Yup I Love John And George. I’m Indifferent About Ringo And Can’t Stand Narcissist Paul At All. But

I love this take! Also I agree diagnosis of a mental health disorder is something between and patient and therapist and not something for an observer. Speculation is fine but formal diagnosis is not.

Hello! Your reblog just now about John’s thinking re: Paul made me think of something I read the other night on Borderline Person Disorder. I am sure none of us feel comfortable diagnosing John and if you want to ignore this question bc it’s a bit sensitive, I understand. But I was reading about the “favourite person” aspect to BPD, in particular the tendency to put that person on a pedestal but then be very hurt if that person does anything wrong, and it did seem to fit the John/Paul dynamic. Do you have an opinion about that? I always love reading your takes on things.

Hello, yes. I think that it’s not something we can know from a distance and without training. Like, it’s clear that John wanted and needed more support than he got. But we can’t say any more than that, and I’m not sure what it would even achieve to do so. Even with a diagnosis, every case would be different so I don’t know what it’d even tell us.

I will say that this behaviour is also just something that a lot of people do. Some people just prefer to have very close, intense relationships than having loads of acquaintances. John also kept a lot of friends throughout his life (Paul included with more or less good will depending on the time period). I think it’s just as fair to say that John was impulsive and loud in his emotions. So when he liked something/someone he’d going to let everyone know, but then he’d also do the opposite

I also wonder how much John did put Paul on a pedestal. Like, he adored him, but the vibe I get from John isn’t so much, “Oh God you betrayed me by being something you pretended not to be”. It’s more, “You never really cared and I should have known that sooner but you kept me around unfairly.” There was also so many ups and downs between them, that I don’t think it’s as simple as John idolised Paul right up until he didn’t any more. I agree with Paul that his impulse to shit all over Paul is more about affirming to Yoko that she’s the only one he cares about. That, I think we know, is a pattern that Mimi likely helped install in him. But anyway.

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!

The Beatles being menaces in Ireland, 7th November 1963 - part 1 (part 2)

Just look at Paul’s life flash before his eyes…

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.

Say it louder for the people in the back!

You’re right to gatekeep John. What are the worst takes on him you tend to see? Or your own takes your particularly attached to?

I typed an entire answer and tumblr deleted it so I'll keep this one brief: the worst takes are the ones involving his addiction. To see people disregard his entire work and being the driving force behind the White album (and Help! and AHDN! and Rubber Soul!) recorded months earlier only because he wasn't an obsessive workaholic but a depressed, grieving, worn out man suffering from a heroin addiction is unreal. Seeing motherfuckers like Barry Miles talk about how they were all relieved he was on it because it got him off LSD shows you the way people talk about John differently than anyone else.

The ask I got days ago where someone proudly claimed to have no empathy for John & Yoko (and was glad that Kyoko was kidnapped never to be seen again) because of their addiction shook me up quite a bit. Not because I'm surprised, because I'm grown enough to know 98% of people have no empathy for addicts, but because another couple in the Beatles also claimed to be proud potheads while taking care of their 4 kids was ? Some drugs are funny & cool to be addicted to while others are not, I guess.

Love the Paul fans in the comments not getting things yet again. No John wasn’t an orphan. Yes he did have an awful childhood. He didn’t know his dad. His mum left him alone at night as a baby to go party and then come back to have sex with random men in front of him. He was taken away from his mother by Liverpool Social Services because at the age of 8 he didn’t have a bed to sleep in. His mothers last act on the night she died was to tell Mimi he wasn’t welcome to come around her house anymore because her husband didn’t like it. She walzed in and out of his life all the time. His aunt Mimi rarely showed him any physical affection, didn’t speak to him as a child for days at a time when she was angry and regularly removed photos of him from the house as a sign of removing her love when he was angry. You don’t think this is traumatic for a child? Saying that John had a rough childhood isn’t glorifying it and excusing anything he did. But it does help understand the traumatic lens of his behaviour. I think the Paul fans commenting need to take 30 steps back. I’m over it

“I’ve no idea if John wants to do anything again. I haven’t spoken to him for quite a while because he’s been keeping himself quiet.

