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Lennon Quotes
"My role in society, or any
artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not
to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but
as a reflection of us all." - John Lennon
It is for others to judge. I am doing it. I do. I don't stand
back and judge -- I do. - John Lennon
"You make your own dream.
That's the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko's story. That's
what I'm saying now. Produce your own dream. If you want to save
Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but not to
put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy
Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or
Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.
That's what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever
since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little
instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshiped
for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the
instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and
always will be. There's nothing new under the sun. All the roads
lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can't wake you
up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You can cure you." -
John Lennon
"You're just left with
yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get
down to your own God in your own temple.
It's all down to
you, mate." - John Lennon
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John Lennon by Andy Warhol
Click on picture to see full size |
“One has to completely humiliate oneself
to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I mean I did
it, I didn't know, I didn't foresee; it just happened, bit by bit,
gradually, until this complete craziness is surrounding you and
you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't
stand, the people you hated when you were ten. And that's what I'm
saying with this album--I remember what it's all about now, you
fuckers--fuck you! That's what I'm saying, you don't get me twice."
- John Lennon
"But nobody's perfect, etc.,
etc. Whether it's Janov or Erhardt or Maharishi or a Beatle. That
doesn't take away from their message. It's like learning how to
swim. The swimming is fine. But forget about the teacher. If the
Beatles had a message, it was that. With the Beatles, the records
are the point, not the Beatles as individuals. You don't need the
package, just as you don't need the Christian package or the Marxist
package to get the message. People always got the image I was an
anti-Christ or anti-religion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I
was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the
things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got
hooked on the teacher and missed the message. All this bit about
electing a President. We pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of
daddies." - John Lennon
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set,
then there'd be peace." - John Lennon
"I think the basic thing
nobody asks is why do people takes drugs of any sort? And that
question has to be resolved before you can think, well, what can we
do for the poor drug addict? Why do we have to have these
accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something
wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot
live without guarding ourselves against it?" - John Lennon
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"When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly
pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning
and come and help me,' you just scream." - John Lennon
"It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be
frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing
dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that--it's all
illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's
plain sailing. Everything is unknown--then you're ahead of the game.
That's what it is. Right?" - John Lennon
"It just was a gradual
development over the years. I mean last year was 'all you need is
love.' This year, it's 'all you need is love and peace, baby.' Give
peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace.
Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if
we all pull together. You're all geniuses, and you're all beautiful.
You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are.
Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe
peace, and you'll get it as soon as you like." - John Lennon
"Once you're so depressed that
you get into drugs, once you're on them, it's very, very hard to see
the light or to have any kind of hope. All you think about is the
drug, and it's no good to us preaching at people and saying don't
take them. Because that doesn't work. It's like the church telling
you not to drink or not to have sex when you're a kid. There's
nothing on earth gonna do it. But if people take any notice of what
we say, we say we've been through the drug scene, man, and there's
nothing like being straight. You need hope, and hope is something
that you build within yourself and with your friends. It's a very
difficult situation, drugs... The worst drugs are as bad as
anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn
people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's
personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if
one can help it." - John Lennon |
Though it seems like round wire-rimmed granny
glasses have been called "John Lennon glasses" forever, John only started
wearing them for his role as Private Gripweed in the 1967 movie How I
Won the War
(The director, Richard Lester, had also directed John in A Hard Day's
Night and Help!) |
"Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the
problem." - John Lennon
"The pressures of being
a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious
parent, and really look to that little being's mental and physical
health is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid
most of the time, because it's too hard. To put it loosely, the
reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the
responsibility of bringing them up..." - John Lennon
"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.
You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think
it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering it.
You've got to really look after it and nurture it." - John Lennon
"You can't cheat kids. If you cheat them when they're children
they'll make you pay when they're sixteen or seventeen by revolting
against you or hating you or all those so-called teenage problems. I
think that's finally when they're old enough to stand up to you and
say, 'What a hypocrite you've been all this time. You've never given
me what I really wanted, which is you." - John Lennon
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" Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
It's them twisting it that ruins it for me." - John Lennon
"As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot. - John
Lennon
"You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You
are what you are!" - John Lennon
"I don't believe in killing whatever the reason!" - John Lennon
"If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have
been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace
are eternal." - John Lennon |
1965 |
"I believe in everything until it's disproved.
