John Lennon's time in this world was far from blissful.
In fact, his personal life was a nearly unending stream of chaos and disastrous events, some
cast upon him by cruel fates, others caused by his own behavior.
So let's dig deep into the dark underbelly of John Lennon's life.
Lennon had a strained relationship with his father, Alfred, who separated from Lennon's
mother Julia in 1944, four years after John was born.
As a result, John has said that he never really knew his father and that he didn't see him
much until he became famous, at which point Alfred mysteriously turned up again.
But it doesn't sound like the reunion went particularly well.
As John explained in a 1966 interview,
"I saw him and spoke to him, and decided I still didn't want to know him."
In 1965, the Beatles were on top of the world, and a talent manager named Tony Cartwright
discovered Alfred working at a pub.
Cartwright shaped Alfred, who was a talented singer himself, into "Fred Lennon" and attempted
to turn him into a recording artist.
Unfortunately, his debut album didn't sit well with his son, who reportedly asked his
manager Brian Epstein to do all that he could to stop it.
Whether Epstein used his industry clout to do this or not, Alfred's singing days were
soon over, and his record never charted.
John only ever saw his father one more time, in 1970, when he grabbed him by the collar
and screamed at him.
Alfred died in 1975, and John eventually expressed regret that he didn't handle their last meeting
better.
The aptly named dairy farmer George Toogood Smith was John Lennon's uncle through marriage,
and indeed, he was too good for this world.
For most of his childhood, Lennon lived with Smith and Mary Elizabeth Stanley, Smith's
wife and Lennon's aunt.
A father figure and a profound influence for the young Lennon, Smith was the one who taught
the Beatle-in-the-making to read, paint, and draw.
He even bought him a musical instrument, a mouth organ.
Unfortunately, the good times weren't meant to last.
In 1955, the 52-year-old Smith collapsed at his home and died of a liver hemorrhage.
Smith's good name hasn't been lost to history, and neither has his final resting place, as
his grave was lovingly restored and unveiled in 2015 as part of Lennon's 75th birthday
celebrations.
Oddly enough, Smith's demise may have inspired a certain Beatles classic in a roundabout
way.
The churchyard that Smith was buried in also contained the grave of a maid named Eleanor
Rigby.
Both Lennon and Paul McCartney frequented the churchyard, and although McCartney insists
that he made up the name and the character, some people speculate that he may have subconsciously
picked up the name from the gravestone.
One of the worst moments in Lennon's life happened on July 15, 1958, when his mother
Julia died in a freak accident.
Although the future superstar lived with his aunt and uncle, mother and son were close.
She was supportive of his musical endeavors and even bought him his first guitar.
So imagine the 17-year-old Lennon's shock when his mother left his aunt's house and
was run over by an off-duty policeman when crossing a road on her way to the bus stop.
She died instantly.
The police officer was neither speeding nor drunk, despite allegations that he may have
been.
The tragic incident had a deeply traumatizing effect on Lennon.
As for the officer, he eventually realized that the woman he hit was the mother of a
very well-known person and Lennon's fame ensured that he kept being reminded of the gruesome
accident.
He ultimately resigned and became a postman, only to discover that his route included the
family home of Paul McCartney.
Thus, he now had to haul hundreds of fan letters to the bandmate of the guy whose mother he
killed.
Some memories, it seems, are inescapable, no matter what.
Lennon's son from his first marriage, Julian, clearly got some of his dad's artistic genes
and world-improving tendencies.
After all, he's a photographer, musician, documentary filmmaker, and philanthropist
in his own right.
However, he doesn't particularly appreciate his father's peacenik public image.
In a 1998 interview with The Telegraph, he labeled his dad a "hypocrite" who preached
about peace on earth, yet had no love for him or Julian's mother, Cynthia.
From Julian's viewpoint, John was a fairly bad dad: an uncommunicative, adulterous head
of a family that was eventually torn apart by divorce.
However, Julian's animosity towards his father doesn't extend to the ex-Beatle's other family.
He says he's on good terms with his half-brother, Sean Lennon, though Sean seems less enthused
about keeping in touch than Julian does.
He also has respect for Sean's mom, Yoko Ono, even if he doesn't always agree with her.
"There was a great deal of anger there, but there's also, you know, I've grown up a lot
and there's been forgiveness since then."
John Lennon liked his drugs, and one particular mind-altering substance affected him so much
that it may have played a part in breaking up the Beatles.
In 1969, he was addicted to heroin, at the same time that many interpersonal gripes were
already straining the Fab Four.
This was an era when opioid addiction was poorly understood, and the other Beatles watched
in increasing alarm as Lennon and Yoko Ono openly partook of the drug, which they recognized
as something much more far-out than they were willing to get.
Lennon attributes the couple's heroin use to the pain they felt after Ono's miscarriage
in 1968, though others have insinuated that he started using earlier than that.
He's also claimed that heroin was his way to rebel against the other Beatles and their
unwillingness to accept Ono as an equal.
Regardless, Lennon's heroin use and the mood swings that accompanied it became a real problem
after a nasty car accident in Scotland.
By the time the band started recording their album Abbey Road, the three other Beatles
had to be careful around Lennon because of his explosive rages.
They were also uncharacteristically unwilling to challenge his insistence on keeping Ono
on hand in the studio, as they could also see that their bandmate was in pain.
