A (abridged) conversation with Julia Baird (John's sister)

By Geoff Franklin

© 2000 The World Beatles Forum


This extract has been sent to us by World Beatles Forum editor Brad Howard (thanks, Brad!). Under no circumstances may it be reproduced or posted elsewhere for any other purpose. "I hope you and your readers enjoy it," Brad says. This is an Abbeyrd exclusive, a 2,000-word extract from the full 9,500-word interview now available in the November / December 2000 issue of The World Beatles Forum fanzine (now, celebrating its fifth anniversary). Subscription details are available at the end of the interview.

Julia Baird is a sensitive, soft-spoken woman, who is also one of three half-sisters of John Lennon. She lost her mother, father, and brother under separate, but equally tragic circumstances. We asked Julia if she would answer some questions about her early family life and her remembrances of John. A few questions are difficult. Julia’s responses are from the heart. Our interview was conducted by a trans-Atlantic telephone call on Sunday, October 15, 2000.

Q: Geoffrey FRANKLIN (GF): After all these years of people’s fascination with The Beatles, are you still keen to talk about it? Is it a little wearisome?

A: Julia BAIRD (JB): Yes. It can be. But, I suppose after . . . 20 years, it’s quite understandable. It’s a landmark, isn’t it?

Q: GF: It really is. It’s been twenty years since the tragedy of December 1980. Had John lived, what do you think he would be doing now?

A: JB: . . . I think he probably would have been in England . . . writing and painting. But, that’s just what I think, because nobody knows what would have happened. We’d have seen a lot more of him and he’d now be 60 and I can’t imagine having a brother who would be 60.

Q: GF: What are your earliest memories of John?

A: JB: I remember John playing the [banjo] with my mother playing piano along with him, because she taught him how to play . . . We had a mother of pearl banjo which had been my grandfather’s and my mother played it a lot and she taught John how to play the banjo. An ironic thing is that . . . when he met Paul, Paul was a left-hander, as everybody must know. And he was playing the guitar upside down, and John was only playing banjo chords on his guitar. So, the beginnings of The Beatles were a banjo player and an upside down left-handed guitar player [laughing]. And Paul . . . saw somebody and realized that the strings were on the other way, and that’s when he realized that he could do that, too. He was always telling John, "That’s a banjo chord you’re playing. It’s certainly not guitar." It was really funny.

Q: GF: Do you have memories of the early stages of the Quarry Men and all that?

A: JB: Yes. Now, with the Quarry Men, he was playing at school. They all used to come and practice in the house. They’d practice on Mimi’s porch and they’d practice in our bathroom, because it was tiled. And my mother used to play along with them.

Q: GF: They liked the sound, the acoustics of the bathroom in your house!

A: JB: It was tiled and small, so it echoed. They’d have to stand with . . . John and Paul facing each other with their feet on the side of the bath. I remember that . . . and Paul, in his book, has said, "Many a fine tune was written in that little room." He was actually talking about the loo. He used to go and sit on the loo and devise tunes.

Q: GF: Did John ever perform for you and the family, just on his own, as a young man or even later?

A: JB: He used to sit and play around with the banjo and play with the guitar and plunk around on the piano, but I’m not telling you that he sat and wrote Love Me Do, because I don’t remember that. I just remember him coming with the record. We used to get the demo discs - you know where it’s plain on one side and the actual grooves are on the other side [Julia may be describing an acetate record - ed.]. We used to get those before they [the regular records] would come out . . .

Q:GF: How many times did you see The Beatles perform?

A:JB: Oh. I don’t know. We went to the Liverpool Empire [October 28, 1962 with Little Richard or March 24, 1963 with Tommy Roe and Chris Montez], when they did the tour . . . and we went to the Finsbury Park Astoria Cinema [December 24 to 31, 1963]. And I have visited that place since and it’s now a Gospel Hall . . . that was in London. And, that was a big, exciting thing. We went along with Cynthia. I think that was the first time it hit me, personally, how big they were . . . We went backstage. My sister and I were like good girls just sitting there . . . watching it all. Mick Jagger walked in . . . But, afterwards, we went back with Cynthia on that particular night. We went back to the house in Weybridge with Cynthia, while John stayed out to party. It was a bit unsettling on Cynthia. She had a babysitter for Julian. He was in bed. We went back and had cocoa.

Q: GF: After he left England in the early Seventies, did John ever come home after that?

A:JB: No, because of the Green Card business . . . and John had said to me . . . in 1974, he started to get in touch with everybody, on his lost week-end, and he asked me to go around and see Julian and we spoke a lot on the phone. He said, "Why don’t you come . . . here. I can’t come to you, because of this Green Card business." And I was saying things like, . . . "The children are at school. I’ll have to wait until they finish their term." We never thought we’d lose him.

Q:GF: You were basically in contact with him, until the last five years of his life.

