When a broad point was being made, John Lennon was never too far away. John Lennon was always wagging his silver tongue, whether it was in interviews, sociopolitical protests, or his music. Still, Lennon rejected the weighty label in the 1960s, when the world embraced his work and hailed him and The Beatles as musical geniuses.
Pop music rose to prominence and the Beatles’ music quickly became the go-to art form for intellectuals everywhere. As the leading group of this sweeping craze, the Liverpudlians took on the role of the new guardians of thinking-man’s culture. Still, the band firmly denied this idea for a long time.
Professors and their students were examining the band’s intricate output, while John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were purposefully attempting to confuse them. After completing the song “I Am The Walrus” and adding a purposefully disorienting sequence of images, Lennon reportedly said to his friend Pete Shotton, “Let the fu*kers work that one out”. After receiving a letter from a student who was researching the band.
They abandoned their scholarly approach to pop music once more with The White Album. We’re saying to ourselves, ‘With less of your philosorock,’ is what we’re trying to do, which is rock and roll. When John Lennon was recording the massive double LP in 1968, he remarked, “And get on with rocking because rockers is what we really are.” The singer, though, didn’t continue to be so resistant to acknowledging his status as one of the greatest intellectuals of his time.
The truth is that Lennon had always demonstrated a deeper level of understanding than most through his writing. His adoption of avant-garde philosophical ideas, and his ability to write excellent poetry. In fact, though unconfirmed, many believe Lennon’s IQ surpassed 150, exceeding the 140 mark set for genius status.
In 1971, Lennon talked candidly about his early years and his capacity for thinking far beyond his peers in an interview with Jann Wenner. “People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine…,” the singer stated. I’ve always asked myself, Why hasn’t anybody found me? Did they not notice that I am smarter than everyone in this school when I was in school? That educators are also unintelligent? that all they possessed was unnecessary information.
The young Beatle obviously expressed displeasure that others were not acknowledging his intelligence, potentially fueling his desire to seek trouble everywhere. “It was evident to me,” he went on. “Why wasn’t I enrolled in an art school?.. Why do they insist on making me act like the other cowboys when I’m not? I was different. I was always different.
Lennon’s behaviour deteriorated in the following years. He moved in with Aunt Mimi, a significant person in his life, primarily because of the death of both of his parents. But her iron fist also sent him there, restrained. That didn’t exactly work out that way, though, and Lennon “got fukin’ lost in high school”. I used to tell my aunt, “You throw out my fukin’ poetry. You’ll regret it when I become famous“. And she would promptly discard the offensive material. I never got over the fact that she didn’t treat me as the childish genius that I was.
Strangely, in the years that followed, Lennon would try to avoid being referred to as a genius whenever possible. Instead he started describing himself as a down-to-earth working-class hero. It’s difficult to say whether he realised at eight years old how brilliant he was. If he did, though, he probably proved his own point in the process.
