Dear The Crimson Hipster Dufuz:
I have to agree with you that Lennon was much deeper than Jim Morrison, but I think the average mud puddle was deeper than Morrison.
Can’t agree with you about Lennon’s influence as a musician, though.
Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, Trane, Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Louis Jordan and (my favorite) Jimi Hendrix are just a few of the musicians who were as influential or more so than Lennon.
And as for making Nixon’s enemies list – that wasn’t the greatest feat in the world. Hell, 90 percent of this board would make the list were Tricky Dicky still in power.
<< Dear The Crimson Hipster Dufuz:
I have to agree with you that Lennon was much deeper than Jim Morrison, but I think the average mud puddle was deeper than Morrison. >>
Mmmm. Across the universe is swell, it’s worthy of Coleridge.
<< Can’t agree with you about Lennon’s influence as a musician, though.
Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, Trane, Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Louis Jordan and (my favorite) Jimi Hendrix are just a few of the musicians who were as influential or more so than Lennon. >>
I’ll give you Armstrong, and Elvis, and let’s say we split on Hendrix. I think you have to rate the others a little lower.
I found his philosophy quite interesting, more so than his music, although the two are closely connected. You can read many of his ideas in THE PLAYBOY INTERVIEWS WITH JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO.
He did not wish to be looked up to as any kind of leader or guru. His song, “Imagine” just asks people to imagine what these things would be like. Open your mind to the possibilities.
I like his ideas, and after reading the book, developed a liking for Yoko. She is really quite a character and was a good match for John.
It’s not insulting John Lennon to say he was no intellectual: he’d have been the first to agree. And it’s not insulting him to say he wasn’t a deep thinker or a profound spiritual guru- indeed, from what I know of Lennon, he’d have rolled his eyes and laughed at the idea of people looking to HIM for spiritual guidance.
Indeed, Lennon spent the last years of his life AVOIDING interaction with people who looked to him for inspiration. Toward the end of his life, he seems to have concluded that a simple happy home/family life was more important and more valuable than any of the trendy political or religious fads he’d embraced at one time or another. At the end of the day, he wanted to be a mere husband and dad, not the new Dalai Lama.
He SEEMED to have been happy at the end, and I’m glad. But do I miss him? No. I have no reason to miss him. I still have his music, and can play it whenever I want to. I can still watch “Hard Day’s Night” and crack up at his bathtub/U-boat scene any time I like. Yoko and Sean miss him, of course, and they have a right to. I’ll let THEM have their grief and their love. THEY can worry about his “legacy.”
But for the rest of us? Just enjoy the one real “legacy” he left to all of us- his music. Lennon was a superb songwriter- just like Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwyn, Irving Berlin, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and Lieber-Stoller. But songwriters don’t change the world! Lennon was no more or less important than MANY performers/writers I admire. Hey, I love P.G. Wodehouse, John Wayne, Roy Orbison, Fred Astaire and Rodney Dangerfield, but none of them “changed the world.” Their “legacies” are the enjoyment they’ve given many of us. And that’s a heck of a good legacy. It SHOULD be enough.
P.S. People keep citing “Imagine” as Lennon’s masterpiece. Personally, I never much liked it. It’s wimpy and saccharine- indeed, if Paul McCartney had written the same song, I GUARANTEE Lennon would have scoffed at it. I’d rather hear Lennon belt out “You Can’t Do That” or “Hey Bulldog.”
I think that perhaps the greatest legacy of the man was that moving from being a teeny-bopper-idol musician, of which there have been many before and since, he, with significant help from the other three, introduced to a rather straightlaced America and England a new, more open attitude. Most of where we are today socially stems from that change that occurred in the early to mid 1960s, and anyone who did not live through it as an older child, youth or adult has no conception of the attitude change that it entailed. There were many other causes; as a country we resembled a supersaturated solution. But by being popular and espousing the causes they did, the Beatles and John in particular crystallized that change.
I think of John Lennon in terms of how easily he was influenced by other people, versus how HE influenced others.
After he met Yoko Ono, he abandoned his wife and friends. And, most importantly, his 5 year old son. So when I read about his “love-ins”, preaching about love and peace, I see a hypocrite.
Toejam football
Everybody had a wet dream
Happiness is a warm gun
You know mynamelookup the number
Don’t let me down
The Beatles are bigger than Jesus
Give pease a chance
Nobody told me
John Lennon was a pot-smoking liberal socialist gasbag who was a fair songwriter and a lousy singer who cheated on his wife. His legacy will be only slightly more memorable than Bill Clinton’s.
im sorry that i can’t boast a master’s degree in 1980 ( was born a little later )
but i guess i am old enuf to know that Lennon kicks major ass. its too bad that the conservative slime that inhabit this country are too blind to see that. Lennon’s message will have an impact forever, no matter what anybody says, because there will always be someone there listening.
i know that sounds like mushy bullshit, but it isn’t.
