John Lennon was stunned when his father showed up at his front door. Their reunion after years apart was a tense and uncomfortable one.
John Lennon spent most of his childhood estranged from his father. By the time Lennon had risen to fame with The Beatles, he’d gone two decades without seeing the man. This changed in 1965 when Lennon’s father, Alfred Lennon, knocked on his front door. According to Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, her husband was angry, embarrassed, and ill at ease throughout the visit.
John Lennon’s estranged father dropped in on him after years apart
“He was a charmer in his own way,” Cynthia said in the book Lennon: The Definitive Biography by Ray Coleman. “There was no way I could have shut the door on him. He looked like a tramp but he was John’s Dad. I had no alternative but to ask him to wait for John to return.”
Lennon was astonished by his father’s arrival, but he quickly addressed him.
“Where have you been for the last twenty years?” he asked his father coldly.
Alfred did little to lighten Lennon’s demeanor. Cynthia said she watched her husband grow increasingly uncomfortable as Alfred spoke about his financial troubles while sitting in the lavish home.
“He was so embarrassed,” Cynthia said, noting, “He was in and out of the room like a cat on a hot tin roof. He was nervous and said he suddenly felt ill at ease in his own home.”
According to Cynthia, it was quite clear that Alfred was there looking for money.
“I suppose Fred was proud of what John had achieved,” she said, “but his main object was to rip off some cash from John.”
John Lennon’s father spoke about his son being a disappointment
Alfred stayed at Lennon’s house for several days, but their relationship never fully repaired itself. Lennon stayed away, leaving Cynthia to talk to Alfred. When the father and son did speak, their conversations devolved into arguments about why Alfred and Lennon’s mother separated.
Later, Alfred spoke publicly about the ways in which Lennon disappointed him.
“He’s only let me down twice,” Fred said, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “Once was accepting that MBE. I wouldn’t have done it. Royalty can’t buy me.”
He added that he also felt disappointed that Lennon hadn’t given a speech at a literary luncheon in his honor. Alfred said that in his place, he would have given a speech and performed a song.
Alfred Lennon worried his son would cause his death
Lennon and his father maintained a relationship for the next several years. Their final meeting took place on Lennon’s 30th birthday, and the two got into such a vicious argument that they cut ties. Alfred left the meeting genuinely concerned that Lennon would kill him.
“There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind, that he meant every word he spoke, his countenance was frightful to behold, as he explained in detail, how I would be carried out to sea and dumped, ‘twenty — Fifty — or perhaps you would prefer a hundred fathoms deep,’” Alfred wrote in a letter to his lawyer, per the book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman. “The whole loathesome tirade was uttered with malignant glee, as though he were actually participating in the terrible deed.”
He explained to his lawyer that if anything bad happened to him, the police should investigate his son.
