Remembering John Lennon

by Anthony McCarthy

DEC 8^th 2015 will the 35^th Anniversary of John Lennon’s death in unfortunate circumstances outside the Dakota building in New York. A short bit away you will locate Strawberry Fields, the area of Central Park dedicated to his memory. I have being there, done that – paying my own personal tribute to one of my all-time favourite musical heroes.

He was born in Liverpool during 1940 and was raised an Anglican. He co-founded The Beatles who became the world’s most popular band during the swinging sixties.

Their ultra positive loving songs simply left the world in a better place than before the first few bars of their debut hit “Love Me Do” were aired. And John Lennon continued the trend with his subsequent solo recordings, more so than any of the other three in my estimation. And the bright young ones of the current era are discovering this music in their own way mostly via social media channels. I had a chat with one such fan Des O’Mara in the back part of his own café “Mirables” in downtown Dunmanway. “How did you first get tuned in to Lennon’s music & that of his preceeding band? “My mother lived in London for parts in the 1960s and it was her record collection that initially spawned my interest. She possesses the original vinyl versions of the Beatles albums & the first couple of Lennon’s solo ones too. And sometimes I play these albums in our ancient Pye record player and that is really special for we are then hearing the recordings exactly as their early fans would have heard them”. Do you think he paid a price for his art? “Yes, because everything has its price and the more truer the artist the more he can come under attack. And so it was with John, who suffered for his art in no uncertain terms at different times. The FBI led campaign to deport him from America was one such example”.

If you compose the very best, you may as well work with the very best. The fact that the great Phil Spector was in the production chair for most of John’s post Beatles recordings is a prime reason why they still retain that cutting edge right to this day.

When songs like Instant Karma, Woman is the Nigger of the World & Imagine were originally released back in the early 1970s, they were out of sync with the simple Catholic created consciousness that predominated here at that time, especially so in rural areas. In fact these JL songs have a lot more relevance with the modern era Ireland.

The great songs by the great artists like JL always raise the bar for all of us to aim at; they coax the ordinary man to think things through more deeply than he was accustomed to in other words.

One night I had this dream:

‘Tis Live at the Marquee Cork and just after the clock struck 9, John Lennon appears on stage to rapturous applause. ………….

After a brief hello he shifts to the side and sits down next to the piano. He hits a few bars and begins singing Imagine……………………

And the whole audience sang every single word……..

And yes things are meant to be that good some of the time. They’ll be days like this as Van the Man sang. Alas it never came true but what a wonderful dream it was…….