Lennon Was All Right, but His Disciples Were Thick and Ordinary
(John Lennon) criticized America’s involvement in Vietnam, and, as the Sixties progressed, he became an increasingly important symbol of the burgeoning counterculture.
— Veteran rock music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, on the website JohnLennon.com, 10/8/10.
As a staunch Lennonist, I was tickled to get a letter some years back from a rich lefty friend that included a photo of him sitting with “John” in Havana. Well, he wasn’t really with John himself, since the ex-Beatle was long dead at that point. But he was sitting next to the famous “Imagine” statue of John on a park bench in the Cuban capital. My friend had a wicked grin on his face — he knew I’d hate to see evidence that he was fraternizing in some sense with the old red butcher Castro.
As I considered the picture, I thought: “Cute, but guess what would happen to any Cuban caught singing the lyrics to Lennon’s best song?” We might all differ as to what was his best song, but to me it was “Revolution 1,” usually just called “Revolution.”
When the Beatles’ “White Album” came out in late 1968, the world seemed almost literally to be coming apart at the seams. Against the backdrop of a big, increasingly unpopular war in Southeast Asia, riots, assassinations, and strikes had become commonplace and upheaval was the order of the day. The young, in particular, were on the march, trying to “kick out the jams” as the gritty Detroit band MC5 urged, and to end not only “the” war in Vietnam, but the very idea of war. Many of the young were in the thrall of a potent millennialism as well: In this “Age of Aquarius” there’d be not only no war, but no want, no racism … not even bad vibes. Nothing but bliss — whether of the drug-induced or self-induced variety, no one much cared. But how to achieve this exalted state of consciousness the young seemed to sense was really just around the corner?
For some, the answer was Lenin. The new age wouldn’t just birth itself, so there would have to be some rough stuff — knocking heads before you could cradle them, as the top Bolshevik himself had said — to bring its benefits to mankind.
But then a funny thing happened: Lenin met Lennon at the height of the world-shaking ructions of 1968, and Lennon won. On the first track of the fourth side of the white double album actually named “The Beatles,” he sang:
“You say you want a revolution … well, you know — we all want to save the world.”
Nice article and arguably my favorite Beatles song. I think a lot of Beatles music was (is) badly misunderstood. A lot of it was actually crap (there are many examples on the White Album). This is largely overshadowed by the pure genius of so much of their other work. In many cases far too much was read into lyrics. But in the case of Revolution I think the author nailed it. Lennon sang ‘em as he saw ‘em.
Let’s not forget that John wrote and recorded that version of the song before he left Rishikesh and was still filled with the “light” of the East. Certainly not the same voice as “Instant Karma”.
Revolution like most of the White Album was written in Rishikesh- but recorded? How? There was no studio there.
The double album was recorded the following summer mostly at Abbey Road with some tracks done at Trident (which, unlike EMI at the time, had 8-track recording decks). Revolution 1 (the album version) was recorded between May 30 and June 21; Revolution (the faster single version) was cut 9-13 July.
“But if you come carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow”
Exactly.
John was Rock’n'roll and Rock’n'roll would have never happened in a Communist country. He was changing in the days before his untimely death. Read carefully the lyrics of “Beautiful Boy”.
Great story. And good advice for the current election cycle. Those on the left who are freaking out (and those on the right who are making grandiose promises) should remember, this is only a mid-term election, there isn’t that much that can change (yet!).
Well, so much space, so many words, so little relevance. Dylan and Lennon, music for pre- and early-teens. Can we talk about Box Car Willie’s contribution to kunst next time?
Great music. “Working Class Hero” speaks volumes about modern life.
The problem with some is their desire for simple solutions, what could be simpler than basing political views and forms of government on moving song lyrics or (some thing) funny guys on a particular cable channel. Simple theories are good, but implementation of them is seldom clean and uncomplicated.
I’m a big proponent of Stonewall Jackson’s simple solution when dealing with enemies, but the devil is in the details!
People need to grow up and learn to appreciate things for what they are, not what they think they are. “Imagine” is a great poem set to music. . . it is not a basis for government.
“Imagine” is an atheist illusion that would lead persons or nations into the hands of Stalin or Mao.
Only if you’re a moron.
