of what his tone suggested. He gestured at Linda, who gave them the look from inside the car, blank faced. "That's Linda. We're married, y’know. We were having dinner."

There was a moment of quiet, the reporters scribbling frantically in their notepads.

"John Lennon," Paul continued, with the slow enunciation of a man at the absolute limit of his patience, "is a grown man who is perfectly capable of speaking for himself. I'm not going to spend my time this evening, standing on the sidewalk in Mayfair interpreting his interviews for you. That's not–" he stopped himself, shook his head, then laughed, "--that's not my job anymore. Alright? Goodnight."

Then he sat down and pulled the car door closed. Ed pulled out into the Mayfair traffic and Paul sat back and stared at the roof of the car.

There were a few, long seconds of silence before he muttered to himself.

"He’s a grown man," he said, this time to the roof.

"Mhm," Linda agreed, "Perfectly capable of speaking for himself, like you said.”

“My question is,” Paul turned to look out the window, “how come every time he speaks for himself it's somehow my problem?"

The next Monday, as he walked past the swarm of journalists outside MPL, he'd smiled at them and said something so non-committal it shouldn’t have even qualified as a sentence.

But then, he'd seen it in The Times.

"NO COMMENT"- MCCARTNEY's RESPONSE TO TOUR RUMORS

Recebecca Cole

The Times, February 1980

In the ten years since the Beatles dissolved acrimoniously, expensively, and with a finality that seemed, at the time, absolute, Paul McCartney has rarely been short of words on the subject. In 1970, announcing the split via a self-administered press kit, he was unambiguous to the point of brutality: he had a better time, he said, with his family. He was twenty-eight years old and he meant it. The door, for all practical purposes, was closed.

It is worth keeping this in mind when considering his recent remarks.

Over the past four weeks, McCartney has addressed the question of a possible collaboration with John Lennon and the Beatles on four separate occasions. Each time, he has been courteous, composed, and almost entirely uninformative. His responses, in order: "John says a lot of things." "We'd have to sit down and have a proper conversation first." "John is a grown man who can speak for himself." And, delivered outside his offices on Soho Square, where McCartney had been conducting what sources suggest were acquisition talks related to his publishing company, MPL Communications, currently rumoured to be in negotiations regarding the estate of Eddie Cochran– a simple: "No comment."

MPL, which already administers the Buddy Holly catalog among others, has not confirmed the Cochran talks. McCartney, characteristically, is saying nothing about that either.

On their surface, his four responses read as dismissals. They read as practiced deflections of a man who has navigated the public eye since his early twenties and knows exactly how to control it. McCartney is not, by any measure, a man who stumbles into interviews unprepared. When he has wanted to shut a rumor down in the past, he has.

Which makes the specific language of these particular responses worth examining.

He has not said it will never happen. He has not said that he and Lennon have no plans to work together, nor that the reunion being speculated about is not under consideration. Instead, he has offered: we'd have to sit down and have a proper conversation first. We'd have to talk. In the same room.

These statements are not denials, but conditions. And conditions, by their nature, imply the possibility of being met.

Whether McCartney intends this reading is impossible to say from the outside. He may simply be choosing his words carefully. Alas, he has been misquoted before and has learned his lesson the hard way. He may be navigating a genuinely uncertain situation with the only tool available to him, which is careful ambiguity. He may, of course, mean nothing at all by it beyond the surface meaning.

But the 1970 version of Paul McCartney would not have needed four attempts and a ‘no comment’ to make his position clear. He managed it once, in a single Q & A, a decade ago.

Something, it seems, has changed.

Both McCartney and Lennon's representatives declined to comment for this piece.

—Rebecca Cole, Arts Correspondent

Paul had been avoiding the industry press for three weeks now. He'd been disciplined about it. Impressively disciplined, in fact

He'd kept the Times, though, because he figured, well, the Times was just the news. The Times was a serious newspaper that covered serious things and did not concern itself with music industry gossip and Beatles reunion rumors and the question of whether Paul McCartney's no comment meant something.

Not to mention he rather enjoyed keeping up with politics and the global news. He even read the arts section occasionally. And there was that crossword that Linda liked, and was better at than him. The Times was a normal thing that normal people read over breakfast without it ruining their morning.

So, when he saw his own name flash at him from the middle of page three of the arts section, his stomach sank. They'd taken his one vague moment, the ‘no comment’ he'd said basically by accident, not even to a journalist but to a photographer who'd shouted something at him getting back into the car and that's what made their headline.

Fuming, he stormed off to his office and dialed Eastman.

"They ran the no comment."

"I know," Eastman said, before Paul had finished the sentence.

"They didn't run any of the actual—I said clear things, y’know. Clear, dismissive things. But they twisted them up, made me sound dogey."

A pause. "Paul, pleading the fifth works in an American courtroom. In the British press, it just makes you look like you're hiding something."

"I don't know what that means, y’know, I‘m not American."

"The right not to incriminate yourself."

"Sure."

"The problem is that invoking it makes you look guilty ten times out of ten. Doesn't matter how innocent you are. The moment you say no comment people assume you've got something to say and you're choosing not to say it."

"But I genuinely had nothing to say."

"I believe you." Eastman's voice was measured. "But Rebecca Cole at the Times doesn't know that.”

"The Times, Christ… I made the Times. The first time I made the Times, it was in 1964 when we landed in JFK and now–” he stopped to gather himself. "And now I make the Times for not answering a question about John Lennon. That's my contribution to the cultural record this week."

John Eastman cleared his throat on the other end of the line. "For what it's worth, I think you've been handling an impossible situation as well as anyone could. The problem isn't how you've handled it. The problem is that it keeps not going away."

"Why won't it go away?"

"Because John Lennon went to Rolling Stone and made it a story, and now it's a story. And, Paul– " there was a loaded pause. "I hate to beat a dead horse, here, but I did suggest that this particular approach might not yield the best results."

Paul sighed, long and defeated. "Yeah, yeah, well."

Silence. Then, carefully: "What do you want me to do, son?"

"Something– anything! Issue a statement, maybe? Talk to their editors. Something legal, I don't care, just, please, make it stop."

"A statement saying what, exactly?”

"You're the lawyer, think of something."

“Well, I can’t exactly come out and say that Paul McCartney is definitively not reuniting with John Lennon. That just becomes another headline: now there's a feud, now there's drama, now we've given them something new to write about for another two weeks."

"So I can't say yes and I can't say no."

"Not in print. Not right now."

“Jesus Christ.” Paul pinched his forehead in frustration and continued to pace the room.

"Paul." Eastman's voice was steady. "You know what would actually make this stop."

Paul said nothing, just shook his head and kept pacing.

"Just talk to him," Eastman said as though it physically pained him to say it, probably for the one hundredth time in his life. "Whatever this is between the two of you, you need to sort it out directly. All of this would be considerably simpler if it weren’t happening through the fucking press."

Paul stopped dead, "he doesn't want to hear from me."

"You don't know that."

"I know John."

"Sure," Eastman said, not unkindly. "But it's been a long time."

Paul was quiet for a moment then said, defeatedly. "Just, find another way."

Eastman, who'd been doing this delicate dance for over a decade, gave a defeated sigh. "I'll see what I can do."

“COME TOGETHER”?-- BAND MEMBERS’ SUSPICIOUSLY EMPTY CALENDARS

Melody Maker, February 1980

Fans of a certain kind may find the following interesting, or make very little of it.

A quick glance at publicly available schedules and promotional calendars reveals something curious: the summer of 1980 contains some suspiciously tidy gaps.

Paul McCartney, who has been notably quiet since the dissolution of Wings, has nothing confirmed between June and September. Very unlike him.

John Lennon, who has had nothing confirmed since approximately 1975, continues to have nothing confirmed—but our sources suggest that several approaches for solo projects, a film soundtrack and a charity concert among them, have been quietly declined in recent weeks. Declined, notably, with the explanation of prior commitments. You can’t have a prior commitment to nothing.

George Harrison, whose HandMade Films keeps him busy, has nonetheless cleared his schedule of anything music-related through the summer. Ringo Starr is, as ever, available.

We are almost certainly reading too much into this.

—Stuart Maconie

EMPIRE THEATER CLEARS ITS BOOKS

The Industry Eye, February 1980

We’ll keep this brief because we don’t want to jinx it.

The Empire Theater in Liverpool, which hosted, among other things, the last UK Tour ever performed by a certain hometown band, has had a block of dates in early July, including July 6th, quietly removed from its available bookings. There has been no announcement and no explanation. The venue’s management declined to comment when we called.

July 6th, for those keeping score, was the day the Woolton village fete was held in 1957. The afternoon a sixteen year old John Lennon played a skiffle set and a fifteen year old Paul McCartney was in the audience. The rest, as they say, is history.

Someone, it seems, has a sense of occasion.

—C.B.

LENNON: OUT TO LUNCH!

The Industry Eye, March 1980

John Lennon was seen having lunch with an unidentified British man at Café des Artistes on West 67th Street last Tuesday. The pair dined for two hours, and it’s worth noting that Lennon’s lunch date donned a full briefcase. Lennon, himself, doing most of the listening, which should, on its own qualify as news.

We called his people. No comment. We called McCartney's people, just for fun. Also no comment.

Make of that what you will.

—C.B.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson NBC

March 1980

Transcript excerpt

CARSON: Steve Martin, everybody.

(applause)

Now, you've got the film coming out, which we'll get to.

MARTIN: We'll get to it, yes.

CARSON: But I have to ask first, because I don't think people know this about you, you're actually a musician.

MARTIN: I am, yeah. I play the banjo, which is– I know it's not what people expect. They expect the arrow through the head, they don't expect the five-string banjo.

CARSON: How did that happen?

MARTIN: I grew up in California and there was this whole folk revival happening, bluegrass was everywhere if you knew where to look, and I just fell in love with it. Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe. These guys were doing something so technically extraordinary and nobody was paying attention because everyone was busy screaming at the Beatles.

CARSON: (laughing) Everyone except you.

MARTIN: Well– I mean. I was also screaming at the Beatles.

CARSON: Were you?

MARTIN: A little bit, sure. Who wasn’t? I was twenty, I had a reputation to maintain, but yes. Every record. I kept it to myself because it was mostly teenage girls losing their minds and I didn't want to compromise my image…

CARSON: As a serious banjo player.

MARTIN: As a serious banjo player, exactly, thank you Johnny. But genuinely– I think there's before Beatles and after Beatles and those are just the two eras of popular music. Everything else is a footnote.

CARSON: So you've been following this whole situation.

MARTIN: Oh, are we doing this?

CARSON: We're doing this.

MARTIN: Okay. Yes. I've been following it. I've read the Rolling Stone piece several times. I'm not ashamed.

CARSON: So what do you think is actually happening here? Beatles reunion? Something else entirely?

MARTIN: Okay so here's my theory. And I want to be clear, I have no inside information, I'm just a banjo player from California who – anyway!

CARSON: Noted.

MARTIN: I think these two men have been having the same argument for ten years. The exact same argument, but they keep having it in public instead of in the same room. Like, one of them says something in an interview and the other one responds in a different interview and they're just– they're conducting an entire relationship through the press. Which is insane. Pick up the phone!

CARSON: (laughing) Pick up the phone!

MARTIN: Just call him! You have his number! I guarantee you have his number! You've had his number since 1957! (laughter) Just call the man! Anyway, did you see the Times piece?

CARSON: I did.

MARTIN: No comment. He said no comment. To the London Times. About whether he wants to work with John Lennon. That is, in my humble opinion, the least convincing no comment in human history.

CARSON: But is it a Beatles reunion, do you think? Because that's what everyone seems to think.

MARTIN: Okay, so this is the interesting part. I don't think it's a Beatles reunion.

CARSON: You don’t.

MARTIN: No, and I'll tell you why. George Harrison has been trying to escape the particular gravitational pull of the Beatles since 1970 and I respect him enormously for it. And Ringo, leave Ringo alone.

CARSON: (laughing) Leave Ringo alone!

MARTIN: He seems happy! Let him be happy! No–I think whatever this is, it's not about the Beatles. The Beatles are finished and I think they all know that and have made their peace with it. But there's something between those two specifically that has never been resolved. There's just, there's something there. And I think that's what this is really about.

CARSON: You know, for a banjo player you've given this a lot of thought.

MARTIN: I contain multitudes, Johnny.

[Laughter, applause]

CARSON: We'll be right back with Steve Martin!

MARTIN: The film! We still haven't talked about the film!

CARSON: After the break–

MARTIN: (to audience) I have a film! It's very good! Please see it!

Harrison: “Whatever’s Going On… Is Between Them”

The Industry Eye, February 1980

George Harrison, attending the London premiere of Monty Python’s Life of Brian on Thursday evening, was asked by reporters whether he had any comment on the ongoing speculation surrounding his former bandmates.

He appeared to think about this for approximately one second.

“Listen–” he said, already moving toward the door, “I read about it in the papers like everyone else. Which is quite refreshing, actually, not being in the middle of it for once. I’d recommend it.”

Asked directly whether he would participate in any reunion, full or partial, he stopped walking.

“No. God, no. Whatever’s going on between those two is between them, as it has always been, as it will always be, world without end.”

He went inside.

Harrison’s HandMade Films co-produced the Python film, which opens nationwide next week. He declined further comment on anything Beatles-related for the remainder of the evening, though sources present report that he seemed to be having a very good time.

—C.B.

John

Reporters had been circling the Dakota since Monday morning.

He’d been doing his best to avoid going out of the house, sending his house keeper for groceries, hoping to wait them out, but after the third or fourth day, he was going stir crazy. He needed to stretch his legs, breath in fresh air, see some faces.

Steeling himself against the onslaught, John finally came down the elevator at his preferred time. He took a deep breath and nodded to the guard to open the gate.

There were six of them, maybe eight, clustered by the entrance. The usual fans were there too, a few regulars, a couple of new faces, and of course, Goresh already in position on the pavement. But this group looked different, they had press passes and recording equipment and the look of people on assignment.

Goresh elbowed his way to the front of the swarm and nudged his way in beside John, camera around his neck, expression deeply apologetic.

"I told them," he said, before John could speak. "I said this isn't—I told them they shouldn't be here, John. I told them."

"It’s alright, kid."He said, slapping him on the shoulder comfortingly.

"I said this is a private residence, I said people live here, I said—"

"Goresh." John said, pulling his newsie cap down to cover his eyes. "It's alright. It might be my own fault, this one."

Goresh looked at him with confusion and a hint of surprise.

"Slightly," John said. He made a point to sign two albums for the regulars and then kept walking, hands in his pockets, heading toward the park at his usual pace. Goresh fell into step beside him as he cleared the cluster of journalists, camera bouncing against his chest.

"They've been here every morning for the past few days," Goresh said, by way of nothing.

"Been watching them from up there, haven’t I?"

Goresh just hummed in general disagreement, shaking his head.

"Asked me yesterday if I knew anything." Goresh said, eventually. "I told them I just take pictures."

"Good man."

"They offered me money."

John looked at him with a face, “And?”

"I told them I just take pictures," Goresh said again, adjusting his camera strap proudly.

"Great man." John squeezed his shoulder once, fondly.

“Thanks, John." Goresh glanced sideways at him, a flush creeping up his face. He was still trotting to keep up.

“Can you believe those lemmings?” John added, not bothering to lower his voice, jutting his chin out behind him towards the press cluster without really turning around. “Absolute lemmings. Print one thing and they all go running off the same cliff together.”

Goresh glanced sideways at him, “So it’s not true, then– what they’re saying?”

“The man I was having lunch with the other day,” John said, with great patience, “is Yoko’s art dealer. We were discussing a Cy Twombly piece she’s been after for eight months. Very exciting stuff. Very rock and roll.” He scoffed under his breath. “I’m just saying. Not everything you read is true.”

Then, just before he turned off toward the park path, he jogged backward a few steps, facing Goresh with a conspiratorial smile. He winked.

"And Goresh?" He was already turning away, calling back over his shoulder. "Get rid of them for me, will you?"

"Aye aye, cap!" Goresh called back, and gave him a sarcastic salute.

John raised a hand without turning around and disappeared into the park.

He managed to ignore the crowd of press for a few more days.

He walked past them every morning with focused neutrality. Almost as though he had selective deafness and blindness towards journalists. He continued to sign things for the fans who were always there first, exchanged his usual few words with Goresh, then kept moving. The reporters shouted questions he didn't hear, they thrust recording equipment at angles he didn't appreciate, but also didn’t acknowledge. The questions were always the same.

John, is the tour happening—

John, have you spoken to McCartney—

John, Paul says that—

Then one day, he’d been on his way back from the park on a Thursday, hands in his pockets, thinking about something else completely, (Sean's piano lessons, whether his starter needed feeding, whether or not it was cliche to pick up jogging at 40) when a woman in a long tan trenchcoat stepped out in front of him from the overhang of some nearby business. It was a complete ambush.

“John,” she said, already pulling out a notepad. He tried to sidestep her but she mirrored him and he stopped dead. “Paul McCartney gave a statement this week.”

John tried to change directions again, she mirrored him again. “He said, and I’m quoting directly: ‘I don’t count John to follow through anymore’.” John did a pirouette around her.

“He also said,” the woman continued, pivoting with him deftly, “that he’s ‘not holding his breath’.”

Giving up, John stopped altogether, which put the woman back on her heels. She almost ran straight into him, but managed to regain her footing just in time.

“Do these quotes suggest to you that Paul McCartney thinks you don’t mean what you said in Rolling Stone?”

John looked at her ballpoint pen, poised and quivering above the pad of yellow legal paper in her left hand.

“Listen–” He wasn’t sure why he was even opening his mouth, he’d been doing such a good job of shutting the fuck up and ignoring these pests.

“I’m a man of my word,” he heard himself say. He really should just keep walking, get the fuck out of here, not give them what they want. “And I’d appreciate it if Paul McCartney, who has known me for twenty three years, didn’t go around suggesting otherwise to journalists.” A pause. “He can not believe me all he likes, but I’m not a liar.”

The headline ran the next morning:

LENNON FIRES BACK “I’m Not A Liar”—THE MCCARTNEY-LENNON FEUD HEATS UP

New Musical Express, March 1980

It has been, by any measure, an unusual fortnight in the ongoing and apparently inexhaustible saga of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Lennon's Rolling Stone interview, (in which he volunteered, apparently without prompting, that he was open to working with McCartney again) sent the music press into a frenzy that has not yet abated. McCartney's subsequent responses, ranging from the breezy to the clearly frustrated, have done nothing to cool it.

And now Lennon has responded to the response.

The former Beatle, who resumed making occasional appearances outside his Dakota apartment building in recent weeks after years of near-total public absence, was approached by reporters on Thursday morning as he returned from his customary walk through Central Park. When informed of McCartney's widely-reported remark, that, quote, he doesn’t count on John to Follow Through anymorI—Lennon stopped walking.

He appeared to consider this for a moment.

Then: "I’m not a liar."

Four definitive words, after days of total silence. He then walked inside his Dakota residence without further comment, leaving the assembled press to run with it.

For context: Lennon's Rolling Stone interview, published in January, contained what many observers read as a direct and deliberate message to McCartney: that he is open to a collaboration, (whether with McCartney himself or the Beatles as a whole is still up for debate), that the timing for once wasn’t the problem, that the ball, implicitly, was in someone else's court. McCartney's response– four public statements of varying non-commitment, culminating in a no comment that made page three of the Times– was interpreted variously as diplomacy, evasion, and, by at least one prominent music critic, as the most elaborate yes in recent memory.

Lennon, it seems, has his own interpretation.

‘I’m not a Liar’, is not, strictly speaking, a direct answer to any question currently on the table. It is, however, considerably more interesting than ‘no comment’. It means that Lennon stands by what he said in Rolling Stone. It means that McCartney's reluctance to take him at his word is, in Lennon's view, a failure of trust rather than a failure of interest. It implies, in short, that whatever is happening between these two men is not nothing.

Neither camp has issued a statement.

We will, as ever, be watching.

—Stuart Maconie

John

John was having a difficult week, to say the least.

Fred kept leaving press clippings on the counter. To his credit, John had asked him to do exactly that when he was first hired, to keep him informed, clip anything relevant. He'd since asked him to stop. Fred kept forgetting, and so the clippings kept piling up, day after day, their headlines getting worse and worse.

The story had taken on a life entirely of its own. Fed somehow by both of them, but without either of them meaning to. Every morning there was something new. A columnist's theory, a fan's open letter, a radio DJ in Liverpool who had been playing nothing but Beatles records for two weeks straight, in what he'd told his listeners he was calling an act of hopeful solidarity.

And yet, Paul still hadn't backed down.

That was the thing John kept coming back to. He'd really expected Paul to fold by now. That had been the whole plan: call his bluff in, make him back down publicly, relish in his humiliation.

Except nothing had gone according to plan. Paul had given five non-committal press statements that somehow read as more and more committed with each one. He'd made the Times, and now the whole goddamn world was treating this like a foregone conclusion and John didn't know what to think.

The worst part was, John didn’t even feel like gloating. It should have given him some inkling of pleasure to see Paul squirm under pressure. It should have been satisfying– but it wasn't. Instead it just kind of made him angry. And anxious. Really anxious actually. Because if Paul didn’t back down, then- fuck. What was he going to do?

John looked at the pile of clippings on the counter. He really needed to talk to Fred about the clippings.

It’s just that he was sick and tired of being the bad guy. He'd been the bad guy for ten years running and he was exhausted by it. Sure, he'd come out of the breakup looking strong, or at least that's what people said. How Do You Sleep had landed like a bomb and everyone agreed he'd won that particular war, and for a while the winning had felt good– really good.

But Paul had been right, in the end. About Klein. John had known within two years, and knew it properly within three, and by the time Klein was out he'd had to sit with the fact that he’d sued his oldest friend over a man who'd turned out to be exactly the conman he’d been warned he was. Paul had seen through the smoke and mirrors and John had called him a liar and a coward and written a song about it and put it on an album.

He'd been a cunt, to be perfectly blunt.

And he knew, deep down, that the fans would crucify him if he were the one to break. That was the thing Paul never seemed to understand. John Lennon backing down meant something very different than Paul McCartney backing down. Paul had been playing the heel in the public eye for years. He'd filed the lawsuit, he'd been the one to publish that press kit, he'd been the one who'd formed Wings and tried too hard and been mocked for it and absorbed it and kept going, kept smiling, kept being relentlessly, exhaustingly happy in the face of everything. Paul was used to people being disappointed in him. He'd built up a tolerance to it, the way you built a tolerance to hemlock.

But John hadn't.

All John had was his reputation. His wit, his edge, and the sense that he was always the one who saw through things, who said true things, who didn't compromise or perform or try to be liked. That was the currency he'd been living on for ten years. And if he backed down now, if he went from ‘I'm open to it’ to ‘actually, never mind’, he'd look weak. He'd look like he hadn't got it in him.

So no, he wouldn’t be the one to back down first.

***

That night, after Yoko had gone to bed and John had finished picking up after Sean (trains back in their box, socks located, the apartment returned to its nighttime serenity), he poured himself a stiff glass of gin, sank deep into his favorite chair and sat with it in the dark.

He wasn't thinking about anything in particular when his hand found the desk drawer, and then opened it without him deciding to open it. He watched himself pull out a legal pad, flip to a blank page, uncap a pen, and for no reason he could identify, wrote:

Things I would need if I were going on tour

He stared at it. It stared back. It was just a hypothetical, just a thought exercise. It’s not as though he was actually considering it even for one fraction of a second. It was just a stupid thought exercise that had nothing to do with anything. He was just thinking. People were allowed to think.

He wrote:

Songs

Then sat with that. It was true, he hadn’t written anything in almost five years. He’d had ideas for songs, sure– and he'd caught them on the portable tape recorder he kept on the bedside table. Most were half finished and sloppy. The recorder was full of them, but he hadn't listened back to any of them in months. Nothing was anywhere near finished, let alone ready to be recorded or performed.

Slowly, and without thinking, he started writing song titles. He scratched title after title and once he got going, he realized he couldn’t stop. Each song naturally pulled the next one behind it, the way they always had. When he had filled about half a page, he put his pen down and looked.

It hit him all at once.

He’d written down seven songs, and all seven were Beatles tracks, five of which Paul had written.

John flipped the legal pad face down with more force than was strictly necessary. Sat there for a moment chewing the end of his pen, looking at the ceiling, then at the overturned pad, then at the ceiling again. Then he yanked the desk drawer open, shoved the pad inside, and slammed it shut.

He sat there, chewing on the pen cap. Then he opened the drawer, took the legal pad out, tore the page off, crumpled it, and dropped it in the bin.

Paul

Linda finally brought it up on a Sunday evening in a roundabout kind of way.

The kids were in bed. She was on the sofa with a book open on her knee, feet tucked under her. Paul was doing a very convincing impression of reading the farming periodical. The fire was going. The house was quiet.

"How long do you think it'll take?" Linda said, without looking up.

"How long will what take?" Paul shook the periodical to keep the pages upright.

"You know." Linda turned a page of her book. "For everything to die down."

Paul turned a page, clearing his throat. "Dunno. A few more weeks. Maybe less."

"Paul.” He glanced at her over the pages of the periodical. She raised her eyebrows at him. “That's what you said a few weeks ago."

"And it's quieter than it was then." Paul said definitively, turning the page to an advert for insect and pest removal. Like it never happened, boasted the tagline. He stared at it. He rather liked the idea. No evidence, no residue, no nagging awareness that something had been living in your walls. Clean and simple and done.

"Is it?" Linda put her book down now, dogearing the corner of her page. "Because my father called twice this week. And the Times ran another piece."

"It was only an od-ed. Nobody reads the op-eds.”

"I read the op-eds."

“It was nothing, Lin. Come now, don’t worry yourself.”

"The Industry Eye,” Linda looked at him pointedly, “was nothing, recurring mentions in the Times is something."

Paul set the periodical down with a definitive rustling. "George said no. Ringo said no. Two out of four is not a Beatles reunion, and eventually the press will work that out and move on to something else. That's how it always goes."

"I know that's how it always goes." Linda was leaning forward now, her voice dangerously close to argumentative. "But, darling, the press already know they’ve said no. If you bothered to read any of what they’re saying, you’d know. They've known for weeks. And it still hasn't gone away." She paused.

“You’ve been reading this crap?”

"Someone has to."

"I don't need you bothering yourself–"

"Why haven't you released a proper statement?" she said. "Something definitive. Door closed, end of story."

"Your father says not to."

"My father–," Linda echoed, surprised, and left a brief pause. "That's never stopped you before when you've really wanted to put something to bed."

Paul turned a page he hadn't read.

"Paul."

"Hmm."

“I’m talking to you.”

“Hmmm.”

"Paul." She waited until he looked up from the periodical. "What are you going to do?"

“What am I– nothing, Lin! Can we drop it please.”

“Paul– can I–” she held up a hand when he opened his mouth to argue, “ – no wait– let me ask you something.”

He looked at her over the top of the periodical. “What?”

Linda was quiet for a moment, choosing her words carefully. "Is there a reason you don't want to shut this down?"

"Of course I want to shut it down. What do you think I've been doing for the past month?"

"Honestly?" Linda looked at him directly, with that open, undefended look that he'd never been able to hide from in ten years of trying. "It looks like you're waiting for him to call."

The fire crackled.

Paul opened his mouth.

"I'm not saying that's bad," Linda said, before he could say anything. "I'm not saying anything about whether it's good or bad. I'm just saying, that’s what it looks like to me, your wife of ten years."

"Well I’m not," Paul said. "And I can't believe you've been reading all this rubbish behind my back. I don't need you monitoring the press for me, Linda, I'm perfectly capable of handling this myself–"

"I know you are," she said, defensively.

"Then why are you–"

"Because someone in this house has to have their head above the sand." She said, frustratedly. "You've decided it'll go away on its own, and I understand why, but that doesn't mean it will."

"It'll go away," he said.

“You’re impossible!” She exclaimed, throwing her hands up. “What will it take for you to just give him a fucking call?”

Paul sighed a long, drawn out sigh. “I’m telling you, Lin. John doesn’t want to hear from me about this. He’ll only laugh in my face.”

Linda picked her book back up, shaking her head. "I'm just trying to help," she huffed.

"I know." He sighed, massaging his brow, then reached over towards her hand. "I know you are."

"Okay," she said, took his hand in hers, gave it a squeeze, then leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

They sat by the fire for another hour, reading things they weren't reading, and neither of them brought it up again.

***

Monday passed without incident. Tuesday too. Paul fixed a section of gutter that had been bothering him, milked the cows, played guitar and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

He was waiting it out, and it was working.

But the message from Apple arrived on Wednesday morning, routed through MPL, flagged urgent by someone in the office who had clearly understood immediately what it meant even if they hadn't said so in the note.

Paul read it standing at his desk. Then he read it again. Then he sat down.

John Lennon, through the appropriate legal channels, had submitted a formal request to license Hello Goodbye for use in a British Telecom television advertisement. The campaign, his representatives explained, was intended to be charming and nostalgic. The fee being offered was considerable. They hoped Mr. McCartney would give it his full consideration.

Paul folded the letter back into its envelope.

John wanted to give their song– his song, if he was being specific, which he rarely was about this particular thing– to a fucking Phone Company. Wanted to sentence it to commercial hell.

He wanted to embalm it in the thirty seconds of airtime between news and weather, playing over footage of people picking up phones and ringing each other, until everyone who'd ever loved it had heard it enough times selling telephone subscriptions that they'd never be able to hear it any other way again. That was what John wanted to do with it.

He knew exactly what this was. He could see all the way to the bottom of it. John had spent thirteen years making sure Paul knew exactly what he thought of that song. It was lightweight, trivial, beneath them, the wrong choice for an A side, embarrassing in its simplicity. He'd said so to Paul directly, then to journalists, then to anyone who'd listen. And now he was submitting a formal licensing request to use it for a British Telecom advertisement.

Charming and nostalgic, the letter said. Paul scoffed, furious. But there was something else, something so far beneath that he almost missed it:

He was almost impressed.

He picked up the letter again and read it a third time, as though it might say something different. It didn't. It said what it said, and what it said was: John Lennon wants to do something with your music that he knows will drive you insane.

This was transparent and it was calculated but it was, even by John's standards, spectacularly cheeky.

None of that made him any less irrate. He set the letter face down on the desk, looking at nothing in particular, conducting a rapid and deeply unsatisfying internal argument.

If he called, he was doing exactly what John wanted. Walking directly into it, eyes open, giving John the satisfaction of knowing that this had been the thing that finally cracked him. John would answer the phone and Paul could practically hear it already, the insufferable tone he got when he knew he'd won.

But if he didn't call…

If he didn't call, what came next? Because this was a clear escalation. Paul knew this man, knew that when he ran out of patience he’d only reach for something more drastic. So, it was logical to assume that if Paul didn't respond then his next move would be even worse. John was creative– was extraordinarily, exhaustingly creative when he wanted something badly enough, and whatever came after licensing Hello Goodbye to a phone company would make this look restrained.

He thought about the song soundtracking a British Telecom advertisement, playing over footage of people picking up phones and calling each other. Then, in a move he recognized to be soaked in irony, he picked up his phone.

Better to stop it now.

The line rang four times. Then:

"Yeah."

The sound of John's voice after many months was… Well, Paul didn't let himself finish that thought.

“Liscening blackmail, is that what we’re doing now?" he barked, instead.

"Paul." John's voice dripped with faux pleasantry. "What a surprise."

"Is it."

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

"You're well?" John said, which was not something John said.

“Fine.” Paul said, impatiently.

"Right." Another pause. "How's Linda?"

"John."

"The kids–"

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

"Right." John dropped the pleasantries. "I take it you got the letter."

"Of course I got the letter, John, that's why I'm calling."

"Well, I wasn’t sure if it'd reached you yet. The post from America can be slow."

"It reached me."

"Look, it's a song about communication," John said, pleasantly. "Hello, goodbye. People pick up phones. It fits."

"Bollocks," Paul scoffed.

"Thematically."

"It's not–” Paul stopped. "That’s our song, John. We don't just license it to whoever comes along with a cheque. You know that."

"Our song," John said.

"Yes, our—"

"Interesting that you'd call it that."

Paul went very still. "Call it what?"

"Our song." John said it again, with careful precision. "You just called it our song."

"Because it is our song!" Paul spat, furious.

"Right. It's ours." John said reasonably, "and I'm entitled to make decisions about it. That's what ours means."

“So now it's ours," Paul’s voice went low in disbelief.

“What do you mean? Of course it is.”

"Well, I seem to remember you wanting nothing to do with it!” Paul’s voice was getting louder now, and he was dangerously close to yelling. “You've been trying to distance yourself from that song since the moment it was released and now suddenly it's ours?"

"The other two have already agreed," John said blankly, as though this might throw him off.

"Have they," Paul said, through gritted teeth.

"Yes."

"Right, and I suppose so has the Queen of England." Paul looked at the letter on his desk. "I don’t believe you."

"Well, that’s because you're paranoid."

"No– it’s because I know you." He picked up the letter, and shook it. "Honestly, John– this feels like the most transparent thing you've ever done, and that’s saying something."

"It's a licensing request, Paul, don’t work yourself up.”

"I know what it is, I have the letter, that's why I'm ringing—"

"So call the lawyers and say no," John interrupted, his voice rising. "That's what you do when you don't want something to happen. You say no."

There was a long silence in which Paul stood frozen, breathing hard into the receiver.

"Is that what you want?" Paul finally said. "For me to say no?"

There was another silence that felt a lot longer than it probably was.

"I want you," John coughed out, "to stop being so bloody vague about everything."

"Oh, that's—" Paul laughed despite himself, short and disbelieving. "That's what this is about. Oh that’s rich. You want me to stop being vague? Right. So that as soon as I say something definitive, I become the villain.”

“Well, I've been perfectly clear about where I stand, thank you very much."

"Oh, you have? From where I stand, it looks like you’ve been giving unprompted interviews to Rolling Stone, just making this whole thing into a story where there isn’t one.”

"At least I'm saying something. You've been very–" John paused," –non-committal, in the press. Very open to things in the Melody Maker, but then when anyone asks you about it, you look like you've smelled dog shit and say ‘we'll see’ in that voice that means absolutely never–"

"That is not what I–"

" –which is very confusing, Paul, because either you meant it or you didn't, and if you didn't mean it then perhaps don't say it in national publications–"

"Oh, I meant it," Paul said, louder than he meant to.

“Oh did you?”

“I did!”

“Well, so did I!” John was yelling now, his voice cracking the phone line.

Paul laughed, humorlessly. "You, John Lennon, who hasn't left his apartment in years, just so happens to be itching to get back out on the road."

"As it happens, I've been thinking about it, actually. Recently."

"Right." Paul's voice had gone very flat. "And I suppose it's just a coincidence that you've been thinking about it right around the same time you called Rolling Stone out of the blue. Very convenient."

“I thought it was quite straightforward."

"Oh, don’t even– nothing with you is ever straightforward."

"Please–" John stopped, and Paul could hear him recalibrating, the way he'd always been able to hear it, even across an ocean, even after all this time. "You're one to talk. You sat in a hotel somewhere and told a journalist you thought I hadn't got it in me."

"I was trying to bury the rumor."

"By questioning my capability?"

"By making it clear nothing was going to happen!"

"And did it work?" John's voice had found an edge now, sharp and cruel. "Did it bury the story? Because last I checked, it's on page three of the Times and Johnny fucking Carson is talking about it on American television."

There was a long pause. Paul heard John panting hard, then cleared his throat.

"Look, Paul. You told a journalist I don't have it in me. You did that. Whatever story you're telling yourself about why–"

"I was trying to protect you, goddamn it!" The words spilled out him before Paul could stop them.

He heard movement in the hallway and looked up. Linda was in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, expression careful and worried. She'd heard everything. From the look of her she could probably hear John's voice, too. Faintly, from where she was standing, tinny and distant through the receiver but audible, just.

Their eyes met and Paul turned slightly away.

"What–" John sounded stunned, “on earth?”

"It’s–” Paul stopped to chew on his index fingernail. "I thought if I said you weren't up for it, nobody would expect anything from you. You'd have an out. That's all."

"Right." A pause. "Well, I don't need you to bail me out, Paul." John said with venom in his voice, "I haven't for a long time."

Paul wasn’t sure what to say to that, actually. He cleared his throat.

“I mean…” He rubbed the back of his neck, which was beginning to sweat a bit. “It’s not as though you were actually going to take me up on it, though?”

John laughed, short and without humor. "Right. Because I don't follow through. That's the thing now, is it? Paul McCartney doesn't count on John Lennon to follow through anymore."

“That was taken out of context!”

“And I suppose it was taken out of context when you said you were open to it.”

"Christ, John!" Paul's voice cracked up a register. "How many times do you need me to say it? I meant it when I said I was open to it. Alright? I said it to fucking Angelica Bridges, I meant it–”

"Paul, don't."

" –a conversation we had in 1974–"

"I said don't–"

" –where you said you were coming–"

"Paul, I said don't–"

" –and I was there, John, I was there waiting–"

"PAUL." John bellowed, and he finally went quiet.

Linda took a small step through the doorway extending a hand. Paul brushed her off, his heart battering in his chest. He turned more towards the window, hoping she couldn’t make out John’s words through his yelling. He stopped and breathed in and out a few times, trying to get his pulse in check. He looked back at Linda once to scan her face for any signs of comprehension. She hadn't moved from the doorway.

“What do you want, John?” Paul tried again. When John didn’t respond right away, Paul continued. "Because I'll tell you what it looks like," Paul said, and his voice had gone somewhere brutal and plain. "It looks like you couldn't leave well enough alone. A bit childish, isn't it? I mean, come on- is this 1970 again? Rolling Stone, the NME, a bloody phone company?” He paused. “You just had to, didn't you. You just had to shoot another arrow."

"Oh, here we go—"

"I thought you were happy!" Paul's voice was raw anger. "That's what everyone said! John's happy, John's content, John's got his life sorted up there in his bloody fortress– but no- you couldn't just stay there. Couldn’t leave me alone for five fucking minutes?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I bothering you?”

"Yes! You are! You've been bothering me for three months with your cryptic interviews and your licensing requests and your– I mean, are you really that miserable? Is that what this is? You're up there so bloody miserable and you couldn't stand that I wasn't?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Paul.”

"Then what is it, John? What is it? Because I’ve been getting along fine these past couple years, before you decided to–"

"For fucks sake, Paul– I MEANT IT!" John roared, suddenly, the words tearing out of him. "The whole thing! Is that what you need to hear?”

"WELL, I MEANT WHAT I SAID IN THE MELODY MAKER!” Paul screamed back, his voice rising again to fever pitch. “Is that clear enough for you?!"

"Crystal," John screamed at a volume that would have woken the dead. "Because I meant what I said in Rolling Stone, and I am open to working with you again," his voice cracked slightly, but remained furious, "How's that? Clear enough to get through your thick fucking skull?"

"Perfectly," Paul spat back at exactly the same volume, his hands tugging at the roots of his hair. "So am I. I’d love nothing more, actually–"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

"Then it's settled–"

"Yes, it is!"

"Brilliant," Paul shouted.

"Brilliant," John shouted back..

