John Lennon’s sister sets record straight about mum
Julia Baird’s breezy sentences, sweetened by her English accent, came to a screeching halt when I asked the question that had to be asked. Where was she the day her half brother, John Lennon, was murdered 35 years ago? We all remember, at least those of us old enough. “I don’t want to talk about that,” said Baird, 69, by phone, her voice barely a whisper. “No. Not at all.”
Everything else, though, was fair game during a half-hour conversation fueled by an upcoming appearance of a band called the Mersey Beatles. A cover band with all the hair and 1960s-era attire, they’ll play May 14 at the Flying Monkey in Plymouth. Baird is the nightly host on the 40-show American tour. She’s the narrator (pronounced na-RAY-tor by Baird), presenting a documentary on the night’s act, then, after the show, signing copies of her book, Imagine This: Growing up with my brother John Lennon.
There, in those pages, is the truth that Baird wants known, setting the record straight on their mother, Julia Lennon, who, Baird says, was misrepresented by the news media after Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon to death in New York City on Dec. 8, 1980. “Five years after John had died, they did a documentary in Britain, the BBC,” Baird told me, shortly before a show in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Everybody watched.”
By: Ray Duckler
Source: Concord Monitor
