Althouse: John Lennon is 70.

October 8, 2010

John Lennon is 70.

There's a nice tribute to Lennon in today's Google logo. An animated line drawing, with exactly what you'd expect in the audio track. Must it always be "Imagine"?

Imagine no "Imagine"
What song would they use
For every Lennon tribute
In the annual Lennon news
Imagine all the people
Freed from that old song...

You may say I'm a dreamer
Like some crazy peacenik dove
I hope someday you'll join me
And the new song would be Love.

40 comments:

DADvocate said...: John Lennon was murdered on Dec. 8, 1980. He'll never be 70.; 10/8/10, 12:09 PM
bagoh20 said...: "Imagine" has got be one of the most widely hated AND loved songs of all time. It all depends on how you see things. I'm a hater.; 10/8/10, 12:21 PM
Kensington said...: It's a dreadful song with a pretty melody.; 10/8/10, 12:23 PM
Clyde said...: On the Elton John live double album Here and There, there is a three-song set where he brings on John Lennon and they perform "Whatever Gets You Through The Night," "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," and "I Saw Her Standing There." Great stuff! It was from around Thanksgiving, 1975, at Madison Square Garden, and was Lennon's last public concert appearance.

wv: fogyrow. Where the old people sit who remember John Lennon from when he was still alive.; 10/8/10, 12:24 PM
Widmerpool said...: John Lennon's contribution to popular music was incalculable. Like the vast majority of pop and movie stars, his political musings were embarrassingly puerile.; 10/8/10, 12:27 PM
Clyde said...: Correction: Thanksgiving, 1974.; 10/8/10, 12:30 PM
ndspinelli said...: I learned John Lennon was killed by Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. And..Lennon was in the Monday Night booth once during halftime.; 10/8/10, 12:34 PM
traditionalguy said...: Lennon? Didn't he die in 1924. I remember he had a mummy outside the Kremlin.; 10/8/10, 12:39 PM
The Dude said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/8/10, 12:39 PM
Bob Ellison said...: It's a dreadful song with a dreadful melody and a dreadful chord structure and a dreadful lead vocal by an otherwise great lead vocalist. And it has no beat, though that wasn't the point. But shouldn't it have some redeeming qualities? Rolling Stone rated it the #3 rock song of all time. Rock? Really?; 10/8/10, 12:47 PM
SteveR said...: Really they should use Norwegian Wood.

And correct, he's not 70.; 10/8/10, 12:49 PM
Known Unknown said...: I learned John Lennon was killed by Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football.

Mark David Chapman might want to know about this.; 10/8/10, 1:02 PM
Drew said...: I learned John Lennon was killed by Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football.

English teachers should replace "Throw the cow over the fence some hay" with the above. Because it is AWESOME.; 10/8/10, 1:07 PM
Lucien said...: Cosell was provoked: Lennon wouldn't stop referring to Muhammed Ali as "Cassius Clay".

(. . . and Jodie Foster just hated that."; 10/8/10, 1:10 PM
Bru said...: Watching the Wheels is so much better than Imagine; 10/8/10, 1:14 PM
ricpic said...: The pied piper of suicide.; 10/8/10, 1:16 PM
DADvocate said...: de gumat give and de gumat take away.

LOL

The Beatles were my favorites for about 3 decades. For some reason I like the bluesy, harder driving Rolling Stones now.; 10/8/10, 1:17 PM
chuck said...: I have a confession: I've never listened to Imagine. Nor do I have any urge to seek it out.; 10/8/10, 1:22 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Tie on the bed, throw the rope out the window.; 10/8/10, 1:40 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: I guess he died before he got old.

Imagine is the most ignorant song I have ever heard.; 10/8/10, 1:40 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "I have a confession: I've never listened to Imagine. Nor do I have any urge to seek it out."

Are you the Unabomber?; 10/8/10, 1:41 PM
The Scythian said...: "Special friend that he was, [Elton John] could even lampoon John's most famous lyric without chilling his welcome:

Imagine six apartments
It isn't hard to do
One is full of fur coats
The other's full of shoes.

The same antimaterialist anthem cropped up one day when John was grumbling about the expense of his burgeoning empire to Neil Aspinall. 'Imagine no possessions, John,' Neil reminded him. 'It's only a bloody song,' he retorted."

