All the hype surrounding John Lennon's seventieth birthday has got to me. He was dead at forty. I'm forty seven. Why should I look up - to a kid?
A few days ago I listened to a tape of John talking to a fan and I realized for the first time that he was a first class idiot. From the time he had just dropped out of art college people fawned over him and led him to believe that he was really smart and insightful. No, he was opinionated and very rich. That is a very dangerous combination, an invitation to fuckwittery of the highest order. Meeting Yoko Ono sealed his doom.
It is only because I was a Beatles fan before I could think that I had been taken in by all this. I can see as clearly as the next man that Michael Jackson was a lunatic, empowered to heights of maniacal idiocy by the sycophants that surrounded him. But just like the Michael Jackson fans who swallowed the Koolaid before they could think I was vaccinated against seeing John Lennon for what he truly was: just a bloke who played and wrote music.
For years I have defended Yoko because John loved her, and loved John because he was my hero. But why? Just because John was one of the first atheists I was aware of. That's it! I lacked a better role model so I looked to John as a hero. It makes no sense at all. I am not a Lennonist, not a socialist, not a pacifist, not a braindead peacenik. The only thing I share in common with John Lennon is the idea that the world would be a better place if we didn't bother with religion.
BANG. He has no hold over me! I am free! He was just a musician. Liking his music does not require me to fawn over him or see him as a great figure in world politics or a great thinker. He wasn't! He was a smart lad with a natural flair for music and leadership, he built The Beatles and drove their careers forward. For that I am grateful, but it ends there.
The Ononists are a bunch of wankers! It is simply absurd magical thinking to believe that you can create peace by marching, thinking about it, sitting in a bag or growing your hair. Or chanting. Or releasing a record of your dead husband singing a sentimental song to earn you millions. Or sticking bits of paper on a tree. Self indulgent nonsense!
Peace requires effort, goodwill and restraint by the people with the capacity to fight wars, not pseudo-action by people who lack the power to make war.
Peace is made by warriors and politicians, not by poets, artists, singers and art school drop-outs.
Liking the Beatles music does not require me to endorse their crazy ideas. I don't have to become a vegetarian or a champagne socialist. I don't have to have their haircuts or approve of their choice of women or endorse their crazy ideas either. I am free to enjoy consuming the product they sold without any need to endorse their world-view. I don't have to be a believer in magic to like the Beatles music any more than I need to support the same football club as the fisherman who caught my lunch or approve of a filmstar's spouse, politics or religion to enjoy the film. Music is just a product sold like any other, produced by those who can produce it and sold to those who want to buy it. Music should never be the basis of a person's identity and nobody should get their political views from song lyrics.
“Please don't put your life in the hands
Of a rock and roll band
Who'll throw it all away”
Noel Gallagher
(another over-indulged wanker)
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