So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if
it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as
real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
- John Lennon
"If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art
or my music. then in that respect you can call me that. . . I
believe in what I do, and I'll say it." - John Lennon
"Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that
the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality"
- John Lennon
"Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and
peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or
something."-1980 - John Lennon
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"My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows
all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to
cry. Simple." - John Lennon
"Everything I've ever done is out. I don't
have boxes of unreleased stuff. There's nothing in the files. I can
never keep anything unless I don't like the sound of it or it didn't
work. If I can sing it to an engineer, I can sing it to anyone..." -
John Lennon
"For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll
stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty. It
would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would
get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if
it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad,
I was furious 'cause I could've done it better..." - John Lennon
"I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved
and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician.
But I cannot be what I am not." - John Lennon
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"I don't intend to be a
performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I'll be around I don't intend to be
running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don't want
to die at 40." - John Lennon
"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to
conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak
all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those
people." - John Lennon
"I still don't know how to express the really
delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very
personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot
seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why
I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is
a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to
rhyme." - John Lennon
"When real music comes to me - the music of
the spheres, the music that surpasses understanding - that has
nothing to do with me, cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for
me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a
medium... those moments are what I live for." - John Lennon
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"Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The
only one who can control me is me, and that's just barely possible.
And that's the lesson I'm learning. If someone's going to impress
me, whether it be a Maharishi or Yoko, then there comes a point
where the emperor has no clothes 'cause I'm naive, but I'm not
stupid. For all you folks out there who think I'm having the wool
pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. But if you think
you know me, or you have some part of me because of the music, and
then you think I'm being controlled like a dog on a leash because I
do things with her, then screw you, brother or sister, you don't
know what's happening. I'm not here for you, I'm here for me and
her, and now the baby" - John Lennon
"Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm
not interested in being hip." - John Lennon
"I've been baking bread and looking after the baby...Everyone else
who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But
what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?'
Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time
job. After I made the loaves [of bread,] I felt like I had conquered
something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well,
Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?" - John
Lennon
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"Song writing is about getting the demon out
of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the
song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into
something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the
middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your
critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole
game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away.
You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never
grasp them." - John Lennon
"The first year I had this sort of feeling in the back of my mind
that I ought to [be doing music]. And I'd go through periods of
panic, because I was not in Billboard or being seen at Studio 54
with Mick and Bianca. I mean, I didn't exist anymore. It would
become like a paranoia, and then it would go away, because I'd be
involved with the baby. And I realized there was a life without it -
life after death." - John Lennon
"The idea of being a rock and roll musician
sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but
then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in ...The whole Beatle
thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying
for help." - John Lennon
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"They want to hold onto something they never had in the first
place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an
individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely
misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with
Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're
just jacking off to - it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody
else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, okay? I don't need it." -
John Lennon
"When you're thirty-five, you can't take as much booze ... and I
always got a little violent on drink...So it was kind of a
self-destructive suicide side of me, which is resolving itself for
the better, I believe, because I never enjoyed it..." - John
Lennon
"In one way, I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was
different from the others. There was something wrong with me, I
thought, because I seemed to see things people didn't see. I always
saw things in a hallucinatory way." - John Lennon
"If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim.
And once you've learned - swim!" - John Lennon
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1973 |
"The only time we took drugs was when we were
without hope and the only way we got out of it was with hope and if
we can sustain the hope then we don't need drugs, liquor or
anything. But if we lose hope, what can you do? What is there to
do?" - John Lennon
"It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a
concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?" - John Lennon
"I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's 'Get
Back.' When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang
the line 'Get back to where you once belonged," he'd look at Yoko."
- John Lennon
"Now, in the sixties we were naive, like children. Everybody went
back to their rooms, and said, 'We didn't get a wonderful world of
just flowers and peace and happy chocolate, and it won't be just
pretty and beautiful all the time,' and just like babies everyone
went back to their rooms and sulked. 'We're going to stay in our
rooms and play rock and roll and not do anything else, because the
world's a horrible place, because it didn't give us everything we
cried for.' Right?" - John Lennon
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From:
http://artsillustration.com/lennon.htm |
"The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the
Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more
mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we
were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than
when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties." -
John Lennon
"Well, crying for it wasn't enough. The thing the sixties did was
show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It
wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility." -
John Lennon
"We've been on our peace gig, as we call it, for a year solid. And
people say, 'Do you think it's having any effect?' I can't answer
that. It's like asking me in the Cavern, 'Are you gonna make it?' In
the back of my mind I thought, I'm gonna make it, but I couldn't lay
it on the line. And I think that peace is more tangible than
Beatles." - John Lennon
"We were all on this ship in the sixties, our
generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles
were in the crow's nest of that ship ... We were part of it and
contributed what we contributed. I can't designate what we did and
didn't do. It depends on how each individual was impressed by the
Beatles or how our shock wave went to different people. We were
going through the changes, and all we were saying was, it's raining
up here, or there's land or there's a sun or we can see a seagull.
