I agree. I am looking at it from an American viewpoint. There are millions of houses like this all over America. However I don't think people in America make a big a deal about what type of house one grows up in. Maybe we are exaggerating the whole issue of John's house even in a UK context. I think the reason John's class status is such a topic is not the house he grew up in but anger about his song content post-Beatles. This conversation is probably more about people being upset with what a "rich guy" decided to sing about that what social class John was from. I'll leave it at that.
I’m no expert but from my reading..very much..in UK you’re born into your class and regardless of achievements or marriage to someone in a higher class, you remain in your class. In US, class is more based on money and career achievements.
No it's specifically about John Lennon singing "Working Class Hero' when his childhood and adolescence appears to have been rather middle class.
Right. Didn’t Paul frequently tell that story about how John got 100 pounds from one of his uncles for his birthday and the two of them used it to go to France? Paul said something like “we had never heard of someone getting 100 pounds for their birthday.” Moreover, the uncle was a dentist. Paul said “that was very elevated stuff. We’d never known someone who had a relative who was a dentist.”
In answer to the question, John Lennon was working class, as outlined by Lewisohn in the chapter 'In My Liverpool Home', on account of his father being working class (a sailor, among other things) and his mother being working class (more than once she was forced to take on a job as a barmaid when John’s father deserted his ship and later was charged for possession of ‘broached cargo’ spending a month in prison and could no longer send pay home). There are some muddied waters in John’s case when we start to break it down, but then muddied waters isn’t unusual for anyone. It’s not unusual because although both working class and middle class are umbrella terms, neither is standardised across the country, and differences exist from individual to individual, from region to region, as in John’s case. Also, we need to take into account the time period being post-war and how that influenced housing and infrastructure, and the education act that was passed to give working class children a chance at social mobility (hence the grammar schools) as well as a host of other factors too numerous for one post. Also an important factor for the discussion: just because John was better off than the other Beatles, does not mean he was a class above them. As Lewisohn states, when Mimi married George who owned some cows (Lewisohn doesn’t say dairy farm, but cows, so I guess make of that what we will) and they moved into Mendips, which 'bordered on the affluent lower-middle class’ she did so with an aim to ‘leave behind her working class roots’. At one point, George was employed on very low pay to clean the trams and buses. The people who lived in the house before Mimi had already made their own aspirational changes (Lewisohn calls it ‘delusions of grandeur’) such as giving the house its name, calling the front room 'The Morning Room' and installing servants bells that were never used. Mimi and George had taken out a mortgage but they struggled to make the payments, so they rented out a cottage that George had inherited. Mimi had to budget very carefully to look after John on top of it all. Because Mimi was aspirational, she encouraged John to read, as did she and George. They were avid readers, and she put him on the grammar school path so that he might have the opportunity to at least live a middle class lifestyle. Mary McCartney wanted the same for her children. A case of the parents wanting their children to do better than they did. So, as I said in the Get Back thread, John was raised in what some might perceive as a middle class environment by post-war Liverpool standards of the time, but he himself was not middle class because of his background. It's why I believe he was somewhat conflicted by his class status.
A real lol…rears lemmy comments about The Beatles and the stones classes…lemmy said stones from the beginning were playing working class ..
Lemmy: “...the Beatles were hard men too. Brian Epstein cleaned them up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. They were from Liverpool, which is like Hamburg or Norfolk, Virginia--a hard, sea-farin' town, all these dockers and sailors around all the time who would beat the piss out of you if you so much as winked at them. Ringo's from the Dingle, which is like the f***ing Bronx. The Rolling Stones were the mummy's boys--they were all college students from the outskirts of London. They went to starve in London, but it was by choice, to give themselves some sort of aura of disrespectability. I did like the Stones, but they were never anywhere near the Beatles--not for humour, not for originality, not for songs, not for presentation. All they had was Mick Jagger dancing about. Fair enough, the Stones made great records, but they were always s**t on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear.”
Those days they even in UK had different hats that distinguished the class they were from that men wore.
Totally random, but I just realised that John's Uncle George owned cows; John got Yoko to invest in cows, didn't he? lol. I just thought that was funny.
If John was not a class above them, then why have a classes at all. This is something that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.
I still maintain that John being seen as a class slightly above the others caused the Brit Beatles biographers to..emphasize and in some instances instances at the exclusion of the others…to overly emphasize John and his role in the Beatles at the expense of the others. This Brit established views of each of them carried over to the American authors and the press, folks like…christgau..who said ”when I found out John had been to art school, I realized he was my Beatle.” The middle class author Peter brown denigrated paul as a “culture vulture” who in the late sixties for trying to improve himself attended many London artsy events and ignored George but complimented his tastes in house decoration in the late sixties before the garish friar park home and specifically mocked ringo’s illiteracy despite his home and fancy cars in …his book the “love you make.” Likewise, the middle class Brian I think realized John was more upper working class and I’ve suspected George Martin did also, though himself working class and with an acquired posh accent from WW2 experience and past radio work, but Paul’s talent in the studio made Martin closer to Martin.
If you don't mind me asking: How many useful, positive threads have you posted? And feel free to put up a link or two... three.
It's a fascinating topic, but it's very hard to explain the nuances and complexities of the class system in England to people who haven't lived it because it's basically cultural and historical. How do you explain culture? Well, you give it your best shot of course, but reading about it is never going to be the same as experiencing it. And there are so many factors to consider, not least of all how the Beatles saw themselves. As @hoggydoggy explained so well, they saw class through the prism of their own class experience, which would differ mightily from how someone living in Twickenham or Chelsea, or Surrey for example, might see it. When they went down to London, before they became famous, you can bet they experienced prejudice for being from Liverpool. As to why have classes at all, that's a history lesson!
I've never been upset about such things to be honest. Perhaps it was a bit overwrought and condescending but the message is don't let the system turn you into a middle class jerk. John was human like everyone else, and Lord know he was not the only rich person to write sad songs or complain about life.
All of this may be true, but I always felt that John brought this attention on himself. Perhaps I'm projecting backwards after his Working Class Hero song was released.
In Britain, class is not just about money. There are plenty of multi millionaires that are ,and always will be, working class and lots of skint upper classes. It is about your upbringing education and background. We don't worship money like Americans do. It is considered vulgar to flaunt your wealth here.
