#8: John Lennon
The address is famous now: Menlove Avenue in Liverpool. But the house where John Lennon grew up wasn’t his parents’ home. Born in 1940, Lennon was raised primarily by his mother’s sister, his Aunt Mimi Smith, as his parents separated. Mimi provided a stable, if strict, upbringing. His mother, Julia, was not absent, however. She lived nearby and remained a bright presence in his young life, teaching him his first banjo chords. Her sudden death in a traffic accident in 1958, when John was a teenager, was a devastating loss that would haunt his music and life years later, from The Beatles to his solo work.
