John Lennon 1940 - 1980

[bluediesel]

Well, it's 26 years today since John Lennon was shot dead on his New York doorstep. I read earlier this morning of a mass shooting in a Chicago office. Have we really learnt nothing from the assassination of that great man?

[B00]

What lesson would you like us to learn?

And 'great man'? Why? Apart from make some ruddy good songs- what else did he do?

[noxlumos]

I'm sorry I have no time for John Lennon, he was emotionally abusive to his son to extreme and generally on a personal level and thoroughly unpleaseant bloke I understand.
As for shooting people, I would have hoped it was obviously wrong to shoot ANYONE, and by and large most people don't :)

[kwicky]

The USA has a problem!

Weapons of destruction...guns.

Is this what GW Bush means about freedom. Free to buy over the counter to kill another innocent human being?

[jonnythebosh]

I'm with nox on this one, good song writer but lets not get carried away.

[Theland]

In my opinion, JL took himself too seriously, and believed in his own legend.

I thought it wrong to have renamed Speke airport after him.

And he was a hypocrite.

Liverpool can't let the legend die because it brings in the tourists.

[bluediesel]

I'm genuinely surprised at such a negative reassessment of the late, great John Lennon. Fair enough, it might seem rather hypocritical of him to suggest that 'All You Need Is Love' when the man was a multi milionaire, and I suppose you could argue that such sentiments might appear to be a manifestation of him and his band 'taking themselves too seriously.' Indeed, it could even appear to be vaguely preposterous that four young men should consider themselves to be in the vanguard of global political and cultural change.

But surely the cardinal point here is that the Beatles in general and John Lennon in particular spoke for their generation, and continue in their music to address very real social and political ills. It's an over simplification, I think, to suggest that Lennon was some sort of latter day saint or even the new Messiah - indeed, he repeatedly went out of his way to dispel such patently absurd hagiography, and he did it with some pretty robust good humour by all accounts. But he was certainly a man of peace (conspicuous, these days, by their absence) not to mention a quite brilliant songwriter and vocalist to boot.

It should be obvious by now that I am a lifelong admirer of John Lennon and his work; but I was interested to read a 20th anniversary commemoration in The Times wherein it suggested that Lennon's demise 'made all our hearts skip a beat,' even those who were entirely indifferent. Surely it must have touched all our lives in some way and to some extent? Surely? No?

Let's not forget that John Lennon was the driving force behind perhaps the most significant popular phenomenon of the post war era, ie The Beatles. It's easy to pick holes in anyone's character, even one as deeply flawed as that of John Lennon's, and especially when the man is dead and cannot speak for himself.

[Gef]

The Beatles - great band and great music although that's just opinion.

Lennon & McCartney great songwriters, true, but there have been many others.

Anything else? Nothing other than what the media wanted them to be.

[scruffscat]

well bluediesel, im with you a top bloke, broke my heart the day he went,and i always wonder what sort of stuff he would of done by now if he would of still been here.

[noxlumos]

Pardon me for mentioning it but "spoke for a generation" ??? !!!??? That's a little grand isn't it? He wrote middling resonable songs with chorus' everyone could remember but I am really struggling to see hwo the vast majority of Beatles or Lennon work could be considered politically awe inspriring.
True enough it's easy to slag someone off after they are dead and gone, but anyone who abuses kids is never going to appear on my top tn great bloke's list, and no my heart didn't skip a beat when he died, and aside from having to put up with lots of gnashing of teeth over his demise by people who've never met him it didn't impact on me one way or the other, except for me to be sorry he was dead, just as I would have been had it been anyone.
He was just a singer who sold a lot of records and on that basis made people happy presumeably but he was never going to change the world despite the noble sentiments in "Imagine".

[robertson]

It's not right to judge someone by what you've heard or read. To the vast majority of John Lennon fans, it was his music that made him great. Only those who genuinely knew him should really judge him as a human being, and then a person's unique circumstances should be taken into account. How many celebrities emerge well from media scrutiny, and how well would all of us emerge were we celebrities? Not many, I suspect.

[joko]

what do want us to learn? that shooting people is bad?
well guess what, most people don't need to learn that, most people don't shoot others, and have no intention of shooting anyone.

i doubt very much that anyone who had been planning to shoot someone would have their minds changed just because one man was shot.

did you really expect the shooting of a pop singer to change the world, and gun crime would suddenly disappear?

