| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/28/2008 11:44:09 AM | | If John lennon wasnt murdered do you guys think the beatles would have ever reunited as a group and either record new material or even put on a concert, i know john wasnt a big fan of doing live shows. The McCartney, Harrison and Starr experioment of the mid 90's dont count in my opinion because its not the beatles without lennon. Well in closing I think they would have reunited for some kind of project because Lennon always spoke highly of the remaining 3 after about 1973 when all the legal disputes were settled and the smoke cleared and they could have been friends again. I heard an interview on youtube by lennon in early 1980 where he said the beatles would always be close to his heart and wouldnt have minded doing "something" when he was finished recording his own album. So you never know what could have been if it wasnt for that dreadful night in new york city on december 8th 1980. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/28/2008 12:16:57 PM | The individual members of the fab four never had the consistent excellence apart as they did together. The height of Lennons' solo work was "Imagine" in 1971. McCartneys' zenith was "Band on the Run in 1973, and Georges' best was certainly "All Things Must Pass" in 1970.
So by 1980 when Lennon re-activated his career with the distinctly sub-par Double Fantasy, I think there must have been an increasing curiosity and will to rekindle the magic. Perhaps it would have happened in 1985 at the Live Aid concert. We will never know.. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/28/2008 12:47:43 PM | | ..all 4 would have to agree, and there always seemed to be one of the 4 at odds with one of the other at any given time. They certainly didn't need money...so I would have to say "no".... but definitely not 'never'. All things must definitely pass...and this is one phenomenon that happened that I feel is best that should be left the way history dictated. Just my opinion, of course... | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/28/2008 1:24:16 PM | | lennon didnt like doing live shows when the beatles wereat the hight of there popularity.nor did the other members.that was only because it seemed the music wqas not why the people were there.you couldnt here the music above the crowd noise. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/28/2008 1:43:05 PM | I think the Beatles would have reformed (for whatever reason) at some point. For charity or for an anniversary from their past. Lennon talked about releasing another album (Milk & Honey) & hitting the road in 1981. He died just before the advent of MTV and the music video age. I wonder how he would have used it since he seemed to be very comfortable in front of the camera's eye.
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/29/2008 7:07:30 AM | | Interesting topic. I believe they would have reformed and perhaps even toured upon completion of a new album. With the advancement in PA gear by the early 80's compared to what was available in the 60's/70's you would have been able to hear the band above all the screaming fans. I still can't believe that only Paul and Ringo are left... | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/29/2008 8:20:10 AM | I think they might have. John Lennon may not have liked live shows, but if he had lived and grown to a ripe ol' age, who knows? I find as people grow older they tend to change their views on things. Look at all the artists who have sworn things off and still done them:
1.) David Bowie said after his "Sound and Vision" tour that he would never do his classic hits live again. And yet I saw him perform them during his 2004 "Reality" tour.
2.)Tina Turner said in 2000 that she was retiring and would never tour again. And yet she is headlining several shows this summer.
And how many "farewell" tours have bands like Kiss and The Who done? Artists are entitled to change their minds. And considering the love that is still out there for the Beatles, I could see Lennon possibly saying "what the hell, let's do it!" | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/29/2008 6:19:16 PM | | It's possible they might have gotten together for an album production rather than any sort of tour. Rather than being a great work of genius I'm sure it would have been a disappointment, because they wouldn't have collaborated together like they used to. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/29/2008 7:31:07 PM | No. Absolutely not. And the person that would have been the holdout - even if the rest of the Beatles agreed - would have been John. To get an idea of how he felt about the Beatles, read "Lennon Remembers". His testimony on the subject of a reunion is there within the pages of The Rolling Stone Interviews. There is absolutely in no way that he would have performed or recorded with the other Beatles as a group.
And I believe that if John had not been assassinated by that piece of garbage that night in NYC, two critical things would have happened:
(1) He would have freed himself from drugs. It was already in progress, since he was at a zenith in his career. He was thinking clearly, and was looking for a new start. There were indications that he felt that he was at a crossroads, and he knew what he had to do. I think this time he would have made it.
(2) He would have rid himself of Yoko Ono. Eventually, he would have seen her for the parasite that she surely was, with the fog of drugs that was clouding his judgment and his reason, finally lifting.
