from the LP The Beatles (White Album), Apple Records, 1968John Lennon would have turned 70 years old today, and there are likely hundreds of other bloggers writing about this anniversary as we speak, so I’ll spare you my esoteric ramblings on what made him such a real revolutionary and just let the music lead the way. This polyrhythmic monster of a track is categorically brilliant from start to finish: every change in time signature, every metaphor, every axiom, every acidy image, every goddamn bloody note people!! That potent contrast of guns mixed with sex, death & life, the drug experience ultimately straddling both worlds simultaneously---no one else wrote songs quite like this, “…she's not a girl who misses much…she's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand, like a lizard on a window pane…I need a fix ‘cause I'm going down; Mother Superior jumped the gun…and I feel my finger on your trigger… happiness, is a warm gun; bang bang, shoot shoot…” There was a seemingly interminable willingness inherent to much of Lennon’s work, both with the Beatles and without, a willingness to focus the lens on things that struck him as fucked up, whether in his own life or around him, an eagerness to get it all out. We could sure as hell use some of his earnest enthusiasm these days, more than ever really, and I can only imagine the plethora of things he’d be commenting on, both big and small (“Happiness is a Warm Tan”?!!). Rest in peace, you wild-eyed radical.
