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