From: raindrop@leland.Stanford.EDU (Nathaniel Michael Pearson)
Subject: Re: "Two Of Us"
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 21:51:48 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.205853.24961@midway.uchicago.edu> dlm3@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In a recent article, mcodogno@nyx.cs.du.edu (Maurizio Codogno) suggests:
>
>>Could someone tell me whether "The Two of Us"
>>is indeed a song about the good old times when Paul & John
>>were not so angry at each other? (You and I have memories...)
[lots omitted]
>I've always heard "The Two Of Us" as a gloss on that sentiment. To me
>it refers to a companionship as deep as love, certainly as intertwined
>as love, but based on intense complexities that govern male-to-male
>platonic relationships. It works fine for a woman and man, too, of course,
>for whom "Sunday driving" and "lifting latches" must have some personal
>resonance.
>
>Now the last part seems to be to indicate the inevitable close of
>a beautiful friendship. "Two of us wearing raincoats/Standing solo in
>the sun...." (Is this a reference to John's treatise on precipitation?
>"Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines/It's just a state
>of mind...?") It would make sense then---or rather nonsense, like 
>John's paradox suggesting that one can "get a tan from standing
>in the English rain"---to wear raincoats in the sun. But "standing
>solo"---is the team broken? Is the partnership at an end?
 
Along the lines of Paul's allusion to earlier songs, the "Sunday driving" line
reminds me explicitly of "Day Tripper":  "a Sunday driver, yeah..."  Could
both of these refer to an even more cryptic inside joke?  People often mention
"Day Tripper" (for some obvious reasons) as one of John's earliest musical 
experiments in pun and double-entendre.

>The repetition of two fast friends "on our way home", to me, implies
>a home for each, separate now for the first time in years...or like
>in "Hey Jude", almost a musical act of permission to each seek his
>own way in the world. But in doing so each brings the companionship
>home to a final rest.
>-- 
>"The Lana Sisters, clad in pink, added a welcome feminine flavour.
>'Much better than those Beatles' I heard one gentleman remark."
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>saki (dmac@math.ucla.edu---despite appearances to the contrary)

	The title, too, strikes me an indication of deeper meaning.  "Two of
us" implies that there are more of "us" (four, maybe?)  Paul could have called
it "Us", "Just us," "You and Me" (used in the lyric) or a myriad of other
things which might have changed his phrasing but not the surface message of the
song.  Yet he chose a title which explicitly implies that not everyone 
involved in the singer's life is directly mentioned.  
	Overall, "Two of Us" fits as one of the final compositions in a string
of McCartney songs of reconciliation, homecoming, rest -- even redemption.  
Hey Jude, Let It Be, Get Back, Golden Slumbers, The End:  all contain the same
cadence of resolution, the same inevitable direction toward a reunion with the
good and familiar.  You're right, Saki; "Two of Us" may be the most bittersweet
of all these reconciliations -- Paul's final farewell to a union he couldn't 
save.  

				Nat Pearson
				raindrop@leland.stanford.edu





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