"My people will call your people–"

"Have them call–"

"Fine–"

"Fine!"

Then he slammed the phone down in its cradle.

Paul stood in the middle of his study, put his hand on his hips, panting as though he’d just run a mile, and stared at the wall.

Linda hadn't moved from the doorway.

He turned around.

She looked at him.

"What," she said carefully, "was that?"

Paul looked at the phone. Looked at Linda, then back at the phone.

"I have absolutely no fucking idea," he said.

The Wound That Wont Close

Rolling Stone, April 1980

By Cameron Crowe

Something’s changed. It’s unclear when or what, exactly, but if you’ve been following this story you know what I mean.

For the better part of six months, both Paul McCartney and John Lennon maintained a strict level of ambiguity regarding the rumours about the two of them possibly reuniting, neither confirming nor denying. The most definitive quotes we got were personal digs at one another’s character and relative ability to commit. It was rather odd, a bit sad to watch, but it was a strategy that kept us at arm’s length while the situation developed.

But in the last few weeks, that strategy seems to have changed. Nobody’s denying anything anymore.

“We’ve spoken, yeah,” McCartney told a reporter outside his London offices on a Tuesday afternoon. “A couple of times. It was, er–” he paused to smile, “—it was something.”

Lennon, when asked the same question outside the Dakota several days later: “Of course we’ve spoken. We’re not children.” He kept walking. Then, almost as an afterthought he tossed out over his shoulder: “He sounds well.”

You could miss it if you weren’t paying attention. But of course, we’ve been paying attention, and if you’re reading this, so have you.

“Something’s been agreed to,” says one senior promotions executive, who asked not to be named. “I don’t know what exactly, nobody really does, but the energy has completely changed. Three months ago you couldn’t get either camp on the phone. Now people are returning our calls.”

The most concrete piece of evidence came last week, when John Eastman, McCartney’s attorney and father-in-law, was photographed entering the Dakota building on Wednesday afternoon. He was inside for two hours. Neither Lennon nor McCartney’s representatives would comment on the nature of the meeting, but the symbolism was not lost on anyone.

And then there are the things they’ve been saying about each other.

This, perhaps more than anything else, is what has fans losing their minds. Because Paul McCartney and John Lennon have been talking about each other in the press for a decade, and it has never sounded like this.

McCartney, asked recently in Mayfair about Lennon’s Rolling Stone interview: “John’s a grown man who means what he says. I’ve decided to take him at his word, and so should you.”

Lennon, in the rare occasion that he stops to acknowledge reporters camped out outside his 72nd street residence, recently said this when asked if there will be any official announcement released: “I’m not going to get into specifics but I will say I haven’t changed my mind. And neither has he.”

McCartney, asked whether he stood by his comment that Lennon didn’t have it in him after years away from music: "There's this assumption that because he's been quiet he's not– I wouldn't count him out. I never have."

Lennon, asked what he thinks McCartney has been doing with his time: “Making good music. He’s always made good music. I’ve always known that.” Then when journalists started scribbling his words down like mad, he said, “don’t print that like it’s news.”

It is, of course, news. It is, for anyone who has spent the last decade watching these two conduct their estrangement through press releases and pointed album lyrics and the occasional interview grenade lobbed across the Atlantic. Quite remarkable news, in fact. John Lennon thinks Paul McCartney makes good music. Paul Mccartney doesn’t count John Lennon out. Something has changed.

These 180 degree reversals, conducted in public, without acknowledgement that there was ever anything to reverse in the first place is either breathtaking in its audacity or the most Lennon/McCartney thing in the entire world, depending on how you look at it.

_____

Greg Millward is twenty-six years old and lives in a three bedroom house in Syracuse, New York with five other young men. He doesn’t own much, but in the center of his living room sits a dusty record player, and a copy of Abbey Road that has been played so many times the vinyl has gone slightly soft in some places.

He grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His older sister Barb was a proper Beatlemaniac who screamed herself hoarse at a show in ‘65 and kept the ticket stub in her jewellery box for years. Greg was eleven in 1965. Too young for the shows, and too young for the hysteria. He got the records secondhand from Barb, fell in love with their early stuff, and then lost the thread somewhere around Revolver. He told me he was too young for their dramatic turn to psychedelia, and by Sgt. Pepper he’d moved on to other things.

And then they broke up.

“I was sixteen,” he tells me. We’re sitting in the kitchen of the Syracuse house, which smells like coffee and newsprint from the innumerable fliers stacked by his door. “And I went back to the records, all of them, front to back, and it was like–” he thinks about it and his face lights up. “It was like re-reading a book you weren’t old enough for the first time and suddenly the whole thing makes sense.”

He works for the Syracuse peace council now, printing fliers, making very little money, doing work he believes in. He has a degree in social work that he hasn’t used yet. He wrote to Rolling Stone in March because, he says, he couldn’t stop thinking about one thing.

“I never got to see them,” he says. “That’s the thing that keeps me up at night. By the time I understood what I was missing they were already gone. And I’ve made my peace with that, mostly. But there’s this wound.” He wraps his hands around his coffee cup. “Not in me specifically. In the thing itself. You listen to the records and you can hear it, there’s something that didn't heal between them.”

He knows this isn’t a Beatles reunion. He’s very clear on this point, more clear than most people twice his age who’ve been following the story.

“George and Ringo both said no. That’s done.” He shrugs. “But George and Ringo—I mean, I love them, they’re brilliant—but they were never really the heart of the wound, were they. The wound is those two. It’s always been those two.”

I ask him what he thinks is happening.

“I think,” he says carefully, “that two men who should have made up a long time ago are finally getting around to it” He pauses. “I don’t know what it’ll sound like. I don’t know if it’ll be a tour or a record or just like, one song, even. But I know whatever it is, it’ll be brilliant.”

He looks out the window. The Syracuse afternoon is grey and ordinary.

“I just want to hear what they sound like now,” he says. “That’s all. I want to hear what they sound like, when they’re not angry anymore.”

Nobody knows yet if that’s what’s coming. Like Greg says, it could be a show, a tour, or maybe just a song. But the denials have stopped. And John Lennon thinks Paul McCartney makes good music.

And somewhere in Syracuse, a twenty-six year old man with a worn-out copy of Abbey Road is waiting to hear what comes next.

So are the rest of us.

John

"Don’t count him out," John said, to no one in particular, in the drawling honey-sweet voice he used to imitate Paul. "Don’t count him out" He sang again, hamming it up, then scoffed, slamming down his mug of coffee. "Six months of him slagging me off in every publication imaginable and now it's 'don’t count him out.' Like he didn’t say I was a washed up old rag only three months ago."

Fred appeared in the doorway. “Are you talking to me?”

"The wound that won't close," John read the title of the article in a snooty voice, in lieu of answering Fred. He put down the magazine. "Very poetic, very soulful."

“So you are talking to me?”

“Jesus, Fred, do you see anybody else here?”

“I was just asking–”

"Did you read this bollocks?” John interrupted, turning back to pour over the glossy pages.

Fred hesitated. “Yeah, I caught it.”

“Hmm.” John hummed to himself. “What do you make of this bit about the fan?" he asked.

“The fan?”

"Greg." John found the page. "Greg Millward, twenty-six, Syracuse. Peace activist." He read for a moment. "He sounds like an idealist.” he scoffed. “Grow up, Greg."

Fred said nothing.

"I mean it." John pushed the magazine away. "Grow up. Go outside. Meet a girl. You're twenty-six years old in Syracuse with a worn-out Abbey Road and you're waiting for two middle-aged men to sort themselves out so you can move on with your life?" he stopped.

He looked at the photo again, at Greg's oval face, with blue grey eyes looking out at the grey ordinary afternoon behind a pair of wide framed glasses. He sighed.

The Dakota apartment had been very quiet lately. Yoko had been in her studio more than usual, blasting experimental music John was scared to admit he didn’t understand or enjoy.

If she wasn’t in her studio, she was in meetings he wasn't invited to or informed of. She hadn't mentioned John’s screaming match with Paul. Hadn't mentioned the fact that he’d agreed in a fury of rage to work with the one person he knew Yoko disliked most. She hadn’t mentioned the Eastman meeting. she hadn’t mentioned much of anything really.

She wasn’t really speaking to him. At all.

John had been waiting for her to broach the topic and she hadn't and at this point he suspected she wasn't going to. He wished she’d just storm out of her studio and scream at him, flay him alive, set him straight. He’d deserve it after all. Then he could grovel and beg for forgiveness and she would shut this all down, make a call to Paul’s people herself, tell them John wouldn’t be doing anything of the sort. End of story, case closed. That’s what she normally did when John acted rashly, she came in and fixed things.

But she wasn’t doing that now. Which meant she was forcing John to live with the consequences of his actions. Which was… uncomfortable to say the least.

Sean, at least, was straightforward. Sean wanted juice and trains and for John to sit on the floor and make sound effects. John could do that.

Outside on 72nd street, the press presence had doubled. Maybe tripled.

He looked out the window every morning and counted. Every day he noticed someone new. A face he hadn’t seen before. And the weird part was, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

There was something about it. Something invigorating in walking past them, in the alertness it required. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be news. Not the Beatles kind of news, not that, never that again, but something. Something happening. Something the world was watching.

"The Eastman thing," Fred said, tentatively refilling his cup. John jumped, he’d forgotten Fred was still standing there. "It's in the piece."

John turned towards his assistant slowly. "I know it's in the piece."

"Prominently." Fred looked at him with curiosity.

John shook it off with a flick of his hand. "It was a power move," he said it like it was obvious. "Paul thought he could send his in-laws with an official proposal and I'd take one look at it and back down."

He remembered the call from Eastman's office. A meeting had been suggested, to discuss the particulars of their agreement. What, exactly, he’d agreed to, he had no fucking clue. But clearly, he’d agreed to something.

He'd known, even then, that Eastman coming to the Dakota was Paul's way of raising the stakes. John would have to either commit or retreat, and retreating would mean admitting that he'd said all those things about being open to it in Rolling Stone, on his own doorstep and on the phone without meaning any of it.

Which he hadn't. Probably. He wasn't entirely sure. It had all come out in such a rush on the phone with Paul, he wasn’t sure what was true anymore.

In the end he'd let Eastman come. He’d served him tea and biscuits over the kitchen table, and sat there the whole time thinking: Paul put you up to this, didn’t he? Paul thinks he can frighten me off with paperwork.

Which had made John double down, out of pure stubbornness, which he was aware was not the most sophisticated response to the situation.

And that was before he'd read the proposal.

"The contract," John said disgustedly. "Did I tell you about it, Fred?"

"You haven't, no."

"Insulting. That's the word."

"How so?"

"Forty dates," John said. "Forty. Starting in August, Fred. As in three months from now. Paul has apparently decided I can just drop everything and–" he picked up the magazine just to put it down again, "I’ve got a son, y’know. A four year old. Did he consider that? And the cities. He wants to start in London, which, fine, but then he's got us going everywhere. Cairo, Cape Town, Buenos Aires. Everywhere he's ever wanted to go, apparently." He drummed his fingers on the counter. "And I've only just got my green card sorted. Does he think the US government is going to let me wander the globe with no notice? Not that I'd go. Because I'm not signing anything. Because nothing is happening."

“Hmm.” Fred nodded, absently.

“And the songs. The breakdown of songs per set. Do you want to know the number of his songs to mine?"

Fred appeared to decide that silence was the correct response to this.

"Makes it look like I'd be the backup guitarist on the Paul McCartney show," John said. "Absolutely fucking unacceptable. I've made that clear. In writing." He paused. "Significant amendments."

Fred looked up. "Such as?"

"Such as the dates being pushed back. Such as the set list being renegotiated. Such as the payment structure, which I found—" he searched for the word, "—offensive. Paul's people came up with a payment structure that I can only describe as the work of a fucking thief." He paused. "The whole thing, basically."

"So you rewrote the contract."

"I made changes."

Fred nodded slowly, carefully.

"It's called negotiation, Fred. That's how contracts work."

"Right," Fred said, in exactly the same tone as before.

John turned the magazine face down on the counter.

"Nothing's happening, Fred," he said.

"Right." Fred set his mug in the sink. "Nothing's happening."

"Because he won't sign it," John said.

Fred nodded.

"He won't." John picked up his coffee. "Something will come up. It always does. He'll read the counter-proposal and decide the timing's wrong, or Linda will have opinions, or she'll get pregnant again, probably. That's how these things tend to go."

Fred looked at him for a long moment.

"What?" John said.

"Nothing."

"I’m telling you, this thing will be dead in the water by next week.”

Fred picked up his coffee and shrugged.

PAUL

"He rewrote the entire thing," Paul shouted down the line at his father in law, venom oozing from his voice. He stood in his farmhouse study, which had become, over the past several weeks, less a room he worked in and more a room he paced in while pretending to work. The contract in front of him was thirty-two pages long. He'd read it so many times he could recite sections of it from memory.

"He made amendments." Eastman tried.

"He rewrote the whole thing. The dates, the cities, the songs– there's nothing left of what we sent him."

"I know."

"He added Japan to the list."

"I noticed."

"He knows I'll never set foot in Japan again. He knows that!”

“I know.”

"And he's pushed everything back six months. Six months, I mean, what is he thinking?" Paul stood up from his desk and ran a hand through his hair. Outside the study window his farm sat in its usual grey. He could see the fields, the horses and Linda's darkroom light on. The life he'd built. The life that currently felt like it was slipping between his fingers.

"I noticed that too." Eastman's voice was measured. "Paul. We should talk about what we send back."

"What do you mean what we send back? We send nothing back. He either signs the original or this doesn’t happen."

"That's one approach." There was a long, heavy pause. "Paul– how committed are you to this? Actually."

Paul looked out the window and drew a deep breath. Sighed it out. The honest answer was that he didn't know. He genuinely didn't know, and the reason he didn't know was because none of this had been a decision, exactly. It had been a series of things that had happened, each one slightly more real than the last, until here he was with a thirty-two page contract on his desk.

Even the decision to draw up the contract in the first place, hadn’t felt like a decision. He hadn't sat down after his screaming match with John and thought to himself: right, the logical next step here is to formalize a legal document. He'd just dialed and when Eastman answered Paul had said, without preamble: we need to draw something up, and Eastman had said draw what up, and Paul had said a contract, for the tour, and there had been a pause and Eastman had said right, and that had been that.

He'd been acting on adrenaline and fury that was that. Eastman was a lawyer. Eastman dealt in intentions and things that could be held up in court. He didn't need to know that Paul had essentially dared John Lennon into a legal document.

Some mornings he woke up and he felt that all of this was inevitable, like something that was already happening, that had been happening since before the phone call, since before the Rolling Stone interview, since before any of it. Other mornings he lay in the dark at four o'clock and thought: what the fuck have I done.

"I don't know," he finally said, and it was the truth.

“That’s what I thought you’d say," Eastman said carefully. "Listen, there's an another approach we can take. We send something back that's reasonable on the surface but would require–"

"Significant further negotiation," Paul said.

"Yes."

"Something he'd never agree to."

"I didn't say that."

"But that's what you mean."

Eastman was quiet. “I mean, it might give you more time to think.”

Paul looked at the contract on his desk. Even crossed out and rewritten in the formal prose of whoever his lawyers were, you could feel John in every amendment. Making everything as complicated as possible.

Paul was quiet for a moment. "Do it," he said.

"Paul—"

"I need to know if he's serious." He picked up the contract and paced with it rolled up in one hand. “If he's serious he'll respond. If he's not—"

"If he's not," Eastman continued, "we'll know."

"Right."

Paul stopped pacing and stood at the window. All of a sudden it hit him that two weeks ago, the man he was speaking to had been inside the Dakota. His father in law had sat across from John Lennon in John Lennon's apartment and had tea with him and talked to him. Recently. More recently than Paul had, which was…. the thought gave him a weird, nauseating feeling in his stomach.

It’s just that– Paul had this version of John that lived in his head that he’d constructed entirely from press clippings and magazine photographs. Meanwhile this man had just been in the room with the actual person.

He wanted to ask. He'd been wanting to ask since the moment Eastman had gotten back from the meeting: How did he look? Was he well? Did he seem like himself?

He was furious at John. He wanted to be very clear about that. The counter proposal was an insult and Japan a clear provocation. The whole fucking thing was infuriating: John was being John, which was maddening and exhausting and… fuck. He just wanted to know how he was.

"So." Paul kept his voice very even. "How did he seem? You know. Generally." He said it like a business man doing his due diligence, asking out of professional interest, purely out of practical concern for the viability of the project.

"Lennon?" Eastman clarified, surprised.

"John, yeah."

"He was—" Eastman seemed to be taking his time. “Well, he- er…" The hesitation in Eastman’s voice got Paul’s attention right away. He straightened up.

"He was what?"

"He was very–" there was another pause. Eastman seemed to be choosing his words with unusual care, "Listen, he knew the thing inside out, had thoughts on every section, and he wasn't–" there was another pause, " –he wasn’t exactly unhappy about the idea. That was my impression."

The study went very quiet.

"He wasn't posturing?" Paul asked, stunned.

"Not that I could see. He seemed committed to making something happen."

"Committed," Paul repeated.

"It seemed that way. Or–" Eastman recalibrated. "I mean, that was my impression.”

“Huh," Paul grunted, not sure what else to say.

“But who knows, I mean, you know him better than anyone, so–”

"Right." Paul looked out the window. "Right."

"I wouldn't read too much into it," Eastman said.

"I'm not reading anything into it," Paul said, which was not true. It was John, he couldn't not read into it. That was the problem, had always been the problem, this compulsive need to decode every word and gesture until he understood what it meant.

It was entirely possible that John was as ‘committed’, as Eastman said. But it was just as likely that John had calculated, with his usual precision, that the best way to keep Paul off balance was to appear to be the one who wanted it more. To be resolute and specific and committed right up until the moment it suited him not to be.

And the fucked up thing was, Paul couldn't tell which one it was.

"Let’s work up a new proposal," he said. "a complicated one."

***

Later that evening, after Linda and the kids had gone to bed, he spread the contract across the kitchen table and began to mark it up. He'd told himself he'd do an hour or maybe two. He'd go through section one, make notes, get a sense of where they stood, and then he'd sleep on it and come back to it fresh in the morning.

But, he was still there at midnight when Linda came down for a glass of water. She stopped in the kitchen doorway, squinting against the light, hair loose, one hand already reaching for the tap.

"Come to bed," she said, taking in the table, the dozens of pages spread from one end to the other, the margins dense with his scribbled handwriting.

"In a bit."

"Paul." She crossed to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off, not unkindly.

"I just need to finish this section."

"What section are you even on?"

"Four."

She looked at the stack of remaining pages. "There are twelve sections."

"Right, there’s a lot to cover.”

Linda walked back to the tap and filled her glass and looked at him over it while she drank. She tilted her head to one side. "Are you alright?" she said, carefully.

"He'll back down," Paul responded, without looking up.

"Paul."

"He always does, always has done, and this will be no different because this is John and John doesn't follow through, that's what always happens–"

"Paul." She set her glass down. "Stop." It was the stern edge in her voice that made him look up.

"Hmm?"

She leaned against the sink with her arms folded, looking at him directly with a knowing look on her face.

“What’s going on with you?”

"What do you mean, I'm just going through section–"

"I'm not talking about the bloody section you’re on." She gestured at him, at the table, at all of it. "I'm talking about this. You."

He looked at her blankly.

"Oh come on, Paul. For months you've been telling me nothing's happening. Nothing to worry about, Lin, it's just a rumour, Lin, John's all talk, Lin. Meanwhile you're dodging questions in the press, you're not sleeping, you're on the phone every five minutes, and then last week a large envelope arrives from my father and you mention, very casually, very oh by the way, that you've drawn up a contract. And now there's a thirty-two page agreement on our dining room table drawing up the details of a tour with the one man you’ve spent the last ten years telling me you’d never work with again." She paused. “Am I missing anything?”

"Well, I never said never, did I?"

"Paul."

"I never used the word never, Lin, I said it was unlikely.”

"For Christ's sake, Paul." Linda dropped her arms. "I heard the whole phone call, or don’t you remember?” She looked at him steadily. “So let's skip the part where you tell me nothing's happening, because I heard you scream at John you'd love nothing more than to work with him again. Your words. Quite loud ones."

Paul’s mouth opened and shut like a helpless guppy.

“So help me out. What's the truth? Are you excited about this or is nothing happening? Because it can't be both."

"Look," he said, in the voice he used when he was about to be very reasonable, "technically speaking, until both parties have signed a mutually agreed upon final version of the contract, nothing is legally binding. Which means that at any point in this process either party can walk away without consequence. Which means that what we have right now is… it's a negotiation. That's it! A negotiation doesn't mean something's happening, it means two parties are exploring the possibility of something happening, and exploring a possibility is not the same as—"

"Oh my God," Linda said.

“-committing to anything, which means that in the strictest legal sense nothing is actually-"

“Oh for fucks sake!” Linda turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen.

"He'll back down," Paul called after her. "You'll see!"

The kitchen door swung quietly behind her.

John

John woke at three and reached for Yoko before he was fully conscious, only to find her side of the bed cold.

He sighed, and lay there for a moment, listening to the apartment. The Dakota at night was something so familiar that he could map the building by sound alone. He knew every creak and click of it. There was the whirr and hum of the elevator, the low whistle of the wind outside, the muffled footsteps of neighbors above him. He strained his ears to listen for her, but he didn't hear Yoko.

She'd been doing this more since February. Not every night. Some nights he awoke to her back turned towards him, breathing slow and even. But other nights, like this one, she simply wasn't there.

She was in her studio, maybe, or a meeting that ran late, or… he didn't know.

He sat up and groped around his bedside to find his glasses. He put them on slowly then stood up, walking to the bedroom window in the dark.

He stared down at Central Park below, the bare path lights, the occasional cab moving along Central Park West. New York at three in the morning was still going, always going, the city that had never once made him feel alone.

He thought about Paul.

He’d been doing this a lot lately. He’d wake up in the dark and find Paul already there beside him, heavy and cumbersome.

It was nothing new, if he was being honest. Paul had always been there. That was the fucked up truth he could never admit. In every version of his life, in every room he'd ever stood in, there had always been this low frequency presence of Paul McCartney, like tinnitus.

And like tinnitus, he’d stop noticing it for months, even years at a time. But then sometimes, out of nowhere, he’d wake up at three in the morning and there it was, ringing and high and as obnoxious as ever.

He'd tried to silence it several times and in several different ways, all with varying degrees of success.

He didn't think about New Orleans if he could help it.

Or more specifically, what had come before. The smell of leather in the Los Angeles sunshine. Marijuana smoke heavy in the air. The sticky warmth of skin against skin in the California heat. Fingers through dark hair in a room with curtains drawn. The citric burn of cocaine at the back of his throat. He didn’t like to think about it. What he thought about instead, when the memory bubbled up, was his phone in LA ringing, and Yoko's voice, then five months later, Sean.

Sean, who was asleep down the hall right now, whose existence was the most concrete evidence John had that he’d done something right for once in his life.

He heard the elevator ding through the wall, then a soft jingle of keys. He got back into bed and lay in the dark and listened to her moving through the apartment. He could trace the soft sounds of her through the dark, the route she took when she was trying not to wake him. He'd memorized it years ago. He lay still and let her think he was asleep and tried to make his breathing even.

She came into the bedroom and he felt her stop.

"You're awake," she said.

"I'm asleep," John mumbled.

She made a small sound of recognition. She spent a while shuffling about in the room, taking off her earrings, undressing and folding her clothes. Then, she sat on the edge of the bed. John could feel the mattress shift with her weight. She didn't touch him.

"Where were you?" he asked, towards the wall.

"Out." A pause. "Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither."

Silence, then:

"I've been thinking," Yoko said.

"About what."

She was quiet for a moment. "About your situation," she said, finally.

John kept his breathing even.

"Every time he comes near to you. It's like you forget," Yoko said, quietly. “You know what came up in the sessions." She didn't move, didn't turn. "I was there, John. I was in that room with you." A pause. "You’re weak."

"Yoko."

"It’s like a compulsion," She stopped again, "you just keep going back. No matter what it costs you." She said it simply, like a diagnosis. "You don’t value yourself. That's the saddest part." John stared at the ceiling.

The thing he couldn't explain to her, the thing he couldn't explain to anyone, really, least of all himself, was that it wasn't a choice. It wasn't a decision he made, falling back into Paul. It was more like gravity. Like some internal pole in him had been oriented toward Paul McCartney since July 1957 and had never fully reoriented, no matter how many years went by or how many miles he put between them.

He'd tried. He really had. He'd been trying for ten agonizing years.

And all these months of circling and doing interviews and not calling and calling Fred for gossip rags and sending one of their songs to British Telecom, and re-writing half the contract, none of it was new. It was the oldest thing in him. It was the thing that had been there before Yoko, before Sean, before anything else he could remember.

"Come to bed," he said.

Yoko sat on the edge of the mattress for a moment longer, then she lay down with her back turned. The space between them felt vast.

John stared at the ceiling.

Down the hall, Sean slept.

The proposal went back and forth. And back and forth. And then back and forth again.

Six weeks of this. Six weeks of documents crossing the Atlantic with amendments and counter-amendments and adjustments to adjustments, the language getting more precise and more elaborate with each iteration as both sets of lawyers tried to account for every possible contingency.

Paul's people objected to the billing. The original proposal had them listed as Lennon/McCartney, alphabetically, John’s lawyers noted. Also, identical to the songwriting credit that they’d agreed upon over twelve years ago.

McCartney/Lennon, they counter-proposed on the grounds that McCartney had been the one actively touring for the past decade and therefore commanded greater name recognition among the younger demographic they'd be selling tickets to. John’s lawyers noted, in response, that name recognition was not what this tour was about, and that the existing credit had been established for reasons that had nothing to do with who had been playing arenas with Wings most recently. They also added, in a scribble in the margin that was technically outside the formal correspondence, that Paul had enjoyed top billing on every Wings record for ten years and could perhaps cope with being second for a change.

Paul did not find this funny. This went back and forth three more times before both sides agreed, with some reluctance, on Lennon & McCartney, the ampersand apparently acceptable to both parties in a way that the slash had never been.

The setlist went back seven times. Paul's original breakdown had allocated seventeen of the twenty-five proposed songs to his catalogue, with eight from John's, which John amended to thirteen each with the remaining songs to be negotiated. Paul countered with fifteen/ten. John sent back a note that read, in its essence: fuck you. His lawyers subsequently translated this into more formal language, but the sentiment remained.

There was a clause about rehearsal hours (six days a week, eight hours a day, minimum twelve weeks before the first date) that John found both outrageous and laughably characteristic of Paul, who he claimed had not changed one single iota since 1969.

There was a clause about hotel accommodation that Paul found downright delusional. John had specified five-star minimum at every tour stop, which might have worked in London or New York or Los Angeles but was unrealistic in the eleven mid-sized American cities Paul's people had proposed, where five-star meant they’d be lucky if there was a minifridge in the room.

And then there was the sub-clause about recording rights for any live material that neither party, it seemed, could agree to. The issue was simple: if the shows were recorded, and shows like this usually were, who owned what they captured, and who had final say over whether any of it ever saw the light of day?

John objected, and said he had no intention of releasing anything without explicit song-by-song approval, and the clause as written left too much room for Paul to make decisions about John's material without his consent.

Paul objected because the clause gave John effective veto power over music that Paul had both co-written and co-performed and therefore, he felt, had equal claim to. Both positions were equally reasonable as they were incompatible.

This specific sub-clause went back eleven times. It was rumored that one of Eastman's junior associates was keeping a tally on the whiteboard in the conference room.

Cairo was removed from the proposed tour dates after John's third amendment. Buenos Aires disappeared in the fifth round. Japan remained, stubbornly, in John's version of the contract through all six iterations, appearing and reappearing like whackamole. Paul's people removed it every single time.

And through all of it, in the press, both of them were all smiles:

Do you still have musical chemistry after a decade apart?

Paul: "I've worked with a lot of really great musicians. But there's magic that happens when John and I are together. I've never been able to replicate it. I've stopped trying."

John read Paul's quote over breakfast then crumpled up the newspaper and threw it at the wall.

John: "I've made really great music with two people in my life. Two. Everything else has been fine. Good, even. But it's not the same thing as great."

Paul read John’s in the back of the car on the way to his office and made a scoff so loud that Ed checked the rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t choking.

Is there still tension between you two?

John: "Paul's my best mate. Has been since I was sixteen. If I’m not allowed to row with my best mate, I mean– that's what best mates are for.”

Paul: "John and I spoke just recently, so, no feud. Never really was. You’re reportings off, there.”

Are you closer now than you were during the Beatles years?

John: "Closer than we've been in years, yeah.”

Paul: "I think we understand each other better now.”

Are you excited about the speculated collaboration?

Paul: "John is the most naturally gifted musician I've ever met. I mean that."

John: "Paul's incredible. He's always been incredible. People forget sometimes because they're used to him, but there's nobody like him.”

Are you optimistic about the possibility of a future collaboration?

Paul: "More optimistic than I've been in a long time,

John: “Yeah, yeah I am.”

***

Paul

“Paul’s incredible," Paul sang, in the nasal voice he used for John's quotes, which was not entirely accurate but recognisable enough.

"That's nice," Linda said, barely looking up from her cooking.

"He’s always been incredible," Paul shook his head, “what a tosser. He's playing the game."

"What game?"

"The nice game. He's being so relentlessly–" Paul gestured, " –the flattery! It’s so obviously forced. Anyone could tell that from a mile away. He doesn’t mean a word he’s saying. He’s just playing the part so that when the contract falls apart he can say he was always willing, he was always enthusiastic, it was me who didn’t want to go through with it."

"Or," Linda said, not looking up from her book, "he meant it."

Paul looked at her and raised an eyebrow in utter disbelief.

"It's possible."

“Oh yeah?” Paul picked up the latest version of the contract. "Then why’d he put Japan back in?”

***

Paul was on his fourth cup of tea and his second read-through of section nine when the phone rang for the fifth time that day.

“Yeah.” He said, expecting Eastman.

"So is it true then?”

“George?” He sat up straight, blinking like he’d snapped out of a spell.

"Is it true?"

"Is what true?”

"Come on" George said. "I've been reading the papers for two months. I've been very patient. I let you have your little back and forth in the press, I stayed out of it-- very mature of me might I add-- and then I wake up this morning and Olivia's left the Times out and there's your face on page four going on about how incredible of a musician John is.”

"’Most naturally gifted musician I’ve ever met’," He said it like he was reading a foreign language. "That's a quote. From you."

"Well it’s true, isn’t it."

"I know it’s true, but that’s not my concern. I’ve never heard you speak like that about him, or me, or anyone for that matter. It’s worrisome. Are you ill, Paul? Is that it? I'm trying to find an explanation for this, mate, I really am."

“I was just being diplomatic.”

"You were being soft in the head is what you were being." George sounded like he’d reclined in his chair. "Olivia asked me if you're feeling alright.”

"It was one quote."

"Five quotes, actually. I've counted. Each one more baffling than the last." There was the sound of George settling somewhere comfortable, and then the sound of papers rustling.

“‘Most naturally talented musician I’ve ever met’, you’ve ‘never been able to replicate’ the magic the two of you have, you’re ‘more optimistic than you’ve ever been’ about working together. I mean, Christ– What happened? Walk me through it. Because last we spoke you weren’t going to touch this thing with a ten foot pole."

Paul drew in a deep breath, sighed it out long and slow. "It's… complicated."

"Is it?”

"Yes."

"Funny," George said, "because from where I'm standing— Henley, very nice, very peaceful, no journalists outside– it looks pretty simple to me."

“Oh, is that so?”

“It's just the two of you being completely mental about each other, same as always."

Paul felt a flush of heat crawl up the back of his neck. "Please, it's not like that, it's just business."

"Oh, brilliant. Great. How's that going?"

"Geo, can we—" Paul sighed, then pressed his index finger and thumb against his eyes, " –can we please talk about something else."

"No." He replied, quick as anything. "How's the contract going, by the way?"

"The contract–” Paul stopped short, “ –how do you know about the contract?"

“Because Richie told me."

"How does Richie know about the contract?"

"John talks to him, Paul. We all do. You must know that.”

"Of course I know that." Paul said, too quickly. And he did know, he just forgot, sometimes. It was easy to forget that the four of them were still in this small, strange, lifelong club where every member had been through something that nobody else in the world could ever understand. It was easier to think of it as finished, as something that had ended cleanly in 1970 with the lawyers and the lawsuits. But they were still, underneath all of it, four boys from Liverpool who told each other everything eventually.

Paul looked at the pages spread across the table. "He rewrote the whole thing."

"Naturally."

"So I sent it back with amendments."

"You rewrote his rewrite."

"George."

"I'm just clarifying the details for myself."

Paul pinched the bridge of his nose even harder now. "Look. It doesn't matter. The minute this gets real for him he'll back out. You know what he's like."

"Hm." A pause. "Funny that."

"What's so bloody funny about it?"

"Nothing." George said, laughing. "You just both seem very convinced that the other one's going to bottle it."

Paul sat in silence for a moment. Of course John talked to George. Of course he did. Somewhere, in some phone call Paul hadn't been part of, John had been talking about him. He didn’t love the way that thought made his stomach clench.

"He said that?" he said finally.

"Words to that effect, yeah." Another pause. George seemed to hesitate before his next words. "He mentioned New Orleans as well, actually."

"He what?" Paul sat up straight. "He mentioned New Orleans? He's the one who– that was him, George, that wasn't me, I was there waiting–"

"I know!"

"I was there, I was ready, and he's the one who–"

"Paul. I know." George said, defensively. “I remember, I was there. Or at least, I heard about it later. You don’t need to tell me.”

Paul breathed in long and deep, then let it out slowly. "Yeah, sorry."

"You know, the Maharishi used to say that the depth of our resistance is equal to the depth of our longing. Which–”

“George, please–”

"—which I think applies rather well to this situation, actually!” He took a beat to make sure Paul wouldn’t interrupt him again. “Look, mate, you're both so obviously terrified of being the one who ends up wanting this more." George paused. “Are you sure this isn't just some massive show of self-protection? I mean, you're both pushing each other away while simultaneously trying to get closer, which didn't work in 1969 and I don't see why it'd work now."

“George–”

“It's a very macho way of going about things, actually. Like you said. I don't need you but please don't leave." George's voice was dry. "Very you two."

“George, mate. I hear you, I do, very profound, really great stuff. But I don't think that's what’s going on here. Good thought though."

"Okay."

"Don’t say okay like that."

"Like what? I'm agreeing with you."

Paul almost laughed despite himself, then shook his head. "He'll back out," he said. "End of the month. You watch."

"Maybe." George yawned. "Or maybe you will. Or maybe neither of you will, which, Krishna help us, means something actually happens, and I have to read about it in the papers later like always." A pause. "I'm very glad I said no, by the way."

"You've mentioned."

"Worth mentioning again." There was the sound of him standing up, the voice of Olivia in the background, the shriek of Dhani running past. "Eat something, Paul. You sound dreadful."

"Goodbye, George," he said, then hung up.

***

Somewhere around the fifth week, both sets of lawyers independently arrived at the same conclusion: there was nothing left to fight about.

The setlist was fifty-fifty with twelve songs each, and an additional four slots designated for solo material of each artist's choosing, the final selections to be agreed upon no later than six weeks before the first date. This had taken nine drafts to arrive at and was, both sides could acknowledge, entirely fair.

The live recording sub-clause had finally been resolved as follows: all live material to be recorded as standard, with nothing released commercially without written consent from both parties. Either party could veto a release within thirty days of being presented with the material. In the event of a disagreement, the material would be shelved indefinitely. Neither party loved this but both could live with it.

Ticket revenue: sixty percent to the touring fund, forty percent split equally between both artists after expenses. The expenses clause had its own sub-clause, which had briefly threatened to become its own beast before both sides agreed to let the accountants handle it.

Rehearsals were to begin the second week of June in London. Four days a week. Six hour sessions. Paul's original eight-hour proposal was reduced by two hours while John's original three-day proposal increased by one day.

Twenty-five cities. Twelve in North America, thirteen in Europe. Starting in New York on the fourteenth of September. Ending in London on the twentieth of December. Home by Christmas.

Japan was not on the itinerary.

***

Eastman called Paul on a Thursday morning.

"We need to talk about this contract," he said.

"What's wrong with it now?" Paul grumbled, putting down the knife he’d been using to chop onions. His eyes immediately started watering.

"Nothing," Eastman said. "That's rather the point. There's nothing wrong with it. It's a good deal, Paul. It's actually a very good deal. The ticket projections alone…" he trailed off.

"And?"

"Are you sitting down?"

"Yes.”

"Good." A pause. "Conservative estimate puts ticket revenue across the twenty-five dates at somewhere between eighty and a hundred and twenty million. Merchandise, broadcasting rights, the live recording deal if you both agree to release something…” There was a pause, “we're looking at north of two hundred million. Considerably north."

Paul was quiet, an allium induced tear trickled down his cheek, which he wiped away frustratedly with the back of his hand.

"Two hundred million, Paul."

"I heard you." He sniffed.

"I want to make sure you're really hearing me. Because that number—"

“Christ, I mean, yeah, but, it’s not about the money.”

"I know it’s not about the money," Eastman insisted, but it was clear he didn’t really believe him.

"I don't need any more money."

"I know that too." Eastman's voice was slightly desperate now. "But think for a brief second about what a number like that actually means. Not for you personally, but what you could do with it. That arts school you've been talking about for years…"

Paul still said nothing.

"The charity foundation. The music education program. You've been wanting to fund those things properly for forever. With a deal like this, you could fund both, outright, and still have enough left to make whatever music you wanted for the rest of your life without answering to anyone."

"I already do that."

"Great," Eastman said. "You can continue to do it. Indefinitely. Without thinking about it. And fund the school."

"If money were the reason I was doing this," Paul said, slowly, "I'd have taken that three hundred million dollar offer four years ago. The Beatles stadium tour. Remember that?"

“Of course I do, but that was the Beatles, this is different!”

This is different. The words swirled around in his head.

"Alright," Eastman finally said, changing tack. "Forget the money.” His voice was direct and unadorned. “You've had this contract for, what, six weeks now? You've read every version of it. You two sent amendments back and forth so many times my junior associates started betting rings on how many times you’d do it."

Paul couldn’t help himself, he laughed.

"There's nothing left to pick at," Eastman chuckled along with him. "We've been through it fifty times, son. It's fair. It protects you." Another pause. "We've run out of reasons to send it back."

Paul thought about the rehearsal hours, he had no argument there. He thought about the setlist, he'd gotten exactly what he'd asked for. He thought about the billing, the ampersand, both of them had agreed…

"The hotel accommodation clause," Paul said, half heartedly. "I'm still not entirely—"

"We resolved that in week four."

"Right. Right." He shuffled through the contract. "The recording sub-clause—"

"Resolved. Both parties have right of refusal, thirty day window, mutual consent required."

"Right." Paul turned a page. "The expense sub-clause—"

"The accountants are handling it."

"And the—"

"Paul." Eastman's voice was soft. "You're not going to find anything. We've been through it. There's nothing left."

Paul was quiet.

