#class and the beatles

[get-back-homeward]

The Case of Thelma Pickles

Thelma's account of John is most often cherrypicked by detractors as evidence he was some lifelong wifebeater. While the violence in the incident she describes is clear, the nuance that makes her account so vivid gets lost in the debate.

I keep coming back to her account for her picture of John at a crucial time, only a few months after Julia is killed.

John’s girlfriend in the autumn of 1958 was Thelma Pickles, a new and interesting student at the art school, just turning 17. Initially, she thought him “a smartarse,” then changed her mind when she witnessed his reaction to a girl who asked if what she’d heard about his mother was true. “She said, ‘Hey John, I hear your mother’s dead.’ He didn’t flinch. He simply said, ‘Yeah.’ She carried on, ‘It was a policeman that knocked her down, wasn’t it?’ Again he didn’t react, he just said, ‘That’s right, yeah.’ I was stunned by his detachment, and impressed that he was brave enough not to break down or show any emotion. Of course, it was all a front.”30

Soon afterward, John and Thelma sat talking at the Queen Victoria Monument and each revealed being deserted by their dads. “He pissed off and left me when I was a baby,” John said of Alf, which was far from correct but no doubt how he felt. Thelma’s father had left home when she was ten; she was sensitive to the stigma of having only one parent and emotional when anyone mentioned it. “I couldn’t sustain the detachment John managed,” she says. “I thought it was quite an achievement to be able to behave like that.”

Suddenly, John and Thel, as he called her, were “going out.” The shared soul-baring cemented it, and also they fancied each other. Thelma was the first female John allowed to get close after Julia’s terrible death. She was given glimpses of his other side.

When we discussed it between ourselves I realized he was clearly more sensitive than he appeared. He spoke of the pure shock of losing his mother, and he said what a loss it was (though I don’t think he used the word “loss”). At such times, he spoke in a much softer, more explanatory way than usual, and though he never demonstrated extremes of emotion, his pain was clear. The other side of the coin was that he’d detect any minor frailty in somebody with a laser-like homing device. I thought he was hilarious, but it wasn’t funny to the recipients.31

Thelma was witness to a rare occasion at Mendips, when John, Paul and George all stood in the kitchen and played their guitars. Mimi was out, and before she was expected back Thelma and the two lads scarpered. John knew Mimi didn’t want them in the house and would raise merry hell about it, and he just didn’t need the headache. For a while, though, John and Thel took regular advantage of Mimi’s going out (it seems she went to play bridge one night a week). The plan, carefully formulated by John, was for Thel (who lived in Knotty Ash) to take the bus to Woolton; she and John would meet and sit across Menlove Avenue in a shelter on the edge of the golf course, and when Mimi left and walked down the street, over they’d go. “I only ever saw Mimi from a distance, in the dark,” Thelma says.

Mostly, Thel found John “enormous fun to be with, always witty, and when we were alone together he was really soft, thoughtful and generous-spirited.” He made them tea and toast, he made her laugh, and he made love to her in his little bedroom above the porch. “We didn’t call it sex—that word wasn’t really used by people then. John called it ‘going for a five-mile run,’ because he’d read or heard this was the amount of energy a man spent.” They used no protection, trusting only to luck, and John told Thel he was glad she was no “edge of the bed virgin”—his euphemism for the kind of girl who would take him half the way there but no further.

John and Thel often took afternoons off from art school to go to the pictures. He liked the old horror films at the equally old Palais de Luxe on Lime Street, and they also went to see Elvis’s final pre-army film, King Creole, which reached Liverpool Odeon in mid-October 1958. Though John very occasionally wore his glasses at college, he definitely didn’t do so in public, and without them, even sitting near the front of the stalls, he could hardly make out how his idol was faring up there on the big screen. He kept nudging Thelma, nagging her to describe all the action: “What’s he doing now, Thel?”

