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Location: Denver, CO | John Lennon's birthday came and passed (yesterday) without mention here. Interesting that one of the most influential singer/songwriter/guitarists of the 20th century slipped silently passed.
A happy birthday mention is certainly not for his benefit but to remind all to whom music is important and necessary that one of the great ones passed far too young. Happy Birthday John. |
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Posts: 15682
Location: SoCal | Well, he is dead...... |
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Posts: 9301
Location: south east Michigan | I have been very aware of it.
How could not not be? It's been all over the media.
Even looking forward to the Lennon bio-pic later this month.
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Perhaps the board was focused with other important matters. |
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Location: Newington, CT | No disrespect intended, but I was just never a fan. Didn't see what all the fuss was about. |
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September 2010
Posts: 36
Location: Denver, CO | Originally posted by AlanM:
No disrespect intended, but I was just never a fan. Didn't see what all the fuss was about. Interesting. Every musician I've ever seen interviewed, major or minor, acknowledges that the Beatles (aka John Lennon) had a major influence on them and their music. He, as a song-writer, singer, guitarist and member of the most influential band of the past century, changed the direction of popular music. That includes every genre of contemporary music for the past 40 years. So you don't have to be a fan of his, but simply a fan of music (which you must be unless you are here simply as a collector of guitars) to appreciate his contribution to music. Unless, of course, you are 10 and don't know the music world and its development at all. |
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Posts: 1565
Location: Indiana | Originally posted by DenverSteve:
Every musician I've ever seen interviewed, major or minor, acknowledges that the Beatles (aka John Lennon) had a major influence on them and their music. That is an enormously large paint brush you're using... |
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Posts: 36
Location: Denver, CO | Here's what much of the fuss was/is about. :)
A Day In The Life (Lennon-McCartney)
A Hard Day´s Night (Lennon-McCartney)
Across The Universe (Lennon-McCartney)
Aisumasen (I´m Sorry) (Lennon)
All I´ve Got to Do (Lennon-McCartney)
All Together Now (Lennon-McCartney)
All You Need Is Love (Lennon-McCartney)
And Your Bird Can Sing (Lennon-McCartney)
Angela (Lennon-Ono)
Any Time At All (Lennon-McCartney)
Ask Me Why (Lennon-McCartney)
Attica State (Lennon-Ono)
Au (Lennon-Ono)
Baby, You´re A Rich Man (Lennon-McCartney)
Baby´s Heartbeat (Lennon)
Baby´s In Black (Lennon-McCartney)
Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (Lennon)
Because (Lennon-McCartney)
Beef Jerky (Lennon)
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite (Lennon-McCartney)
Bless You (Lennon)
Borrowed Time (Lennon)
Bring On The Lucie (Freda People) (Lennon)
Cambridge 1969 (Lennon)
Christmas Time Is Here Again (Lennon-McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Cleanup Time (Lennon)
Cold Turkey (Lennon)
Come Together (Lennon-McCartney)
Cookin´ (in the Kitchen of Love) (Lennon)
Crippled Inside (Lennon)
Cry Baby Cry (Lennon-McCartney)
Cry For a Shadow (Harrison-Lennon)
Dear John (Lennon)
Dear Prudence (Lennon-McCartney)
Dear Yoko (Lennon)
Dig A Pony (Lennon-McCartney)
Dig It (Lennon-McCartney/Harrison/Starkey)
Do the Oz (Lennon-Ono)
Do You Want To Know A Secret (Lennon-McCartney)
Don´t Let Me Down (Lennon-McCartney)
Dr Robert (Lennon-McCartney)
Everybody´s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey (Lennon-McCartney)
Fame (Bowie-Lennon-Alomar)
Flying (Harrison-Lennon-McCartney-Starkey)
Free As A Bird (Lennon)
Girl (Lennon-McCartney)
Give Me Some Truth (Lennon)
Give Peace A Chance (Lennon-McCartney)
Glass Onion (Lennon-McCartney)
God (Lennon)
God Save Oz (Lennon-Ono)
Going Down On Love (Lennon)
Good Morning Good Morning (Lennon-McCartney)
Good Night (Lennon-McCartney)
Goodnight Vienna (Lennon)
Grow Old With Me (Lennon)
Happiness Is A Warm Gun (Lennon-McCartney)
Happy X-mas (War is Over) (Lennon-Ono)
Hello Little Girl (Lennon)
Help Me To Help Myself (Lennon)
Help! (Lennon-McCartney)
Here We Go Again (Lennon-Spector)
Hey Bulldog (Lennon-McCartney)
Hold On (Lennon)
How Do You Sleep? (Lennon)
How? (Lennon)
I Am The Walrus (Lennon-McCartney)
I Don´t Wanna Be a Soldier (Lennon)
I Don´t Wanna Face It (Lennon)
