John Lennon’s letters reveal ex-Beatles’ cranky side

Washington: John Lennon may have written the peace-loving classic like ‘Imagine,’ but he wasn’t always the pacifying type, the late Beatles’ letters have revealed.

In a number of letters excerpted by Vulture from the forthcoming book ‘The John Lennon Letters,’ Lennon has rallied against critics of his wife Yoko Ono, and even scolded Paul and Linda McCartney. “Yoko’s been an artist before you were even a groupie,” the Huffington Post quoted him as writing to his fan, who ridiculed Ono. In another letter to a critic who didn’t like Ono’s show, he wrote, “I’d forgotten about people like you! Well, well - you still exist, of course, in small towns across the world...” To Linda and Paul McCartney, he wrote, “I was reading your letter and wondering what middle aged cranky Beatle fan wrote it. I resisted looking at the last page to find out - I kept thinking who is it … What the hell - it’s Linda!” In another letter that he addressed to Linda and Paul, he said, “I’m not ashamed of the Beatles - we did start it all - but of some of the shit we took to make them so big - I thought we all felt that way in varying degrees - obviously not.” In a letter to George Martin, a producer, he wrote, “of course, George Martin was a great help in translating our music technically when we needed it, but for the cameraman to take credit from the director is a bit much.” ANI