When They Were Boys (8 page)

Four years after John and Cynthia's intense relationship began, the beautiful Ms. Powell advised him that she was pregnant. The times and his own personal philosophy meant that marriage was a mandate. The baby, Julian, was born in April 1963. Young sisters Julia and Jackie became aunts at a very young age to Julian.

Time and subsequent remarriages by Cynthia Powell Lennon have not
changed Julia Baird's view of her. “She is a wonderful person. She has a great son [Julian]. During those years, she was dutiful and faithful. Jackie and I love them very much.”

For John, in that era, the marriage was a stumbling block, but he never let anyone know until years later. Although John was viewed as caustic and uncaring, he loved his son, but in that relationship, he lost his way. He rarely bonded with Julian. When May Pang—John's former secretary and girlfriend for eighteen months in 1973 and 1974—arranged for Cynthia and Julian to visit the couple in California, a maternal instinct on the part of May, there were some flickers of chemistry between father and son, but apparently not enough to sustain a close relationship.

In the professional style of the early Beatles, John could be caustic, but the memories of his peers tell a lot about the young leader.

There are those who say that people never change. It is true that John's hard side was always there, but the softer, unselfish piece of his personality, always on view, has rarely been chronicled.

Billy J. Kramer has the stories to prove it. His legal name was William Howard Ashton. When young star Billy Kramer began his ascent in Great Britain, John, his contemporary, suggested that he add the middle initial “J.” to his stage name, telling him it was “much stronger.” And in an extraordinarily unselfish act, John graciously offered two songs to him.

“It was my twentieth birthday. We were all at Bournemouth. John surprised me, said he had a song exclusively for me. It was called ‘Bad to Me,' a Lennon-McCartney early creation. He also offered me, ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret,' and it became a hit in Britain even as the Beatles released it on their own.”

“What was the motive?” I ask.

“He liked me, and it was really quite unselfish. I did ask him to let me cover ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.' I think it was a stretch. This was during a meeting at Abbey Road. He smiled and said, ‘I think, Billy, we are going to save that for ourselves, if you know what I mean.' I laughed, too.”

To put the caring, unselfish side of Lennon in perspective, consider this: Billy J. Kramer was a competitor, yet Lennon went out of his way to help Kramer's
career. In one of the early
Mersey Beat
polls, Kramer finished third behind the first-place Beatles. Although they shared a manager, Brian Epstein, for a while, Kramer was a genuine, viable contender. Still, the song “Bad to Me” was written by John,
for
Billy, during a vacation in Spain. John's generosity for people he genuinely respected was unlimited. “Bad to Me” became a number-one hit for Kramer in England in 1963, and hit the top ten in America. It was the first hit penned by Lennon (although “Lennon-McCartney” is on the credits, as was their agreement) for another artist to make it in America.

Much has been said about the style and substance of John Lennon. My own work has been criticized by people who never met the man as much too soft and sometimes patronizing. From his youthful womanizing to his violent temper, the view of John is complex, but the facts and the testimony of the living and dead, speaking of John's lifelong musical philanthropy, are the truth.

Billy J. Kramer views John's musical offerings as proof of the nature of the man, even as a young and aspiring entertainer.

“This was a complete man, a person who really cared about people, but real people. I guess we hit it off. I know everybody says how he and the guys changed life and entertainment, but in this case, he really changed one life: mine.”

Another Billy, Billy Kinsley, founder of the band the Merseybeats, remembers the generous nature of the boys during so many concerts at the Cavern, Tower Ballroom, and Litherland Town Hall. Kinsley has vivid memories of John:

H
E WAS THE LEADER, EVEN AT TWENTY OR TWENTY-ONE
. H
E DID IT WITH HIS BODY LANGUAGE
. H
E COULD BE A BIT CAUSTIC
. P
AUL WAS VERY PLEASANT AND COURTEOUS, AS WAS HIS STYLE
. G
EORGE WAS QUIET THEN
. A
ND
P
ETE, MY FRIEND TO THIS DAY, WAS SUBDUED BUT [WAS], AND IS TODAY, A KIND AND SENSITIVE PERSON
. I
THINK
J
OHN SET AN EXAMPLE FOR COURTESY
; J
OHN WOULD DO ANYTHING TO MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE, AND HE DID IT WITH HUMOR AND A SMILE
. H
E ALMOST, AT TIMES—AND SOMETIMES WITH HIS HANDS AND HIS SMILE—CHEERED ON THE OTHER BANDS, ESPECIALLY
B
ILLY
J.
AND OUR BAND
. I
KNOW HE HAD HIS ISSUES IN THE TIME, BUT HE WAS A REAL MAN, KIND AND GIVING
.

