God is a concept by which we measure our pain
I’ll say it again
God is a concept by which we measure our pain
Black
cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Want
to die
Yeah, want to die
If I ain’t dead already
Oh, girl, you know the reason why
The reason why was that for some miraculous reason John Lennon was a special motherfucker that rarely comes around that cared more about the world he probably detested than himself.
No one loved rock and roll more than John Lennon. Were it up to him every song he released would have sounded up to par and of the style of “Long Tall Sally” or “Rock and Roll Music.” After the Beatles broke up, he said he thought most of his work was crap and the only song on the radio he liked was Dave Edmund’s “I hear you knocking,” a basic blues in a rock and roll style and were it up to him, had he not a bigger agenda that’s what it would have all sounded like.
He was in pain. Epic pain. People fire away at those who commit suicide like it is a selfish concept. It’s unfair. It doesn’t matter who they do not want to leave behind. They don’t want others to feel their pain. They just have no ability to survive it anymore. It has to end. They are on fire. You don’t survive that pain. You kill yourself in a way you absolutely don’t survive, and if you do survive it or come close and are able to stop yourself then you spend the rest of your life trying to help others, and he did.
John Lennon could have taken over the world and ruled it as the greediest, most despicable dictator ever imagined. He didn’t. More props to him.
He had every right. He had flighty parents. He was an accident. They made him choose between them; they abandoned him; he was brought up under loving discipline that every bone in his marrow fought against. He only wanted a mother. He got her back and she was run down by a drink cop in a random joke from the heavens that would have left a mere mortal crying out for revenge forever or in a heap in the corner crying.
Somehow he was better than that. Somehow he knew the purpose of life was to have fun. Somehow he didn’t define it as just having as much fun as he could at the expense of everyone else. He wanted it for everyone, and was willing to die for other people almost all of which he had nothing, but contempt for.
People criticized him for preaching sharing when he was wealthy. Yoko Ono made all of John Lennon’s money. He didn’t care a bit about wealth. He would have died without her and he thanked her constantly.
The world is not kind to geniuses. He was one. He was better than that. He had every right to compare himself to Christ and he got the same ending. After crying out for happiness in the dark for years, after carrying the torch forever for others, he’d done enough. His search was complete and he had done enough and he had found his escape route, he reached full consciousness on Double Fantasy, he had his true love, he had his mother, he was out of here and finally going to reap the rewards of more hard work than almost anyone ever.
I don’t care how hard rock the Cheap Trick versions of those songs are. I’m glad they exist. Bonus.
Every John Lennon song can be defined by the drug or philosophy he was reaching for desperately at the time, and the sound of Double Fantasy is perfect. The drug is contentment, happiness, and love. The thing he preached from almost from his first breath, and then that lazy, jealous, selfish, motherfucker shot him down.
The time has come the Walrus said
for you and me to stay in bed again
It’ll be just like starting over
Starting over
Why don’t we fly off alone
Spend a weekend in some old hotel
A little place without a phone
A certain honeymoon would do us well
(in the voice of Elvis who he once said he no longer believed)
WELL, WELL, WELL
John Lennon was the Beatles. All of it. It was his band his vision. He had the final word. He was intent to do what he had to do even if he cloaked his message in sugar, no matter who he had to wink at and bow down to until he could later tell them to fuck off and be better.
His band. His vision. His revolution. Thank God for him. I love Paul, I love Dylan, I love Harrison, George Martin was great.
It was all John Lennon. All of it. His Band He started it. He ended it. Even though it broke his heart for the millionth and biggest time.
The Sirius Beatles channel either has no clue or no inclination to put out that narrative.
“Where are we going boys – to the top – cheer up!”
I was a kid whose brain did not turn off. It still doesn’t turn off unless I hear music. Music is an international language that anyone or anything from any galaxy can understand. It settles the uneasy mind or at least it does its best. It’s our best shot. If it has lyrics, all the better and I listened to the lyrics. I cling to them. I live my life by them. Most don’t even know their meaning as they sing them. Most have never considered the meaning of the music they love even if those lyrics do speak to them without them listening.
No one used the word “listen” more than John Lennon. He listened as he spoke, wrote, and sang. He fought like hell every day of his life, but if he found a better idea, a valuable ally he would adopt them and protect them forever.
He had some bad days. He did some bad things. No one worked harder to apologize. No one worked harder to fix things then John Lennon.
I was dreaming of the past
And my heart was beating fast
I began to lose control
I began to lose control
I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy
I was feeling insecure
You might not love me anymore
I was shivering inside
I was shivering inside
Oh I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy
I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh my I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy
I was trying to catch your eyes
Thought that you was trying to hide
I was swallowing my pain
I was swallowing my pain
I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh no I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy
Watch out baby I’m just a jealous guy
Look out baby I’m just a jealous guy
There is no apology in the history of mankind more beautiful than that song. It takes full responsibility and says, “I’m sorry.”
The problem with the world is sometimes people will not forgive. Love is forgiveness. John Lennon was all about love. John Lennon cried out in pain for love. John Lennon was love.
There are some nice covers of Jealous Guy. It’s untoppable though.
My unsettled, uneasy mind was not ready for music when I was young. I needed words and input. I would lay in the dark filled with unanswerable questions of infinity and angst and I needed words.
I’d listen to Pete Franklin’s sports talk show until 11:45. Then I would be scared to death for 15 minutes until Larry King came on at midnight. I’d maybe fall asleep before it was time for school. Sometimes, I’d read the encyclopedia from the beginning to the end until I passed out.
