Evidently, boxed sets, DVD releases, and album sales just aren’t enough.
This past week, Yoko Ono, the widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon, announced that she was developing a Broadway musical with producers Edgar Lansbury and Don Scardino based on the life and music of Lennon, set to debut in the 2004 season.
Believe me, I’m one of the biggest Beatles fans on this campus. John Lennon is a personal hero of mine.
But honestly, hasn’t the canonization movement for John Lennon gone far enough?
In her press release, Ono said, “[John] was a catalyst who brought down the hypocrisy and the old world establishments by saying ‘Gimme Some Truth.'”
I never thought it was possible, but Yoko has clearly gotten more insane in her old age.
John Lennon was an incredible poet and musician; his musical creativity and incredibly deep and socially conscious lyrics are some of the most powerful ever done by a rock musician. But a “catalyst” who “brought down hypocrisy and the old world establishments?”
His songs did make people more politically aware, but I must have missed when John ran for President in 1976 and revolutionized health care.
This isn’t an attack on John Lennon, it’s an attack on everyone else. Look, John wasn’t a saint. At times, he drank too much, he had a short temper, and could be a real baby about things. Bottom line: he was a human, like the rest of us.
It was undoubtedly his early, tragic murder which caused people’s memory of John to become so skewed. He was a hero to millions of people, and he made such a deep connection with his fans. When he was taken from us entirely too soon, it was human nature to remember him with rose-tinted glasses.
It’s bad enough that Beatle fans have turned John Lennon into something he wasn’t. Yoko Ono doesn’t need to add gasoline to the flames by deifying his memory.
John Lennon was a musician, a father, a husband, and a visionary, but he didn’t change the world. Nor would he want to be remembered that way.
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