Abstract
John Lennon has an enduring, instantly recognisable, iconic, spectacle look. However, prior to 1966, he was rarely seen wearing glasses in public. From ages 7 to 26, he effectively hid his myopia away, including a period of unsuccessful contact lens wear during Beatlemania. This narrative review examines John’s experience with contact lenses from 1963 to 1966 when he wore corneal rigid lenses made from polymethylmethacrylate, which regularly fell out. This frequent lens ejection was most likely due to the interaction between his upper eyelid and a spherical back surface rigid lens fitted to his right eye, which had a moderate degree of with-the-rule corneal astigmatism. John’s recollection that his contact lenses stayed in place while ‘stoned’ supports this hypothesis, as a cannabis-induced upper eyelid ptosis would reduce the likelihood of lens ejection.
Key points
- John Lennon had a high degree of myopia and moderate with-the-rule astigmatism but avoided wearing spectacles in public until 1967.
- During Beatlemania (1963–1966), John Lennon wore corneal rigid contact lenses which frequently fell out.
- Cannabis-induced upper eyelid ptosis helped to keep his sub-optimally fitting contact lenses in place, which most likely ejected due to moderate corneal astigmatism in his right eye.
Like his mother, John became myopic around 7 years of age3 but was reluctant to wear spectacles. Nigel Walley, John’s childhood friend and manager of John’s first band ‘The Quarrymen’ (which evolved into The Beatles) recalled: ‘The thing with John though was that he was as blind as a bat—he had glasses but he would never wear them. He was very vain about that’.4 ‘He didn’t want to be seen out in them, and kept them in an inside pocket along with his mouth organ. He might slip them on to see something, but he’d whip them off again very quickly’.5 In 1980, John himself explained that ‘I was just a suburban kid, imitating the rockers. But it was a big part of one’s life to look tough. I spent the whole of my childhood with shoulders up around the top of me head and me glasses off because glasses were sissy…’.2
Paul McCartney recounted a story of John’s spectacle wearing habits from their teenage years in Liverpool.6 ‘He was pretty short-sighted, and it led to some funny occasions… Normally if there were girls around, he’d whip them off. He was a little bit shy with them, so if he was out and about, he’d just take them off… But he came down to my house, he lived about a mile or so away… We were writing some stuff and we got finished about midnight. And so… he took off his glasses and walked home. The next day he said “…do you know those people on the corner of Booker Avenue?” I said ‘Yeah’. He said, ‘They’re crazy… at midnight when I left you, they were out on the porch of their house playing cards’. I said, ‘You’re kidding me’. So, I had to investigate. I went around and had a look… it was a nativity scene’.
Cynthia Lennon, John’s first wife, also confirmed his dislike of wearing spectacles at age 18 when they met at the Liverpool College of Art in 1958;7 ‘One morning the students in the lettering class were testing each other’s eyesight for fun. It turned out that John and I were equally short-sighted: just like me he couldn’t see a thing and hated wearing glasses, most of all, ironically, the little round lenses you got on the National Health. Instead, he had horn-rimmed black ones, which had cost quite a bit. Laughing about our rotten luck and the blunders we’d made when we couldn’t see gave us our first real connection…’.
Photographs taken during ‘Beatlemania’ (1963–1966) often show John wearing clear or tinted spectacles during dress rehearsals, which are notably absent during the subsequent live performance or taping (e.g., The Mersey Sound television documentary, August 1963). Beatles biographer Michael Braun observed during their first British tour; ‘Backstage, Paul is playing the piano with a sweater over his head. Ringo and George are putting on makeup and John is ostentatiously removing the glasses he constantly wears off stage. ‘Mustn’t spoil the image’, he says’.8 One reason John may have avoided wearing spectacles on stage during this time was to avoid comparisons with, or accusations of imitating, Buddy Holly; both his signature horn-rimmed spectacle look and the similarities between band names (The Crickets and The Beatles).
In April 1964, the Beatles were interviewed at Twickenham Movie Studios for the UK TV show “Star Parade”.9 One question posed from a fan was: “John, why don’t you wear your glasses on stage?” To which he replied: “Because I’d lose my nerve if I could see everybody in the audience you know, I like to have it all vague.” However, by 1965, he was wearing contact lenses in public. As told by 17-year-old Cheryl Andrews who met the Beatles during a press conference:10 “As I stood in front of my favourite Beatle the only thing I could think of was that his contact lenses looked like they hurt him… ‘John,’ I said, ‘are your contacts bothering you?’ ‘No,’ he answered. I got the distinct feeling that not too many people had asked that question. Undaunted I plunged on, ‘I have them too!’ I confided. He leaned closer and stared searchingly into my eyes. ‘Are yours bothering you?’ he said with a straight face. ‘No.’ I stammered and then we both laughed. ‘They’re good aren’t they?’ John said seriously and I could only nod, not trusting my voice. ‘But your eyes are prettier than mine.’ John said and to my dismay unwanted tears rolled down my cheeks. ‘Hey’ John said with a slight laugh. ‘Don’t cry or they’ll wash away!’…”.
