My Hero John Lennon

He was JUST a man..... Though a truly incredible one.


He was a living, breathing man of art!



What I admire so much about him was his honesty! He was always so incredibly honest... being his authentic true self without worrying whether others would like it or not. I completely and utterly respect his bravery, his strength, his talent and his honesty!!


He was a very very special... very very different man ... one that also struggled with big weaknesses and one who made many mistakes. But he always tried to learn from them and grow and change with age. He also believed so strongly in Love and in the danger of fear and violence which strikes a chord so strongly... more than anything else with my own core beliefs.

And then of course there's his music... his lyrics! Nothing else like it in the world. When partnered with Paul McCartney their joined genius created the best music the world has ever seen. Then with his second and only other Partner, Yoko, he did some incredibly real, self reflective journeying through his music which I believe is just as genius as his Beatles hits... just in a different style and way.

It seems that John Lennon always had an inner sense growing up that he was more than the average joe. He knew he was bound for bigger things in this world.

He had to struggle with hardship and grief very early in life which would have affected the man he became.

His father was permanently out of his life as a child and his mother gave birth to him while she was at a very young age which is why John's Aunt Mimi became his full time carer. John had an extremely close relationship with his mother Julia who seemed more like an older sister than a mother. A Mum who taught him his love for music. A Mum who was tragically taken away from him suddenly and so shatteringly when he was just 18 years old when hit by a car driven by a drunk, off duty poiceman!

Imagine yourself having to come to terms with such a tragedy?

John always seemed a lonely lad... dealing with a grief that not many other human beings have to even contemplate at such a young age.

Through Cynthia who he met at art school he found a beacon of light... of love. John and Cynthia fell very much in love. But they were so young... and it all happened before John became one the most famous people in the entire world!

All Cynthia cared about was being with the man she loved and she would have done anything for him... but the world wanted more from him and once Cynthia gave birth to Julian...being a good mother prevented her from being a wife to her husband, who did nothing but tour the world at the time. So of course they grew apart. John started using amphetamines first in Germany to help keep awake for his long 8 hour gigs and slowly drugs just became part of the Beatle Scene. The more John used drugs and was away from his family... the further apart he and Cynthia became.

John and the rest of the Beatles were thrown into a kind of fame NO ONE had ever before seen or experienced! Can you imagine how overwhelming it would have been to hear & see screaming banshee like girls chasing after them like females possessed wherever they went and not being able to ever feel private again? When they were touring they were basically imprisoned in the hotels.

Apparently people would 'feel up' the Beatles any chance they got so it became the norm for the fab four, when in a crowded area filled with fans, to be pretty much molested without their permission. How do you think you'd react to having that done to you all through your life?

I think if I were thrown into circumstances such as these I'd probably find drugs a release too.

John seemed to find drugs such a big release that he was doing them constantly. By this time John Lennon had been subjected to a lot of death... first his mother then his Uncle that was like a father to him. Then early in the Beatles career he lost his closest and best friend Stuart to a brain tumour. The grief alone that he would have been having to cope with, mixed with the world then putting him on this pedestal never seen before, must have been almost impossible to come to terms with.

He admitted once to having lost count how many acid trips he'd taken.. it was well past the hundreds!

So as you can imagine John Lennon was living in a completely altered reality compared to the one most people understand. Here he was... a man so famous that people never acted normal around him... and to top it off he was high a lot of the time.. first on halllucinagens then later moving onto opiates

For a marriage to survive such circumstances would be virtually impossible.

By the time Yoko came along John was a completely different person... he and Cynthia had grown so far apart it would have taken a miracle for the relationship to repair. By that time too... it's said John had also been dabbling quite heavily in extra marital sexual affairs which definitely meant his relationship with Cynthia was in the direction of being severed beyond repair.

John was a very lonely person. When he got to know Yoko... he felt a connection and love for her like he'd not experienced before... as she did for he. He no longer felt completely alone when with her... so of course... why would he want to go back to feeling alone again?

