FEATURE:
Power to the People
PHOTO CREDIT: Bob Gruen
John Lennon at Eighty: An Incredible Legacy
___________
IT will be quite an emotional day…
IN THIS PHOTO: John Lennon with The Beatles, circa 1963/PHOTO CREDIT: Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images
today (9th October), as it is John Lennon’s eightieth birthday. Even though Lennon was killed forty years ago, his legacy and influence remains strong and widespread. Whether you discovered his songwriting genius when he was a member of The Beatles, or you were tuned in when he was releasing solo work, it is clear that, between some slightly less-than-incredible albums, he was producing some truly fantastic work. In fact, the last album he released in his lifetime, Double Fantasy (1980), ranks alongside his very best. From the incredible originality and constant reinvention, through to Lennon’s embrace of the Avant Garde and the experimental – that started during his Beatles’ work and continued thereafter -, to his amazing work with his widow, Yoko Ono, there was nobody like Lennon! In fact, Yoko Ono had a profound impact on Lennon as an artist and man, and her positive influence can be felt in his work - his bed-in for peace in 1969 would not have happened were it not for Ono. Looking at the way Lennon progressed as a songwriter, and one hears something more political and sharper on his work with The Plastic Ono Band and in his solo material compared to what he was producing with The Beatles. One does not have to divide Lennon pre and post-Beatles, but there were definite changes and developments when he stepped away from the band.
It is impossible to talk about John Lennon and his legacy without mentioning The Beatles. He started the band and brought Paul McCartney in; the two formed the finest songwriting partnership that has ever been seen in music. If McCartney was associated with slightly softer music, character songs and there was greater escape and invention, then Lennon’s songs were bolder, bigger, and, perhaps, more emotionally raw - though McCartney was no stranger to bearing his heart and soul! I think Paul McCartney was the best Beatle, but I know Lennon wrote, debatably, three of the best songs the band ever produced. Strawberry Fields Forever, and In My Life are masterpieces, whilst I Am the Walrus is one of my absolute favourites. One can also mention All You Need Is Love, and A Day in the Life – McCartney wrote some of it, but the main thrust and body came from Lennon. There are various events and shows dedicated to John Lennon at eighty. There is a wonderful series by Sean Ono Lennon on BBC Radio 2, where he interviews people inspired by his father. Ono Lennon chats with Paul McCartney, Elton John and his brother, Julian Lennon. In 2010, Richard Williams wrote a piece for The Guardian, and he discussed Lennon’s legacy, and where he might have headed if he had lived:
“Now, too, we can hear him prefacing "(Just Like) Starting Over" with: "This one's for Gene and Eddie and Elvis… and Buddy!" This was Lennon excavating his roots and he might have carried on with that for a while. He would certainly have admired the way some of his contemporaries make new music while retaining the integrity of the sounds that first inspired them. The chances are, however, that – after effectively missing out on punk and the new wave, which happened during his voluntary engagement with house-husbandry while Yoko worked at consolidating their fortune – he would have found a way to engage with more innovative sounds, rather than settling for the kind of traditional AOR textures that were added in the final stages of the production of Double Fantasy.
Not that he was ever a completely dauntless adventurer. For all his endorsement of Yoko's wailing, he cheerfully confessed that he had been unable to get through even the first side of John Coltrane's Ascension, one of the key works of the 60s avant garde. But having enlisted Phil Spector's help in 1969 to turn the reverb-laden sound of Elvis Presley's Sun records into the pared-back starkness of "Cold Turkey", "Instant Karma" and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, he might have found a way to perform the same trick for a second time at a later stage in his life. There is always an audience for primal, bare-bones rock'n'roll, something for which he had an instinctive feel.
In the Britpop wars, he would probably have preferred Blur's originality to Oasis's revivalism ("So why all this nostalgia? I mean, for the 60s and 70s, you know, looking backwards for inspiration, copying the past. How's that rock'n'roll?"). It's easy to imagine him enthusing over Radiohead and the White Stripes”.
Not only is Lennon’s musical genius affecting artists and resonating so many years later, but his activism definitely connected with people in all walks of life. In 1990, Yoko Ono spoke with Rolling Stone and shared her memories of Lennon and the way he continued to influence people a decade after his death:
“She had struck a similar note during her press conference following the UN ceremony. “I think John’s spirit is alive today,” Yoko answered when she was asked what sort of things Lennon might be doing on this day if he were still alive. “And I think this celebration is a proof of that. I think that his music is still affecting people, affecting the world and encouraging people to make a better world.” She emphasized in particular Lennon’s continuing importance to people who were only children when he was killed. “It seems like [young people] have their own way of being in touch with John’s spirit,” she said.
“I have a teenage son, so I know that that generation seems to be very interested in, not John’s only, but Sixties music.” Of course, Yoko, like everyone else, has her own favorite aspect of the legacy left by her husband. “The exchange of roles,” she said that day in the Dakota, with evident fondness. “John’s awareness about the roles of women and men and how to cope with each other and with a relationship. I think that affected a lot of couples and a lot of couples with children, too.”
She still holds to the brand of personal politics that she and Lennon made a hallmark of all their activism in the Sixties and Seventies. Speaking about what ordinary people can do to help realize the ideals extolled by John and Yoko in their own lives, Yoko articulated a vision that inextricably linked the late Sixties with the early Nineties. “I always get letters from people saying, ‘I’m not famous, I’m not rich, and I’m just an ordinary housewife. What could I do?’ ” Yoko began. “I think this is an age when the issues are so big that, of course, one hero cannot take care of it. All of us have to be heroes in some ways. But we don’t really have to be that much of a hero. What I learned from what we did in the Sixties – maybe we were young, too, but we were always in so much of a hurry. When I wrote the song, ‘Now or Never,’ I thought, ‘Oh, well, with this song, everything is going to be all right by next year’ – I was that naive, you know?
IN THIS PHOTO: John Lennon and Yoko Ono circa 1970s/PHOTO CREDIT: Keystone-France/Gamma/Getty Images
And when I saw that nothing happened after writing a song or something, it was like ‘Oh, it didn’t work.’ I think a lot of us were like that. We were very idealistic, and we wanted a result now. If we demonstrated, the war was supposed to end tomorrow. That’s how it was”.
John Lennon is still motivating and stirring his Beatles bandmate, Paul McCartney, and I know there are scores of artists performing today who owe a debt to John Lennon! It will be sad looking back on Lennon’s life knowing that he could have made so many changes and contributed so much more brilliant work to the world, but we can also celebrate his legacy and spirit. From the timeless music and his politics through to his work with The Beatles and everything else, we will all come together today to mark the eightieth birthday of a true icon. He really was a one-off who changed music and the world more than he could ever have imagined! Whatever you are doing today, put away some time to remember the life of and celebrate the great music of…
THE masterful John Lennon.