John Lennon Went to ‘Great Lengths’ to Make His Aunt Like George Harrison, but He Didn’t Succeed
It took John Lennon a while to warm up to George Harrison, but the bandmates became good friends once he did. Lennon wanted to introduce Harrison to his aunt, Mimi Smith, but he knew Smith didn’t tend to like his friends. She wouldn’t let Paul McCartney into her house and once threw a fit in front of Lennon’s girlfriend, Cynthia. Because of this, Lennon worked hard to make Smith think she would like Harrison. Ultimately, though, his efforts were unsuccessful.
The musician’s aunt did not like many of the people in his life
Smith took custody of Lennon after calling Social Services on his mother, Julia, twice. After taking him in, Smith made it clear that she had a specific set of expectations for her nephew. She did not want him playing in a band, and she didn’t want him spending time with people she deemed unsuitable. Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, believed Smith was jealous of Lennon’s friends.
“Mimi wanted and expected John’s devotion, and if you got in her way you were not popular,” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “She constantly hounded and oppressed him. He constantly complained that she never left him alone and found fault with everything he did. Even before his mother died she had been the closest thing he had to a parent, and he wanted to please her, but she made it impossible for him. Years later, when he was world-famous and wealthy, he was still trying to earn her approval and she was still telling him off.”
John Lennon tried to make his aunt like George Harrison
Smith did not want Lennon to play in a band, so Lennon had to keep his group, The Quarrymen, a secret from her. Even though she didn’t know about the group, she did not approve of his bandmate, McCartney.
“He used to come to my front door,” Smith said, per the book The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “He’d be on his bike which he’d lean against the fence. He would look over at me with his sheep eyes and say, ‘Hello, Mimi. Can I come in?’ ‘No, you certainly cannot,’ I’d say.”
Knowing this, Lennon tried to speak highly of Harrison around his aunt to make her think she’d like him.
“John used to go on and on about George, what a nice boy he was and how I’d like him,” she said. “He went to great lengths to impress me with George. ‘Give you anything, George,’ he’d say.”
Lennon hadn’t liked Harrison when they first met, so his eagerness to make his aunt like him showed that their relationship had improved.
John Lennon was not successful in getting his aunt to like George Harrison
Lennon gave it his best effort, but Smith determined that she disliked Harrison the moment she saw him.
“I eventually said he could come in one day,” Smith said. “He arrived with a crew cut and a pink shirt. I threw him out. Well, it wasn’t done. I might have been a bit old-fashioned, but schoolboys dressing like that! Up till John was sixteen I always made sure he wore his regulation school blazer and shirt.”
