by Larry Kane
Psychologists like to tell us that we are what we think we are. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for everybody, but for John, it was always a work in progress—the challenge of channeling his childhood loneliness and constant despair into the real-life messages of hope, love, and loss that showed up in the songs he wrote both with Paul and after the Beatles. To this day, John Lennon may be the most autobiographical of songwriters, unashamed for the rest of us to share his ordeals.
One can image the loneliness he felt in the mid- to late fifties, and the reasons: a mother struck by a car and killed when he was seventeen; a father who had supposedly vanished from his life; the hostile failure of his teachers to recognize his creative endeavors; and the lack of mentors, save for the recording artists he worshipped.
So, inevitably, imagination took over. It is not without coincidence that his most iconic song is “Imagine.”
The photograph of John sprawled out on his narrow bed in Mimi’s home, reading and sketching and listening to records, is the most compelling. His second-floor bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue is still locked in time today, much like the sitting room below. The furniture is circa 1955, and the walls are as they were. Like many British homes, it has a name, Mendips. The home provided John a room with a view, a bright and shiny view of the world outside. When I glance around the narrow room I can imagine the teenage world of the smoking milkman as he lay in his bed, reading, getting up to look at the avenue, quietly shaving in the bathroom, fantasizing about being on stage, rocking like the famous rockers, infuriating his teachers, and dealing with his kind Uncle George and his upright and strict Aunt Mimi, guardian of the young empire, dominatrix of the household, surrogate mother, for a time, and puritanical challenger of everything John.
Mimi was a force, although Freda Kelly, the teenage secretary to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and one of the closest people to Mimi, has a different take. Kelly was the main liaison to the Beatles’ parents. When she first met John and Mimi, months after she went berserk with the rest of the crowd at the Cavern, she was in a different position. Now she saw John as a wild and creative and unchained force. In Kelly’s view, five years after the death of John’s mother, Mimi was quite necessary.
“She was like my father: old school,” she says. “John needed controlling. He was a rebel. She was a woman who was trying to do the right thing, doing her best to guide and bring him up right. She was a lovely person who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Her imagery as a tough, unrelenting woman is not the whole story.”
Brian Epstein’s lifelong friend Joe Flannery sees the aunt’s assertiveness from a different angle: “There is no doubt that Mimi, who was someone who loved him beginning at birth, saw and understood John’s vulnerability, and believe me, he was vulnerable.”
Mimi. George. Mendips. Along with the mother he loved, they were John’s world.
From the age of five, when he was brought into Mimi and George’s life, until twenty-three, John lived at various intervals at Mendips. At the age of seven, he wandered in the small but lush backyard, bordering on Strawberry Field, a home for orphans. He often, in moments of daring, scaled the fence to join the children. He enjoyed their company for years. During a 1975 interview, John told me, “Most of my memories in those days were with the other children. I liked being with them. But Mimi was not happy.” Did he sense a commonality with them? Did he feel like an orphan, too? I never asked him those questions, but once again, as it happens so often in this story, the fence-jumping, Mimi-defying excursions made their way into song.
When Mimi scolded John for jumping the fence, John said, “C’mon, Aunt Mimi, they can’t hang you for it.” Later, in the words of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it was “nothing to get hung about.”
Sitting on his narrow bed, posters of contemporary entertainers on the walls, John would read late into the night, sometimes sleeping just a few hours before heading out to his milk rounds. Mimi’s husband, George, one of the motivators of John’s teenage years, used the home as a refuge for learning. Mimi’s strong-willed sense of discipline extended to her husband. George enjoyed his time with John. Mostly they talked about the need to read. John became a master reader. His interest in contemporary news reports was intense by his fourteenth birthday. John started reading the “Just Williams” children’s series at ten, and graduated to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows, a 1908 novel of mysticism, camaraderie, and adventure, channeled through four animal characters with human-like features and traits: a mole, a rat, Mr. Toad, and Mr. Badger. The book is a classic, and the young fence-climber was fascinated by its fantasy. At the age of ten, he would share some of the stories with his friends on the “other side” at Strawberry Field.
