Russian Ringo Moodboard

do you think yoko loved john when he died? do you think when she says she misses him or says she gets choked up hearing his voice still sometimes that it is genuine or just what she has to say and do as his widow(tm) (not necessarily maliciously but she is very brand and image obsessed.) she seems very cold and stoic so i cannot tell if any emotion on him is genuine or something she forces out to fit that narrative. i guess i just get sad because you can really feel the love when olivia talks about george for example, but with yoko im always wondering if it's just her saying what she thinks people want to hear. he has been dead longer than he was even alive so im not saying she has to be grieving still or anything but i do hate that i feel like i cannot trust anything she says because she says everything so emotionlessly.

Hello anon.

I wasn't going to discuss this but couldn't pass the opportunity of addressing some issues that have been bothering me. People act like I go out of my way to start discourse but it's not my fault I get questions like this. Sure, I could ignore the message but I don't see any reason to hold back.

(I'm not going to put this under a cut, you scroll it down, your finger won't fall off, I promise.)

You've worded your point respectfully and I can tell you don't mean any harm but I need to touch on some of those bizarre stereotypes and misconceptions.

For starters, WHY do tumblrinas think it's not only ok but cool dismissing John and Yoko's marriage as Not Valid™ and questioning the extent of their love?

Oh wait, I know the answer. It's because acknowledging Yoko (or Stu or Brian) goes against their cosmic soulmate McLennon dreams.

Yoko was John's wife, mother of his child, creative partner and manager. One might love or hate her but she exists. Show some basic respect.

It's fine to discuss the JohnandYoko brand, their publicity stunts and manipulation of the media but what I often see is people using that as an excuse to further their shipping preferences.

To be honest, if they were as straightforward as your average boyband fan I wouldn't have much of a problem with it. I might even get amused. It's the self righteousness and "correcting the record" bullshit I can do without.

Contrary to popular belief, it's unlikely John and Yoko were total sociopaths pretending to be in love. I know it might come across as a shock but sometimes people just like each other! It's irrelevant whether they bonded for the "wrong" reasons or even if their dynamics was healthy. It's not up for the public to decide what is acceptable between two consenting people. It might seem toxic, insane or plain abusive to you but sometimes people get a kick out of being miserable together. That's nobody's business.

Maybe if they had circulated more footage of them and their blonde children in the tour bus their choices would've been taken more seriously, who knows.

Now straight to your question: did Yoko love John by the time he died? It's hard to say. Depending on who you ask you'll get very different perspectives. But it doesn't matter. Regardless of the motivations, there was a mutual agreement between this couple and it seemed to be working in their terms. It doesn't have to make sense to the rest of us.

In my opinion, she did love John. For all his serious flaws, he wasn't that hard to love. I doubt Yoko was enough of a Bond villain to be indifferent to a man who was cherished by millions for his humor, brilliance and sex appeal. Which is not to say there wasn't envy, resentment and possessiveness on her part. All of these things can coexist.

It's not out of line wondering whether Yoko's public grief has performative elements. It does. But keep in mind that after December 8, 1980 she wasn't speaking just as a wife or manager anymore but as the beneficiary of John's will. She had a product to sell. Of course she'd promote herself and say things people want to hear sometimes.

Which brings us to Paul McCartney. I wasn't going to drag him into this but since everybody assumes he was the reason John existed (and in total equality with his wife), I don't see why not. Why doesn't anybody ever question HIS intentions?

Do you really believe he's not aware of the cultural obsession with Lennon/McCartney and doesn't use it for his own purposes as well? He cherry picks stories and plays for the audience all the time. But it's considered almost sacrilegious suggesting this might be the case.

Now it's totally fine implying he was just as affected by tragedy as the woman who watched her husband getting shot four times right next to her, when they were returning home to have dinner with their kid.

What THE FUCK is wrong with you people?

Fans project a lot of strange things onto this woman. They'll excuse every thing John and Paul ever did because Dead Mothers™ but Yoko being stoic because she grew up in the middle of Japan's WWII's bombings and almost starved to death is not even considered. She didn't come from background where what we consider appropriate displays of affection were common. Yoko might've been a bad influence on John in many aspects but she was as messed up as him, not a Blofeld mastermind attracting a lamb to slaughter. He walked into the "trap" because he saw something he liked and could relate to.

I'm not above contradictions, I have made some of these mistakes myself. After more careful research over the years and reading some of the most ridiculous takes one could imagine, my opinion on the subject has evolved a lot. I still find most of her business decisions questionable and I'm just as annoyed by her occasional attention seeking behavior. But I always had respect for her as an artistic partner to John. I genuinely enjoy their work together and never hid my opinion that he made his most interesting music after she came into the scene.

Does that make me a JohnandYoko stan? No, because I'm not a fucking weirdo. I look up to people for inspiration but I don't live vicariously through their relationships. I don't need JohnandPaul or JohnandYoko or PaulandLinda to be the fairytale of the century in order to believe in love nor I want a celebrity couple to be my parents.

And before anyone accuses me of shaming people, I wanna say that all your crazy ideas are perfectly acceptable on a fan fiction level. Direct all this creativity to entertaining your fellow fans instead of annoying them with rancid takes. We're starved for content!

(yeah that also includes myself, i'm trying! When I finish my fics it will be all over for the rest of you.)

