Alfred Lennon: Demonised Dad?
Cynical grifter or unfairly maligned?
Alfred Lennon only had a walk-on — or rather a walk-off — role in the story of his son’s childhood. This has earned him an almost universally bad press That he bailed on his wife and baby as the Luftwaffe were bombing Liverpool has not improved his image. Nor has his sudden reappearance — with his hand outstretched for a touch — at the height of Beatlemania.
John Lennon was initially convinced that Alfred’s only motivation was to ‘blackmail’ him and cash in on his fame. This has become the standard line, casting Lennon Senior as a grifting wastrel. One recent critic even accuses Alfred of continuing to cash-in from beyond the grave:
He was without a doubt a gold-digging attention seeker who showed up in Lennon’s life again when he was famous. He… even tried to scratch some money recording some songs after Lennon’s death. Reddit comment on Alfred Lennon (1912–1976)
I think we can safely clear Alf of that charge. It’s also clear that any digging he did never struck gold. He was frequently described as a ‘tramp’ during his brief moment in the sun, and Cynthia would be startled by the shabbiness of his appearance.
Like his son, Alfred Lennon lost his father early but he had no Aunt Mimi when his mother couldn’t cope. He and his sister spent most of their childhood in an orphanage. This was physically close to the home of the comparatively comfortable Smith family — but worlds apart.
The father of the man
John Lennon’s biological parents first met as teenagers in Sefton Park, Liverpool in 1927. Eleven years later they still barely knew each other — but in December 1938 married ‘for a dare, a lark’, (Lewisohn). That afternoon they went to the cinema and the following day Alf went back to sea
War and a baby came in quick succession — but the marriage remained nominal. Julia never lived with Alf, who returned to sea soon after John was born. The couple were legally separated in 1942.
A year later, Seaman Alfred Lennon went absent without leave from the merchant navy. He eventually resurfaced after a spell in a north African prison for — according to his not always reliable account — “stealing a single bottle of beer”.
A now demobbed Mr Lennon stopped off in Liverpool in June 1945. Hearing that Julia was now living with another man, her ex-husband made a characteristically hapless (and illegal) bid for custody of their son. This culminated in the notorious showdown on Blackpool beach.
Forced to choose between his parents, John went with Mum. Dad then disappeared for eighteen years. As John told Hunter Davies “It was like he was dead.”
During those missing years, Alf (now more commonly known as Freddie) bounced between unskilled jobs in unlikely locations. He also featured in several scrapes with the authorities. One episode involved dancing in the street with a looted shop mannequin.
In 1958 his brother, Charlie, sent him him a newspaper cutting, from the Liverpool Echo. This described the inquest into his ex-wife’s fatal road crash. Though ‘saddened’ by the news, Alf/Freddie still made no attempt to establish contact with his son, now seventeen.
Fame
Fred would claim that he did not hear about The Beatles until late 1963, when a fellow kitchen porter showed him a newspaper photo. In his memoir he says that he then attended one of Finsbury Park Christmas with his brother Charlie. These ran from December into early January.
In February The Beatles became world famous following the Ed Sullivan Show appearance. Two months later Mr Lennon’s (senior) made his move. Without any prior warning, he called at the NEMS office — accompanied by a tabloid journalist. “I’d like to see my son, John.”
A startled Brian Epstein immediately contacted John, whose initial response was short and Anglo Saxon. Fearing a public relations disaster, Epstein managed to persuade the singer to come to the office.
A short stormy meeting did not go well. Alfred and his new press pal were escorted from the building.
Shortly after John — a life-long avid newspaper reader — was outraged to see a story his father’s photo in the Daily Express.
there he was, washing dishes in a small hotel, very near where I was living outside London. The front-page news was: ‘John’s dad is washing dishes, why isn’t John looking after him?’ I said, ‘Because he never looked after me.’
A few months later a down-at-heel Freddie again appeared unannounced, this time at Kenwood, the Lennon family home in suburban Surrey.
Now it was Cynthia’s turn to be startled by a man who “looked like a tramp” with her husband’s face. With exquisite English decorum she made him tea and cheese on toast. More bizarrely she also cut his “long, stringy locks” of hair.
That’s My Life
Again John responded with furious rejection of all overtures from his father, followed by second thoughts and contact.
An uneasy truce survived until Freddie recorded a cash-in single “That’s My Life (My Love and My Home)” at the end of 1965. John broke off relations with his father. He also instructed Brian Epstein to do all he could to ensure that My Life never made the charts (mission accomplished).
Three years later his father — still on his uppers — reappeared at Kenwood. This time he was accompanied by a (very) young fiancee, the Rolling Stones-loving student, Pauline.
Again, John was initially hostile but then relented. He even agreed to employ Pauline as a live-in nanny/personal assistant for Julian. Perhaps symbolically she was housed in his attic for a few months until the couple married and moved to Brighton.
A primal scream
Filial relations remained tense but tolerable until 1970, when John and Yoko underwent the then voguish primal scream therapy in Los Angeles. This ‘recovered’ the hurt of John’s childhood abandonment.
The resulting rage was unleashed when John invited Alfred, Pauline and their eighteen-month-old child, David Henry Lennon to lunch on the eve of his 30th birthday. According to a legal affidavit, Alfred received both barrels in a “loathsome tirade … uttered with malignant glee”.
This would be the last ever meeting between father and son and the his only one John had with his half brother. John reaffirmed his resentment in the Lennon Remembers interview (1971).
Time, though, would sooth the open wound. With the birth of his second child, John notably mellowed in his appraisal of his father. Primal screaming, he conceded might have led to undue harshness.
In 1976 news came from Pauline that Alfred was terminally ill with stomach cancer. John sent flowers and then phoned his father on his deathbed. Apologies were made and accepted from both parties.
