Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - the Definitive Life
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Jon Baldo, University of Rochester, Eastman School, was among the very first to edit my first manuscript, Tell Me Why, back in 1984–5, and he pored over an embarrassingly early draft of this book with infinite patience and forgiveness. I cannot thank him enough for his steady encouragements. Another editor who left a huge imprint on my prose has been Fresh Air’s Milo Miles, and I’ll always feel lucky that I came to Boston in time to meet Mark Moses and hang out with movie critics Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek. Musicians like Clint Conley and Mark Leccese deserve special mention as colleagues of indomitable redoubt.
At Emerson College, I thank the steadfast support of my Journalism department chair, Ted Gup, and dean, Janis Andersen, who make teaching such a pleasant pursuit.
At Hyperion, I thank Gretchen Young for her sensitive and gracious edit, and Elizabeth Sabo for favors both large and small. Cover designer GTC Art and Design, production editor Kevin MacDonald, and copyeditor Rick Willett weeded out many an error with awesome humility and patience.
In Ike Williams, I have an agent whose diligence under abject circumstances is downright miraculous, and whose talent cannot be overstated. His Kneerim and Williams team, with Hope Denekamp and Katherine Flynn, always make me feel a bit spoiled.
There are many, many others—librarians, reporters, Oberlin interns, tour guides—who assisted along the way; let my poor memory sit in grand contrast to their contributions.
Finally, there is simply no chance this project would have ever seen completion without my wife Sara Laschever’s Olympian endurance. There were so many times when our discussions sharpened my ideas that her influence echoes through every sentence. If I could coax all the chocolate in the world to sing, I would have it sing her virtues to the highest rafters.
As for Moses and Adam, dittos with confetti: this part’s all in claymation.—TR
Notes
The following codes have been used to indicate frequently referenced works:
BA
Beatles, The. The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
BC
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Chronicles. London: Hamlyn, 2006.
BJY
Rolling Stone, Editors of. The Ballad of John and Yoko. Garden City: Doubleday Dolphin, 1982.
BL
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Live! New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1986.
CLJ
Lennon, Cynthia. John. New York: Random House, 2005.
CLT
Lennon, Cynthia. A Twist of Lennon. New York: Avon, 1980.
DCH
Lennon, Pauline. Daddy, Come Home: The True Story of John Lennon and His Father. London: Angus and Robertson, 1990.
IT
Baird, Julia. Imagine This. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007.
JLE
Harry, Bill. The John Lennon Encyclopedia. London: Virgin Publishing, 2000.
JLMB
Baird, Julia, with Geoffrey Giuliano. John Lennon, My Brother. London: Grafton, 1988.
MYFN
Miles, Barry. Paul McCartney Many Years from Now. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1997.
PB
Lennon, John, Yoko Ono, and David Sheff. The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York: Putnam, 1981.
RTB
Kehew, Brian, and Kevin Ryan. Recording the Beatles. Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006.
SS
Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner. John Lennon in My Life. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.
TBRS
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962–1970. London: Harmony, 1988.
Chapter 1: No Reply
1. BA, 4.
2. S. Almond and B. J. Marsh, Home Port: Bootle, the Blitz and the Battle of the Atlantic (Sefton: Metro Borough of Sefton Education Department, 1993), 7.
3. S. C. Leslie, Ministry of Home Security, Bombers Over Merseyside: The Authoritative Record of the Blitz, 1940–1941 (Liverpool: Scouse Press, 1983), 8.
4. William Manchester, The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988), 679.
5. Isaiah Berlin, with Henry Hardy, Roger Hausheer, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 618.
6. CLJ, 29.
7. Jan Morris, “In Liverpool,” from The Ballad of John and Yoko (Garden City: Doubleday Dolphin, 1982), 4.
8. JLMB, 19.
9. During the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, 9,000 Irish arrived in its ports each day, swelling the population from 286,000 to 376,000 between 1841 and 1851.
10. Danny Ross, A Blue Coat Boy in the 1920s (Gunnison, Colorado: Pharaoh Press, 1996). Ross writes about his childhood friend, Alfred Lennon, who gave Danny a mouth organ and taught him how to play.
