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10.38am
8 September 2014
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I just finished the book and thought it was pretty interesting to read from Cynthia’s perspective. I feel even worse for Julian, he had such a rough childhood.
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” - John Lennon.
5.05am
22 May 2019
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May be a bit late to the thread but wanted to add to it anyway! I really enjoyed this read I felt it was like a harsh reality and Cynthia didn’t whitewash over things like she could have about her years with John. It gives us so much personal insight into her relationship with John especially the distance she felt between them during those later years and her descriptions of how it felt to be with someone who was there but not ‘really there’ seem so accurate and heart wrenching. I feel it helped us see not only what John was like in his romantic relationships but also his character as a father and friend. What stuck with me the most and was probably the most saddening was the last sentence of the book in which she wrote:
“But the truth is if I’d have known as a teenager what falling for John Lennon would lead to, I would have turned round right then and walked away.”
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5.25am
Reviewers
17 December 2012
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I’ve always thought that an incredibly cruel line because, at its most basic, it’s saying she’d be willing to not have had Julian.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
6.09am
22 May 2019
Offline That’s the difficult thing, because she says she could never regret having Julian yet of course we know there is no Julian without John.
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Beatlebug"Who's that little old man?"
5.45am
26 January 2017
Offline I suppose she would most likely have had a child with someone else.. but it wouldn’t have been Julian.
I've been up on the mountain, and I've seen his wondrous grace,
I've sat there on the barstool and I've looked him in the face.
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow him down,
he was humming to the neon of the universal sound.
7.26pm
14 June 2016
Offline LittleBeatlemaniac said
I just finished the book and thought it was pretty interesting to read from Cynthia’s perspective. I feel even worse for Julian, he had such a rough childhood.
Julian’s childhood is what makes him more authentically like John than Sean. John really had b*****d aspects of his personality, especially as a younger guy, and through his attitude towards Sean he basically repeated how he himself was raised. I am not an untrustworthy liar, but I have sociopathic aspects to my personality. I think, like John, it’s about holding onto a sense of individuality and having a sense of control. These things are very hard to shake, nigh impossible. It’s either in your DNA or it’s not.
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12.57pm
Moderators
15 February 2015
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^I thought that (broadly speaking) sociopathy was environmental while psychopathy was genetic?
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1.08pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Offline No, it’s to do with the severity of the illness, @Beatlebug. Psychopathy is a more severe form of sociopathy. All psychopaths are also sociopaths, but not all sociopaths are psychopaths.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
8.21pm
30 April 2019
Offline Well technically both are outdated terms for what is now called anti-social personality disorder.
3.05pm
5 November 2011
Offline I read this book a few years ago, and I remember being really disturbed by it. It made me lose a lot of respect for both John and Yoko. Julian was a strong kid to allow his father back into his life after being neglected for so long. A lot of people wouldn’t have given him that chance.
All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit
3.25pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Offline Julian was no more neglected by the parent who didn’t have custody and lived abroad than any child in that situation. While Julian says he rarely saw his father in the last years of his life, there are photographs that contradict that, and also quotes from Julian that contradict his more damning appraisals of John as a father. It all needs balancing.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
3.59pm
5 November 2011
Offline Whether or not Julian saw John a couple more times than he claims doesn’t make much of a difference. John was the one who made the decision to move to New York and abandon his child. His absence did not start with his and Cyn’s separation, either. Julian was born while The Beatles were on tour, and when John finally got a break from touring, he decided that going on a two week vacation was more important than spending time with his wife and newborn child. He started this pattern in the very beginning of Julian’s life.
All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit
4.20pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Offline Given the choice that not going to New York would have meant that Yoko had no chance of getting Kyoko back, since Anthony Cox was hiding her in a US-based cult. Many children of broken relationships only see their parents during school breaks, and Julian was no different. Lots of those who were there have said Cynthia made it difficult for John to see as much of Julian as he might have wanted. Sadly kids often become the battleground in parental break-ups, and Julian and Kyoko were victims of this. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
8.52pm
18 April 2013
Offline I’m glad I haven’t read this book.
