“And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told.”

—Mark Lewisohn • Things We Said Today podcast • Nov 22, 2017; Ep 252

LEWISOHN: the delusional dimension

I have gotten my back up countless times over the theory that Mark Lewisohn simply doesn’t know better than to do what he does, and that even if he did, he’s just too blind to see. There is a contingent of mostly fair-minded Beatles’ fans who, while willing to admit that Lewisohn has problems, also forcefully argue that he’s an innocent true believer who just happens to be the fount of all Beatles’ knowledge. And also, give the guy a break, he’s not a trained historian and couldn’t possibly know the rules.

Because he is not a trained historian or biographer I think [Lewisohn] truly believes this is how you tell the “true” story. That the everyday fan doesn’t have the wealth of knowledge he does and thus he has to translate it through his superior lens. I think he’s just convinced himself his subjective reality IS objectivity.

-Representative Lewisohn defense from my Tumblr message box

There’s a lot of sarcasm toward Lewisohn in that message, but it still lets him off the hook for the undeniable and meticulous calculation in most of his work.

I have debated some fans and friends—especially on Tumblr—over the “but Lewisohn really believes what he writes” defense. It frustrates me because in deconstructing his most twisted and untrue narratives I see how incredibly calculating they are. How carefully his false stories are constructed. How finely he slices words to create quotes that mean something entirely new, what he leaves out and what he selects, where he embellishes and where he denies. Sometimes the brazenness with which he contrives a deception literally takes my breath away, because his meticulous manipulations are so laid bare in the dissections. Again and again he weaves a mangled quote into a tapestry of lies, leaving behind only a false impression and just enough room for a disingenuous “I didn’t actually write that” on the off-chance that he’s ever questioned.

But that undeniable side of Lewisohn’s problem might blind me to another truth, so today I am here to make an admission: those of you who argue that Lewisohn does sometimes believe his own delusions are correct. I cannot deny it. Designing Lewisohn is the primary Lewisohn, but Delusional Lewisohn is definitely a thing.

“It could be they didn’t see much of each other in the summer of 1958.”

–Mark Lewisohn, Tune In

@wingsoverlagos and I listen to a lot of Lewisohn podcast interviews, but when she first shared this one with me I was only half paying attention. However, when I played it again last week on one of my walks it came all the way home and helped me make sense of a chunk of text I’ve been bogged down in for weeks. Like most of Lewisohn’s fictionalizing, the narrative I’ve been untangling is almost all calculation, but there are also sprinkles of full-on Lewisohn Fanfic thrown in, and this interview turned out to be my Delusional Lewisohn Rosetta Stone.

There is no way, even for me, to listen to this and not be wholly convinced that Lewisohn believes what he’s saying. He is confident that the logic of 2+2=57 will be as clear to us as it is to him. The way he explains it, like, “See! Isn’t it amazing!” is almost impressive.

—Full transcript at end of post—

DELUSIONAL LEWISOHN “unearths” a heck of a story

Delusional Lewisohn is on full display when he tells us how he “unearthed” the never-before told story of how Mimi hid John’s birth certificate before the 1960 Hamburg trip.

“That was a heck of a story that I unearthed for Tune In.”

The confidence with which Lewisohn recounts a series of events that only shows beyond all doubt that “the extraordinary story” he’s about to convey was not “unearthed,” but concocted—or dreamed—while clearly expecting the listener to see exactly how it fits together and proves his narrative seems inexplicable to me by anything but delusion. Or if there is a rational explanation, it lies beyond my earthbound grasp.

— To center Lewisohn’s story in time —

📍 Mendips opened to the public in 2003.

📍 John’s Aunt Mimi died in 1991.

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office … and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine.

And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told.

Mark Lewisohn; (Things We Said Today • Nov. 22, 2017)

Indeed, in “Tune In” Lewisohn tells an incredibly dramatic tale of Mimi hiding John’s birth certificate and refusing to give her permission for the first Hamburg trip, of everything going down to the wire, and of John finally racing to Williams’ van at the very last second and the group making it out of Liverpool as a unit by the skin of their teeth.

The details in the book are gripping, and on the podcast he will even defend Mimi’s motives for supposedly hiding the birth certificate, opining that her reasons for doing this completely dreamed up thing were “perfectly understandable.”

Then Lewisohn reveals how he discovered that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate in hopes of stopping him from leaving England.

He says:

“Documents tell these stories. I mean I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica– until I saw a passport on display in his house in Liverpool.”

Upon seeing the passport on the wall at Mendips Lewisohn had a realization. The passport date was August 15, the day they left for Liverpool. And he had previously bought a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate at a Sotheby’s auction, so he knew that the birth certificate was dated August 12, 1960.

