52: The Mother(s) of all bands part 2

Of all The Beatles it is John Lennon’s relationships with his mother Julia Stanley Lennon and Mary (Mimi) Stanley Smith, the aunt who raised him from the age of five has received most attention. Indeed it has been the basis of a film ‘Nowhere boy’ which I reviewed in one of my earliest posts.

John would also publicly document his feelings for Julia on several occasions. She would inspire the songs ‘Julia’, ‘Mother’ and ‘my mummy’s dead’. Ian McDonald has perhaps written with most sensitivity about the effect that Julia’s early death would have on John in his acclaimed ‘Revolution in the head’.
Having read Hunter Davies’ biography, what strikes me about Mimi Smith is her treatment of John as male. Mimi told Hunter Davies she was so delighted when Julia gave birth to a boy, she could only think of baby John and forgot Julia. John (as generations of men before and since) would have received the message that a male he was deserving of a privileged position within society. At the same time, Mimi’s strong personality was dominant within the Smith household. John, as many generations of men and women before him received extremely mixed messages about the role that women should play in relation to men.

Mimi Smith, like Mary McCartney, trained to be a nurse. She also shared Mary’s aspirations to be middle class and placed a high premium on social respectability and education. It can be argued therefore that Paul and John were raised by very similar women. This would be repeated when Paul and John would later marry women who shared many similarities (but more of this in a later post- I hope!).

There is the additional issue of John’s unsettled childhood. I will not over the events of John’s childhood. As Gould put it in his book John had an aunt who acted as a mother and mother who acted as an aunt. Mimi Smith has been portrayed as something of a battleaxe, but she gave John a stable home, particularly through his tempestuous teenage years. It is also important when considering Julia’s role in John’s life that she fell foul of  the rigid morality of the post war era (having to give an illegitmate daughter up for adoption and losing sutody of John). She was however able to eventually make a home on her own terms with her partner and their daughters and began to rebuild her relationship with John.

The memory of Juliawould haunt John for years after her tragic early death. Several of John's songs dwell on absent/non-responsive women (Yes it is/No reply) and jealous men (Run for your life). Ian MacDonald in his book ‘Revolution in the head’ discusses John’s desire to find a highly intellectual, artistic, assertive woman who would provide him with a fulfilling and equal partnership.  John would eventually find this woman in Yoko Ono.

There are additional formidable women in the early story of The Beatles. There is Mona Best, who was Pete’s mother and who ran the Casbah where the Beatles would play some of their early gigs. She would become very embittered about the way Pete was treated by his own time band mates. Hunter Davies was finally reveal in the 2009 edition of the Beatles biography that Mona had been in a relationship with Neil Aspinall, the Beatles school mate and road manager. There was also Queenie Epstein, Brian’s mother.

Astrid Kirchherr was also arguably a mother figure to the group. The band lived in squalid conditions with little money while in Hamburg and Astrid and her mother made sure that they got a decent meal and wash whenever possible. Astrid would also help the band develop their image and greatly assisted their intellectual development by introducing them to intellectual concepts (such as existentialism) that they had not previously been exposed to She also helped the band develop their image (giving them their trademark page boy haircuts) . This care was repaid when Stuart Sutcliffe died of a brain aneurysm in 1962. She remains protective of the band, and has refused many offers to tell her story and artefacts connected to the band. She did act as advisor on the film ‘Backbeat’ which told the story of her relationship with Stuart and the Beatles and helps with Beatles events in Hamburg.

However, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, having a strong female role model for a mother does not translate into viewing women as equals.  This will be shown in the relationships that the Beatles had with their first wives. I hope eventually to look at the way that the Beatles partners/wives have been treated by the media