“Kind and giving.” Did his teachers know that John had the potential to be a giver as well as a taker?

It is amazing in life, isn't it, that the real potential of people is often overlooked in the standards set by the people who guide us through the early years. And remember the famous quote by a teacher, “This boy is bound to fail.” It's an easy one to remember, isn't it? How many fine teachers may have missed the potential of their students?

As you look at the infancy and maturation in the life of John Lennon, you may think of a question: Was the teacher talking about a grade, a course, a test, or the triumphs and travails of a life itself?

“Grading” John Lennon? Try it at your own risk, but know one certainty: whether it was the period when he was a “boy,” or his budding success and fame in 1963, John was closer to that complete man that Billy J. talks about—brooding, triumphant, confused, indignant, determined, soothing, unselfish, irresponsible, sensitive, and giving.

From the boys at Strawberry Fields, to the kids chasing him at an early Quarrymen gig, to the invitation to Paul to join his band, and to his magnanimous gestures to fellow artists like Billy J. Kramer and Billy Kinsley, even during his own struggle to succeed, John was a complete man.

Maybe it was the childhood mystery of his parents' challenges, or the antiestablishment protest at schools, but the middle-class boy who would become a millionaire and an icon championed the real people. On tour, he constantly criticized “the authorities” for keeping the crowds so far away.

“All they want is a wave, just a wave of a hand, Larry,” he would tell me on tour.

For people like Billy J. Kramer and Billy Kinsley, John would offer help and sympathy. The “working-class hero” in him surfaced whenever he met people he felt were challenged economically, many of whom lived in Merseyside.

That part of him, the anarchist turned human-rights fighter, was wonderful to watch. Just as he perceived his own wants and needs, the amazing, sometimes caustic and unpredictable leader of the boys wanted a perfect world.

That, along with personal ambition, is usually the end result of imagining the future. John Lennon could be a malcontent. He was constantly frustrated and, at times in his life, often drunk. He could be violent, as you will discover,
graphically, later in this story. His affections were reserved for only a few, and then, in bursts of love, they flowed faster than an overflowing river. In youth, and later, he was a man who abhorred bullshit, and didn't suffer obstructionists lightly. But watch out! If you got in his way, he would throw you under the bus, and a few blocks later, check to see if you were really dead.

Complex? The word is too minimal to explain him. He was a lot of things.

But above all else, the man who penned the immortal “Imagine,” the milkman who walked his teenage beat, was a dreamer.

CHAPTER TWO

INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, AND ADMIRATION

“
Lonnie Donegan. All of us listened to him, you know. Inspiration, of course. We all wanted to be Lonnie.
”

—Ringo Starr

For the milkman and his current and future cohorts, there was plenty of inspiration. But one man, who sang in an unusual staccato voice and used the barest of essentials, set the early standard.

In 1959, a novelty song made its way to number five on the record charts in the United States. At the time, I was in twelfth grade and worked part-time at a Top 40 radio station. You couldn't miss the song, but who knew the singer of this wacky melody had almost single-handedly changed the music scene in Britain? The tune was catchy, its lyrics fun. It was called “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight)?”

The artist was the most successful solo artist in British history. And there was, in his life, a dual legacy—he scored twenty-four hit records on the British charts, and he was the greatest musical influence for the boys who became the Beatles, and for almost every other British artist or group of the time. An original member of the Quarrymen, the learned Rod Davis, remembers the sound and the man.

