April 20, 2020 • 40 mins
John Lennon was one of the worlds most revered singer songwriters, and peace activists. His lyrics are filled with unresolved mourning and longing which can be understood as a product of his early traumatic life. How did John's childhood suffering inform his creative productions and drive his desire for peace?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. John Lennon
had a traumatic upbringing, filled with abandonment and loss. These
miseries shaped his internal life, his attachments to other people,
and his creative endeavors Throughout his tragically cut short life.
(00:22):
Feelings of longing buried in his unconscious drove him to
write many of the most important songs of the last century.
My guest today is Jordan run Tug, one of the
two hosts of the podcast Rivals, a show about the
greatest music rivalries in history. So I thought it would
be a perfect opportunity to get him on to discuss
one of the most well known musicians of all time.
(00:44):
This conversation went long, but it was all so good
that we decided to turn it into two episodes. This
first one will cover John's early life right up to
the point for the Beatles really explode in popularity. So
with that, let's start at the beginning. John Lennon born
October ninet and Liverpool, not in the midst of a
(01:07):
bombing raid has been you know, said in legend, but
it's a pretty good metaphor for his upbringing. Just constant
state of conflict, running for safety and shelter. It was
World War two, to Liverpool was a major bombing target
because of it was industrial ports city. Trauma going on
all around him, so to speak. I mean, people were
very concerned. It was a difficult time. There was a
lot of rationing. And his mother and father, his father
(01:30):
being a merchant marine who was being intimately shipped out.
We're definitely barely making ends meet. Let's say, um, and
we're a very young married couple, very very young, and
and not exactly happily married either. They essentially married on
a dare, shall we say. His father, Alfred Lennon, was
something of a to be kind of smooth talking rogue,
(01:51):
something of a cad, i should say. And then John's mother,
her name was Julius Stanley, was very much like John
went for broke flauded convention, was a real fun, loving renegade.
She was described even in later years as sort of
vivaciously full on the upside right, and very charming in
that sense. On the downside, perhaps very irresponsible, selfish, self involved,
(02:18):
and important to note that her parents did not want
her to marry him. Oh, this is not an approved
of marriage. And as you know, every every Romeo and
Juliette's story. She mostly married and might say despite her family,
and she I guess she came home and put the
marriage license down on table. So there I've gone and
done it. And so rebellious, rebellious, very something John probably
would have done exactly. And so you know, when we
(02:40):
think about attributes, or let's say, of less than attributes
that he perhaps got from his parents, she was the
kind of counterculture, anti authoritarian, rebellious one in the pair,
very much so. And and John's mom and dad were
rarely together. I read something that he probably spent no
more than two months at a stretch with them both
(03:01):
in the same house at any point in his childhood,
before the age of maybe six, because, as you said,
his dad was a merchant seaman and was constantly shipped out.
He would send money home, but it often dried up,
and he spent some time in Algerian prisons. And he
there's a famous story of him in London getting drunk
and breaking into a women's department store window and stealing
a dress and just waltzing down Oxford Street in a dress.
(03:23):
So he had his own rebellions authoritarian. Shortly after John's birth,
he goes off to see on a mission. I mean
it was this was his job and this is what
he had to do. He was he basically, uh sort
of looked for German u boats or dodged them as
he brought supplies back to Britain and while he was gone.
Though at times things were good when he left. Over time,
(03:47):
even though she initially seemed to be happy and taking
care of John and having a baby, over time she
would leave him and go to pubs and drink and
flirt and get involved with other men, many other man.
There's a series of lovers that she would bring home.
It was obviously very confusing to young John. One of
them she ended up becoming pregnant by and then Alfred
(04:11):
came home after eighteen months away showed up as she
was pregnant with another man's child. Huge fight in the
house between the three of them. John apparently witnessed it.
He was maybe four or five years old, and and
he he remembers it years later, doesn't remember. He didn't
know at the time obviously what was happening, but he
absorbed that anger that was happening in the house, the
relationship with this other man. His name is Taffy Williams
(04:32):
didn't last. But what was important is that in that fight,
basically John's father removed John and said I'm leaving. I'm
taking my kid with me. He gave John for a
period of time to his brother and this uncle. The
amount of chaos in this little child's life and his
(04:53):
ability to attach to any one person was really compromised
by the fact that father leaves, father comes back. Then
child is taken away, stays with a father a while.
Now he's with the uncle, the father's brother for a while.
He's moved around so and more people before that too.
That because Julia, when when Alfred was away, stayed with
her father's, stayed with her sisters, stayed with her cousins.
(05:14):
I mean, it's just the amount of up people in
his young life before the age of five was ridiculous.
And then there was a crucial, crucial moment in the
age of five. The father has come back, has taken John,
goes away with him to sort of a beach location
if you will, Blackpool exactly, and is in his own
mind crafting a plan that maybe he's going to take
John with him and go to New Zealand and the
(05:35):
two of them will be will leave Julia for good essentially,
and he will have John, and Julia understands that this
is about to happen. She finds the father and they
have an argument and they both turned to John, who
is five, and say who do you want to live with?
In reality, I think that he was actually probably gonna
stay up in Blackpool with his father, who would probably
(05:57):
be away as much as he always was at sea.
So it was a case of do you want to
live up here with these family members that you really
don't have any connection to, or do you want to
go back down to the life you have a really
known in Liverpool, but psychically, psychically for for a five
year old who has definitely does not have the cognitive
or developmental capacity to make such a choice. But what's
(06:19):
important about this memory is less so it's accuracy. Then
that's how then what John Lennon believed it to be
and reported it to be, which is that he had
to make this choice, this unchoosable situation. Essentially that he
initially said I'll stay with my father because he's been
with his father. The mother in his memory of it,
(06:40):
turns and walks out. He can't bear it. He runs
after her. No Mommy, I'll stay with you. He leaves
with his mother, and then of course he doesn't see
his father for another twenty years. So in his fantasy
memory of this tragic event, he basically chooses away from
his father, loses his father for two decades, and he
(07:03):
goes with his mother, who fairly promptly gets involved with
another man marries him. It's not a good situation, this man.
There's domestic violence in the house. He doesn't like this
guy at all. He's quite he's an alcoholic. It's miserable.
So even though he chose his mom and his mom
brought him home, he doesn't get his mom right, as
(07:24):
she's sort of with this other man and absentee emotionally
for him. And he goes to live with his aunt Mimi. Right.
And something that that's not really mentioned much is that
actually he believed that his mother gave him away. That
is how he believed it, really, as far as I know,
to the end of his life. In reality, his aunt
Mimi had kind of been lobbying for many years. He's
(07:46):
seen what was going on from the sidelines, knew that
this little boy was was bright and aware of some
kind of chaos that was happening around him. He might
not been able to put down exactly what was going on,
but but he was smart enough to know this wasn't right,
and she was really worried about him. And I think
the final straw was when Julia and her new lover
moved into a new apartment that had one bed and
(08:09):
they all shared one bed, and that I think was
was so shocking to Mimi that she's all right, you
know what. I think she basically did the equivalent of
contacting social services and got John placed in her care.
I don't think John knew any of that, but that
adds another layer of confusion, well you could say confusion,
but really again abandonment. His mother gave him away. It's
(08:33):
also important to note that, yes, indeed, he seemed quite
privy to what went on in the marital bed, and
in fact, he himself discusses having seen sexual goings on
between his mother and her husband, probably at an earlier
age than he could necessarily process in a way that
was healthy for him. That stimulated sexual feelings that he
(08:57):
maybe didn't know where to go with them, so to speak,
but certainly the sexuality of his mother, and then longing
for his mother and being in his mind given away
to this aunt who my all accounts was right was
I mean, she was structured. She introduced him to everything
(09:18):
from table manners to religion, but to also to literature
and things that became important. And actually he really quotes
a lot later in life in terms of what went
into his music also, so uh poetry, Lewis Carroll a
(09:39):
very important Exactly things that he read in that house
and went to school and participated in that later crop
up as important to him in his feeling states and
in his music. Absolutely and as you say, very structured,
strict but fair. They kind of appealed to each other
on an intellectual level. He loved making her laugh because
(10:02):
she was again very stern, but he could always kind
of get through to her that way. Her husband, John's uncle, George,
was by all accounts a sweet, sweet man, probably the
only uncomplicated loving relationship in his childhood. It was very
affectionate and give him candy the kids, and that he
was a dairy farmer and would deliver milk to people's
houses and would sing as he did it. And I
(10:22):
think gave John his first um harmonica, one of his
first musical instruments a character in John's early life that
really doesn't get discussed very much, but it was a
huge influence. And when John was a boy, I think
he was twelve, George dropped dead of non alcoholics curosis
of the liver, which is something you know, you don't
expect somebody who doesn't drink a lot to have. He
just John was out to play and he just literally
(10:42):
dropped dead in the house. Boys, I think even now,
aren't really taught. It's okay to be exactly, but boys
in the fifties in Britain absolutely not. He apparently he
just went up to his bedroom and just laughed. Is
that this odd laughing response that he had subsusstance. Some
other deaths that occurred, but it's important to note, and
this will this will be important later and we talk
(11:02):
about really the most pivotal loss of his life, but that,
as you point out, in Britain in the fifties, it
wasn't just that boys weren't supposed to emote. Nobody was
supposed to emote. So you know, the reaction to death.
