Well, if John Lennon had survived, he’d be 72 years old today. I do think its kind of strange to wish a dead man happy birthday, but this is John Lennon, a guy that still lives in my fantasies and dreams. Along with Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, RFK, and Bob Marley, John Lennon is one of the mythic superstars of reality that I had wished lived to see the future. His work in life was unfinished, and the thought of wondering what music and outrageous activities he had saved in cranium can drive any Beatle lunatic fan mad. Recently I discovered that John was offered the role of Professor Falken in the cult classic “War Games,” and seriously considered it until his untimely murder stopped all that. At first I thought that would have been terrible, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought how brilliant John would have been in that role. John WAS an actor after all, with a lot of experience making movies and being in front of the camera. Most of his roles were Beatle related, and not exactly serious, though he shows flashes of brilliance in every movie he was in. John could have had a distinguished career as a wonderful character actor, a dimension that would have brought to life a whole new artistic light for him and the world. Anyway, its always fun to speculate on what might have been every time John Lennon’s birth, or death date, comes around, whether they be dreams about Beatle Reunions, or battling rogue AI in an effort to save the world from global thermonuclear war. But in the final analysis, to quote another dead hero, John was a musician, so here is some; the song and video for “Woman” from “Double Fantasy.” “Woman” is a beautiful soft rock ode to Yoko, and all women too. It’s a lovely philosophical and mature song on the subject of love, and its also a great feminist anthem, an awesome talent John possessed. Enjoy, and Happy Birthday Mr. Lennon.

Well, I’m back in America, the land I love, and the city that made me, New York.  After 48 hours of near continuous travel by boat, car, and plane, I’ve made it home to Brooklyn.  Over the last five months I’ve been to Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney, Bangkok, and Railay Beach in southern Thailand.  For someone who has never left the USA before, and never really planned to, it was an eye opening experience.  I found people in the Australasia region to be both extremely warm and friendly, and positive to Americans especially because they love Barrack Obama.  Thanks Mr. President for making Americans cool again overseas.  I’ve also arrived just in time for the American Spring, which will lead right into summer, giving me 3 summers in a row, suck it winter.  I’ve only been in New York for 24 hours, but I’m already looking for a new apartment, been invited to a musical, and eaten the most delicious NYC bagel I’ve ever had.  To celebrate even further, I’m posting John Lennon’s performance of “New York City,” from his fabled Madison Square Concert live performance.  I’ve already linked to performances of “Come Together,”  “Mother,” and “Cold Turkey,” from the same concert, so it doesn’t hurt to keep globbing on more of the same Lennony goodness.  Anyway, it’s good to be back, and it’s good to be home, and I look forward to resuming my daily activities of providing you with the best rock and roll music in the world.

I’ve discussed the subject of “She Said, She Said” before when discussing the Black Keys’ excellent cover version of the classic psychedelic Beatle rocker.  Right now, I have something a little tastier, John Lennon’s acoustic home demos of the song.  Through a magical few minutes, the clip below cuts together all of John’s early takes for what would become a soaring electric guitar masterpiece.  The thing I love most about this clip is the way John twists his gorgeous folk rock melody, fine tuning it to perfection. Its remarkable because all versions of this song sound brilliant and inspired.  The recording is like a beautiful mirror of John’s creative process.  He sounds at times dreamy, whimsical, unsure, confident, and druggy, a fine mix of emotions that led to the song’s ultimate nature.  Even the starts and stops are fascinating, giving you insight into how the guy needed to wind himself up properly to create something so good…

