Patterico's Pontifications

10/9/2015

John Lennon’s 75th Birthday

Filed under: General,Music — Patterico @ 6:58 pm



John Lennon would have been 75 today. Let’s celebrate what we had:

59 Responses to “John Lennon’s 75th Birthday”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (fecd9b)

  2. Okay. But he was my least favorite Beatle.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  3. Had he not been shot, I wonder if he would still be alive today. When George Harrison died from lung cancer I recall someone saying in passing that Lennon had been an even bigger smoker than George, so it’s possible that he too would have had problems with cancer. Of course maybe he would have just soldiered on like Keith Richards.

    JVW (ba78f9)

  4. I prefer the Stones.

    DRJ (521990)

  5. Had John lived would the Beatles have reunited for Live Aid (or even later just to make a huge pile of dough)?

    JVW (ba78f9)

  6. I prefer the Stones.

    I’ve never disagreed with you so strongly in my life!!

    Patterico (fecd9b)

  7. I just finished reading Keef Richards’s book and he said that Lennon never left Keef’s house on his own two feet, he always had to be carried out. Keef said it was just one of life’s mysteries why that was always the case.

    And then there was Lennon’s “Lost Years”, when he was palling around with Harry Nilsson. But the Beatles are still my favorite group, I think.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  8. The ’60s… so much good and bad music… back when the bands that took more than a year to issue a new album were slackers. As for the Stones… there was never anything cooler – maybe as cool as, but never cooler – than the ’68 thru ’72 era Stones. Never will be.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  9. “Julia” is my favorite Lennon song.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  10. Well, now, John may have been my least favorite Beatle, but:

    Beatles > Stones. Not close.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  11. SF music sucked… LA music rocked… It was either happenin’ in SoCal or in Great Britain from mid-60s til about ’70-’71… really no where else. IMHO.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  12. Imagine a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars singing about a world where there are no possessions.

    Come on, it isn’t hard to do.

    Deuce Frehley (73c323)

  13. Yuge Beatles fan. Paul has worked hard over the years to become my least favorite Beatle. Not big on Stones but Keef’s book is one of the most interesting that I have read.

    Gazzer (7baf28)

  14. As for the Beatles, George Martin was the maestro of their unique sound.

    The Rutles took away a little of the mystique… but just a little.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  15. Stones = eight #1 hits.

    Beatles = twenty-four #1 hits.

    I rest my case, reserving the right to rebuttal.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  16. I have a gold disc of Abbey Road in my bathroom.

    Gazzer (7baf28)

  17. Rutles…right up there with Tap.

    Gazzer (7baf28)

  18. Like to think the best of people. Lennon was not quite the crazy leftie at the end of his life. He donated money the NYPD’s police union for bulletproof vest for city cops. Ironically he was rushed to the hospital in the back of an NYPD patrol car.

    We always need to consider; what kind of world will we leave Keith Richards?

    Bugg (fa64ec)

  19. good Lennon tune…

    http://youtu.be/4lKwXwU5iWs

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  20. Beggar’s Banquet and Let it Bleed are hard to top, Beldar… #1 hits or not.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  21. Bugg might be right. In his last interview, published posthumously in Playboy, he said some things that sounded to me like he was re-thinking it. Maybe he would have come around.

    Gazzer (7baf28)

  22. DRJ,

    Me too re Stones.

    It’s funny, I can still thrill to most Stones songs, but the Beatles, nah.

    Dana (86e864)

  23. The Beatles are for girls. Very young girls. Very young bubble gum chewing girls. But better than what passes for music today. To the everlasting shame of today.

    nk (dbc370)

  24. Unrelated to Lennon, but if your roots are back in the 60’s, a great little documentary to watch is “The Wrecking Crew”, all about the session musicians who were the REAL players on a lot of the best recordings of that era. I’d known for a long time that the Beach Boys weren’t the players on Pet Sounds and others, but these guys (and a female bassist named Carol Kaye… I think) were all over the place.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  25. Also born that same day
    Joe Pepitone

    And perhaps by obstetric arrangement, Sean Lennon was born on October 9, 1975, John’s 35 birthday.

    kishnevi (31ba4e)

  26. The Beatles are for girls. Very young girls. Very young bubble gum chewing girls. But better than what passes for music today. To the everlasting shame of today.

    nk, great story: In the mid-60s when Tom Jones’ career was taking off a snotty reporter asked him if he was bothered by the observation that the Beatles had an audience of young girls screaming for them while his appeal appeared to mostly be to middle-aged women. Jones replied that it did not bother him one bit, because when young girls scream they don’t really understand what they are screaming over but that middle-aged women know exactly what they are screaming over.

