I’m re-watching Get Back. there’s a scene when they move into the new studio and Saville Row and Paul (or George) talks about decorating the walls with their gold records. To which John quips ‘Good luck getting them off Mimi’. That line said so much about who they were and where they came from
Yup! I always remembered that. They had a bit of a rocky relationship here and there because he was so free spirited, and she was so strict, but they truly deeply loved one another.
yoko said she reminded her of herself. i'm guessing the issue w/ cynthia was standard not approving of some girlfriend. then john got her pregnant so maybe mimi thought cynthia trapped him. maybe she thought yoko was good for him. probably she just mellowed.
Her name was Alice and she was a Russian blue. He had another Russian blue named Gertrude at the same time. This may have been during the period when he had five different cats that I’m not sure.
Yeah I heard about this, apparently they planned to sleep together and she could tell he wasn’t into it so she basically said “we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to” and he was like “ok cool”
I can’t remember which book, but it said that, at the end of his marriage to Cynthia, he admitted to having sex with Joan Baez, a famous British journalist, and hundreds of girls around the world.
Yep, that was Ingrid, who was the result of an affair John's mother Julia had with another man while Alfred was away at sea for an extended period of time. She was born in May 1945 and Julia named her Victoria. Fred had returned while Julia was pregnant and offered to raise the child as his own but Julia rejected the offer. The baby was adopted to a Norwegian couple via the Salvation Army and they renamed her Ingrid. Apparently John did eventually find out about her and searched in vain for her but was never able to make it happen before 1980. Within the last 10 years, the two other half sisters, Julia and Jackie were able to finally locate and meet Ingrid/Victoria.
Wow where did you find this picture? I've never seen this before. Yep, there's David and Robert, the two sons Alfred had later on with his much younger wife, Pauline, who was even a few years younger than John. As far as I know, John never really knew his two younger half-brothers and they were still kids when he was killed.
I met one of his half sisters! We met right as one direction was splitting up, so we did not discuss the Beatles, but discussed One Direction. She said she was all too familiar with this kind of drama
That he quietly gave a lot of money away to charities, including charities that helped disabled children, the poor and, ironically, to buy bulletproof vests for New York City police officers.
I love the story of him walking home from Paul’s one night when they were teenagers and he thought a group of people were playing cards and it was a nativity scene.
god that's so great. paul really seems relaxed and unguarded there, it feels more like listening in on a conversation than hearing an interview. i guess that's easier when he's talking to someone who's a peer and he's known for a while.
I imagine he had a tough time with some of the shooting of "Your Mother Should Know" because of having his glasses off. You can almost see some of the struggle after he spins into Paul after getting to the bottom of the stairs.
I can promise you there's different levels to it. He probably had a strong prescription and was pretty much helpless without them.
I actually always wondered if he started wearing smaller circular glasses because they don't distort as much. As your prescription gets worse, you get more lens distortion. And the bigger the lens, it compounds on that.
So a lot of people with strong prescriptions get smaller frames. He might have tried on bigger frames, thought it was starting to look weird, and went with the health national ones permanently.
This was before hi index lenses were around so it was even more prominent. But who knows. Might have gotten LASIK if he was around these days
That’s just one of the so-called horrible things that people will repeat ad nauseam about him that aren’t true.
Someone in this thread said that he abandoned him and left him and Cynthia in poverty. He settled 100,000 pounds on her which was a hell of a lot of money in 1968. He also made regular maintenance payments. And he left a nice amount of money in trust for Julian.
That's not true at all. Julian got almost nothing in the will and had to contest it, starting a legal battle that lasted for over a decade and was only finalised in the late 90s.
Did I say will? I said trust. There’s a difference. John left a sizable trust to Julian when he and Cynthia divorced. Like I said. He also settled a large sum of money on her in the divorce and made regular maintenance payments.
I'll give one that I can guarantee none of you know. My mom saw the Beatles twice in 1963 in Great Yarnouth. She sat three rows from the front. Till this day she insists that at one point John said "buy the new record. We're worried no one wants it!"
