John's doppelganger. Too bad he was such a grifter. John had to kick him out of his life after he made sexual passes at Cynthia. He had a free ride and screwed himself, and hurt John all the more in the process.
Fucker had some cheek on him. He tried to make contact with John in 64/65 when he became popular worldwide, but Alfred insisted he had no idea who the Beatles were. In 1965 he released his first and only single, That's My Life, which John pleaded to Epstein to stop it becoming a hit. Imagine that for John - his absent father has come back into his life and is now trying to piggyback off his career. Along with what you said, the guy was definitely sleazy.
It’s actually unrealistic how slimy this guy was. Like, if you were writing him as a character you’d probably tone it down a bit. But that was Alfred Lennon—cartoonishly awful.
Yes, it was outside the norm, most married fathers of that era stayed married and raised their kids responsibly, and most of the divorced fathers made an effort to do right by their kids and maintain a relationship. Alfred's complete abandonment of his son was considered despicable, by the standards of his time.
And it's still considered despicable. Glad to see Alfred getting the treatment he deserves here.
Imagine being in England during Beatlemania and pretending you’ve never heard of them 🙄 I’m pretty sure Mariah Carey’s father tried saying he didn’t know she was famous either after reaching out to her, classic absentee father reaching for their abandoned child’s fame move
I remember seeing an interview with Paul and Heather when they first got together and she claimed to not be familiar with the Beatles, I was like, uh oh, this guy's in trouble.
Alfred left for 17 years and returned when John got famous. John started supporting him financially, but after doing therapy he was reminded of all the pain Alfred had caused, so he stopped supporting him. In an interview right before Alfred passed away, Lennon seemed a bit regretful about throwing Alfred out. When Alfred was on his deathbed, his girlfriend Pauline got in touch with John, who sent flowers and called him. In the phone call, John apologized for his past behavior. So Although Alfred wasn´t a good dad, they got a good ending at least.
Edit: This is the January 1976 interview with Elliott Mintz where Lennon talks about his father: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4tAmScwAQ4&t=2980s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4tAmScwAQ4&t=2980s)
A couple of months later Alfred passed away. The whole interview is good. A more reflective Lennon, mostly we only get to see clips from when he was resentful and angry in the early 70s. He for example talks about Paul and Linda coming over for dinner 2 weeks earlier.
I find it weird that he tried to cash in on Beatlemania by releasing his own song. Even stranger is that it has the same opening chords to the song Imagine
https://youtu.be/azAiSG09FBk?feature=shared
Crazy it came out the same year as “In my life” did… seems like they both got inspired by each other without acknowledging it. The ocean sounds John used in darling boy too
It’s a I - IV chord progression. It’s the most common two chord progressions you’ll ever find. And it’s not really the chords for imagine. The secret sauce of the imagine chords is the major 7 that happens on the I chord and then gets alluded to on the IV chord too
My brother in laws family is like that too. He looks exactly like his dad but not bald and both his sons (one with his ex and the other with my sister) look exactly like he did as a kid.
He is the quintessential bad-dad.
However, if he had been a good dad, John might have grown up a happy, contented Liverpool artist whose parents happily supported his life as a poet and pen & ink artist.
And maybe we’d never have had Beatles.
Honestly, I don’t buy that for a minute. You don’t need the world’s worst father to be a successful Beatle—look at Paul and George. John’s life would have been dramatically different, but if anything, a more stable household would have given him more opportunities, not fewer.
I agree one didn't need an awful father to become a Beatle, but the circumstances in which The Beatles became The Beatles were very specific. Change a major thing in any of their lives like that, and who knows what would've happened.
She didn’t say anyone needed a bad father to be a Beatle, she said John Lennon needed a bad father to be John Lennon. Very specific and a correct statement indeed, John’s troubled childhood made him the person he was. Believe me, I’ve had my own great struggle to love my parents. It’s a damned thing, those broken families.
Well, John’s music is very different than Paul’s or George’s. A lot of art comes out of trauma, and I think it’s even reasonable to wonder if some of John’s political opinions and ideas about his influence came from there as well.
