A love story in 43 songs: was John queer for Paul?

Last spring, I got Ian Leslie's "John and Paul a Love Story in Songs" and read it right away. 

There was quite a bit to talk about after that first pass, but I've listened to the audiobook version several times since then, as well as watching or listening to a bunch of podcasts with Leslie, and I have more thoughts about the book now.

First, it's a love story in 43 songs, which I put together as an Apple Music playlist, and made available here. It's 2 hours and 24 minutes long.

Although Leslie doesn't only talk about the 43 songs named as chapter titles. I especially liked his discussion of I Know (I Know) from Lennon's "Mind Games." See below for more.

It's a very good book, since Leslie takes a new approach to Beatleography with the focus on the John/Paul partnership. His thesis is that John and Paul had a romantic, but not sexual, relationship, although Leslie does speculate, with some evidence, that Lennon was a bit on the bi-side. It's a very interesting idea, although I felt he stretched it a little, occasionally.

Leslie takes this idea the furthest in the chapter "Look at Me" and it gets pretty sexy:

John said that no one ever hurt him the way Paul hurt him. McCartney was nonplussed at John's anger towards him in the late 60s and early 70s, which seemed to go beyond the normal frustrations of co-working or the annoyances of friends. Even Yoko was baffled by John's animus towards Paul. She speculated to Phillip Norman (Beatles and Lennon biographer) that John might have contemplated an affair with Paul and that Paul rejected him. "I knew there was something going on here," she said. "From his point of view, not from Paul's. And he was so angry at Paul, I couldn't help wondering what it was really about." 

Yoko kept an audio diary in 1968, on the 4th of June, a month after her romantic relationship with John began, she said to her tape recorder: "I'm sure that if Paul had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat, because there's something definitely very strong between John and Paul." 

There is little doubt that John was predominantly heterosexual, but as we've seen, he was also curious about same sex desire. 

"I think he had a desire to have sex with men, but I think he was too inhibited," Yoko said in 2015, before modifying herself. "No, not inhibited, he said, 'I don't mind if there's an incredibly attractive guy. It's very difficult, they would have to be not just physically attractive, but mentally very advanced too, and you can't find people like that.'" 

It is at least possible that in early 1968, John felt he had found someone like that. Perhaps John was queer in a modern sense, fluid in his preferences, and more so than Paul. He seemed to dream of an all consuming relationship that wrapped music and sex and love into one. Whether or not this is so, what matters is that John felt rejected and abandoned by Paul after Rishikesh. The wounding probably took place inside his head, but that of course doesn't make the pain any less real. In fact, knowing that it was inside his head may have made it worse. 

Everyone who watches "Get Back" is struck by the intensity with which Lennon and McCartney hold each other's gaze as they play through endless versions of Two of Us. The two friends spent an unusual amount of their lives looking into each other's eyes... 

...John had known Paul planned to leave Rishikesh before him, but even so, he didn't like people leaving. As 1968 went on, he began the painful process of accepting that the one person he regarded as an equal, the one he saw as his best friend and creative soul mate, didn't see him in quite the same way. When John wasn't being looked at by Paul, he didn't know who he was supposed to be.

McCartney has always been adamant that if Lennon had any gay tendencies he would have known about it, but Leslie seems to think that McCartney often failed to pick up on emotional signals from Lennon. Certainly Yoko's testimony is pretty compelling. And the lyrics of "Look at Me" which is on Lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" are pretty suggestive when considered in light of Leslie's discussion, and knowing that Lennon wrote "Look at Me" in India, before he got involved with Yoko in a big way:

Look at me
Oh please look at me, my love
Here I am
Oh my love
Who am I?
Nobody knows but me
Nobody knows but me
Who am I?
Nobody else can see
Just you and me
Who are we?
Oh my love

He argues that several of the John songs mentioned in the book are about Paul. I have my doubts about some of his claims, but I think he really nails it with Lennon's "I Know (I Know.)" I must have heard this song for the first time, long ago, because I had the vinyl version of the Mind Games album once upon a time, but I wasn't impressed by most of Mind Games except for Bring on the Lucie (Freda People).

