I
was six years old when the Beatles phenomenon hit the USA like a storm. All I
knew was that I wanted to be a Beatle when I grew up. I’ve done pretty well
with that. I am singer-songwriter and I play a guitar on a stage! But it’s a
real guitar – not a toy one – and I play on a real stage and not the fireplace
hearth in my parent’s living room! I listened to their albums, trying to figure
out which one was Paul. I contemplated how I might actually climb into
the stereo so that I might actually be there with them… wherever that might be!
No luck with that! All of this went fine and well for awhile.
However,
time does some strange things. My six year old self would have been mortified
to see her future self destroying those same beloved albums during the Beatle
Burning era – mob action of a different sort. “The Beatles say they are more
popular than God!!!” said the horrified masses. I guess I saw that as pure fact
– no screaming mobs entered any church I knew of. But it affected people deeply
including friends and family in my immediate surroundings. So following herd
mentality, I joined in. I remember trampling on and scuffing the records in my
family’s garage. Beatle magazines were in shreds. [Lucky note: one of them
survives to this day without a cover!] I remember the feeling of indignant
superiority that accompanied the process. I watched myself and wondered.
Years
later again… Reason comes with age and computers provide access; so one day in
the modern age, I finally looked it up. What exactly did John Lennon say that
started all of the ‘Mop Top’ flames? There it was. I read his comments within
the context of the article. And all I saw was a man who was telling it as he
saw it. He was in the middle of something we saw only from the outside. Maybe he
was disillusioned by his own place – watching the insanity from his lonely perch
on the tower of success. I don’t know. But I didn’t see anything there worth a
match and an angry bonfire.
Still,
I can surely say that I was a part of Rock history – ashes included. I was
there through the thick and the thin of it – and back to the thick again. And
for that, my six year old self breathes a sigh of relief.
Lennon's comments appeared in a 1966 article by Marureen Cleave, entitled: How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This. His comments on Christianity appear here in full and in context.
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"Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. 'Christianity will go,' he said. 'It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.' He is reading extensively about religion." -M. Cleave
PHOTO NOTES: Chris Mackie's interpretation of the famous "I Love New York" photo of John Lennon. Seen and photographed at the Garden Gallery in Carlisle, PA. It's called "Lennon on Steel 4." Meet Chris here.
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