You Never Give Me Your Money by Peter Doggett | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I remember, though, that Taylor didn’t take it as a joke. In the broader context, it seems like Paul was having a mental breakdown that partly manifested itself in passive-aggressive anonymous postcards to a few people, including Taylor and Taylor’s wife.

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This is one of those stories about Paul that fascinates me, so here’s what I’ve found (copying from a thread I’d started in another forum):

From Doggett’s book (pp 48-49):

In the midst of this turmoil McCartney invited Lennon and Ono to live with him and Schwartz in his home close to Abbey Road Studios while the Lennons’ divorce was finalised. “When John came over,” Schwartz recounted, “all he could talk about was how much he loved Yoko. That disturbed Paul. In spite of John’s obvious happiness, Paul stifled his jealousy with not-very-cute bursts of crap.” Schwartz remembered Lennon and Ono discovering an envelope on the mantelpiece one morning, addressed to them but not bearing a postmark. Inside was a single typewritten sentence: “You and your Jap tart think you’re hot s**t.” While they stood there in shock, McCartney entered the room and said, “Oh, I just did that for a lark,” and smiled. As Schwartz recalled, “That was the moment when John looked at Paul as if to say, “Do I know you?” It was over, it was completely and totally over at that moment. They may have been able to work together, but it was never the same.” Soon afterwards Lennon and Ono moved into a central London flat that was being rented by Starkey.

The same story from Howard Sounes’ bio on Paul – page 220:

One morning, when John was going through his mail at Cavendish, he found a postcard addressed to him with the message, “You and your Jap tart think you’re hot s**t.” Paul admitted he’d sent the card for a joke. He had a strange habit of sending anonymous postcards, another of his victims being Derek Taylor, who ran the Apple press office with more profligacy than Paul liked. The card to John and Yoko may have been meant as a joke, but it made for an awkward atmosphere in the house. “It was embarrassing. The three of us swivelled around, staring at him. You could feel the pain in John,” Schwartz wrote of the moment Paul admitted to sending it.

Also, I have a pdf of Francie’s book, and the postcard is mentioned at p. 86 of Body Count. Regarding John and Yoko staying at Paul’s house:

But Paul was treating them like s**t too. He even sent them a hate letter once, unsigned, typed. I brought it in with the morning mail. Paul put most of the fan mail in a big basket, and let it sit for weeks, but John and Yoko opened every piece. When they got to the anonymous note, they sat puzzled, looking at each other with genuine pain in their eyes.

“You and your jap tart think you’re hot s**t,” it said. John put it on the mantle, and in the afternoon, Paul bopped in, prancing much the same self-conscious way he did when we met.

“Oh I just did that for a lark…” he said, in his most sugar-coated accent.

It was embarrassing. The three of us swiveled around, staring at him. You could see the pain in John. Yoko simply rose above it, feeling only empathy for John.

The story PeterWeatherby referenced – page 62 of Doggett’s book:

Harrison was persuaded by Derek Taylor to meet the other Beatles at Apple on Wednesday. “Brian Epstein, I knew would have fought and fought to keep them together,” he explained, “and so I was bolder than I had ever been or ever would be again, and demanded passionately and at length that George not let Paul carry the weight of keeping the film and the Beatles going. I felt that George’s sense of decency could be touched, and it was.” Taylor’s reward was a postcard in McCartney’s handwriting, with the stamp carefully torn in half and the simple Northern injunction, “Up yer.”

A quote at p.254 of the Sounes bio, during Allen Klein-era of shake-ups at Apple, which Sounes attributes to Derek Taylor’s Fifty Years Adrift (which will run you a few thousand dollars if you ever find it):

As mentioned, [Derek] Taylor believed Paul was the sender of anonymous postcards the PR man received at home, some weird and “some outright nasty ones” as Taylor recalled, with stamps torn in half and cryptic messages, one of which, addressed to Derek’s wife, read: “Tell your boy to obey the schoolmasters.” Derek was in no doubt these were from Paul, though the star didn’t admit sending them.

Someone else who has Taylor’s book, As Times Goes By: Living in the Sixties, quoted it (I don’t have the page number, sorry):

 I don’t think I ever hated anyone as much as I hated Paul in the summer of ’68. Postcards would arrive at my house from America or Scotland or wherever, some outright nasty ones, some with no meaning that I could see, one with a postage stamp torn in half and pasted neatly showing the gap between the two halves. Joan received one bearing the words, ‘Tell your boy to obey the schoolmaster,’ and signed, ‘Patron.’ Far out.

On a side, note, I have Ringo’s Postcards from the Boys , and on pp. 28-29, there is one postcard with a torn stamp in there. The postcard has a postmark from St. John’s Wood and a photo by Guy Withers of a Siamese cat playing with a ball captioned “Eye on the Ball.” It reads:

COINTREAU?
CARIDU
NOTFUFF?

And it is addressed to:

ANYONE?
APPLE?
BROOKFIELDS?
CUT MILL LANE?
ELSTEAD?
SORRY.

Ringo’s commentary: “From Paul, I think. Nothing to say but it’s okay.”

The torn stamps remind me of that story Paul told of how he’d quietly rebel against his parents as a child by making tiny tears in one of the curtains.

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