“Lonnie Donegan? When you look at the pictures of the Quarrymen, in the beginning, we were all emulating Lonnie. I truly believe, in fact, his songs, so successful, were borrowed from America.”

Lonnie Donegan, the lad, was “the King”—that is, until the lads, ironically, ended his reign. Once a jazzman, the Scotland-born Anthony James Donegan was to the kids and adults in the 1950s what Elvis Presley was to America at the same time.

Skiffle had been around for many years before Lonnie emerged from the
nightclubs of London and discovered a uniquely American style of country music—the raw and spiritually inspired folk and blues music made by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. In 1954, he recorded Leadbelly's “Rock Island Line,” later immortalized by Johnny Cash. Donegan, washboard and guitar in hand, catapulted the song to solid gold in Great Britain that year, and it also became his first top-ten song in the United States.

What was skiffle? Skiffle was a mixture of folk, jazz, blues, and some country. Most of the artists created their own instruments, like the washboard and the tea-chest bass.

To get the real feel of Donegan's music, take a listen, as John Lennon did, to “Rock Island Line,” and feel the fast-paced flavor of the artist, relying only on primitive instruments and the speed of his delivery. There are no sophisticated arrangements, just the almost eerie sound of Donegan's storytelling with a hint of a church revival, his voice breaking into different cadences of emotion. To the country-music-addicted Richard Starkey, Donegan's music, and that washboard humming in the background, sounds fresh and very different even in the modern day.

To the teenagers of the early and mid-fifties, listening to Lonnie Donegan's no-frills style, his energy, and his haunting and “new” sound was not just a treat. It was an opportunity.

“He was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get . . . to number one. . . . We studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group,” says Paul McCartney. “He was the man.”

The sense of opportunity, in fact, empowered young John Lennon to form a skiffle group.

“Lonnie Donegan was like a god to us,” recalls Rod Davis. “If he could do it, we could do it. John was really inspired by Donegan. It was a true case of hero worship, plain and simple.”

Of the four Beatles, John, Paul, and George were so impacted by Donegan and an appearance he made in Liverpool in 1956 at the Empire Theater that they were inspired to buy guitars. Richie Starkey was crazy about Donegan, too, as well as country music. In my vast archive of audiotapes, several episodes feature all the Beatles talking about influences. There were mentions
of Johnny Cash, Fats Domino, Elvis, and Little Richard, of course, but the only person uniformly mentioned by all was Lonnie Donegan. And remember, these interviews were conducted within a few years of their rise to fame, so the veracity of their thoughts was not tarnished by memories fifty years later. Ringo talked about Donegan with me in the summer of 1964.

“Who was the most influential to you, all of you?” I asked.

“Lonnie Donegan. All of us listened to him, you know. Inspiration, of course. We all wanted to be Lonnie.”

Paul was so inspired by Donegan that father Jim paid fifteen British pounds to buy him his first guitar. George was likewise inspired, and borrowed three pounds from his mom to buy a secondhand guitar. But that wasn't enough for George, whose idolatry of the suave and handsome Donegan, and his music, had no boundaries. George investigated the whereabouts of the superstar in Liverpool. He knocked on the door again and again until the star emerged. The curious, stargazing George refused to leave without an autograph, which he got.

The original Quarrymen were dazzled by Donegan. Many of their informal concerts leaned heavily on his songs. Colin Hanton was infatuated with Donegan's music. “We loved ‘Rock Island Line,' ‘Railroad Bill,' ‘Midnight Special,' and all the songs. It wasn't rock, more folk, but John rocked with it anyway, getting up there and holding his guitar close, chest high. In his mind, at that time, he
was
Lonnie Donegan, and nothing could stop him.”

When the Quarrymen first played in earnest at the Cavern on August 7, 1957, John offered to play a version of “Don't Be Cruel,” the Elvis favorite. But the club's management reminded him that rock 'n' roll was forbidden at the club. John improvised with his own version of the song in Lonnie's skiffle style. Eventually John, Paul, and George would rock the place into the history books. But in the beginning, they were forced to improvise, and with the addition of Paul into the band, the future Beatles did a creative imitation of Lonnie and his style.