John Lennon Bombed a Meeting With His Biggest Celebrity Crush Because He Was on Acid
For years, John Lennon’s biggest celebrity crush was Brigitte Bardot. He developed crushes on women who looked like her and encouraged his girlfriends to dye their hair blonde. Because of his fame, he finally got a chance to meet his longtime crush. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t go over well. He took acid to soothe his nerves, but it kept him from being able to make conversation.
John Lennon didn’t make a great impression when he met his celebrity crush
After over a decade of having Bardot as his biggest celebrity crush, Lennon finally got the chance to meet her in 1968. Beatles press officer Derek Taylor organized a dinner for them.
“John, needless to say, was beside himself with excitement at the prospect of actually encountering in the flesh the woman he’d been fantasizing about for nearly fifteen years,” Lennon’s friend Pete Shotton wrote in the book The Beatles, Lennon, and Me. “Naturally I begged John to let me tag along; but since Brigitte had specified that she wasn’t prepared to meet a crowd of strangers, only Derek was permitted to accompany him.”
Shotton excitedly waited for Lennon to return from the dinner. When he did, though, he wasn’t happy.
“‘F***ing nothing happened!’ he finally snapped,” Shotton wrote. “‘I was so f***ing nervous that I dropped some acid before we went in, and got completely out of me head. The only thing I said to her all night was “Hello,” when we went in to shake hands with her. Then she spent the whole time talking in French with her friends, and I could never think of anything to say. It was a f***ing terrible evening — even worse than meeting Elvis. So there you are.'”
According to Taylor, who was there, he and Lennon remained in Bardot’s suite while she went to dinner with her friends. Per the book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman, Lennon sang a song for Bardot when she returned and then promptly fell asleep in her bed.
John Lennon asked his girlfriends to model themselves after his celebrity crush
Lennon was so attracted to Bardot that he asked all his girlfriends to alter their appearances to look more like her.
“John’s perfect image of a woman was Brigitte Bardot,” his first wife Cynthia said, per the International Business Times. “I found myself fast becoming molded into her style of dress and haircut. I had only recently gone through my change from secretary-bird to bohemian when I met John, but under his influence, another metamorphosis was taking place and this time the emphasis was on oomph! Long blonde hair, tight black sweaters, tight short skirts, high-heeled pointed shoes, and to add the final touch, black fishnet stockings and suspenders.”
He developed crushes on women if they looked like Brigitte Bardot
Given Lennon’s love of Bardot, it’s unsurprising that he was attracted to women who resembled her. One of these women was Pattie Boyd, George Harrison’s first wife. Boyd noticed the crush Lennon had on her and said that Cynthia did too.
“I think she felt a bit out of her depth in the smart, sophisticated circles in which the Beatles were now moving in London,” Boyd wrote in her book Wonderful Tonight. “And I don’t think it helped that John thought I looked like Brigitte Bardot, or that I got on so well with him. There was a rumor — I don’t know where it came from — that John and I had an affair, and I suppose Cynthia may have believed there was something in it.”
