Latest Posts by slenderfire-blog - Page 3

crossing a picket line, abusing striking workers AND littering, all before 9am smh. No one deserved a slap more that day.

Also not convinced by that teacher's assertion that Lennon would be on the picket with them, unfortch. Rich guys are still rich guys.

Anyway, important to remember that wealth is the greatest corrupter, even of our faves.

What did goddess mean by this?

paul's most relatable characteristic (to me) is being a complete weirdo and obsessively secretive about it

an important part of any feud is ruining your enemy’s whimsical schemes

It makes sense that Little Lamb Dragonfly, a certified j/p pining tune, contains a musical echo of a Beatles song.

It's considerably less clear why the song in question is..... Rocky Raccoon

A depressing conclusion to a mystery

T/W anorexia, disordered eating, just generally miserable times

Something was bothering me from a few anecdotes that I'd read over the past couple of months regarding John's height. In Elliot Mintz account of John giving him a hug, he mentions that John was no giant, despite apparently being 5"10. Robert Rosen, the man who got hold of Lennon's diaries says that John's shirts fitted his 5"8 frame perfectly (just ... just don't ask how he got them) and Mike Tree estimates that John's height was about 5"8. ((A random redditor further apparently interviewed Halstead, the captain of John Bermuda trip, who said he thought John was 5"7/5"6)). From this it would be a pretty fair to conclude that John had been lying about his height, especially as the Beatles did wear heels.

The thing is that we know from John's midsummer Night's Dream costume fitting was measured to 5"10, a pretty good indicator that John actually was that height. (Note as well that Ringo is listed as 5"6 here when his PR height was 5"8, indicating that these are accurate.)

Even by today's standards, 5"10 is above average height. So what's going on? Why are there multiple accounts of John in the 70s of him not being very tall?

One reason could be his posture and that he may have been slouching, which he seems to have done a bit. The other reason is that John may have just been extremely skinny, but in saying that in my experience skinniness usually makes you look a bit taller.

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at common reasons for what causes an adult to lose height. The obvious answer is age, but what is it about age that causes people to shrink? Welll, many factors, a big one being spinal compression as the vertebrae thins out and loses elasticity. However, two other key factors are muscle wastage and Osteoporosis: a condition where bones lose their density and become weaker. As the bones become weaker, micro breaks in the spine can occur, causing people to stoop and lose height. Muscle wastage on the other hand affects the spine as well as posture.

What does this have to do with John? He was in his late 30s-40 when these stories started coming in, not an old man in the slightest. See unfortunately, Osteoporosis doesen't just occur in old people, it can also crop up in younger people too due to different risk factors; factors like genetics, hormone issues, lack of vitamins and ... malnutrition.

I think anyone who has seen pictures of 1980 John and knows about his eating habits knows where I'm going with this.

Osteoporosis is a common side effect of anorexia, occuring in 30% of sufferers with 90% of sufferers experiencing bone thinning. Osteoporosis can also occur within a year of the onset of symptoms. As far as we know John's disordered eating and periods of starvation started in the late 60s, meaning that he had nearly a decade of consistent bouts of starvation. Muscle wastage too is extremely common with anorexia and from pictures you can see that this is also the case with John. In the picture above, there is no muscle on the chest area to cover the bones. A lack of physical activity would also have exacerbated both conditions.

I could be wrong, man could just have had a terrible posture and people could be misremembering his height. Nevertheless, I think there's a real possibility that John actually starved himself shorter.

reblog w the song lyrics in your head NOW. either stuck in yr head or what yr listening to

worst thing that can happen to a girl is her friend gets a boyfriend

The more excerpts I read from that Ian "Monstrous Terf/Zionist" Leslie book the more I see that he just rewrote a bunch of tumblr posts. His contextual knowledge actually seems quite shallow - he just writes in the style of "anecdote we all know + reference to much-shared photo + oft-repeated quote" - a style directly lifted from tumblr. And his apparently not knowing abt the beetles photo on RAM from that talk he did with (puke) Tom Holland is a real tell as to the limits of his knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if most of his research is posts rather than books/primary sources (whatever his bibliography says). His only original writing seems to be some psychology and some song analysis (tho he's stolen a lot of that too eg In My Life trutherism, originally promoted by OSD.)