But, if you think about it, there’s a fella whose father left home when he was a little kid, who lived with his aunt and his uncle. Then his uncle died, then his mother remarried and used to come to visit him but lived with another man. And while she was coming to visit him one night, when he was 16, she got knocked down by a car and killed. So that guy has grown up in a world where basically he’s never had any family.

He then got married to Cynthia but he was in the middle of all the Sixties dope and everything and he never really got with that family.

And he’s now married again to Yoko, who, for him, is the love of his life. He believes he’s found it and they now have a son. And I think he’s just taking every second that’s left to him to enjoy that —and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

— Paul McCartney, Liverpool Echo, December 4th, 1979

If people want to say Mark Lewisohn is a John Lennon fan boy and to take everything he says with a grain of salt, it’s only right to say that Erin Torkelson Weber is the same for Paul McCartney. She’s often quoted on tumblr and she may use real life quotes but please understand that quotes, interviews and anecdotes can be arranged in a way to result in implicit bias toward a particular subject and excluding other anecdotes that contradict your version of events is a bias in and of itself.

“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

There’s no John hate here! Us John lovers have to stick together 😘❤️

December 8, 1980. 

This is the stupidity I know and love on tumblr. Ooo Paul. What a hero for sending a LETTER to Maggie Thatcher. Never mind the years he has kissed the ass of the royals and the establishment in general. Bonus points for throwing Johns name in to shit on him for no reason. No one in Johns camp ever compared the incident with the MBE to Paul’s no doubt slightly less than vanilla letter but Paul’s camp has to sling arrows that Paul is the true hero TM. Lol

“Did you know Paul sent a telegram to Margaret Thatcher in 1982? He did. It wasn’t friendly. He lost his temper over her treatment of health workers and fired off a long outraged message, comparing her to Ted Heath, the prime minister (tweaked in “Taxman”) felled by the 1974 coal strike. McCartney warned, “What the miners did to Ted Heath, the nurses will do to you.” This controversy is a curiously obscure footnote to his life—it seldom gets mentioned in even the fattest biographies. He doesn’t discuss it in Many Years from Now. I only know about it because I read it as a Random Note in Rolling Stone, not exactly a hotbed of pro-Paul propaganda at the time. (The item began, “Reports that Paul McCartney is intellectually brain-dead appear to have been premature.”) But the telegram was a major U.K. scandal, with Tory politicians denouncing him. In October 1982, Thatcher was at the height of her power, in the wake of her Falkland Islands blitz. Many rock stars talked shit about Maggie—Elvis Costello, Morrissey, Paul Weller—but Paul was the one more famous than she was. He had something to lose by hitting send on this, and nothing to gain. What, you think he was trying for coolness points? This is Paul McCartney, remember? He was in the middle of making Give My Regards to Broad Street. He could have clawed Thatcher’s still-beating heart out of her rib cage, impaled it on his Hofner on live TV, and everybody would have said, “Yeah, but ‘Silly Love Songs’ though.” Why did he feel so intensely about the nurses? He didn’t mention his mother in the telegram, but he must have been thinking of Mary McCartney’s life and death. So he snapped, even though it was off-message. (He was busy that week doing interviews for the twentieth anniversary of “Love Me Do”—the moment called for Cozy Lovable Paul, not Angry Paul.) He didn’t boast about it later, though fans today would be impressed that any English rock star of that generation—let alone Paul—had the gumption to send this. You can make a case that it was a braver, riskier, and more politically relevant move than John sending his MBE medal back to the Queen in 1970. Still, John’s gesture went down in history and Paul’s didn’t, though his fans would probably admire the move if they knew about it. He couldn’t win. He was Paul. All he could do was piss people off.”

—

Rob Sheffield, Dreaming the Beatles. (2017)

This is one of the best books I’ve read on them. Go get it.

John Lennon & George Harrison (1964)