Posted on 12/08/2020 4:31:47 AM PST by Kaslin
I’ve always been interested in World War II, but really only the war in Europe. The war in the Pacific, though equally as important to world history, just never grabbed me. Maybe it’s because of the movies “Patton” and “Saving Private Ryan” and the lack of an equivalent movie in the other theater? I don’t really know why, it just is. The whole thing happened a lifetime before I was born, but something about it captured my imagination, which is how imagination works – you don’t have to have been a part of something for that something to be a part of you. Such is the case with John Lennon, who was murdered on this date in 1980.
The Beatles weren’t together in my lifetime, I’d just started forming lifelong memories when John was killed (though I have no memory of it because I was too young to know who he was). My parents were Elvis fans, anyway. But Beatles music, and John’s, has become as much a part of my life as it is to anyone screamed at the TV set watching The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964.
The Beatles were the very definition of a group; without any one of them there would not have been any of them. There was just something about them together, and that something carried each of them long after they broke up. Whether John was the “leader” or not is something some people still argue about to this day, but it is irrelevant. If Ringo Starr weren’t playing the drums, or George Harrison on guitar, or Paul McCartney on bass, John Lennon would be a retired factory worker somewhere.
Why did those four people together change music and, in many ways, the world? Books have been written about it, seminars held, someone is probably arguing on social media somewhere about it right now.
The question of “why them?” is something I can’t explain beyond the obvious, and I think correct, answer: they were damn good.
Not only were the songs some of the best ever written, you have to view them in context to understand just how different they were form everything else. At the end of the 1950s/beginning of the 1960s, Elvis had been drafted, leaving music for a while and returning as a crooner/movie star. His rock and roll days were over, at least until 1968’s comeback special. Buddy Holly, a true pioneer who, unlike most contemporaries, wrote and produced his own music, had died in a plane crash. Eddie Cochran died in a car crash, Little Richard had left music for religion, Chuck Berry was in prison for bringing a 14-year-old girl across state lines for “immoral purposes,” and Jerry Lee Lewis was a pariah for marrying his 13-year-old cousin.
Rock and roll was dead in every way except as a label. Crooners packaged by record labels were called rock and roll, but they weren’t anything close to it. Think what you will of groups like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, their music is very catchy (and I enjoy it), but it’s not what comes to mind when you think of rock and roll.
Yet, that’s what dominated the U.S. charts and radio in the early 60s. The month before the Sullivan show the Billboard charts featured acts like Bobby Vinton, The Murmaids, Bobby Rydell, and the Singing Nun. Picture any song by any of those artists, then hear “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in your head. That’s what changed – The Beatles brought rock back to rock music.
By April of that year, The Beatles has 14 songs in the top 100, including the top 5 slots, and the top 2 albums in the country. No one has come close to that kind of chart domination.
There really isn’t a moment of any of their lives that hasn’t been documented by someone at this point, most presidents haven’t had as many biographies written about them.
At the time of his murder 40 years ago tonight, John was back on top after a 5-year break from recording. He’d become a father again, more mature and unencumbered by Beatlemania, he threw himself into it this time. But all loaves of bread he baked didn’t quiet the songs in his head. And the country loved those song, the “Double Fantasy” record.
Through the mania, the insanity, the drugs, the everything that happens to a person when, in their early 20s they’d had the whole world want a piece of them, he’d finally gotten his life together. Then he was murdered.
We can all wonder what he would have done had he lived, whether they would’ve gotten the band back together or whatever. None of that really matters because it’s impossible now. What we do know is a wife lost a husband, two boys lost a father, and the world lost someone who’d provided at least a song or two to the soundtrack of every life that came, or will come, after it. No deranged assassin can take that away.
That’s my point. I can’t convince you to consider the Beatles the “best of all time” anymore than you can convince me to feel similarly about the Allmans. It’s subjective - to each his own. But I can objectively say the Beatles influenced a hell of lot more artists that the Allmans. BTW, I think the Allmans were/are great and have seen Greg Allman/Warren Haynes live 4 or 5 times over the years. They were phenomenal shows!
Read the background of Chapman and the World Vision organization. One man?
George Martin was indeed the 5th Beatle.
True enough. I would contend that a lot of that has to do with timing more than anything else. The Beatles were in a stronger position to influence others because they rose to prominence at an earlier point in time.
It's sort of like saying that Vince Lombardi influenced more football coaches than Bill Belichick, isn't it?
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And all those bullets and none hit Yoko Ono..... Well, the children should not be derived if a mother too.
RIP John Lennon.
Lennon was a serial wife beater who put at least two women in the hospital multiple times.
He used to go out after concerts and ambush men coming out of Gay bars.
He beat his road manager to the ground and then kicked him until his spleen burst and he died.
Glad he’s dead.
That was a good album.
In memory of John Lennon:
Jealous Guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O4J4DH4tyo
Yes, the change in popular music was dramatic from the early sixties to the late sixties, and that was largely due to the Beatles using their influence and popularity to expand the way music was written and performed.
Perhaps the reason they rose to prominence because they were so far ahead of their peers at the time (mid to late 60s). Also, they didn't have the technology that the groups from the 70s had.
I can only judge a person's accomplishment based on the era in which they lived. I am sure physicists today know light years more than Einstein. But I can not say that these same physicists could have accomplished what they accomplished without the pioneering work of Albert Einstein.
Yes. One man. This is John Lennon, not JFK.
You know none of that is true, right?
Dennis Leary said it best:
“We live in a country where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him, not ONE F***ING BULLET! Explain that to me!”
Just thinking the same.
Long time Beatles and music fan. No denying their influence is above all others in modern music.
While the music is THEE thing I am and have always been fascinated by their personalities and their success story.
It’s like the ultimate American-but not in America, obviously-success story.
Start with four kids with almost no formal musical training. Mix in a drive and talent in what was the ultimate backwater city in England. They just slogged it out and somehow after multiple rejections and a series of lucky coincidences - any one of which would have killed their road to success - rose to the top of their field.
Then instead of resting on their laurels pushed themselves to innovate and evolve and take chances musically.
Truly an amazing story when it comes down to it. You could hardly make a movie so improbably and have it believable.
Then after they broke up as a group, they individually continued to make great music (Ringo, maybe not so much).
Lennon had some killer songs during the Beatles later years....the White album and Abbey Road were particularly strong albums for him.....Julia, Yer Blues, Revolution, Come Together, I Want You, etc
But it’s his early stuff that holds a special place in my heart..... The stuff he wrote between 63 and 65 was just off the charts.....This Boy, I Call Your Name, A Hard Days Night, If I Fell, No Reply, Day Tripper, Help, Ticket To Ride, Nowhere Man, Norwegian Wood, etc..... Some of the best music of the 20th century
The single most astounding thing about The Beatles was how strong Lennon and Mccartney ‘s voices were in addition to all their songwriting talent..... but Lennon had no charisma on his own without the other Beatles...he always looked a little awkward on stage, but the strength of his voice combined with the energy of the whole band made up for the fact that he was no Mick Jagger or Prince
Mental illness still wreaking havoc on society, then and now.
Twenty years ago, I took my daughter to see ‘Ringo and his all Starr Band’ concert. Aside from girls not going crazy, a good time was had by all - and for just a few moments, I felt like I had entered a time warp. He still does 3 or 4 shows a year.
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