And so I mourn the John that might have been. Had he lived, I think there would have been no limit to the talent and songwriting that would have come from him. He once said: "If there is such a thing as a genius, then I am one". A statement that many held in disdain. And yet - if someone can achieve what he did in a drug-induced haze....what might he have accomplished with his head on straight, and no self-serving leech to influence him to her own ends?
There would not have been a Beatles reunion, and the closest that it ever came was the surviving Beatles recording "Free As a Bird" with John singing posthumously. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/30/2008 10:21:02 AM | "Lennon Remembers", came out soon after the Beatles break up when John was feeling bitter and twisted about things. He happily burned his bridges with musical statements like "I don't believe in Beatles" from the song "God", on "Plastic Ono Band" and the childish McCartney trashing diatribe of "How Do You Sleep", on the "Imagine", album.
By the time of "Double Fantasy", I think his views on the Beatles legacy and the possibility of a reunion may have softened somewhat with a decade of hindsight, and if he'd lived into the mid eighties and as you suggest, divested himself of drugs, who knows? A Beatles reunion would have been like the Second Coming to many people. I think the temptation would have been hard to resist. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/30/2008 5:26:49 PM | clarence clutterbuck said:
"Lennon Remembers", came out soon after the Beatles break up when John was feeling bitter and twisted about things."
As recent as 5 months before his death, John was quoted in Creem or Crawdaddy - one of those rock publications, I can't recall which - as again denouncing the Beatles, and not wanting to talk about the past, wanting to discuss his current recording instead. Maybe at the time of the interview he was tired of all the "When are the Beatles getting back together" rhetoric that he suffered through on a daily basis, but plainly, from that interview, you got that John still wanted nothing to do with a Beatles reunion. To him it would have been moving backwards, and he would have had to make compromises ....something that he vowed he would never do again. And when Double Fantasy was released, all you had to do was listen to Watching the Wheels to know exactly how John still felt about the whole Beatles thing.
A Beatles reunion would have been like the Second Coming to many people.
Which is the main reason why he wouldn't do it. The more fans asked him the inevitable Beatles question, the more determined he was that it would never happen.
Don't forget: John had established himself as an individual artist long before he quit the Beatles. All you have to do is play the White Album and listen to the songs he sings lead on, which are the ones that he wrote, regardless of what it says on the credits. Paul might have had a couple of middle-eights in them but they were John's songs. He felt he'd outgrown the Beatles as workable vehicle for the music he wanted to make. Which is why many of the post-Beatles Lennon albums are such a vast departure from his work within the group. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/30/2008 6:16:40 PM | I think it depended on his mercurial mood on any particular day. In 1975, John did a television interview where he said he wouldn't rule out doing something with the boys sometime in the undefined future.
Considering today's current events... it may have even re-sparked his political activism.
I don't think he would have broke off with Yoko though. Any marriage has ups and downs and he did feel the calling to pick up the guitar again after 5 years and show his boy that he was more than just the Dad in the kitchen baking bread.
I really got into Double Fantasy when it was released... well, all the songs except Yoko's "Kiss Kiss Kiss".
It is sad to think what great music we may have missed out on..... or, perish the thought... maybe he would have joined "A Flock of Seagulls .... with Yoko on lead vocals wailing away?
The sad fact is.... we will never know. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/31/2008 1:51:37 AM |
Considering today's current events... it may have even re-sparked his political activism.
Well, we will never know, but (as a huge Lennon fan) I do think he would have been on the forefront of the anti-war movement.
That comment about the turn in technology is an important one. Yoko and John probably would have been at ease in a YouTube world. Websites and other things probably would have reconnected him to the world, in a huge way.
As for Double Fantasy being bad, I think it showed him at the top of his game, as a maturing artist. Those songs STILL stand up.
A reunion with the others ? I think that would have been more than likely, had they been given enough time to relax and think about it. You have to understand they spent a great majority of their lives up to that time together, in kind of a marriage that forced them into a very private world. For roughly twenty years, the legacy of their talent had imprisoned them together.
They needed to break away from that to find their own paths and lives again. Marriage and children tend to do that to people in any business association - much less the Beatles.