11. JLE, 474. Harry reports that the Blue Coat orphanage publicly “berated” Alfred, but he seems to be the only source for this incident.
12. JLMB, 8–9.
13. Ibid.
14. DCH, 75.
15. Although it is an important primary source, very few Lennon narratives work in Alf’s quotes from Daddy Come Home surrounding any of these key events.
16. JLE, 476.
17. DCH, 33.
18. Ray Coleman, John Lennon (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 25.
19. The October 10, 1940, edition of the Liverpool Echo reported only news about British raids on Germany, especially on its armament factories in Krupps. But there is no mention of raids on the Merseyside area that night of October 9, just a single bomb falling “in a north-west town,” again, name withheld for security reasons. On this same night, forty London districts were detailed as bombed. Aunt Mimi may have been misremembering bombs which fell on the night of October 10 and 11. From author correspondence with Quarrymen member and Lennon confidant Rod Davis.
20. Coleman, 25.
21. JLE, 821.
22. Ibid, 34.
23. DCH, 30–33. This narrative reports that Julia, Alf, and John had shared the apartment with the Stanleys since John was born; others differ as to precisely when the Stanleys gave up the Berkeley Street dwelling. But Anne’s death brought about some sort of living readjustments if only because the balance of family chemistry changed radically.
24. Ibid, 40.
25. Ibid, 42.
26. JLMB, 13.
27. Maritime Museum exhibition, Liverpool, May 2008.
28. Walter Everett, The Beatles As Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 14.
29. Ibid, 369; DCH, 61.
30. Paddy Shennan, “Teenage Teds Without a Care in the World,” Liverpool Echo, October 3, 2007, http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-entertainment/the-beatles/the-beatles-news/2007/10/03/teenage-teds-without-a-care-in-the-world-100252-19888187/. If this expulsion came in the spring of 1946, this preceded the Blackpool scene, which signals how boisterous Lennon’s temperament had grown in advance of this defining trauma.
31. DCH, 65.
32. JLE, 480. Sydney Lennon claims that he and his wife also took the boy in for nine months when John was four, during this same period.
33. DCH, 67.
34. Founder Alderman William George Bean quoted in 1896, in the same turn-of-the-century park fever that inspired Chicago’s White City and later Disneyland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_pleasure_beach.
35. Hunter Davies, The Beatles—The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 9.
36. DCH, 70.
37. Ibid, 72.
38. Ibid, 75; 110.
39. MYFN, 47.
40. Davies, Beatles, 12.
41. Ibid, 44.
Chapter 2: Something to Hide
1. MYFN, 44.
2. JLMB, 15.
3. Author interview with Len Garry, Chicago, 2007.
4. “Leila” seems to be spelled “Liela” on the Liverpool Lennon.net family Web page, http://www.lennon.net, and in IT, but not JLMB
.
5. All these Stanley Parkes quotes come from the Lennon.net family Web site, at http://www.lennon.net/reflections/s_parkes.shtml, stories that have not been reproduced elsewhere until now. Mimi and George lived in “The Cottage” before taking over Mendips; her sister Harriet moved in with Leila after the war.
6. JLMB, 28.
7. Coleman, 25.
8. CLJ, 106.
9. Coleman, 30–31.
10. Ibid.
11. SS, 23.
12. Ibid, 27–28.
13. Ibid.
14. David Ashton, A Woolton Childhood, unpublished memoir, http://www.beatlesireland.utvinternet.com/John7020Lennon/Woolton.Woolton1.html, 3.
15. SS, 33. Although it’s not uncommon for adolescents to fantasize about places more magical and mysterious than their ordinary surroundings, the early ambition to write a work resembling Lewis Carroll’s points to Lennon’s nonlinear bent that would produce such surreal pop landscapes as “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “I Am the Walrus,” “Glass Onion,” “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” “Across the Universe,” and “I Dig a Pony.”
