A Mens Liberation Guide to Women | Page 7

to Women 10
Though we have no desire to assassinate the character of a man who was himself
assassinated in the physical sense, we feel obliged to point out that this “working class
hero”, who though obviously very artistically talented and poetic, was also a very
psychologically damaged man, as an example of the generality of what happens to
men when they do not have a stable upbringing.

That is – he failed to fully develop his masculine identity as an autonomous self-
directed being apart from female influence, just as at least perhaps ninety-five percent
of men currently do.

And after failing in this spiritual quest – that is, his search to be whole and self-
sufficient as man, inde pendent of woman - due to lack of proper guidance, he
apparently regressed psychologically back into the state of a lovesick teenager as
indicated in his over-sentimental final songs.

It is somewhat ironic to observe that Lennon himself in some of these last few songs,
became somewhat sweet and sugary, which he had in fact himself criticised Paul
McCartney’s post Beatles e fforts for often being.

Hardened John Lennon worshippers will of course find this analysis offensive, but we
would like to point out to them, that we are exercising that same right to free speech
that all true artists such as Lennon have always fought fo r, and we would also wish
them to ask themselves whether Lennon hims elf would have acted in the same angry
way to such opinions about him – he w ho for example upset so many by claiming,
perhaps even with justifica tion, that the Beatles were mo re popular than Jesus Christ.

It is never a pleasant task to demolish icons of history, but if we want to be
“enlightened” and truly “grown up” we have to stop buying in\
to the rose-tinted
illusions and emotional fantasies about celebrities which stop us seeing what is really
going on in the world and in our own lives.

John Lennon was a fine and innovative s ongwriter, and a philosophical, creative,
thinker, but psychologically he was just a man like you and I, who had problems with
sex, alcohol, drugs and his vari ous women, the first of whom he divorced, leaving his
son Julian almost entirely to her care, and therefore from the point of view of this
thesis, neglecting him, just as he himself was deserted and neglected by his own
genetic father.

We will see later in this work, for example, in the case of Princess Diana, that this
“history repeating itself” is the typical behaviour of the damaged and abused person
towards their own children, rather than the exceptional.

As to the relationships in the Beatles in general, perhaps drummer Ringo Starr made
one of the most telling comments in the Beatles Anthology TV series, when he said
(approximately):

“the Beatles were just four talented guys who loved each other very much.”

A Men’s Liberation Guide to Women 11
And we put it to you, that their period of gr eatest creativity came from this love for
one another, in the non-sexual sense, before the women in their lives became
dominant – i.e. Yoko Ono in John Lennon’s life, and Linda in Paul McCartney’s.

They were during that phase the “brothers- in-arms” whom all men should be, helping
one another to explor e and understand life.

But what did we then see?

After Lennon failed to find a father figure to respect in transcendental\
meditation
guru, the Maharishi, suddenly Yoko Ono started to b ecome the central figure in his
life, to the irritation of the rest of the ba nd, because they kept their girlfriends out of
the creative process, whereas Lennon insisted on having her “here, th\
ere and
everywhere”, including in the studio beside him during recording sessions, as well as
alongside him in the famous “rooftop concert.”

Again, this kind of behaviour suggested the unhealthy claustrophobic attachment of
an emotionally needy and dama ged person, who certainly ignored Khalil Giban’s now
well known dictum - let there be space in your togetherness.

So we can say that John Lennon was a gr eat artist and poet, but