When They Were Boys (6 page)

Quarry Bank's headmaster, William Pobjoy, knew that despite his questionable grades at times, John was very smart. In an act that caused some of the teachers to question his own credibility, Pobjoy helped John to get into the Art Institute (now John Moores University), where his relations with intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals would make him even more of a young revolutionary. Although he would meet future wife Cynthia there, along with great friends Bill Harry and Stu Sutcliffe, John's grades were dismal. Some years later, John answered a fan letter from a student at Quarry Bank. In reference to the headmaster who indirectly paved the way to advance John's destiny, John wrote, “After all, it was he who got me into art school, so I could fail there, too, and I can never thank him enough.”

There is plenty of confirmation of John's indifference to the standard rules of education. June Furlong, our heroine who once braved German bombings in total darkness, became a successful life model and worked at the Art Institute. Sitting in the coffee shop of a modern Liverpool movie house, June smiles broadly as she tells me that John's close friend Stu Sutcliffe was engaged in the learning process, while John seemed less so.

“Stuart was the student. John was the inquisitor and activist, more involved with the other students, a little bit distracted, but I must add, the perfect gentleman at the same time.”

So we know that John as a student, at both his middle and high school, was highly suspect. The only time he seemed to meld at Quarry Bank was when he talked music, and subsequently formed his very basic skiffle band, the Quarrymen, affectionately named after the school he had so warmly accepted as his own in more ways than one. And it is in that pursuit, the desire to play his heart out for anyone who listened, that John Lennon, in his early teens, found his obsession, influenced by his birth mother along with a spark from good friends.

Colin Hanton remembers the traits of character that the confused but driven teenage John brought to the band.

“He was a leader but he didn't bang the table and say, ‘I am the boss.' Whatever he wanted to sing, there was no point arguing. We just went along with it. He led gently, so to speak. Where John went, we followed. He wasn't a tyrant or anything, most of the time.”

Was he fun to play with?

“Oh yeah. He was a great laugh. There was no middle ground with him. If he liked you, he liked you. If not, then he wasn't going to be funny about it. I must add, too, that he was rarely afraid of trouble.”

And trouble was always just around the corner.

Trouble did come in one of the Quarrymen's early concerts. It was an important event because it showed young John that he had a power, in addition to the music, that would carry over to the days of the Beatles. It was, in a word, seduction. Some men and women develop the art of seduction as life goes on. John had it at an early age, and he broadcast what he was looking for with his eyes, his hips, and his voice, sometimes high but always entrancing.

June 22, 1957, was a day to remember, or forget, depending on whom you were. If you were John Lennon, it would be an early lesson in the perils of sexual animal magnetism—aka John Lennon putting girls in heat.

Rosebery Street was putting on a bit of a street festival, part of a citywide celebration of neighborhoods. The Quarrymen were booked, and set up their instruments on the back of a lorry. In American terms, that would be a flatbed trailer behind a truck—not very glamorous, but they
were
fifteen years old.

Dealing with nerves was never part of John Lennon's preshow routine—not until he downed some mind-altering drugs, such as Preludin, to stay awake in Hamburg, or heavier drugs post-1964 on the worldwide tours. Generally, though, in the early days, John was not afraid. Early on, his onstage sexual appeal to women was clear—especially when he belted out hard-rock songs.

In an incident I'll call “Johnny's great escape,” black women in the Rosebery Street crowd rushed the wagon, screaming for John, reaching out. Their hands were up in the air, their faces showing sexual energy toward the animated boy leading the band. And the black boys in the crowd became incensed; John was poaching on their turf.

Eyewitnesses described a frantic scene, as the Quarrymen realized that the girls seemed to be excited by John, heat glowing from their cheeks, while their male friends wanted to put down the musical maniac who was turning them on. Their eyes were filled with a look that said, “How dare this bloke with the guitar incite our women!”