You know, if you were going to cry, it had
to be in private. You know, you you couldn't really
talk about loss. You couldn't talk about sadness and agony.
(11:23):
You had to have that stiff upper lip. And religion
was supposed to be your big solace and you're supposed
to faith. And everything happened for a reason. The tone
was set for repression, and that is in every section exactly,
and that's how you were supposed to behave. Of course,
we know that you know, feelings don't disappear just because
(11:45):
you've repressed them, and in fact, in some ways when
you repress them and they have even more power to
influence behavior and feeling states. And in that sense, all
of this chaos and tumult and abandonment and then loss.
As John headed into his teenage years, he became by
all accounts, increasingly angry, rebellious, misbehaving, aggressive, And so he's
(12:13):
described as a teenager in school as someone who originally
was doing well as a student in grammar school and
middle school, clearly bright, a really promising student. Now he
heads into high school and he's cutting classes, he's starting fights, right,
He's he's having physical fights, very vitriolic with all kinds
of people. It's like just really says terrible and biting
(12:36):
and crass things to push people away again defensively, not
an unusual style for someone who has struggled with a
lot of ambivalent attachments to people. This is the point
I want to make. When you have a young childhood
where it's not you're just abandoned and left, but in
fact you go back and forth, you attach, but you
(12:57):
never know if that person to whom you've got and
all of these warm attachment feelings is going to stick around.
You could suddenly be dropped or abandoned and have it
go back and forth. You develop what Bold be an
important psychologist, would have called an avoidant ambivalent attachment style.
And what that means is, more than the average person,
(13:17):
you long for attachment. You desperately need and want someone
to be that person that's with you all the time.
But at the same time you have a great paranoia
and a great fear that at any moment that will
be ripped out from under you. And so people like
that often appear highly neurotic, intimately struggled with depression, terrible anxiety,
(13:41):
lots of jealousy, and lots of aggression. And so that
is what we start to see as John Lennon becomes
a teenager that he starts to behave this way toward
friends supposedly or you know, um mates in school, um
at Mimi, and that is not surprising given his background.
(14:04):
Let's take a quick break here. We'll be back in
a minute. When we left off, the teenage John Lennon
was having trouble adjusting to a quieter, more suburban like
with his Aunt Mimi. Years of instability had taken their toll,
and now suddenly his mother comes back into the picture.
(14:29):
As he progressed into adolescence and with butt heads more
and more with Aunt Mimi, he started to sort of
secretly at first visit his mother, who lived two miles away,
had a spare bedroom, had now two daughters with this
this other man, and Mimi at first very much discouraged that.
She didn't want to confuse him. She just thought she
was a bad influence also, but ultimately she couldn't stop
(14:53):
him from visiting his mother, and who really behaved more
like an indulgent aunt or a big sister. She kind
of encouraged him skipping off school. Whenever he did skip school,
even more often than not go to her house, but
she did encourage him. He started to get into music.
This was the mid fifties when Elvis Presley, Jean Vinson,
Eddie Cochrane, all these people that were huge influences on John,
(15:15):
Bonnie Donnegan, the skiffle Star started putting records out, and
Julia was unusual with most of the adults in John's
life because she actually liked this stuff. She she got
even got a cat and named it Elvis, which she
thought was amazing. She was playing those records at her
house anyway, because she was buying these records and playing
these records, whereas Mimi was like, definitely not what we're
listening to classical music at our home. That's what they did.
(15:39):
In addition, she would buy John the t shirts and
the tight color and all of the sort of get
up so that he could pull off this look of
being what they called the teddy boy, which was a toughie,
like a tough guy. It was funny now because you
look at them and they look you know, they look
preppy almost they don't look in anyway. But at the
(15:59):
time that was like if you were like the bad
boy that was a little luck a rock and roller.
His mother really supported this whole self image that he
was developing, and again taught him his first song too,
and that was his first song, was Ain't that a shame?
A Fats Domino song that she'd heard? She probably heard
(16:19):
the Pat Bollon version, but yeah, and so I mean
she she played panjo around the house and taught him
how to play banjo. That was his first real music education,
was his mom taught him. So she was really the
instrumental in the beginning of this development of music. Now,
(16:41):
he was clearly viewed himself as artistic and creative, and
in fact was right. He was a good drawer. Let's
let's say he was a brilliant drawer, but he was.
He was a good drawing show James Berber pen and ink,
very surreal um illustrator. I think it's probably what he'd
call himself. He liked drawing pen and kind of surreal drawings.
(17:01):
Wrote poetry, funny, sort of James Joyce and almost like Jabberwockie.
That kind of style again very important because ultimately, I mean,
you know, when you think about music, the lyrics are
essentially poetry. And so that's something he started early and
something again encouraged by his mother, and importantly ultimately he
his first band, which was in high school they practiced
(17:24):
at the mother's house because that's where they could practice.
Oh yeah, Mimi wouldn't let him at front. If on
the rare case that she let John's friends into her home,
it was through the back door, which is says a
lot about Mimi, exactly exactly. So, yeah, they would go
over to his mother's house, and so he would bounce
back and forth between being repressed with all probably good intentions,
(17:46):
but being repressed through Mimi. She would throw away his
drawings and poetry and basically beg him in more strict
terms than that, but really urged him to just focus
and get on the straight and narrow and just be secure.
And it came from her, you know, raising a single
woman in the fifties in Britain, raising a teenage boy.
(18:06):
I mean she she needed him to get it together,
wanted wanted him to be able to be self sufficient
and not be like his mother, especially father for that matter.
Right in this period of time, then really regains a
closeness with his mother. I think it's important to understand though,
that it's very normal for children, especially younger children, when
(18:27):
they first start experiencing sort of sexual feelings, to feel
those feelings for the parent of the opposite sex. Right,
we call that the edible complex to be attracted to.
But as one ages one represses that attraction, you might
transfer it on to another person. It is not unusual
(18:47):
for people to marry people who are a lot like
the parent of the opposite sex, though nobody wants to
know that's what's going on. Right. But in this case,
the fact that John was a very privy to a
lot of sexual goings on in the home with his
mother and witnessing it, be that his mother didn't act
like a mother, that she didn't create a distance, that
(19:08):
she tried to be the fun, seductive artsy out there
on Janue exactly left this door open for more sexual
attraction from John towards his mother, something that he really
referred to even later in his life. He kept a
private audio diary in the late seventies which was subsequently
(19:31):
found and then published in numerous biography. So it's out there,
and he talks about an afternoon and I'll put it
in my delicate terms, and he did basically lying on
the bed with his mother one afternoon home alone with
just her, he thought in the moment, and I guess
for the rest of his life, thought about whether or
not he should have, in his words, tried something, made
a move, made a move yeah. In fact, he refers
(19:53):
to having his hand on her breast yes, and that
he probably should have done something more doom, presuming she
would have allowed it. Sexual fantasy that is fairly intense
and actually very accessible. That's what's unusual. It is not
unusual for kids to have or even later perhaps older
(20:14):
kids to have such a fantasy, but it's usually really
repressed and unavailable to them. So this longing for his mother,
who is constantly intimately unavailable to him, and it being sexualized,
I think heightens his not only desire for in a
mommy way, but sexual desire for his mom. And that
(20:37):
remains important as well, we'll talk about later in terms
of the threads of his music and the threads of
his future relationships and how they need to be for him,
so to speak. So he has this intensity of feeling
about his mom. He's developing the person that maybe he
wants to be, or he feels is the direction that
(20:58):
he can take should take, feels good about. He can't
get into college because his grades are so existence. It's
Aunt Mimi and trying to save him, manages to wangle
him essentially into an art school. But he is already
now playing music in a band, and he's already met
Paul McCartney and brought the two of them together, and
(21:18):
so they're already operating at the same time that he's
sort of in this art school, sort of doing some
art exactly. Yeah, And John didn't like his relationships to
be equal at that partner's life. He liked being the ringleader.
