Jordan Michael Smith: John Lennon ... Reagan Democrat?
[Jordan Michael Smith has written for The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and The New Republic.]
After John Lennon was shot on Dec. 8, 1980, thousands of fans spontaneously gathered around his apartment in New York City, imagining what the apostle of peace might have accomplished with the rest of his life. The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund received an outpouring of donations, some of which described the late Beatles songwriter as a “humanitarian.”
That was one John Lennon. And it was the one the world chose to remember, the Lennon opposed to the Vietnam War and hosting bed-ins for peace with Yoko Ono. But that was not the only Lennon, nor the final one. In fact, the one who emerged in 1980 after five years of shunning public life held views far removed from those of the counterculture icon. Yet this Lennon—a wiser, more honest self, according to the singer—seems to have been erased from public memory in favor of the bearded prophet perpetually singing “Imagine.”
In the last major interview Lennon gave, to Playboy in late 1980 (and later released unedited as a book, All We Are Saying), he and Yoko Ono offered opinions that can fairly be described as chastened, jaded, even provincial. The Lennon memorialized in Strawberry Fields in New York City, John Lennon Park in Havana, or the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavík—or the Lennon martyred at monuments in Italy, Spain, Peru, Hungary, and England—would not have said the following: “I am not going to get locked in that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly… . All of you who are reading this, don’t bother sending me all that garbage about, ‘Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans’.”
When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.” It’s a critique of foreign aid readers of P.T. Bauer would be familiar with. “You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it.”
This was not the ’60s revolutionary who hung out with Yippies and Black Panthers. Not only did Lennon dismiss his earlier efforts, he rejected the entire idea of social change through political action...
Read entire article at American Conservative
After John Lennon was shot on Dec. 8, 1980, thousands of fans spontaneously gathered around his apartment in New York City, imagining what the apostle of peace might have accomplished with the rest of his life. The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund received an outpouring of donations, some of which described the late Beatles songwriter as a “humanitarian.”
That was one John Lennon. And it was the one the world chose to remember, the Lennon opposed to the Vietnam War and hosting bed-ins for peace with Yoko Ono. But that was not the only Lennon, nor the final one. In fact, the one who emerged in 1980 after five years of shunning public life held views far removed from those of the counterculture icon. Yet this Lennon—a wiser, more honest self, according to the singer—seems to have been erased from public memory in favor of the bearded prophet perpetually singing “Imagine.”
In the last major interview Lennon gave, to Playboy in late 1980 (and later released unedited as a book, All We Are Saying), he and Yoko Ono offered opinions that can fairly be described as chastened, jaded, even provincial. The Lennon memorialized in Strawberry Fields in New York City, John Lennon Park in Havana, or the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavík—or the Lennon martyred at monuments in Italy, Spain, Peru, Hungary, and England—would not have said the following: “I am not going to get locked in that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly… . All of you who are reading this, don’t bother sending me all that garbage about, ‘Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans’.”
When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.” It’s a critique of foreign aid readers of P.T. Bauer would be familiar with. “You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it.”
This was not the ’60s revolutionary who hung out with Yippies and Black Panthers. Not only did Lennon dismiss his earlier efforts, he rejected the entire idea of social change through political action...