John Lennon

I first became aware of John Lennon on December 9, 1980. He had been murdered the night before by a mentally ill man with a handgun.

Now, I was peripherally aware of the Beatles, but only peripherally. I was thirteen, and was more familiar with the band ELO, who were played incessantly at my house. At the time I was busy devouring science fiction paperbacks and banging away on my monstrous metallic typewriter, composing bad stories on a daily basis. As far as the Beatles went, I think I knew “I Want to Hold Your Hand” from a transistor radio and I vaguely recall Paul McCartney’s vocals over a car 8-track, possibly while driving with one of my uncles.

Anyway, at school the next morning, December 9, we all sat silent in a weird, unfamiliar and uncomfortable atmosphere of my music class. The teacher, whose name I forget, was an eccentric middle-aged bearded hippie. Along all three walls, just below the ceiling, were large poster pictures of classical composers. These portraits fascinated me, more so than anything the teacher might have said. (Just writing that, I realize how approving John Lennon would be of such a statement.) In this class, which only ran one quarterly marking period, we practiced playing the instrument of our choosing – the acoustic guitar, the recorder, or the glockenspiel. I chose the guitar, and earned an A for the class performing John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” for the final exam.

But I digress. That drab Tuesday morning my teacher’s eyes were bloodshot, either from crying or staying up the night before watching the news or from self-medicating. Perhaps all three. He sat at his desk, a small lump, leaning down in his chair, mumbling for the next forty-five minutes about who the Beatles were and what they meant to him and, by extension, the world.

He got up twice to play two songs for us. The first was “I Saw Her Standing There,” the opening track on the band’s 1963 debut album. We listened to it mostly in silence, twittering and chuckling nervously with sidelong glances at the “OOOOOOH!”s prior to every sung “I saw her standing there.” Then the teacher played “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and, to be quite honest, I was never creeped out more by sung lyrics in a song before. That creepy feeling has always stuck with me, and I still get the same reaction whenever I hear cellophane flowers of yellow and green …

That night, or maybe it was the following weekend, all the TV news was talking about Lennon, his murder, and his legacy. My uncle and his girlfriend came over, and we overhead the announcers debating whether “Imagine” should become the new national anthem. They played it and my uncle stood up, hand over heart, for the duration of the song, then said, “Nah. Too long.”

Thirty-nine years later, on a whim, I checked out a biography on the Beatles. Over the summer I borrowed Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and The White Album, and enjoyed my time driving around, to work, to pick up the girls, to run errands, immensely. I also started listening to solo Lennon, particularly “Mind Games”, a tune I hated in my band days but which has grown on me, along with “#9 Dream” and stuff off Double Fantasy.

Can’t rightly explain my fascination with the man. As I tried to state before in a review of that Beatles book I read earlier this year, I don’t find him a sympathetic character. Actually feel sorry for him. Tremendously talented, yet still very childlike. A true wounded artist in a cliché-defying way. Or maybe I find him sympathetic, but unlikeable. But there is something there admirable. Or is there? I dunno … Perhaps I am overthinking something I should simply enjoy.

I wanted to post a Lennon song here, whether solo or with the Beatles, something that would kinda encapsulate what I’m trying to say very poorly, and I find I can’t do it. So much good stuff, so much remarkable stuff I only came across this past summer. I thought about “She Said She Said,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” (the song which changed the course of music more than any other, save, possibly, “Hound Dog” or “Jailhouse Rock”), “Mind Games,” “Beautiful Boy.” Couldn’t decide, so I thought to go a bit more obscure.

In preparation for The White Album, the band recorded demo takes of two dozen songs at George Harrison’s house in Esher; these became known as the Esher Demos. The following tune, “Cry Baby Cry,” is one such demo that features a descending chromatic riff I note in a lot of Lennon songs, as well as the F chord he liked to include. Plus, how many songs have you heard that could – just possibly – be about ghosts in a castle that don’t know they’re dead?