Jump to content

30 years w/o John Lennon

B. Goren.

By B. Goren.
in Artists

 Share

Recommended Posts

JETman Newbie

JETman

Posted
Posted

can't say I even noticed he was gone.

did any jazz musicians die on this date?

Nice!

My first musical hero. I still remember my shock when Cosell announced his death during Monday Night Football. I stood in front of the Dakota that Friday evening.

Very sad day for me. I named my daughter "Julia" in his honor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Randy Twizzle Newbie

Randy Twizzle

Posted
Posted

can't say I even noticed he was gone.

did any jazz musicians die on this date?

Nice!

My first musical hero. I still remember my shock when Cosell announced his death during Monday Night Football. I stood in front of the Dakota that Friday evening.

Very sad day for me. I named my daughter "Julia" in his honor.

Cosell announcing Lennon's death

Link to comment
Share on other sites
GA Russell Experienced

GA Russell

Posted
Posted

I learned of it the following morning. My radio alarm clock was set for radio only, and it woke me up with the CBS News. I believe that it was Morton Dean announcing, and he led off with the news that John Lennon had been shot and killed.

In my semi-consciousness, my first thought was...That person has the same name as the Beatle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Alexander Newbie

Alexander

Posted
Posted

I was nine, turning ten in a few weeks. I've been a Beatles fan since babyhood, so I was well aware of John Lennon by 1980. I woke up the next morning and heard the news on my clock-radio. My first thought was, "I must still be asleep. I'm dreaming." I got up, went into the kitchen (still unsure if I had really heard what I thought I heard) and found my mother crying in the kitchen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Alexander Newbie

Alexander

Posted
Posted

can't say I even noticed he was gone.

You don't have to like him, or even respect him. I'd be quite the hypocrite to piss all over Leslie Nielsen's memory and then bitch because somebody said something mean about John Lennon.

However, I find your comment disingenuous. I can't believe that you didn't "notice" when he died (I assume that's what you mean. Not that you weren't aware that he'd been dead for the past thirty years). Even as a child, albeit the child of Beatles fans, I could see that the story was all over the news at the time. This was not treated by the media like the passing of some also-ran pop musician. This was more akin to the death of a Head of State. The death of John Lennon was treated, by the media and populace alike, as equal to the death of JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. Because the story here was not merely death, or even untimely death (Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon), but VIOLENT, untimely death. Whatever you thought of the Beatles, John Lennon's death was BIG, BIG NEWS. You noticed. Or did you also not happen to notice 9/11?

"Hey, didn't there used to be a couple of towers over there? What do mean, 'where have I been'?"

I can see missing George Harrison's passing. It wasn't quite the same level of news story. But missing John Lennon's death? Do you have ANY memory at all of 1980?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
7/4 Newbie

7/4

Posted
Posted

can't say I even noticed he was gone.

You don't have to like him, or even respect him. I'd be quite the hypocrite to piss all over Leslie Nielsen's memory and then bitch because somebody said something mean about John Lennon.

However, I find your comment disingenuous. I can't believe that you didn't "notice" when he died (I assume that's what you mean. Not that you weren't aware that he'd been dead for the past thirty years). Even as a child, albeit the child of Beatles fans, I could see that the story was all over the news at the time. This was not treated by the media like the passing of some also-ran pop musician. This was more akin to the death of a Head of State. The death of John Lennon was treated, by the media and populace alike, as equal to the death of JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. Because the story here was not merely death, or even untimely death (Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon), but VIOLENT, untimely death. Whatever you thought of the Beatles, John Lennon's death was BIG, BIG NEWS. You noticed. Or did you also not happen to notice 9/11?

"Hey, didn't there used to be a couple of towers over there? What do mean, 'where have I been'?"

I can see missing George Harrison's passing. It wasn't quite the same level of news story. But missing John Lennon's death? Do you have ANY memory at all of 1980?

Maybe that comment was a bit too flip, let's just say Lennon's untimely passing still isn't that significant to me. I heard about it on the radio the next morning while I was buying my Dad his birthday present.

Now Harrison's death...that was real sad.

Comparing it to 9/11 plain fucking silly. The Beatles are pretty trivial in the big picture. I could see the twin towers from my building and was on my was to town on that morning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Van Basten II Newbie

Van Basten II

Posted
Posted (edited)

My displeasure with him has little to do with him but mostly how he was showcased to us, he was a fine musician who did some great stuff but I never bought into Lennon being a great peace figure, to me he was the dude who was pissed off against his former bandmates.

Then again am too young to have known the Beatles and the early seventies, so maybe I have a more cynical view of him than those who were old enough in the 60s and early 70s.

Edited by Van Basten II
Link to comment
Share on other sites
monkboughtlunch Rookie

monkboughtlunch

Posted
Posted (edited)

Lennon was a brilliant, complex artist. His final Lp sessions found him setting aside politics and reflecting on family and relationship renewal. Hard to say with any certainty what he would have done had he lived, but given his history of outspokenness, it's reasonable to conclude he may have spoken out against salient issues such as the Iraq War. His outspokenness on the Vietnam war showed he wasn't afraid to push back against the system and use his fame to stand up for the underdog. His solo career had some fantastic peaks (Plastic Ono Band, Imagine) and some inconsistent lesserlight material (Some Time in New York City, Walls & Bridges), but it's also reasonable to conclude he would have continued writing music and put out some strong material from time to time.

Regardless of if you dug Lennon's music or not, the viciousness of some born-again piece of shit asshole shooting a man in the back who had a wife and two sons is a stomach turning tragedy.

In a recently released interview with Lennon conducted a few days before his death Lennons states:

"“I’m not claiming divinity. I have never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can. But I still believe in peace, love and understanding. These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they are on their way up ... I cannot be on the way up again. What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I’m not interesting in being a dead (expletive) hero... So forget ‘em, forget ‘em.”

http://new.ca.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stopthepresses/335127/rolling-stone-to-release-john-lennons-final-print-interview-30-years-later/

Edited by monkboughtlunch
Link to comment
Share on other sites
monkboughtlunch Rookie

monkboughtlunch

Posted
Posted (edited)

Check out this video called "I Met The Walrus"

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced him to do an interview. 38 years later, Levitan, director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina have collaborated to create an animated short film using the original interview recording as the soundtrack. A spellbinding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit and timeless message, I Met the Walrus was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short and won the 2009 Emmy for 'New Approaches' (making it the first film to win an Emmy on behalf of the internet)."

Edited by monkboughtlunch
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...