By Michael Laster
John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool, England on October 9th 1940 to Alfred Lennon and Julia Stanley. Alfred lost his father at the age of 6 and was sent to live in an orphanage because his mother couldn’t afford to care for all four of her children. As a child, Alfred had rickets, wore leg braces, and grew to only 5 feet 4 inches tall. But he was a natural entertainer, and was described as happy-go-lucky and known for being quick and witty. Both Alfred and Julia played the banjo. To support his family, Alfred joined the Merchant Navy in 1940 as a bellboy and steward during World War II. Absent from Julia and John’s lives during this period, Alfred sent checks until he went AWOL in 1943, stopping the payments.
By the time he returned in 1944, the marriage was essentially over, due to Alfred’s lack of communication. Julia became pregnant by another man, and although Alfred offered to raise the child as his own, she rejected him. John Lennon’s half sister Victoria was put up for adoption due to pressure from Julia’s family, including her sister Mimi. Mimi, who was strict and judgmental, disapproved of Julia’s marriage to Alfred, and was highly critical of her sister’s lifestyle, which she characterized as carefree and irresponsible. Mimi repeatedly contacted child protective services, believing it was inappropriate for John to share a bed with Julia and her new partner, Bobby Dykins. Due to this pressure, Mimi and her husband George eventually took in the five-year-old John.
The following year, Alfred took John to his Blackpool home without Mimi or Julia’s knowledge, sparking a notable incident. Alfred reportedly planned to move to New Zealand to raise John, but Julia and her partner Bobby located them within a few days. This led to a confrontation, in which John’s father allegedly asked John to choose between Alfred and his mother. John at first chose his father, but then as his mother left, he ran after her crying. Alfred’s friend Harry Smith disputes this story of John being forced to choose who to live with, but in any case, the emotional toll of being caught in a custody battle within a fractured family must have been incredibly traumatic. On one hand, he likely felt like the most important child on Earth, but was also incredibly confused by the frequent changes in his caregivers. John’s lifelong struggles with jealousy and fear of abandonment likely stemmed from these formative years. After this incident, he wouldn’t see his father again for almost two decades.
For the rest of his childhood, he lived with his Aunt Mimi and her husband George. Mimi was loving but strict, and somewhat prudish, while George was more lenient and carefree. George died of a liver hemorrhage when John was 15.
John’s mother Julia and her partner Bobby had their own child when John was 7, also named Julia.
At school, John had behavioral issues and had trouble following directions. He developed a reputation for being a troublemaker, and parents would warn their kids not to hang out with him. “I was aggressive because I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the leader. It seemed more attractive than just being one of the upper-class snobs. I wanted everybody to do what I told them to do, to laugh at my jokes and let me be the boss.” However, he earned praise for his artistic skills, particularly his satirical cartoons. John often skipped school to spend time with his mother, whom a childhood friend described as more of an older sister than a mother to John. She introduced him to rock music and taught him banjo chords on the guitar. John’s love of early rock music included Elvis, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Muddy Waters, and Smokey Robinson.
In 1956, John formed an amateur band with his friends, which became known as the Quarrymen. In 1957, the Quarrymen performed at a festival outside of St. Peter’s Church. This was the day John met Paul McCartney. Recognizing Paul’s natural talent, John was initially hesitant to let him join the band. “He could obviously play the guitar. I half thought to myself – he’s as good as me. I’d been kingpin up to then. Now, I thought, if I take him on, what will happen? It went through my head that I’d have to keep him in line, if I let him join. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him.”
John joined the Liverpool College of Art that year, where he met Stu Sutcliffe. John deeply admired Stu’s artistic talent and knowledge of literature and philosophy. They formed a tight bond, greater than the bond he had with Paul at the time. During this time, Paul brought George Harrison into the band to play lead guitar, whom he had overheard practicing on the school bus.