Get over him! He never was all that anyhow and most of the people I know who consider him some sort of a ‘guru’ are stonies from way back, have been working at 7-11s and hamburger stands for the last 10 years or so to pay for their dope and walk around going ‘fer real, man.’
I never liked Lennon. Never liked his looks, thought his philosophy sucked, and figured that all of those ‘strange’ pictures they took of him and his homely girl Yoko should have been hastily buried at the full of the moon, in an abandoned grave yard, under a huge rock with a ‘danger! Radiation Hazard!’ plaque hammered in place.
I thought his staying in bed protest was a waste of time and publicity and generally annoying to the public. Yoko is still a dipshit and I have seen many very pretty and cute oriental girls and she certainly is not one. Then again, John wasn’t the most handsome man around either, nor of the Beatles. He looked like a long term crack addict.
Lennon fanatics remind me of ‘Grateful Dead’ followers – much ado about nothing.
hey nightgirl44- how superficial can one person possibly be? i mean, damn, u have entered a new level of shallowness.
have u ever actually listened Lennon solo?
how can a guy that wrote Give Peace A Chance be so bad?
Lennon wrote some cool songs, but so did about 50 other great artists of the time. Besides, had he not been a member of the Beatles, he never would have gotten anywhere anyhow.
I did not like him either, considered his fame over blown and was not pleased to suddenly see him with this huge, dreamy eyed, flower throwing, hanging on every word he uttered following spring up. I should not have been surprised at his death, but I was, because once people get that form of fame, there are always members of the splinter group of sanity drawn to them.
I also considered him homely and he had that form of thinness that I seem to find most with people on some form of illegal drugs and Yoko certainly is not what I would remotely consider even cute.
I do not care much for John Lennon’s worldview/politics. If you followed his life you can see that he flip-flopped constantly, from Paul, to Yoko, to peace, to scream therapy, to political activism to being a “house husband.” He had constantly shifting ideals and was constantly adopting and discarding different ideas (this is one of the things that makes Lennon such a fascinating character). However, when it comes to music, most people seem to forget what a powerhouse John Lennon was, especially in the early days of the Beatles. Lennon wrote and sang on the lion’s share of Beatles songs in the early days (his drift into drugginess and apathy in allowed Paul the upper hand in the later years). But consider this: this guy wrote Help, Nowhere Man, Day Tripper, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Please Please Me, Baby’s in Black, A Day in the Life, In My Life, I Am the Walrus, Because, Strawberry Fields Forever, A Hard Day’s Night, Revolution and many, many other excellent songs. At the height of his ability (1962-1970, with the Beatles at his side) he was virtually unstoppable, and the yardstick that all other songwriters of the time (with the exception of Dylan) were measured by. So to answer the OP, it’s the music, man, the music.
“Inside the mahogany-paneled office of the Dakota apartment house in New York City, on one of the warmest December nights on record, Jay Hastings waited for John Lennon and Yoko Ono to come home. The burly bearded twenty-seven-year-old doorman had worked at the Dakota for more than two years. He’d always said that the best part of his job was getting to know John and Yoko, who owned five apartments in the building. Hastings had been a Beatles fan since he was a kid; he’s even collected Fab Four picture cards. But now he was more than a fan. John Lennon knew him by name. Lennon would say, “bon soir, Jay,” when he and Yoko came back from a night on the town or in the studio, and sometimes they’d joke around. Tonight, Hastings had a surprise: a red Plexiglas rain hat that an avant-garde clothes designer had dropped off for Yoko. He planned to ask them to guess what it was.
Hastings was reading a magazine shortly before 11 o’clock p.m., when he heard several shots outside the office, and then the sound of shattering glass. He stiffed. He heard someone coming up the office steps. John Lennon stumbled in, a horrible, confused look on his face. Yoko followed, screaming, “John’s been shot. John’s been shot.” At first, Hastings thought it was a crazy joke. Lennon walked several steps, then collapsed on the floor, scattering the cassette tapes of his final session, which he’s been holding in his hands.
Hastings triggered an alarm that summoned the police and he rushed to John’s side. The anguished doorman gently removed Lennon’s glasses, which seemed to be pushing in on his contorted face. He struggled out of his blue Dakota jacket and placed it over Lennon. Then he stripped off his tie to use as a tourniquet, but there was no place to put it. Blood streamed from Lennon’s chest and mouth. His eyes were open but unfocused. He gurgled once, vomiting blood and fleshy material.
Yoko, frantic, screamed for a doctor and an ambulance. Hastings dialed 911 and asked for help. Then he returned to Lennon’s side and said, “It’s okay, John. You’ll be all right.”
The doorman stationed outside ran in and told Hastings the attacker had dropped his gun on the sidewalk. Hastings went after the gunman. It wasn’t necessary. The pudgy young man who had shot Lennon was standing calmly on West Seventy-second Street, reading “The Catcher in the Rye”.
Two squad cars screeched up and four cops jumped out, guns drawn. “Put up your hands!” they told Hastings, who was wild-eyed and covered with blood. “Not him,” the other doorman shouted. “He works here.” He pointed to the young man who had been reading. “He’s the one.” Two cops slammed the suspect against the Dakota’s elegant stone facade. The other two policemen and Hastings ran into the building.