John was mostly peaceful at home. School was another story. He alternately puzzled and tortured his teachers at Quarry Bank. He was, as Stuart Sutcliffe’s sister Pauline describes, an “anarchist.” There may have been reasons.
Boyhood buddy and bandmate Rod Davis says John, like him, ventured into a scary environment at Quarry Bank. It was somewhat formal yet surrounded by young goons trying to mess up the school day.
“So we had our nice little blazers with our Quarry Bank stags on and our little gold stag heads around the cuffs and so on. And we were a target for all the toughs. We were the bright guys, just for going to Quarry Bank School. So therefore we were the targets for all of the guys who decided they were going to take it out on us. So, John’s technique was to develop a hard exterior, and that worked quite well.”
John was both angry and insightful, but determined to disrupt classes with outbursts, the distribution of graphic and sexual sketches, and other odd gifts. When teachers would scold him, he looked dumbfounded, with a “not me” look, an external innocence, as if to say, “Nothing to get hung about.”
Eventually, for a short period, John became one of the “toughs” himself, to prove his mettle.
And later, along with his friend Pete Shotton, John became one of the intellectually stimulated students; he would and could excel, depending on the day. As John plowed his way through the books, interested more in hearing music from the States than focusing on the sciences or math, teachers were frustrated by his pranks. One of them was heard to say, “This boy is bound to fail.” Failure at times, in the school setting, was something John dealt with gracefully, sometimes with humor and sarcasm. But he also made it clear to teachers and friends that he was very interested in music and art.
Quarry Bank’s headmaster, William Pobjoy, knew that despite his questionable grades at times, John was very smart. In an act that caused some of the teachers to question his own credibility, Pobjoy helped John to get into the Art Institute (now John Moores University), where his relations with intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals would make him even more of a young revolutionary. Although he would meet future wife Cynthia there, along with great friends Bill Harry and Stu Sutcliffe, John’s grades were dismal. Some years later, John answered a fan letter from a student at Quarry Bank. In reference to the headmaster who indirectly paved the way to advance John’s destiny, John wrote, “After all, it was he who got me into art school, so I could fail there, too, and I can never thank him enough.”
There is plenty of confirmation of John’s indifference to the standard rules of education. June Furlong, our heroine who once braved German bombings in total darkness, became a successful life model and worked at the Art Institute. Sitting in the coffee shop of a modern Liverpool movie house, June smiles broadly as she tells me that John’s close friend Stu Sutcliffe was engaged in the learning process, while John seemed less so.
“Stuart was the student. John was the inquisitor and activist, more involved with the other students, a little bit distracted, but I must add, the perfect gentleman at the same time.”
So we know that John as a student, at both his middle and high school, was highly suspect. The only time he seemed to meld at Quarry Bank was when he talked music, and subsequently formed his
very basic skiffle band, the Quarrymen, affectionately named after the school he had so warmly accepted as his own in more ways than one. And it is in that pursuit, the desire to play his heart out for anyone who listened, that John Lennon, in his early teens, found his obsession, influenced by his birth mother along with a spark from good friends.
Colin Hanton remembers the traits of character that the confused but driven teenage John brought to the band.
“He was a leader but he didn’t bang the table and say, ‘I am the boss.’ Whatever he wanted to sing, there was no point arguing. We just went along with it. He led gently, so to speak. Where John went, we followed. He wasn’t a tyrant or anything, most of the time.”
Was he fun to play with?
“Oh yeah. He was a great laugh. There was no middle ground with him. If he liked you, he liked you. If not, then he wasn’t going to be funny about it. I must add, too, that he was rarely afraid of trouble.”
And trouble was always just around the corner.
Johnny’s Great Escape: First Rush
Trouble did come in one of the Quarrymen’s early concerts. It was an important event because it showed young John that he had a power, in addition to the music, that would carry over to the days of the Beatles. It was, in a word, seduction. Some men and women develop the art of seduction as life goes on. John had it at an early age, and he broadcast what he was looking for with his eyes, his hips, and his voice, sometimes high but always entrancing.
June 22, 1957, was a day to remember, or forget, depending on whom you were. If you were John Lennon, it would be an early lesson in the perils of sexual animal magnetism—aka John Lennon putting girls in heat.