He liked having a gang sort of falling around. Paul
was really one of the few, one of the first
people of his own age in his life. Paul's a
little younger that he respected as an equal, respected him musically.
(21:41):
Paul went and saw John's band, The Corey Men, play,
and Paul's impressed, thought he was a little sloppy, but
impressed and went backstage after and they had a mutual
friend who introduced them, and Paul said, Hey, can I
borrow your guitar? You know, I know how to play
a little bit too. And he's left handed, so he
plays it upside down, which already blows John's minds, like, wow,
you play it both ways? Wow? And he plays um
(22:02):
one of John's favorite songs that Fight Rock by Eddy Cochrane,
and he knows all the words. John can't remember words
to save his life. He's he's he's more big picture.
Paul learns the solos, learns the words, and so that
kind of made him super super respect Paul like the
(22:25):
fact that Okay, he's good, he's real good. And he
proved himself in that moment in a way that really
no one else I think in John's life at that
age did, And so from that point on they were
bonded musically. And Paul had lost his mother a few
years earlier to cancer when he was fourteen, and John
would say to him at this point like, oh my god,
how can you just exist normally when your mom's dead?
(22:48):
Like I give something like that ever happened to me.
I would completely go crackers. I would lose my mind.
I can't believe you you continue to function obviously in
a way prophetic. Not long after he went to Julie
his house, John went to Julia's house to go see her.
She wasn't there. She was actually at Mimi's house. They
had just missed each other. Julia and Mimi would have
(23:08):
like sort of a weekly tea, had repaired their relationship
a little bit. And so Julia was leaving Mimi's house,
was crossing a busy street in front of her house,
and a car came and strucker two things that are
just a note when we think later again about John
Lennon's music and lyrics. She was struck by an off
duty police officer who was only twenty four actually, who
(23:28):
actually apparently only had his learners permit, and so there
were a lot of questions as to whether his mother
was in the wrong in that moment or whether and
it was something that the driver did, but also important
that she was taken to the hospital because Mimi heard
the accident. She was alive apparently when she was taking
the hospital, but died, and it was a police officer
who then came and told John at the home what
(23:52):
had happened. And his interaction with police, so to speak,
is set in a certain kind of way in terms
of being notified and being responsible for the death, but
subsequently finding that it was the fault of his mother
and questions about that. His immediate reaction was stunned, and
then remarkably, you know, non emotional. Everybody's reaction was remarkably
(24:16):
non emotional in fact, the attempt to repress everybody's response
to Julia's death. She has two daughters, The daughters are
shipped away and told at the time that they shipped
away for a long period of time, and Mimi doesn't
have much of an emotional response. This is sad, but
life goes on. The husband similarly seems to not have
(24:37):
that much of an emotional reaction. He outraged John. I
guess one of his first reactions was who's going to
look after the kids? And John, selfish guy. I can't
believe that's what you know that he never forgot that
completely outraged him. He again doesn't have like a vehicle,
an audience, support group to really grieve with. Undoubtedly this
(24:58):
may have furthered his on with Paul McCartney, who, as
you said, had lost his mother and somebody that he
could be with who maybe would understand at least what
it was like. As you say, I mean, you're right,
no one in his immediate family really was able to
provide the support system. And just even sort of more cruel,
the accident happened right outside of his bedroom window. Basically
(25:19):
he wasn't specifically told that, but he worked it out
where it would have happened. So it was a sort
of a constant reminder of this gaping hole in his life.
And you're right, he and Paul a lot of it
went unspoken, but it was definitely a bond they shared,
and it was something that they knew each other understood,
and that was kind of enough that there was somebody
else there who got it. I don't think there were
(25:41):
too many instances of them actually having heart to hearts
about it. Specifically, John had no heart to hearts. That
is really the point that he really he didn't process it.
He didn't you know. We think about like how do
you deal with grief, And there's no question but that
John Lennon repeatedly said this was the biggest trauma of
his life. This was the biggest loss of his life,
(26:01):
no doubt, made much much more so by the fact
that he constantly had this longing for this mother who
kept disappearing and reappearing, but now she had reappeared and
he was with her, and this abrupt loss that you
can't come back from, right, You can't get back together
again after death. And the ability to process grief usually
is in talking about it and being able to think
(26:23):
about it and being able to express it in It
seems that that was something that he couldn't do for
the collection of reasons of you know, who was around him,
the times that they were, who he was, who he
was already right, his style of already dealing with everything,
which was to be highly defended and highly repressed, and
so he doesn't resolve this. It's it's important in the
(26:44):
sense that in numerous songs, particularly you know song Julia Mother,
that he writes these lyrics that are just I call
your name, but you're not. There. Was that a blame
for being unfair? He always said later on, I mean,
that's an early song of him. But he always said
there was a lot in those words that he don't think.
I don't think he even consciously realized that name, but
(27:09):
do not there was a yeah, you would later say,
you know, I lost her twice. I lost her when
I was five, and then I lost her again more
permanently at seventeen, and then when it happened, it was
it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
And when it did happen, I felt, you know what,
I have no responsibilities to anyone now. Obviously is traumatic
(27:31):
and horrific and in a way that that cannot be
over emphasized. In a strange way, I think he felt
liberated by it. Obviously not saying that this is a
good thing. You could say, well, you could say on
the upside liberated. You could stay on the downside unmoored,
feeling essentially that there was no structure and nothing keeping
him quote at home. He leaves, he goes with the
(27:51):
band right to Germany, to Germany, to Hamburg, and in
a way finds himself or a little bit more of himself.
Let's say, as they play together, let's take a quick
break here. We'll be back in a minute. So John
(28:14):
has just had to deal with the death of his mother,
who he was very close to. As a method of coping,
he started to throw himself into his music as well
as other more destructive things in the immediate aftermath of
his mother's death. Has happened in the Beatles went to
Hamburg in nineteen sixty and in that period he really
(28:35):
sort of, probably a lot of men did at that time,
drowned his sorrows and alcohol, and it was, as you said,
acted out, would smash up telephone boxes and get into fights,
and was really difficult to deal with, put his music
on hold for a couple of months until Paul kind
of coaxed him back. But yeah, Germany was where he
really he grew up. He would always say, I was
born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg, Germany.
(28:56):
They were called the Beatles at that point had a residency.
Are just boys let off the leash was how they
would always put it. So in high school he'd already
discovered sex and alcohol. Um, so he was. He was
already involved. But after the death of his mother and
going to Hamburg, there was now sex, alcohol, drugs in
abundance and abundance and nobody's schedule. They played all night,
(29:18):
so the whole schedule was topsy turvy. But they grew
their presence essentially, and they grew their cohesiveness. Give us
the timing of when did they add in Ringo and
George and they well, it's funny. They went to Germany
with an art school friend of John's named Stewart Suckcliffe,
who was more so than Paul this period, his best
friend and a mentor. He was there about the same age,
(29:41):
but they were an odd couple. Stewart was incredibly gifted
Painter Stewart, who became his best friend, and he met Cynthia,
who would become his wife. Two odd couples, two odd couples,
but in art school. But Stewart Wright goes off with
him essentially to Germany, and he really really respected Stewie said,
I relied on stud tell me the truth, which is
a great thing to say about anybody, really really, And
(30:04):
Stewart was in the band, not really because he was
a great musician, but John wanted him there and they
were really close, and of course that caused a lot
of jealousy with Paul, who not only was jealous of
the friendship but also thought he wasn't a very good musician,
which he wasn't. And they were very very close. And
when they were in Germany they met a bunch of
arts of German arts students who would have a big
influence on the band in terms of their style. Names
(30:24):
that fans might now claus form and who designed the
Revolver album cover. And this woman Astrid that can never
say last name, sorry, Astrid Astrid Kircher, who was kind
of like the band's first stylist. The Beatle haircuts kind
of came from her and their early leather image and
kind of moody, almost like French new wave style. With
the caller was Pierre Carden, jackets and stuff. That was
(30:44):
all her And she fell in love with Stewart, and
so Stewart left the band when they left Germany to
live with her, and they ended up getting engaged, and
he and john even though they were, you know, countries apart,
stayed close. And then when the band were going back
to Hamburg in nineteen sixty two, they got to the airport.