16. Ibid.
17. Coleman, 32.
18. Hunter Davies, The Quarrymen (New York: Omnibus Press, 2001), 23.
19. Reproduced in James Henke, Lennon Legend: An Illustrated Life of John Lennon (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003), 8.
20. Davies, Quarrymen, 23.
21. SS, 38–39.
22. Ibid, 29.
23. Ibid, 29.
24. Author interview with Liverpool resident Paul McNutt, 2008.
25. SS, 30.
26. Author interview with Michael Hill, January 2005.
27. Allen Ginsberg, with Bill Morgan, ed., The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (New York: Da Capo, 2008), 223.
28. Lisa Philips, ed., Beat Culture and the New America—1950–1965 (Paris and New York: the Whitney Museum of Art in association with Flammarion, 1995), http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Carney.html.
29. CLT, 25.
30. BA, 9.
31. JLE, 72.
32. Davies, Quarrymen, 32.
33. Author interview with Rod Davis, Chicago, August 2007.
34. Davies, Quarrymen, 23.
35. Ibid, 20.
36. As evidenced in Henke, 8.
37. Author interview with Rod Davis, 2007.
Chapter 3: She Said She Said
1. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The Twenties to the Nineties (revised edition) (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 439.
2. Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971), 146.
3. Dave Cotterill and Ian Lysaght, directors, Liverpool’s Cunard Yanks (Souled Out Films, 2007).
4. Tony Bramwell and Rosemary Kingsland, Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006).
5. Author interview with Colin Hanton, Liverpool, 2005.
6. BA, 11.
7. Pauline Sutcliffe and Douglas Thompson, The Beatles’ Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club (London: Macmillan, 2002), 31. Jackson was an innovator as well, stringing together sound effects to create jingles between songs that accented the music’s inanity. On Jackson’s show, rock ’n’ roll sprouted comic leaks; the only thing on the three BBC frequencies that came anywhere close was Lennon’s beloved Goon Show with Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers, which got considerable comic leeway.
8. John Firminger and Spencer Leigh, Halfway to Paradise: British Pop Music 1955–1962 (Liverpool: Finbarr International, 1996), 30.
9. Ibid, 29.
10. Alan Clayson, Beat Merchants: The Origins, History, Impact and Rock Legacy (London: Blandford Press, 1996), 30–31.
11. Ibid, 18.
12. BA, 28, and MYFN, 19.
13. Author interview with Colin Hanton, Liverpool, 2005.
14. Mark Lewisohn Beatle Days conference interview with Julia Baird, Liverpool Adelphi Hotel, August 2005.
15. JLMB, 25.
16. Ibid, 28.
17. SS, 38.
18. Author interview with Len Garry, Chicago, 2007.
19. JLMB, 23.
20. BA, 11.
21. Ibid.
22. All quotes from this scene from an author interview with Michael Hill, January 2005.
23. BA, 10.
24. Ibid, 11.
25. Ibid.
26. Davies, Beatles, 12.
27. JLMB, 27.
28. Stanley Parkes, quoted in a 2002 interview on lennon.net, the Lennon Family Web page, http://www.lennon.net/reflections/s_parkes3.shtml.
29. Ibid.
30. BA, 8.
31. SS, 38.
32. Ibid, 38.
33. JLMB, 49–50.
34. Julia Baird interviewed at Beatle Days conference by Mark Lewisohn, August 2005.
35. Jim O’Donnell, The Day John Met Paul: An Hour-by-Hour Account of How The Beatles Began (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 69.
36. Author interview with Len Garry, 2007.
37. Davies, Quarrymen, 39.
38. Ibid, 43.
39. BL, 19. “The 550th Anniversary of King John, who issued the royal Charter ‘inviting settlers to take up burgages or building plots in Liverpool, and promising them all the privileges enjoyed by free boroughs on the sea.’ ” Also, Quarrymen has always been a single word band name.
40. JLMB, 34.
41. BA, 20.
42. Ibid.
43. Author interview with Colin Hanton, 2005. McCartney is alone in remembering Lennon’s alcoholic breath; Colin Hanton and Rod Davis swear the drinking was at a minimum, and have no distinct memories of Lennon chugging at ale or anything else. Others speculate Julia may have bought a pint for him.
