September 9, 2020

Imagine 80-year-old John Lennon.

55 comments:

mikee said...

Imagine is one of the soppiest, most ridiculous songs of all time.
Lennon's opinion on the use of his blissed-out screed by youth of today, to promote Marxist totalitarianism through violent revolution, would be of interest. And Ted Kennedy would be 88 today were he not dead. Mary Jo Kopechne has no comment on this.

gspencer said...

Lennon?

Meh.

I'd rather that we still had George Carlin or Andrew Breitbart.

Lurker21 said...

Imagine there's no pudding.
It isn't hard to do.

rehajm said...

That's in Yesterday. It's been done...

Scotty, beam me up... said...

John Lennon would have turned 80 next month on Oct. 9, 2020. Like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, John Lennon will always be remembered as a young man. It is hard to believe that he will be gone 40 years on Dec. 8. Ringo’s memory is slipping, based on his twitter post. Ironically, as I write this, Ringo’s song “Wrack my Brain” is playing on SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel...

Yancey Ward said...

Jeez, hard to wrap my mind around that.

LilyBart said...

but no love to Julian?

tcrosse said...

Imagine all the tedious songs we could have had.

Gregory said...

Peace and love to Yoko and Sean? Huh. John has another son, as Ringo well knows. Is he mad at Julian or something?

Temujin said...

RIP. Imagine was soppy. But his body of work was great. Loved his guitar.

Charlie Eklund said...

Yes, this coming October 9, is the late John Lennon’s 80th birthday. In addition to that, as of December 9, 2020, John Lennon will have been dead longer than he was alive.

Yancey Ward said...

Yeah, I noted the omission of Julian, too. Ringo is getting old, too.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Imagine there's no Lennon
It's easy if you try
No crappy songs
Trying to make you cry.

Equipment Maintenance said...

I was one of the "John Lennon meh" people until I took a Beatles tour in Liverpool. Came away sympathetic and appreciative of his contributions to the world. Still don't much like Imagine, though.

dustbunny said...

Wrong month

Marcus Bressler said...

I too noticed the slight towards Julian.

THEOLDMAN

eddie willers said...

Imagine is one of the soppiest, most ridiculous songs of all time.

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix where they interviewed the last Personal Assistance John had when he died.

This was a typical young liberal and he was complaining that John had gone conservative and talked about how "Imagine" was now embarrassing to him.

If he was 80, he'd be posting here and giving Inga and Chuck shit.

Aussie Pundit said...

Imagine is one of the soppiest, most ridiculous songs of all time.
And yet it's a great song. I'm no marxist but I love it for it's whimsical, absurd, blissed out wishful thinking.
Lennon's opinion on the use of his blissed-out screed by youth of today, to promote Marxist totalitarianism through violent revolution, would be of interest.
He had already renounced his hippy views in the 1970s.
He was a Reagan supporter.
Also, read the lyrics to Revolution and Taxman.

JaimeRoberto said...

One of the surprises of 2020 is discovering that Sean Ono Lennon is one of the more reasonable voices on Twitter. Who would have seen that coming?

PubliusFlavius said...

People say I'm crazy,
doing what I'm doing
Well, they give me all kinds of warnings
to save me from ruin
When I say that I'm okay,
well, they look at me kinda strange
"Surely, you're not happy now,
you no longer play the game"

Watching the Wheels-John Lennon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVXR2LYeFBI

Mark B said...

I don't remember Marilyn Monroe as a young man.

The Godfather said...

. . . and BTW Mary Jo would be 80 today if she'd gotten a ride with someone else. Imagine what her life might have been like.

Fernandinande said...

John Lennon would have turned 80 next month on Oct. 9, 2020

Ringo was only off by 0.104%, which is more accurate than most things.

tim maguire said...

I still miss you man

"Man" is what makes it not gay.

tim maguire said...

gspencer, I often wonder how things might have unfolded differently (ex., The tea party) if Breitbart were still alive. Like Trump, there was only one Breitbart. When he died, much of what he was building died with him.

Jupiter said...

I was about to write something moderately snarky about John Lennon, who has not aged well, even for someone who is dead. Then I recalled, that on the morning I learned he had been killed, I sewed a black armband and wore it around my left bicep for the rest of the day.

Narr said...

My least fave of the Fab Four.

Narr
O NO! It's Yoko!

William said...

To a musician dying young: there's a knack to it. Too young and you leave only a truncated body of work: Brian Jones, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison. They didn't leave much behind. I can't even remember the name of that guy who was with Courtney Love. The ravenous maws of obscurity will soon close over them all.... Gershwin, Mozart, Lennon stuck around long enough to leave a considerable body or work, but yet there's pathos and a sense of loss to their passing. The wonders they would have worked. Lennon lived about as long as you could and still die romantically young. I guess that's the plus side. The best bet is still to be like Paul and hang around forever. Irving Berlin broke a hundred. He outlived the copywright on some of his songs. Nobody sighed and said "if only" at his funeral.