--from John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman

Despite Lennon's significant talent and brilliance, he will be forever remembered best for a blatantly hypocritical song that is perhaps the most insipid in his body of work.; 10/8/10, 1:54 PM
Unknown said...: I would have said "would have been 70", but so many beat me to it.

Lennon was what passed for the smart, literary, and sophisticated Beatle. My sister couldn't wait to run out and buy "In His Own Write" (see how clever!!!). Even at fifteen, I couldn't what drivel it was.

PS Agree about "Imagine". Greg Crosby has a good piece at Jewish World Review (sorry C4) about, among other things, what dreck the other half of the geniuses (McCartney) masterpiece, "Yesterday", was. They should have stopped at "All My Loving".; 10/8/10, 2:01 PM
The Dude said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/8/10, 2:09 PM
Dark Eden said...: Wait wait wait...

...

John Lennon did songs other than Imagine?; 10/8/10, 2:22 PM
ndspinelli said...: My deceased sister was a high school English teacher. She's not rolling over in her grave about my Cosell butcher job, she's laughing.

In the vernacular of today, "my bad." I got to put down that crack pipe before I type.; 10/8/10, 2:22 PM
Sixty Bricks said...: Well he would have been 70. Tomorrow. He was Great.; 10/8/10, 2:30 PM
Jeff Gee said...: 'Was it a millionaire who said, "Imagine no possessions"? /
A poor little schoolboy who said, "We don't need no lessons"?' -- Elvis Costello.

I'd go with "Norwegian Wood" or "Anytime at All." I also liked the part about looking through the bent-back tulips in "Glass Onion." "Imagine," not so much.

WV: comsgo. Oh yeah.; 10/8/10, 2:57 PM
Bob_R said...: Dictatorship of the dreamers. A totalitarian nightmare of botched meter and bad rhymes. None of the interesting rhythm tricks that made his late work with the Beatles so good. (Look at a score for All You Need Is Love some day.); 10/8/10, 3:02 PM
Charlie Eklund said...: RSB is correct. John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, making tomorrow his 70th birthday.

His son Sean was born on October 9, 1975, so tomorrow is his birthday as well, number 35.

The scary thing (to me) is that on December 9, 2015, Sean Lennon, who was only 5 years old when his dad was murdered will have lived a day longer than his dad did.

Tempus fugit and all that.; 10/8/10, 3:20 PM
Methadras said...: Lennon was a child in a man's body and his body of work is that of a child.; 10/8/10, 4:04 PM
blake said...: Actually, if you believe in multiple lives, Lennon's probably about 30 by now.

McCartney liked "Imagine" and Lennon shot back that it was "Working Class Hero" for pantywaists. Which, come to think of it, is probably true.

WCH displays a lot of the same kind of fuzzy anger that we see in the statists that post here. There's a "they" who do all sorts of nasty things to you, and the only apparent solution is communism. Or something.; 10/8/10, 6:20 PM
William said...: Imagine a world where everyone believed in and acted on the most banal sentiments of John Lennon and did so all the time. Only the fool on the hill would want to live in such a place....This is not the song with which to mourn Lennon's passing.; 10/8/10, 6:48 PM
Robert Cook said...: "I'm a hater."

One could already have gleaned that.; 10/8/10, 9:10 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Imagine is the most ignorant song I have ever heard."

How so?; 10/8/10, 9:12 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Lennon was a child in a man's body and his body of work is that of a child."

Says the man(?) who represents himself (accurately) as a screaming infant.; 10/8/10, 9:14 PM
Robert Cook said...: Actually, the song Lennon should be remembered for, among many very good songs, the one that should always be played when paying him tribute, is "A Day In The Life."

I also always liked "Instant Karma."; 10/8/10, 9:17 PM
Quaestor said...: All we are say-ing
Is the sixties are past.

All we are say-ing
Is the sixties are past.

(Repeat until closure achieved); 10/8/10, 10:18 PM
Rt1Rebel said...: The MNF story I remember reading, although I can't recall who recounted it, was of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan. It was actually very touching. There in the booth were Reagan and Lennon, perhaps two of the most politically opposed personalities imaginable, yet Ron had his arm around John, pointing to the field, explaining to John what was happening in this strange American football game, and John just absorbing it all. It seemed like a father-son moment to the author.; 10/10/10, 12:28 AM
Quizman said...: My favorite lyrics by Lennon are "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." - Beautiful Boy.

+ 1 to Watching the wheels.; 10/11/10, 5:54 PM