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Mon 11 May 2026 15:03, UK
John Lennon once said, “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination”. So, the “dreamer” who just wanted ”to be real” fittingly lingered somewhere between these two poles, flitting from fantasy to gritty realism like a schoolboy gazing out of the window in algebra class.
The true John Lennon is subsumed somewhere within the myth he managed to muster. Now, his legacy may be troubled and turbulent, but it is also pretty much unsurpassable. He remains the Godhead of pop culture, a divine essence by design who continually proves impossible to define. He’s far from the only one to forge their own lore, but he is the only one to fabricate John Lennon.
He achieved iconic status in the religious sense of the word, much to the chagrin of many., There have been many folks who have seen him as a false idol. In some ways, you feel that Lennon would almost be glad of this. Being a safe populist never was his style. After all, in the annals of pop culture, you’ll struggle to find anyone who continually sullies The Beatles quite as much as Lennon himself, a man who also said that they were “bigger than Jesus”.
In short, being divisive was part of his artistic aim, so much so that he grew cautious of the Fab Four being lauded by the safe mainstream and derided them himself to drum up some punky contention. He always wanted to be radical. How could you have an impact on society if you were safe?
As he said himself, “We were all on this ship in the 1960s, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.” Beyond the magical songs that they mustered, you sense that this driving spirit was his proudest achievement with the Fab Four. Their impact aligned with his favourite mantra: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
Many others joined The Beatles as they sailed towards liberated shores, but plenty of these peers took aim at Lennon when he left the band behind. While The Beatles, naturally, had their detractors, he was even more polarising as a solo artist, and his existence followed suit. As his own son, Julian Lennon, famously declared: “Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son.”
Julian solemnly continued, “How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces – no communication, adultery, divorce? You can’t do it, not if you’re being true and honest with yourself.” For many, that duplicity reveals a flaw in Lennon’s supposed sincerity, and they point to it as proof that “he really wasn’t where it’s at”, to borrow the lyrics of Bob Dylan.
Further reading: Features
However, his son has since reconciled this spell when he drifted away as a sign that his father was simply fallible like the rest of us, and that the message of his work has far outstripped any hypocrisy. This creates very muddy water surrounding the pop culture anti-hero, and he leaves a legacy that is difficult to dissect. However, there are those who got straight to the heart of it and refused to buy what he was selling in the first place. We’ve assembled their various critiques in a list of five naysayers below.
Five musicians who hated John Lennon: ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE 
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