"Paul," Eastman said again, gently.

Paul stared down at the contract on his desk, at the months of back-and-forth reduced to a stack of paper that was clean and reasonable and, if he was being honest, hard to argue with.

“I'll sign it." He heard his own voice say it from a slight distance, as though he were watching himself from across the room. He wasn't sure when he'd decided that. In fact, it seemed to have happened without him.

“Paul–”

"I'll sign it," he said again, more certain this time, at least more committed to sounding certain. He sat up straighter, nodding slowly, more to himself than to Eastman. “No, this is good. There’s nothing left to– I’ll sign it.” He sat down with finality, nodding to himself. This was a good idea. This was fine. Because the alternative, the idea that all of the months and weeks of it, the phone calls and the six weeks of negotiations and the press clippings and George's insistence that they both secretly wanted this, and Linda confronting him at midnight at the kitchen table… the idea of all of that ending in… nothing? It all felt, somehow, so terribly wrong.

"Send it over," Paul said. "I'll sign it.”

***

The fax machine in the farmhouse study was so much older than it should have been for a man of Paul's means. It always made this grinding sound whenever it printed that Paul knew he should get checked out, but the thing worked well enough, so he supposed it wasn’t that important.

Page by page, it ground out the final version of the contract while Paul stood over it in his socks at half past nine in the morning, watching it emerge.

Linda appeared in the doorway with two cups of tea.

"What's going on?"

"Just," Paul picked up the first page, squinted at it in order to avoid looking her in the eyes, "y’know, just something from the London office."

Linda walked over and reached for the page in Paul’s hands. She read it out loud:

"Lennon & McCartney Touring Agreement, Version 9.3, As Amended And Agreed Upon By All Relevant Parties Including But Not Limited To—" she looked up. “Version nine point three?”

"Yeah."

She looked back down, and Paul watched her eyes move across it all the way to the bottom of the page where her eyes caught. She stared for a second too long, then she looked up at him, looked at the fax machine and finally back at him.

"You signed it," she said, vacantly.

"Lin—" he reached for the paper in her hands, which she deftly pulled out of his reach.

"You actually signed it." She began to pace, walking in circles, one hand in her hair the other clutching at the page, creasing it slightly in between her fingers. Her voice was barely audible beneath the grinding of the machine. "When were you going to tell me?"

"I was going to, I swear, as soon as you were awake. I was just–"

"You've been telling me for weeks that he was going to back out, that this whole thing was nothing to worry about.” She stopped and looked at the machine, which was still grinding, still printing. "Paul." Her voice broke slightly on his name and his stomach dropped.

"I know." He rushed over to try and embrace her, but she shrugged him off, lifting a hand to indicate she did not want to be touched.

"When did you decide this?"

"About twenty minutes ago."

"Are you–" she stopped and backed up another foot, pressing her fingers to her forehead. "You signed a thirty-two page contract and couldn’t wait twenty more minutes until I was awake?"

He faltered at that. He knew he had this terrible habit of acting first and finding out why later, usually by hearing himself explain it to someone else. He'd been doing it his whole life. He'd done it in 1957 when he'd learned Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On on the spot to impress a boy he'd just met and hadn't stopped to ask himself why impressing this particular boy felt so urgent.

"It's been a process, Lin, you know it has."

"I know it's been a process!” She shook the piece of paper in her hand, her voice rising over the grinding of the machine. "I've been living in the same house as you for the past six weeks! But that's not why I'm upset! I'm upset because you signed it and I'm finding out because I came in to bring you tea!"

"It's a good deal," he rushed to say, his words coming quickly. "You should see the projections, Lin. The ticket revenue alone—your dad nearly fell off his chair. And the terms are fair, actually fair, I've been through it fifty times and there's nothing in there that isn't reasonable."

"Paul."

"The setlist, the billing, the recording clause, we sorted all of it, and what we've ended up with is actually quite brilliant if you look at it objectively, which I think you have to—"

"Paul."

"What?"

"Stop." She looked at him steadily. "I'm not a bloody journalist. You don't have to sell it to me."

The fax machine printed the last page. The silence was immediate and total. They stood in it, the two of them, on opposite sides of the study, the contract between them in a neat stack.

"You said he was playing a game," Linda said.

"I was being hard on him." Paul picked up the contract, "I mean, you've seen what he's been saying in the press lately. Something's changed, Lin. There's something different about the way he's—"

"You said his quotes were calculated."

"I was being defensive, I think." He cleared his throat. He’d been so sure the things he’d said to the press were the performance. The whole time, he'd been so sure he knew which part was real and which part wasn't. But at this moment, he wasn't so sure anymore. He thought briefly about George, about the Maharishi.

"It's not the Beatles," he finally said, and it came out too quickly. "That's the thing, isn't it. The Beatles was where everything went wrong. Klein, the lawsuits, the whole disaster. But this, this is different! This is just me and John. No machinery, y’know.”

Linda was quiet, just staring at him, then she slowly walked towards him. "Is that what you think, or is that what you're telling yourself?"

Paul looked at the contract in his hands. "Both, I dunno," he said. "Does it matter?"

“You know what this reminds me of?" she said, setting the creased first page of the contract down on top of the stack in Paul’s hands, then crossing her arms. "When we first met. Do you remember what we talked about? Every conversation, every fucking day. John. Klein. Whose fault it was. Who'd done what to whom." She shook her head. "And I sat through all of that with you, Paul. I was there for all of it. And I'll be honest– I’m not," she stopped to steady her voice, "I'm not interested in doing that again."

"Linda, please."

"Do I need to remind you what you were like then?" She looked at him plainly. "Because I remember. I remember exactly what you were like. And I don't think you do."

Paul said nothing.

"What happens if he doesn't sign?" she said. "What then? Am I going to need to hide the whiskey bottles?"

"Of course not," Paul said. "I’ll be fine. If he doesn’t sign, it’ll be a bloody relief, honestly."

Linda looked at him, her piercing pale blue eyes taking him in for a long time.

"You exhaust me," she said finally, shaking her head. And even through her defeat, he could tell it was said with love. "You know that?"

She picked the contract out of his hands and set it carefully on the desk.

"It's done now, isn’t it." she said. "Nothing to do but wait."

She walked out.

John

“Right. Testing. Right. Okay. I think that's—yeah.

I dug this out from the back of the—it was in the closet, behind Sean's baby things, in a box. Took me twenty minutes. Forgot you have to hold down both buttons at once or it doesn't—anyway. It's going now.

It smells like plastic and something a bit bad. Old breath, maybe. Mine, probably, from—whenever I last used this.

Yoko's out. I don't know where. Sean's with the nanny. It's the middle of the day and I'm sitting in the study, being quiet. I don't know why I'm being so quiet, there's nobody here. Old habits I suppose.

I haven't used this thing in years.

It's—I don't know what day it is. Fred will know. April something. The fourteenth maybe. I've been saying the fourteenth for about a week, so, Fourteenth. We’ll stick with that.

I didn't get any lawyers involved. Didn't think I needed any—not like I'm actually going through with this. So I made one up. Gave him a jewy- sounding name. Harvey Steinberg. Or Bergstein, I can't remember which way round I wrote it. Anyway– Harvey is handling everything.

I've been talking to Fred about all of this. Don't know why. He's useless. Well—not entirely. The thread count thing was his idea actually. Fred says, very casually, you should put in a thread count minimum. And I thought that was the maddest thing I'd ever heard so I put it in and Paul's people had an absolute fit, so. Credit where it's due. Otherwise useless. Keeps telling me to talk to Yoko. Talk to Yoko, John. Talk to Yoko.

Yeah.

The contract itself is—I mean it's a document, it's a proper document, I have it right here in front of me, I mean, it's got—thirty six pages, Paul, there are so many pages. There's a clause about the hotels which is where the thread count thing came in,and there's a clause about the setlist which we've been going back and forth on for… original breakdown was something like seventeen of his songs to eight of mine which is—I mean. The nerve. The absolute nerve.

Harvey was furious.

And then there's the whole food thing. Vegetarian. I think he's just winding me up. Has to be. Knows exactly how much I love a burger. I mean—he used to too, before Linda got hold of him.

Twenty five dates. September through December. Home by Christmas, it says. Harvey thought that was a nice touch.

I've been talking to journalists.

I know!

But you run out of options when your wife won't discuss it and your lawyers don't actually exist and your only friend is a kid who stands outside your building hoping to take your picture.

The journalists keep asking me how I feel about it and I keep saying batty things about Paul. True things but embarrassing things, and then I walk away and think—why did I say that? Why do I keep saying those things? It's true but why do I keep–

What's he doing right now, I wonder. It's—what, two in the afternoon here, so it's—seven in Scotland. Probably having dinner. Or fixing something. He's always fixing something. He decides a problem is solvable and then he just—solves it. Drives me absolutely mad.

I heard him on the radio today. Wonder if that means he’s in town. Well, if he was he didn’t ring.

It’s fine. I’m not — I’m not thinking about him calling, clearly, since I'm sitting here talking to a cassette recorder about him at two in the afternoon…

Two old men. Can you imagine. Two old wrinkly men up there —

"I wanna hold your haaand"

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. The kids in the front row going oh look it's history, dad's crying, meanwhile me and Paul are just standing there with our reading glasses and our—God. Although Paul'll still look like a bloody choirboy somehow. He always does. It's not fair is it. I look like a history teacher and he looks like that. Anyway…

When I actually try to picture it. I don't know. My brain won't let me or something. Shuts right down.

This is a trap. Right? This has to be a trap. Or maybe that’s just the paranoid part of my brain talking– which is a significant part, I've been told, by multiple professionals in multiple countries.

Six weeks. Six weeks and every time Harvey sends something back you fix it. Every single thing. What's the play here? I keep waiting for you to get precious about something and you just…

Maybe that is the play. Be so reasonable I sign it and then—what? I don't know. It's a trap. It has to be. I just can't work out what happens if I spring it.

There's a show on my birthday, by the way. Harvey put it in there. October ninth. I'll be forty. On stage.

I don't know why I did that.

Or wait, I guess I didn’t. Harvey did.

***

John came back from the park the long way, which he'd been doing a lot lately.

Not because the long way was particularly scenic, it wasn't, it was just more asphalt and more pigeons. He came the long way because the short way was over too quickly, and the apartment had been very quiet lately.

He turned onto 72nd Street and stopped dead.

There were more of them than usual. He counted ten, eleven, maybe more. All of them clustered around the entrance to the building in a way that blocked the free flow of traffic, which made the simple act of walking into his own building into a whole ordeal.

He stood at the end of the block and considered his options. He could run. But where? It’s not as though they would leave. He’d have to face them sooner or later. He could try and sneak around back, but he’d been hesitant to use that entrance in the daytime, convinced one of them would see him.

He sighed, steeled himself. He'd been doing this for twenty years. He knew how to move through it, how to go from man on the street to a Rock Star navigating a crowd. He'd done it ten thousand times.

He just didn't particularly want to today.

He squinted and spotted Goresh amongst the crowd. He was in his usual spot, slightly to the left of the entrance, camera up, checking his light meter. He'd clearly been there a while, and was also, John noticed, positioned in a sort of deliberate way. He’d wedged himself between the entrance of the Dakota and the worst of the cluster. Not confrontationally– just, there. Solid and… there.

Something in John's chest loosened slightly.

The hoard finally noticed him at the far end of the block, and all at once their cameras swung round to face him. John kept his pace even, shoved his hands in his pockets, and kept his eyes pointed forward. The questions started before he was halfway there:

"John—"

"Mr. Lennon—"

"John, is it true that—"

He shrugged his shoulders up higher, and began to shimmy his way through the press. One of them stepped forward just a little too fast, and a hair too close, with his recorder extended, and John flinched.

Then, suddenly, Goresh was there, in between him and the over-eager reporter, with one hand up.

"Give him some fucking room," Goresh shouted. He dug his heels in, making himself into a human shield between John and their flailing arms.

John continued to shove past the hoard, past the questions, through the gate and finally broke free onto the other side. Taking a deep breath, he paused to glance back at Goresh, who had returned to his spot, camera up again, as though nothing had happened.

John waited, then cocked his head. After a moment Goresh lowered the camera and looked at him.

John jerked his head.

"Come here a minute," he said.

Goresh pointed at himself.

"Yeah, you." John pushed the gate open a hair. "You want a cup of tea?"

"I—" Goresh looked at his camera, at the entrance, at John. "I'm —"

"Come on."

"Are you—" Goresh lowered his voice slightly. "Are you sure?"

John looked at him.

"Goresh," he said. "Have tea with a lonely old man?"

Goresh glanced behind him one more time, towards the other photographers watching him now with open disdain, then he shuffled forward.

"Yeah," he said, hurriedly putting the lens cap on his camera. "I mean, yeah, okay. Sure."

"Good." John held the gate open for him, then forced it shut behind them. "No need to make it weird."

"Ok," Goresh said, nodding furiously.

***

The elevator at the Dakota was old and slow and made a sound on the way up that John had stopped noticing years ago but that Goresh was probably noticing now. John watched him.

"It does that," John said.

"Does what?"

"That sound."

"Oh, ok." Goresh nodded.

"It's not going to fall," John said.

"I didn’t think so."

"But the building is quite old.”

Goresh looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"It’s not going to fall," John said again.

The elevator arrived and they crossed the landing towards John’s door. He unlocked it and let them both in.

John had never quite gotten used to the Dakota's relationship with daylight, the way it rationed it, the way even on clear days the rooms had something dark about them. He'd learned to like it, though. It suited him.

"Sit down," John said, already toeing off his shoes and moving towards the kitchen.

Goresh sat on the edge of the sofa, camera still around his neck.

The kitchen smelled like the morning's coffee and something Yoko had cooked the night before that John couldn't identify. He put the kettle on, found two mugs and stood at the window while it boiled. The park was mostly still. He watched as a single jogger moved along the path, pigeons plucking about, the bare trees swaying in the wind.

He brought the tea back to the living room to Goresh, who was perched on the edge of the settee, spine rigid, hands on his knees, eyes darting around the room in quick careful movements.

John set the mugs down and sat across from him.

"You can relax," John said.

"Oh, I–" Goresh straightened further, which shouldn't have been physically possible. "I am relaxed."

"Look like you're about to go in for a job interview."

"Sorry." Goresh exhaled slowly. "I just– I can’t–” he stammered, gesturing as if to say: holy fucking shit.

John laughed, and nodded at the camera still around his neck, indicating to Goresh he should feel free to take it off. Goresh looked down as though he'd forgotten it was there.

"Sorry– oh God– " he lifted it over his head, his face turning a bright red.

John picked up his tea. "Just take a deep breath, son. Nobody's going to ask you to leave."

Goresh let out a deep, long breath. His spine descended approximately one inch.

"Better," John said.

"It's just—" Goresh looked around the room again, helplessly, "—it's your apartment."

"That it is"

"And I'm inside it." Goresh picked up his tea with both hands. "Drinking tea."

John cocked his head, casting Goresh with an appraising look. “Is that going to be a problem?"

"No," Goresh said immediately. Then: "Maybe give me a minute."

John gave him a minute.

The 20 something photographer drank his tea and looked at various points around the room, jaw slack and eyes glazed, while John watched.

John had a brief internal moment of wondering what exactly he'd been thinking, asking this kid up. He'd been standing at the entrance and seen a familiar face and thought—what? That it would be nice to have someone to talk to for an afternoon. That the apartment had been very quiet lately. That Goresh had been out there every single morning for three years without fail and that had to mean something, that kind of consistency, and maybe…

Maybe he'd just wanted some company.

Goresh cleared his throat.

"Is that—" he nodded toward the guitar propped against the far wall, then stopped himself.

John waited.

"Is that yours?" Goresh said.

He heard himself say it and his face crumpled.

"What a stupid question," he said immediately. "You live here. Of course it's yours– sorry."

"It's out of tune anyway," John said by way of an answer.

"Right." Goresh nodded seriously, as though this were important information.

John reached into his jacket pocket and took out the joint he'd been carrying since the park. He’d wanted to smoke it on the way back, but hadn't, not with all the photographers lurking around. He set it on the table between them.

Goresh looked at it.

"I need to talk to someone," John said, "who doesn't work for me and isn't my wife." John looked at him for a moment. Then he lit the joint.

The smell of it moved through the room immediately, that particular musk, and John sat back into the sofa and let the first pull settle. He passed it to Goresh.

Goresh took it with the careful expression of someone trying to appear more comfortable than he really was, took a pull, held it for approximately one second, and then coughed.

John watched him with a small smirk.

"Right," Goresh managed.

"You don't have to—"

"I'm fine." He passed it back, eyes watering. "I'm good. I'm okay."

"First time?"

"No." A pause. "Maybe the second or third."

John took it back laughing, then looked at him properly. Goresh was young, even younger than he looked on the street, somehow. He was round-faced, a little soft around the middle, and a mustache that was thin. It was very much the kind of mustache a twenty-something grew to look older, which instead made him look exactly twenty-something. He was sitting with his hands on his knees again, blinking through his watering eyes, trying very hard to look like a man who smoked marijuana with famous rockstars all the time and found nothing whatsoever remarkable about his current situation.

John thought about the times he'd met his heroes. The specific agony of it. He'd met Elvis once and had been completely insufferable. Couldn't explain it afterwards. Some defensive thing that kicked in when he was out of his depth, this reflex to lash out when what he actually felt was awe. Couldn't seem to help it. Spent half his life wanting to be near the people he admired most and the other half making sure they knew he didn't need them.

He felt a brief, unexpected wave of sympathy for this kid.

John watched as Goresh picked up his tea for a small, delicate sip, set it down, and as he looked around the living room once more. Then:

"Why am I here exactly—"

"Objectively," John butted in. "Between me and Paul. Who looks stronger?"

Goresh’s mouth hung open.

"Actually, nevermind. Don't answer that," John said hastily, waving a hand.

Goresh closed his mouth.

"And don't—" John pointed at him, "—don't tell me what you think I want to hear. That's not—I didn't bring you up here for that. I can get that from Fred."

Goresh sat very still for a moment. John could see him working through it—the particular paralysis of a man who loves someone and has just been asked to be honest about them.

"I don't know what to say," Goresh said finally.

“Well say something. S’why I asked you up here, isn’t it?”

"Alright. Okay." Goresh started, carefully, "I mean, look– you've always been– I think most people would say–" he stopped just to start again. "You're my favorite. You know that. You've always been my favorite. I think you're– I mean, you’re John Lennon– shit– the work speaks for–"

"Goresh." John said.

"Sorry, right." Goresh adjusted his hand around his mug. "Well. Paul's been– Paul's been very visible. Very– out there. The press, the quotes…"

"So Paul looks stronger."

"I didn't say that–"

"You were about to."

"I was about to say that you both look strong."

"Paul." John looked at him. "Stop trying to protect my feelings. I'm a grown man. I'm forty years old this year."

Goresh took a long, visible breath.

"I think– I think you both look like you mean it. Which is—that's not really answering the question–"

"It's not."

"But from where I stand, literally stand, outside, every day, it looks like two people who are both trying very hard to appear like they don't care. Paul has been playing it very well. He's been visible but not desperate. His quotes are–" he paused, "-they're good. They make him look generous. Open." Another pause. "You, not so much.”

John stared at him.

“It looks a bit like you’re taunting him, playing a game.”

John blinked.

"You said not to protect your feelings," Goresh said.

"I did say that." John took a long pull. "I did say that." He exhaled. "Right."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. That's–" John waved it off. "This is good. Useful." He looked at the ceiling, scoffed under his breath: "Bastard."

“What?”

“Nothing.” John cleared his throat.

He thought about that, about Paul being generous, open, magnanimous. All the things the press had been saying. If Paul was so generous then what exactly was the vegetarian catering rider about. What was seventeen songs to eight about. What was six weeks of a contract going back and forth about, with demands from Harvey Bergstein being slashed and re-written. That wasn't generous.

"Are people actually talking about this?" John finally asked. "Like, regular people? Not just the press."

"Are you serious?" Goresh looked at him. "It's all anyone talks about. I mean– everyone. My building, the guys at the diner, the woman at my dry cleaners, she asked me about it last week, she knows I stand outside your building and–"

"What did she say?"

"She said she’ll cry her eyes out if it doesn’t happen. That she’s been praying that you'll actually…" Goresh stopped. "that it’s real."

John absorbed this.

"Do people think I still have it in me?" he said, and then immediately felt disgusted at himself for asking.

"What? Yes. Obviously. Don't be stupid–" Goresh shook his head, "-of course. Nobody's worried about that." Goresh shook his head. He said it as though that wasn't quite what people were worried about.

"What are they worried about?"

"Whether you'll actually do it." Goresh paused.

He stopped, cocked his head. “I mean–” John shifted. “There's the contract, y’know. Nine versions of it. My– there's a lawyer involved, well, an imaginary lawyer, Harvey, anyway– he's been going back and forth with Paul's people for six weeks. Every time Harvey sends something back they fix it. Every single thing. The billing, the setlist, the hotel clause, the recording rights– all of it. And it should have fallen apart by now, that's what I keep thinking, that's the thing I can’t– at some point you run out of things to fix and you either sign it or you walk away and Paul keeps fixing things and not walking away and I keep sending things back and not walking away and– but then again there’s the recording sub-clause– the sub-clause alone might be–" he stopped suddenly, like he’d been snapped out of a trance, and looked up.

Goresh was sitting very still. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes glassy. He looked like he’d just seen Christ himself perform a miracle. "You’re telling me…” Goresh said very quietly, and almost to himself. "There’s a contact? An actual– it's not just a rumour. There's a real–"

"Stop." John held up a hand. "Stop. Pretend I didn't say any of that."

"But–"

"No. I'm serious." John leaned forward. "That cannot leave this room. Not a word. Not to anyone. Not your dry cleaning woman, not the guys at the diner, nobody. Do you understand me?"

Goresh snapped his mouth shut and shook his head as if to clear it, then nodded furiously.

"I need you to be very clear with me right now," John said. "Because if any of that gets out– if I find out it came from you– you will never stand on this block again. Ever. I will personally see to it. I know people."

"John—"

"I'm serious."

"I know you're serious." Goresh looked at him steadily.

John looked at him for a long time, trying to decide if Goresh was telling the truth.

“I swear, John. On my life. Genuinely. John, I would never–"

"I know." And the strange thing was, he did know. Something about standing outside a building every morning for three years—there was a particular kind of loyalty in that. Odd loyalty. Inexplicable loyalty. But loyalty.

He sat back and squinted at what was left of the joint, took a short pull.

"The thing is," John said, more quietly now, "I might actually have to sign it. The contract, I mean. It's been weeks and there's almost nothing left to fight about. Harvey's running out of things to object to." He paused. "Which means at some point I'm going to have to make a decision."

Goresh nodded slowly. John looked out the window and sighed. They both sat with that for a moment.

“Who's going to come to something like this anyway?” John finally asked. "All our fans are mums now. Sitting at home somewhere. They've got mortgages."

"I'll be there," Goresh said immediately.

John looked at him properly. "How old are you?"

"Twenty four."

"Twenty four." John absorbed this. "You weren't even—"

"Eight," Goresh said. "I was eight when you went on Ed Sullivan. I discovered you after." He shrugged slightly. “I found the records when I was thirteen and I," he stopped. "All my friends are the same. None of us were old enough but we all grew up with it anyway. It just– it lives on. The music just lives on."

John looked at him for a long time.

"Twenty four," he said again, to himself.

"There are a lot of us," Goresh said. "More than you think."

The apartment was very quiet.

"Can I ask you something?” Goresh asked, his voice breathy. John gestured, indicating for him to continue. Goresh leaned forward. “Do you actually want this?" Goresh said. "Like–at all?"

John looked at him.

"That," he said, "is the golden question." He looked at the joint. Took a pull.

"I don't—" he started. "I don't not want to." He said it slowly, feeling his way through it. "I mean, the idea has been—it's been growing, if I'm being honest. Which I am, because—" he gestured at Goresh, at the room, at all of it, "—apparently this is what my life is now. Being honest with a man who photographs me."

Goresh just chuckled.

John finished the joint. "What if it's a disaster?" he heard himself ask, which was the most honest thing he'd said out loud in months.

He wasn't even sure, as he said it, what he meant. Disaster how. Disaster like– he was out of practice, hadn't been on a proper stage in years, the muscle memory gone soft? Or disaster like– he got back on stage with someone and all the reasons he’d left them in the first place came flooding back and he remembered exactly why he’d built the walls in the first place.

Goresh was quiet for a moment.

"Can I tell you something?" he said.

"Go on."

"My older brother," Goresh said. "We didn't speak for seven years. He left for college when I was fourteen and it was like—" he shook his head, "—it was like he didn't think twice. Just left. And I blamed him for all of it. The stuff at home, my dad being hard on me, all of it. I was so angry." He turned his mug in his hands. "And then my dad died. And I was even angrier, because now I'd never have the relationship with him I wanted, and somehow that was my brother's fault too. So when it was time for the funeral, I didn't want him there."

"But he came," John said.

"He did." Goresh nodded. "It was ugly. My mom cried. I said things." He paused. "But he was still my brother. And when it was over, when we were all just standing there in the kitchen afterwards with terrible food someone had brought over, I realized he was the only one I could talk to. About dad. About all of it. He was the only other person in the world who'd had the same father." Another pause. "We talked for three days. I found out I'd had the whole thing wrong. He hadn't left to abandon me. He'd left to save himself. And if I hadn't been there when he came home for that funeral—"

He left it there.

John sat in the quiet kitchen and said nothing for a long time.

"Three days," John said finally.

"Three days," Goresh said.

"And you'd had it wrong the whole time."

"All that time" Goresh looked at his hands. He shrugged, simply. "I nearly missed it."

John nodded again.

He looked at the guitar against the wall for a long moment. Then he stood up.

"Come on," he said. "I'll take you out the back."

"The back?"

"There's a way out." John was already moving through the apartment, toward the kitchen, past the hallway where Sean's drawings lined the walls. "The photographers won't see you. If they see you coming out the front they'll—" he made a gesture, "—you don't want that."

Goresh followed him through the kitchen, past the study door, down a narrow corridor that didn't look like it led anywhere until it did—a service door, plain and unremarkable, that opened onto a back stairwell smelling of old stone and dust.

"Down two flights," John said. "Left at the bottom. Out through the service entrance onto 71st.”

(Still John)

The door closed behind Goresh and the apartment went quiet.

John sat back down on the sofa for a while without moving. The two mugs on the coffee table were still there, Goresh's was barely touched.

He replayed the whole scene, the way he'd asked who looked stronger, the way he'd rambled about the contract, spilled details he most definitely should not have to a kid who stood outside his building. The way he'd asked do you think I still have it, which he physically cringed at now alone in his own sitting room.

Had it been too much, bringing him up? Asking those questions? Had he seemed desperate sad and lonely?

He'd just wanted someone to talk to, that was all. And now he felt worse than before Goresh had arrived, which figured, actually. That was very on brand for him at the moment.

He vowed, quietly and sincerely, to stay inside for a while. No more impromptu invitations, no more asking fans up for tea and then asking them odd questions about his psychological state. Better to avoid human interaction altogether for a bit. He was feeling rather overwhelmed as of late and he didn't see that getting better by talking to more people.

He turned the lamp off, sat in the dark for a while, then went to bed.

***

A few days passed.

John woke late, ten, maybe ten thirty, to the sound of Sean and Helen in the other room, Sean's particular babble going on and on about whatever he was building or destroying. Yoko was already gone, her side of the bed cool, her studio door closed when he passed. He shuffled to Sean's room in his socks.

"Daddy!" Sean launched himself from the floor with the total confidence of a four year old who had never once considered that the person they were launching themselves at might not catch them.

John caught him and hoisted him up, one, two, three, Sean shrieking with delight on the third, and John held him there above his head for a moment, this small perfect person, and felt something in his chest loosen slightly.

"Morning," John grinned.

"Morning!" Sean announced, to the ceiling.

John set him down and ruffled his dark hair, and accepted a very serious explanation about the current state of the train layout. He nodded in the places that required nodding.

Then the phone rang. Not his personal line, the other one, the front desk line. It was the one the building used when something had arrived for him.

"Delivery at the front desk, Mr. Lennon," the doorman said into the earpiece.

"Be right down," John chirped.

He knew immediately what it was. Another version, of course. Version nine point four, or five, or whatever Harvey had negotiated last. He noticed the small familiar lift of it, which he'd been trying not to notice for six weeks now. It was just this slight lilt in his stomach, alerting him to just how much he really looked forward to these deliveries. They came every few days, like clockwork. It was, if he was being completely honest with himself, the most consistent contact he'd had with Paul in, well, years. Well, not contact exactly. But adjacent to it, something like it. Close enough that he'd started looking forward to it.

He told Helen he'd be back in five minutes. Sean was already re-absorbed in the trains. John found his glasses, then his jacket, then headed towards the elevator.

He noticed he was whistling somewhere around the second floor and abruptly stopped. Then after a second or two he started again, because, well, there was nobody there to hear it.

***

The envelope was manila, thick, Harvey’s name in the familiar typeface of Paul's lawyers' letterhead. John tucked it under his arm, thanked the doorman, then spun on his heel back toward the elevator.

He started opening it on the way up. Just the outer envelope at first, working his thumbnail along the seal, feeling the satisfying give of it. The elevator rose. He pulled the document out, all thirty-four pages of it clipped together, the satisfying weight and heft he'd gotten used to over six weeks, and started thumbing through it.

He was looking for the red pen- there was always red pen. Amendments in the margins, clauses crossed out and rewritten, Paul's people's annotations in their careful legal hand. John had come to enjoy them, in a way he hadn't examined too closely, the back and forth of it, the odd excitement of finding something to push back on.

He kept flipping. No red pen. He flipped back and checked the first few pages again. Nothing. Flipped forward. Still nothing.

The elevator dinged and opened on his floor. He stepped off without looking up, still leafing through it, page by page, brow furrowing. He reached to open the apartment door with one hand.

Thirty pages.

Thirty-two.

He opened the door and crossed the threshold.

Thirty-four.

He stopped.

He was standing inside his apartment now, the door slammed shut behind him, but he had stopped moving entirely because at the bottom of page thirty-four, on the line designated ARTIST 1, was a signature.

Paul's signature.

John stood in his foyer and stared.

He knew that signature. Had known it since he was sixteen years old, had watched it evolve over the years from the loose careless scrawl of a teenager to this: still loose, even though it was clearly well rehearsed, but never lazy and always so recognisably Paul. The P swept up into something that almost looked like a J if you held it right. He'd practiced it once, late at night somewhere, just on the back of whatever was to hand, and had shown Paul the way he’d made their names connect the next day without really knowing why. Paul had looked at it and then at him and smiled. John had folded the paper up and put it in his pocket and never mentioned it again. Muscle memory, was the thing. He could still do it now without thinking.

"Mr. Lennon?"

Helen's voice, from somewhere underwater. He tried to swallow, but found that his throat was really, really dry.

"Mr. Lennon, did you want—"

He walked past her, accidentally knocking against her shoulder with his.

"Is everything okay, sir?"

“Do your bloody job and look after my son.” He said, rather sharply, storming off down the hall towards his study, “I need to be alone.”

“Of course, Mr. Lennon, so sorry.” Helen sputtered after him, clearly flustered by his sudden change in mood.

He turned the corner into his study and slammed the door shut. He sat down heavily in his chair, the thick document still in his hands. His heart was doing somersaults in his chest, which was stupid and ridiculous. He was aware that it was stupid and ridiculous but couldn't seem to do anything about it.

And then he laughed.

Because, Christ, the audacity of it. In a final move so bold John genuinely hadn't seen it coming, Paul McCartney had signed the contract. First and without warning.

His laugh faded into a defeated sigh.

Suddenly, he stood up and walked to the window. He needed to think.

He could simply not sign. He’d deployed that tactic once before, spectacularly, for years on end, delaying his signature on the divorce papers until that fateful day in Disneyland. Before that though, he’d let the papers sit for so long the lawyers had started calling Yoko– even though everyone knew they weren’t even living together at the time. But at nearer to Forty than to Thirty, he was painfully aware that the whole act had been an extremely transparent bid for attention dressed up as deliberation.

So, no. He couldn’t stall. Paul would see through it immediately, which made it almost worse than signing.

He could sign it right away.

He considered this and found, to his genuine surprise, that he wasn't as frightened by this idea as he would have been six weeks ago. Harvey had done good work. It was a fair deal. Whatever else was complicated about this, the deal itself was solid and he knew it.

Ok, that thought didn’t absolutely terrify him. He tested the boundaries of that thought: he could sign it and go to England.

The thing about England, about touring with Paul specifically, was that he knew exactly what it was like. He'd done it about a thousand times before. He remembered how it used to feel, living in each other's pockets for months at a stretch, no real separation between them, every boundary blurred. Just them and… well, there hadn't been anything else, really. The two of them sharing rooms and sharing beds, crammed into vans, ordering room service at three in the morning, sneaking up to the roof to smoke pot, writing eyeball to bloody eyeball.

A specific memory flashed in his mind. Sand in the creases of his jeans, sticky ocean air hitting his face, palm trees swaying back and forth, making a silky rustling sound. Too much booze. So much talking. He couldn't remember about what, just everything. Nothing. Before he’d learned to be careful about what he said to people, to Paul. And then salty tears, wet hazel eyes, and a sherbet colored sunrise.

He shook his head to clear the thought. It wasn’t worth it to dwell on such things.

Things were different now. That was the thing he kept coming back to. For better or for worse, this wasn't the Beatles. Not the machinery of it, not the four of them and Brian and the suits and the press conferences and the whole apparatus that had eventually made them all husks of themselves. This was two people and twenty-five tour dates, Harvey's thread count guarantee and separate catering.

He looked at the document in his hand.

He could just fucking throw it away. He could toss it in the bin, right now, and call Fred and tell him to relay through appropriate channels that Mr. Bergstein was no longer interested in pursuing this particular arrangement, and that would be the end of it. Paul would understand… Right? He’d understand that he’d won, that John had been the first to stand down. That this was as far as he’d been willing to take this particular practical joke.

He crossed the room to the bin and held the document over it. His hands shook slightly.

Just then, something slipped from between the pages and fluttered to the floor.

A small piece of paper, blush pink and small. He almost missed it in the dim study light. He bent down to pick it up.

It was Paul's handwriting. He gulped.

“And then there were two.”

John stood very still. His stomach clenched.

Lindsay-Hogg had shown him the footage once. Years ago. The raw footage, most of the fifty hours of it. The four of them in an enormous, dimly lit studio. There’d been Paul at the piano and John with his unwashed hair, just– an overall bastard, really. It had been painfully obvious, watching it back. He’d recoiled, seeing it on film in a way he hadn't been able to see it back then. That aloofness he'd put on, that wall, making everything difficult because something in him had needed Paul to feel it too– whatever he was feeling, the suffocation of it, the pain of it, the terror of it.

He'd wanted Paul to hurt as much as he hurt. And he’d succeeded, some days. He could see it on Paul's face on film, in his eyes.

“...and then there were two.”

John had hated himself for weeks after seeing that.

His eyes were stinging. He noticed this with some surprise, then with irritation, then he just, let it happen. He sat down in his chair in the late morning light, the pink piece of paper, crumpled lightly in his hand and let his eyes sting.

He turned it over. There was nothing on the back. Just those five words in Paul's handwriting, the same handwriting he'd known since they were boys, the writing that hadn't changed in twenty-three years.

It didn't feel like a jab, it didn't feel like a dare. It didn't even feel like any of the moves John had come to expect over the past few months: the press statements, the careful quotes, the “I’m open to it.”

John pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, they just kept stinging.

***

He wasn't sure what he thought a phone call was going to accomplish at this point, with Paul's signature sitting there at the bottom of page thirty-four like a fait accompli, but he picked up the phone anyway because staring at it was making him feel insane and doing something, even something pointless like calling Paul, felt better than doing nothing. He didn’t even know what he was going to say if the man picked up.

The phone rang four times.

“Yeah.” And just like that, all the fury that had been building in his body for the past forty minutes, all his pacing and swearing and all the thumb rubbing into his furrowed brow went somewhere else entirely.

Paul’s voice. Twenty three years and it still did that thing. He could go months, years, without hearing it, could build whole architectures of distance and resentment and very intentionally not think about him, and then Paul said yeah into a receiver three thousand miles away and something in John's chest just… He fucking hated it.

He sat there for the millisecond in which all of this unfolded for him, the phones still pressed to his ear, and had the sudden vertiginous awareness that he hadn't heard Paul’s voice in person in over three years. He’d heard it through phone lines, on recordings, sure, but always filtered through something. It had been three years of him existing only as quotes in the paper and songs on the radio and glossy photos in magazines. He shook his head a few times to clear his thoughts, reaching desperately for the thread of anger that had driven him to dial his number in the first place. He cleared his throat and tried for a stern tone of voice.

"You signed it."

"John," Paul didn’t sound too surprised. Not unsurprised, either. Just—John.

“You signed it.” He said again, at a loss for what else to say.

"I did."

"Just went ahead and did that."

"The deal was good," Paul said plainly. "Your lawyers did good work."

"They're thorough," John said through a small cough . There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence that crackled across the line.

"Well,” John said, “This is great, isn't it? Really great."

"Really great," Paul said back, neutral and completely impenetrable.

"I'm…” He grimaced at the ceiling, “I’m looking forward to it," he said, and as soon as the words left his mouth, and rolled his eyes and cursed himself internally. shut up, John, shut up shut up. "You?"

"Oh, absolutely," Paul said. "Can't wait."

"Er, I’m surprised you can take so much time away from the kids," John said carefully. "Three months. Kids that age, they should be around kids their own age.”

"They'll be fine," Paul said easily, “they’re all mostly homeschooled anyway, y’know.”

“Oh," John said. "Good. That's—good." Fuck. he’d forgotten that’s how Paul did it now, bringing the whole gaggle of screaming kids with him on the road. No night apart from the lovely wife. Thinking fast, or rather barely thinking at all, he heard himself blurt out:

“Was thinking of bringing Yoko and Sean along, actually.” He bluffed “To London. For rehearsals."

"Oh," Paul said, and something in his voice might have sounded put off, but John was probably making that up. "Right. That'll be nice."

"Thought it made sense," John said. "Having her there. Grounding, y’know."

“Sean must be excited.” Paul's voice sounded forced. "He'll be proud of his dad."

"He doesn't know what touring is," John said, his tone souring a bit.

"Well–," Paul said.

"And I don't need my son to be proud of me for being a rock star," John added, feeling defensive once again. "I just want him to think I'm a good dad."

A pause.

"I know," Paul said. "I just meant—"

"No, I know what you meant," John continued, and he couldn't really stop himself now. "And I know what you think. That I've been sitting up here doing nothing. That I haven't got it in me. You said as much, didn't you, to that journalist."

"John, I–"

"And if this is some kind of– if you're hoping that I'll feel so stupid about not having made music that I'll either back down or make a complete fool of myself trying to prove I can…" he stopped. "It's not going to work."

"That's not what I’m trying to do, John.”

"I've been writing," John kept talking, and he knew he should shut up. "Music. Songs. You're not the only one who can do that, you know."

