Y'KNOW, MAN, I'M ALL ABOUT PEACE, ME.
It's my great unwritten post: How the Beatles Killed Rock'n'Roll; how the dire, druggy doggerel of Sergeant Pepper ushered in decades of equally pretentious concept albums by legions of equally jumped-up, gobby tossers, almost but not quite obliterating the genius of Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Phil Spector, anaesthetising us with Tales From Topographic Oceans, Songs From The Wood, Days Of Future Passed and Pictures At An Exhibition, to name but four monstrosities; overblown, grandiose, pompous rubbish - all inspired by the Fab Mopsters and notably a simpering, over-indulgent George Martin.
There can be no questioning the rare magic, the energy, the charm, the invention of earlier Beatles' albums but sadly it is for Pepper that they are most revered and it was their inability to row back - or Get Back - from its excess which sundered the band; they were all, by then, egotisitical pricks, of course, even the dummy at the back, although they could have coped with that, The Eagles do, Keef and Mick do, Queen did, but a self-conferred status of genius will ruin all involved, and with the Fab Four it did, McCartney now fronting his own tribute band; Hari Georgeson, meditating and smoking his days away in wealthy isolation, dodging the Taxman; the dummy grunting and farting his way through a now bitter, meaningless life and Scouse Lennon blown away on his own doorstep, one of the worst things, possibly the worst thing ever to happen, ever, Oh, Man, it was just so, like, bad.
A mean drunk, a drug addict, a wife beater, an absent father, a cruel, selfish, spiteful, vicious arsehole, was Lennon. And stripped of his collaborative muse, Macca, Johnny proved a mediocre musician post-Beatles, screeching about Peace, from inside a bag or a bedroom or some such shit, ineptly regurgitating rock'n'roll classics with wanker-junkies like Elton John and Harry Nilsson or gurning about his new-born and favourite son, the other one having been Yoko- junked, along with poor, mistreated Cynthia; Jesus, a tightfisted, sanctimonious arsehole, a tuneless waster and an emissary from Househusbandsville Nouvelle. And yet somehow martyrdom becomes him, even as it enriches his horrid widow, so much so that today is like another November 22nd, Dead Kennedy Day, I remember where I was when John Lennon was blah blah blah, even if people didn't remember they'd think they did, so remorseless is the annual industry blitz, even if they weren't born then, Q magazine and the rest would persuade them that they were, somehow, there, in that terrible moment.
Much as I love Eight Days A Week, I'm A Loser and Hide Your Love Away, I don't care that he was killed, better him than me. And if you court celebrity, showbizzing, facetiously grandstanding around the world like some junkie Mahatma Ghandi, then it stands to reason that among the millions whom you seduce there will be some who want you dead. Everybody knows that.
The thing that is upsetting is that over at the Observer, the world's leading liberal voice, the mesage boards are full of young people saying, Normally I'm Opposed To The Death Penalty But I Have To Say This Was A Case For It and that every time, these last thirty years that BeatleKiller Mark Thompson and parole are mentioned in the same breath, the revolting Yoko Ono screams the house down, as only she can, the rotten old witch. Peace, Man, yes, and love; all you need is love, love, love is all you need, love is all you need......
6 comments:
Ah, the liberating effect of reading the tabooed truth...
I wouldn't level the accusation of death knell at Sgt. Pepper, which has some nice tunes on it. No, for me it was Revolver, an utterly unlistenable-to self-indulgence that heralded in the Age of the Concept Album. Never mind the music, feel the concept, dude.
Well....Yes....but he made a lovely cup of tea.
The day the music died, eh? "Not!", as the children say.
It is an interesting congruence that we find in your last two, Mr I. The shouting and yelling for Lennon's killer to be strung up is the same ignorant, illiberal oafishness as that now being levelled at Mr Wikileaks. Chapman was just a mad loser/loner who has faded into an irrelevant nothingness, a wandering ghost alone in his misery. Assange though is an international super-traitor who has betrayed us all - or so our masters would have us believe. You can bet your arse on it that there a thousand other murky secrets for every one that he has exposed. So let's just agree that it's a rough and difficult business sifting through megabytes of cant and hypocrisy, and cut the man a bit of slack. The mob, though, is ever with us, easy to prod them to scream for the blood of the Chapmans and the Assanges.
And he is probably safer in the jug in Blighty than anywhere else on the planet. Out on the street, he'll be dead by Christmas.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/07/18665978.php i wonder
Why didn't the guy shoot Yoko too? Why, for the love of God, why?
That's the trouble with narcissists though isn't it? They frequently have "charisma" or are fascinating (because they have bits of humanity missing?) and often have apparently special skills? For example I know one who can, within seconds or minutes, elicit a person's most profound emotional vulnerability. This would be a great gift if he had any empathy, but as he doesn't it is just a mind game and a power trip. It makes other people think however, that he is a fabulous healer.
Lennon was a Hunt and a Hoon, but to hear peeps on the radio talking about him you'd think he WAS Jesus. Peace? Peace?!
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