A QUARTER CENTURY AGO, NIRVANA RECORDED A GORGEOUS SWAN SONG PERFORMANCE
Much has been canonized about the evening that Nirvana stripped themselves of their signature blast of electric distortion, and delivered a sublime and transcendent acoustic performance in November of 1993. Less attention has been paid to the mechanisms backstage leading up to the show and how it almost didn’t happen at all, or how the folk-tinged delivery of the songs hinted at what may have come from Nirvana had they been afforded the time to produce more music. The tragedy of what followed five months later has enshrined its legacy as one of the greatest live performances in history. To the spellbound constituents in the attendance that evening however, the magic of what they had witnessed was immediately palpable. Here was a band that had already revolutionized modern rock and the music industry as a whole, who was playing at the peak of their primal powers, and yet the haunted intimacy and vulnerability of that night’s recording has come to define what many of us remember about Nirvana, and especially Kurt Cobain.
To the general public, things were looking up for Nirvana towards the end of 1993. After spending much of the year fending off media speculation debating the commercial viability of their follow-up to the decade-defining Nevermind, the September release of In Utero was met with critical acclaim and debuted at Number One on the Billboard Top 200. Cobain, the iconoclastic frontman and primary songwriter, had experienced a contentious courtship with the massive fame that had engulfed him since being anointed “spokesman for a generation”. In recent months however, he presented the image of a newly contented husband and father, and an artist who had finally come to terms with his band’s stature as the flagship for the much-hyped grunge rock music explosion. After taking “two years to recuperate”, Cobain seemed ready to enter into a new chapter in his career.
The opportunity to inaugurate this evolution in earnest would present itself when, after months of courting him, MTV was finally able to convince Cobain to appear on their celebrated MTV Unplugged series. Upon agreeing to do the show, Kurt and the rest of the band were adamant that they did not want to approach their performance in the vein of other acts who had appeared on the series over previous years. Despite protests from MTV’s programming department, Nirvana opted to deliver a set that was largely devoid of their greatest hits, and instead featured carefully selected deep cuts and covers of some of their biggest influences. Any act of lesser importance may have been forced to cave to the pressure of an entity as powerful as MTV was at the time; Nirvana, as the network’s producers were fully aware, was no ordinary act.
And yet the grandeur of what came to be a legacy-defining moment was far from promised during rehearsals. From the beginning, the run-throughs and preparation leading up to the performance were fraught with technical problems and discord between the band. Cobain, who was going through drug withdrawal and battling acute nerves, was in a sour mood and was particularly frustrated with Dave Grohl’s drumming. Grohl, celebrated as one of the greatest technical percussionists of the era and a critical component to Nirvana’s sonic cohesion, was not accustomed to delivering the understated and subtle execution that Cobain required. He was naturally a hard and heavy-hitting drummer, and his apparent inability to play gently to Cobain’s satisfaction nearly led to him being sidelined from the grand performance altogether. Eventually, one of MTV’s showrunners were able to send an assistant to buy some wired brushes and sizzle sticks; these were much lighter and enabled Grohl to play quieter.
Then there was the issue of designing the set. The Unplugged series had been strict about its premise of no electric instruments being utilized by the acts, but Kurt was insistent that he use an amplifier for his acoustic guitar to augment some of the songs on the setlist. After much debate, MTV once again relented and chose to hide his amp and effects pedals behind a make-shift box disguised as a monitor. Cobain was very singular on how he wanted the stage to be presented. He ran through a list of distinct requests; in particular, he wanted the set decked out with black candles, a crystal chandelier, and stargazer lilies. Once he understood the decor that Cobain wanted, producer Alex Coletti reportedly asked Cobain “Oh, you mean like a funeral?”, to which Cobain replied “Exactly. Like a funeral.”
