John Lennon: what would he be like at 75?

by Neil McCormick MUSIC CRITIC
9 OCTOBER 2015 • 6:30AM

CREDIT: 2005 GETTY IMAGES/BRIAN HAMILL

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Receding silver hair tied back in a stringy pony-tail; thick glasses perched on his thin nose, a wiry old man steps creakily into the spotlight, blinking into the vast space where an audience roar their love. It is John Lennon, veteran rocker, political activist, acclaimed author and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as figurehead of the anti-war movement that did so much to heal global wounds during the first turbulent decade of the 21st century.

What would he say, what would he play on this, the occasion of his 75th birthday at Madison Square Garden? Would the spotlight come up on a white piano, with some sharp words about how this song remains as true as when he wrote it in 1971, while the opening chords to Imagine ring out? Might he cheekily congratulate new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the size of his marrow and strum Working Class Hero on acoustic guitar? Perhaps he would invite “an old girlfriend” to share the moment, with Paul McCartney entering stage right, so they could play the first song they wrote together back in 1957, One After 909, thrilling to the simple pleasures of throwaway lyrics and perfect harmony: “I said move over once, move over twice, come on baby don’t be cold as ice.” Or perhaps this imaginary concert would open with some unwritten classic from the second half of Lennon’s career that we have never heard and never will.

It is impossible to know what Lennon, born on this day in 1940, might be doing had he lived because he was such a singular character, who always went his own unpredictable way. One of his greatest achievements was surely to break the mould of pop stardom and leave something in its place that was more malleable and individualised, encouraging those in his wake to create their own templates for showbusiness careers. His supreme talent, extreme fame and tragic end have led to him being lionised, deified and mythologised but his music and personality still resonate so strongly because of his art of honesty, his instinct for cutting through the veil and revealing the real complexities and contradictions of the human condition. Lennon was the first truly modern pop star, where there was no distinction between his art and his life.

The Beatles changed everything, as actors and catalysts in the Sixties pop cultural revolution. And for all the talent of that extraordinary band, Lennon was their leader, the rebellious, creative firebrand who ignited the spark. Everyone who knew him pre-fame attests to his charisma, intelligence, humour and boundary-breaking sense of adventure, qualities that the English education system failed to nurture but, in the white hot furnace of rock and roll, facilitated the fastest evolving, most audaciously accomplished career in pop history.

 Lennon was the first truly modern pop star, where there was no distinction between his art and his life. 

Following the first rush of glorious harmonic songcraft, Lennon was responsible for some of the most florid, baroque psychedelic pop ever heard, tracks like Strawberry Fields Forever, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and I Am The Walrus, in which new musical palettes underpinned wild, surrealist lyrics. But if we were to speculate about music he might be making now, it would be unlikely to be trendy, experimental or even particularly grand in scale. 1966’s Tomorrow Never Knows may have been a big influence on techno via the Chemical Brothers 1996 homage Setting Sun, but I doubt Lennon would be interested in the synthetic rush of EDM, nor would you find him engaged by the formulaic polish and trivial content of today’s pop. He might have appreciated the way Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift craft pop songs out of real emotional situations but he was searching for something that dug deeper.

Lennon really found his particular groove when he started paring things down, musically and lyrically. Early classics like Help, Girl and In My Life opened up into the almost brutal honesty of Yer Blues and I Want You (She’s So Heavy). He is the first of the truly confessional singer-songwriters. Has there ever been a song as guiltily apologetic as Jealous Guy? As painfully vulnerable as Mother? As angrily demanding as Gimme Some Truth?

He might have taken to hip hop, with its wordiness and attack, responding to the bravado, braininess and peculiar vulnerability ofKanye West and tough truth telling of Jay Z. But at heart Lennon was a rocker, drawn to music that reflected his teenage obsessions, so apparent on his joyous 1975 album Rock N Roll. He would have liked Nirvana and The White Stripes, although Oasis might have been deemed too indebted to his own back catalogue. His idealistic nature and love of anthems would have endeared him to U2 and Coldplay and he would surely have jumped enthusiastically into the chorus line of Do They Know It’s Christmas and turned up with his guitar at Live Aid.

I wonder if he would have taken to Twitter, such a robust forum for comment, humour and campaigning? Social media might have been the perfect medium for him. Lennon was determined to reveal himself as a human being, flaws and all.

Some biographers have dwelt on his hypocrisies, his temper, cruelty and early misogynism, but Lennon was harder on himself than any critic could ever be. He could have been an important character online, wrestling with issues of self-exposure and public shaming.

 Social media might have been the perfect medium for Lennon, determined as he was to reveal himself as a human being, flaws and all. 

Had Lennon lived, the Beatles would have got back together, as every band seems to in the end. They were a gang from youth, with enduring affection.

There would have been at least one more album, and you have to believe it would have been great because there was too much talent and pride in their ranks to accept anything less. But I doubt they would have become a vintage touring act. Lennon did not have the showbusiness impulse that has kept McCartney on the road. Five quiet years as a house husband in the late Seventies seemed to suit him, and he is more likely to have been an occasional public figure, rather than a perpetual presence like his friends Bob Dylan and Elton John.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono CREDIT: GEORGE KONIG

There would have surely been more books. And there would have been more music, not all of it worth listening to. Lennon’s solo career was erratic and impulsive, and some albums are truly terrible, like 1972’s Some Time In New York City and 1975’s Shaved Fish. But just as 1980’s Double Fantasy is a touching evocation of the mundane joy of domestic family existence, who wouldn’t want to hear Lennon’s occasional dispatches from middle and old age?

This is what the world was robbed of, on that terrible day in New York, December 8, 1980, when Lennon was gunned down. Yet in 20 years of music making, he accomplished so much that he can barely be missed, because he remains ever present in pop culture. Perhaps, at 75, we would find him, as he imagined himself, enjoying a quiet retirement with Yoko Ono. “I hope we’re a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that, looking out at our scrapbook of madness,” he said in 1970.

As he sang that same year, in his sonorous myth-busting masterpiece God, “the dream is over”.