In preparation for his role in Richard Lester’s film How I Won The War, John Lennon was given an army-style haircut and a pair of new glasses to wear.
Lennon’s haircut took place in the breakfast room of the bar The Inn On The Heath hotel in Celle, near Hanover, West Germany. The short-back-and-sides, performed by 28-year-old German hairdresser Klaus Baruch, made headlines around the world.
Baruch shaved off Lennon’s sideburns, swept back his fringe and greased it down. The cut hair was later burnt to prevent it being sold.
Although the hairstyle proved a temporary measure, the old-fashioned round National Health ‘granny’ glasses quickly became a trademark of his public image. They became soon fashionable, and he retained the look until the end of his life.
not true. he retired the granny glasses in the last year of his life for the more trendy plastic Sally Jessy Raphael type glasses.
Yes, he was wearing the plastic glasses when he was shot. Yoko made an album cover with a picture of the blood stained glasses. Typical tacky Yoko…
Tackyoko isn’t that a dessert?
Pictures of John wearing these glasses can be seen in Rolling Stone magazine number 335, January 22, 1981, the issue dedicated to John after his death. Pictures of the glasses are on pages 27, 35, 37, and 56, with the one on page 37 taken earlier on the day of his death. The lenses appear to be of the “transition” variety, which darken automatically in the sunlight.
Does anybody know the brand/model of the sunglasses Lennon wore circa Rubber soul? You know, the dark black, squarish, Roy Orbison-esque glasses?I really want to find a pair!
I doubt they still make them over 40 years later.
They Exist Still Nowadays. Kind Of Hard To Find But They’re Still Being Made, Mostly In The United States
I have a new pair of Dirty Harrys, basically a replica of the world’s first pair of wrap around sunglasses that debuted in the late 60s. They look exactly the same but the materials are lighter and contemporary.
John wore granny glasses and a full beard as a disguise in Help! He had that Abbey Road look four years early.
If you look closely at the photos from Help when the disguised Lennon looks so presciently 1969 you’ll notice small holes in the middle of each lens. They were fake glasses.
i’m also more inclined to believe that this inspired his look. Dick Lester too shares this view in the making of Help documentary. The military issues he wore in How I Won The War were not round, but he and Paul often went out in disguises and he found them useful for a while.
And yeah his eyeballs are so comically huge they’d have to have fake lenses. two or three coke bottle lenses had to have been in those suckers, but they’re dead on “lennon glasses”–compare their gold frames to the ones worn in the Strawberry Fields Video–the earliest appearance of them with his prescription. Gold rims, they’re practically identical. The How I Won The War glasses were tortoise shell it appears.
Did you know he was leagally blind without them from all those years of not wearing them?
partly true. john was legally blind from a young age, he wore contact lenses. one of the early things cynthia found she had in common with john was at art school, neither of them could see because john refused to wear his contacts in his early years. legal blindness is very common, something like 90% of people who wear glasses are considered “legally blind”. If you can’t drive without em, you’re legally blind. but john was wearing the specs when he passed his first driving test in (i believe) 66.
you don’t go ‘legally blind’ no matter how you misspell it from not wearing your glasses. In fact the opposite is true. I’ve had a fight with my optometrist who made me specs that were too strong. My eyesight has improved from not wearing them (myopia)
That happens with age, its common
Isn’t John wearing granny glasses on the back cover of Revolver?
In fact all the Beatles are wearing specs in the picture.
I’m not sure, those look more ovoid- though THOSE are probably my favorite in any photo. Anyway, they’re better than those monstrosities he & Paul are trading back & forth in the Penny Lane video.
I suppose the criteria in this Beatles Bible post is based on him wearing a non-sunglasses form of round specs, but he actually wore round spectacles a number of times before how I won the war.
These were the glasses that John Lennon commonly wore from 1966-1971. Not sure when he stopped wearing them exactly. But I don’t think he regularly wore them past 1971. They aren’t the ones he wore when he was shot, that’s for sure. These glasses are very similar in appearance to the ones Daniel Radcliffe wore as Harry Potter. Except these ones are gold and apparently the glass is thicker than on the ones Daniel Radcliffe wore for Harry Potter.
I hate to burst any bubbles here, but the “granny glasses” fad started with Fritz Richmond, from Jim Kweksin’s Jug band. He found some blue flashed glass pieces, which had set in frames by a local optician, to wear on stage when he had reddened eyes. From there, John Sebastian picked it up, and so did Jim McGuin from the Byrds. When John Lennon started wearing them, it took off. But if definitely started with Fritz!
Fritz was a friend of mine, who grew up down the street from me. So I have it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak!
This is Fritz on a 1963 record by the Jug Band. Note the glasses! there are many early pictures of Fritz wearing these glasses.
Right on, good info. That Kweskin album cover (poster?) is a shot of a group of kids who’ve just discovered pot for sure. I love it.
I never understood why John was so reluctant to wear his NHS horn-rimmed glasses in public on a regular basis, despite his bad eyesight. I think that could be why over time he started to wear sunglasses around 1964-65, but I don’t know if they were ones to protect his eyes from the sun or if they were prescriptive sunglasses to help him see better.
There’s nothing wrong or shameful about wearing glasses and even if John had worn his regularly NHS glasses on a regular basis prior to 1966, it would’ve made him instantly recognizable in band photos not to mention that Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison both wore glasses frequently.
If we’re going jug band, why not Grand ‘Ol Opry/ Grandpa Jones, etc? Ben Franklin likely took a toke, too. I’m guessing Chinamen-on-Opium came up with “crystal spec-ti-cles” on beyond Jesus…