    JVW (ba78f9)

  27. Thinking it over, I would take the Who over both the Beatles and the Stones. Rffekevant to that, Pete Entwhistle was born on this day, four years after Lennon.

    (All this from a site called OnThisDay.com)

    kishnevi (28fa9f)

  28. Beldar,

    Considering that Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and the Bee Gees (what??!!) had more number one hits than the Stones, I submit, that at best, number one song lists are sketchy and not necessarily indicators of greatness.

    Dana (86e864)

  29. the Who?

    http://youtu.be/YIW93cRpK8k

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  30. Kish-

    Agree. Could listen to “Who’s Next” or “Quadraphenia” all day. No knock on any of those other bands, simply a subjective preference.

    As to the Bee Gees, the “Saturday Night Fever”soundtrack holds up terrifically.If you told that to my 16-year old disco-hating denim-jacket helmet haired self, would not have believed it.

    Bugg (fa64ec)

  31. and the BeeGees pre-dated them all having started in 1958.

    Gazzer (7baf28)

  32. @ kish (#27): I’m also a fan of The Who, and once had the opportunity to represent them in court (a long story I’ll save for another time, if you haven’t already read it somewhere). I think of The Who as being of a different generation of rock-and-roll than either the Beatles, however.

    @ Dana (#28): The number of #1 chart-toppers is one meaningful measure, but I’ll grant you it’s not the only one. Still: Twenty-eight. Plus dozens and dozens more in the top 10. If we’re looking for empirical data, that’s a very decided edge.

    And if we start talking albums: There’s only one “Sgt Pepper,” which transformed rock and pop music forever after all by itself; and you can make passionate arguments for at least a half-dozen other Beatles albums. The

    Stones’ worldwide all-time fanbase is measured in many millions, to be sure, but the Beatles’ is measured in billions.

    I’m not saying the Stones are unimpressive, and if longevity is the objective criterion one wants to focus upon, they can make a strong case. But overall? Beatles > Stones.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  33. Bah, sloppy proofreading; mea culpa. Twenty-four, not twenty-eight. And “generation of rock-and-roll than either the Beatles” ought to have omitted the word “either.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  34. But better than what passes for music today. To the everlasting shame of today.

    Perhaps you are referring to rap music — but regardless — which is a style of sound that amazes me for how popular it is with a fairly large number of people, presumably because they get something out of hours of rowdy, raunchy rhyming backed up by a modicum of so-called melody. Whenever I observe people whose ears are attuned to such music — and, yea, I realize taste is very subjective — I feel like forcing such folks to live in a city along the lines of Detroit for the rest of their life, where they can experience, 24/7/365 days, the core of the lyrics of many rap songs that they delight in.

    Mark (f713e4)

  35. None of this rock-n-roll nonsense holds a candle to when Guy Lombardo really gets swinging and lets loose.

    JVW (ba78f9)

  36. Beyond the fact that it was the 75th anniversary of his birth. The only other reason that the media has made this a big deal and they have if you have stumbled across the media and social media today. Is that he was gunned down. Every new story that I have seen about his birthday has talked about him being gun down by a nutter. The hagiography given Lennon, even as we have learned of his warts in all the recent years from how he left his wife to his abuse of women and all the other warts were passed over. Instead its all about how awesome he was with regards to music and that Rock and Roll wasn’t there without him and those three other guys and that it was the day that the music died when that nutter gunned him down.

    Charles (3cf0f0)

  37. One of the most senseless killings of all time. Favorite Lennon song – Norwegian Wood.
    Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Oh ya.
    Wrecking Crew – Leon Russel

    mg (31009b)

  38. McCartney was in a band before “Wings”?

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  39. JVW,

    I know you’re kidding about Lombardo, at least I think you are, but the Big Band era was superb. I don’t think the Beatles or the Stones can hold a candle to Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman.

    DRJ (521990)

  40. And that wasn’t even my era, but their sounds are ageless.

    DRJ (521990)

  41. If the number of fans (a/k/a record sales?) is your criteria for the best bands/singers, wouldn’t that make Elvis number 1? Also, didn’t he do more to transform music than the Beatles?

