In 1964, once The Beatles made it big in America, they returned home to Liverpool and realised that everything had changed. Maybe not physically; it was the same city they had left and grown up in, but the way people treated them and their standing in the local area had been altered forever.
This changed the way that the band approached writing about their hometown. No longer could lyrics be based around what they were currently experiencing, and instead, to have the human connection in their songs that so many enjoyed, they had to dig into the memories of their home. This can be heard on a number of songs, such as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, ‘In My Life’ and, of course, ‘Penny Lane’.
The 1967 track opens with the lyrics, “In Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs / Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know / And all the people that come and go / Stop and say hello.” These lyrics reference the actual barber that John Lennon used to go to when he was younger. However, while the lyrics may seem quite sweet, the barber who owned the shop had a dark past, as he appeared in court as a witness for the defence of Florence Maybrick.
Florence Maybrick was an American woman who stood trial in the United Kingdom as she allegedly murdered her husband, James Maybrick, by arsenic poisoning. There was no denying that Maybrick had arsenic in her home, and so the Penny Lane barber, James Bioletti, was called into court to establish that some beauticians really did soak flypapers in arsenic-based cosmetics. His testimony was supposed to help prove that just because Maybrick had arsenic doesn’t mean that she used it to murder her husband.
“I am a hairdresser and perfumer, carrying on business on Dale Street, Liverpool,” he said in his opening statement, “I have been in business for about thirty years. Arsenic is used a good deal in the hair for some purposes, and I have used it as a wash for the face on being asked for it by ladies. There is an impression among ladies that it is good for the complexion. I have used it on a few occasions, and only when I have been asked for it.”
While his appearance in court pre-dated when he cut John Lennon’s hair and was before his shop moved to Penny Lane, the grizzly tales didn’t stop following the barber around. Lennon was responsible for making one up about the barber to try and scare other kids away so that he didn’t have to wait as long to get his hair cut.
“Old man Bioletti also had a rule that boys could only get their hair cut when there were no men waiting,” recalled David Ashton, one of Lennon’s schoolfriends, “I had met John going into Bioletti’s in Penny Lane on his way back from Quarry Bank School and me from the Bluecoat School. It was after 4 in the afternoon and long before the men would start arriving on their home from work with the gasmask knapsacks they used to wear round their necks to carry their packed lunches.”
Ashton continued: “We were behind two other boys in the queue when some men came in. Exasperated, John said to the two lads in front of us, ‘Do you know, last week old man Biolett’s cut off somebody’s scalp completely, with his shakey hands. You could actually see the brains wobbling around like a dark grey blancmange inside the head. But he was alright cos he stuck the scalp back on with sticking plaster’.”
The story worked a treat as the two children in front of Lennon and Ashton grew so scared they left the barber. Who would have thought that the hairdresser Lennon was making up gory stories about one day would go on to be the focal point of one of his biggest songs?