There are a lot of great moments in rock and roll history that go unrecorded.  The first meeting between Bob Dylan and the Beatles is one of them.  Not only was it the occasion when the Beatles met one of their musical heroes, but its also the first time the Beatles seriously smoke marijuana.  Apparently they had a ball, and obviously the experience influenced them to no end, both musically and personally.  On that personal level, imagine how fantastic if the first time you smoked pot, 1964 era Bob Dylan was the one initiating you.  It’s a total dream time scenario.  Anyway, it’s actually a good thing that the meeting wasn’t caught on tape because in the one instance when John Lennon and Bob Dylan were filmed, it was beyond awkward.  You would think that two icons of ultra cool all time hipsterdom would be savvy and super interesting under the lights, but clearly they are uptight and nervous.  The film from which this video is culled, Eat the Document, was a documentary of Bob’s 1966 tour of the UK.  The scene with John was a deleted bootleg.  John had this to say about it, “both in shades, and both on fucking junk, and all these freaks around us… I was nervous as shit. I was on his territory, that’s why I was so nervous.”  John said that in Rolling Stone magazine, obviously paranoid about what was going to be shown, as he had not yet seen the movie.  The reality is, Bob looked way more whacked out and nervous then John, high on something very strong, with John trying to calm Dylan down in a funny way saying, “Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead, or curly hair? Take Zimdawn!…Come, come, boy, it’s only a film. Pull yourself together.”  Despite the disjointed conversation, and otherwise unrevealing dialog, the film is just amazing for being what it is.  If anything, both guys probably realize the phoniness of the situation as the film clicks away, and that in itself is very enlightening.  So, check out this precious moment in rock history, and let me know if you can decode any secret messages I might have missed.

“Imagine” is the sort of song played by rock stars young and old to honor the memory of dearly departed John Lennon.  It’s kind of sad in a way that its turned into a memorial dirge of sorts, obscuring it’s utopian message of peace and harmony due its tragic association with the author’s horrible death.  It’s because of that negative energy that I prefer to hear to “Imagine” sung by John in live settings.  It’s in moments like the one presented in the video below, that we get to see a vital and hopeful Johnny croon out his most popular solo song without grim specters of his his murder or world apocalypse hanging over everybody.  It’s a thoroughly enjoyable and low-key performance that highlights John’s love for baseball jerseys and his wife’s bongo playing.  Give it a spin.

I was sneaking under a bus parked over a snowy muddy pit.  I jostled a hinge holding the front of the truck to the freight, and it began to collapse on me.  As it caved in on me, I genuinely thought I was going to die.  This was the phrase that went through my mind, “This is the end of Willie Simpson…”  (lame I know.)  The truck hadn’t completely caved, so I dashed away from the pit and jumped just as the freight tipped over and crushed the bottom of my legs.  I couldn’t feel a thing and I assumed I was in extreme shock.  I was wrong, I had just woken up from an intense dream.  Naturally shaken by such a thing, I went right to my website, which I forgot to update yesterday, and found “#9 Dream,” the John Lennon single from Walls and Bridges that peaked on the Billboard Charts at #9.  Nine was John’s lucky number as he was born on the 9th day of October, and accorded it special status in his life, already borrowing it for “Revolution #9.”  He wrote the song when he was broken up with Yoko Ono, and living with May Pang in Los Angeles, in fact she’s in the backing vocals.  Other famous “Beatle friend” luminaries include the presence of bassist Klaus Voorman, (the German who discovered the Beatles in Hamburg), Nicky Hopkins, (famous British piano player who jammed frequently with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Kinks), and Jim Keltner on drums, (a famous session man who appeared on all the solo Beatle records and a zillion other super famous mega acts albums.)  Lastly, that mysterious phrase Lennon chants throughout the song, “Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé” has no meaning whatsoever and is exclusively from the dream that inspired the song.  Enjoy the tune, as its one of John’s best solo efforts, and be careful in your dreams, or you might wake up thinking your dead.

EDIT:  When I posted this at 7 am this morning, I had no idea, that today, would have been John Lennon’s 71’st Birthday.  How’s that for Instant Karma!?

Sorry for the disturbing lack of updates, but I was busy packing up my Brooklyn apartment and heading north for Maine.  I’ve got three weeks in beautiful Portland before I head across the world to South Korea and Australia.  I’m happy to be out of the city and hear crickets out my window, as four and a half years in New York really drains the nature out of you.  I couldn’t be more excited for my trip across the Pacific, and I’m reminded of four other guys who had to get away from it all, the fab four.  The rare song you are about to hear was NOT recorded by the Beatles, but rather its a solo John number from 1980 that he made reflecting on the journey he took just 12 years prior.  John was beginning to feel sentimental about his life, emotions reflected strongly in his last record Double Fantasy.  “India, India” didn’t survive the cutting room floor of that record, but luckily it survives the cutting room floor of history.  It’s a pretty psychedelic folk ballad with a wistful haunting melody.  Enjoy.

