John Lennon

As Quentin Tarantino points out in Pulp Fiction, everyone is either an Elvis man or a Beatles man. I am a Beatles man. I am more of a McCartney man myself, but I still watched parts of Imagine: John Lennon on Cinemax last night. It was interesting to see John and Yoko join the peace movement and try to make an impression on the Vietnam War.

They were doomed to failure. I'm a bit of a cynic and I understand that man's nature has a certain warrior quality to it. Greed, lust...the classics. Even those involved in the peace movement had a certain belligerence and warrior quality to them. So it was fun to roll back the clock and watch John and Yoko lay in bed for peace. (And of course, the soundtrack as they did so was incredible.)

It was also interesting to observe the kinds of trouble he got himself into. It would be laughable by today's standards. He showed his ass on an album cover?!? Yawn. He smoked dope!?! Ho-hum. He said they were bigger than Jesus in Jesus's day? Boooooring. (For the record, they were.)

The movie has a clip of the Beatles playing "Revolution". Raw guitars screaming. John forcefully singing about changing the world and how to do it. They sincerely wanted to change the world. Then I remembered that Michael Jackson bought their catalog, licensed the song for a Nike commercial, and used the profits to build a playland where it is suspected he "played" with little boys. I almost cried.

So as we spin and try to get a grip on a world where the wrong wars are fought for the right reasons, where are the John Lennons of today?