As I said at the end of the last post, the fact that all four Beatles were raised by strong women does not mean they were immune from sexist attitudes. Indeed to could be argued that having four strong women devote their lives to their upbringings may have given the four young men the idea that women were there to devote their lives to them, and any children that may have come along. As John Lennon confessed he was a ‘male chauvinist piglet’. This is illustrated by the stories of the first marriages of John George and Ringo and Paul’s relationship with Jane Asher. However, all four men got older and somewhat wiser. John, George and Ringo’s second marriages and Paul’s marriage to Linda Eastman show, that while imperfect, they were capable of forming more equal partnerships with women. But Cynthia Powell, Yoko Ono, Linda Eastman, Heather Mills, Pattie Boyd, Olivia Arias, Maureen Cox, and Barbara Bach have all had to deal with the implications of their husbands’ enormous fame and some highly problematic press coverage.
Again first some context! It does not need to be said that he Beatles appealed to young women as hearth-throbs. Young women would choose their favourite Beatle based on the qualities they projected. It was not only that female fans hoped to find a partner with the qualities they perceived in their favourite Beatles. It can also be said that the generation of young women who were responsible for the excesses of ‘Beatlemania’ were looking for something to emulate themselves. Susan Douglas in her excellent book ‘Where the girls are’ calls Beatlemania a ‘collective jailbreak’ of a generation of young women. These young women had seen the constrained lives their mothers had been forced to live and were not prepared to accept the same fate. Their rebellion began by coming together very publicly and loudly to honour their idols. They were going to make their presence felt and claim a public space for themselves.
Therefore marrying one of these young women’s idols was not an easy business. Cynthia Lennon and Pattie Boyd were both physically attacked by mobs of jealous fans. They also both had to travel incognito with John and George (Pattie was able to see the funny side of this in later years). Hunter Davies included a lengthy interview with a young woman who was a John Lennon fan who felt no shame in recounting that she had sent Cynthia a letter telling her to leave John as she was in love with him (she had never met John). This would not have been an isolated letter!
There were quite different reasons why male Beatles fans would turn on at least two of the Beatle’s wives. As Jonathan Gould wrote in ‘Can’t buy me love’ part of the appeal of The Beatles was for young men they were the ultimate boy’s gang. As Mick Jagger put it they were the ‘four headed monster’ seemingly acting and thinking as one for at least the early years of their glorious career. As such they presented a model of male friendship and a way of men being together that had not really been seen before. There was the tradition of male camaraderie of ‘Brothers in arms’(men bonding through military service or working together) .The Beatles were a group of men coming together to create something artistic. John, Paul, George and Ringo’s close bond as individuals translated into the tightness of their music. Into this ultimate boys, gang, there could be little room, if any, for women. This not only went for the fans. For most of the period of the bands fame (until at least 1968), the primary relationship each of the band members had was not with their female partners but with each other. This was not only damaging for each member’s marriages, it was a situation which John, Paul, George and Ringo would all come to find highly confining to themselves as individuals.
In the Anthology documentary, Paul compared John’s marriage to Yoko and his marriage to Linda to a group of army buddies finally getting married and have to settle into their own lives (using the song ‘wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine’ to illustrate his point). Fans and the media did not want to aim their anger at the band’s breakup at their idols so took out their resentment on Linda and Yoko. Both women were not overly popular with the Beatles’ fanbase (at least early on) as they were both foreign divorcees who were seen as having usurped two long term English partners (Cynthia Lennon and Jane Asher). To this day Yoko still is the target of misogyny, as I sadly witnesses while reading some deeply unpleasant comments aimed at her on Youtube (but more about this in a later post). As Gould pointed out in his book, both Yoko and Linda had much in common. They both were from very wealthy backgrounds with emotionally distant fathers. They would both have brief marriages in their early 20’s. They both had established careers before meeting John and Paul. They both had young daughters when they started their relationships with John and Paul. They were both ambitious.
Cynthia, Pattie, Jane Asher and Maureen Starkey would all have to deal with a lack of privacy and having their relationships play out so publically. They would all have to contend with trying to live some kind of normal life under highly un-normal circumstances. None of the relationships/marriages that the Beatles were formed before or during the height of Beatlemania survived. This is not surprising given the strain these relationships were put under. Firstly the band had a legendary heavy work load of touring and recording which only began to abate when they gave up touring in 1966. Secondly the bands enormous fame and touring schedule afforded ample opportunity for infidelity. Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, John, Paul, George and Ringo all went through an extreme experience during their time in the Beatles which no-one outside the band would understand. The end of the Beatles would be famously drawn out and bitter, with legal disputes that would go on for decades. John, Paul and George would all try to put their experiences as Beatles behind them. For John and Paul part of this was forming lifelong partnerships with Yoko and Linda. George and Ringo’s marriages to Pattie and Maureen would both finally collapse in 1974 (This was not coincidental but that is for another post!), and John would go his infamous ‘lost weekend’ period when he temporally separated from Yoko. This was the time that the legal wrangling around the Beatles own ‘Divorce’ was at its height. Perhaps it was just too difficult to find a way to make a normal life together after Both George and Ringo would go on to form successful partnerships with Olivia Arias and Barbara Bach.
A significant part of the success of these later relationships was that all four Beatles were able to live somewhat more normal lives. They would all set up homes, and apart from Ringo and Barbara Bach, would have families with these partners. However all four wives had to still deal with the ongoing fascination in their husbands. They would have to put up with press coverage that at times could be hostile, intrusive and very inaccurate.
Tragically both Yoko and Olivia had to witness first hand just how dangerous that level of fame was. Yoko would see John shot dead in front of their home at the age of 40. Olivia had to fight off a murderous attack on George in their home, putting herself in considerable danger while doing so. Both Yoko and Olivia have had to become managers of John and George’s estates and custodians of their memories. They have also had to become John and George’s public representatives (at event such as the launch of the Beatles rock band game) and business representatives on Apple corps.
After Linda’s tragically early death from breast cancer (which had also claimed Mary McCartney) Paul at first withdrew from public life before re-emerging in the early 2000’s. He would remarry in Heather Mills in 2002. This marriage would end in a very public and messy divorce. Paul recently married for a third time to Nancy Shevell.
Pattie, Yoko, Linda and Maureen would all appear in the promotional film for 'Something' with their husbands. Yoko, Linda, Olivia and Barbara would all appear in footage with their husbands in the second version of the 'Real love' video. The original version contains several shots of Yoko, most of which are in the second version, one shot of Linda (there are three in the second version) and none of Olivia and Barbara who appear twice in the second versuon. Presumably Paul, George and Ringo went back to Kevin Godley, who directed the video after the original version was aired and asked for this footage to be added to balance the footage of John and Yoko
I hope to show over the next few posts how the treatment that the Beatles’ wives by the media illustrates ongoing issues of misogyny and sexism in the portrayal of women in the media more generally. This is occasionally complicated by issues of racism and disablism.
Well lets’ get set and go...