John was introduced to contact lenses by Bobby Goldsboro (Roy Orbison’s guitarist) during the Roy Orbison/The Beatles tour of the United Kingdom in May–June 1963.11 Incidentally, Roy Orbison’s signature look of tinted prescription spectacles was cemented around the time of this tour when he left his non-tinted spectacles on a plane and had to make do with his prescription sunglasses.12 John and former Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe had also adopted this approach to conceal their myopia; ‘Like John and me [Cynthia Lennon], he [Stuart] was short-sighted, and got around the problem by wearing hip frames with dark prescription lenses… almost all the time’.13
But John’s foray into contact lenses was relatively short-lived, with several reported instances of the lenses falling out. For example:
On a swing (November 1964): Filming a comedy sketch for the TV show ‘Not Only… But Also’: ‘…during which John Lennon was seen in slow motion swinging on the children’s swings. Dudley [Moore] was pushing him, but eventually he pushed so hard that John’s contact lenses fell out and were lost in the grass. McGrath [Joe] had to stop filming while everyone searched frantically amongst the tall blades. “Luckily John had another pair on him. Because we never found the first ones”’.14
On stage (August 1965): During the press conference after the final show of their 1965 US tour, The Beatles were asked: ‘Were you physically afraid in terms of real violence this afternoon?’ Paul McCartney responded: ‘You know, when you get things like shoes thrown up on stage, you’ve got to be a bit physically afraid for your eye or something, you know, because you could lose it. Right?’. John added: ‘And I don’t want to lose me contact lenses, either’.15 Cynthia Lennon recalled of this period; ‘Over the last few years he had been trying to cope with contact lenses, at least in public, but on more than one occasion fans had thrown jelly babies [gelatine candies] on to the stage—a custom that had been established after George [Harrison] had mentioned he liked them. One had hit John in the face and knocked out a lens, leaving him in considerable pain’.1
In the pool (January 1966): ‘On one holiday—Maureen, John, Cyn and I [Ringo Starr] went to Tobago and John had just got contact lenses and he dropped one; it came out in the swimming pool. We spent about three hours in the pool looking for this damn contact! We didn’t find it obviously’.16
What can be inferred from these stories about John Lennon’s contact lenses? He wore them from mid-late 196311 to late 1966. The only lenses available at this time were large diameter (up to 25 mm total diameter) glass or polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) haptic (scleral) lenses, and the substantially smaller (e.g., 9–12 mm total diameter) PMMA corneal rigid lenses. Corneal rigid lenses were pioneered by Kevin Tuohy in 1948,17 and throughout the 1950s and 1960s began to replace scleral lenses due to the enhanced tear exchange which reduced Sattler’s veil and extended the duration of lens wear.18 Since John experienced many instances of lens ejection, he must have been wearing corneal rigid lenses. Scleral lenses are partially covered by the upper and lower eyelids due to their large diameter and require substantial manipulation for removal. Soft contact lens materials were developed in the 1960s19 but were not commercially available until 1971,20 several years after John had ceased contact lens wear and adopted his signature spectacle look.
Why did John Lennon’s contact lenses regularly fall out? To provide some perspective on the rarity of a contact lens falling out of the eye during this era, a search of the Trove database (trove.nla.gov.au) of Australian newspapers from 1950 to 1970 reveals only two reported instances of a rigid contact lens being ejected from an eye, both related to heavy physical contact during rugby league21 and Australian rules football matches.22 But John Lennon’s contact lenses seemed to eject from the eye with relative ease and frequency, without playing contact sports. Based on the prescription of a pair of his 1971 spectacles which were brought by his younger sister to help launch a fund raising campaign for the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in 2019,23 John had a high degree of myopia and moderate with-the-rule astigmatism: R −5.50/−2.75 × 171 and L −6.00/−1.50 × 2. Applying Javal’s rule24 that ocular astigmatism is approximately equal to 1.25 × corneal astigmatism and an additional 0.50 D of against-the-rule internal astigmatism, it can be inferred that he had around 2.60 D of with-the-rule corneal astigmatism in the right eye and 1.60 D in the left.
