The Real Lennon - By Aunt Mimi (1981)

 The Real Lennon

 by Aunt Mimi 

Daily Star

 February 6-7, 1981 

    We lived seven miles out of Liverpool itself, and John never even knew the city until he went to art college when he was 17. Even then, I went with him. He grew up in a fairly well self-contained community, and his grammar school, Quarry Bank, was just a couple of bus stops away. 

    There was never any need for him to go into Liverpool, and he certainly never had a scouse accent that was completely put on. When I asked him why he did it, he just went into one of his crazy acts. He stretched his hand out like a demented Fagin, saying, "Money, money, money."  Then he curled up with laughter on the settee.

     I know John had this tough, aloof, rather sarcastic image. He loved that really. It was one way he could have a protective shell and a bit of fun at the same time. The real John Lennon was nothing like that, but he was never prepared to suffer fool questions. I remember one hilarious moment when a TV personality had the Beatles on his show. He was terrified that John would make him look small, so he rang me up and begged me for information about a chink in his armor. I told him about John's weakness at school, his maths were terrible. When the show came on the TV, the man repeated this and asked, "How come you can count all the money you're making?" John didn't bat an eyelid. "I don't count it. I weigh it", he told him, with this deadpan face. John's sense of humor helped him to keep his feet on the ground, but I always brought him down with a bump as well. 

    The parents of some of the other Beatles were horrified when I said the boys were lucky. The mums and dads were behaving like royalty, almost giving audiences to people. I just laughed about it with John and called them stray Dukes. Of course, the boys were talented, and of course I was proud of what John achieved, but he knew exactly what I meant, and he told me, "Mimi, you're right. We've been lucky."

     My relationship with John was based on a deep love and respect. I became his mother, father, confidante, and friend. It all began the wartime day when I first saw him as a newborn baby. John's father, he's dead now, was a seaman. He jumped ship in New York a few months later and never came back. But I saw little John every day. I never missed when he was a toddler. My late husband, George, and I took him in. His mother, my sister, Julia, met someone else, but there was never any question of us handing him back. We didn't have children of our own, and it was a joy having this bouncy bundle of fun around the house. 

    The house next door was run by the Salvation Army as a home for orphan children. Its name was Strawberry Fields, later made famous in the Beatles song. Even as a little boy, John was always very quick. He was reading and writing by the time he was four. His uncle, George, used to sit him on his knee with the Liverpool Post, and they would go through the words together. George worshiped him. I was always the one who had to order him upstairs when he was naughty. But even then, he would say things like, "You won't be able to order me around when I'm famous."

     George worked in the family's dairy farming business, and he and John were really conspirators. If I ever sent John to his room, George would slip upstairs with his comics, The Eagle and The Beano. I soon realized that sending John up to bed was no hardship. He was quite happy quietly reading his books for hours on end. Unusual, perhaps, but John really did what people expected.

     Years later, when he stopped making records for a while and wasn't seen around New York with Yoko, the world thought he had gone into seclusion. In fact, he wasn't in seclusion at all. And when he said he was a house husband, that was another of his funny send-ups; he might have experimented a bit in the kitchen, but really, he and Yoko spent the time traveling around the world. 

    In the last few months, he developed a passion for the past. He bought a farm, and when I asked him what for, he said, "Well, Uncle George was a farmer, wasn't he?" It wasn't often that he mentioned Uncle George, not since his death. George died suddenly when John was on a school trip to Scotland. When he got back, he threw open the door and bounced in as usual, shouting, "Where's Uncle George then?"  I was so upset that I just blurted out, "John, he's dead." He was shattered, and from that moment on, I was totally responsible for him. It was a sense of responsibility I never lost.

    Remember all that gossip about the great rift between John Lennon and Paul McCartney? Well, it was all rubbish. John and Paul realized that they couldn't end up as 50-year-olds playing guitar together. The very idea had them in fits. To develop, they knew that they had to go their own way, and having done that, there was no going back.

     John and Paul often used to meet in New York when they were supposed to be at loggerheads. When one tycoon suggested the Beatles should reform and get paid millions of dollars, John said to Paul, "Let's go down and say we're taking him on just for a laugh." You see, the whole idea was absurd to them at the time. So they developed as individuals, and they developed their music. John used to say to me, "Mimi, can you imagine me as an ancient Beatle?"  That explains why they never went up, but they treasured those years and their friendship, and I treasured them too. 

    I remember the birth of the Beatles. I wasn't very keen on the whole idea. I had devoted all my energies to seeing John throughout art college, but he was like me, too much of a gypsy in his soul. I first saw John perform in public at a church fete with Paul McCartney, a childhood friend. I next saw him at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. It was at a lunchtime meeting place for secretaries and clerical workers, with an area the size of a postage stamp reserved for the band. I was livid. There I was paying for John to go to college, and here he was performing on stage when he should have been studying. He didn't realize his Aunt Mimi was watching him from the audience because he couldn't see without his glasses. But afterwards, I gave him a piece of my mind and ordered him back to college. 

    You can imagine what I felt when I suddenly saw him up there on stage, bashing his guitar with the others when he should have been in class. The boys were very lucky, really, that their manager was Brian Epstein. Brian realized there was something commercial there; the boys fell about laughing when he asked to manage them. They were just doing it for a lark. I told Brian about my misgivings of a pop career for John, and he said, "Don't worry, Mimi, I'll take care of John. He's my friend."

     John and the other boys started taping their early hits, "Love Me Do" and " Please, Please Me." I can't say I was over-impressed with them, and I kept on at Brian that I wanted John to finish college. I think Brian really cared about the group. And hopped the demo tapes all over the place. 

    Decca turned them down, and then George Martin heard them. It was funny, really. Martin knew they had some quality, but told John he could not put his finger on it. Their music was new, and their attitudes were new, and they weren't prepared to be pushed around. Then the whole thing exploded, and it hit like a bombshell. One minute, it was the Cavern Club, the next, they were the world's biggest band. There was no way of stopping or controlling it. 

    The first I knew about it was when girls started camping outside our house. I thought they were crazy, but they said they were waiting for John. Then the phone started to ring all day and all night, I ended up screaming down the phone that John wasn't in.

     In the end, I moved away to Bournemouth. It was the only way to preserve my sanity. But John developed his life along other lines and did his own thing. He made music when he felt like it.

     He always loved New York because it reminded him of the earthiness and vibrancy of Liverpool. He could feel a special relationship with that city. I'm just so terribly sad that it was the violence of that city that took his life.