It was then, after seeing the splintered office window and the blood in the alley, that Hastings realized John Lennon had been dying in front of his eyes.
Against Yoko’s wishes, police turned Lennon over to access his wounds. They said they couldn’t wait for an ambulance and gingerly hoisted him off the floor. Hastings, gripped Lennon’s left arm and shoulder blade, heard shattered bones crack as they moved him out the door. Lennon’s body was limp; his arms and legs akimbo. They put him into a police car for the trip to Roosevelt hospital. Yoko climbed into a second cruiser. Hastings walked back to the building and waited in the office. Thirty minutes later, word reached the Dakota; John Winston Ono Lennon, forty-year-old husband and father was gone.”
Taken from the book, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” published by the Editors of “Rolling Stone” magazine, 1982.
Chief of Detectives, James T. Sullivan said, “Sometime shortly before eleven o’clock, John Lennon and his wife arrived back at the Dakota in a limousine. They parked the limousine outside the Dakota. There is a driveway, into which they might have gone, but on this occasion did not. They got out and walked into the archway area of the Dakota… This individual, Mr. Chapman, came up behind them and called to him, “Mr. Lennon!” then, in a combat stance (down on one knee with one arm steadying the other) he fired. He emptied the Charter Arms .38-caliber gun that he had with him and shot John Lennon.”
Dr. Lynn said, “John Lennon…(20 second pause) John Lennon, was brought to the emergency room of Roosevelt, the St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, this evening shortly before eleven p.m. he was dead on arrival. Extensive resuscitative efforts were made, but in spite of transfusions and many procedures, he could not be resuscitated. He had multiple gunshot wounds in his chest, in his left arm and in his back. There were seven wounds in his body. I don’t know exactly how many bullets there were. There was a significant injury of the major vessels inside the chest, which caused a massive amount of blood loss, which probably resulted in his death. I’m certain that he was dead at the moment that the first shots hit his body.”
My own day began as any normal day in 1980. That particular day I was riding with my father to a job site he was managing in Youngstown, Ohio. We were riding in his Saab, I was half-sleeping and he was listening to the radio. It was one of those mundane muzak stations during those days that NEVER reported the news. Just as we were pulling into the driveway the radio announced, " Former Beatles John Lennon was shot and killed outside his Manhattan apartment late last night…". I sat bolt upright in the car and felt the world turn inside out. We parked the car and for the first part of the morning I stumbled blindly around the job site thinking of John and all he meant to me. My mind began to reel backwards as I thought of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. Why? Why was a man of peace and love shot down in cold blood?
Later that day I hooked up with a group of migrant workers from Ireland. They were already talking about Lennon and I fell right in, they had nothing but good things to say about him. They liked it when he gave his medal back to the Queen and how he liked the Irish.
We drove home and pulled into the drive way and I got into my car to drive back to my house and found my mother had gone out that day and bought the single, “(Just like) Starting Over” and taped it to my steering wheel. I broke down and cried.
Later that evening after dinner I drove back out to my parent’s house with my wife and watched Walter Cronkite on the evening news, they were showing the madhouse the Dakota was becoming and I saw a clip of a businessman in a smart suit and tie with a very expensive raincoat and attaché case standing nearby looking at the Dakota with tears streaming down his face. I didn’t feel so alone. I heard that the news was reported in the Pravda and heard the various remarks made by leaders of governments around the world express their respect for John Lennon and I felt proud.
The following evening I went to the local newspaper shop and bought every newspaper that they had. All of them but the Wall Street journal had the story on the front page. I remember reading the New York Times story as I walked home. Snow was falling gently in big fluffy flakes that melted as they hit the story and to me they looked like large teardrops… I thought, “God, can this be real?”
Two other significant events that are directly related to John in my life are (1) when I went down to the Dakota to celebrate John and Sean’s birthday in 1982. A bunch of us had assembled outside on the sidewalk in front of the Dakota across the street and sang Happy Birthday to Sean. Yoko heard us and opened the window and had some of Sean’s Birthday cake and coffee sent down for us to have. I was in Heaven and (2) when I went to Strawberry Fields and met David Peel of “Sometime in New York” fame. He was a cohort of John’s during the Jerry Rubin radical leftist days. David was the President of Orange Records and eventually invited me to come and live with him. I declined. I still have a personal letter that he wrote to me and a list of albums his company had for sale. It’s dated, Feb. 18th, 1983.
I also have a personal photo of John and Yoko that a friend of mine in journalism took when she was visiting New York with her parents when she was 13, the fall before John was assassinated. It sets in my office on a bookshelf.
One of the things that I liked about him the most was his transparency, he allowed us to watch as he went through a variety of changes, changes in attitude about family, himself, and the world in which he lived. I loved it when he finally settled down and realized how important family is. It makes me wonder just how much more he would have shifted to the right as he matured even more.