by Larry Kane
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.
MIMI HAD CONJURED UP A STORY THAT MY MOTHER HAD MOVED INTO A HOUSE WITH MY FATHER [DYKINS] AND TWO CHILDREN, MY SISTER AND I, ALLUDING THAT HE WAS OUR FATHER AND SHE WAS NOT OUR REAL MOTHER.
JOHN IS JOHN. JOHN IS A WORLD ICON. PEOPLE WILL BE WANTING TO KNOW ABOUT JOHN WHEN WE’RE LONG DEAD. I DON’T WANT MY MOTHER TO HAVE NEVER BEEN IN THE STORY.
The family story came apart when mother Julia, leaving Mimi’s house after tea, crossed Menlove Avenue and was struck and killed by a car driven by an area constable. It was July 15, 1958. John was seventeen years old, and his music was beginning to enter the magical phase. It was a loss that brought fits of rage, nightmares, and anger to John for the rest of his life.
Julia Baird, at the time shell-shocked, devastated by the loss of her mother, remembers how John tried to hide his tears.
“He was so ripped apart. He tried to hide his pain, but he had a lot of it, and it didn’t go away . . . not ever, especially when it came to her.”
Nigel Walley, an original member of the Quarrymen, and later manager of the group, had left Julia Lennon at a bus stop near her home. He was the last person to see her before the fatal accident.
“John could hardly face the funeral,” Walley recalled. “John didn’t want anyone to see him crying. For many months after her death he wore black in her memory.”
John, like Paul, who also lost his mother in his teenage years, may have never recovered. It was a big hole in his life, but he rarely talked about it.
On the Beatles’ chartered Electra airplane in August 1964, John Lennon had heard that my mother had just died. He found out from Paul McCartney, who was sharing thoughts with me on losing a parent.
“How are you, Lawrence [my birth name is Larry but he liked to call me that]? How are you doing?” John asked.
“Okay,” I said, the memories still lingering then after my mom’s death at the age of forty.
“Well, it’s hard. I know. My mum was killed in our neighborhood.”
He explained the accident, the feeling of loss. It was comforting.
“What was she like?” I asked.
“Well, she loved music. Bought me my first guitar. Taught me music. We played together, laughed and sang.”
There was no mention of Aunt Mimi and her role in raising John, nor was there any outward sign of bitterness, just a bittersweet sadness in his face.
I wasn’t savvy enough in those days to probe further. After all, when you’re twenty-one, who thinks of writing history? Who actually believes, in the time that you are living your history, that you will pursue the recording of it in the future?
The official history of Julia’s life has been studied in books, films, and hearsay. Her real effect on the future star has been minimized and discredited by the ravages of time and misconception. The truth is that the part-time mother served a major purpose and, probably outside of Yoko Ono, played the most significant role in inspiring the young and confused John. Let’s be honest—it’s much easier to taint and paint a woman of allegedly questionable repute than it is to discredit a seriously intense woman like Mimi, who after complaining to social services co-opted Julia and took control of John’s daily life.
Well, almost. Mother Julia was always present in the background, especially when it came to music. She was dedicated and cheerfully determined. And she was a charismatic woman, with striking looks.
“She was very tiny, like me,” Yoko Ono says. “John used to make the connection between the two of us. John respected all five Stanley sisters, especially Mimi. But he had an enduring love for his mother, [who] in many ways was like a sister, while Mimi was more of the authority figure. He loved both, but his love for his mother was, as I said, enduring.”
As an adult, John would reflect on his mother’s choices. With love and affection, Yoko remembers:
“‘My mom would go to bed with someone who gave her a silk stocking,’ he would tell me. While he knew about his mother, he wanted to know more about his dad. But he knew his mother because of what she gave him.”
And that was a lot.
Julia Baird was eleven when her mother died. She has spent years attempting to correct the impression that Julia Stanley Lennon was an afterthought and, frankly, she has the memories to back it up.
While Mimi banned tape recorders in her house, John would often go to Julia’s house and they would sway together and hold hands and listen to the music of Elvis Presley. John’s sister recalls:
MY GRANDFATHER JOHN CAME BACK FROM THE MERCHANT MARINE WITH A BANJO AND A MONKEY. HE PLAYED THE BANJO AND IT WOUND UP IN OUR HOUSE, ACTUALLY IN MY BEDROOM. HE TAUGHT MY MOTHER HOW TO PLAY A BANJO AND SING. MOTHER TAUGHT JOHN HOW TO PLAY THE BANJO. SHE WAS VERY, VERY MUSICAL. SHE BOUGHT JOHN HIS FIRST GUITAR. MIMI BOUGHT HIM HIS SECOND GUITAR. JOHN PLAYED THE GUITAR LIKE A BANJO AT FIRST, BUT MOTHER TRANSITIONED HIM TO GUITAR. SHE LOVED THE TIME WITH HIM. WHEN HE CAME OVER, JACKIE AND I WATCHED THE TWO BONDING MUSICALLY. SHE LOVED HIM LIKE A MOTHER WOULD LOVE A SON. AND HIS EYES WOULD LIGHT UP WHEN HE CAME OVER. SO WOULD OURS. WATCHING THEM TOGETHER WAS VERY SPECIAL.