They're flying, man, that's what there are. Things are starting
(31:05):
to pick up. They got to the airport and Astrid
met them there and Johnson Warris Stu and he died
the day before. And this freak brain hemorrhage. He'd been
suffering from really severe headaches, abilitating headaches for the last
year and a half, two years, and Noah knew why,
and and he had a brain hemorrhage and died a
horrible loss. But again he laughed, he laughed. He just
mean because it came out of nowhere. I mean, just
(31:27):
all these deaths that were just shocking. I mean, his uncle,
his mother, his best friend. In the space of why
eight years, six years something like that a crucial age
one at this later loss. And none of these old people,
none of these are old didn't get to live their
full lives. A few people that he actually really allowed
(31:48):
himself to connect to, So that that's another one that
I think doesn't get mentioned enough. And he had a
guilt complex too, because they The theory is that the
head trauma that caused this would have been from a
fight after a gig, and he joined the band because
John wanted him there, and so he was haunted by
this the rest of his life. At the same time,
he's involved with Cynthia. They're a couple. There are a couple.
(32:08):
It didn't make much sense. No one ever was really
sure what they saw on each other. I think that
he was attracted to how submissive she was. I mean,
that's a terrible thing to say now, but but it's
very important. It's very important to John. She changed a
lot for him, and she would be with him and
accept all kinds of behaviors from him and not leave,
still be there with him. He was awful to her,
(32:30):
I mean, he hit her, and I think she did
actually leave briefly after that incident. Like it was, he
was fiously jealous, absolutely furiously jealous. Of course, as most
jealousy belar, he didn't hold himself to that standard at all.
When he went away to Hamburg, he did whatever he wanted.
He would sleep with whoever. He was constantly angry and
jealous and paranoid about her. Again not surprising coming from
(32:53):
this avoidant ambivalent attachment childhood, where the thought would be,
you know, anytime I can see you, you might be
leaving me, you might be abandoning me. So that would
prime someone to be a very jealous other, as he
was all the time. Actually, in addition, when you were cheating,
to be honest, you imagine it's not that difficult for
your partner the same thing, which would only add to
(33:15):
your jealousy. But she would always come back and always
be there. That might have been to him at that
stage in his life, when he has such desperate longings
for someone to stay attached to him, might have been
enough like that might have been the thing that you know,
would make you qualify, so to speak, to be the other.
But he was also, as you point out, he was
completely absorbed in his music and being with the Bandon
(33:37):
performing with the band, he added ringo at the Ringo
came last. In two. They had a drummer all through Hamburg,
this guy named Pete Best, and he never really jelled.
They kind of had him on just because he had
a drum kit, which was an expensive item and in
the early sixties, and he just was there and available,
(33:59):
so they took him and before they knew it, a
couple of years went by. But as they said later,
he wasn't really something that they would have necessarily chose
and given an option. And while they were in Hamburg,
they became close with Ringo, who's in a different band
over there, and they ended up when they went to
have a record demo session, the record producer, their longtime producer,
(34:19):
George Martin, didn't like the drummer, and so that was
kind of all they needed to hear, is like, all right,
we need to actually get somebody we like who's good,
and they yeah, they went with Ringo, so that the
lineup was was cemented by August to sixty two, and
they had a manager by that point, Brian Epstein, who
was a I would say the closest thing to a
paternal figure that John had throughout the tumultuous rise of Beatlemania,
(34:41):
all through the sixties. He was a paternal figure and
John was the closest in the group to him, although
John was also the one who would viciously and abuse
him about being Jewish, about being gay, and just on
and on and on, and yet they had this inten
closeness very intensively. It's been suggested that Brian first wanted
(35:05):
to manage the Beatles because he went and solve him
and absolutely fell in love with John on the spot
when he was on stage. He as you said, he
was gay. He liked kind of rough, they called him,
like duck worker type guys, like leather clad, rough, aggressive man,
particularly men who weren't gay, as John was not, at
least far as we all know. That's a bit too simplistic,
(35:26):
but he definitely had strong feelings for John in a
way that John could reciprocate. But John knew it, and
so he would sometimes use that to establish his position
in the band. I guess he was very political. And
there's a famous story John and Cynthia got married. John
Cynthia rather, she got pregnant in uh in the summer
sixty two and unplanned. And you know what you did
(35:48):
back then when you were pregnant you got married, and
so they did. Mimi, of course, was furious and boycotted
the ceremony. Brian was the best man actually, and she
had a baby in April sixty three. Julian named off
John's mother Julia. But actually, so it's interesting, you know,
Julian's actual name is John. He has two he has
it's John, I think Charles Julian. It's after her father,
(36:12):
but John after John, and then Julian, and they called
him Julian, but Julian was after Julia. It's just important
because when you look again later at some of John's music,
that Julian was, this conglomeration of his mother and himself
in name ends up being important in terms of who
(36:35):
he represents to John. Oh absolutely. And so he was
away on tour when he was born. He goes to
visit Cynthia and Julian in the hospital and oh, this
is great. You know, he's beautiful. By the way, Cynthia,
Brian wants to take me to Spain. Uh, we're gonna
go on vacation in two weeks. So bye. Well, first
of all, he wasn't there at the birth. He comes
(36:57):
days later. Right, This now establishes this tragic path. Don't
of exactly how he interacts with his son, which is
not he Well, he blows in like woo, you know,
with like toys or or some sort of very intense,
uplifting attachment, and then he blows out and he's gone
for long periods of time, or he might come in
and ignore him. But basically this is a repetition, right,
(37:18):
It's a repetition of the way that he was treated
as a child. He does exactly the same thing tragically
with his own son. It's heartbreaking and he knew that too.
He would say later on, I felt like a real
bastard doing this, but Brian was his manager and he
wanted to have this solo experience with him to really
kind of cement his wall. You could you could say
he felt like a bastard do it, but he had
to do it, or you could say that he had
(37:41):
to do it because internally, emotionally he was driven to repeat.
It's called repetition compulsion. It's a way of sort of
dealing with trauma, is to unconsciously repeat the exact same trauma,
but in doing it to someone else, you're in the
position of power now or not. The victim you're the
(38:02):
powerful one who, instead of being left and hurt, is
the lever. So essentially he initiated that relationship with Julian
which was probably overdetermined, and you know, justified it with
will Brian says, you know, I have to leave. It
was really tragic, and you know, left this terrible relationship
ultimately and did the same thing psychologically Julian essentially that
(38:24):
had been done to him. It didn't do much for
his relationship with his wife. He was off doing a
lot of drugs, doing a lot of women, and being
mostly gone. She just sort of took it and kind
of hung in there. And yet all this time he
is writing music, right, he is writing and I think,
you know, if people look back at even the songs,
(38:45):
then they all sound cheery and upbeat and love Me
Do and so on. But there are songs like help,
you know, there are songs that clearly belie some of
this emotional longing and emotional difficulty and trauma along the way.
(39:06):
We're going to leave part one here. On the next episode,
we'll get into the worldwide explosion of the Beatles band
and how John deals with a level of fame few
human beings have ever had. To deal with. We will
discuss John the composer, husband and father, the impact of drugs,
loss and therapy on his mind, and of course we'll
(39:27):
get into his pivotal relationship with the Yoko Ono. I
want to thank my guests Jordan run Tug for a
superb conversation. If you haven't yet, please go check out
his podcast Rivals, about the greatest musical rivalries in history.
You won't be disappointed. And if you're interested in more
information about the people we discuss on the show, you
can check out my book The Power of Different or
(39:49):
you can follow me on social media at Dr Gale
Salts or at Personalogy m D. We'll be back next
week with part two of John Lennon. Thanks for listening.
M Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. The
executive producers are Dr Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The
(40:10):
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The associate producer is Lowell Berlanti.
Editing music and mixing by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. John Lennon
had a traumatic upbringing, filled with abandonment and loss. These
miseries shaped his internal life, his attachments to other people,
and his creative endeavors Throughout his tragically cut short life.
(00:22):
Feelings of longing buried in his unconscious drove him to
write many of the most important songs of the last century.
My guest today is Jordan run Tug, one of the
two hosts of the podcast Rivals, a show about the
greatest music rivalries in history. So I thought it would
be a perfect opportunity to get him on to discuss
one of the most well known musicians of all time.
(00:44):
This conversation went long, but it was all so good
that we decided to turn it into two episodes. This
first one will cover John's early life right up to
the point for the Beatles really explode in popularity. So
with that, let's start at the beginning. John Lennon born
October ninet and Liverpool, not in the midst of a
(01:07):
bombing raid has been you know, said in legend, but
it's a pretty good metaphor for his upbringing. Just constant
state of conflict, running for safety and shelter. It was
World War two, to Liverpool was a major bombing target
because of it was industrial ports city. Trauma going on
all around him, so to speak. I mean, people were
very concerned. It was a difficult time. There was a
lot of rationing. And his mother and father, his father
(01:30):
being a merchant marine who was being intimately shipped out.
We're definitely barely making ends meet. Let's say, um, and
we're a very young married couple, very very young, and
and not exactly happily married either. They essentially married on
a dare, shall we say. His father, Alfred Lennon, was
something of a to be kind of smooth talking rogue,
(01:51):
something of a cad, i should say. And then John's mother,
her name was Julius Stanley, was very much like John
went for broke flauded convention, was a real fun, loving renegade.
She was described even in later years as sort of
vivaciously full on the upside right, and very charming in
that sense. On the downside, perhaps very irresponsible, selfish, self involved,
(02:18):
and important to note that her parents did not want
her to marry him. Oh, this is not an approved
of marriage. And as you know, every every Romeo and
Juliette's story. She mostly married and might say despite her family,
and she I guess she came home and put the
marriage license down on table. So there I've gone and
done it. And so rebellious, rebellious, very something John probably
would have done exactly. And so you know, when we
(02:40):
think about attributes, or let's say, of less than attributes
that he perhaps got from his parents, she was the
kind of counterculture, anti authoritarian, rebellious one in the pair,
very much so. And and John's mom and dad were
rarely together. I read something that he probably spent no
more than two months at a stretch with them both
(03:01):
in the same house at any point in his childhood,
before the age of maybe six, because, as you said,
his dad was a merchant seaman and was constantly shipped out.
He would send money home, but it often dried up,
and he spent some time in Algerian prisons. And he
there's a famous story of him in London getting drunk
and breaking into a women's department store window and stealing
a dress and just waltzing down Oxford Street in a dress.
(03:23):
So he had his own rebellions authoritarian. Shortly after John's birth,
he goes off to see on a mission. I mean
it was this was his job and this is what
he had to do. He was he basically, uh sort
of looked for German u boats or dodged them as
he brought supplies back to Britain and while he was gone.
Though at times things were good when he left. Over time,
(03:47):
even though she initially seemed to be happy and taking
care of John and having a baby, over time she
would leave him and go to pubs and drink and
flirt and get involved with other men, many other man.
There's a series of lovers that she would bring home.
It was obviously very confusing to young John. One of
them she ended up becoming pregnant by and then Alfred
(04:11):
came home after eighteen months away showed up as she
was pregnant with another man's child. Huge fight in the
house between the three of them. John apparently witnessed it.
He was maybe four or five years old, and and
he he remembers it years later, doesn't remember. He didn't
know at the time obviously what was happening, but he
absorbed that anger that was happening in the house, the
relationship with this other man. His name is Taffy Williams
(04:32):
didn't last. But what was important is that in that fight,
basically John's father removed John and said I'm leaving. I'm
taking my kid with me. He gave John for a
period of time to his brother and this uncle. The
amount of chaos in this little child's life and his
(04:53):
ability to attach to any one person was really compromised
by the fact that father leaves, father comes back. Then
child is taken away, stays with a father a while.
Now he's with the uncle, the father's brother for a while.
He's moved around so and more people before that too.
That because Julia, when when Alfred was away, stayed with
her father's, stayed with her sisters, stayed with her cousins.
(05:14):
I mean, it's just the amount of up people in
his young life before the age of five was ridiculous.
And then there was a crucial, crucial moment in the
age of five. The father has come back, has taken John,
goes away with him to sort of a beach location
if you will, Blackpool exactly, and is in his own
mind crafting a plan that maybe he's going to take
John with him and go to New Zealand and the
(05:35):
two of them will be will leave Julia for good essentially,
and he will have John, and Julia understands that this
is about to happen. She finds the father and they
have an argument and they both turned to John, who
is five, and say who do you want to live with?
In reality, I think that he was actually probably gonna
stay up in Blackpool with his father, who would probably
(05:57):
be away as much as he always was at sea.
So it was a case of do you want to
live up here with these family members that you really
don't have any connection to, or do you want to
go back down to the life you have a really
known in Liverpool, but psychically, psychically for for a five
year old who has definitely does not have the cognitive
or developmental capacity to make such a choice. But what's
(06:19):
important about this memory is less so it's accuracy. Then
that's how then what John Lennon believed it to be
and reported it to be, which is that he had
to make this choice, this unchoosable situation. Essentially that he
initially said I'll stay with my father because he's been
with his father. The mother in his memory of it,
(06:40):
turns and walks out. He can't bear it. He runs
after her. No Mommy, I'll stay with you. He leaves
with his mother, and then of course he doesn't see
his father for another twenty years. So in his fantasy
memory of this tragic event, he basically chooses away from
his father, loses his father for two decades, and he
(07:03):
goes with his mother, who fairly promptly gets involved with
another man marries him. It's not a good situation, this man.
There's domestic violence in the house. He doesn't like this
guy at all. He's quite he's an alcoholic. It's miserable.
So even though he chose his mom and his mom
brought him home, he doesn't get his mom right, as
(07:24):
she's sort of with this other man and absentee emotionally
for him. And he goes to live with his aunt Mimi. Right.
And something that that's not really mentioned much is that
actually he believed that his mother gave him away. That
is how he believed it, really, as far as I know,
to the end of his life. In reality, his aunt
Mimi had kind of been lobbying for many years. He's
(07:46):
seen what was going on from the sidelines, knew that
this little boy was was bright and aware of some
kind of chaos that was happening around him. He might
not been able to put down exactly what was going on,
but but he was smart enough to know this wasn't right,
and she was really worried about him. And I think
the final straw was when Julia and her new lover
moved into a new apartment that had one bed and
(08:09):
they all shared one bed, and that I think was
was so shocking to Mimi that she's all right, you
know what. I think she basically did the equivalent of
contacting social services and got John placed in her care.
I don't think John knew any of that, but that
adds another layer of confusion, well you could say confusion,
but really again abandonment. His mother gave him away. It's
(08:33):
also important to note that, yes, indeed, he seemed quite
privy to what went on in the marital bed, and
in fact, he himself discusses having seen sexual goings on
between his mother and her husband, probably at an earlier
age than he could necessarily process in a way that
was healthy for him. That stimulated sexual feelings that he
(08:57):
maybe didn't know where to go with them, so to speak,
but certainly the sexuality of his mother, and then longing
for his mother and being in his mind given away
to this aunt who my all accounts was right was
I mean, she was structured. She introduced him to everything
(09:18):
from table manners to religion, but to also to literature
and things that became important. And actually he really quotes
a lot later in life in terms of what went
into his music also, so uh poetry, Lewis Carroll a
(09:39):
very important Exactly things that he read in that house
and went to school and participated in that later crop
up as important to him in his feeling states and
in his music. Absolutely and as you say, very structured,
strict but fair. They kind of appealed to each other
on an intellectual level. He loved making her laugh because
(10:02):
she was again very stern, but he could always kind
of get through to her that way. Her husband, John's uncle, George,
was by all accounts a sweet, sweet man, probably the
only uncomplicated loving relationship in his childhood. It was very
affectionate and give him candy the kids, and that he
was a dairy farmer and would deliver milk to people's
houses and would sing as he did it. And I
(10:22):
think gave John his first um harmonica, one of his
first musical instruments a character in John's early life that
really doesn't get discussed very much, but it was a
huge influence. And when John was a boy, I think
he was twelve, George dropped dead of non alcoholics curosis
of the liver, which is something you know, you don't
expect somebody who doesn't drink a lot to have. He
just John was out to play and he just literally
(10:42):
dropped dead in the house. Boys, I think even now,
aren't really taught. It's okay to be exactly, but boys
in the fifties in Britain absolutely not. He apparently he
just went up to his bedroom and just laughed. Is
that this odd laughing response that he had subsusstance. Some
other deaths that occurred, but it's important to note, and
this will this will be important later and we talk
(11:02):
about really the most pivotal loss of his life, but that,
as you point out, in Britain in the fifties, it
wasn't just that boys weren't supposed to emote. Nobody was
supposed to emote. So you know, the reaction to death.