Rosebery Street was putting on a bit of a street festival, part of a citywide celebration of neighborhoods. The Quarrymen were booked, and set up their instruments on the back of a lorry. In American terms, that would be a flatbed trailer behind a truck—not very glamorous, but they were fifteen years old.
Dealing with nerves was never part of John Lennon’s preshow routine—not until he downed some mind-altering drugs, such as Preludin, to stay awake in Hamburg, or heavier drugs post-1964 on the worldwide tours. Generally, though, in the early days, John was not afraid. Early on, his onstage sexual appeal to women was clear—especially when he belted out hard-rock songs.
In an incident I’ll call “Johnny’s great escape,” black women in the Rosebery Street crowd rushed the wagon, screaming for John, reaching out. Their hands were up in the air, their faces showing sexual energy toward the animated boy leading the band. And the black boys in the crowd became incensed; John was poaching on their turf.
Eyewitnesses described a frantic scene, as the Quarrymen realized that the girls seemed to be excited by John, heat glowing from their cheeks, while their male friends wanted to put down the musical maniac who was turning them on. Their eyes were filled with a look that said, “How dare this bloke with the guitar incite our women!”
Colin Hanton has vivid memories of the concert, performed to a racially mixed crowd:
THAT WAS ON ROSEBERY STREET. I WAS WITH THE LADS AND WE WERE ON THE BACK OF THE WAGON. I WAS WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE BUT I COULD SEE THE GROUP GETTING RESTLESS. AND I LEANED DOWN AND SAID TO ONE OF MY DRINKING BUDDIES IN THE CROWD, “WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE?” AND SOMEONE SAID, “THEY ARE GONNA GET JOHN LENNON!” THAT WAS IT; WE JUMPED OFF, GOT OUR GUITARS, ETC., AND WENT INTO SOMEONE’S HOUSE. JOHN RAN DOWN THE STREET . . . QUICKLY.
ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, WHEN THIS TYPE OF THING HAPPENED, I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH HIM. JOHN WAS VERY GOOD AT TALKING HIS WAY OUT OF TROUBLE. THERE WAS NEVER REALLY ANY TROUBLE TO SPEAK OF . . . ALTHOUGH THERE WAS GREAT POTENTIAL.
Len Garry, who once fancied himself a young teen idol, remarks that despite whatever was going on in John’s personal life, his childhood buddy had a certain panache, a daring charisma, and a determination that he admired.
Garry, who admits he was a bit envious of John’s appeal, remembers the near riot on Rosebery Street:
REMEMBER, EVERYTHING WAS CLOSE IN. THERE WAS NO SECURITY, JUST OUR LITTLE BAND AND THE CROWD. THE GIRLS WERE GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER, JUST STARING AT JOHN, WHO WAS WIGGLING HIS HIPS A BIT. AS THE GIRLS GOT CLOSER, THE BOYS SEEMED TO BE GETTING ANGRIER. JOHN DIDN’T CARE. HE LOOKED STRAIGHT AT THE GIRLS. NO FEAR. NOTHING. COLIN [HANTON] WAS LOOKING SCARED. SO, AS THE RIGHT TIME APPROACHED, WE ALL TOOK A RUN TO SAVE OUR LIVES.
Running for his life—first in Liverpool, and later in the fan-filled arenas of America and the world—would become old hat for John. But for forty years he tried to run, but couldn’t hide, from things beyond his control: the confusion of his childhood, the love he was given, and the affection that was taken away. Love was central to John’s life—real love or the lack of it. John ran from the crowd that day on Rosebery Street, but he could not hide from the dimensions of his early life and the confusion that enveloped it.
Mom and Mom, and the Sister Act
The gravestone is marked with the names of her children. It is inscribed: “Mummy, John, Victoria, Julia, Jackie.” It stands isolated in a Liverpool cemetery along with the graves of thousands. An unusual work of art sits alongside the grave—the tiny stone sculpture of a kitten, a fond farewell from her more austere sister, who assumed the mantle of parental leader.
Beneath the earth, the eclectic and unpredictable mother would never hear the lonely strains of “Mother” and “Julia,” songs written by her firstborn to remember her by, and to scream out for her.