When the day of the performance finally arrived on November 18, 1993, no one was exactly sure whether or not the band would be able to pull it off, least of all the band members themselves. Rehearsals had not gone to Cobain’s liking right up until the end, and as he sat in front of the audience while the producers prepared to roll tape, he was visibly tense and chain-smoking to calm his nerves. To the sound of ecstatic applause, Cobain adjusted his guitar and his mic, cleared his throat and, staring ahead to no one in particular, began the evening with a greeting that has become immortal: “Good Evening. This is off our first record; most people don’t own it.” With that, the band launched into “About A Girl”, a standout track from their 1989 debut album Bleach. And suddenly, everything gelled and came together. Grohl tapped (rather than pounded), along with the song, and Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic’s playing was accentuated by the addition of touring guitarist Pat Smear (formerly of LA punk band The Germs) and cellist Lori Goldston. Kurt’s vocals exemplified a cadence that was akin to the cherished tradition of the best blues and folk performers. Where he was renown in their live concerts for his raging, wounded wail of a scream that somehow managed to stay in tune and on key, here his voice verged almost on a yodel, and through restraint it revealed greater emotional depths to the band’s catalog.
One such example was crystallized in the second song of the evening, and the only major hit that Nirvana would perform from their discography that evening: “Come As You Are”. Listening to his raspy, backwoods interpretation of the murky, metallic original almost makes him appear to be an entirely different performer, one who would sit just as comfortably singing to the gathered faithful of a Nashville country festival than an audience full of alternative, indie, and grunge aficionados. It also sends chills down the spine hearing him repeat the refrain of “And I swear that I don’t have a gun”; in hindsight it would appear that he was attempting, unsuccessfully, to convince himself otherwise of a fate that he knew in his nauseous, burning stomach was all but inevitable.
The next two songs inaugurated the many covers that Nirvana would perform that evening. First came “Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam”, which according to Kurt was “a rendition of an old Christian song”; the band chose to perform a version written by Scottish indie rock duo The Vaselines, who were one of Cobain’s formative musical influences and had originally recorded the track in the late 1980’s. Here was where audiences saw, perhaps for the first and only time live on stage, the breadth of eclectic musing that existed within this band. For starters, Novoselic put down his acoustic bass and picked up an accordion. You can almost hear the telepathic whispering among people’s minds as he strapped the instrument onto his towering 6’7″ frame: “Wait…the bass player knows the accordion?” It certainly went a long way to what Noveselic promised MTV’s cameras outside the venue earlier in the evening, where he confidently declared “It’s gonna show people a different side to us…like scented toilet paper.” The other revelation from this performance was watching Grohl pick up an acoustic guitar to play along with Cobain and Smear. The world didn’t know it yet, but Nirvana’s youngest member was not only a phenomenal drummer; he was also a multi-instrumentalist who, in less than two years time, would record his debut album entirely on his own by playing nearly all of the instruments himself. In hindsight, it seems fair to say that David Grohl was both the Paul McCartney and the George Harrison of Nirvana; he was a gifted songwriter in his own right who was forced to stockpile an incredible backlog of songs in the shadow of Cobain’s unique genius. It is one of the many factors that adds a harrowing sense of loss to the impending tragedy, where one is left to always imagine what this band would have sounded like had they lasted long enough to employ both of its songwriters to collaborate on songs and ideas in the vein of a Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards.
The second of the first two covers is a now-classic version of an under-appreciated David Bowie deep cut, “The Man Who Sold The World”. It was here that Kurt revealed his secret weapon: an amplified acoustic guitar. Producers from MTV who were apprehensive of how the utilization of an amp would affect the authenticity of the show’s platform need not have worried; the Bowie cover is one of the most celebrated of the evening’s performances. When Bob Dylan admits that he sings his own song “All Along The Watchtower” and feels that he is performing a cover of Jimi Hendrix, the same might arguably have been said about Bowie. This was such a thorough re-imagining of the song that it is now difficult to listen to the original without it evoking the memory of Cobain.
Kurt had led into “The Man Who Sold The World” by stating “I guarantee I will screw this song up.” His self-depricating humor masked his profound anxiety, and yet there was a refreshing humility to his admission as well. This would come more sharply into focus with the next song, a selection from the then-recently released In Utero titled “Penneroyal Tea.” Turning from the audience to face the band, Kurt asks “Am I gonna do this by myself?” His inquiry was directed squarely at Grohl, who during rehearsals had not mastered the drum section to Cobain’s satisfaction. Recognizing that this was less a question and more of a declaration, Grohl wisely responded “Do it yourself”. Cobain then turns back to the audience and, retreating into the protection of his trademark dry sarcasm, announces “Well, I’m gonna try it in a different key…I’m gonna try it in the normal key. And if it sounds bad…these people are just gonna have to wait.” After eliciting a nervous laugh from the audience, Kurt began to sing and strum “Pennyroyal Tea” alone, on his chair, by himself. The constituents held their breath as this deeply vulnerable performer bared himself in a way he never had before, voice cracking and all, until the last notes on his guitar faded out. A pin drop could be heard as people collected themselves, unprepared to face even each other in light of the profound intimacy of the moment, before erupting in fervent applause.