In 1958, they recorded their first two songs, including Paul’s original “In Spite of All the Danger.” The title would prove to be all too relevant. Several days after the recording, John’s mother Julia was fatally hit by a car driven by an off-duty police officer. John was devastated and increased his alcohol use. Paul, who lost his mother to breast cancer a year earlier, remarked, “So this was a great bond John and I always had. We both knew the pain of it, and we both knew that we had to put on a brave face because we were teenage guys, and you didn’t talk about that kind of thing where we came from.”
After Julia’s death, John met Cynthia Powell in his college’s calligraphy class. She was already engaged to another man, but eventually broke it off after falling for John’s charm, creativity, and intensity. Like his earlier education, John didn’t take art school very seriously. If he showed up at all, he continued to be a class clown, often drawing his trademark cartoons of misshapen characters. John seemed to have a fascination with the abnormal. It’s likely that his fascination with outsiders was a reflection of his own insecurities. In a Christmas card to Cynthia, John wrote “Our first Christmas” on the front and “I hope it won’t be our last” on the back.
In 1960, the Quarrymen, now renamed the Beatles, received an offer to perform in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, its red-light district. Needing a bassist and a drummer, they hired Stu on bass and Pete Best on drums. During their two years in Hamburg, the Beatles were at their wildest and raunchiest, performing up to eight-hour sets behind comedians, strippers, or as headliners. They immersed themselves in all the sex, amphetamines, and alcohol that the Reeperbahn offered. One drunken night, John performed on stage in his underwear, wearing a toilet seat around his neck.
Stu Sutcliffe left the band in 1961 to focus on his art career. Tragically, Stu died at age 21 from a mysterious brain hemorrhage a year later in April 1962. When his fiancée broke the news to the Beatles, John broke down, alternating from crying to laughing hysterically. Having already lost his father, his uncle George, and his mother, Stu was the fourth major loss of his life. By this time, Cynthia was pregnant. According to her memoir, John told her “There’s only one thing for it, Cyn, we’ll have to get married.” Julian Lennon was born in April 1963.
By this time, the Beatles had signed with their new manager Brian Epstein, and replaced their original drummer Pete Best with Richard Starkey, known as Ringo Starr. Their first major hit was Please Please Me. Their cover of the R&B hit Twist and Shout was also foundational in establishing John Lennon as one of the most iconic vocalists in rock. His nasal and raspy baritone voice is instantly recognizable, always striking the perfect balance of vulnerability, and confidence. Even in his most tender songs, there’s often a sense of a latent power and aggression that can come forward at any moment. After the recording session, for which the first take was used, he recalls, “My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed, it was like sandpaper.”
Beatlemania was now in full swing in England in 1963, and by the end of the year, in America too. The Beatles’ rise to fame would have been less unlikely if it weren’t for the group’s collective charisma. George Martin, who signed the Beatles, said initially he wasn’t impressed with them musically, but was won over by their chemistry and sense of humor. While all of them are usually quick on their feet, John is often considered the wittiest.
Fame was exciting at first, but John quickly grew disillusioned with the pressure and insanity of being bigger than Elvis. John said “The elevator man wanted a little piece of you on your way back to the hotel room, the maid wanted a little piece of you back at the hotel – I don’t mean sexually, I mean a piece of your time and your energy.” All the Beatles were friendly with fans and down to Earth given their circumstances, however, fame comes with a price. Being idolized as Gods at a young age must have felt deeply dehumanizing.
At the height of Beatlemania, after their appearance on the Ed Sullivan show and the creation of the album A Hard Days Night, John released his first book of absurdist poems and illustrations, In His Own Write. John’s use of wordplay was heavily influenced by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, while his illustrations were influenced by the works of James Thurber, illustrator for the New Yorker. The following year, John released his second book, A Spaniard in the Works. It was the last book he published during his lifetime. A third book of short stories, Skywriting by Word Of Mouth was published posthumously. Here’s John promoting In His Own Write on Swedish TV in 1964.
