Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon

Subject: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 04:36 AM

John Lennon would have been 80 today.

This from the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-54450152

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 04:58 AM

My Mum would have been a hundred last year.

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 12:47 PM

Still miss John. Never knew your granny...

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 01:46 PM

I doubt whether given his lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and fags, that John would have made it to 80. Still, A tragedy that Lennon's life was ended too early by ease of access to guns in the US. Only another 30 years and Lennon's solo written songs will be traditional/public domain in UK terms.

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 03:18 PM

The exact opposite with me. I've sort of got used to John not being around, but I still miss my Mum.

Apart from a few royalties - most of which were nicked by the music industry The Beatles music has always been in every meaningful sense 'in public domain and in the folk process'. Has any guitar teacher or school teacher EVER been asked to pay royalties. Is there any guitar or uke teacher who excludes The Beatles from their ringbinders.

Only the jealous contemporaries of the 'folk revival' ever thought otherwise. Virtually every line of lyric and verbal inflection is steeped in idiomatic English.

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 07:29 PM

I miss John Lennon all the time.
I particularly miss his sophomoric madcap humo[u]r,
in which Paul McCartney no doubt egged him on.

"You took your cocker spaniel,
and you fed it to the laun-dro-mat..."

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: GUEST,Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Oct 20 - 10:22 PM

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.

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Oct 20 - 01:21 AM

We sang a lot of Beatles songs at our singaround in Sacramento tonight. It's always fun to sing Beatles songs. I've been to camps where people sang Beatles songs for three hours straight, never singing any song twice.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 10 Oct 20 - 05:16 AM

From "Guest"

"I doubt whether given his lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and fags, that John would have made it to 80".

Yoko's still there at 87!

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Oct 20 - 07:57 AM

That's the lottery of life .. some people (Keith Richards, Ringo, Paul etc), get away with fags, booze and drugs, living long after stopping the worst excesses. Others like George Harrison pop off prematurely with throat cancer - though he just escaped being murdered. I slagged off American gun culture, ironically it was a multiple stabbing with Harrison that nearly ended him - but the heavy smoking probably caught up with him. Yoko is in pretty poor health, but still goes on...

Subject: RE: Happy 80th Birthday John Lennon
From: Peter the Squeezer
Date: 10 Oct 20 - 10:04 AM

Agreed - you do such things with certain substances, then you are playing Russian Roulette!

Doesn't prevent us from mourning the loss of all of them, though.