#under a readmore because it's long as ballllllllsssssss

[stonedlennon]

I've read this somewhere and i can't help but think about it a lot: do you think that the relationship of john-yoko and paul-linda are very similar, albeit manifested and viewed differently because of the people involved? like they're the inseparable, co-dependent type? and what do you think, if ever, does this say about the relationship of j/p? minimum 700 words, doubled space, 1 inch margin on all sides lol jk luv u

so this is literally one million years old and i apologize so much for that. honestly i’ve been trying to think of a way to frame my answer, because (as you all know by now) i try to give as balanced a point of view as i possibly can; in the interests of fairness i want to highlight anything that could be relevant. also, don’t joke about the double spacing. i’d probably do it, lmao!

here’s the thing. i don’t really think so. and the reason i say that is because you have to break down those respective relationships in two ways: 1. the way they manifested; and 2. the way they have been perceived. these are, whilst not diametric opposites, still intrinsic to way you can hope to analyse something like a personal relationship without falling into wild assumptions. i’ll use your two points of reference - inseparable and co-dependent - as a framework for this discussion.

on the first point: manifestation. john and yoko’s relationship was by definition public, and i don’t necessarily mean only in their new york existence with bed peace, et al., but their fight for kyoko, their constantly traveling around the world, gibraltar, and so on. paul and linda, by comparison, were relatively private, mainly towards the late 60s and the breakdown of the beatles and paul’s sadness beard and all that. john and yoko had reported drug dependence, they went to court. and yes paul was stuck for possession as well, but the narrative has been framed somewhat differently. not to get on too much of a tangent. but john reacted almost consistently with belligerence and - dare i say it - entitlement when it came to certain situations. paul was the diplomat, the one with the smooth cold smile and a degree of boyish candor that played very differently to wild john lennon who went off with an artist and had all these adventures. the way their relationships manifested was as much perpetuated by the media then as it has been in subsequent years - hence my second point: perception. 

john, even when he was a beatle, was the “clever” one, the tricky one, the bloke who always had a plain-speaking attitude to him that somewhat fascinated the media, who were more used to performers like paul. keep in mind i’m only talking about them from an outsider’s perspective - we know that paul could be canny and cruel just as much as john. but the difference is that when john/yoko and paul/linda manifest, the media already built boxes for them to fit into. their rivalry took on something of a mythology. an extension of that logic is that yoko represented an underdog (and i do think this is true): diminutive, artistic, strange, somewhat unearthly, steadfast by the troublesome john lennon. linda: the professional, an attractive white woman, divorced (but not scandalously so), american (not so great), a mother (bonus points: heather had a very public role in the paul/linda relationship whereas kyoko was somewhat mysterious [not least because she was busy being kidnapped]). on the same note, you cannot remove the aspect of race from this equation. yoko suffered horrendous racial slurs that continue to this day. there is an aspect of orientalism to the idea that yoko, “the bad one”, “lured” john away from the beatles. like.. she’s a woman, not an evil fairytale figure. i absolutely contend that the discussion/situation would be different were she a white woman. 

SO with all that in mind, that jumble of thoughts, i don’t think their relationships were similar. when you say co-dependent, do you mean linda’s presence in paul’s life to the point of joining the band? or the fact that they rarely spent a day apart? keep in mind that all of this is just me theorizing. but inasmuch as yoko was supportive of john, she also isolated him, they encouraged and enabled each other to take drugs, and they made a concentrated effort to remove themselves from society - they also, with some rare exceptions, did not have a child to look after; they were one unit. paul and linda, on the other hand, went to scotland in order to escape, however i don’t believe they refused to see people or to go down to london occasionally. they were also raising heather, who required a stable home life on account of being a child in need of support. there is also the question of energy. i do not deny that yoko was what john needed at a point in his life - i made a post a while ago defending her, because i do genuinely think yoko has been treated abysmally by the fandom and the public.

by energy i am circling back to the idea of media perception. linda and paul’s relationship has been framed by picturesque photographs of them in the countryside (and note what the countryside implies: fresh air, health, happiness, tradition - especially in the pastoral british mind). john and yoko were city dwellers, standing outside court, yoko a tiny little dark figure hovering by john as he sounds off about something or another, them in new york - america! what does that represent to the british mind? modernism, isolationism, the avant-garde. john and yoko were perceived as “other”: edgy, stylish, strange, artistic. paul and linda are tradition: white, happy, country-dwelling, supportive of each other. 

it’s impossible to know the realities of their relationships. we have fragments, and we can guess, but you really can’t detract the power the media and the beatle mythology has played into the framing of these two relationships. there is also the fact that posthumous recollection plays a powerful role. linda’s death, as a woman, a mother, a wife, is very different to john, martyred, murdered, genius. yoko is the grieving widow who has “sunk her claws” into “john’s estate” to “better herself”. paul is the grieving widower who had a very slow and public mourning period, but who did “move on” eventually. to this day people imply that yoko didn’t mourn john “enough” - not to mention the damaging fact that she shacked up with sam havadtoy very soon after. paul however appeared “genuine” in his grief. sex and gender play strongly in these two situations, as they have throughout the john/yoko and paul/linda dichotomy. they are presented as binary opposites: “good” and “bad”. the connection to the beatles also means that it can be revealing who you side with: the artistic yoko; or the independent linda. it’s akin to the “which beatle are you” magazine quizzes back in the 60s. it’s somewhat perverse.

i feel like i’ve said so much and yet nothing at all. i would like to discuss john/paul in perhaps another post? if you’re interested, let me know? but with regards to the john/yoko and paul/linda situation, i think they were presented as fundamentally different right from the beginning. right from the beginning. so we are only ever able to receive information that has been pre-filtered. we will never know the truth from the evidence we have. but by turning the evidence around, we can know that the way linda/yoko were portrayed says a lot about the culture of the 60s-80s; the media portrayal of women in relation to musicians; the role these women played in the break up of one of the world’s biggest bands; and the role they played in subsequent constructions of john and paul’s respective public identities and images. identities and images, it must be said, that were strong enough to resonate even through to today, to the point where we, in 2017, are debating the issue. that is some powerful media spin.