    DRJ (521990)

  42. Ditto for Michael Jackson, who I think also outsold the Beatles.

    DRJ (521990)

  43. I view music as a personal thing so it’s fine with me if some people, or lots of people, like the Beatles more than the Stones. It’s also fine if more people see a white and gold dress instead of a blue and black dress. Different strokes for different folks, which reminds me of another good band.

    DRJ (521990)

  44. John Lennon was a left wing commie hypocrite. It’s easy when you’re worth 200 million dollars. If he were alive today he’d be a regular on The View and Yoko would be doing Hillary! commercials on MSNBC.

    Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie™ (f4eb27)

  45. The Beatles had those 24 number one songs during one of the greatest eras of music ever. Their competition was fierce. Here’s a list of the groups with the top albums of 1968, in reverse order:

    The Mothers of Invention
    Grateful Dead
    Blood, Sweat & Tears
    The Moody Blues
    Small Faces
    Steve Miller Band
    Jethro Tull
    Canned Heat
    Pink Floyd
    Iron Butterfly
    Aretha Franklin
    Canned Heat
    The Velvet Underground
    Steppenwolf
    The Zombies
    Buffalo Springfield
    Big Brother & The Holding Company
    The Byrds (2)
    Traffic
    Neil Young
    Creedence Clearwater Revival
    Otis Redding
    The Kinks
    Cream
    Louis Armstrong
    Simon & Garfunkel
    Steppenwolf
    The Doors
    Townes Van Zandt
    Jerry Jeff Walker
    Leonard Cohen
    Van Morrison
    Jimi Hendrix (2)
    James Taylor
    The Rolling Stones
    The Beatles
    The Band

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  46. Those are fine bands and singers but the Big Band era had good bands and songs too. Decades of good times for music-lovers.

    DRJ (521990)

  47. Imagine a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars singing about a world where there are no possessions.

    Come on, it isn’t hard to do.

    He was envisioning his future after Yoko had got done bleeding him.

    nk (dbc370)

  48. @45
    1968 was also the year Underground, Miles in the Sky, and (in the UK) Filles de Kilimanjaro were released.

    kishnevi (31ba4e)

  49. I saw Count Baise at the Old Opera House in Austin back in the late 70’s, orchestra arranged sound gets me high. My mom loved big band and dixie land jazz. Louis Armstrong was her favorite.

    mg (31009b)

  50. With 60s and 70s as point of reference, Rudy Valle was to us back then as the 60s/70s band are to today’s young folks.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  51. “When I was about 14, I read a Pete Townshend interview in MelodyMaker about going round the world, meeting women and making money and taking drugs and I thought wait a minute, hold on, that sounds like the job for me.”

    – Chris Difford of Squeeze

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  52. True confessions: I was a Deadhead. I feel like I should apologize for that.

    Dana (86e864)

  53. Kevin M @ 45,

    I notice that your list has some artists that were known more for their lyric writing (Townes Van Zandt and Leonard Cohen), which makes it interesting that Bob Dylan wasn’t on the list.

    Dana (86e864)

  54. I know you’re kidding about Lombardo, at least I think you are, but the Big Band era was superb. I don’t think the Beatles or the Stones can hold a candle to Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman.

    Only half kidding, DRJ. Actually, my tastes these days run more towards Sinatra and Crosby than the Beatles and Stones.

    JVW (ba78f9)

  55. Sara Vaughan gives me shivers. She does this Lennon & McCartney song justice.
    http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sarah+vaughan&FORM=VIRE5#view=detail&mid=A8A147EE10F1D0FE80ADA8A147EE10F1D0FE80AD

    mg (31009b)

  56. Beldar-

    tell the tale or post a link.

    Bugg (fa64ec)

  57. Bugg (#56): I haven’t ever blogged about it that I can recall, but I did find a teaser link.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  58. DRJ: I’m a fan of excellent in just about any musical genre. You can certainly find influences from the Big Band era in Beatles songs — think about the piccolo trumpet solo in “Penny Lane,” which could have been played by Harry James, or their use of lush strings, winds, and brass in “Sgt Pepper.” I wouldn’t compare the Beatles to Glenn Miller or try to pick one over the other.

    But Beatles > Stones. 😉

    Beldar (fa637a)

  59. The music was innovative and to the American public their brash style caught on wildly. Mr. Lennon’s politics were puerile.

    xsssx (3bbec8)


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