Posted on 12/05/2005 6:12:41 PM PST by ncountylee
JOHN Lennon was almost as famous for his biting wit as he was for his music.
The star who was shot dead in New York 25 years ago this week - on December 8, 1980 - pulled no punches in interviews.
Here DAVID EDWARDS looks at some of his acerbic comments on everything from religion to the Rolling Stones.
ON PAUL McCARTNEY
WE got fed up of being sidemen for Paul. Paul took over and supposedly led us. What's leading us when you wander around in circles?INthe studio, every time he sang the line 'Get back to where you once belonged' he'd look at Yoko. HEis an egomaniac.
ON ELVIS PRESLEY
"ELVIS really died the day he joined the army. That's when they killed him and the rest was a living death."
ON THE SIXTIES
"IF someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal."
ON RELIGION
"CHRISTIANITY will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that, I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
These don't necessarily make for a good song though. A manic depressive suicidal society where everyone is miserable doesn't make me want to sing in the shower. The creativity on the other hand, that one I'll give you.
Anyone who can turn "who, as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity, sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity," into a lyric is aces in my book.
If he'd been even halfway intelligent, he would have known how stupid that sounded.
Lennon and Yoko lived in The Dakota, an apartment building for the wealthy. According to this link, Yoko still has an apartment there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dakota
No cold-water walk-up for those two Marxists!
He didn't leave his oldest son, Julian, a dime, that's for sure. His estate went entirely to Yoko and their son.
"John and Paul had made up by the time of John's death. "
Almost..for the most part. Apparently, Paul really wanted to bury the hatchet, and after it looked like they would be civil to each other, Paul showed up un-announced at John's apartment in New York carrying his guitar.
Instead of welcoming him in, John berated him, saying stuff like "You can't just drop in like this anymore, we're not the Beatles, etc."
Lennon was talented, but I cannot stand him or his politics. At the time, I was only interested in his music though.
I agree. Lennon/McCartney was a great popular music writing team, no doubt about it, and I love most of their music, but genius? Gifted, yes. Genius, no.
That said, selective quotation such as this is terribly prone to misrepresenting a complex character, and if Lennon was nothing else his collection of neuroses alone made him a complex character. A little humility might have served to temper the mix a bit - perhaps if he had been allowed to reach his 50's he might have achieved that, and perhaps not.
For a real howl, if you get the chance, try to obtain a rendition of Tony Hendra's parody of Lennon. It's hysterically funny with Lennon (Hendra impersonating Lennon's voice) proclaiming himself a genius.
Say whatever you like - Liberace was a Homo, Ali was a draft dodger, Lennon was a left-wing PooPoo Head.
All of the above were the BEST at what they did.
Lennon/McCartney were the best song writing team to hit the pop scene EVER. At their WORST, they were still better than most.
We have the luxury of time - when we compare contemporaries to these guys. Lennon was the genius of the two. McCartney meanders on with his syrupy sophomoric pap, all the drive and bite lost when Lennon left the scene....sigh...
rant completed...
"every time he (Paul) sang the line 'Get back to where you once belonged' he'd look at Yoko."
I love it!
"Fish is a drugged out socialist who writes good songs"
What about Lynyrd Skynyrd? I think he was better than Fish.
:-0
It's funny that Lennon called McCartney an egomaniac. Lennon sounds quite full of his own self.
I am so happy that I wasn't alive in the 60's.
I remember hearing John Lennon had died when my alarm woke me for work. My first thought 'must have OD'd. It was a horror how he died, though. Went to a gathering in Boston for Yoko's minute of silence and heard many people sobbing. Reading his thoughts so many years later, all I can think about is what a bitter man he was. 'The Beatles' are an institution. Individually it seems that three of them were/are probably pretty nice guys.
I have never...EVER... disagreed with anyone more than I do right now. But musical tastes are subjective, there can be no right and wrong to it[={)}
MARILLION - INCUBUS
...Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets, As you stutter paralysed with rabbits eyes, searing the shadows Flooding the wings, to pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary My cue line in the last act and you wait in silent solitude Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt, you've played this scene before.
I'm sort of taken aback by all these posts. I'd bet more than a few on this thread were flaming lefties 25 years ago but they can't give a dead guy a break. Lennon would probably have figured out by now that he'd been brainwashed by the English socialists. He did always speak his mind and I think he would have realized that the socialists, the media, and terrorists are on the same side and gunning for the destruction of western civilization.
Lennon was a guy who seems to have been permanently scarred by being abandoned by his father (who he basically never knew) and his mother (who he at least knew a little bit until she was hit by a car and killed). So what does he do? He abandons his own first son. So I should listen to his views on life because?
On a related note it always intrigued me that George Harrison was all about eastern mysticism and being one in body and in mind and pure and all the rest and he smoked himself to an early death. Otherwise, Harrison seemed like a basically OK guy but you would have thought he eastern mysticism would have at least shown him the way to quit smoking the ciggies.
"I resent performing for you ___ers, tell me, what do you know? A lot of ____ing middle class kids wearing long hair and shabby clothes...Well I'm not your ___ing parents and I'm sick of ___ing hippies coming knocking on my door with your ____ing peace symbols, well get this: ___ that, I don't owe you ____ers anything and all I've got to say is '____' yoooou....the sky is bluuuuuue!"
Actually, they bought the building, and Yoko still owns it.
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