—Tune In, Ch. 9 (June–Dec 1958)

Her account of the beginning of their relationship supports Paul and Cynthia’s characterization of young John as a kid that put on a public front to mask fear and insecurities and grief. She is surprised by his detachment to loss, something she wishes she could attain. (Echoes of this story of John and Paul. Like recognizes like?) Yet with further scrutiny, she sees the detachment as a facade and discovers a shared trauma, and they bond over opening up about their family losses.

After this recognition, they become close. When alone, Thelma sees the softer side to John, thoughtful and generous. When in public, she notices his awareness of the eyes of others, mocking frailties of others while walking around half-blind himself. She finds him hilarious as long as his target is someone else, feeling a sense of specialness by being part of his crew. You can see echoes of John and Paul's mean girls schtick here.

It's notable that by 1959, John has made a habit out of bonding over shared grief/trauma. John meets Paul just after his mother dies, and John lost his father figure a few years before that. John meets Thelma after Julia’s death and they bond over absent fathers. John goes on to meet Cynthia, who has just recently lost her father.

Her account of the end of their relationship supports how John would lash out when power shifted and exposed his insecurities. This lashing out comprises not only one hit in a moment of anger, but several days/weeks(?) of public mocking in response to her ending the relationship over his own actions. Notice how he mocks her with a lie they both know isn’t true all because she wounded his ego? It’s the performance of it all that sticks with me.

And the only way she gets him to shut up is to match him in being equally vicious back. The games of adolescence perhaps, but its echoes in John’s other significant relationships suggest a pattern. Mind games, more than anything, is the weapon of choice.

[Quotes and sources under the cut]

During the course of this, John leaned over to Thel and asked if she fancied “going for a five-mile run.” She agreed, and they slipped upstairs to the Art History room, assuming it would be free. “It was dark but we could tell there were other couples in there, probably having a five-mile run of their own, or trying to,” Thelma recalls. “I told John I was uneasy about doing it in a place like that, especially with other people there, and he wasn’t happy with my attitude. When I insisted on going, and got up to leave, he became rough and whacked me one—his fist connected somewhere between my shoulder and my head, around my neck.”8

During the course of this, John leaned over to Thel and asked if she fancied “going for a five-mile run.” She agreed, and they slipped upstairs to the Art History room, assuming it would be free. “It was dark but we could tell there were other couples in there, probably having a five-mile run of their own, or trying to,” Thelma recalls. “I told John I was uneasy about doing it in a place like that, especially with other people there, and he wasn’t happy with my attitude. When I insisted on going, and got up to leave, he became rough and whacked me one—his fist connected somewhere between my shoulder and my head, around my neck.”8

Thelma stormed off, and decided that was the end of their relationship. She did her best to avoid John through the following week, and when this wasn’t possible she simply ignored him. He started to mock her but she resisted his gibes, and this went on for several days until reaching its culmination in the Cracke. “He was still mocking me, in front of others, and then he called me ‘an edge of the bed virgin.’ That really pissed me off because we both knew it wasn’t true. He was just being sarcastic and wounding because he was pissed off with me, and I got so enraged I shouted back, ‘Don’t blame me just because your mother’s dead!’ It was a cruel remark, but he knew all about those. It just seemed the easiest way to get back at him.”

John and Thelma had reached the end of the line, though they’d remain friends and keep in touch for several years. In an interview in 1980, John reflected on his teenage behavior: “Hitting females is something I’m always ashamed of and still can’t talk about—I’ll have to be a lot older before I can face that in public, about how I treated women as a youngster.”9 Except that he was talking about it, and with the sort of candor customary even when it was to his own detriment. In 1967, John mentioned it within a song lyric and spoke about it to his biographer Hunter Davies. “I was in a blind rage for two years,” he said. “I was either drunk or fighting. There was something the matter with me.”10

