IT STILL IS "A DRAG"...
...John Lennon remembered...again...
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When John Lennon was gunned down THIRTY years ago (how time flies), the inquisitive members of the press shoved their microphones into Paul McCartney's face with questions such as "what do you think?", "how do you feel?", "what do you have to say", etc. etc., and Macca was then supposed to come up with something intelligent, sensitive, and all-knowing, but that didn't happen. McCartney said that John Lennon's death was "A Drag". And he was taken to task for having used that phrase to describe his feelings about Lennon's death. "A DRAG????" Well, it IS a drag. How can anyone be expected to say the right thing whilst undergoing the rampant inquisitiveness of the Press at precisely the worst moment?
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I read some time back, that when Paul first found out about John's passing, he went to the studios to do some work on a song because, well, he didn't know what else to do. He and others in the studio laid down a few tracks, but Paul was obviously in a "drag" type of mood. The session was cut short, and outside the studio, waiting like a pack of the sharks they are, were the Newsmen waiting to jump on Every Word that McCartney would say. I'm sure that what he felt inside was akin to having your entire system blown up and ripped to shreds. How can you sum that up in a word or two? Oftentimes the emotions are whirling around at the speed of light and it's impossible to say the right thing. Just ask someone who's suddenly lost someone special and see what they say. In my case, I felt gloom and doom as I'd never felt before December 8th, 1980. What happened to him affected me for weeks afterward, and in a way, still does, for usually write a post like this one every First Week Of December. It's something I can't forget.
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If you look at the Beatles' articles listed on the left margin of this page, (which can also be found at http://www.whatgoeson.com/), a Beatles historian-guy has said that, it STILL is a drag. And YES, it is. It's a drag to hear a Beatles' song, if it makes you remember that John Lennon was fatally wounded. It's a drag to see a Beatles' movie or hear a Beatles' song if it makes you recall that John Lennon was shot and killed. It's a drag to read a Beatles bio or to sift through your collection of Beatles records, compact discs or cassettes, and all of a sudden, think, "oh yeah, John's still gone", which is the way I felt after seeing "Imagine" (the Lennon bio-pic from the early '80s). At the end of the show, after watching Lennon on-screen for two hours, the thot hit me as I exited the theatre that " Lennon is still DEAD." What a drag, indeed.
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Had this not happened to John, he'd still be alive, right? Well, who knows? Lennon was 40 years old when he met his fate. Had he not been mercilessly blown away, perhaps he might have died of natural causes, or in a car crash, or perhaps getting run down by a bus in New York City. Maybe he would've died from Cancer or Complications of Pneumonia or any number of other things. But at the very least, he would've lived at least a few more years. The reason we have such harsh memories of Lennon's death is that he died an Ugly Death. Ugly, Awful, Terrible, Senseless and Shocking. It's easy to draw a parallel between the deaths of John Lennon and John F. Kennedy. Both were Shocking, and are cases of Unfulfilled Promise. We'll never know what either of them would've done if they'd lived. But in both cases, had they lived, we'd be certainly happy enough to have gone along for the ride. So this is what assassins' bullets do. They negate hope. They cause sorrow. And They injure all of us.
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I've said in prior postings that George Harrison's death has made it a bit easier to accept Lennon's death. It has to a point, reinforcing the fact that the Beatles were never going to reunite, which is OKAY. Had a Beatles' reunion never happened, John probably would have written some more songs and maybe would've made more records, gone on tour, and m-a-y-b-e reunited with his former band-mates...? I was never one to clamor for a Beatles' reunion, but who knows what John might have done with the 'Fabs' or on his own? From all indications, after 5 years away from the music business, he was all charged-up and ready to go. I guess we'll never know. When the 'Double Fantasy' album first came out (I bought my copy two weeks before he died), I was pleased to hear his voice again. He sounded good.
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As of December 8th, 1980, all of a sudden we all lost someone whose presence was reassuring. It would've been fascinating to go along, to see how things would've turned out. I've always thought of record albums as "letters from home", letting us know that The Artist is still alive, doing well, and would've represented another step in the process of life as we all grow old together. We were all ROBBED of that when John Lennon, icon that he was, was suddenly no more. A part of me, buried deeply in my subconcious, is still, after all this time, VERY ANGRY about what happened to John Lennon. I think that's true for multitudes of us.
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And that's where this posting must end. If I write any more than this, things are going to get Really Ugly. Suffice it to say that even though religions teach forgiveness, I don't think I could ever forgive something like this. "To forgive is divine", sure, but I'm not at that point yet. Not even after Thirty Years. Nobody told me there'd be days like these...