Hence the reason why lefties love that song so much.
When I was a kid I liked it too, during that period in my life when the ideologies of the left were completely unknown to me. Had someone explained leftist ideology to me at 14, and then told me that there were people in the world who actually BELIEVED such things, I’d have thought that person was crazy.
It is funny how you interpret words when the meanings behind them are beyond your experience. When reasonable seeming people say things that are crazy, and you’re so young that you don’t understand that crazy people can appear superficially reasonable, it is easy to believe that they must somehow mean something other than what they are actually saying.
When we are young we do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.
In Revolution 1 Lennon was advocating the advancement of communism via changes in the law and the long march through the institutions as opposed to Mao’s “barrel of the gun”. He was still advocating communism. And despite some people’s misty-eyed worship of Lennon, the fact is there are few beings more odious and reprehensible than wealthy communists and socialists. If they don’t redistribute their wealth immediately after acquiring it, they are manipulative, lying hypocrites.And that’s what Lennon was.
As is Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Bill & Hillary, Barry & Michell, Al Gore et al. What are they doing with all their millions? Not much redistribution I’d guess.
Nutty people with money are the most dangerous, i.e., Lennon, McCartney (white house nutcase),Gore, Soros. They have the means to get their narrow minded views out. Music is an enticing venue, esp for the young brains full of mush.
Please add John Kerry to your list of the world’s toxic, rich leftists.
Don’t forget how Yoko told us we only need a 3 Tatami room to be happy, all the while John and Yoko lived at the exclusive Dakota where John had a special climatized closet just for his fur coats. Yeah, no hypocrisy; nothing to see here. Move along.
Thanks for that. It’s tough to be a cranky right winger like me and listen to Lennon get trashed. Personally, I think by this stage in his life he’d be right wing and married to Ann Coulter.
This is just wishful thinking. If Lennon were alive today he’d probably be more like Yoko than Coulter. Lennon was a limousine socialist and there is no evidence that he was “changing” politically. Undoubtedly he woke up to some things–as we how all who reach 40 do–but they were not earth shaking. People need to stop worshiping him as some kind of secular saint because then as now, he ain’t!
Yea, you can bet your bottom dollar he’d be a big al-Bama supporter just like Paul. You know he would be.
Yes, if he hadn’t been gunned down he would not have the image he does today. It’s like Kurt Cobain. You off yourself and music critics fawn over you. If John were alive today the Beatles would probably back together. They’d be like the Rolling Stones, a bunch of geriatrics living the glory days. John’s narcissism would have never let him fade into obscurity so he’d have had plenty of opportunity to marginalize himself as he tried to stay relevant.
You might be on to something. One of my favorite writers, Robert Anton Wilson, said: “It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.”
Revolution was released first as a single before the release of White Album.
I don’t know if F. Scott Fitzgerald was correct when he said:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
But perhaps the sign of a first-rate artist is his ability to recognize and give voice to two opposite ideals in such simple, beautiful, and moving ways.
First, the full-throated and incisive rejection of authoritarianism in “Revolution No. 1″ and later, making the best case possible for the communist ideal, a fundamental rejection of many of the things that make us human, in “Imagine.”
Artworks must stand on their own. I rarely take artists seriously when they attempt to interpret their own works, especially years after their creation. In my opinion, an artist admits to a lack of ability if he feels he must explain his work. If the art is good, it speaks for itself and lives a life of its own.
If Lennon were alive today, he’s the last person in the world I would trust to sort out the puzzle presented by Revolution-Imagine; it’s not his place, really. But he certainly was a great artist. Thirty years after his death and forty-plus years after these songs were written, they have lost none of their relevance or power. I expect that to remain true for as long as there are people around to hear them.
Jason, you are absolutely correct. Any self-respecting artist should never try to explain his work, otherwise he’s effectively admitting that his work failed. As, after all, most people (skipping the a-tonal-academics) agree that art needs to communicate something — and might I add, that “something” to be of (gasp) an emotional nature. Irrespective though, if that communication fails or in some way needs to be “augmented” by a verbal explanation… well then the artist didn’t (arguably) achieve all that he set out to.
