When I was a kid John Lennon was one of my biggest heros. At 16 years old I read the Rolling Stone interview, and JL said something like ‘I’m the kind of person, when I have a hero, if I find out they wear green socks, I’ll run out and buy green socks’ and I immediately started to wear green socks myself. Wore ’em for years. I know that’s fucked up.
He did a photo spread in Look Magazine, with Yoko, it must have been around the time of the making of the White Album, and the pictures made a big impression on me. Him and Yoko were posing in a big empty house that they’d just moved into. She was sitting with him and he was playing the guitar, and I just really admired him, with his girl and guitar in a big house where nobody could tell him what to do. It was one of the things that clarified, at the time, my ideas about life. Of course, my image of him was rubbish. He was mad, painfully insane, destroying his mind with drugs, about to break up his great band. But that flux was part of what was great about him. I would consciously, and unconsciously, imitate all of that before too long myself.
I identified with the depth of his problems, as expressed in Yer Blues. That was my favorite for a while. My band ‘Pig Nation’ performed it at every gig we did, through 1969 and 1970. Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan were my other biggest living heros, and that song kind of summed it all up for me.
‘I’m lonely, want to die,’ 
Pig Nation used to rehearse in my parents basement and my Mom once called down the stairs: ‘Boys, play that nice song about suicide again!’
I’d seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show every time they were on. That was the first time I ever talked back to a grown up. My Dad was making cracks about their hair and I told him to be quiet. He got me good for that one! That was the first trouble JL got me in. I still have a 1964 diary somebody gave me for Christmas. ‘Saw the Beatle last night on TV. Mom and Dad think they stink. I think they’re great!’ Then me and a couple guys skipped outta school at lunch, and went downtown. I was 9, what is that, 4th grade? And we stood in the drugstore reading the first Beatle magazines ’til the guy asked us to buy something or leave. My first adventure with truancy, thanks John.
So you see, he was a big one for me. I became a songwriter in 1965, right after ‘I Feel Fine’ came out. Me and George Pope, my first songwriting partner, wrote ‘Stay Away,’ that was my first tune. We played it in my band, The Telstars, and that was it: all I ever wanted to do, after that.
I could go on and on. But I think you see. I spent three years living and playing on the streets of San Francisco. That was sort of my ‘Hamburg’ period. Me and my pals would play 12 or or more hours a day, everyday. During this time, I didn’t give a fuck about anything, just like I knew JL didn’t when he was a young rocker. It was a dark time in a way, but it taught me that I could project rock and roll.
When he died I was in the Plimsouls. That night me and Eddie Munoz had just written our song Shaky City. When the news sunk in, I cried my guts out. What a disaster. Eddie didn’t cry. He just said ‘ They kill all our heroes.’
2 comments
I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject this last year or so. Not sure if this will make any sense as I’m still under the influence of a sedative or whatever conked me out at the doctor today, but I’ll give it a try. What is it that really happens inside us with these heroes that we mostly don’t know personally, but sometimes do.? Dylan incorporates Woody. Case incorporates Lennon. And when they die, the grieving is as real and deep as for our dearest family members and friends. I know I grieved (really grieved) Bowie’s passing. Same with Cohen and Shephard and Prince and Clark and Stanton and McLagen and Petty and others. How do thee people fill holes big enough in our souls that their loss feels so immense? Why do I feel big parts of myself, of my very fabric, die with them? I have to believe it’s a mixture of shared humanity, the art, that the art so often is the only thing that “gets” us, that connects us to life and leaves us feeling less alone, less isolated. I’m not talking about hero worship here or being starstruck or delusional. Dylan wasn’t delusional with Guthrie. Case isn’t with Lennon. I really don’t think i am. Anyway, would be curious on your or anyone else”s thoughts
Beautifully stated Peter … and Art.
Sedated, huh? I wanna be.
I’ve grieved the deaths of artists I’ve admired and drawn strength from. Much more so than, say, family members. Real fathers vs. the ones you get saddled with.
I have personally been moving forward by singing up their songs whenever I can: Jesse Winchester, Prince, Allan Toussaint, Bowie, Jimmy Lafave, Hag, Guy Clark, Steve Young and now Pettya … and those are just the recent ones.
Or as Dylan puts it in “Joey”: “He ain’t dead // he’s just asleep”. Of course, reading Lester Bangs essay about Desire will make you wonder about all the crazy shit — which we love so much — that Bob says or sings! But reading it will sing up Lester which is a worthwhile thing to do. Start with the collection by G. Marcus and then proceed to John Morthland’s. Lester sings … a real writer. Check him out, Art, if you can. His essay on Van Morrison is my favorite thing I’ve ever read about popular music. And his stuff on Lou Reed is definitive on the “fan”‘s relationship to the artist i.e. very relevant to what you write above. What IS it about Lou that resonated so deeply with Lester? He gets at that in an articulate and moving way.
The great ones don’t disappear when they die. They’re still with us. Cliches abound. But it’s late over here.
What really got me with Lennon: hearing the song “I’m a Loser” … so liberating and disarming. No one says shit like that anyone. Or they say it but it doesn’t have weight (cf. Beck).
PC: safe travels!
Art: safe sedation! Hope you are ok.
Ok, back to Finnegan’s Wake which begins with HCE (Here Comes Everybody!) who is either asleep, dead, or both.
David Ackles, Inc.