"I know," Paul said, his voice sounding a bit exasperated. "I remember, John. We did quite a lot of it together, you and I."

John’s heart was hammering. He had a sudden, horrible moment of clarity, standing in his study at whatever time it was, one glass of scotch in, phone pressed to his ear, having just insisted to Paul McCartney that he'd been writing music and that Paul wasn't the only one who could do that as though Paul had suggested otherwise, as though any of this had been about that, as though he hadn't called up in a panic to do damage control on a situation that was entirely of his own making.

He heard himself from a slight distance and he sounded insane. John pressed his free hand against his forehead and massaged his temples. He straightened up, cleared his throat.

"I called," he said and his voice was a bit flatter and more controlled, "to let you know that if you're hoping I'm going to back down, I'm not going to. That's all. That's why I called."

He could hear how it sounded. He heard himself saying it and knew it sounded paranoid. But something about Paul's voice, the way his voice sounded like a god damn benediction, had made John dig his heels in hard.

It was Klein all over again.

It was Klein and it was Paul’s three kids to his zero when he and yoko were desperately trying, it was Imagine peaking lower than Band on the Run, it was every time John had ever lost, which was most of the time, which had always been most of the time, because Paul had this way of winning without appearing to try and John had spent his whole life on the wrong side of luck. He couldn't have this too. Paul couldn't have this, too.

“Right," Paul finally said, after a moment and he sounded not taken aback exactly, but somewhat surprised. "Alright, good."

"You don't believe me," John said.

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn’t, but I can tell."

"What the—"

"You've got that tone."

"I don't have a tone."

"You've always had that tone. Since we were kids. You think I'm full of shit."

"You're a man of your word," Paul said, very carefully. "I've learned my lesson on that front."

"Right," John said. "Right, well–" he looked at the contract, sitting on the desk in front of him, at the pen next to it, and something lurched in him, some wild impulse surged him forward. "You know what, I'll sign it right now. While I’ve got you. I'll do it right now."

"Oh, ok John," Paul said, and the bastard didn’t even sound surprised. Not triumphant. Just—ok, John. The two most infuriating words in the English language delivered in the most infuriating register possible.

John grabbed the pen and scratched his name across the bottom of page thirty-four with more force than was necessary, his pen almost tearing through the page.

"There," he said, “it’s done.”

"Good," Paul said.

"It's signed."

"I heard you."

"Right." John put the pen down and stared at what he'd just done. His signature, big and far darker than usual, underneath Paul's. "Well."

"Well," Paul repeated. There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"I suppose I'll see you in London then," John said, by way of nothing else to add.

"I suppose you will," Paul said back, just as quick.

"Great."

"Brilliant."

"Right then," John said.

"Goodnight," Paul said, before the line went dead.

***

Yoko came home at six.

John heard her key in the lock and immediately stood up from the kitchen table.

Which was stupid.

He'd been sitting there for nearly an hour with the newspaper open in front of him, not reading it, listening for the elevator. The moment he heard her key he sprang to his feet like a man caught doing something criminal. He was at the stove by the time she came through the door, doing something pointless with a wooden spoon.

He'd rehearsed several versions of how to begin this conversation and had discarded all of them.

She came through the door with her coat still on, bag over one shoulder, moving through the apartment with a sense of purpose.

"You're home," John said. Stirring already overcooked pasta.

"I am." She didn't look at him.

"How was—" he gestured vaguely, "—wherever you were."

"Fine." She glanced at him finally, briefly. "You cooked," she said.

John looked at the pot on the stove, at the soggy noodles coated in red sauce.

"Oh. Yeah."

Yoko set her bag down on one of the stools by the counter and came to look at what he was doing. She dipped a finger into the pot, picked out a noodle and popped it in her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, then nodded imperceptibly, apparently accepting it.

It struck John then, how strange this scene really was. Usually when Yoko arrived home, we was sprawled out somewhere, half-reading three things at once, with the television on in the background, barely registering her arrival. Tonight he was at the stove facing the wall, shoulders raised like he was bracing for impact. He couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d tried.

"How was your day?" John tried again, trying to relax his muscles and failing.

"Fine." She poured herself water from a pitcher they kept on the counter. "Yours?"

"Good. Yeah. Fine." He stirred the sauce, which really didn't need any more stirring.

Yoko was watching him. He could feel her eyes on the back of his neck.

"What's happened?" she asked, and although he wasn’t looking at her, he could tell her eyes were narrowed.

"Hmm?"

"Something's happened."

He turned around and gave her his most innocent face.

"I'm making pasta," he said. "I'm not capable of anything more sinister than that. Look at me."

Normally that would've gotten a laugh, but tonight it didn't. John cleared his throat and changed the subject.

"Have you thought at all about summer? What you want to do?"

Yoko looked at him.

"Summer?” she cocked her head.

"Yeah. Like, Montauk, or whether you want to go, when you want to go. Sean loves it y’know, and I was thinking maybe we could—"

"It's barely turned spring, John."

"I know, but–”

"Summer is weeks away."

"I know when summer is." He put the spoon down, then picked it up. She continued to watch him as he kept stirring. The pasta was rapidly becoming paste.

Yoko set her glass down and looked at him, clocking something imperceptible in his face. He couldn't have said what, he was trying with all his might to appear calm.

"What's going on?" she insisted, taking a step towards him.

"Nothing's going on. I'm making pasta." He turned away from her, his stomach clenching.

Yoko poured herself another glass of water while another long silence blanketed the kitchen.

"John." She eventually said, slow and cold. He turned the heat down on the pasta. Turned around and leaned against the counter.

"Look, it’s not a big deal. I was just asking– if we were going to go to Montauk this summer," he said carefully, "when would you want to go? Like, were you hoping to go in June, or would you rather—"

"Why are we talking about summer?"

"No reason, really."

"John."

"No reason! I'm just trying to plan. Get ahead of things. You're always saying we don't plan enough."

"I've never said that."

“Well, then I said it.”

She stepped another inch towards him, water glass to her lips. She swallowed.

"Plan? Get ahead of things?”

"Yeah."

"Why this sudden interest in calendars, John? You have never once in ten years of marriage asked me about June in April." "

"I don't know, you have things, the gallery and such, don’t you?"

"John." Her voice had gone very level. "What is going on?”

He looked at her.

"Its just, well– it’s just that– I might need to be in London in June," he said. And there it was. He could feel his face flush with shame. Because London only meant one thing, and Yoko knew it.

"London," she repeated.

He swallowed. "Mhm."

"For…. what, exactly." She was going to make him say it.

"Er– Rehearsals?” His voice lilted up at the end, like it was a fucking question.

The kitchen was very quiet for just a moment too long. John squirmed against the counter, crossing then recrossing his arms.

"Oh, John." Yoko said slowly, almost with pity.

He opened and then closed his mouth once, then twice. Because what the fuck was he supposed to say? That for the past six weeks he'd been secretly negotiating a touring contract with Paul McCartney using a made-up lawyer named Harvey Steinberg or Bergstein, he couldn't remember which, who didn't exist, while telling absolutely nobody, and that the whole thing had started as a bluff—his bluff, Paul's bluff, he wasn't even sure whose bluff anymore—except it turned out it wasn't a bluff because Paul had gone and signed the thing and now John had signed it too, had actually signed it, and he didn't entirely know why, but he’d done ahead and signed it in a manic flurry, convincing himself that if he didn't, then Paul had won, whatever that meant.

And he knew he should have told her, he'd known that for six weeks, but he hadn't because he'd known she'd make that face, the one she was making right now and–

Instead of saying any of that he held up one finger, indicating to her that she should stay where she was. His heart beating faster than he would have liked, he turned on his heel and rushed to his study, opened his desk drawer and picked up the document, which suddenly felt absurdly heavy. He came back to the kitchen with it and dropped it on the table between them. Yoko didn’t move. They both just stood there for a moment, looking at it.

"What is that?” She asked, point blank.

"It's paperwork." John said, trying to sound normal.

Yoko reached for it and opened up the envelope. She looked at it for a long time, he could see her eyes scan up and down the cover page. Finally, she looked at him again, but it was different this time. No more pity, only fury.

"How long has this existed," she breathed.

"Just a few–"

"How long, John."

"Six weeks. About."

"Six weeks?" She looked like she was doing very rapid calculations. "You've been negotiating a contract with him for six weeks."

"Harvey was handling it."

"Who the hell is Harvey?”

"My—" John exhaled and closed his eyes before finishing his sentence. "My lawyer."

"You don't have a lawyer named Harvey."

"Listen—" John started, "—I mean, look, it's not—it's a business arrangement, really, when you strip it back, it's just—twenty-five dates, we're home by Christmas, it's—we did a good job with the terms, actually, it's a very fair deal, objectively speaking, and I wasn't—I don't even particularly—it's not like I—"

"Don't." She held up her hand and John shut his mouth immediately. Her voice was shaking slightly, which meant she was furious, which meant this was going to be bad. "Don't try to fucking explain this to me like I'm a child. Six weeks, John."

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he just shut his mouth and braced himself for what was coming next.

"I fucking knew it," she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Yoko—"

"I fucking knew it!” Louder now. John flinched a little and reflexively looked towards Sean’s room. She was looking at him with something so raw it was almost unbearable. "Don't treat me like a moron, like I don't know what this is. Like I don’t know you, John." Her voice broke on the last word and she steadied herself, jaw tight. She was sawing in place,"I knew it. I fucking knew it."

“Knew what?” John desperately tried to deflect.

"You know exactly." She straightened up, looking him dead in the face. “You admitted as much.” Her eyes pierced him and suddenly he was back there, on the floor of Janov’s clinic, sobbing into her lap over a man who would never understand the hurt he’d caused.

"I was out of my mind back then!" John's voice shook slightly. "I was so fucked up, Yoko. Whatever I said in those sessions, I was—we were both—you can't hold a man accountable for what he says when he's in that kind of state."

"Those sessions," she said, her voice softening a little, almost tender but not quite, "were the best thing that ever happened to you. Do you remember what you were like before? Do you remember?"

"I remember crying—"

"You were sick," she said, gently, placating. "You were holding onto things that were making you sick, and Janov helped you shed them off. We helped you put them down." She looked at him steadily. "Remember?"

“I guess so.” He replied, blinking.

Still, in that gentle voice of hers that was almost scary, "when it was over you said you felt free. You said that. Do you remember?"

He did remember.

He also remembered what had come before feeling free. What had come out of him in that room, in those sessions, all the things he'd said that he hadn't known were in him. He'd thought he was discovering something. He remembered thinking that. That he was finding something out.

"You promised." His voice came out louder than he intended, rawer. "You promised that after all of that—after everything I said in those rooms, everything I—you said it would get better. You said we'd be better.” he stopped. "You promised."

"And you promised you were done with him!" She threw it back at him across the kitchen, and there it was, the thing underneath all of it, the thing neither of them had said out loud in years. "You promised me that. After LA, after everything. You promised and now there's a contract on my kitchen table with your names linked together so forgive me for being upset."

"That's not —"

"There is no way," she said, quieter now, more controlled, which felt all the more dangerous, "that you signed this. Whatever you've been doing for six weeks with these phantom lawyers—fine. But you still have some shred of self-respect. As an artist. Or at least as my husband." She picked up the contract. "There is no way you actually put your name on this thing…"

John watched her flip pages until she turned to the last page, then watched Yoko’s face move through a series of small, furious, movements that were barely visible. Then she set it down and said nothing, then nodded.

John had prepared for several reactions. Anger he could handle. Questions he could handle. Even the cold precise fury she was capable of, he'd been braced for that. What he hadn't prepared for was this. The absolute stillness of her. The way she just stood there, looking at the contract, saying nothing at all. It was considerably worse than whatever had come before.

"Say something," he said, taking a small step towards her.

She didn't.

"Yoko. Say something."

"What would you like me to say?"

"Anything. Scream at me. Throw something. Don't just sit there—"

She looked up at him. "I'm not going to do that."

"Why the hell not?” He screamed, pacing back and forth in front of her. “You could y’know," he yelled. “I’d deserve it!” He knew he was contradicting himself. One second he’d done nothing wrong, and this was nothing to worry about, the next he was taunting her by saying he’s an ass who deserves her wrath. He didn’t even know anymore, he just wanted her to not be mad anymore.

She sat there and stonewalled him, arms crossed. John felt himself get more and more worked up at her serene facial expression. He wanted her to react, to say something, anything, fix things for him so this would all end and they could go back to the way it had been before. Before the contract. But she didn’t say a word.

"You fucking put me here, you know?” John heard himself spit the words out. “You and Sean and the whole thing– and I know I chose this, I know I did. But you made it clear I didn’t really have a choice. And I don't regret it, I don't regret Sean, I don't regret– but did it ever occur to you that I might want more than this? That I might not be finished?"

"I know you don’t mean that, John.” She shook her head. “You want a fight so you can feel angry instead of guilty. I know how you work."

"Maybe I am angry!" He heard his own voice, louder than he'd meant, but didn't pull it back. "Maybe I've been angry for a long time and nobody's noticed because I've been very quietly sitting in this apartment and not—" he gestured, at the walls, at everything, "—not doing anything. Not making music. Not touring. Not being an artist–" he stopped dead. He didn’t even realize he’d felt that way until he’d heard himself say it.

Yoko looked at him for a long moment then she walked toward him. "I did not ask you to stop. I did not tell you to come home." Her words were lethal.

Something shifted slightly in John's face.

"Do you not remember? Do you not remember 1975? What you were like? What state you were in when you came back to me?"

John said nothing.

"You wanted to come home."

"Yeah, I–" He spoke slowly.

"You were in a terrible state. You couldn't have stayed there. With him."

"I was a mess," he said. "I’ll own that—" he stopped. The memory kept sliding away from him. Clouded and blurry. The phone call, the cure, the three days, then emerging with that strange sense of certainty. "But I—" he frowned, "—I think I wanted to stay. In LA. Before all of that. I think I was—I think I was going to New Orleans."

Yoko was very still.

"You weren't well enough to go to New Orleans. I told you that."

"But I wanted to go," he said. More firmly. "That was something I wanted."

"You called me," Yoko said, with the patient certainty of someone correcting a small factual error. "You were a wreck and you called me and you said you wanted to come home."

John looked at her and she looked back at him, composed and certain. She’d told this story to him so many times it had become the absolute truth.

"And I let you," she continued, her voice softening back into that gentle register, "because I was frightened for you. Because you were flying too close to the sun and I loved you and I wanted you to be safe. Even after everything. Even after what you did to me. I let you come back home because I love you."

"I know," John said slowly.

"And it worked," she said, and she extended a hand to rest on his. "Didn't it? You came home and you got better and Sean was born and you said—you told me, John, you told me this was what you wanted."

"I did say that."

But there was something wrong with this. He could feel the shape of it without being able to see it clearly.

And then he was back there suddenly. How clean it had all felt. How resolved. Like his life had been decided for him while he was unconscious, while he was vomiting into a bucket somewhere in New York, and he'd woken up knowing what he was going to do without really deciding to do it.

He'd called Paul. He remembered the phone in his hand and Paul's voice, tight and aloof, and John telling him, very cold, very distant that he wasn't coming. That he was going to live in New York. That it was over.

He remembered Paul’s voice, all high and unbothered, making some excuse for why it wouldn’t have worked, really, in the long run. Which meant he was actually completely gutted, but would never admit to it.

Stop playing make believe, he'd said. The dream is over.

"Right." He looked at the contract. "But. Yoko, I think I – I think I have to do this.”

She blinked at him, shock written on her face that he hadn’t softened to her words. "Fine," she straightened up, blinking furiously. "Fine. Go back to him. See what happens." She stood up then, brushed by him to her studio and closed the door.

***

He sat in his study until midnight.

The contract sat on the desk in front of him, thick and taunting. There were two healthy inches of scotch in a glass that he kept refilling, god knows how many times he’d done so already. The apartment was deathly quiet around him, Sean long asleep, Yoko's studio dark now, the whole place still.

Against his better judgement, he allowed himself, for a brief moment, to picture it. Standing in a rehearsal room in London in June. Paul enters the room all loose limbs and bouncy, and John sees him, in his flesh and blood and hears his voice and feels his body in relation to his. Feels him disrupt the same air particles as him. He tried to imagine what it would feel like.

He poured himself another inch.

The last time they'd been in a rehearsal room together to really play together, working, not drunk and high, had been, what? '69 on Saville Row? And that had been—he didn't like to think about that period. What he'd been like then. What they'd both been like.

But there had been moments. Even then, even through all of it, there had been moments where it had clicked into something so good it was almost frightening. Where Paul would pluck a string and John would know, just know, exactly where it was going and exactly what it needed. And Paul would look at him and there'd be this addicting electricity. Like: yes. That. Exactly that. It felt like sex. Better than sex. It felt like flying.

He poured the last of the scotch. What if it was all gone? What if they got into that rehearsal room and it was just two middle aged men with guitars and twenty years of baggage and nothing left of the thing that had made any of it good?

What if John felt it and Paul didn't? Oh god, what if Paul felt it and John didn't? What if they both felt it and it destroyed everything all over again?

He sat in his study until the glass was empty until a deep, unsettled anxiety sank into his bones. Everything felt simultaneously catastrophic and terrible and inevitable all at once. He started to breathe heavily, his heart racing.

He'd signed it. He'd actually fucking signed it. His signature existed on a contract and there was no version of events in which that could be taken back, no Harvey Bergstein who could un-sign the thing, no amendment he could come up with that said– actually disregard everything, I've reconsidered, I was having a moment.

Oh God.

What had he been thinking? What the fuck– months of this. Months of telling himself it would never happen, telling Ringo and George and anyone who'd listen that Paul would back out, that this was all a very elaborate bluff, but Paul had signed it and John had forgotten every lesson he'd ever learned about what happened when you let Paul McCartney get under his skin.

He was breathing too fast. He noticed this distantly. Oh God. His heart was doing something alarming.

He pressed both hands flat on the desk and tried to breathe in and then out. But all his mind could do was: what have I done. What have I done. What have I done. What have I done.

He got up. He moved through the dark apartment quietly, past Sean's room and into the bedroom. Yoko was on her side, back to the middle of the bed, breathing slowly and even. John crawled onto the bed carefully, then lay on his back. He looked at the ceiling.

"Yoko," he said, barely above a whisper.

She didn’t reply.

"I need you." He said it to the ceiling. "I know you're angry. I know I've—I know. But I need you. Please don't be mad."

She made a small sound, which was enough for him. He climbed into bed beside her, and wrapped himself around her small body. Buried his face into her mane of black hair and tried to breathe. She reached behind him and gave his hand a squeeze.

John lay in the dark and listened to her breathe.

Eventually he slept.

***

"I need you to know I'm sorry," he said.

John found her at the kitchen table drinking tea and looking out the window at the park the next morning. Sean was with Helen and the apartment was very quiet.

She didn't look at him. He continued.

"About not telling you. That's—I should have told you. I know that. I knew it the whole time and I didn't and I'm sorry." He looked at the fronts and then the backs of his hands. "It just happened. Not the contract, I mean the contract didn't just happen, that took weeks, but the way it got this far without me—" he stopped himself. This wasn’t helping. He took a deep breath and tried again. "I genuinely didn't think it was going to happen, Yoko. You’ve got to believe me. Every time I thought it was going to fall apart it just… didn't. And by the time I understood that it wasn't going to fall apart I'd been not telling you for so long that telling you felt impossible." he stopped again, realizing there were no words he could say to make this right. He fell silent and waited.

Eventually, Yoko sighed and turned to look at him. “Why do you need this so badly?” she asked. John blinked at her.

"I need to prove—" he stopped just to start again. "To myself. That I can. That I'm not—that I'm not someone who has to be managed and kept indoors and—" he looked at her, and some of this was coming out all wrong but he kept going anyway, "—and I need Paul to know I'm not a coward. Whatever he thinks of me, whatever anyone—I'm not going to let them stand there and Paul with his wife and his children and his whole—" he gestured, broadly, at the entire concept of Paul McCartney, "—and think that I can’t do it. That I’m frightened. I couldn’t bare it, i just couldn’t"

Yoko was very still, she didn’t speak.

"I'm not asking you to be happy about it," he rambled. "I know you're not happy about it. I just—I need you to know I'm sorry. And I need you to know that I've signed it and I think I have to go through with it now. At least through rehearsals. I can't—" he pressed his fingers against the table, "—I can't back out now. It would be—I just can't."

She looked at him for a long time, still not speaking. John, unable to let a moment of silence linger, kept going.

"And I need you to see that it's nothing," he said. "I mean, I just need you to know. It’s nothing. Nothing like what you said. I mean it's obviously—but it's not—" he pushed his chair back, stood up, which didn't help anything but felt necessary, "—Paul never tours without Linda and the kids anymore, you know. They're always with him. The whole family. And maybe—I've been thinking about that actually, maybe that's the right idea. Having everyone there. A grounding thing. A—" he looked at her, and here it was, here was the thing he'd been building to for three hours, "—I need you to come. You and Sean. Please." He stopped, breathing heavily, looking at Yoko with pleading eyes.

"I mean it," he repeated, more insistent now, and then he sat back down across from her and reached for her hand. And he did mean it, completely, felt the truth of it physically—the thought of walking into a rehearsal room in London, into a hotel lobby in London, and Paul being there with Linda on his arm and the children winding around his legs like a small cheerful army, all of it telegraphing ease and domesticity. The thought of facing that alone made him want to die.

John knew how to do this. He felt slightly sick about it, but he did it anyway because he knew how this worked. He'd known how this worked for fifteen years. You gave her the power back. You made sure she could see she still held something essential, that without her the whole thing would collapse, which was true actually. Which made it worse somehow, the fact that it was true and he was also using it to get something he wanted. He wasn't proud of that. He sat across from her and thought: I know exactly what I'm doing right now, and I’m doing it anyway, because what is the alternative?

"I need you there," he finally said. "I know that's—I know. But I do."

Yoko looked at him for a long time, and then John could see it. The flicker in her face that meant he’d hooked her, he’d appealed to her need to be needed.

"Fine," she said, and it wasn’t warm, nor was it with the reassurance he'd been hoping for, but it was an agreement.

"Yeah?" John said, squeezing her hand.

"I said fine, John."

"I need you," John said again, leaning across the table and grabbing her other hand.

"You always need me when you're afraid."

He didn't have an answer for that. Eventually she picked up her bag from where she'd set it down and went toward her studio.

"Yoko."

She stopped.

He wanted to say something—he wasn't sure what. That he was sorry. That he understood. That he knew exactly what he was asking of her and what it cost and he was asking anyway because he was, at the end of it, terrified, and she was the only person in the world whose presence made him feel like the terror was manageable.

"Thank you," he said again.

Paul

The contract came back on a Thursday.

The roof was almost done, all Paul had to do was weather proof the thatch and it’d be taken care of. And just in time for spring showers, too. Around lunchtime he’d come inside, mud on his boots, still pulling off his gloves. He’d sneezed a few times, the spring pollen had been thick that year, and went to reach for a tissue on his desk when he saw it. He stood there in the middle of the study and stared at it, his heart beating fast.

He'd genuinely thought John would set fire to it.

Not metaphorically. He'd had an actual nightmare about it a few nights ago, just a flash of a dream; John, contract in one hand, matchstick in the other, and the orangey glow of a flame flickering across his face, glinting off his glasses.

So yes, Paul had genuinely thought John would set fire to it, but he hadn’t, apparently, because here it was, sitting in front of him on his desk. He walked towards it very slowly, and pulled the contract out of the envelope. He stood in place and turned to the last page.

John’s signature looked tighter and more aggressive than he remembered. He'd clearly signed it in a hurry, the pen pushed into the page with a force that had left the letters raised slightly on the other side, textured under Paul's fingertip when he ran it along the back. The signature itself slanted upward in John's characteristic way, and he’d written it slightly off to the right so that the downward stroke of the L in Lennon intersected with the upward tail of Paul's P on the above line. It had probably been just the angle of the pen, but Paul traced it anyway.

He should put the thing away. File it somewhere, give it to Eastman, do something administrative with it that would make it feel like the business arrangement it was. That would be the sensible thing to do. Instead, he sat down and looked at their signatures crossing at the bottom of the page, and before he could stop himself he was smiling to himself.

He was smiling because, God help him, he was thinking about it. Actually thinking about it. Not in the way he'd been thinking about it for the past six months, which had been a strange, detached kind of strategic way of thinking about it. No, he found himself actually thinking about it. About London, about rehearsals, and John walking in.

He hadn't let himself think about what John looked like now. He had been very careful about that. The photographs he’d seen of John outside the Dakota didn't count, those were John at a distance, John with his collar up, John not looking at the camera. John up close was a very different thing. A very different thing indeed. John in a room, John the way he was when he was working, which was different to every other version of John; looser, goofy, soft.

Fuck, he missed that John.

He felt himself rush to bury that thought. He hadn't let himself even acknowledge that he might be looking forward to this reunion until at this exact moment, sitting at his desk in Scotland with the contract in his hands. Which was stupid and absurd, because he was dreading it. He knew that. This would be a drag and John would probably be a huge pain in his ass, but maybe—maybe if they both behaved…

He stayed seated like that, his thumb moving along John’s signature feeling the texture of it, until he heard Linda in the hallway. Then, very quickly he set the contract down and cleared his throat and looked out the window at the garden where absolutely nothing of interest was happening.

Linda sauntered around the corner of his office and leaned in the doorway. She glanced at the contract on the desk, and then at him. No doubt she'd been the one to put it there. But she hadn't opened it, didn't know what was inside.

She didn't say anything for a moment, just stood in the doorway looking at him patiently.

"Well, he didn't set fire to it," Paul said, then after a long pause, “he actually signed the damn thing.”

She lifted her eyebrows in a look that did not convey shock.

"Are you that surprised?" she asked.

"On some level," he said. "On another, no. I don't think I am." He looked at the contract.

Linda came further into the room. She looked at the contract properly now, at both signatures. She rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Paul looked up at her. She was smiling a reassuring smile, but he didn't like the look in her eyes.

"What?" he said, before he could stop himself.

She sighed. Then: "I'm not coming."

"What?" Paul's eyes widened.

"On the tour." She sat down in the chair across from his desk, crossed her legs, and looked at him steadily. "I've been thinking about it and I'm not coming."

"Lin, what are you even talking about?"

"This isn't Wings," she interrupted. "I was part of Wings. But this—" she gestured, "—this doesn't include me." She paused. "I think you need him to know you're coming in peace."

Paul felt an anxious lilt in his stomach.

"But Lin, this what we do, you come with me on tour. The kids come with us. That's how this works."

"They're old enough, Paul. It's only a few months. They won't forget who you are."

"But their birthdays—" Paul started, "I'll be away for– Mary’s turning eleven!”

"Paul." Linda reached across to squeeze his hand. "She’ll understand. And so will Stella. James won’t even remember.”

“It's just—" he started, "—we've always done it this way. That's the whole point of the way we do it. Christ sake, I'm not one of those musicians who disappears on his family for six months and comes back a stranger.”

"Oh don’t be melodramatic," Linda said with a half smile, “this isn’t six months, it’s three. And nobody is going to forget who you are.”

"John will have Yoko there, probably, and Sean,” Paul was babbling now, “and if I show up alone it looks like, I dunno, but if I’m alone— Lin, don't think I could bear it."

Linda looked at him.

"I don't," he said, slightly less certainly.

"The kids will be fine," she said. "I'll be fine. You, will be fine.” She patted their entwined hands with her free one. “Everything will be exactly as you left it." She looked at him steadily. "I promise"

Paul opened his mouth to protest but then shut it, at a loss for where to start.

She held his gaze. "I'm not coming. And I think you know why." She looked at him. All of him, the way she sometimes did, not just his face but the whole of him. He let out a full body sigh, squeezing her hand one more time.

In the end, they agreed on three visits. Amsterdam in late September, when he'd have been going long enough to need her– and conveniently, all three children's birthdays fell close enough together that they could make a proper occasion of it. They’d eat German chocolate cake in a Dutch hotel room, which Stella would find romantic and Mary would find a bit boring and James would mostly find interesting because of the cake. New York at Thanksgiving was briefly on the table until Paul reminded Linda about the time they'd tried to fly out of JFK on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and had spent eleven hours in a terminal that smelled like body odor and fry oil. They settled on Toronto instead, which was quieter, easier and the children wouldn't know the difference. And then New York in December, near the end, close enough to the finish line that the sight of her would carry him home.

But first, there was the terms finalization meeting.

Which meant London. They'd settled on EMI House on Manchester Square, which was neutral ground, more or less. MPL had been floated, even his living room at Cavendish, but Paul knew John would cry home advantage at either, and rightly so. So they’d settled on a place that had once belonged to all four of them and now, in a sense, belonged to none of them. It was, the lawyers had agreed, the most sensible location.

It also meant lawyers, witnesses and a notary. Every i dotted and t crossed in the presence of actual human beings who could testify in court that it had happened. The contract, after all, had been signed in private, in separate countries, in what felt in retrospect like a bazaar fever dream. This was the meeting that was supposed to make it real. Last chance for any outstanding demands to be met, any final objections to be raised, any last-minute John Lennon manoeuvres before the whole thing became official and irrevocable.

Linda would be there.

Not to the meeting itself, that was lawyers and witnesses and the two of them. She had been clear about that, no reinforcements. But to London. She'd drive with him, stay in the townhouse on Cavendish avenue, and be there when he got back. It was just London, after all, just another meeting. She wasn't coming on the tour, they'd settled that, but she could come to London for two days and hold his hand in the car and make sure he ate something before he walked into Savile Row. That, she could do.

***

Paul had been pacing for twenty minutes. His bedroom at Cavendish avenue had become a circuit—window to bed to bathroom door to window again—and Linda was sitting on the edge of the bed watching him, biting the inside of her cheek.

"I'm going to be sick," Paul said.

"You're not going to be sick. Deep breaths"

"I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"You felt like you were going to be sick before the Wings Over America tour and you were fine."

"This is different."

"How is it different?"

"Because that was– this is—" he stopped at the window, looked out at the back yard, turned around. "What am I doing, Lin? What am I actually doing?"

"You're going to a meeting."

"I'm going to Manchester Square. To meet John. To discuss a tour that I’ve apparently agreed to —"

"You did agree to it."

"I know I agreed to it, that's the — oh, God, what have I done?!”

"Paul." Linda patted the bed beside her again. Again, he didn't sit. "Listen to me. Nothing is set in stone yet. You've signed a contract, yes, but there's been no public announcement, the document hasn’t even been notarized. Nobody knows anything except the people invited today. If you go to this meeting and it's a disaster, if you walk in there and it's immediately clear that this is not going to work, you can walk back out again and we sort it quietly and nobody needs to know."

He took a long, deep breath. "You're right," he said. "You're right. It's not like there's been any announcement. I can still—we can still backtrack if we need to."

“That's what today is for.” Linda echoed the talking points they’d been repeating to themselves for the past few days. “If John backs out, or makes a scene, or decides he's changed his mind—we can all still walk away. No harm done."

"Right," He repeated, nodding, “no harm done.”

Except, yes harm done. Because he’d already been through so many emotional gymnastics to justify his being here, already dared to imagine what this might look like, what it might mean. That wasn’t something he could just turn off and shove away if today didn’t go as planned. He felt sick simultaneously hoping it would all fall through and nauseated by the thought that it might.

There was a knock at the door and Eastman peaked his head in. He looked between Lind and Paul, assessing. "How are we doing in here?"

"Alright," Linda said, at the exact same moment Paul said, "I'm going to be sick."

Eastman chuckled to himself and then came in properly. He sat down in the armchair by the window, unhurried. He poured two glasses full of scotch and handed one to Paul, keeping one for himself. Linda rolled her eyes and poured herself a glass too.

"The deal is solid, Paul. You know that.” Eastman tried to console, swirling the brown liquid in circles. “There's nothing in that room today that should worry you."

“I know.” Paul nodded, chewing on the nailbed of his middle finger.

What he didn't have the heart to explain to Eastman, or to Linda, was that the deal wasn't what he was worried about. That the deal had never been what he was worried about. He'd been fine with the deal for weeks, had been fine with whatever Eastman and Bergstein had finalized for them. He’d been fine even through the moment this meeting had been scheduled and they’re travel to London yesterday. It wasn’t until this morning that the reality of it had landed on him like a ton of bricks: that in a half hour he was going to walk into a room and John Lennon was going to be in it.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen John in person. He'd been trying to remember for weeks, actually. Some awkward, unplanned visit in '77, maybe. Maybe earlier. It had been long enough that the thought of it had taken on a slightly surreal quality. John had existed for him for three years as a spectre, and today that spectre was going to materialize into an actual person standing in an actual room and Paul was simply not prepared for that. He'd been trying to prepare for it for weeks but he was not prepared because how was he expected to prepare for that?

The weeks following the signature, if anything, had been worse than the six weeks of negotiations. He’d been unable to sleep, unable to eat. He'd thought their negotiations had him worked up, but without negotiations to keep his mind busy, he'd gone almost crazy.

At least during the negotiations there had been something for him to do. John’s amendments to review, clauses to object to, counter-proposals to draft. His mind had been completely occupied. Now the contract was signed and this meeting was scheduled and there was nothing left to negotiate and Paul had found himself at loose ends in a way he hadn't been since he couldn't remember when.

He'd started jogging. Bloody jogging. Every morning before the kids were up, out along the lanes around the farm in the grey Scottish dawn, just to have somewhere to put the energy, because the roof was finally finished and he couldn’t have been less pleased. He'd started looking at other things around the farm that needed fixing: the guttering on the east side, a section of fence that was sagging, and Linda had gently suggested, after being woken up to the sound of power tools at six in the morning, that perhaps he should find a different outlet.

He and John still hadn't spoken since the phone call where John had signed. Since then, everything had gone through their lawyers. Harvey Steinberg to John Eastman all, formal and efficient, and Paul couldn't say for the life of him why he couldn't just pick up the phone and call. Hey, so we're about to spend three months together, isn't that completely cracked—it wasn't a hard call to make, theoretically. But the longer they went without speaking, the harder it got to be the one to break, and anyway they had people for this now, apparently.

JOHN
John had been quietly, privately convinced that something would go wrong at the airport.

Nothing dramatic, just a quiet intervention from the universe, maybe. Some bureaucratic snag, some immigration issue, some holdover from the drug convictions and the many deportation attempts that would manifest at JFK as a polite but firm suggestion that Mr. Lennon might want to reconsider his travel plans. He'd spent the cab ride to the airport half-expecting it.

But nothing happened. They’d checked in seamlessly and were shown to the gate without incident. The plane even departed on time, which even John found hard to believe.

He sat in his seat and watched New York disappear beneath the clouds and thought: well. That's that then.

Before he’d left for London, John had done one last thing he hadn't told anyone about. He took the contract down to the copy shop on 71st Street himself, without Fred, wearing a large hat he felt stupid in, and had two copies made. One for his files. One for the drawer.

The original went back to the lawyers that afternoon, and one copy went in his filing cabinet. The other copy went in the left-hand drawer of his study desk, underneath the legal pad with Harvey's notes, which he locked.

He and Yoko had been trying. That was the word for it, trying. More dinners together, more evenings in the same room, more of the ordinary routines of a marriage that they’d been neglecting as of late. It was… fine. It was better. He thought so at least. He wasn't entirely sure. She had been smiling at him more.

When Yoko was in her studio or when Sean was with Helen and the apartment was quiet, he sometimes went to his desk. He’d unlock the drawer and take the contract out.

He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He'd read it fifty times during the negotiations. He knew what it said. But he'd sit there in the study in the late afternoon light and read through a clause, or look at the city list or just skip to the last page and look at the signatures. Usually he'd get a stomach ache within about five minutes, then slam the drawer shut, lock it and go make tea and try to think about something else.

On the day before they’d left for London, he went to the drawer and it wasn't locked. He stood there for a moment, looking at it. He was fairly certain he'd locked it, and for a horrifying moment he was worried he hadn’t put it back. But when he opened the drawer, the contract was still there, exactly where he'd left it, nothing obviously disturbed. He locked it again, more carefully this time, and went to find Fred, who was in the kitchen doing something industrious.

He moved the copy to a different location the following morning, just to be sure.

Then he packed his bags.

The flight was longer than he remembered, which made sense given that he hadn't done it in years. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be that suspended, all that open sky, all that distance, nothing to do but sit. He'd been in his Dakota bubble for so long that the sheer openness of being thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic felt a bit scary. He watched Yoko sleep and tried to read his book and didn't sleep at all.

They landed at Heathrow at seven in the morning.

It hit him before he'd even cleared customs. The accents around him in the terminal, the gray, flat light casting in through the airport windows, the sound of the tannoy announcements in a voice that was properly English, not the nasal New York accent he'd been hearing for years. The sum of all of it loosened something in his chest. He took a deep breath- he was home.

The car was waiting for them at arrivals. John got in the backseat next to Yoko, and stared out the window as London flew by. The narrow streets, the brick face terraces, the grey-gold light of an early London morning, it was all so achingly familiar.

And then he smelled it, wafting through the open car window, faint, but just strong enough to make his mouth water: vinegar and hot fat. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd told the driver to stop. He was out of the car before Yoko could say a word.

It was a fish and chip stand on a corner that had probably been there since before the war. There was a man in a white apron tending the fryer. The smell hit him properly as he got close, vinegar and salt and hot oil, and his stomach did something embarrassingly enthusiastic.

"Large chips," John said across the counter. "Salt and vinegar."

"Right you are, love," the man said, without looking up.

John stood on the pavement and waited. People who didn't understand England called this kind of weather miserable, but John knew better. There was nothing quite like a hot order of chips on an overcast morning. A bus went past, and the specific red color of it kicked something in his chest. Two men in suits were having a disagreement outside a newsagent, and an older woman tried to walk a dog that clearly had no interest in walking. Somewhere nearby, a siren– not the two-tone wail of New York but the rising warble he'd heard growing up through his bedroom window. It wasn’t Liverpool, but it was England.

"Here you go, love."

John took the paper parcel. It was warm through his fingers immediately. He ate standing up, chips burning the roof of his mouth, at seven in the morning, not caring. He licked the salt off his fingers between each one like he used to as a kid. The vinegar stung a small cut on his thumb that he'd forgotten he even had, something from picking up Sean's train track last week. He barely noticed.

"John," Yoko called out from the car window.

"Just a minute," he said, then crumpled the newspaper into a ball, threw it away, and got back in the car.

"They just don't do it like that in the States," he said to himself, readjusting his jacket around his seatbelt.

Yoko looked out the window at the sky, "I'd forgotten how dreary it is here," she said. "I'm glad we left."

John’s smile faded as he looked out his own window. He didn’t say a thing.

And then after around 20 minutes, they turned a corner and he saw the street sign for Cavendish Avenue. They didn't even go down it, for God’s sake, just passed it by, the sign visible for only a second through the window, and then it was gone. But it had been enough to ruin his mood. John immediately felt something shift inside him, all the giddiness of the fish and chips and the London morning evaporated and the reality of why he was here and what was waiting at the end of this car journey sank back in. He hunched back into his seat and stared at his hands.

Yoko glanced at him but said nothing.

