John Lennon Said He Was ‘Never Really Wanted’ as a Child: ‘The Worst Pain’
When John Lennon was a child, he went to live with his aunt and uncle after his parents separated. While his mother remained in his life, particularly as he grew older, he went nearly two decades without seeing his father. When he still lived with his parents, though, Lennon said he did not feel they wanted a child. He described why he saw this as both a blessing and a curse.
John Lennon said he didn’t feel wanted as a child
When Lennon was a child, his parents separated, and he stopped seeing his father. He saw his mother now and again, though with enough infrequency that he didn’t realize how close she lived to him. He said that this led to him feeling unwanted.
“The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realizing your parents do not need you in the way you need them,” he said, per The Beatles Anthology. “When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind.”
Despite this, he said his upbringing was the “only reason” he became famous. He also noted that he sometimes felt relieved to grow up with his own ideas, not his parents’.
“Sometimes I was relieved to have no parents,” he said. “Most of my friends’ relations bore little resemblance to humanity. Their heads were filled with petty-cash bourgeois fears. Mine was full of my own ideas! Life was spent entertaining myself, whilst secretly waiting to find someone to communicate with.”
John Lennon went to live with his aunt when he was a child
Lennon’s aunt, Mimi Smith, called child services on his mother twice, and he went to live with her. He said that his life with Smith was pleasantly suburban.
“I was a nice clean-cut suburban boy, and in the class system that was about a half a niche higher-class than Paul, George and Ringo who lived in council houses,” he said. “We owned our own house, had our own garden; they didn’t have anything like that.”
While he dealt with feelings of abandonment, he said that his childhood with Smith was overall a happy one.
“I’d say I had a happy childhood,” he said. “I came out aggressive, but I was never miserable. I was always having a laugh.”
His aunt wanted to be a part of his life
While Lennon felt that his parents didn’t want him, his aunt wanted to be a part of his life. She was strict with him during his upbringing, but she fought to raise him and proved, in his adulthood, how much she loved him. She kept all the letters he wrote to her and all his childhood journals. Even after all his success and the ways he was able to help her, she said she would give everything up to experience his childhood again.
“I’d give up £2 million to be back again,” she said in The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “It’s very selfish, I know. I always think of him as a little boy. I know it’s stupid. But nothing could compensate for the pleasure he gave me as a boy.”
