My Father the Beatle
John Lennon
John Lennon was a songwriter and musician, born in Liverpool, England, in 1940. Together with his friends Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and later Ringo Starr, he was a member of the Beatles, one of the most popular and influential bands in the world. He was assassinated in 1980 in New York City and is survived by his sons, Julian and Sean, and his second wife, Yoko Ono.
John and Julian (five years old) posing in front of John’s psychedelic Rolls-Royce, in Liverpool, UK, 1968
alot of my happy memories of my father are from the late 1960s at Kenwood, the old Tudor house we had in Surrey, England, when I was a little boy. The house had a front-room lounge with windows that faced west where I used to watch the sunset. That was the main hang. Without knowing it, I probably saw some of the greatest musicians in the world come and go through that room.
I remember sitting on the roof of that house with my dad making a balsa-wood airplane. There was a great view from up there. As a kid, I thought my dad was pretty happy—with the family, the family home, and his place in the world. Who could have predicted that everything was about to change?
The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. At the time, my dad had his famous psychedelic Rolls-Royce Phantom V, which I adored because it had a record player in the back. We also had a Honda monkey bike, a mini motorcycle we used to ride around on. Ringo lived down the road, and my dad would take me to see him on the monkey bike. My dad had a great sense of humor. He loved Peter Sellers and had a comedic sensibility I naturally shared. You see it in some of his sketches and in his book A Spaniard in the Works.
At Kenwood, my father and I were close. So close, in fact, that though my first name is also John, I started to get called Julian or Jules since when my mum would shout, “John, your dinner’s ready!” both my dad and I would react. Then suddenly he literally disappeared off the face of the planet. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. He and Yoko Ono were deeply, and publicly, in love. And I felt like my mum and I had been cast aside. Not everyone forgot about us, though. Paul wrote “Hey Jules” after dropping in to check how my mum and I were doing. (Obviously, the title of the song changed.)
Maybe ten years passed during which my dad and I barely spoke. I was very angry about how he left the family. It was thanks to my mum that we started having conversations again. She was such a gentle soul, never vindictive in any way, shape, or form. My mum got brushed off, and she struggled with it for years, but she always wanted me to have a relationship with my dad.
I was scared the first time I went to visit him in the United States after my parents’ divorce. I was becoming more aware of the magnitude of this man. I was fixated on an episode that had occurred years before during a trip to Montauk, when he became very angry at me for laughing. I had an uncontrollable nervous giggle as a child, which upset him a great deal. My dad had berated me, telling me to shut up. So I was worried about that. Much to my relief, the visit was a success. There was a lot of laughter—but not from nervousness. My dad was charming and funny and warm. From that trip on, I remember us getting along better. We had some good times after that, less as father and son but more as friends, or maybe a combination of both.
In fact, I often return to another memory, one that reminds me of the time we made the balsa-wood plane at Kenwood. In 1979, the remains of Hurricane David were coming toward Long Island, and I was standing with my dad on the lawn at a rented house near Montauk. There were 100-kilometer winds sweeping through, and my half brother, Sean, was with us. We were just enjoying one another’s company, watching the storm approach, and I recall it was the first day we all spent together.
Even though I was playing guitar before I was in my teens, I hesitated to enter the music business because of who my dad was. I would send him the odd cassette of me playing live, or song ideas I had recorded on a little Sony Walkman he had given me as a gift. He warmly encouraged me to continue playing, but sadly, he never really got to see my career unfold, as he passed when I was seventeen. When I did finally become a professional musician a few years later, I felt like I understood him better. I experienced just a fraction of the mania that he did, but I got a sense of what it’s like when thousands of people are waiting outside your hotels, trying to rip off your clothes when you come or go. I can’t imagine going through that with a wife and kid at home.
I can certainly understand why my dad did a lot of what he did, particularly in terms of keeping his emotions bottled up inside, hidden especially from those he loved. The Lennon men seem to be always running off, singing and playing the guitar, looking for a way to express ourselves. I understand the frustration my dad had when it came to that, and I’m grateful that at least he found his way through his music. I just wish he could have done that a bit more with me, as a father, too.
I try to remember my dad as fondly as possible. I strive for forgiveness and understanding in that area of my life, for the difficult times he put my mum and me through. I loved her more than anything and can’t forget how poorly he treated her. But our relationship was getting better before he died. He was in a happier place. He wanted to reconnect, not just with me but with the rest of his family in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. He never got a chance to do so. Even now, almost forty years after my father died, and almost five years after my mum passed away, I try to hold my father’s memory dear. I imagine that’s what he would have wanted. That’s what my mum would have wanted. And that’s what I would like, too.