I Don´t Wanna Spoil The Party (Lennon-McCartney)
I Feel Fine (Lennon-McCartney)
I Found Out (Lennon)
I Know (I Know) (Lennon)
I Should Have Known Better (Lennon-McCartney)
I Wanna Be Your Man (Lennon-McCartney)
I Want You (She´s So Heavy) (Lennon-McCartney)
I´ll Be Back (Lennon-McCartney)
I´ll Cry Instead (Lennon-McCartney)
I´m a Loser (Lennon-McCartney)
I´m Happy Just To Dance With You (Lennon-McCartney)
I´m Losing You (Lennon)
I´m Only Sleeping (Lennon-McCartney)
I´m So Tired (Lennon-McCartney)
I´m Stepping Out (Lennon)
I´m the Greatest (Lennon)
I´ve Got A Feeling (Lennon-McCartney)
If I Fell (Lennon-McCartney)
Imagine (Lennon)
In My Life (Lennon-McCartney)
Instant Karma! (Lennon)
Intuition (Lennon)
Isolation (Lennon)
It Won´t Be Long (Lennon-McCartney)
It´s Only Love (Lennon-McCartney)
It´s Real (Lennon)
It's So Hard (Lennon)
Jamrag (Lennon-Ono)
Jealous Guy (Lennon)
John And Yoko (Lennon)
John Sinclair (Lennon)
Julia (Lennon-McCartney)
Life Begins At 40 (Lennon)
Little Child (Lennon-McCartney)
Loneliness (Lennon)
Look At Me (Lennon)
Love (Lennon)
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Lennon-McCartney)
Mean Mr Mustard (Lennon-McCartney)
Meat City (Lennon)
Mind Games (Lennon)
Misery (Lennon-McCartney)
Mother (Lennon)
Move Over Ms. L (Lennon)
Mr Hyde´s Gone (Don´t Be Afraid) (Lennon)
Mucho Mungo (Lennon)
Mulberry (Lennon)
My Life (Lennon)
My Mummy's Dead (Lennon)
New York City (Lennon)
No Reply (Lennon-McCartney)
No. 9 Dream (Lennon)
Nobody Loves You (When You´re Down And Out) (Lennon)
Nobody Told Me (Lennon)
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (Lennon-McCartney)
Not A Second Time (Lennon-McCartney)
Nowhere Man (Lennon-McCartney)
Nutopian International Anthem (Lennon)
Oh My Love (Lennon-Ono)
Oh Yoko! (Lennon)
Old Dirt Road (Lennon-Nilsson)
One After 909 (Lennon-McCartney)
One Day (At The Time) (Lennon)
Only People (Lennon)
Out the Blue (Lennon)
Please Please Me (Lennon-McCartney)
Polythene Pam (Lennon-McCartney)
Power To The People (Lennon)
Radio Play (Lennon)
Rain (Lennon-McCartney)
Real Love (Lennon)
Remember (Lennon)
Remember Love (Lennon)
Revolution (Lennon-McCartney)
Revolution 1 (Lennon-McCartney)
Revolution 9 (Lennon-McCartney)
Rock´n´Roll People (Lennon)
Run For Your Life (Lennon-McCartney)
Scared (Lennon)
Scumbag (Lennon-Ono-Zappa)
Serve Yourself (Lennon)
Sexy Sadie (Lennon-McCartney)
She Loves You (Lennon-McCartney)
She Said She Said (Lennon-McCartney)
Song For John (Lennon)
Steel And Glass (Lennon)
Stranger´s Room (Lennon)
Strawberry Fields Forever (Lennon-McCartney)
Sun King (Lennon)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Lennon-Ono)
Surprise, Surprise (Sweet Bird Of Paradox) (Lennon)
Tell Me Why (Lennon-McCartney)
The Ballad of John and Yoko (Lennon-McCartney)
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill (Lennon-McCartney)
The Luck Of The Irish (Lennon-Ono)
The Rishi Kesh Song (Lennon)
The Word (Lennon-McCartney)
There´s a Place (Lennon-McCartney)
This Boy (Lennon-McCartney)
Ticket To Ride (Lennon-McCartney)
Tight A$ (Lennon)
Tomorrow Never Knows (Lennon-McCartney)
Touch Me (Lennon)
Two Minutes Silence (Lennon)
Two Virgins (Lennon)
Wait (Lennon-McCartney)
Watching The Wheels (Lennon)
Well Well Well (Lennon)
What Goes On (Lennon-McCartney)
What You Got (Lennon)
Whatever Gets You Through The Night (Lennon)
When I Get Home (Lennon-McCartney)
Why (Lennon)
Woman (Lennon)
Woman Is The Nigger Of The World (Lennon-Ono)
Working Class Hero (Lennon)
Yer Blues (Lennon-McCartney)
You Are Here (Lennon)
You Can´t Do That (Lennon-McCartney)
You´re Going to Lose that Girl (Lennon-McCartney)
You´ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (Lennon-McCartney) |
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Location: Flahdaw | WAY overrated! |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Guess you never interviewed me either. There are some Beatles songs I like. Much more interested in the stuff McCartney, Harrison and Ringo did after they broke up. Sorry, I don't get the Lennon thing either. The Beatles and specifically Lennon do get mentioned as a major influence for many.... and I still don't understand why. |
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Posts: 7247
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | Wow, is that a complete list? My favorites aren't on it. :( |
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Posts: 11840
Location: closely held secret | I think it's more because the Beatles had such an influence on pop music in general. The number of songs they had in airplay was enough to produce hundreds of bands trying to capture their sound. The problem was, they kept changing that sound. A moving target is hard to hit.