We were just reporting what was happening to us." - John Lennon
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1964 |
"Newspaper people have a habit of putting you in the front pages to
sell their papers, and then after they've sold their papers and got
big circulations, they say, 'Look at what we've done for you" -
La entera entrevista por Playboy (en Inglés)
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"When I was a Beatle I thought we were the
best fucking group in the goddamn world, and believing that is what
made us what we were." - John Lennon
"I was too scared to break away from the
Beatles, which I'd been looking to do since we stopped touring. And
so I was sort of vaguely looking for somewhere to go but didn't have
the nerve to really step out into the boat myself, so I sort of hung
around, and when I met Yoko and fell in love, my God, this is
different than anything before. This is more than a hit record. It's
more than gold. It's more than everything...When I met Yoko is when
you meet your first woman, and you leave the guys at the bar, and
you don't go play football anymore. Once I found the woman, the boys
became of no interest whatsoever, other than they were like old
school friends." - John Lennon
"People want peace. And you've got to sell it
and sell it and sell it. So we do the bed-ins and they say, 'What?
They're in bed? What's this?' And all we're doing really is donating
our holiday. We get tired and it's ... more convenient for us to
stay in one spot than go around doing press conferences." - John
Lennon
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"Before Yoko and I met, we were half a person. You know there's an
old myth about people being half and the other half being in the
sky, or in heaven or on the other side of the universe or a mirror
image. But we are two halves, and together we're a whole." - John
Lennon
"Everything is clearer when you're in love" - John Lennon
"We've broken down a few barriers between us. which we had to do
because we had two big egos. two individual artists - and with love
we overcame that." - John Lennon
"I'd never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That
sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or
a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field
I was in, I didn't meet many intellectual people anyway. I always
had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be
like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that
was it." - John Lennon
In the 60s we fought for peace, when the
Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the
politicians and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And
I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war,
we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know? So I
thought, not this time, it's too complicated a situation. We cannot
enjoy the machoism of fighting for peace. I felt that I wanted
John's fans to know that.
You can stand for peace, but not fight for it.
...the people who are fighting today, probably think that they are
fighting for peace, too. Probably we are all imagining the same
thing in the end, but we have different ideas of how to get there.'
- Yoko Ono
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John Lennon and Yoko Ono in a scene from the film
which revisits the musician's
legal fight to avoid deportation from the United States in the 1970's.
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Photo Credit:
Courtesy Of Barrie Wentzell Photo |
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"Yoko looks upon men as assistants. . . . Of varying degrees of
intimacy, but basically assistants. And this one's going to take a
pee." (Exits to the restrooms) - John Lennon
"Anybody who knows our history knows that we went through all hell
together - through miscarriages and terrible times." - John
Lennon
"We are both sensitive people and we were hurt
a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love,
when somebody says something like, 'How can you be with that woman?'
you say, 'What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the
fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this? Why do you
want to throw a rock at her or punish me for being in love with
her?' Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty
violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we
managed to survive it and here we are. [John looks up] Thank you,
thank you, thank you." - John Lennon
"We haven't been apart for more than one hour in two years.
Everything we do is together, and that's what gives us our
strength." - John Lennon
LENNON: In England, there are only
two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement
or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing
Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an
instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should
get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of
it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich.
So what the hell -- if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I
am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why
I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be
screwed by so-called managers.
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"We're all in a bag, you know?... I was in a pop bag, going round
and round, in my own little clique. And she [Yoko] was in her own
little avant-garde clique, going round and round...So we just came
up with the word. If you'd ask us what bagism is, we'd say, 'We're
all in a bag, baby." - John Lennon
"We've broken down a few barriers between us, which we had to do
because we had two big egos, two individual artists - and with love
we overcame that." - John Lennon
"When [Yoko and I] got back together, we
decided that this is our life. That having a baby was important to
us, and that everything else was subsidiary to that, and therefore
everything else had to be abandoned. I mean, abandonment gave us the
fulfillment we were looking for and the space to breathe." - John
Lennon
"Why don't people believe us when we say we're
simply in love?" - John Lennon
"With us it's a teacher - pupil relationship. That's what people
don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the
famous one. I'm supposed to know everything. But she taught me
everything I fucking know." - John Lennon
"Yoko was the only one who didn't put me down through that period,
because
a) she knew I was suffering, and
b) she said, 'You didn't kill anyone. You didn't abuse anyone.' And
I thought, Okay, okay, she doesn't mind it, so I'm not going to give
a damn whether the reporter likes it or not." - John Lennon
"We all have Hitler in us, but we also have
love and peace. So why not give peace a chance for once?" - John
Lennon
"I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically -- any woman. I
was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and
I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is
the most violent people who go for love and peace."
Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace.
I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his
violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public
how I treated women as a youngster. -
John Lennon y Yoko Ono por la Paz (en Inglés)
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Listen to Beautiful Boy by John Lennon |
"When I was cleaning the cat
shit and feeding Sean, she [Yoko] was sitting in rooms full of smoke with
men in three-piece suits that they couldn't button." - John Lennon
"The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn't come out of my
belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to
every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a
fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all his
things. But he is my biggest pride." - John Lennon
"If [Sean] doesn't see me a few days or
if I'm really, really busy, and I just sort of get a glimpse of him, or if
I'm feeling depressed without him even seeing me, he sort of picks up on
it. And he starts getting that way. So I can no longer afford to have
artistic depressions. If I start wallowing in a depression, he'll start
coming down with stuff, so I'm sort of obligated to keep up. And sometimes
I can't, because something will make me depressed and sure as hell he'll
get a cold or trap his finger in a door or something, and so now I have
sort of more reason to stay healthy or bright..." - John Lennon
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John Lennon as a boy |
THE JOHN LENNON SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
The John
Lennon Scholarship Program recognizes young songwriters
working in any genre between the ages of 15 and 25 and has
awarded over $160,000 in scholarships over the past nine
years. Entries are solicited from a select group of schools
and from the National Association for Music Education/MENC.
Students
and alumni from the following schools will be eligible to
participate in the 2007 competition: Appalachian State
University, Bard College, Belmont University, Berkley College
of Music, Birmingham-Southern College, Booker T. Washington
High School (Dallas), Brown University, Univ. of California
Los Angeles, California State U. Northridge, Carnegie Mellon
University, Catawba College, University of Cincinnati, Clark
Atlanta University, Colorado State University, University of
Colorado Boulder, Columbia College (Chicago), Drexel
University, Elmhurst College, Emory University, Fairfax High
School (Los Angeles), University of Florida, Florida State
University, Georgia State University, Hamilton High School
(Los Angeles), Harlem School of the Arts, Harvard University,
University of Houston, Hunter College, University of Idaho,
Indiana University, LaGuardia High School (NYC), Lehigh
University, Loyola University (New Orleans), University of
Memphis, University of Miami, University of Michigan, Michigan
State University, Middle Tennessee S. Univ., Millikin
University, New England Conservatory, New York University,
University of North Alabama, Univ. of N. Carolina Chapel Hill,
University of North Texas, Northwestern University, Oberlin
College, Purchase College (SUNY), University of Southern
California, Southern Methodist University, Stuyvesant High
School (NYC), University of Texas at Austin, University of
Utah, Vanderbilt University and Yale University.
Additional entries will be accepted through the National
Association for Music Education/MENC, with college and
university chapters throughout the U.S.
Established in 1997 by Yoko Ono, this scholarship program
honors the memory of one of the preeminent songwriters of the
20th century, John Lennon. Lennon’s enormous creative legacy
includes such songs such as I Want To Hold Your Hand,
Strawberry Fields, Imagine, I Am the Walrus, All You Need Is
Love, and Come Together and continues to inspire and uplift
new generations of music lovers around the world.
Questions may be addressed to:
info@bmifoundation.org
December 8, 1980
John Lennon was murdered in
New
York City on
December 8,
1980 by a deranged
fan, as he and Ono returned home from a recording session; he was, and continues
to be, mourned throughout the world.
"More popular than Jesus"
controversy
Lennon often spoke his mind freely and the press was used
to querying him on a wide range of subjects. On
4 March
1966
in an interview for the
London Evening Standard with
Maureen Cleave, who was a friend, Lennon made an
off-the-cuff remark regarding
religion.
- "Christianity
will go. It will vanish and shrink. ... I don't know what
will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. We're more
popular than
Jesus now. Jesus was all right but his
disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it
that ruins it for me."
The article was printed and nothing came of it, until five
months later when an American teen magazine called Datebook
reprinted part of the quote on the front cover.
A firestorm of protest swelled from the southern U.S.
Bible Belt area, as conservative groups publicly burned
Beatles records and memorabilia. The Beatles looked at this in
a wry way, by saying, "They've got to buy them first before
they burn 'em."
Radio stations banned Beatles music and concert venues
cancelled performances. Even the
Vatican got involved with a public denunciation of
Lennon's comments. On
August 11,
1966,
The Beatles held a press conference in
Chicago, in order to address the growing furor.