Colin Hanton has vivid memories of the concert, performed to a racially mixed crowd:

T
HAT WAS ON
R
OSEBERY
S
TREET
. I
WAS WITH THE LADS AND WE WERE ON THE BACK OF THE WAGON
. I
WAS WAY ON THE OTHER SIDE BUT
I
COULD SEE THE GROUP GETTING RESTLESS
. A
ND
I
LEANED DOWN AND SAID TO ONE OF MY DRINKING BUDDIES IN THE CROWD
, “W
HAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE
?” A
ND SOMEONE SAID
, “T
HEY ARE GONNA GET
J
OHN
L
ENNON
!” T
HAT WAS IT; WE JUMPED OFF, GOT OUR GUITARS, ETC., AND WENT INTO SOMEONE'S HOUSE
. J
OHN RAN DOWN THE STREET . . . QUICKLY
.

O
N SEVERAL OCCASIONS, WHEN THIS TYPE OF THING HAPPENED
, I
WAS NOT HAPPY WITH HIM
. J
OHN WAS VERY GOOD AT TALKING HIS WAY OUT OF TROUBLE
. T
HERE WAS NEVER REALLY ANY TROUBLE TO SPEAK OF . . . ALTHOUGH THERE WAS GREAT POTENTIAL
.

Len Garry, who once fancied himself a young teen idol, remarks that despite whatever was going on in John's personal life, his childhood buddy had a certain panache, a daring charisma, and a determination that he admired.

Garry, who admits he was a bit envious of John's appeal, remembers the near riot on Rosebery Street:

R
EMEMBER, EVERYTHING WAS CLOSE IN
. T
HERE WAS NO SECURITY, JUST OUR LITTLE BAND AND THE CROWD
. T
HE GIRLS WERE GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER, JUST STARING AT
J
OHN, WHO WAS WIGGLING HIS HIPS A BIT
. A
S THE GIRLS GOT CLOSER, THE BOYS SEEMED TO BE GETTING ANGRIER
. J
OHN DIDN'T CARE
. H
E LOOKED STRAIGHT AT THE GIRLS
. N
O FEAR
. N
OTHING
. C
OLIN
[H
ANTON
]
WAS LOOKING SCARED
. S
O, AS THE RIGHT TIME APPROACHED, WE ALL TOOK A RUN TO SAVE OUR LIVES
.

Running for his life—first in Liverpool, and later in the fan-filled arenas of America and the world—would become old hat for John. But for forty years he tried to run, but couldn't hide, from things beyond his control: the confusion of his childhood, the love he was given, and the affection that was taken away. Love was central to John's life—real love or the lack of it. John ran from the crowd that day on Rosebery Street, but he could not hide from the dimensions of his early life and the confusion that enveloped it.

The gravestone is marked with the names of her children. It is inscribed: “Mummy, John, Victoria, Julia, Jackie.” It stands isolated in a Liverpool cemetery along with the graves of thousands. An unusual work of art sits alongside the grave—the tiny stone sculpture of a kitten, a fond farewell from her more austere sister, who assumed the mantle of parental leader.

Beneath the earth, the eclectic and unpredictable mother would never hear the lonely strains of “Mother” and “Julia,” songs written by her firstborn to remember her by, and to scream out for her.

There is one absolute in the life of the mad and funny genius whose scrape-filled marathon to immortality gave us the Beatles: his childhood and teenage years were filled with a confusing angst, and the spillover affected his adult life.

It all starts with the story of Mother, and there are many versions. The question is: Will the real Julia Stanley Lennon please stand up? After all, Julia, you did affect so much in a very short time.

The boy who was running the race to greatness had, within him, a storm of emotions about his mother, a British beauty with a loving touch. To say that Julia Stanley Lennon was an attraction to men is an understatement. To label her a harlot, as many writers have, is an exaggeration of a woman's needs and the consequences of bad choices.

Painted, tainted, and applied with a broad brush, the story of Julia's life and her impact on John is debated passionately and often. Inevitably, recorded history is often trumped by the priorities of family. The writers seek the testimony of the past; the family members search for their own truth, where historical accomplishments are much less meaningful than the story of what really happened around the kitchen table.

