The Cynthia, Jane, Pattie and Maureen thread
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That was a wonderful interview Julian gave. Love that he said he's a spiritual person, in many ways he's alot like his father.
It's interesting about the white feather... a few years ago, when I got re-interested in listening to the Beatles music, I found a white feather outside my front door,! I still have it. I really think John is still such a positive influence in the world through his music, and all the good things he tried to accomplish in making the world a better place!
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Interesting interview with Jane Asher, from 2004, where she gives her reasons for not wanting to talk about her time with Paul and The Beatles
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/drama/3622480/The-darkness-behind-the-smile.html
This is an excerpt:
I'm struck by an image that has haunted me since I first encountered it while researching her career. Her father, whom she loved dearly, committed suicide, having become seriously ill, and his body lay undiscovered for a week in the basement of the Ashers' Wimpole Street home.
"Oh well, that's overplayed too," she says, dismissively, when I tentatively raise the subject. "He was ill and it was horrible and . . . that's enough. That's really sensitive stuff, not so much for me, but to my mother. And life's much more complicated than, 'Her father kills herself, so that's why she's got deep, dark wells and she finds parts like that.' That's simplistic psychology."
True, but it does suggest why Asher might feel that even the happiest family is just one step away from catastrophe. I wonder, too, whether a similar desire to avoid pain explains the other great denial in her life: her relationship with Paul McCartney.
Asher met him on April 18, 1963, two weeks after her 17th birthday, having been sent by the Radio Times to interview the Beatles. In The Beatles Anthology, McCartney recalls: "We all fancied her - I tried pulling her, succeeded, and we were boyfriend and girlfriend for quite a long time."
Asher's mother invited McCartney to live in the family home. There, he and Lennon wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand and several more of McCartney's greatest songs, including We Can Work It Out, said to be inspired by his relationship with Jane. His fellow Beatles assumed the couple would marry, but Paul ended up with the American photographer Linda Eastman.
Asher has never said a word about the relationship, or the Beatles, since. I have no expectation whatever that she will break her silence for me. But I am curious about why, after all these years, she will not share her experience of one of the great cultural phenomena of the past century.
"I realise I'm hypersensitive and probably slightly paranoid," she says, "but clearly the major connection with all that is personal. And because I've been happily married for 30-something years, it's insulting [to her husband and family]."
I push the point: "If I met the Dark Lady, I'd be bound to ask her about Shakespeare." Asher replies, "Yes, but the Dark Lady might say, 'I'm very sorry, but I'm now married to this playwright who hasn't had a single success, and his sonnets are crap, but I love him.' "
It's not easy to see what this response says about her feelings for her husband. But I press on, objecting that I couldn't care less what her teenage sex-life was like; I'm interested in the cultural history she's witnessed.
"I know what you're interested in," Asher accepts. "It may be musical, but my connection to that is personal, so it opens up a whole thing. You have to make a blanket rule and that's the decision I made, many years ago. And because I made that decision, it's just easier to stick to it."
I draw three possible hypotheses from all this. First, that Asher quite enjoys the game of witholding something she knows people want, then watching them try to crack her resolve. Second, that she's stuck in a position from which she can't now extract herself. And third, that she's telling the truth. She can't separate the historical from the personal. And the personal still hurts...
It seems like, in this interview, that she's thinking of her husband, in not wanting to discuss Paul or The Beatles. Have to respect her for that. But it must also be difficult (as the last sentences of the quote above state) to separate her personal feelings from looking at it from a historical standpoint.
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https://www.ronburtonphotographer.com/photo/paul-mccartney-and-jane-asher
Paul McCartney and girlfriend Jane Asher return to London Airport after a holiday in Portugal. Paul was called home early when the news was about to break on the Beatles' MBE awards. 11 June 1965
Photo by Ron Burton
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Ringo and Maureen's wedding day, February 11, 1965
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Brian Epstein, Cynthia, John, George, and family attended the ceremony.
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From the Victoria and Albert Museum instagram page (@vamuseum)
I can't get no satisfaction 'cause I try and I try and I try and I try
Patti Boyd in a Mary Quant dress with the Rolling Stones, photo taken by John French (1906-66). England, 1964. In this print, Patti Boyd is the only person looking at the camera while the Rolling Stones seem to have been directed by the photographer to look elsewhere but the camera.
#WeWantQuant #RollingStones #MaryQuant #SwingingSixties #60sFashion
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^ They are all looking at Pattie which probably wasn’t hard for them to be directed to do!
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Nancy R wrote:
^ They are all looking at Pattie which probably wasn’t hard for them to be directed to do!
Yeah
Interesting that both Pattie and Linda had photographic connections to the Rolling Stones. Linda took photos of them in New York in 1967.
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^ That was 1966 on that boat off NYC.
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Circa 1976 with new husband, John Twist.
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Pattie, Ringo, and Jane Asher at an event (late 1980s?)
From The Beatles Wives and Girls page on Facebook
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At Mike & Angie's wedding June 7, 1968
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Nancy R wrote:
At Mike & Angie's wedding June 7, 1968
Great photo! It's amazing to think that just a few weeks later he'd be with Linda in LA.... then Francie that summer..... If he wasn't a Beatle he'd have been good at flipping houses
But we him. -
LadyLeslie wrote:
Nancy R wrote:
At Mike & Angie's wedding June 7, 1968
Great photo! It's amazing to think that just a few weeks later he'd be with Linda in LA.... then Francie that summer..... If he wasn't a Beatle he'd have been good at flipping houses
But we him.Francie had actually originally showed up at Apple on Savile Row in April I believe, but they didn't get involved right away. When Jane was out of town, he moved Francie in to his London home. She was definitely around until at least July 28, 1968 (Mad Day Out photoshoot) but I think he sent her packing in early August.
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Nancy R wrote:
Francie had actually originally showed up at Apple on Savile Row in April I believe, but they didn't get involved right away. When Jane was out of town, he moved Francie in to his London home. She was definitely around until at least July 28, 1968 (Mad Day Out photoshoot) but I think he sent her packing in early August.
Paul was seeing Francie on the 4th June ( just three days before he attended Mike's wedding with Jane) as Francie was at the recording session for Revolution 1 on that date.
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Arriving in India 1968
Photobucket may or may not show you this pic! 🤬
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LadyLeslie wrote:
Nancy R wrote:
At Mike & Angie's wedding June 7, 1968
Great photo! It's amazing to think that just a few weeks later he'd be with Linda in LA.... then Francie that summer..... If he wasn't a Beatle he'd have been good at flipping houses
But we him.He flips houses? I've never heard that before?
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love2travel wrote:
LadyLeslie wrote:
Nancy R wrote:
At Mike & Angie's wedding June 7, 1968
Great photo! It's amazing to think that just a few weeks later he'd be with Linda in LA.... then Francie that summer..... If he wasn't a Beatle he'd have been good at flipping houses
But we him.He flips houses? I've never heard that before?
No, it was a joke! He "flipped" women so much he might have been good at flipping houses!
