I Can’t Believe The Nerve Of Some People. Littlelambdrgnfly’s Writing Is Fire.

I agree-they both needed each other. What’s most frustrating in this fandom is that some people think saying Paul needed John or vice versa somehow takes away from their individual talents and achievements but surely it only enhanced it? There is nothing wrong with needing people in this life otherwise we would all be recluses living a nomadic existence. Both John and Paul were wildly talented on their own but with each other they went further then they would have alone not just musically but through giving each other the love, support and confidence to succeed.

I’m asking you this question because I really value your opinion. Judging from some people’s opinions;some without knowledge and some with knowledge seem to feel that Paul didn’t need John, that he never needed John. Paul was IT. My question is , do you think he was just humoring John or did Paul feel that they were equals? I find it interesting that Paul felt that John was being credited for everything after he was killed, but now,IMO, it has gone WAY overboard in the other direction. Your thoughts? Thanks.😎

This is a very in depth question ha! Sorry I have been M.I.A lately things have been a little crazy...

Anyways... We all know that once John met Paul, and Paul met John, something magic just clicked. They were discovering things within each other that no one previously had been able to bring out. Yes, Paul was more "musically talented" in technical terms at the time, but John added that special something that made them excellent. Even after John’s passing, Paul still says he “looks to John” for guidance when he's stuck with a song, melody, or whatever it may be he needs a trusted opinion on... John was virtually the other half of Paul’s brain in human form, as was he to John.

Moral of the post, to make it short and sweet, I do believe they needed each other to a point. Then after that point ended, hanging onto each other (musically) would have held them back. Both boys branched out to what they wanted to do after the split, however continued to be influenced by each other, they did their own thing and thrived while doing so. If John was alive today, I know we would have gotten loads of more beautiful music, and whatever else his unique mind came up with. John and Paul set eachother up for greatness, yet always had each other to fall back on if need be <3

Apologies for the quickly thrown together response, but thank you for writing in! I love sharing my thoughts and opinions on the 4 boys we love the most!

Paul McCartney circa 2022 in the Lyrics book: A Day in the Life-that was all me and I’m not even going to mention the other guy at all.

— John Lennon, Hit Parader: Lennon-McCartney Songalog – Who wrote what. (extracts) (April, 1972)

Controversial option but in some ways I think George understood John even better than Paul did

John Lennon & George Harrison | 1969 © Bruce McBroom

"That was the great thing about John and what I got from him, from all those years. He saw that we are not just in the material world; he saw beyond death, that this life is just a little play that is going on. And he understood that." ~ George Harrison

This image had me thinking that Paul was sitting on John's lap. But it's just a nice optical illusion.

Firstly this anon is posting me off claiming they have a crystal ball and know exactly how John would have been politically had he lived and even insinuating it’s good John died so they wouldn’t have to see it. This is bullshit. If you want to pick on John, pick something from his life that actually happened instead of inventing fantasies of how you think John would be in the modern age and using them as a comparison against Paul who luckily didn’t get murdered and got to live in this era. Secondly Julian posted on Instagram when he got his vaccines. You can look it up. He is not anti vaccine at all. I thought when he posted the picture of ivermectin he was doing so out of sarcasm. I got nothing from his post he was being serious. Thirdly Sean has not posted anything anti vaccine so stop pulling him into this. Fourthly even if you disagree with Julian, this has nothing to do with John and his views. This whole argument is pathetic and I can’t believe people are buying into this rubbish.

“Would John have gotten politically weird if he lived” anon here and FRUSTRATED. I’m not saying I told you so, I’m just telling at these idiot men through the screen.

Also I do not understand how these rich famous people don’t know the difference between a parasite (what ivermectin treats) and a fucking virus. They are different.

Listen to your uncle Paul boys. Be cool, get vaxxed.

I have no clue where Julian gets this from tbh I don't know his social circles. I'll say that from what I can tell most of John's weirdness seemed to come from Yoko and her circle (not saying it's entirely her fault, just saying I feel like that might be why Sean's like this, though he may also be just trying to be supportive of his brother).

It's so hard to talk to these types of people cause they're so terrified generally and for whatever reason feel completely justified in their distrust of science. I don't know Julian or Sean's full educational background but often I think it's people who get overwhelmed about biology and don't have an intuition for it (see: people who clearly don't really know what RNA even is freaking out about it)

Honestly, probably Paul is also non-confrontational about this type of thing though, so I'm not sure he's the best bet to try and convince Julian and Sean otherwise.

Behold my purchases from the Eyes of the Storm exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday. I had a discussion with the women on the till in the gift shop about how hot John looked in his sunglasses 😎

This is such a weird take that John’s mom dying horrifically in a car accident right underneath his bedroom window counts as hagiography regardless of whether the driver was drunk or not. It was still a traumatic thing for John. Also why is it never acknowledged there is massive hagiography for Paul “everything can be explained away as his actions are always right” McCartney?

