Music
John Lennon's aunt didn't hold back and called her nephew and Yoko Ono ugly when she saw them naked on their 'Two Virgins' album cover.
Published on July 8, 2023
2 min readJohn Lennon met his lifelong muse when he met Yoko Ono. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney dissolved as his relationship with Yoko deepened. Lennon and Ono developed into a controversial couple since they never compromised their art. That included their naked pose on the Two Virgins album cover that John’s aunt Mimi hated because she said the couple were too ugly naked.
John Lennon’s aunt Mimi hated the ‘Two Virgins’ cover because he and Yoko were ‘so ugly’ naked
Lennon jumped fully into Ono’s avant-garde art world when their relationship started. The Beatles’ founder started recording sound experiments, tape loops, and comedy bits on his own time. Sometimes, such as “Revolution 9,” John’s artistic outlets overlapped, but he mostly kept them separate.
His first recording project with Yoko, the 1968 album Two Virgins, was made separately from the Fab Four. Ono criticized Lennon’s effort on the album, but no one could have faulted his commitment. He and Yoko freely stripped down and posed naked for the album cover — full frontal on the front jacket and cheeks bared on the back.
The nude cover was meant to be a comment on the couple’s innocence, but John’s aunt Mimi was appalled. Not so much by the nudity, per se, but that John and Yoko didn’t choose different cover models (via 150 Glimpses of The Beatles):
“It would have been all right, John, but you’re both so ugly. Why don’t you get somebody attractive on the cover if you’ve got to have someone completely naked?”
John Lennon’s aunt mimiAunt Mimi wasn’t the only person who took offense with the Two Virgins cover, but her reaction was among the tamest.
John said the general feedback was ridiculous. People accused them of doing it for shock value and publicity. When they stopped seeking out publicity in the press, people accused the couple of retreating from view to get people talking. It was a no-win situation. Kind of like Lennon trying to please aunt Mimi, nude album cover or not.
John’s aunt never minced words with him
Lennon’s dad was barely around during his childhood. His mother died in 1958 when he was still a teenager. He had lived with aunt Mimi for years before then, but he attended the funeral in a daze and tried to maintain a stiff upper lip.
Yet John’s aunt didn’t cut him any slack.
Mimi Smith frequently lambasted his music, accent, clothes, Quarrymen bandmates, and girlfriends. Any and everything was a target for her scorn. Aunt Mimi battered John’s self-confidence at every opportunity, even after he established himself as a quarter of the most popular band in the world. Aunt Mimi hating the cover and calling John and Yoko ugly was just par for the course.
How ‘Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins’ and its sequel album performed in the United States and the United Kingdom
The unorthodox music and nudity on the cover made Two Virgins (full title: Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins) a tough sell in 1968. Still, it wasn’t a complete flop.
The album reached No. 124 on the Billboard 200 after first appearing in early 1969. It stayed on the chart for eight weeks. The album’s sequel, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions, reached No. 174 and stayed on the chart for eight weeks. Neither of the records charted in England.
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