When They Were Boys (5 page)

During his shows, when he played to the crowd, his eyes stared straight out, as if he were rocking the joint for an audience of millions. One on one, in intimate moments of emotion and eloquent conversation, he would give a wistful look, as if to show sincerity. I was always stunned at his eye contact with the audiences. His flashes of humor, that ability to jump ahead of the thought, respond in a second or two to a statement or a question, were amazing, if not superhuman. The boy, making his deliveries, and the man, later offering his words to the world, never stopped thinking his special thoughts, or about what he would say next. His personality and his imagination were something special, a package of excitement, sometimes so special and rudely honest that it became excess baggage on the travels of his life, but always, in the end of the remarks, refreshing the world with courage and conviction.

The milkman takes a deep drag on a cigarette as he circles back to the small home. As he comes through the door, the cigarette is gone. It wouldn't be accepted in this house. He knows he has just a few minutes to gather up some tea, maybe toast with jam, a short conversation, if any at all, and it will be time to head off to school. It will be a long day, but music from the radio the night before is still filling his mind—Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, the Everly Brothers, good old Lonnie Donegan. Lately he has been obsessed with George Formby Jr., the man who grew up in Lancashire, the tart comedian who also sang. The milkman has searched in great wonder for information on George, a banjo-ukulele man who eased out of Merseyside to reach the world of comedy and movies. After all, John thinks, how many infants could lose their sight and regain it after a violent sneeze? How many children at the age of seven could have a short career as a jockey? How could
Formby, whose voice alone could make you laugh so hard, create separate stage and recording careers that brought so much joy to people during the Depression and war? And could John become, like Formby, a man who created comedy and song with rich double meanings, like Formby's risqué tune “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock”?

It was not lost on John that “My Little Stick,” a trademark song for Formby, king of comedy from 1934 to 1945, was banned by the BBC. John would take it as a badge of honor that years later, his relatively harmless song “Imagine” was banned on hundreds of American radio stations because it simply stated that there could be a better world without wars and the divisions of religion. John was amazed by Formby. Along with Donegan, Vincent, and the Yanks (an expression he learned from his mother, referring to American musicians), there was enough inspiration to incite the most curious of teenagers. Sadly, by the time he was seventeen, the mother was gone, and now he relied on his music boys, quiet Uncle George, an unsung hero in his life, and his formidable aunt, Mimi, who raced to the hospital during the bombing blitz to see little newborn John Winston, “the one” she had been waiting for.

He was at times both angry and hopeful, and always resented the establishment around him—the teachers, the pompous, and anybody with a hint of bullshit. In his world, there was no room for that. He was also glowing or prickly, and there was very little in between. This mood swing, nonchalant to sensitive, would continue for all of his life.

Most of all, the milkman was an incessant dreamer. Dreaming was his first real profession. He did it all the time. During an argument we had on the 1966 North American tour, we debated the Vietnam War. He told me, “I dream of rescuing Americans before they go off and get killed.” Then, realizing that I was going into military service that summer, he offered me a job in the Beatles organization. “You could become an expatriate,” he said. I replied, “You've got to be kidding.” He said, “Not at all.”

Did he dream of becoming famous? Yoko Ono's favorite time with her husband was late at night, before bed, when the pillow talk about both of their younger lives came to the forefront.

“John told me that at Mendips [John's childhood home] he wasn't dreaming
of becoming a big thing like the Beatles. He was thinking of music, but he, his early years, he was a little boy who was saddened that his mom was not around and his dad was not around. He always wanted to find out about his dad, but through it all he dreamed of excellence.”

Transferring those dreams from daydreams to reality has always been the supreme challenge for human beings, especially young people. But in this case, the life was fiercely complicated by a family conflict that could rip into one's insides. Rising above such a situation—a part-time mother, a vanished father—and dealing with a surrogate family could be so difficult. Such obstructions were a challenge for John Lennon as a preteen, as a teen, and even as a Beatle. But John had his own weapons, his own emotional shields to blunt the sadness, the vulnerability.

