An open letter to Mike Williams, Sage of Quay

I like the guy and his work. This is not a takedown.

Mike Williams is also known (musically, I think) as Sage of Quay, and runs a website by that name. He puts out videos, and since I have been traveling, suffering jet lag and that sort of thing, I’ve watched a few of them. They are quite long, and in my opinion, very good. I will link to some of them at the end, but not run them here.

Generally when someone does an “open letter”, get ready for a takedown. That is not my purpose. Mike does a few common themes which cause me to avoid him, such as the idea that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a person known as Billy Shears. He and I have been around the block on that, and I am not going to rehash, as it serves no purpose. The whole of the McCartney business was covered here in my post, Sir Faul. His side, my side, and a group that first performed on Ed Sullivan in 1962, 62 years ago!

I watched a Williams video on the making of Rubber Soul, and left it thinking Mike works very hard, is very thorough, and has exposed far more than I have. In it he explains that the Beatles had just come off tour, and had a limited time to put out a new album in time for release by Christmas. They take a well deserved vacation, and by their own admission, did not write any songs during that time.

Mike then goes on, and in great detail explains what it took at that time to release an album. Just one detail … the center sticker on an album of that era had on it a complete list of the songs on both sides, their order and time. They had to make an album cover. They had to press the vinyl and distribute the completed product to record stores in time for holiday shopping.

Mike concluded that it could not have been done, that it was an impossible mission. Here’s what he concludes happened: George Martin, the Beatles producer, had, while the boys were on tour, brought in a new group of songwriters doing more sophisticated work. Studio musicians had laid down the instrumentation, so that when the boys returned to the studio after vacation, all they had to do was learn the melodies and lay down the vocal tracks.

Mike concludes that for Rubber Soul, they did not write the music nor play the instruments. I think he suggests this to be the case for all of their albums up to the White Album, where Billy Shears, Mike says, led them to make a real album. Some evidence to that effect: On the White Album, the number of takes for some of the songs was perhaps fifty or more (watch the video for better information).

In other work, Mike has traced the origins of Yesterday and Hey Jude to Italian sources. The sounds played on piano are eerily like the pieces supposedly penned by scrambled eggs-Paul.

That’s the kind of work Mike does, and why I don’t care if we don’t see eye-to-eye on other matters. He’s taken a long road trip on this stuff, where I have only gone on a short hike. I like his work and recommend it to everyone.

In the last video I watched, the first one listed below, Mike and his host talked about John Lennon and the tragic loss of his mother and absentee father, and how it might have affected him. This is another point on which he and I disagree. I say that Lennon was to the manor born, and by a different name, perhaps John Stanley, but I do not know. I’ll put up some evidence here.

John, after his mother Julia was struck by a car and killed in 1958, was then raised by his Aunt Mimi. The problem that I have with that is is that there is only, one photo of the two of them together, and it is fake. I would have no problem if no photo existed, as photos were not as common in that era as now. But to fake a photo? I doubt Aunt Mimi had a photo dark room or the skills necessary to do that sort of work.

Notice Mimi’s right arm-  it bends straight down and then bends unnaturally (compare the location of the elbow bend in the right arm to that of the left) and reaches out from that point out to cover Johns right arm to maybe half down his upper arm. The problem is that her arm, when not embracing John, must have hung down to her knee with an elbow maybe six inches below the armpit.

That’s just sloppy darkroom work. Also notice the unnatural straight line of her dress on her left side. Maybe OK, as straight lines happen in photos. To me it looks to have been extended to cover something, Perhaps another child was snuggled up on that side and had to be brushed out.

Here’s another photo of John, a day at the beach.

I really have no problem with this photo, though it has appeared to me at times that there is a pair of feet between the cousin and the young boy on the left, who I take to be John. That would explain the dangling arm from the older man, but it could also be that he is trying to avoid burning his wife with his cigarette.

People have come to me to tell me who these people are, really. I am not convinced, really. This is a family group that includes a set of twins. I was pretty excited about this photo, as I happened upon it after discovery of the McCartney twins. It just never panned out.

What I take this to be is a friend or cousin (left), grandma and grandpa, names unknown, the mother, and her twins, foreground. They look too much alike, are dressed too much alike, to be just cousins. I’ve done facial work on them, but with kids you just don’t know how they will turn out. I’ve had no luck finding anything in grown Lennon to support the twins idea. I gave up.

I did find an interesting photo of Lennon with Yoko and Stu Sutcliffe, excuse me, I mean Andy Warhol. Sufcliffe faked his death in 1962 to serve as a destroyer of art and beauty. It was a large project run by CIA that used people such as Picasso, Jackson Pollack, and Warhol to remove substance from art, just as various successors to the Beatles such as heavy metal, grunge and hiphop have destroyed any musical value from rock and roll. In my view.

One more Lennon photo:

Said to be Lennon, and directly behind him a “boarder” at their home, the two look familiar, as if father and son. That would make this a family photo with John, his father and mother, and a big-headed dude who does not belong, whose shading is all wrong, who was pasted in the photo to block out the other guy, John’s twin brother. My guess.

The idea of Julia and John’s heartfelt song to her, after years of photo analysis, did not sit right. Is John a set of twins? I could never nail the landing. But as I regard it now, Julia was a literary device used to move John away from hs real family and into the realm of pop superstar fiction. She had to be removed after serving her literary purpose.

His father Arthur? A lifetime actor. Nothing more. They are all about in spook world.

Mike Williams on the PtPop Podcast: Cultural Marxism and Pop Culture

Sage of Quay Replay Doubleheader: Mike Williams on the Delingpole and Truthstream Podcosts