When I Was 5 Years Old My Mother Art
The truth behind John Lennon's "happy" quote
9 October 2020, 09:00 | Updated: 23 March 2022, 16:08
Did the old Beatle really come up with the inspirational quote that's all across social media? Radio 10 investigates....
John Lennon was always good for a quote: a smashing lyricist, he also wrote surrealistic verse and had a gift for a withering one liner. The man who founded the Beatles was known for his savage wit and vicious streak of humour.
One of the quotes that is shared on a regular basis whenever someone is recalling the anti-institution mental attitude of Lennon is this one:
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to schoolhouse, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote downward 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life."
Pretty absurd, right? Very profound. And very typically John Lennon. Or is it?
The lines are reproduced beyond the internet and social media, almost ever with an attribution to Lennon and often with a flick of the man himself. Hither's only a couple of examples.
The question is, did John Lennon actually say it?
Here are the chief issues with attributing this much-shared quote to John Lennon.
Did John Lennon ever give the quote?
Nobody seems to exist able to discover a physical link to an interview that proves that the quote is genuinely from Lennon. A lot of data on the internet is unattributed and is shared and re-shared without checking. Even the self-regulating Wikipedia gets information technology wrong, despite its rigorous checks.
John Lennon gave thousands of hours of interviews to the press from the early 1960s when the Beatles first broke in Liverpool through to the very solar day that he died on 8 December 1980. At that place are literally thousands of other articles in which Lennon was asked most his songwriting, philosophy, politics and other opinions. So why is it near impossible to find an original source for the "happy" quote?
Every reference to the quote just says "John Lennon" - no year, no publication name, no radio or TV station or any other sources are named.
The hardcore Beatles fans at the Beatles Bible forum - a site that knows what its talking about when it comes to the Fab Iv - mulled over the question in 2012 and fifty-fifty they couldn't come up with a concrete source for the quote.
Fifty-fifty a quick skim through the extensive pages of www.beatlesinterviews.org turns up nothing!
Why is it unlikely that the quote comes from John Lennon?
The first matter to raise the alert for a Beatle fan when analysing the quote is the mention of Lennon's female parent. One of the most of import facts well-nigh the life of John Lennon is the deplorable story of his parents. Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 to Freddie Lennon and Julia Stanley. Lennon senior was abroad at sea during World State of war 2 and went AWOL in February 1944.
By the time Freddie he returned to Liverpool in the summer, Julia had met some other man. When John was five, Freddie attempted to take the boy to New Zealand, but in a tragic scene forced the kid to choose between his father and his mother. John chose his mother - who then left him in the care of his Aunt Mimi. John then grew up in the home of Mimi and his Uncle George, merely over the years, Julia came back into his life until she was killed in a road accident when the future Beatle was just 17.
This harrowing upbringing makes it quite unlikely that Lennon would fondly recall words his female parent gave him aged 5 - when she was in the procedure of abandoning him. In fact, Lennon wrote a whole album near the situation - the classic 1970 "Primal Scream" LP, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Ring in which the musician sang: "Mother, you had me, but I never had you/I wanted you… You didn't want me."
So there's the matter of the phrase "I didn't understand the assignment" - the word "consignment" is very much an Americanism. Even if this "assignment" was given to young John at a later period in his school career, it'south hard to imagine a post-State of war Liverpool instructor giving the kids "assignments".
It's difficult to notice an example of the quote online that's not linked to Lennon - but in that location are a few. Some of the examples supersede the word "mother" with "mom" - which again hints at an American source.
Where else could the quote have come from?
The skillful people at Quote Investigator are similarly stumped - and verifying quotes is their task. In 2013, the nearest they become to an attribution is that a vaguely similar story was told past actress Goldie Hawn in both a 1992 Vanity Fair interview and her 2005 autobiography…. but information technology's even so not verbal.
"People used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I'd say 'Happy!' That was all I wanted to be." - Goldie Hawn to Vanity Fair, 1992
Some people merits that an former Peanuts comic strip besides used a similar phrase… and that was in 1960.
Why is John Lennon linked to the quote?
Information technology's likely that the quote has found itself fastened to John Lennon over the past decade thank you to social media and the internet. The quote became a Tumblr favourite and there'south a mail dated 12 Nov 2008 that includes the quote… minus the link to Lennon. But this list of famous quotes names Lennon as the source and it'due south apparently dated 31 January 2001. And then who's right?
It's non the first time that John Lennon has been misquoted - which, as we said, is strange considering how many genuine quotes are out there.
Earlier this year, Fab historians were able to lay to residual the urban myth that Lennon joked that "Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles" - which apparently came from a Radio 4 comedy!
Read the full story here
Until someone proves the original source of the "Happy" quote, nosotros're bound to keep seeing John Lennon's proper name attached to information technology… If you know better, make it bear upon!
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Source: https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/john-lennon/truth-behind-john-lennon-happy-quote/
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