There is no doubt that the left-handed guitarist, Paul McCartney, was, is, and always will be a workaholic. Friends like Bill Harry and Tony Bramwell will tell you so.

Quarrymen banjo player Rod Davis, who was closer to John and really didn't know Paul, says that John Lennon was also a hard worker, but an unremitting dream machine.

“He was, in my day, a cocky kind of guy, a young guy with a pointed nose who liked to start trouble, but yes, a dreamer. . . . He was also cynical,” Davis says. “Would I ever see him as a peace activist with a beard and long hair? Never in those days, mind you. But then again, he was unpredictable. That's what made him so exciting.”

Quarrymen bassist Len Garry (now vocalist for the modern-day version of the band) says John was a good listener, but it's what he didn't listen to that took him where he thought he wanted to go. John had encouragement, but an enormous amount of negative energy around him.

“That guitar; that's what it was all about,” Garry remembers. “Aunt Mimi told him, ‘That guitar, John, you'll never make a living out of that.' Did John listen? No. He didn't listen to anyone who disagreed with his hopes. He followed his talent. Lots of people will tell others, ‘You can't do that,' and that affects people. But John wouldn't be denied. There was a drive that was both admirable and overwhelming.”

Quarrymen drummer Colin Hanton recalls, “John could be impossible sometimes. He was driven to extremes. He could be almost near violent. When he acted like that, sometimes I wanted to give him a smack. But he was always determined to be something, to stand above.”

Davis, a current world traveler and surfing enthusiast, will always remember John as tough and sensitive, two traits hard to reconcile as a teenager:

F
IGHTING BACK, AND HARD, WAS A
L
ENNON TRADEMARK
. . . . I
NEVER KNEW HE WAS A SENSITIVE HUMAN BEING, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE HE DID WRITE POETRY; HE DID WRITE THINGS FOR THE SCHOOL MAGAZINE
. B
UT HE WASN'T FLOWERS AND BIRDS AND CLOUDS AND STUFF
. I
MEAN, HE WROTE A POEM CALLED
“T
HE
T
ALE OF
H
ERMAN
F
RED
,”
WHICH WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SCHOOL MAGAZINE, AND WAS QUITE AMUSING
. S
O HE HAD THIS ABILITY TO EXERCISE TOUGHNESS, BUT HE DID NOT VIEW HIMSELF AS UNMANLY BECAUSE HE ENJOYED WRITING
. H
E COULD BE CHAOTIC IN THE CLASSROOM, THOUGH
.

Psychologists like to tell us that we are what we think we are. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for everybody, but for John, it was always a work in progress—the challenge of channeling his childhood loneliness and constant despair into the real-life messages of hope, love, and loss that showed up in the songs he wrote both with Paul and after the Beatles. To this day, John Lennon may be the most autobiographical of songwriters, unashamed for the rest of us to share his ordeals.

One can image the loneliness he felt in the mid- to late fifties, and the reasons: a mother struck by a car and killed when he was seventeen; a father who had supposedly vanished from his life; the hostile failure of his teachers to recognize his creative endeavors; and the lack of mentors, save for the recording artists he worshipped.

So, inevitably, imagination took over. It is not without coincidence that his most iconic song is “Imagine.”

The photograph of John sprawled out on his narrow bed in Mimi's home, reading and sketching and listening to records, is the most compelling. His second-floor bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue is still locked in time today, much like the sitting room below. The furniture is circa 1955, and the
walls are as they were. Like many British homes, it has a name, Mendips. The home provided John a room with a view, a bright and shiny view of the world outside. When I glance around the narrow room I can imagine the teenage world of the smoking milkman as he lay in his bed, reading, getting up to look at the avenue, quietly shaving in the bathroom, fantasizing about being on stage, rocking like the famous rockers, infuriating his teachers, and dealing with his kind Uncle George and his upright and strict Aunt Mimi, guardian of the young empire, dominatrix of the household, surrogate mother, for a time, and puritanical challenger of everything John.