This was also, of course, the way it was in many other relationships, and had been for a long time and would be in the future, especially in the north of England. It wasn’t excusable but nor was it unusual, and such attitudes were reinforced constantly in receptive minds by the silver screen. “Not only did we dress like James Dean and walk around like that,” John later remarked, “but we acted out those cinematic charades. The he-man was supposed to smack a girl across the face, make her succumb in tears and then make love. Most of the guys I knew in Liverpool thought that’s how you do it.”11

In terms of dress, John continued to interchange between college scarf and Teddy Boy drape, though being a Ted was always more a state of mind for him.12 The persona remained very much part of his attraction to Paul and George, however—as Paul says, “We looked up to him as a sort of violent Teddy Boy, which was attractive at the time. He got drunk a lot and once he kicked the telephone-box in … [and] what might have been construed as good old-fashioned rudeness I always had to put down to ballsiness.”

—Tune In (Ch. 10, Jan–July 1959)

Based on the accounts of Thelma here and Cynthia elsewhere, both known incidents of John being physically violent with women are single, isolated events. Thelma describes a hair pull and full-on hit (punch) in the neck, which is physically painful to think about, whereas Cynthia describes a slap in the face. In both cases, they feel confident enough to shut it down and walk away, Thelma for good and Cynthia at least making him grovel first (Christmas 1959 card). Domestic violence comes in several forms, some of which do match John’s behavior with Cynthia even if they were common for the time (controlling appearance and activities, possessiveness and paranoia of infidelities, etc.), but neither of these women describe habitual physical violence.

However, this incident does not seem to reflect the guilt with which John talks about it later. Even when put together with Cynthia’s account, which is less than a year later (fall 1959), the level doesn’t seem to match. I notice both incidents would be within the two years after Julia’s death, yet he’s writing about it in 1967 (“I hit my woman”) and still talking about it in 1980. Even 3 months before his death, he was calling himself "a hitter." Either there were more incidents left untold (e.g., Thelma and/or Cynthia are condensing into one where they left, or other women who’ve remained silent) or John’s guilt spun it into more over time. This is notable because there’s not much else he ever seems to publicly regret.

Looking up Lewisohn’s sources, the worst quote from John is actually from Source 11 (the James Dean quote above), a print interview from a dubious author (link in the sources listed below). The author Sandra Shevey has claimed to have spent at least 12 hours interviewing John and Yoko, and while at least one recording of her interview with them is available, I’m skeptical about other quotes in print considering her output. Reading a few pages of her book on John, some parts are so unhinged I wondered why on earth Lewisohn even used anything from her as a source (serious burn book vibes). John has mentioned elsewhere about being influenced by Hollywood’s images of (toxic) masculinity as a teen, but her full quote makes it sound like he was basically raping women all the time. She uses the quote as a springboard to her more outlandish theories (like devoting several pages to the idea that John raped and then murdered Brian over a contract detail?!).

Burn book moments aside, Shevey also gets tons of basic details completely wrong like attributing Get Back’s writing or Bernard Webb’s Woman to John (both are Paul’s) and in general treats Paul as a nonentity in John’s life and work. So I have a hard time trusting anything from her book. However, she is one of the few John bio authors to consider bisexuality (unhinged theories aside) and is questioning the ballad of John&YokoTM in print as early as 1990, perhaps because she spoke with them during a time when the cracks were more visible. So assuming her quotes are accurate and her reading is just wildly off the mark, I think it’s worth mentioning the context of this James Dean quote in her book. It's prefaced with background that may shed light on the case of Thelma Pickles, who had the dubious honor of being John’s first real girlfriend.

Talking in 1972, he's speaking about this in relation to his struggle with accepting Yoko as an equal creative partner on the latest album. There’s a flavor of blaming British society and American culture that sounds very Yoko shaped (he goes on to call British men both effeminate and sadist). However, applying this background to 1958, you can see how a young John would have struggled to apply his relationships with other boys to his first attempt at a relationship with a girl, especially one who was by her own account looking for recognition and belonging with the boys.

