John Lennon Compared Electing a President to Picking Out a Dog From the Pound

John Lennon had a lot to say about electing a president. He compared it to picking out a dog at the pound. In addition, he saw presidents as father figures who were expected to perform miracles.

John Lennon said people choose presidents based on their hair and teeth

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features a 1980 interview. In it, John compared important people to fathers. For context, the interview happened shortly after the election of President Ronald Reagan. “So all these leaders, parking meters, are all substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political … All this bit about electing a president!” he said. “We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies. This is the daddy that looks like the daddy in the commercials. 

“He’s got the nice gray hair and the right teeth and the parting’s on the right side,” he continued. “OK? This is the daddy we choose.”

John compared elections to going to dog pounds. “The dog pound of daddies, which is the political arena, gives us a president,” he said. “Then we put him on a platform and start punishing him and screaming at him because Daddy can’t do miracles: Daddy doesn’t heal us; we don’t feel better. So then we move the daddy out in four years and we get a new daddy.”

The former Beatle’s relationship with his father was distant from the beginning

These comments are more interesting in the context of John’s relationship with his own father, Freddie Lennon. According to Ultimate Classic Rock, John discussed Freddie in a 1966 interview featured in The Beatles Anthology. John said he only met his father twice before he turned 22. After becoming a rock star, John met Freddie a few more times and decided he wasn’t interested in pursuing contact with him.

In All We Are Saying, John discussed his feelings about Freddie. “A lot of us are looking for fathers,” he said. “Mine was physically not there. Most people’s are not there mentally and physically, like always at the office or busy with other things.”  In his song “Mother,” John expresses pain over his father abandoning him.

John Lennon discussed some of the other father figures in his life

John discussed father figures elsewhere in the interview. He said Elvis Presley, whose music he loved, might have been a father figure for him, as was movie star Robert Mitchum. John later learned about meditation from a guru called the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who played the same role in his life. The Beatles’ time at the Maharishi’s meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India, inspired many songs from The White Album.

John said another notable guru later served as a “daddy” for him: Arthur Janov. Janov devised primal scream therapy. John’s primal scream sessions influenced his debut solo album: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The former Beatle later said the positive effects of primal scream therapy were temporary.

John had a lot to say about father figures even if some of those comments were really odd.