Joe Smith said...

So he'd be an 80-year-old sanctimonious asshole? Good to know.

Lurker21 said...

Ringo is 80, but apparently nobody cares.

rcocean said...

I think Lennon had written all his best songs when he died. i don't think he had many left in him. The track record of over 40 rock stars isn't great. He'd probably have gotten the band back together and been a touring oldster like the Rolling Stones.

Assuming he lived that long. IRC, he was smoker and Pot user. Probably would've died of something before he was 65.

rcocean said...

If you want to blow your mind. Woody Allen and Elvis were born the same year: 1935.

BUMBLE BEE said...

More to the point Raquel Welch is 80, and as classy a beauty as Venus de Milo. Such elegance!

BUMBLE BEE said...

Ringo had a birthday special shown on Axios. Good music with his All Stars.

stevew said...

Imagine was a signature song for the time, an echo of the sentiment then. Lennon had a good sense of popular sentiment and wrote songs that appealed to it. I don't like that song much, didn't at the time either. Not appropriate or fair to judge him for one song that is popular among people whose views and opinions I disagree with.

Kathryn51 said...

Ringo losing it, I guess.

Today is SEAN ONO Lennon's birthday. How do I know? I follow him on Twitter.

Why do I follow him? He's sane - and holds no quarter for the censor tyrants in our midst.

For example, this tweet on Sept. 1st: Anyone notice how we are being asked to believe both that speech can be violence and that some violence is ‘expression’ at the same time?

cassandra lite said...

Poor Julian. Always left out of the convo.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Imagine John Lennon a homeless person, strung out on crack, it's not hard to do. Imagine John Lennon burned all of his money in a glorious bonfire, it's not hard to do so.

Imagine is the worst song of all time.

Static Ping said...

"Imagine" is perhaps one of the best and one of the worst songs of all time, at the same time.

Andrew said...

Nobody told me there'd be days like these.

Scotty, beam me up... said...

@ Mark B for his comment at 9/9/20, 4:48 PM

Yeah, I made a grammatical mistake. My point was that because he died young like Monroe & Dean, that no, I can’t “imagine” him being 80.

William Jamieson said...

Aussie Pundit at 4:31 pm: minor point, but Taxman was written by George Harrison.

My humble opinion about Lennon. I was 10 in August,1963. Earlier that summer, my mother bought us the VeeJay album, Introducing the Beatles. IIRC,Meet the Beatles, the Capitol album, came out late'63.

Anyway, I fell in love with Lennon's voice while wearing the Introducing album out. Their stunning, one-take version and his vocals on Twist and Shout still gives me chills.

While I still love most of his music, not much post-Beatles, he lost me after I read the Playboy interview, circa 1970, during which he pissed all over most of the Beatles recordings, including some of my favorites.

Years later, well after Lennon died, I read several biographies, most of which described Lennon as a difficult, at best, person. More like vicious and cruel, but by then I could separate the artist and work from the man.

BTW, I've hated Imagine since the day it hit the radio. What happened to the guy who tore through some great American rock-and-roll, and wrote and sang his own?

Thank you.
William Jamieson






Will Cate said...

Certainly by now I would have expected someone to notice that Ringo is one month off: John was born on Oct. 9, not Sept. 9.

steve uhr said...

The video of Lennon singing Instant Karma with the go go dancers and yoko knitting blindfolded is classic.

eddie willers said...

"Imagine" is perhaps one of the best and one of the worst songs of all time, at the same time.

MacArthur Park would give it a run for its money. Frequently tops both lists.

Kate Danaher said...

Perhaps it was a mistake with a preset. I am looking at the date on my Irish laptop right now: 10-09-2020. I could see a Brit making a similar mistake.

Howard said...

Tough crowd

Doug said...

Great songwriter, very good singer, indifferent musician. Nasty piece of a as a person, though.
Elvis Costello in "The Other Side of Summer": "Is that a millionaire who says 'Imagine no possessions?'"

Heartless Aztec said...

On that Sunday night in February 1964 John and his mates changed my life. There was a time before the Beatles and everything after. Looking at my Gretsch and Epiphone semi hollow bodies as I type

Lindsey said...

My mom was talking once about how great this song is, and I was like... if there are no possessions, it would mean you have to share underwear with strangers.

Fernandinande said...

"Imagine" is perhaps one of the best and one of the worst songs of all time, at the same time.

It was the best of songs, it was the worst of songs.

I enjoy the way people get all wee-weed up over it.

Charlie said...

Imagine there's no Oatmeal.

Banjo said...

If there was a contest for The Phoniest Artist of the 20th Century, Lennon would be up near the top. A heroin addict who walked around his penthouse apartment naked for days on end even though his closets were stuffed with expensive clothes, this ultra-rich con-man asked us to Imagine a world without possessions.

mikee said...

Mark B: I remember, as a young man, remembering Marilyn Monroe. But yes, not as a young man.

Skippy Tisdale said...

Imagine there's no Beatles,
It's easy if you try.