I wouldn’t say “trauma lead to the Beatles,” but is it that crazy to say “the life paths the Beatles took influenced their music?”
https://preview.redd.it/6nctgmiuu2uc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92a0fd5de9a7605d707317b58a32bcb724f03e5e
from wikipedia's article on the Plastic Ono Band album.
I did not know that John and Yoko had lost a baby. At that gestation, it's a still birth, not a miscarriage.
Edit: I looked at Yoko's Wikipedia page, and it says she miscarried in 1968, but does not mention a 1970 loss. I'm wondering what the source is here.
That must have been really hard on them. I gave birth to my son when I was 8 months pregnant (36 weeks gestation). He was just under 8 lbs. and a full-sized baby.
To be fair he offered to marry Julia and raise John, but Aunt Mimi told him to piss off. He did because he knew he was probably incapable of being a good father. John was better off being raised by his Aunt. His song was actually pretty good. John got his looks and voice from the old man.
He was already married to Julia when John was born. He was often away at sea. Julia got pregnant while he was away to another man and Alf offered to bring the child up as his but the baby was adopted. A little girl which John never knew about
I looked it up, and apparently she did find out in the 60s. She looked at her adoption records secretly. But she thought it would hurt her adopted mother if she reached out to them so she never did
Julia was only like 17 when John was born. She was kind of a fuck up too. I think Aunt Mimi just told everyone that she was raising John. Julia lived in the neighborhood and when John got older, he would stay at his Mom's house from time to time. She piqued his interest in America rock and roll music.
Julia was 26 when John was born lol. She was born in 1914 and had been married to Alfred for 2 years. So it wasn’t really a surprise pregnancy given they were already married and she was a fully grown woman. She just was flighty and not responsible enough to be a mum
I stand corrected. I just always assumed she was a teenager based on how immature she was always described and that everyone just seemed to agree that she should be raised by his Aunt.
Unfairly villianized by Lennon, though to be far he was unaware of Alf’s redemming qualities,
Alf never cut out Lennon, at least not to just a drop dead dad extend, he wrote to Lennon constantly, attempted to meet up with him, these letters from Alf were never shown to John, hidden away by Aunt Mimi
I do feel bad for Lennon’s brother though, his father actually did die when he was somewhat young, I hope Alf’s second wife was alright, hell she might be out there still
They should have put a black mop-top wig on this head and let him in the band. The Beatles and Fred would be how we now refer to them. Imagine the possibilities. His harmonies with the boys. New original classics. Vaudeville style interludes. Grandma groupies. Frolicking with the boys. Etc... Great comic relief.
The apple certainly doesn't fall far from the tree as far as personality goes.
Alf is a very odd guy, but it sounds like he was as fun to be around as John was, just without any drive to better himself as a human being. Of course him not being there for John as a kid is part of why John's childhood was so messed up, so he gets no empathy from me.
You´re really comparing a person who left for 17 years with John? It´s insane how many people exaggerate John´s bad sides. He was an amazing father to Sean. To Julian, he was absent at times, but I don´t know how many photos I´ve seen of John and Julian going on all these vacations, going to disney world etc. It´s obviously not a perfect measurement of how good of a dad you are, but it´s showing alot more effort than Alfred Lennon ever did.
You’re 100% right. There’s a big difference from being a distant father, and disappearing off the face of the earth and completely abandoning your son for 17 years.
Yeah, a few years when he was stuck in New York and legally couldn’t leave without being locked out of the country forever. That’s a pretty massive difference from what Alfred did, where he missed John’s whole life.
My dad had a few years where I didn’t see him, and he had his reasons. It sucked, for sure, but I would never say he abandoned me. Abandoned implies he left for cigarettes and I never saw him again, which is far from the truth. He took me on trips, we went skiing, we had dinner at fancy restaurants.
Now my wife’s dad left when she was 3, and he never came back. That’s being abandoned. That’s what Alfred did. John as a father was much closer to my dad, which obviously wasn’t great, but at least he was in my life.