“I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office”

Mark Lewisohn

A blinding light now overwhelms Mr. Lewisohn. He sees it all. And he tells us what this means. The great significance. The extraordinary drama. The tidbit of Beatles’ historical truth “unearthed” by loads of cash spent at a Sotheby’s auction combined with a visit to Mendips. And the way he tells it makes it seem as if it should be as obvious to everyone else as it is to him. The dates prove it: John’s aunt Mimi hid his birth certificate to keep him from leaving. (And who can blame her?) His explanation is short and to the point. Like skipping the parts of a complex math problem that should be obvious to all, he makes his case simply and confidently.

The Lewisohn Equation:

And obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate. So, he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport.

Okay, I’m with you so far…

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had. She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it. … He’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck in all in and go off to Germany and play guitar? So she– so, her attempt to stop him going—which, actually from an adult point of view is completely understandable—was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport.

Mark Lewisohn “learned” this from the dates on John’s passport and birth certificate. He “learned” that Mimi hid John’s birth certificate and wrote a whole colorful drama around it.

And no, there is literally nothing beyond the dates on the birth certificate and passport.

That means that some time between 2003 and 2013—at a minimum over twenty years after Mimi’s death and over thirty after John’s—Lewisohn “unearthed” this incredible, “never been told” story by noting the dates on two documents.

I feel like he believes it. The way he tells it like it’s obvious this is what happened and like the words he’s saying about dates on passports actually explain how Mimi hid John’s birth certificate is like listening to a child beaming with pride, explaining how 2+2=57.

In Tune In

As we move into his text Designing Lewisohn rears his ugly head again, dammit. Pulling back the curtain sure seems to show him deliberately trying to make it look as if he has actual support for his wholly fictionalized dreamscape.

I will be sidestepping an extraneous bit of color that Lewisohn claims John-told-Cynthia-who-told-Lewisohn. (Who tells us that for some inexplicable reason Cynthia never wanted to include the dramatic scene in her own books.)* But since that’s not directly related to the hidden-birth-certificate “revelation” I’m not going near that quicksand.

*Perhaps Cynthia was saving the story for Mark Lewisohn. But Mr. Lewisohn has the ability to put all these doubts to bed in an instant with his interview recordings.

All the sourcing we will be left with is one craftily placed unrelated Hunter Davies footnote—which I will add directly after the corresponding text—at which point you will be satisfied that there is zero support for the ‘Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to keep him from going to Hamburg’ melodrama. (Beyond John’s birth certificate date + John’s passport date which ≠ Mimi hid John’s birth certificate. 🫠 )

“TUNE IN” TEXT: (All emphasis is mine. All ellipses are Lewisohn drama dots.)

They all needed passports and were fortunate that Liverpool, as an international seaport, had a Passport Office open to personal callers and able to process applications fast. The provision of a birth certificate was compulsory with every application … and Mimi told John she didn’t know where his was.

Now he was in trouble. They were leaving Monday morning, the 15th, and when he found this out it was already the 10th or 11th. A passport could be got quickly enough, but if John first had to apply for another birth certificate he mightn’t make it.

As Cyn has said, Aunt Mimi’s view of John’s future “couldn’t have been blacker.” She was simply desperate he didn’t fritter away his prospects by going off to play silly guitar, and she was furious about his wanton sabotage of the college course she’d encouraged and supported him through. He’d defied her once too often, so when John did his best to fire her up about Hamburg, bragging his guitar would earn him “£100 a week,” she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate. (42)

“Tune In” p343 ❦ (42: “Davies, p79.”)

But here we run into what looks like Designing Lewisohn propping up Delusional Lewisohn. In the sentence before the citation he has defied Mimi once too often, and so despite John’s £100 a week bluster “she refused to be stirred and said sorry, she just couldn’t find the birth certificate.” Then we have the Davis citation, so in passing the reader assumes that there is a basis for the claim that Aunt Mimi hid John’s birth certificate to stop him from running off to Hamburg.

Unfortunately for us, the citation is only for “£100 a week”.

“Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. ‘Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,’ he told her. ‘I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!‘”

And unfortunately for Lewisohn it also knocks the knees out from under what he claims as Mimi’s hide-and-seek motivation: John was three years through a four-year degree and she wasn’t going to let him waste it when he had only a year to go.

Then Hamburg came up. This was going to mean a proper severance, for a long time in a foreign country. Mimi remembers John trying to get her as excited as he was. “Mimi, isn’t it marvelous,” he told her. “I’m going to get £100 a week, isn’t that marvelous!”
A slight exaggeration on the money, but still marvelous for five teenage lads. John, of course, jumped at the chance of having a good excuse to leave the College for good. He’d survived three years, just. Arthur Ballard, the lecturer who had most to do with him, saved him from being expelled several times. But John was now glad to get away, though he’d failed all exams and was leaving without any qualifications.

SOURCE: Hunter Davies (Lewisohn Footnote 42)

So John was failing out, anyway?

BACK TO “TUNE IN”:

(Things are about to get “traumatic.”)

While racing around to get a second copy, John heaped a ton of spice into the mix by suddenly moving back into Mendips.

Lewisohn, p342.

