The Beatles Boxed Set (14 page)

            As
Alf and Judy waited for their son to make a decision, they didn’t know the
torture that the child must have gone through. He was supposed to make a big
decision, though either choice was simply abandonment in different terms. If he
chose to live with his father, didn’t it mean betraying his mother? And if he
chose his mother, didn’t it mean turning away from a life he could have in New
Zealand?

            John’s
first reaction was to choose Alf. He had just spent an fun and adventurous
three weeks at Blackpool, the longest he had spent with his father. Judy asked
him again, and John repeated his choice. With a heavy heart, Judy said
good-bye. She joined Dykins, who had accompanied her at Blackpool, at the gate
and started walking up the street. With the decision of John still ringing in
her ears, Judy was perhaps unsurprisingly content to walk away with her man and
leave her child completely, with the possibility of not seeing him again.

            But
John, horrified at seeing his mother walk away, ran after her. He couldn’t bear
to see his mother walk away forever from his life. Alf didn’t stop him. He knew
it was John’s final decision, to be with his mother. John had chosen to be with
Judy. Alf continued on with his plans to go to New Zealand with his friend to
travel as he had done before. Himself having been abandoned by his own mother
when he was young, he had no qualms about walking away from his child and leave
him with other people. He had given John a chance to be with him, but John’s
decision was unequivocal. It would be 18 years later before Alf made an attempt
to contact his son on the set of
A Hard Day’s Night
.

Little
John was back in Liverpool. It was not clear whether Auntie Mimi had sent Judy
to go to Blackpool and retrieve John, but what was clear was that Mimi still
felt that John belonged to her. She didn’t approve of Judy moving in with
another man while she was still married to Alf and raising her son.

            Now
the issue was centered on John. How would Judy look after him? Mimi stepped in
and decided to claim John even if she had to wrench him away from his
irresponsible mother. He needed to be in a stable home, one with a father and
mother figure to be there for him.

            What
Mimi did next was to go to Liverpool Social Services and tell them that Judy
was an unfit mother to John. When the Social Services visited John’s home, they
noticed that the boy lacked a bed to sleep in and insisted that Judy find an
alternative situation or they would take John away. For John’s own good, Judy
handed him to Mimi, where John would stay for the best part of his pre-Beatles
life.

            Feelings
of abandonment would haunt John throughout his life. When reflecting on his
childhood, he said, “The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realizing
your parents do not need you in the way you need them. I was never really
wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing would
have driven me through all that if I was ‘normal.’”

John with his Auntie Mimi Smith, a strict
woman who didn’t think highly of John’s interest in music

            His
domestic situation further confused John. He didn’t know where he belonged. At
five years old, he couldn’t quite figure out why his father and mother couldn’t
be together with him. Why did they hand him off to Auntie Mimi? His life had
always been rootless. Having been taken from one home to another, handed to his
aunt or to one of his uncles, John was relocated more than a dozen times before
he was five. Aside from Mimi, John’s uncle Sydney and Billy Hall’s parents
offered to adopt him. But in many ways, John was unclaimed.

            John
began living in the Smith household in Mendips the autumn of 1946. Auntie Mimi
and Uncle George were childless. Mimi was a stern and old-fashioned woman who
delivered on her promise to Judy. For the next 15 years, she would look after
John the way a mother should. They allowed Judy and Bobby Dykins access to John,
though John would only see his mother a few times over the next few years. The
Smiths never formally adopted John.

At
school, John developed an unruly nature though he was well-fed and loved. He
had a privileged life compared to other children. He recalled, “Auntie Mimi
lived in the suburbs in a nice semi-detached place with a small garden, doctors
and lawyers and that ilk living around, not the poor, slummy image that was
projected. I was a nice clean-cut suburban boy and in the class system that was
about a half a niche higher-class than Paul, George and Ringo who lived in
council houses. We owned our house, had our own garden; they didn’t have
anything like that. So I was a bit of a fruit compared to them.”

            John
was enrolled in the Dovedale Primary School in Allerton in the fall of 1946. He
would take a three-mile bus ride down the main Menlove thoroughfare with a
change at Penny Lane (Mimi would trail him from behind). The school’s
headmaster told Mimi, ‘There’s no need to worry about him. He’s sharp as a
needle. But he won’t do anything he doesn’t want to.”

