Latest Posts by sadplampgun - Page 2

cynthia's take on john & paul: fact or fiction?

"John never looked at anyone the way he looked at Paul."

-cynthia lennon

this quote gets passed around a lot. a Lot a lot. it's in compilations, it's on twitter, it's in youtube comments...

did cynthia really say john never looked at anyone like he looked at paul?

from everything i can find?

this one comes in from an anon! and a few people talking about this quote when i brought up the idea of making this blog/brought up the amount of unsourced things in this fandom

well, anon, i found the origin of the quote- at least this iteration of it. i came to a bit of a dead end that i'm not sure is a dead end, but i'll share what i found!

disclaimer: these all come from tumblr posts around 2014. this is old enough that i'm willing to link & name the users involved but if you know them or are them & would like any urls/names taken down, let me know! for now, it's staying up for the sake of answering the question "where it originated from"

so the original post that this all seems to circulate from comes from a tumblr post on january of 2014 (source)

the rest of the post is mostly speculation from the op about john being bisexual with some other quotes in there (some real, some i'm unsure on as i've never deep dived on them)

a few months later, they were asked about the source of the quote bc people were evidently already coming up blank

buffysommers-blog: That quote you site from Cynthia Lennon, "John never looked at anyone the way he looked at Paul." Where is that quote from? I've seen that quote repeated often but I've never once seen a source for the quote (was it from one of Cyn's books? an interview? with which publication) so I'm not yet convinced she actually said that. theforgottenmadcap: Hi, if I remember rightly I read it on here, I think it may be from an interview with her, as I've got both John and A Twist of Lennon and don't remember it from either of those.

(source)

however, this is where i ran into a road block. given that the op thinks it might be from an interview, i spent a good few hours listening to rare cynthia lennon interviews that haven't been transcribed on double speed. nothing there (although there were some pretty interesting quotes in them- including her calling them twins lol). and this exact wording isn't found in any of her interviews that Have been transcribed, as far as i can tell.

so there's a few options here. 1) this is completely made up & this answer was just a handwavey copout (not the answer i'd like to believe & not one i think is most likely honestly bc generally i don't think people have bad intentions) 2) they did indeed see it somewhere else on tumblr & that blog is the true origin of this quote for whatever reasons. i just can't find anything older or 3) it is in fact from a cynthia interview, just not worded exactly like this since it seems theforgottenmadcap wasn't directly copy-pasting and was just quoting a quote they saw around from memory.

if anyone winds up finding anything older or a cynthia interview with some similar statement, do let me know! or something older with similar wording.

but for now, putting this on the "fake" shelf

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

One, two, three, four Can I have a little more? Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten — I love you! 💗

we are all sinners

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.

It's kinda funny when people draw John without lashes because that man had lashes longer than a camel

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

"JoHn waS tHe MosT ovErRated BEatle" maybe in the 80s and 90s but definitely not now. Its like ever since John's wrongdoings were brought to light, some of us have forgotten how talented John was. Maybe not on the level of Paul, in terms playing instruments, but he was so talented! I just hate the narrative that as of now, 2025, he's the most "overrated" beatle, because he's most certainly not

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.

!

My question is, when people have a least favourite beatle, let's say John, because we all know he's not favored in the Beatles fandom, how do you lot avoid them? When you watch interviews or music videos of the Beatles, do you just avoid him as best as you can? Like do you skip parts of the video that you'll know he'll appear in?

I'm just glad that I don't really have a least favourite Beatle, makes my Beatles experience more enjoyable, for me

OMG I STAND BEHIND EVERY SINGLE WORD. JOHNNY IS THE UNDESERVED MARTYR OF TIKTOK AND OTHER PLATFORMS EXPLOITING MINORS (AND NOT JUST THEM)

Unpopular opinions

1) there's no such thing as an "unproblematic musician" . The only reason why they are seen as unproblematic is because they are able to mask their wrongdoings better than other artists.

2) I do not buy Paul's story of spending everyday with Linda with the only time being separated was when Paul was imprisoned. That's bollocks mate.

3) You lot make John Lennon worse than he actually is. Compared to what other rockstars did, e.g. Brian Jones being a sexual sadist and loved beating women with objects whilst forcing them into sex, John is lowkey mild (fuck him for abandoning Julian tho)

4) I'm convinced the majority of you only like George Harrison for his looks. He is more than just his looks

5) Last unpopular opinion, all the Beatles were equally shit (personality wise). There was no worse Beatle. I could go on about this, especially about how a Beatle is singled out for a wrongdoing whilst another Beatle, who also did the same thing, is let off the hook (both John and Paul saying the n word, but only John is singled out for this like tf??)

My thoughts on why I think Paul had a preference for men - 

As I discussed in an earlier post, as a young teen Paul found himself attracted to musical theater, which had a very strong gay element attached to it. As he put it, “I used to hang around stage doors, I was a bit of a Stage-Door Johnny. I was so fascinated by all of that stuff. I loved it. I just wanted to be near it. I hung around the stage doors, got to meet the Crew Cuts. I sort of wanted it, wanted it bad.”

