Lennon at 70

I was 15 years old when John Lennon was killed.

At the time, I wasn’t at all into pop music; all the records in the house belonged to my parents, and they were all show tunes, folk or comedy albums, not that it mattered because they rarely played any of them.  I’d had a turntable when I was younger, but I only ever used it to play “book-and-record” adventures of superheroes, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” or similar novelty records.  My uncle tried to get my brother and me into contemporary music — I guess — by giving us a B.J. Thomas album that included “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” and “Suspicious Minds,” but it failed to convert us.  When we finally got a radio in our room, we used it mostly as an alarm clock and left the dial at the “easy listening” station.  I couldn’t have named a single “guitar god” of the 6-string, but I was well-versed in the “101 Strings.”

I’d heard of the Beatles, naturally.  I mean, I didn’t live on the Moon.  But as a lad, my exposure to them was limited to a network airing of the Yellow Submarine animated film (which I liked) and possibly a re-run or two of their 60s cartoon show, so I figured they were a kid-oriented group like The Monkees, only not as cool.

lennon1Ironically it would take the death of Lennon — and the resulting flood of Beatles tunes on every radio and TV station in America — to make me sit up and take notice of the Fab Four and through them, rock and pop music in general.   My uncle had an 8-track tape of the Beatles 1962-1966 compilation album (aka “The Red Album”) and we must have played it a thousand times that December, marveling at how good every single song was.  Seriously, even “best of” albums tend to have their weaker tracks, but this thing was all killer.

From there, the hunt was on to locate and collect all the Beatles’ albums.  With no concept of the band’s history, Tim and I acquired them completely out of order, based more on the appeal of the cover art than anything else, so the heavily produced and technically accomplished Abbey Road might be followed by the more rudimentary, almost live-sounding Please Please Me.  At first, the group was a four-headed beast; one voice the same as the others, but in time we learned to tell the difference: that’s Paul singing, now it’s John, that other voice must be George.  Ringo’s easy.

Still later we learned to hear their “voices” in the writing; “Norwegian Wood” had John’s fingerprints all over it; “Yesterday” was undoubtedly Paul’s.  Either member of the songwriting Dynamic Duo could paint vivid pictures in words, but with John there was that seemingly effortless mastery of language; the ability to coin a phrase that could mean two or even three things at once.  And of course there were the phrases that had no meaning at all, save those the listener assigned to them, but somehow they always came off sounding mysterious and important — possibly life-changing if we could only decipher them correctly — instead of just random and meaningless (which was closer to the truth).

Inevitably, and with no little disappointment, we reached the end of the 200+ catalog of Beatles songs, but not to worry, because then came the CDs, which featured the albums in their superior UK configurations and provided an excuse to start the process all over again.  And then there was the Anthology project, the re-masters, the Love album, the #1 album, the various solo albums and so on.

Meanwhile, all those trips to the record store (which I’d always just walked by without a glance pre-Beatles) led to interest in Pink Floyd, the Stones, the Kinks, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and later the Talking Heads, David Bowie, the Police, etc.

Most likely if Lennon hadn’t been killed that December, something else would have eventually gotten me into pop music, but as it stands that was the catalyst.  I’ve always harbored a bit of guilt at remembering that 8-track so fondly, given the reason it got popped in in the first place, but maybe a better way to look at it is that it was a case of something good coming out of an event that was otherwise so tragically rotten.

