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9.01am
5 June 2017
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This might be a dumb topic when you first read the title. Why didn’t Paul marry Jane? Umm, well, they probably weren’t suitable for each other perhaps? Add to the fact that Paul cheated on her quite a few times. But the other day I was surfing on the Meet The Beatles For Real blog, and came across an interesting article where Paul did admit to being engaged to Jane in 1965 or 1966 (not sure which year). Here is the snippet of the interview that caught my eye:
While someone asked John a question, I asked Paul if he was engaged to Jane Asher. He said very softly “An assistant of ours announced it. Yes, I am.” I told him that I saw Jane’s movie and that I thought she seemed to be a nice type.
http://www.meetthebeatlesforre…..mment-form
In the same website, he said to someone else during another press interview in 1966 that he’ll probably be marrying Jane this year.
Q: Paul McCartney , are you going to marry Jane Asher this year? (Somebody cried out “oh no!” then there was a long pause)
P: probably.
http://www.meetthebeatlesforre…..mment-form
I find the above quote interesting because he answered “Probably” to the question of him and Jane getting married that year. All other times he said no. Maybe he just got tired of answering no?
So it just makes me wonder what stopped them from getting married? I know he proposed to her in December 1967, but I do wonder if they planned on getting marrying earlier and it never happened for whatever reason. One reason I can think of is that Brian Epstein wanted them to hold off on their wedding, as after Paul got married then there would be no more single Beatles for the fans to swoon over. And Paul, who cares for the band and its image, went with it.
Of course, all this could totally be wrong and the only time they were engaged was after December 1967. But if anyone has any insights on this, then that would be interesting.
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SgtPeppersBulldog10.57am
10 March 2017
Offline Very simple actually, Paul engaged to Jane on Christmas 1967 and were going to get married but Jane caught Paul in bed with Francie Schwatrz in 1968 which broke up their relationship.
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1.02pm
5 June 2017
Offline Dark Overlord said
Very simple actually, Paul engaged to Jane on Christmas 1967 and were going to get married but Jane caught Paul in bed with Francie Schwatrz in 1968 which broke up their relationship.
LOL, I know that. My question was what stopped them from getting married before? If they were indeed engaged in 1965/1966.
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Lisa0011.36pm
10 March 2017
Offline I don’t know but i bet @Ron Nasty might have the answer you’re looking for.
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1.39pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
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I don’t think they were officially engaged before the December 1967 announcement, @Rachel. There was an assumption, even within the Inner Circle, that they would marry. This was reflected in press coverage and Paul would usually just deny them (partly, I suspect, not to cramp his style – it’s easier to get a woman into bed if you’re a single man with a girlfriend than if you’re an engaged man on the road to marriage).
However, he did often joke around with the press about how close to marriage they were. As early as 1964, although I can’t find the quote right now, he joked to the US press that they were married, had two children, and were considering divorce.
Jane was very good for him, but was also too independent a woman for him at the time. Paul wanted a woman whose main role in life would be to keep him happy and be his companion, while Jane also needed her career which Paul saw as a distraction. You see this with Linda, who was a professional and upcoming photographer, who Paul was loathe to trust being around men like him, and so sacrificed her career to be with him. Jane wasn’t prepared to do that.
They may have considered themselves unofficially engaged before 1967, as they believed they were on the road to marriage, but the official engagement was, in lots of ways, the desperate move of a couple to try and stay together while realising they’re falling apart. Couples in trouble often do things like this, as if painting a picture that everything is fine and rosy, and that they’re planning a future together, will somehow counteract the trouble they’re in.
That is not to criticise Paul. His attitudes were pretty much universal among his generation of men. Of the Beatles, Ringo was probably the only one who was devoted to his partner, until George put pretty big cracks into their relationship that ended up splitting them apart.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
2.28pm
8 May 2017
Offline All good points, Mr. Nasty.
I also think it was a matter of timing. They met in 1963, when Jane was more established than Paul, not only professionally, but also personally, in terms of status and cultural knowledge. By the late ’60s, Paul’s life had changed dramatically, of course. The world was his for the taking. Maybe he didn’t want to be tied down… Until Linda came along and knocked his socks off 🙂
8.13pm
22 September 2014
Offline “it’s easier to get a woman into bed if you’re a single man with a girlfriend than if you’re an engaged man on the road to marriage.” I’m sure this statement is true with respect to you and me, RN, but I don’t think it would present any kind of an impediment to The Paul McCartney .
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8.28pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Offline With the usual groupies I would agree, @georgiewood. However, Paul also had affairs with actresses like Jill Haworth and Peggy Lipton (the future Mrs Quincy Jones). They were not groupies, but rather young women who thought their flings might lead somewhere.
