Lennon Lives Forever

Maybe it's surprising or simply incidental that all this self-interest affected us in such wondrous and valuable ways. Or maybe it isn't incidental at all. The marvel of John Lennon's story is that all he really wanted was peace for his own interests — he hated feeling hurt, and he felt it his whole life — and in pursuing that end, he changed the times around him and the possibilities of the times that followed him. Deep-running hurt drove him. It's what made his story.

"You're born in pain," Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970, after he had just left the Beatles, "and pain is what we're in most of the time. And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need."

Lennon's pain reached back to his earliest memories — and cut through his entire life. Without it, his most memorable and lasting artistic creation — the Beatles — would likely never have happened, or at least would not have accomplished what they finally accomplished.

Lennon was born in Liverpool, in northern England, on October 9th, 1940, during the days when Britain was the primary major democratic force willing to stand up against the advancement of fascism in Europe. Liverpool was one of England's leading port towns and a frequent target of Nazi bombing raids. On the night of Lennon's birth, air-raid sirens announced an impending attack, and the city shut out its lights. John Lennon was born that night into darkness. Though the city was hit hard and often, Liverpudlians were resilient people, with rough manners, harsh humor and a spirit of proud individualism. They needed those qualities, since much of southern England — particularly London — regarded the city as a plebeian backwater. "We were looked down upon by the Southerners as animals," he said in 1970. "We were hicksville."

Whereas the other young men who eventually joined Lennon to form the Beatles — Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — grew up in housing projects and tougher parts of Liverpool, Lennon was raised in relative comfort, in his aunt Mimi's home in the cozy suburb of Mendips. But that benefit didn't shield the young boy from other deprivations. His father, Alfred, was a ship's steward and liked to drink; his mother, Julia, was impulsive and rebellious — traits that Lennon inherited. Julia and Alfred married young, in a burst of passion in 1938, and John Winston Lennon was born two years later. Alfred, however, was often at sea, sometimes for a year or more, and in 1944, Julia became pregnant by another man. Alfred returned home in 1946, and when he couldn't put his family back together, he told the five-year-old John to choose between his father and mother. John at first chose his father, but when he saw the pain this was causing Julia, he relented, crying, begging his mother not to leave him. John would not see his father again until well into his fame in the Beatles; in 1970, when he severed his relationship with Alfred, Lennon still felt rage over the neglect from years before. "Have you any idea what I've been through because of you?" he screamed at his father. "Day after day in therapy, screaming for my daddy, sobbing for you to come home. What did you care, away at sea all those years?"

As it turned out, neither of Lennon's parents raised him. Julia's family was offended by her extramarital conduct, and Julia's sister Mimi took custody of the boy. Mimi was stern — nothing like Julia. She tried to give Lennon a steady home and firm direction, though she was often unwilling to accommodate his youthful enthusiasms, and she withheld love unless he pleased her judgments.

Julia's influence, on the other hand, was immense. Whether she meant to or not, Julia provided her son a model of social defiance; she didn't feel bound by proper conventions and easy morals, and neither would John. She also encouraged his fervor for rock & roll.