Lennon's Ghosts: The Women Who Shaped a Beatle

How five sisters from Liverpool forged the mind behind the music that changed everything

• John Lennon's childhood, marked by maternal absence and feminine influence, created the psychological landscape from which his most poignant songwriting emerged

• The "invisible men" and "five strong women" of Lennon's youth established his first "feminist education" decades before such concepts entered the mainstream

• Beneath the Fab Four's cheeky exterior lay deep wounds of abandonment that propelled Lennon's creative drive – "The only reason I am a star is because of my repression"

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One might reasonably argue that popular music's most transformative revolution began not with four lads from Liverpool but with five sisters from Woolton. At least, that's how John Lennon himself might have framed it, had he been in one of his more reflective moods.

"Those women were fantastic," Lennon once said of his mother and her four sisters who dominated his youth. "One day I might do a kind of Forsyte Saga about them, because they dominated the situation in the family."

That Forsyte Saga never materialised, of course. But perhaps it did, in a way, through the catalogue of Beatles songs and Lennon's solo work – an emotional landscape shaped profoundly by these five women, most notably his mother Julia and aunt Mimi.

What emerges from Lennon's reflections in the Beatles Anthology is a picture not of the cheeky, quick-witted Beatle who conquered the world with three chords and a smirk, but rather a complex, wounded figure whose creative genius was inextricably linked to his fractured childhood.

"I was never really wanted," Lennon confessed with characteristic bluntness. "The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them."

It's the sort of statement that causes one to revisit songs like "Mother" or "Julia" with fresh, and rather more uncomfortable, understanding. The sardonic wit that so defined Lennon's public persona appears, in this light, less a natural disposition and more a fortress built to protect something far more vulnerable.

PENNY LANE IS IN MY EARS AND IN MY EYES

If you've ever found yourself humming along to "Penny Lane" whilst visualising a charming, bucolic Liverpool suburb of the 1950s, you might be surprised by the reality Lennon describes.

"That's the first place I remember," he said of Newcastle Road near Penny Lane. "It's a good way to start – red brick, front room never used, always curtains drawn, picture of a horse and carriage on the wall."

Not exactly the stuff of cheerful pop nostalgia, is it? More like a scene from an Alan Bennett play – all suppressed emotions and antimacassars.

What's striking about Lennon's recollections isn't just their emotional frankness, but the class consciousness that permeates them. He describes himself as "a nice clean-cut suburban boy" living in a "semi-detached place with a small garden" – which in the rigidly stratified world of post-war Britain placed him "about half a niche higher-class than Paul, George and Ringo who lived in council houses."

"We owned our own house, had our own garden; they didn't have anything like that," Lennon recalled. "So I was a bit of a fruit compared to them, in a way."

One can almost hear the ghost of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch lurking behind these words – "You had a HOUSE? Luxury!" – though it's worth noting that Lennon's upbringing, while materially comfortable by the standards of austerity Britain, was emotionally anything but.

THE WOMEN WHO MADE THE MAN

The Beatles' story has traditionally been told as a male narrative – four lads who shook the world, guided by impresarios like Brian Epstein and George Martin. Even the iconic Beatles haircut, we're told, came from German photographer Astrid Kirchherr during the band's Hamburg days.

But Lennon's account disrupts this narrative, placing women at the centre of his formative experiences. "The men were invisible," he said. "I was always with the women. I always heard them talk about men and talk about life, and they always knew what was going on. The men never ever knew. That was my first feminist education."

It's a fascinating reversal of the usual 1950s domestic dynamic, and one that significantly predates the feminist consciousness that would emerge in popular culture during the late 1960s. While other rock stars were objectifying women in their lyrics, Lennon had been raised in a matriarchy.

Julia Stanley, Lennon's mother, emerges as a particularly poignant figure – a "comedienne and a singer" who would perform in pubs despite not being a professional. One of Lennon's earliest memories was of her singing a tune from Disney's "Snow White" – "Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell. You are standing by a wishing well."

Those familiar with the Beatles catalogue will immediately recognise these lyrics as the inspiration for the early Beatles track "Do You Want to Know a Secret" – a connection that speaks volumes about the lasting impression Julia made on her son despite their separation.

When Lennon's parents split when he was four, it wasn't his father who took custody but his Aunt Mimi – Julia's elder sister. "My mother just couldn't deal with life," Lennon explained. "She was the youngest and she couldn't cope with me and I ended up living with her elder sister."

This forced separation created wounds that never fully healed. "I soon forgot my father. It was like he was dead," Lennon said. "But I did see my mother now and again and my feeling never died off for her. I often thought about her, though I'd never realised for a long time that she was living no more than five or ten miles away."

The tragedy of this near-miss relationship – a mother and son living just miles apart but separated by circumstance – would later be compounded when Julia was killed in a car accident in 1958, just as Lennon was beginning to reconnect with her. She was struck by a car driven by an off-duty police officer while leaving Mimi's house after visiting John – a cruel irony that would haunt Lennon throughout his life.

NIGHTMARES AND DREAM WORLDS

"The first thing I remember is a nightmare," Lennon stated with characteristic directness. Not for him the cosy childhood recollections of ice creams at the seaside or conkers in autumn.