So, why, I ask Baird, would Mimi portray her own flesh and blood, her own sister, in a negative light, and falsely broaden her own role in John’s life?
Baird stares straight at me and says, “She had been rigid in many ways. . . . I think that, at the end of her life, she was struggling with how she had lived her life.”
Baird feels that Mimi did give John guidance and some level of discipline, but that mother Julia gave him an emotional connection. She also pointed out that while married, Mimi had an affair. So, she says, the dignified aunt was flawed after all. The truth is that husband George had lost a small fortune to gambling. Mimi was devastated and became involved with a boarder. The affair, in Julia Baird’s view, contradicts the view of Mimi as a tidy, controlled, faithful guarantor of ethical standards.
As far as her own mother, the namesake insists that the tag of a young, frivolous lover is absurd.
“Fred [John’s father, Alfred] and my mother were courting on and off for ten years. How much more conventional can it get?”
More important than the subject of virtue is the effect that both women had in developing young John. Music from his mom, and something much different from her sister—together they produced a legacy of women with impact.
“When John finally took me to meet Mimi,” Yoko remembers, “Uncle George was in a corner like no one could see him. John always said that in that household, in that family, men didn’t mean anything. The women at times so dominated that men couldn’t voice their opinion.”
Was Mimi as stern and intense as she has been portrayed?
“First of all,” Yoko says, “Mimi was a handsome woman. Mimi said, ‘I always loved him.’ It must have been tough for Mimi. She was one of five sisters. She was tough, but I think in a loving way. She wasn’t musical like her sister Julia, but the discipline she handed out was good for John.”
It was an interesting tween and teenage environment that John Lennon lived in. Yoko continues, “Mimi was not into popular music and art, so John learned the classical music from Mimi and her art. Mimi wanted John to be a tweedy type, and she thought and told John he could be anything. She loved Van Gogh and certainly influenced John’s art and drawings.”
There was another aspect of Aunt Mimi that Yoko delights in:
SHE WAS VERY INTELLIGENT. VERY PERCEPTIVE. IN THE HOUSE ONE TIME SHE SAW PAUL SITTING ON A STOOL REHEARSING AND JOHN WAS ON THE FLOOR. SHE KNEW HE [PAUL] WAS PRETTY AND TALENTED AND HAD A WAY WITH PEOPLE. MIMI WARNED JOHN [ABOUT PAUL’S AMBITIONS]. SHE WAS SUSPICIOUS. JOHN WAS NERVOUS ABOUT PAUL BECAUSE MIMI WAS WARNING HIM. JOHN WAS MORE OUTGOING. LATER HE LOVED HELPING RINGO AND GEORGE, ESPECIALLY HELPING GEORGE MAKE “SOMETHING” INTO A
SINGLE. ALL THE WHILE, PAUL WAS SUGGESTING THAT JOHN WAS REALLY DOING NO FAVOR, BECAUSE HE FELT THE OTHER THREE COULD BECOME A GROUP “AGAINST ME.”
So, the prospect of a conflict between the two giants of contemporary music was a prophecy of protective Aunt Mimi.
Of course, Yoko never met mother Julia. But she did stay in close touch with Mimi, even in the years after John’s death.
About Mimi’s affair, Yoko says, “That would mean she is only human, maybe not as hard and cold” as she has been portrayed.
Julia Baird, on the other hand, is emphatic about Mimi’s affair—perhaps to deflect from her mother’s own challenges? Maybe, but the fact is that all of the Stanley women were attractive, and sought after by men. No surprise, then, that the central figure in our story became a young man in hot pursuit of women as aggressively as he was seeking the lore of rock ’n’ roll.
The domestic education was an unusual one for the skinny boy who would have to tiptoe out of the house. When that didn’t work, when Mimi heard him and would whisper through the walls, “John? Is that you, John?” he would remain undaunted and would sneak out, whether to climb the fence to visit the boys at Strawberry Field, or later, to wander out for a smoke or to meet with a girl.