Aside from the physical violence, Thelma’s account details the headtrip of John’s verbal violence. When you’re 16, a week of public mockery can feel like a lifetime. Doubly so when it comes from someone you were once close to. Like Pete and Paul, Thelma figures out how to match John’s level and shut him up. Bill Harry also recalls the importance of standing up to John to gain his respect. Thelma has to deal with him like one of the guys, delivering a verbal uppercut that leaves him clocked out and in the sand.

In a way, John’s mockery of Thelma looks like a mirror of the much longer, much more public mockery Paul gets from John 1970-1972. Ram aside, Paul waits to turn the public equivalent on John until 1972—which just so happens to be when John starts to cool his fire toward Paul. Shevey claims to interview John a day in September 1972 and the only recording she’s released is John ruminating about working as a partner with Yoko vs male artists (“It’s a plus, not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without…I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship, maybe that would have solved it”) and the continued struggle of making this transition. Assuming Paul knew more about John after 13 years than Thelma did in 6 months, I’m left wondering why did Paul wait so long in the 70s? Maybe it’s harder to kick back when you’re feeling down? Or guilty? Maybe smarting from result of the last attempt? Maybe it’s harder to kick back when there’s a mountain more of feelings between you.

After Thelma gives him a taste of his own medicine, they continue to be on speaking terms though the closeness they had was gone. She recalls loaning him art college assignments because he’s in danger of flunking out. John goes on to date Cynthia, and Thelma remembers thinking he’d fancied her given his taunts but sounds a bit dismayed by how he got her to change her entire identity for him (“He got what he wanted”). She recognizes being married to John would be a “gargantuan task” and had no regrets herself.

Lastly, a comment on Lewisohn’s framing here. I think it’s appropriate to mention John’s guilt and the effect of pop culture on the social mores of the time here. But I find it incredibly distasteful that Lewisohn concludes this incident with a quote that suggests Paul liked John violent and hitting women, considering the actual context of the quote.

Here's Paul's words in Many Years From Now that Lewisohn quotes from:

The first sentence of Paul's words on this says it all. This quote is all about the image of the Teddy Boy as a protective measure. Conflating violence against women with fashion is not helpful at all.

This word-twisting feels especially terrible because Paul ends up dating Thelma himself a few years down the line...

All the Beatles were now in settled relationships. Having ended with Dorothy Rhone, Paul played a broad field without hindrance, sparking flames old and new, and he also (from August 1962) found himself a special new “steady.” This was Thelma Pickles—John’s art school lover before he got together with Cynthia. Paul had always liked Thelma, and happened to see her in Liverpool while driving his car—his proud and precious Ford Consul Classic, which he bought new (“on the never-never”) in early August.16 She married, had a baby boy and then separated from her husband. Approaching 21, Thelma lived in a Prince’s Avenue bedsit as a single parent and was trying to resume her art school studies, a talented young woman … and here in her life arrived Paul McCartney.

He was no longer a slightly plump young schoolboy but very much his own person. I only like visual art, I’m not into music, so I had just a vague notion that John and his group were still going. Paul said he’d pick me up later to see them play at the Cavern. It was a jazz club when I’d last been there. It was full of raw energy. Girls were screaming and boys liked them as well. I’d only ever watched Six-Five Special and this was different. I hadn’t believed what Paul said about their increasing fame—being brought up working-class in that era, we were given to believe “our sort” couldn’t become successful.17

—Tune In (Ch. 31, Aug 19–Oct 4 1962)

Her comment on class and success is important to put in context with the rest of her account. Given John's more middle class standing living with Mimi at the time, I’m sure Thelma felt the power differential between them at least the first time she visited Mendips. Notice how sneaky John is to make sure Mimi doesn’t meet her? It mirrors how John only has the band over when Mimi's out of the house; he knows how she will react to him seeing a working-class girl and doesn’t want the trouble. That sticks with a girl, feeling like you’re not worth the trouble. He does end up introducing the much more prim and proper Cynthia to Mimi, and it still goes terribly, but at least he tries, signaling to Cynthia he sees some future with her. That hit in the neck? Sounds a lot more gruesome than a slap in the face. And it's in public, after she turns him down. Despite their shared closeness alone, the power differential in public still reigns supreme. But she knew her limits and stood firm in spite of it all. We only have one picture of her at this time, but it’s a telling one all the same. I look at it and can’t help thinking, oh, I know this girl. Good for her.