A:JB: Absolutely true. My aunt, one of the sisters - the third, the middle of the five sisters, called Anne - John called her Nanny. . . He’d phoned Nanny in November [1980]. Now, Nanny’s birthday is in November, so whether it was her birthday or not, I don’t know. But, he phoned her . . . and said, "I’m coming home, Nanny and you’ll have get everybody together. It will have to be at [your place], because it’s the only place big enough for all of us." And, we were all waiting. And Nanny, when she got very old and ill at the end, and very repetitive as people can get, she repeated that endlessly.

Q:GF: And a short month later after that phone call, there was the horrible news . . .

A:JB: I don’t know what you want me to say about this. I was just horrified. There are no words for something like this. Our mother had died, knocked down by a drunken driver, our father had died when I was 19 and Jacqui was 16 and a half. He crashed his car into a tree. He died several hours later. And then, here’s John dying. It’s just beyond belief. Absolutely, beyond belief.

Q:GF: Did you have any desire to follow the recent MDC parole hearing?

A:JB: Oh, God. Well, actually, we’ve had a nightmare over it; a total nightmare, because I don’t about the system in Canada, but in America they seem to seek out views of the victim’s family, which doesn’t happen here. One likes to think that the law of the land is there to take that stress away from you; to act with justice and fairness and not to involve you. And it distressed Jacqui and I enormously to have to do this. But, my oldest cousin, Stanley, had already written a letter, as had David, my other cousin . . . Jacqui and I . . . didn’t want to, but we did what we had to do . . .

Q:GF: Victim Impact Statements . . .

A:JB: Right. The impact of John’s death, I can’t tell you what it is, because it is without limit. But, we wrote these letters saying that we believed in the system of justice that had brought him to justice and that please, with God’s grace, whatever you do, act in good conscience. That’s what I wrote, "Please act in good conscience, i.e., If you do let him out, know what you are doing."

Q:GF: Do you have any keepsakes?

A:JB: Yes. There’s another photograph that I found, and that’s a tiny one. I’ve had it blown up, because photographs used to be very small, black and white, then. And it’s John, when he’s about nine in his school shorts and blazer, and he’s written on the back, "This is me . . . the year I lost my [swimming] trunks." He’s written it in pen, and it must’ve got wet as he was writing it. And I’ve had the writing from the back put on the front, so that you’ve got the whole thing in front of you . . . it’s a lovely picture of John.

Q:GF: Have you ever talked to your nephew, Sean?

A:JB: No. No. I wouldn’t be allowed.

Q:GF: But, at some point, people want to have discovery of their family. Would you be receptive to meeting with him at some point?

A:JB: Well, we would . . . Sean had John for five years and had his own relationship with his own father. The fact is that his father is my brother and had a family in England beforehand. Sean is an American . . . living his own life. It’s just more surprising to us, because we are a close family. There’s nothing that we can do about it. He’s obviously happy in his own way. If he ever wanted to know more about his father’s family, he should have that letter of Leila’s where she wrote everything down, and he could find us. It wouldn’t take him two minutes, if he really wanted to find us. I have a feeling it’s not going to happen. I don’t think Yoko would like it. I think that Sean would be aware of that. And, maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe the stories that he has are good enough for him.

Q:GF: Are you in contact with Julian, at all?

A:JB: I’m close to Cynthia, but Julian we don’t see. He lives in the south of France. I think that Julian has had a very raw deal all around - yes, from John, certainly from Yoko. I don’t know about from Sean. I know that Julian felt very protective of Sean, at one time. I don’t know what their relationship is now. Julian, I do know, has a girlfriend that he’s had for a few years, Lucy. And, he’s very happy with her. I’m just happy that he’s happy.

Q:GF: You’ve mentioned your sister, Jacqui. Now, there’s also a long, lost sister that you’ve managed to track down. Ingrid [Victoria] was adopted out of the country, wasn’t she?

A:JB: No. We thought so. We thought she was adopted and lived in Norway, and I did actually try to get in touch in the 1980s. But, it came to nothing, at all. She’d been in Liverpool, and then near Southampton. We didn’t know. So, my mother was not allowed to keep John and she was not allowed to keep Ingrid, and it was a matriarchal family of which Mimi was the . . . head who made all the decisions. I think I may just write about her to put things straight . . .

Q:GF: So, it sounds like you’ve got some good ideas for a new book.

A:JB: . . . The only bit I know about John is his childhood, when my mother was alive, after my mother died, when John was 17, when John was 22, 23, 24 . . . we started losing track in London, because he was living life with Cynthia and the baby. Although, Cynthia has always been fantastic with us . . . she is one lovely lady. It was in America, where we really lost track. But, I lost track, personally, a bit before that, because I went to live in Ireland. I married an Irishman . . . in 1968, just after I got my degree . . .It was Yoko’s coming on the scene, really, that took John away. But, he fell in love. And he was living another life . . .

Interested readers can visit Julia Baird at her web-site: http://welcome.to/juliabaird

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