Long before the days of vulnerable tracks like “I’m a Loser” and “Help!” (and even further from the raw emotions of “Cold Turkey” and “Mother”), John Lennon was hiding his sentimentality in plain sight. The songs he wrote for The Beatles didn’t always reference his past personal life. But there were a few glimpses to be had, if one knew where to look.
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One such window into Lennon’s childhood came in the form of “Do You Want To Know A Secret”, an early single from the band’s U.K. and U.S. debuts, Please Please Me and Introducing… The Beatles, respectively. In a testament to his initial subversiveness, Lennon didn’t perform lead vocals on the song, despite being the one who wrote it.
Instead, George Harrison sang lead—a creative decision Lennon would later cite as a matter of practicality, not humility. In any case, a No. 2 placement on the Billboard Hot 100 proved this choice to be a positive one.
How Julia Lennon Helped Inspire “Do You Want to Know a Secret”
John Lennon had an incredibly turbulent childhood, experiencing emotional strain and trauma that no child should ever have to endure. His father was a seaman who was often absent. During one particularly long absence, Lennon’s mother, Julia, became pregnant with another man’s child. When Lennon’s father returned, the couple separated. Julia’s eldest sister, Mimi, deemed the recently single mother’s life “immoral” and complained to the local authorities multiple times until, eventually, she received full custody of Lennon.
Lennon maintained a relationship with Julia throughout his childhood and early teen years. She inspired his love of music and even bought her son his first guitar. Tragically, on July 15, 1958, an off-duty police officer struck Julia with his car while she was walking home, killing her. The trauma of losing his mother—in many small ways as a child and then with such heartbreaking finality as a teen—deeply impacted Lennon. He would later address this grief more openly, like in the 1968 Beatles track “Julia”.
But before that, Lennon referenced his mother in smaller, subtler ways, like in “Do You Want To Know A Secret”. Speaking to David Sheff about the song in 1980, Lennon said, “My mother was…a comedienne and a singer. Not professional, but, you know, she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice [and] could do Kay Starr. She used to do this little tune when I was just a one- or two-year-old. Yeah, she was still living with me then. The tune was from the Disney movie. ‘Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell / You are standing by a wishing well.’” The song was “I’m Wishing”, the first song featured in the 1937 film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Did John Lennon Actually Write the Song for George Harrison?
According to Paul McCartney, yes. According to John Lennon, no. The latter ex-Beatle told David Sheff that after he finished the song, he realized the track could be a “good vehicle” for George Harrison. “It only had three notes, and he wasn’t the best singer in the world. He has improved a lot since then, but in those days his singing ability was very poor because (a) he hadn’t had the opportunity, and (b) he concentrated more on the guitar. So, I wrote that—not for him, as I was writing it. But when I had written it, I thought he could do it,” he explained.
“I didn’t know how to sing,” Harrison later said of his performance on “Do You Want To Know A Secret”. “Nobody told me how to sing.”
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