You know, if you were going to cry, it had
to be in private. You know, you you couldn't really
talk about loss. You couldn't talk about sadness and agony.
(11:23):
You had to have that stiff upper lip. And religion
was supposed to be your big solace and you're supposed
to faith. And everything happened for a reason. The tone
was set for repression, and that is in every section exactly,
and that's how you were supposed to behave. Of course,
we know that you know, feelings don't disappear just because
(11:45):
you've repressed them, and in fact, in some ways when
you repress them and they have even more power to
influence behavior and feeling states. And in that sense, all
of this chaos and tumult and abandonment and then loss.
As John headed into his teenage years, he became by
all accounts, increasingly angry, rebellious, misbehaving, aggressive, And so he's
(12:13):
described as a teenager in school as someone who originally
was doing well as a student in grammar school and
middle school, clearly bright, a really promising student. Now he
heads into high school and he's cutting classes, he's starting fights, right,
He's he's having physical fights, very vitriolic with all kinds
of people. It's like just really says terrible and biting
(12:36):
and crass things to push people away again defensively, not
an unusual style for someone who has struggled with a
lot of ambivalent attachments to people. This is the point
I want to make. When you have a young childhood
where it's not you're just abandoned and left, but in
fact you go back and forth, you attach, but you
(12:57):
never know if that person to whom you've got and
all of these warm attachment feelings is going to stick around.
You could suddenly be dropped or abandoned and have it
go back and forth. You develop what Bold be an
important psychologist, would have called an avoidant ambivalent attachment style.
And what that means is, more than the average person,
(13:17):
you long for attachment. You desperately need and want someone
to be that person that's with you all the time.
But at the same time you have a great paranoia
and a great fear that at any moment that will
be ripped out from under you. And so people like
that often appear highly neurotic, intimately struggled with depression, terrible anxiety,
(13:41):
lots of jealousy, and lots of aggression. And so that
is what we start to see as John Lennon becomes
a teenager that he starts to behave this way toward
friends supposedly or you know, um mates in school, um
at Mimi, and that is not surprising given his background.
(14:04):
Let's take a quick break here. We'll be back in
a minute. When we left off, the teenage John Lennon
was having trouble adjusting to a quieter, more suburban like
with his Aunt Mimi. Years of instability had taken their toll,
and now suddenly his mother comes back into the picture.
(14:29):
As he progressed into adolescence and with butt heads more
and more with Aunt Mimi, he started to sort of
secretly at first visit his mother, who lived two miles away,
had a spare bedroom, had now two daughters with this
this other man, and Mimi at first very much discouraged that.
She didn't want to confuse him. She just thought she
was a bad influence also, but ultimately she couldn't stop
(14:53):
him from visiting his mother, and who really behaved more
like an indulgent aunt or a big sister. She kind
of encouraged him skipping off school. Whenever he did skip school,
even more often than not go to her house, but
she did encourage him. He started to get into music.
This was the mid fifties when Elvis Presley, Jean Vinson,
Eddie Cochrane, all these people that were huge influences on John,
(15:15):
Bonnie Donnegan, the skiffle Star started putting records out, and
Julia was unusual with most of the adults in John's
life because she actually liked this stuff. She she got
even got a cat and named it Elvis, which she
thought was amazing. She was playing those records at her
house anyway, because she was buying these records and playing
these records, whereas Mimi was like, definitely not what we're
listening to classical music at our home. That's what they did.
(15:39):
In addition, she would buy John the t shirts and
the tight color and all of the sort of get
up so that he could pull off this look of
being what they called the teddy boy, which was a toughie,
like a tough guy. It was funny now because you
look at them and they look you know, they look
preppy almost they don't look in anyway. But at the
(15:59):
time that was like if you were like the bad
boy that was a little luck a rock and roller.
His mother really supported this whole self image that he
was developing, and again taught him his first song too,
and that was his first song, was Ain't that a shame?
A Fats Domino song that she'd heard? She probably heard
(16:19):
the Pat Bollon version, but yeah, and so I mean
she she played panjo around the house and taught him
how to play banjo. That was his first real music education,
was his mom taught him. So she was really the
instrumental in the beginning of this development of music. Now,
(16:41):
he was clearly viewed himself as artistic and creative, and
in fact was right. He was a good drawer. Let's
let's say he was a brilliant drawer, but he was.
He was a good drawing show James Berber pen and ink,
very surreal um illustrator. I think it's probably what he'd
call himself. He liked drawing pen and kind of surreal drawings.
(17:01):
Wrote poetry, funny, sort of James Joyce and almost like Jabberwockie.
That kind of style again very important because ultimately, I mean,
you know, when you think about music, the lyrics are
essentially poetry. And so that's something he started early and
something again encouraged by his mother, and importantly ultimately he
his first band, which was in high school they practiced
(17:24):
at the mother's house because that's where they could practice.
Oh yeah, Mimi wouldn't let him at front. If on
the rare case that she let John's friends into her home,
it was through the back door, which is says a
lot about Mimi, exactly exactly. So, yeah, they would go
over to his mother's house, and so he would bounce
back and forth between being repressed with all probably good intentions,
(17:46):
but being repressed through Mimi. She would throw away his
drawings and poetry and basically beg him in more strict
terms than that, but really urged him to just focus
and get on the straight and narrow and just be secure.
And it came from her, you know, raising a single
woman in the fifties in Britain, raising a teenage boy.
(18:06):
I mean she she needed him to get it together,
wanted wanted him to be able to be self sufficient
and not be like his mother, especially father for that matter.
Right in this period of time, then really regains a
closeness with his mother. I think it's important to understand though,
that it's very normal for children, especially younger children, when
(18:27):
they first start experiencing sort of sexual feelings, to feel
those feelings for the parent of the opposite sex. Right,
we call that the edible complex to be attracted to.
But as one ages one represses that attraction, you might
transfer it on to another person. It is not unusual
(18:47):
for people to marry people who are a lot like
the parent of the opposite sex, though nobody wants to
know that's what's going on. Right. But in this case,
the fact that John was a very privy to a
lot of sexual goings on in the home with his
mother and witnessing it, be that his mother didn't act
like a mother, that she didn't create a distance, that
(19:08):
she tried to be the fun, seductive artsy out there
on Janue exactly left this door open for more sexual
attraction from John towards his mother, something that he really
referred to even later in his life. He kept a
private audio diary in the late seventies which was subsequently
(19:31):
found and then published in numerous biography. So it's out there,
and he talks about an afternoon and I'll put it
in my delicate terms, and he did basically lying on
the bed with his mother one afternoon home alone with
just her, he thought in the moment, and I guess
for the rest of his life, thought about whether or
not he should have, in his words, tried something, made
a move, made a move yeah. In fact, he refers
(19:53):
to having his hand on her breast yes, and that
he probably should have done something more doom, presuming she
would have allowed it. Sexual fantasy that is fairly intense
and actually very accessible. That's what's unusual. It is not
unusual for kids to have or even later perhaps older
(20:14):
kids to have such a fantasy, but it's usually really
repressed and unavailable to them. So this longing for his mother,
who is constantly intimately unavailable to him, and it being sexualized,
I think heightens his not only desire for in a
mommy way, but sexual desire for his mom. And that
(20:37):
remains important as well, we'll talk about later in terms
of the threads of his music and the threads of
his future relationships and how they need to be for him,
so to speak. So he has this intensity of feeling
about his mom. He's developing the person that maybe he
wants to be, or he feels is the direction that
(20:58):
he can take should take, feels good about. He can't
get into college because his grades are so existence. It's
Aunt Mimi and trying to save him, manages to wangle
him essentially into an art school. But he is already
now playing music in a band, and he's already met
Paul McCartney and brought the two of them together, and
(21:18):
so they're already operating at the same time that he's
sort of in this art school, sort of doing some
art exactly. Yeah, And John didn't like his relationships to
be equal at that partner's life. He liked being the ringleader.
