I Love Your Stories And The Rise And Fall Of John Lennon Is One Of My Fav Stories In The Fandom. It Was

Sharing because I’m a John girl and I need to represent

I love this. This is why I struggle with people holding a particular book or author up and saying this is the true story of the Beatles or John Lennon or whatever. People have spotty memories and people have a tendency to remember things in a way that minimises their faults or presents them in the best light or removes negative memories. You have to take everything with a grain of salt.

he's not right for you -- but right for each other

she often had to lend him the fare -- he's usually offer to pay my fare

...

Cyn and Phyllis remembering mirror pasts.

My favourite album is Rubber Soul! Yes! I like to think I’m both deep but approachable. I kind of wish my favourite was Let it Be if only for the description

hiya! how would you describe someone based on their favourite bugs album?

Hello my darling, sorry this took ages. But, here we go:

Please Please Me: Hipster who thinks they are the only one to truly understand The Beatles. Or you just think Ringo singing so joyously about Boys is worthy of the top spot. Maybe you're right

With The Beatles: You think the whole Lennon/McCartney thing is overrated and they were just a neat little rock group. So, in other words, and independent thinker. But not necessarily in a good way

A Hard Day's Night: Perhaps you were irrevocably fucked up from watching the film on repeat with your childhood best friend where you'd pretend to be married to Paul and John (don't look at the author). Or, you're a happy-go-lucky good time boy/girl and I think we should be friends

Beatles for Sale: Depressed and here for a pity party

Help!: Depressed but better at hiding it

Rubber Soul: Deep, but in a fun, approachable way

Revolver: Deep, but in a sort of off-putting yet compelling way

Sgt Petter: Just straight up fun but not that deep

Magical Mystery Tour: Another flavour of hipster, but one that wants to explain the dream they just had to me in great detail.

White Album: A freak that cannot be satisfied by staying in one lane. I like you

Yellow Submarine: A George Martin stan that thinks he should have been able to have his own album, as a treat

Abbey Road: You like pain, but in a suffering is beautiful sort of way. Like a renaissance painting come to life

Let It Be: You like pain, but in a horny way. We should be best friends

Okay, how did I do?

Finally an acknowledgment that the Eastman dynamic was pretty toxic to the Beatles too, not just Klein. So many people think Paul was offering sone kind of reasonable alternative to Klein when in reality his management offer was his in laws who had no desire to represent the other Beatles and their interests. Klein may have been a bad choice but in my opinion the Eastmans would have been a disaster for the other Beatles in terms of representation

wait re your tags what do you mean by wives of two members having more influence. on the group? or on those two members?

Linda and Yoko were basically the other two Beatles for the remainder of 1969. Everyone talks about Klein and the fact he offered Yoko a successful career being the main reason John stuck with him at all, but Linda was the one who brought her dad into it, and the clash of titans between Eastman vs. Klein was just as big a reason the group broke up as the psychosexual crossfire of Lennon/McCartney, possibly an even bigger one. I’m not saying Linda was scheming in any way, but obviously her father was one of the best lawyers in American entertainment business, and her boyfriend was the biggest rockstar on the planet who was in a shitstorm of legal/money problems. Of course the two would meet, and Linda soon went from black sheep of the family to Golden Daughter.

But as the year went on, the JohnandYokoandKlein monster grew stronger against John Eastman’s aggressive and selfish business tactics. Sure, Klein and the others tried to pressure Paul into going with him, but Eastman wasn’t even remotely interested in taking on the rest of the band (was listening to a 71 Paul interview, and he said his father-in-law wouldn’t have managed the others if they paid him, and Paul still went with him. Hm). Yoko obviously tried to meddle in as much as she could, and John helped her do so; Linda found herself tangled in a web of shit that she originally wasn’t planning to get into, but she’s no pushover and so she went to meetings and was her husband’s only source of strength for the rest of these cockfights (to her own detriment as well).

My point was: where do George and Ringo fit into his? John didn’t turn to anyone in the studio for help except his wife, and Paul confided in no one else except his own spouse and her family of lawyers (who were managing Paul Solo from the start). George’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer that same year too, it was a hard time for him and he had no real voice (and I think patience) to deal with the whole Eastman vs. Klein debacle. George and Ringo went with John and Klein because they were the ones actually giving them what they wanted, not the Eastman-McCartneys.

My beautiful Johnny. This is why he was so beloved

Find someone who can make you laugh like this

I agree! The reality is that all these authors have bias but if it’s in favour of Paul McCartney it’s ok because he’s seen as being victimised by the rock journalists of an earlier era. Erin Torkelson Weber has a quote I’ve often seen here that just because something came later it’s not necessarily untrue. But the important thing to keep in mind is it’s not necessarily true either. Paul McCartney has a huge advantage over John Lennon in that when he tells his story, the emotions of the situation have settled which makes him seem like a more rational source, unlike John who was still working through his emotions in the 70s as the events were still in recent memory. Paul has also had time to think about how to make his story palatable to today’s audiences where times have changed, which John never had given he died 40 years ago. He also has his legacy to preserve and of course will twist things to his advantage as who is going to challenge him? Yoko is ill and Sean doesn’t know the full story as he was only 5 when his dad died. I just think people need to think critically about this and realise that just because this is the latest version of events doesn’t necessarily make it true. The truth is always something in between

“Some of those who eulogised Lennon seemingly could not do so without denigrating McCartney, Harrison and Starr or devaluing their contributions to the Beatles. “He [Lennon] stood for a mixture of tough minded realism… wit and intellect. Paul on the other hand was a pretty boy.” The most famous example of this came from the Village Voice’s Christgau, one of America’s most powerful rock critics. In a piece shortly following Lennon’s death, Christgau referred to the three remaining Beatles as “hacks” and blamed their refusal to accept Ono into the band for the breakup. He also repeated a number of misconceptions about Lennon that, while widely accepted, were untrue. This included praising Lennon, the only middle-class born Beatle, as a “working-class” hero and declaring that Lennon had always been the only artistic, avant-garde Beatle because “the others just didn’t have the stuff.” His obituary of Lennon stated that the wrong Beatle had been killed. “Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn’t it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney?”