Even after Thelma and Paul’s relationship fizzles, they stay friends through other connections. She ends up dating (and later marrying) Mike’s bandmate, Roger McGough. She recalls staying with Roger at Cavendish in the 60s. It’s not clear if she crosses paths with John at this time. Perhaps her presence prompted the guilt we see John express in 67 in Getting Better and interviews with Hunter Davies. I hope she haunted him…even just a bit.

Sources by Chapter

Chapter 9

30 Observer, December 13, 2009.

31 Author interview, September 6, 2010.

Chapter 10

9 Interview by David Sheff, September 24, 1980, for Playboy.

10 Davies, pp56–7. The song lyric: “I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved”—“Getting Better,” 1967.

11 Interview with Sandra Shevey, the Hartford Courant, November 26, 1972.

12 “The Teddy Boy … that was my scene, but it was only a club to belong to at the time”—interview by David Skan, Record Mirror, October 11, 1969.

13 Many Years From Now, pp49/33.

Chapter 31

16 Author interview, May 2, 1991.

17 Author interview, September 6, 2010, and e-mails August 29, 2010, and February 28, 2012.

[bowielit]

they're so annoying....... like ur in the middle of an interview.....

[abutterpie]

This is a letter Paul McCartney wrote to Heather’s teacher about her name change after legally adopting her. 1969.

Dear Miss England, Heather's name is now McCartney - soon to be official. apparently you need the note to be sure of what to call her. If this fails, try Rover!

Paul McCartney

and, wait for it,

Love, Heather

[rpftourney]

Best RPF Ship - Round 2 Match 3

Propaganda under cut

McLennon Propaganda

The OG, the blueprint, the background love story that reverberates in every love song after them, the RPF that probs shouldn’t count as its too canon to be considered fiction. Forget Beat the Meatles, forget John showing Paul and co he and Yoko’s sex tape in the studio, forget high John cutting up the clothes of the girl Paul was sleeping with with scissors (okay, well don’t forget them exactly), this rabbit hole goes way, way deeper.

Their whole story is a mix of the most romantic bullshit cliche ever and the surrealist unhinged obsession you could possibly get, like if Love Actually and Shakespearean tragedy had a psychosexually obsessed mutant baby. There’s:

A meet cute in 1957 so iconic there’s a whole damn plaque commemorating it.

Disapproving parents who try to keep them apart, only for them to choose each other

A ‘best friend’ rival that leads to a bust-up with on stage

A trip to Paris, yes really, when John turns 21 and he takes Paul and not his gf.

A honeymoon period where their friends notice that they seem to ‘love each other more than most marriages’

A psychic bond?? As you do.

And then the break up, which is cliched c h a o s. They fall out and rebound hard. They get married within eight days of each other: it's very normal. John writes funeral on Paul’s wedding photos as he’s so normal about it. John moves countries and sells some weirdly intimate Paul pictures including this one of Paul sleeping that he didn't take but had for some reason??

They invent the diss track to send shit to each other. John is also btw playing Paul's records in private and crying about how he loves him really. It’s the break up period which also spoiled us by giving us THESE quotes:

(click to read)

Fellas is it gay if you admit to your wife you thought of sleeping with your best friend???

