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cheretted · 2 days ago

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Can you make a compilation of all the times Paul, John and other have talked about the breakdown of their relationship and the whole John/Paul/Yoko triangle?

John/Paul/Yoko

"I mean, 'cause [their problem] was, uh, about Yoko, really. [...] Let me tell you what I can remember is Paul and John were the best pals, really, right? They spent all their time together and stuff, and they had individual lives. But in the end they were the final sort of arbiters of everything between themselves. Yoko completely took over John. I mean, Paul just really felt left out and just hated it, you know what I mean? (John Dunbar)

"It was clear to Paul by this point that Yoko had become by far the most important person in John Lennon's life; even were she to somehow vaporize, John would not come running back to Paul after that unfortunate disappearance." (Danny fields)

“Paul and I had our differences early on, mostly creative ones, but we always got over them. Then I met Yoko and we fell in love. When I invited her to the recording studio during the Let It Be sessions, none of them took it well. This was a men’s club, and no women were allowed in the recording room. But Paul seemed the most bothered about Yoko, and part of me felt it was because he was jealous. Because up till then, he had all my attention, all my love when we were recording. And now there was another. Now there was Yoko.”(John)

"This was my best mate from my youth, the collaborator with whom I'd done some of the best work of the twentieth century. If he fell in love with this woman, what did that have to do with me? Not only did I have to let him do it, but I had to admire him for doing it. That was the position I eventually reached. There was nothing else I could do but be cool with it." (Paul)

"Being around Paul gave me a sense of stability. When I met Yoko, I knew it was time to cut myself loose. Paul hated me for turning my back on him and did everything he could to turn the others against me. He saw that he couldn't compete with Yoko, so he tried to stab us in the back. He was absolutely vicious, and it shattered whatever illusions I had about our so-called friendship." (John)

"I was jealous because of Yoko, and afraid about the break-up of a great musical partnership. It’s taken me a year to realise that they were in love." (Paul)

"Paul wasn't happy. But the big things that were driving him mad were beyond me. He kept on working and writing, but when John came over, 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 racist crap." (Francie)

"Paul hates Yoko for stealing the love of his life away from him. No, not Linda…. John! Paul has never forgiven her for that." (Francie)

"John did put it that way, he was 'riding on the boat called Paul, and now I'm going to ride on a boat called Yoko." (Yoko)

"Yeah, I think we spurred each other into marriage. I mean, you know...They were very strong together, which left me out of the picture. So I got together with Linda and then we got our own kind of thing. [...] Um..and then yeah, I think they were a little bit peeved that we got married first. Probably. In a little way, you know, just minor jealousies. And so they got married. I don't know if that's ...I mean, who knows.."(Paul)

“I didn’t realise how sensitive the other Beatles were to John’s opinion. Paul worried about what John would say and was still longing for his friendship. [...] Those interviews were done before John’s death and Paul’s heart was broken, even then. It wasn’t just the break-up of the Beatles. It was more personal than that.” (Steven Gaines)

"Why this odd little Japanese lady? The reason, many people believed, was that more than a trophy wife, a model or an actress, John needed a chum. His love affair with Paul McCartney was ending." (Peter Brown)

"The Beatle thing is over. It has been exploded, partly by what we have done, and partly by other people. We are individuals, all different. John married Yoko, I married Linda. We didn’t marry the same girl." (Paul)

"When John and Paul split up (think of them as a couple for a moment) their second mates [Linda and Yoko] had to stand by them." (Francie)

"One week and one day after Paul married Linda, I received a phone call from John. He and Yoko were at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris and wanted to get married, immediately. People believe that John's desire to get married so soon after Paul's marriage was a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps it was psychologically about breaking up with Paul." (Peter Brown)

"For a reason to hold a grudge [against Yoko], think about the possibility of this: She took John from him. And she didn't particularly want to share John with his "ex significant other" on certain levels." (Francie Schwartz)

"It's like a marriage. These two broke up. And it took Paul a long time to get over it. John too, but he was just too macho to show it. But they had a marriage before Yoko arrived, although they both had girlfriends before." (Ray Connolly)

"With Yoko present, Paul's reign as Lennon's princess was doomed."(Peter McCabe)

"I mean . . . the disruption really came with the women anyway. Where you have very close personal relationships between two men, and one of them goes off and gets a girl, and the other one goes off and gets another girl, and the two women don’t particularly like each other . . . then there’s a divergence. I don’t think Paul minded Yoko — Yoko’s fine, nothing wrong with Yoko — except that she was always there. When she wasn’t well, she had a bed in the studio, and the other boys got fed up with that. I think that was the beginning of it. And almost in self-defense, Paul got Linda. (George Martin)