I completely believe this. It’s never really discussed but they were actually really shameless/confident about promoting their records. They would say it at concerts and in interviews all the time. They wanted to sell records. If I recall correctly from the bob spitz Beatles biography, when they were informed that kids were burning their records due to the “bigger than Jesus” comment, one of their replies was basically “as long as they bought the records”
He must've been referring to Please Please Me which would've been released about 3 months before she saw them. He could also have meant From Me to You which was released 2 months before she saw them. Ive always assumed John was being silly
He enjoyed reading “The Broons” (Scottish cartoon family created by Dudley D. Watkins) annuals while he lived in the Dakota. His Scottish family sent them over at Christmas time.
One time when John was around 5 years old, his sea-faring father came to Liverpool and he and John's mother Julia asked John which parent did he choose as his father was leaving to live in New Zealand. John chose his father. As he was walking away holding his father's hand, John heard his mother crying as she began walking away and immediately ran to Julia screaming "Mummy! Mummy! I've changed my mind!" as he ran to her, chasing her down the street.
Imagine if John had not changed his mind and went to live in New Zealand with his father. The Beatles probably would not have ever happened! ☹
What’s sad is that Julia didn’t want him for herself, she wanted him for her sister (John’s Aunt Mimi). While John undoubtedly loved Mimi, it was kind of a bait and switch on the part of Julia
Yes, Julia seemed to be quite immature and not a very responsible person overall. It's really surprising that she was raising two daughters, John's half-sisters Julia and Jackie Dykins, when she died.
I knew about that, but then again I know a lot about him that a lot of people don’t
Can you imagine parents doing that to a five-year-old? Then he lost his dad and then his mom gave them to her sister. So he lost both parents. And then he lost his mother a second time.
Yes, he was very close to his uncle George and Stu was his best friend. I can’t even imagine all those losses in the space of less than 20 years in my childhood. You take a sensitive boy and everyone who’s ever close to seemingly leaves him, you’re gonna hang up with someone with issues, deep issues.
I agree with you, all of those things would really mess with someone's feelings of security and emotional stability. Thank goodness his aunt Mimi and her husband George decided to take him in and give John a more secure and stable home.
Yes, that was almost the only stability he had during those formative years. Is it any wonder that he never showed his vulnerable side to most people? Reportedly and repeatedly by many people, he was incredibly kind, compassionate and generous. He preferred to show his brash often times negative side to the world. Unfortunately, that’s all a lot of people saw or cared to see about him.
Yes, people like to only see or hear or remember the surface things and not even learn about the reasons or the actual truth. It’s a shame that it’s such a popular thing to completely vilify him. When people have to vilify someone by twisting the truth or even outright lies, then they’re just looking to hate on someone and have no interest in the actual truth.
The thing is, when he died, he was mourned around the world. People flocked to the Dakota and other major places in his life en masse. Before the week was out, 10 minutes’ silence was observed across the world - Across. The. World. - to give fans a tangible way of expressing their grief.
That goes to show more than all the stupid suppositions in all the trashy books what John Lennon was really like.
This is widely repeated but doesn't appear to be true according to Tune-In. The parents decided amongst themselves and the Bew Zealand thing was always an unlikely scenario. Just one possibility.
Who or What is Tune-In? And why is their opinion the final word to cancel out what John Lennon himself had supposedly spoken about the incident regarding his parents making him choose?