One can say, that art, including written art (literature) intrinsically exists on a “higher plane” than verbal communication — by which I mean mundane communication like “please move that box over here.” Reading a poem out loud doesn’t count since it’s in the genre of written art (that is simply being read out loud). And as for “spoken poetry” or rap even, well, there again, by distinguishing themselves in certain structural ways from every day language, they (at least attempt to) rise to the traditionally “higher-plane” of art.
So, all that being said, it does indeed irk me to read — and I make a point now never to read — interviews of various song-writers who whether because they were asked a question or whether on their own accord, attempt to explain a song. It’s the immediate mark of failure of their progeny, the song.
In my mind it’s vaguely related to that quasi philosophical saying, “if a tree fell in a forest and there was no one around to see/hear it, did it happen?” — (my rough recollection). Except here, we have (with your indulgence) the song floating as a cloud. In answer to a question, the songwriter inhales naturally in order to begin his “explanation.” But by doing so, the cloud then falls & dissipates into a “lower strata of being.”
As a struggling pop & “serious” songwriter, I’ve vowed never to attempt to explain anything I’ve written — with the possible exception of using very wide brush strokes like, “this is a song about ‘love lost’.” Irrespective however, I have, and will continue to interpret any questions as to “the meaning” behind a piece I’ve written as a sign of failure on my part — the song gets all the glory, the songwriter, all the blame ;-\.
But sure, I suppose I could blame the questioner next time I am even lucky enough to encounter someone with the sufficient interest that is necessary to even produce the asking of a “why” question… but really, would anyone need to ask Beethoven to “explain [his] 9th Symphony?” — I rest my case that the composer must accept all the blame if his song and some “cool hand Luke” exhibit “a failure to communicate.”
In any case, that’s why we have music critics: to “explain” for us all why Beethoven did this or that in the 9th Symphony, e.g. the kettle drums you hear at 18:12 represent the beating sounds of Napoleon’s horse’s hoofs riding in the woods.
But explaining how Beethoven did this or that is a wholly different matter, as it is the legitimate purview of Musicology and Composition Theory.
Frumious,
I’m with you on the artist trying to “explain” his art. No good comes of it.
Way back when I was, for a while, a young struggling visual artist, my most harrowing moment came when an art critic for a local newspaper covering the show asked me what my work “meant.”
I was struck dumb. It was as if she had asked me, “why don’t you become an essayist and go ahead and read me a good one now.” In my naivite, I had thought that visual art was to be intuited, or at least intellectually understood, to be what it was by LOOKING at it, just like a song is understood and felt by listening to it. But critics, unlike artists, need structure in order to place artists’ work in the kind of contexts that critics can understand and pin to a movement of artists, all conforming their work to concepts they share. That’s because that’s what a critic’s work is. But, it’s not what an artist’s work is.
Therefore, I hesitate to take up the role of a critic in this case, and speculate as to what political reality Mr. Lennon was bending towards when he wrote Revolution 1. Was it away from collectivism at all, or merely for the long march through the institutions? Or was he merely pissed off at the hypocritical, mostly spoiled rich kids asking him for gobs of money to establish the revolution for the “people?” Or did he just feel that they had no business disturbing him on one of his heroin benders with Yoko? Who the hell knows.
Hey, it’s a catchey tune. I like it.
On the whole, though I much enjoy many of the songs by those Beatle boys, from what I know of them, I should think that only Ringo is possessed of a realy large and far-reaching intellect. Or maybe George. But gosh, the hair on those fellas. Anyway, I don’t put much stock in reading the political tea leaves from pop singers, no matter how popular they are, and doubt that John’s admonitions to his more action-oriented lefty friends had any more salutary effect on them than did the frequently negative passing comments of burly hard hats along their protest parade routes.
Beautiful line about disturbing him and Yoko during a heroin bender! I loved it!
Very nice. I write stories; when I was younger I wrote some songs as well. You expressed some true things there…
About John Lennon, I believe that he pretty much a socialist. I read somewhere that he killed a manager of his, or someone in that realm, with a punch when he was young. If so, I suspect a lot of his ‘extreme’ pacifism flowed from that event.