It’s also massively problematic for anyone to diagnose anyone else without a formal mental health evaluation and even more wrong for a mental health clinician to do it via taking pieces of biographies out of context. Also Erin Torkelson Weber is biased. Ugh. So many things I hate about this and once again it’s taking a complex person like John and taking out his worst pieces out of context to form a half baked conclusion.

Hi :) my friend just sent me a link to a podcast episode called "The Psychology of John Lennon" by Psychology in Seattle. I'm kind of interested but seeing as the episode so awfully long and I have no experience with that podcast idk if it's worth a listen. So I wanted to ask if you have given that one a go and if so what are your thoughts on it? Is it insightful?

P.S.: I love your blog, I really appreciate all the hard work that goes into your posts and they're always so interesting to read!!

Hiya anon!

Thank you for the lovely “PS” message btw — I really appreciate hearing that!! :)

I have listened to this podcast a few times, and I’ve actually recommended this specific episode (which can be found here (x)) quite a bit – so I’m pretty familiar with it! The short answer here is that I would recommend it. It’s a decent illustration of the key arguments concerning a diagnosis for borderline personality disorder, albeit, not a comprehensive one. But id say the host gets the job done, and it’s a good starting point for wider discussion.

The long answer, is that the episode does have a handful of flaws. There were two main issues I recall having with it, the first being that Dr Honda assumes Mimi’s parenting was not in any way problematic or abusive. He discusses Julia’s parenting, establishing it as chaotic, and also discusses Alfred's parenting —or lack thereof, really— and illustrates how both these early abandonments would have affected John. He even mentions an intergenerational aspect to the family-line which I thought was interesting (I’m actually working on whole post dedicated to that topic!). But then he brushes off Mimi’s parenting as “good-enough”, when it evidently had a more substantial impact on John.

In discussing how a borderline personality might have developed for John throughout his childhood, I just don’t believe you can dismiss Mimi in this way, since she was such a pivotal figure in the formation of his personality. Her treatment of him appears to have been emotionally and verbal abusive — and that isn’t a judgement of her, nor is it to say that she didn’t love him (or that he didn’t love her), but simply that if you read the various accounts of her parenting styles, it seems fairly apparent that it is what would be considered abusive today. I do appreciate that John was probably always going to be difficult, and that she had her own issues largely stemming mainly from her father — but these things don’t ultimately dispel the argument that her parenting could be abusive. So essentially, Mimi's needed to be discussed in more depth for this to be a comprehensive outlook on John’s childhood. As well as this, the episode would have been improved had he dedicated more time into discussing the impact of Uncle George and his death.

The second issue I had with the episode, was that the host largely neglects to discuss John’s relationship with Paul. There are parts of the podcast where he does discuss their closeness, but overall it didn’t feel to me as though he had really recognised the depth of this relationship. Im aware that he recently did an episode on Get Back, which I haven’t gotten round to listening to just yet — but I’m interested to see to see if perhaps his perspective has changed/grown.

There are other things in the podcast which I take issue with (for instance, his understanding of the relationship between John and Yoko could be fairly shallow and one-sided), but it seems to me as though these things tended to be more-or-less related to a problematic historiography. I appreciate that Dr Kirk Honda has done dozens of these kinds of episodes, where he analyses the psychology of various celebrities and characters, and offers potential diagnosis’s for them – and therefore, I’m not expecting him to be an absolute expert on John Lennon. When you’re running a podcast which is fairly miscellaneous in its subjects, there’s an extent to which you can research each topic, and so I cant really expect the host to have studied practically Every Single Area of John Lennon’s life. There are things which I would have been more attentive towards — but I’ve dedicated, frankly, an amount of time into researching him which therapists would find concerning (*kidding*…..but not really). Additionally, I would presume that the shows hosts haven’t read most of the biographies in which they gathered their information from with much critical thought, because they’re not The Almighty Great Erin Torkelson-Webber. So effectively, their understanding of John Lennon is going to blindsided by hagiography — an example of this would be when the host cites that John’s mother was killed by a drunk-driver, which contemporary reports would disagree with. But I wouldn’t say that this flaw is so much so that it spoils their entire overarching argument, its just a notable blindspot and something to keep in mind when listening to their analysis’s.

On a more positive note, there were merits to this podcast. As a professional psychologist, he is able to offer valuable insights into things such as Janov’s Primal Scream Therapy, and illustrate in laymen’s terms, essentially why its a quack. And despite his arguments being, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed since they neglect to account for two massively crucial figures (Mimi and Paul), he’s still able to conclude with a solid, evidenced argument for John having had BPD.

If you happen to be someone fairly ‘iffy’ about diagnosing (or suggesting diagnosis’s) John with a mental illness—especially something as complicated as borderline personality disorder—id definitely recommend giving this as a listen! You might still conclude that diagnosing him is not the right course of action, or that it has little value, or that its just plain wrong etc. but I still think its a good thing for people to at least understand the arguments here, since I know that in the past when I have mentioned that I think John was a strong candidate for BPD, I am often met with a response telling me that I'm just projecting onto him, which does make me wonder if they’ve really understood the objective outlook in this discussion.

