October has arrived in Irvington. In my never-ending struggle to find something spooky to write about during the Halloween season, I’ve decided to lay some numerology on y’all. This Sunday will be October the ninth. Unless that happens to be your birthday or anniversary, it probably won’t mean much to you. But if you’re a fan of numerical patterns and their relationship to mystical pseudo-scientific inferences, then you might want to examine the number 9 in the life of Beatle John Lennon. It seems that numerous events throughout Lennon’s life were connected with the number nine, or numbers whose sum is nine.
The first one is easy. John Lennon was born in war-time England on October 9th, 1940. The first home he lived in was at 9 Newcastle Road, Wavertree, Liverpool. Freddie Lennon, John’s father, was a merchant seaman of Irish decent. He was not present at John’s birth and was seldom around for the rest of his son’s life. John’s mother, Julia, was by all accounts the light of young Lennon’s life. It was Julia who bought 16-year-old John his first guitar in 1956. Julia would be hit by a car and killed in July of 1958 when John was just 17. From that point on, John Lennon lost himself in music.
The Beatles’ first appearance at the Cavern Club was on February 9, 1961. Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ influential manager, first saw them perform 9 months later on November 9, 1961. The group’s contract with EMI was confirmed on May 9, 1962. The Beatles’ debut single, “Love Me Do,” was on Parlophone records with a reference number of R4949. Their record-breaking debut appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was on February 9, 1964.
On November 9, 1966 John Lennon and Yoko Ono met for the first time at an exhibition at the Indica Gallery in London. According to the Lennons, John went to Yoko’s conceptual art exhibit at the art gallery. Lennon was intrigued by Ono’s “Hammer A Nail” exhibit that encouraged patrons to pound a nail into a wooden board thereby creating the art piece. Although the exhibition was not yet open, Lennon wanted to hammer a nail into the clean board, but was prevented from doing so by Ono. The art gallery owner whispered to her, “Don’t you know who this is? He’s a millionaire! He might buy it.” Ono had never heard of the Beatles and had no idea who the mop topped hipster was. She finally relented on the condition that Lennon pay her five shillings, to which Lennon replied, “I’ll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in.”
John and Yoko were married in Gibraltar on March 20, 1969. In April 1969 he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. There are nine ‘o’s in the combined names of John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon. The couple were expecting a child in February of 1969 but the baby was lost in a miscarriage. Just before the miscarriage, the fetal heartbeat was recorded. It was included in Lennon and Ono’s 1969 album Life With The Lions, followed by two minutes’ silence. The unborn child was named John Ono Lennon II, and was buried by the couple in a secret location.
Lennon and Ono lived for a time in an apartment on West 72nd Street, New York City. After a robbery at that location, they moved to the much safer Dakota building. Their first apartment in the Dakota was number 72. Both address numbers form the sum of 9. Numerologists have a field day adding up names (like McCartney), addresses and John Lennon word associations whose letters add up to the number 9. The Beatles formed in 1960, and disbanded nine years later.
After The Beatles split up, Lennon embarked on a solo career that lasted nine years. “#9 Dream” was a song on Lennon’s 1974 album Walls And Bridges. The album was his ninth non-Beatles album, and was released on September 26, 1974, the ninth month of the year. The album’s cover featured a painting done when Lennon was 11 years old. It depicts a football player with a number nine on his back. The song “#9 Dream” peaked at #9 on the Hot 100 charts in the U.S. Lennon wrote two other songs with the number 9 in the title: “Revolution 9” and “One After 909.” Lennon’s “Revolution 9” appeared on The Beatles’ ninth original UK album: The Beatles’ White Album.
In a 1970 interview, Lennon told Rolling Stone, “‘Revolution 9’ was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will happen when it happens; just like a drawing of a revolution. All the thing was made with loops. I had about 30 loops going, fed them onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing voice saying, ‘This is EMI test series number nine’. I just cut up whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realise it: it was just so funny the voice saying, ‘number nine’; it was like a joke, bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.”
Sean Taro Ono Lennon was born on October 9, 1975, John Lennon’s 30th birthday. In 1980 Lennon released the single “Just Like Starting Over” to celebrate he and his son’s birthdays. To celebrate the milestone 40th birthday of her husband John Lennon, and the fifth of her son Sean, Yoko hired a New York City aircraft pilot to skywrite a message in the sky above the Dakota. At around 5 p.m. the skywriting began over Central Park. The message read: “Happy Birthday John & Sean – Love Yoko,” and was written nine times in the sky. The occasion became a major news item on U.S. television.
Nine weeks later, John Lennon made the headlines one last time. John Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980 in the breezeway of his Dakota apartment building. After he was shot, Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital on 9th Avenue in Manhattan, where he was pronounced dead at 11:07 pm (1+1+7=9). John Lennon’s December 8th death came at 10:50 p.m. New York City time, but because of the 5 hour time difference, it was December 9 in his birthplace of Liverpool, England. The release of the digitally remastered The Beatles’ back catalog and Rock Band video game came on September 9, 2009. The choice of 09-09-09 was no accident.
Individually, these occurrences may amount to little more than coincidence. However, in his later years Lennon became fascinated with numerology, and was well aware of the role of the number nine played throughout his life. Shortly before he died, Lennon told author David Sheff, “I lived in 9 Newcastle Road. I was born on the ninth of October, the ninth month. It’s just a number that follows me around, but, numerologically, apparently I’m a number six or three or something, but it’s all part of nine.” Although John Lennon was incorrect in his identification of October as the ninth month, he was certainly acutely aware of the role the number 9 played in his life… and death.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