As the band neared the halfway point on its setlist, the tracks “Dumb” and “Polly”, from In Utero and Nevermind respectively, were given the Unpluggedtreatment. On the studio albums, the songs were performed acoustically and/or with a cello arrangement, and so selecting them was a logical choice; Cobain, in another moment of sly deprecation from the evening, quipped “The reason we didn’t want to play these two songs in a row is because they’re exactly the same song”. “On A Plain”, which was originally a raucous up-tempo number on Nevermind, was slowed down and the pronounced vocal harmonies between Cobain and Grohl during the chorus “Love myself better than you” further showcased the merits and potential of a musical marriage between the two. “Something In The Way”, which followed “On A Plain” to close out Nevermind (the hidden track “Endless, Nameless” notwithstanding), is far more stark here than its studio counterpart, and it is while listening to these lyrics that one begins to decipher a coded thread throughout the show’s setlist. The fact that Cobain was meticulous and that each song was carefully selected and curated was common knowledge among the rest of the band and the producers. What they may not have realized at the time was that the entire evening’s performance stood testament as a poem to Cobain, one that loosely follows his experiences in life from the sweet, Beatlesque euphoria of young love in “About A Girl” to “Something In The Way”, Cobain’s account of feeling abandoned and cast aside by those who were supposed to love him.
As news of Nirvana’s inclusion to the Unplugged lineup reached the media in the weeks preceding the show, the rumor mill began churning out unconfirmed accounts that Nirvana intended to have a “special guest” join them onstage. The alternative nation began frothing at the mouth; who could it be? Would they bring out Tori Amos and have the band accompany her piano version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit?” Would there be a duet between Kurt and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, the other towering figurehead of the Northwest grunge movement? Would Cobain invite his wife, Courtney Love of the punk band Hole, onstage to sing some unreleased material? (The latter actually did happen in 1993, just not on the Unplugged stage. And unfortunately, it wasn’t filmed). After more than a month of speculation, the audience inside the MTV studios that evening were finally about to have their answer. Setting aside his guitar, Kurt lit a cigarette and waited until two long-haired lumberjacks in flannel made their way onto the platform. As they took a seat and strapped on their guitars, Kurt turned to the audience and proudly proclaimed, “These are the brothers Meat Puppets. We’re big fans of theirs.” The two guest musicians received a warm welcoming applause from the audience, but there was undoubtedly some surprise that a more revered name in the alternative rock pantheon wasn’t up there instead. Any doubts the public may have had were irrelevant for Cobain, who was determined to use his fame to spotlight and champion the acts that had influenced his music and informed his communal outlook. Wishing for some grand grunge congregation would have been missing the point of the evening entirely. As the huddled masses took a journey through three songs from the Meat Puppets’ catalog (“Plateau”, “Oh Me”, and “Lake of Fire”), it quickly became apparent why Kurt shared such a kinship with their compositions. Sitting alone on his chair, sans his acoustic guitar, singing lyrics like “I can’t see the end of me/ My whole expense I cannot see/ I formulate infinity/ And store it deep inside of me” renders one to consider the turmoil that Kurt was wrestling with inside his soul. He was looking out over the edge towards infinity, but he could not foresee exactly when or how his end would come.
With the conclusion of “Lake of Fire”, the brothers Meat Puppets rose for a final ovation before graciously exiting the stage. Cobain beamed proudly, feeling as though his mission to turn the audience on to an unsung and exceptional band had been achieved; he almost appeared reluctant to retrieve his guitar and resume the show without them. And yet the evening was in the home stretch, saving two of its most iconic performances for last. As Kurt began to pluck away at the opening notes to “All Apologies”, Novoselic and Grohl’s rhythm section mated beautifully with Lori Goldston’s cello and produced an arrangement of this In Utero closing track that has eventually surpassed the original in stature. Whereas the studio version’s chorus was layered in distortion, pounding drums and anguished vocals, the Unpluggedinterpretation comes off almost as a sermon, with Kurt leading the faithful through the comforting refrain of “All in all, is all we are”. It was a message of hope buried in the lament of its creator, who wanted to share his love and gratitude for his family, friends and peers, and for his audience. With these parting words, Nirvana was writing its own epitaph.
