Book Passage and a Song

[itsnotmymind]

A quote from May Pang's book Loving John, about why John was reluctant to sign the papers would dissolve the Beatles' partnership:

John seemed to be in a very strange state of mind about the dissolution. From the hints he had dropped since we had been together, I had learned that John's departure from the Beatles had essentially been Yoko's idea. Without Yoko to drive him forward, he felt strangely ambivalent about officially ending the Beatles at that moment. By nature, also, he felt inclined to take a position opposite from that of Paul McCartney. Paul desperately wanted that agreement signed. Whether or not it was the best thing for him to do, John, on principle, was inclined not to want to sign it.

I love how this passage starts off sounding like it's going to be all "Yoko broke up the Beatles, that evil bitch!" (especially since May Pang is quite anti-Yoko in general (not that I entirely blame her...) and ends up being all about John's compulsive need to be at odds with Paul. Which I'm sure had NOTHING to do with the Beatles' break-up. Nothing at all. Nope.

So what sort of hints had John been dropping the implied that leaving the Beatles was Yoko's idea? I wonder if John and Paul's compulsive opposition to each other had anything to do with Yoko's reasons for wanting John out of the group.

And, in order to test my Youtube embedding skills, here is an outtake of "Out the Blue", one of John's more underrated solo songs:

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I do wish they could have all made it work. John and Yoko and Paul and Linda are my Tragically Impossible OT4.

Mine, too, these posts and this story being evidence of same. :)

That stream of consciousness monologue of Yoko's, which you can read in its entirety here, is fascinating for other without hindsight reasons as well, for example revealing the fact she was not at all sure John would stay with her as opposed to going back to Cynthia. I mean, for every biographer on the planet, no matter their attitude or agenda, the fact that the John/Cyn marriage was doomed (and would have been even if Yoko had dropped dead from a stroke in 1967 before ever getting together with John) seems glaringly obvious, but Yoko's extreme insecurity about this is a good reminder of how different something may look to the people involved. (It also defies the idea of Yoko in 1968 as some calculating mastermind getting into the relationship for publicity as opposed to love.)She wonders whether the longevity of the John/Cynthia relationship says something about John:

And the passiveness, paranoia, I hate to say, but I really think that that had a lot to do with, with her, your marriage. Or maybe you were like that, and that’s how your marriage became that. I don’t know, that seems like a long relationship like that, would really screw somebody up. (...)John is not here, he went out into the hall. I don’t know for what. He’s out for a long time. I think probably he’s calling home, I don’t know. He’s been with her for over a decade and their other child, I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t want to think about it. It’s either that he had a terribly weak character or he was in love to her. I just don’t want to think about it. I’ve never been with anyone for so long so I wouldn’t know. If I think very hard, then I know, I mean I don’t even think I have to think hard, I just get so jealous about it I almost think I’m going to go insane.

I have no idea what was going on with that choice.

Me neither. Or rather, the only explanation I can come up with that John had a not so subconscious need to punish himself for having been an ass re: partnership dissolution (I mean, the others were in New York at his convenience and then he doesn't show up - even John had to realise this was not stellar behaviour). Or maybe he wanted to remind himself again why he had objected to Paul's choice of manager so much back in 1969, after his choice of manager had turned against him. The weird thing is that by May's account he just sat there for an hour and took Lee's put downs (before Julian came in with the "George sends his regards" news), which is the exact reverse of what was going on in 1969 according to Peter Brown, when John had been ranting non-stop complete with "Mr. Epstein" taunt ("how Lee kept his cool, I don't know", quoth Brown). Anyway, whatever the reason, John can't have expected anything good out of that meeting, so as an example of Lennonian perversity and masochism it's among the top five or so.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Oh, the opening line of that story:

She has never cared for sudden noises, which is why she has made an art out of them.

Did you get that from an interview with Yoko, or did you make that up?

I can't quite tell from that part of the stream-of-conscious whether Yoko thinks long relationships in and of themselves will screw you up, or if it's something specific about John and Cynthia's relationship that she thinks was screwed up.

Or rather, the only explanation I can come up with that John had a not so subconscious need to punish himself for having been an ass re: partnership dissolution

That seems like the most likely explanation.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

No, alas. I worked in a lot of actual Yoko quotes (including "The opposite of love is not hate: it is fear"), but the opening line wasn't one of them. An educated guess on my part.

I can't quite tell from that part of the stream-of-conscious whether Yoko thinks long relationships in and of themselves will screw you up, or if it's something specific about John and Cynthia's relationship that she thinks was screwed up.

Me neither. Either interpretation seems plausible for Yoko in 1968 to make. I mean, John and Cynthia were basically text book screwed up from a feminist pov (I always thought it an irony of fate that the lyrics of John's and Yoko's song "Woman is..." fit Cynthia and the way John treated her so very well). But it's equally possible that Yoko, whose parents according to herself were miserable for the marriage & children & status for giving up artistic aspiration, and whose own two marriages hadn't been long term, would be very sceptical about long term relationships in general at that point.

Sidenote: of course, there's the irony of fate that she did manage at least two long term relationships afterwards - her decade (well, twelve years minus Lost Weekend 18 months?) with John and her twenty plus years with Sam Havadtoy, as detailed here.