John Lennon's Seventieth Birthday: A Secular Hymnody

Those of us who are adults remember where we were at certain moments of history. OS admits to his age when he tells you of sitting in his elementary school classroom on 11 November 1963, seeing a tearful teacher poke her head through the door who blurted out: 'Turn on the television! The President's been shot!'

Likewise, the memory of the moment of hearing of John Lennon's senseless murder is burned in the brain. That terrible sense of loss, knowing that a creative voice had just been stilled.

OS has mixed feelings about Mr. Lennon. He was a brilliant creative voice, who emerged from the neighborhoods of post-war Liverpool; as unlikely a success story as one would ever encounter. He and his mates adopted the American (born in the South!) idiom of rock-n-roll, blended it with their own cultural upbringing (including a good bit of English music-hall material, and a more classical approach to melody than they even suspected at the time), and sang it back to us all. They absolutely transformed the culture of the day, and we're still sorting out whether for better or worse.

Mr. Lennon also embodied much of the 'gonzo' wackiness of his day, and publicly participated in and promoted its drug and ego-fueled excesses, for which we are still paying a dear price. But by the time he was taken from us, he had settled a bit. OS heard awoke this morning to the interview of a journalist who had spent three weeks with the Lennons in New York, recording interviews with John. He had embraced fatherhood, and was particularly proud that he had learned how to bake bread. He was not so much interested in recounting the past as planning for his future, at one point saying, 'Look, I'm only forty! Paul's thirty-eight. Think of Elton, Bob Dylan...we may all have forty productive years ahead of us.'

And, then came the end. So we are left with what he did to that point. Which is a sobering thought, since we are none of us guaranteed tomorrow.

Thirty years on, the press coverage of the wacky excesses becomes a curiosity, and the wacky excesses are just that, no more. His vision of 'Imagine' doesn't hold up, no matter how pretty the song. Like all of us, he had the right to be wrong, and unlike most of us, he did it in public.

John Lennon left behind a body of work that still speaks afresh, and universally. Old boomers like OS grew up on his music, and OS's kids embraced it for themselves. Because it's a wonderful body of work--OS raised very sophisticated kids, not easily impressed.

Here's an exercise: Stop for a moment, and quickly sing back to yourself as much of the following songs as you can recall. Don't think about it, just go for it.

Yesterday
Eleanor Rigby
Help
Michelle

You probably can recall most of the melody and lyric. That's extraordinary, because the list could be stretched to twenty titles. That's a body of work.

John and Paul, at their best moments, created a sort of secular hymnody, a common set of songs that ring in the mind, and shape how many people view their world.

Wednesday night, Mr. and Mrs. OS were daubing tears from their eyes as they viewed the final episode from this season of The Choir, on BBC America. (Here's hoping the episodes are re-run, and that you get to see them. Have tissues close at hand.) Young Gareth, the conductor, takes the choir into Abbey Road studio to record an arrangement of "In My Life", and Mrs. OS exclaims, "It's secular hymnody". And she was, of course and as always, spot on. The video below does not include the final performance, but it shows the choir rehearsing this song in this place most associated with the Beatles. The camera catches faces as lines are rehearsed, and one can almost see choir members' memories scanning back to the people they loved and perhaps lost. The song itself gathers the memories for them, and there they are, singing that song in that place. Words fail at moments like this.

For whatever John Lennon may or may not have done or accomplished, he left behind a body of work that will move millions of people to the bottoms of their hearts for many years to come. Very few of us get that privilege, or accomplish a tenth of that sort of contribution to the world.

May he rest in peace, and may his memory be blessed.