John Lennon Autorized Assasination

John Winston Ono Lennon has been exhumed in print more than any other popular musical figure, including the late Elvis Presley, of whom Lennon said that he "died when he went into the army". Such was the cutting wit of a deeply loved and sadly missed giant of the twentieth century. As a member of the world's most successful group ever, he changed lives, mostly for the better. Following the painful collapse of The Beatles, he came out a wiser but angrier person. Together with his wife Yoko Ono, he attempted to transform the world through non-musical means.

To many they appeared as naive crackpots; Ono in particular has been victim of some appalling insults in the press. One example shown in the film Imagine depicts the cartoonist Al Capp being both hostile and dangerously abusive. Their bed-in in Amsterdam and Montreal, their black bag appearances on stage, their innocent flirting with political activists and radicals, all received massive media attention. These events were in search of world peace, which regrettably was unachievable. What Lennon did achieve, however, was to educate us all to the idea of world peace. During the Gulf War of 1991, time and time again various representatives of those countries who were initially opposed to war (and then asked for a cease-fire), unconsciously used Lennon's words; "Give Peace A Chance". The importance of that lyric could never have been contemplated, when a bunch of mostly stoned members of the Plastic Ono Band sat on the floor of the Hotel La Reine and recorded "Give Peace A Chance", a song that has grown in stature since its release in 1969. Lennon's solo career began a year earlier with Unfinished Music No 1 - Two Virgins. The sleeve depicted him and Ono standing naked, and the cover became better known than the disjointed sound effects contained within. Three months later Lennon continued his marvellous joke on us, with Unfinished Music No 2 - Life With The Lions. One side consisted of John and Yoko calling out to each other during her stay in a London hospital while pregnant. Lennon camped by the side of her bed during her confinement and subsequent miscarriage. Four months after "Give Peace a Chance", "Cold Turkey" arrived via the Plastic Ono Band, consisting of Lennon, Ono, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann and drummer Alan White. This raw rock song about heroin withdrawal was also a hit, although it failed to make the UK Top 10. Again, Lennon's incorrigible wit worked when he sent back his MBE to the Queen, protesting about the Biafran war, Britain supporting the American involvement in Vietnam and "Cold Turkey" slipping down the charts.

In February 1970, a freshly cropped-headed Lennon was seen performing "Instant Karma' on the BBC Television programme Top Of The Pops; this drastic action was another anti-war protest. This Phil Spector-produced offering was his most melodic post-Beatles song to date and was his biggest hit thus far in the UK and the USA. The release of John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band in January 1971 was a shock to the system for most Beatles" fans. This stark "primal scream" album was recorded following treatment with Dr. Arthur Janov. It is as brilliant as it is disturbing. Lennon poured out much of his bitterness from his childhood and adolescence, neat and undiluted. The screaming "Mother" finds Lennon grieving for her loss and begging for his father. Lennon's Dylanesque "Working Class Hero" is another stand-out track; in less vitriolic tone he croons: "A working class hero is something to be, if you want to be a hero then just follow me". The irony is that Lennon was textbook middle-class and his agony stemmed from the fact that he wanted to be working-class. The work was a cathartic exorcism for Lennon, most revealing on "God", in which he voiced the heretical, "I don't believe in the Beatles . . . ", before adding, "I just believe in me, Yoko and me, and that's reality." More than any other work in the Lennon canon, this was a farewell to the past. The album was brilliant, and 20 or more years later, it is regarded as his finest complete work.

His most creative year was 1971. Following the album Lennon released another strong single, "Power To The People". After his move to New York, the follow-up Imagine was released in October. Whilst the album immediately went to number 1 internationally, it was a patchy collection. The attack on Paul McCartney in "How Do You Sleep?" was laboured over in the press and it took two decades before another track, "Jealous Guy", was accepted as a classic, and only then after Bryan Ferry's masterly cover became a number 1 hit. Lennon's resentment towards politicians was superbly documented in "Gimme Some Truth" when he spat out, "I'm sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites". The title track, however, remains as one of his greatest songs. Musically "Imagine" is extraordinarily simple, but the combination of that simplicity and the timeless lyrics make it one of the finest songs of the century. A Christmas single