I agree with toon that we probably missed out on an incredible legacy of music, and perhaps a rather different world today, thanks to his murder. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/31/2008 9:10:32 AM | toonsmith said:
I don't think he would have broke off with Yoko though. Any marriage has ups and downs
Ups and downs? Good grief. What they had wasn't a marriage. It was pure domination....her over him. There was a cartoon in the early 70s - a caricature or John & Yoko Ono. It appeared in several news media publications. It showed Ono as this huge figure....immense, and holding a leash - at the end of which was a tiny creature with John's face. It really summed it up. Yoko Ono was interested in John for one reason only: what she could get out of him. She used him in many attempts to try to further her own "career" at the expense of his. Read any John Lennon Biography that wasn't directly sanitized by her, and you'll get the idea. Her control over him was absolute, and she neither respected him nor admired him....I doubt that she loved him in any way, even although I do think he loved her.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once said, "The fastest and easiest way to make a million dollars, is to invent your own religion". Ono went him one better, since she discovered that the fastest way to make 20 million dollars is to find some rich, impressionable, easily-manipulated rock star and marry him.
I maintain that John would have come to his senses eventually, and divorced her a$$. However, you are certainly correct about one thing....we will never know. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/31/2008 10:12:51 AM | This thread has got me thinking about John Lennon and his music, most of which I've probably got in my CD collection. Montreal Guys' remarks regarding the merits of Double Fantasy recall to mind a review I read of the album when it came out that described it as "John and Yoko revealing their clean washing in public", or words to that effect. A criticism of the lack of edgy or challenging subject matter and the somewhat sanitised focus on domestic life. No Cold Turkey-like moments, just songs about navel gazing like Watching the Wheels, or twee dedications to family life like Beautiful Boy and Woman, plus the non-ground breaking, retro sounding rocker, Just Like Starting Over. The album and singles from it were very successful in the UK as I recall, in the aftermath of Lennons' murder, but if he'd lived on, the sales would have no doubt been less.
Although possessing the vinyl album, I never bothered to buy Double Fantasy on CD because of my perception of it as being inferior to his other works and the fact that I wouldn't listen to it much, if at all. I actually prefer the stuff he recorded before the five year recording hiatus, like Mind Games and Walls and Bridges.
Purely my opinion of course, and I'm not being argumentative with Montreal Guy for disagreeing. After all, what is it that makes us perceive one record as being better than another? I'd welcome thoughts on the subject.
I've jus' read After The Rains' latest post and must confess I'm not very well read on the John/Yoko relationship. I remember the "Lives of John Lennon" biog coming out in which the writer was critical of the Lennons but I never made the effort to acquire and read it. I would however speculate that if John was indeed dominated by Yoko, then maybe something in his character wanted to be dominated in this way. Perhaps he craved a mother figure after the loss of his own mother in his youth. Just a thought. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 5/31/2008 2:24:09 PM | clarence clutterbuck said:
I actually prefer the stuff he recorded before the five year recording hiatus, like Mind Games and Walls and Bridges.
Hmmm. Yes, me too. Walls and Bridges was a particular favourite of mine. However, I think the songs on Double Fantasy are worth buying the album for. Just make up a new copy of it without Ono's garbage on there, and you've got a great album.
I'm not very well read on the John/Yoko relationship. I remember the "Lives of John Lennon" biog coming out in which the writer was critical of the Lennons but I never made the effort to acquire and read it.
You should. It's an eye-opener. A lot of people dislike Albert Goldman because he doesn't handle the stars he writes about with kid gloves and saccharin syrupiness. In the book, he's often brutal with his pen about John, but by the same token, he doesn't hold back on his praise for him whenever Lennon did something that was great. He also provides some amazing insight into John's psychological profile, and offers up a number of great points about why John was the way he was. The bio is gutsy, often critical - but at the end of it, you come away feeling that you knew a lot more about John Lennon and why he was the way he was.
I would however speculate that if John was indeed dominated by Yoko, then maybe something in his character wanted to be dominated in this way. Perhaps he craved a mother figure after the loss of his own mother in his youth. Just a thought.
And I think you're right on the money. It would be very evident about just how correct you are by the time you had finished reading the book. | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 6/11/2008 1:24:59 AM | | Probably no Beatles reunion, but I suspect John might have become a Traveling Wilbury... | |
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| IF John Lennon wasnt murdered
Posted: 7/3/2008 4:06:16 PM | | If John Lennon wasn't murdered, you'd probably wouldn't be spending time, talking about how he should have been for you. Instead You'd probaly be spending your time listening, and spending your money on his latest Albums. | |
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