The Lennon-McCartney ‘bromance’

MANILA, Philippines - At 21, Paul McCartney’s first serious romantic love was Jane Asher; at 27, John Lennon was a late bloomer, with Yoko Ono. Barely out of their teens, Lennon and McCartney had a “bromance” (brotherly romance).

The article titled Paul McCartney’s Secret Autobiography, In Song: His 25 Most Revealing Tracks listed 25 songs composed by McCartney for the loves of his life headlined by his friendship with Lennon and followed by legal wives Linda McCartney, Heather Mills and Nancy Shevell.

It grossly missed out on Asher, the most influential single female in his Beatles songs. Maybe this was because he never married her or there was a major shift of sentiments or the article’s author considered her as irrelevant.

He met the actress when the Beatles invited her to their hotel after the concert at the Royal Albert Hall. As the representative of Radio Times, she was supposed to do the show’s review. However, it ended up with McCartney badly smitten and doing the “interview” to get to know her better.

After that first meeting, they started to date, and by the end of 1963, he had moved into a room in Asher’s house on Wimpole St. as a friend of her brother Peter Asher, who was one-half of the Peter & Gordon vocal duet, which was also famous at that time.

Asher’s influence on Beatles songs instilled in McCartney a fondness for love songs. He heavily associated himself with the genre because he believed it was “a very serious subject” that would expand the Beatles’ rock ‘n roll medium.

McCartney’s compositions All My Loving, Things We Said Today, Every Little Thing, What You’re Doing, Another Girl, You Won’t See Me and I’m Looking Through You were all about and for Asher.

Lennon would not be left out. He wrote You’re Going To Lose That Girl as an advice to McCartney that he’s “going to lose that girl (Asher)” if he does not value her and will “make a point of taking her away” from him.

But McCartney would write his best and most covered song, Yesterday, (“Suddenly, I’m no longer half the man I used to be”) when he had broken up with Asher. Although credited as a Beatles song, Yesterday was a solo McCartney recording, making it an ersatz Fab Four song.

Lennon shamelessly admitted in Don’t Let Me Down (“I’m I love for the first time / Don’t you know it’s gonna last”) that Ono, not first wife Cynthia Powell, is his first love. He owned up getting Cynthia pregnant with Julian Lennon in Do You Want to Know a Secret.

Lennon had always needed a new source of inspiration.

After Bob Dylan and a brief fling with the Maharishi, Lennon undertook another renewal. He accepted Japanese artist Ono not only as a lover, but also as an artistic collaborator, turning out to be his new “father” figure.

In effect, Ono and her avant-garde art were the replacements for Dylan, McCartney, Powell and the Beatles. She did this by introducing Lennon to heroin.

Lennon met Ono when he previewed her exhibit at the Indica Gallery. The relationship eventually reduced to a dependency issue, what Lennon called a “teacher-pupil relationship.” This completed the succession of dominant female figures that punctuated his life.

When Lennon sent Cynthia to a Greek holiday, he invited Ono to their Weybridge House to pursue her. After showing his tape loop experiments, Ono prodded Lennon for them to produce the Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins album, and they made love to consummate their relationship.

Without explanation, Lennon brought Ono into the control room of Studio Three of Abbey Road at the beginning of the recording sessions of Revolution. He quickly introduced her to everyone and she thereafter never left his side.

Lennon would end up composing the Beatles songs successively about Ono like Julia, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, Don’t Let Me Down, Ballad of John and Yoko and I Want You (She’s So Heavy).

Even before they found true love, Lennon and McCartney’s bromance suffered, leading to the Beatles’ break-up.