Imagining John Lennon
by Jim SullivanHOFN.com Exclusive, hofmag.com
Many horrible facts frame his killing, not the least of which is that
he had just come out of his self-imposed hibernation. The most politically
active singer-songwriter of the early 1970s had been inactive, politically and
musically, for five years. He retreated from rock in 1975 after the Rock and
Roll album to become a househusband, raising Sean. (Albert Goldman, in a
controversial bio, paints those not as idyllic days at all, but isolated and
drug-addled.)
When he did emerge, he did an interview and simply said rock ‘n' roll
"was not fun anymore. I chose not to take the standard options in my business –
going to Vegas and singing your great hits, if you're lucky, or going to hell,
which is where Elvis went."
(Doesn't sound drug-addled, sounds ... smart.)
Lennon and Ono released Double Fantasy, in November 1980. It was a
breezy album that celebrated domesticity in general and their son in particular
with Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy). It was about accepting middle age and finding
pleasure in it. I remember thinking the album slick, mild, and reasonably
tuneful, which is to say, rather disappointing.
He explained himself in Watching the Wheels, singing, "People say I'm
lazy/Dreaming my life away/Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to
enlighten me/When I tell them I'm fine watching shadows on the wall/'Don't you
miss the big time, boy?/You're no longer on the ball'/I'm just sitting here
watching the wheels go round and round/I really love to watch them roll/No
longer on the merry-go-round/I just had to let it go."
It was certainly not the edgy, agitated, challenging Lennon I loved. It
was passive, content. But that's where he was. He had to be true to himself and
he couldn't fake anti-Reagan or anti-Thatcher activism – the punk rockers were
doing a pretty good job at that, anyway – so he wrote what he knew. Billy Idol
and his band Generation X picked up Lennon's Gimme Some Truth and gave it a
thorough punk thrashing. The words still rang true. Idol and company just upped
the tempo and put more of a snarl in.
That Chapman shot Lennon at that phase of his life – well, any phase is
horrible – but just as the man seems to have found inner peace is doubly tragic
and ironic. After all the government harassment he put up with, a lone gunman,
a former admirer who felt wronged, walks up, hails him and kills him. John
Lennon: Dead, frozen in time at age 40. It just shouldn't have been that way.
I asked Steve Morse where he thought Lennon might be had he lived –
he'd be 66 – and Morse said, "he would have probably experimented with just
about everything – from world music to hip-hop, I could see him doing that –
but hopefully by now he would have put it all together, no doubt in ways that
would still enlighten and inspire."
I'm not sure. I had the feeling that Lennon was on a path he might have
continued on, playing music that's now called "adult contemporary." (Rock-lite
for people who used to love rock.) He might have helped ease his generation
into retirement without steering them to shuffleboard.
But who knows what might have stirred him? Lord knows, Neil Young has
remained political and vocal into his 60s. Bob Dylan has remained an enigmatic
workhorse. Would Lennon have been moved to action by the 9/11 attack on his
beloved adopted city? Or the subsequent invasion of Iraq? I wouldn't have
minded hearing what Lennon had to say – or, really, to sing – about those
things.
Original Page: http://www.hofmag.com/content/view/455/61/1/1/
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