Yoko was an avant garde artist and she dived in head first and joined John completely in his creative life & ventures (which included the drug scene)... so... well of course .... it made complete sense that they then were inseperable.... John needed Yoko just as she then needed him.

It's sad to know that through John's musical genius, his celebrity and because of his unresolved grief and his life lessons and growth... Cynthia and Julian were hurt so badly from it.

Although John tried many a time to make up for this loss with Julian because he knew what it was like not to have a father... he was never in the right place unfortunately to give Julian all that he needed. Yoko too was struggling with the loss of her own daughter who had been taken out of the country by her former husband without permission (basically kidnapped). Yoko never knew where her own daughter was and was constantly trying to find ways to find her. Her grief and overwhelming attention to trying to find Suri.... meant she wasn't in a good place either to be a good step mother to Julian.

John and Yoko travelled forward on their creative paths, struggling to deal with their drug demons & their intense fame... all the while knowing their one central focus through it all... was projecting their message of love and peace for the world. It was of utmost importance to them especially due to the Vietnam war taking place at the time. John & Yoko decided to publicly show how anti-violence & anti-war they were through their artistic expressions.

Many have loved to label them crazy and whacko during these times... I myself don't think it all! The people who call them this... I believe are not able to put things in proper perspective & relate to who they were and how they would have thought and felt. They were artists after all and artists are known for being different & more sensitive compared to the majority of the population. Not only this... they were both emotionally grieving their own personal losses as well as struggling through intense drug addictions. And if that wasn't all... they were forced to live in a fishbowl... where everything they did and said was dissected and analysed by the worlds press! How do you think you'd react to those kinds of stimulus in your life?

It was a period of fear and unrest due to the war in the U.S. Their was a relatively new rock n' roll movement for which John was one of the central players and there was also a growing hippy movement amongst the youth which was like a public revolution of sorts. So the things Yoko & John were doing were hardly so out of place... especially to the youth at the time.

So although they themselves personally were lost emotionally in a drug addiction & emotional turmoil.. they were in a positive place for the world... projecting love and peace to all... which the world (especially the US) seemed to be yearning for at the time.

John and Yoko started sharing their altered reality with it's basis of peace & love with the world and it absolutely fascinated it! People could hardly believe the transformation in John... which to me seemed due to his huge journey of self discovery through drugs and pain like no other before.. and I dare say no other again.

Through it all though... John stayed focused on his own soul truth, following his intuition and always being incredibly honest with the world and those around him. He was a very smart and switched on fella who had a perspective of the world that enchanted most that heard it.

And then there's his musical genius. The man truly was... a genius! His music was completely soul shaking... it's hard not to love it... I'm sure most of you have to agree?

So for me... he was truth and love. He showed the world his truth and helped us all grow through it.

He was an ambassador for so many... and still is an ambassador for so many today.

Even though much of his memory has been commercialised and blown out of proportion as the years go by... I still think it's a great thing that he's a symbol for peace & love in our world.... we need more men like him.

And his music will live on through the ages... a gift for people to hear his voice and words that will hopefully touch a part of their souls.

What a gift to give!!

So....

Like I said...

.... WHAT... A ....MAN!!

- Pip (2011)

You Are Here Funny T-shirt by Pip_Gerard

John wrote this beautiful song while working on his one and only major film role of 'Private Gripweed in Dick Lester's 'How I Won the War'.

He would head to the beach between takes and it was there that Strawberry Fields was born.

John said it was about the conviction he'd had since he was a child that he was somehow different from everyone else, that he saw and felt things that other people didn't.

In the early recorded tape versions John actually sings:

"No one is on my wavelength" later changing it to "No one I think is in my tree"

In an interview he once said.... "I seem to see things in a different way from most people"

And in his playboy interview of 1980 he said he would see hallucinatory images of his face as a child when looking in the mirror. He said it was only when he later discovered the works of artists like the surrealists (I'm sure Yoko being one of them) that he realised he wasn't mad but part of 'an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms'.

