Posted on 10/11/2010 10:11:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's a landmark event for Beatledom. John Lennon, dead these thirty years, would have turned seventy years old today.
For many '60s survivors who grew up in thrall of the Fab Four, the idea that such an important symbol of the youth culture has arrived at the threshold of old age (if such a category still exists in our teen-obsessed culture) must be profoundly unsettling.
It is as if that entire generation had finally found itself washed up on the very doorstep of senility.
There can be no doubt that Lennon, in his partnership with the brilliant tunesmith Paul McCartney, did craft some of the most memorable pop tunes of the 20th century. That might be reason enough to celebrate his life. But Lennon's failure to complete his life's journey has frozen his memory in perpetual mid-life. There he presides as the guru of peace and love, an unfazed and unrepentant hippie whose vision for world peace remains unfettered by reality or subsequent historical events.
Forgotten, or perhaps conveniently overlooked, is that Lennon's solo work in his ten post-Beatles years was far inferior to anything he did as a member of the group. It was weak even by comparison to the output of his fellow Beatles (and yes, I include Ringo Starr in that assessment). His coda, the cloying and maudlin "Double Fantasy" (1980) was an embarrassment for such a great talent, and perhaps evidence that his muse had permanently fled.
Part of this can be attributed to Lennon's early '70s determination to make political statements rather than music. Moving permanently to New York City in 1970, he and his wife Yoko Ono became lightening rods for radicals and far-left causes. Feminists, Black Panthers, Yippies, and peace movement activists all pitched their tents under the Lennon/Ono carapace to propagate their liberation politics. The recorded product of this eclectic jamboree, Sometime In New York City (1972), is a rather tuneless and bleak attempt to capture the radical zeitgeist. It bombed and is regarded universally as one of the worst post-breakup efforts by any of the Beatles.
While Lennon's post-Beatles recordings, save for the very early ones, can be largely dismissed, what can't be dismissed is his cultural influence. Lennon stands today as the most revered icon in the pantheon of the peace movement -- a figure of such sainted majesty that he has been practically beatified by secular humanists. This reputation balances precariously on the foundation of just one song -- the anthemic "Imagine."
"Imagine" dredged up some half-baked Romantic notions and presented a vision of a world free of conflict. Attached to an ethereal melody, it seems to float in a sea of mysticism, painting a picture of a utopia that most Communist leaders in the 1970s would have recognized.
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...
Would Lennon have matured intellectually as he aged, ultimately recognizing that this formula for world peace -- written in a swishy mansion in the English countryside, far from the Communist despots and authoritarians who at that time imprisoned nearly half of humanity -- could not work? Would he have understood that there was something a little skewed about attempting to denude the world of religion, governments, sovereignty, and wealth?
Would he have finally understood that his adopted home, the United States, actually stood as the last best chance for humanity to preserve the liberty that had allowed him to pen such masterpieces such as "Across the Universe" and "A Day In the Life..."?
Probably not. Naïveté is one of the great privileges of the rich and famous. Insulated from the hard realities of life, our pop icons are safe and free to make ignorant guesses about the world and pose solutions that suggest more, not less, misery for its human population. Once having made such a statement of principle, it is highly unlikely that Lennon would ever have retired his "Imagine" philosophy. Unlike McCartney, who has revealed himself to be comparatively sensible on a number of important security issues, Lennon, socially alienated as a child and conditioned to reject convention, likely would have continued to find some gratification in oppositional politics and ideologies. It is doubtful he could ever have written a song such as "Freedom," which McCartney penned in outrage following the attacks of 9/11.
But his legacy remains, and his "Imagine" vision continues to inspire the contemporary antiwar movement, a fact of which he would doubtless have been proud. Yet as the threat of a nuclear Iran grows and Islamic terrorism sets Western society in a state of constant alert, the notion that we can embrace those sworn to our destruction in a "brotherhood of man" presents as nothing more than an irresponsible failure of imagination.
Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He blogs at The Intermediate Zone and On the Other Hand.
As I have become wiser, I realize that most people listening to pop music never pay much attention to the lyrics. I always listened to those lyrics with horror, and wondered how many people who bought Beatles records realized what what absolute insane horror they were promoting with their idiotic lyrics.
Historically, very few lifelong lefties have been able to see it for what it really is as they aged. Leftism has NEVER been a search for truth...
Wasn’t Lennon leaning conservative in the late 1970s?
John Lennon was a talented entertainer. He was not, however, Mahatma Ghandi. (I’m not even sure Mahatma Ghandi was Mahatma Ghandi.)
George Harrison wrote much better songs.
Taxman being his pinnacle achievement.
IMAGINE is probably one of the most covered songs of all time.
Everytime there is a peace festival, or a rock or pop concert promoting peace, you can bet that song will surface.
How true is the legend that Forest Gump actually inspired John Lennon to write the song? (HEH, HEH) :)
His utopia was a fake notion. People are not the same and therefore despite basic similarities people don’t always agree with each other on what a perfect world is. The same people embracing Lennon, the hippies, dealt in drugs, crimes against liberty, and supported policies and stances of politicians who are heading America to socialism. His legacy has become the promotion of causes that are a failure. Everyone might want peace on earth, but that is too broad a concept. Left wing policies neither bring peace nor prosperity anyways.
How true is the legend that Forest Gump actually inspired John Lennon to write the song? (HEH, HEH) :)
This writer seems to think Lennon was the better writer. I might disagree with that. I thought McCartney actually was worse without Lennon - his tunes were nice, but often repititive and lacking depth.
I remember reading an interview with Lennon’s first child Julian. He seemed quite bitter. He said when his father abandoned his first wife for the strange Ono, he abandoned him also, prefering to spend time and money on the child from the Ono marriage.
Lennon was also at one time a severe drug addict. I don’t know what would have happened as time went on, but Lennon seemed to have very strange values. He certainly didn’t grow up in a normal family, as McCartney did.
Sir Paul, whom I always respected, destroyed my respect for him when he came out with that inane comment about Bush at Obama’s party. If McCartney had known at all what he was talking about, he would have found that Bush was a voracious reader.
I shed no tears for John Lennon...... His death is no great loss. It was a boon
I always assumed that rock music was mindless piffle and that people who took it at all seriously were vacuous idiots.
I love good rock music, but only an idiot would look to a rock musician for political, economic or philosophic insight.
Shut up and sing, I say.
Grow old along with me
The best is yet to be
When our time has come
We will be as one
God bless our love
God bless our love
Grow old along with me
Two branches of one tree
Face the setting sun
When the day is done
God bless our love
God bless our love
Spending our lives together
Man and wife together
World without end
World without end
Grow old along with me
Whatever fate decrees
We will see it through
For our love is true
God bless our love
It’s disgusting to see the media adoration of this worthless creep . . . he was totally against everything America stood for, extremely a-religious, and advocated communist takeover of any country that we were at war with. Still can’t understand the worship afforded to this punk.
I’m sorry to have seen him shot by that worthless jerk, but I still find no value to John Lennon.
Who was it that said, “Just shut up and sing.”?
You just described the Democratic Underground.
There was a boo hoo fest all week for their God Lennon.
Yes, I laughed hysterically.
Lennon was a selfish fool. Some hero.
</i>Grow old along with me</i>
Except John didn’t write that... it was based / borrowed heavily from two poems by Robert & Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
John Lennon was an extremely talented individual who in the end was as human as the rest of us. In our youths many of us have been duped by popular culture and public education. Lennon was no different.
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