He can remember every minute detail from the first time he met John, from the smell of his beery breath, to the feel of John putting his arms around his shoulders. Immediately after meeting this boy, Paul already started planning a life-long partnership with him, figured out how to combine their names, and was doodling pictures of him in his school workbook. This to me is the behavior of a boy who has already come to terms with his attraction to boys, not someone who’s confused, in denial, or unaware of his feelings.

Two of his earliest songs have themes of a forbidden, risky love. At fourteen, he described love as “suicide” and at 15 he’s promising someone he just met that he’ll love them “in spite of all the danger.” 

When he started dating girls, he would pick out all of their outfits and would instruct them on how to style their hair. Yes, this could be interpreted as Paul just wanting his girlfriend to look like Brigitte Bardot, but to me it sounds a lot like something a stereotypical “gay best friend” would do.

He and John went to The Dart, a gay club, together. This, to me, diminishes the common belief around here that Paul thought of himself as “only gay for John” and not actually queer. The fact that he regularly hung out at a gay club implies that Paul felt that he was no different than all of the other gay men there.

Then when the Beatles went to Hamburg, Tony Barrow remembers how he thought Paul was gay “for months.” If Paul was truly sleeping with as many girls in Hamburg as he claimed, why did it take Tony so long to find out that he wasn’t gay?

The fact that Paul was known to use his “bedroom eyes” and “sex appeal” to get what he wanted from Brian implies that this isn’t Paul’s first time flirting with a man in my opinion.

If you trust Simon Napier-Bell’s account, Brian revealed to him that the Beatles had “other boyfriends,” implying someone not within the band. So this could suggest that Paul was casually dating men other than John during his time in the Beatles.

Mid-sixties, Paul once again deliberately placed himself in the artsy gay crowd of London. I find it interesting to say the least that Paul, age fourteen on, has taken every opportunity possible to surround himself with a group of other gay men. First it was the theater, then beatniks, now Swinging London. 

When John dumped Paul in the summer of 1968, Paul seemed to genuinely be contemplating living the rest of his life as a gay man. When he briefly dated Francie Schwartz, he was said to be going off to gay clubs in the middle of the night. In Francie’s book “Body Count,” she recounts a conversation with Billy Lancaster where he asked her, “Really, what’s Paul like?  I heard he was gay.” to which Francie replied, “He might have gone that way but he didn’t.  He didn’t really dig fucking all that much if that’s any kind of an answer.“

And the emotional intensity of Paul’s breakup with John in itself speaks volumes about how Paul values his relationships with men significantly more than the ones he had with women.

Or in a 1970s Tom Snyder interview, Paul was talking about his days as a Beatles, being able to have any one he wanted. He said, “When you’re that age, that’s the thing to do. You’re looking for girls or whatever turns you on.” When Tom asked what the alternative to girls would be, Paul told him “Boys.”

And none of this even touches all of the crazy suggestive quotes and things regarding him and John’s relationship, like when Paul literally said that he and John were one of the first men to come out openly when homosexuality was still illegal (!!!)

I don’t know…there’s probably a lot more I’m forgetting right now but you get the point 

(also this is all purely speculation so please don’t try to come for me)

All it ever does is rain, Christophe Jarcot

PAUL MCCARTNEY at the Beatles’ press conference after it had been announced that the band would be awarded MBE’s; June 12th, 1965.

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

John's tongue. You're welcome.

Songs by The Beatles that shaped me as a person

Michelle

Don't Let Me Down

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

She Said She Said

Mother Nature's Son

Fixing a Hole

I'm Only Sleeping

Because

Baby's in Black

Dig a Pony

Оооо I feel a very special vibe in all these songs.

Pisces Rising

Paul McCartney

ARIES RISING

JOHN LENNON

WHAT THE BEATLES JOHN GAVE US

I have so many special memories of Beatle John. His strikingly strong charisma and magnetic allure, which intimidated me and most other girls, driving us to choose Paul (or George, or Ringo) as our favorite instead. His charming smile, capable of transforming your own gloomy face into a joyful one. His delightful wit and unique eccentricity, which he revealed when you least expected it. His grace, his charm, and, of course, his exceptional appearance.

Johnny Old Web 🍓

do you remember that sweet old site about John with sparkles and cuteness? 。･:*:･(✿◕3◕)❤

Новая еда 🍴🍱

МакЛеннонс в психоанализе — что об этом думает deepseek

Англоязычные sorry

nurse shes thinking about george’s yahoo Q and A again… warning last view WILL make you cry

Some cute little things

Teddy boy era John! I don’t feel like I draw bro enough *sigh*…

john lenny

This is 10000% canon I did not make it up.

the lyrics: the statistics

did a re-read and this is driving me insane so i must share. this isn’t including mentions in the credits of the song or in photographs, just times paul explicitly mentioned their name in the write-up.

ringo mentioned in 21/154 song entries (13.6%)

george mentioned in 27/154 song entries (17.5%)

linda mentioned in 36/154 song entries (23.3%)

john mentioned in 80/154 song entries (51.9%)