Julian Lennon Blamed John Lennon for Being a ‘Poor Father’
Julian Lennon was John Lennon’s first child and the first of all The Beatles’ children. He didn’t have a particularly strong relationship with his father, though. After Lennon and his first wife, Cynthia, divorced, Julian rarely saw his father. While he has said he has forgiven his father for his behavior, Julian once said he did blame Lennon for not being a good father to him.
John Lennon’s son Julian was angry with his father for a long time
Julian was born in 1963, just as The Beatles were making it big. By 1968, his parents had divorced following Lennon’s affair with Yoko Ono. After that, Julian’s relationship with his father grew strained. While they saw each other more in the 1970s, Julian said Lennon always felt like a stranger to him.
“It was still very distant. I probably knew him as much as I know you,” he told a reporter for The Telegraph in 1998. “That’s about how warm it was. There were cuddles now and then but there was always an uneasy tension.”
He admitted that he blamed Lennon for being a “poor father.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said. “If you bring a child into this world, whether it’s planned or an accident, you’d better make sure you can care for it. You have to be around. You make time. It’s as simple as that.”
John Lennon’s father Alfred treated the musician similarly
What adds another edge of tragedy to Lennon and Julian’s relationship is that the Beatle knew how his son felt. When Lennon was four, his parents separated and he went to live with his aunt and uncle. While he saw his mother occasionally, his father, Alfred, fell out of his life entirely. According to Paul McCartney, this always bothered Lennon.
“His father left home when he was four,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “I don’t think John ever got over that. I talked to him about it. He would wonder, ‘Could he have left because of me?’ Of course he couldn’t, but I don’t think John ever shook off that feeling.”
Lennon knew the impact of his father’s abandonment on his life, but he did the same thing to his son. He said that the feeling of not being wanted as a child was terrible, but he passed on the same feeling to Julian.
Julian Lennon eventually forgave John Lennon
Julian said that as he aged, he learned to forgive his father. He’d written a song about his childhood friend, Lucy, after learning of her death, and it helped soften his resentment.
“With Dad running off and divorcing Mum, I had a lot of bitterness and anger I was living with,” he told CBS News in 2009. “In the past, I had said I had forgiven Dad, but it was only words. It wasn’t until the passing of my friend Lucy and the writing of this song that really helped me forgive my father. I realized if I continued to feel that anger and bitterness towards my dad, I would have a constant cloud hanging over my head my whole life.”
He added that writing was therapeutic for him and helped him better understand Lennon.
“Writing is therapy for me and, for the first time in my life, I’m actually feeling it and believing it,” he said. “It also has allowed me to actually embrace Dad and the Beatles.”