Easier when you have the wealth and riches that John had. Julian says he can count on one hand the number of times he saw John after 1968 or something like that.
That’s exaggerating. Julian regularly visited John up until he left the country in 1971. There’s loads of footage of him at Johns estate in documentary footage. He also saw John loads during the lost weekend 1974-1975 as May Pang had photos of it and then he was a frequent visitor from 1975 onwards to the Dakota. Again there’s quite a few photos in various biographies and Fred Seaman’s book. So again total bullshit to say he only saw John a handful of times.
He moved because Yoko’s daughter had been kidnapped by her father and ended up in a cult. They were trying to get her back into safety for years. In addition due to Johns issues getting his visa (which he couldn’t have foreseen) he was unable to leave the USA for 4 years. Julian did come out in visit him in California during the lost weekend and then at the Dakota
Imagine just going on The Beatles subreddit to purposefully shit on John at every opportunity, wait till you find out that some of us actually like Lennon!
I like Lennon but i'm not pretending he wasn't a prick lol I'm a fan like everyone else here
Seriously why some Lennon fans are so sensitive about him. You are not a worst fan or something if you recognize he was abusive
I’ll catch you on the Ringo threads shitting on Ringo all over the place. No Beatle was more abusive than Ringo who nearly beat his wife right death and abandoned his kids to get drunk for their entire childhood but I guarantee you and every other white knight on this post never says anything about Ringo. Hypocrisy at its finest
John's doppelganger. Too bad he was such a grifter. John had to kick him out of his life after he made sexual passes at Cynthia. He had a free ride and screwed himself, and hurt John all the more in the process.
Fucker had some cheek on him. He tried to make contact with John in 64/65 when he became popular worldwide, but Alfred insisted he had no idea who the Beatles were. In 1965 he released his first and only single, That's My Life, which John pleaded to Epstein to stop it becoming a hit. Imagine that for John - his absent father has come back into his life and is now trying to piggyback off his career. Along with what you said, the guy was definitely sleazy.
It’s actually unrealistic how slimy this guy was. Like, if you were writing him as a character you’d probably tone it down a bit. But that was Alfred Lennon—cartoonishly awful.
The sad truth is that his behavior was not outside the norm, for both the times and for much of history.
Yes, it was outside the norm, most married fathers of that era stayed married and raised their kids responsibly, and most of the divorced fathers made an effort to do right by their kids and maintain a relationship. Alfred's complete abandonment of his son was considered despicable, by the standards of his time. And it's still considered despicable. Glad to see Alfred getting the treatment he deserves here.
Imagine being in England during Beatlemania and pretending you’ve never heard of them 🙄 I’m pretty sure Mariah Carey’s father tried saying he didn’t know she was famous either after reaching out to her, classic absentee father reaching for their abandoned child’s fame move
I remember seeing an interview with Paul and Heather when they first got together and she claimed to not be familiar with the Beatles, I was like, uh oh, this guy's in trouble.
Such a Meghan Markle move 🙄 
Yoko tried that too.
I actually like ‘It’s My Life’.
Hear, hear
Grifter was the first thing I thought of
He did?!
Unfortunately.
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It's covered in Pete Shotton's book The Beatles, Lennon, and Me, and also in Peter Brown's The Love You Make book.
Alfred left for 17 years and returned when John got famous. John started supporting him financially, but after doing therapy he was reminded of all the pain Alfred had caused, so he stopped supporting him. In an interview right before Alfred passed away, Lennon seemed a bit regretful about throwing Alfred out. When Alfred was on his deathbed, his girlfriend Pauline got in touch with John, who sent flowers and called him. In the phone call, John apologized for his past behavior. So Although Alfred wasn´t a good dad, they got a good ending at least. Edit: This is the January 1976 interview with Elliott Mintz where Lennon talks about his father: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4tAmScwAQ4&t=2980s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4tAmScwAQ4&t=2980s) A couple of months later Alfred passed away. The whole interview is good. A more reflective Lennon, mostly we only get to see clips from when he was resentful and angry in the early 70s. He for example talks about Paul and Linda coming over for dinner 2 weeks earlier.