He was going to sign whatever they put in front of him today, he'd decided that somewhere over the Atlantic. It was clear now that there was no going back. He'd convinced Yoko to come, he'd signed the contract. He'd won this standoff, he supposed, but somehow he'd also lost it. He wasn't entirely sure there was a difference anymore.

The car pulled up outside the hotel on Savile Row and John looked at the building and thought: Paul is somewhere in this city right now.

In a few hours they’d be in the same room. The thought made him sick.

He got out of the car.

Paul

EMI House on Manchester Square smelled the same.

That was the first thing Paul noticed, stepping out of the car and into the building. There was that particular smell, old carpet and new paint and old cigarette smoke that lit up a deep and specific part of his brain. He'd walked through this building hundreds of times, he knew every inch of it. Every corner. He knew the sound that shoes made on the floor. He knew which step on the staircase creaked. His body remembered all of it.

Eastman was with him. Linda had stayed at the hotel, as agreed, had sent him off with a kiss on his cheek and an encouraging squeeze of his arm, and Paul had climbed in the car feeling like a man walking towards death row.

When they arrived, a receptionist Paul didn’t recognize showed them upstairs to the room they’d be using. He’d made sure they arrived early so that he wouldn’t have to walk into a room with John already in it. That would have been far too much for his frayed nervous system.

The conference room was on the second floor. It had a long table with large windows overlooking the street. He remembered this room- he could see the staircase through the open door, the one they'd hung over the banister of, which felt simultaneously like just yesterday, and an entire lifetime ago. He felt his heartrate kick up and took a deep breath and made himself look at the table instead.

The team of Apple lawyers were already there, two of them with folders, and a mousey notary in the corner with his stamp. There was a woman from Apple legal who smiled at Paul and gestured to a seat, and near the window, a young man in a dark suit and a yarmulke, examining the contract. Since when had he lost track of who worked for them? There was a time he knew everyone’s names, and their mother’s names, and their children too.

Paul sat down carefully and rocked the swivel chair back and forth, and back and forth. His eyes kept flicking up at the door. He looked at his watch.

"He'll be here," Eastman said quietly, just loud enough for Paul to hear.

"I know," Paul breathed.

He straightened the pens in front of him so that all their tips aligned. He looked out the window at Manchester Square, at the treetops swaying in the breeze, at a woman crossing the green with a pram. It struck him all at once how this was just an ordinary Tuesday morning in London to everybody else. Completely unremarkable in every way.

Then he heard the elevator and his heart rate skyrocketed.

He heard voices in the corridor, one he didn't recognise and one he very much did, saying something about the lift being slower than he remembered. Paul's hands went very still on the table in front of him. All he could hear was the thudding of his pulse in his eardrums.

Then the door opened and John walked in.

Three years collapsed into nothing. That was the thing about John in the flesh, no photograph had ever managed it, the exact density of him, the way he rearranged air in a room. Paul had spent three years with a flat version of John, John on a page, John in a quote, John reduced to grain in column inches, and now here was the actual one, breathing, occupying space, close enough to touch if Paul had been insane enough to reach across the table. He looked older. He was wearing a dark jacket over a white shirt, glasses, his hair longer than Paul expected, going soft and curling at the collar. He looked… good.

He looked good and Paul's whole body had registered it before his brain could even process what was happening, some animal part of him sitting up, going there he is, there he is, like it had been waiting the entire time for exactly this moment, but had just been clued in.

John crossed the room and sat down on the opposite side of the table, which felt faintly absurd, the two of them across from each other like opposing counsel. He was looking everywhere but Paul, which Paul tried not to read too much into.

The lawyers shuffled their folders and papers, which Paul was grateful for. It gave him somewhere else to look.

John glanced around the room, taking it all in.

“Harvey sends his apologies," John said, conversationally, to no one in particular. Paul looked up. "His daughter's bat mitzvah. Couldn’t be helped.” He leaned slightly toward the young man in the yarmulke by the window, "You understand."

The young man blinked as an odd silence settled over the room. Nobody, it seemed, was sure whether this was supposed to be a joke. The young man smiled awkwardly and looked down at his folder. Eastman cleared his throat. Paul shot his hand over his mouth to stifle a nervous giggle because of course—of course—John had been in the room for ninety seconds and was already making everyone deeply uncomfortable, and Paul was the only one in the room who found it funny.

"Lovely service, apparently," John added, when nobody spoke. "She read beautifully." He still didn’t look at Paul. "So one of the Apple lot's signing for me today," John went on, oblivious to the general discomfort in the room. "That alright with everyone?"

"That's fine, John," Eastman said.

"Wonderful family, the Steinbergs."

"I thought it was Bergstein," Paul said, looking up at John.

John’s eyes snapped to his. Paul felt his stomach clench and then go hot. His pulse banged in his ribs.

"It's both," John finally said after a second too long, "It's hyphenated."

"Ah." Paul nodded, pretending that made any sense whatsoever, then quickly looked down, breaking the eye contact, because if he didn't, his heart might genuinely crack one of his ribs.

Eastman cleared his throat again, and straightened his folder. He stood, passing documents around to each party present. "For the record," he said, "we're here today to finalise and execute the touring agreement between the two parties. The contract provides for twenty-five dates across Europe and North America commencing September the fourteenth, billing as Lennon and McCartney, an equal division of the setlist with allowance for solo material, the recording rights as set out in clause fourteen—"

"For fuck’s sake," John said.

Eastman stopped dead.

"I mean, come on. We've all read it," John continued, looking at the document rather than at Eastman. "Fifty bloody times. I could recite it, bet Paul could too. Your man in the corner there could probably recite it and he only got here this morning." He turned a page, then looked up over his circular glasses when nobody said anything. "Sorry, sorry, so sorry," he mimed the act of a much more meager man, bowing his head repeatedly, “Go on, then. Mister Lawyer, sir.”

Paul pressed his lips together very hard and concentrated on the table. For christ’s sake, John was right, that was the maddening thing, John was completely right. Everyone in the room had read it fifty times, himself probably closer to one hundred, and were sitting here, listening to a recitation of it purely for ceremony, and only John would have the nerve to say so out loud in a room full of lawyers and somehow not get thrown out for it. Only John.

"Be that as it may," Eastman said, with the tone of a patent man dealing with an obstinate child, "I'm obligated to confirm a few points before we proceed." He went on to recite the rehearsal schedule, the accommodation terms, the expense provisions. John listened to all of it with the expression of a man being read his last rites, occasionally nodding, once muttering "thread count" under his breath in a very serious way that nearly finished Paul off entirely.

The documents went round and Paul read without reading. He knew every word of the thing but he read it anyway because it gave his eyeballs somewhere to be that wasn't across the table at John fucking Lennon,

Across the table, John was reading too, or at least, appearing to read.

Paul decided to sneak a look.

John's nose was exactly the same, that downward curve Paul could have drawn from memory. His hair had thinned a little on top, Paul noticed this and felt an unexpected pang of tenderness about it, though the soft curl of it at the sides more than made up for it. His glasses were the exact same. The set of his mouth, too. His hands holding the document, which Paul knew, which he had watched form chords and hold cigarettes and gesture wildly and a few times, a long time ago, do other things he was absolutely not going to think about in a conference room in Manchester Square.

He tried to read the mood off him, trying to work out what this was. Were the jokes because John was in a rare good mood, that this was the real thing, and John had actually come here to sign? Or were the jokes just a sign of John holding back, waiting to spring some objection at the last possible second the way he'd done a hundred times before, blowing up a deal just to prove he could. Paul couldn't tell. He'd never been able to tell, not really, not with John, who could be perfectly easy right up until the floor dropped out.

Then John looked up and their eyes caught.

The moment might have lasted less than a second. John's face did the thing it did when he'd been caught, his jaw set slightly forward, a small lift of the eyebrows, an almost imperceptible flush high on his cheeks. Paul recognised it from ten thousand recording sessions and press conferences and the back of vans, and here it was again, six feet away.

John looked away. Then Paul did too.

His face was burning. He hoped to God it didn't show.

He thought, with some surprise: he's not as rancid as I expected. He'd built a version of John over three years, someone prickly, defended and ready for a fight. This John was making inappropriate jokes at a notary and going pink when their eyes met. This John looked tired and funny and almost shy.

Paul didn't know what to do with that. He didn't know what to do with any of it. He sat very still and breathed and waited for the part of him that had been screaming since the door opened to please, please, quiet the fuck down.

"Final signatures," Eastman said eventually, sliding a clean copy to the center. "Both parties."

Paul took a deep breath, then signed. He slid it across.

John looked at it for a moment. Just a moment. Then he picked up his pen, a battered thing, the kind you bought in a pack of ten, and paused.

Here it is, Paul thought, his stomach dropping. He's going to bottle it. He's going to make a scene.

"Should I sign as Johnny Silver," John said, "or will that not hold up in court?"

Paul laughed—out loud, helpless, pure relief flooding through him so fast it came out as a sound which he quickly tried to disguise as a cough.

"Terrible," he managed to get out between coughs. John looked pleased with himself.

"I didn't even check whether you'd signed it Ramon," John smirked, examining the page. "Could've caused loads of trouble."

“Ramon only signs where I tell him to," Paul said, unable to help himself but play along. "Very obedient." A flick of John’s eyes up to Paul’s before they landed back on the contract.

"Bit of a pushover, your Ramon."

"He knows his place. Unlike some.”

John’s mouth curved up, but he stopped it by biting the inside of his cheek.

The notary looked between them, baffled. Eastman too. The young man in the yarmulke had given up all pretense of reading his copy. Everyone was staring at them.

Then John signed his actual name. The notary stamped it. And that was that.

The lawyers began gathering their things. The Apple lawyer exhaled quietly. Someone offered tea, and Paul said yes, and John said yes, and they sat at opposite ends of the conference table while tea was arranged and the room emptied, one by one, lawyers and strangers filed out while Paul stayed seated, and so did John. Eventually the last one left, and the door clicked shut.

Paul wrapped his hands around his cup. His heart was still going so hard he was half convinced John could hear it from across the table. The room felt enormous suddenly, and also far too small. Now nothing between them at all, no lawyers, no notary, no buffer. Just them, which was a situation Paul had forced himself to stop picturing somewhere around 1977 because picturing it had become unbearable.

He cleared his throat. It came out wrong.

"So that's it then," John said. "We've gone and done it."

"Seems we have."

"No backing out now. There was a man with a stamp."

"Very official."

"Very," John said, waggling his eyebrows. "Wouldn't cross him if I were you."

Paul laughed, then stopped himself with a sip of tea. He was aware of being almost unbearably careful of every word, every movement, the exact angle of his own body, as though the wrong gesture might give the whole thing away, might let out the thing he'd kept lidded for years, which had woken up the instant John had walked through that door and was now roaring to life inside of his chest.

John leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the table and looked at Paul properly for the first time. Paul felt his face go hot again and shook his hair out, an old nervous tic.

"You signed first," John said. "The contract. You signed it first."

Paul swallowed. "I did."

"Hm."

Just that. Hm. Loaded with God knew what. Paul wanted to ask, wanted to know exactly what that hm meant. He didn’t dare.

"You signed second." Is what he came up with. Very clever.

"I signed under duress."

"We were on the phone."

"Like I said. Duress. I was in a hurry."

"In a hurry." Paul said.

"Furious hurry," John said. "I was very angry at you."

“Angry?”

John considered this. "I've forgotten about what," he said.

That gave Paul pause. He hadn’t known John had been angry. He’d assumed… what had he assumed? That John was at least a little excited. He’d taken him at his word, was the thing. All those months of quotes in the press, Paul had dismissed them to Linda as calculated, but somewhere in there he’d also just… believed them. And then when John had signed while Paul was on the phone, the overeagerness of it; Paul had filed all of that under John being excited—conflicted— but excited. At least a little bit.

“What were you angry about?” Paul said.

John looked at him.

“I just said I’ve forgotten.”

“Right.”

"But it was substantial."

“Hm,” Paul said.

“Hm,” John agreed.

Paul looked at him and cocked his head, trying so hard to read him, to get underneath the jokes to whatever was actually happening, this man he'd spent years arguing with inside his head on nights he couldn’t sleep, who was now sitting across the table with his legs stretched long out in front of him, careless, making Paul's chest hurt in a way that was deeply inconvenient, not to mention uncomfortable. It wasn't anger, was the thing. Whatever this feeling was, it wasn't anger, and, he was beginning to understand, it never really had been.

Paul laughed then. Couldn't help it, it was all too weird. The two of them, somehow here, somehow doing this. John almost smiled, caught it, looked out the window instead.

"They should take that thing down," John said, out of nowhere. "It's embarrassing."

"Hm?" Paul looked up.

"In the corridor." John nodded toward the door.

"Oh." Right. He'd seen it on the way up, the four of them over the banister, impossibly young. "Right."

"God," John said. "Look at us."

"We were children."

John squinted at it and turned his cup slowly on the table. "Idolizing something that's dead. Walking past it like it's a shrine. People should learn to move on." He looked out the window. "That's the whole problem after all, isn't it? With all of this nonsense. Nobody can just… move on."

Including us, Paul thought, but he didn't say it.

"But here we are," he said instead. "Playing along."

John hummed in agreement. Drank his tea. "They've redone the place," he said, after a moment. "It's worse. It used to have some colour to it. Some personality. Now it's all—" he gestured around the room, "—beige. Everything's bloody beige."

Paul smiled a little to himself, because he'd thought exactly the same thing walking in, and of course John had noticed too.

"It's a conference room, John," he said, placating.

"It's a tragedy."

“It’s just one room.” He tried again.

"What happened to those green chairs," John said, ignoring him entirely. "You remember the green chairs? Horrible things. I have a memory of being hungover in a green chair in this exact building."

Paul didn't remember any green chairs, but he didn't say so, because John had gone off now, properly off, talking about the chairs and the carpet that used to be here and the man who used to run reception whose name he couldn't remember but who allegedly had a glass eye, and Paul just… watched him.

He was too busy being struck, all over again, by how strange this was. That he was sitting in a room with John. That John was complaining about furniture. The world had circled the sun several times and somehow it had delivered the two of them back to where it all started, in a conference room on Manchester Square, John with his feet up, gesticulating as he talked, and Paul sitting across from him with his chest hurting and his tea going cold, watching the man he'd spent the better part of his life loving and arguing with and missing, and never mentioning a word of it to anyone.

It felt like the most ordinary thing in the world and at the same time, completely ridiculous.

"—I mean, it was never that nice to begin with, I suppose," John was saying. "Everyone remembers it like it was Abbey Road but it wasn't. It was freezing in winter, boiling in summer. Brian used to sweat through his shirts, I remember.” He stopped himself, looked around and then at Paul. "Good though. The rest of it."

And he meant the building, and the chairs, Paul knew he did. But he also meant all of it.

"Yeah," Paul agreed. "It was." Then he cleared his throat. "Right. I should—" He stood, because if he didn't stand now he wasn't sure he'd manage it later. "I should get going."

Because it was too much, all of it, and the maddening thing was that John seemed completely at ease with his feet up, waxing poetic about some green chairs that Paul was pretty sure had never existed,, all while Paul sat there with his heart trying to break a rib. John's ease only made it all so much worse, and made Paul feel like he was losing his mind.

John stood too. And then they were both just standing there.

This was the part that had always tripped him up, as long as he could remember, the not knowing what to do with his hands after a long time apart. They'd go shy with each other. Two grown men who'd shared hotel beds, suddenly unable to work out the simple mechanics of greeting or parting.

Paul felt himself lean very slightly forward, like some old muscle memory had kicked in to reach for a hug. But Paul caught himself just in time and turned it into extending his hand instead. But he felt alarmed at himself, at the impulse, at how naturally it had nearly happened.

John looked at Paul’s hand for half a second, then took it. And it was just a handshake. An ordinary handshake. Except John's hand was warm and solid and real in a way that did nothing to help the ache in Paul’s chest, and the contact went all the way through him like electricity, and Paul held on for exactly one beat too long before he made himself let go.

"June," John said.

"What? Oh right. The—what is it, the ninth?"

"Tenth."

"Tenth. Right." Paul nodded, too many times. "Only a few weeks away."

"Three," John said.

"I'll—yeah." Paul picked up his folder, just to have something in his hands. "I'll suppose I’ll see you then."

"You will."

Paul got to the door. Turned to look at him again through narrowed eyes.

“Bergstein,” he said.

John looked up from gathering his things with a blank stare.

“Interesting name,” Paul said, leaning against the doorframe. He folded his arms over his folder, all casual like he had all the time in the world. He was testing something. “What is that?”

“Jewish,” John said quickly. “Hence, the girl’s bat mitzvah.”

“Right,” Paul nodded very slowly, very seriously. “Sorry he couldn’t make it. Is he good?”

“You tell me,” John said. “He got me a pretty good deal.”

Paul tilted his head, conceding this.

“He was ruthless,” he said. “Like negotiating with you.”

John coughed into his fist and avoided eye contact.

“It’s funny.” Paul continued, glancing at the ceiling briefly. “Eastman didn’t know him. You’d think, in thirty years of practicing—”

“Harvey’s very private,” John said. “Keeps a low profile.”

“Is that right?” Paul squinted at him.

“Mhm.” John nodded and continued to avoid Paul’s gaze.

“Did you have to single out the poor Jewish kid?” Paul tried again, not wanting John to clam up.

“He understood it was a joke,” John said.

“He was being polite.”

John stopped to finally look at him.

"He laughed," he said defensively.

Paul cocked his head at John, shot him a pitying look. "No, John, he didn’t."

"You laughed." John added, giving him a look that made Paul’s chest feel funny again.

"That was nerves." He hurried to say, then, immediately embarrassed to have admitted to having any, he pressed on before John could pounce. “Time for some new material. That's all I'm saying."

"Get out of here," John said, pointing to the door, and Paul could have sworn there was a ghost of a smile there.

Paul raised a hand in surrender, then turned towards the door.

He made it all the way down the stairs, past the photograph of himself and the other three, out into the ordinary morning of Manchester Square, and only then, with a block in between himself and the building, did he finally let himself breathe.

****

John

"How did it go?" Yoko asked, the minute John walked through the hotel door.

She was at the desk by the window when he came in, papers spread in front of her.

"Fine," John said.

“I still think I should have come.” She said, capping a pen she had been using. “I don’t think you’re strong enough right now to be seeing him in person.”

“I told you, it was only lawyers and relevant parties.” He repeated what he’d told her that morning when they’d landed. He walked over to the edge of the bed, sat down and pulled off his shoes, one by one and threw them in a corner. Yoko wordlessly stood up and arranged them so that they faced the wall.

“Relevant parties.” She muttered under her breath, standing up to put away her documents. John chose to ignore this, instead plowing forward.

"We both signed, in the end. It’s done." He offered.

“Well.” Yoko said, and it was more of a statement than anything else. Well, wow, isn’t that something.

It had gone relatively well, he thought, which was inconvenient. He'd been half-hoping, right up until the end, for some last-second divine intervention. Maybe Paul would stand up and announce some impossible new demand that John could righteously refuse, or maybe Eastman would clutch his chest and go down with a heart attack. Anything. But God, it seemed, had a sick sense of humor.

Luckily, he'd held it together for most of the meeting, at least he hoped he had. He'd walked in and made some stupid joke and tried with every fiber of his being to appear entirely unbothered, but the truth was, the whole time he'd been vibrating like a struck tuning fork. Every cell in his body. He was honestly surprised the table hadn't been shaking.

"How did he seem?" Yoko asked, sitting down next to him on the mattress.

"Very composed," John said, rolling his eyes a little, “very protected. Couldn’t even count how many lawyers he had with him."

Which was a lie, or not a lie exactly, but not exactly the truth either. Because Paul had really only brought Eastman. The rest of the lawyers were supposed to have been there as neutral parties, but John didn’t have even one lawyer, which at this point in the game, felt woefully uneven.

"You were gone for a while," Yoko said, and it wasn’t an accusation, but it wasn’t a simple comment either.

"Lawyers." John shrugged. "You know how they are. Stamp this, witness that. Notary had to stamp every fucking page."

The truth was the meeting hadn’t been long at all. It was afterwards, when it was just the two of them that had taken up most of the time.

"So it's done," Yoko said.

"It's done." He repeated, not looking directly at her, picking at his fingernails.

She seemed to survey him for a moment, then went back to her papers.

John lay back on the bed with a huff and just stared up at the popcorn ceiling.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. That the entire time he’d been in that building he’d felt on the verge of fainting, his breathing shallow and his vision going black at the edges. That Paul had laughed at his terrible jokes and John’s stomach did the same annoying thing it always did when he made Paul laugh, flip upside down in an extremely undignified way. That, at the very end Paul had nearly hugged him and John’s stomach had almost fallen out the bottom. That Paul had basically admitted to having nerves, which was wild because Paul never admitted to having nerves, and maybe that meant they could communicate a bit better now, and maybe this wouldn’t be such a disaster after all. He didn’t tell her any of that, and the fact that suddenly, out of nowhere, he wasn’t feeling dread about June, that he was actually pathetic and had already started a mental list of songs he wanted to perform, and which of his new ones he could show Paul and how he knew it was all probably destined to blow up in their faces, but but God, when it was good, it was just so… good.

The worst part of all, the thing he’d never tell a soul, was that Paul had looked—God, he'd looked so fucking good, was the thing. Which was deeply unhelpful and extremely annoying information. He looked older, of course. Hell, everyone John knew was older now, but the difference was that age seemed to suit Paul in an infuriating way. For fuck’s sake, every age seemed to suit Paul, didn’t matter how many years passed, he just continued to look more and more… He wasn’t sure of what. Just more… Paul.

Sitting here now, though, watching Yoko try to relocate her reading glasses from the desk to the top of her own head where they had been the entire time, he could not for the life of him work out why any of it had surprised him.

When had he ever looked at Paul and not noticed how good he looked? Not once. Not in twenty-three years. He’d looked at Paul across a chip shop in 1957 and thought, unhelpfully, oh no, and had been done for ever since.

For fuck’s sake, had anyone ever looked at Paul McCartney and come away neutral? The man made it impossible, always shaking his hair out like a shampoo advert, gnawing on his thumbnail in that way that dragged your eyes straight to his mouth, doing the whole doe-eyed thing he’d been doing since he was fifteen and knew, knew, exactly what he was doing. It was practically a public safety issue. Someone should have outlawed it by now.

So: not a surprise. And yet John was deeply annoyed anyway. Ten years, sober-ish, a marriage and a kid later and none of it had put so much as a dent in the reflex. He genuinely did not know how he was going to get through three months– fuck, even longer with rehearsals– of this. He’d signed a legal document committing himself to being in small rooms with Paul McCartney for the better part of half a year, which, in hindsight, was an extremely stupid decision.

He was, quite suddenly and quite sincerely, glad Yoko was here.

“John. Do you want to eat or not.”

“Not.”

“You have to eat something.”

“I had chips.”

“That was nine hours ago.”

“They were very good.”

Yoko continued to drift around the suite asking him all sorts of things about what Helen had said on their phone call to Sean back home, had he seen where she’d put the thing, the other thing, not that thing—and John was fielding maybe one question in four, and badly, because the rest of him was still across London in a beige conference room, running the tape back.

That was nerves, Paul had said, going faintly pink, when John caught him laughing at the bat mitzvah thing. Had Paul actually been nervous? Or had he said it to smooth things over or manage John’s mood? Because if it was the latter, John objected strenuously, on principle. He did not need handling, that was the whole point of this.

Then there was that moment at the very end where he’d been quite certain Paul had nearly gone in for a hug. A fucking hug, which would have been a disaster of the highest order, and John found that mental image enormously funny. Paul McCartney, world’s most composed man, misjudging a handshake so badly he ended up with his arms wrapped round John Lennon in an EMI conference room. Not that John would have minded. But that wasn’t the point.

“You’ve gone somewhere,” Yoko said, waving a hand across his line of sight.

“I’m right here.”

“I asked you what you want for supper.”

“Whatever. You choose.”

Rehearsals would start in weeks. His stomach performed a slow, elegant swan dive.

He could not remember the last time he’d picked up a guitar with real intent. There was the one he’d brought from the apartment that he mostly used as a place to hang things. He’d have to actually practice. He’d have to choose songs, submit them, and then defend them, because Paul would have opinions—Paul had opinions about everything, Paul had probably had opinions about the setlist already and John would need to catch up—and the thought of sitting across a table workshopping arrangements with him for six hours a day made John’s palms go sweaty in a way that was, frankly, undignified for a man of forty.

And just like that the whole cocktail of nerves and dread was back, and it needed somewhere to go, and Yoko was the nearest available surface.

She had sat down, finally, just existing and turning pages of a book, breathing slow and steady that John found incredibly annoying.

"Can you just—" he started.

"What?”

"Nothing. Never mind."

Yoko looked at him for a long, unbothered moment, then stood up. She smoothed her skirt down and tied her hair back.

“I’m going for a walk,” she said.

“Great. Brilliant. Enjoy.”

“I will.”

The door clicked shut to leave John to sit alone in the enormous quiet of the hotel room. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw bursts of colors, and attempted, with limited success, to calm down.

Three weeks.

“Oh, god,” he groaned into the empty room.

Paul

Paul was, simply put, freaking out.

The cab back to Cavendish had been… less than ideal. His stomach had been doing something deeply unpleasant and his mind going at approximately twice the speed as usual, replaying the meeting on a loop, the way John hadn’t looked at him for five minutes, then the way he had looked at him when he finally did, and the flush of Paul's own cheeks that he was fairly certain had been visible from space. He'd been gripping the door handle without realising it for most of the ride.

He made it through the front door and into the kitchen, which smelled like something Linda had been baking. Banana bread by the smell of it. The afternoon light came in low through the window above the sink. It was all extremely lovely and ordinary and Paul stood there in the middle of the linoleum floor and felt like he was going to vibrate out of his own skin.

“How'd it go?" Linda said, without looking up.

He had no idea how to answer that, so he didn’t. Instead he dropped his bag to the floor and kept standing there. He was shaking his head back and forth very subtly when Linda looked up at him. She immediately registered his mood and closed the magazine, snapping to attention.

“What happened?” She demanded, and it was a demand, because she didn’t need to ask.

"I don't." Paul shook his head slightly. "I don't even know."

Linda stood up, her brows knitted together, and paced towards him cautiously.

“This was a mistake,” he said, as she approached. “This was a big mistake, I can see that now. I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I can see now how much of a mistake this is.”

Linda reached out to touch him, her face worried. “What happened, Paul? Did anything–”

“How am I meant to get through three months of this? I’ll be dead by October. I’ll simply expire.”

“Paul—”

“And for what? I don’t even need him. That’s the mad thing. I’ve got half an album written already, more than half, I don’t need a band for that, I did the whole first record myself, played every instrument, and it was rather good–” he was spiraling now, pacing back and forth in place as he chewed on one nail, “—so I’ll just do that again. McCartney II. That sounds good. I’ll call your Dad today and he’ll sort it. There’s got to be a way out, we haven’t announced anything, nobody knows—”

“Paul.”

”—I’ll go ring him now, he’s bound to be back at his hotel–”

“PAUL.” Linda put both hands flat on his chest, stopping him in his tracks. Paul snapped his gaze up to look into her pale blue eyes. “Breathe.”

He seemed to snap out of it, and breathed. She breathed with him, then pulled him into a hug. “Tell me what happened.” She said softly, in his ear.

“Nothing.” He sighed into her hair, and the worst part was, it was true. Nothing remarkable had happened, it had just been him and John in a room and he wished he could explain to anyone why that felt so scary. Linda pulled away from their embrace and looked at him quizzically for a long moment.

“What did he do?" she asked, her face spelling out confusion.

"He just– Christ—"

"Did he give you a hard time?"

"Not—no. Not exactly."

"Did he say something?"

Paul thought about John’s off-color comment to the jewish notary, then said, “No, not even."

“Hm,” Linda hummed, then sat down at the desk table near the door. Paul watched her and shrugged helplessly.

This was all so much worse than if John had just made a scene.

Because if John had been a bastard, if he'd been late, or rude, or pushed back and refused to sign, Paul would have something to point to right now that would explain this bone deep unease he was feeling. A real reason for the cold thing currently sitting on his chest like a dead weight, which he was beginning to understand, unhappily, as fear.

He was, simply put, scared. That was what this was. He'd been playing a very clever game for six months and somewhere in the last 12 hours it had stopped being a game and it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he couldn't actually do it.

He didn't know how to say any of that to his wife, who he'd kept in the dark for weeks about his real feelings, and whose father's contract he'd signed without consulting her, having convinced himself the whole thing would never actually materialise. So instead, he said:

"Well, to start, he showed up late." He began, even though John had been about three minutes behind, which for him was practically early. "And he made this joke—racial too, completely inappropriate."

"Mm," Linda said.

"And he was rude to your father. Just steamrolled him, wouldn't even let him get through the summary, swore at him, actually."

"Mm-hm."

"Overall, he treated the whole thing like a big joke. Like it was one big laugh. Glib about the contract, glib about everything, like he couldn’t care less either way."

Linda tilted her head slightly and looked at him funny.

"So, to be clear," she repeated, slowly, "he was a bit late, made an off-colour joke, and had no patience for lawyers."

"Yes.”

"Love," she said, with an air of confusion, "that just sounds like John."

And he knew that, he absolutely knew that. But these reasons were considerably more convenient than the actual truth, so he doubled down.

"Right, exactly, that's my point. There's been no growth. None whatsoever. He's exactly the same person he's always been and I got swept up in the momentum of the whole thing and now I'm looking at it clearly and it's off, Lin. It's too much. It was a lovely idea and the deal was solid but it's off."

Linda was quiet for a moment. The kitchen settled around them while something ticked. Outside, a car went past.

"What exactly did he say?" she said, again, no doubt sensing this sudden change of heart didn’t quite line up.

"I just told you—"

"No, Paul, you told me he was late and he swore at my dad." She folded her arms on the table. “Which he’s done a dozen times before. Something else is going on here. What did he say?"

Paul opened his mouth but nothing came out. The horrible truth was that he had forgotten most of what John had even said. He’d barely been listening, caught up completely in remembering what it was like to be in the same room with John. Reeling from the catastrophic familiarity of him. The minute John had entered the conference room, Paul had been fifteen years old again, transparent as glass, not a single thought in his head he could have shown anyone in that room, but he didn't say any of this.

"Look, Lin, he didn't do anything specific," Paul said, which was the closest to the truth he was going to get. "It's the whole thing. I don't think I can handle it. I'd forgotten how—difficult it is." Again, an almost-truth.

Linda looked at him then, really looked at him.

“Can you even do that?” she said, not unkindly. "Unsign the thing? I thought today was supposed to be the irrevocable signing of your life away."

"I don't know, Lin, I don't know. Fuck—" He was threading his hands through his hair again.

“Okay," she said, quietly, reaching for his wrist, “okay, okay, hey, look— would it have been more convenient for you to have realized this several weeks ago? Yes, of course. But at the end of the day, there’s been no announcement. Nothing’s public. Which means nothing’s actually irreversible.” She smoothed his coat down.

Paul nodded, chewing his thumb nail down to a stump. Linda reached for his hand and removed it from his mouth.

“Why don’t you call my Dad and ask what can still be done?”

Paul nodded.

***

"I need to talk to you about the contract," Paul said, as soon as Eastman picked up on the second ring. He had the phone angled between his ear and Linda’s so they could both hear.

There was a long pause in which Eastman was no doubt summoning patience he hadn't budgeted for today.

"Alright," he said finally. "Go ahead."

Paul glanced at Linda. She gave him a small nod.

"Right. This morning was—I mean, it was a bit mad, wasn't it?"

"Was it? I thought it went fairly smoothly, all things considered."

"Sure, but John was—he was quite the ass, wasn't he?"

There was a beat.

"He seemed a little distracted, sure, but I wouldn’t say–"

"He swore at you," Paul interrupted. "When you tried to go through the terms. Remember?"

"I've heard worse."

“Well, sure, but—“

"What's going on, Paul? I just walked through the door of my hotel room, what couldn't wait until dinner tonight that you needed to call me?"

"Right." Paul cleared his throat. "The thing is, well, the thing is I've had a chance to properly think now that it's signed and real and—" He stopped to look at Linda, who nudged him. He sighed. "I — I don't think it's going to work."

There was an interminable silence on the other end. Paul blinked. "Hello? Did you hear what I said?"

"No, I heard you," Eastman said, “you’re talking about the tour?”

"Yes, the tour.” Paul clarified.

"The one you agreed to this morning?"

"Just the same, listen — it's not about the terms, it's the whole thing. Today he was late and he was rude and he swore at you, which I dunno it just… it's off."

Eastman didn't respond.

"I think—" he continued, "—I don't know. I couldn't... I think I convinced myself it would work when it was all theoretical, but now it's real and I actually don't think it's a very good idea."

"Okay," Eastman said, very slowly, "listen, I want to make sure I understand. Because if you're telling me that the working relationship is the problem, that you've had a chance to assess the professional dynamic today and you have genuine concerns about whether the two of you can function in a collaborative environment, then that's a financial and publicity concern." Paul didn't say anything.

"But if you're telling me that you're getting cold feet and want to back out of a deal that could potentially earn us hundreds of millions of dollars…"

"The first one," Paul said, glancing at Linda, "obviously the first one."

"Ok," Eastman said.

"He swore at you!”

"Look," Eastman said, breezing past this, "from a purely legal standpoint, you have a valid contract. Both parties signed in good faith, it was properly witnessed and notarised this morning. The deal is solid, the terms are fair — you know that, you negotiated them. Walking away now is not without consequence, even with the annulment clause."

Paul and Linda locked eyes.

"The annulment clause?" Paul asked, “what annulment clause?”

There was a quiet sigh on the other end.

"I had a feeling this might happen. Which is why — Don't —" he cut off Paul's small noise of indignance, "— Which is why I included an annulment clause. Forty-eight hours from the notarised signing. It's a swift exit, and all perfectly legal."

"Well that sounds perfect," Paul said, looking at Linda with wide eyes.

"But didn't you say, Dad, that backing out would still have consequences?" Linda piped up.

"Oh hello, there, darling —" Eastman said, then "— yes. Reputational, mostly. Nothing catastrophic. But if this gets out, Paul, you’ll absolutely never hear the end of it.”

“Well it’s not going to get out, the only people who know about it were in that room today and half of them signed our NDA just for the privilege to stand there.” Paul said, chewing on a nail.

“It’s not going to get out!” He repeated when Eastman didn’t immediately reply.

"I can have it drawn up tonight. You'd have until Thursday morning."

Paul looked at Linda, who cocked her head as if to say, not too bad.

"Paul."

"Yeah?”

"Do you want me to draw it up?"

Paul stood in the hallway with the phone in his hand and the clock on the wall ticking and Linda next to him, listening, and John somewhere across the city, probably napping, probably completely fine, completely at ease, completely—

"You should talk to him," Linda said, covering the mouthpiece and speaking just loud enough for him to hear.

"You’re father’s just said he can annul the signatures—"

"I know, but — just, I think you should, you know? Talk to him. You owe him that much. Before anything gets drawn up."

"Paul? Are you there?" Eastman, down the phone line. Paul looked at Linda and she removed her hand. He cleared his throat.

"I think I—” he looked back at Linda for a brief second, who nodded at him again, “don’t do anything yet. I– I need to talk to him first.”

"To John?" Eastman asked.

"Yes."

"Well, you don’t have long. Would need to be today."

"Alright then, today." Paul agreed. "Yeah. I’ll go over there, talk to him.”

"If that’s what you think is best.” Eastman said.

He looked at Linda one more time, and she nudged him.

“Right– yeah. I think so. Yeah.”

“I’ll be up," Eastman said. "Call me once you've talked.”

An hour or so later, Paul was standing in the hallway with his coat on, calling a cab. It had started to rain, he could hear it against the kitchen window. Linda came over and straightened his collar for him, which she didn't need to do, but the gesture was a small comfort.

He had his conversation points prepared. All the legal language, all extremely practical. His plan was to present John with the annulment clause, tell him they both had forty-eight hours to sign, and that they could both walk away. Like it never happened.

He'd deliver it practically and logically and John would see the sense immediately, would definitely agree, probably even with relief, and they’d shake hands and that would be the end of a very strange six months.

John

John had never once got on an airplane without his guitar. Even these past five years, when the Gibson had more often served as a clothing rack than an actual instrument, it still came with him everywhere. He couldn't have imagined flying all the way across the Atlantic without it.

Good thing he had, too.

The minute he'd got back to the hotel he'd started spiralling. He hadn't picked the thing up in over a month. His calluses were softening. In three months he'd be standing beside one of the most relentlessly well-rehearsed musicians in the world, sounding like absolute shite if he didn't start practicing again.

So yes, he'd been playing guitar when he heard Yoko's voice from the other room. But the moment he recognised her voice, he slapped the strings dead.

He couldn't make out what she was saying. She was clearly not speaking to him, it was just her muted voice, then silence, then her voice again, and then footsteps. Something in him lurched when she appeared in the doorway. He had a bad feeling about this.

"Paul's here."

John stared at her.

"He's in the front room," she said, in case he hadn't heard. "Do you want me to send him away? He's very wet."

“He’s wet?” John took a second to process what Yoko was saying to him. Paul was here, in his hotel room, wet apparently.

“Dripping.”

John set the guitar carefully against the chair, then immediately reached for the legal pad on the bedside table and flipped it face down. Whatever half-finished ideas he'd been scribbling for the setlist, Paul didn't need to see them.

Paul was standing in the doorway. Rain had darkened his coat across the shoulders. His hair had collapsed into damp ribbons that clung to his forehead and temples. Water still hung from his eyelashes, catching the light in a way that was frankly indecent and John immediately wished that he hadn't noticed. Then Paul looked up and John's heart gave one stupid, embarrassing double skip.

He'd thought the meeting in the conference room today would have taken the edge off it, that a low dose might inoculate him. Exposure therapy.

It had not.

If anything it had done the exact opposite, because now his nervous system had recent data to work with instead of photographs and hazy memory, and apparently had decided that Paul's actual physical presence constituted some sort of cardiac emergency.

"Wasn't expecting you," John said, stopping behind the cheap polyester sofa and leaning against its back.

"No," Paul said. "Sorry. I just—" Paul rubbed the back of his neck as his eyes flicked briefly towards Yoko. "Erm–could we talk? Y’know, somewhere… private?"

"He could come in," Yoko said from behind John’s shoulder.

"It'll only take a minute," Paul said quickly. His voice was all charm on top, but John could hear urgency underneath. "Won’t keep you."

"It's no trouble.” Yoko reassured, taking a step towards him.

Paul’s eyes flicked behind John to the bedroom, where John’s guitar was visibly resting against the armchair. His eyes quickly moved off it and back to John’s face, which he had approximately one second to decide what to do with.

"Come on." John brushed past Paul into the corridor, still wearing only his socks."Follow me.”

***

The stairwell was cold and smelled of fresh paint, damp concrete and something faintly metallic. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, making the whole place feel vaguely like a hospital.

John shuffled down half a flight and stopped on the landing, then squatted down to sit on the steps. Paul looked around the concrete tube John had apparently decided was the venue for this conversation, and then looked down at him. He didn’t sit.