One evening in 1965, John, George, and their wives Cynthia and Patti, had their drinks spiked with LSD by their dentist John Riley at a dinner party. John used LSD more frequently than any of the other Beatles. “I’ve always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I’m more crazy, probably.” LSD directly influenced John’s studio experiments and lyrics, notably, the songs Tomorrow Never Knows and She Said She Said from their album Revolver. She Said She Said was based on an incident where all the Beatles but Paul took LSD in Beverly Hills at a rented home. George was telling one of their guests, Peter Fonda, tried to comfort George by saying he knew what it was like to be dead and that it’s nothing to worry about. Fonda accidentally shot himself in the stomach when he was 10, and his heart stopped on the operating table several times. John, who was trying to enjoy himself, overheard the conversation and told Fonda to shut up, exclaiming, “You’re making me feel like I’ve never been born!” John also claimed that LSD helped him embrace an attitude of non-violence.
John was known for having a sharp tongue, and his relationship with physical violence during his early years is troubling, though often exaggerated. During Paul’s 21st birthday party, Bob Wooler, the MC of the Cavern Club, made an off-handed remark about John Lennon’s recent holiday in Spain with their manager Brian Epstein, who was gay. Wooler said “Well, come on, John, tell me about you and Brian, we all know.” This insinuation about John’s sexuality caused something in John to snap. Highly intoxicated, he beat up Wooler to the point where Wooler had to be taken to the hospital. “The Beatles’ first national coverage was me beating up Bob Wooler at Paul’s 21st party because he intimated I was homosexual. I must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual to attack him like that and it’s very complicated reasoning. But I was very drunk and I hit him and I could have really killed somebody then. And that scared me…” Cynthia claims there was a single incident in 1958 while still dating John where she wanted to dance with their mutual friend Stu, and he slapped her out of jealousy. clip Yoko claimed that John was never physically violent towards her. Unless both are lying to protect his image, rumors of John being a physically violent husband outside of the one incident with Cynthia lack any evidence.
A week or two before Revolver was released, an old interview with John from earlier in the year was reprinted in the US. In the interview, he claimed, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.” These comments were largely uncontroversial in the UK. However, in the US, especially among conservatives in the South, the comments were seen as downright blasphemous. In fact, The Beatles were already unpopular among many conservatives because of their public stances in favor of civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. John tried to clarify that the quote was taken out of context. Despite John’s clarification, the backlash continued. Several southern radio stations organized bonfires encouraging fans to burn copies of their records, and members of the Ku Klux Klan openly threatened them.
During a concert in Memphis in 1966, an audience member threw a firecracker onto the stage. Out of concern for their safety, and a desire to keep evolving in the recording studio, they decided to stop touring for good. During a brief hiatus, John would play a supporting role in a black-comedy film called How I Won The War, directed by the same director of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. The film itself was not a success. However, during his free time on the set, John started writing one of the Beatles’ most enduring and beloved songs, Strawberry Fields Forever. John fully embraced the psychedelic era, writing songs like Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, parts of A Day in the Life, I Am the Walrus, and All You Need Is Love. Many songwriters would envy writing even one of those songs, yet John wrote all four in just seven months.
By this time in 1967, John felt increasingly disillusioned with his identity as a Beatle. He recognized that Paul and George Martin drove the Sgt. Pepper album’s success, and he may have envied their credit despite his own fan adoration. Recognizing Paul’s greater talent as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger, John felt increasingly insecure as a musician. He felt unhappy in his marriage, and felt intense pressure to live up to Sgt. Pepper. He was also left without any direction after the death of their trusted manager, Brian Epstein, whose accidental sleeping pill overdose came as an unexpected shock. John’s efforts to rebuild his identity and confidence were closely tied to his deepening relationship with conceptual artist Yoko Ono, whose influence on him was growing. Part II explores how John’s pursuit of artistic independence, which was paradoxically inseparable from his reliance on Yoko, ultimately led to the breakup of his marriage with Cynthia, the breakup of the Beatles, and the start of his solo career.