He liked having a gang sort of falling around. Paul
was really one of the few, one of the first
people of his own age in his life. Paul's a
little younger that he respected as an equal, respected him musically.
(21:41):
Paul went and saw John's band, The Corey Men, play,
and Paul's impressed, thought he was a little sloppy, but
impressed and went backstage after and they had a mutual
friend who introduced them, and Paul said, Hey, can I
borrow your guitar? You know, I know how to play
a little bit too. And he's left handed, so he
plays it upside down, which already blows John's minds, like, wow,
you play it both ways? Wow? And he plays um
(22:02):
one of John's favorite songs that Fight Rock by Eddy Cochrane,
and he knows all the words. John can't remember words
to save his life. He's he's he's more big picture.
Paul learns the solos, learns the words, and so that
kind of made him super super respect Paul like the
(22:25):
fact that Okay, he's good, he's real good. And he
proved himself in that moment in a way that really
no one else I think in John's life at that
age did, And so from that point on they were
bonded musically. And Paul had lost his mother a few
years earlier to cancer when he was fourteen, and John
would say to him at this point like, oh my god,
how can you just exist normally when your mom's dead?
(22:48):
Like I give something like that ever happened to me.
I would completely go crackers. I would lose my mind.
I can't believe you you continue to function obviously in
a way prophetic. Not long after he went to Julie
his house, John went to Julia's house to go see her.
She wasn't there. She was actually at Mimi's house. They
had just missed each other. Julia and Mimi would have
(23:08):
like sort of a weekly tea, had repaired their relationship
a little bit. And so Julia was leaving Mimi's house,
was crossing a busy street in front of her house,
and a car came and strucker two things that are
just a note when we think later again about John
Lennon's music and lyrics. She was struck by an off
duty police officer who was only twenty four actually, who
(23:28):
actually apparently only had his learners permit, and so there
were a lot of questions as to whether his mother
was in the wrong in that moment or whether and
it was something that the driver did, but also important
that she was taken to the hospital because Mimi heard
the accident. She was alive apparently when she was taking
the hospital, but died, and it was a police officer
who then came and told John at the home what
(23:52):
had happened. And his interaction with police, so to speak,
is set in a certain kind of way in terms
of being notified and being responsible for the death, but
subsequently finding that it was the fault of his mother
and questions about that. His immediate reaction was stunned, and
then remarkably, you know, non emotional. Everybody's reaction was remarkably
(24:16):
non emotional in fact, the attempt to repress everybody's response
to Julia's death. She has two daughters, The daughters are
shipped away and told at the time that they shipped
away for a long period of time, and Mimi doesn't
have much of an emotional response. This is sad, but
life goes on. The husband similarly seems to not have
(24:37):
that much of an emotional reaction. He outraged John. I
guess one of his first reactions was who's going to
look after the kids? And John, selfish guy. I can't
believe that's what you know that he never forgot that
completely outraged him. He again doesn't have like a vehicle,
an audience, support group to really grieve with. Undoubtedly this
(24:58):
may have furthered his on with Paul McCartney, who, as
you said, had lost his mother and somebody that he
could be with who maybe would understand at least what
it was like. As you say, I mean, you're right,
no one in his immediate family really was able to
provide the support system. And just even sort of more cruel,
the accident happened right outside of his bedroom window. Basically
(25:19):
he wasn't specifically told that, but he worked it out
where it would have happened. So it was a sort
of a constant reminder of this gaping hole in his life.
And you're right, he and Paul a lot of it
went unspoken, but it was definitely a bond they shared,
and it was something that they knew each other understood,
and that was kind of enough that there was somebody
else there who got it. I don't think there were
(25:41):
too many instances of them actually having heart to hearts
about it. Specifically, John had no heart to hearts. That
is really the point that he really he didn't process it.
He didn't you know. We think about like how do
you deal with grief, And there's no question but that
John Lennon repeatedly said this was the biggest trauma of
his life. This was the biggest loss of his life,
(26:01):
no doubt, made much much more so by the fact
that he constantly had this longing for this mother who
kept disappearing and reappearing, but now she had reappeared and
he was with her, and this abrupt loss that you
can't come back from, right, You can't get back together
again after death. And the ability to process grief usually
is in talking about it and being able to think
(26:23):
about it and being able to express it in It
seems that that was something that he couldn't do for
the collection of reasons of you know, who was around him,
the times that they were, who he was, who he
was already right, his style of already dealing with everything,
which was to be highly defended and highly repressed, and
so he doesn't resolve this. It's it's important in the
(26:44):
sense that in numerous songs, particularly you know song Julia Mother,
that he writes these lyrics that are just I call
your name, but you're not. There. Was that a blame
for being unfair? He always said later on, I mean,
that's an early song of him. But he always said
there was a lot in those words that he don't think.
I don't think he even consciously realized that name, but
(27:09):
do not there was a yeah, you would later say,
you know, I lost her twice. I lost her when
I was five, and then I lost her again more
permanently at seventeen, and then when it happened, it was
it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
And when it did happen, I felt, you know what,
I have no responsibilities to anyone now. Obviously is traumatic
(27:31):
and horrific and in a way that that cannot be
over emphasized. In a strange way, I think he felt
liberated by it. Obviously not saying that this is a
good thing. You could say, well, you could say on
the upside liberated. You could stay on the downside unmoored,
feeling essentially that there was no structure and nothing keeping
him quote at home. He leaves, he goes with the
(27:51):
band right to Germany, to Germany, to Hamburg, and in
a way finds himself or a little bit more of himself.
Let's say, as they play together, let's take a quick
break here. We'll be back in a minute. So John
(28:14):
has just had to deal with the death of his mother,
who he was very close to. As a method of coping,
he started to throw himself into his music as well
as other more destructive things in the immediate aftermath of
his mother's death. Has happened in the Beatles went to
Hamburg in nineteen sixty and in that period he really
(28:35):
sort of, probably a lot of men did at that time,
drowned his sorrows and alcohol, and it was, as you said,
acted out, would smash up telephone boxes and get into fights,
and was really difficult to deal with, put his music
on hold for a couple of months until Paul kind
of coaxed him back. But yeah, Germany was where he
really he grew up. He would always say, I was
born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg, Germany.
(28:56):
They were called the Beatles at that point had a residency.
Are just boys let off the leash was how they
would always put it. So in high school he'd already
discovered sex and alcohol. Um, so he was. He was
already involved. But after the death of his mother and
going to Hamburg, there was now sex, alcohol, drugs in
abundance and abundance and nobody's schedule. They played all night,
(29:18):
so the whole schedule was topsy turvy. But they grew
their presence essentially, and they grew their cohesiveness. Give us
the timing of when did they add in Ringo and
George and they well, it's funny. They went to Germany
with an art school friend of John's named Stewart Suckcliffe,
who was more so than Paul this period, his best
friend and a mentor. He was there about the same age,
(29:41):
but they were an odd couple. Stewart was incredibly gifted
Painter Stewart, who became his best friend, and he met Cynthia,
who would become his wife. Two odd couples, two odd couples,
but in art school. But Stewart Wright goes off with
him essentially to Germany, and he really really respected Stewie said,
I relied on stud tell me the truth, which is
a great thing to say about anybody, really really, And
(30:04):
Stewart was in the band, not really because he was
a great musician, but John wanted him there and they
were really close, and of course that caused a lot
of jealousy with Paul, who not only was jealous of
the friendship but also thought he wasn't a very good musician,
which he wasn't. And they were very very close. And
when they were in Germany they met a bunch of
arts of German arts students who would have a big
influence on the band in terms of their style. Names
(30:24):
that fans might now claus form and who designed the
Revolver album cover. And this woman Astrid that can never
say last name, sorry, Astrid Astrid Kircher, who was kind
of like the band's first stylist. The Beatle haircuts kind
of came from her and their early leather image and
kind of moody, almost like French new wave style. With
the caller was Pierre Carden, jackets and stuff. That was
(30:44):
all her And she fell in love with Stewart, and
so Stewart left the band when they left Germany to
live with her, and they ended up getting engaged, and
he and john even though they were, you know, countries apart,
stayed close. And then when the band were going back
to Hamburg in nineteen sixty two, they got to the airport.