Well Jeff before you go too far in claiming Lennon as a crypto-conservative, consider that he was a supporter of John Sinclair and the White Panther movement. You could say, as well, that the declaiming of Mao and violent communist revolution and singing power to the people are all right out of the Alinsky playbook. Like Dylan, however, his libertarian streak prevented him from going totally left. Neither wished to be a tool or a spokesman for a movement.
In fact, I believe it is later, with Double Fantasy, a collection of songs with no political message at all, that Lennon made an album that betrayed his incipient conservatism. It was nearly a country album with its down to earth concerns about family and love.
The Lennon just before his death was (apparently) sober, clean shaven, short haired and usually talking complete sense. I think that it was this gradual drift away from left wing concerns that got him murdered by yet another disgruntled and confused leftie who couldn’t accomodate the real multi-millionaire John Lennon with the image that, unfortunately, Lennon had himself created.
“his libertarian streak prevented him from going totally left”
That’s it
How the Beatles rocked the Eastern Bloc
I think the author’s basic point is valid. The hard revolutionary left winced with pain when Revolution was released. Time magazine ran an article filled with criticism of the Beatles for the song, which did take some wind out of the sails of the hard left. Whether Lennon was a steath lefty or evolving to the center-right I don’t know. I do know that the vapid and essentially ridiculous Imagine is the song he is probably most remembered for. Its soft-headedness and wishful thinking is an anthem for what has come. Imagine is a perfect song to illustrate the weak-minded way so many people view the challenges we face from the left and from Islam. Some want him to have a Nobel Prize because he wrote the song!
Can anyone verify that about Time magazine? It sounds so crazy since I would have imagined Time to be more a “member of the establishment” — thus moving them to support that supposedly anti-revolution lyrics of the song. What the hell was their beef with it? Since when was Time a Left-wing rag pushing for “revolution?” (this was a few years before my consciousness, hence my ignorance). Well, if Time has their issues up for searching, I guess I can go read the article for myself and find out… weird though.
But not as weird as all those folk-ers (no, not the plane) in the audience at the Newport Folk Festival booing and throwing stuff at Bob Dylan when he (gasp) first used an electric guitar. Just shows that rigidity of the mind and preconceived notions can exist in anyone at any age.
As Mark said, “Revolution” was first released as a single. There is an interesting difference between that version and the White Album version. On the first Lennon sings, “If you talk about destruction/Don’t you know that you can count me out.” On the White Album, it’s “don’t you know that you can count me out” and then he adds “in.”
However they were recorded in reverse order: the album version first.
Bill L- add the Lennon wall in Prague. If any contradictory ideas can be held is to believe pop music can change the world while holding that… well.. it IS pop music. I mean really. Like so many on the right, my list of lefties I luv4ever gets longer and longer and JOhn is still #1- I luv I Feel Fine- great George riff to kick it off… or Ticket to Ride or Help or…
Excellent article. Yes, and the primal therapy that Lennon did was also part of the mix of what could work.
In other words, you needed to clean up your own act first to bring about meaningful change in the world. Lennon had gotten to the point of not even seeing color at times from a continual use of LSD.
There is also a set of interviews from the Dakota apartments where he lived.
In it, Lennon specifically repudiates socialism by name and warns against hero worship of politicians, in particular.
By the way, even the Rolling Stones song about revolution repudiated revolution: “what can a poor boy do, but play for a rock-roll band…got no time for a street fighting man” or words to that effect.
Lennon: OVERRATED.
I, too, grew up with the Beatles and my kudos to Mr. Durstewitz for his enlightened take on a great song that I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years. Oh, and thanks for the quick journey down memory lane while reading your article.
Moderator, please use this post. The other one had a mistake. Thanks
Following on Jim’s remarks, I think Lennon hit the wall when the Beatles broke up, maybe a year or two before. ‘Revolution’ was a great, tough minded song as Jeff says. There’s no doubt he was a huge part of what made the Beatles, although in the music Paul’s basslines were what set them apart.
Afterwards, that soft headed ‘Imagine’, and the bitterness he showed talking about the Beatles suggests a breakdown to me. He was on the edge in a way none of the others were, and the pressure told in the end.
That’s how I see it, anyhow.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/kschlichter/2009/10/27/the-worst-song-of-all-time-imagine/
Lennon apologists are vomit inducing.
