Today. October 9th, a soft slow lazy rain hovered over Chicago. The day is almost over. But still time to wish you happy birthday.
Maybe Liverpool was like this too?
Maybe it was raining when you sat on the bedroom floor of your friend Paul's house and listened to Buddy Holly, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Elvis and then made up some songs of your own?
Maybe it was raining in Hamburg, those early days when your band would go for 8-10 hours a set. Every day. It really all started from the fact that you guys practiced. You poured the sweat of the hardest working guy on the Liverpool docks into your job. You put your hours in. My God, you guys were good. You worked at being good. And it showed.
Maybe it was raining outside of the Ed Sullivan Theater that first night you came through the tiny black and white Zenith TV in our families basement, I hushed my sisters to listen, they liked Paul but I thought you were the cool one.
On that night that everything changed.
I remember looking at your scribbled handwriting on the ragged piece of paper in the most stately of glass display cases in the British Museum. That piece of paper where you wrote:
“Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved you more.”
Maybe it was raining that night in front of the Dakota. That night you were shot down dead.
That night everything changed again.
It's been what. . .that many years?
Jesus.
Sometimes I forget that you are gone.
But then I remember what you left behind.
I listen and I grin.
Trying to be a bit like you.
As if I knew one or two of your secrets.
And of course I don't.
But I can sure feel you there when you sing.
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Molly Lilly
Lea Lane
Thomas Rogers
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Noni The Intern
Walter Blevins
Salon.com
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Are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
Thank you John.
Happy Birthday, John.
“Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved you more. ” Brings tears every time...
and , "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans..."
Were truer words ever written?
-rated-
I can only speak my mind
Julia
Julia
Sleeping sand
Silent cloud
Touch me
So I sing a song of love
Julia
Julia, One of my favorite of his songs, ever.
We still remember you, John Lennon. As long as we can do that, we won't lose you completely although we miss you. Happy Birthday.
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope...
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now"
there was no one quite like him, ever.
Happy Birthday, Johnny.
Kris---you just wrote a great "mini-post" right there! Amazing what a genius can inspire.
Thanks Andy!
Mothership--jamming with Shawn---THAT is cool! I saw a video of him, Moby and Rufus Wainright singing "Across the Universe when I ws assembling this that ws mesmerizing. And no, truer words WERE ever written."
STim--I had forgotten about that proximity to the Magna Carta---that thought struck me too and it is incredibly telling.
Owl--yep. all comes down to that.
Melissa--Julia was my first choice and I couldn't find a video. So the almost never seen picture of him young with Cynthia is for the spirit of Julia. When he sang that song I learned something about how tough edgy artists can also be tender. . . .
wschanz---that's it exactly
Lonnie---that could have been his mantra because that thought and attitude ran through pretty much his whole body of work. (BTW I've missed you! Probobly out making money or something huh?)
Michael---me too. I was looking at the "in 2009 he would have been 69, 0r 70 " or something I blocked the year from my mind because it made me too sad.
I commented on and rated this yesterday and by the time I hit enter you had taken it down... Basically said that I have not much use for those don't recognize the cultural icon that was/is John. I'm proud to say that even my 16 year old son is a huge fan. Thanks Man, this would have passed me by without your post.
My god, he was an amazing person.
Nora---I even got to hear Terri Hemmert for a few minutes, which is as close as it comes to sitting in a room and talking with John.
Rod---you're right---ageless.
Thanks to all who left messages in his honor---Isn't it great to hear the lyrics people share?
If you've got a lyric---share it!
You mentioned Hamburg and now I can't get "Komm gib mir deine Hand" out of my mind. Of course, there are worse things than that.
Thanks Greg and Traveller1!
singing along.
And yes, "May we all shine on..."
Julie--I was also at a kitchen table when I heard. XRT. Was in shock
femme--I've been back to sing along with this 1/2 a dozen times. I know the feeling
the devilinme---THAT is the message!
I was loath to admit that much as I loved The Stones, I knew they'd always be secondbest. I just couldn't admit -- even to myself -- that I could also love a band my sister loved.
I didn't complain when my dad got a couple of tickets to the Shea Stadium concert and gave them away to someone else, him knowing how much disdain I felt for them.
I hardly looked up at the window of the hotel the band was staying at in '64 when they played Ed Sullivan. Bunch of screaming girls on the sidewalk. Yech.
These days, I find myself easing back in my office chair and plugging into YouTube and searching out prime Beatles songs. Not Sgt. Pepper or even Abbey Road but songs from Beatles '65, and Yesterday and Today and b-sides: "I Saw Her Standing There," "Slow Down," "Run for Your Life," -- the stuff they played as a band, before the orchestrations and the experiments -- simple, rollicking pop music, two guitars, a bass and drums. It's heaven. While I was recuperating from surgery in the hospital a while back, I had a Beatles epiphany that I hope to post about more fully one of these old days. I'll be stealing your phrase about them, Roger "On that night everything changed."
Before I go any further, I want to mention what's always been a chilling moment for me. I went through my secret love affair with The Beatles while enduring adolescence in Hartsdale NY. I remember walking down Central Avenue, playing one Lennon-McCartney song after another in my head. It's about the only positive memory I have of the place.
Flashforward to the miserable night he was murdered, following the news and trying to tell my kids what had happened and how sad it was and a few days later writing a eulogy for the lousy paper I was working for at the time that got cut to shreds by some bozo editor
and reading on about the fourth day that his remains were to be buried (actually, cremated) at some place called Ferndale Cemetery, in Hartsdale, NY.
It was a most miserably unhappy discovery that Ive never quite been able to forget -- the memory of my teenage self, happy for a few teenage minutes, walking down a street where later the broken body of one of the sources of that happiness would be reduced to ashes.
As I said, a most miserable time, made bearable then as now by the work that survives him and every other ashen moment of my life since then.
Thanks for reminding me, Roger.
Happy birthday, Lennon!
I never agreed much with Yoko's world view, but John definitely had my attention.
His body may be gone, but his spirit lives on.
Happy Birthday, John. Still hoping and praying that someday, we WILL give peace a chance.
Rated.
Second, I was really surprised that no one else mentioned the Stones so thank you for adding them to the discussion. Cause the contrast between the 2 bands really did mean something back then and it does now too. I can't help but think of Mick as being first and foremost the most successful marketer to ever graduate from the London School of Economics. How many years now has it been that he's been selling air? But of course there was a time when that wasn't true. And we will of course never know the "what if's" of John.
Your scene of the tragedy was bone chilling because you seamlessly wove it into real life with the bozo editor. Right where it should be.
When I posted the picture of John and Cynthia---not one you see every day--it was in honor of those prime moments of simple joy captured in the early stuff---exactly as you said.
Exactly as you said.