Someday I’ll have to sit down and write up an entire post on all this, collecting the strongest arguments for him having had BPD (and someday I will, I swear!) but for now I’ll just leave you a few other relevant links to this topic:

An overview of the John and BPD argument (x) — @thecoleopterawithana

Exposing the voice of truth: a psychological profile of John Lennon — Deborah Fade (x) + additionally you can read the @anotherkindofmindpod critique of it here (x)

A quote from Lesley Ann-Jones and (a more important) addition from @walkuntilthedaylight (x)

It’s nice to see a music critic put into words how I have felt as some of these excerpts from the book have come out. As a John fan, I’ve had to scroll past people calling John an evil wifebeater on my dash, people diagnosing him with a variety of mental illnesses despite no diagnosis in his lifetime and then diagnosing people around him with mental health issues just for associating with him. They then use these mental health issues he may have had to discredit his thoughts and feelings or even worse infantilise him, particularly in relation to Paul. I haven’t called these things out as everyone has a right to their opinions. But when a few people have called out Paul for some of the hurtful things he has said regarding John, they have been shouted down, blocked or told they have no right to their opinions and aren’t being team players in the fandom. I think that due to Paul having a tough treatment after John’s death, there’s a need to put Paul on a pedestal as he is seen as needing defending and consequently either minimise John’s accomplishments or grossly highlight all of John’s flaws (while conveniently ignoring those of the other Beatles.) Paul, like john, is human and it’s should be ok to point out elements of his behaviour you find problematic and by the way many of John fans completely are aware of both John’s flaws and Paul’s wonderful points too. If we call out the Jean jackets who put John on a pedestal and treat him like a God surely we shouldn’t be encouraging that behaviour for the fans of the other Beatles. Ted talk over

McCartney, With and Without Lennon

In “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present,” Paul McCartney and the poet Paul Muldoon present the words to 154 of the former Beatle’s songs.

  Posting this, because it’s a pretty balanced review. The reviews have been generally pretty favourable, but they do (and rightly so) call out Paul for his (intentional?) inconsistency and revisionism. I’m not too familiar with the author, but a quick wikipedia search says he has been on the musicology/ music critique writing scene since the 70s. Some will probably say “oh he’s just one of those male rock journalists who favoured John and therefore his criticism of Paul is invalid”. But I think he makes some really excellent points about the flawed elements of this book. 

  “The best of the songs collected here (“For No One,” “She’s Leaving Home,” “When Winter Comes,” “On My Way to Work” and quite a few more) reflect eyes fixed on the small niceties and curiosities of everyday life and a mind that bounces freely, taking childlike pleasure in that freedom. “The Lyrics” makes clear that McCartney has written on a high level long past his Beatles years, and even the weakest lyrics in the books have a character all their own: a feeling of giddy playfulness and unguarded experimentation. They’re a joy to read because they exude the joy their maker took in their making.” “Over and over, McCartney shows how deeply he is steeped in literary history and how much his output as a songwriter has in common with the works of the likes of Dickens and Shakespeare. “John never had anything like my interest in literature,” he announces at the top of his commentary on “The End,” before pivoting to a mini-lecture on the couplet as a form. “When you think about it, it’s been the workhorse of poetry in English right the way through. Chaucer, Pope, Wilfred Owen.” Apropos of “Come and Get It,” the trifle he wrote and produced for Badfinger, McCartney notes, “When you’re writing for an audience — as Shakespeare did, or Dickens, whose serialized chapters were read to the public — there’s that need to pull people in.” Aaaah … we realize: Paul really is a word man, the more literary and cerebral Beatle.”  “As one would expect from the pop star who posed with his baby tucked in his coat on his farm for his first post-Beatles album, McCartney talks with ardor and respect for his parents, his extended family in Liverpool, and the traditional values of hearth and home in general. He attributes the buoyant positivity of his music to the happiness in his family life and, by extension, ascribes the bite and cynicism that distinguishes much of Lennon’s work to the domestic upheaval in John’s early years. To McCartney, a dark view of humanity is a failing and must be a mark of suffering, rather than an attribute of thought.”  “While pronouncing his love for Lennon as a longtime friend and creative partner, Paul is pretty rough on him at points in “The Lyrics.” His main crime is one of omission, passing on opportunities to point out Lennon’s signature contributions to songs they wrote collaboratively, such as “A Day in the Life.” In the context of conflicts between the two of them, McCartney describes Lennon as “stupid” or an “idiot.” Yes, we all know that McCartney can’t help defining himself in relation to Lennon. Still, as he shows convincingly throughout “The Lyrics,” you don’t have to make the other guy out to be an idiot to prove that you’re a genius.   

John Lennon begins to realise that Paul McCartney is broken. The Beatles, interviewed by Jeremy James for Day By Day. Portsmouth Guildhall, 12th November 1963 - part 2 (part 1)

Yes thank you! Why if he claims to love this man do nigh is every single article about how he really did everything in the Beatles and John was just there?

Paul McCartney, I love you but I hate you so much right now.

Stop trashing John (who can’t defend himself because he’s been dead for 41 years) just to make yourself seem more important. You did your best and most important work TOGETHER.