"Really?"

“Oh it’s not that bad.”

“I think I smell piss.”

"No you don’t,” John fished a pack of cigarettes from his pant’s pocket, then tapped it against his knee. “I came here to smoke earlier. Yoko thinks I've quit."

Paul shot him a skeptical look."Has she not smelled it on you?"

"Probably." John tapped a cigarette loose then placed it in his mouth. "She hasn’t mentioned it." He found matches in his other pocket, lit it and took a drag. He held the packet out. “You want one?"

Paul hesitated, glancing up and down the staircase, then, satisfied nobody was coming, he nodded. “Yeah, go on.” He extended his hand and stepped down until they were nearly eye level. John cupped the match between both hands and Paul leaned into the flame and John tried very hard not to notice the tiny drops of water that still clung stubbornly to his eyelashes.

Christ, if this wasn't the stupidest situation he'd ever found himself in.

As soon as it caught, Paul took a long deep drag and blew it from the corner of his mouth all slow, like. He coughed a bit, and then laughed at himself.

“It’s been a minute.” He said, examining the cigarette, “trying to kick it.”

"But you always come crawling back."

"Something like that."

And there they both were, in a hotel stairwell landing at half past nine in the evening, smoking illicit cigarettes. A long, tense silence settled between them, interrupted only by the buzz of the overhead lights, the occasional hiss of tobacco, and the rain tapping somewhere outside. John watched Paul from the corner of his eye and tried to read him. Something was off. He looked nervous, but not regular-nervous. He looked restless. His fingers kept shifting around his cigarette and his foot wouldn't stay still.

John frowned.

"So."

Paul looked over at him and didn’t answer, just took another pull of his cigarette. He rearranged his weight from foot to foot. John waited a beat. "You've come all the way over here."

Paul raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Oh... y’know, I was in the area." Paul looked down at his cigarette and smiled faintly to himself.

"You’re such a shit liar."

Paul laughed once through his nose.

"Bit harsh."

The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, and John didn’t reply.

"I just thought..." Paul began, then stopped. He shook his head. "I've just been thinking, that's all."

"About?"

Paul took another drag, buying himself a few more seconds.

"The whole thing."

"Riveting. And?"

"And..." Paul rubbed his thumb over the cigarette paper until it creased.

“And?”

"I don't know, I–"

“Out with it, Paul– Christ!”

"Fine, I don't think we should do it!" The words echoed down the concrete shaft, bouncing back towards them an awkward second later. Paul glanced up instinctively, as though checking whether anyone had heard.

"The tour," he added, unnecessarily.

“Oh.”

When Paul had turned up at the hotel, soaked through and asking for a private word, John had assumed this was about rehearsals. Something urgent and practical, like it always used to be. Paul couldn't leave those sorts of things alone once they'd got into his head. Not this. He cleared his throat and inhaled smoke deep into his lungs.

"Cold feet?” He muttered through his exhale.

"No, not cold feet." Paul was picking at his thumb, ash falling from his neglected cigarette.

John scoffed, then took another long pull. “It’s the definition, Paul. In the dictionary, there's a little picture of you."

"No, you see, I've thought about it properly, and–”

"You signed the thing this morning."

"Yeah? And, I’ve been thinking since then."

"Nine hours? That's not thinking, that is, that's cold feet." John looked at the concrete wall in front of him, blankly. Paul’s foot started to bounce.

"I got swept up in the back and forth, and now I'm looking at it clearly and I think it's—I think it's a mistake." Paul's ash fell unnoticed onto the steps. His foot was really going. "The kids need me. And the whole commitment is just—I can't do three months of it— and I know the deal is solid, I know that, and I'm sorry if it's disappointing, but—" he stopped. "It just feels a bit mad, y'know?"

"It is mad." John agreed, monotone.

He hated what his stomach was doing right now. Wasn’t this exactly what he’d wanted? Paul pulling out first? Paul admitting once and for all that he'd never actually meant any of it, that John had been right the whole time, that the whole six months had been a very elaborate bluff that had finally, inevitably, run its course? Wasn't that exactly what he'd been expecting since January?

So what the fuck was this feeling in this chest? He shook his head to clear it. Whatever it was, he did not intend to examine it here, in a hotel stairwell, in his socks, with Paul looking at him with his rain-damp eyes.

Paul looked down the stairwell, then back at the cigarette between his fingers, which had nearly burnt to the filter without him seeming to notice. When he finally spoke, his voice was much smaller than it had been a moment ago.

“It’s just not the right time.”

John let out a humorless laugh. Months of back and forth in the press and weeks of negotiating a contract, a flight across the Atlantic and it had just occurred to him that this wasn’t a good time. And the fool he was, he’d fallen for it, he’d let himself imagine it, picture it, he’d flown here for God’s sake, he’d convinced Yoko to come against her better judgement. He shook his head and ashed his cigarette over the railing.

"You're unbelievable, you are.”

"That's not fair, you—"

"No, you are, you're genuinely–" John was looking at him now, which was a mistake. "You get people on board, you get them excited, you get them to bloody well rearrange their lives—" He stopped. He could hear himself and he would not do that. He leaned back against his elbows and looked at the flickering tube overhead and breathed. He took a drag then let it out slow. "You know what? No. It’s fine. You don't have to explain," John said.

"John, I just want you to understand that–”

"Paul." His voice came out very even and he was proud of that. "You want out. Alright, fine. I’m not going to fight you on it."

"I thought..." Paul said, his eyebrows raised, clearly expecting more of a fight. He deflated a bit. “Right. Well, good.”

"Good." John nodded, eyes shifting anywhere but on Paul’s face. "I'd basically talked myself out of it anyway, if I'm being honest. Thought I'd go along since you seemed so set on it."

He said it and felt it leave his mouth and knew immediately it was the wrong note, too pointed to be genuinely indifferent. Neither of them said anything. Paul coughed a bit, then snubbed his cigarette out onto the banister, ash falling to the ground.

"Listen- Eastman put in a nullification clause," Paul said. "Forty-eight hours from the notarised signing. We’re well within the window. Nothing's been announced, nobody knows.”

This caught John’s attention. He figured there was still some way out, but he hadn’t realized it would be this easy. Had that been Paul's plan all along? Save a backdoor exit for the last possible second? Get John to fly to England, have him sign in front of god and lawyers, then nullify the thing nine hours later?

"So it just doesn't happen?" John clarified, eyes narrowed.

"Right."

"Grand," John said, shrugging. "That's—grand.”

He was not going to look at him. He was looking at the wall; there was a scuff on it at about knee height, something dark, a shoe maybe from somebody's hurrying and catching the wall. John looked at it and kept his gaze where he needed it. He smoked his cigarette.

He'd been thinking—and he was going to be honest about this at least in the privacy of his own skull—about what it would be like. Rehearsal rooms all had this very specific smell, it didn’t matter where you were in the world. Like timber, old carpet, and brass polish. Like warm dust under stage lights. He'd been thinking about that smell, and standing in a room with Paul, both of them with instruments, facing one another… Better to look at the wall.

"I thought you were over the moon about this," John said.

"Sorry?"

"The tour. I thought you were– you seemed very keen. All those quotes in the press." He kept his voice entirely straight. "I assumed you were beside yourself."

There was a long pause in which Paul went a bit pink. He shoved his hands into his pockets. His leg continued to bounce relentlessly.

"It’s possible I was playing it up a bit," Paul said, not looking at him.

"It’s possible?” John said. Paul wouldn’t look at him. Neither of them said anything for a long time.

"You'll be alright?" Paul finally asked, very carefully. "With cancelling?”

John looked at him then, because he couldn't not, because Paul had said it in that specific way, the one that meant John needed to see his face to know what he was really asking.

Paul's face was tired. He looked wet and tired and he was in his coat looking at John with the expression of a man who was… scared. He was scared. John felt his stomach loosen a fraction. John held his gaze as he thought about what awaited him back in New York.

The Dakota. Sean with the Nanny. He thought about what it actually meant to go back. The same view of the park, the long days full of nothing, the bread, the silence in the evenings when Yoko was in her studio and Sean was asleep and John was in the armchair and the city was going on without him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he finally said.

"You'd put things in place, maybe," Paul shrugged. "For the tour. I didn't want to—"

"I'm fine, Paul." And he was. He was completely fine. Whatever was happening in his stomach right now was none of his business. "I'd basically made my peace with it, to be honest.”

Paul hummed and his leg went faster.

He thought about how Paul had admitted to nerves, in the conference room. He’d gone all pink and flustered and tried not to laugh at John’s joke, and John had thought it’d meant something. Because Paul didn't admit to nerves. Paul performed confidence so well and so often that he forgot, sometimes, that it was just that, a performance. He forgot that underneath all the ease and the hair-shaking and the cloying warmth, there was a person who got frightened, who had called John in the middle of the night when he’d gotten too stoned and convinced himself their entire album sounded wrong. John had thought: he's scared and he's doing it anyway, which meant something, it had to mean something.

"Three months of what?" John blurted out, surprising himself.

“Huh?” Paul’s neck snapped towards him, his face confused.

"You said you couldn't do three months of this. Three months of what, exactly?"

The stairwell was very quiet while Paul’s leg bounced and he chewed at that nail. John made a very specific point of not looking at him. He watched his own cigarette instead, the slow business of it, the ash growing longer.

"It's just a lot," Paul said. "The whole thing."

"Right," John said.

He dropped the cigarette on the step and ground it out with his heel.

Paul straightened up, his weight shifting toward the stairs, and that was that. The conversation, such as it was, was over.

John stood. And they went without discussing it. Paul moved and John fell into step beside him and neither of them chose this, it just happened, the way it always had.

The corridor felt oddly soft after the stairwell, all carpeted with wall sconces and every noise slightly dampened. John's room was at the far end. They walked it without speaking, and John could hear a muffled television through somebody's door. Paul stopped just before it while John reached for the handle.

"I'll have Eastman send the nullification over in the morning," Paul said, and his voice sounded different now; cleaner and flattened out. All business. "Just sign it and send it back as soon as you can. Call if you have any questions."

Call if you have any questions.

John looked at the door handle, then back at Paul. He nodded.

"Right," he said.

"Right, well," one of Paul’s hands went into his coat pocket, and his other hand went out, which John genuinely hadn’t expected. “Sleep well.” John looked at it for a half-second then took it.

Paul's hand was warm and solid and John's nervous system could barely handle it. God, he’d hardly gotten used to the physical presence of Paul, much less physical contact.

Then, underneath the handshake, underneath the professional civility of it, something happened that made John want to die. This sudden and completely unwelcome sensation of no, wait, please don't go. It arrived without warning, with the force of a freight train. He hated it.

"You say goodbye–" John said, still holding his hand unwilling to let go, Paul laughed despite himself.

"And I say—" he started, then stopped. He looked at their joined hands then back up at John. "Goodnight, John."

John almost smiled.

"Night."

Paul turned and walked down the corridor back towards the elevator.

John stayed in the doorway.

He watched as the lift arrived without being called—someone coming up from below. The doors opened and a young man in hotel livery stepped out, head down, then looked up and stopped dead. He looked at Paul, then at John standing in the doorway at the end of the corridor, and his whole face went slack. Paul stepped past him into the elevator and gave him a friendly nod.

The young man swallowed and looked toward John who also gave him a nod.

Then the doors closed and John went inside.

Paul

The phone was ringing.

It was barely light out and the phone was ringing.

Paul lay for a moment as he slowly took in his surroundings. He was in his room at Cavendish, Linda was next to him, they’d thrown the duvet to the floor in the middle of the night so that he was tangled in the remaining sheet. He groaned as he sat up slowly, rubbing both eyes until he saw stars. The phone kept ringing and Linda made a disgruntled sound beside him that meant she was also awake and also unhappy about it.

He reached across her and picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" He croaked.

"Are you awake?" Eastman.

"No," Paul yawned.

"Get up and turn on the news."

"What time is it—" Paul looked at the clock. "It's half six—"

"Turn on the news, Paul. Now."

Something in Eastman's voice made him feel immediately and completely awake in the way that only bad news could manage.

"Alright, alright. Hold on." He set the phone down off its hook, climbed awkwardly over a half-sleeping Linda and swung his legs out of bed. Linda said something unintelligible that probably meant what's happening, stop it, come back to bed, and Paul whispered behind his shoulder that he didn't know and for her to go back to sleep, then went out of the bedroom and down the stairs in his bare feet.

He was halfway down the stairs when he heard it. The sound from outside was all wrong. Cavendish Avenue at half six in the morning was soft swishing cars and songbirds and occasionally someone's small child. Not this. Not this particular pitch and volume, this low dull roar of noise…

His veins went cold. He knew that sound. He'd known that sound since he was twenty-one years old. He'd come of age inside that sound, been deafened by it, been carried by it, had nightmares about it and then missed it and then been relieved when it stopped. He went to the front window.

The street was packed. Girls, women, maybe a hundred of them, pressed against the police barriers that were already going up, blue lights strobing against the walls of the houses opposite. Some of them crying, some of them screaming, some holding signs he couldn't read from this distance. There were cameras. A news van. Another news van. A reporter setting up with a microphone.

His stomach dropped clean through the floor.

He ran to the kitchen and lunged for the phone on the wall.

"Paul?" Eastman was saying. "Are you seeing it?"

"I'm seeing it," Paul said, staring blankly out the window. With a jolt, he thought he made eye contact with one of the girls and quickly stepped behind one of the walls.

"It's everywhere, Paul. On every channel. MTV picked it up at midnight— apparently someone leaked the full tour announcement and they've been running it on loop since two in the morning. All the dates. Both your names. The whole thing."

Paul walked closer to the window and watched a police officer ask a younger girl to step back from the barrier and thought, distantly, that he should probably close the curtains.

"MTV?" he echoed, his brain still lagging to keep up.

"And the BBC. ITV. It's in the papers too— I don't know how they got ahold of it so fast but it's in the morning editions. The Times has it on the front page."

“Jesus Christ.” Paul whispered to himself. Two girls on the pavement were unrolling a hand-painted banner: BRING BACK BEATLES, in enthusiastic, uneven letters. Paul stared at it. He gulped.

Linda appeared at the bottom of the stairs in her dressing gown, blonde hair loose and sticking up in the back. She was looking at him with an air of complete and utter confusion.

He just pointed at the window. Her eyes followed the path of his finger and one hand went to her mouth.

Paul held the phone to his ear and crossed to the television. Still in his briefs and a dirty tee shirt, he switched it on with the volume low, so as to not disturb James, who had come along for the journey, though given the noise from outside that was probably already a lost cause. Linda, always the forward thinker, went immediately to the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows and pulled the curtains shut, casting the room into half-darkness.

He paused on whatever news channel came up first, some BBC syndicate out of London where a news caster he half-recognised was speaking with the barely contained excitement of someone delivering the best news of their professional life.

Behind her, a graphic: LENNON & McCARTNEY. AUTUMN 1980. And the dates, all of them, running along the bottom of the screen like a ticker. London. Manchester. Glasgow. Dublin. Amsterdam. Paris. Hamburg—

The camera cut to a reporter on a London street. Paul could barely hear what he was saying, something about months of speculation being confirmed and millions of dreams coming true. Then the camera pulled back and Paul felt his stomach go to lead because the reporter was standing directly outside Cavendish Avenue, his own townhouse framed in the background, curtains now conspicuously shut.

Linda yelped and ran into the other rooms to close every remaining curtain in the house.

The camera cut again, this time to a girl in front of what looked like NEMS record shop somewhere in Liverpool, crying openly, saying she'd been waiting for this her whole life, she was only eighteen, she'd never seen them, her mum had seen them at the Cavern and now she'd get to too and she couldn’t believe it.

Cut. This time to a young man in Hamburg, very serious and dressed in all black, telling the camera in German that October the ninth was now the most important date in the history of music.

Cut. A crowd outside what Paul recognised as the Dakota, already, at whatever time it was in New York, people standing in the dark with their lighters raised.

The presenter again, back in the studio, holding up what was unmistakably a document. Paul went very still.

"What we can confirm," she was saying, with barely contained excitement, "is that copies of what appears to be a signed agreement between both parties began circulating late last night. The document, which bears the letterhead of both MPL Communications and Lennon/Ono Music, and what appear to be the signatures of both men, was first picked up by—"

"Paul," Eastman said, “Shit, this wasn't supposed to happen, nobody was supposed to know, we hadn't authorised any announcement, nobody in that room should have—"

"Fuck." Paul said.

"They’ve got the contract. Or part of it, it’s unclear. So far just the cover page, tour dates and the signature page has been leaked—not the full terms, as far as we can tell, just enough to confirm it's real." Eastman explained. "With both your actual signatures on it, Paul. There's no walking this back as a rumour."

"Fuck!" A bit louder.

"I have no idea how this got out. You’ve got to believe me.”

“Did someone see us?”

"I don't know. It may have started there but then someone with access to the document — we don't know exactly. Paul, it doesn't matter now how this happened–”

"It matters to me!"

"What matters," Eastman said, with extremely measured patience, "is what happens next. Because this is out. It's on the BBC, and unfortunately people believe the BBC." He exhaled. "I hate to even ask but—"

"John didn’t do this," he said before he'd consciously decided to, but once he’d said it, he found he fully believed it.

Whatever John was feeling after last night, whatever game they'd been playing for six months, whatever was underneath all of the back and forth and push and pull, John hadn't done this. John didn't want this out any more than Paul did.

"No," Paul said again. "He wouldn’t."

Eastman let out an audible sigh, like he didn’t fully believe him. "Then who?”

"I don't know." Paul pressed his fingertips to his forehead. "But it wasn’t him.”

“Alright, Paul. Alright.”

There was a long, loaded pause.

“Is there any way back from this?"

"Back from it how?"

"The annulment. We’re still within forty-eight hours. Is there still– can we still do something?"

"Paul, listen." Eastman's voice was slow and very careful. "Legally, yes. The clause stands until tomorrow morning. Nobody can force you to do anything."

"But…?" Paul hedged.

"But." And there was a long exhale. "You two have been building to something like this for six months. The press has been covering it for six months. And now it's out—not officially, not by you, but it doesn't really matter; it's everywhere, and your signatures are on television." He stopped. "The fallout from walking away now would be…”

"Unfathomable ," Paul finished for him.

"Catastrophic." Eastman agreed. “We have no idea who the leak is. Whoever it is might even leak the rest of the terms. Right now it’s just the announcement page with tour dates but it’s out and it's real and everyone can see that. If you deny it they’ll just force you even further into a corner.”

Paul was silent on the line. He was dragging a hand down his face, letting out a low guttural groan of anguish when Linda came back into the room and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Im telling you,” Eastman continued, “you walk away from this now, after everything—the story will be that you bottled it. That's the only story now. And John—whatever John decides—John will have been willing and you won't have been, and I don't think that’s what we want."

"I know. Fuck— I know!" Paul almost shouted.

Linda sat down beside him and began rubbing her hand slowly back and forth across his back, watching the television with her jaw set and her eyes absolutely on fire.

Outside, the crowd had grown.

On screen they'd cut to a man in New York who was weeping openly and saying he'd given up hope, this was a miracle, he never thought he'd live to see the day, blah, blah, blah

"What do I do?" Paul finally asked.

“First thing,” Eastman said, "you need to talk to John. Get on the same page before either of you does anything. Control the narrative—"

"Or we both deny it."

"That ship," Eastman said carefully, "may have sailed.”

“Christ– I just spoke with him yesterday!”

"So talk to him again! Find out where he is. Because if he goes one way and you go another—"

"It gets considerably worse."

"Considerably."

"Fucking hell." Paul looked at the blue lights still strobing across the ceiling, listened to the crowd outside his house gathered at half six in the morning because someone had copied a piece of paper with his name on it.

"Alright," Paul said.

He hung up.

Linda looked at him. She brushed his hair back and kissed his forehead.

"We'll figure it out," she said.

"Don't think we have much choice," Paul said.

From upstairs, small and confused: Daddy? What's that noise?

Paul looked at Linda and silently begged her.

"I'll go," she said, already standing.

LENNON AND McCARTNEY TO TOUR TOGETHER FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 1966

The London Times, May 30 1980

Joint venture announced; 25 dates across Europe and North America confirmed

In what music industry observers are already describing as the most significant announcement in a decade, John Lennon and Paul McCartney are to perform together on a joint touring venture beginning this autumn, it emerged late last night.

The tour, billed as Lennon & McCartney, will comprise 25 dates across Europe and North America between September and December of this year, concluding with a London finale on the 20th of December. The announcement, the source of which remains unclear, was first reported in the early hours of the morning shortly before this edition went to press.

The venture does not necessarily constitute a reunion of the Beatles, whose dissolution in 1970 remains one of the most litigated and acrimonious splits in the history of popular music. Neither George Harrison nor Ringo Starr are understood to be involved. So far, no statements have been issued by Lennon or McCartney's representatives.

The announcement has already prompted extraordinary scenes outside Mr. McCartney's London home in St. John's Wood, where a crowd had gathered by daybreak. Similar gatherings were reported outside the Dakota building in New York, where Mr. Lennon has resided since the early part of the decade.

The tour is to open at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, on the 14th of September, before proceeding through Europe, including dates in Amsterdam, Paris, and Hamburg, where Mr. Lennon will mark his fortieth birthday on the 9th of October. The North American leg begins in Miami on the 1st of November, culminating in a performance at Madison Square Garden, New York, on the 8th of December.

The commercial implications of the venture are considerable. Industry analysts contacted by this newspaper suggested that demand for tickets would be, in the words of one, "unlike anything seen since the Beatles played Shea Stadium in 1965."

The announcement comes after months of speculation, fuelled in part by interviews given by both men in which they spoke of one another in terms markedly warmer than had characterised their public relationship in recent years. Mr. McCartney, speaking to a journalist outside his offices in March, described Mr. Lennon as "the most naturally gifted musician I've ever met." Mr. Lennon, in a separate interview, said there was "nobody like" his former collaborator. Neither man confirmed at the time that any formal arrangement was under discussion.

The document circulating overnight, reproduced in part below, bears the official letterhead of both MPL Communications and Lennon/Ono Music, and carries what appear to be the signatures of authorised representatives of both parties. Its authenticity has not been disputed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MPL Communications and Lennon/Ono Music are pleased to announce that Paul McCartney and John Lennon will undertake a joint touring venture beginning in the autumn of 1980. Further details regarding dates, venues, and supporting musicians and ticketing will be announced in due course.

— MPL Communications, London / Lennon Ono Music, New York

MPL Communications & Lennon/Ono Music present ══════════════════════════════════════════

LENNON & McCARTNEY · AUTUMN, 1980 ══════════════════════════════════════════

— EUROPE —

14 SEP · London, UK · Hammersmith Odeon

17 SEP · Manchester, UK · Apollo Theatre

20 SEP · Glasgow, UK · Apollo Centre

24 SEP · Dublin, Ireland · National Stadium

27 SEP · Amsterdam, Netherlands · Concertgebouw

1 OCT · Brussels, Belgium · Forest National

5 OCT · Paris, France · Palais des Sports

9 OCT · Hamburg, W. Germany · Musikhalle

12 OCT · Berlin, W. Germany · Deutschlandhalle

16 OCT · Munich, W. Germany · Olympiahalle

19 OCT · Zurich, Switzerland · Hallenstadion

23 OCT · Rome, Italy · Palazzo dello Sport

26 OCT · Madrid, Spain · Palacio de los Deportes ──────────────────────────────────────────

NORTH AMERICA
1 NOV · Miami, FL · Miami Beach Convention Center
4 NOV · Washington, DC · Capital Centre
7 NOV · Philadelphia, PA · The Spectrum
11 NOV · Boston, MA · Boston Garden

21 NOV · Chicago, IL · Chicago Stadium
24 NOV · Toronto, Canada · Maple Leaf Gardens
26 NOV · Montréal, Canada · Montreal Forum
28 NOV · Ottawa, Canada · Ottawa Civic Centre
1 DEC · San Francisco, CA · Cow Palace
5 DEC · Los Angeles, CA · The Forum
8 DEC · New York, NY · Madison Square Garden

══════════════════════════════════════════

✦ FINALE ✦ 20 December · London, UK · Hammersmith Odeon ══════════════════════════════════════════

John

John had not slept.

He'd lain in the dark for a while doing a convincing enough impression of someone who might fall asleep at any moment, but around four he gave that up and moved to the armchair by the window. He’d been thinking about Paul. What else was new.

He made tea at six and drank it standing at the window, watching a taxi go past, watching a man walk a dog, and sighed. He was in the middle of thinking about nothing in particular—which was a lie, he'd been thinking about one thing in particular, or to be specific, one person, when the hotel phone rang. He lunged for it before it could wake Yoko.

"Hello?" he whispered.

"Mr. Lennon." Helen's voice. Low and steady, so as not to alarm him. "I'm sorry to call you so early. At least I think it’s early there. It’s late here. Anyway–”

“What is it? Is Sean alright?”

“Oh yes, Sean is fine. Sorry, no– I just–”

“Then what is it?”

“There are, uh, well, there are people outside the building."

"People." He echoed.

"A lot of people. They started arriving about an hour ago. It's—" a pause, "—quite a few."

"Helen, there are always people gathered outside," he said. "I live there."

“No, I know, of course. But I don’t know if–”

“Helen,” He interrupted, "keep Sean inside today. Ignore them. They'll scatter when they figure out I'm not home. Get some sleep."

“Er, ok Mr. Lennon. I will. Sorry to call like this, I just–”
“It’s alright, dear.” She was such a nervous one, he should really talk to Yoko about firing her. “Get some sleep.”

“Right, of course.”

He hung up and sat back down in the armchair. He’d spent most of the night in it, half-heartedly practicing songs he’d told himself he wasn’t looking forward to playing. The legal pad was still on the armrest. He’d apparently started a setlist at some point before Paul had shown. He didn’t remember doing it.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Before long, the phone rang again. He lurched awake. There was a small patch of drool on his chin. He wiped his mouth and felt his way to the phone. The sun wasn’t much higher in the sky; it couldn’t be any later than seven.

“Helen, I thought I told you to go to sleep.” He grumbled into the phone, rubbing his eyes.

“It’s me.” Paul.

John straightened up and cleared his throat.

“What’s going on?” Paul had come by last night to effectively snuff out a six month ordeal and told John to expect paperwork. Paul calling now, twelve hours later, could only mean one thing.

"Have you seen it yet?” Paul said.

“Seen what, Paul? It’s hardly daybreak.”

“Turn on the news,” Paul said, and John could hear the effort it was taking to keep his voice steady.

“Yoko’s asleep,” John murmured, “What’s happened? Just tell me.”

There was a pause. He thought maybe he could hear Paul grinding his teeth. John almost laughed. Christ, Paul could negotiate a contract worth hundreds of millions but could hardly spit out a sentence before seven in the morning.

“Paul, what’s going on? Out with it, now.”

“Well,” Paul hedged. “The thing is, well, with the contract, you see…”

“Yes?” John leaned forward even though Paul couldn’t see him.

“There’s no better way to say this.”

“What the fuck, Paul–”

“Shit, John— it’s out.”

“What’s out?”

“The contract, it’s out.”

“The contract?”

“Y’know, for the tour. The contract—someone’s got a hold of it, John. It’s been on MTV since midnight. It’s on the BBC now.”

“On the BBC? What the– you mean it’s been leaked?”

Paul took a deep breath and hissed it out between his teeth. “‘fraid so.”

John stood at the window with the phone in his hand and said nothing.

“John.”

“I heard you,” John said, his voice even.

“Are you—”

“I heard you, Paul.”

Paul, John knew, was trying to read him right now, he could feel it through the phone. He said nothing to help him.

“Do you know how it got out?” Paul said, very carefully.

“No,” John said.

“Right,” Paul agreed, too quickly for John’s liking. “You’re sure?”

“I’m just finding this out now, Paul. How would I have any idea how it got out?”

“I dunno, but somebody does, the notary, maybe? Bergstein—“

“Me?”

“What? No. God— no, John—“

"You were thinking it," John said.

"I didn’t say that.”

“You were about to. Go on. Say it.” John stood up then, he couldn't sit down anymore. “You were working your way around to it very politely, but I'm too tired for that right now. So say it."

"I don't think you did it," Paul said. A beat. "But I had to—"

"Ask. Yeah." John rubbed a hand over his face then moved to the window and massaged his brow. "But, for the record, I had no interest in getting out. None whatsoever. If it were up to me, the forty-eight hours would have passed quietly, and the whole thing would be over by now, but apparently that was too much to ask — so here we are."

"Alright, alright— I believe you!"

"Good. Because I'm telling you the truth and I'd quite like someone to know that today."

There was a long silence and then Paul cleared his throat.

“Listen,” and there was that shift in his voice, again, all business. “I was thinking about how we can handle this. Because there might still be a way to, if we both came out together, said something, got ahead of it—”

“Ahead of it?” John said.

“Are you sure you can’t just turn on the news? It’d be a lot easier – It might give you an idea of the scale of the situation, is all.”

“I don’t want to wake up Yoko, Paul. Talk.”

“Right well I was thinking, we could say it was preliminary. That it was a draft, that nothing’s been finalized, that the signatures were on an early version and it’s been misreported…”

“Uh-huh.” John didn’t say anything else. He just sat there, fingers to his lips.

“John?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you think? We make a joint statement, say it’s fake or preliminary, or something.”

“Would it really be that bad?” John heard himself ask, and realized a fraction too late that he’d said it out loud.

“Sorry?”

“To just…” He looked out at the pale strip of morning beyond the window. “The tour. Would it really be so bad? Honestly, you’d rather say the thing’s fake?”

There was a long pause, and John could imagine Paul chewing on one of his nails.

“Well, I just thought, you know, yesterday you were saying it’s not the right time.”

“That was you,” John said.

Paul didn’t say anything for a long moment, but John wasn’t going to be the one to break.

“Right,” he said finally. “Well.”

“Eastman said we should deny it?” John asked.

“Well, actually… he said the ship’s most likely sailed. Not after six months of… not after— but he says we could still technically annul it, if we talk to each other first. The option is still there.”

“He’s right,” John said.

“Which part?”

“That the ship’s sailed. If it’s on the BBC, then we can’t exactly deny it. They’ll just put our signatures back on screen.” He paused. “It’s done, Paul.”

“Well, even so, I imagine you’ll want to talk to Bergstein first. Discuss your options.“

“He’ll agree with me.”

“How do you know?” Paul said.

“I know how he thinks. And he’d say that our hands are tied.”

“Fucking hell,” Paul sighed. “There are people outside my house, you know."

"There are people in New York, too," John said. “The nanny rang.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment. John waited patiently for reality to settle on Paul.

"I want it on record," John said, finally, after Paul hadn’t spoken for a while, "that this is not how I wanted this to go. I wanted a quiet dignified exit and instead we’ve got bloody MTV."

"Noted," Paul said.

"And I'm exhausted," John said. "I haven't slept. I've been up since– I don't know when."

“Are we really doing this, then?”

“Seems like it, yeah.”

“Fuck…” Paul trailed off with a long drawn out sigh. “I suppose... Let’s just try to get through it. Alright?”

Something in John's chest folded shut. He'd spent the hour before Paul knocked on his door last night thinking about stages and songs and Paul's left hand on his bass frets, and whether he could finally ask Paul about the bass part on Coming Up, which he'd mostly figured out on his own from the record but it wasn't quite right, and how that was probably insane but he'd been thinking about it. And now Paul was talking about getting through it like a root canal.

“Right,” John said, “Get through it.”

“Okay.” Paul’s voice had gone practical again, distant and unreachable. “I’ll talk to Eastman again. Maybe we can put out something official. Get ahead of the rest of it before anyone leaks the full terms.”

“Alright. Sure.”

"And then I suppose I’ll see you in a few weeks for rehearsals."

"Yes you will," John said.

"Alright." Paul paused and John could hear him inhale nervously, "are you—are you alright?"

The question caught him completely off guard. "Yeah," John cleared his throat, “Alright, yeah.” He could feel Paul not quite believing him and he felt himself compelled to continue, “If this is what you want, then–”

“If it’s what you want–”

“Our hands are tied, like I said.”

"I suppose so. I’ll get it sorted.” Paul said. "Goodbye, John.”

“Goodbye, Paul.”

John put the phone down and looked around the room. So much in the last twelve hours had been decided without him. First the contract, then the cancellation. He was tired of being jerked around without anyone asking what he wanted. This, at least, felt like a direction. For once, he could start thinking about what came next. It was about time the world heard from him again.

Lennon & McCartney, Together Again

New Musical Express

June, 1980

We sit down with the most famous duo in the history of popular music — and try to work out what's actually going on.

by Danny Kelly

The official line is that the Lennon & McCartney tour, featuring twenty-five dates across Europe and North America, beginning September 14th at the Hammersmith Odeon, has been "in development for some time."

This is, by any measure, an understatement. What has actually been developing, as anyone who has followed the music press over the past six months will know, is something considerably more complicated than a touring agreement. What we've witnessed is less a reunion than a slow, public, occasionally baffling reconciliation between two men who spent much of the 1970s either ignoring one another or suing one another, conducted almost entirely through press interviews, song lyrics, and increasingly feverish speculation. That was, at least, until two days ago, when a fully signed touring contract appeared on American Music Television shortly after midnight and the entire affair became, as one industry insider put it to me, "indisputable."

Mr. McCartney's representatives rang me early Wednesday morning, no doubt in response to their touring agreement suddenly appearing on television screens around the world, to arrange an official interview. They wanted, I was told, to "set the record straight."

Needless to say, I cleared my diary.

The following afternoon, with Lennon due to fly back to New York only hours later, I found myself walking into a conference room at the Dorchester to interview the two men together. Talking to either Paul McCartney or John Lennon is an unusual enough experience. Talking to both at once, under these circumstances, felt completely surreal.

I met them in a conference room at the Dorchester. And although Lennon is staying here, McCartney arrives first by about four minutes, which he spends rearranging the furniture. There are three chairs in the room and by the time Lennon arrives, Paul has positioned two of them neatly side by side.

Lennon walks in without knocking, notices the arrangement immediately, and after the briefest pause, pulls up the untouched third chair and sits in that instead. Without a word, Paul stands, drags one of the chairs across the carpet, and positions it opposite John's.

Voilà. Face to face.

First things first: what is it actually like, doing an interview together again? It's been a while.

Paul: It's—it's fine, isn't it, you know. Been a while but… here we are.

John: Surprisingly civilized.

Paul: We’ve managed not to kill each other, haven’t we?

John: Last time we did one of these together I think Harold Wilson was still a going concern.

Paul: He's exaggerating.

John: Only slightly.

Has it felt strange? Seeing each other again after so long?

Paul: Not really, no.

John: It hasn't felt strange.

Paul: Funny, that. You sort of expect it to.

John: Everyone else thinks it's supposed to be strange.

Paul: It wasn't, though.

Glad to hear it. The last five years have been very different for each of you. John, you’ve slowed down enormously. Paul, you've barely stopped.

Paul: Well, you know, we've both been busy in different ways.

John: Well, Paul's been busy. I've been—

Paul: John's had Sean. I mean, I don't know. I think we both did what we needed to do. I kept working because that's how I make sense of things. Sitting still has never really agreed with me.

John: See, I found the opposite. Once Sean came along I discovered I quite liked being home.

Paul: You've become very domesticated.

John: I have. Shocking, isn't it? Mind you, your lot have probably seen more of Europe than I have.

Paul: They come along for the ride. They love it.

John: I'm sure they do. Probably met every weirdo in rock and roll before they could even spell.

Paul: They're remarkably well-adjusted, actually.

John: Against all odds.

Paul: Linda and I always thought if we had to be away, we'd rather be away together than apart. It wasn't perfect, but it was our way of doing it.

John: And I used to think being a good father meant providing. Turns out it mostly means showing up.

Paul: Mm.

John: Took me long enough to figure that one out.

I imagine the real reason we're all here today is yesterday morning's leak. What would you like to say, officially, about what happened?

They seem to have prepared for this. McCartney sits forward slightly. Lennon puts his cup down.

Paul: Right. Well. (He then clears throat, suddenly and inexplicably formal) We are going on tour. Lennon & McCartney, coming to a theater near you this fall! You heard it here second!

Lennon, apparently feeling this requires physical accompaniment, slaps both hands on his knees and then raises them, fingers spread, in the manner of a circus ringmaster presenting the main act.

John: Ta-da.

That's the official statement?

John: What else do you need? The dates are on the press release. Which I assume you’ve seen.

I have, as have most.

John: Then I think we've covered it.

Can you give us something more than what we already know?

John: Uh, well. We're very excited.

Paul: Over the moon.

I suspect there's a joke here I'm not in on, since both men smile slightly to themselves. It is, as official statements tend to be, perfectly coherent and almost entirely unrevealing. Neither man says anything that could reasonably make tomorrow's headlines. What's more interesting is what happens immediately afterwards, when I ask what should have been the easiest question of the afternoon...

Let's start at the beginning. How did this come about?

Paul: It came about the way most things do, I suppose. Slowly, and then before you know it you're in a room full of lawyers. We'd both been— I think we'd both been thinking about it for a while. Whether we'd ever get back to making music together. And then at a certain point the conversation was going on and it was clear that there was something there worth pursuing, you know.

John: To put it simply. Papers were signed and here we are.

Paul: Here we are.

For the fans who've been waiting for this for a decade — what can they expect? What does a Lennon and McCartney show actually look like in 1980?

Paul: I think that's an exciting question, isn't it? Because we're not trying to recreate anything. We're not kids anymore. The songs aren't the same songs they were then — they mean different things now, to us and to the people. What I hope people will hear is that these songs have grown with everyone and that they still hold up.

John: We’re going to play them and see what happens. We haven't played together since, well, it's been a long time. So we'll find out the same as everyone else.

The setlist — how are you approaching that? There's an enormous catalogue to choose from.

Paul: Carefully. (laughs) Very carefully. There are— obviously there are songs from the Beatles years, songs we wrote together, songs we wrote separately, and then we've both got solo material we want to bring in. The trick is making it feel like a coherent evening rather than a greatest hits package.

John: We want it to feel like there's a thread running through it.

Paul: Which there is. There always has been, really. If you listen to what John and I have each been making separately over the last ten years, there are similarities. Not on the surface, maybe —Silly Love Songs and Working Class Hero aren't exactly the same record, are they? But that's always been the case with us. I come in with the love song, John's got his—

John: Tortured artist shtick?

Paul: I was going to say cynical sense of humor–

John: It's alright, it's true. I wasn't exactly chasing disco.

Paul: I've thought about this a lot actually. If you listen to what we've both been doing... it's funny. We sort of kept answering each other, didn't we? John puts out Imagine and I go off and write something political. Then I write something daft and he'll do something... I don't know... it's almost like the conversation never really stopped. You can hear it if you listen.

John: Listen really hard, sure.

There's been a lot written about what this means for music — that a collaboration of this magnitude in 1980 signals something about where rock music is going, the dominance of punk and new wave, whether there's still space for what you represent. Do you feel any pressure to justify your place in the current landscape?

John: No.