Hi. I remember reading a quote by Stuart's sister about some sort of love triangle between John, Stuart and Paul, or something like that. I know she said something about them, but I can't find the source 😓

She didn't really frame it as a love triangle, but she did imply that Paul's intense jealousy of Stu might have been because he suspected there was something going on between John and Stu:

"I have known in my heart for many years that Stuart and John had a sexual relationship but to protect my mother I kept my counsel about it although everything I knew, personally and professionally, pointed towards it. And, with hindsight, it was a lovely happening: two lost boys who needed and found each other. [...] I’ve wondered many times over the years if that’s what some of the antagonism between Stuart and Paul might have been about, whether Paul suspected something [between John and Stu]. None of us directly connected to the Beatles have publicly acknowledged that John had less than conventional sexual attachments." —Pauline Stutcliffe (The Beatles' Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club)

I think some of you are projecting onto John when you say he was deeply obsessed with Paul. It seems like you're the ones obsessed with Paul, and you're projecting those feelings onto John. Yes, John admired Paul, but you all act as if John spent his entire life obsessing over him. I don't think that's the case.

!

I know I'm dipping my toe into dangerous waters, but the biggest takeaway from Get Back and Paul/Peter's narrativization of the Beatles was really just how much pain and resentment Paul is still holding 60 years later. Which isn't something I can personally judge, given that I haven't been alive for 60 years, much less had an event from 60 years ago heavily influence my ensuing life path, but it does feel like a reflection of his intense antipathy to any kind of self reflection or processing and how this precludes any real possibility that his personal interpretation of his life story will ever change. He's the same guy 60 years later and he sees things the same way, and that's both comforting and a little sad.

beatles yaoi + mclennon songs

one of your girls - troye sivan

sometimes i need to be alone - ricky montgomery

paul - big thief

attempt - far caspian

copious - menomena

bittersuite - billie eilish

kaleidoscope - chappell roan

how long? - vampire weekend

i think ur a contra - vampire weekend

star - mitski

should've been me - mitski

happy - mitski

one more to see you - mitski

crack baby - mitski

3/3 - the japanese house

saw you in a dream - the japanese house

diamond dave - the bird and the bee

i know you - faye webster

David Ash, ‘Our Kind of Girl - By The Beatles’, Daily Express (21 Nov. 1963)

After the show, after the applause, what kind of girl do the Beatles think about in the loneliness of hotel rooms locked against the fans? [...] So I went and asked them: What is your kind of girl? [...] Paul McCartney, 21, told me: “It would be great to have the sort of girl who would darn my socks and cook apple pies and things.” Now that may sound like Platitude 1 (a) from the pop-star's handbook of ready-made quotes. But this McCartney I think says what he means. He continued: “She'd be attractive, but not the big show-biz personality type of girl, or one who's affected, or a dizzy dumb blonde. “She'd be intelligent - but not fantastically brainy, because I'm not - and interested in all kinds of music. Including mine.  “And she'd have to have the right sense of humour. Because we do have what someone called a sense of self-irony. And we laugh at all sorts of off-beat things.”

And physically…?  “I like girls to have long hair (it rhymes with 'her'), interesting eyes, and rather high cheekbones. But not turned-up noses. I have one myself, and it's put me right off them.  “I don't like Elizabeth Taylor-type looks. And I don't like exaggerated hour-glass figures. The figure doesn't matter all that much.  “I like girls in with-it clothes. But some girls look fantastic in just a dirty old sack. Indian girls look great in saris.”

John Lennon was looking around for a scotch. And his face, in serious moments like this, has the fear-neither-God-nor-man quality of a Renaissance painter's aristocrat. At 23, he seems the group's elder statesman. For he is married, with one baby. He talked. Huskily, cryptically. “My kind of girl is, of course, Cynthia. My wife. “I like her looks (she's fair-haired), her cooking; everything about her. I'm an extrovert, and she's the opposite.  “We are both indoor types - that's why I don't mind this life, being locked away behind doors. We live at our mum's or our auntie's or hotels. But wherever I'm with her is home. “People have said that every time she comes down to London to see me she is just trying to patch up our marriage. They say, 'You know what they're like in show business.'  “But that's not true of us. I don't happen to be showbusiness. I married before I was in it. And I haven't changed my mind since."  He added: “Of course, I notice other girls.”

George Harrison - at 20 he's the youngest and (some say) the handsomest - thought he preferred blondes. Smallish ones. Then he decided: "I don't go looking for any special sort of girl. She could be any age from 17 to 40. “I wouldn't like one who was soft (unintelligent). Or one who was terribly intellectual - I wouldn't know what she was on about half the time.  “I wouldn't mind if she were arty, hated pop and loved classical music  “Oh, yes, and I don't like girls with too much make-up.”

Ringo Starr’s sad eyes gazed thoughtful down at his drumstick-balancing fingers and the four rings on them - none of them with any marital significance.  “My girl would be just an ordinary sort of girl, but with just that something different for me,” he said.  “I wouldn’t care if she couldn’t cook very well. She could learn. But I don’t like sitting at home, so I’d want a sociable girl who’d come out every time I wanted to go out.”

Not one Beatle mentioned old-fashioned considerations like social status and family connections.  In their kinds of girl they all looked for a sense of humour, interest in their work, reasonable dress sense, and a complete lack of pretentiousness. 

paul mccartney

John Lennon at The Beach Boys concert for UNICEF in Paris, December 16, 1967.

Paul doodling Beatles logos

The Paris trip, 1961

John Lennon in Miami Beach, FL | February 1964 (I)