“Happy New Year…” Friend Jon just forwarded me this news article detailing a letter that John Lennon wrote a young songwriter in early 1970. The letter never reached the songwriter--it was intercepted and sold. Which I think is quite a neat metaphor for both Lennon's fundamental decency, and how the circumstances of his life conspired to make it difficult for him to express that.
(All words from Lennon interviews.) http://youtu.be/oSnjRaGoYyI (Via Jonathan.) [MG, Oct. 2013--This is from National Lampoon's great comedy album Radio Dinner, which came out in 1972, and you should listen to. John and Yoko were friends with National Lampoon art director Michael Gross, and used to hang around the magazine...until this came out, I suspect.]
...just maybe not when you're thirty-five. [Update February 2015: Here's a mini-doc on the "bigger than Jesus" controversy:] http://youtu.be/ETFKXMdjbkU
"What's the creepiest photo you have?... Yeah, that one." This is a two-part news program from 1989, where the author of the muckraking "The Lives of John Lennon" (just released at that time) debates Hunter Davies, the author of "The Beatles" authorized biography from 1968. Davies is very charming, and makes some very good points about Goldman's tendency to veer off into—well, the nicest thing to call it is "creative writing." I think that's exactly how any sensible person should read it; at points Goldman stops writing about the real John Lennon, whoever he was, and begins crafting a character [...]
http://www.youtube.com/v/4Ph4rZU0Ns4&h What's with the weird autotuning/dubbing? It makes him sound like that guy from The Beatles cartoon.I've written some thoughts on this at my blog, mikegerber.com. (Someday, I'll investigate cross-posting.) [Sorry, folks: in 2012, mikegerber.com was hacked by Azerbaijanis, if you can believe it. I couldn't fix it, so I put up a generic landing page. Unfortunately at present I can't link to the old posts. Revisiting this John Lennon Citroen commercial five years later, I think we can assume the mikegerber.com post was probably some typical MG whinging about not selling John Lennon to the highest bidder. And frankly? With John [...]
John Lennon The Life by Philip Norman The New York Times Book Review sent Philip Norman's new biography John Lennon: The Life to singer-songwriter Nellie McKay, and her very positive review is written in the manner of Lennon the prose stylist. Did she pull it off? I'm of two minds, myself. On the one hand, the review is a chore to get through, in a way In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works are not. As I read, my delight was heavily diluted by frustration. But that's at least in part a genre problem: a book review, [...]
John, Cyn, and showbiz newcomer Julian in LIFE, 1965. DEVIN McKINNEY • Seems to me I recognized the shot Michael posted below, or one quite like it ... It's evidently from the same session that yielded this shot, part of a pictorial in Life magazine's issue of May 21, 1965. The story, "Hear That Big Sound," is about the current exploding state of pop music and features pix and hype-nuggets on a range of current faves, some mere pan-flashes, others eventual mainstayers: Chuck Berry, Supremes, Herman (sans Hermits), Pacemakers, Righteous Brothers, Wayne Fontana, Dave Clark Five, Dreamers (as in Freddie [...]
John and Julian Lennon. I'm not even going to attempt to date/source this photo (we know what happened the last time), but I discovered it yesterday and wanted to pass it along today. Spare a thought, and be good to the people who love you.
Now that's a Great Seal! MIKE GERBER • Hello folks--Dullblogger Mike here. Sorry I've been silent, but it's for the best of reasons: I've just finished a comic mystery about a rock star who survives an assassination attempt, and has to go incognito to find out who did it and why. I'll let everybody know when it comes out; I trust it will meet with your Beatle-bonkers approval. As part of my coming-back-to-life I forward the following from my boon companion Jon Schwarz, proprietor of the very fine progressive blog A Tiny Revolution. It's a good reminder about just how crazy [...]
George watches This Boy. http://www.youtube.com/v/NAZGpFrx8G0&h