John Lennon’s sister has opened up on what would have been the Beatles star’s 85th birthday about the childhood experiences that shaped him into a global icon
Staff at the Strawberry Field children’s home in the 1950s were used to seeing a skinny lad sitting in a tree in their grounds. The boy who climbed their fence to escape a troubled home life was John Lennon – who would have been 85 today (October 9) – whose experience inspired him to write one of the best-known songs of all time.
Now, as the visitor attraction prepares to mark a major milestone in its history, Lennon’s sister Julia Baird is keen to explain why Strawberry Field’s success – and her brother’s legacy – really is forever. “This place has been a part of my life for a very long time and it meant a lot to John too,” Honorary President Julia, now 78, tells The Mirror.
“He had a rough childhood and to come into these grounds was his escape. Without really knowing it, he was another damaged child who was being taken care of here.”
Given to The Salvation Army in 1934, Strawberry Field opened two years later – 90 years ago next year – offering refuge for some of Liverpool’s most vulnerable children. Today it houses an exhibition tracing Lennon’s life and career – its star attraction being the world-famous piano on which he wrote and recorded Imagine .
It also operates a Steps to Work programme, providing training, skills and work placements for young adults with learning difficulties, or other barriers to employment. Beatles fans from across the globe still make pilgrimages to Strawberry Field in south Liverpool, but Julia says of the song that’s its namesake: “I get fed up with hearing it!
“My favourite track of John’s is actually Watching the Wheels. It reminds me of him lying on the bed, watching telly with Sean running around – and ignoring the pressure he was under to get back into the music industry. I love that. I saw an interview he did once and he was asked if he would consider writing his autobiography ‘Oh no,’ he sneered. ’I’d never do anything like that, what a stupid thing to do’.
“But I was laughing my head off. I thought ‘you’re writing it all the time through your songs.’ Strawberry Field is his psychoanalytical poem.”
Six-and-a-half years older than John, as a lad he had only sporadic contact with his seaman father, Alfred, and was raised mainly by one of his mum’s sisters, Mimi, in a house only yards away from Strawberry Field. His mum also had two daughters in a new relationship – Julia and her younger sister Jackie – but remained close to John, seeing him regularly.
She taught him to play the banjo and introduced him to Elvis Presley – dancing around the kitchen to the music. “Our mum was very arty, very creative and musical,” says Julia, who now lives in Cheshire. “She played the piano accordion and loved Judy Garland and Edith Piaf.
“And she was an excellent mother when she was given the chance; my father made sure she had that chance.”
Julia recalls John being an ‘awkward’ teen with a ‘chip on his shoulder,’ saying:“There he’d be, walking down the road with his guitar and his quiff, a cocky kid. “I was chatting to a former neighbour once and he said he remembered all the boys playing football in the street. John came along and kicked the ball into infinity so they all set on him and beat him up!
“People ask me what it was like to be John Lennon’s sister, but I didn’t know any different; he was just my older brother.”
When their mum was killed in a car accident in July 1958, John was just 17. “People say it was terrible for John and it was, but it was a lot worse for Jackie. She was only eight years old,” says Julia. “John’s childhood was far from plain sailing, but the result of that was John, the world icon. It made him the genius he was.”
Julia had a ringside seat when global fame hit her brother, together with Paul, George and Ringo, in the wake of The Beatles’ first single, Love Me Do, in 1962.
“There was no escaping it. I’d help open Beatles fan letters – some inviting them to leave their wives and girlfriends – and because fans kindly put in stamped addressed envelopes we’d reply. We’d pretend and say ‘we’ll meet you at the station?’” she says. “It was a full time job!”
Recalling a 1964 concert in London – part of a sold-out 16 night run – where, to John’s dismay, she and Jackie insisted on moving from a spot backstage out front, she says: “The front few rows were relatively empty and we thought we’d get a good view. He told us again and again to stay put but we pestered and he relented in the end.
“But then suddenly the opening bars for She Loves You started, the curtain went up and before the second bar everyone from the back was at the front – there was a huge surge. It was quite threatening, like a stampede. So John is singing and also going ‘get the girls, get the girls’; we were hauled on our stomachs back over the side of the stage. He just looked and said, ‘told you so’.”
Like most brothers, John could be embarrassing. “This was later during the anti-war protests – when he was in a bed or in a bag; it was awful,” says Julia. “I was married by then and living in Ireland and my in-laws said, ‘don’t worry love, we’ll keep it quiet that you’re related to him’.
“I mentioned it one day on the phone to John. I said, ‘you were in the ivory tower. We were dealing with it on the street’. He just said ‘sorry about that’.” John was murdered in 1980 in New York by Mark Chapman, who remains in prison.
Retired teacher Julia, who has three grandchildren, is convinced if he was alive today, her brother would be speaking out about global issues, including war and famine. “I can’t see him being able to keep out of it or keep quiet about what’s happening across the world. Life had been very unfair to him – as it is to so many people – and he hated injustice so whatever the cause he’d be saying ‘that’s not fair – we need to do something’,” she says.
Of his music, had he lived, she adds: “Maybe he’d have graduated to jazz. I don’t see him retiring at all. He’d be writing books although I worry that his eyesight might have caused him trouble using a computer. And I do wonder what he would look like now. I haven’t seen him for so long, and yet because he’s John Lennon I see him all the time. I wonder if he’d still have hair!”
But she believes John’s message and music are as relevant today as ever. “The Beatles were part of a cultural shift. They were an instrument for change – that birth of the teenager where young people no longer had to accept they’d simply leave school, get engaged, get married, have babies or work in an office,” she says. “That sort of change which challenges the norm still resonates.”
She believes he would have celebrated his birthday, adding: “Mum always made a big thing of birthdays, even when we were small, always made it a big celebration. John would have known that that was the order of the day.”
At Strawberry Field, Julia is surrounded by reminders of John, from engraved song lyrics to the famous red-painted entrance gates. But she has one very special keepsake that she treasures.
“I’ll never lose it or misplace it because it’s his blood,” she says. “I have his blood in my veins.I’m so proud of that.”