There is one absolute in the life of the mad and funny genius whose scrape-filled marathon to immortality gave us the Beatles: his childhood and teenage years were filled with a confusing angst, and the spillover affected his adult life.
It all starts with the story of Mother, and there are many versions. The question is: Will the real Julia Stanley Lennon please stand up? After all, Julia, you did affect so much in a very short time.
The boy who was running the race to greatness had, within him, a storm of emotions about his mother, a British beauty with a loving touch. To say that Julia Stanley Lennon was an attraction to men is an understatement. To label her a harlot, as many writers have, is an exaggeration of a woman’s needs and the consequences of bad choices.
Painted, tainted, and applied with a broad brush, the story of Julia’s life and her impact on John is debated passionately and often. Inevitably, recorded history is often trumped by the priorities of family. The writers seek the testimony of the past; the family members search for their own truth, where historical accomplishments are much less meaningful than the story of what really happened around the kitchen table.
Welcome to the kitchen table of the Stanley and Lennon families, and the debate that still rages.
Julia was thin and tiny, striking and adorable. Her personality was cheerful, but there was an underlying insecurity—a neediness to be loved, and the inevitable desire for financial security in the bleak period after the Depression. But first and foremost, Julia was a woman of passion.
Although she died in the middle of the last century, the strong debate over her role in John’s life is still central to his story. The conventional story of Julia’s life is not remarkable in the history books: young beauty gives birth to the son of her husband, Alfred Lennon, often described as a seafaring deadbeat, although he was hardly that, sending money home to Julia from his various ports of call. Their marriage dissolves, but the lively and spirited Julia has a series of affairs, and three other children. John’s first sister was named Victoria Elizabeth. The father was a soldier; his name was Taffy Williams. In due time, Williams left the scene. The baby girl was offered for adoption and raised by a family in Norway. Ironically, Julia Baird Lennon learned as she grew older that her sister was nearby. She met the woman, now named Ingrid, who told her that she actually grew up in Liverpool and Hampshire. Mother Julia’s next love interest was John Dykins. Never official, it was a common-law marriage that remained in place until Julia’s death. The couple had two girls, Julia and
Jackie, born in 1947 and 1949. At first Dykins was loving, but was often elusive, and later was quite abusive. The elder Julia suffered beatings at his hand. Dykins never wanted young John in their household. He was keenly aware that Mimi had taken responsibility for John’s upbringing in his early years. She relished the relationship. What’s missing in the narrative of John’s life is the many overnight visits to his real mother’s home. For his part, Dykins was quite happy that Aunt Mimi was handling John’s parenting, along with her sweet and pliant husband, George. In the early fifties Julia saw shreds of a family coming together as John and his sisters would interact. It was a splintered family, but still, she felt, family.
That’s the conventional story. Then there is Julia Baird’s version.
In the words of Paul McCartney, in a 1968 interview with me about his use of LSD, “The truth is sometimes painful.”
Julia Baird makes you think about the truth, which for her has been a painful and life-altering experience. In the world according to John’s oldest sister, much of conventional history about his childhood was rewritten by their Aunt Mimi.
Baird, who bears a great resemblance to her brother, sits in the back room of the modern version of the Cavern, on Mathew Street, in 2010. She is extremely intense, almost nervous about recalling the past, as she did in her book Imagine This, which gave the people of the world a different look at her mother and the family dynamics:
WELL, ESSENTIALLY MIMI LIVED ELEVEN YEARS LONGER THAN JOHN DID. IN THAT TIME SHE WAS ABLE TO REINVENT HERSELF TOTALLY. THINGS SHE COULD NOT DECIDE ABOUT MY MOTHER WHEN JOHN WAS LIVING STARTED SUDDENLY APPEARING. . . . WHEN JOHN HIMSELF DIED SHE WAS ABLE TO WHITEWASH OVER MY MOTHER. . . . I ALWAYS USED TO JOKE THAT IF MIMI HAD LIVED ANOTHER TWENTY YEARS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SOME DREADED FAMILY SECRET BUT SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO GIVE BIRTH TO JOHN!
