John Lennon (1940–1980)

A successor to (and improvement on) In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, John Lennon's two books of nonsense verse written during the height of Beatlemania, Skywriting by Word of Mouth is an unexpected joy. Written during the late 1970s during Lennon's 'retirement' from music, and published six years after his tragic death, the book shows Lennon unbound, his mind completely free creatively. As the titular story says in its opening, it is "a novelty in 4/4, in which our hero finds show more himself, ten years later, older, madder, but definitely CURED" (pg. 47). John is evidently having fun, which, when combined with his previously proven talent for this sort of thing, makes for a surprisingly great reading experience.

Warming up the reader with a breezy and candid bio of his post-Beatles years ("I even wrote and recorded the rather embarrassing 'Power to the People'… We kept the royalties, of course." (pg. 25)), the book becomes an occasionally astonishing and always interesting series of short stories. Deploying great imagery and wordplay, Lennon also shows a maturity and craft that wasn't necessarily evident in his two previous nonsense books, and the reader feels the better for it.

It is also genuinely funny, not only in its wordplay, but in its daftness and occasional bawdiness, forging yet another mysterious spiritual link between the Beatles and the Pythons. (You could imagine "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you something to chew on, followed by a short pause" (pg. 49) being recited by John Cleese.) Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear are obvious analogies, but it notable that Skywriting by Word of Mouth does not feel diminished by the comparison. This is a book that would stand even if its author was not John Lennon. show less

I took my time with this one, because there's a lot to absorb.

The older I get, the more I realize that John and Yoko were a little "woo woo" at times. Out there, I guess is the better way to say it. But I firmly believe their hearts were always in the right place, and for that, I will always admire them.

I love that this book isn't just about John and Yoko, but that a large portion is given over to all those who had a hand in somehow bringing Imagine to life. The musicians, the producers, the show more photographers, the helping hands. It truly shows that no album is made entirely from a single person's vision or talent.

It also covers the making of the Imagine movie, that I was given tickets to see for my birthday (three days before John's). The movie is...interesting. I'm glad I saw it, but I can't say I truly enjoyed it. It was a little too out there for my tastes. Maybe if it was still the early 70s and I was high...

I did have to laugh at the section of the book where John and Yoko talk about just letting the movie happen. Just waking up and deciding what to film that day. As though John had already forgotten how well that worked just a few years earlier for Magical Mystery Tour.

Overall, though, this is a gorgeous and fascinating insight into the making of John Lennon's best album, and well worth the effort. show less

A decent compilation of nonsense verse and poetry, although the book's writing style can make it hard to understand. My favourite is the deliciously evil 'Good Dog Nigel', and it is no coincidence that this is one of the more straightforward pieces. However, the book, and its follow-up, A Spaniard in the Works, probably wouldn't have seen the light of day if not written by a Beatle.

Review of: Imagine John Yoko, by John & Yoko Lennon
by Stan Prager (2-3-19)

