Im not gonna front,..... Im not the biggest John Lennon solo fan. Im a Beatles fan. Michelle is probably more of a Lennon fan than me , and although she'd be more qualified to write this piece she can start her own blog somewhere if she wants to pontificate. Im torn about the guy......surely he was no Holden Caulfield and damn it Mark David Chapmin... ya didn't have to shoot him. He just signed your copy of Double Fantasy, thats a hell of a way to thank a guy. Im mean, yeah sure, some of that avante garde Yoko Ono shit made me wanna shoot myself.... and maybe I entertained the thought that she should get her hearing checked if she thought that stuff sounded good,.... but I never wanted to kill John Lennon over it. And I surely never felt amiss about him after reading Salinger..... WTF buddy?.... Could ya not have respected him enough as a musician?.. whether he was a "phony" or not ?. He was a Beatle for christ sakes.....and they are in increasingly short supply. There only ever was 4 of them to start with......
But then again theres a flip side. In some instances John Lennon was ,as Barnum was once refered, " a shameless self-promoter".... Im not saying its bad.. hes John Lennon and he can do what he wants. But he did do some media friendly publicity stunts to draw attention to himself, his work, and yes to market his thoughts about love and peace, ect. After all I've seen and read about the man as a person he sometimes was a bit over-theatrical . Being drunkenly dragged from bars by friends while he screams and cries out for Yoko during one of their many periods of seperation. My friend Charlie remarked today that although he is a Beatle fan he is far from being a fan of John Lennon the solo artist and the man himself. He remarked that Lennon reminded him of everything he hates about hippies. John Lennon was filled to the brim with "An attitude of self-rightous intellectual superiority with the idea that I know whats better for you than you do"..., an" I'm the smartest one in the room mentality ".... much like Cartmans humorous but true observations about hippies in general.
And so maybe John Lennon was a "phony" or maybe he wasn't . The point is we'll never know. His life was ended much too short by a man who just may have seen through Lennon before the rest of us did....... But phony or not,..... It shouldn't have ended this way.
I don't really have anything rare or obscure to offer by way of John Lennon. But I'm gonna post a few of the Lennon solo tunes I enjoy. Hopefully you 'll enjoy them too.
Listen-
Happy Christmas ( War is Over) - download here
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Imagine - download here
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Working Class Hero - download here
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You make many valid points about Lennon being a shameless self promoter. He could have used his platform to talk about anything (worldwide hunger, lack of clean water, lack of access to medical care)but most of the time he seemed to be talking about the fact that he was talking about something. Some of Lennon's solo stuff was fantastic, but nothing was better than when all 4 Beatles were together. It's like guacamole. An avocado tastes OK on it's own, but you mix it with salt, lime and hot sauce and it's out of this world. Mark David Chapman took something away from all of us when he shot Lennon on the street, and for that i hope he never gets out of jail. Think of all the creativity that was still left in Lennon! All that he could have instigated and maybe just maybe the Beatles would have gotten back together.
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