Cobain would introduce the most momentous performance of the evening by stating “This was written by my favorite performer.” Then, to emphasize this, he turned to the rest of the band and mockingly persuaded them to agree. “Our favorite performer, isn’t it? You like him? The best?” The performer he was referring to was none other than Leadbelly, one of the foremost African American blues singer/songwriters of the 20th century and who had influenced a wide range of musicians with his haunting lyrics and dark, wounded melodies. It made sense that Kurt would be so taken with an artist whose honesty and emotional power would draw a blueprint for his own. On this occasion, he elected to play the Leadbelly classic “In The Pines”, re-purposed and re-titled here to be named “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”. The dramatic guitar intro to the song silenced the crowd, and they sat transfixed and caught in the melody’s mystic trance as Kurt and the band delivered a gripping and stunningly poignant take on the somber blues standard. “My girl, my girl, where will you go?/ I’m going where the cold wind blows”, Cobain mourns as the song reaches its precipice. “In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine/ I will shiver the whole night through.” Then, to an unsuspecting audience, he begins to howl. A lifetime’s worth of pain, dejection, and repressed rage is channeled through his vessel as the band attempts to keep up with his primal scream. “My girl! My girl! Don’t lie to me!/ Tell me where did you sleep last night!/ In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine/ I will shiver the whole night through…” Cobain is now possessed, and the flood of emotion continues to echo out of his throat and across the venue. “…In the pines…the pines/ The sun…shine/ I would SHIVER!!!!” As his voice cracks at the end of the verse, the catharsis overwhelms the other musicians as Grohl’s drums, Novoselic’s bass, and Smear and Goldston all grind to a halt. “The whole…” he cries as his face grimaces. And then the most remarkable thing happens; he opens his piercing blue eyes wide and sharply inhales, seemingly taking his last breath, and sings “…night through”, extending the phrase until there is no air left in him. The attendees in the room, including the MTV staff, are speechless. As the song comes to a close and the audience erupts in response, Kurt calmly raises his hand and waves goodbye. “Thank You” is all he is able to muster, but it is more than enough. He knows he won’t be back.
Nirvana’s Unplugged stands as their transformative moment, the point in their career that separated them from the restrictive and generic aesthetics of the grunge movement that they had pioneered. It was their Rubber Soul, a quantum leap forward that revealed to both fans and critics that there was far more depth to the band and to Cobain’s songs and that they were indeed capable of evolving their sound outside the scope of the commercial hype. Kurt was reportedly very pleased with the outcome; unlike previous acts who had been given the Unplugged treatment, the band had run through the entire show’s performance in one marvelous take. And despite repeated attempts from MTV’s producers to convince him otherwise, he refused to do an encore. The unbridled power of the last song could never be topped, and once the showrunners realized this, they backed down. The triumph of the evening also re-enforced Cobain’s feelings of being creatively stifled by the precedent that the band had established with their studio output. “I wanna do something different, really different”, he told MTV cameras later that year. “And I wanna have enough guts to do that, and if it alienates people that’s too bad.” To a certain extent, In Utero had already accomplished distancing some of their mainstream audience due to its more abrasive sound. Had they remained a functioning unit, the next Nirvana studio record was sure to promise a left turn from what they had come to be famous for; they had only just begun to experiment. Sadly, we will never know to the degree of where this new direction may have taken them. We can only find solace in the fact that the band was around long enough to leave us with such a gorgeous swan song, one that continues to resonate and speak to new generations. It is a gift which is eternal.
Article by Justin Thomas
JOHN LENNON: 7 WAYS THAT HE CHANGED THE WORLD
The legacy of the iconic Beatle, artist, writer, and activist continues to loom large in our culture, forty years after his death.
