Two of Us, IV

Yesterday Slate continued it's series on the Lennon/McCartney connection, discussing the inner-workings of a partnership that never   really went away.

It's supremely odd how history would play the collaboration between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The result of one of the most intertwined partnerships in music history, their work would consistently be reduced to static roles. It's almost as if, faced with the bound pair, a culture obsessed with individualism found a way to cleave them in two.

Take, for example, the relentless focus on "John" songs versus "Paul" songs—or sections of songs, or single lines—as though that's the skeleton key to the Beatles' inner workings.

Actually, this tradition has an impeccable source: John and Paul themselves. The irony is that the way they came to tell their own story, after their split, may speak less to the way they separated and more to the way that they remained connected.
Two years later, John would mix up his tenses when describing Paul in an even more revealing way. It was Thanksgiving night in 1974, when he joined Elton John at a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.

Lennon wore a black silk shirt, a black jacket, and a necklace that dangled a flower over his chest. He had on his usual "granny" glasses with dark lenses. His thin, brown hair fell down past his shoulders. After storming through "Whatever Gets You Through the Night" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," Lennon came to the microphone to round out the set.

"I'd like to thank Elton and the boys for having me on tonight," he said. "We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we'd do a number of an old, estranged fiance of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang. It's an old Beatle number and we just about know it."

The song was "I Saw Her Standing There" [a "Paul" song.]

Though he lived another six years, John Lennon never took the stage for a major show again. His strange words have a peculiar and lasting echo. By then, Paul and John had been the most famous exes in the world for four years. But somehow, they were still "fiances"—prospective spouses. As much as had passed, the energy between them was always in front of them—always, somehow, in the future.