A great artist can zig left, then zag right or vice versa, because neither left nor right contain absolute truth and neither has a fill reality to describe; together they have what we have…politically. I can imagine “all the people, living life in peace,” but I know that it is imagination; it ain’t happening….anyhow.
YEAH. But then Lennon set the Kommunist Manifesto to music with “Imagine” and any sentiments expressed in “Revolution” went right out the window.
Lennon was a dick and a poseur, decrying wealth while actively accumulating it.
Ringo remains my favorite ex-Beatle.
This was one of my favorite Beatles’ songs. Most of my friends didn’t know the lyrics.
John Lennon and Michael Moore – free market communists.
George Soros is another one.
It’s not ‘We all want to save the world’ – it’s ‘We all want to change the world’
I’m not even a huge Beatles geek (or a grammar-nazi), but I do tend to notice misquoted lyrics.
I am one of the few Boomers who doesn’t think much of the Beatles. Other then Revolver and Sargent Pepper most of their music is about as memorable as Lady Gaga. There were far better groups out their then the fab four. I was listening to Steppenwolf the other day and find them much better then the Beatles or the Stones. I could go through a whole list of better music. If you are looking for a song from the 60′s that is proto-conservative I would suggest listening to Monster. It has a Tea Party flavor to it. Steppenwolf is much more Libertarian (and I am no fan of it) then the Engeist-Lennonist Beatles.
Remember, John Lennon was a self proclaimed Christian. That does not jive with the Communist assertion.
“Imagine” was a great thought experiment, treating social phemomenae as would Gene Roddenberry. Lennon was certainly clever enough to know that most of this was unattainable within his life and some was even of dubious merit. But for the masses it was a glorious thing to imagine, however briefly, a world where the petty things that exacerbate the worst aspects of the human condition could be, for once, negated.
Imagine no religion: cool. No 9/11. No Iranian mullahs working on nukes. No palestinians working overtime to kill jews. No wingnuts stocking up weaponry for the imminent rapture or mass suicides waiting for UFO gods from planet X.
Imagine no countries: cool. An entire planet living as we in the west do, everyone free to live as they like, nobody starving, everyone has a vote and a say, equal protection under the law. Yeah, what a disgusting communist thing that would be.
And so on.
Does imagining this translate to a wish for it to happen? Certainly I’d be for a world where everyone were able to have a say in the leadership. As would all of you here. I doubt the Iranians really want half-insane mullahs as their leader. And consider the North Koreans… Does this imply that I’d like to see “world government” tomorrow, or adminstered by the corrupt hacks operating the UN? No. But certainly, working to get all people free seems a laudable and achievable goal. And I can imagine a world where everyone is free. In that world, maybe nationalism is a secondary concern (except in FIFA World Cup matches.)
Maybe some of you think that’s communist. Some of you are simply idiots. Imagining better conditions is the first step to figuring out what conditions ought to improve and how we humans go about doing this. Lennon wrote this at the height of the Cold War, when the threat of dying in a nuclear holocaust was quite real. Putting to music the imaging of a world where this wasn’t the case was addle-brained silliness? No. Not any more than Revolution was.
When you ignore reality in favor of fanciful whimsies, it’s childish, not genius. It’s like Bette Midler’s From a Distance. That’s the liberal mindset. Look at everything from a distance and pretend there are no harsh details that common folk have to abide by. Sit in your lofty, ultra exclusive ivory tower in downtown Manhattan and tell us all who have to slug it out day to day how we should think. Better yet, keep your incoherent mumblings to yourself, Mr. Lennon.
And for the best take on John Lennon, ever, go to youtube and look up the Magical Misery Tour.
Why on Earth would you need to destroy the concept of nation-states in order to free people? Plenty of nation-states are free. The goal of the globalists isn’t freedom. It’s the opposite. They want to make us all slaves to one another in order to create global equality. Well, I don’t want global equality. I like living in a rich country. I’ve been to poor countries and they suck. I don’t want to sacrifice my high stanards of living so others can raise theirs.
Besides, such a plan is impossible to begin with and has already been tried by the communists and utterly failed. All they ended up accomplishing was making everyone equally losers with a big pile of dead bodies and collapsing states left behind…
All this globalist agenda will accomplish is to cause the rich and successful countries to be brought to their knees by the poor and stupid countries. Just like with socialist and corrupt Greece nearly taking down the entire European economy. Think that but magnitudes worse and on a global scale.