John (back row, sixth from the left) and
his classmates at Dovedale Primary School

            The
school required the male students to wear a tie, a black blazer, a badge with a
dove and gray shorts. John’s classmates recalled that his tie was often askew
and his shirt untucked. But as the teachers couldn’t force John to do what he
didn’t want to do, they’d just sigh and shake their heads. On the other hand,
he showed promise in drawing and painting.

            Soon
after starting school, one problem surfaced: John’s eyesight. He was suffering
from short-sightedness. It didn’t bother him much during his early years at
primary school, but as he became more aware of his image, he learned to hate
wearing glasses. He also began to behave badly at school.

            John
was always the leader of his little gangs throughout his school career. He and
his friends would steal apples, climb trees, and ring doorbells and run away.
Mimi always found herself being called into the headteacher’s office, or
neighbors’ houses, to answer for John’s behavior.

            At
other times, John would refuse to go out and just stay in his room for hours.
Auntie Mimi took him to the local library, and her love for reading would be
passed on to John. He became interested on the children’s literature of the
time. He also read all the comic books available, from
The Beano
to
The
Hotspur
and
The Rover.

           
Soon, John
would be creating his own versions of the
Hotspur
and
Beano
. He
was good artistically, something that his teachers and classmates at school
recognized. He won prizes for his drawings and paintings and would always ask
Mimi to buy him more paint and paper. John found it fun to play with words and
make up nonsense words, such as the “funs is low” he wrote from Scout camp. In
addition, John became interested in Lewis Carroll’s stories
Alice in
Wonderland
and
Alice through the Looking Glass
.

            When
John was eight, Mimi enrolled him in the Sunday school at St. Peter’s where
John sang in the choir. But even in the church, John’s mischievous behavior
didn’t go unnoticed. His neighborhood friends, Ivan Vaughan and Nigel Walley
recalled how John taught them to take pennies from the St. Peter’s collection
plate so that they could buy bubble gum. John also met at the church Rod Davis,
a future member of the Quarrymen, and Barbara Baker, one of John’s earliest
girlfriends.

            At
Dovedale, John became fast friends with Pete Shotton, who lived on Vale Road
and attended St. Peter’s. The pair became inseparable and called themselves
“Shennon and Lotton.” They would often do things together in mischief, such as
one time when they dared a nightwatchman at a new housing development to chase
them into an empty and dark house. John howled like a ghost, scaring the man
that he fled downstairs while John and Pete laughed hysterically.

            In
1948, John moved up to the Dovedale Junior School for boys. His love for short
stories didn’t change, and he would always talk about popular British
children’s author such as Edgar Allan Poe, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, among
others.

            When
John was 11, he would visit his mother at 1 Blomfield Road. She already had two
daughters with Dykins, Julia and Jacqueline. If he was jealous that his
half-sisters were living with mummy, he didn’t show it. Nevertheless, the girls
loved his visits, and he would tell them stories and make them laugh. Judy would
also play Elvis Presley records for her son, and she taught him to play the
banjo.

            In
1952, John took his 11-plus exam at Dovedale. This was an all-important
comprehensive exam that determined where each student would go: grammar school
for the most gifted, secondary school for most students, and technical college
for vocational training. John passed the exam without much preparation.

            His
love for drawing also developed further. He would draw savagely funny cartoons
and political satire which, along with his other cartoons, were published into
a flyer he edited called the
Daily Howl.
He would accompany his
headlines with funny illustrations of swollen heads, wide-eyed figures and dogs
wearing spectacles. The
Daily Howl
made its circulation among John’s
classmates to entertain them.

            After
passing his 11-plus exam, Mimi chose for John the Quarry Bank High School. It
was less prestigious academically than other secondary schools, but it was
known for discipline, which Mimi thought that John needed.

            But
as he entered Quarry Bank in 1952, John would rebel against the school’s
conservative style. He would always disrupt classes and disobey his teachers. He
tied string on the doors of old ladies’ houses, set alarm clocks to go off
during classes, rigged blackboards so that they would collapse when a teacher
wrote on them, and stole unused lunch tickets. John would say later on that
“most of the masters hated me like shit.”

John had made a reputation for himself as
a troublemaker

            John’s
troublemaking didn’t stop there. He would always plan pranks against his
classmates or the masters at the school. His
Daily Howl
cartoons would
humiliate cripples and the mentally retarded. It was an indication of John’s
impulse to strike out at people he considered weaker than him.