But Leslie makes the case that I Know (I Know) is about Paul, and listening to the song now, he is surely right. Here are the lyrics:

The years have passed so quickly

One thing I've understood

I am only learning

To tell the trees from wood

I know what's coming down

And I know where it's coming from

And I know and I'm sorry, yes I am

But I never could speak my mind

And I know just how you feel

And I know now what I have done

And I know, and I'm guilty, yes I am

But I never could read your mind

I know what I was missing

But now my eyes can see

I put myself in your place

As you did for me

Today, I love you more than yesterday

Right now, I love you more right now

I know what's coming down

I can feel where it's coming from

And I know it's getting better all the time

As we share in each other's mind

Today, I love you more than yesterday

Right now, I love you more right now

Ooh, no more crying

Ooh, no more crying

Ooh, no more crying

Ooh, no more crying

• The song starts out sounding just like "I've Got a Feeling" which was one of the last songs that Lennon and McCartney worked on equally. Lennon has quoted the titles of Beatles songs several times, most flagrantly in "Glass Onion" and in the infamous "How Do You Sleep," released two years before Mind Games, which was an attack on Paul. It's certain that Lennon knew exactly what the opening to "I Know (I Know)" sounds like.

• Lennon mentions "yesterday" which was one of the McCartney song titles he also used in "How Do You Sleep." You can see McCartney performing Yesterday on stage in the video on my December 3, 2025 post. Lennon was absolutely obsessed with writing a song better than Yesterday, which, although attributed to Lennon/McCartney was written entirely by Paul.

• He also mentions "it's getting better all the time," in case anybody missed the Yesterday reference.

• The line about put myself in your place as you did for me - in his book, Leslie points out how often McCartney had to defend Lennon from the results of his own poor choices.

• I think the "no more crying" line is significant. Leslie shares Mal Evan's testimonial of how McCartney responded when Lennon announced he was leaving the Beatles: 

...the 20th of September, Klein convened John Paul and Ringo (George was visiting his mother) at Apple to sign the deals he had negotiated with EMI and capital. The date of this meeting is a little uncertain. It could have been the 16th of September, McCartney's diary entry for that day reads in block capitals THE END. The deals guaranteed the band an increased royalty rate while committing them to make two albums and three singles a year until 1976. 

It's unclear how realistic each of The Beatles themselves regarded this commitment as being. After the signing, the three Beatles discussed the future of the group. Paul floated his idea of playing small venues and John, well, Paul has described the moment vividly enough: "John looked at me in the eye and said, well I think you're daft. I wasn't going to tell you till we signed the capital deal, but I'm leaving the group." 

A year later, Lennon recalled it like this: "Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do. So in the end I just said "I think you're daft, I want to divorce."  

...in 1975, Mal Evans recalled the meeting and its immediate aftermath."That was really, truly a heartbreaking experience. I drove Paul home and we got to Paul's house and he spent the next hour in the house crying his eyes out."

It seems very likely that Evans had told this recollection to Lennon by the time Lennon was making "Mindgames" during his time in Los Angeles, since Evans was in LA with him.

In addition to the focus on the Lennon-McCartney relationship, "A love story..." has quite a few excellent essays on lots of their songs. I will be discussing those later.

But now, to wrap up all this McLennon shipping, I found this video extremely amusing -  the host of this podcast, Carly, is very entertaining, and it's pretty wild to hear the Beatles described by someone from Generation Alpha - or whatever generation she's from, I really can't be bothered to keep track of those generation categories.

Carly gets a few things wrong: she claims they fired Pete Best because he was handsome and that's why they got Ringo - because he was not. In fact, their producer George Martin thought Best was a shit drummer, when they began their recording career, and that's why they got Ringo, who was not only a better drummer, but they felt a more personal rapport with him. 

Carly says they played in Berlin - it was Hamburg. 

She says the John/Paul trip to Paris was in June for Paul's 21st birthday - it was in October, for John's 21st birthday. 

She guesses that the Chunnel existed in the 1960s.

Her description of the "rude mechanicals" scene from "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" which the Beatles performed was: "...a play on Pyramus and Thisbe...  I believe it's like a Greek tragedy that Romeo and Juliet are based off of..." 

She claims that Patty Boyd told George that the Maharishi was hitting on women, but it was actually Alexis Mardas (aka "Magic Alex") who told George and John.

She mentions Lennon's play, FOUR IN HAND, which is about masturbation and is included in the at-the-time scandalous "Oh! Calcutta!" which I actually didn't really know much about. Thanks to the Internet I was quickly able to find the play. It's not bad at all, although the Wikipedia article claims that the "first draft" was written by Lennon, so who knows how much is was changed by others in however many drafts it took to finish.

I like that Carly defends McCartney's 1970s band Wings, and also that she rightfully excoriates "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" which is one of the worst examples of what a music critic once called McCartney's "rooty-toot persona." 

Although now I cannot think of that song without laughing, thanks to comedian Ryan George.