lennon21I won’t pretend to buy into the blinkered hagiography that’s evolved around Lennon — who wasn’t a saint by any stretch — and I was never impressed with the daft publicity stunts presented as “peace demonstrations” that really amounted to advertisements for his wife’s “art” shows.  I find a lot of his solo work littered with ham-fisted “message” songs, the witty wordplay of the old days replaced by blunt, unsubtle sermonizing,  repetitive protest chants or glorified therapy sessions venting insecurities, hang-ups or personal grudges I’d just as soon not hear about.  (And yes, I know that was the point of them, and I was supposed to feel uncomfortable hearing them.  But that doesn’t make for songs I like to hear over and over.  It’s like Schindler’s List: I’m glad I saw it, but I’d just as soon not see it again).  However, on the flip side are the strong melodies, the occasional great lyric, the beautiful, dreamlike quality of songs like “#9 Dream” or “Oh My Love,”  the promising return to form with Double Fantasy and that phenomenal, versatile voice, so perfect for rock-and-roll.  With John, it was always a mixed bag, but that’s what kept him interesting.  He seemed to write songs to please himself, not the masses, so when a song did work it was because he’d tapped into something universal, not because he’d assembled it by the numbers.  Like any fan I’ll always be left to wonder what aural wonders might have come to us if he’d stuck around, and what if any role  he’d have played in shaping popular music in the decade or two that followed.

Of course that’s assuming he’d have stuck with it.  I often think even a guy as egocentric as Lennon would be amused to see himself made into a secular Messiah, and likewise I think he’d have scoffed at the notion of a septuagenarian performing “rock and roll.”  But Mick and Keith and his old mates Paul and Ringo are still at it, so you never know.  One day you wake up and 70 years have gone by, but the songs are still coming and the voice is still there, so what are you gonna do? Maybe he’d be on the road even now, playing “Nowhere Man” and “Twist and Shout” to packed stadiums and selling truckloads of t-shirts and souvenir mugs.  Maybe he’d be schmoozing with the president as he’s handed Gershwin Awards and Kennedy Center Honors.  Now there’s a radical concept; John Lennon, darling of the Establishment.

As it is, he’ll always be frozen in time at age 40; the outspoken activist, the too-hip-to-be-commercial artiste, the martyr for peace, still possessing a full head of hair in its original color, sporting  just a few wrinkles and a respectable waistline.  Unlike his contemporaries in The Who, he really did die before he got old.  Like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and JFK, he got to go out on top and looking good, remembered as much or more for what people projected onto him as for what he really was.  As pop icons go, it’s not a bad deal but as a husband and father, and a guy who loved life as much as any of us, I have to think he’d have been willing to trade all that for a few more decades on Earth, even if it did mean being gradually marginalized by a succession of “next big things”, eventually showing some neck wattle and maybe even creaking onto the stage for the occasional labored reunion tour with the other aging Beatles.

In the end, though, we all play the cards we’re dealt.  For all his songs and demonstrations telling us how we ought to do this or that, Lennon understood — had to understand given his troubled childhood and the whirlwind of Beatlemania — that much of life is simply beyond our control.  Or as he once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Happy 70th, John, wherever you are, and thanks for the music.

4 Comments

  1. You know the most surprising thing in your post? That you were not at all into pop music at that age.

    I was bonkers about Beatle music by that age. The first record (vinyl LP) I ever bought myself with my own money was the red compilation double you mentioned. Through my much younger childhood I had always liked certain songs more than others, and later I recognised some of them as Beatles.

    When I was very young (say, six) my favourite 45 was “Speedy Gonzales” by Pat Boone and I played it over and over (and over and over) by myself on my Dad’s portable turntable. So my liking for popular music started from the year dot.

    It’s important to see through John Lennon. Was it the Americans who somehow elevated a faded and slightly nutty pop star into a guru? It’s bizarre. People see what they want to see. The masses chant peace and love in his wake, yet he would arrive home from being feted at peace rallies only to beat the snot out of his wife.

    I love his Beatles work and while his solo work can be interesting, I have never understood the appeal of the inane “Imagine” — and songs like “Give Peace a Chance” and “Power to the People” are the most abysmal rubbish. And a return to form with “Double Fantasy”? I don’t really agree. I always really liked “Woman” but honestly? It’s a pretty average album. No, make that below average.

    Solo, he showed his limitations. You know, with Paul and the others, he was part of the best thing around. But by himself he was mediocre. I’m just being honest. Try to sit through his solo catalogue.

    As you would expect, we had the real albums, and I never understood why the yanks chopped up and repackaged these artworks, or why they were allowed to.