This Tuesday, December 8th, 2020, marks forty years since the tragic death of John Lennon. That means that he has now been gone for as many years as he was alive. As unfathomable as that reality is, perhaps it feels all the more astounding to us because of how prescient, influential, and indelible he remains to our culture. Lennon’s music, his words, and the trailblazing means by which he led his singular, legendary life continue to inspire generation after generation, ensuring that while he may be physically gone from this Earth, his spirit remains very much alive.
The following are seven ways that his life, art, and music have shaped our world, both in his own lifetime and in the decades since.
He made being Working Class something to aspire to
Before the Beatles, celebrities usually went out of their way to disguise or hide their humble beginnings. If they originated from a low-income family or poor background, they were dissuaded by their management, studio heads, or record labels from making this widely known to the public. The entertainment business in the early-to-mid 20th century was full of stars across the film, music, and (later) TV landscape who more or less disowned their working-class roots for fear that it might hurt their image or their popularity. Even some of the Beatles’ earliest idols, including Little Richard and Elvis Presley, went out of their way to flaunt their newfound wealth and success through their flamboyant fashion and opulent lifestyles. With the advent of the Beatles, the pendulum flipped the other way. In particular reference to his home country of England, Lennon explained in his last televised interview in 1975 that his band “were the first working-class singers who stayed working-class, and pronounced it.” The individual Beatles, at least outwardly, did not feel it necessary to show off the material benefits of their success in ways that overshadowed their working-class origins and identity. Even their Brian Epstein-mandated suits (which were a far cry from the grittier street image of leather and jeans during their early days in Hamburg and Liverpool’s Cavern Club) more or less reflected that they were of working-class origin, and it was something they exuded with pride. In their press appearances and in their film A Hard Day’s Night, their deft and sarcastic humor served to stick up their nose at the pretension of older generations and exposed the long-festering class divide between the entertainment industry and its new, younger audience. Lennon in particular, who had the most sardonic wit of the four, had no patience for the status quo or the establishment and naturally rebelled against it. In the days of Beatlemania, he expressed his disdain by mocking the Queen during a Royal Variety Performance and instructing “those in the cheaper seats please clap your hands. And the rest of you just rattle your jewelry.” Later, on his first solo album Plastic Ono Band, his scathing song “Working Class Hero” confronted and indicted the class system and told his listeners that “a working-class hero is something to be.” This served as great inspiration for legions of aspiring musicians and artists at the time and served as a template for future icons in punk, hip hop, and beyond to utilize their working-class origins as a term of endearment and connection with their audience, who largely hailed from the same background and struggles.
He established that writing your own songs was to be expected, rather than exceptional
Lennon, along with his Beatles songwriting partner Paul McCartney, served to upend another traditional norm of the entertainment business – that pop music stars did not often write their own songs. Prior to The Beatles, popular music largely consisted of two camps – the performers and the songwriters. On one hand, you had writers such as Goffin & King (Gerald Coffin and future pop star in her own right, Carole King), who worked on an assembly line writing hit songs for up and coming performers. Similar formulas were followed in the early days of Motown and other pop and R&B acts of the time; the songwriters would write the words and the music, and the singers would perform them, becoming megastars in the process. The writers remained largely in the background, out of sight, and mostly unknown to the general audience. This all changed with the advent of the Beatles. Although other groups such as the Beach Boys were already writing and performing much of their hit material, it was not until Beatlemania ascended in 1963 and 1964 that the notion of a self-contained musical unit that wrote their own material, played their own instruments, and sang their own songs increasingly became a pop industry standard. Referencing the earlier assembly line pop songwriters, John Lennon famously said that he and Paul McCartney wanted to become the “Goffin-King of England”. Coupled with the cross-over success of folk hero-turned pop iconoclast Bob Dylan, popular music in the mid-1960s began to dramatically shift away from manufactured hitmaking to organic songs of self-expression and social commentary, as opposed to simplistic tunes of teenage romance and young love. Out of all of the Beatles, Lennon was the one who was most open to self-exploration and self-reflection. Greatly influenced by Dylan in particular, his confessional songs “I’m A Loser”, “Help!”, “Norwegian Wood”, “Nowhere Man” and “In My Life” exposed a profound vulnerability that was unprecedented for a pop star of the time (especially a male pop star, in a climate dominated by chauvinism and misogyny – more on that later). This process of self-exploration and world reflection would reverberate across the decades, with countless artists from across genres taking their cue from the Beatles – and especially Lennon – to fully express themselves and to be both brutally honest and nakedly vulnerable.