There were many other bands that also had a hand in what rock sounds like today, but none seemed to have had the wide appeal of the Beatles.
While many of the Lennon Beatles songs are among my favorites, his post-Beatles music (other than a select few songs - Instant Karma, #9 Dream, Watchin the Wheels) never really did anything for me other than depress me. He always put down the notion that being part of the Beatles drove his creativity, but the quality of the material he produced after the breakup says otherwise.
Of course, he's frozen in time now. We never got to see what he might have done as he aged, mellowed and got off his social change bandwagon. Maybe written more songs the caliber of "Dear Prudence" and "Day In The Life"?
And DenverSteve... I doubt most Beatle fans have heard many of the post-beatle songs you have listed. We got tired of being screamed at and preached to by a very troubled and drugged-up pop star with an over-inflated view of his own influence. His 'legend' is more nostalgia than substance.
In solo careers, I'll take any of the other 3 over Lennon. |
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Posts: 1851
Location: Newington, CT | Again TRULY no disrespect meant here. I agree with dark bar. Lennon was overrated, I think. I say this fully aware that I could be wrong.
Like Mr. Ovation, I liked a few of their songs, but none were favorites. However, where my cavil lies is in the adulation for Lennon as social commentator. I think that if you were to take all his lyrics out of the realm of social commentary, then he wouldn't be nearly as admired as he is today. In other words, I don't think that the adulation for him is based on his music as much as on the perception of Lennon as the primary spokesman for some gauzy, ill-defined, amorphous vision of I-like-you-you-like-me, ephemeral vision of "world peace."
Also, JMHO, none of his melodies were anything all that remarkable, or sophisticated or ground-breaking, or, more importantly, worthy of singling out as a major contribution to music in general.
There were, I think, two major "indictments" of Lennon as important contributor to art or public policy: (1) the song CONSTANTLY mentioned as his finest legacy, "Imagine," always struck me as a good candidate for the most inane, insipid, silly, just-plain-dumb song ever written. (2) A song I always liked (for its melody) was "Give Peace a Chance."
Some of the lyrics for "Give Pdace a Chance' were: "All we are saying is give peace a chance." I'm pretty sure that I was not alone in recognizing that that was pretty much all they were saying.
I figured that if they brought their wide-eyed idealism to some of the major actors of the time, these people would have recognized them for what they were: useful idiots in the west.
I'm thinking of, of course, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Saddam Hussein (in power as of 1968), Brezhnev, Mao, etc...some of the most vicious tyrants of the century. Again, all they were saying was, "give peace a chance." And yet, these songs are the ones most highlighted as the bulk of Lennon's legacy.
And, lest one say that I'm reading too much into it, Lennon himself viewed himself as a major commentator on his times, and on the personalities mentioned above.
I was underwhelmed. |
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Posts: 396
| Well, I would say his influence, and the Beatles as a whole, is HUGE. Of course, people who die too young or in a tragic way are usually overrated. As single artists, I would agree with
Waskel that I find the work of the other three as post Beatles much more interesting. I would have liked to see, once he removed himself from the self-imposed cross, what music John Lennon would have produced. Too much of his post Beatles music focused on John the activist celebrity, instead of John the songwriter and singer. He produced a lot of crap on his post Beales albums, and a few very good songs. Personally, I love the Beatles music and the play it all the time. Also, post Beatles music by Harrison, especially, can be found all over my ipod. |
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Location: Denver, CO | I admire John Lennon's contribution to music. I've never thought of him as anything but a great poet and writer. Whether he is considered to be the spokesperson for a "gauzy, ill-defined, amorphous vision of I-like-you-you-like-me, ephemeral vision of world peace." I don't know. However I respect anyone who advocates for peace, equality and world harmony. Advocates for such noble causes plant the seeds for others to act upon, they don't actually create world peace or harmony. John's membership in the "fab four" - I believe - leaves, even today, an undeniable presence in modern music. |
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Posts: 10583
Location: NJ | Well as my mother would always say, there is chocolate AND vanilla.