When the Beatles split in 1970, it was mainly a split between John and Paul.  It’s odd because George, Paul, and Ringo would have kept the group going, but because John wanted to end it, George and Ringo became as enthusiastic as John about kiboshing the whole affair.  I suppose John had more good will with the “sidemen” then Paul did, and as a result, John collaborated much more frequently with his former mates than Paul did.  In this video, I have an intimate portrait of John and George rehearsing one of Lennon’s more tender ballads, “Oh, My Love,” from the Imagine album.  It’s a cool scene where you George fiddle around with a steel guitar, and John ruminate with Yoko on their philosophies about love and sex.  You also get to see George lay down those awesome electric licks that instill in the ballad its beautiful perfection.  This video also serves as a great preview for the upcoming Martin Scorsese HBO documentary on George Harrison’s life, “Living in the Material World,” which premieres in early October.  Enjoy.

I’m not ready to leave John’s 1972 concert just yet.  Yesterday I posted about “Come Together,” and in the past I posted the live performance of “Cold Turkey.”   Despite the fact that Yoko only released the inferior afternoon version of the show, as opposed to the superior evening version, there are still incredible worthwhile performances to be had, and John’s performance of “Mother” is one of them.  “Mother” is the unofficial sequel to John’s Beatle song “Julia” from the White Album.  Julia Lennon was struck down by an  drunk driving off duty police officer when he was 17.  Her death was already the 3rd or 4th tragic moment in a young life that was quickly piling up memorable scenes of wretched heartbreak.  By that point, young John already had to deal with the sorted split up between his parents which included an aborted kidnapping, the death of his uncle George, the strict surrogate parenting of his aunt Mimi, the discovery that his mother had another family whom all lived down the road without his knowledge, and the complete abandonment of his father who provided no support and lived in New Zealand.  The death of his mother, who he had just begun a reconciliation with, pushed John over the edge personality wise and hardened his soul.  The song “Mother” is the result of a bunch of soul searching and therapy, and is subsequently a triumph of someone who refused to be swallowed up by sadness, bitterness, and rage.  It’s one of John’s best songs, and one of my favorites too.  BTW, today is the last day to vote me in as CBS’s Best Local NYC Blogger, so, cast me one last vote for all time’s sake!  Thanks.

They say elephants never forget, and they also say fuck Yoko Ono.  When John Lennon played Madison Square Garden Live in 1972, he played an afternoon show and an evening show.  “Elephant’s Memory,” the backup band for John, claimed that the evening show was far superior, but upon releasing this concert  in 1986, long after John’s death, Yoko decided to use the inferior afternoon show  as the basis for the album and the concert video.  Why?  Nobody knows what Yoko is thinking.  She probably thinks that her performances in the afternoon show were better than her performances in the evening show, which is insane, because nobody could possibly care.  The tapes and video of the evening show are locked away forever, or maybe even destroyed, and we might never get to see them thanks to the brilliant Yoko.  Yoko did the same thing for the Mind Games video where she took a raw 19 hours of footage, shot by college kids who followed John Lennon around for a day, and condensed it to a precious 4 minutes!  In that 19 hours you can supposedly see John Lennon making an appearance at Radio City Music Hall, where the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band On The Road” was playing.  He apparently got a 20 minute standing ovation that he described as one of the greatest moments of his life, and proceeded to sit down on organ and play with the house band.  Why this footage is not released is beyond me.  I actually rather wish I knew it never existed, then to think Yoko’s got it hidden away somewhere for no one to see.  Blah, that’s the end of my rant.  Enjoy John’s performance of “Come Together,” a song originally written as a way to get people to vote LSD guru Timothy Leary as governor of California.  It’s a little historical tidbit that’s a perfect segue for me to champion my status as finalist in the CBS Best Local NYC Blogger award one last time!  Tomorrow is the last day of voting, and you can STILL vote for me, even if you’ve already voted!  Once a day counts, so click that link and put me over the top!