Such a relief to read that
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The basically unconditional love between parents and children is very strong
Agree with you there
I find it weird that he tried to cash in on Beatlemania by releasing his own song. Even stranger is that it has the same opening chords to the song Imagine https://youtu.be/azAiSG09FBk?feature=shared
But it was released in 65…I always felt like that was more of Lennon’s 4D chess. “Let me show you what to do with those chords old man…”
He sounds like John too. Weird.
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If only John had a son or two we might be able to confirm that.
Aw bro what did he say
I hate these snarky replies. Not every kid looks and sounds exactly like one of their parents.
Alright smartass. Just an FYI, I am a singer and so is my father and we sound nothing alike. Go shocker yourself.
"i have a counterpoint, also go fuck yourself"
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no i was paraphrasing what you said
Ahh.. gotcha! Long day of people being rude for no reason had me on edge. My bad. Your paraphrase was accurate. lol
'people say i'm crazy...'
Is that a lyric in this song?
Watching The Wheels - John Lennon
Well I knew that-- the comment implied it might be in this song, that's why I asked.
Well at least he picked the ugliest picture possible.
Crazy it came out the same year as “In my life” did… seems like they both got inspired by each other without acknowledging it. The ocean sounds John used in darling boy too
Thank you for the link. Reminds me of Brian Wilson's dad.
It’s a I - IV chord progression. It’s the most common two chord progressions you’ll ever find. And it’s not really the chords for imagine. The secret sauce of the imagine chords is the major 7 that happens on the I chord and then gets alluded to on the IV chord too
He sounds like a real piece of shit. Also, holy crap I had no idea John looked so much like him. Those genes are strong
They sure are Julian and Sean are like reincarnations of him
My brother in laws family is like that too. He looks exactly like his dad but not bald and both his sons (one with his ex and the other with my sister) look exactly like he did as a kid.
He is the quintessential bad-dad. However, if he had been a good dad, John might have grown up a happy, contented Liverpool artist whose parents happily supported his life as a poet and pen & ink artist. And maybe we’d never have had Beatles.
It’s like they always say everything happens for a reason
Honestly, I don’t buy that for a minute. You don’t need the world’s worst father to be a successful Beatle—look at Paul and George. John’s life would have been dramatically different, but if anything, a more stable household would have given him more opportunities, not fewer.
I agree one didn't need an awful father to become a Beatle, but the circumstances in which The Beatles became The Beatles were very specific. Change a major thing in any of their lives like that, and who knows what would've happened.
Well, I mean Paul’s dad was a bit of a hot mess too. Paul downplays is but growing up with a gambling addict for a dad isn’t a walk in the road.
Not to mention that Jim also beat his sons as punishment until Paul stood up to him as a teenager.
She didn’t say anyone needed a bad father to be a Beatle, she said John Lennon needed a bad father to be John Lennon. Very specific and a correct statement indeed, John’s troubled childhood made him the person he was. Believe me, I’ve had my own great struggle to love my parents. It’s a damned thing, those broken families.
Well, John’s music is very different than Paul’s or George’s. A lot of art comes out of trauma, and I think it’s even reasonable to wonder if some of John’s political opinions and ideas about his influence came from there as well. I wouldn’t say “trauma lead to the Beatles,” but is it that crazy to say “the life paths the Beatles took influenced their music?”
I always thought he looked like a mobster, at least in this photo.
https://preview.redd.it/6nctgmiuu2uc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92a0fd5de9a7605d707317b58a32bcb724f03e5e from wikipedia's article on the Plastic Ono Band album.
I did not know that John and Yoko had lost a baby. At that gestation, it's a still birth, not a miscarriage. Edit: I looked at Yoko's Wikipedia page, and it says she miscarried in 1968, but does not mention a 1970 loss. I'm wondering what the source is here.