"If you go to a party and the husband and wife have been having a row - there's a tension, an atmosphere. And you wonder whether you are making things worse by being there. I think that was kind of the situation we found with Ringo. He was probably feeling a little bit odd because of the mental strangeness with John and Yoko and Paul." (George Martin)

"One of my feelings even when he used to lay into me was that he really didn’t mean it. I could always see why he was doing it. There was this attempt [on John’s part] to get rid of the spectre of me, which I understand, because he had to clear the decks just like I did." (Paul)

"Then also we were like married, so you got the bitterness. It’s not a woman scorned this time, it’s two men scorned — probably even worse. And I had to make way for Yoko. My relationship with John could not have remained as it was and Yoko feel secure." (Paul)

"Really all that happened was that John fell in love. With Yoko. And so, with such a powerful alliance like that, it was difficult for him to still be seeing me. It was as if I was another girlfriend, almost. Our relationship was a strong relationship. And if he was to start a new relationship, he had to put this other one away." (Paul)

"I understood what happened when he met Yoko. He had to clear the decks of his old emotions. He went through all his old affairs, confessed them all. Me and Linda did that when we first met. You prove how much you love someone by confessing all that old stuff. John's method was to slag me off." (Paul)

"Of course, for me Yoko provoked all the echoes of the past, of Stuart and John. How Stuart was the one who was between John and Paul. We must all bring our own interpretations of what jealousies or fears did really lead to the abandonment of the Beatles. I would suggest that it had to do as much with personal relationships and power as with artistic ambition and financial awareness." (Pauline Stutcliffe)

"Perhaps Jane wanted Paul to be something other than what he was, more like the young man in the public image of the perfect couple. But that wasn’t what he wanted. More important to Paul than his relationship with Jane, was his partnership with John Lennon, whom he’d met shortly after his mother died of breast cancer (the same illness from which Linda was to die) when he was 14. And when John’s mother was also to die in a road accident just over a year later, the friendship had intensified with a shared sense of loss. And so it was to remain as adulthood and fame arrived, and the girls came and went. And, in John’s case, a wife as well. [...] Exactly a year after their first encounter, Paul met Linda again when he contacted her while he and John were on business in New York. A few weeks later Paul called and invited Linda to join him at another business meeting in Los Angeles. Slowly but surely, they were coming together, just as certainly as John and Paul were breaking apart. John had fallen in love with Yoko Ono, and, increasingly fuelled by hard drugs, seemed bent on destroying what Paul saw as their creation. Losing interest in the Beatles, John had less time for Paul. The two could no longer write or record freely together without Yoko offering advice. Her presence put Paul off and John didn’t care. Paul was finding himself abandoned. Outwardly super-confident, inwardly he was growing increasingly insecure. There were girls all around him, of course. He couldn’t get rid of some of them, but he needed someone special at his side. He sent for Linda. [...] Catching Paul at the Beatles’ Apple headquarters in Savile Row, he told me they wanted a quiet wedding. A quiet wedding for a Beatle in the centre of London in 1969 was impossible. Eight days later John and Yoko married in secret in Gibraltar. [...] Paul had always played on stage with his best friend. He couldn’t play with John Lennon anymore, so he turned his new best friend, Linda, into a keyboard musician in his new group, Wings." (Ray Connolly)

"The Beatles were having severe problems then, with Yoko Ono apparently having driven a wedge between Paul McCartney and the most important person in his life, John Lennon." (Danny Fields)

"The wedding [of Paul and Linda] was front-page news all over the world [...] Girls wore the black of mourning for weeks afterwards, and, like an answering move in a chess game, John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar eight days later." (Danny Fields)

"I always wished I’d been involved in the Beatles’ early happier days, but my role was to cover the final act of their career, and to observe the fall-out, largely, though by no means totally, with John and Paul. There were some bizarre and revealing moments during those days." (Ray Connolly)

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cheretted · 2 days ago

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My favorite John photos I love older John and 64’ John absolute gold.

#true...

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cheretted · 2 days ago

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My favorite John photos I love older John and 64’ John absolute gold.

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cheretted · 3 days ago

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The absolute lack of empathy for Yoko Ono is something I will never be able to forgive people for. This woman has been villainised for 50 years for breaking up a band that was already broken up and she has her work constantly mocked and degraded. her husband was murdered in front of her, and her daughter was kidnapped with her having no way of knowing where she was or how to contact her for 30 years. She’s been treated as a cultural punching bag for half a century and has never been given any sort of grace or been treated with dignity and it makes me sick.

