John Lennon was assassinated 39 years ago tonight. Sigh.
This is a great video of "Working Class Hero," which accentuates the lyrics. As a person substituting at schools here in New Mexico, I am finding myself singing a line or two from this song more often than I thought, as my heart goes out to these kids.
As with the JFK assassination, one remembers where one was when they heard the news. Most of us were watching Monday Night Football and recall Howard Cosell essentially interrupting the game to make the announcement. What is amusing is how Cosell verbally turned to Frank Gifford for a comment, Gifford being the great football hero from the New York Giants in the early 1960s, and then doing color commentary. All Gifford could do, however, is sputter, "Indeed, it is." Frank Gifford missed the Sixties student movement and may have liked the early Beatles, but had no clue about anything from "Revolver" on, other than George Harrison's lament about taxes, one supposes. The Giff was a football star who lived a life very much removed from protest and critical thinking. He was an idol, too, but one far more narrow and fleeting than Lennon, who I am sure Gifford did not like from Gifford's vantage point.
Here, in Lennon's song, "god," is Lennon asking his fans to give up their idolization of him and The Beatles. I always loved Lennon using Bob Dylan's birth name so as to not leave anyone wondering if Lennon meant Dylan Thomas. However, I guess Lennon's plea for being treated with less cult-like reverence did not work with a particular disaffected, southern white guy who drifted around the nation, and bought a gun in Hawaii to track down Lennon in New York City, in front of Lennon's home at the Dakota Hotel.
I remember a London paper had said something like "New York sickie killed our John." That was not true at all. New Yorkers were so in love with, and respectful towards Lennon they essentially let him live like a normal individual. Lennon walked the streets of NYC without being mobbed for autographs or anything like that. A father of a woman I have known since high school used to work in NYC, and he would see Lennon nearly every day while the father walked to his office. He and Lennon passed each other on the way--just happenstance--and eventually they would acknowledge each other with a smile and a wave. If I recall correctly, they never had a conversation, just a brief hello or good morning on occasion, and mostly just a smile or a wave. It is remarkable because there are many stories like this, and a FB friend reminded me of a Tom Snyder interview in April 1975, where Lennon stated this himself.
In the days following Lennon's assassination, I remember concluding the Sixties were really over with Lennon's death, as Lennon's death followed, just the month before, the election of a man, Ronald Wilson Reagan (Mr. 666), who first achieved public office attacking the Sixties student movement, which began in Berkeley, and who actively promoted racist dog whistles for white Baby Boomers and their even more racist elders.
In 1988, HBO did a miniseries called "Tanner '88." about a congressman named Jack Tanner, who was a combination of then senator Gary Hart, Bobby Kennedy, and a blow-dried news reader (cough, cough, Tom Brokaw), who ran for president that year. Garry Trudeau, the creator of "Doonesbury," wrote the miniseries, and the series featured Michael Murphy as Tanner. Murphy literally went around Iowa and New Hampshire in that presidential year as if he was a real candidate. The script was often brilliant, par for the course with Trudeau, who I consider our nation's Balzac in comic strip format. Here is the end of the first episode where Tanner, frustrated at his lack of traction, and his belief that he and his other candidates are mostly just spouting spin and vague, focus-group massaged language, talks about who the best Beatle is. Tanner says there is only one correct answer to that question. And I would say Tanner is right that, if you are running for public office, there is only one correct answer.*
The dream is over/What can I say?/The dream is over/Yesterday/I was the dream weaver, but now I'm reborn/I was the walrus, but now I'm John/And so, dear friends, you'll just have to carry on/The dream is over.
*Still, I have to say, though I hated then, and hate now, Tanner's discussion of Vietnam. There was no moral reason in starting that war and certainly none in how we got out. I know Trudeau knows better, and, over the years, I have wondered why he wrote that. The War against Vietnam was not a morally based mistake. It was a war crime from the start and it continued to be one, right through the way Nixon and Kissinger negotiated the end of that war. And Watergate was not a "triumph of the system." It was far less than that. Still, Tanner talking about Biden and the loss of any can-do spirit is even more profound than it was in 1988.
