Strange Days, Indeed

It started early in their career: George was the quiet one; Paul was the cute one; Ringo was the clown; John was the witty, acerbic one. Later on George was the mystic; Paul’s cuteness could not mask his consuming musical perfectionism; Ringo’s clowning could not mask his alcoholism; and John had channeled acerbic wittiness into sounding the charge for social revolution. Everyone had his favorite Beatle. John and Paul were always the front-runners, while Ringo never rose above dead last and George was for those who championed a dark horse.
John Lennon was my favorite Beatle. It was John who had the best line in “Hard Day’s Night.” When a British reporter asks him, “And John, how did you find America?” John replies, “Turned left at Greenland.” Paul’s bits were usually with his fictional uncle. Paul wrote, “Yesterday” and a batch of other wonderful songs, but John was the guy who wanted to jump into something, anything, with both feet and figure the rest out later. Paul’s songs were inventions, third person stories, but John’s songs were more personal, more daring, and just riskier. “Penny Lane” was from Paul’s past, but it sounds like something from a children’s storybook. “Strawberry Fields,” from John’s past was surreal but from the start he invited the listener to come along, advising him that his experiences from the past no longer felt real. The sound and instrumentation of the song is like nothing anyone had heard before. And at the end of the song, when there is nothing left of it but pounding drums, John says, “Cranberry sauce,” just for the fun of it, maybe just so the listener wouldn’t take this “heavy” song too seriously.
Lennon even caught the attention of my dad who thought Bing Crosby was a fine example of contemporary music. Dad hated rock and roll, and called it jungle music, but one day he walked into the living room while I was playing “Rain” which John wrote. He sat down and tipped his head in the direction of the stereo. “If the rain comes they run and hide their heads, they might as well be dead.” Dad noted that he was right, that people are scared of getting wet, when they ought enjoy it. The next line, about people slipping into the shade when the sun shines delighted Dad even more; there were Dad said people who were afraid to sweat, afraid of the sun, as if being with nature would hurt them. We had a long conversation that day involving rain, sun, nature and people’s attitudes. I ended up playing the song three times for him.
John married a Japanese woman whose idea of art was the word YES taped to the ceiling of the art museum. There was a ladder to climb to see the word. I thought it was just the greatest thing at the time. A ladder, and the word YES in an art museum.
When the Beatles broke up, it was the Rolling Stone interview that made it possible for John to reveal his human side. All the pain, rage, resentment, paranoia all poured out of him. I didn’t like or agree with everything he said but I knew that he was trying to become real by telling the truth. And it was the same with that first studio solo album. I didn’t agree with the idea that “God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” and the idea that Lennon could be a “Working Class Hero” is laughable, but that album is one of the best, most soul- baring album I have ever heard. When he cries out “Mama don’t go! Daddy come home!” and when he makes the observation, “I don’t expect you to understand, after you’ve caused so much pain. But then again, you’re not to blame; you’re just a human, a victim of the insane!” it is genuine. It is not fun, but it is one guy trying to get everything on the inside out.
His biggest ideas were often the most simple. “All you need is Love” was originally broadcast live around the world. He knew he had the attention of millions in the western world, and he wanted to make something good of it. He and his wife went to bed, called it a “Bed-In” and announced that it was better to go to bed than to go to war. One of his better slogans was “War is over if you want it.” And of course the slogan he made into a song, “Give peace a chance,” and the refrain from “Instant Karma,” “We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.” We were a collective, powerful source, and all we had to do was believe it and act on it. He believed in “Power to the People” but the people had to claim it.
By 1980 though that kind of thinking had gone away. The feeling that came with it– that things could change– was gone, too. It all seemed like some old, dated, black and white movie that not too many people remembered anymore. I was married, had a haircut, and was listening to jazz, classical and bluegrass music. I was convinced that rock had lost its life-transforming power– a power that Pete Townsend said could save souls– and that there were no bands like the old bands, that there just couldn’t be, and that maybe it was just time to go on to something else.
On Monday, December 8, Grace and I were at the house of our friends, Kenny and Robyn for dinner. It was a fine time, a cheerful time. Robyn is the person who introduced me to Grace, although it might have been the other way around since both Grace and I had known Robyn for a long time. Sometimes pairs of couples don’t match up; the men are cool but the women don’t mix, or vice versa, or there might be little friendship across gender lines. But in the Chavoor-Esraelian grouping, everyone likes everyone else. We are always happy to see each other and sad to see each other go.
