Who were John Lennons parents?

Answer 1

John Lennon's parents were Alfred Lennon and Julia Stanley Lennon. They separated when he was a baby, but were never officially divorced. (He did not see his father from the age of four, until after he became famous.) After Alfred and Julia separated, Julia started a new relationship with John "Bobby" Dykins. When the social services discovered that young John was sharing a bed with Julia and her new partner, it was agreed that John would move in with Mimi Smith; Julia's sister and John's aunt. (It turned out later that Mimi herself had informed on Julia.)

Julia visited Mimi nearly every day, and had two more daughters, Julia and Jacquie, with Dykins. (People began to call her "Mrs. Dykins", and she never corrected them, the same as Mimi never corrected anyone who called her John's mother, or him her son.)

Julia played four-string banjo (which she learned from Alfred) and sang, and later taught John banjo chords for his guitar. She also had an unusual sense of humor (wearing glasses with no glass in them to see who would notice, and wearing underwear over her head instead of a bandana, when she did housework), which John picked up, and he said later she was more like an older sister to him, than a mother.

John grew up being told his mother lived "far away", but learned later her house was just a few minutes' walk from Mimi's. He began visiting her in his early teens, then spending weekends and nights after fights with Mimi with the Dykinses.

He was on one such visit when Julia was struck and killed by a drunk driver, in July 1958. The police came to the house; Dykins broke down at the news, and seventeen-year-old John had to go with the police to identify her body.

John had met Paul McCartney not long after Paul had lost his own mother to cancer; John told him then if anything happened to Julia, "I'd go off me head." He proceeded to do just that, and began to abuse alcohol, and take his frustrations at losing her out on the world, including his girlfriends. (He said later "I lost her twice"; once at four, and again at seventeen.) The fact that both John and Paul lost their mothers young made them closer. John's boyhood friend Pete Shotton, who'd also known Julia, recalled later just one brief conversation about her death: "I'm sorry about your mum." "I know, Pete." They never spoke about it again; John preferred it that way.

John remembered his mother in the song "Julia", ten years after her death. The song also included images of Yoko Ono, who was the first woman he'd met that he felt as comfortable with as he had his mother. (He called Yoko "Mother" later in life, after the birth of their son Sean.) John expressed his pain at his parents' absence in his life in his song "Mother", and Julia's death in the deceptively simple "My Mummy's Dead".

He continued to refer to Julia as "Mummy" privately, until the day he died.

Answer 2

Alfred and Julia Lennon