| Well,
here's a democratic gesture: Working Class
Hero - the latest posthumous John Lennon
greatest hits album - has been made available
to download. It's only what you'd expect from
the proletariat's supreme son, isn't it?
But the title, like much of the Lennon legend,
misleads. For, unlike Paul, George and Ringo,
he was not brought up in a council house and was
irredeemably middle-class.
Fostered by his stern Aunt Mimi in the 1950s,
the young Lennon was brought up in the Liverpool
suburb of Woolton - large chunks of which were
owned by his uncle's family.
From the age of five to 23, home was a substantial
1930s semi called Mendips; Lennon had his own
room, the not inconsiderable sum of five shillings
a week pocket money as a child, and went to grammar
school.
Paul McCartney described his |
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mark paterson
challenges the popular myth of the Liverpudlian
singer’s upbringing
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young friend's foster-family as "another world". "I remember being very impressed in Mendips with seeing the entire works of Winston Churchill, and knowing that John had actually read them".
Lennon's first wife, Cynthia,
suspected that he had adopted his working-class
Liverpool accent as a rebellion against his snobbish
aunt, who spoke without a hint of Scouse and whose favourite
epithet was "common" - one she applied to
many of Lennon's friends.
Still, in 1971 Lennon told the underground
magazine Red Mole: "I've always been against
the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought
up like I was... it's just a basic working-class thing."
For a middle-class boy, "a working
class hero" - as Lennon sang - "is something
to be". 
FIRST
POSTED NOVEMBER 22
EMI publishes all Lennon’s solo work on the web on December 5th |