Mimi scared John but also disciplined him in a productive way. Mother Julia pleased him, with valuable time spent on entertaining and enlightening him. There was no heavy lifting or tension on John’s visits with his mother, but then again, part-time mothering does have its benefits.
On the key point of the impact on a child’s mission into life, mother Julia had great influence, even on his art:
MY MOTHER HAD INFLUENCE ON THOSE FAMOUS SKETCHES. SHE TAUGHT JOHN, ME, AND MY SISTER TO DRAW IN BLACK INDIA INK ON WHITE PAPER. IT WAS THOSE MOMENTS, WHEN MY MOTHER LOVED HER ADORED CHILD, THAT SHAPED HIM, ALTHOUGH FRANKLY, HE WAS PRETTY WELL SET WITH HIS OWN MIND.
IN ORDER TO WRITE MY BOOK, I GOT IN TOUCH WITH A SCHOOL FRIEND OF JOHN’S—DAVID EPSTEIN. SADLY, HE GOT THIS DISEASE CALLED FARMER’S LUNG. HE WAS A BEEKEEPER, NOT A SMOKER. HE MUST HAVE GOTTEN IT FROM ALL THE PESTICIDES. WE GOT TO BE FRIENDS SINCE I WROTE THE BOOK, AND HE SENDS ME LITTLE BLACK-AND-WHITE SKETCHES OF CREATURES. I SAID THEY LOOK FAMILIAR. HE SAID, “I WONDERED WHEN YOU’D ASK. YOUR MOM GAVE ME THE PENS.” I RANG HIM STRAIGHTAWAY AND SAID, “PLEASE SEND THEM TO ME.” HE DID, AND THEY ARRIVED ON MY MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY. AND I RECOGNIZED THEM STRAIGHTAWAY.
I always wondered whether the young John Lennon knew he had uncommon talent. He certainly carried himself with a swagger as a twenty-three-year-old, so I assumed that he believed in his abilities.
“He knew when he was eleven that he was a genius,” Baird says. “He said, ‘If there is such a thing as a genius, then I am one.’ There are people who just know. But it still didn’t come easy. They said they did eight hundred hours of rehearsal in Hamburg alone. Then they repeated it here. They were hardly an overnight sensation. They worked at it really hard. They worked it hard for seven years.”
She emphasizes, “It didn’t come easy.”
Nothing came easy for John. Could life have been that carefree and consequential for a child searching for a father, torn between two adoring and dramatically different but equally volatile sisters? The apparent prodigy walked the line between ruination and reinvention all of his life. He soared and then he sank, and when barely out of his teens, he made a fateful mistake.
***
Sitting in 2010 in the old classroom in the Art Institute, at John’s desk, I glance over to the row that Cynthia Powell sat in. It was this classroom, traditional in its seasoned wood and elevated rows, where the eyes of John and Cynthia first met. It was eye contact and blushing first love.
Sister Julia Baird says,
AS FAR AS JOHN, IT WAS TRUE LOVE FROM THE BEGINNING. I REMEMBER IN THE COURTSHIP DAYS, SHE WAS BRIGITTE BARDOT–LIKE. [JOHN HAD AN OBSESSION WITH BARDOT.] SHE [CYNTHIA] HAS THIS GREAT BONE STRUCTURE, HIGH CHEEKBONES AND ALL. SHE STILL LOOKS GREAT, BUT SHE IS A GREAT PERSON INSIDE, TOO. IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF JOHN, SHE DOESN’T REALLY GET THE PRAISE SHE DESERVES FROM THE HISTORY WRITERS, BUT DURING SUCH A CRITICAL CREATIVE TIME IN HIS LIFE, SHE GAVE HIM THE ATMOSPHERE TO MAKE IT WORK.
Four years after John and Cynthia’s intense relationship began, the beautiful Ms. Powell advised him that she was pregnant. The times and his own personal philosophy meant that marriage was a mandate. The baby, Julian, was born in April 1963. Young sisters Julia and Jackie became aunts at a very young age to Julian.
Time and subsequent remarriages by Cynthia Powell Lennon have not changed Julia Baird’s view of her. “She is a wonderful person. She has a great son [Julian]. During those years, she was dutiful and faithful. Jackie and I love them very much.”
For John, in that era, the marriage was a stumbling block, but he never let anyone know until years later. Although John was viewed as caustic and uncaring, he loved his son, but in that relationship, he lost his way. He rarely bonded with Julian. When May Pang—John’s former secretary and girlfriend for eighteen months in 1973 and 1974—arranged for Cynthia and Julian to visit the couple in California, a maternal instinct on the part of May, there were some flickers of chemistry between father and son, but apparently not enough to sustain a close relationship.