It was late and I was on my way home, rock n’ roll blasting on the car radio. It was the one-week anniversary of our very first apartment together as a couple, so there was a kind of glow around the day. Then the music cut off abruptly and the news broke: John Lennon had been shot. John Lennon was dead. When the tunes resumed, it was all Beatles and Lennon solo stuff. One of the songs was, of course, Imagine. Tears show more streamed down my face. It was December 8, 1980.
Imagine had been recorded and released in 1971, but as the year 1980 closed out that already felt like fifty years ago. The Vietnam War and Nixon were long gone. The sense of radicalism, of tumult—as well as innovative creative expression in music and the arts—had slipped away, its wake littered with the detritus of cocaine, schlocky pop music, and a kind of national ennui. Most men, including myself, didn’t wear their hair shoulder-length anymore. Almost exactly a month before Lennon’s murder, Ronald Reagan was elected President, leaving many of us far more shaken than stirred.
John Lennon had recently reemerged after a long hiatus from the studio and public life. He was just forty, but he looked much older than that. Double Fantasy—his first album in five years, featuring songs by John and Yoko—was released just three weeks before his death. I personally found it weak and disappointing. But I bought it just days after it hit the record stores—of course—it was music from John Lennon! Lennon had been my favorite Beatle, as well as a kind of personal hero: a peace activist, an iconoclast, a man who found himself trapped by the money and fame and lifestyle that others salivated for, a man willing to throw it all away (well, perhaps not all the money) for the love of his life, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, even if many of us were puzzled by his obsession with her. It turned out that the sum of its parts that was the Beatles would ever far outshine the solo work of its members, including Lennon, but perhaps his best work was the album Imagine that featured that eponymous song of hope that remains a soft-rock national anthem. John’s murder sent Double Fantasy skyrocketing on the charts, if not to critical acclaim, but Imagine is the real legacy of John Lennon.
Thirty-eight Christmases after Lennon’s assassination, the stark white cover of the beautiful outsize volume Imagine John Yoko emerged beneath festive wrapping paper, a gift from my wife. Compiled by Yoko, but with author credits to John and Yoko Lennon, this gorgeous coffee table edition boasts extensive interviews, black and white photography, liner notes, illustrations, and ephemera, crafted to tell the “definitive inside story” of the making of the Imagine album and film of the same name at their English country mansion estate, Tittenhurst Park.
The spotlight is not only upon John and Yoko, but also on a generous cast of characters, including co-producer Phil Spector, then-giants of the music scene such as George Harrison, Nicky Hopkins and Mike Pinder, as well as lesser-known figures, plus all sorts of production assistants and the often uncredited folks who each play a significant if not always acknowledged role in the final cut of a masterpiece like Imagine. Interview excerpts are not dated; some are contemporary to production, while others look back from decades ahead. Sadly, like Lennon, many have passed on, including Harrison and Hopkins; King Curtis, who sat in on saxophone, was murdered in late summer of that same year. Ironically, Phil Spector and drummer Jim Gordon—of Derek and the Dominos fame—are both in prison serving life sentences for murder. Almost all the rest who are still alive have faded into obscurity. But thumbing through this magnificent book, for a moment it is the early part of 1971 again: John Lennon is just thirty, madly and obsessively in love with the older Yoko Ono, who just as madly and obsessively reciprocates. John has left the Beatles behind, his long collaboration and once-close friendship with Paul McCartney on the rocks, but there is a palpable sense of great promise in what the future holds for John and Yoko.
The very next day after I began perusing Imagine John Yoko—and before it turned into a cover-to-cover read for me—I dug out my old vinyl copy of Imagine and gave it a spin. I had not listened to it in many years and I had forgotten what a truly great album it is. The title track tends to get all the attention, but to my mind Gimme Some Truth is the best song on the record. Other iconic tunes include Crippled Inside, Jealous Guy and I Don’t Want to be a Soldier. Some might argue that none of it lives up to Strawberry Fields Forever or Happiness is a Warm Gun, but there’s little doubt that the collection of songs on Imagine is outstanding and certainly Lennon’s best post-Beatles work. It was re-listening to the album after all this time that led me to carefully read, rather than skim, the entire book. Along the way, I also screened the Blu-ray DVD that contains the full length “rockumentary” film Imagine, replete with innovative music videos from the Imagine album as well as selections from Yoko’s Fly album, as well as a companion “making-of-Imagine” film entitled Gimme Some Truth. Icing on the cake includes cameos from Andy Warhol, Fred Astaire, Dick Cavett and Jack Palance. I highly recommend these audio-visual companions to the book to help to make it come to life in all its brilliance once more.
The highlight of the book and the film is John in the “White Room” at Tittenhurst recording Imagine, singing and playing on the all-white Steinway grand piano that he gave to Yoko for her birthday that year, while Yoko slowly opens a series of white shutters to let light stream in. At the end, Yoko is seated beside John at the piano, and they exchange looks that reflect such a degree of genuine mutual love and affection and admiration that that one single moment serves to validate the entire project. The combined experience of immersing myself in the book, the album and the films made me not only come to better appreciate the superlative achievement of Imagine, but also the integral role that Yoko represented as artist and inspiration throughout. Like much of the public, back in the day I found it difficult to grasp John’s utter infatuation with Yoko, but the testimony of so many in this book underscores Yoko’s essential piece in the creation of this masterpiece. At the same time, listening to her vocals on portions of the Imagine film have yet to convince me that she has talent as a singer. Still, Yoko was clearly full partner to Imagine, not some assistant. It would never have been if not for her presence in John’s life.
One of my favorite bits in the book and in the Gimme Some Truth film feature Claudio, a Vietnam Vet suffering from PTSD, who was found to be living for some days in the woods at Tittenhurst. Claudio had become convinced that John was communicating with him through his lyrics. Disheveled and confused, he is brought before John, who tells him that “I’m just a guy who writes songs,” and patiently explains to an obviously crestfallen Claudio that the lyrics have nothing to do with him. There is a brief pause, and then John, with much empathy, asks: “Are you hungry?” John then brings him in and feeds him at his table. Claudio was both disturbed and obsessed with John Lennon, and the recounting of this episode made me wonder how things might have turned out differently if John had managed to similarly engage someone else who was disturbed and obsessed with him—Mark David Chapman—before it was too late.
On the final pages of Imagine John Yoko, they each speak to us. There’s an excerpt from an interview with John saying of he and Yoko that “We’d like to be remembered as the Romeo and Juliet of the 1970s.” When asked if he had a picture of “When I’m 64,” John replied:
“I hope we’re a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that—looking at our scrapbook of madness. My ultimate goal is for Yoko and I to be happy and try and make other people happy through our happiness. I’d like everyone to remember us with a smile . . . The whole of life is a preparation for death. I’m not worried about dying. When we go, we’d like to leave behind a better place.” [p298]
Those days of turning scrapbook pages were, sadly, not to be. As a fan, as a reviewer, I would urge you to buy this book and to read it, but it is not for me but rather for Yoko to deliver the coda, of course:
“It was such an incredible loss when I think about it . . . See, most people think, ‘Well, he’s a rocker and just kind of rough, maybe,’ but no. At home he was a very gentle person and extremely concerned about me but also concerned about the world too. I still miss him, especially now because the world is not quite right and everybody seems to be suffering. And if he was here it would have been different, I think. I think that in many ways John was a simple Liverpool man right to the end. He was a chameleon, a bit of a chauvinist, but so human. In our fourteen years together he never stopped trying to improve himself from within. We were best friends. To me, he is still alive. Death alone doesn’t extinguish a flame and a spirit like John.” [p298]

Review of: Imagine John Yoko, by John & Yoko Lennon https://regarp.com/2019/02/03/review-of-imagine-john-yoko-by-john-yoko-lennon/ show less