Comments on Liverpool Part 1 John Lennon

For me, when I see how John lived his early life I can see how his music was affected by it. His father abandoned him, only later to reclaim him when he became a rich and famous Beatle. His mother also abandoned him, but he was not as bitter about her abandonment. John was very close with his mother. With John's Aunt Mimi taking over the role of adult guardian of John, Julia became more of a buddy for John than a parent. It must have been one of those situations in which Julia thought John would interfere with her relationship with Twitchy Dykins. Julia and Twitchy had children of their own, John's half sisters. There was a bonding of Julia and John around music. Julia played the banjo and was a very vivacious character who loved music and entertainment. John's father Freddie Lennon also was a fairly good amateur singer as a younger man. Although, by the time he tried to cash in on his "father of Beatle John Lennon" noteriety and recorded a record for himself, his missing teeth and age and years of hard living worked against him into becoming anything more than a novelty entertainer. I believe that Freddie had his teeth capped, and I think John referred him to the Beatles dentist who later gave John and George their first LSD trip.
There is a critical incident from John's childhood in which Freddie had returned and was bonding with John and asked John to choose between living with him or his mother. John chose Freddie, and then seeing at how broken hearted his mother was, ran back to his mother. John was torn between his mother and his father. Both parents abandoned John, but he forgave Julia. This is explored more in John's solo song "Mother." John explained this incident in a Rolling Stone interview in 1970.
(Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers, Rolling Stone 1970).
John and Paul became friends because Paul also lost his mother as a teen. John was raised primarily by Julia's sister, John's Aunt Mimi and his uncle. Paul was raised by his widowed father Jim who was an amateur musician and regular contributor to local productions around Liverpool. Paul later said that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was partly based upon his father's jazz band that performed for theater productions in and around Liverpool.