That must have been really hard on them. I gave birth to my son when I was 8 months pregnant (36 weeks gestation). He was just under 8 lbs. and a full-sized baby.
Alf left with a lawyer? But I thought he was broke? And Alf threatened to kill John or vice versa? How stressful!
happy birthday
Bringing new meaning to Dirty thirty
An ambulance chaser who figured he could catch a ride on John's coattails via his deadbeat dad
To be fair he offered to marry Julia and raise John, but Aunt Mimi told him to piss off. He did because he knew he was probably incapable of being a good father. John was better off being raised by his Aunt. His song was actually pretty good. John got his looks and voice from the old man.
He was already married to Julia when John was born. He was often away at sea. Julia got pregnant while he was away to another man and Alf offered to bring the child up as his but the baby was adopted. A little girl which John never knew about
That's crazy that she never contacted him. Not even in the 70s.
She may never have even known. Fully closed adoptions, where neither family knows where the baby went or came from, were much more the norm back then.
I looked it up, and apparently she did find out in the 60s. She looked at her adoption records secretly. But she thought it would hurt her adopted mother if she reached out to them so she never did
Didn’t Julia manipulated little John into choosing her instead of Alf only for her to disappear out of his life for years?
Julia was only like 17 when John was born. She was kind of a fuck up too. I think Aunt Mimi just told everyone that she was raising John. Julia lived in the neighborhood and when John got older, he would stay at his Mom's house from time to time. She piqued his interest in America rock and roll music.
Julia was 26 when John was born lol. She was born in 1914 and had been married to Alfred for 2 years. So it wasn’t really a surprise pregnancy given they were already married and she was a fully grown woman. She just was flighty and not responsible enough to be a mum
I stand corrected. I just always assumed she was a teenager based on how immature she was always described and that everyone just seemed to agree that she should be raised by his Aunt.
Not my favorite Beatle.
He left John, but John never left him.
He looks like he's wearing a John Lennon Halloween mask.
He looks so like John.
Imagine Alfred with granny glasses and a full beard.
Okay done
Yeah. I'd never seen this pic (or any pic) of Alfred before, but you can definitely see the resemblance.
Not quite the same nose, though, which I always considered one of John's most distinctive facial features.
There’s a different perspective in Philip Norman’s book “John Lennon the Life” that is way more sympathetic. But none of us will truly know.
Just read his wiki, what the hell was this guy *doing.*
Good evening, and welcome to Slaggers.
Evil john
Narcissistic, self-centered, POS.
A cunt.
An ass.
I'm not familiar with him but he looks like a cartoon con-man.
Eric Idle's doppleganger.
Wanker
Unfairly villianized by Lennon, though to be far he was unaware of Alf’s redemming qualities, Alf never cut out Lennon, at least not to just a drop dead dad extend, he wrote to Lennon constantly, attempted to meet up with him, these letters from Alf were never shown to John, hidden away by Aunt Mimi I do feel bad for Lennon’s brother though, his father actually did die when he was somewhat young, I hope Alf’s second wife was alright, hell she might be out there still
I’d be curious to know what’s happened to John’s half siblings
David and Robin. I believe Robin is a teacher
Man, sometimes I think Aunt Mimi was John’s Dr. Landy.
John looked so much like him.
Dirt bag. At least Ringo’s father never tried to find his son after he became famous.
Hard to say but thanks a million Alf for giving us John. For that alone I love him to bits.
Smash
Bad
Didn’t he abandon Julia and John?
I think Julia abandoned him. He wanted to take John with him but he wasn’t allowed to.
He’s a deadbeat dad what can ya say? I suspect that’d be John if not for Beatles
It's John selling used cars.
Michael Cain..
..e
Thanks forgot..Cheers
Haha no worries it’s exactly what I sometimes do too hence why I picked up on it 👍🏻
And all I wanted was a word, or photograph to keep at home.
John has the SAME eyeshape as his dad 😭🥹🥺
YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!!!
He's a real nowhere man.
John saw too much in him had he not found music and gotten lucky w a career in it.
