“How do you do that”: How John Lennon failed to accept Paul McCartney’s relationship with son, Julian

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad, Take a sad song and make it better”: Paul McCartney wrote those words in 1968, and quickly, they became the opening lines to one of the world’s most well-known anthems. For decades since, crowds have chanted it back at him, adopting the song of hope into the world’s songbook as McCartney’s rallying cry for joy is beloved by all. But when remembering that Jude is Julian Lennon, the song really does become sad.

Julian Lennon, John’s first son, was born in 1963, early in the Beatles’ career. He was born to the singer and his first wife, Cynthia, and was only a newborn when the storm of Beatlemania whipped around them. He was a newborn when the band were still busy touring the world, was still only a baby when they decided to quit, and was a mere toddler when they were still spending seemingly all their time in the studio or off on side-quests, making movies or jaunting off to India.

All of that is to say that Julian Lennon was born to perhaps the world’s busiest father, and that inevitably means that the relationship was a struggle. That fact was made worse in 1967 when Cynthia returned to their marital home to find Yoko Ono there, the start of the story where Lennon would divorce his wife, eventually move to a different country away from his son and seemingly dedicate all his time to a new family. But the fact was also made worse year on year as Julian grew older and learnt more about his parents’ relationship, reading confessions like Lennon saying, “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself, and I hit”.

But Julian’s mother, Cynthia, had been with the band since the start. She used to go to Quarrymen gigs, she went with them to Hamburg; she was part of their makeup from the early days, so the rest of the members had deep affection for her, especially McCartney. When the couple divorced, McCartney refused to cut ties, stating, “We’d been very good friends for millions of years and I thought it was a bit much for them suddenly to be personae non gratae and out of my life.”

In the final years of the band, that would become an issue. As Lennon ran off with Ono, spending less and less time with Julian, the rest of the band seemed to almost step up as surrogate fathers. McCartney especially showed so much care towards the kid in a way that reflected his own desire to have children, and the way he’d later be towards Linda Eastman’s daughter, Heather, adopting her when the couple got serious.

Yet despite being the actual father in the group, Lennon simply couldn’t seem to grasp paternal instinct. There’s a sad moment, reportedly from the set of their Magical Mystery Tour movie, where Julian and McCartney were playing between takes. Lennon watched from the sidelines and later remarked, “How do you do that?”

That’s undeniably what made the sting of Sean Ono Lennon’s life even harder for Julian. “Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the difference,” Lennon once cruelly remarked when his second child was born and he was seemingly finally ready to be a father, despite Julian being a near teenager by then.

McCartney saw the lack. He seemed to see the ways Lennon was failing his first son and tried his best to make it up to Julian, both through songs like ‘Hey Jude’ and simply with his time, energy, and care. “Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit,” Julian reflected on his childhood, “More than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going, and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad.”