They're flying, man, that's what there are. Things are starting
(31:05):
to pick up. They got to the airport and Astrid
met them there and Johnson Warris Stu and he died
the day before. And this freak brain hemorrhage. He'd been
suffering from really severe headaches, abilitating headaches for the last
year and a half, two years, and Noah knew why,
and and he had a brain hemorrhage and died a
horrible loss. But again he laughed, he laughed. He just
mean because it came out of nowhere. I mean, just
(31:27):
all these deaths that were just shocking. I mean, his uncle,
his mother, his best friend. In the space of why
eight years, six years something like that a crucial age
one at this later loss. And none of these old people,
none of these are old didn't get to live their
full lives. A few people that he actually really allowed
(31:48):
himself to connect to, So that that's another one that
I think doesn't get mentioned enough. And he had a
guilt complex too, because they The theory is that the
head trauma that caused this would have been from a
fight after a gig, and he joined the band because
John wanted him there, and so he was haunted by
this the rest of his life. At the same time,
he's involved with Cynthia. They're a couple. There are a couple.
(32:08):
It didn't make much sense. No one ever was really
sure what they saw on each other. I think that
he was attracted to how submissive she was. I mean,
that's a terrible thing to say now, but but it's
very important. It's very important to John. She changed a
lot for him, and she would be with him and
accept all kinds of behaviors from him and not leave,
still be there with him. He was awful to her,
(32:30):
I mean, he hit her, and I think she did
actually leave briefly after that incident. Like it was, he
was fiously jealous, absolutely furiously jealous. Of course, as most
jealousy belar, he didn't hold himself to that standard at all.
When he went away to Hamburg, he did whatever he wanted.
He would sleep with whoever. He was constantly angry and
jealous and paranoid about her. Again not surprising coming from
(32:53):
this avoidant ambivalent attachment childhood, where the thought would be,
you know, anytime I can see you, you might be
leaving me, you might be abandoning me. So that would
prime someone to be a very jealous other, as he
was all the time. Actually, in addition, when you were cheating,
to be honest, you imagine it's not that difficult for
your partner the same thing, which would only add to
(33:15):
your jealousy. But she would always come back and always
be there. That might have been to him at that
stage in his life, when he has such desperate longings
for someone to stay attached to him, might have been
enough like that might have been the thing that you know,
would make you qualify, so to speak, to be the other.
But he was also, as you point out, he was
completely absorbed in his music and being with the Bandon
(33:37):
performing with the band, he added ringo at the Ringo
came last. In two. They had a drummer all through Hamburg,
this guy named Pete Best, and he never really jelled.
They kind of had him on just because he had
a drum kit, which was an expensive item and in
the early sixties, and he just was there and available,
(33:59):
so they took him and before they knew it, a
couple of years went by. But as they said later,
he wasn't really something that they would have necessarily chose
and given an option. And while they were in Hamburg,
they became close with Ringo, who's in a different band
over there, and they ended up when they went to
have a record demo session, the record producer, their longtime producer,
(34:19):
George Martin, didn't like the drummer, and so that was
kind of all they needed to hear, is like, all right,
we need to actually get somebody we like who's good,
and they yeah, they went with Ringo, so that the
lineup was was cemented by August to sixty two, and
they had a manager by that point, Brian Epstein, who
was a I would say the closest thing to a
paternal figure that John had throughout the tumultuous rise of Beatlemania,
(34:41):
all through the sixties. He was a paternal figure and
John was the closest in the group to him, although
John was also the one who would viciously and abuse
him about being Jewish, about being gay, and just on
and on and on, and yet they had this inten
closeness very intensively. It's been suggested that Brian first wanted
(35:05):
to manage the Beatles because he went and solve him
and absolutely fell in love with John on the spot
when he was on stage. He as you said, he
was gay. He liked kind of rough, they called him,
like duck worker type guys, like leather clad, rough, aggressive man,
particularly men who weren't gay, as John was not, at
least far as we all know. That's a bit too simplistic,
(35:26):
but he definitely had strong feelings for John in a
way that John could reciprocate. But John knew it, and
so he would sometimes use that to establish his position
in the band. I guess he was very political. And
there's a famous story John and Cynthia got married. John
Cynthia rather, she got pregnant in uh in the summer
sixty two and unplanned. And you know what you did
(35:48):
back then when you were pregnant you got married, and
so they did. Mimi, of course, was furious and boycotted
the ceremony. Brian was the best man actually, and she
had a baby in April sixty three. Julian named off
John's mother Julia. But actually, so it's interesting, you know,
Julian's actual name is John. He has two he has
it's John, I think Charles Julian. It's after her father,
(36:12):
but John after John, and then Julian, and they called
him Julian, but Julian was after Julia. It's just important
because when you look again later at some of John's music,
that Julian was, this conglomeration of his mother and himself
in name ends up being important in terms of who
(36:35):
he represents to John. Oh absolutely. And so he was
away on tour when he was born. He goes to
visit Cynthia and Julian in the hospital and oh, this
is great. You know, he's beautiful. By the way, Cynthia,
Brian wants to take me to Spain. Uh, we're gonna
go on vacation in two weeks. So bye. Well, first
of all, he wasn't there at the birth. He comes
(36:57):
days later. Right, This now establishes this tragic path. Don't
of exactly how he interacts with his son, which is
not he Well, he blows in like woo, you know,
with like toys or or some sort of very intense,
uplifting attachment, and then he blows out and he's gone
for long periods of time, or he might come in
and ignore him. But basically this is a repetition, right,
(37:18):
It's a repetition of the way that he was treated
as a child. He does exactly the same thing tragically
with his own son. It's heartbreaking and he knew that too.
He would say later on, I felt like a real
bastard doing this, but Brian was his manager and he
wanted to have this solo experience with him to really
kind of cement his wall. You could you could say
he felt like a bastard do it, but he had
to do it, or you could say that he had
(37:41):
to do it because internally, emotionally he was driven to repeat.
It's called repetition compulsion. It's a way of sort of
dealing with trauma, is to unconsciously repeat the exact same trauma,
but in doing it to someone else, you're in the
position of power now or not. The victim you're the
(38:02):
powerful one who, instead of being left and hurt, is
the lever. So essentially he initiated that relationship with Julian
which was probably overdetermined, and you know, justified it with
will Brian says, you know, I have to leave. It
was really tragic, and you know, left this terrible relationship
ultimately and did the same thing psychologically Julian essentially that
(38:24):
had been done to him. It didn't do much for
his relationship with his wife. He was off doing a
lot of drugs, doing a lot of women, and being
mostly gone. She just sort of took it and kind
of hung in there. And yet all this time he
is writing music, right, he is writing and I think,
you know, if people look back at even the songs,
(38:45):
then they all sound cheery and upbeat and love Me
Do and so on. But there are songs like help,
you know, there are songs that clearly belie some of
this emotional longing and emotional difficulty and trauma along the way.
(39:06):
We're going to leave part one here. On the next episode,
we'll get into the worldwide explosion of the Beatles band
and how John deals with a level of fame few
human beings have ever had. To deal with. We will
discuss John the composer, husband and father, the impact of drugs,
loss and therapy on his mind, and of course we'll
(39:27):
get into his pivotal relationship with the Yoko Ono. I
want to thank my guests Jordan run Tug for a
superb conversation. If you haven't yet, please go check out
his podcast Rivals, about the greatest musical rivalries in history.
You won't be disappointed. And if you're interested in more
information about the people we discuss on the show, you
can check out my book The Power of Different or
(39:49):
you can follow me on social media at Dr Gale
Salts or at Personalogy m D. We'll be back next
week with part two of John Lennon. Thanks for listening.
M Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. The
executive producers are Dr Gayl Saltz and Tyler Clang. The
(40:10):
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The associate producer is Lowell Berlanti.
Editing music and mixing by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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