Nowhere Boy is a great new film dealing with something rarely covered in books, and never portrayed in film – John Lennon’s childhood. It brilliantly manages to evoke the atmosphere of suburban life, circa 1960.

The Director Sam Taylor-Wood manages to avoid the obvious cliche of telling Lennon’s story through his and the Beatles songs, instead there is plenty of the 1950’s music that inspired the Group during their formative teenage years.

There are only two musical references that are out of sync with the period. The opening credits starts with a loud guitar chord from ‘A Hard Days Night’ and fades to the fans screams of those later years. The closing credits finish with Lennon’s track ‘Mother’ from his first solo LP, (although the version used in the film was a studio out-take).

The Mother track was the most poignant, and the lyrics are basically the films entire plot;

“Mother, you had me but I never had you.
I wanted you but you didn’t want me……..
Father, you left me but I never left you.
I needed you but you didn’t need me………”


I’m a long-time Beatle fan so I already knew the whole story, but I was reaching for the Kleenex tissues long before the end. Even if you don’t know Lennon’s background, if you like a good tear-jerker, this is the film for you.

To understand the origins of the  Beatle phenomena, you only need to watch two films; ‘Nowhere Boy’ dealing with the formative childhood years, and ‘Backbeat’ covering the Hamburg and Cavern years where the Beatles honed their stagecraft. Both films are historically accurate, but more importantly great entertainment as well.

John McNally