A few weeks ago, we went about our orphan-issue-naming process like we normally do. Swords in stones, masonic dances on our front lawn, and a poll on our Facebook account asking people to vote between Ray Charles and John Lennon. During this poll, I noticed a lot of vitriolic anger towards Lennon–a contempt, a small amount of people but vocal. I noticed this, but also, an overwhelming amount of silent votes for Lennon.
I think I speak for most of The Literary Orphans Journal’s staff when I say I’ve (we’ve) always been a Stones fan. I wrote it off to that–we attract a crowd that favors a greaser audience as our more involved audience–nothing more.
Then, somebody contacted me and informed me that John Lennon hit women. He hit men too. I did the research, checked out a book or two from the library–it’s absolutely true. John Lennon mentally tormented his son and wives. He intimidated Yoko Ono so much, that he made her come to band practices even though she got shit for it from the others. He didn’t trust her alone. And when he went to the bathroom in public? He made her come with him because he didn’t trust her.
But hey, give peace a chance, right?
As the votes continued to pour in for Lennon, the Managing Editor, Scott Waldyn and myself became more and more sure that we wanted to name the issue after Lennon and draw attention to this. You, good reader, may be very much like me: unaware. This is a white-washed part of our history and it needs to come to light. This is named The Lost Prophet issue not because John Lennon was killed prematurely.
But this is a public service announcement, not a character assassination.
There are a lot of things I learned in those books.
The first thing, is that for all the attraction the Rolling Stones had for the edgier crowd–The Beatles were by and large far more the working class heroes, the kids from the tough areas of town–with the exception of John Lennon.
Lennon was born during the war in 1940.
Lennon’s father sent checks home to his wife, but then went absent without leave in 1944. By 1945, Lennon’s mother was pregnant with another man’s child. Lennon’s father forced the 4-year-old to choose, and he (apparently, debatably) ended up choosing his mother. This is where it gets even more strange–his Aunt, his mother’s sister and a religious woman–complained at length to the social services until the young mother agreed to give Lennon’s aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, stewardship of John Lennon.
Raised by his aunt and uncle in what we can imagine to be a typical middle-class British household, working-class Paul McCartney often recounted that he was patronized by Uncle George whenever visiting Lennon as a 15-year-old boy.
What can you say about John Lennon? You can say that his was a story moving towards a redemption that was never fully realized. In him, you saw an open admittance of his bad behavior, of his angry, abusive youth. You found him wanting to be different. Wanting to rise above but failing. You saw a man who attended “primal therapy” with Ono ten years before his death to try and exorcise the demons of his first years alive. You saw a man who wanted to see peace in the world while fighting his own inner turmoil.
Heroes and prophets are a rare thing. More often than we realize, the people that got us through the rough years of our own lives, the people who made us rise above and struggle to attain a sense of moral gravity in a vacuum of a world; well, looking close we find them lacking. How often do we find out that that great writer we like was a sexist lion-killing asshole? Or that that great writer with a heart problem that we loved dearly was a racist?
Who can we believe in?
You can believe in us, reader.
And know that Literary Orphans believes in you.
This has been a public service announcement.
In solidarity,
Mike Joyce, Editor-in-Chief/Executive Director
Scott Waldyn, Managing Editor/Deputy Director