Alf’s recording career, on the other hand, spans a single day. His record tanks—and he’s not too pleased about it. Nor is John pleased to learn that kind Cyn has invited his father into their home when “the ignoble Alf” turned up unannounced one day.

He’d first resurfaced in John’s life on April 1, 1964, when Brian had phoned to tell John that the elder Lennon was in his office. With a journalist.

John headed over to NEMS Enterprises in London to see his father—for the first time in seventeen years. “I don’t feel as if I owe him anything,” John’s always said. “He never helped me. I got here by myself, and this is the longest I’ve ever done anything, except being at school.”

“It wasn’t what you would call a happy reunion,” a witness said. “It was very tense.”

“What do you want, then?” John asked coldly.

Alf gave John his side of the story, describing how Julia Lennon left him for another man while he was out working at sea, how Mimi and the other Stanley girls were dead set against him from the very beginning, how they forced him to give up any sort of right to custody. John felt himself thaw a bit. He knew all about how tough Mimi and his aunts could be.

“The world deserves to know the truth,” Alf said.

Alf has no idea he’s being used.

Behind his father’s approach is British tabloid the Daily Sketch, which offered to forgo printing Alf’s story in exchange for exclusive interviews with John and the other Beatles.

And there it is.

Brian refused, and the story eventually went to Tit-Bits.

The next time Alf stops by the house, John is home—and his father’s not alone. He’s brought along his manager.

Alf, John notices, has also had extensive dental work done.

The record company “made me get my teeth seen to,” Alf explains. “It cost £109. I’m still paying it up, £10 a month.”

“It was only the second time in my life I’d seen him,” John said later, describing the scene. “I showed him the door. I wasn’t having him in the house.”

“I know you’re behind pulling my record,” Alf accuses his celebrity son—an accusation Alf’s manager later repeats to the Daily Mail—but John isn’t having it.

“I had too many father figures,” John later says, but that doesn’t make his own struggle to be a father to Julian any easier.

Admittedly, “I’m not the greatest dad on earth; I’m doing me best. But I’m a very irritable guy, and I get depressed. I’m up and down, up and down.”

He slams the door on Alf in disgust.

*  *  *

During repeated acid trips—a thousand over time, John later estimates—“a lot of early childhood was coming out.”