A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to play a song by Lennon at a party and I did so. I played and sang Imagine by the former Beatle. It started me thinking about John and a few days later I ran across this book and grabbed it.
I don't read many biographies as I usually find them boring. This one was not boring, at all. I skipped around in it a bit, rather than read it straight through. At least until I got to the latter part of John's life, when he and Yoko were living at the Dakota building in New York City. For some reason, I sat enthralled and read for several hours without getting up.
At the time that the book was talking about, my focus was not on music, but on building a career in a challenging field, nuclear power, and raising a family. Which is even more challenging. So I knew little about Lennon's life at that phase. I'll take the liberty of telling you a few tid-bits from the book.
After John's fortieth birthday, Yoko would awake at night to find John crying. He'd fret over the thought that he might die and that she and Sean (his son) might be "put out on the street". Imagine that.
There was a passage where the story was told about John's cat falling from the seventh floor of their apartment building, and it was killed. It was said that John cried over that mishap. Can you imagine that?
One of John's friends was astonished that John was angry because he had no book on the New York Times Bestseller List. The man said to John, "You haven't even written a book!" To which the Beatle replied, "That's not the point, is it?"
John was very jealous of Paul McCartney, in many ways. For instance, Yesterday became the most covered (performed by other individuals) song, worldwide. More so than Imagine, for instance. Hey, John, I did Imagine a few times. Anyway, Paul's angelic image irritated the rebel a little bit, also. Then, when Paul and his new band, Wings, became a huge concert draw, that galled the former Beatles leader. It's funny that we, as fans, think that our heroes have the world by the tail and we cannot imagine them as insecure, unhappy, unfulfilled or withdrawn.
When John went for a long time without doing anything creative, (he and Yoko had made a pact to do that, by the way) he devoted himself to raising Sean and doted upon the youngster. It was, in fact, a near tragedy that brought Lennon's creative juices into flow again. It happened on this wise. He had chartered a big sailboat and was cruising to Bermuda. The crew was limited and when they sailed through a storm, only the Captain and John were still in any condition to work. After Mon Capitan had been at the helm for 48 hours, he had John pilot the ship while he slept. John did well and the flush of confidence and self assurance that his exploit brought sparked a return to the creativity of his youth. He started writing songs again and the Double Fantasy album was born. Can you imagine that?
Then, when he and Yoko had been recording one evening, they were going to eat at a restaurant. John insisted on stopping by the Dakota building to kiss his son goodnight. That was the December evening when a psychopath shot John Lennon five times, and then stood calmly awaiting the police. I can't, and don't want to, imagine that.
If you find John Lennon interesting, at all, I think you'd enjoy this book. I found myself a bit melancholy, and sober, as I placed it on the table and walked out to sit on the porch swing. In the darkness, I sat and wondered about life and death, fate, and a million other things, here at the author's green retreat.
I'm CE Wills.
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