First, he was, at best, an average guitar player, mostly confined to basic rhythm parts, and his piano playing wasn’t much better. Still, a very good case can be made that Lennon was remarkably under-talented even as a musician and a songwriter. This is probably the most controversial item on this list, and, admittedly, it is an inherently subjective issue to some extent. In all of these cases, the truth was embarrassing but no more than the kind of behavior many rock stars acknowledged engaging in during the ’60s and ’70s Lennon compulsively lied about it anyway.

In fact, he had been living in a drug-induced haze most of the time. When he emerged back into the public eye shortly before his death, he claimed that he had spent the time baking bread and being a stay-at-home dad. In fact, he had all but left the band in its last two years due to a serious heroin addiction. He claimed to have lost interest in the Beatles due to Paul McCartney’s tendencies toward pop music and dominant role in the group, as well as his desire to do his more avant-garde work outside the band. In fact, Ono had stalked him for months before he gave in to her advances. He claimed to have met Yoko Ono at an art show, and their love blossomed spontaneously. He denied being married during his early years of stardom. He claimed he had been a working-class lad from Liverpool before the Beatles he was actually raised in a comfortable middle-class home. Everyone does this to some extent, but in Lennon’s case, he rewrote almost every major event in his life to suit his tastes. Usually, he did so out of pure egomania-a desire to make himself appear better than he actually was. Put simply, John Lennon made up his own life-exaggerating, embellishing, and outright lying-when it suited him to do so.

In perhaps the saddest statement ever made about Lennon, Julian later stated that Paul McCartney was more of a father to him than his real father ever was. Once, Julian giggled, and Lennon shouted back, “I hate the way you fucking laugh!” Julian was not yet a teenager at the time. After they reconnected, Lennon emotionally abused his son severely on several occasions, berating and screaming at him until the boy was reduced to tears. After he divorced Cynthia, Lennon took off with Yoko Ono and dropped out of his son’s life for years. Both Julian and his mother, Cynthia, have publicly stated that Lennon was alternately absent, indifferent, drug-addled, and generally unpleasant to be around during Julian’s early childhood. Lennon clearly resented the young boy whose conception had forced him into a marriage he didn’t want and trapped him in a domestic routine he was too immature and narcissistic to sustain. Without question, the greatest victim of Lennon’s character failings was his oldest son, Julian.

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