Time That Was So Hard To Find

It's an emotional statement Julian made, which I don't begrudge him the right to express. But I also think it's a rather silly statement to take literally.

Actually, I think there's a few quotes people in this fandom take a bit too literally.

I mean, Not Good, y'know. Not Very Good, lol.

I do feel discussions about John as a father are prone to exaggeration and some erasure of his genuine efforts, but it doesn't overall coalesce into a positive image. I'm not sure how much I blame him pre-68, where a mix of immense pressure to overwork himself as well as untreated mental health issues kind of set him up to fail. After that, I do feel like he just… evaded responsibility over Julian (though it's possible that was at least partially out of a fear of facing his own failures). TBH, I find it irresponsible that he moved an ocean away from his child, though JohnandYoko's move to New York wasn't originally meant to be permanent. With Sean, it feels like the takes on his parenting really vary, and he certainly got more help than he publicly projected… but it does seem like he still made an effort to spend time with him.

I mean, I don't disagree with any of this really, cause I don't feel you're really contradicting anything that was said. I don't really know enough about the nature vs nurture debate to say much more on the exact origins. It's true that not everyone who goes through experiences like that react as badly as John did.

I am curious how you think internalized homophobia played into his parenthood though. Could you elaborate on that?

where's the john talking about which school to send julian interview i need to kms

Hi anon!

I'm like a semi-contrarian about this, but also Not Really.

What we know about In My Life is that John both described it as a really personal song and also didn't really elaborate on what the lyrics meant, electing instead to provide the backstory. It could mean he was being specifically cagey about the song's subject but I also get the feeling he was just a bit pissed the entire time he was doing his song rundown for Playboy 1980 lol – which is understandable IMO; he probably would have preferred to talk more about his newer music than going over songs from 15 years ago again.

Now, given the timeline of when the song was written, I've always seen three possible candidates for who it's about: Paul, Cynthia, and my personal pet theory: Julian.

At this point, I do kind of think Paul is the most likely subject of the song, though I'm not sure that's entirely rational on my part. Partly it's the I Know (I Know) lyrical connection (a song I am pretty much 100% on the Paul train for); partly it would make sense that, if Stu and Pete are also being referenced in the song, it would be natural for John to draw a comparison between them and Paul, his current best friend. A thing I find interesting in this context (and the Julian context) is that the song isn't necessarily speaking to a romantic love interest. It certainly could be (and I do tend to think John came to think of Paul that way at some point if not necessarily by 1965 already) but it also might not. Especially when you consider the "acid mindset", which John was getting acquainted with at the time: romanticizing your friendship with your artistic partner could slot into that perfectly, without any of it necessarily being sexually-tinged (or without one having to admit to oneself that it is sexually-tinged).

As for Cynthia, it's absolutely fascinating to me (in a bad way) that she is not commonly held to be the subject of the song. In My Life is a love song, but scholarship seems to stop listening after the first minute. I don't think this is because the song intrinsically can't be about her, I think this just speaks to how egregiously the JohnandYoko narrative (or even the JohnandPaul narrative, in these circles) dominates discussions. It would certainly make sense for John not to want to admit this song might've been for the wife he mistreated by 1980. This emotional letter John wrote Cyn is from just around the time the song was written, meaning it wouldn't be unthinkable for him to in a sense "renew his vows to her" in form of this song.

Which brings me to the Julian theory, that sort of combines all the points I made above. On the one hand, the song isn't explicitly romantic, and I think the line "When I think of love as something new" makes a lot of sense referring to parenthood. Plus, "But of all these friends and lovers" could also suggest that the you is neither a friend, nor a lover. And the letter I linked above is actually mostly about John feeling regretful about how he's not been around for Julian. "I think it’s been a slow process my feeling like a real father!" he writes, more than 2 years after his son was born, which IMO would make sense of this song coming so "late", if it were for Julian. And again I imagine John would not cop to it in 1980, as he wouldn't for Cyn or Paul.

On the whole, I think I find Paul slightly more likely, but to be honest, that might just be bias on my part, so I don't commit to it fully, and I think the other readings are very interesting at least. In My Life as a song from a parent to a child is wonderful!

Uhhhhh to be honest I'm not entirely clear on What Was Going On re:Kyoko and Tony. I'm not sure your assumption is entirely fair, because I'm not convinced John and Cyn's divorce maps on perfectly to Yoko and Tony's. But I also don't know enough to contradict you, so all I can say is I agree it's fucked how kids got involved.

I had a back and forth about John's will about 10 months ago. My thoughts on it haven't evolved much since and aren't too different from yours. I really am not sure what to make of it all. But I have a hard time believing it was a serious, thought-through document.

Here's all the relevant posts: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

As for how John would have been with his kids, had he lived, I think I agree with you. It's not like John and Julian never saw each other, though I personally kind of side-eye him for choosing to continue living so far away from his kid, even if I get why he liked New York better. I don't know Julian that well, so I don't want to be too presumptuous, but I suspect that John dying contributed a significant amount to his resentment. Once reciprocated reconciliation is taken away from you as an option, forgiveness must become so much harder.

I tend to think JohnandYoko would probably eventually have broken up, but they weren't super close to it in 1980. It more seems like they were both invested in re-vamping their relationship. I get that a part of that was probably PR, but given that Double Fantasy isn't actually all sunshine and roses, I still think it's credible they were genuine. I talked about this a few days ago actually. Here's some more thoughts: 1 / 2

Whether Yoko would have loosened the "reins" on John is very hard to say. I feel he didn't have enough time to adapt to his newfound self-confidence for me to say :(

Hey anon! Sorry for taking a while to get back to you! I've been studying and have also been rotating this in my brain but I'm struggling to answer your question.

