John Lennon
From Philosopedia
The Beatles with a bearded Royston Ellis
Lennon, John Winston (9 October 1940 - 8 December 1980)
Lennon was a pop star, composer, songwriter, and recording artist born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. A rhythm guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist, he was partner in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team. In 1969 he married Yoko Ono (18 February 1933) - his second marriage - and together, by being filmed staying in bed while being interviewed, they invented a form of peace protest that led to a single recorded under the name of The Plastic Ono Band, Give Peace a Chance (1969), one that became an anthem for pacifists.
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Bigger Than Jesus
At the height of his group's fame, he said that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.” It was during a 4 March 1966 interview for the London Evening Standard with a friend, Maureen Cleave, that he made an off-the-cuff remark regarding religion:
- Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. . . . I don't know what will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more popular than Jesus now. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
Months later when Datebook, a teenage magazine, printed the remarks on its front cover, conservative groups particularly in the United States complained and publicly burned Beatles records and memorabilia - their reaction was that someone had to buy the records before they could burn them. Meanwhile some radio stations banned their music and some concert performances had to be cancelled. The Vatican denounced them, leading them to arrange an 11 August 1966 press conference which included the following:
- Lennon: I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have got away with it, but I just happened to be talking to a journalist friend (Maureen Cleave), and I used the words "Beatles" as a remote thing, not as what I think — as Beatles, as those other Beatles like other people see us. I just said "they" are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. But I said it in that way which is the wrong way.
- Reporter: Some teenagers have repeated your statements — "I like The Beatles more than Jesus Christ." What do you think about that?
- Lennon: Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.
- Reporter: But are you prepared to apologise?
- Lennon: I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.
As a result, governing members accepted his apology. Although the furor died down, constant Beatlemania, mobs, crazed teenagers, and now a press ready to tear them to pieces over any quote was too much to handle. The Beatles soon decided to stop touring, and never performed a scheduled concert again. A firework was thrown on the stage at one of their last concerts and McCartney later said that the band all looked at Lennon, fearing a gun had been fired at him. The pressure of dealing with incidents like that convinced even McCartney to say that he had had enough []].
Nutopia
In 1973, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, described their utopia.
Imagine
During a drug episode when he was taking LSD, according to Mark Hertsgaard in A Day in the Life, Lennon allegedly thought he was Jesus Christ come back again. Hertsgaard claims Lennon continued the belief when he woke up the following day. However, Lennon later called himself an atheist, writing that “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”
Lennon’s atheism is found in the song, “Imagine,” perhaps written as an LSD reaction, in which he conjures up a world without countries or religion:
- Imagine there’s no heaven,
- it’s easy if you try,
- no Hell below us,
- above us only sky.
- Imagine all the people
- livin’ for today.
- Imagine there’re no countries,
- it’s not hard to do;
- nothing to kill or die for
- and no religion too.
- Imagine all the people
- livin’ life in peace.
- Imagine no possessions:
- I wonder if you can;
- no need for greed or hunger,
- a brotherhood of man,
- all the people sharing all the world.
- You may say I’m a dreamer,
- but I’m not the only one.
- Some day I hope you'll join us,
- and the world will be as one.
- - Words and music by John Lennon. © 1971 Northern Songs Ltd. (Maclen Music)
"Imagine" became an anthem for non-believers and anti-war demonstrators.
Views
Asked once if he was worried about the prospect of nuclear destruction, Lennon replied, “Well, like everyone else I don’t want to end up a festering heap, but I don’t stay up nights worrying. I’m preoccupied with life, not death.”
On the birth in 1975 of his son, Sean, Lennon retired from music to become a house-husband.
His January 1981 interview in Playboy showed Lennon as something of a waverer. As for Dylan’s having become a born-again Christian, Lennon replied,
- For whatever reason he’s doing it, it is personal for him and he needs to do it. But the whole religion business suffers from the Onward, Christian Soldiers bit. There’s too much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I’m not pushing Buddhism, because I’m no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian, but there’s one thing I admire about the religion: There’s no proselytizing.
Lennon’s very interest in cult leaders in India, however, was highly criticized by many non-theists.
In a 1971 interview for Red Mole, an underground magazine, Lennon remarked:
- I've always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere. I mean, it's just a basic working class thing, though it begins to wear off when you get older, get a family and get swallowed up in the system. In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to overshadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And that religion was directly the result of all that superstar shit - religion was an outlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to life, isn't there? This isn't it, surely?' But I was always political in a way, you know. In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around. I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder, because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression coming down on us - it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle world it got left out, I got farther away from reality for a time.
- At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feel my own pain.
The End
In 1980 he recorded "(Just Like) Starting Over," but he was shot by a deranged fan just before the song's release. His death affected millions, but record sales soared. Friends recalled that in the 1960s when asked how he expected to die, he responded, "I'll probably be popped off by some loony."
That loony was Mark David Chapman, who shot Lennon in front of his residence, the Dakota in Manhattan at 1 West 72nd Street, just after autographing a Double Fantasy album cover for Chapman.
Chapman pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. He has been denied parole several times and remains incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility.
In his last interview (recorded the morning of his death), Lennon mentioned that he often felt that somebody was stalking him (although he was referring to federal agents in the 1970s who had tried to deport him).
Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, and his ashes were kept by Yoko Ono. Some believe his ashes were scattered in Strawberry Fields, a place dedicated to him in New York City. His will left most of his property to an estate controlled by his wife.
(See entries for Royston Ellis, Sam Phillips, and Yoko Ono.)
War Is Over
Yoko Ono, on 8 December 2007, sent a greeting that included a humanistic film clip with Lennon discussing "Imagine Peace."