People give Glenn Beck constant crap, but he was exactly right on this issue. I don’t want my economy linked with the economies of unstable and backwards countries. Piss off and figure out how to create your own wealth without the West holding your hand. Or don’t. I really don’t care. I’m too busy concerning myself with the health of my own nation to care about yours.
Help you get freedom? Sure. I’d even be willing to sacrifice the lives of my fellow countrymen to accomplish that. But your economic development is up to you to figure out.
The politically incorrect reality though is that these countries will never develope. They’re too stupid, backwards and corrupt to run a healthy and prosperous state.
I guess that’s why the leftist globalist have such a hardon for wanting to destroy the nation-state and to create a kind of giant EU or UN on steroids.
They’re the “enlighetened ones” who will micromanage our affairs from some mutually agreed upon capital. It won’t work. It never does.
The only reason the Euros have managed to get away with it to a large degree so far is because, well, they’re Euros. Highly educated and intelligent populace with a common ethnic heritage going back thousands of years. They very stupidly think they can export that model to the rest of the world when it isn’t even clear yet if their internationalist model has lasting power beyond a couple decades…
Roddenberry. Don’t get me started…
I tend to agree. In the end, it’s just one song out of many. That’s what songwriters do. Write songs. Whatever one might think of Mr. Lennon, I believe he spread and continues to spread enough joy through The Beatles to make up for any brief moment of political naivete or youthful folly. The worst thing Chapman was end any further changes in Lennon’s most fascinating life and career. I’d have been very interested in what might have followed Double Fantasy. Now we can only imagine that.
Imagine no religion: cool. No 9/11. No Iranian mullahs working on nukes. No palestinians working overtime to kill jews. No wingnuts stocking up weaponry for the imminent rapture or mass suicides waiting for UFO gods from planet X.
It’s been tried…just Google “Soviet Union” and “China” for more information, especially on the 100+ million that were killed in a little over 60 years by the benign non-religious commies.
Imagine no countries: cool. An entire planet living as we in the west do, everyone free to live as they like, nobody starving, everyone has a vote and a say, equal protection under the law. Yeah, what a disgusting communist thing that would be.
Please explain how all of these things will be magically granted to anyone via the dissolution of national borders?
Maybe some of you think that’s communist. Some of you are simply idiots.
Yeah…this from a guy who’s completely clueless to the surreal irony of condemning religious people for violence in comparison to Communists who – in one short century – managed to kill far more people than ANY religious group throughout recorded history.
Your inane, naive ignorance certainly befits a thread about pop songs.
Mr. Alston the only idiot I see on this thread is you because you called other people idiots. As we have seen last week with the NPR firing anytime a Progressive insults someone it is a mere act of projection.
There are millions of people working in the trenches to help make this world a better place…did John Lennon ever do anything productive toward helping humanity besides writing songs about how he WISHED things were? I’ll take action over sentimental mush any day.
He put a lot of smiles on people’s faces. Made a lot of people happy and actually still does through his recordings. Youthful political folly aside, he was a great entertainer, if nothing else. What have you done lately?
I agree that John Lennon was a good entertainer, although I find the reverence to him disturbing. And, I am quite familiar with the view from the trenches on a daily basis, thank you.
Well, props to him for not going full retard.
#29 …did John Lennon ever do anything productive toward helping humanity besides writing songs about how he WISHED things were?</i?
You mean besides giving craploads of cash to refugee organisations and organising events steering million$ to them?
#28 — Mr. Alston the only idiot I see on this thread is you…
Good for you. In other news, #29 is too stupid and lazy to look things up, relying instead on reactionary nonsense and making my point. Your turn.
Marsh — Why on Earth would you need to destroy the concept of nation-states in order to free people?
Read some Arthur C Clarke, inventor of the concept of communications satellites, among other things. Like most of the great visionaries whose work has turned out to be prescient, Clarke reckons that the concept of nations will eventually go to the wayside. It’s not about DESTROYING nations so much as the world becoming a smaller place tends, over time, to make the concept fuzzy. And this has already started, e.g. in the EU you don’t need passports to cross borders and currencies are common. Lennon was echoing the greats of speculative fiction, not Marx.
