Sophomoric....selling John a bit short there, I think.

After all we didn't see much of him from age 30 to 40, and thanks to the fuckwits who keep America's gun laws in the stone age, we never knew him at forty two, forty three , fifty one, seventy....

we all thought we knew John. We identified with him.    Its like Jeff Nuttall wrote in Bomb Culture, most of us in the 1960's and 70's led lives of quiet desperation. Our freedom was to see The Beatles enjoy their freedom.

I suppose what we forget is that no one just gave him that freedom, John fought the stifling sneering establishment every day of his life to get that small space of personal bohemian existence.

I like to think of him as the young man, before he got famous hitch hiking round England and Europe with Paul, and half drunk on a vision of freedom that most of never even suspect exists.

And there is John, like fly trapped in amber. easier to like than someone we actually knew.