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cheretted · 3 days ago

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May Pang: Loving John

I've read loads (loads and loads and loads) of Beatles related books lately and written short sort of "reviews" here for anyone who might be interested. I love reading and It always makes me happy when I hear that my posts have sparked someone's interest to choose a particular book. But May Pang's Loving John was painful to read and I've thought about what to write about it for weeks now. And i know that what I'm about to write may anger some people but it's a risk I just have to take.

I'm perfectly aware that when someone writes a book about their life it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But holy fuck, if even one third of this book is true it's still absolutely horrible. And May's version of events is actually backed by many people who were there during John's "Lost Weekend." Here are my thoughts about the book and everything it reveals:

John and Yoko shamelessly used and abused May, their young employee who was in a very vulnerable position

The way she was pressured into sexual relationship with John made me sick

John's mental health problems were much, much more serious than I've ever even imagined. Even though his actions in this book are mostly despicable, I still feel sympathy for him. That poor poor man. He needed psychiatric help, not Yoko

Nothing, and I mean nothing in the narrative Yoko created around this period, starting with the dismissive "Lost Weekend"- title is true. And John kept seeing (= fucking) May till Late 1978 and had made contact with her again just before his death. Some "weekend"

John's idyllic "house husband years" were nothing like we have been told they were. This is confirmed by everything Julian has told about life in Dakota during John's last years

Yoko Ono is beneath contempt. That woman is evil, plain and simple and she REEKS of entitlement. I already of course knew some of that from the way she treated Julian, but holy mother of god I!!!!

And finally: everyone who thinks that Yoko is some kind of a feminist needs to read this book. Calling her that is an insult towards all the real feminists who had fought for women's rights all over the world, and still do. Yoko is an entitled asshole who didn't hesitate to use her wealth and power (well, John's wealth and power...) and other women to achieve what she wanted, no matter how much pain she caused

The book is available in archive.org

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cheretted · 3 days ago

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I miss John Lennon. MY JOHNNY!!! 😭😭😭 ugh idc about his buck teeth and wtv looking weird self. I STILL WANT HIM!!!

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cheretted · 3 days ago

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Was told how john has bimbo eyes from a friend and now I’ve been thinking about her sleepy bimbo eyes ever since

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cheretted · 3 days ago

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John fueling rumors about his own sexuality (and trying to drag Paul along with him) throughout the 70’s

“P.S. The bit that really puzzled us was asking to meet WITHOUT LINDA AND YOKO. I know you’re camp! But let’s not go too far! I thought you’d have understood BY NOW, that I’m JOHNANDYOKO.”

— John Lennon’s letter to Paul McCartney, published in Melody Maker (November, 1971)

“Q. Have you ever fucked a guy?

A. Not yet, I thought I’d save it til I was 40, life begins at 40 you know, tho I never noticed it.

Q. It is trendy to be bisexual and you’re usually ‘keeping up with the Jones’, haven’t you ever... there was talk about you and PAUL...

A. Oh, I thought it was about me and Brian Epstein... anyway I’m saving all the juice for my own version of THE REAL FAB FOUR BEATLES STORY etc... etc…”

— John Lennon, “Interview with by/on John Lennon and/or Dr. Winston O’Boogie” for Interview Magazine (November, 1974)

“Q: Actually, there wasn’t that much press attention to the separation as one might have expected.

JOHN: Well I read more about myself than you probably do, and I’ll tell you there was. I mean, they would catalogue everyone you went around with, and things like, ‘Lennon In Florida Trip’… things like Rona Barrett wrote that Yoko was living with my ex-wife in a ‘strange relationship’. She was putting that around... we got the clippings and everything. I mean that was dead wrong, because Yoko was definitely NOT living with my ex-wife in ‘a very feminist relationship’! I see them all, because I’ve got a clipping service and I get all the newspapers, and you can bet your life somebody’s going to send you the clippings...

Q: Yeah, your friends...

JOHN: Yes, all your best friends let you know what’s going on. I was trying to put it ‘round that I was gay, you know — I thought that would throw them off... dancing at all the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with the boys... but it never got off the ground.

Q: I think I’ve only heard that lately about Paul.

JOHN: Oh, I’ve had him, he’s no good. (We laugh.)”

— John Lennon, interview w/ Lisa Robinson for Hit Parader: “A conversation with John Lennon” (December, 1975)

“The next night Elliot took us out with a friend of his, Sal Mineo, and we all went to a gay cabaret/discotheque. John was oblivious to the gay ambience. He was curious about everyone’s sexuality and liked to gossip about who was sleeping with whom, whether they were gay or straight. John made no judgements about homosexuality but was really curious about who was and who wasn’t gay.

