It was over 30 years ago - John Lennon and Yoko Ono had just become a hot tabloid and fan magazine item. Many Beatle fans were outraged. The press was having a field day with John and Yoko's declarations of love.

One teen magazine, TEENSET, had a regular columnist who signed her name, "AFAN." I'm not sure if she ever revealed her true identity, but she was a very big John Lennon fan and I always enjoyed reading her comments.

As I was digging through my old magazines looking for some "new" old stuff to show everyone on my web page, I came across this article from TEENSET in 1968. The editor wrote about it being September, although for the life of me I couldn't find the date of the issue anywhere on the cover or the inside contents page.

And please don't ask me to tell you about the Yellow Submarine special insert. It wasn't in this 30+ year-old magazine. It's probably under a huge pile of other posters and magazine articles somewhere in my basement!

Signed, Marsha Ewing, IK! Online

Am I a dreamer or am I a dreamer? I might well ask because I have, for the past few months, actually allowed myself to think that it wouldn't be necessary to write this article...That everyone would just understand that it was John Lennon's life and John Lennon's own damn business what he did and let the whole thing go at that.

I was obviously out of my mind. The two types of magazines which are an insult to anyone over the age of eleven (months), namely the teenybopper and movie-fan books, are already starting in on the Great Lennon Divorce Controversy and Cash-In. And I've been getting some mail on the subject that frightens me.

Before I get involved in this article, I want to make something crystal clear. I am hardly happy that John and Cynthia have gotten, are getting, or will probably get a divorce. This announcement did not fill me with glee and have me up nights thinking "Ah..and now the coast is clear for little old me." I may be a dreamer, but I'm not that much of a dreamer.

True, for a very long time, I hysterically and wholeheartedly longed to make John Lennon (amen to that) happy, and I have wished he wasn't married as many thousand times as I've wished he wasn't a Beatle. But, this doesn't mean that I harbored fond hopes of Cynthia falling into a quagmire while crossing the moors. In fact, I really didn't think of her at all. I'm sorry about that now, because I can see it's time somebody did.

I would assume that all this is rough enough on her, and on John, without the additional delight of the drivel that is being written about their connubial un-bliss. So, since this is the only thing I can do to help (or to at least try to), I would like to explain a few of the "points" which are being ill-taken by some members of the - and I use the word loosely - press.

The teeny bopper type of stories seem to be taking the "Will John's Divorce Destroy the Beatles?" direction. And as a result, I imagine that a few five-year-olds are sincerely worried that it might.

They needn't be. If the hydrogen bomb could destroy the Beatles, I'd be pretty surprised. Seriously, the Beatles no longer have to depend on mass public acceptance for their daily bread. They're long past that point, if indeed they were ever at it.

The movie magazines, who literally make a living from puffing up and often creating scandals, are on another road. The above attack is too simple for their sort and not meaty enough for the simple sort who reads them.

They're more in the "Which Beatle Marriage Will Go Next?" bag. Or "Did LSD Break Up John Lennon's Home?" or "Will Cynthia Lennon Be the Next Jackie Kennedy?" (as in young, rich and unattached socialite). Those aren't actual titles of course - the real ones are even worse. They're just to illustrate the direction being taken by these literary (not very) parasites whose circulations depends upon whose privacy they can invade. On paper only, of course, because people who work for such publications can't get anywhere near a star and are usually barred from all film studios, etc.

Several years ago when I was younger and even more foolish than I am now, I asked Tony Barrow, who later became the Beatles' number one publicist, why the group didn't sue some of the idiots who wrote rubbish about them. He was nice and went on about libel and copyright laws being different from country to country, and I don't remember whether he said it would be utterly hopeless for them to try suing everyone who published barefaced lies about them, but it would be. How do you sue 500 magazines every month? You don't. You just turn the other cheek and hope that your fans are too smart to believe such tripe.

I'm quite sure that most of the Beatles' fans are just that, but I'm just as sure that there are many who honestly didn't know that some of the words they see in print aren't the gospel truth. For the first twelve or thirteen years of my own life, I thought that things that weren't true couldn't appear in print, and I wasn't particularly dumb. I just wasn't informed on the subject, and that's one of the reasons I feel compelled to write this. In case someone else feels as I once felt, then this is as good a time as any to find out.

Should you have read any stories, up to this point, where John talks about the situation at home, or Cynthia talks about it, or John turns to Cynthia and says a gentle farewell and walks off into the Surrey sunset, kindly keep in mind that you have just read a lot of krap with a capital K! Stories are written this way to "involve" the reader, and give you that "You are There" feeling. To date, John hasn't made any statements about the seemingly impending divorce, nor has Cynthia.

There was, if it is to be believed, an announcement to the effect that their lawyers are trying to reach a property settlement, and John has made a couple of rather confusing statements about the young woman whose company he's keeping (I don't know much about her other than that she is one lucky broad if you ask me), but that's it at present and if you've read anything else, consider ze zource.

Now, about that mail. It's no secret that I have had a roaring, soaring thing for John Lennon and I have struck up a casual correspondence with many who share my feelings. I don't mean a regular pen pal thing. I just mean letters going back and forth now and again, filled with Beatle goodness.

The contents of a few I've received lately have half scared me. None of these people have ever showed an ounce of arch conservatism before, and now a couple of them sound so narrow they could see through a keyhold with both eyes.

One flatly stated: "I no longer have any feeling for the Beatles because I do not believe in divorce." Fine, great and good. Don't believe in divorce and don't ever get one. But don't try to make the rest of the world live by your rules, kiddo.

Another worried me even more. She went on and on about being broken-hearted about John and Cyn's separation because "they were so happy and I don't want them to ever be unhappy." She went on to say that "divorce is a horrible thing and does terrible things to a family."

I know she was being sincere and not just plain small like the other letter-writer I quoted, but just how does she or anyone know how happy John and Cyn may or may not have been? We really have no way of knowing this because it was something John would never talk about. And as for a divorce being a horrible thing, I suppose it isn't a real ball, but dear God, neither is an unhappy family.

I just can't go along with the concept of keeping a home together if everyone there is miserable. I know too many people who are a product of that kind of home, and among the many things I can think of which are a lot worse than broken homes are broken human beings.

We don't know what happened with the Lennons and I doubt if we ever will know. And it's just as well because it's none of our business. But something happened that brought this all about and maybe made everyone unhappy and maybe kept a little boy from ever smiling while he was having his picture taken. (Have you ever seen him smiling?)

With this in mind, I can only look at three people I care about and feel that with the dissolution of whatever was bothering their union, three souls have been liberated from something that just wasn't their scene.

And you know that can't be bad.