> Ah, let's not get carried away.
Let's be clear: I disliked his leftist politics, and while his efforts to promote world peace were nice, a lot of hippies were doing that back then. I'm not at all fond of the political stuff from his Yoko Ono controlled avante garde period.
I was talking about his non-political musical output, which is the vast majority of what he produced. The man was a creative genius, musically. Even if you weren't a fan, you must admit he was a hell of a prolific songwriter and millions of people enjoyed his songs.
As a musician, I mourn that we never got to hear what he would have done in his later, less-political years. Those songs would have improved the musical world, at least.
I just got the Blu-ray edition of A Hard Day’s Night and while I will say that the comedy does not hold up (I didn’t think it was too funny when I saw it as a kid), there is no doubt that the musical sequences are absolute powerhouses - and that Lennon was the obvious driving force behind it. I always hated Yoko’s influence in turning him from a macho tough guy (which he truly was!) into a fake peacenik which just didn’t suit him at all. Interestingly, for all her peacenik junk, she was and is a hard-nosed business woman who buys up Upper West Side real estate like you and I would buy jelly beans.