Thread for John Lennon

[KelKel]

Give Peace A Chance

Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism
Isn't it the most
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

Ev'rybody's talking about
Ministers, Sinisters, Banisters and canisters,
Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes,
And bye bye, bye byes.
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

Let me tell you now
Ev'rybody's talking about
Revolution, Evolution, Mastication, Flagelolation, Regulations.
Integrations, Meditations, United Nations, Congratulations
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

Oh Let's stick to it
Ev'rybody's talking about
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary, Tommy smothers, Bob Dylan,
Tommy Cooper, Derek Tayor, Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna,
Hare Krishna
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

[KelKel]

John Lennon's strange sort of immortality, now 25 years long

He was shot and killed, 25 years ago today, by a mad fan who thought he'd sold out and become a phony. On this Dec. 8, hundreds of biographies, broadsides, candlelight vigils, documentaries, reconsiderations and a Broadway musical later, John Lennon remains in the culture's magnified crosshairs. And still we can't quite get a fix on him.

Almost anyone of a certain age, now as then, has an opinion; a construct; a shadowy, imperfectly mapped place where Lennon lives and how his music -- even if we only experienced it as a backdrop, as I did -- helped place us in the world and simultaneously question that place. "Strawberry Fields Forever." "Imagine." "Beautiful Boy." "I Am the Walrus." "In My Life." "Mother." "Help!" The titles of the songs -- everyone has his own private playlist -- are enough. They summon things, take us back and remind us what we took forward and what we left behind. They stop time and expand it.

Popular music inevitably becomes the soundtrack of our youth. Lennon, of the Beatles era and beyond, was that and something more, an artist who seemed to both describe and drive experience, to anticipate as well as celebrate, whether it was puppy love, politics, drugs, marriage, dissatisfaction, parenthood, despair, contentment or the conundrum of celebrity he addressed. He was at once knowing and naive, incisive and baffled, contradictory, inspired, vain, generous, uncertain, fully flawed. He was, in other words, alive.

And then, suddenly, when we hadn't thought much about Lennon during his long retreat into househusbandry or whatever that was from 1975-'80, there it was: How displaced we felt, how unfinished, when he died. It's the wound that didn't ever heal, which is why we keep turning back to Lennon while he, endlessly discussed and ever elusive, seems to slip from our grasp.

Other popular musicians get summed up and sent off on a raft of tributes, biographies, box sets and celebratory star-vehicle films, where even the demons take on a kind of retrospective glow. "Ray" (Ray Charles) and "Walk the Line" (Johnny Cash) are the latest examples of the genre. Lennon has certainly had his share of attention and then some, before and after death. Make that the understatement of the day. But it's somehow fitting that he also got an odd, diffident musical about him in which he was played, in the show's San Francisco tryout earlier this year, by nine different actors of both genders and various races.

It didn't work. It felt both pompous and vague. The musical, with various revisions, bombed on Broadway. Blame it, as much has been blamed, on Yoko; she was the unseen hand holding all the cards. But you knew what the show's creators were driving at: Lennon was somehow bigger, or differently shaped, than the standard biopic or musical tribute measure.

One life wasn't enough to contain or explain him, which has fascinated, confused and angered people over the years. How could that adorable, influential, dominant Beatle wind up noodling away at performance art with Yoko? How could someone so patently talented write the mediocre songs on "Sometime in New York City?" What was he doing all those years up there in there in his Dakota enclave? How could a sorry nonentity like Mark David Chapman end it all?

Long before the great maw of entertainment journalism, cable television, image management and the Internet opened to its current, all-consuming dimensions, Lennon seemed to sense, warily and cannily, its appetite. He was, as many commentators and critics have said, both victim and master manipulator of his own image, whether he was being turned into a Teddie-cute Beatle by Brian Epstein, stage managing the bed-ins for peace with Yoko or meticulously recording his every thought, move and meal in his diaries.

Lennon laid the foundation for everything from Madonna's art of perpetual self-creation to Michael Jackson's public spectacle of self-destruction to Bono's purposeful political activism. Many of the aspects of today's celebrity culture -- its power to transfix, trivialize, degrade and do good -- stem from Lennon's singular career.