However big The Beatles were, there were always those prepared to turn them down. Ronnie Spector’s turning down of John is a prime example. Being able to admit you were attached, but not necessarily too attached, was am advantage in certain situations.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
3.36am
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1 May 2011
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11.45am
5 June 2017
Offline Thanks everyone for your replies! Especially to @Ron Nasty for that very insightful post! I do agree with you that Paul and Jane’s official engagement announcement seemed to be a last ditch effort to save their relationship. It seemed Out Of The Blue , and if Paul was really committed to Jane to the point of wanting to marry her, he would have stopped his philandering ways.
This brings me to another (slightly off topic) observation: I never understood why a lot of Beatles fans dislike Jane. Maybe not everyone, and maybe no one on this board either, but in other places I noticed there’s quite a bit of dislike towards her. Don’t know why. Can’t explain it. But it never made sense to me, I never understood why she got all the hatred. I absolutely love Paul but if anything, he should get more of the hate from that relationship since it was him who wanted Jane to stop acting and it was him who cheated on her plenty of times. She may have cheated on him too, but definitely not as much as Paul.
I find their relationship interesting because it was love in the beginning, but when Paul became more famous and had women lining up for him and Jane refused to give up her acting career, I wonder what was it that still tied them together for 5 years? Jane must have had an idea that he was unfaithful to her. So was it love? Or their publicists wanting to keep their relationship intact because it was good for both of their careers?
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Beatlebug12.00pm
26 January 2017
Offline Listen to Paul’s songs about her. I can’t hate a muse that great. The ups and downs of their relationship have been recorded into history through Beatles music. The honestly of I’m Looking Through You and the gentleness of Here, There, and Everywhere, which comes afterward tells me that Paul was very much in love with her and that they had a real relationship.
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12.17pm
10 March 2017
Offline Thinking about, i wonder if Yesterday talks about Jane at all, i know the original lyrics mention her but when Paul says lines like love was such an easy game to play is he referring to Jane at all, it sounds like a love song to me but as with Got To Get You Into My Life , not all love songs are about a person.
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12.21pm
26 January 2017
Offline A lot of songs also are about the general feelings of love, and are written because of a great idea for a lyric, and not for a specific person. Yesterday was written for its melody, which got stuck in Paul’s head one day and he had to write the song.
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12.47pm
22 September 2014
Offline I thought that song was about general feelings of egg preparation. Wait …was Paul the Eggman?
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12.51pm
10 March 2017
Offline You must be thinking of Scrambled Eggs, we’re talking about Yesterday and whether or not it reflected Paul and Jane’s relationship together.
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1.01pm
22 September 2014
Offline 
I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.
Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake, 1997
1.56pm
5 June 2017
Offline sir walter raleigh said
Listen to Paul’s songs about her. I can’t hate a muse that great. The ups and downs of their relationship have been recorded into history through Beatles music. The honestly of I’m Looking Through You and the gentleness of Here, There, and Everywhere, which comes afterward tells me that Paul was very much in love with her and that they had a real relationship.
I agree. His songs about their relationship depict their relationship well. I’m not saying they didn’t have a real relationship, I think they did. You don’t write a bunch of songs about your girlfriend depicting the highs and lows of love if it wasn’t real. It’s just a a general observation of mine that there are people who do think their relationship was more for the press. For example, I know there are people who think Here, There, and Everywhere is about John rather than Jane. I’m a younger Beatle fan and one of the places I visit is Tumblr, mainly for all the great images of the Fab that get posted there. In that website, there are quite a few supporters of the idea that Paul wrote Here, There, and Everywhere for John. I can’t see it. I know he wrote the song while waiting for John to wake up… but the lyrics tell me it’s about Jane.
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Beatlebug7.23pm
14 November 2017
Offline From everything I’ve read on this subject,it seems that Paul thought that he and Jane had an open relationship,but the ‘open’ part of it seemed very one sided. I can’t imagine he’d have been too happy if he’d walked in on Jane in bed with another guy. Maybe they both just realized that marriage wasn’t the right course of action for them both.
She was good for him in certain ways, and it’s clear from songs like Here,There and Everywhere, I’m Looking Through You , What You’re Doing ,We Can Work It Out etc that he loved her very much,but what comes across for me in those songs is that he sounded so frustrated with her. It seems (quite selfishly) that he wanted a relationship with her on his terms, and when he couldn’t have that, and she wasn’t prepared to give up her career for him,he started cheating on her. I could be wrong,but that’s just my feelings on it.
I also read somewhere that when she caught him in bed with Francie Schwartz, that was deliberate on Paul’s part, because he saw it as a way to end the relationship with Jane,which seems a bit of a shitty way to go about it if true
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7.54pm
1 November 2013
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I wonder if her and John would of been better?
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6.25am
14 November 2017
Offline Starr Shine? said
I wonder if her and John would of been better?
Interesting. I’d never considered that. Jane was apparently very anti-drugs though,so I think she’d have had her work cut out with John on that front. I know Paul used drugs too,but John’s drug use was off the charts
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