Thoughts on John Lennon

Those of you who know me know that I am really the biggest Beatles fan possible. Thank god listening to Beatles doesn't make you fat, or rot your teeth, or give you cancer, because if it did, I'd be one huge, toothless, cancer-ridden SOB.

So it goes without saying that I've read nearly every Beatle book worth reading (no, not Spitz yet--I'm saving that for Xmas; and yes, Albert Goldman, which I didn't find so unbelieveable or scandalous). It also goes without saying that John Lennon has always been the Beatle that most interests me--with George, ever the dark horse, making a late charge. Naturally I've been thinking about John Lennon today, 25 years after he was murdered, so here are some thoughts for anybody who cares to indulge:

1) Lennon's death was a senseless act, but in retrospect it wasn't all that surprising. You live like an archetype, you die like one too; I think Lennon grasped this and didn't expect to die in his bed. In fact, I think it's rather more surprising that none of the Beatles were shot when they were Beatles--I can think of no bigger testament to the uncanny good fortune those four enjoyed. There were, we know now, many death threats, but obviously in the Sixties and Seventies entertainers did not hold enough weight in people's psyches to merit murder; only politicians were so psychoactive. This is not to say that the Beatles didn't arouse sufficient love and hate, but there was clearly something in our human culture back then that prevented us from making the connection. That changed with Lennon, or maybe Bob Marley (who was wounded in the late 70s for coming out in favor of a politician). The risk of murder seems to be related to grasping for, then achieving, a certain kind of relevance and importance; just the kind that the post-Beatles Lennon founded his career upon.

2) Lennon's death was intimately related to his greatest talent; he was expert at making you feel you knew him. Sure, a lot of his success--especially with the Beatles--was about the music, but from about 1966 on, he wasn't as much a musician as he was John Lennon, the approachable icon. Think of the songs he's remembered for: Help!, In My Life, Strawberry Fields, Imagine, the whole of Double Fantasy...These are all the work of a consummate performer PRETENDING to give you, the special fan, a glimpse of secret pain or dearest wish. Lennon invented and perfected pop song as heart-to-heart, and he didn't hide it in poetry like Bob Dylan, either. Murder is an intimate act, and I believe that if Mark David Chapman had not felt he knew John Lennon well through his music and his public statements, he wouldn't have murdered him. The irony of it is that the public Lennon was just an act--as are all public personas--but in Lennon's case, I think he'd been doing the act since he was so young, and had gotten so much from doing it, that he was constantly losing track of the real him. For a decade at least, Lennon's persona had insisted on being taken seriously. Whatever else it is, murdering you is taking you seriously. I expect that would've become less and less important to him as he aged, and maybe he would've been less and less liable to provoke violence, too. Nobody's shot Pete Townshend or Eric Clapton or Mick Jagger. Lennon's murder, like the Beatles success, was a confluence of factors a long time in coming, in retrospect almost inevitable.

By the way, Lennon fans are encouraged to check out "Free As a Bird: The Dakota Beatle Demos." A little solo Lennon goes a long way for me, but that bootleg of home demos from 1975-80 is the best.