In the professional style of the early Beatles, John could be caustic, but the memories of his peers tell a lot about the young leader.
There are those who say that people never change. It is true that John’s hard side was always there, but the softer, unselfish piece of his personality, always on view, has rarely been chronicled.
Billy J. Kramer has the stories to prove it. His legal name was William Howard Ashton. When young star Billy Kramer began his ascent in Great Britain, John, his contemporary, suggested that he add the middle initial “J.” to his stage name, telling him it was “much stronger.” And in an extraordinarily unselfish act, John graciously offered two songs to him.
“It was my twentieth birthday. We were all at Bournemouth. John surprised me, said he had a song exclusively for me. It was called ‘Bad to Me,’ a Lennon-McCartney early creation. He also offered me, ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret,’ and it became a hit in Britain even as the Beatles released it on their own.”
“What was the motive?” I ask.
“He liked me, and it was really quite unselfish. I did ask him to let me cover ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ I think it was a stretch. This was during a meeting at Abbey Road. He smiled and said, ‘I think, Billy, we are going to save that for ourselves, if you know what I mean.’ I laughed, too.”
To put the caring, unselfish side of Lennon in perspective, consider this: Billy J. Kramer was a competitor, yet Lennon went out of his way to help Kramer’s career. In one of the early Mersey Beat polls, Kramer finished third behind the first-place Beatles. Although they shared a manager, Brian Epstein, for a while, Kramer was a genuine, viable contender. Still, the song “Bad to Me” was written by John, for Billy, during a vacation in Spain. John’s generosity for people he genuinely respected was unlimited. “Bad to Me” became a number-one hit for Kramer in England in 1963, and hit the top ten in America. It was the first hit penned by Lennon (although “Lennon-McCartney” is on the credits, as was their agreement) for another artist to make it in America.
Much has been said about the style and substance of John Lennon. My own work has been criticized by people who never met the man as much too soft and sometimes patronizing. From his youthful womanizing to his violent temper, the view of John is complex, but the facts and the testimony of the living and dead, speaking of John’s lifelong musical philanthropy, are the truth.
Billy J. Kramer views John’s musical offerings as proof of the nature of the man, even as a young and aspiring entertainer.
“This was a complete man, a person who really cared about people, but real people. I guess we hit it off. I know everybody says how he and the guys changed life and entertainment, but in this case, he really changed one life: mine.”
Another Billy, Billy Kinsley, founder of the band the Merseybeats, remembers the generous nature of the boys during so many concerts at the Cavern, Tower Ballroom, and Litherland Town Hall. Kinsley has vivid memories of John:
HE WAS THE LEADER, EVEN AT TWENTY OR TWENTY-ONE. HE DID IT WITH HIS BODY LANGUAGE. HE COULD BE A BIT CAUSTIC. PAUL WAS VERY PLEASANT AND COURTEOUS, AS WAS HIS STYLE. GEORGE WAS QUIET THEN. AND PETE, MY FRIEND TO THIS DAY, WAS SUBDUED BUT [WAS], AND IS TODAY, A KIND AND SENSITIVE PERSON. I THINK JOHN SET AN EXAMPLE FOR COURTESY; JOHN WOULD DO ANYTHING TO MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE, AND HE DID IT WITH HUMOR AND A SMILE. HE ALMOST, AT TIMES—AND SOMETIMES WITH HIS HANDS AND HIS SMILE—CHEERED ON THE OTHER BANDS, ESPECIALLY BILLY J. AND OUR BAND. I KNOW HE HAD HIS ISSUES IN THE TIME, BUT HE WAS A REAL MAN, KIND AND GIVING.
“Kind and giving.” Did his teachers know that John had the potential to be a giver as well as a taker?
It is amazing in life, isn’t it, that the real potential of people is often overlooked in the standards set by the people who guide us through the early years. And remember the famous quote by a teacher, “This boy is bound to fail.” It’s an easy one to remember, isn’t it? How many fine teachers may have missed the potential of their students?
As you look at the infancy and maturation in the life of John Lennon, you may think of a question: Was the teacher talking about a grade, a course, a test, or the triumphs and travails of a life itself?
“Grading” John Lennon? Try it at your own risk, but know one certainty: whether it was the period when he was a “boy,” or his budding success and fame in 1963, John was closer to that complete man that Billy J. talks about—brooding, triumphant, confused, indignant, determined, soothing, unselfish, irresponsible, sensitive, and giving.
From the boys at Strawberry Fields, to the kids chasing him at an early Quarrymen gig, to the invitation to Paul to join his band, and to his magnanimous gestures to fellow artists like Billy J. Kramer and Billy Kinsley, even during his own struggle to succeed, John was a complete man.