- Lennon: "I suppose if I had said television was more
popular than Jesus, I would have got away with it, but I
just happened to be talking to a journalist friend (Maureen
Cleave), and I used the words "Beatles" as a remote thing,
not as what I think — as Beatles, as those other Beatles
like other people see us. I just said "they" are having more
influence on kids and things than anything else, including
Jesus. But I said it in that way which is the wrong way."
Reporter: Some teenagers have repeated your statements —
"I like The Beatles more than
Jesus Christ." What do you think about that?
- Lennon: "Well, originally I pointed out that fact in
reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus
did, or religion at that time. I wasn't knocking it or
putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's
true more for
England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or
greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or
God
as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it
was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."
Reporter: But are you prepared to apologise?
- Lennon: "I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was
saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a
lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make
you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've
tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to
apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry."
The governing members of the
Vatican accepted his apology.
Lennon largely abandoned his leadership role under
the influence of
LSD and
Timothy Leary's book The Psychedelic Experience,
believing he needed to "lose his ego" to become
enlightened. He resented McCartney's taking effective
control of the band after
Brian Epstein's death in 1967, and disliked some
of the resulting projects, such as
Magical Mystery Tour, and particularly
Let It Be ("That film was set up by Paul, for
Paul," as he said later to Rolling Stone).
Lennon was the first to break the band's all-for-one
sensibility, and also the rule that no wives or
girlfriends would attend recording sessions, as he
brought
Yoko into the studio.
Lennon was also the first member to permanently
quit the group (Starr had left during 1968, but was
persuaded to return; Harrison walked out on a filming
session early in 1969, but turned up at a business
meeting a few days later), which he did in September
1969. He agreed not to make an announcement while the
band renegotiated their recording contract, and
blasted McCartney months later (with the negotiations
complete) for going public with his own departure in
April 1970. With the public unaware of the details,
McCartney appeared to be the one who dissolved the
group, depriving Lennon of the formalities. Lennon
told Rolling Stone "I was a fool not to do what
Paul did, which was use it to sell a record," and
later wrote "I started the band. I finished it." McCartney later admitted Lennon had been the first
to quit, re-explaining the circumstances to
CBS-TV's
48 Hours in 1989. In a subsequent
Playboy interview, McCartney asserted "We all
looked up to John. He was older and he was very much
the leader; he was the quickest wit and the smartest
and all that kind of thing."
In the last major interview of his life conducted in
September 1980, three months before his death —
published in the January 1981 issue of
Playboy— Lennon said that he'd always been
very macho and had never questioned his
chauvinistic attitudes towards women until he met
Yoko Ono. By the end of his life, he had embraced the
role of
househusband and even said that he had taken on
the role of wife and mother in their relationship.
While Lennon was always distant with his first son
(Julian) he was very close to his second son (Sean),
and called him "my pride". Lennon also spoke about
having a child with Ono: "We were both finally
unselfish enough to want to have a child."
In the
same interview, Lennon said he was trying to
re-establish a connection with the then 17-year-old
Julian, and confidently predicted that "Julian and I
will have a relationship in the future."
Both Julian and Sean Lennon went on to have
recording careers years after their father's death
From:
WIKIPEDIA
STORY OF JOHN LENNON
John Lennon's killer denied parole
October 11, 2006
Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon 26 years ago
Mark David Chapman, 51, must remain at Attica Correctional Facility
for at least two more years for gunning down the former Beatle outside
his Manhattan apartment building in 1980.
"The panel remains concerned about the bizarre nature of this
premeditated and violent crime," the board wrote in a one-page
decision issued today shortly after Chapman's appearance before the
three-member panel at Attica.
The hearing lasted 16 minutes, said Scott Steinhardt, spokesman for
the state Division of Parole. A transcript of the hearing was not
immediately available."While the panel notes your satisfactory institutional adjustment,"
the decision said, "due to the extremely violent nature of the
offence, your release would not be in the best interest of the
community."
The decision came one day after what would have been Lennon's 66th
birthday.
Chapman has been in prison for 25 years.
He became eligible for release after serving 20 years of a maximum
life sentence.
His next appearance before the parole board will be in October
2008.
AP
MAHATMA GANDHI QUOTES
JOHN LENNON NEWS
BOOKS ABOUT AND BY JOHN LENNON
WHO AUTHORIZED THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN LENNON?
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
CHAPMAN
WORLD PEACE DATABASE
GREATDREAMS.COM MUSIC DATABASE
GREATDREAMS.COM MAIN
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