Despite “Mother” being one of John Lennon’s most deeply personal songs, there was a point when he told a concert audience in 1972, “A lot of people thought [‘Mother’] was just about my parents, but it was about 99% of the parents, alive or half-dead.” That “half-dead” jibe referring to the kind of parents Lennon had, who were never quite fully there—mostly because of their own emotional stuntedness that wouldn’t allow them to be. Although “Mother,” from the 1970 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, explored the shortcomings of both of Lennon’s progenitors, Alfred a.k.a. “Freddie” and Julia, it was his matriarch who served as the primary focus for the rage-sadness that punctuated lyrics like, “Mother, you had me/But I never had you.”
That the song commences with a bevy of elegiac carillons additionally speaks to Lennon “laying to rest” his proverbial “Mommy issues.” Not least of which included his Oedipal admission of wanting to touch his mother in ways inappropriate for a son. Recalling how his hand grazed her tit one afternoon as they were napping, John would later muse, “I was wondering if I should do anything else… I always think I should have done it. Presumably she would have allowed it.” What with Julia’s reputation for being so “bohemian.”
Oedipal inclinations aside, from the get-go of “Mother,” Lennon gut-punches his listeners by holding up his abandonment like an open wound he’s begging someone—anyone—to heal. As if, by showing it, maybe somebody can mend the damage. But, by that point, it was far too deep-seated to ever be repaired. Although the lyrics are sparse and often repetitive, the rich tapestry of Lennon’s varying vocal intonations is what makes the visceral song so arresting. This being in addition to the fact that so many can relate to the sentiments and themes presented. Both of which cut to the core of the type of abandonment that seemed so much more normalized when baby boomers were growing up (ergo the classic trope about Dad going out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returning).
Not to say, of course, that parents don’t still abandon their children (in more abstract ways now) every day, but it’s certainly less “tolerated.” And the only thing people hate more than having to be responsible is being made to feel guilty or shamed about, that’s right, not being responsible. “Back then,” as the phrase goes, it appeared so much more “accepted” to abandon children. After all, there were numerous cataclysmic factors that allowed one a “get out of jail [because, yeah, parenting is a prison] free” card. World War II, the Great Depression, a lack of surveillance technology in the form of smartphones—just to name a few of those “extenuating circumstances.”
To enhance the notion that to be a baby boomer child (and particularly a male one) was to run a higher risk of emotional damage incurred from one’s parents, Phil Spector co-produced the song. And he, too, got something of what can be called a “raw deal” in his upbringing. For his father, Benjamin, offered perhaps the worst kind of abandonment: committing suicide. Spurred by his increasing debt in 1949, Benjamin chose carbon monoxide poisoning as the most effective out. At the time, Spector was ten years old. Lennon would be far younger when he dealt with his own sting of abandonment, as his father was constantly absent due to his job as a sea merchant. But “at least” when he was doing that, he could send the checks home to help Julia support their son. Those checks mysteriously ceased circa 1944 (in the months when John would have been three) after Freddie went AWOL. A desertion that would soon extend to his nuclear family.
Six months after his disappearance, perhaps something like a guilty conscience struck as Freddie decided to return and try to get Julia to take him back. But she had already “canoodled” with a Welsh soldier, and ended up pregnant with his child (her family implored her to put up that baby for adoption, which she did—as even she couldn’t seem to talk herself into the idea that she was a “fit mother”). After that, she got together with John “Bobby” Dykins and had two children with him, although she never officially divorced from Freddie.
Though Julia eventually “got it together” for her second family, her “care” of John proved worrisome to her older sister, Mimi, who reported her to social services and gained custody of Julia’s firstborn that way. Regardless, Julia remained in daily contact with John and, in 1946, followed her son and Freddie to Blackpool where the latter was intending to run away to New Zealand with John. Forced into one of the most uncomfortable positions any child can be, John was asked to choose between his parents as they proceeded to get in an argument about custody. Stating that he chose his father, John then ran after an affronted Julia. But he was damned by whatever decision he made, for neither parent was equipped to raise him. Just as so many parents aren’t, yet still decide to go ahead and spawn anyway.
Later, in a 1980 interview, John would come to understand of his mother, “[She] just couldn’t deal with life. She was the youngest and she had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn’t cope with me, and I ended up living with her elder sister. Now those women were fantastic… And that was my first feminist education… I would infiltrate the other boys’ minds. I could say, ‘Parents are not gods because I don’t live with mine and, therefore, I know.’” This revelation—the one that children aren’t supposed to find out about until much later—came to John earlier than it should have. Ironically, while parents are supposed to be seen as some kind of all-knowing, all-powerful gods by their children, they themselves often know so little. It was no wonder David Bowie therefore clapped back in 1972’s “Changes,” “And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.”
John certainly was. And it was something he could never not be aware of—no matter how many drugs or how many women (or men) he turned to as a means to numb that awareness. That’s why he was still writing about the parental slight in 1970, at the age of thirty. Perhaps finally having the clarity that’s so often associated with “age” and being able to look back on things with a greater sense of perspective and wisdom. In the end, for his own self-preservation, he has to admit to both parents in “Mother,” “I, I wanted you/You didn’t want me/So, I/I just got to tell you/Goodbye.” Unfortunately, his wisdom arrived after he had already made the same mistake of rushing into having a family of his own too early—as though to “generate” the one he never had. Thus, in “Mother” he also sings, “Children, don’t do what I have done/I couldn’t walk and I tried to run.” In effect, John urges childless people not to hurry into having kids just because they want to fill some void left by their parents’ method of “raising.”
Shouting, “Mama don’t go! Daddy come home!” as the song draws to a close, the residual pain left by his parents is forever immortalized. And for so many children (no matter what age) who listen to it, that pain is all too resonant.
Genna Rivieccio
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