Some figures reach such a degree of reverence that they can do no wrong. We see the most troubling extreme of this play out daily on the internet as fandoms band together to support a fallen hero or leap to 'well, actually' defence in response to a wayward remark. John Lennon, ironically, might have had many fans of this ilk, but he'd never fall foul of blind hero-worshipping himself.

In fact, you almost get the sense that the bespectacled Beatle thrived on building up his favourites, just to tear them down. From Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan and even his old pal Paul McCartney, in time, those who Lennon once worshipped found themselves well under the heel of his boot.

There is perhaps no finer example than the aforementioned folk icon. While his fallout with Macca might have been deeply personal, and his spat wth Elvis was an inevitable reflection of how they had both changed, his brutal dismissal of Dylan, after admitting that he had changed his art and outlook, perfectly exhibits Lennon's need to either be in fixated awe or ferocious attack.

As his old friend Elliot Mintz told Spin, he needed validation, and picked battles in a strange bid to find it. He would grow furious "about the fact that he felt the Rolling Stones got the kind of adulation and respect that 'The Mop Tops' didn't, and that the Stones were perceived as the revolutionaries because they came forward with 'Street Fighting Man' as opposed to 'I Want To Hold Your Hand.' He loved Mick Jagger, and the two of them spent countless nights together in London. But when he would get really angry about it, he'd called them the Rolling Pebbles."

Mintz would explain that this was simply part of his psyche. "He had that same kind of envy of the way people perceived Bob Dylan," he said. "Bob released 'Blowin' in the Wind' six months before the Beatles came out with 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' and the respect and wonder that surrounded him was something that challenged John. He insisted to me he was a far better writer than Dylan was. It was a love-hate thing."

While he would admit to copying Dylan in the early days, by the time he had entered his Born Again Christian phase, it was closer to a hate-hate relationship as far as Lennon was concerned. One track, in particular, bore the brunt of his ire, and he drawled a scathing 14-word review of 'Gotta Serve Somebody' into a dictaphone to prove it.

In truth, the song itself has received somewhat of a revisionist reappraisal in recent years, something that Dylan prophesied himself when he said, "The critics wouldn't allow the people to make up their own minds. All they talked about was Jesus this and Jesus that, like it was some kind of Methodist record."

In his view, and that of many of his fans these days, the creditable song was simply guilty of not fitting into the atheistic alternative zeitgeist, and its merits were dismissed along with its actually pretty ambiguous reference to god. Lennon didn't see it that way. He simply thought it was utter shit.

His review of the song, revealed in a leaked home recording, was simply thus: "The backing is mediocre [...] the singing's really pathetic and the words were just embarrassing."

That's pretty much as damning as it gets. But in typical Lennon fashion, the bearded bastard was now doubt heaping bombastic praise upon 'Changing of the Guard' the next minute. He trusted his instincts and called a spade a spade, and that's what Lennon Lennon, whatever that was.