"JoHn WaS THe MosT OvErRated BEatle" Maybe In The 80s And 90s But Definitely Not Now. Its Like Ever Since

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.)

ultimate bottom!John master post ;)

Every fic listed is mclennon, includes sexual content and is on ao3. Do feel free to add onto the list if I’ve missed anything! 

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🥺oh well

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

I suspect that Paul was a lot like his mother. As you said, there's really no way to know what she was like, but I felt like I understood a little more about Paul after learning that Mary had grown up in abject poverty, and that she said nothing but made sure the house was clean and the kids' lunches were packed before going to the hospital to die. :(

Absolutely. Mary had it rough growing up, her mother died when she was young, her father moved the family to Ireland to try farming, had to move them back to Liverpool when he proved to be kind of bad at it, and then he got married to a stepmother that hated Mary. Mary reputedly ran away from home and signed on to be a nurse after her stepmother slapped her. She insisted on being her own person until she met Jim in a bomb shelter and they hit it off.

I think about that parallel a lot because Paul was also similarly furious about being struck by a parent figure (there's a fan interview from 1965 maybe? where Paul, with George as a witness, made a jibe that he'd had enough of being struck by his father). John has that quote about how "your dad can't do anything to you, you could kill him if you wanted to" or something like that which in hindsight really reads like John telling Paul not to put up with being kicked around anymore. And then there's the fact that Paul dropped out of school to run away to Hamburg with John which...

Paul has a lot in common with his mother. Paul and Mary shared a lot of hardnosed qualities where they are both willing to abandon unsalvageable situations and they don't put up with being disrespected. They even both ran away from home...though eventually Paul went back. His relationship with his dad was really shot through with a lot resentment and sadness.

And yeah, Mary looking after the kids and putting them over her health, and the way she said nothing the day she went to the hospital. Jim was a similar way, he couldn't verbalize his feelings either. It's easy to see why Paul struggles so much with putting words to his feelings, not just that he's uncomfortable doing it but that he doesn't know what he is feeling unless he uses music to access it.

A friend of mine just described his sexual fantasy to me — John Lennon in a fox kigurumi

Stuart was going to stay in Hamburg, cos he’d fallen in love with this girl Astrid [Kirchherr], who was part of a little set who called themselves the Exi’s, existentialists. They were very cool in black, tight trousers, little high-heeled boots. She was blonde, she had a short Peter Pan pageboy haircut, she looked dead cool. We’d never seen a chick like it. She dressed like a boy, a very slim little boy, so it was all, Fuckin’ hell, look at her!  I think we all fancied her but she fancied Stuart, who’d been the one guy who’d never been able to pull anything in our band. We’d always pulled before old Stu, but he got these great shades and struck a James Dean pose, got his hair going groovy like James Dean, so she went mad for him. And their group used to really like Stuart. I think it went: Stuart, John, George, me, Pete Best. That was their order of preference. They took some great photos of us. 

- Paul McCartney interview in Paul Du Noyer, Conversations with McCartney (2015) pp.34-35

okay but can we PLEASE talk about the absolute LIES some of you spread about john lennon’s looks?? “ugly”?? “not handsome”?? are we LOOKING at the same man??

because let’s dissect this crime against humanity:

- that face is LITERALLY a medieval portrait come to life—aristocratic oval, sharp yet delicate, like someone carved him out of history itself

- the EYES. THE EYES. hypnotic almond shape, long straight lashes, the kind of gaze that could either seduce you or dissect your soul

- THE NOSE!!! (we don’t even need to elaborate. it’s a sculpture.)

- and his aura?? PURE SUNLIT CHAOS. a smiley, wild-haired ginger cat with the energy of a flaming comet. fire incarnate.

He had this magnetic pull that attracted everyone

this man was art in human form. if you disagree, i respect your right to be objectively wrong (and also fear for your vision).

...and yes, you could just fall asleep in those straight, bushy eyebrows of his...

we are all sinners