John Lennon often sang about peace, but when he was growing up in Liverpool, people knew him as someone who was constantly getting into fights. He had a quick temper and felt that physical altercations were a way to establish himself among his peers. According to those who knew him in Liverpool before Beatles fame, Lennon would get into fights about even the most minor things.
John Lennon got into many physical fights in his life
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When Lennon was growing up, he explained that he used physical altercations as a way to establish himself socially.
“I looked at all the hundreds of new kids [at Quarry Bank grammar school] and thought, ‘Christ, I’ll have to fight all my way through this lot,’ having just made it at Dovedale,” he said, per The Beatles Anthology. “There was some real heavies there. The first fight I got in, I lost. I lost my nerve when I got really hurt. Not that there was much real fighting; I did a lot of swearing and shouting, then got a quick punch. If there was a bit of blood, then you packed in. After that, if I thought someone could punch harder than me, I said, ‘OK, we’ll have wrestling instead.’ I was aggressive because I wanted to be popular. I wanted to be the leader.”
He continued getting into fights long after establishing himself at school, though. According to an acquaintance, Nick Crouch, it didn’t take much to incense Lennon. Interestingly, though, Lennon respected the people who stood up to him.
“Oh, he’d fight about anything. Stupid things,” Crouch told The Guardian. “He could be quite violent, John. But if you stood up to him, you were a friend for life.”
John Lennon’s propensity for fights and physical violence made him a tad hypocritical
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Lennon’s level of success with The Beatles made it difficult for him to get into fights as often as he did pre-fame. Still, he was prone to bouts of violence. At Paul McCartney’s birthday party, Lennon attacked a friend so viciously that he was hospitalized. He spoke at length about how he hit his wife, girlfriends, and son.
Despite all this, Lennon frequently sang about peace and how “love is all you need.” His fuse was so short that he was unable to extend the messages of his songs to the people in his life. Upon reflection, it makes some of his music sound hollow.
The former Beatle renounced his violent ways
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By 1980, the final year of Lennon’s life, he saw the fault in his ways. In an interview, he spoke about his regret for the violence of his youth.
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“I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically — any woman,” he told Playboy, adding, “I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything’s the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.”