John’s with-the-rule corneal astigmatism was most likely a contributing factor to the frequent contact lens ejection (probably from his right eye), along with eyelid position and tension. When a spherical back surface corneal rigid lens is fitted to a toric cornea that is steeper along the vertical meridian than the horizontal (i.e., with-the-rule astigmatism), the lens can pivot or rock along the flatter horizontal meridian with lens stand-off (excessive edge lift) in the superior and inferior regions.25 This can help to promote tear exchange, but may result in an unstable, free moving contact lens that slides down to the lower limbus or lid margin when the upper eyelid is raised. In cases of generous edge lift, the lens can be ejected from the eye altogether, particularly if the eyelids are tight and the upper lid interacts with the superior lens edge.26
A recollection27 from John’s optometrist in New York during the 1970s includes a comment from John himself regarding his experience as a contact lens wearer which supports this theory: ‘Several long-time patients fondly remember encountering John in my office, offering advice on the frames they were trying on. One patient recalls trying on contact lenses when John’s voice surprised him from behind: “I tried to wear them, but the only way I could keep them in my bloody eyes was to get bloody stoned first”’.
This comment from John (as recalled by his optometrist) confirms that his contact lenses frequently fell out, but also provides an insight from the patient perspective that, after consuming cannabis, the lenses stayed in place. This was most likely due to cannabis-induced upper eyelid ptosis. While the exact mechanism linking cannabis and eyelid posture remains unclear, cannabis has been used to treat blepharospasm in humans,28 and several experiments have reported ptosis as a secondary effect in animal models.29 It appears that John’s relaxed or lowered superior lid position while stoned addressed the potentially poor contact lens fit along the vertical meridian, perhaps by providing a lid attachment fit to hold the lens in place and reducing the interaction between the eyelid margin and the edge of the lens. John’s period of contact lens wear (late 1963 to late 1966) coincides with The Beatles peak use of cannabis (their 1965 ‘Rubber Soul’ album is referred to as ‘the pot album’). John later recalled of this period (filming the movie ‘Help!’ in 1965): ‘We were smoking marijuana for breakfast during that period. Nobody could communicate with us. It was all glazed eyes and giggling all the time’.30
While fitting a back surface toric rigid contact lens to appropriately align the lens with the toric anterior corneal surface would improve the fit along the vertical meridian, for up to 2.50 D of corneal astigmatism, most practitioners (now and then) would initially attempt to fit a spherical lens. Although toric rigid corneal lenses were introduced in the early 1950s,31 a 1960 survey32 of contact lens manufacturers revealed there was no consensus regarding what magnitude of corneal astigmatism required altering the fitting technique employed for a spherical cornea. Only 5% of respondents (one manufacturer) suggested fitting a corneal lens with a toric back surface in cases of significant astigmatism, with other manufacturers recommending to approach the fit as for a spherical cornea (24%), aligned with the flattest meridian (19%), midway between the flat and steep meridians (19%), slightly steeper than the flattest meridian (19%), slightly flatter than the flattest meridian (9%) or slightly steeper in with-the-rule astigmatism and slightly flatter in against the rule astigmatism (5%). The magnitude of astigmatism warranting a change in the fitting philosophy used for a spherical cornea ranged from 1 to 6 D with a median value of ‘over 2.00 D’ (consistent with the magnitude of corneal astigmatism in John’s right eye).
In conclusion, until 1967, John Lennon chose to hide his myopia away. Throughout his childhood, adolescence and early 20s, he was highly myopic, but rarely wore spectacles in public. During Beatlemania, he wore PMMA corneal contact lenses during public appearances (from late 1963 to 1966) which regularly fell out. These lenses were most likely a spherical back surface design which ejected from his right eye due to moderate with-the-rule corneal astigmatism resulting in poor alignment of the lens with the cornea along the vertical meridian. John’s observation that his lenses remained in place while stoned supports this hypothesis, as cannabis-induced upper eyelid ptosis would reduce the interaction between the upper eyelid margin and the edge of the contact lens reducing the chance of ejection from the eye. Ultimately, John’s sub-optimally fitting contact lenses may have played a minor role in the genesis of his iconic bespectacled look, which is still instantly recognisable over half a century later.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Roslyn A. Vincent: Investigation (supporting); project administration (lead); resources (lead); writing – original draft (supporting). Stephen J. Vincent: Conceptualization (lead); investigation (lead); writing – original draft (lead); writing – review and editing (lead).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Open access publishing facilitated by Queensland University of Technology, as part of the Wiley – Queensland University of Technology agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
FUNDING INFORMATION
None.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
