This drippy version of his life, written and directed with equal clunkiness by Don Scardino and featuring a Muzak-alized assortment of Lennon's non-"Beatles" songs, suggests that he was just a little lost boy looking for love in all the wrong places until he found Ms. Ono and discovered his inner adult.I was never a big Ono-loather, but this musical project has turned me into one.
August 15, 2005
Don't you love the meanest sentence in a bad review?
From Ben Brantley's NYT review of "Lennon" (the Broadway musical):
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6 comments:
The only time I hear pop radio is in the gym, and every time I go work out I hear ads for this show every hour on the half hour. It sounds awful. I'm sure Lennon is rolling in his grave.
Saul, that's just too sentimental. She deserves to be held into account for the decisions she makes that reflect on his art. She won him by being and artist and she used him to promote herself as an artist. She is now making artistic decisions for him. When they suck, we should call her on it.
I grew up when Claudia Cassidy was music critic for the Chicago Tribune.
Her reviews could be horribly scathing, and often drove artists (real artists,) to tears.
Today, 99&44/100% of the "reviews" are only hype, hype that is so deep I need my fishing waders to muck through it.
Listening to todays' artists (my father would have said "they sound like a wounded caliope") I long for the days when people could still sing.
Who knows what was in Lennon's head/heart when he fell for this woman -- but ever since I first heard that atrocious voice cackling and repeating "don't worry don't worry don't worry"...ugh!!
As far as Saul's comments, suggesting that Lennon would have enjoyed the muzak of his own works seems almost spoofish to me; and his surmising that she had little to do with the Beatles' break-up is directly contrary to every other biographical source that I have read -- not that one should pin the blame on her alone (they were all pretty vain in the first place), but if she ws not a cause, she was certainly a catalyst.
Oh, and IMHO, her own art truly does suck.
Lennon may have enjoyed musak (although I doubt it) but trust me, he would not enjoy this show, based on the sound snippets I have heard. It's beyond musak.
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