Your favourite John Lennon songs?

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: *daylia*
Date: 12 Mar 05 - 01:18 PM

Hmmm ...

Well I'm just sittin here watchin the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch em roll ...

I picked that one and not Imagine, because after years and YEARS of it being my favourite Lennon song, the Conservatory now has it on their repertoire list for Grade 8 piano exams. Which means that now, everybody and their next door neighbour wants to play it. As a piano teacher, I've hear it played so awful - sorry, that's often - that now I can only lay back and dream of this perfect enchanted world ... one where NO ONE WILL EVER EVER MASSACRE THAT LOVELY PIECE AGAIN!!!

I just got back from a performance class where it was executed (quite literally) half a dozen times. So I apologize for the rant, but *whew* it was fun to vent this in a semi-safe place far far FAR away from my innocent students. They are improving and they do love it, after all.

Thank you Mudcat

daylia

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST,Bill
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 01:56 PM

I love "#9 Dream."

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 02:08 PM

Thought this may interest a few folks..just found it..

John Lennon - Rare Videos

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 02:12 PM

If John Lennon knew better he would have got into English folk; if Gordon Brown knew better he would have joined the SNP.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 04:00 PM

John Lennon? Shmickles!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXILMn7fk7g

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST,seth in Olympia
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 04:50 PM

I like a lot of his songs, but I have a fondness for "Imagine", as they play it in supermarkets and dollar stores in the U.S. as music to shop by.
People sticking their face into the dairy case to get a blast of cold air and John: "Imagine no religion, it's easy if you try... " It's like a joke by John from the next dimension.
Seth

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 04:55 PM

Make that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXILMn7fk7g

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:04 PM

Working Class Hero.

Rog

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 05:07 PM

I have far more respect for the likes of Martin Carthy.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:25 PM

Rocky Mountain High

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:37 PM

The greatest Beatles song was "Here Comes the Sun" by a country mile. Because it was composed by a real musician I suppose.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:37 PM

I'm certainly not a Beatles fan - I found them soft-centred. I was a Stones man. Of the Beatles, I would have preferred Harrison or Lennon to the others. Starkey was simply barely competent, and McCartney was consistently twee.

Lennon's vocals were not bad at all - "I saw her standing there" is a fine piece of rock singing.

However, surely the thread seeks preferences amongs SOLO Lennon Songs.

I opt for "Cold Turkey" - but the best bit is the guitar line, and I have a little bell going off in my head that he did not play it and that it was Clapton - am I wrong?

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:38 PM

I am not a guest. I'm Steve Shaw. Can someone tell me how I can resume my real identity!

---

Hi, Steve. I sent you an e-mail. If it doesn't come through, contact me.
-Joe Offer
[e-mail]

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 07:47 PM

Er, Richard, the lead on I Saw Her Standing There was sung by Paul.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Bobert
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 08:34 PM

Being an ol' revolutionary myself, I'll go with "Working Class Hero"...

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Neil D
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:24 PM

"John Sinclair" stands as one of the few protest songs that actually worked. The song and John's efforts on his behalf were instrumental in helping to gain Mr. Sinclair's release from prison where he was serving ten years for giving two joints to a narc (they gave him ten for two, what more can the bastards do). Dylan's "Hurricane" exposed an even greater injustice, nevertheless I give John props, plus the slide guitar really rocks.
    The primal scream of "Mother" is one of the most powerfully emotive pieces of vocalization ever. I literally get chills up my spine whenever I hear it. I think it took a certain kind of courage to give unabashed tribute to his love for Yoko Ono in songs like "Oh, Yoko" when she was being held in such low regard by his own fanbase.
    I also love "Instant Karma", "Imagine", "Yer Blues" and really just about everything he ever wrote. All that being said I have a special place in my soul for "Working Class Hero". I used to break out the old vinyl and play that song every year on Thanksgiving Day.
I'm not quite sure why, maybe as counterpoint to the spirit of the day, but it was a privately heartfelt tribute to a man who had a major impact on my life. I know he was far from saintly, his imperfections were part of what made him so infatically human, but his willingness to profoundly expose that human frailty to the world made him great.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 09 - 10:49 PM

WORKING CLASS HEROS

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Allen in Oz
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 02:07 AM

"One After 909"

AD

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 03:53 AM

I must have my Beatles tracks mixed up (entirely possible, since I am no great fan). Which was the track they recorded last, for their first album? I remember reading that Lennon had a cold or throat or something, and had been singing gently all day and living on Fisnerman's Friends - and was finally able to cut loose on that since he knew it was the last of the day and if he wrecked his voice he would not need it again?

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 04:00 AM

Which was the track they recorded last, for their first album?

Twist and Shout

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 04:23 AM

Thank you.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 04:52 AM

Rather than putting their skills into their own English folk music, the Beatles were very good at copying an aspect of American culture - pop.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 05:12 AM

Rather than putting their skills into their own English folk music, the Beatles were very good at copying an aspect of American culture - pop.

Ignoring the absurdity of the first bit of that statement, The Beatles didn't just copy an aspect of American culture, they, and countless others, including God-like Geordie Eric Burdon and The Animals, gave it back to them transfigured. It was the Animals' Chas Chandler who brought Jimi Hendrix to England (initially staying at Candler's mother's in 2nd Avenue in Heaton) and it was Jimi Hendrix who took The Soft Machine back to America to tour with him & record their first album. Seminal moments in the international history of pop, without which...

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 06:37 AM

Thanks for getting me back in, Joe. I'm a computer primitive, you know. :-(

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 07:21 AM

Interestingly, I remember reading that the Beatles were much frowned upon in folk clubs near the Mersey for some time, because they did NOT copy the then folk-fashionable US things like Seeger, Guthrie, Leadbelly et al.

Subject: RE: What's your favourite John Lennon song?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 03 Jun 09 - 07:45 AM

Personally, it was flipping over the All You Need is Love 7" way back in the summer of 1967 that I regard as a seminal moment in my own musical history. Although only 6-years-old at the time I nevertheless recall my soul thrilling to the psychedelic folk bag-piping modality of Baby, You're a Rich Man which still brings a smile to my lips more than 40 years on.

No great Beatles Fan, they were part of the cultural ambience of my childhood - and along with other folkish popular musics, from Rolf Harris to Ennio Morricone, they helped shaped my musical vision in my formative years. Not as much as the Bonzo's though - Vivian Stanshall's recorder (that's English Flute to you, WAV) playing on Quiet Talks & Summer Walks (note: comes in around 2.30, after Neil Innes' spontaneous rendering of Zappa's Dog Breath) is likewise enduringly sublime...