Why John Lennon stopped driving
“John Lennon began the ’60s with a car crash in Scotland. He ended the decade with another car crash in Scotland.” Ken McNab ‘The Beatles in Scotland’
John Lennon and cars didn’t really get on, especially north of Hadrian’s Wall. In 1960 he was asleep in the passenger seat when singer Johnny Gentle ploughed into a saloon carrying two pensioners in Aberdeenshire.
Nobody was hurt. He would not be so lucky in a second accident almost exactly ten years later.
On the road
Unlike most of his rockstar peers, Lennon had little interest in cars. He learned to drive comparatively late, only passing his test in 1965, when he was twenty-four. Even when he got his licence, he showed little enthusiasm for getting behind the wheel, rarely doing so for the next four years.
The car(s) would probably have stayed in the garage had Yoko not entered his life. In July 1969 a rare free week appeared in The Beatles schedule. They both need after all the excitement of bed-ins and bagism.
Yoko proposed a week’s holiday in Scotland. “Yeah that would be gear!” he might have said. “I can show Highlands, where I went on holiday as a child. You can meet my aunts and cousins.
‘How will we get there? I’m not going in a mystery bus’
‘I’ll drive,’ said John, boldly spurning the chance to call on his chauffeur driven Rolls Royce. ‘We’ll just take off the open road. Paul does it all the time.’
Paul McCartney was indeed a regular visitor to his remote Highlands farmhouse. He was, however, a much more skilled and experienced driver.
More Aunts than Bertie Wooster.
Perhaps conscious that a white Rolls Royce didn’t quite fit the back to basics vibe, initially set off on their adventure in his customised mini. Travelling together were John, Yoko (in the early stages of her pregnancy) and their two young children: John’s son Julian and Yoko’s daughter Kyoko.
Being squashed in such a tiny car soon lost its outlaw allure. In Liverpool, where they visited Aunts Nanny and Harrie, John called his chauffeur Les Anthony. “We need something bigger.”
“Your Austin Maxi, sir? That’s more roomy and reliable.”
So Anthony dutifully drove to Liverpool in the Austin and drove the Mini back to Weybridge. All in a day’s work for a working class hero’s chauffeur.
After a brief stay in Edinburgh, where John’s Aunt Mater lived, they continued north. Eventually, they arrived in the resort town of Durness in the Highlands. This was where John had holidayed as a child and where Aunt Mater had a holiday home where they could stay.
Until this point the driving had been on fairly good roads but they then set out to visit a second aunt, who lived in a remote crofter’s cottage. This was to severely challenge John’s rudimentary driving experience.
En route, they ran out of petrol. A local, noting that they were ‘a bit scruffy’ by local standards, guided them back to the village of Tongue, where there was post office with a petrol pump.
When they finally arrived at the crofter’s cottage they received another warm welcome. Cousin Stan was alarmed, however, at the absence of a chauffeur:
‘I had serious reservations over John’s ability to tackle the journey of single-track, winding roads beyond Inverness. He was a terrible driver…with bad eyesight’.
These limitations would prove significant on the return journey, during which the weather worsened.
Squinting into the distance, John glimpsed another car trundling towards them near the Kyle of Tongue.
He drove on regardless until he realised the other driver — a German tourist — was as ignorant of the rules of the road as he was and they were both on a collision course. John swerved the Maxi out of the other car’s path and into a ditch.
John and Yoko took the full impact of the shunt. The kids in the back, though shocked, were largely unhurt. Source
Battered, bruised and cut the family were taken to the local hospital at Golspie. Three of the four were injured.
Six-year-old Julian was sent back to Durness to stay with Aunt Mater. The other three were kept in hospital to monitor for internal bleeding. All had stitches for cuts: John seventeen (chin) Yoko (fourteen) Kyoko four stitches in her lip.
Yoko hurt her back. Her unborn child was unharmed but sadly she would miscarry three months later.
Hold the front page
All in all, it was a minor road traffic accident, though a very nasty experience for those involved. For the local press, however, it was the biggest story since the Battle of Culloden, while the involvement of John and Yoko guaranteed international press coverage.
As reports of the accident spread, a caravan of journalists set off for the Highlands. They discovered plenty of soap opera to keep the story going.
Julian’s mother, Cynthia, was alarmed to hear that her son had been in a traffic accident on a holiday she knew nothing about.
I was watching television when a newsreader announced that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had been in a car crash in Scotland, with their children…I was horrified.
What on earth was John doing taking Julian to Scotland without telling me?’
from John by Cynthia Lennon
Cynthia was even more upset that she had not been personally contacted with news of the accident. She was not, however, surprised that it had happened.
…his driving had always been terrible but he had my son with him
With the help of Beatles’ publicist Peter Brown, Cynthia immediately flew up to Scotland. Or rather to Belfast, as she somehow ended on the wrong plane.
Finally arriving at the hospital, Cynthia was told that her son was now back in Durness, fifty miles away in Durness. She demanded to see John. He refused but sent a note to reception with the soothing message that ‘Yoko had been finding Julian badly behaved’.
This was not received well.
“If you’re going to have a car crash,’ he advised ‘try to arrange for it to happen in the Highlands. The hospital there was just great.” John Lennon to journalists.
By this point the back-to-basics holiday was over. The grown ups — in the form of the Beatles Office in London — were back in charge:
When they were discharged from hospital on July 6th, a chartered helicopter was waiting on the hospital lawn to take them across the Moray Firth to Inverness airport. There, they boarded a private executive jet which took them back to London. Source
The mangled Austin Maxi was ferried back to the couple’s Tittenhurst Park Estate. It ended its days as a makeshift monument in the gardens, representing ‘the fragility of life’.
John Lennon never drove again.