[matt66]

boom boom shake shake the room...tic tic tic tic boom......

now thats the band that speaks for a generation.

Does anyone really beleive that when soemone sists in s tudio and writes songs they are thinking 'lets write something that speaks for a generaton'...no they try to use words that will best fit the melody....so if tic tic tic tic boom fits it will be used.

[Bazile]

Personally, I can't see what all the fuss about the beatles , is/was all about - they were just an average band and lennon & McCartney was / is just average singers

Great man ?....... oh please .
Depends on your definition of greatness , I suppose .

[bigmalc]

Ask any musician worth their salt, and they will tell you that the Beatles revived the western musical tradition. You would be hard pushed to find a successfull modern band that didn't list themas an influence. Tracks like 'Penny Lane' and 'When I'm Sixty-Four' may sound simple, but on a more complex level, they are clearly the work of a songwriter that knows what they are doing. And that songwriter is Sir Paul McCartney. Lennon was, undeniably, a great musician, but when it comes to musical arrangement he was not even in the same league as Paul McCartney. I'm not a fan of McCartney's solo efforts, however, individually they are clever pieces of music. Lennon's tunes were always crowd pleasers.

Some of the comments are right, anyone who is going to shoot someone is not going to think twice about John Lennon's death, but I do think that the National Rifle Association have a lot to answer for as does the American gun lobby in general. Any society who's citizens believe they have a 'right to bear arms' is going to have a high murder rate.

Anyway, love them or loathe them, you can't deny that the Beatles were and are a huge influence on our global culture and that includes all four of them. I doubt very much whether there would be suchan outpouring of grief were Bob Geldof to be assassinated.

[joko]

there's no denying lennon was a great musician and the beatles changed the face of music - but why his death should have altered the face of gun crime is a bit hard to see - which is what bluediesel is getting at.

his musical merits are irrelevant - he was shot and it would have been nice if from the world had 'given peace a chance' - but lets face it, it was never very likely was it?

the sad fact is that people who shoot others are a law unto themselves and i doubt they could care less how many celebrities are assassinated.

its a nice sentiment bluediesel but unfortunately unrealistic

[bigmalc]

If Lennon had not been killed by an utter lunatic, I think that it would have had more of an effect upon gun control. The fact that Mark Chapman was completely insane shifts the blame from the gun to its handler.

[noxlumos]

Sorry, but if D, G and A are the sole chords in a song then it's musical drivel, ask any musician worth his salt, or alternatvely compare them to Hendrix, Santana, Curved Air, Pink Floyd or any of their other contemporaries and even if you aren't a musician you'll hear the difference. Rather like popsy junk today, they were the popular crowd pleasing bubblegum music of their day,being muscially utterly banal.I'd imagine that niether Lennon nor McCartney would understand the mathematical intricacies of a serious musical piece if it slapped em in the face, and their lyrics weren't even close to Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan who might indeed have spoken for a generation.

[bigmalc]

Come on noxy! I respect your opinions, but you cannot honeslty hold up your hands and compare the Beatles to today's 'popsy junk music'!

The Beatles wrote all of their own music and had enough musical knowhow to change their styles and genres. I'm obviously fighting a lost cause here, but you simply have to accept that the Beatles were a huge influence on modern music. Don't forget that they and Dylan were friends and each expressed admiration for the other's achievements. Likewise, Hendrix and Pink Floyd have listed the Bealtes as major musical innovators.

The question, though relates to whether we have learned anything as a species from a senseless and tragic murder. I would say no, but then what does it matter who is killed? Surely the why is more important?

[bigmalc]

Bet you're a Clash fan noxy!?

[noxlumos]

I have a diverse musical taste Malc, I'll grant you, but the Beatles have never figured in it AT ALL, with the exception of Eleanor Rigby which I thought was a lovely bit of kit. My present plylist I'm listening to now is enough to get me certified (Liszt, Linkin Park,Ian Dury,Snowpatrol,Pink Floyd, Kaiser Chiefs,Inkubuss Sukkubus, Dufus and, I'll shut my hole about music now, Numa numa). I do like Oasis who are heavily Beatles influenced to be fair, and yeah I like the Clash:)
I agree with you it matters not one iota who it is is killed, just that they are.Terrible waste of life.