He changed the parameters of how a pop star was supposed to behave – and what pop star was allowed to say
From the outset, John stood out from the rest of the Beatles. He wasn’t just a musician; he was a visual artist and an accomplished writer that had two books of creative prose and short stories published between 1964 and 1965 (In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works, respectfully). He also had the sharpest tongue and the slyest wit, and wasn’t afraid to speak exactly what was on his mind. In the early days of Beatlemania, this was often perceived to be emblematic of the foursome’s overall charm, and some of his resentment towards and criticism of the status quo were not-so-carefully disguised by the power of the band’s wholesome image. Naturally outspoken while also painfully insecure, John used humor as both a weapon and a shield. From the moment the band first stepped foot on American soil at New York’s Kennedy airport, the press were treated to his trademark sarcasm and biting commentary. Press: “Are there some doubts that you can sing?” John: “No, we need money first.” Press: “What do you think your music does for these people…why does it excite them so much?” John: “If we knew, we’d form another group and be managers.” This was behavior that was completely left field and unexpected by the media establishment of the time. However, the unprecedented popularity of the Beatles allowed John to get away with challenging those assertions of how a pop star was to behave. That is until 1966, when his off the cuff comment that his band was “more popular than Jesus” would land him – and the other three Beatles – in a firestorm of controversy in the United States. While touring the country’s Bible belt that summer, the band (and John in particular) were met with boycotts, bonfires of Beatle records and memorabilia, and death threats. Eventually, John was forced to apologize publicly in front of the cameras, but not before stating that “had it said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it.” Since John’s complete reshaping of who a pop star can be and what they can say, the ensuing decades have seen no shortage of successive music icons using their platform to speak their mind without reserve or apology – everyone from Jim Morrison to Madonna, Tupac Shakur to Eminem, and – most recently – Kanye West.
He bridged the Arts, Politics & Activism in ways that are mirrored by today’s biggest cultural movements
Before John Lennon, no one in pop music so effectively married the personal and the political. With John, he saw the two as being inextricably linked. Even his closest peer and contemporary, Bob Dylan, did not possess the gift of making social commentary reflect the deepest hopes and fears of one’s individual soul and conscious the way that Lennon did. The mid-’60s saw exponential growth for John, musically, intellectually, and psychologically. Not only was his songwriting maturing and evolving, but so was his interpretation of world events unfolding around him. He was one of the first major celebrities of the time to speak out fervently against the Vietnam War. Like much of his generation, he recoiled from the increasing hostility and violence that permeated the social and political climate. In songs like “The Word” (off of Rubber Soul) and especially “All You Need Is Love”, he lent significant credence to a collective hope that love would save us all. Of course, as the revolutionary ’60s continued to progress, many of those hopes were scattered to the wind amidst riots, assassinations, and escalating conflict. John responded to the melee by writing the song “Revolution”, with its famous line “when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.” Lennon was asserting that if he had to make a choice, he would personally reject violent altercation whenever possible. On popular TV talk program “The Dick Cavett Show”, he explained: “If I am a revolutionary, or we are revolutionaries, we are revolutionary artists – not gunmen.” He followed this up with an anthem for the ages, “Give Peace A Chance.” The impact was enormous and immediate; months after the single’s release, tens of thousands of people who had assembled in Washington DC for the largest anti-war protest in history were singing the repeated refrain of the song’s chorus, much to the chagrin of US President Richard Nixon. Nixon was so threatened by the sway and power that John held over his audience, that he and his administration utilized the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO surveillance to open a file on him. John, and his new love and partner Yoko Ono, were beginning to blur the lines between their art and direct political action and activism. Once they decided to relocate from England to the US, they took up with many figures of the American Left, including Yippie movement founders Abbie Hoffmann and Jerry Rubin, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale. In 1971, John & Yoko’s appearance at a Michigan benefit concert for incarcerated activist John Sinclair overnight effectively reversed the decision of the Michigan courts to hold Sinclair indefinitely. By the following year US Immigration and Customs, at the behest of the Nixon Administration, began a long and arduous battle to have Lennon kicked out of the country. Throughout it all, John’s creativity didn’t waver, and he continued to release songs and albums that addressed his personal desire for, and commitment to, fundamental societal change. Songs like “Happy Xmas (War Is Over, If You Want It)”, “Power To The People”, “Gimmie Some Truth”, and most famously “Imagine”, challenged his audience with a vision of what was possible if we only dared to imagine a world without war, without violence or division based on race, class, or religion. The fearless means by which John put his livelihood, his career, and his reputation on the line to stand for a cause he believed to be right has inspired people around the world in the decades since. He wasn’t the only famous celebrity of his time to make this sacrifice (Muhammad Ali comes to mind), but it served as a blueprint for future public figures to emulate as they strove to use their enormous platforms in addressing inequality and injustice.
