*News, views and pix on the great John Lennon*
Shot down in his prime at 40, John Lennon died in some sort of intense energy, just as he had lived. We might have expected it.
Lennon was a master singer-songwriter and a political activist, a hero to many and a villain to others. What is the real legacy of this man?Lennon's influence from 1963-70 as a Beatle was profound. It was brought about by a combination of prodigious talent, aggressive self-promotion, and technological opportunities. The ability of a single musical act to have the vast reach that the Beatles enjoyed was only made possible by technological advances - satellites, recording techniques, advances in shipping technologies, air travel, even new printing technology aided the Fab Four.
Lennon's influence from 1963-70 as a Beatle was profound. It was brought about by a combination of prodigious talent, aggressive self-promotion, and technological opportunities. The ability of a single musical act to have the vast reach that the Beatles enjoyed was only made possible by technological advances - satellites, recording techniques, advances in shipping technologies, air travel, even new printing technology aided the Fab Four.For example, in 1967, the Beatles recorded All You Need is Love in a London studio, watched live by millions of people all around the world in the first ever global telecast, Our World. Fortunately, it was also a great song (yet another Number One), though almost everything they did had the stamp of greatness on it. They never seemed to let their fans down and kept getting better and better.
However, despite that song, and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and a phenomenal 31 Number One Beatle hits (in Australia), John Lennon's intellectual star shone most brightly in the decade following the 1970 acrimonious demise of the band. It was then that full vent was given to the acuity of his mind in combination with his musical gifts.His influence was profound in the realm of the personal/political. The song Imagine represented much of what Lennon was saying, and it became a standard. However, some of his best work, written and recorded in his first few years as 'former-Beatle John Lennon', did not sell as well and is not so well known.
Such songs as Woman is the Nigger of the World, Luck of the Irish and Attica State brought an overtly leftist political dynamic to pop music. The album Some Time in New York City was fiercely alternative and made Lennon many enemies, such that Sean Lennon, his son, claimed that his father might have been killed by the CIA. It seems a paranoid conclusion to draw, and it is not a theory I subscribe to, but certainly Lennon was a target of the Nixon administration and investigated by the USA's FBI and Britain's MI5 spooks. He had the same drug convictions as George Harrison, but he, and not George, was refused a Green Card by the US Immigration Department ...

I hope you'll enjoy my other Squidoo lenses:
On This Day with Wilson's Almanac
Mother Nature, we love you!
Australia. I love a sunburnt country
Linkarama
- John Lennon: Saint or Sinner?
- The rest of the article above, plus a video of John and Yoko recording 'Give Peace a Chance' during their Bed Peace. See if you can pick Timothy Leary.
- Bagism
- Everbody's talking about bagism ...
- john-lennon.com
- Imagine an international holiday on John's birthday
- John's birthday in the Book of Days
- What else happened on October 9?
- Lennon mp3s
- At Radio Blog Club.
- Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list
- OK hipsters young and old, see how many of these people and events you know!
- CounterCulture Wiki
- The Counterculture and hippie wiki you can read, write and edit yourself.
- Podcast
- The 'Rolling Stone' interview with John Lennon.
- Official John Lennon site
- Run by Yoko Ono and the Lennon estate.
- The Beatles
- The official site. It's pretty crappy for some reason (not enough money?).
- Wilson's Almanac Search
- Search for hundreds of references to John Lennon, Beatles, George, Paul & Ringo.
- Dubya sings 'Imagine'
- Warning: this free online video is hilarious but contains some Iraq invasion images not recommended for children.
- Hey Bulldog
- The Lennon song ... play it here.
We all shine on, like the Moon and the stars and the Sun ...
Click Astro pic * Sun * Moon phase * Nat. Geog. pic * Global significant weather events
I read the news today, oh boy
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byLennon music
Picture yourself in a box on a flickr
Beatles in the news
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMore John news
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byJohn Lennon & Beatles videos to put on your site
It's easy to place these videos on your personal website
Did you know you can watch John Lennon videos and Beatles videos, and also put them on your website? (You can see an example on my own site here.) Click on Google video you like, then click the link that says 'Embed'. It's not on every video, but many of them allow embedding. You just copy the code and paste. (It doesn't work on Squiddo, though, otherwise I would have 'Imagine' on Lennon Lives! Botany picture of the day
Before I go, just something to say bye-bye with
John loved life and Nature, so here's a bit of that
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