Chapter 4: Nobody Told Me
1. This “Auntie Jin” shows up in McCartney’s Wings song, “Let ’Em In,” in 1976.
2. MYFN, 21.
3. Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 89.
4. Ibid, 90.
5. MYFN, 32.
6. BA, 134.
7. Spitz, 110.
8. MYFN, 46.
9. Author interview with Colin Hall, Mendips curator, 2005.
10. Simon Frith and Howard Horne, Art into Pop (London: Methuen and Co., 1987), 73.
11. John Goldrosen and John Beecher, Remembering Buddy (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 29.
12. Ibid, 65.
13. JLE, 514.
14. Bramwell, 32.
15. Goldrosen and Beecher, 159.
16. Author interview with Colin Hall, August 2005.
17. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 16. This is yet another important first-person account of the young Lennon that has eluded previous Lennon biographers.
18. Ibid, 18.
19. Ibid, 20.
20. Ibid, 17.
21. Davies, Beatles, 65.
22. BL, 20.
23. BC, 16. Lewisohn pegs the date as February 6, 1958.
24. BL, 17.
25. Ibid, 18.
26. Author interview with Colin Hanton in Liverpool. Lewisohn claims Hanton did not participate in the recording. Hanton remembers it vividly.
27. Ibid.
28. JLMB, 51.
29. Ibid, 51–52.
30. Spitz, 146.
31. Paddy Sherman, Liverpool Echo, October 5, 2007.
32. JLMB, 52.
33. Ibid, 54–55.
34. JLE, 958.
35. MYFN, 48.
36. Ibid, 49.
Chapter 5: Pools of Sorrow
1. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 44.
2. Frith and Horne, 40.
3. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 40.
4. Ibid, 40.
5. Davies, Beatles, 55.
6. Steve Stark, Meet the Beatles (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 72.
7. CLT, 18.
8. Davies, Beatles, 57.
9. Ibid, 57–58.
10. Sutcl
iffe and Thompson, 32.
11. Ibid, 37.
12. Ibid, 39.
13. Davies, Quarrymen, 63.
14. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 25.
15. Ibid, 52.
16. Ibid, 122.
17. Spencer Leigh, The Best of Fellas: The Story of Bob Wooler—Liverpool’s First D.J., the Man Who Introduced “The Beatles” (Liverpool: Drivegreen Ltd, 2002), 160.
18. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 122.
19. BL, 16.
20. Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen, Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music (Chicago: Ballantine Books, 1999), 123. Less than two months later, early on the morning of August 14, his mother died in Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Elvis was granted emergency leave from Killeen to be at Graceland when she passed.
21. John Lennon, The Lennon Tapes: John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Conversation with Andy Peebles, 6 December 1980 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1981), 203.
22. Patricia Romanowski with Jon Pareles and Holly George-Warren, The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 72. A hat-checker in Berry’s St. Louis nightclub. She complained to the police when Berry fired her. “After a blatantly racist first trial was disallowed, he was found guilty at a second. Berry spent two years in federal prison in Indiana, leaving him embittered.”
23. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 64.
24. Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1981, 67.
25. Before his recording career, Vincent had suffered a leg injury during a motorcycle accident in the navy, which required a metal brace. Part of his appeal stemmed from his sexual demeanor in spite of this wound.
26. Alan Clayson, Hamburg—The Cradle of British Rock (London: Sanctuary Publishing, 1998), 50.
27. Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 133. Oldham’s remark gets argued through many British band encores, from the Who and T. Rex covering “Summertime Blues” to Led Zeppelin’s “C’mon Everybody.”
Chapter 6: Well Well Well
1. Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place, From the Cavern to the Capital of Culture (London: London Virgin, 2002), 32.
2. BA, 46.
3. Norman, Shout!, 95.
4. BA, 47.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Pete Best and Patrick Doncaster Beatle! The Pete Best Story (London: Plexus, 1985), 111. It’s one of those Lennon stories you hope is true, but it’s disputed by Harrison, who was probably there.