John Lennon Hated His Mother’s Partner for His ‘Selfishness’ After Her Death
John Lennon’s mother died when the musician was a teenager. When he heard the news, he was with his mother’s partner, John Dykins. Lennon didn’t usually have a problem with Dykins, but he was furious with his reaction to hearing of Julia’s death. Lennon believed his response was entirely selfish.
John Lennon’s mother died in 1958
Lennon’s aunt, Mimi Smith, raised him after reporting Julia to Social Services. He began growing close to his mother again as a teenager. They bonded over music, a hobby that Mimi actively discouraged Lennon from pursuing.
“Julia had bought him his first guitar, and she loved music,” Cynthia Lennon wrote in her book John. “She played the piano and banjo, and sat with him patiently for hours, showing him over and over again how to play the chords. She had also introduced John to rock and roll. She would play Elvis Presley records at top volume, grabbing John’s hand to jive around the kitchen to them. She always encouraged John’s musical dreams.”
Lennon and Julia were especially close by 1958. Tragically, that year Julia was killed after getting hit by a car.
John Lennon was furious with his mother’s partner
Lennon was staying at Julia and Dykins’ home on the night of her death. Julia and Dykins had been together for a while and shared two daughters together. While Julia had not divorced Lennon’s father, Fred, she was in a long term relationship with Dykins. Lennon didn’t have a problem with Dykins, but he began referring to him as “Twitchy.”
“I was staying with Julia and Twitchy this weekend,” Lennon said, per the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “We were sitting waiting for her to come home, Twitchy and me, wondering why she was so late. The copper came to the door, to tell us about the accident. It was just like it’s supposed to be, the way it is in the films. Asking if I was her son, and all that. Then he told us, and we both went white. It was the worst ever thing that happened to me.”
Lennon tended to swallow his emotions, and he did his best to do so. He noted that Dykins took the news worse than him, and Lennon found his response unforgivable.
“Twitchy took it worse than me,” Lennon explained. “Then he said, ‘Who’s going to look after the kids?’ And I hated him. Bloody selfishness.”
He hid his emotions about her death
Though the death was extremely difficult for Lennon to process, he didn’t speak about his grief with his friends.
“He never showed it,” his friend Pete Shotton said. “It was like when masters beat him up. He never gave anything away. His exterior never showed his feelings.”
Lennon retreated into himself. His fellow students at the Liverpool College of Art noted that he became less caring, and his jokes grew increasingly cruel following Julia’s death.
