Largs man saw Beatles revolution

In our edition of April 29 1994, the ‘News’ revealed that John Lennon’s cousin was living in Waterside Street, and he gave us an exclusive interview about his memories of his famous relative.

Stan Parkes was with John through the musical revolution of Beatlemania which has had such a lasting impact on popular music culture, and sat in on the recording sessions of the ‘Fab Four’, and can even be heard in the background of some of the famous tracks.

He moved to Waterside Street, with his Largs born wife Jan, and have lived there ever since. The 81 year old said in his original Largs ‘News’ interview: “I am frustrated by all the lies and rubbish written about John by people who never knew him.

“I remember DJs in America calling them working class louts who came out of the gutter. This is completely untrue. John came from a family background totally different to wath most people think. But he never bothered about the lies.” John and Stan grew up in Liverpool, the sons of two sisters from a family where the women were very much in charge. Contrary to the ‘working class hero’ image, Lennon’s family included businessmen, a civil servant and an army major.

The oldest of the cousins, Stan would take young John to the park, or the pictures, little realising the effect lennon would have on millions of lives.

The myth that had generated around John had suggestd that John’s father was an ‘irresponsible rake’, who disappeared and his mother, Julia, went to live with another man, dentist Bertie Sutherland, leaving her older sister Mimi to look after the youngster. Stan disputed this and stated that Lennon’s mother kept in regular contact with her son.

“Julie played the ukelele and banjo. She was a natural at the piano too. She taught John basic chords as a youngster, saying if you played a musical instrument you will never be short of friends. That’s how he got his basic interest.” As a younger man, Stan was sent to boarding school in Scotland, and lived in Edinburgh after his father died. He lived with his mother, overlooking Murrayfield, and the young Lennon was a regular visitor. Stan would regularly go down to Liverpool to accompany the future Beatle on the bus journey north. Stan recalled that John and another cousin, Leila, would ‘bundle into a car and head up to the family croft at Durness, which Bertie had inherited.” - and John loved the family holidays from age 9-15.

The cousins reminded in close contact when Stan married Jan, the daughther of Largs man and Third Lanark footballer John Caldwell. Her grandparents owned a guest house and - during the war - her grandmother had owned Haylie House.

Stan was working in the garage trade when Beatlemania phenomenon took off.

“It took them completely by surprise, I remember him coming to Edinbrugh and saying, ‘I have made a record, I have made a record,’ He played it- ‘Love Me Do’ - and I said ‘that’s good’.

“John said he had to be at an interview in the television studio at 7.30pm. Brian and the boys were in the hotel. It was Paul Young who would do the interview. I told him that there was no tv studio in Edinburgh, it was in Glasgow. We had to rush through to Glasgow in time for the interview. They were on tour in Scotland as the Silver Beatles, playing Elgin, Angus and Kirkcaldy. They toured Scotland quite extensively back then.” Recalling the hysteria, Stan said: “We were at all the film premieres, the concerts, backstage with them and had a great old time. I am on quite a few of their records as I used to go to the studios. All their recordings was done at night. We would be sitting playing cards and then we would be asked to bang things or go ‘la, la, la’. It was fascinating to see how it was done. It was primitive, they only had four track recording and in the start, it wasn’t even stereo. Most of their most famous records were all very basic.

“Their very early stuff was done when they were schoolchildren. They would sit up on the top deck of a bus, writing down verses on scraps of paper, When they became famous they went back to their original scrap jottings for songs.

“They were four lucky boys and everything came to gel at the righ ttime. John was thinking of going back to art school when they returned from Liverpool from Hamburg, But everyone was asking about them in the record shops and that’s how Brian Epstein came to hear about them.” Stan and Jan were frequently guest backstage - when they would meet all sorts of famous people. “At a concert in Glasgow,” Stan recalled, “John asked us to come over and speak to this lassie, she was homesick. She turned out to be Dionne Warwick. It was all very surprising for us. He was just my cousin John but he was a multi megastar, mixing with people who were my heroes, like Burt Lancaster. We had some great times - it is really like a dream bow.” Stan also recalled that fame also had its drawbacks though, and commented: “They couldn’t lead a life. They couldn’t go to the pictures, they were trapped behind stage or recording studios, When they were on stage they couldn’t hear. They needed ear plugs to block out the noise of the fans screaming. I took John to RS McColl’s to get a packet of cigarettes and the wee lassie just keeled over and fainted - she couldn’t believe it!’ The death of manager Brian Epstein, the decision to stop touring, and the lack of a private life, was believed to have contributed to the inevitable split of the iconic band.

John’s break up with wife Cynthia led to him eventually moving to New York to live with Yoko Ono. Although they kept in touch by phone and by letter, the last time Stan met John was at the large home at Ascot where John was in the midst of composing one of his most famous songs ‘Imagine’ during the 1970s, John was living in New York, and was fatally shot by a crazed madman on December 8 1980.

* View the full original article of ‘My Life with Lennon’ from 1994 on the Largs and Millport News Facebook page.