Νομίζω αξίζει να διαβάσετε τα λόγια του May για τον Lennon:
I wasn’t allowed to go to see the Beatles in concert when I was a kid. My parents thought Pop concerts were attended by the wrong sort of people. So I never got to see the 20th century?s biggest phenomenon live. But from the moment I heard “Love Me Do” on the radio, I knew this bunch of guys were magic … that they voiced all my hidden joy and yearnings as a teenager struggling to make his way into the world of the 60?s. The raw power, the biting harmonies, and passion, the cursory but good-humoured slap in the face for authority, and everything that had gone before - that famous ‘irreverence", epitomised by John Lennon?s smirks to the News teams that hung on the Beatles’ every utterance throughout the world - was food for my soul from that day forward. That feeling of release that the Beatles gave me has never gone away. It is impossible to doubt that the combination of the four lads was unique, a piece of magic in a million - the perfect rock group to inspire all rock groups, and rewrite the framework of not only popular music but the whole culture of the young. But, as time went on, it became apparent that John Lennon was at the heart of this awesome power. Standing next to the melodic genius of his pal Paul McCartney, the emerging spiritual fire of George Harrison, and undoubtedly the most original drummer of his day, Ringo Starr, it was the acerbic Lennon who provided the bedrock of amused cynicism, the anchor of Truth, and ultimately, the pure, riveting off-the-wall invention that kept the Beatles firmly out of the trite, and into the extremes of dangerous creativity.
There is not enough space here to come close to chronicling all Lennon?s masterpieces, but check out ?Tomorrow Never Knows?, ?Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?, and then ?I am the Walrus? and ?Strawberry Fields? and tell me you do not gasp ? NEVER had anything been created like these works in the whole of History. Lennon, from a frankly less-than-glamorous teenager with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, developed into the coolest guy on Earth. He was cool enough to write the greatest teen Pop song ever written (in my humble etc), “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, to embrace Psychedelia and make it musically valid, to leave the Beatles when he felt it had all become a shallow game he didn’t want to play any more, and then to put his whole being into promoting Peace in his solo work, producing almost certainly the greatest, most daring and personally revealing solo albums ever made, including the exquisite “Jealous Guy”, the soul-baring ?God?, and the immortal anthem for Mankind, “Imagine”. OK, I am out of space, but Lennon for all of us Post-Revolution (whatever THAT was?) musos, was, is, and always will be … IT.
I rest my case.
Πέστα ρε Brian θεέ.