The Peculiar Education of John Lennon: A Scouse Lad's Journey Through Neuroses and Margarine

How a sensitive weak lad from Liverpool became the world's most famous angry young man, armed only with poetry, rebellion, and a stepfather who greased his hair with butter

• Lennon's childhood with Aunt Mimi shaped his artistic rebellion and defensive persona

• Liverpool's unique cultural position as a port city exposed him to American music before the rest of Britain

• His complex relationship with his mother Julia and stepfather "Twitchy" Dykins revealed early patterns of emotional avoidance

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The trouble with autobiographies is that they're written by people who've lived through their own lives, which rather defeats the object of objectivity. Take John Lennon's recollections of his formative years, a collection of memories so deliciously contradictory and psychologically revealing that Freud himself would have rubbed his hands together with glee and probably charged double.

Here we have Britain's most famous rebel, the man who would later tell the world that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," confessing with characteristic bluntness: "I'm not a tough guy. I've always had to have a façade of being tough to protect myself from other people's neuroses. But really, I'm a very sensitive weak guy." It's rather like discovering that the school bully spent his evenings knitting jumpers for abandoned kittens.

The irony is delicious, of course. Lennon, who would go on to write songs that challenged authority, religion, and social convention, was essentially a frightened child playing dress-up in rebel's clothing. But then again, aren't we all? The difference is that most of us don't end up on album covers stark naked with our wives, declaring our vulnerability to a world that frankly wasn't asking.

The Mimi Years: A Masterclass in Middle-Class Aspirations

At the heart of Lennon's psychological makeup was his relationship with Aunt Mimi, a woman who seems to have been blessed with all the nurturing instincts of Margaret Thatcher and the artistic sensibilities of a particularly militant chartered accountant. Picture the scene: young John, bursting with creative energy, scribbling poetry and dreaming of artistic glory, whilst Mimi systematically destroys his work and attempts to transform him into either a rugby player or a chemist. It's like watching someone try to turn a peacock into a pigeon—technically possible, but rather missing the point.

"She always wanted me to be a rugby type or a chemist," Lennon recalled with the sort of weary resignation usually reserved for discussing tax returns or dental work. The image of John Lennon in rugby shorts, thundering across a muddy pitch whilst composing "Strawberry Fields Forever" in his head, is one that rather boggles the mind. Though given his later predilection for avant-garde performance art with Yoko Ono, perhaps it wouldn't have been his strangest career move.

The domestic archaeology of the Lennon household reveals fascinating details. Mimi, determined to maintain their semi-detached respectability, took in students to make ends meet—a decision that must have made for some rather interesting dinner conversations. One can only imagine the lodgers' bewilderment as they attempted to navigate between Mimi's middle-class propriety and John's burgeoning artistic rebellion.

The poetry incident is particularly revealing. Fourteen-year-old John, returning home to discover that Mimi had "rooted all my things and thrown all my poetry out," responded with characteristic defiance: "One day I'll be famous and you're going to regret it." It's the sort of declaration that every teenager makes at some point, usually whilst slamming doors and refusing to eat their vegetables. The difference is that Lennon actually meant it—and more importantly, he was right.

But perhaps the most telling detail is Lennon's admission about his "serious poems, like emotional stuff"—written in "secret handwriting, all scribbles, so that Mimi couldn't read it." Here we see the future songwriter already developing the defensive mechanisms that would characterise much of his later work: vulnerability hidden behind layers of obfuscation, genuine emotion disguised as aggression or absurdity.

Twitchy Dykins and the Art of Emotional Avoidance

If Mimi provided the stern discipline, then John's mother Julia offered something altogether more complex—a relationship that seems to have been part maternal, part sibling rivalry, and entirely confusing for a young lad trying to work out where he fitted in the world.

The introduction of "Twitchy" Dykins—"otherwise known as Robert Dykins or Bobbie Dykins"—into this domestic drama provides some of the memoir's most darkly comic moments. Lennon's description of his stepfather is a masterpiece of teenage disdain: "little waiter with a nervous cough and the thinning, margarine-coated hair." The detail about Dykins greasing his hair with margarine before leaving for work is the sort of observation that could only come from a child—both utterly trivial and somehow devastating in its precision.

The margarine hair routine becomes even more significant when we learn that young John was systematically pilfering Dykins' tip money from the kitchen tin. "I believe Mother got the blame," Lennon notes with characteristic absence of remorse. "That's the least they could do for me." It's a delicious piece of psychological revenge—the artistic stepson literally stealing from the prosaic stepfather whilst simultaneously ensuring his mother takes the rap.

But the most revealing moment comes when Julia arrives at Mimi's house "in a black coat with her face bleeding" after some unspecified accident. Lennon's response is telling: "I couldn't face it. I thought 'That's my mother in there, bleeding.' I went out into the garden. I loved her, but I didn't want to get involved. I suppose I was a moral coward. I wanted to hide all feelings."

This pattern of emotional avoidance—loving someone intensely whilst simultaneously running away from the mess of human connection—would become a recurring theme in Lennon's life and work. It's there in his marriages, his friendships with the other Beatles, and his complex relationship with fame itself. The man who would later write "All You Need Is Love" was, by his own admission, terrified of the very emotion he was celebrating.

Liverpool: The Port of Musical Call

But perhaps the most significant aspect of Lennon's early years wasn't the domestic drama but the geographical accident of his birth. Liverpool in the 1950s was uniquely positioned to receive American culture in a way that the rest of Britain simply wasn't. As Lennon observed: "Liverpool is cosmopolitan. It's where the sailors would come home on the ships with the blues records from America."