Now I want nothing but music. I’m besieged by words, and I admit it I’m lazy and listen to tons of the Beatles channel on Sirius. It’s just too cheap, they keep making it cheaper every time I try to cancel. I’m too lazy to plug in my iPhone or iPod into my phone on occasion as I drive. I sing along to the music and get enraged by the talk.
Right or wrong I just hate listening to those stories. I loved listening and discovering them, but it’s endless and so many are wrong, spouted by celebrities and simpletons spouting rhetoric generally accepted as gospel.
The gospel was Paul
I love Paul McCartney. John Lennon went around trying to knock people into bloody unconsciousness hoping that someone would get back up. Paul was the first that did, and then they formed the ultimate alliance, the ultimate team, the best movement. Those that could hang like Klaus Voormann noticed it immediately, and it changed their lives. They got to help try to change the world.
It’s just fact. John got shot. John got to be the martyr. That hurt McCartney’s legacy, but in the long run the story gets to be told by Paul.
John took shots at Paul and his music. He had the right. Had anyone else criticized his chosen partner Lennon would have slayed them with as few words as necessary like no other human.
So that’s what the Sirius channel feeds me. Paul’s stories, the same ones over and over.
We went looking for B7
Jimi played Pepper
My dad said Yes, Yes, Yes
John told me to leave “The movement you need is on your shoulder,” as is.
George wasn’t constrained by two cuts an album. John insisted that Ringo and George get two cuts an album. John and Paul made George learn and earn the ability to write the songs he did.
John looked after George and Ringo forever and even Paul even if they weren’t talking.
John’s band. John’s vision. John Lennon was going to write original songs and take over the world with them when no one had the notion it was possible in a dump town on the docks of poverty where ships brought it rare vital music.
Except for Ray Davies none of them would have written songs. The Stones, Clapton, all of them were happy to be knocking out faithful blues covers forever.
John Lennon sang those blues covers mockingly. He told those blues covers to cheer up. He made the blues happy. Marshall Crenshaw played Lennon in Beatlemania. He understands. I’ve yet to hear him played even once on that channel even though his version of Arthur Alexander’s “Soldier of Love” which Lennon covered is wonderful.
When Lennon covered others he didn’t do it by rote, he put himself in. David Bowie is great. He’s a performer. Every word ever sung by John Lennon was sung baring his soul as if his last breath and vital existence depended upon it.
It’s easy to be an artist with principals and not sell your work. Bitch and moan that you are not recognized. It takes fame to reach the masses and try to change them. It takes compromise, and once you achieve it you can never take it back. So don’t balk at Kurt Cobain. He did the best he could and only achieved superstardom because his weak spot was his love of John Lennon.
Lennon had a bigger plan, a bigger agenda. Ray Davies said more about the world to me than John, but John fought to be heard. Ray was happy to let his career drown and be re-evaluated at a later date.
The word on John Lennon’s minds was both “love” and “now!”
God was I happy when Paul came out and said they jerked off together once. I cherish
pets and think nothing is worse than animal abuse, but they could have drowned
a cat for all I care as long as it was the truth and new.
I don’t want jingles. I don’t want clever interludes telling me how the lyrics sound in other supposedly more poetic mediums. I don’t want the history I know it, and I certainly don’t want flimsy celebrity intellects or simpleminded fans spouting the rhetoric of acceptable crap that has been perpetuated by years.
All I want is the truth now.
The truth is only the music.
The channel is fine. I just want the words and music together and nothing else. The Sirius Beatles channel is fine for others, it’s just not for me.
I’ve read every book on John Lennon except that prick Albert Goldman’s. I’ve seen every movie and documentary hundreds of times, and I can still watch them. I just love the Pete Best produced “Birth of the Beatles,” even though that jagoff anti-Christ Dick Clark was involved.
It gets John. It shows the winks. It shows the compromises he made to get the things he needed to get done. It shows the smiles at the end saying, “Don’t you know everything’s gonna be alright.”
I’m a patient man Brian, but I’m losing my patience with you,” (followed by a cheerful wink).
I somehow had the same goofy smile and roll your eyes look as he did by birth. I looked like dork doing it while he looked like a God, but I had it.
There is a scene where Brian Epstein is beaten up late at night at an illegal gay club and hides out embarrassed of his facial injuries. I don’t know if this happened, but it feels right from the person people only say was so afraid of his manhood being questioned that he beat up a guy for calling him a fag, but then apologized over and over for losing the hairpin trigger he fought his whole life to control.
“You know it’s alright Brian. Nothing to be ashamed of you know. Any loving. Anything between people that is loving is alright. There is too much pain in this world. We knew about you the first time we was here. Don’t matter to us Eppy. We need you. (smiling tenderly) Just be more careful next time. OK?”
That motherfucker had it all figured out.
All John.
George Martin helped.
Lennon respected and enjoyed being Dylanish for a time, and God was it easy for him. He could have put people down like Dylan and Eminem in every song and he rarely did.
“A Day in the Life” is wonderful. It was something John Lennon tried like someone who wants to experience acid once.
Paul had the artistic ideas. Lennon outdid him every time with more talent and passion. Once it was done, he was happy to put on a Fats Domino record and relax, but he sadly very rarely had the chance to. His brain only stopped racing for a cherished moment and he was shot down.
All John.
I’ll keep buying other’s books. Mine won’t sell. I won’t watch that crappy new movie about some Indian guy in the future. It was a Twilight Zone episode from like 30 years ago. All this shit is recycled except for stone cold genius’ like John Lennon.
Thank God he chose love.
“Imagine I’m in love with you – I’ll get you in the end!” 1963
John Lennon – Punk Rock
