You don't know the first thing about tomorrow. You're nothing but a wisp of fog, catching a brief bit of sun before disappearing.
- James 4:14
This weekend a lot of attention is being paid to John Lennon, and rightfully so. One can go on and on about the ever-growing impact of Lennon on popular culture. His talents as a musician, song writer, self-promoter, and, especially, as a lyricist are legendary and unequaled in music history. Put it this way: 30 years after her last album, Lady Gaga will not get a Google banner in her honor. Lennon did.For all of his talent and ingenuity, Lennon lived a life that was filled with neglect and heartache. Abandoned by both his father and, ultimately, mother, Lennon grew up with an aunt in the blue collar, working class town of Liverpool. By all accounts the two celebrities who had the most impact on Lennon during his formative years were James Dean and Elvis Presley. Those two superstars fed the future Beatle's rebellious streak and encouraged the lad to combine music with just enough attitude to become both popular and rich. It worked well, but only after the talented Lennon surrounded himself with other talented musicians and hard working self-promoters.
The ultra-success of Beatlemania ultimately never cured John Lennon's growing sense of disenchantment, and actually seems to have driven him even deeper into the pit. What started out as recreational marijuana use turned into LSD experimentation and a full-blown heroine addiction by the late sixties. While many might argue that drugs made Sgt. Pepper's possible, no one questions that Lennon's creative capabilties began to nosedive by the time he started his use of heroine (see Let It Be).
His marriage to Yoko Ono came about when Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, discovered that the Japanese-American "Conceptual Artist" (whatever that means) had been having an adulterous relationship with John. The Lennon/Ono marriage was rocky from the very start and included periods of hardcore substance abuse, mutual adultery, international controversy, and - lest we forget - more ingenious self-promotion which spanned the first half of the seventies. What lacked during this period for Lennon was any actually good music. So Lennon decided to quit writing music and, legend has it, focus fulltime on rebuilding his relationship with his wife and growing a relationship with his youngest son.
In 1980, after a half decade as a stay at home father, Lennon and Ono released the LP Double Fantasy. Ono's contributions not withstanding, Double Fantasy represents John's best work since Pepper, maybe even Revolver. It is far and away the greatest post-Beatle album by any member of the quartet (All Things Must Pass is a distant #2). Lennon's contributions to Double Fantasy focus on themes such as maturity, forgiveness, family devotion, and fatherly patience...themes which are far more adult oriented than songs about anarchy and class warfare and overblown allusions of a post-religious world. Perhaps these themes from the mind of the aging Lennon were more self-promotion, but perhaps they represent the first indicators of a major cultural shift of the eighties: Baby Boomers growing up and entering reality.
Whatever the case, Lennon's artistic creativity was no longer about fusing youthful rebellion to good music as much as fusing a truer and deeper sense of self-understanding to really good music. Or so one might imagine from those few tracks. Merely a month after the release of Double Fantasy, Lennon was shot dead. Just as he began talking about "Starting Over," his precarious life ended at age 40. Saturday will be his 70th birthday.
