Sunday, December 10, 2006

Hey Johnny




I was seven when the Beatles first played the Ed Sullivan Show during the winter of 1964. The performance was the talk of all the neighborhood kids. I remember being mesmerized and barely aware of my parents’ snide remarks about them, their hair, the screaming of the teenage girls in the audience. I watched carefully, my mind recording every detail – the guitars, Paul being left handed, Ringo grinning ecstatically behind his drums, John’s defiantly strong posture behind his mic. Mostly I remember the absolute joy on their faces as they played.

It wasn’t long after that I received my first guitar (a $15 plywood Silvertone that was close to unplayable) and not long after that that I was in my first band with three other guys in the neighborhood. We played Beatles’ songs, of course. Soon an electric guitar and a small amp replaced the Silvertone and band practices filled up after-school and weekend hours. On Saturdays we were allowed to set up in our drummer’s garage and we would play our ragged and out-of-tune versions of the Beatles’ catalog until a police car would roll up the driveway and an officer (always the same one) would inform us that there had been complaints and our concert needed to end.

As my music career advanced and I felt the influence of other musicians, learned new songs and playing styles, began writing my own songs to sing, I always felt the deepest resonance singing Beatles’ songs, particularly John Lennon’s. I loved the thoughtfulness of his lyrics, the passion in his voice as he sang. I could always find the inspiration to open my heart in song from the often pain filled sound of John’s open heart. I became less fearful of my own darkness because John showed me his and that singing though the darkness was an act of hopeful defiance.

The Vietnam War was the backdrop of my childhood and adolescence. I was 12 that awful summer of 1968 when the world just beyond my safe, suburban neighborhood seemed to be tearing itself apart. The killing of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the riots, the Democratic Convention in Chicago and of course the war cascaded across our television screen nightly. There was a revolution happening and the music I loved and was learning to play was the soundtrack for it.

Yet the summer before, it was John who reminded the world in the first worldwide television show that a revolution fueled by Love was a revolution that could actually bring real change.

The years passed and the sixties gave way to the seventies. The war finally ended, the Beatles disbanded and I began performing professionally in bands and solo. I learned some of the joys and frustrations of life and tried to convey all those through singing. John had been so visible and active, and then disappeared from view for a time. I kept singing – my songs, John’s songs and other songs that inspired me. John re-emerged after a few years with new songs that expressed hope and optimism that love was real and peace was attainable.

I was home alone on December 8, 1980 watching Monday Night Football when Howard Cosell informed me and the world that John had been shot and killed in front of his home in New York. I still ache remembering that cold evening and the days that followed as I tried to come to terms with the enormity of the loss. A man I had never met, yet felt I knew intimately, had been taken from this world. My last hero had been killed and it felt like the last of my innocence had been slain with the same bullets.

26 years – it seems like a lifetime ago and just yesterday. I’m ten years older than John was when he died. I wake each morning since then in that space we inhabit between joy and despair. I work. I sing. I try to remember at least three good things that happen every day. And I remember John, and others who have left me since, and the inspiration that seared my heart when I was a child.

All you really do need is love.

Imagine.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was out sledding with my chldren when John was
killed. When I got home, my ex-husband called me in
tears to say that "Lennon" was dead. I thought he
meant Lenin since the thought of John dying ws
incomprehensible.

I said, "Jerry, Lenin's been dead for years."

"No, JOHN Lennon," he said.

Then I cried, too.

Stephen said...

It's like JFK, RKF, MLK, 911, etc. Most everyone I know remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing on Dec 8, 1980.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

Great picture, nice posting.

Every teenage male in the sixties and seventies played guitar it seemed, and tried forming a band. My own? Volcanic Ash, the fine residue of rock n roll.

One of the things I hate about today's music is the absolute absence of guitar...or should I say good guitar.

About John Lennon. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had he lived. Would he and McCartney finally gotten together and joined for some music or reincarnation of the Beatles. I would bet that with the death of Harrison, that Lennon would have been part of the musical tribute to Lennon.

I miss him too. But then, I also miss my youth.

Stephen said...

Hi Stewart

I found the picture somewhere online (I can't remember where or I'd give credit). A nice job with photoshop that captures what might have been.

I miss the music, but I also wonder what he would be saying and doing about the state of the world.

Thanks for stopping by.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

Lennon would say, in that Liverpool accent: "It's a ridiculous thing, that war, man. They didn't learn from Vietnam. That's why I've decided to get some of me mates together and put on a show to raise awareness."