I am neither stupid nor lazy, thank you. I know and admire many people to whom charity work means more than painting a picture, writing a check, or penning a song. I hope that the charities which garner funds from Lennon’s estate are productive in achieving their goals. By the way, do they teach debate in high school anymore?
G.A.
Those who use the word Reactionary tend to work at NPR enforcing political correctness.
But lets look at what reactionary means: “The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante) in a society
Describes so-called Progressives like you to a T. You wish to bring the old failed nostroms of 1950′s Socialism back. Once again you are projecting.
That song is the only diss of the far Left by a moderate Leftist of which I am aware. What usually happens is that the “moderate” Leftist is morally disarmed in the face of the more extreme — and more logically and morally consistent — Leftist.
It is telling that this song should have come out when it did, as 1968 was the point when actual liberals ceased to come out of the schools. After that, it was just a matter of waiting another thirty years or so for the existing ones to die off, or migrate over to the Right.
When moral premises are shared, it is the more consistent one which prevails.
#14 – Chicago Mike:
Actually, that’s John playing the beginning riff on “I Feel Fine.” I saw them do it at Candlestick Park, and you can see him playing it in these two videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrnJEnbVZZA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyywJRtz08k&feature=related
Unlike most boomers, I am an avowed Beatlemaniac and actually prefer their earlier stuff, particularly, “She Loves You,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “Thank You Girl,” “I’ll Get You,” This Boy,” “I Call Your Name,” etc.
I was only eight when the “White Album” came out, but it’s by far my favorite Beatles set. I’m not sure whether “Revolution” really tamped down the Leftist penchant for violence, but like Skipper from “The Penguins of Madagascar” I’d like a time machine so I could go back and slap some hippies–or maybe make them get jobs.
I actually think Harrison was the deepest Beatle, even if he did take a wrong turn into Hinduism; at least his songs (which HE wrote, unlike Lennon/McCartney ones, the lyrics and music of which are sometimes impossible to differentiate between the two more famous members)dealt with a desire for what C.S. Lewis called “the Numinous” (“While My Guitarl Gently Weeps,” probably the greatest Beatles song bar none; “All Things Must Pass;” and of his post-band ones like “My Sweet Lord” and “Isn’t It a Pity”).
“Something”, …… in the way she moves, attracts me like no other lover. George Harrison music and lyric. Priceless. Interpretation by F. Sinatra. Transcendental. Ommm!
John Lennon, Flawed Man in Life, Demigod in Death
“And this man has now become a god?” (Cassius, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I, ii)
To anyone who has until now doubted that Western civilization has been inexorably sliding into history’s toilet, this should reassure you that you are quite correct and that we are on our last, creaky legs.
Jealous, possessive, violent, angry, chauvinistic, abusive, adulterous, prideful, arrogant defender of a twice-convicted murderer, buddy to the Chicago Seven and violent Yippie peace activists Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, Marxist sympathizer, confirmed druggie object of a deportation attempt in the U.S. as a persona non grata, John Lennon has now become a virtual saint.
No one as yet, to my knowledge, has suggested this deeply-flawed, wife-beating, borderline seditionist, drug-addled man “is now become a god,” except in the eyes of his celeb-fixated idolators who would, if they could, elevate him to that status in the crowded pantheon of entertainers if not crown him superior to all those lesser gods.
It’s startling to witness how death and 30 years can induce such absurd, widespread mania.
It’s never nice to speak ill of the dead, although liberals rarely if ever abide by that restriction and which is why I’ll wait a while to comment on Elizabeth Edwards’ recent demise but, when mindless adulation devolves into bizarre devotion, something need be said before the whole of humanity succumbs to mass idolatry.
Chief Beatle, John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE, was shot to death on December 8, 1980 by a deranged Mark David Chapman while in the company of his second wife, Yoko Ono, as they approached the main entrance of their residence, The Dakota, in New York City.
Ms. Ono, second wife to Lennon whom he called “mother,” is a Japanese artist, musician, and agitator with a history of unseemly associations in her own right but that’s a subject of a future analysis.
It should be noted that Lennon’s MBE title, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2985