Thinking the Unthinkable About John Lennon

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Haven't heard most of George Harrison's work, have you?

i've heard a lot of it. most of it is bad but innocuous. i think what bugs me so much about "ram" is the fact that mccartney feels the need to keep throwing in these random little "do-do-do-do-do-dos" on every fucking song! horrible.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 10 December 2005 01:04 (eighteen years ago) link

three months pass...

They sang 'Hey Jude'? Why? Paul wrote that for John's son Julian after he abandoned him to go live with Yoko.

― Laurie, Tuesday, 4 April 2006 15:43 (eighteen years ago) link

Wow, great thread, I'm glad it came up.

"It is for that moment--not for John Lennon the man---that you are mourning, if you are mourning. Ultimately you are mourning for yourself."

My problem comes in that I don't think any of this is special about Lennon's case. Whenever you mourn ANYONE, you mourn the passing of someone who affected you personally and profoundly, that's how you're going to mourn them. Mourning is a selfish process; it's the way we heal with wounds. So, yes, of course you're going to be mourning for yourself. I don't think that there was a difference between the people mourning Lennon and the people that mourn the deaths of friends and loved ones every day. In each case, you're mourning the passing of another human being that made you feel happy, optimistic, perhaps loved. And in each case, it's utterly selfish and all about the hole missing in your life that the other person used to fill. And that's perfectly fine.

I agree with Tim Ellison on his points. People needed to mourn Lennon. Bangs was just living up his persona of Bangs. But I think that, down somewhere inside of him, he was just as sad as anyone around him was. Maybe that was his way of dealing with it.

― Harrison Barr (Petar), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 18:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Compare/contrast with Lester's 1976 remember-how-good-it-felt-to-be-alive essay on the British Invasion, in the first Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 18:04 (eighteen years ago) link

is that in one of the books?

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 07:35 (eighteen years ago) link

It's in the old, oversized Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock. Good shit. It basically made me buy a Zombies album when I was 15.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 07:37 (eighteen years ago) link

probably not in my college library...

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 07:39 (eighteen years ago) link

it's great tho! it has nik cohn's phil spector essay, one of the very best pieces ever written about pop (and about 186,000 times better than that tom wolfe piece which only gets remembered because he came up with "first tycoon of teen" - and spector was like 24! dork!), plus greil marcus' original punk essay (which got expanded into the first part of lipstick traces) and peter guralnick's original take on elvis, which is a far cry from that of his books - "his biggest talent turned out to be for making money."

also a hilariously smug dave marsh piece on neil young which sadly got kicked out of the most recent edition.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:00 (eighteen years ago) link

i have forwarded your post to the librarian.

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:06 (eighteen years ago) link

i wish you'd told me you were gonna do that, i would've used the shift key

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:14 (eighteen years ago) link

Here's the unthinkable: can we let both these fuckers rest in peace?

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:24 (eighteen years ago) link

nah it's ok, the britzor library will have it, i'll summon it up there.

need a library of ROCK here in london we really do.

― Real Goths Don't Wear Black (Enrique), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 09:31 (eighteen years ago) link

"Compare/contrast with Lester's 1976 remember-how-good-it-felt-to-be-alive essay on the British Invasion, in the first Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll."

That piece actually made it into later editions (maybe because it's referenced in Marcus' terrific Beatles essay.)

J.D. OTM about the old Stone book. I also dig the Marcus "Rock Film" essay and Janet Maslin's piece on Dylan (both of which got dropped from later editions).

― Chairman Doinel (Charles McCain), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:38 (eighteen years ago) link

Here's the unthinkable: can we let both these fuckers rest in peace?

NOOOOOOOOOOOO we must live in an endless 1975.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 15:44 (eighteen years ago) link

about 186,000 times better than that tom wolfe piece which only gets remembered because he came up with "first tycoon of teen" - and spector was like 24! dork!

agreed the RS piece is better but the "teen" of the title isn't about Spector's age, it's about his constituency

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 5 April 2006 16:28 (eighteen years ago) link

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Thinking the Unthinkable About John Lennon - Lester Bangs