He knew that his appearance at a gay club might start rumors about his own sexuality, and it made him laugh. He told me that there had been rumors about him and his first manager, Brian Epstein, and that he usually didn’t deny them. He liked the fact that people could be titillated by having suspicions about his masculinity. Then I was the one who was laughing. ‘How could anyone believe a man who likes women as much as you do is gay?’ I told him.”

— May Pang, “Loving John: The Untold Story” (1983)

“JOHN: Well, that’s rubbish, you know. Because nobody controls me. I’m uncontrollable. The only one that can control me is me, and that’s just barely possible. But that’s what life is about. And that’s the lesson I’m learning. Because — nobody ever said anything about Paul having a spell over me, when I was with him for a long time. Or me having a spell over Paul. They didn’t think that was abnormal, two guys together. Or four guys together. In those days? Why didn’t anybody ever say, ‘How come those guys don’t split up? I mean, what’s going on backstage? I mean, what is that Paul and John business? Why — you know, how can they be together so long?’ We spent more time together than John and Yoko, in the early days, the four of us sleeping in the same room, practically in the same bed, in the same truck... living together night and day, doing everything together. Nobody said a damn thing about being under the spell.”

— John Lennon, interview w/ David Sheff for Playboy (August, 1980)

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cheretted · 4 days ago

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I have seen people saying that Paul often talks about John unprompted in interviews. can you give me some examples??

Yes, this was once said by Paul De Noyer, who has interviewed Paul many times over the years:

"The world's most famous living Liverpudlian has grown more open about the world's most famous dead Liverpudlian. Unbidden references to John Lennon occur in almost every interview I've done with Paul McCartney. It's clear their complex partnership still stalks the halls of his memory."(2016)

Here are some examples:

A guy who worked with Linda on her cookbook (around 1987) said that when he first met Paul, he took him out for a walk around the garden:

Peter Cox: Also on that walk, he kept talking about John Lennon in the present tense. It was John says this and John thinks that. Very weird.

Q Magazine (1998):

Q: How do you feel about all the animosity between you and Oasis right now? Paul: There is none as far as I'm concerned. What happened was I'd said, Good group, good singer, good songwriters. But people asked me about it so much that one time I decided to take it further and say they don't mean anything to me. I am not related to Oasis. I wish them good luck and everything. But my kids mean something to me, John Lennon means something to me, but Oasis...

Interview for The Telegraph (2001)

Q: Do you use a computer [to write]? Paul: Pencil and paper. I’m not a typist. Funnily enough, John became a red-hot typist towards the end of his life. He had always had this “Arts Correspondent in Kowloon” kind of dream. But for me it’s pencil and paper.

Interview for The Telegraph (2009)

"As Paul muses over a suitable recipe for another cookery video to promote the new campaign, he remembers one of his father's favourite recipes. "Pea sandwiches," he recalls. "I remember my dad making one for John once." But his daughters groan. "It has to be mum's lasagne," says Mary."

PaulMcCartney.com Interview (2023)

Q: Would you describe yourself as a risk-taker? Paul: Not really, no. I’m quite careful normally. There’s a couple of times in life when you are forced into taking a risk. After The Beatles, this was my situation: ‘Do I keep going with music, or not?’ Well, I want to keep going. So, ‘How am I going to do it? Am I going to have a band, or am I just going to busk outside train stations? How’s it going to work?’Inherently, I’m not a risk-taker. I weigh things up and try to be pretty careful. I was the polar opposite to John. If there was a cliff to be jumped off, John would jump! He would just dive into things, and I would sometimes have to rescue him and say, ‘Hey man, you shouldn’t be doing that!’ Or, he sometimes wouldn’t pay his taxes, for example, and so I said, ‘You’re going to have to, or you’re going to jail!’ But then it was very exciting to be around someone with such a different personality. That was part of the fun and attraction.

PaulMcCartney.com Interview (2023)

Q: Is there anything in particular you hope people will get from reading your new book [Eye of the Storm]? What do you hope their main takeaway will be? Paul: Well, I mainly see it as a 'behind the scenes' publication. I love just looking at old pictures of the guys, for example, ones of John with his glasses; obviously it's hugely sad, because I miss him so much. But this just reminds me of growing up with him and all the pleasant memories. Whenever I see John with these sorts of glasses, it reminds me of the way he would take him off when there were girls around. For some reason people think they look better without their glasses! And now, whenever other people do that it always reminds me of John. I'd be chatting with him, or writing a song, and he would take his glasses off and clean them. And because nobody in my family had glasses, I'd never seen someone just chatting and absent-mindedly cleaning them. So, that's what this picture and really the whole book reminds me off-it just brings back all those little memories which make up life.

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