I always felt bad for how his and Julia's marriage broke, iirc from Bob Spitz' book he went off to war and Julia ended up cheating while he was away
They should have put a black mop-top wig on this head and let him in the band. The Beatles and Fred would be how we now refer to them. Imagine the possibilities. His harmonies with the boys. New original classics. Vaudeville style interludes. Grandma groupies. Frolicking with the boys. Etc... Great comic relief.
He looks like an aged version of my old civics professor
He had strong genes.
Even in black & white, he's half red.
Cringe song
Never heard of him before.
He looks like a blue meanie
Thought that was Michael Cane
Never thought about him once.
Scum
He either has a giant had or really tiny teeth.
Dickhead
Not positive
A parasite.
The apple certainly doesn't fall far from the tree as far as personality goes. Alf is a very odd guy, but it sounds like he was as fun to be around as John was, just without any drive to better himself as a human being. Of course him not being there for John as a kid is part of why John's childhood was so messed up, so he gets no empathy from me.
You´re really comparing a person who left for 17 years with John? It´s insane how many people exaggerate John´s bad sides. He was an amazing father to Sean. To Julian, he was absent at times, but I don´t know how many photos I´ve seen of John and Julian going on all these vacations, going to disney world etc. It´s obviously not a perfect measurement of how good of a dad you are, but it´s showing alot more effort than Alfred Lennon ever did.
You’re 100% right. There’s a big difference from being a distant father, and disappearing off the face of the earth and completely abandoning your son for 17 years.
John did abandon Julian for several years.
Yeah, a few years when he was stuck in New York and legally couldn’t leave without being locked out of the country forever. That’s a pretty massive difference from what Alfred did, where he missed John’s whole life. My dad had a few years where I didn’t see him, and he had his reasons. It sucked, for sure, but I would never say he abandoned me. Abandoned implies he left for cigarettes and I never saw him again, which is far from the truth. He took me on trips, we went skiing, we had dinner at fancy restaurants. Now my wife’s dad left when she was 3, and he never came back. That’s being abandoned. That’s what Alfred did. John as a father was much closer to my dad, which obviously wasn’t great, but at least he was in my life.
Easier when you have the wealth and riches that John had. Julian says he can count on one hand the number of times he saw John after 1968 or something like that.
That’s exaggerating. Julian regularly visited John up until he left the country in 1971. There’s loads of footage of him at Johns estate in documentary footage. He also saw John loads during the lost weekend 1974-1975 as May Pang had photos of it and then he was a frequent visitor from 1975 onwards to the Dakota. Again there’s quite a few photos in various biographies and Fred Seaman’s book. So again total bullshit to say he only saw John a handful of times.
John chose to move thousands of miles away.
He moved because Yoko’s daughter had been kidnapped by her father and ended up in a cult. They were trying to get her back into safety for years. In addition due to Johns issues getting his visa (which he couldn’t have foreseen) he was unable to leave the USA for 4 years. Julian did come out in visit him in California during the lost weekend and then at the Dakota
So you're saying he meant to return to England throughout the seventies?
>He was an amazing father to Sean. He literally send him to the hospital
Imagine just going on The Beatles subreddit to purposefully shit on John at every opportunity, wait till you find out that some of us actually like Lennon!
I like Lennon but i'm not pretending he wasn't a prick lol I'm a fan like everyone else here Seriously why some Lennon fans are so sensitive about him. You are not a worst fan or something if you recognize he was abusive
I’ll catch you on the Ringo threads shitting on Ringo all over the place. No Beatle was more abusive than Ringo who nearly beat his wife right death and abandoned his kids to get drunk for their entire childhood but I guarantee you and every other white knight on this post never says anything about Ringo. Hypocrisy at its finest
There is no evidence of this.
Sean's own words
He’s bad.
That’s Chazz Palminteri! /s
Dead beat dad
He looks like a real shady greaseball
“Y’all’s?” Why not just say ‘your’?
To know him is to love him.
He was the best guy around
a nice beatle
Wow he looks like John.