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
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