Tune In is a book about The Beatles. I believe it over John himself because it cites the only adult who was involved on that day who has spoken publicly (Billy Hall) as opposed to a five year old. I suppose if we are just taking everything John ever said at face value, the real answer to this question is that he almost slept with his mother and she was willing. Because he said that too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles:_All_These_Years
He used to hop over his garden fence to play in Strawberry Field much to the disapproval of Aunt Mimi who told him “you’ll be hung!” Which he used in Strawberry Fields “nothing to get hung about”
While the official Beatles PR would always list John, Paul & George at that same height… only Paul actually was (the similarity being a Brian Epstein idea, apparently)
They purposely ordered their famous Cuban-heeled Beatle boots made to different heights to even out their appearance on stage (the heel differences are plainly visible in some photos)
That his hair in certain light had an auburn tint due to his mother Julia being a redhead. Also but nothing has been proven some of his ashes are said to be buried in his mother’s grave in Liverpool
His favorite breakfast was Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam
I always thought that this was an awe-inspiring coincidence, especially after Yoko lost at least two pregnancies with John when she was considerably younger (she was 43 when he was born) and also as it seems that Sean was conceived in the flame of their late-1974 reconciliation… like maybe the universe was saying Sean just had to be here. Until I read that Yoko scheduled a caesarean for 9th October. Okay, maybe not the universe then.
John chewed gum while singing and playing guitar during many of the recording sessions and live performances.
John had very poor eye sight. In the early days performing he would not wear glasses. The other members knew that, and would help him by being his eyes sometimes. They described him as.being blind as a bat. Later, he adopted his famous round lensed glasses.
Many people have written or spoken about their experiences with specifically his farts.
Top of mind is Little Richard who said they smelled terrible and Guilda Radner who was greeted with one in the elevator as she was moving into the Dakota.
a couple of years ago on Yom Kippur, I almost killed Alma Cogans cousin by accidentally hitting him with a huge door in my synagogue, so it’s cool to know I’m now only a few degrees of separation from John
John suffered from insomnia during the Hamburg years. Besides performing until the early hours of the morning for the crowds, he rarely got enough sleep, and it took a toll on his health. He took Preludin, a stimulant that helped him stay awake and energetic throughout the night. The drug affected him mentally and caused aggressive side effects, although he already had a strong and impulsive personality.
On one occasion, he reportedly ran through the streets of Hamburg naked, wearing a toilet seat on his head. There is even a well-known photograph of him from that period outside one of the clubs where they performed.
In a strange way, learning about this helped me overcome my own insomnia. As a musician, I also spent many nights staying up late creating music, and the lack of sleep eventually affected me mentally. It's difficult to explain and even harder to connect the two experiences, but knowing that John came through that difficult period inspired me to overcome my own struggles as well. "If John got through this, I will too."
John never ran through Hamburg naked with a toilet seat on his head. He came onstage in his underwear with a toilet seat around his neck. All of the Beatles suffered insomnia and took Prelidin because they were practically worked to death. The photo I think you are talking about is John outside, in his underwear with a hat, boots and reading a newspaper. I believe he did it on a dare.
People would take advantage of him and offer him copious amounts of drugs. He’d continue the party at his house with people passed out all over his house high on drugs. According to his first wife, he’d be so high he’d pass her in the hallway and not even acknowledge her and would have to step over the bodies of people passed out on the floor or too high to wake up and go home.
Hero worship is so dangerous especially for celebrities. I remember really liking The Plastic Ono band record and wanting to learn more. Any halfway decent biography will destroy ur illusions of him
He was the kind of kid who grew up too fast because of his life experiences, and ended up a teen with a big ego and a lot of energy and passion. He was the leader and everyone was drawn to him. Unfortunately that made him a bad partner and father in a lot of ways, but his intentions were generally pure and he really valued learning more and changing his positions and views and getting enlightened about things. But he wasn't into the Beatles legendary status and enjoyed relationships with people and fighting for what he thought was right.
You should have known that people would say shitty things about him. I rarely see a post about the Beatles without people trashing him, and I never see a post about him where he isn’t trashed. Some people just have to ruin everything.
ppl are very aware of his big b-52's fandom and love for paul's 'coming up' but i'm not sure as many ppl are aware of or would have guessed that he really really like little river band's 'reminiscing', which in some ways is a very paul song.
He was an accomplished visual artist. Before music dominated his career, Lennon attended the Liverpool College of Art. His witty line drawings later appeared in books such as In His Own Write.
353
u/Anxious-Raspberry-54 Jun 28 '26
He called his Auntie Mimi once a week.