John Lennon's reactionary rant

[khad]

Just thought I'd share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPISESOQ3fA

Socialism dead after Spain, says the depraved hippie who thinks that Brave New World is a socialist dystopia.

[Communist]

Lennon was a brilliant musical talent. But he had some issues which caused him to say some very ridiculous things about any topic imaginable, including his fellow ex-Beatles - and politics. He was a naturally irreverent person who has been viewed with way too much reverence since his death. Often he said things just to get a reaction. And he went through a 'revolutionary phase' as well, which resulted in perhaps the weakest music of his career and probably wasn't even very serious to begin with.
In other words, don't take anything John Lennon said seriously.

[Meridian]

What he says about political leaders seems true enough though.

[Communist]

Yeah, well, people like Lennon, for example the other Beatles, Bob Dylan - immensely talented people who can write extraordinarily well and have that presence - can often pull that stuff off on a moment's notice. Dylan; read some of his interviews and statements from over the years. Most of it sounds like incoherent nonsense (the 'putting on' trick he's always played) - but there's always something real in it. In the early '70's Dylan was seen out and about drunk frequently and then claimed to be a Zionist (which he never was) for some months. Asked about it years later, he said he'd rather have been called a drunk and/or a Zionist than the Voice of a Generation. I've always found some real depth in that, for as bizarre of stunts as they were. Lennon mostly failed at this for a period, as he did little more than appear in public completely trashed saying often idiotic things and completely embarrassing himself. He called it his 'Lost Weekend' that lasted a year. Must've been fun. I guess.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

How exactly is he blasting socialism? What was reactionary about this?

[Sarah Palin]

I think these were Lennon's best lyrics:

edited by bulk sheep: removed due to sexist content

[Sarah Palin]

So the relevance of my above post is that we really couldn't tell his political leanings based on lyrics. I guess that rant posted by khad is the only evidence of Lennon's political activism we have.

[¿Que?]

So the relevance of my above post is that we really couldn't tell his political leanings based on lyrics. I guess that rant posted by khad is the only evidence of Lennon's political activism we have.

Actually, lyrics can be indicative of political leanings, although often they are ambiguous. Regardless, I don't see how you could interpret "Give Peace A Chance" as having a pro-war message.

Your second sentence is, of course, completely off the mark. If you've ever read or seen any biographies of Lennon, you'd know his political activism is well documented (The famous Bed-In with Yoko Ono comes to mind), and possibly used as an unspoken pretext to kick him out of the US.

To be sure, most of what I know comes from a VH1 documentary I saw a while back ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. But my ultimate conclusion is that Lennon himself was ambivalent about political involvement, whereas people like Abbie Hoffman generally tried to win him over to their cause and get him more involved.

[Kassad]

I think these were Lennon's best lyrics:
edited by bulk sheep: removed due to sexist content


Get this sexist bullshit out of here. Consider this a verbal warning. Every instinct in my body wants to give you an infraction, but I'll be nice today.

[Sarah Palin]

Actually, lyrics can be indicative of political leanings, although often they are ambiguous. Regardless, I don't see how you could interpret "Give Peace A Chance" as having a pro-war message.

Your second sentence is, of course, completely off the mark. If you've ever read or seen any biographies of Lennon, you'd know his political activism is well documented (The famous Bed-In with Yoko Ono comes to mind), and possibly used as an unspoken pretext to kick him out of the US.

To be sure, most of what I know comes from a VH1 documentary I saw a while back ago, so my memory is a bit hazy. But my ultimate conclusion is that Lennon himself was ambivalent about political involvement, whereas people like Abbie Hoffman generally tried to win him over to their cause and get him more involved.

Wasn't the sleep in just like a porno shoot or sum shit? also mtv is more trustworthy than vh1 so i cnt rlly believe nuffin.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

As I said earlier...How exactly is he blasting socialism? What was reactionary about this?

Everything he says is in description of people like Orwells views, he is not discussing his own.

If you don't think lyrics are indicative of political leanings then consider the fact that he donated money to groups like the International Committee of the Fourth International.