Welcome to the kitchen table of the Stanley and Lennon families, and the debate that still rages.

Julia was thin and tiny, striking and adorable. Her personality was cheerful, but there was an underlying insecurity—a neediness to be loved, and the inevitable desire for financial security in the bleak period after the Depression. But first and foremost, Julia was a woman of passion.

Although she died in the middle of the last century, the strong debate over her role in John's life is still central to his story. The
conventional
story of Julia's life is not remarkable in the history books: young beauty gives birth to the son of her husband, Alfred Lennon, often described as a seafaring deadbeat, although he was hardly that, sending money home to Julia from his various ports of call. Their marriage dissolves, but the lively and spirited Julia has a series of affairs, and three other children. John's first sister was named Victoria Elizabeth. The father was a soldier; his name was Taffy Williams. In due time, Williams left the scene. The baby girl was offered for adoption and raised by a family in Norway. Ironically, Julia Baird Lennon learned as she grew older that her sister was nearby. She met the woman, now named Ingrid, who told her that she actually grew up in Liverpool and Hampshire. Mother Julia's next love interest was John Dykins. Never official, it was a common-law marriage that remained in place
until Julia's death. The couple had two girls, Julia and Jackie, born in 1947 and 1949. At first Dykins was loving, but was often elusive, and later was quite abusive. The elder Julia suffered beatings at his hand. Dykins never wanted young John in their household. He was keenly aware that Mimi had taken responsibility for John's upbringing in his early years. She relished the relationship. What's missing in the narrative of John's life is the many overnight visits to his real mother's home. For his part, Dykins was quite happy that Aunt Mimi was handling John's parenting, along with her sweet and pliant husband, George. In the early fifties Julia saw shreds of a family coming together as John and his sisters would interact. It was a splintered family, but still, she felt, family.

That's the conventional story. Then there is Julia Baird's version.

In the words of Paul McCartney, in a 1968 interview with me about his use of LSD, “The truth is sometimes painful.”

Julia Baird makes you think about the truth, which for her has been a painful and life-altering experience. In the world according to John's oldest sister, much of conventional history about his childhood was rewritten by their Aunt Mimi.

Baird, who bears a great resemblance to her brother, sits in the back room of the modern version of the Cavern, on Mathew Street, in 2010. She is extremely intense, almost nervous about recalling the past, as she did in her book
Imagine This
, which gave the people of the world a different look at her mother and the family dynamics:

W
ELL, ESSENTIALLY
M
IMI LIVED ELEVEN YEARS LONGER THAN
J
OHN DID
. I
N THAT TIME SHE WAS ABLE TO REINVENT HERSELF TOTALLY
. T
HINGS SHE COULD NOT DECIDE ABOUT MY MOTHER WHEN
J
OHN WAS LIVING STARTED SUDDENLY APPEARING
. . . . W
HEN
J
OHN HIMSELF DIED SHE WAS ABLE TO WHITEWASH OVER MY MOTHER
. . . . I
ALWAYS USED TO JOKE THAT IF
M
IMI HAD LIVED ANOTHER TWENTY YEARS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SOME DREADED FAMILY SECRET BUT SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO GIVE BIRTH TO
J
OHN
!

Baird is determined that future generations get the real story.

This intensely serious and sensitive woman sips her water, stares around at the Cavern's walls, and declares that even her own origins had been slammed by her aunt.

M
IMI HAD CONJURED UP A STORY THAT MY MOTHER HAD MOVED INTO A HOUSE WITH MY FATHER
[D
YKINS
]
AND TWO CHILDREN, MY SISTER AND
I,
ALLUDING THAT HE WAS OUR FATHER AND SHE WAS NOT OUR REAL MOTHER
.

J
OHN IS
J
OHN
. J
OHN IS A WORLD ICON
. P
EOPLE WILL BE WANTING TO KNOW ABOUT
J
OHN WHEN WE'RE LONG DEAD
. I
DON'T WANT MY MOTHER TO HAVE
NEVER
BEEN IN THE STORY
.