  2. I guess I was a pretty odd kid not to care about pop music, but there you have it. You mention “later recognizing” some songs as the Beatles’; I may be unique on the planet for having heard so many of them in their “elevator music” iterations before hearing the originals. Stuff like “Yesterday,” “Here There and Everywhere” and “Norwegian Wood” were played all the time on easy listening stations in watered down, strings and piano form, and I’ll always wonder if part of my instant acceptance of actual Beatles recordings wasn’t helped along by being first conditioned by the “muzak” versions.

    Sometimes I’m struck by how much small kids like Beatle music; my kids adore them, and have since Day One. But again, with only the few (mostly so-so) tracks of “Yellow Submarine” at my command, it’s probably not too surprising I didn’t sign on early.

    I have no idea what prompted the canonization of Lennon in America, but I do have a couple theories. One is guilt: Lennon was “in our care” at the time of his death and he was killed by one of us. So in death we elevate him from an also-ran — the least successful ex-Beatle commercially and arguably artistically — to a saint; the prophet of peace shot to death for his troubles, a New York Ghandi. Suddenly the guy who couldn’t write a hit becomes the artiste who didn’t care about having hits; you don’t judge a prophet by his profits. We later saw the same thing with Princes Diana, reliable tabloid fodder and endless entertainment for fans of emotional train wrecks everywhere, until she’s killed and suddenly she’s Mary Poppins, Mother Theresa and Cinderella rolled into one.

    The other theory is that Lennon is the poster boy for the Woodstock generation, the Boomers who made him the symbol of all their own pie-in-the-sky ideals, which is appropriate enough since he, like they, was better at preaching than practicing. To them, he’s forever young (their dream, pretty much) and died before he “sold out” (like most of them eventually did). Just being on Nixon’s hit list would have made him their idol if he’d never made another record.

    Calling Double Fantasy a “return to form” probably is going too far, but if you compare it to most of his 70s output, it’s at least listenable, and even “catchy,” for the first time in forever, which is close enough. Plus I had the sense the post was turning too critical on what after all was the guy’s birthday, so I decided to be generous. There is, you’ll admit, at least a potential in that album, a suggestion of good things to come, that hadn’t been present in a long while. And I guess I’m as guilty as anyone of assuming that would necessarily mean he’d have made more good stuff had he not died, just as every assumes JFK would have been more than a mediocre president if he’d lived longer.

    Let’s just say the re-release of the Lennon catalog is more appealing in the age of i-Tunes. If any artist’s work demands “cherry picking” it’s his.

    Finally, Capitol had rights to put out the Beatle albums however they wished, and chopped them up to make them shorter, thus (eventually) resulting in additional (short) albums and additional profits. The Beatles helped invent the concept of albums as cohesive works and not just random compilations, so in the early days no one treated as “defacing a work of art,” if you will.

  3. Good grief……… Could there be anything more disgusting musically than elevator music versions of Beatles songs?

    I wasn’t saying you were an odd kid, although now that I actually think about it, I picture you at ten with a pipe in your mouth (after the fashion of early Bob Kane-style depictions of Bruce Wayne), in your little dressing gown, listening to Schubert while composing a letter to the editor of The Times………..

    Come on; I’m pretty close to the truth, aren’t I?

    🙂

  4. Well, I was partial to a pipe, but it was a bubble pipe with an embossed image of Popeye on the bowl, and it was accessorized not with a smoking jacket, but with a tassled cowboy vest and a Lone Ranger gunbelt with two cap-firing six-shooters and spare “silver” bullets (as insurance against a meeting with TV vampire Barnabas Collins).

    There’s a photo of me completing the ensemble with a plastic “Grand Prix”-style race driver’s helmet that came with a slot car racing set.

    Not that I wore this get-up all the time, mind you. Just to church and formal functions.

    And yes, there is something more disgusting than Muzak versions of Beatle tunes, and that is the Muzak version of Lennon’s “Imagine.” Only Lennon’s arrangement and phrasing keeps the whole thing from tipping completely into maudlin mush as it is, but when performed by a string orchestra in sunny, “Up With People” mode, it’s the musical equivalent of a finger down the throat.

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