[Glenn Beck]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/02/lennon-lost-interview-radical-left

I interviewed John Lennon, and he was no ultra-left radical

His association with 'serious revolutionaries' was brief and much regretted



http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/2/1/1265032578410/hindle.jpg (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/maurice-hindle)


Maurice Hindle (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/maurice-hindle)
The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian), Tuesday 2 February 2010



You reported on the 1968 interview with John Lennon (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/johnlennon) that I published in the New Statesman, which revolved around Lennon's "furious" response to a letter attacking him and his song Revolution for being "unfavourably compared to the BBC radio drama Mrs Dale's Diary" (Day in the life: Lennon's six-hour interview with student revealed (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/dec/17/john-lennon-lost-interview), 17 December).
The article says Lennon was "enraged" by the letter, in "Tariq Ali's radical journal" Black Dwarf. As you say, "The Beatles (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/thebeatles) might have changed their image, but had lost none of their fire, [Lennon] insisted." And in *January 1969, in his own letter to the magazine, Lennon expressed irritation at being "ticked off" by "brothers in endless fucking prose".

But in the actual conversation – triggered when I showed him the letter, which was so patronising I knew it was bound to get him going – Lennon's response was initially dismissive, unsurprising given that this was the first time he'd seen it. He was not a regular reader of Ali's ultra-left paper: in fact the open letter to him had appeared a month before the interview.
But the idea that by the time John Lennon was shot dead in 1980 he "had long since made his peace with Tariq Ali, and regained his radical laurels", is wrong. It is true that Lennon flirted with the left in the early 70s, mainly in New York, employing his song-writing and rhetorical talents in the cause of justice and the promotion of peace.

It is therefore perhaps apt that you quote from the interview Lennon did with Ali and Robin Blackburn for Red Mole in 1971, to the effect that "Lennon agreed with Ali that he was becoming 'increasingly radical and political'".

But that was 1971. Lennon's political radicalism was in fact a relatively short-lived affair, as readers of his collection of (mostly) late 1970s writings, Skywriting by Word of Mouth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywriting_by_Word_of_Mouth), will know.
Lennon much regretted his earlier association with the radical left, as the contents of the chapter entitled "We'd all love to see the plan" (quoting from the song Revolution) make clear.

Writing in 1978, he stated: "The biggest mistake Yoko and I made in that period was allowing ourselves to become influenced by the male-macho 'serious revolutionaries', and their insane ideas about killing people to save them from capitalism and/or communism (depending on your point of view). We should have stuck to our own way of working for peace: bed-ins, billboards, etc." [emphasis mine - G.B.]

Lennon's primary gift was for writing and recording songs that communicate with millions in ways that no ideologically driven political creed – whether of the left or right – ever could.

In the book I am writing about the relationship between Lennon's songs and his life, I explore the communicating power of his music. The book also draws on my recollections of the 75% of the Lennon interview that has yet to be revealed – your reporter could not know that what appeared in the New Statesman is far from being "the full version".

[khad]

Writing in 1978, he stated: "The biggest mistake Yoko and I made in that period was allowing ourselves to become influenced by the male-macho 'serious revolutionaries', and their insane ideas about killing people to save them from capitalism and/or *communism (depending on your point of view). We should have stuck to our own way of working for peace: bed-ins, billboards, etc." (emphasis added)
I gotta ask, did he come to that pacifist epiphany by smacking her around?

[Glenn Beck]

Check out the first comment on that article:


The radical left likes to try and make itself synonymous with various like disarmanent, workers' rights, 'peace' etc., usually to their detriment. John Lennon was a very English type of radical. Similarly, to Orwell, he was infused with a keen sense of natural justice and , to me, his songs and writings were not inimical to the idea of pride in country and a continuity of progression.

It's so perfect when your own opponents confirm your views to such a degree that it's practically pornography. I would've never even drawn such a beautiful connection by myself.

[khad]

It's so perfect when your own opponents confirm your views to such a degree that it's practically pornography. I would've never even drawn such a beautiful connection by myself.
Well, their personality types match.

Orwell was a sexpat and a rapist and a chauvinist who derided the socialists of his time for being fat and unmanly.

Lennon was a notoriously cruel misogynist and wife beater who kept his partners on a tight leash. Most of Yoko Ono's weird behaviors, such as her following Lenon to the bathroom, were the result of that fucker ordering her to.

British manarchism FTW! :thumbup1:

[Hit The North]

Well, their personality types match.

Orwell was a sexpat and a rapist and a chauvinist who derided the socialists of his time for being fat and unmanly.

Lennon was a notoriously cruel misogynist and wife beater who kept his partners on a tight leash. Most of Yoko Ono's weird behaviors, such as her following Lenon to the bathroom, were the result of that fucker ordering her to.

British manarchism FTW! :thumbup1:

Where do you get this bullshit from?