It all paints a picture of a grimy little opportunist deliberately queerbaiting to sell his book made up of other people's uncredited or barely-credited research. The text I've seen presents that research without sufficient rigour and puts the book in the same category as all the other sloppy, fanfic-y beatles bios. And some fans are falling all over his grotty transphobic ass bc he's "making McLennon mainstream". With friends like that, who needs enemies? There's a better, non-derivitave, non-sloppy J/P book waiting to be written by a decent person. Ian can go back into the hole he crawled out of and take his chickenshit book with him.

251 Menlove Avenue in Liverpool, England | 21 April 1964

[➕] Mimi's framed photo of John:

16 year old Pauline Blackburn is queuing for tickets to see The Beatles at The Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead, England | 17 April 1963

John not into chicks in this January 1966 issue of Fabulous magazine.

Naturally I googled the photoshoot...

The face and sleeves of a man who does not want to be doing this at all 😄❤️🐥🐥

Another regular conversational pit stop during our calls was the guests I was interviewing on my radio show on any given week, especially if they were rock stars. Inevitably, John would have some spirited opinions to share about his competition. One time, for instance, I casually mentioned an upcoming booking with Mick Jagger.

“Why are you interviewing him?” John asked.

The truth was, I was interviewing Jagger because he was holding a concert in L.A. to raise money for victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. (His wife, Bianca, was Nicaraguan.) But for some reason I foolishly blurted out, “Because the Rolling Stones are probably the greatest live touring band in the world.”

“Isn’t that what they used to say about us?” John coolly replied.

“But the Beatles aren’t touring anymore,” I said, stepping on a landmine. “The Beatles as a group don’t exist anymore. And the Rolling Stones are as important a presence as anybody in rock ’n’ roll.”

“The Rolling Stones followed us!” John shouted. “Just look at the albums! Their Satanic gobbledygook came right after Sgt. Pepper. We were there first. The only difference is that we got labeled as the mop tops and they were put out there as revolutionaries. Look, Ellie,” he went on, “I spent a lot of time with Mick. We palled around in London. We go way back. But the Beatles were the revolutionaries, not the Rolling Pebbles!”

Excerpt From, ‘We All Shine On’, Elliot Mintz

The Beatles rehearse for the BBC radio show Teenager's Turn (Here We Go) in Manchester, England | 11 June 1962 © Mike McCartney

this is always a bodyslam whenever you hear it 🤯

but aside from that I just love long haired lady, most days at random times I find myself doing linda NYC voice DO YOU LOVE ME LIKE YOU KNOW YOU OUGHTA DOOOO .... OR IS THIS THE ONLY THING YOU WANT ME FORRRRR

When you’re WRONG love is long???!?!!?

I’ve only ever heard “gone” before (which Linda does sing at least once). I’m going to have to stew on this.

eight word horror story

THE BEATLES at a hotel in Weston Super Mare, Somerset, by Bruce Leak, an 11 year old boy who was on a family holiday with his parents and sister. 1963.

I don't know how Ray thought this story makes him look like a good journalist. "It was the most important story of my career" what, because one of the subjects was so flattered by it that they flattered you in turn and got you to be (one of) their court stenographers for a time? He's better than most Beatles writers but this story makes him sound easily bought and bad at his job, idk why he'd tell it.

Cultivating journalists was one of John’s best PR skills. He was very good at building relationships, encouraging loyalties, creating a dynamic where his interests became the journalist’s interests.

Ray Connolly is a good example. He met Paul first, reporting on the filming of Magical Mystery Tour. He was new to the job, and remembers “sitting meekly outside the crowd in the bar in the hotel, wondering how I was ever going to get to know anyone, when suddenly someone sat in the empty chair next to mine. It was Paul McCartney.” From this start, Connolly builds a working relationship with Paul and the other Beatles. But over time, he becomes closer to John and Yoko - because they put the work in. Paul is friendly to a shy journalist, and vaguely supportive afterwards. But John rings him up, pays attention to his writing, rewards him when he (and Yoko) like what Connolly’s doing.