The Beatles didn't last long after Abbey Road's release, though Ono and Lennon eventually
quit heroin.
Lennon might have been an esteemed artist and a well-known advocate for peace, but in
his private life, he could be a violent man.
Unfortunately, this violence very much extended to the women in his life, particularly in
his youth.
In a 1980 Playboy interview, he almost casually admitted that he had a history as a domestic
abuser, having hit his ex-wife Cynthia.
He said that the Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track "Getting Better," which features lyrics about, quote,
"being cruel to my woman," beating her, and keeping her "apart from the things that she
loved" was about himself.
As he put it,
"I was a hitter.
I couldn't express myself and I hit."
Lennon also expressed that he sincerely believed in love and peace, that he became a changed
man, and that he was genuinely regretful of his past actions.
Still, his history of domestic abuse is a serious dilemma for any socially conscious
fan.
What's more, some have wondered whether Lennon's violent tendencies also applied to his son
Julian.
Julian himself has neither confirmed nor denied these suspicions, though he has noted that
he considers his father a hypocrite who never showed him and his mother the love and peace
he was preaching to everyone else.
"I can say, 'Think peace, think peace,' but it's up to them what to do."
In the summer of 1973, Lennon's marriage with Yoko Ono was in trouble.
The couple were reeling from the commercial and critical disappointment of their album
Some Time in New York City.
Ono has said that the constant hate their union drew was slowly ruining their careers.
She wanted a break from the idea that she broke up the Beatles, and she needed one from
Lennon as well.
Her solution was to set her husband up with a mistress.
The couple had an assistant named May Pang, whom Ono trusted and who she knew Lennon was
attracted to, so she proposed that the pair should start an affair.
Unfortunately, Lennon's vision of the affair was rather overindulgent.
He and Pang ran off to Los Angeles, where Lennon started giving into his worst habits,
which included drinking heavily and generally behaving like a rock star for almost two years
before he and Ono decided to start anew in 1975.
While Lennon completed no less than three albums during this period known as the "lost
weekend," the creative process was usually booze-filled and bizarre.
It probably didn't help that one album, 1975's Rock 'n' Roll, was produced by a very unpredictable
Phil Spector, who often turned up in outlandish costumes and once even fired a gun into the
ceiling.
Lennon's most famous foils might've been his bandmate Paul McCartney and the concept of
war.
But he had two other adversaries who were arguably even more powerful: President Richard
Nixon and the FBI.
Around 1971, the Bureau took a dislike to the musician's political activism and started
waging a five-year war against him.
The federal file on Lennon was opened when he performed at a rally for John Sinclair
of the White Panthers, who had recently been handed a ten-year jail sentence for selling
two marijuana joints.
Fortunately for Sinclair, he was soon released.
But unfortunately for Lennon, his appearance at the rally put him in the FBI's bad books,
which was a really bad place to be for someone who had recently moved to New York City.
The American government harassed Lennon for years, collecting a 300-page file on him and
trying to deport him on a semi-regular basis.
According to the book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, President Nixon had
a hand in this, as he thought Lennon's political activism might endanger his re-election prospects.
In the end, however, Lennon was able to weather the storm.
When the Watergate scandal brought Nixon to his knees and forced him to resign in 1974,
the pressure against Lennon eased up, and in 1976, he was finally able to secure a green
card.
"I don't expect to be, you know, hassled, unless I'm going to Hungary or something.
Or Czechoslovakia.
Then I'd expect it."
The Beatles probably aren't the first group you would suspect of plagiarism.
Nevertheless, Lennon was once accused of getting a little too inspired by another song.
The song of his that drew plagiarism accusations was "Come Together," a standout track on Abbey
Road and one of the Fab Four's most famous tunes.
According to the lawsuit by music producer Morris Levy, Lennon plagiarized "Come Together"
from Chuck Berry's 1956 song "You Can't Catch Me."
While Lennon did admit that he drew inspiration from Berry's song, Levy claimed that Lennon
had actually just slowed down "You Can't Catch Me" and presented the end result as his own.
Allegedly, Lennon even stole some of the lyrics, as both songs contain a very similar line.
Lennon's version goes,
"Here come ol' flattop, he come groovin' up slowly,"
Meanwhile, Berry's went,
"Here come a flattop, he was movin' up with me."
Lennon settled the suit out of court, and he spent the next few years feuding with Levy
over specifics in the agreement.
Levy took Lennon to court for failing to record one of the three songs that the settlement
agreement required the Beatle to record for Levy, and Lennon later returned the favor
when Levy released a bootleg album featuring Lennon's old recordings.
It's impossible to talk about the many tragedies in John Lennon's life without mentioning how
it all ended.
He was tragically assassinated by a man named Mark David Chapman, who gunned down the 40-year-old
musician in front of his own home on December 8, 1980.
Weirdly, this wasn't the first time Lennon and Chapman's paths intertwined.
On roughly 4:30 PM of that same day, a young fan approached Lennon on the street.
The ex-Beatle signed the Double Fantasy album the fan was holding, and his friend snapped
a few photos of the two together.
That fan turned out to be Chapman, who would send five hollow-point bullets at the artist
a little over six hours later, while still holding the signed album.
Chapman targeted Lennon simply because he was famous, and he admitted that his motivation
was attention.
He was inspired by the J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye, and he went through
with the deed despite the kindness that Lennon had showed him.
Chapman has claimed since that he now regrets his crime.
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