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When the Beatles first came around, I wasn’t much impressed by them. Call it pre-mature sophistication, perhaps. I knew what they were doing, but most of the rest of America didn’t get it. I understood from the get go that they were recycling American rock and a twist of the blues and selling it back to us.
I had gotten tuned in to rock and popular music at about the age of seven and I knew, even if I couldn’t have expressed it, that this was America’s music and its roots were our common roots. It was invented here. Yes, of course I liked the Beatles. Those high energy, herky-jerky, bouncy songs were fun, but I was waiting for them to do something else, something better.
Boy, was I blown away when they did. Rubber Soul still plays in my head. Sgt. Peppers? All the way to the max and then past the toppermost. The White Album? I spent most of an entire Christmas vacation time listening to that just after it came out.
Right away, I was a fan of John. The girls were crazy about the cutesy looks of Paul, but it was clear to me that John was driving the band (only much later would I come to appreciate the depth and shear scale of Paul’s massive talent). John had the gravitas, Paul had the ballroom pop tunes of his youth.
One of the strongest regrets I have in life is that I did not get to know John, did not even meet him. I had the chance and I didn’t take it. I only saw him once, at an anti-war demonstration on the streets of New York and the feeling was electric. I was turned into an eager pre-teen kind of fan for those moments, just being in his presence. I was thrilled and very pleased that he was not singing, but speaking.
Then, just as Lennon was starting to come to grips with what it meant to be a mature adult, he was dead. To some degree, I felt he had been moving toward, even seeking the end that came to him. With the “bed in” for peace with Yoko, his comment about being more popular than Jesus and his song, which said, “they way things are going/they’re going to crucify me” seem to invite an early death. Yet, it was said that the Beatles stopped touring out of fear that in some southern state like Alabama they might actually be killed. The end of touring, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end for the Beatles; it disconnected them from human interaction and they became purely a studio band (and a wonderful one at that) and within a few years, they were gone.
Lennon told interviewers that he had lost his youth to the Beatles, even though he had about the wildest, most cut free experiences as a young man that anyone could imagine. Maybe he couldn’t remember most of them from being so stoned or drunk. He lived five wild youth times in Hamburg, Germany, but he was also working as a Beatle, playing live music, most hours of the day. Soon, they were all swept up in one of the most astounding star bursts ever seen in the world.
What he wanted most of all was to slow down, to think and just live. That’s what he did and what he was doing, living the semi-secluded, semi-public life that a celebrity was then allowed to live in New York, not bothered by fans or autograph seekers most of the time, just another poet/musician/singer with his wife and young child, living in the Dakota with Central Park just across the street. He and Yoko spent hours in a popular coffee shop/cafe and they were left alone to be themselves. People noticed, but didn’t bother them. Most everyone knew where he lived and didn’t seek him out, aside from the killer who traveled from Hawaii, stood outside the door and waited.
John Lennon had already given us his most energetic and outrageous rock songs. He had a lot more to give and it would have been a wonder to see. Like some performers who realize they can never outdo their younger self, he might have retreated entirely from show business, but I doubt it. He was blessed, and cursed, with a pulsing need to make his mark and have it last. He was a man who wanted everything and then some more, so he probably would have continued working in many different ways and forms. He clearly wanted to show he was a lot more than a Beatle and he had proven that, well, before his death.
When we remember John Lennon, we should remember that in addition to his great talent, the fire in his belly which drove him forward was formed in suffering and loss as a child. He turned that into a gift for us, a gift for the world. This is, in part, what all artists try to do. He succeeded.
Doug Terry, 12.8.10
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