Quoted from Kevin

I just read this. My brief thoughts:
Cynth recounts half a dozen times John lost his temper (at her or Julian and Sean) and one count of violence. It doesn't make him a monster - just a typical dad of his times (my own dad was from Toxteth).
Cynth comes across as very compliant - her inability to stand up to John, even when confronted with his infidelity, is quite remarkable. Her (and no doubt Julians inherited) inability to deal with issues and subsequent meekness does, to me, make John seem worse than maybe he really was. John could be a thoughtless, selfcentred  arsehole, but he was a product of his times. His rise to sainthood probably makes his fall from race seem even more extreme.
On the man himself - during Beatlemania, when he was being told what to do, what to say, how to behave all was well. When that stopped he fell into a blackhole. Perhaps he was so drawn to Yoko because again he was being told what to do, what to say, how to behave.......
And now, I don't think boredom was at the root of Johns post-touring dropout. He just wasn't fit for purpose. Paul was the man with the ideas (Sgt Pepper, MMT, Let it Be) and increasingly the tunes. With no one to tell him what to do he did nothing. He was a great rock and roller, but lacked the vision of Brian and Paul.

I first read this and said, yeah, that sounds about right. But then thinking about it some more, I'm not so sure. Nobody was telling him what to do in Liverpool and Hamburg, but he was the one who kept the group going. In one of those recent big fat books that came out recently (closeup of their four faces, looks like they're lying on the floor) there was a description of a scene that just blew me away ... I think they were touring in Scotland with some drummer they had hooked up with for a while - an older guy, not a kid at all.  

Turns out this guy gets in a car wreck and winds up in the hospital. So what do the Beatles (or Silver Beetles, or whatever they were at the time) do - cancel their gig/tour? In John's mind, not a chance, he could probably SMELL that they were ever so close to making it big. So John goes to the hospital, and BROWBEATS this guy into getting out of his bed, drags him to the gig, and makes him play. Again, this was not a kid, but a grown man that John simply overpowered by force of will.

After remembering that, I think that John could do just fine doing things without being told to, at least at this stage of his life. I think he got disillusioned with fame and fortune, even depressed maybe. That in combination with a LOT of mind-altering substances I'm guessing is why he sort of checked out for a decade or so.

Just my two cents!

Mmm. The drummer you're talking about is Tommy Moore.

The Beatles were told to perform in Liverpool and Hamburg and sure, John wanted the band to play as much as possible. But when he could really fill in his own time in the late sixties (after touring stopped), he drew a blank.

I agree, at that stage in his life it seems the flame had burned out, or at least was too low to get him up anymore.

Like a shooting star, JL.