John managed to get a “short copy” of his birth certificate on the Friday, by which time everything was becoming traumatic at Mendips. What scenes, what noise, what ferocity there must have been there that weekend. Written consent of a legal guardian was necessary for the issue of a passport to a minor, but no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it. After the way he’d treated her, and blown away everything she’d slaved for on his behalf? John now had no idea whether he’d even get a passport, and could only find out on Monday morning, when they were supposed to be leaving. At the moment of deciding to make the guitar his life, was he about to watch helplessly as the group he formed and led went off without him?

Lewisohn, p343.

Lewisohn’s story in the interview about realizing the significance of the dates on the two documents is a good one up until he goes off the rails. It’s not un-noteworthy. And in fact, we know from other sources that it was a close call because his mother was dead and his father was Nowhere Man. But it’s a long way from “it must have been a close call,” or even “it was a close call” to this entire sideshow and “literally” running from the passport office to Allan Williams’ van at the last minute because Mimi hid his birth certificate to stop him from going.

I mean, “no matter how much John begged or demanded, Mimi wouldn’t give it”?? Are you mad?

This section cuts back and forth to the four different stories of the boys, and there is no other footnote relating to John’s passport until Lewisohn picks the action sequence back up on page 345, where we’re almost out of danger. (And where we will encounter our last—and one of my favorite—citations.)

But I’m ruining the, “er,” drama.

All would become clear after he’d rushed to Water Street, to the fifth-floor Passport Office in India Buildings, and waited as patiently as an impatient young man in a hurry could, praying the “brummercrats” would understand his situation: dead mother, absent father, er, how could he show adult consent?

p345

Continuing: “To John’s eternal relief…”

To John’s eternal relief, his passport application was processed once the office opened at 9:30. An official leniently considered the circumstances and granted dispensation without written adult consent, issuing a standard five-year passport but with a restriction that it expire after six months, in February 1961, unless the required document was produced. (54) John handed over his photos, signed where applicable, grabbed the precious blue-black document, ran for the lift, broke out onto Water Street, felt higher than that there Liver Building and hared up the hill to Slater Street.

p346

SOURCE – (54)

54: Courtesy of Yoko Ono Lennon, a facsimile reproduction of John’s first passport is on display at Mendips (now open as a National Trust property), accurately illuminating this and other facts.

Lewisohn – footnote 54

I cannot top “accurately illuminating this and other facts.”

But now, considering that single, tricky footnote pointing to a single source—but only for the “£100 a week” —I wonder if I was wrong about Delusional Lewisohn all along. Perhaps he Exacto-knifes the story together first, and then gets caught up in it later?

I wonder what Allan Williams—the star witness for this section—had to say?

---

THINGS WE SAID TODAY AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

• For purposes of time I have cut from the audio two Lewisohn devolutions, both represented in the transcript. (…) The first is Lewisohn working through the intermediate itinerary between Liverpool and Hamburg, the second is him throwing in that on the second Hamburg trip Pete and Paul couldn’t get permits at first. I also haven’t transcribed the four or so host reaction sounds, but no questions were asked and I haven’t cut any of the direct narrative. (The Spotify link is timestamped to go straight there.)
  

LEWISOHN:

That was a heck of a story that I unearthed for ‘Tune In’ of John only getting his passport—his ticket to ride, as it were—his passport to leave Britain and into Germany (…) he only got his passport the morning of their departure, and they were going to go anyway, without him. It was John’s– the Beatles were John’s group, but they were gonna go, and if John couldn’t get a passport, he couldn’t get a passport.

And it was only the very morning—I mean, he literally had to run from the passport office up to Allen Williams’ Jacaranda coffee bar, where Williams had his minibus—and they went straight off to Hamburg within minutes of his arrival. It was that fine.

And the drama of him getting the passport was an extraordinary story that had never been told. (…)

It– it was great. Doc- documents tell these stories. I mean I didn’t know about John Lennon’s passport thing until I saw a replica of his passport on display in his house in Liverpool. You know, it’s now open to the public, courtesy of the National Trust. And they have a display of some documents, and one of them is John Lennon’s first passport. And I looked at it and I could see that the date of issue was the 15th of August, ’60, and I knew that was the day they’d left.

Um, I also had– I had from years ago—it came up at Sotheby’s—um, a copy of John Lennon’s birth certificate, dated the 12th of August 1960—the date of issue. Twelfth of August, ’sixty. So– and obviously you couldn’t get the passport without the birth certificate, so he had to get a birth certificate before he got his passport.

And the reason he had to get a birth certificate is because Aunt Mimi wouldn’t give him the copy that she had.

She hid it and wouldn’t let him have it.

For exactly the same reason as Ringo, which is, you know, he’s–he’s done three complete academic years of a four-year art course and suddenly he wants to chuck it all in and go off to Germany to play guitar? So she– her- her attempt to stop him going—which actually, from an adult point of view is perfectly understandable—um, was to hide his birth certificate so he couldn’t get a passport.

—RETURN TO AUDIO PLAYER—

📍Things We Said Today podcast • Episode 252: “Mark Lewisohn!” • Nov 22, 2017