we ain't written no poetry

I've always been sceptical that Mimi was the firm but kindly figure she portrayed herself as - even by her own account she can come across as narcissistic, dishonest, manipulative and sometimes very cruel. The actual story by which she came to assume guardianship of John remains mysterious, with Mimi's own version (that she was obliged to due to Julia's unsuitability as a parent) being adopted by most historians and biographers. Kenny provides a valuable counterpoint in highlighting the oddness of the situation, even if his conclusions are no easier to prove than Mimi's.

John's relationship with Mimi was certainly conflicted: he sometimes expressed frustration, privately had rows with her, didn't see her in person for the last nine years of his life, but at the same time remained largely loyal to her version of events (in public, at least). Kenny frames John's internal struggle as being between the view of the world imparted to him by Mimi's class-bound, suspicious prejudice, and the open, rambunctious, friendly world of working-class Liverpool (represented by Teddy Boy fashion and, later, rock 'n' roll), and some of John's conflicted views of people as originating from that struggle.

Kenny also identifies psychological splitting and projection in John's feelings about Julia/Freddie and Mimi. In Kenny's assessment, John eventually accessed the deep pain and anger he felt as a child, but directed it against the wrong target - framing Julia and Freddie as the ones who harmed him and retaining a semi-idealised view of Mimi, when his issues in fact stemmed from Mimi's cruel treatment. It's an interesting perspective that could have something to it. But I think Kenny falls victim to the same kind of psychological splitting that he astutely describes John as suffering under. As Mimi is the villain, thus Julia is the hero. Julia is portrayed in only positive terms, as a warm, encouraging, lively person who only ever wanted good things for John. Freddie is also viewed fairly positively. This is too simplistic. Julia was not a monster or an angel. Accounts describe her displaying inappropriate behaviour towards her son and his friends, perhaps a symptom of her own mental illnesses. As John was in her care during the first five years of his life, it's not unreasonable to speculate that her parenting was less than ideal. Not that that justifies his being taken away from her, but it is context.

Similarly, Mimi being a cartoon villain is unhelpful. I would have liked more context for why she behaved the way she did. There is some Stanley family background, but not enough to get a sense of what kind of environment the sisters grew up in. Meanwhile, Uncle George is identified as another victim of Mimi. Kenny speculates (probably accurately) that George was gay and a covert alcoholic and gambling addict, but he was just respectable enough to be instrumentalised by Mimi in her quest to join the middle classes. Kenny sees him as submitting to her tyranny as a form of cover, but still providing young John with something resembling parental kindness in an atmosphere where it was otherwise absent, a description that broadly jibes with others' observations of George. While insightful in some ways, this assessment of Mimi and George's relationship suffers from the same splitting as Kenny's view of Mimi and Julia, with a clear villain and a benevolent, suffering victim.

Kenny's analysis of social class in Liverpool and its relevance to John's psyche is quite interesting. It's not an angle that's explored often enough. He makes the argument (quite convincingly, I think) that John was always insecure about the fact that he was essentially "pretending" to be working-class, and combined idealisation of working-class Liverpool life with a snobbish contempt for it inherited from Mimi. Much of this was unconscious but it manifested itself in his attitudes to friends and his self-perception as a rocker vs. an artist.

Kenny makes an interesting case that John's attraction to Stuart (and to a lesser extent Cynthia) was part of his unconscious longing to be a sophisticated, middle-class-coded artist/writer. In contrast to that, Kenny posits that John's friendships with Paul and George could only be that of them being his "junior partners" because of their class position and age. Kenny also maintains that John's relationship with Paul only flourished when the latter wasn't trying to compete with John for the "leadership" of the Beatles. He also says that Stuart and Brian were genuine confidantes of John's partly because of their class position being closer to his own, while Paul and George were never proper confidantes in the same way. Later, Kenny sees John's attachment to Yoko as another example of him finding a higher-class "confidante", and also feeling free to lean into his (really Mimi's) upper-class aspirations, in the form of avant-garde art and music, while retaining a love-hate relationship with the earthy delights of rock 'n' roll.

I can see why Kenny would come to these conclusions, and I don't think they're entirely without merit - but they feel incomplete. To support his theory, he has to leave out much primary source information about the development of John and Paul's (and John and George's) relationship over the years. It ignores John and George's bond over LSD, John and Paul's creative collaboration (in favour of just seeing rivalry) and even sees Ringo as somehow dominant over John, which I don't think is borne out by the evidence. The theory gets even more stretched by the time we get to the breakup, as Kenny has to find ways to explain why John stayed in the band so long even though he had seemingly already "defeated" Paul by deciding to leave and go off with Yoko. One explanation given is that John only agreed to record Abbey Road so that Apple/The Beatles would raise enough money to buy controlling shares in Northern Songs! This technically could be true, but I've never heard anything like it before, and the main loss of controlling shares had already happened before recording started on Abbey Road. Kenny provides citations for some claims but not others, so I can't help but assume that the uncited claims are just his opinion, stated as fact (Yet again I come across this exhausting tendency!). Tellingly, Kenny doesn't go into the final breakup being announced by Paul, or the lawsuit, perhaps because they don't align with his theories.

With that said, I can believe that John and Paul's relationship suffered from a lack of straightforward communication. Get Back and "Days We Left Behind" seem to provide support for the sense many fans have gotten that the two tended to communicate in music, code and "bits". That seems to have been a central part of their intimacy, something only they (and to a lesser extent, the other Beatles) shared, but it is also inadequate for communicating about major life changes and relationship challenges, as I speculated in my Hey Bulldog post. I can see a scenario where John was more likely to speak openly about his feelings with people like Stuart, Brian and Yoko, and that that willingness could have been (partially) influenced by unconscious class-bias. Yet I don't think John, consciously or unconsciously, looked down on Paul. Well after the breakup, John spoke in an interview of Paul's intelligence and scholarly potential, even joking that he (John) "ruined his life" by tempting him to a career in rock 'n' roll. Nor do I believe, as Kenny does, that their relationship was primarily one of rivalry and competition. Those aspects certainly existed and were prominent, but it's not the full story.

The book has a glowing foreword by Bill Harry, old friend of the Beatles and publisher of some of John's earliest surreal writings, so we can assume that Harry subscribes to the general thrust of Kenny's argument. Seeing as he knew both of them, Harry could be said to be in a better position to know about John and Paul's relationship than most, but even people who knew the Beatles well have blind spots and make assumptions based on later myth rather than what they actually observed.

I think The Making of John Lennon is worth reading for the interesting and often astute observations Kenny makes about John's early life and the role of social class in his psychological make-up, but care should be taken not to accept all Kenny's assertion as definite fact, as they are his own opinions. It would be helpful if he (like countless others) was willing to tell the reader when he is offering his opinion rather than provable fact.

The book includes a quote I found particularly interesting. Kenny is quoting psychiatrist and author Anthony Storr, who wrote about the therapeutic effects of creative expression:

"[The creative] work may be a much more valid piece of self-expression than what is revealed in action or conversation in 'real life'"