4 Reasons John Lennon’s Aunt Criticized Him 

When biographer Hunter Davies spoke to the parents of The Beatles, he noticed that John Lennon’s aunt, who raised him, was the only one to criticize her child. Lennon and his aunt, Mimi Smith, had a complicated relationship throughout his youth, and that didn’t change when he got older. She consistently criticized him for four reasons.

1. John Lennon’s aunt once threw a fit when he spent money on a coat

Smith had a problem with Lennon’s spending habits. He once bought his future wife, Cynthia, a new coat, and when Smith saw it, she flew into a rage.

“When she saw the coat and heard that John had bought it for me she hit the roof,” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “She screamed at John that he’d spent his money on a ‘gangster’s moll’ (even with Mimi yelling at us it was funny) and hurled first the chicken, which she grabbed from me, then a hand mirror at John. ‘Do you think you can butter me up with this chicken when you’ve spent all your money on this?’ she screamed. ‘Get out.'”

Her opinion on his spending did not change after he got famous and began making more money than he could spend.

“He’s too soft over money,” she told Davies in the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography. “He’s an easy touch. Generous beyond belief. I’m always telling him.”

2. She did not want him playing in a band

When Lennon was growing up, Smith forbade him from playing music in the house or joining a band. Lennon even made her a plaque engraved with her constant refrain: “The guitar’s all right, but you’ll never earn your living with it.” 

Lennon went behind Smith’s back and formed a band with Paul McCartney and George Harrison. When she learned he was playing afternoon shows at the Cavern Club, she rushed to the venue to make him go back to school.

“I’d never heard of this awful place, the Cavern,” she said. “It took a long time to find. I just had to follow the crowds in the end. I went down some steps with them all and there was this chap, Rory McFall, taking money. I pushed him out of the way. “You’re getting no money out of me. I want John Lennon!'”

3. John Lennon’s aunt did not like his clothing

Smith did not like the way Lennon dressed, particularly as a teenager. On the day he met McCartney, she was disgusted with him for dressing like a Teddy Boy, a British subculture. 

“Mimi had said to me that day that I’d done it at last,” Lennon said, adding, “I was now a real Teddy boy. I seemed to disgust everybody that day, not just Mimi. I was looking the other day at the photograph of myself taken at Woolton that day. I look such a youthful young lad.”

Years later, when Lennon took Smith to look at a house, she didn’t want to go, partly because she was embarrassed to be seen with him.

“The people were still living in it and I didn’t want to go in, especially the way John was dressed,” she said. “He had old jeans with holes in them and an old suede jacket I’d bought him years ago which was miles too small for him. He had a silly yachting cap on as well. I said we shouldn’t go in, the house was far too smart just to land on them like this.”

4. She once said she didn’t like the way he spoke

Those who spoke with Lennon noted that he tended to jump between topics, giving a stream-of-consciousness feeling to conversations. Smith once admitted that she did not like this trait. 

“John’s always been a bad speaker,” she said. “And he’s getting worse all the time. I often can’t understand what he’s talking about. His mind’s jumping all over the place.”

Though some of Lennon’s traits made Smith roll her eyes, they remained in close contact for Lennon’s entire life. Smith said Lennon frequently sent letters from his travels, and she kept them all, proving that she loved him, even though she was hard on him.