His dream life sounds equally turbulent: "I dream in colour, and it's always very surreal. My dream world is complete Hieronymus Bosch and Dali. I love it, I look forward to it every night."

One can't help but connect these vivid, surreal dreamscapes to songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" or "I Am the Walrus" – though Lennon would likely have scoffed at such straightforward psychoanalysis. The connection between his dreams of flying "in time of danger" and his later fascination with transcendental meditation and spiritual escape routes seems equally apparent.

These nightmares and dreams provide a window into the psychological landscape from which Lennon's more experimental songs emerged. While Paul McCartney was crafting perfect pop melodies, Lennon was diving into his subconscious, fishing for strange and beautiful creatures that would transform pop music into something altogether more challenging.

SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIALS

Perhaps the most startling revelation in Lennon's reflections is his matter-of-fact assertion that "Ninety per cent of the people on this planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whisky on a Saturday night, and there was no intent to have children."

"Ninety per cent of us were accidents," he continued. "I don't know anybody who has planned a child. All of us were Saturday-night specials."

It's a quintessentially Lennon statement – provocative, probably exaggerated, but containing a kernel of uncomfortable truth. One can almost imagine him delivering it on Parkinson, causing nationwide spluttering into teacups.

The casual inclusion of himself in this category of "accidents" adds another layer to his sense of being "never really wanted." This isn't self-pity so much as an attempt to universalise his experience – we're all accidents, all unwanted in some fundamental sense. It's the sort of existential angst that would later infuse songs like "Nowhere Man" or "Help!"

THE BIRTH OF A BEATLE

Amid these recollections of childhood trauma and maternal absence, Lennon casually drops a biographical detail that would prove fateful: "Being born on 9th October 1940, I wasn't the first Beatle to happen. Ringo, being born on 7th July 1940, was. Although he didn't happen as a Beatle until much later than the rest of us, having played with his beard at Butlins and things before realising where his awful destiny lay."

The line is pure Lennon – factually accurate but delivered with a wry, absurdist touch worthy of Spike Milligan. The reference to Ringo's "awful destiny" manages to both celebrate and mock the Beatles phenomenon, capturing Lennon's ambivalence about his own fame.

Ringo emerges as an interesting counterpoint in Lennon's class-conscious recollections. "Ringo was the only real city kid," Lennon noted. "I think he came out of the lousiest area. He doesn't care, he probably had more fun there."

This observation captures something essential about the Beatles' appeal – the blend of suburban aspiration (John, Paul and George) with authentic working-class grit (Ringo). It was a combination that proved irresistible to fans across Britain's rigid class divisions, and eventually to the world.

THE METHOD IN THE MADNESS

"Nothing would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'," Lennon stated when reflecting on his path to stardom. It's a statement that challenges the comfortable narrative of the Beatles' success as the result of natural talent meeting hard work.

Instead, Lennon suggests something darker – that his creative drive stemmed from psychological wounds, from the need to be seen, to be wanted, in a way that his parents never provided. "The only reason I am a star is because of my repression," he claimed.

This perspective recasts the frenzy of Beatlemania in a different light. Were the screaming fans at Shea Stadium unwittingly participating in a mass therapy session for John Lennon's childhood abandonment issues? It's the sort of question that would have delighted the more self-analytical Lennon of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Yet there's something troubling about this narrative of creativity born from trauma. It veers uncomfortably close to romanticising psychological damage, suggesting that great art requires great suffering. Lennon himself seemed aware of this danger, noting that "Most people never get out of it. Some people cannot see that their parents are still torturing them, even when they are in their forties and fifties."

Lennon's path from traumatised child to global superstar to introspective artist suggests that while trauma may fuel creativity, true artistic maturity comes from confronting and processing that trauma. His later work, from "Mother" to "Beautiful Boy," charts this journey from wound to healing.

BEYOND THE CHILDHOOD'S END

What emerges from Lennon's reflections is not just the origin story of a Beatle, but a broader meditation on how childhood experiences shape adult identity. "Life was spent entertaining myself," he recalled, "whilst secretly waiting to find someone to communicate with. Most people were dead. A few were half-dead. It didn't take much to amuse them."

The isolation in this statement is palpable, as is the sense of being different, apart – feelings that many artists have expressed. Yet Lennon found his way out of this isolation, first through the brotherhood of the Beatles, then through his relationship with Yoko Ono, and finally through his role as a father to Sean.

The journey from the curtained front room on Newcastle Road to the Dakota Building in New York was not just geographical but psychological – a journey from abandonment to connection, from being unwanted to being loved.

That this journey was cut short by an assassin's bullet in 1980 remains one of pop culture's most painful tragedies. Yet in the songs Lennon left behind, we can trace the full arc of his emotional development, from the playful irreverence of "Please Please Me" to the naked vulnerability of "God."

"I wear glasses," Lennon stated at the beginning of his recollections – a simple fact that somehow captures his essence. Through those glasses, he saw the world differently, transforming his unique vision into songs that continue to resonate decades after his death.

In doing so, he transformed those five strong women from Liverpool into immortal figures in pop culture's mythological landscape – ghosts who continue to whisper through his music, if we listen closely enough.