Paul: I think what John means is–

John: I mean no. The songs are the songs. You don't have to justify Beethoven because someone invented jazz. The songs exist. They'll exist after us. What's happening in the charts right now is whatever it is, and some of it is very good, some of it reeks, but none of it changes what we made. Shakespeare didn't bloody audition for the Globe every time a new playwright came along. The work is the work.

Paul: This isn't in opposition to anything that's happening right now.

John, you’ve never exactly lacked confidence in your own importance. You famously said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Do you stand by that?

John: I said we were more popular than Jesus at the time, which was true, probably, nobody's ever actually disproved it, you know. The Americans burned our records and we still hit number one ten more times. I'll tell you the difference between us and God, though; God only had one album. Between the two of us we've got the better part of thirty, and nobody had to die for any of them.

I see nothing’s changed, John– thirteen years on and you’re still putting your publicists through the ringer.

John: I don’t have a publicist.

Paul: And don’t we all know it.

Is that what this tour is? Paul McCartney as damage control?

Paul: That's a bit reductive, isn't it? I think the more interesting question — and I suspect your readers will agree — is how this actually came about in the first place.

Alright, whose idea was this? Did one of you call the other?

Paul: We'd been in touch for a while.

Through?

Paul: Various channels.

John: Very mysterious, our Paul.

Was it a phone call?

John: Eventually.

Who made the first move?

John: Sounds terribly romantic. Should I describe what I was wearing?

Paul: Listen, I was willing to go along with whatever John wanted.

John: And Paul seemed very keen, right away.

Paul: I was very open to whatever John had in mind.

John: And, you know, these things gather steam when lawyers get involved.

Why so much secrecy around it?

Paul: It wasn't secrecy so much as— we wanted to make sure there was something real to announce before we announced it. You don't want to get people excited about something that might not—

John: We didn't want to get anyone’s hopes up.

Paul: That's— sure. It was partly that.

John: Not to mention, the whole world has an opinion about me and Paul. We've never been able to do anything without twenty million people scrutinizing what it means. We wanted to just— get on with it. But that didn't quite work out.

Paul: The announcement came a bit earlier than we'd planned, obviously. But in the end it doesn't— the tour's the thing, isn't it. The announcement is just paperwork.

The announcement, as you put it, appeared to be a leak. How did that happen?

Paul: Someone must have talked. Obviously, it wasn't ideal.

John: We don't actually know. But whoever it was saved us from writing a press release. Very efficient, whoever did it. Real time saver.

Paul: Well–

John: We were going to tell everyone eventually. This just moved up the timeline.

Paul: But I think we'd have preferred to do it on our own terms.

John: Sure.

You've both been asked about each other constantly for the last six months. John, you told Rolling Stone in March that Paul, and I'm quoting here, "writes good music" Paul, you told us that John was "the most naturally gifted musician you’ve ever worked with" Do you stand by those?

John: Yes.

Paul: Of course.

Because at the time, neither of you had confirmed anything was actually happening.

Paul: No, but— those things were true regardless of whether the tour happened or not. I've always thought those things about John. That's not really up for debate.

John: We weren't lying, if that's what you're asking.

Let’s clear the air once and for all. The word "feud" has been used quite a lot. Where do you actually stand?

Paul: Feud is a— it's a tabloid word, isn't it, so dramatic.

John: Much more dramatic than what it actually was. We have our differences. We've had them since we were teenagers, you know. That’s what it’s like with old married couples.

Paul: The legal stuff in the early days was complicated, and it went on longer than either of us would have liked, and I think in the press that got overblown. But John and I have never stopped talking.

John: We haven't always been talking. Let's be honest about that. Can we be honest about that, Paul?

Paul: We've had periods of less contact than others, yes.

John: We've had periods of no contact whatsoever. Years of it. Very diplomatic, our Paulie.

John, in retrospect, do you regret How Do You Sleep?

John: I’ve already been asked that, y’know about one hundred times. My answer’s not changed.

Which was?

John: You know, Paul and I have talked and he doesn’t hold it against me, in the end.

Paul, is that true?

Paul: Look, we all get angry and say things we don’t mean. In John’s case he said I was a talentless hack, which, y’know, stings of course, but, I’ll give him this — it’s a very well-produced record.

John: I’ve said the song was about me, alright? About my own— Look, I’ve said it a hundred times, what it was about.

Paul: It was a long time ago, anyway.

Why now, when there have been so many opportunities to reunite over the years?

Paul: I think, y'know, I think other people's butting in was the problem. You can't push two people into something. It really had to come from—

John: –the right lawyers?

Paul: From us, I think. From us.

Fans and music press alike have alluded to a sort of unfinished business between the two of you. What did you make of that?

John: Well, the music.

Just the music?

John: What else would I mean?

I'm asking you.

John: The music. When you've worked with someone the way Paul and I worked together… You don't just— it doesn't just go away because the band does.

Paul: That's well put, actually. He’s exactly right, you know. There were things we never got to do. And I know there’s an audience that wants to hear those things. We're not pretending to be the Beatles. This is something else– something new.

John: Something old, really. Ancient and decrepit.

I have to ask about the Beatles. Is there any world in which George and Ringo join this tour?

John: No.

Paul: They weren't— it was never on the table in the same— Listen– this isn't that. This has never been that. George and Ringo have their own—

John: That's alright. Good for them. I respect that enormously. George especially. Very principled man.

Do you think the audience will be disappointed? A lot of people are calling this a Beatles reunion.

Paul: It's not a Beatles reunion. We've been very clear about that.

John: It's not a reunion. A reunion implies it's the same thing, but this is not the same thing. Hairs too thin for a mop top anymore.

Paul: Which is actually, I mean, when you think about it, that's actually the exciting part of it. What these songs sound like now. What we sound like now. I think people will be surprised.

John: I think we all will be surprised.

What's the thing you've missed most about working together?

John: Being told when something's rubbish.

(Paul laughs immediately.)

John: No, really. I've spent the last few years with people who think everything you do is marvelous. It's unbearable. Paul'll hear something and go, "bin it."

Paul: I usually try and soften it a bit more than that.

John: Hardly.

You've been asked this separately, so I'll ask you together: are you excited about this?

Paul: Yeah. I think it's going to be great.

What about you, John?

John: Yes.

That's it?

Paul: What John means is that we're both, well, as you can imagine, it's a lot to take in. It's been a big few days. You saw the crowds outside my house. But at the heart of it, we are–

John: Excited, yes. I said yes.

Paul: — looking forward to it.

Last question. What do you want people to take away from this tour?

Paul: We just want people to have a good time, really. It's a show. We want it to be a really good show. We mean it to be anyway. I hope they enjoy themselves and rock out, you know?

John?

John: What he said.

Lennon & McCartney begin their European leg September 14th at the Hammersmith Odeon. Tickets on sale Friday.

© The New Musical Express, 1980

EXCLUSIVE: THE BELLBOY WHO BROUGHT LENNON AND MCCARTNEY BACK TOGETHER

THE INDUSTRY EYE

Issue dated June, 1980

by Karen Simms

"Get whatever you want," says Thomas Webb, twenty-two, of Hammersmith. “I'm famished. It's been a mad few weeks."

Mad is one word for it. Thomas Webb —a meager bellboy, and what he will describe no fewer than four times over the course of our meeting as "a crucial part of music history" — was there. He saw them.

"John and Paul," he says, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "Together. Just the three of us."

Thomas, in a corridor at the same time as John Lennon and Paul McCartney, is not quite the same as just the three of us, but he's already moved on.

Thomas did not grow up wanting to be a bellboy. He grew up, he tells us, wanting to be a music producer, a dream that has so far expressed itself as carrying luggage for famous musicians, but which he speaks to as a reasonable first step.

"You've got to start somewhere, haven't you," he says. "So, here I am."

Here he is indeed. Since the night of the second of June, Thomas has appeared on three radio programs, two breakfast television spots, and at least one regional news segment that aired, he tells us proudly, in the East Midlands. He has been photographed several times. He has given quotes to anyone who has asked. He is, he says, available for further comment.

The story, as he tells it, goes like this:

It was late when he'd finished his shift. He stepped off the elevator and into the Hotel corridor and there they were: John Lennon and Paul McCartney, standing together, in the middle of what Thomas describes as "an intense, private moment."

"You could feel it," he says, tapping the table for emphasis. “Like something massive was happening."

We ask what he saw them doing.

"Talking," he says. "But like, quietly, you know." He pauses. "You could tell whatever it was, it was important, like.” I ask if he felt sorry for intruding. He shakes his head adamantly.

“I think I was meant to be there, actually. Just one of those things."

We ask if either of them said anything to him.

"Paul looked at me," Thomas says. "Gave me this look — you know the look he does? Very warm, very — Paul. And John— John was brilliant. Very relaxed. Nodded at me." He smiles at the memory. "I nodded back, you know. Kept it cool."

We ask what happened next.

"I gave them their space," Thomas says, with tremendous dignity. "That's what they would’ve wanted, you know?" He nods sagely.

"I think that was probably good, actually. For them to have someone show up at that exact moment… Without freaking out, you know." He considers this. "I think I helped, in a way. Just by being there.”

We point out that he was there for about fifteen seconds.

"Sometimes that's all it takes," Thomas says.

He is, he wants us to know, not the leak.

He says this several times, with varying degrees of emphasis. He did not leak anything. He went home after the encounter, he went to sleep, then eight hours later he woke up to his mother banging on his door and there it was on the BBC. He put two and two together just like everyone else. He happened to be a lucky witness to history.

"Completely different thing," he says.

We move on.

Thomas is no longer employed at the hotel.

"We came to a mutual understanding," he says. "I get it. Guest privacy, that whole thing. No hard feelings." He mops up the last of his egg. "Honestly, between the interviews and everything, I've not had much time to miss it."

He has not, he admits, entirely worked out what comes next. He has some ideas. He is, he says, keeping his options open. The music industry continues to interest him. He knows people now. Things are in motion.

We ask if John or Paul have been in touch.

"Not directly," he says, in a way that implies this is only a matter of time. "I'm sure they've got a lot going on. The tour and everything."

Thomas Webb is available for interviews, appearances, and what he describes as "promotional opportunities." He would also very much like two tickets to the Hammersmith show. Him and his mum. Front row preferred but flexible.

© The Industry Eye, 1980

BBC RADIO 2
Transcript: Steve Wright in the Afternoon
Thursday, 5 June 1980
[Partial transcript, approx. 2:14pm]

STEVE WRIGHT: —and we've got a very special guest in the studio today, Paul McCartney, who's very kindly come in to talk about what I think we can all agree is the biggest news in music this year, possibly this decade—

PAUL McCARTNEY: Now, Steve, let's not go overboard—

WRIGHT: —the Lennon and McCartney autumn tour, twenty-five dates throughout Europe and North America. Paul, welcome.

McCARTNEY: Thanks for having me. Love the show.

WRIGHT: Now, we also have a very special surprise.

McCARTNEY: Surprise, yes.

WRIGHT: Joining us by phone all the way from New York City, John Lennon. John, are you there?

JOHN LENNON: I'm here, Steve. Big fan of the programme. I’d like to say hello to everyone listening at home. Or in their cars, or in Dentist's waiting rooms. Very important demographic, Steve, the dentist's waiting room listener. I find they’re such a captive audience.

WRIGHT: Right, yes—

LENNON: Sorry about the NME, by the way. To everyone listening. Or not sorry, depending on your views on theology.

McCARTNEY: So, Steve—

WRIGHT: Yes! The tour. Obviously the reason we've got you both on this morning is the tour — Paul, it's been a remarkable few days since the announcement. Has it sunk in yet?

PAUL McCARTNEY: I'm not sure it has, to be honest. It's been a busy few days, very busy. But in the best way you know, the response has been great, really. We're grateful that people are as excited as they are.

WRIGHT: John, same question — has it sunk in?

JOHN LENNON: Like quicksand, Simon.

WRIGHT: Fair enough. Now, there was a little — shall we say — a little excitement around how the announcement was made. The leaked contract, the photographs — was that how you planned it?

PAUL McCARTNEY: We'd have chosen a slightly different timeline, I think it's fair to say. But the important thing is that it's out now, and we're very much looking forward to it.

JOHN LENNON: Saved us a press conference. Paul hates press conferences.

PAUL McCARTNEY: I do not!

JOHN LENNON: No, he loves them. Just winding him up. Loves the spotlight, Paul does.

WRIGHT: Now, let's talk about the tour itself. Twenty-five dates. John, you haven't toured since—

JOHN LENNON: A while.

WRIGHT: A while, yes. Are you nervous?

PAUL McCARTNEY: We're very much looking forward to it. Genuinely. Preparation has been going very well.

WRIGHT: You're about to start rehearsals, is that right?

PAUL McCARTNEY: That's right, yes. Exciting times.

JOHN LENNON: Very exciting.

PAUL McCARTNEY: Very exciting.

JOHN LENNON: Enormously exciting.

WRIGHT: Now I have to ask — the setlist. People are desperate to know. Can you give us anything?

JOHN LENNON: We'll be playing songs.

WRIGHT: Can you be any more specific?

JOHN LENNON: Songs with words.

PAUL McCARTNEY: We're still working on the setlist, Simon. You’ll just have to come to the show to find out!

WRIGHT: Now, we had listeners send in questions beforehand - hundreds of them - and I want to put a few to you both, if that's alright. Nothing too serious, just the things people are curious about.

LENNON: Is this the hard-hitting journalism portion of the program?

WRIGHT: It’s what the people want to know. Alright, John, you first– this one’s from Susan in York, what do you both like to eat for breakfast?

LENNON: The people want to know what we eat for breakfast?

WRIGHT: They do, yes.

LENNON: Alright, fine. I eat toast. I make my own bread. It's very good actually.

McCARTNEY: I have granola. Linda makes it. It's got seeds and such in it. Very good for the heart, they say.

LENNON: Nothing beats homemade birdfood!

WRIGHT: Alright, this one’s from Truman in Stratford, what’s the first thing you do when you get to a new city on tour?

McCARTNEY: Great question, Truman. Let’s see, I usually find a good place to eat. Order myself, well, it used to be a ham sandwich isn’t it, but now meat’s out the window, so I’ll usually find a place that’ll make me a good cheese omelet.

LENNON: Sleep.

McCARTNEY: He’s always been that way, can sleep anywhere that one.

LENNON: I sleep, Paul eats, and then we do the show. Very efficient system.

WRIGHT: Let's go to the phones — we've got listeners who've been ringing in all morning. First caller, is Sheila from Birmingham, you're on with Paul McCartney and John Lennon—

CALLER 1 (SHEILA, BIRMINGHAM): Oh my God. Oh my God, I can't believe— sorry. Sorry. Hi Paul. Hi John.

LENNON: Hello Sheila.

SHEILA: Oh God. Sorry. I just wanted to say I've been waiting for this my whole life and I just— I cried when I heard the news, I proper cried—

McCARTNEY: Oh, that's lovely, Sheila, thank you—

SHEILA: And I wanted to ask, is there any chance of a Liverpool date? Because the fans here would absolutely—

McCARTNEY: It's been discussed—

LENNON: We'll look into it, Sheila. For you personally.

SHEILA: Oh thank you, John—

LENNON: Don't cry, Sheila. We're not worth it. Well. Paul might be, but I'd hold off on me.

McCARTNEY: Thank you for calling, Sheila.

WRIGHT: Next caller — we've got Linda from Surrey—

LENNON: Not my Linda, is it?

McCARTNEY: My Linda's in Scotland.

LENNON: Just checking. Hello, Linda.

LINDA FROM SURREY: Hello! I just wanted to ask —with all this excitement, do you ever get time to yourselves?

McCARTNEY: Oh, all the time, Linda. It's very important, you know, to have ordinary days. I mean, we live pretty normal lives, really, when all this isn't going on.

WRIGHT: Is that true, John? I mean, do you go out for milk? That sort of thing.

LENNON: I walk the boy to piano lessons. That's normal, I think. But I could be wrong. I’m not exactly the going expert on normal.

WRIGHT: And how is the family, John? How old is Sean now?

LENNON: He turned five in October. Anyway, next caller, Steve. Let’s keep it moving, right?

WRIGHT: Right, yes— we've got time for one more—

LENNON: Make it a good one. I'm paying for this call.

MCCARTNEY: No you’re not, John. No he’s not, listeners.

LENNON: Oh, you got me, Paul, it was in fact a jokey little joke.

WRIGHT: Last caller — Dave from Manchester—

DAVE FROM MANCHESTER: Yeah, hi. Just wanted to say—brilliant news, can't wait for the tour. Erm… this is a bit daft, but if you could go back and give your younger selves one piece of advice, what would it be?

LENNON: Don’t wear leather trousers. They chafe something awful.

McCARTNEY: I'd say — travel light. Don't bring things with you that don't belong on international flights. Especially not to Japan.

LENNON: Specific.

McCARTNEY: Hard-won wisdom, that.

WRIGHT: Fair enough. John Lennon, calling in from New York City—

LENNON: Pleasure, Steve. To your dentist's waiting room listeners I bid them adieu.

WRIGHT: Paul McCartney, in the studio.

McCARTNEY: Thanks Steve. Good fun.

WRIGHT: I have to say — and I mean this — I've been doing this show for years and I don't think I'll ever top this. I really don't. Paul McCartney, everyone. John Lennon, all the way from New York. We'll be back after the news.

[Commercial break —– END TRANSCRIPT —–]

© BBC Radio 2, 1980. Transcript produced for internal archive purposes.

ABC NEWS: "Good Morning America"

Transcript [Partial] June 8, 1980 — 7:43am EST

DAVID HARTMAN (anchor): This morning’s top story—after months of speculation it’s official: Paul McCartney and John Lennon will tour together this fall, for the first time in over a decade. The news broke overnight last week, and already ticket lines are forming in cities across the country. I want to bring in Sandy Kenyon from our Los Angeles Bureau, and Ann Martin is here with me in New York. But first: Ann, you and I, and everyone of that generation, remembers where we were on February 9th, 1964. What’s it like to be sitting here, sixteen years later, and talking about this?

ANN MARTIN: David, I don't think there's anyone in this newsroom who isn't feeling a bit of that excitement today. You know, we grew up with the songs, and it’s hard to overstate the effect this will have on fans. I mean, the phone banks are flooded, our newsroom is flooded, and I saw on the way in this morning there was already a line at the Tower Records in Midtown. They’re waiting for tickets that aren’t even printed yet. But to answer your question—yes, it's extraordinary. We've been following the rumors for months, but seeing it confirmed in black and white by the two men themselves—it's surreal.

HARTMAN: Is there any sense, Ann, about how this came together? After what—ten? Eleven years of nothing but lawsuits?

ANN MARTIN: Twelve, if you want to count all the way back to ’68. But yes. It’s really fascinating. From what our sources are saying, it started picking up steam early this year. Paul McCartney was wrapping up the Wings tour and there were a few sightings of him in New York, but the real turning point, from what we understand, was John's interview in Rolling Stone back in February. He went on the record for the first time in years, and he said some things about being open to working with McCartney again.

HARTMAN: Fascinating. Sandy, what are you hearing out in Los Angeles?

SANDY KENYON (via satellite): David, the reaction out here has been nothing short of electric. I'm standing outside the Forum, where they're scheduled to play on October 18th, and there are already—I'd estimate about two hundred people camped out. They've got sleeping bags, signs, the works. And the phones at the venue box office started ringing at 4 a.m., even though tickets won't go on sale for weeks.

DAVID HARTMAN: Ann, is there any indication yet of what we can expect from this tour musically?

ANN MARTIN: Not officially, no. But sources close to the situation suggest they'll be playing a mix of Beatles classics and their solo material. There's also talk of new music, but that's unconfirmed at this point.

HARTMAN: Sandy, back to you. What are people saying out there?

KENYON: David, I've been talking to fans all morning, and the overwhelming sentiment is one of disbelief. Many of them grew up with the Beatles, and for them, this is like—I don't want to overstate it—but it's like a dream come true. One woman I spoke to said she and her husband saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965, and now they're hoping to take their children to see this tour.

HARTMAN: Ann, take me back. Take me back to February 9th, 1964. You were—what, fifteen? Sixteen?

ANN MARTIN: Sixteen. I was sixteen years old, and I was sitting on the floor of my parents' living room in Queens, about two feet from the television set. My mother told me to move back because it would hurt my eyes, but I refused.

HARTMAN: Of course.

ANN MARTIN: And I remember — there they were. And I just — I watched them, and… well, I probably shouldn’t say this on national television but my god, I fell completely and totally in love with Paul McCartney. I'm sorry, Tom, honey! The hair, the suit, his face. Oh my GOD, David.

HARTMAN: (laughing) Ann, you're a married woman with two children now, I think Tom understands.

MARTIN: He'd better. I told him about this on our first date.

HARTMAN: Now, Ann, I want to ask you about something that aired overnight on the BBC. Did you catch the radio interview?

MARTIN: The Steve Wright show? Yes, I—I listened. I had to set my alarm for the rebroadcast at 4 a.m. because I missed the live airing, and I just- I couldn’t believe it!

HARTMAN: Tell me.

MARTIN: Their voices together in the same room, effectively. Well, across an ocean, but both of them, talking!

HARTMAN: What struck you most about the interview?

MARTIN: It was, well, I could hear them falling back into old rhythms, the way they used to finish each other's sentences, the way they tend to rib at each other. It was lovely to hear.

HARTMAN: I'm getting chills just hearing you describe it. Sandy, any reaction out in Los Angeles to the interview?

KENYON: People are talking about it everywhere, David. I've been hearing snippets of it playing on car radios as I walk down the street. One thing that's got everyone buzzing is John's comment about the NME interview—the "comparison to God" thing. He didn't back down from it, and Paul seemed to be trying to smooth it over. It's classic Lennon-McCartney back in action.

HARTMAN: Ann, you know what this means, don't you? We're going to have to get them on this show. Both of them. Right here on this couch.

MARTIN: Oh, David. No.

HARTMAN: What do you mean, no?

MARTIN: If that happens, I'm calling out sick. I'm serious! I don't think I could handle it, I really don't. I'd be a puddle on the floor. You'd have to get someone to scrape me off.

HARTMAN: We'll have a medic standing by.

MARTIN: I mean it, David. I'd need a sedative.

HARTMAN: We'll keep that in mind. Now, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have the latest on the situation in Poland, and a check-in with our weather team. Ann, Sandy, thank you both.

MARTIN: Thanks, David.

KENYON: Thanks, David.

HARTMAN: We'll be right back.

[Commercial break — "Good Morning America" will return after this message.]

--- END TRANSCRIPT ---

WZAK "THE ROCK" TRANSCRIPT

"THE ROCK BLOCK" WITH CHUCK AND DAVE

Thursday, June 10, 1980 — 3:15 PM EST

SOUND: Station ID sting, "Back in the U.S.S.R." guitar riff fading under CHUCK MARCONI’S voice

CHUCK: —and we are back on WZAK, New York's home for rock and roll, and I've got my co-host Dave "The Professor" Callahan sitting across from me, and we are continuing the conversation that America cannot stop having this morning—

DAVE: The conversation that—

CHUCK: —that we started at six a.m. and have not stopped having—

DAVE: —and will not stop having, because this is—

BOTH: (in unison) —The Rock Block!

[Sound effect: a lion roar]

CHUCK: I want to pick up where we left off, because I think we've got a real problem here, and I don't think I'm the only one—

DAVE: No, you’re not.

CHUCK: I've got to say-, I'm worried. I'm genuinely worried about this tour.

DAVE: You’re worried?

CHUCK: John Lennon is the stronger musician. And I think that's going to be a problem.

DAVE: Oh, Chuck. Oh, Chuck, no. No, no, no, no, no.

CHUCK: Hear me out! Hear me out—

DAVE: Alright, fine, fine- I'm already disagreeing with you, but go ahead—

CHUCK: Paul McCartney is a showman. He's got the voice, he's got the stage presence, he knows how to work a crowd. But John is an artist. He's the one who pushes things forward. And I heard it in that interview, Dave, I heard it plain as day—

DAVE: What did you hear?

CHUCK: Paul trying to manage John and John taking little potshots. They were talking over each other in that old way, and I'm thinking—okay, fine, that's chemistry. But Dave, here's the thing that's bugging me—

DAVE: Go ahead.

CHUCK: Who's the stronger musician? I mean, like, right now, today? Because I'm telling you, I don't think they've figured that out yet, and I think that's going to be a problem when they hit the stage.

DAVE: What are you even talking about, dude?

CHUCK: —I'm talking about, as musicians, as songwriters, as the two dudes behind the biggest band in history, who's the real talent? Because here's my take, and I've been thinking about this all morning, and I want you to hit me back, Dave. John Lennon is the soul of the Beatles. Full stop. End of story. Without John, you don't have "Strawberry Fields," you don't have "A Day in the Life," you don't have "I Am the Walrus." You don't have the edge. You don't have the weirdness. Without John, Paul would still be writing cute little love songs about holding hands.

DAVE: That's insane. That is absolutely insane. Paul’s got the melodies, Chuck! The man wrote "Yesterday"! You can't sit there and tell me—

CHUCK: I'm not saying he's not talented! I'm saying John Lennon is the more interesting musician. Do I need to remind you who wrote "Imagine", one of the greatest songs ever written?

DAVE: Right, Imagine, and then what? Five years of nothing? Paul was out touring and making music the whole time—

CHUCK: Quantity over quality, Dave.

DAVE: Name me one person on earth who can write Hey Jude AND play drums AND play bass AND produce the whole thing themselves. Name one. You can’t.

CHUCK: No, no, no — I'm telling you, when they hit that stage, the dynamic is going to shift. John's been sitting on this energy for five years. Five years, Dave! That's a long time to build up creative tension, and now he's got an outlet for it. Paul's been running around with Wings, doing the same show night after night. There's no comparison in terms of hunger.

DAVE: Hunger doesn't equal talent, Chuck. And you know what? I think you're underestimating Paul McCartney. Severely underestimating him. The man is a musical genius. He plays, what, six instruments? Seven? And he plays them all well. The man is a machine.

CHUCK: I saw Wings at the Garden in ‘76 and Paul was tight, I’ll give him that, but it wasn’t dangerous, you know what I mean? There was no edge. But here's what's really going to sink this whole thing, and I want you to really think about this—

DAVE: I'm thinking, I'm thinking—

CHUCK: Ego. Huge ones on both of them. That's what broke up the Beatles in the first place, and that's what's going to break up this tour before it even gets off the ground.

DAVE: Yoko broke up the Beatles, come on man.

CHUCK: Well that’s a whole other conversation, good luck getting anything done with her in the room.

DAVE: God, imagine being on tour and having to check in with Yoko every night.

CHUCK: Imagine sleeping with Yoko every night.

DAVE: Yikes! No thanks, Chuck.

CHUCK: But to get real, and this is what I was trying to say before we went off the rails—

DAVE: You were trying to say something, yes.

CHUCK: The reality is that this tour could be in real trouble, because these two are fundamentally different artists now. That's what I'm getting at. Paul's this polished, professional, stadium-touring machine and John's been— and they're supposed to walk onto a stage together and just—click? Like it's 1966 again? I don't buy it.

DAVE: But they're the heart of the Beatles, man. That's what you're not getting. If anyone can do it, it's them.

CHUCK: I hear you, I hear you—

DAVE: You’re — see, this is what you do, Chuck, you always do this, you turn everything into a versus thing—because it’s not — I mean, people are sleeping outside Tower Records right now, Chuck. Right now. Four in the morning. You think they’re out there because they want to see who’s the better musician? Come on. It’s not about who’s — listen. You take away George, you take away Ringo, and I love those guys, but — Chuck. They ARE the Beatles. That’s what you’re not getting.

CHUCK: Okay. Okay, okay, okay. I hear you. It’s John and Paul, that’s the draw, but I’m telling you right now, six weeks in they’re going to be at each other’s throats and I’m going to be sitting here saying I told you so.

DAVE: Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

CHUCK: We've got calls stacked up, and we've got—what's next, Donna? Donna's giving me the wrap sign. Donna's giving me the wrap sign.

DAVE: Already?

CHUCK: she’s telling me we're out of time. That's all we got people. Dave "The Professor" Callahan, always a pleasure.

DAVE: We'll be back tomorrow at six with more on the Lennon-McCartney tour and the absolute madness that's sure to follow. Until then, this is The Rock Block on WZAK. Keep it locked.

[Station ID sting, "Revolution" guitar riff fading under announcer's voice]

—-END TRANSCRIPT—

Paul

The legend of the bellboy, as it turned out, had legs.

Paul first caught wind of it while flipping channels with James the morning after the leak, his only intention to avoid the news. He flipped past a daytime soap, a cartoon teddy bear, and a nature programme before he found himself staring at the smug, cheerful face of the same hotel bellhop who'd come off the elevator the very evening he'd thought he was putting this whole thing to bed.

Paul watched the interview out of simple curiosity, which then quickly turned to disbelief. By the end, he was in it purely for the spectacle.

The lad was everywhere: local telly, morning radio, a glossy centrefold in one of the gossip weeklies, complete with a staged photograph of him holding his bellboy hat and looking tremendously pleased with himself. By Friday the story had ballooned into myth—how he'd stumbled into the hall, caught John and Paul mid-argument, and single-handedly brokered a peace deal that would change the course of music history.

"Is any of this true?" Linda asked, squinting at the telly.

"Hardly."

"He's very convincing."

On screen the bellboy was now demonstrating, with considerable physical commitment, how Paul had clutched at Mr. Lennon's sleeve and begged him not to leave. The reporter patted him on the back like he'd delivered the world's greatest scoop.

"He's milking it," Paul said.

"It's a good story, I suppose." Linda tilted her head. "Better than the real one, maybe."

"That's the problem with reality," Paul said. "A bit crap by comparison."

In a way, he almost envied the kid. To the bellboy, it was all a lark, a story for the grandchildren. He didn’t have to live with it forever, or carry the weight of the legend. Must be nice.

***

After the leak, everything changed.

Life turned into a blur of phone calls, faxes, couriered press kits, and strangers clutching signs outside Cavendish Avenue, which ranged from touching—WE BELIEVE IN THE BEATLES, (sweet if slightly theologically confused) to one that simply read JOHN & PAUL 4EVER, which Paul felt obscurely embarrassed about, though he couldn't have explained why.

One afternoon Linda caught a film crew attempting to scale the garden wall in broad daylight. Paul watched this from the kitchen window with a slice of toast in one hand and decided not to intervene, on the grounds that Linda was already handling it and was considerably more frightening than he was.

Requests flooded in by the hundreds. Every television programme in Europe and North America wanted them, and Paul said no to all of them—politely at first, then firmly, then through a written policy his office distributed on his behalf because he'd genuinely run out of diplomatic ways to decline without sounding like he was hiding something.

He was, a little. Hiding something. He needed time to think, was the honest answer, but there was no way he could say that in any press release without it raising eyebrows.

He would have liked nothing more than to put everyone in the car and drive north. Scotland, the farm, the quiet. He mentioned it to Eastman, who listened patiently and then explained that it wasn't the right moment.

There were meetings, he said. There were going to be so many meetings from here on out—with the label, with venue representatives, with the production team, with lawyers whose specific function Paul couldn't always immediately identify but who Eastman assured him were necessary. The announcement had created a paper trail that needed managing, and managing it from a farmhouse in Scotland was, Eastman pointed out, suboptimal. Better to stay in London for a few more weeks to get everything bedded in.

So he stayed. He sent for the children instead.

Stella arrived at Cavendish with her roller bag and immediately wanted to know why there were so many people outside and could she wave at them, and Paul said absolutely not and then caught her doing it anyway from the upstairs window twenty minutes later. Mary wanted to know if they could get a kitten.

It was, in its way, sort of nice, the house full again.

The crowd outside thinned and thickened depending on the day, the photographers came and went, and the phone rang constantly.

And of course there was John’s “God” comment.

For a full day after the NME interview Paul had paced the living room imagining a thousand variations of disaster. The tabloids piling on, the American networks balking, ticket sales collapsing under the weight of a single line about God, just as it had nearly happened the last time. All day he'd waffled between hoping it would just go ahead and explode and worrying that it would. He cursed John thoroughly and at length. The bastard had no doubt done it on purpose, or possibly just couldn't help himself, which was somehow worse.

He called Eastman the morning after, hoping for a lawyerly solution. For all his wisdom, all Eastmand had to say was: “It’s not the sixties anymore. People have moved on.”

Unconvinced, Paul spent the days between the interview and publication arranging a Radio 2 slot for the two of them on the very morning the issue hit newsstands—something breezy and unthreatening, designed to run alongside it as a distraction. He'd left that interview a nervous wreck, bought every copy of the NME at the local newsagent—drawing a look from the man behind the counter that suggested this was not normal behaviour—and then spent an hour chewing a pencil and watching the phone waiting for shit to hit the fan.

But, it didn’t.

Instead, that next day’s headlines were, in order: “LENNON/MCCARTNEY SET TO SHATTER BOX OFFICE RECORDS,” “FIRST SHOWS SELL OUT IN HOURS,” and “LONDON TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED—SEE PAGE 3 FOR FULL SCHEDULE.”

People weren't reading the interview because of any Lennon provocation. They were reading it to confirm it was all real. The world had apparently learned to take John as he came, or they were simply too delighted to care.

***

The second week after the leak, Linda came into Paul’s study and set a mug of tea down.

“Someone called about an interview?” she said, voice still husky from sleep.

Paul squinted up at her. “What interview?”

She shrugged. “Some lad from NBC was on the phone. Said he’d try again after you’d had your granola?”

He made a face at the granola comment, and took a long sip of the tea. "The office is supposed to be fielding all of these."

"I'll tell him to fuck off," Linda said pleasantly, and squeezed his shoulder.

He kissed Linda’s hand to thank her, as she made her way back to fixing breakfast for the children.

Paul turned to the thing he'd been staring at before she came in. This week's NME, open on the desk, already creased down the middle. There’d been a photographer at the interview, and the piece had been published with a select few shots. But apparently, the issue had sold so well that they’d solicited the photographer’s entire contact sheet for publication.

“LENNON & McCARTNEY: PHOTO EXCLUSIVE.” As if he and John had been discovered by David Attenborough in their natural habitat.

The photos were the same ones from the Dorchester interview, him and John in opposite chairs. Paul’s hair in desperate need of a trim, John’s thin. The lines on their faces, well, they were there. No getting around it.

The piece itself was mercifully short, mostly recapping what everyone already knew. There was a quote from Paul, lifted from the BBC interview and a quote from John, also from the same.

Paul scanned it and found himself staring, despite better judgement, at one of the photographs.

John's smile. Aimed at something—at him, he knew, he'd been there—with a focus so direct it still made him slightly uncomfortable to look at.

In the photo, John's body was turned away but his eyes were locked on Paul as though nothing else in the frame existed. Paul had never quite gotten used to that look. He probably should have by now, but he hadn't.

In the early years, it had been a thrill just to have John Lennon look at him. Him, out of everyone in all of Liverpool, deemed worth the attention of such a handsome, sharp, slightly terrifying older lad. Later, when the business got ugly and their egos got bigger, it was easier to pretend the looks meant nothing. But even at their lowest Paul would sometimes catch a glimpse of that same soft, direct intensity, and it always did something to him that he'd never found a satisfactory word for.

The photo made him think about all the other times, the times nobody ever saw, when John looked at him with that same intense, bright affection.

There was one time in particular, not long before the end, John had him something he'd been calling Child of Nature. He’d been sitting at the piano with his back slightly curved, playing it through without looking up, and Paul listened and said nothing for a full minute because the song was brilliant and he was trying to work out how to say so without it coming out wrong.

When he finally looked, John was watching him, eyebrows slightly raised. Waiting for the verdict that apparently only Paul could give.

“Is it any good?” John asked, as if asking a priest for deliverance.

And Paul, who had spent half his life competing with the man and the other half seeking his approval, just nodded, and said, “It’s brilliant.”

For a second, John looked so grateful it made Paul want to look away. But he didn’t, and there was this moment, this flash of something so intimate it could have been called love, if he hadn’t known any better. And then, just as quickly, it was gone and they were back in the room and John was being difficult about something again.

He wondered if anyone else saw the same thing, now, looking at the photo in the magazine.

***

With only one short week until rehearsals, time seemed to stretch, and the days seemed to drag. To help the days pass, he worked.

That was what he did wasn’t it? He worked so that all the inconvenient emotions had somewhere to go, so that he could maintain some semblance of control.

Paul’s own worst enemy had always been boredom: an hour of enforced idleness and he’d be plotting a double album or buying rights to another catalog. But John… John luxuriated in inertia. This, Paul knew, was the crux of their trouble: not malice or the usual pop-psychology buzzwords about control and ego, but a basic personality difference in how they approached a problem.

Late one night, sometime during the second week, he was seated cross legged on the floor of his study, a double espresso balanced carefully on his knee, and wondered if Coffee ever really kept you awake, or if it just gave you heart palpitations.

He was holding his leather notebook, an absurdly expensive Italian number Linda had bought for him, turned open to the page of columns and subcolumns he’d drawn, each with a heading.

“Big Production.” “Bare Bones.” “Full Band.” “Maybe Piano.”

He’d started earlier that evening with good intentions: fill in just one song for each column, rank them by energy, and mark the ones that John might actually agree to perform. After an hour or so of that, though, his note quickly devolved into a complete mess of scribbled arrows and question marks.

He looked at what he’d written. In capital letters, “OPEN WITH SOMETHING FUN, NOT OBVIOUS,” and then circled it twice. Under that, “NO INTROS.” Then, “ENCORES?” Then, in the margin, “What if ‘Help!’ but as a dirge? Too much?” He drew a frowning face, then crossed it out.

Should it be just the two of them? Maybe, since the billing read only their two names. But something about that didn’t sit well with him. Two of them on stools wasn’t a show, it was a damn busker act.

He took a sip of the tepid espresso, made a face, and looked back at his notebook. Next to the setlist mess, he’s started a new list: “Leaks?” Under it, a column of possible suspects. “1. MPL staff (unlikely). 2. Yoko? 3. That creepy kid at the Dakota, always lurking with the camera.” Then, “4. Eastman (hmm). 5. One of the ex-Wings—someone bitter?” He added “6. John himself,” then stared at it, wondering if that was true or just a symptom of his own paranoia.

He scribbled a couple more names, crossed them out. In the end, it didn’t matter. The tour was happening, and what he actually needed to worry about was making sure it wasn’t a total disaster.

The espresso had developed a bitter skin that reminded him of tapioca pudding. He stared at the brown swirls of foam and resisted the urge to reach for the phone. He had tried—honestly tried—to outwait the impulse to call John.

But the two of them hadn’t spoken since the day of the Leak, and John’s only reply to Paul’s telegram (“HAVE IDEAS STOP WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS STOP CAN CALL ANY TIME STOP”) was a brief, perversely brief letter: “Phone works. – J”

He had waited five and a half days. Until tonight, when the little LCD clock in the corner flicked to 01:41 am, when he finally found himself dialing John’s Dakota number.

An American operator’s voice answered after three rings: “You have a collect call from—”

“Paul,” he muttered.

Another click, then:

“Paul?”

“Sorry, John, is it late there?”

There was a wet, smacking sound: John taking a drag off a cigarette, or maybe a drink.