None of this would have surprised him. In his "last interview" with Playboy, which appears in the book "All We Are Saying," Lennon told David Sheff that by his mid-30s, "I had always considered myself an artist or musician or poet or whatever you want to call it and the so-called pain of the artist was always paid for by the freedom of the artist. And the idea of being a rock 'n' roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality, and the freedom was great. But then I found I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in." If it was a trap, he understood how to live inside it, with all its limitations and liberations.

As Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times five years ago, at the 20th anniversary of the artist's death: "Lennon created and cultivated a public persona that was so well defined and copiously documented that it resists attempts to make him into either a saint or, as the revisionists have it, a dysfunctional layabout." Not that that has kept journalists, critics and meta-critics from sifting and resifting the evidence. There are books about every phase and aspect of Lennon's work and life, from his unhappy childhood to his complicated relationship with Paul McCartney, his droll drawings, his final days, even "The Mourning of John Lennon." And they're still coming. A fat new tome, Paul Spitz's recently published "The Beatles," argues that previous books about the Fab Four depend on a simplistic and reductive original narrative.

Anyone who remembers that Monday night in December of 1980, where they were and how they heard what had happened outside the Dakota in New York, has a stake in Lennon, a sense of broadly shared loss that intensifies the private connection many people felt to him and his music. You didn't need to be a rabid or even casual fan. You might have stopped listening to his music or thinking about him, but he was still a presence, an aura that radiated through the culture. He had changed some things, set others in motion, and meanwhile tried to live his life. And then, at age 40, he was gone.

Now, a quarter century later, a sense of persistence and sudden absence remains. We know him, through his music and the paradoxical, intently studied puzzle of his personal life, and we know him not. Lennon is everywhere and nowhere, a maker of infinitely adaptable anthems ("Imagine," "All You Need Is Love," "Give Peace a Chance,") that seem almost creatorless and a complex, faceted, self-scrutinizing artist who died too young.

Last week, and not because the 25th anniversary of his death was coming up, Lennon and the Beatles kept turning up. In the "Sing-It-Yourself 'Messiah' " at Davies Hall, conductor Bruce Lamott quoted a line from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band": "You're such a lovely audience/We'd like to take you home with us." My colleague Mick LaSalle, in a review of Eminem's new CD, called the rapper "the closest thing to John Lennon since John Lennon." Billy Crystal, in his solo show "700 Sundays," invoked the black-and-white TV miracle of seeing the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

We don't just remember Lennon now. We remember how we remember him, what we feel now about our own feelings when we first heard a song or saw him in concert -- that last time in Candlestick Park! -- or wondered what he was up to, what the next album might be and what it meant. No answers, then or now. Only the long tunnel of recollection, lit by a softly glowing light. Imagine that. - Steven Winn

[Dan]

There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

[nocellphone]

Watching the Wheels

People say I’m crazy doing what I’m doing
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin
When I say that I’m o.k. well they look at me kind of strange
Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game

People say I’m lazy dreaming my life away
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me
When I tell them that I’m doing fine watching shadows on the wall
Don’t you miss the big time boy you’re no longer on the ball

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go

Ah, people asking questions lost in confusion
Well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I’ve lost my mind
I tell them there’s no hurry
I’m just sitting here doing time

I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go
I just had to let it go

[sunshinebluesky]

geez,i miss him--all he was,and what he could have been!!!

[FaeryQueen]

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people. "
John Lennon

[KelKel]

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
Ans so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...

[Dan]

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

JL.

[pedagogue]

Yet another artist who was lost too young. I saw a nice tribute to him earlier today. (One of the morning shows)

-p

[Gabe]

And in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make

[historyteach]

Was here this morning...
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...day-79311.html

Shalom!

[historyteach]

John Lennon
Imagine

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Just one about says it all....

Shalom!

[janeeyre]

sigh....

[Dan]

Originally Posted by janeeyre

sigh....

Yep.
For many reasons...

[CAPTAINZING2000]

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But when you want money
for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
Ah

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
all right, all right
all right, all right, all right
all right, all right, all right

SO MANY THINGS CAN BE SAID ABOUT LENNON. SUCH A TRAGEDY TO HAVE HIM CUT DOWN IN HIS PRIME.


