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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Lennon is a hero to those of us of a certain age for two reasons: because of his work, and because we grew up with him. First and always, there is his work -- though really only that work done with the Beatles. Lennon's post-1970 explorations have moments of searing intensity and occasional beauty, but don't even come close to the songs he created and helped create with the Beatles. Lennon needed the Beatles, and in particular McCartney, like black needs white, gin needs tonic. Less tutored and advanced as a musician than Paul, though still a solid rhythm guitar player -- he once summed up his ability on the guitar by saying, if memory serves, "I can fucking make it howl and move" -- his rougher musical style perfectly complemented Paul's sometimes saccharine tendencies. John was a viciously smart writer; Paul's lyrics were often silly. On their own, neither of the two men was that special: Together, they were magnificent.
Who can forget the way John's plaintive yet uncannily authoritative voice undercuts Paul's high-pitched optimism on "We Can Work It Out," warning that "Life is very short"? Or the way his dirge-like evocation of his youth, "Strawberry Fields," balances Paul's soaring "Penny Lane"? In a thousand ways, they were a marriage of equals. The mere fact that Lennon and McCartney existed, came together and went down the road as far as they did, is one of those things that makes the universe seem fundamentally friendly.
And for a few years, along with Ringo and George, they played -- played in both senses of the word -- in view of the whole world. Perhaps nothing is more touching in the whole saga of the Beatles than the simple fact that these guys had so much damn fun together. Their story told us: You can change history and still just be in summer camp.
But the mere quality of Lennon's work doesn't explain why he's so important to so many. To have grown up with the Beatles, as the entire baby-boom generation did, was to live out a very strange love affair, at once intimate and one-sided. They were the world's most popular group, and they provided the soundtrack for millions of utterly personal moments -- an amazing phenomenon. Everyone owns the Beatles, because everyone has a thousand specific memories, sharp as the smell of wood smoke, in which the Beatles are in the room as surely as anyone else who was there: the joint smoked on that nervous afternoon in the cabin while "I'll Be Back Again" played on the KLH, smiling inside as the bass comes in on "Here Comes the Sun" after breaking up with a boyfriend. It is the sheer accretion, the thousands of hours of those experiences, that binds the Beatles to their fans.
Remembering Dec. 8, 1980
Robert Altman, Lucianne Goldberg, Roger Ebert, Larry Flynt, T.C. Boyle, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and others recall how they felt when they heard the news of John Lennon's death.
By Stephen Lemons
And it was the weight of those memories that made so many of us feel, on that December day so long ago, that part of us had died with John -- that youth itself, a certain kind of innocence, tinsel-wrapped and hopeful, had passed forever. To this day, for me, no one has ever died as emphatically as Lennon did. His death brought death home: If John Lennon could die, that frightening crack in the middle of existence must be real.
It's hard for those of us who loved the Beatles to get past John's death, because it's so inextricably tangled up with loss itself. But then you walk over to the stereo and put on "And Your Bird Can Sing," or "She Said She Said," and that voice blasts out, at once brutal and joyous, wounded and uncaring, like a cavalry trumpet echoing down over a tired line of soldiers, and you shake it off and get up, following it back to the place where we all won so long ago, the place where we all win.
