Posted on 12/04/2010 7:03:56 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
On December 8, 1980, The World was stunned to hear that John Lennon was murdered on a street in New York, not far from where he and his wife Oko lived. The impact of his death was felt immediately, as millions mourned the forty-year old rock star in candlelight vigils around the world.
What was this man’s legacy? Who is this man who will again be deeply mourned by many in this generation on the thirtieth anniversary of His death? Lennon was no doubt a profoundly gifted musician and lyricist, but I believe his legacy goes deeper than his involvement with the Beatles, and the songs he is noted for.
Lennon’s legacy was more than musical, it was and still is spiritual, for he was a minstrel for the drug and sexual revolution that swept through the west in the sixties. Obviously he wasn’t the only one who promoted sex and drugs through music, but he was one of the more effective toxic role models.
In a Rolling Stone interview of January 1971, Lennon admitted he began taking LSD in 1964, “How Long did it go?”, he was asked.”It went on for years” he replied.”I must of had a thousand trips…a thousand,I just used to eat it all the time”. When the Rolling Stone interviewer said “Theres a lot of obvious LSD things you did in the music,” Lennon replied,”Yes”. (from pg 58 The Legacy Of John Lennon, David Noebel,Nelson publishing)
Lennon would go on to say that “Help”, “Rubber Soul”,”Day Tripper” and “Yellow Submarine” were all drug oriented. Perhaps the most pervasively drug oriented Album up to that time, was 1967s “Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band”. This album has been credited with heralding the drug revolution.
Lennon himself , to be fair, insisted that “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” was not a coy reference to LSD, although the lyrics of the song evoke a mystical,dreamy hallucinogenic trip. But other songs such as “I Get High With A Little Help From My Friends”openly advocate the Pharmekia that God hates.
The fact that the Beatles were open and outspoken proponents of the Drug Revolution cannot be denied.Life Magazine, in an article “The New Far Out Beatles” quoted Paul McCartney about his own use of LSD;
“After I took it ,it opened my eyes.We use only 1/10 of our brain.Just think what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world.If politicians would take LSD, there wouldn’t be any more war ,poverty or famine!.”(Life June 1967)
In July 1967 The Beatles signed heir names to a full-page advertisement in the London Times, calling for the legalization of marijuana. In his biography of the band, called The Beatles, Hunter Davies quotes Lennon’s favorable evaluation of his own use of LSD,”I was suddenly struck by great visions when I first took acid. But you have got to be looking for it before you could possibly find it”.
Lennon was also a minstrel of the sexual revolution which wreaked such terrible havoc in the west. I personally do not believe we have ever recovered from the trashing of Judeo- Christian morality in the west, and perhaps never will.
Lennon strongly advocated in his songs and interviews, and by his very public life, the deliberate destruction of the Christian sexual ethic of monogamous. married, till death do us part commitment.
Lennon, while still married to his first wife Cynthia,posed nude for an Album cover with his adulterous lover Yoko Ono for his album The Two Virgins. His comment on that was ;
“…intellectually we knew marriage was a stupid scene, but we’re romantic and square as well as hip and aware. We lived together for a year before we got married, but we were still tied to other people by a bit of paper.”(Noebel,legacy of John Lennon, pg 52,Nelson)
Lennon also wrote a pornographic ,blasphemous book called A Spaniard In The Works, which ridiculed Jesus, in hate filled and badly written prose. There are many blasphemous, anti Christ quotations Lennon is noted for, therefore I feel no need to repeat them. We pray he had time to renounce his anti-christianity before he died, God alone knows.
We are all going to be treated to the spectacle of mass mourning, public airings of Lennon’s songs, notably the atheistic hymn, Imagine , and other forms of canonisation, on or about the anniversary of Lennon’s tragic death. But what exactly are the people mourning?
Who is going to mourn for the millions who followed Lennon’s lead into the drug culture, and never made it out to sanity again? Who will shed a tear for the legions of broken and ruined people, who allowed Lennon’s message of sexual anarchy to wreck their lives? What about the broken families, the disenfranchised children, the ruined health of the thousands who bought into Lennon’s hedonistic Utopia?