Erin Torkelson Weber, The Beatles and the Historians

I agree-they both needed each other. What’s most frustrating in this fandom is that some people think saying Paul needed John or vice versa somehow takes away from their individual talents and achievements but surely it only enhanced it? There is nothing wrong with needing people in this life otherwise we would all be recluses living a nomadic existence. Both John and Paul were wildly talented on their own but with each other they went further then they would have alone not just musically but through giving each other the love, support and confidence to succeed.

I’m asking you this question because I really value your opinion. Judging from some people’s opinions;some without knowledge and some with knowledge seem to feel that Paul didn’t need John, that he never needed John. Paul was IT. My question is , do you think he was just humoring John or did Paul feel that they were equals? I find it interesting that Paul felt that John was being credited for everything after he was killed, but now,IMO, it has gone WAY overboard in the other direction. Your thoughts? Thanks.😎

This is a very in depth question ha! Sorry I have been M.I.A lately things have been a little crazy...

Anyways... We all know that once John met Paul, and Paul met John, something magic just clicked. They were discovering things within each other that no one previously had been able to bring out. Yes, Paul was more "musically talented" in technical terms at the time, but John added that special something that made them excellent. Even after John’s passing, Paul still says he “looks to John” for guidance when he's stuck with a song, melody, or whatever it may be he needs a trusted opinion on... John was virtually the other half of Paul’s brain in human form, as was he to John.

Moral of the post, to make it short and sweet, I do believe they needed each other to a point. Then after that point ended, hanging onto each other (musically) would have held them back. Both boys branched out to what they wanted to do after the split, however continued to be influenced by each other, they did their own thing and thrived while doing so. If John was alive today, I know we would have gotten loads of more beautiful music, and whatever else his unique mind came up with. John and Paul set eachother up for greatness, yet always had each other to fall back on if need be <3

Apologies for the quickly thrown together response, but thank you for writing in! I love sharing my thoughts and opinions on the 4 boys we love the most!

Hilarious to see Paul fans so triggered by one guy within the whole Beatles fandom who might actually have criticisms of Paul (instead of acting like he is the only Beatle that matters) while us John girls have to deal with people acting like he was the worst human who ever lived in every post or at best a glorified idiot who was lucky Paul took pity on him (eye roll). I’ll be playing the worlds smallest violin for you.

Sending special love to the original OP who thinks anyone who doesn’t agree with her is narrow minded and that there is such a thing as a historian who isn’t biased. I guarantee if this historian was biased towards Paul she wouldn’t complain.

"The Paul of Tune In isn't real, and so he isn't relatable."

Today's AKOM was outstanding. I have so much to write and probably no time to write it until Thursday, but I had to make the time to say that it blew me away. The aspect I expected to influence me least, influenced me most: the death of Paul's mom. The writing about it. All of it. It humanized him and that loss in a way that hit me hard, and made me realize how much I'd been influenced by Tune In, even though I'd done my own critiquing of that section before.

(I want to write about the money part so badly, because I think that was very real for Paul, and I believe all the evidence shows that Jim was — or at least would have felt — much less stable than we really think about. He bet on the horses. He was the fun parent. But no, that's what I don't have time for.)

This was an excellent, excellent episode. The most powerful overall, by far. The most holistic in its picture, the most undeniable, and the one that brings me back to where I started, and with a bullet: "What story is Mark Lewisohn trying to tell? And why?" And why aren't we talking about the fact that he seems to hate Paul McCartney and Apple definitely doesn't like him?"

There are longstanding grievances, and the fact that he makes Paul McCartney into a manipulative ice cube on the page is likely not an accident.

I mean, right??

Lewisohn seems downright deceptive—may I even say manipulative?—after listening to today's episode. And although I have big problems with Lewisohn because studying the text you just have to, I have played Devil's advocate in my head through every episode, but at some point today I lost my ability to find any excuses. It is just impossible to construct any defense of this.

Fucking incredible episode. Brava, ladies.

Reminder clip: Mark Lewisohn on Fans on the Run pod — "the bastards took my name off it"

Reposting because John looks so good in this picture. I don’t even care about the anecdote. This is a beautiful man.

“John and I went hitchhiking. George and I did it a couple of times too. It was a way to get a holiday. Maybe our parents booked holidays, but we wouldn’t have known how to. So we would head out, just the two of us, with our guitars. John was older, but I was in on the decision about where we might go. He’d got a hundred pounds from his uncle, who was a dentist in Edinburgh, for his twenty-first birthday, and we decided we’d hitchhike to Spain by way of Paris. We’d start over on the other side of a particular bridge because that’s where all of the long-distance lorries started. We’d wear little bowler hats to get their attention! When we got the lift, we sat together; we’d experience the lorry driver together. We knew what it was like to go on the cross-channel ferry; we knew what it was like to try and hang out in Paris. We would walk for miles around the city, sit in bars near Rue des Anglais, visit Montmartre and the Folies Bergère. We felt like we were fully paid-up existentialists and could write a novel from what we learnt in a week there, so we never did make it to Spain. We’d been together so much that if you had a question, we would both pretty much come up with the same answer.”

Paul McCartney, “Ticket to Ride” from The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present (2021)

"Possibly I (would) have to marry a very rich old lady... Or man, you know, to look after me.": John Lennon's interview for French TV at Sutton Place, New York, April 5, 1975.