John Lennon: 40-40

80 years since October 9, 1940, 40 since December 8, 1980. 40 with John Lennon, 40 without.

Saints are often depicted as “holier than thou” impossibilities, people of mythical and dubious origin from a time far removed from our own. I find this very similar to how people now separate artists from, say, the 60s and before, as archaic craftsmen from a bygone era. Influential and revered, unattainable.

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was an old library book called Fifty-Seven Saints, the stories of fifty-seven holy men and women who lived anywhere between the lifetime of Jesus and World War Two. They were fleshed out, strong, witty, and, most importantly, human. These were real people with their own faults, missteps, and sacrifices. They were amazing, but not perfect, and they lived and died that way. Their stories were interesting, and I felt like I could glean something from them to apply to my own life.

When I was a child I heard voices on the radio that I wouldn’t recognize for much too long. One of these belonged to John Lennon.

On a cross-country journey in the early 2000s, one might wake up to “Rockin’ Robin” by Bobby Day after sleeping through Texas. This was a different time, when “oldies” was an aesthetic, a genre with better-defined lines, and not a catchall term for anything released over a decade ago. Still, one could find radio stations playing the hits from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was on one of these trips when I heard John Lennon’s reflective echo on “A Day In the Life.” What a grandiose song to just be on the radio, but driving through the streets of Whittier back to my house, tired from the road, felt right.

John Lennon has a lot to teach us still, but he suffers from historical revisionism. “Imagine” was only a number one hit after his death, his “radical” politics were mocked as too idealistic, and his solo career was the least applauded of all The Beatles.

This man was born as the Blitz rained down on England, never knew his father and only got to know his mother just before she died. His proto-punk, emotional Plastic Ono Band (1970) was his coming to terms with these things— primal scream therapy and snarling guitars as well as minimalist instrumentation and gentle contemplation. It was laughed off as a tantrum; what did John Lennon have to be upset about? The way he dealt with mental health and self-expression was unprecedented in popular music, not so surprising for the founder of the greatest band in history.

The sheer amount of people who turned off to Lennon in the 70s is somehow easily forgotten because his life halted so violently. You never know what you have until it’s gone. The other three Beatles had wanted to reunite at some point, but had pushed it off. Now, they will never have the chance. Like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, John F. Kennedy, and everyone who stood for anything, Lennon was still human, still flawed, and just like them, was shot like a dog in the street.

I think we remember and revere these people despite their flaws because they strove towards something. And, ultimately, they died for us.

A musician is a performer; their medium is in echoes, streams of the ongoing universe channeled by instruments, captured and placed in a neat little package, a recording. Popular ones can destroy themselves, but they produce music in service of their fans. The Beatles always knew this, and I suppose even if one finds them a little indulgent at the apex of their career, they always wrote for the people. Their accents betrayed their working class background, and Lennon, the son of a seaman, was perhaps the model image of a stereotypical Liverpudlian. Spending some time at sea towards the end of his life, I imagine his reflection.

There is a world in which he lives a normal life working in Liverpool’s quarry or at the docks. If this would have been the life he chose, I never would have met him.

Sometimes when I hear songs from Double Fantasy (1980), especially late at night, I cry. He had just come out of a five-year retirement. “Beautiful Boy” is a lullaby for his son Sean, about how he can’t wait to watch him grow up. I think about how my own father loves when I play the song, and how there’s so many people who now enjoy this song with their children. John will never share this joy. I wonder if Sean thinks about this as much as I do. I hope he knows his dad has always been a close friend.

Among other tearjerkers are “(Just Like) Starting Over” and “Watching the Wheels.” One must be alone. Music does not exist in a vacuum. Songs carry different weights at different times.

The first Lennon-penned track on The Beatles’ Please Please Me (1963) is called “Misery.” He closes the one-day recording session with the rousing, feverish final track “Twist and Shout.” The latter is a cover. He was always a rocker, his guitar work on “Revolution” and “Helter Skelter” set the stage for punk, but from the start there was a certain pessimistic melancholy. Paul was always the idealistic one, yet somehow a man excited about love and working through his problems was too much.

Hypocrisy is a loaded term nowadays, and there are true hypocrites, but sometimes a hypocrite is just someone in the process of changing. Lennon’s murderer, clutching a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, stood by as Yoko Ono held John’s bleeding body in her arms before the police arrived outside their apartment building. Believing the singer of “Imagine” to be a phony, the gunman hoped to gain his fame, and because of the way our media works, he partially succeeded. Everyone’s a phony to somebody from a certain perspective I suppose. The same man was also a troubled hero, simply trying his best, finally accepting domestic life and love.

He was much like the saints in that dusty old book to me, but maybe even more so than the others: I could hear him; I could get to know him. There’s always so much to be upset or sad or lost about, and yet at the same time “nothing to get hung about.”