John Lennon on the Type of Fan Who’s a ‘Fool Nobody Needs’ at a Concert
John Lennon and the rest of The Beatles were the subject of fan obsession for years. Even today, The Beatles have fans who love to discuss and defend the band. Lennon was always appreciative of his fans, as they buoyed his success. Still, he couldn’t defend some of their behavior. He shared the type of fan he did not like to see at the band’s shows.
John Lennon found a fan irritating at a concert
The Beatles played their shows behind barriers and police protection in order to keep them safe from anyone who might storm the stage. Still, some people managed to get close to the band. Lennon recalled one show in which a fan stole his hat, which he found incredibly frustrating.
“It [the San Francisco show] was wild. Some little lad got my hat,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “Somebody like him doesn’t really care about the show anyway, or the kids there — he just grabbed my hat from behind and dived full length onto some kids at the front. He could have killed one of them. That kind of fool nobody needs.”
He said the army of photographers at the show made the situation worse. If they weren’t there, fans wouldn’t have crowded as close to the stage.
“I don’t think it would have been as bad if the photographers hadn’t been standing in the front so that the kids had to stand up to see,” he said. “And the photographers got higher so as to photograph the kids standing up and that’s when it started.”
He typically defended The Beatles’ audience
While Lennon found the type of fan who would steal from the band annoying, he usually defended his fan base. They received a lot of flak — even from members of The Beatles — for screaming through the concerts. Lennon didn’t mind, though.
“We played for four or five years being completely heard and it was good fun. And it’s just as good fun to play being not heard and being more popular,” he said. “They pay the money; if they want to scream — scream. We scream, literally; we’re just screaming at them, only with guitars. Everybody’s screaming — there’s no harm in it.”
Lennon was grateful that his dedicated fans had made his career possible.
“He could be intolerant of hangers-on, gold-diggers, money-men, and sycophants, but he respected and cared for the fans,” Cynthia Lennon wrote in her book, John. “He believed the group owed them a lot. After all, they were the ones who bought the records and paid to go to the concerts.”
John still found some fan behavior frustrating
Lennon valued his fans, but he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at some of their behavior. He believed that people looked too deeply into the lyrics of his songs.
“The words didn’t mean a lot,” he said when talking about “I Am the Walrus,” per Mental Floss. “People draw so many conclusions, and it’s ridiculous. I’ve had tongue in cheek all along — all of them had tongue in cheek. Just because other people see depths of whatever in it…What does it really mean, ‘I am the Eggman?’ It could have been ‘The pudding Basin’ for all I care. It’s not that serious.”
He wrote “Glass Onion” to poke fun at the overanalyzing fans. He thought the line “the Walrus was Paul” would throw people for a loop.
“That’s me, just doing a throwaway song, à la ‘Walrus,’ à la everything I’ve ever written,” he said, per the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono by David Sheff. “I threw the line in — ‘The Walrus was Paul’ — just to confuse everybody a bit more. And I thought ‘Walrus’ has now become me, meaning ‘I am the one.’ Only it didn’t mean that in this song.”