I'd like to fill the oceans with guns

[lulu70]

"You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate." - John Lennon

[KelKel]

Man Of Peace
by Bob Dylan

Look out your window, baby, there's a scene you'd like to catch,
The band is playing "Dixie," a man got his hand outstretched.
Could be the Fuhrer
Could be the local priest.
You know sometimes
Satan comes as a man of peace.

He got a sweet gift of gab, he got a harmonious tongue,
He knows every song of love that ever has been sung.
Good intentions can be evil,
Both hands can be full of grease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, first he's in the background, then he's in the front,
Both eyes are looking like they're on a rabbit hunt.
Nobody can see through him,
No, not even the Chief of Police.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, he catch you when you're hoping for a glimpse of the sun,
Catch you when your troubles feel like they weigh a ton.
He could be standing next to you,
The person that you'd notice least.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, he can be fascinating, he can be dull,
He can ride down Niagara Falls in the barrels of your skull.
I can smell something cooking,
I can tell there's going to be a feast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

He's a great humanitarian, he's a great philanthropist,
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed.
He'll put both his arms around you,
You can feel the tender touch of the beast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Well, the howling wolf will howl tonight, the king snake will crawl,
Trees that've stood for a thousand years suddenly will fall.
Wanna get married? Do it now,
Tomorrow all activity will cease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Somewhere Mama's weeping for her blue-eyed boy,
She's holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy
And he's following a star,
The same one them three men followed from the East.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

[Gabe]

[In memory of miracle]

What happened here as the New York sunset disappeared
I found an empty garden among the flagstones there
Who------------lived here
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
Now it all looks strange
It's funny how one insect can damage so much grain

And what's it for, this little empty garden by the brownstone door
And in the cracks along the sidewalk nothin' grows no more
Who------------lived here
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And we are so amazed, we're crippled and we're dazed
A gardener like that one no one can replace

And I've been knockin' but no one answers
And I've been knockin' most of the day
Oh and I've been callin' oh hey hey Johnny
Can't you come out to play

And through their tears some say he formed his best in younger years
But he'd have said the roots have grown stronger if he could hear
Who------------lived there
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And now we pray for rain and with every drop that pours
We hear------------we hear your name

And I've been knockin'....
Can't you come out---can't you come out---to play
Johnny---can't you come out to play---in your empty garden

Songfacts: A tribute to John Lennon, who was shot to death in 1980 by a deranged fan.
Elton had performed on several Lennon songs and even appeared onstage with him at his final concert in 1974.
Elton is the Godfather of Lennon's second son, Sean.
When he performed this at a sold-out Madison Square Garden show in August 1982, Elton was joined onstage by Lennon's wife Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon.

[2dayzmuse]

Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)

by John Lennon

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right in the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon your gonna be dead

What in the world you thinking of?
Laughing in the face of love
What on Earth you try'na do?
It's up to you
Yeah, you

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna hit you right in the face
You better get yourself together darling
Join the human race

How in the world you gonna see?
Laughing at fools like me
Who on Earth d'you think you are?
A superstar?
Well, right you are

And we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well, we all shine on
Everyone, c'mon

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognise your brothers
Everyone you meet

Why in the world are we here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on Earth are you there
When you're everywhere
Gonna get your share

Well, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
C'mon and on and on, on, on

Yeah, yeah
alright

Well, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
On and on and on, on and on

And we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
Like the moons and the stars and the sun
Yeah, we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

[Dan]

John spent the last half of the seventies pretty much still looking for a way to express his angst. After Imagine... How do you follow that up, he must have felt...
His drunken escapades and brawls with Spector and Nilsson, among others, are legendary. Yoko sent him away to the west coast, with Mae Pang to watch over him...
The impression I get from his life in that time period is that he was finally emerging from teenagehood. Slowly... His well documented insecurities about his voice, his weight, his talent, were coming to a head.

When he decided to have one more kick at the can so to speak, he came back to New York, and Yoko, and Double Fantasy, his last album, saw the light of day.

Look at pictures of John from '79/'80...
He was happy. He was slim and healthy. He had found his voice again.
He was home, at last.