Failing to succeed: Culture stars who flopped their way to the top
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Grades aren’t everything: How John Lennon failed his way to the top
It’s A-Level Results Day. That dreaded day when a measly brown envelope seems to prognosticate your future. All A-stars and you’re on your way to greatness, but a D that doesn’t pass muster and your dreams are slung on the ash heap of history, along with all of the university thrills, foreign romances, and life-changing experiences you had envisioned.
However, I’m here to tell you, along with the help of John Lennon, that the brown envelope of fate doesn’t amount to much more than a piece of paper and a change of plans. All those things you had dreamed existed purely in your imagination anyway—and that’s always subject to change. Sometimes failing to succeed is failing to succeed, but sometimes it’s failing to succeed, if you’re catching my wordy drift.
Lennon isn’t alone either; David Bowie, Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen King, Blondie and a string of other stars all flopped their way to the very top. So, fear not. They say you learn more from failure than you do from success. That seems to almost be ratified by the many folks who dusted themselves down and came back at it with a greater understanding of what they wanted, where they were at, and how they wanted to get there.
So, you might have failed your A-Levels, but you’ll have done well to beat the balls-up that Lennon made in his exams. As his 1956 report card reads: “His term marks amounted to 17% of the maximum and he missed the final exams. He is certainly on the road to failure if this goes on.” And his House Master reported: “He has too many of the wrong ambitions and his energy is too often misplaced.”
As it happens, those wayward ambitions and misplaced enthusiasms went on to change the world in such a way that brings to mind William S. Burrough’s famous quote: “Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”
But for Lennon, this took time, just as everything takes time. After flunking school, in 1957 Lennon pursued art – pretty much the only subject he passed – but he was about to fail this too. He felt that he was facing up to a life of “brummer striving” which is Lennonese for a life in a dead-end job. However, he had just about enough passion and sagacity to work his way towards pretty much the polar opposite of that.
Lennon got a D grade in his first year at art school. He ultimately received a ‘red letter’ asking him to leave (which is perhaps the most British way to expel a student in history). However, within months he met Stuart Sutcliffe, formed the Quarrymen, and then a few months later met Paul McCartney—the rest, as they say, is ancient history.
The moral of the story is: you’d be amazed how many times in life you find yourself gladdened that it didn’t work out the way you once thought you wanted it to. Be wary of bad tidings in brown envelopes, as fellow serial failure Bowie said, “[When you’re young you have] a nonrecognition that the future exists,” it does, and there’s plenty of it, so Godspeed to you all. As our last notable former failure in this flopping decree, Nick Cave, was once told by his mother: “Head high and f—k ‘em all.”
