I Can't Join in the "St. John" Line

John Lennon is one of the last century's most well known cultural icons. The Beatles, the bed ins, the granny glasses and the long hair. Pretty much everyone knows who he is, and of course he receives the customary (posthumous) adulation that this level of fame brings, which is a lot. His advocacy of the peace movement that formed in his lifetime due to fall out from; amongst other things the Vietnam war and the harsh backlash to the civil rights movements has cemented him in the eyes of his fans, as one of the key figures of the time. Songs like "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine" in particular have become almost secular hymns in their own right. I'm even sure the Jesus like long hair, and the white suits and robes played their part in his almost saintly mythos. I had a first hand experience of the St Lennon phenomenon at a "Bootleg Beatles" concert at the Manchester Apollo a few years ago, on the anniversary of his death. The renditions of "Imagine" and his Christmas tune, accompanied with his portrait had the feel of a quasi religious eulogy. In a way this is understandable on some levels. Lennon's senseless death was a genuine tragedy, and such a waste of a genuine talent. There is a grim irony that such a vocal advocate of peace was violently gunned down in the street. But as I thought when I saw this, and when I watched a BBC4 drama about Lennon, from when Brian Epstein killed himself to Yoko and him moving to the US, Lennon really wasn't an angelic figure. If you see past his genuine talent, and the good (as well as dodgy or naive) causes he espoused, he was a man, and a flawed one at that.

Almost anything written about Lennon's life will openly demonstrate that he was; what we would now say was "emotionally retarded". He was troubled, and had a troubled upbringing. Abandoned by his feckless father, and palmed off by his mother to an aunt who brow beat him mercilessly, and had little appreciation of her charges musical talent. He comes across in even sympathetic biographies as chippy, and unable to empathise with people on a normal emotional level, to the point of callousness. Less sympathetic biographies point to him openly mocking disabled strangers and his insensitivity towards his friend Stuart Sutcliffes girlfriend when Stuart died of a brain hemorrhage.

But the two people who really received the brunt of his callous nature where his ex wife Cynthia and his son Julian. Cynthia was rather conventional and straight laced, compared with her wayward and unconventional husband (seems likely they only married because she fell pregnant) he had little appreciation for this situation, and could never understand that she could not apply herself to his more wayward lifestyle, as many wouldn't be able too. He did manage to even bully her into taking acid. In Ray Coleman's sympathetic biography of him, Coleman all but berates her for being a bad wife for being to square for her husband. He was certainly very cruel to her as a husband, for very little justification. The way he blankly didn't react when she returned home to find him having a post shag smoke with Yoko, was really setting the bar for spousal twattery. He seems to have needed to have it spelled out to him that a woman whose marriage has fallen to bits might be a bit down, when he accuses her of being glum for "winning the fucking pools" in the divorce settlement. His lack of empathy almost seem to border on anti social disorder.

If Lennon was a lousy husband, he didn't get extra marks for being a father. One thing the program about him focused on was the childhood abandonment he faced at the hands of his parents. When they both forced him to chose at 6, which parent he wanted to live with, is the worst sort of mental torture you can think of to subject a kid to. For someone so badly stung by his parents selfishness, it is just terrible that he went on to virtually abandon his eldest Julian, rarely seeing him, and berating him for laughing and crying (pretty standard kid behaviour).

If "Lennon Naked" shows one thing, it is that John Lennon was seriously flawed. Although he gave us some great songs, and great biting witty observations. He was emotionally damaged. He had some lousy family values, and was guilty of the same kind of neglect he condemned his own family for. The advocate of peace, was temperamental, and verbally (as well as physically) aggressive. His heroin abuse, and the more mutually self absorbed indulgences aspect of his marriage to Yoko, didn't make him as profound or touched by musical genius as he might have liked to have thought during that period. Often the opposite. His death was tragic, and he went way before his time. But he wasn't a saint. And I think John himself, would have been uncomfortable with some of the more hagiogic sentiment around him.