John Lennon during the White Album recording sessions, October 1968. Photos by Linda McCartney.
John Lennon during the White Album recording sessions, October 1968. Photos by Linda McCartney.
John by Ringo Starr
“I love this shot, but it may not mean a lot to anyone but me. Besides the fact that John has his glasses off, he is sitting in a typical ‘him’ pose. He had this weird way of sitting. The knee could go down to the floor and the leg right up to his shoulder! John and his fabulous loose hips. It’s far out, isn’t it? I can’t do it. All you people reading this out there — can you do it? It’s a competition.“ - Ringo Starr
John and Paul, Magicall Mystery Tour, 1967
John Lennon and Paul McCartney during the Please Please Me sessions, 1963
Cynthia & John Lennon talking to sales manager Maurice Knight about the Iso Rivolta S4 at a motor show at Earls Court in London, England | 17 October 1967
We were looking for Ringo, but we realized he must have come back here.
John Lennon & George Harrison backstage at Sundsta Läroverk in Karlstad, Sweden | 25 October 1963 © Bo Trenter
John Lennon’s 1976 passport.
omg can you speak more to your latest post about the reverse happening in 1980, I’ve never about the coherence of the narrative actually :O
Yeah an alternate universe would be crazzyy because our main narrator and star witness of the Beatles would be resident shit stirrer … John Lennon.
John
Fucking
Lennon.
The thing with Paul is that he’s kept to a pretty consistent narrative for the past 40 years or so: John broke up the Beatles cause he wanted to move on, army buddies, they loved each other etc. You can criticise it (I certainly do), but it’s coherent. It’s also one that has allowed John grace and promoted love and community as a core message, something that the other last surviving Beatle Ringo is more than happy to support. It works, we get it, it's a good message in many ways.
Whereas John … wooo boy. The only idea we have of what John would have been like is the 70s where he couldn’t even make a narratively coherent sentence.
If you take his comments and put them together, the Beatles break up was because the guys were blokes he got bored of but also the temple he loved too much but also a marriage that had to end but also a mistake in many ways. Simple, right?
And who was Paul again? Oh, well he was his closest friend ever but also someone he was never very close to and a genius but also artistically dead and yeah, he talks to him often but hasn’t spoken to him in a decade and could talk about him for days but also never thinks about him and is his dear one but also a straight and his ex-coworker who he didnt really work with much … wait no fiance/brother that he would do anything for. Whatever emotion John felt at that moment was his new forever truth/cope and that was the shit he was sticking to on record for those five minutes.
And that’s John in normal factory mode. Now imagine the nuke that would be losing Paul, his Paul. Imagine every extreme feeling and every defense mechanism under the sun all going off at once and right in the interviewer's face like a deranged grief firework show. Then the added mess of Paul being seen as a saint and Paul the person not being there to reality check John’s view of him … chaos. On top of all that, if Yoko is right and John did contemplate an affair with Paul, you think he wouldn’t have spouted that at some point AMONGST OTHER THINGS WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT?
Trying to work out the whole Beatles saga would be like trying to find Bigfoot but the compass is pointing in every direction and through several detours through an inexplicable amount of orgies, scandals and psychosexual drama.
Who were the Beatles? God knows, apparently only the best band ever of bffs/coworkers who were so overrated and boring that John couldn’t wait to leave/never wanted to quit. Who the fuck was Paul McCartney? Duh, the most beautiful perfect wonderful genius man who had ever lived, one of the great loves of John’s life whose memory will stalk his dreams and waking hours until his dying day and has seances for on the reg. Oh he's also a sheep fucking devil who was hated and who intentionally and maliciously slept with half of London and wrote 'nogoodsongsshutup' in an evil plot to trick John to make music with him until Yoko freed him from his spell. What was their relationship? ????????? (okay maybe not everything would have changed lol but we would have so many more details on John’s side). There’d be no message from the Beatles tale, no story, no cohesion. Just a free-for-all pile of disparate tales of love, hate, treepanning and heartache to sift through.
In any case, I would love to see the madness that would be their version of Beatles tumblr.
John Lennon & Brian Epstein in Miami, FL | February 1964 © Dezo Hoffmann
HELP! (1965) — dir. Richard Lester
JOHN LENNON
DAVID GAHR, 1974.
John Lennon at Paul & Jerri Pollak's home during the LIFE magazine photo session in Miami Beach, FL | 14 February 1964 © Bob Gomel
The Beatles visit Central Park in New York City on February 8, 1964.