Right, but seeing as John and Paul wrote and sang alternating verses of the song, I have a feeling that it’s more about *their *relationship than anything else.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:8, topic:666161”]
Why is this one worse than Maxwell’s Silver Hammer?
Or Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy?
[/QUOTE]
Because those are both examples of over-the-top black humor. Their content is so intentionally outrageous that they’re not meant to be taken seriously.
I have it on good authority that his favorite Bay City Rollers song is “Rock n’ Roll Love Letter”. Not that it correlates to his life especially, just that he fucking loves that song.
But the John part is especially relevant to the “Run for Your Life” discussion.
At least he was being honest. John Lennon was a world-class asshole with serious anger management and abuse issues. He was a known wife batterer among other things.
“There’s simply no way of disputing this: the revered icon of peace and love had a serious problem with violence against women. This has been documented all the way back to his Liverpool days, and he eventually admitted it himself later in life. His first wife Cynthia and his second, Yoko Ono, were both victims of Lennon’s brutality at one point or another, and given that most men who beat their spouses or girlfriends regularly are not particularly discriminating about the object of their violence, it’s frankly impossible that they were the only ones.”
The next time I need to illustrate the concept of trying too hard to troll people, I think I’ll use that link. It’s true that he abused his first wife and was a pretty terrible father to his first son. I’d never heard him accused of beating Yoko before- it could be true, I’d just be surprised if nobody else credible had bothered to mention it. As for the accusations that he was untalented and broke up the Beatles and was a phony who kinda deserved to be murdered: like I said, they’re trying way too hard.
O.J. would have trouble picking his favorite Motörhead song (“Smiling Like A Killer” and “Dancing On Your Grave” are possible choices).
Number one with a bullet would be “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” 
You’re All I Need by Motley Crue was nominated to be my senior prom song and I think I even voted for it. I thought it was pretty at the time.
“The blade of my knife
Faced away from your heart
Those last few nights
It turned and sliced you apart
This love that I tell
Now feels lonely as hell
From this padded prison cell”
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Kid’s music today sucks. We had classics like “I Used to Love Her but I had to Kill Her” by Guns-N-Roses and “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” by NWA. I can’t even turn on the radio now without being assaulted by lovely, dovey songs with innocent themes. Why can’t the kids keep it real today?
Yeah the lyrics are appalling, but that’s what makes the song good. If we eliminated every song/movie/show/literary work that didn’t take a strong stand against wrong behavior, we’d lose a ton of great artworks. Art is not about showing us good and bad behavior, but revealing the great complexity of the world around us.
I always thought that, too! Is that a common interpretation?
I always thought there was a fireplace and he lit a fire in it, but if McCartney says otherwise, who am I to argue?
Lennon said that McCartney helped him on the lyric so McCartney’s recollection in the Wiki article could be taken at face value.
But McCartney is a notorious Beatle history revisionist and he has a lamentable desire to be regarded as the avant-garde and punky leader in the band, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his burn-down-the-house explanation was after the fact.
Lennon said that was mostly Paul’s song. Lennon contributed the bridge “Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting…” He said the rest was pure Paul.
Several years ago I listened to all of the Beatle’s songs at one time (well, during my driving to and from work, that is). One thing I noticed was that there were a surprising number of songs about unhappy relationships. Even those who lived through the Beatles’s heyday, as I did, probably have a picture in their mind of them as happy-go-lucky types. If you listen to all of their music though, you can see that there are a number of songs about relationships that had or would or might end.
That is the time-honored approach to pop music songwriting that endures: Music Up, Lyrics Down. Sting, aka The King of Pain, has overused this approach to the point of hilarity, but it works great if done well…
As for the OP - yep, John Lennon was apparently an asshole in a lot of his behavior as a young man. What has always defined “heroes” is their arc - do they Try; work hard to confront their failures and chart a different path, even if they slip up along the way? It strikes me that Lennon is respected for Trying to Do Better as a person, alongside his achievements in music.
Pretty much all pop music before Dylan - and the majority after - can be divided into:
- I want to fuck you.
- I am fucking you.
- I used to fuck you.
Ugh… That “video” hurts my eyes.
Back when all that OJ stuff was going on I imagined his favorite song was I Used To Love Her (But I Had To Kill Her) by GNR.
I even made my Sega Saturn pitch shift the song so it sounded like OJ was singing it. Good times. Good times. Well, not for OJ’s victims, but you know what I mean.
I think it’s because John Lennon’s legacy is that he was a great pacifist, always protesting war, but in his private life, he was basically a douche and a violent one at that.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge Beatles fan, and I love Lennon’s work. But a lot of people seem to think he was a nice guy – he wasn’t.