Glob-a-log

In my last post I was somewhat critical of John Lennon - as a human being much more than as an artist. I’m not taking any of that back but since I seriously like a lot of the things he did, this post will just celebrate a few of those.

First, the song I ended last post with. A political/feminist song, called ‘Woman is the nigger of the world.’ An ugly title, yes - but it’s still an ugly reality.

Secondly, one of the songs he recorded with Phil Spector, for his ‘Rock-n-Roll’ album - which was a tribute to all the music Lennon grew up with: ‘Stand by me’.

Thirdly, a harrowing song called ‘Mother.’ The story goes that Lennon went to a psychoanalyst in order to come to terms with some old stuff. Instead of mining this ex-Beatle’s mother load for all it was worth the analyst supposedly said, “Why come to me? You’re John Lennon. So, write songs about it.”

Fourthly, a song first recorded on the Beatles’ famous ‘White Album’ - when most of what they were doing was already, in fact, solo work. ‘Yer blues’ was and is a true John Lennon song.

Fifthly, one of his many anthem-like songs, ‘Working class hero.’ Great song.

Still, in a way, the importance of artists can also be judged by the amount of covers other bands make of their songs.

There are a lot of Lennon covers - but I’ll end with this one, because I truly believe it is even better than the original. It’s Marianne Faithfull’s version of ‘Working class hero.’

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 16:29 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.