Then comes the tragic writing about each other in songs and diaries all throughout the 70s/John thinking the ‘I Love You’s’ in one of Paul’s songs were for him/John writing erotica and heavily implying the subject is Paul/’estranged fiance’ phase. They seem to be on the verge of getting back together and then John is murdered. It’s tragic and horrible so let’s just say that Paul doesen’t take it well and spends the rest of his life defending John, stuffing his house and studio with John’s things, writing at least one tribute song in which he still loses it on at least once a tour or gets stuck repeating ‘I love you’ over and over again. It’s batshit, it's so fucking funny yet heartbreakingly tragic and in the end its just two people loving each other too much to ever let each other go. You can’t compete, sorry, this shit has been going on since 1957 and we’re getting a book about their love story coming out next year. With peace and love, it's over, your faves could never.

[slutty-oranges]

God I hate this loser

[javelinbk]

Two of Us: The Play?!

link

[loadingbraincells]

we had a fire drill at school and I, on my shit again, was ranting about the Beatles and how mclennon was in fact real.

and my home room teacher looks at me, and deadass asks me to explain why I think ‘here there and everywhere’ is gay

after listening to hearing me stammer my way through the explanation, she gives me a look like:

and went on to rant about how Paul actually died in 1966 with a straight face

[dupreesketchpad]

John Lennon

Drawing by Georges Dupree

[thecultstuff]

my professor acknowledging bisexual john lennon, the brian affair speculations, and the paris trip oh lord

[ghostfrog81]

Mclennon is almost philosophical in the way that there's only enough evidence to speculate and we may never get a solid answer to whether they were lovers or not. But like the answer to the question "what happens after death?" if there is an afterlife, and I ever end up in the same place as John Lennon, I will be asking him what happened

[space427]

my grad cap!

[torchlitinthedesert]

I’m reading Hunter Davies' biography of the Beatles, and really noticing how he observes class and accent. the times he talks about accents. Davies is the same generation as the Beatles, similarly Northern and working class, very aware of how much that mattered and how it was signalled.

For the Beatles to speak in Liverpool accents was a very big deal, a generational shift from the time when British working class people, particularly entertainers, were expected/pressured to adopt middle-class accents ("received pronunciation", or RP) if they wanted to get ahead.

But keeping your accent isn't necessarily simple either. Within "working class Liverpool", there are clear variations. George’s is broader than Paul’s, say, which also reflects the layers of the class system. Paul’s family was working class, but ambitious to improve their status - which is exactly why he was encouraged to soften and “correct” his accent. So the different Beatles grew up with different pressures to change or stay the same - and with identity and aspiration baked into how you sound, that could get painful.

Interestingly, while Davies is very aware of class, I haven't noticed him commenting on George or Ringo's accents - perhaps because they don't seem to have modified them? Does it mean they’re more grounded, or is it just be another example of writers focusing on Lennon-McCartney?

John

John's father remembers speaking to him on the phone: "He must have been getting on for five by then... He spoke lovely English. When I heard his scouse accent years later, I was sure it must be a gimmick."

[By "lovely English", he means middle-class received pronunciation, where "scouse" is a working class Liverpool accent.]

"John was by this time about to start at Art College, but was as deliberately aggressive and working class as ever, despite all Mimi's upbringing."

Paul

"One of his other early memories of his mother is when she was trying to correct his accent. 'I talked real broad, like all the other kids round our way. When she told me off, I imitated her accent and she was hurt, which made me feel very uptight.'"

[thefabelmans2022]

no one except steven spielberg is brave enough to hold open auditions and chemistry tests these days. no one wants to work anymore everyone just wants to cast twitter white boys of the month when they could be CREATING twitter white boys of the month.

[snakeutensil]

hazza

[lord-save-me]

I LOVE English class because I get to google Taylor Swift, Chappell roan, the Beatles and Yoko Ono for entire lessons and still be on topic

[loadingbraincells]

im making a thing and i need help figuring out which dnd class the beatles would be

i have sortta an idea. like i think paul would be magic based(a wizard maybe?) but i'm not too sure for the rest. they could defenatly all have a class of bard, but i really want to ovoid that one bc its the obvious answer.

feel free to lmk you thoughts or whateve r:}}