I think you're right that probably John would have treated a daughter born in 1963 differently to some extent due to his thoughts on gender roles, but it seems to me that by 1975 he had outgrown a lot of them, which informed his treatment of Sean, so I'm not sure a girl born in 1975 would have had a very different life from Sean. I think the idea that John would have been a natural GirlDad is also due to him handling Heather pretty well. There's also a story from Ruth McCartney that John was the one who taught her how to ride a bike. I feel like John was generally not bad with kids that weren't his own (not because he uniquely hated his own kids but because being a parent is a completely different responsibility from entertaining kids for max. a few hours) and the fact he only had sons makes it seem like gender was a big part of his issues as a parent, but personally I doubt it was massively impactful.

I do think about John at first worrying the name "Julian" would be too sissy – my suspicion is he feared Julian might be bullied. Perhaps John understanding how boys and men work, in what ways they are prone to hurting each other, impacted his parenting in a way. And that would, with a girl, also perhaps lead to overprotectiveness.

You also raise a good point about a daughter perhaps being an even bigger sore spot for Yoko.

In conclusion: who knows Yoko! But this is interesting to think about.

First off: obligatory "It was a different time", except I do want to emphasize it, because it's not only to contextualize some of Mimi's behaviour that a lot of people might classify as emotional abuse nowadays, but because it affects literally all of this. Social mores dictated the actions not just of Mimi but of all the Stanley sisters, who in my view all enabled the situation to get as far as it did. And, most pertinently, I don't think people at the time really understood how damaging it is to all parties to separate a child from their parents (and tbh, especially their mother). My main takeaway from the whole situation, as well as what I've learned about "difficult homes" since, is that taking John away from Julia should have been an absolute last resort, unless there was extremely concrete evidence that Julia was being highly abusive towards him.

(and I do mean highly abusive. It, for instance, would not have done Paul and Mike any good to be separated from their father, even if Jim put them through hell at times [though of course, the extent of the abuse they suffered is debatable]. These situations are terrible all-around, but from what I can tell – and what I think John's story shows – breaking apart families is very rarely the best course of action.)

"But Julia was making little John share a bed with her and Bobby Dykins!" – okay, I see how this is potentially a problem, though it's from what I can tell entirely (implied? I don't know that she went so far as to say it out loud) conjecture on Mimi's part that John was made to witness adults having sex. In my opinion, the first course of action here should have been to help Julia out by acquiring a separate bed for John.

I recognize that Julia was probably often irresponsible and, from what I've read about her, I suspect she at times struggled with parenting in way similar to how John would later on – not due to a lack of love, per se, more due to a helplessness in the face of the true burden of taking care of someone and a difficulty comprehending the seriousness and scope of child-rearing. That being said, it's hard to fully blame her when she had her toddler taken away – because of her own sister, as you mention – and had to give up her second baby for adoption. That's twice-over the worst trauma a mother could endure* so it seems natural to me that she would have attachment issues with John later on. Again, helping Julia with her parenting instead of denying her the role of mother seems to me the best course of action here. (Oh look, it's my nuclear family take rearing its head again.)

*some people happily give up babies – I don't have much reason to believe Julia was one of them.

I also think Mimi thought she was doing the right thing and her decision to take John in admittedly made more sense when Uncle George was still alive. This is where the "It was a different time" comes back in, because it would be unfair of me to expect her to understand all the complexity I've been describing. I don't know that I believe Julia Baird's claim that Mimi instigated the entire situation so she could have John for herself – but there is perhaps a middle ground here, where Mimi loved her nephew a lot, felt no one was taking care of him the way she believed he needed, and let that blind her to the damage she was going to inflict by interfering the way she did.

It's difficult to fully assess Mimi's impact on John, because it seems the abandonment issues his early childhood instilled in him made him particularly loyal to her. Mimi was, if nothing else and above all, steadfast. (You can draw a parallel here to Yoko, though that's another discussion.) You aren't gonna find a ton of statements from him condemning her, and I definitely don't want to discount the genuine love they both had for each other. I appreciate that she didn't have an easy task, bringing him up, especially after being widowed, and I appreciate that she came through for him in significant ways.

The thing that motivated my (somewhat callous) post last night, was this:

What I hate about the above quote the most is how often John, even as a teen, is conceptualized as this free-spirited rebel*; but looking at this, it hits extra hard that he was a child who had virtually no power in this situation the adults around him put him in.

*and writers like Mark Lewisohn are definitely not off the hook here; one of the things I find the most questionable about him as a biographer is that, despite his painfully obvious bias towards John, he still fails to contextualize huge chunks of John's childhood, preferring to defend Mimi at all cost.

Now, it does seem like there's some he-said/she-said going on regarding how much Bobby Dykins and John got along. I don't think John spoke super highly of him, but I also don't recall him expressing any larger issues with his pseudo step-father. Yes, Julia Baird is probably biased towards her own parents, but here's the thing: don't most of our pro-Mimi accounts come from her? Is John an unbiased source on the aunt who raised him?

So why should Julia Baird – whom I consider to be one of the most empathetic characters involved in Beatles history; rarely have I seen someone so interested in truly understanding their own family history, considering the cultural context, tying in her experience as a teacher in special needs and talking to multiple people to gain a fuller picture, even when a lot of it must've been incredibly painful for her – be seen as a less trustworthy source than Mimi – who we know has a history of editing stories to suit her:

The only thing Mimi has "going for her" as a source is that she was an adult and not a child when these events transpired. I think that's fair enough, and I do believe there are details to this story Julia Baird and we the public will never know, which made Mimi's decisions seem more justified to her and to her family. But that doesn't stop me from largely condemning most of the decisions made, even though I suspect Julia did at least on the surface agree with them.