This wasn't just about music—it was about identity. "America used to be the big youth place in everybody's imagination," Lennon noted. "America had teenagers and everywhere else just had people." The distinction is crucial. British youth culture in the 1950s was still largely an oxymoron—young people were expected to be miniature adults, complete with national service and deference to their elders. America, by contrast, had invented the teenager as a distinct species, complete with their own music, fashion, and attitude.

The cultural imperialism of American entertainment had created a generation of British youth who knew more about Coca-Cola than about tea, more about James Dean than about any contemporary British film star. "They wouldn't even make an English movie without an American in it," Lennon recalled, "even a B movie, because nobody would go to the movie. They'd have a Canadian if they couldn't get an American."

This cultural colonisation had a profound effect on British popular music. "There was no such thing as an English record," Lennon observed. "I think the first English record that was anywhere near anything was 'Move It' by Cliff Richard and before that there'd been nothing." The dismissal of pre-rock British popular music is typically harsh, but it reflects a genuine frustration with what seemed like a terminally uncool cultural landscape.

The Politics of Musical Taste

Lennon's musical education reveals some fascinating social observations. His dismissal of the folk revival is particularly cutting: "As kids we were all opposed to folk songs because they were so middle-class. It was all college students with big scarfs and a pint of beer in their hands singing in la-di-da voices, 'I worked in a mine in Newcastle,' and all that shit."

The class consciousness here is razor-sharp. Folk music, despite its supposed authenticity, had been appropriated by middle-class students who had never been within miles of a coal mine but felt entitled to sing about working-class experiences with "fruity voices." It's a criticism that still resonates today—the tendency of privileged performers to colonise working-class culture whilst remaining safely insulated from working-class realities.

"Folk music isn't an acoustic guitar with a singer who talks about mines and railways," Lennon argued, "because we don't sing like that any more. We sing about karma, peace, anything." This redefinition of folk music as contemporary expression rather than historical preservation would later inform much of the Beatles' work—taking traditional forms and filling them with modern content.

The Sexual Awakening of a Future Beatle

No discussion of Lennon's formative years would be complete without acknowledging his refreshingly frank discussions of his sexual development. His teenage fantasy about "a woman who would be a beautiful, intelligent, dark-haired, high-cheekboned, free-spirited artist (à la Juliette Greco)" reveals a romantic idealism that sits oddly with his later reputation for cynicism.

The progression from Anita Ekberg to Brigitte Bardot as his ideal woman type is telling—the shift from Nordic goddess to French sophisticate suggesting a developing aesthetic that would later find expression in his attraction to conceptual artist Yoko Ono. The detail about pressuring his girlfriends to dye their hair blonde to match his Bardot obsession is both funny and slightly disturbing—a preview of the controlling tendencies that would later manifest in his relationships.

But perhaps the most revealing sexual anecdote is his memory of "fucking my girlfriend on a gravestone and my arse got covered in greenfly." The observation that "This was a good lesson in karma and/or gardening" is typical Lennon—taking a mortifying experience and transforming it into cosmic philosophy. It's the sort of detail that makes you simultaneously laugh and cringe, which is probably exactly the effect he intended.

The Making of a Defensive Genius

What emerges from these early memories is a portrait of a young man whose creativity was forged in the crucible of emotional confusion and social dislocation. The tough guy persona was a necessary defence mechanism, protecting a "sensitive weak guy" from a world that seemed determined to crush his artistic ambitions and emotional authenticity.

The pattern established in those Liverpool years—the combination of vulnerability and aggression, romanticism and cynicism, rebellion and insecurity—would define much of Lennon's later work. Songs like "Help!" and "Nowhere Man" make perfect sense when viewed through the lens of a young man who learned early that showing weakness was dangerous, but hiding it completely was impossible.

The domestic chaos of his childhood, with its absent father, complicated mother, and stern guardian, created a man who would spend his life trying to construct the stable family unit he never had as a child. The fact that he often failed at this task—his first marriage to Cynthia, his neglect of his son Julian, his sometimes obsessive relationship with Yoko—only underscores the damage done in those formative years.

But perhaps that's the point. Great art often comes from great damage, and Lennon's particular genius lay in his ability to transform personal pain into universal expression. The angry young man from Liverpool who told his aunt he'd be famous one day wasn't just making an empty threat—he was stating his intention to turn his neuroses into art, his confusion into songs, his pain into something beautiful.

In the end, the most remarkable thing about John Lennon's childhood isn't how it shaped him into a Beatle, but how it shaped him into a human being who was brave enough to admit his weakness, smart enough to use his damage, and talented enough to make his neuroses sing.

The sensitive weak guy behind the tough facade would go on to write some of the most honest songs in popular music history. Aunt Mimi, who threw away his early poetry, would live to see those same sensibilities celebrated around the world. And Twitchy Dykins, with his margarine-slicked hair and nervous cough, would find a strange sort of immortality in the memories of a stepson who never liked him but never forgot him either.

It's all rather beautifully circular, really—the sort of cosmic joke that Lennon himself would have appreciated. The boy who wanted to hide all his feelings grew up to become a man who made his living exposing them. The young rebel who stole his stepfather's tip money became rich enough to buy and sell a thousand little waiters. And the child who was told he'd never amount to anything artistic proved that sometimes the best revenge really is massive success.

As Lennon himself might have said: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." In his case, it just happened to include rather more margarine and rather less rugby than anyone expected.