[PHUNX]

which brings me to my next point: Don't smoke crack :laugh:

[Dimentio]

Lennon's rant is very much the kind of intrinsically non-offensive pseudo-arguments which are usual within The Zeitgeist Movement, where they blast all "isms" for being "isms" and therefore for some reason dogmatic, without even understanding the basics of those isms.

[khad]

Where do you get this bullshit from?


which brings me to my next point: Don't smoke crack :laugh:

Cry some more. I'm of sounder mind than your depraved hippie hero. Emulate him all you wish, but don't project his degenerate behavior onto me.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article565118.ece


Stuart Sutcliffe was one of the three people John was closest to. Although he had plenty of cronies, he only really let down his guard with Stuart, me and Paul McCartney. Paul was still at school, but Stuart was at art college with us, and he and I got on well.

One night John went mad when someone told him Stuart and I were dancing together. As soon as I saw the look on John’s face we stopped and, as so often before, I reassured him that it was him I loved. The next day at college he followed me to the girls’ loos in the basement.

When I came out he was waiting with a dark look on his face. Before I could speak he raised his arm and hit me across the face, knocking my head into the pipes that ran down the wall behind me.http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/item_CiGDOKXUtPlMvbNoopX1lN;jsessionid=B7E679C7919 B514957870388E20C88F7


When Cynthia returned from a vacation in Greece to her home in England, she found John and Yoko seated on the floor together in matching bathrobes.

"John showed no sign of guilt or even surprise, merely looking round with a casual, 'Oh . . . hi,' " Norman writes.

But the songwriter's first pass at Yoko isn't what love songs are made of.
Yoko was "deeply offended" by Lennon's cheap maneuvering at a party, where he commented that she looked tired and suggested that she "lie down," writes Norman.

"One of the Beatles' entourage then drove the two of them to a nearby flat and, without preamble, began folding out a sofa into a bed. It was clearly an established procedure for John's conquests."

Yoko rebuffed the oversexed Beatle, but fell under his spell soon after.
When they first began dating, Lennon forced Yoko to write down a list of men she'd slept with so he could pore over the names, treating each like a "mortal enemy."

He insisted that Yoko accompany him to studio sessions - a famously big no-no to the band, who had kept their studio off limits to lovers. Everywhere he went, he insisted she follow, even to the men's bathroom.
"People said I followed him to the men's room, but he made me go with him," Yoko told Norman.

"He thought that if he left me alone with the other Beatles even for a minute, I might go off with one of them."
He also admitted to Yoko that he regretted never bedding his mother, Julia, who was struck and killed by a speeding off-duty cop's car when John was 17.

Lennon, whose sexual appetite was voracious, taunted Yoko between the sheets, saying, "You just lie there and think of England."

He also cheated in her presence. The night of Nixon's re-election, the lecherous Lennon was in rare form - drunk, high and distraught, and eyeing a woman at a party at a friend's house.

"She didn't come on to him at all, he just pulled her and went into the next room. And then they were groping and all that, and we were all quiet," Yoko recalled.

"Then one of the other guests was very kind and put a record on, Bob Dylan or something, so that we don't hear it. But we heard it anyway. And everyone had their coats in the next room, where John and this girl are making out so nobody can go home."And more secure in my masculinity than Orwell, who fled to a sexpat life in Asia after his "botched seduction" of his childhood friend.

http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/buddicom-memoir-postscript.htm


Eric & Us: The Postscript
by Kathryn Hughes
Guardian, 17 February 2007

Jacintha Buddicom and George Orwell were childhood soul mates who lost touch until he was dying. A new postscript to her genteel memoir sheds a disturbing light on their friendship...


But Venables's postscript changes all that. Venables is the Buddicoms' first cousin, and was left the copyright to Eric & Us, as well as 57 crates of family letters. From these she made the shocking discovery that, in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.Or get my jollies imagining that a couple of random fat guys as socialists in order to puff myself up by deriding them as unmanly scum.

http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/10.html

In addition to this there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks
wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the
impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards
them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer,
sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped
and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty,
both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was
obscenely bald, the other had long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George
style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into
which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every
dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.
The man next to me, a commercial traveller I should say, glanced at me, at
them, and back again at me, and murmured 'Socialists', as who should say,
'Red Indians'. He was probably right

[Little Bobby Hutton]

Their both in my room 101

[Dimentio]

Orwell sounds like he had some troubles with people's appearance. I don't know if Lennon was the same type. I know that Lennon had a special affinity of Pierre Trudeau though... hm, the intrigue deepens...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWgcjEu8kZ8