He (and Yoko Ono) invented the Reality Show
The impact that Yoko Ono had on John Lennon’s life and art cannot be overstated. An artist in her own right, Yoko was instrumental in releasing John from the confines of being merely a Beatle, and gave him the courage and motivation to express himself freely without compromise. Many of the creative impulses that he had always buried, or relegated to the sideline in the wake of the Beatles’ massive celebrity, now were suddenly brought to the forefront. He even credited her for inspiring and co-writing his signature solo song, “Imagine”. John and Yoko also made the pioneering decision to document every aspect of their life, both the public and private. This had never been facilitated before by celebrities of their caliber and status. As a part of their brand of art and activist theater, they would bring a film crew wherever they went; hosting their two Bed-In’s for peace (one in Amsterdam, the other in Montreal), holding press interviews under a bag, private moments at their home and inside their bedroom, spending quality time with family, friends, and distinguished peers, producing their music and creating accompanying videos and experimental films. Much of this footage – some endearing, others explicit – were often publicly disseminated through avante-guard film screenings, television broadcasts, art gallery exhibits, or their joint albums of musical experimentation. Their first music project together, the sonic collage of Two Virgins, famously featured a naked picture of the couple on its cover that was so offensive to vendors at the time that it had to be distributed in a brown paper bag. Nothing about their life together was off-limits, and the public was invited to not only witness but to actively participate. When the song “Give Peace A Chance” was recorded live in their Montreal hotel room during the Bed-In, they invited their supporters, followers, and throngs of media and reporters to take part in the performance. At the time, much of the public did not know what to make of this, as nothing like it had ever quite been done before. Many, including frustrated Beatles fans, lashed out with cynicism and dismissiveness. Over time, however, the full extent of how ahead of their time John and Yoko were has become undeniable. In this era of reality TV and social media, everyone is living their lives publicly – for better or for worse. Some media figures are harnessing the power of social media to bring awareness to important causes, just as the Lennons did. Others are simply using it for popularity and notoriety. As John and Yoko’s friend and peer Andy Warhol once stated, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” As a society, we have now arrived at that future.
At the height of his fame, he walked away to become a Househusband
Following the birth of his second son Sean in 1975, John Lennon made the decision to retire from public life to raise his child. Moreover, he elected to become a stay at home dad and to have Yoko take over managing the family business. This reversal of gender roles within the traditional family dynamic was an extraordinary reconfiguring of society’s expectations up until that time, and represented another revolutionary act from Lennon. It was one thing for a woman of John’s celebrity and stature to step back from the limelight and raise a child after giving birth, but for a man of John’s status to walk away from it all at the peak of his career was nearly unheard-of. To people familiar with John’s life story, it is not uncommon knowledge that he wasn’t the best father to his son Julian, from his first marriage to Cynthia Powell. Julian had been born just as the Beatles were on the verge of becoming worldwide superstars, and life on road meant that John saw very little of his child during those important and formative years. Following their divorce, Cynthia was granted custody of Julian, which meant that as John’s new life with Yoko progressed he saw even less of his son. John himself had been abandoned by both his mother and father as a child, and he felt guilty that he’d essentially repeated the sins of his parents. Once Yoko gave birth to their son, he made the conscious choice that he was going to spend as much time as possible in his new baby’s life. At the same time, he entrusted the handlings of his considerable fortune to his wife, who came from a Japanese family of bankers and had had the propensity to manage their business affairs. From the mid-1970s until his decision to come out of retirement in 1980, John spent nearly every waking moment caring for Sean; he nurtured him, fed him, bathed him, taught him how to swim, and took him for walks in Central Park, across from the Dakota apartment building in New York City where the Lennons lived. Lennon’s peers and fans were perplexed that one of the most important and consequential people of his time had decided to completely eschew the roller coaster ride of fame and success to be a stay at home dad, or as John proudly proclaimed it, a “househusband” (he would later address this on “Watching The Wheels”, from his last album Double Fantasy). While the image of the former rock and roll rebel spending days in the kitchen baking bread may have been confusing for some, for others it was inspiring. For many men, in particular, it opened their minds to the reality that manhood was not necessarily rooted in being the partner who went to work every day or being the economic provider or breadwinner. The same as the 1970s and ’80s saw a rise in women asserting themselves and pushing for equality in both the workplace and at home, simultaneously (albeit slowly), the role of men in society began to change. Today, it is not uncommon for men to stay at home and raise the children while the wife and mother pursues her career and provides for the family. It has been many decades coming, but much can be attributed to the example John set for the evolution of gender roles in relationships.