So we were having such a good time I wasn’t too worried about it being Monday night late in the season with an interesting game on TV. The AFC East is always competitive no matter what decade it is, and that night was no exception; The Dolphins were in a close game with the Patriots. When dinner was over and we moved into the living room and when Kenny offered to put the game on, well, I didn’t say no.
We had been watching the game but not intently when something odd happened: Howard Cosell was quoting Jackson Browne. I think it was “For a Dancer” from the Late for the Sky album. I was confused, and when I heard Kenny say, “Oh no,” I thought that Jackson Browne had died but I couldn’t imagine why Howard Cosell would know or care. He was from the Frank Sinatra generation. I was about to say that I couldn’t hear and would someone please turn up the volume, when, as if Cosell had heard me, spoke emphatically, “John Lennon, dead at 40.”
I gasped audibly and the others looked at me. I wasn’t sure how they felt about it, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but what I believed was that he was more than a celebrity, or a former Beatle, or a political activist. I felt as though I had grown up with him, that I met him when I was ten and he was on the Ed Sullivan Show and that I had experienced some of his own changes with him or at least felt a strong empathy. But my logical side would not accept this. I never spoke to him or met him, so how could I be upset? I was sad but not rattled when Jimi Hendrix died, but he was a victim of his own environment, he killed himself. No one hated him so much that he would take a gun and shoot him down in the street. And besides, Lennon was different.
If I was going to get visibly emotional about the murder and loss of John Lennon, I decided I wanted to be alone, as my wife or my friends may not understand. So I exited to the bathroom. In the bathroom I couldn’t decide whether to let it out or compose myself. I decided on the latter. I ran the water for a while. A sob came out but I gathered myself. I shut the water off. I was going back and would be appropriately sad. I didn’t know him, he had never been to my house, I never called him on the phone, and we never had a beer together. That funny, crazy, reckless time had been retreating steadily in the rearview mirror and now with Lennon’s death, it was really over, done with and no longer in sight. With my new resolve I returned to the living room.
We talked about it a little bit. We couldn’t imagine who would want to kill John Lennon. After that Grace and Robyn talked while Kenny and I watched the rest of the game even though Cosell had commented that a football game meant nothing compared to the enormity of what had happened in New York. My attention to the game came and went. I did though exult abruptly over a good play in a close game. Immediately afterwards I felt guilty and silly as though I had been secretly following a game during a funeral.
We got home and while we were getting ready for bed, the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and a strained voice spoke.
“Hey man.”
“Hey.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Me neither, man.”
“John’s gone, man.”
“That you, Tom?”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you call anybody? I called John Tokorian. He was bummed.”
A half hour later John called. The conversation was pretty much the same except that we reviewed Lennon’s career, the highs and the lows and the huge impact he had made on our generation and how they where the only band members people called by their first name and how he had kicked heroin and had become a family man who appreciated the home life and how all that was showing in his latest lp and how it might have been the start of a rebirth of his talent which might have led to a revival of resistance to the Reagan presidency, and now all of it was gone with a single bullet.
That night I dreamed that the old, dated black and white movie was back. There were all my friends from those long ago days, relaxed and cheerful. We were outside somewhere. More people were arriving and were greeted with enthusiasm and love. We wore the old clothes, spoke the old, lost language, using the idioms and expressions of that time. We knew something good was about to happen, something was about to change for the better; it was the way it felt back in those days. Then Sanford, one of the old friends, summed things up by saying, “It was a time that had to come, and a time that had to go.” I awoke, feeling cold and thirsty.
A month later I coughed up a little more than I would otherwise pay for a record, and special ordered a Japanese import of “Live Peace in Toronto,” his concert album with Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman, and Alan White. It was not available at any local record stores. When it arrived I tore the package open and put the record on right away. There was John in concert, telling the audience, “We’re gonna play numbers that we know because we’ve never played together before,” and then lurching into “Blue Suede Shoes,” sloppy and messy but familiar and comforting.
After that Yoko tried living off his ghost and Nike used “Revolution” for a TV ad, tribute Beatles bands popped up all over the place, but we all knew where the real John Lennon was, he’s right there on the last track of side one, telling the audience in Toronto, “This is what we came for, really,” just before they do “Give Peace a Chance.”
All we were saying was give peace a chance.