Here’s the big turning point. On 27 November 1969, Connolly published an article headlined “1969: The day the Beatles died”. “In writing this article, I was, in journalistic parlance, flying a kite,” Connolly explains - writing up his own guess about what was happening. “In terms of my career, it turned out to be probably the most important piece I ever wrote – and at least one of the Beatles was delighted when he read it.” And here’s how he expressed that delight:

The day after this piece was published a white rose in a see-through plastic box was delivered to my desk at the Evening Standard. An attached card read ‘To Ray with love from John and Yoko’. The unwritten message couldn’t have been clearer. From that moment I was to have my own ‘Deep Throat’ in the Beatles organisation, leaking me a steady flow of information - John Lennon.

I laughed out loud when I first read that, because it’s just so perfect. The white rose turns 1960s flower power into the new, stripped-back, all-white JohnandYoko aesthetic. It keeps the imagery of peace and flowers, but moves them into the art gallery. The rose comes encased in plastic, another trademark (think of Plastic Ono Band, or John’s enthusiasm for the idea of performing in a giant plastic bubble in Get Back.) And the written message doesn’t say anything concrete: no specific praise, no comment on the piece. Instead of committing themselves, they leave Ray to join the dots.

Which he did. More than that, just look at how he reads the situation: he sees John as his source, rather seeing himself as John’s journalist. Within a month, John and Yoko are paying Ray’s first-class fare so he can fly to Canada to report on their peace campaign. Ray Connolly strikes me as one of the brighter Beatle-adjacent journalists - he kept his independence, and managed to stay on good terms with Paul as well as John - but he fell for that one hook, line and sinker.

what is it with dezo hoffman and taking the most erotic photos imaginable of beatles. see also: the smoky hazy sleepy paul in paris 64 pics that john supposedly owned. also a p hot one of george from the same shoot

John Lennon backstage at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England | 4 April 1963 © Dezo Hoffmann

"At first neither John nor I liked this picture because it was contradictory to his tidy image. But his expression and the lighting were so good that we ended up liking it. It seems to sum up John at that time." ~ Dezo Hoffmann

This line is so funny. Soccer mom that just gave herself a pelvic injury by doing crescent lunge pose too enthusiastically.

From Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook

More thoughts on this: while Norman is blatantly obnoxious, this take isnt too far from what most beatles writers conclude which as well as being stupid is such a missed opportunity, like we have never had a big splash doorstop biography of Ringo and we *should*, bc evidence suggests he was a lot more complex and troubled than everyone assumes.

There's Maureen's reference to his insecurity and suicide attempt (!), his random disappearance on tour after allegedly expressing suicidal feelings, his decades of alcoholism & the toll that took, and also maybe his detachment in GB isn't wisdom but disassociation??

Like he is happy now and got over the worst of his demons but just bc he was the calmest member externally doesnt mean he wasnt troubled, even traumatised. And just bc he didnt write songs doesnt mean he wasnt creative - remember the experimental home movies he was too shy to show ppl? What about his father that Hunter Davies tracked down who never reached out even after fame? How did Richie feel about him? I've never seen this addressed!

His is a unique perspective as a person who genuinely came from nothing, and as a late arrival to JPG, and it makes me mad that hardly any writers seem interested in exploring his psyche in depth.

fuckkkkkkk offffffffffff

fuckkkkkkk offffffffffff

you can't have a man who's been to workmans playing paul mccartney. a man who knows what wowburger is? playing a beatle? that's not how the world works.

me looking at the two english actors in this lineup

lmao even

why did stu make him look bald

Anne Mason (1958) // Stuart Sutcliffe (1960) // Helen Anderson (1958)

looking up gay bars and I found one with a giant John Lennon picture painted on the wall

I hateeeee that we are stuck with Ian Leslie as an alternative voice to the mainstream Lennon/McCartney narrative. I don't want to rely on this man, and he possibly has the means to really shift the narrative/affect beatle literature/media. Our society depends on the perspectives of men (fuck this, but it is true unfortunately), particularly white men, especially on topics as mainstream and "male dominated" (absolute bullshit) as the Beatles. Like, we can't even get a queer white man on this!! What the fuck? That man has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to the absolute queer shit storm that is Lennon/McCartney.