"If you're ever in the shit, grab my tit.” —Paul McCartney
3.31pm
18 March 2019
Offline I finished the book 2 months ago. It was really good, but depressing.
I found it unpersonal though, whenever she mentioned happenings in The Beatles timeline that she didn’t witness. I guess it was to not confuse the new fans about what happended when.
Even though I got more respect for Cynthia for what she went through and got to understand better why a lot of people hate Yoko, I wouldn’t had wished that John had stayed with Cynthia because they would had fallen apart no matter what (gosh, how I wish some fans on the internet would stop romanticizing their relationship based on photos) and in the end it was better for both of them to leave eachother.
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Beatlebug, Tangerine4.47am
24 March 2014
Offline Expert Textpert said
I’m glad I haven’t read this book.
To each his own. I’m glad i did it. 
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6.19am
14 June 2016
Offline Shamrock Womlbs said
Expert Textpert said
I’m glad I haven’t read this book.
To each his own. I’m glad i did it.
Yep, it’s essential reading IMO to get the full, real picture of the man. No matter what people say about John’s past dark ways, he’d still carve up today’s pathetic pop stars. His sharp wit is just the best.
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3.22pm
25 August 2021
Offline The problem with the book is not that Cynthia lies, she certainly does not, except for the moment where she insists that John was “pleased as punch” to get the MBE and would have wanted to be knighted. That’s a real stretcher right there. The insistence that “Yoko took credit for Julian saying the ‘tennis court’ conversation with Sean” is also likely a misunderstanding if not an outright invention. It could just as easily have been Yoko who said that.
Other than those moments, everything Cynthia says is true, but she often puts things out of context. She paints everything in the harshest light possible and it is a very transparent ploy for sympathy from the crowd. This is not to say she was undeserving, on the contrary. John admitted he treated Cynthia and Julian horribly, and was doing his best to make things up to them by the time he was gunned down. So dealing with John at his worst cannot have been remotely pleasant, and anyone who was on the receiving end deserves love and understanding to be shown to them.
But there’s a difference between telling one’s truth to reach understanding, and flogging the same stories and leaning on them as a crutch, going “take pity on me, and I want your money.” Cynthia never truly moved on, and just wallowed in the past, because it sold. Yoko tried to work in good faith to be civil with Cynthia, but Cynthia rejected it out of hand and immediately cast it as insincere, which meant that Yoko stopped trying; and yet Cynthia bitched about the fact Yoko didn’t try harder. What do you actually want, Cyn?
The worst part is that Cynthia’s recalcitrance infected Julian and made him just as bitter. All his constantly going on in interviews to slag John comes from her. Whereas in the ’80s and so forth, Julian was much more relaxed and saying how John was making the effort to connect with him because of how well he was raising Sean. Time hardened Cyn, and it hardened Julian, so it became nothing more than repeating sob stories all the time for clickbait-hungry vultures and alogrithms.
While not as malevolent or acting in bad faith as so many of this type of figures playing the victim card and refusing to move on and/or refusing to admit responsibility for their own actions, the book and the way Julian speaks now is still emblematic of what Don Henley attacked in The Eagles’ comeback single “Get Over It.”
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Rube5.49pm
Reviewers
17 December 2012
Offline I find the problem with this book is that it has a strong element of bitterness that was absent from her previous book, 1978’s A Twist of Lennon. In 1978, with John alive, she knew she could be sued by him for libel and defamation had she made statements that were disputed which she could not support with evidence – with their being evidence that she did remove statements from that book she was unable to substantiate. With this second book, facing no fear of John suing because the dead can’t sue, she felt able to make accusations and offer opinions she would not have done when she could have faced legal repercussions.
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The Beatles Bible 2020 non-Canon Poll Part One: 1958-1963 and Part Two: 1964-August 1966
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