The diary below was originally posted in my blog, the and adapted for Political Cortex. Allow me to digress from the usual politics and current events topics of my blog writing to acknowledge the anniversary of John Lennon's death. I was only eleven in 1980 and watching Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell delivered the news.
I had recently learned all the lyrics to the Beatles, Rubber Soul album and was especially moved by the lyrics to "In My Life." Personally I've never been a great believer in icons. Lennon himself delivers a stirring rebuke to the myth of icons with his classic composition early in his solo career.
Yet Lennon to me was different. Lennon was an artistic genius and international statesman. His personal journey and evolution took place in a fishbowl.
As a chauvinist from Liverpool, Lennon abused his first wife Cynthia. Under Yoko's influence he became a feminist who sang, "women are the nigger of the world." During Beatlemania, Lennon was an absentee father and detached from his first-born Julian.
With his second born Sean, Lennon opted to jettison fame's narcissism and dedicated himself solely to raising his son. A tormented soul Lennon in his youth was violent and got in more than his share of scraps. But in 1969 he wrote "Give Peace A Chance" and a timeless rallying cry for antiwar protesters was born.
Four simple words that sent shivers down the cowardly spines of the Nixon Administration who wanted to deport him when Lennon moved to America. By 1980, Lennon had confronted his inner demons, reconciled with his fame and established a fulfilling private life. He could jump in the studio, compose music and enjoy public adulation.
And he could also retreat to his private world with Yoko and Sean. A bond was also developing with Lennon and his son Julian who had his own interest in music. Lennon wrote "In My Life" in memory of his close friend Stuart Sutcliffe, an artist from Liverpool who died of a brain tumor.
He was a young man paying tribute to a dear friend.
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