Lennon had gifts alright, but who did he actually put them to the service of?
Psalm 12
Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men.
They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak. The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things: Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is lord over us? For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him. The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever .The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.
more to come
I would have answered, “Dung Beetle”.
Well at least he was a fan of Benjamin Franklin, a great American.
You go and like what you like, and I'll like what I like and neither of us have to preach to the other.
Stop beating a dead Beatle.
He was who he was, a flawed and foolish but very
talented human being.
Besides, we shouldn’t be in the market for ‘minstrels’
or any other kind of God or demigod.
We should learn from all these true-life lessons
and gain some perspective on the oddness and unpredictability of human life.
“Some will say I’m a dreamer
but I’m not the only one...”
An inspired line in a song that makes lots of people
puke, all these many years later.
Lennon advocated peace and practiced capitalism - a little something for everybody.
People who think he was some kind of cultural trailblazer ought to turn back the clock another ten years to the Fifties and check out the likes of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis (whose third wife was his 13 year old cousin).
Well, at least you gave him his due for the only thing he was important for.
To suggest he was somehow responsible for the destruction of Judeo/Christian society is ludicrous.
Lennon was no more than a melodic genius and superb singer.
To suggest more gives credence to the concept that artists actually have anything to SAY that's worth hearing.
Incredible voice.
John Lennon was a brilliant songwriter and musician. I don’t agree with his political views or his social views, but who goes to musicians for that? Blaming various societal ills on a musician is silly - people are going to do what they’re going to do, and some will try to fob off their choices and actions on culture, politics, all sorts of lame scapegoats. Whether we admit it or not, most of us know perfectly well what we’re doing and no pop culture figure has anything to do with it.
The same could be said of Beethoven or Wagner.
You're a hater.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the kind reply.
Ever hear the song “God” by Lennon? He says he didn’t believe in anything but himself. Yoko made him change the last line to “Yoko and me”.
in his 1970 solo song “God”, “I was the walrus, but now I’m John.”
Rock and roll’s Jackie O?
“I admit to being a huge Beatles fan (I even have a signature John Lennon Rickenbacker guitar and a Vox AC-30 Amp) but Lennon was a naive fool. Ever listen to the words to “Imagine?” It’s basically the Communist Manifesto set to nice music.”
He was the ultimate leftist and we are paying the price today.
I find the song "Instant Karma" kind of humorous. In it he says that people that laugh at him will get instant Karma. You have to assume he's speaking of those opposed to him politically would get instant Karma. Yet what happened to him epitomizes Instant Karma as they believe. If he believed in Karma and he indeed recieved Instant Karma in their eyes, then what was it that Karma was getting him for...millions dead in Cambodia perhaps...which he never accepted at least partial responsibily for being one of the main leaders the anti-war movement which led to the slaughter. Even Pete Seeger accepted partial responsibility for Cambodia on behalf of the antiwar movement.
George Harrison seemed like the good one, even though he dabbled in the eastern religion also. But his "My Sweet Lord" makes up for some of that in my eyes for the repeating of the word "Hallelujah", which in Hebrew means "pray be to the God of Israel", "jah" being "Ya", which is the short version of God's name in Hebrew. Not just any god, but the God of Israel.
I don't believe in Karma by that way. God will judge some to be snuffed out forever, but this is not Karma as the atheists and the eastern religionists believe.
“delivered in what were essentially remixes of musical patterns which have on a fundamental level been known to man for thousands of years.”
‘The same could be said of Beethoven or Wagner.’
Exactly. Just as every great book is delivered in what are essentially remixes of words and verbal patterns that have been known for centuries...which in no way diminishes their value.
Lennnong changed a lot in his later years, he was faintly embarassed by his earlier behavior.
That song induces instant projectile vomiting for me - a nauseating musical self-abasement to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Hare Krishnas and whatever else Harrison found interesting in India when he traveled there in 1968.
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