Cut for Reasons: John Lennon's Tragic Backstory

Thankfully I haven't gotten a huge amount of "well actually" and "What about?" with the Yoko/Beatles video, but I did write a segment addressing John's tragic backstory and his alleged history of violence. It was cut before I got around to recording it because Angelina, correctly imo, talked me out of it. The main purpose of this segment wasn't to contribute to the overarching thesis of the video, but to pre-empt bad faith criticism against John, and in my old age, I have tired of trying to pre-empt bad faith criticism if it's not in service of the underlying purpose of the video.

Now, there are times when pre-emptions of bad faith interpretations are integral--HBomberguy's video on plagiarism is a good example, because of how Somerton had so successfully manipulated his audience into doing his dirty work for him that a lot of groundwork had to be laid in order to make the plagiarism accusations stick. However, this is not that; anyone who has any interest in the life of John Lennon isn't going to simply stop at "lol didn't he beat his wife" - we all contain multitudes, and Lennon was a particularly complicated public figure. He's not so "complicated" that I cannot love him as deeply as one can love any long-dead celebrity (no matter how WRONG he was about Abbey Road, smh John), but he was complicated. Even more complicated was Julian Lennon's relationship to his dead father, which evolved radically throughout Julian's life, and we could do a whole 'nother 2 hour video on that. Julian turned 61 this year, and if nothing else he does seem somewhat at peace now with his father's legacy and his relationship to it, but at the risk of going into tangent-land I didn't go into that.

Anyway, it was the right call to cut the section on John's Tragic Backstory to keep the focus more on Yoko and the work/activism he did with her, but here's that segment, in outline form, because that's how my video scripts are written (it makes them easier to read):

• Some John backstory - and I don’t want this to come across as apologia but rather context 

• Born to Alfred and Julia Lennon in 1940, his father abandoned the family not long after his birth. He came back when John was 5 years old and his parents pressed upon the five year old Lennon - you must choose. Choose between mommy and daddy, little johnny. But whoever you choose you’ll never see the other one again! This will not scar your six year old psyche. John chose his mother, and would not see his father again for 20 years, whereupon Alfred realized the son he abandoned was now a millionaire.

• Regardless, John’s aunt Mimi, who had no children of her own, gained custody of him after making several reports to social services over concerns about Julia’s lifestyle, living in sin out of wedlock with other men, that sort of thing. 

• Mimi basically raised John alongside her husband, George, who was a much warmer presence in John’s life as well as the closest thing John had to a father,. John saw his mother occasionally, increasingly often when he was a teenager. It was Julia who taught John about music, particularly her love of Elvis Presley and playing banjo. She bought him his first guitar and kept it at her house, as Mimi did not support his musical aspirations. According to Mimi,

  • "The guitar's all very well, John, but you'll never make a living out of it."

• By his late teens Julia visited John every day. John loved spending time with Julia, who was fun and free spirited and artistic, unlike his cold, emotionally unavailable trunchbull of an aunt, Mimi. One day in 1958, while walking home and visiting John, Julia was struck by a car, killing her instantly. John was 17 years old.

• This was devastating for young John, who began drinking heavily and developed a violent streak he’d struggle his whole life to control 

• John also lost his uncle George as a teenager. Then in the early days of the Beatles when they were still playing hamburg, john lost his best friend and founding Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe at 21 years old to a brain hemorrhage just hours before John, Paul and George arrived in Hamburg to visit him. Then came Brian’s death a few years after that.

• So it’s safe to say by his mid-20’s john had experienced more tragedy than most. 

• So let’s talk about all that wife-beating

• Cynthia

  • john clearly had a lot of guilt about being an abusive fuckboy that came out a lot in his Beatles lyrics

    • Examples - “getting better,” “run for your life”

    • He would go onto say this - “That was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically ― any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything’s the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.”

  • Cynthia wouldn’t go on the record until 20 years after his death, and claims that John never hit her while they were married. Cynthia’s book - JOHN - mostly exonerates John of the majority of accusations leveled against him (even though the book itself is full of some very, very sour grapes). Apparently for most of their marriage he was a pretty good, loving husband and father, when he wasn’t working (which was most of the time). He was never emotionally abusive as many claim and their marriage didn’t start to fall apart until drugs came along, which Cynthia cites as the main factor in the disintegration of their marriage.

  • According to Cynthia he was only physically abusive once when they were teenagers, years before they were married. 

    • Sound bite of cynthia saying she’d have left him if he did it again

    • According to Cynthia his behavior only tipped to emotional abuse and gaslighting once Yoko came along, by which point he’d checked out of the marriage anyway. But he was never physically abusive during their marriage, and was never physically abusive to his children at all.

    • Less juicy than "wife beating" - There’s just something less tantalizing about “did you know john lennon stonewalled his wife”?

  • Cynthia also vehemently denies the charge that he was forced into marriage by her pregnancy, that he resented her and Julian and was always looking to get out - according to her he was into the whole marriage and family thing until he found his new love interest - LSD. And that came into the picture years before Yoko did (though let's be clear--there is no love lost between Yoko and Cynthia).

  • Julia/Julian

    • And with time flat circling himself, John ended up doing to Julian what both of his parents did to him. He seems to have been convinced that Cynthia cheated on him and betrayed him, which she denied, and the result is that he didn’t speak to Julian for a few years at one point in the early 70’s. But over time, particularly in the last year of John’s life, he started spending more time with Julian. Julian would fly out to New York a few times a year, John would teach him about music. They’d talk on the phone. John was the artistic, free-spirited presence in Julian’s life in contrast to his mother. And then John died. Julian was 17 years old.