5 Wild Teenage John Lennon Stories That Still Blow My Mind (Beyond That 9 Out of 10 Bet)

Hey everyone, PJ Pat here. So I dropped a quick Short about that wild bit from Philip Norman's John Lennon: The Life biography. Teenage John bet his mates he could take care of himself 10 times in a single day, and he came up one short with a final tally of nine. Pretty bold. Pretty crude. Pretty Lennon. But that is just one of a hundred wild stories from John's pre Beatles years that show you exactly what kind of weird, brilliant troublemaker built the biggest band in rock history. Here are five more young Lennon stories that go way beyond the bet.

1. His School Reports Predicted Total Failure

John attended Quarry Bank High School for Boys in Liverpool from age 11 to 16, and his teachers basically gave up on him. The 1956 report card from when John was 15 is still floating around and it reads like a roast. The headmaster wrote that John had "too many of the wrong ambitions" and that his "energy is too often misplaced." His handiwork was scored as "weak." His physics teacher said he "lacks effort." His religious studies attitude was "most unsatisfactory." Here is the kicker. The headmaster who wrote those withering notes was a man named William Pobjoy, and Pobjoy eventually did the opposite of giving up on him. He personally recommended John to the principal of Liverpool College of Art and helped get him admitted despite the catastrophic grades. So the same guy who said John had wrong ambitions is the reason John ended up at art school, where he met Stuart Sutcliffe and started writing the songs that would change everything. Sometimes the people who roast you the loudest are the ones rooting for you the hardest.

2. Paul McCartney Auditioned by Tuning John's Guitar

July 6, 1957. The Quarrymen, John's skiffle band, were booked to play the St. Peter's Church Garden Fete in Woolton, Liverpool. A 15 year old Paul McCartney showed up with his friend Ivan Vaughan, who was a mate of John's. Between sets in the church hall, Paul picked up John's guitar and immediately showed off two things. First, he tuned the thing properly. John had been tuning his guitar like a banjo because his mother Julia had taught him banjo chords on it. Second, Paul ripped through Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock with every lyric memorized perfectly. John was 16, supposed to be the cool older one, and he was floored. A few weeks later he asked Paul to join the band. That moment in a church hall in Liverpool is the literal pivot of rock history. No fete, no Beatles. Pretty wild that the biggest moment in 20th century music happened at an event with bake sales and tombola tickets.

3. A Bus Driver Gave Him His First Real Harmonica

Picture young John, around 9 or 10 years old, on a long coach ride from Liverpool up to Edinburgh to visit his cousins. He had a cheap tin mouth organ in his pocket and he played it the entire trip. The bus driver, instead of getting fed up, was actually charmed by the kid's persistence. He told John to come by the bus depot at St Andrew Square the next day. When John showed up, the driver pulled a proper harmonica out of the lost and found that some unlucky passenger had left behind. He handed it to the kid and sent him on his way. That instrument became John's constant companion for years and it is the reason you hear that wailing harmonica intro on Love Me Do, the Beatles' first single. So the very first sound the world heard from a Beatles record can be traced back to a kindly Scottish bus driver who decided to reward a noisy kid instead of telling him to shut up. Music history is full of small mercies like that.

4. Aunt Mimi Said He'd Never Make a Living at the Guitar

John's Aunt Mimi raised him from age 5 at her house Mendips on Menlove Avenue. She was strict, refined, deeply suspicious of rock and roll, and absolutely certain her nephew was wasting his time on a guitar. Her most famous line, said directly to teenage John, was "the guitar is all very well, John, but you'll never make a living at it." That quote haunted Mimi for the rest of her life because the entire planet quoted it back to her after the Beatles took over. Here is the part that gets me. Once John had Beatle money, he bought Mimi a beautiful bungalow on the seaside in Sandbanks, Dorset. He also had her exact words framed and gifted to her so she would see them every single day in her new house. That is peak Lennon. Tender, savage, and turning a doubter's words into a love letter at the same time. Greatest "told you so" in rock history.

5. The Goon Show Built His Sense of Humor

If you ever wondered where John got that surreal, wordplay drenched, slightly cruel sense of humor, look no further than BBC radio in the 1950s. John was obsessed with The Goon Show, the absurdist comedy series starring Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, and Harry Secombe that ran from 1951 to 1960. He listened religiously through every year of his teens. The Goons did weird voices, broken English, made up words, and surreal storylines that did not really care about logic. That is exactly the formula behind John's later writing. His books In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are basically Goon Show energy printed on the page. Even his stage banter at Beatles concerts had Spike Milligan's fingerprints all over it. So when teen John was making cruel bets with his friends and joking around in ways that horrified the adults in his life, he was channeling his radio comedy heroes. The same goofy, cheeky kid mind that thought up that 9 out of 10 bet is also the kid mind that would one day write I Am the Walrus.

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Anyway

Anyway, that is five wild teen John Lennon stories that prove the cheeky kid in that 9 out of 10 bet was the same kid who would rewrite music. The bet is funny. The path from Quarry Bank disaster student to Woolton church fete to Beatlemania is the actual story. For more rock deep cuts, subscribe to It's 1 Louder on YouTube, follow us on Facebook, and hit me up at hello@its1louder.com if you want me to dig into another rock legend's wild teen years.

Crank it up 1 louder.

PJ Pat