He abandoned his earlier machismo and – with Yoko’s guidance – learned to embrace feminism.
By his own admission, John was a man who had grown up prone to confrontation and aggression. He was often angry and abrasive, verbally combative, and used sarcasm to hide his sensitivity and keep people at bay. He was also known to unleash the worst of his tendencies on those closest to him; nowhere was this more apparent than in his relationships with women. Both his high school girlfriend Thelma Pickles and his first wife Cynthia Powell recounted times in his youth where he had hit them in moments of jealousy or rage. Fame would only serve to reinforce his indulgences and his womanizing, as he disregarded his wife and engaged in adultery throughout most of the Beatles’ heyday. This behavior was not an anomaly for a man of his celebrity and status at that time, but it served as a problematic contradiction that someone who often wrote about the importance of love and peace was capable of such callousness. Enter Yoko Ono. Over the course of their twelve years together, Yoko did much to reform John’s chauvinism and cavalier disposition towards women. Right from the beginning, John became the student and Yoko the teacher. His nickname for her was “Mother”, because she represented both a maternal figure as well as a mentor, lover, and creative partner. She taught him about gender inequality, educated him on the burgeoning women’s liberation, and introduced him to the concepts being espoused by leaders in the feminist movement. In turn, John was adamant to make sure that Yoko shared accreditation on all of their campaigns and artistic projects, and he pushed for the public to accept her as an equal partner in all of his endeavors (this acceptance was initially begrudging at best, and was rooted both in sexism and racism toward Yoko’s Japanese heritage). John’s attitudes and outlook were undergoing a radical transformation, but that didn’t mean there weren’t stumbles along the way. Starting in 1973 their relationship began to unravel, leading to a period of excess and debauchery that he later called his “Lost Weekend”. After spending 18 months living with the couple’s personal secretary May Pang (Yoko’s handpicked mistress for John during this time), he eventually found his way back to his wife. Following the birth of their son Sean, he committed himself unconditionally to his family and worked tirelessly to repair his marriage. As previously discussed, he put his wife in charge of their business affairs while he stayed at home to raise their child. He also sought to reclaim his path towards feminist enlightenment. Years later, Yoko would recall finding John in bed at the Dakota reading a book called The First Sex, which detailed how women’s contributions to civilization were greater than men’s, but that throughout history they weren’t given any credit at all. He suddenly began to cry, turned to his wife and said, “I didn’t know we were doing this to women.” By the time he began writing for his final album Double Fantasy, John was ready to come to terms with the sins of his past; on songs like “Woman”, he seemed to be asking for forgiveness not only from Yoko but all the women he had wronged or hurt in his life. It was a far cry from the machismo he had displayed as a younger man, but one of the greatest things about John was his willingness to own his mistakes, and his desire to evolve and become a better person.
One can only imagine what new paths he might have forged for our culture and society had he not been taken from us so viscously.
– Written by Justin Thomas (12/07/2020)
https://vocal.media/beat/john-lennon-7-ways-that-he-changed-the-world
Just The Artist 