The Toronto Sun reports that in the final years of his life, John Lennon declared, I’m So Tired of left-wing radicalism and that before his assassination in 1980, he was ready Imagine the Instant Karma of the Reagan Revolution.
Perhaps it was a cry for Help! … or just Starting Over, politically. But according to Fred Seaman, Lennon’s last personal assistant, he was ready to Come Together with Reagan and had bought a Ticket to Ride with what appears to be a more conservative world view. The details are coming out ahead of a new documentary.
Lennon argued with his liberal friends, telling them, You Got to Hide Your Love Away for your naive, radical views. It also appears Lennon considered President Jimmy Carter a real Nowhere Man.
“John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.”
“I also saw John embark in some really brutal arguments with my uncle, who’s an old-time communist… He enjoyed really provoking my uncle… Maybe he was being provocative… but it was pretty obvious to me he had moved away from his earlier radicalism.
“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”
Never, In My Life, would I have thought that 30 years after his death – and one year after Paul inspired me boycott his music – that John Lennon would become my favorite Beatle. And while it may be true that All You Need Is Love, this glimpse into the world of Lennon shows it doesn’t hurt to have a realistic world view as well.
Reminding me of a Churchill quote: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
No punnery intended, but I Imagine that had Lennon spoken publically in favor of Reagan in 1979-80, it would have cost him the election. It is not normally accepted that the election of 1980 was close but it was very close, not Bush-Gore close, but close. It wasn’t so much that Reagan won that election as Carter lost it. Reagan won the election in 1980 but he didn’t “make the sale” until 1984. I don’t think the middle American mind in 1980 would have been able to accept the reality of a Mamet-ian conservative conversion at that stage of the game.
Actually, the 1980 election was not close at all. Reagan received 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49. That’s called a landslide.
The election in 1980 was close? Here’s the map. http://electoralmap.net/1980.php I know it doesn’t show by population, but by electoral college standards it was a blow-out.
Frank, how do you see the election as being close in 1980? Reagan won all but 3 or 4 States. I thought it was the biggest landslide in US Presidential election history. Until his reelection that is (he lost only one state in 1984. We’ll never see that happen again). This isn’t meant to be inflammatory, I’m genuinely interested in your view.
Now once again I can proclaim, with considerable pride, that I’m a committed (Groucho) Marxist-Lennonist.
#2 – The 1980 election was close!? Reagan carried all but three states with just over 50% of the vote. Carter had 41%. The rest of the votes were cast for 3rd party candidate John Anderson. Twelve years later, Clinton rode into office with well less than 50% of the vote, with the majority of votes cast for GHW Bush and Ross Perot. I hope the Republicans do as well in 2012 as they did in the “close” election of 1980.
Fred Seaman’s assertions correlate with Lennon’s own views as conveyed in the last interview he ever did, with Playboy in 1980. See this story in the December 2010 issue of American Conservative:
“I dabbled in so-called politics in the late Sixties and Seventies more out of guilt than anything,” he revealed. “Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face, to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.”
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/stop-imagining/
And see also this more recent recap in Ricochet:
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/The-John-Lennon-You-Never-Knew
(P.S. to PJ Tattler staff: a note on what HTML formatting is OK would be helpful. A preview button would be even better.)