The song was written and changed many times which is why the sentiment above in some ways seems out of place from a lot of the song. He changed more of it on his return to England... and then it wasn't until in the studio that he added the 'Strawberry Field's chorus. Strawberry Fields is said to represent a state of mind for John. Strawberry Field (John added the s) was a Salvation Army orphanage that he used to frequent first with his Aunt Mimi then later with his mates as their own kind of private adventure playground. It was a huge Victorian building surrounded by wooded grounds. To John... he likened it to Alice's escapades down the rabbithole. When he went there he felt like he was entering another world... a world that seemed more suited to his own unique inner world.

No other Beatles song captures my feelings like this one. Such a clear and moving message re-inforcing my belief that Love is most definitely it!!

The incredible song came about when the BBC approached the Beatles in the late 60's requesting them to write a simple song that could be understood by viewers of all nationalities from all over the world. It was to be the highlight of the first-ever live, global television link, broadcasting to 26 countries.

Both John and Paul wrote their own compositions for the occasion but in the end John's 'All You Need is Love' was the obvious choice. It so perfectly captured the aspirations of the youth in 1967. It was a time when the Vietnam War was at it's most intense and their had been a number of peaceful protests already by the younger generation.

You can't say this song is not an inspiring and moving song. Just imagine what it would have been like for the youth of the 60s to first hear...

What an anthem for peace!

Brian Epstein was quoted as saying "The nice thing about it is that it cannot be misinterpreted... it's a clear message saying that love is everthing!"

Love %u2665 is all you need Womens Girls Tee by Pip_Gerard

POSTER

Love is All You Need Retro Funky Poster Print by Pip_Gerard


Love Illustration Retro Hippy Office School Binder by Pip_Gerard


Love is all you need Retro Illustration Girls Tee by Pip_Gerard

(Photo from the ImaginePeace Website by Yoko. Photo is of John and Sean at Rozanso Coffee House in Karuizawa )

THE LIGHTER "From Yoko's ImaginePeace Website" - www.imaginepeace.com

Karuizawa is an old summer resort in Japan very much like the Hamptons except it's in the mountains. There is a coffee house in a pine forest near Karuizawa. John & I fell in love with the place, and found ourselves going there almost every day with Sean. To get there, you had to go cycling for about 30 minutes from the town of Karuizawa. But we loved going there. There was a big hammock in the backyard, and John, Sean and I used to spend the afternoon lying in it, giggling, singing, and watching the sky.

After John's passing, five years from the time we were last there together, I visited the coffee shop again. It was as if time had stood still. There was the same stillness in the shop with only a few people sitting around. The scent of pine and aroma of good coffee was in the air. I had a cup of coffee and left. The owner came running after me and handed me a lighter. "Your husband left this the last time he was here," he said. I looked at him and the lighter. "I'd like to return this to you." I lit the lighter. The flame shot up, like it was alive. Then I remembered the day that John had left the lighter at the coffee house.

The three of us went there to spend the afternoon as usual. Right in the middle of our bike ride home, John remembered that he had left the lighter at the coffee house. I was going fast on my bike. He was shouting something to me from behind. "What?" I shouted. "I left me lighter at the coffee house!" John shouted back. "The one I bought yesterday!" I knew he liked that one. I slowed down and turned my head around. "Shall we go back to get it?" I asked. "Yeah, let's," he said. Then he changed his mind "Oh, never mind. I'll get it tomorrow when we're there," he said. But tomorrow never came. The rainy season started the next day. It rained cats and dogs for several days without stopping.

Karuizawa was not fun when that started. John just sat in the hotel room and made collages. Then we packed and left for Tokyo, then home to N.Y.
We got busy with other things and, as fate would have it, we never went back there again. I was left with the lighter.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." JL

Y.O.
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