Lennon choose to use his celebrity to bring attention to the causes he felt most strongly about. world peace, the end of war etc. Idealistic, perhaps but an intentional effort to focus on the needs of the world and its inhabitants as a whole.
Lennon was always my favorite Beatle, the one I felt was the most honest and had the most edge. McCartney's songs lost something without John's edge to drive them.
With that being said he also took risks. Doing music with Yoko, and trying to take things to another level. When you bought a solo Lennon LP you never got the feeling that any of the songs were written with the intention of being on the radio or being hits but they were there and just stood out for you to evaluate and enjoy or not.
With that said, yes not all of the stuff was listenable. And some outright horrible, if you take away the "artistic" part of the equation. But I am glad that he did it, even those records opened my mind to listen to composers that were not in the norm and unconventional.
I too think the iconic level that he is held at is rather uncomfortable and I would venture to say that he would also think so too, but again he used his celebrity to influence causes that were near to him. did it work, well probably not but then again if we look at the regard in which he is currently held then it did work. His message and legacy of world peace is brought out at any opportunity to promote it. Rather powerful IMHO.
I saw a blurb on Nobel and his prize. He invented many things that most influential was TNT. When his brother died the newspaper mistook it for him and call him the biggest merchant of death to modern man. He saw that as a sign to do something and directed his money in the Nobel prize which promoted literature, science, and ultimately peace.
Lennon did not need to do this. He lived his legacy and it followed him
Underwhelmed? perhaps but you and I should be so lucky |
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Posts: 2793
Location: Atlanta, GA. | Originally posted by DenverSteve:
Interesting. Every musician I've ever seen interviewed, major or minor, acknowledges that the Beatles (aka John Lennon) had a major influence on them and their music. They say the same thing about Michael Jackson. |
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Location: Newington, CT | alpep: agreed, and thanks for the additional perspective. I feel that I should add: to murder him was just a horrible thing.
I agree that it's just a good thing to try to promote world peace, or diminish violence, or defeat hunger and disease, and that, effective or not, those who work sincerely toward those goals should be applauded.
There is no indication that Lennon was anything but sincere. |
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Posts: 1851
Location: Newington, CT | Originally posted by cholloway:
Originally posted by DenverSteve:
Interesting. Every musician I've ever seen interviewed, major or minor, acknowledges that the Beatles (aka John Lennon) had a major influence on them and their music. They say the same thing about Michael Jackson. |
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Posts: 4996
Location: Phoenix AZ | No disrespect, but peoples legacy usually tends to get inflated when they pass away. More so if the death is a tragic one before it's time. Lennon, Croce, Denver, Morrison, Coban, Hendrix, etc. would never have achieved the notoriety they did had they still been alive. That's the way I see it. |
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| hmm...someone who influenced his generation, still inspires admiration (and derision) in generations following his early and untimely death at the hands of another, and whose main message was that we're all in this together and should try to live in peace...where have I heard that before? Most underwhelming, for sure. |
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December 2003
Posts: 13997
Location: Upper Left USA | I agree with Dave.
Choose your heroes well!
And when I'm gone I know that each of you will wish you had bought one of my guitars... |
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April 2008
Posts: 1851
Location: Newington, CT | Originally posted by MWoody:
I agree with Dave.
Choose your heroes well!
And when I'm gone I know that each of you will wish you had bought one of my guitars... Wrong!
I BOUGHT one of your guitars!
I wish I'd bought more! |
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December 2003
Posts: 13997
Location: Upper Left USA | :D
So I can go peacefully now... (like Hell!) |
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April 2008
Posts: 1851
Location: Newington, CT | Originally posted by MWoody:
:D
So I can go peacefully now... (like Hell!) Nope. If you make more like the one I bought, I'd like to have more...so you have to hang 'round for a bit. |
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March 2002
Posts: 15682
Location: SoCal | I, too, have one of Woodrow's guitars. So I'm ready for his passing.
I always thought the Lennon needed McCartney and vise versa. They balanced each other. Separately, neither of them appealed to me that much.
On his own, while I admired Lennon's passion for his causes, his music did nothing for me...... |
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Happy Birthday John Lennon
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