“Just past dinner time.”

“Yeah, right.” Paul pinched the bridge of his nose and counted the beats between words, trying to sound breezy. “Sorry to interrupt. Or, I dunno—maybe I didn’t.”

“You didn’t.” John sounded more awake by the syllable, the way he did when he had been in a stupor of Television and Pot, and this was the first time he’d spoken in several hours. “What is it? What’s on fire?”

“Nothing on fire, just—” He tapped a pen against the legal pad, morse code in ballpoint. “It’s been mad here, actually. Linda’s fielding reporters at the gate, and the Times sent a guy to look through our windows. He wanted to know if you were going vegetarian for the tour, which I thought was funny.”

“Don’t kid about that kind of thing,” John said. “I take those threats very seriously, you know.”

He could hear the smirk on the other end of the line. But there was nothing to be done but press forward, so Paul said: “Have you given any more thought to everything? The tour, I mean– What we’re doing.”

A long, theatrical sigh. “Christ, Paul, already?”

“It’s not so far off, is it?” Paul tried to keep it light. “Only a week or so till our first rehearsal. Not that I’m counting.”

“You’re always counting.”

“That’s how things get done.”

“Or ruined,” John said, and there was a faint clatter in the background, a cup or saucer hitting a table. “You know, you could just let it be for a bit. Enjoy the calm before the storm. Once this kicks off, it’s all going to be a circus. You want that already?”

“I want to make sure we’re ready.”

There was a long, drawn out sigh from John. “Look, I figured we’d work everything out in rehearsal. That’s the idea, right? They give us a room, we knock heads, see what we come up with.”

“That’s—” Paul felt himself tense, then made himself breathe and unclench his jaw. “There’s logistics, John. Some of these songs—you know, there’s four parts. Five, even. You want to just bring in session players? Or—”

"I hadn’t thought about it," John said. Paul heard the drag of another cigarette.

"Well, I have.”

“Shocking.”

“I've been trying to work it out for the past– and I keep hitting the same wall, which is that there are too many variables I can't account for because I don't know what you're thinking, and I can't prepare properly without knowing what you're thinking, and I've been trying not to ring but I've been through it ten times now and—"

"Paul."

"—I can't work out the session musicians until I know how big you want to go, and I can't work out the arrangements until I know the session musicians, and I can't—"

"Paul."

"What."

“You’re spinning out,” John said. “I hate it when you spin out.”

“I’m not spinning out. I’m preparing.” But he was spinning out, and he hated it, and he hated that John could tell.

“Same bloody thing.”

“Not for me, it’s not,” Paul said, and was surprised to find a vein of actual irritation there. “For some of us, preparation is how we don't end up making complete arses of ourselves on a stage in front of twenty thousand people."

"And for some of us," John said, "spinning out eight days before rehearsals even start is how we make ourselves mental before we've played a single note." A pause. "I’m telling you, this can all wait until then."

A pause.

"Can it though?"

"Yes," John said, his voice finding an edge. "It can. That's literally what rehearsals are for. Please, Paul, don’t turn this into a job before it has to be.”

Paul exhaled hard enough to send a small cloud dust flying. "Christ, John– you must have some idea of what this will look like. For example, do you imagine we’ll be sitting or standing?"

"Sorry?"

"On stage. Are we standing? Sitting? Is there a piano or—"

"I haven't thought about whether we'll be bloody sitting or standing."

"Fuck– John, reherals are a week away."

"Eight days.”

"Whatever, and you haven't thought about something as basic as where we’ll be on stage?"

"Not in those specific terms, no."

"In what terms have you thought about it?"

"Broad strokes," John said. "Impressionistic."

"Impressionistic," Paul repeated.

"Like Van Gogh."

"Jesus, John– you’re not Vincent Fucking Van Gogh– we are not Vincent Van Gogh. We're performing live together for the first time in over a decade, y’know—"

"You're like a bloody top, mate," John said. "Incredible, really. Just—" and Paul could hear the gesture, the twirling finger, "—spinning and spinning and spinning. Can't stop yourself, can you?"

Paul opened his mouth.

"I'm not—"

"Round and round," John said pleasantly. "Going absolutely nowhere."

"John." Paul's voice had lost some of its warmth. "Is this really how it's going to be? Me pulling you along? Again?"

There was a loaded silence, and Paul immediately wished he could shove the words back inside his mouth.

"Is this how it’s going to be?" John’s voice dropped its charm all together, and came out sharp. "You trying to control every little detail, including where our feet go?"

"That's not—" Paul stopped. "No. That's not what I'm—" another pause, and when he spoke again the warmth was gone entirely. "Fuck. John, the press has been relentless. I've got nothing to tell them. Every day there's someone new outside the house and they're all asking me the same questions and I've got no answers because I don't know anything and I just—" he exhaled, looked out the window, "—I can't do nothing. You know I can't do nothing."

A long exhale from John.

"You always did know how to get what you wanted out of me."

"Don’t do that"

“Do what?”

“You know what.” He hated how hot his cheeks could get when John said things like that.

“I don’t.”

Paul tried to believe him, tried to play it off, and shook his head. “It’s just– look, We’ve both done this before, right? Not this, but you know what happens—if we don’t talk it out, the first day will be all teeth-grinding and then everyone's in a foul mood by lunch."

“McCartney Management School,” John said. “You gonna make me a badge?”

“I’ll get you a sash. Or a tiara, if that’s what you want.”

That actually seemed to work. The conversation found its footing again, and Paul felt his shoulders drop slightly. They were fine. It was fine. This was how they worked, a slap and a kiss in every exchange. The trick, he supposed, was not letting the ratio go too far one way or the other.

Paul stared at the desk. "Look." A pause. "Have you thought about the setlist at all? In your impressionistic way."

“Do you know what I’ve thought about, Paul? How to survive this. That’s my setlist. Wake up, play, go home. Repeat. Survive…” There was a long pause. Paul didn’t say anything, sensing John was working up to something. There was a sound, like John putting his head back on the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “But, yeah, I’ve made a list,” he said eventually.

"Can I—"

"Not yet."

"John—"

"It’s not ready, Paul."

Paul’s jaw clenched. “When is it going to be ready?”

“Backstage before the first show. Or possibly onstage, depending on how much you wind me up.”

“Very funny.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” John suddenly sounded less amused, than resigned. “You’ve been out there, year after year, doing your thing with Wings ever since we stopped. I haven’t done this, not really, since—fuck, since Nixon. So if you want me to— just give me a second to find my feet. Or I’ll be out the door before you can say ‘Ob-La-Di’.”

Paul let that settle. He could push—he wanted to push—but he’d learned something in the past 27 years, about what happened when you yanked too hard on a rope with John Lennon at the other end. Most of the time, he simply let go.

Instead he cleared his throat, “Sorry. I just—We don't have much time," he said, but the fight had gone out of it.

Another silence. In the background, a muted TV played a commercial jingle, then there was a child’s voice, and the TV snapped off.

He wondered, for a second, what would happen if they just called the whole thing off. He could imagine the next headline: “World’s Most Famous Bastards Cancel Tour: Too Much Like Hard Work.” There would be outrage, sure, but there would also be relief, and maybe a bit of pride in having nearly done it, having almost given everyone what they wanted. But Paul knew, as surely as he knew anything, that this wasn’t an option: the engine was running, and it would drag them both behind it whether they wanted to or not.

“Alright,” Paul finally said. “We’ll leave it till rehearsal.”

“I'll have something. I promise."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." A beat. "When my back’s up against a wall- remember? You’ve just got to stop shoving.”

And Paul, who had just decided they were back on safe ground, who had just let his guard down, said: "Thought you rather liked it. When I shoved."

The words were out before he'd decided to say them. He heard them land and felt his face go scarlet in the dark, felt his stomach drop clean through the floor.

John cleared his throat aggressively.

"Anyway," Paul said, like if he rushed past it maybe he could trick John into thinking he hadn’t said it in the first place. "Well. At your own pace, then. That's—yes. Your pace. I'll stop—I won't push. Anymore. At all."

"Good," John said. His voice was completely even, which was, somehow, considerably worse.

There was another long, uncomfortable pause.

"Well," Paul said.

"Well," John said.

"I suppose I'll—see you next week, then."

"Right." The smallest pause. "Goodnight, then."

"Goodnight."

He set the phone down and massaged his left temple, feeling the aching pulse of too much caffeine, annoyance at John, embarrassment at himself and an emotion he could only describe as dread. He sat with the dread for a moment.

They’d agreed, a long time ago, in a different city, a lifetime ago, never to talk about it again. Especially not like that, half one in the morning on a transatlantic phone call.

Then he thought: actually, it was fine.

It was fine. It had been a joke. It had been a reference to their working dynamic, nothing more—the way John always needed a push to get moving, the way Paul had always been the one to provide it, that was all it was, that was the entire meaning of the sentence, and anyone listening would hear it and think yes, obviously, nothing to see here.

He nodded to himself.

Except that was their mother tongue, wasn’t it. Double meanings. Always had been. Since they were seventeen years old sitting in each other’s bedrooms learning chords, they’d never once said the plain thing when the thing with two meanings was available. And if the roles were reversed—if John had said it—Paul knew, with absolute certainty, that he’d be sitting in his armchair right now turning that sentence over and over, examining it from every angle until it drove him completely mad.

Fuck.

This. This was what he’d been worried about. Not the setlist, not the session musicians, not the staging or the arrangements or whether they’d be sitting or standing. This. The way it happened every single time, without fail, all of a sudden and without warning—one conversation, one unguarded moment, and every boundary he’d spent years constructing went soft at the edges. Hazy. He’d forget what was good for him. He’d forget the rules he’d made. He’d forget, specifically, the rule he’d made after LA, after New Orleans, or after what had almost been New Orleans. After he came home to Linda and the kids and decided once and for all that there was a line and he was going to stay on the right side of it.

Shaking his head, Paul went back to his notebook. He wrote “Maybe Medley” at the bottom of the page, then tried to remember the sequence from the end of Abbey Road. “You Never Give Me Your Money” “Sun King” “Mean Mr. Mustard”? No, that couldn’t be right. He dug into his memory then wrote down what he remembered with a question mark. He didn’t want to look it up and he definitely did not want to ring John again.

He tried to imagine the first rehearsal. The stuffy rehearsal room, sound dampened and intimate. Would John show up late, or not at all? Would he insist on the most obscure songs for the setlist, starting with a B-side no one liked? Would he bring Yoko, just to see if Paul would squirm? Or would he, as in some of the better dreams, walk in and everything would click into place as it once had, for a brief and beautiful minute, before they inevitably disagreed?

Paul realized he’d drawn a tiny cartoon of John, scowling in profile, on the margin of the page. He added a speech bubble: "We'll sort it at rehearsals." Underneath, in different ink he drew a small figure of himself, and underneath it, wrote in very small letters:

Idiot.

He tore the page out, folded it into a rough square, and shredded it into confetti. The bits drifted to the tabletop, where they looked a little like snow, or the aftermath of a sad parade. Paul brushed them into his palm, dropped them in the coffee saucer, and felt a little better.

***

He lasted four days.

Not even four full ones. Three and a half, if he was exact, before he found himself standing at the telephone table in the hall with the receiver already in his hand.

He dialed. The Dakota line rang twice, then three times.

"Hello?"

"John. It's me."

A beat. Then: "I know, Paul. Your voice hasn't changed that much since Monday."

"Right," Paul said. "No. Course not."

He was standing in the hallway with the cord wrapped twice around his wrist. The window at the end of the corridor let in a thin, greyish light—which meant even though it was London in late spring, it could have been any season at all.

He could hear a pigeon on the roof, the distant thrum of a car out in the road. Normal sounds.

"So," John said. "What is it this time? Still spinning like a ballerina?"

"No." Paul insisted. He unwound the cord from his wrist just to wind it back. "I just—I was thinking. Rehearsals are what, four days out now? Something like that."

"Oh, don’t act like you don’t know," John said, and there was something in his voice—not quite a laugh… maybe a dry smile.

"Don't be like that." Paul leaned his shoulder against the wall. "I only meant—I thought we should maybe touch base before we're in the same room. You know. Get a sense of where we're at. So it's not all—"

"All what?"

"All teeth-grinding. Like I said before."

"We’ve still got four days, Paul. Plenty of time. Used to write a whole damn album in that time." There was a pause, then Paul heard the faintest sound of liquid being poured—tea, probably, or maybe beer. "I don't see why we need to get reacquainted over the phone, you know. We're going to have plenty of time for that on the road. Months of it, if I'm not mistaken."

"That's not—I'm not trying to—" Paul stopped. He’d thought this through earlier this morning in the shower. What had he planned to say? "Look. I’m just giving you a phone call. A bloke is entitled to make a phone call, isn’t he?"

"He said, with zero ulterior motives,"

"I'm just—“ Paul closed his eyes. "I'm really just giving you a ring, John. I'm, well— I’m checking in. Like a person checks in with another person before they're about to work together."

Another beat. Then, almost gently: "Paul."

“I'm not pushing."

"Sure you are." John's voice had gone quiet, which was worse than sharp. "In your own kind of way.”

Paul made a noise that communicated that he was terribly offended by John’s suggestion.

“You call me up and say you just want to chat and then within thirty seconds you've got me pinned to the wall about setlists."

His stomach did a weird flip at John’s choice of words. But, before he could let it fluster him, he shook his head as if to clear it, then actually gave his throat a clear.

"I haven't mentioned a setlist, have I?”

"No.”

“Right, then.”

“But you were about to."

Paul opened his mouth and then closed it tight. John was right, of course. He could feel the shape of the question forming in his throat, like a cough he couldn't suppress. He pressed his forehead against the cool wallpaper.

"I wasn't," he said.

"Liar."

"John."

"Say it, then. Get it out. You'll feel better."

Paul exhaled through his nose. The pigeon on the roof cooed. He swallowed hard and bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling.

"Fine," he said. "Have you—have you given any more thought to the—"

"The setlist?"

"—to the general shape of it. Yes."

"There it is." John sounded almost pleased. "Took you longer than I expected, actually. I was starting to worry you'd grown."

"I'm trying, John. I genuinely am."

"I know you are, love. You just can’t help yourself, can you?"

The word love landed somewhere painful and clunky in his chest, and Paul hated how it made his heart do a double skip. He pushed off the wall and started pacing the narrow corridor, three steps one way, three steps back.

"Apparently not," he said. "Listen, while I have you- I thought we could discuss something else. Not the setlist."

"Go on." And Paul could hear John’s eyes roll through the phone.

"Costumes."

"Costumes." John repeated, skepticism dripping from his voice.

"Stage wear. Whatever you want to call it." Paul was gaining momentum now. "I've been thinking about it, because—well, because it matters, doesn't it? The visual. People are going to be looking at us. So do we go casual? Jeans and shirts? Or something more—I don't know. Structured. Suits, maybe. We used to do suits."

"We used to do a lot of things."

His stomach flipped, because that was the thing about John. Paul felt it in his stomach before he felt it anywhere else.

He'd spent three days hoping—genuinely, hoping—that John hadn't picked up on his stupid comment about shoving him against a wall. Had almost persuaded himself that it had landed unremarked upon. But now here was John, stepping back into their dance as if no time had passed at all, as if they hadn't agreed years ago to put their swords down.

The worst part was the inconvenient warmth that moved through Paul when he did.

He'd always been better at this dance than was good for him. He coughed and tried to focus.

"Or something else. Something—you know. Thematic. Like Sgt. Pepper. Not the same thing, obviously, but that idea. Something that says we've thought about it. That we're not just two blokes wandering onstage in whatever we happened to throw on that morning."

"I think the crowd would like it more if you just went topless, actually."

"What?"

"Topless," John repeated, perfectly even. Still that voice. Like he was suggesting something genuinely helpful. "You know. Shirt off. Let the people have what they want. I'm sure the front row would appreciate it."

Paul could feel unbearable heat climbing his neck. He pressed his palm flat against the wallpaper, as if the wall might steady him. It didn't.

"That's—" He cleared his throat. "That's not helpful."

"I think it's very helpful. Solves the costume question entirely."

"You're being—"

"Practical?"

"An arse."

"That too." John was definitely smiling now. Paul could hear it in the shape of his breathing—the particular way John's mouth moved when he'd landed a good one and was enjoying the aftermath. "You asked what I thought. I told you what I thought."

"You didn't think anything. You're winding me up."

"Paul." And there was something in his voice, something that might have been amusement or might have been something else entirely, "You're flustered."

"I'm not flustered."

"You sound flustered." John said, gently.

Paul closed his eyes briefly.

"The suits," he said, with as much dignity as he could muster. "We'll discuss it at rehearsals."

"There you go," John said warmly. "See? You're learning."

Paul realized, distantly, that he was holding his breath. He let it out. The pigeon cooed again. Downstairs, Linda was humming something—he couldn't make out the tune, just the shape of it, warm and low and completely unconcerned with whatever disaster was unfolding three floors above her.

"Look," John said, and his voice had shifted again, gone almost gentle. Almost. "We've got four days. I'll have the setlist. I'll have thoughts about the—what did you call it. Stage wear. I'll even think about whether we're sitting or standing, if it'll make you sleep at night."

"It would, actually."

A rustle—John shifting position, probably. The creak of old furniture. "But you can't keep calling me every three days to see if I've done my homework. It makes me want to not do it."

Paul stood in the hallway and looked at his own hand pressed flat against the wall. His knuckles were white. He made himself relax them, finger by finger.

"Alright," he said. "No more calls."

"No more calls about the setlist."

"No more calls about anything."

"I didn't say that." John's voice was light again. Playful. “You could call about other things. The weather. The granola you had for breakfast. You know, normal things.”

“John—“

"Paul."

"What."

"Go have dinner with your wife."

Paul could hear Linda's humming more clearly now—she'd moved into the kitchen, directly below him. The smell of something roasting drifted up through the floorboards. Rosemary. Garlic. Normal things.

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

TO: P. MCCARTNEY, CAVENDISH AVENUE, LONDON
FROM: J. LENNON, THE DAKOTA, NEW YORK CITY
DATE: JUNE 4, 1980

SINCE YOU ASKED. COME TOGETHER. TOO OBVIOUS? IN MY LIFE. TWO OF US. YESTERDAY SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE, GET IT OVER WITH EARLY. NOT FIRST.

RE: SILLY LOVE SONGS — ABSOLUTELY NOT. I HAVE STANDARDS.

RE: COSTUMES — TOPLESS. FINAL ANSWER.

YOU'RE WELCOME. HOPE YOU CAN SLEEP NOW.

— J.L.

But first, a few weeks earlier: John

The cab shot west, windows greasy with the city's chemical grime. He slumped back, watching yellow cabs slalom round a bus that looked like it had been rusting out since before the Great War.

The driver was a fan, but mercifully he kept it to a soft “Welcome home, Mr. Lennon,” over the classical station. John gave him a cordial nod and smile.

He'd expected to feel something on landing. Relief, maybe. A little moral victory lap round Manhattan after a London trip that hadn't, against the odds, ended in bloodshed. Contract signed. Paul seen, spoken to, not fled from. A reasonable outcome, by any measure.

Instead the ride uptown just depressed him.

In London there'd been momentum. Now he was back and the momentum had stopped dead, and what was waiting for him was the usual, long days of nothing much. Sean and Yoko to talk to. Fred turning up in doorways like he lived there, which, fair enough, he did.

The cab hit a pothole hard.

He watched the city go by and tried to work out what kind of circus he'd be walking into. There'd be cameras, obviously, reporters too. The real question was how many of the proper freaks would've turned out.

Thirty minutes on, the car slowed into the parkside traffic, and sooner than he was ready for, the Dakota loomed up.

"Jesus Christ," Yoko said, half to herself, fingers tapping her lips.

John followed her gaze to the gate at the curb, the ancient ironwork looking less welcoming than ever.

The fans that awaited him outside were not Paul's fans. That was the first thing he noticed. He’d always known it, but hadn’t really been faced with it for a while. The taxonomy of the people who came to stand outside his building versus the people who came to stand outside Paul's was striking. Paul got the weepers, the cheerful ones, the girls with handmade signs in bubble letters.

John's lot had always been a different breed. The ones who'd read everything he'd ever said in an interview and built a manifesto out of it. The ones convinced every song he'd ever sung was addressed personally to them. The crazies, as he’d lovingly come to think of them.

There was a man in a rumpled corduroy jacket clutching a battered copy of In His Own Write who looked like he'd been rehearsing his opening line for years. Two young women in matching wire-rimmed glasses were having a very solemn debate—the Iran hostage crisis, probably, or possibly the correct interpretation of Revolution 9, with his fans it could go either way.

A woman in a long coat had a handwritten placard that read simply IMAGINE and was holding it tight between two hands.

Next to her, a young man—twenty, maybe younger—standing very still, not holding anything, not shouting anything, just watching the door still and devout. John recognised that one. He'd been that kid once, outside a cinema in Liverpool waiting to watch Elvis do whatever Elvis did. It didn’t matter what, just being near it had been the point.

Off to one side, a different sort altogether, holding signs.

LENNON DOESN'T NEED McCARTNEY, one read, in furious block capitals.

MACCA SOLD OUT. HE’LL DRAG YOU DOWN.

And a thin lad who'd clearly appointed himself guardian of John's artistic soul, holding a sign that just said: YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS.

His people. God help him.

John eyed the mob and wondered how fast he could thread the needle into the lobby without incident. He sighed, stepped out into the unseasonably thick June heat, and palmed a bill into the driver's hand. He guided Yoko through the crowd, one hand at her low back — not for steadiness so much as a shield.

He was nearly through the surge, bracing to stop while the doorman worked the gate, when his eye caught a welcome sight.

Standing a few paces off from the rest of them was Goresh, in a leather jacket a size too small, camera already up and clicking before John had properly stopped walking. There was nothing predatory in it. If anything, Goresh was about the only safe pair of eyes on the whole block.

"Mr. Lennon — John, good to have you back!" Goresh kept his voice level, breaking from the pack.

John slowed, only slightly, to give Goresh the opportunity to catch up.

The camera was already back at Goresh's eye. "I know you hate this, but — if I could just get a quick one—" He jerked it upward, half-apologetic.

"Go on then," John said, turning to face him properly. "Quick about it. And only if I get to keep my soul."

Goresh's face split into an earnest, slightly nervous smile. "Deal." He fired off a quick burst, each shutter click audible even over the crowd. "Looks good," he breathed, half to himself.

John stood there and let him get on with it, and as he did he looked around at the assembled crowd—the signs, the intellectuals, the freaks, and then back at Goresh.

Goresh, who'd been camped outside the Dakota most mornings for years. Who knew his schedule better than John did most weeks. Who'd been upstairs. Who'd sat in his flat and been told things John really shouldn't have told anyone.

He watched him lower the camera.

"Just wanted to say — I've read all the interviews," Goresh was saying, grinning properly now. "You and McCartney. Unreal, man. I can't even—"

John wasn't really listening. He was looking at the camera bag slung across Goresh's chest.

"—and the bit about God, when you said—" Goresh was saying, and John caught "God" and nodded, some automatic muscle in his neck.

John let him get one more shot, and Goresh took it, grinning behind the lens.

Somewhere behind them a woman screamed something about wanting his babies. John flinched, glanced back to check Yoko had made it through the gate, then let his attention settle back on Goresh.

"—didn't even know you two still—I mean, everyone thought—" Goresh again, something about disbelief, about not knowing, and John nodded at that too, even though he wasn’t processing any of the words. "—my mate works at the pressing plant, he couldn't believe it either, he said—"

John looked at him. Narrowed his eyes. Let him get one more shot.

"—anyway, sorry, I'm going on," Goresh said, laughing at himself, lowering the camera at last. John ooked at him properly this time, and decided there was only one way to settle it properly.

"Come with me," he said, and took hold of his arm, harder than he meant to.

Goresh looked down at John's hand on his arm, then up at John, his face cycling through surprise, confusion, and something approaching alarm.

"Now?" he said.

"Now," John said.

Goresh looked like he'd been hit by a brick — excited then anxious all in the same second. "Sure — yeah, alright, I mean—" He gave a small, clumsy bow that John ignored completely, already pushing through the door.

***

The Dakota lobby was warm but oppressive, the building’s ancient floors creaking like a haunted house. John nodded to the guard, who buzzed them through the inner doors. He half-guided, half-shoved Goresh into the lift ahead of him, muttering something to the doorman, who did his level best not to look concerned about the young man being manhandled across his lobby.

John was still wearing a big, unconvincing smile at the guard when the doors shut. The second they did, the smile dropped clean off his face and he turned to look at Goresh properly.

Goresh looked back at him with the face of a man trying to work out whether this was going to be the best night of his life or the worst.

"Pleased with yourself?" John asked, though the tone didn't match the question at all.

Goresh blinked. "Sorry?"

"Out there. Pleased with yourself?"

"Sure," Goresh said, sounding anything but. "I — yes? I think so? I'm not sure what you're—"

"Right," John said, and looked at the doors instead.

Goresh opened his mouth, thought better of it, shut it again. He shifted his weight foot to foot, sneaking a glance at John sideways. "Really great to have you back," he tried.

"Mm," John said.

The lift was taking its time about it, and gave an ominous little clunk somewhere in the shaft. John watched the numbers light up one by one. The paranoia he'd been hauling round since the airport did what paranoia always did left to its own devices — it grew. For Christ’s sake, he hadn't slept properly in four days. London, then Paul, then the stairwell, then the leak, then the interview, then a plane, and now a lift with a lad he barely knew, who he'd told things to. Things he really oughtn't have.

He turned to face him full on, voice dropping. "You didn't do it, did you?"

Goresh blinked. "Do — what?"

"The leak." He kept his voice low and even. "Tell me you didn't."

Goresh went through about four colours in quick succession. "No — no, Mr Lennon — John, I mean. I wouldn't. You know I wouldn't. I'm not—" He shook his head hard. "That's not who I am."

"Well. Somebody did," John said. Not an accusation. Just a fact that needed acknowledging.

The elevator doors opened and when Goresh didn’t move, John shoved him ahead into the hall.

***

He didn't offer tea this time. Just turned round in the middle of the sitting room and looked at Goresh properly.

The kid's hands, always in motion, always fiddling with his camera, were dead still at his sides.

The flat was a sprawl, with recently delivered art propped against every surface, magazines everywhere, Sean's train tracks still piled in the corner from before London. Yoko had already vanished into her studio, her luggage abandoned outside the bedroom door like she couldn't be bothered with it a moment longer.

Goresh hovered on the threshold, visibly vibrating.

"Swear on your life," John said.

"I swear." Goresh's face had gone the colour of a sheet, his voice coming out slightly strangled. "I heard after the fact, same as everyone. Couldn't believe it. None of the lads out there knew till it hit the wire." A pause. "I'd never. You know that."

John looked at him a long moment, took him in from the face down to the shoes. Watched his knees shake.

Goresh looked like he might actually cry.

"Alright," John said finally.

"Alright?" Barely above a whisper.

"Alright." John moved to the bar cart. "I believe you." He'd known before he asked, of course. But he'd needed to ask. "Whiskey?"

Goresh blinked. "What?"

"Whiskey, son. D'you want one."

"I — I—" Goresh stammered, still somewhere back in the shock of it. "What?"

John poured two, crossed the room and put a hand on Goresh's shoulder.

"Come on, then,” he said, looking him dead in the eye. "S'not poisoned."

Goresh let out a long, shuddering breath. His shoulders dropped a good two inches. "Okay. Good. Thank you."

John handed him the glass and dropped into the nearest chair.

“Suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway. Story’s out. What’s done is done.”

“Right.” Goresh choked out in between long deep sips in the tone of voice of someone who would agree with absolutely anything John Lennon said to him right now.

"Still." John pointed at him with the glass. "Keep your ears open. Out there, usual channels, wherever it is you lot talk. Anything at all about who did this — you come to me first. Before anyone else."

"Of course," Goresh said immediately. "Absolutely. Whatever you need. Mister—" he stopped, "—John."

Goresh was perched, stiff-spined, on the edge of the sofa, both hands wrapped around the glass. His eyes darted from the Warhol print to the African sculpture in the corner.

A pause.

"Sorry about the elevator," John said.

"That's—completely fine," Goresh said, in a tone that suggested he had decided to move on.

"Long few weeks, I've had."

"I can imagine."

"You really can't," John said. Not unkindly. He let that hang, and watched Goresh’s eyes brim with curiosity.

John settled back into the chair and sighed. "Go on then. Ask what you're dying to ask."

Goresh hesitated, then: "What was it like? The two of you. Together. I still can't — I mean, I can't believe it."

John swirled the drink, watched the ice shift.

"Imagine being stuck in a lift with your ex," he said. "Who's also your brother. Who owes you money. And there's lawyers in there with you." He took a sip. "Bit like that."

It wasn't, though. Not really. It had been worse and better than that in ways he had no idea how to explain to a twenty-something he barely knew. How he'd told himself he wanted out of the whole thing right up until Paul had actually tried to call it off, and then some traitorous part of him had gone hollow with disappointment instead of relief, which he would never forgive himself for.

Goresh took the joke in with his mouth slightly open, then laughed, nervous. "Oh — right."

John didn’t speak for a long moment. Goresh, filling the silence, piped up again, “So is it real, then? The tour?”

“As real as anything is, these days, I guess.” John eyed the kid over the glass. “Why— you want a ticket?”

Goresh grinned, bashful. “Honestly, I’d settle for a good shot from the pit. But that’s not—I mean, the world’s lost its mind, Mr. Lennon– John. They’ve got pool sheets for which show the roof’ll collapse from the crowds. My mother’s already in a lottery. It’s just—unbelievable.”

John scoffed into the whiskey. "Hope that's not her retirement plan."

"She's a school teacher, so it's not far off, honestly."

"Christ. I dunno what's wrong with you lot over here, not paying your teachers enough to retire on."

Goresh just shrugged, took a sip.

"If you don't mind me asking — how did it happen? After everything. How'd you two just—?"

John hesitated. He could give the party line. The sanitized version, the one he and Paul had rehearsed for exactly this question, the one they'd trotted out for the BBC and would trot out again a hundred more times before the first show. Or he could let something truer slip, to a twenty something with a camera.

John turned his glass slowly in his hands, watching the whiskey climb the sides and then drip down. London came back to him in pieces, unhelpfully — Paul's face in the stairwell going pink under a fluorescent tube, the ridiculous stupid feeling of standing six feet away from him, after years of making a very real effort to avoid him.

"I dunno, kid," he said. "One minute we're tearing chunks out of each other in the press. Next thing everyone's convinced we're getting back together anyway, whether we like it or not. And I suppose enough people said it long enough that we just — stopped arguing the point." He paused, turned the glass again. "And then all of a sudden there we were. Back again, like flu season."

There was a lot he wasn't saying. That rehearsals started in a fortnight and they had, between them, precisely nothing prepared. That the interview with NME was already causing trouble. That seeing Paul had set him back approximately two decades. That m he looked obnoxiously handsome for a bloke approaching forty. That he had no earthly idea what he was going to say to a stadium full of people who thought they were about to witness something holy, when he wasn't sure yet himself what it was.

“Wow.” Goresh breathed through a disbelieving grin.

"Best reserve judgement till the shows actually happen."

“I’m sure they’ll be terrific.”

John grunted.

“Anyway, you’re back,” Goresh said, a little brighter. “And everyone’s rooting for you.”

“Not everyone,” John muttered, half to himself.

The kid searched his face. “If you’re worried about those idiots outside, you shouldn’t be.”

"I'm not worried," John said, which wasn’t entirely true. "I just didn't expect them. Thought everyone wanted this."

"Most people do."

He looked into his glass. "Paul sold out. Paul's dragging you down. Paul this, Paul that." He said it flatly, without inflection. "Funny, that."

Goresh looked at him carefully.

“I mean,” John said, “they should know it's a loser's game. I tried to make people think Paul was beneath me for the better part of 1970 and it never stuck. Not once. Because—" he stopped just to look down at his glass. "Well. Because it isn't true, is it.”

Goresh said nothing, wisely.

"Point is," John said, "if anyone's going to have a go, it should be me. That's my job.”

"Right," Goresh said.

"I can say it," John said. "They can't."

“Completely.”Goresh nodded furiously.

"Anyway." John tapped a rhythm out on the lip of his glass. "It threw me. That's all. I thought the whole world had lost its mind over this and then I get home and there are people outside my building telling me I've made a terrible mistake." He set the glass down.

“You're not making a mistake."

"I know I’m not," John said. "But some mornings it feels like it." He finished his drink. "Paul bloody McCartney isn't beneath anyone. I could've told those idiots that."

Goresh almost smiled. "For what it's worth," he said, "the ones with the signs are outnumbered about a hundred to one. You should've heard some of the people I talked to out there this week."

John looked at the window.

“Some guy I spoke to drove up from Delaware," Goresh continued, "just to stand outside the building. Didn't have tickets. Didn't know if he'd get tickets. Just wanted to be near where you live." He paused. "Said it made it feel real."

“Delaware? Where the hell is Delaware?”

“Far away. Does it matter?” They both laughed.

"A hundred to one," John repeated.

"At least," Goresh said.

John picked up his glass just to find it empty.

"Right," he said. "Good."

"I’m telling you, most of us can't wait for this to happen." He shook his head, "—I've never seen anything like it. Waiting outside your place these last few days has felt like waiting outside a temple."

"A temple," he repeated.

“Well–”

"S'a lot of pressure," John said, "for two old men to play a few songs."

"I’m sorry— that’s probably not what you needed to hear right now–" Goresh started.

"Not quite.” John set down his glass. "But fuck if I don’t already know it." He ran a hand through his thinning hair. "A temple. Christ."

Goresh smirked slightly to himself. "Good acoustics, in a temple," he said.

John looked at him and laughed, short and real, the first one that had come out of him since before London.

Goresh smiled, then stood, a little awkward about it. "I should let you get some rest. Long day. More coming."

John stood too, and walked him to the door. "Remember — anything comes your way, you call me first. But don't go getting yourself in trouble over it. You're about the only one out there I can stand."

"Cross my heart." Goresh made a small salute, then hesitated in the hall. "Really glad you're back, Mr. Lennon."

Lennon softened, just for a second. “John, please.”

“John.” Goresh repeated, shaking his head. “Don't think I’ll ever get used to that.”

He watched the elevator swallow Goresh and the echo of his footsteps, then shut the door and leaned against it, alone in the quiet. This was how it was, always: the world wanted a piece, and you got to decide how much flesh you were willing to spare.

***

Paul called on Friday.

Then again on Monday.

He was bursting with optimism and forward motion. It was, objectively, exactly what the situation required. It was also, objectively, completely insufferable.

John had done his best. He’d deflected, redirected, and even enjoyed it more than he should have—right up until the moment Paul had said that damn thing about shoving him against a wall.

Well. That's what John's brain had made of it, anyway. Paul hadn't said much of anything, really. It was more so his tone.

All Paul had really said was that John rather liked a shove, which was, for the purposes of their working relationship, true. But it was the way he'd said it that had given John pause. More than pause. Given him a bloody heart attack, if he was honest.

John had said absolutely nothing, because saying nothing was the only appropriate response, really. The only appropriate response when his skin went hot and tight and his throat as dry as a bone. All of which would have been embarrassing enough on its own, if Paul had meant to throw him.

If it had been deliberate, John could at least have called it a cheap shot and moved on.

But it might just as easily have been nothing– a slip– and somehow that was worse. That he was forty years old and still couldn't tell the difference. Still getting flustered over a choice of words.

John didn't know which one it was. He'd been turning it over for three days and he still didn't know. And not knowing was really fucking frustrating, because knowing would have at least given him permission to be annoyed.

Instead he was just left with an image—less a thought, more a picture, Paul's hands, a wall—and it was Paul's bloody fault he had it, entirely Paul's fault, he hadn't asked for it—and he hadn't asked for his skin to go hot every time it surfaced, which was far too frequently, which was also Paul's fault.

John promised himself that when Paul rang a second time, he was going to say something so precisely, so deliberately loaded that Paul would be the one sitting alone afterward with his skin prickling and hot, unable to focus on anything else, turning it over and over and not sleeping.

Fair was fair.

***

By the time Paul actually rang on Wednesday, John had a shortlist.

He didn't use a single one of them.

Instead, John's mind went catastrophically blank, and what came out instead was some nonsense about going on stage topless — which was, in retrospect, a bit much. Too obvious by half, no subtlety to it whatsoever, nothing like the careful, loaded lines he'd spent three days sharpening.

He could feel Paul go tight on the other end of the line, working hard to stay composed. Didn't matter, in the end. John had pressed exactly the button he'd meant to press. Too easy, sometimes. Had always been too easy. Paul's buttons were so well labelled. He didn't much like examining why pressing them felt so good.

That was meant to be the whole victory; Paul flustered, score settled. Except John found he was enjoying it far too much to leave it there. One needling line led to another, and then another, and somewhere in the middle of it he'd stopped keeping score entirely, too busy being delighted with himself, too busy missing this. Being matched, word for word, by someone who never once let him win.

Fair, apparently, was not always fair.

***

At night John made his lists.

Not a setlist or the production schedule or anything that would have been helpful. Those were in a folder on his desk that he had opened approximately twice, and then closed again. He made other lists in his head, lying in the dark, or in the armchair, or standing at the kitchen window at two in the morning with cold tea.

The lists changed every night.

Sometimes the list was about the Beatles songs, which ones had been played to death, which ones he’d forgotten how to play. Sometimes it was his solo work—what he wanted people to hear, what he wanted to say, whether there was a way to put Imagine and God in the same set and have it make sense or whether that was far too much for an audience in one evening.

Sometimes the list was about Paul's songs.

One night around one in the morning he put one of Paul's records on—some Wings thing, he couldn't even remember which—and listened with the lights off. Made notes he didn't write down. What Paul sounded best on. What he'd want to hear live. Whether he could bring any of it up in rehearsal without revealing how many times he'd listened to this specific Paul McCartney album like some kind of fan.

There were other lists, too.

Why this was a terrible idea. Why it hadn't worked the first time. Why he hadn't gone to New Orleans.

That last one he could never finish, because finishing it required thinking about what had happened in Los Angeles, which he hated to think about because thinking about it always gave him a stomach ache.

And then the list he really wouldn't finish.

Things he wanted to say to Paul that had nothing to do with music. Things he wanted to say and had done his best to ignore every single day since he was seventeen years old.

That was the thing nobody told him about getting older—he assumed he’d get better at it. The pushing down. The not thinking about it. He was forty years old and he'd genuinely believed, somewhere between now and then, that he'd gotten stronger. That the muscle had developed. That he could be in the same room as Paul and it would be manageable in a way it hadn't been at twenty-five or thirty.

It wasn’t.

And he knew, if he was being sensible, that he should be talking to Paul about this. The logical thing to do would be to pick up the phone and say look, here's what I'm thinking, what are you thinking, and then actually listen, and have a conversation about the music like two adults who had agreed to spend three months together professionally.

But he didn’t. Because Paul had almost called it off, because he hated how much this was keeping him up at night and because he couldn’t admit that he was excited now, nervous even. Because he had some dignity. Not much, but some.

So he made his lists and waited for rehearsals to start.