“When the Music`s Over, Turn Out the Light!”

Today is the anniversary of the death of John Lennon; it happened twenty-nine years ago as of today. Seems like yesterday. As Lester Bangs said, John was just a man. The worship of The Beatles was/is just a fantasmagorical illusion of their fans. But John was only forty years old. He was startin` to write his best stuff with Double Fantasy. He plays a stunning guitar part (use of the wammy bar) on Walkin` On Thin Ice, that was recorded on the very day he died.

I had seen Lester Bangs just a few months before he wrote this piece for the LA Times, Thinking the Unthinkable About John Lennon. Lester is just saying that he was past his prime. We are still shocked by Bangs` honesty. But Lennon left his mark on history, and that will never die. *(In case you`ve forgotten, it`s a message of PEACE!) I visited the Dakota and Strawberry Fields Park in December of 2005. Yea, The Dakota largely looms eerily on the edge of Central Park, with such ghosts as Rosemary`s Baby. Don`t know why Yoko still lives there? *(my photo-SFP)

“I don`t know which is more pathetic, the people of my generation who refuse to let their adolescence die a natural death, or the younger ones who will snatch and gobble any shred, any scrap of a dream that someone declared over ten years ago.” Lester Bangs    Okay, Lester, I feel guilty, I`m amongst that group of fools. Worthless sentimentality is the Fools Gold that keeps me tickin`.