Mimi was a force, although Freda Kelly, the teenage secretary to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, and one of the closest people to Mimi, has a different take. Kelly was the main liaison to the Beatles' parents. When she first met John and Mimi, months after she went berserk with the rest of the crowd at the Cavern, she was in a different position. Now she saw John as a wild and creative and unchained force. In Kelly's view, five years after the death of John's mother, Mimi was quite necessary.

“She was like my father: old school,” she says. “John needed controlling. He was a rebel. She was a woman who was trying to do the right thing, doing her best to guide and bring him up right. She was a lovely person who didn't suffer fools gladly. Her imagery as a tough, unrelenting woman is not the whole story.”

Brian Epstein's lifelong friend Joe Flannery sees the aunt's assertiveness from a different angle: “There is no doubt that Mimi, who was someone who loved him beginning at birth, saw and understood John's vulnerability, and believe me, he was vulnerable.”

Mimi. George. Mendips. Along with the mother he loved, they were John's world.

From the age of five, when he was brought into Mimi and George's life, until twenty-three, John lived at various intervals at Mendips. At the age of seven, he wandered in the small but lush backyard, bordering on Strawberry Field, a home for orphans. He often, in moments of daring, scaled the fence to join the children. He enjoyed their company for years. During a 1975
interview, John told me, “Most of my memories in those days were with the other children. I liked being with them. But Mimi was not happy.” Did he sense a commonality with them? Did he feel like an orphan, too? I never asked him those questions, but once again, as it happens so often in this story, the fence-jumping, Mimi-defying excursions made their way into song.

When Mimi scolded John for jumping the fence, John said, “C'mon, Aunt Mimi, they can't hang you for it.” Later, in the words of the song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it was “nothing to get hung about.”

Sitting on his narrow bed, posters of contemporary entertainers on the walls, John would read late into the night, sometimes sleeping just a few hours before heading out to his milk rounds. Mimi's husband, George, one of the motivators of John's teenage years, used the home as a refuge for learning. Mimi's strong-willed sense of discipline extended to her husband. George enjoyed his time with John. Mostly they talked about the need to read. John became a master reader. His interest in contemporary news reports was intense by his fourteenth birthday. John started reading the “Just Williams” children's series at ten, and graduated to
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and
The Wind in the Willows
, a 1908 novel of mysticism, camaraderie, and adventure, channeled through four animal characters with human-like features and traits: a mole, a rat, Mr. Toad, and Mr. Badger. The book is a classic, and the young fence-climber was fascinated by its fantasy. At the age of ten, he would share some of the stories with his friends on the “other side” at Strawberry Field.

John was mostly peaceful at home. School was another story. He alternately puzzled and tortured his teachers at Quarry Bank. He was, as Stuart Sutcliffe's sister Pauline describes, an “anarchist.” There may have been reasons.

Boyhood buddy and bandmate Rod Davis says John, like him, ventured into a scary environment at Quarry Bank. It was somewhat formal yet surrounded by young goons trying to mess up the school day.

“So we had our nice little blazers with our Quarry Bank stags on and our little gold stag heads around the cuffs and so on. And we were a target for all the toughs. We were the bright guys, just for going to Quarry Bank School. So therefore we were the targets for all of the guys who decided they were
going to take it out on us. So, John's technique was to develop a hard exterior, and that worked quite well.”

John was both angry and insightful, but determined to disrupt classes with outbursts, the distribution of graphic and sexual sketches, and other odd gifts. When teachers would scold him, he looked dumbfounded, with a “not me” look, an external innocence, as if to say, “Nothing to get hung about.”

Eventually, for a short period, John became one of the “toughs” himself, to prove his mettle.

And later, along with his friend Pete Shotton, John became one of the intellectually stimulated students; he would and could excel, depending on the day. As John plowed his way through the books, interested more in hearing music from the States than focusing on the sciences or math, teachers were frustrated by his pranks. One of them was heard to say, “This boy is bound to fail.” Failure at times, in the school setting, was something John dealt with gracefully, sometimes with humor and sarcasm. But he also made it clear to teachers and friends that he was very interested in music and art.