John Lennon – HystericallyBored

2023-11-032023-12-20

Ransacking the Graves of Dead Beatles

You may have heard that a “new” Beatles single has been produced, featuring the dead Beatles along with the expired ones, McCartney and Starr. It’s a song called: “Now and Then”. You can watch it if you want. I won’t.

The idea of ransacking the identities of deceased artists is kind of repellent– they can’t consent, of course, and they can’t, in turn, ransack the identities of those who now exploit them because they’re dead. I don’t know if there is a way to make this illegal when their own families (of the dead artists) are still trying to cash in on long-expired relevance but I wish they could. I wish that an artist could, in his will, express his solemn wish that no one could use a technology that hasn’t been invented yet to, in the future, create an artificial replica of his body or voice and use it to make money.

I really wish they could.

Next: a duet with Janis Joplin and Elvis Presley? Buddy Holly and Cass Elliot? A guitar duel between Jimi Hendrix and Robert Johnson? It is coming. It is absolutely coming.

It does McCartney’s and Starr’s reputations no good. Reputations are earned by production: give us a new song that is really worth listening to. That’s something neither of them have done in 40 years. In desperation, they exploit the memories of Harrison and Lennon. Sure, the families consent: they want the money.

If Lennon were alive, I’m sure he’d have something acerbic to say about the very idea. I think is very likely he would find the very idea repugnant.

2004-01-302022-05-04

Anne Murray Hanging Around With Disreputable People in LA

Anne, what on earth are you doing in this picture? Look at it!

anne.jpg (11758 bytes)

Yes, that is Canada’s own beloved, virginal, Anne Murray carousing with John Lennon, Harry Nilson, Alice Cooper(!), and Mickey Dolenz of the Monkeys.

Well, good heavens– Mickey Dolenz in the same frame as Alice Cooper? And John Lennon?!

1998-10-242022-04-11

Marketting Lennon

Well, Apple Computer has done it again. They persuaded Yoko Ono, presumably, to sell them her vampirish endorsement of their computer products. “Think Different” is the theme of the campaign.

But wait– isn’t that John sitting beside Yoko? Isn’t that a picture from the “bed-in for peace” in Amsterdam? John Lennon, who wrote:

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
Nothing to kill or die for
A brotherhood of man

Well, this takes the cake. It reminds me of Rolling Stone Magazine, emerging from the flotsam of the 1960’s as the first, supposedly, “counter-culture” magazine. In actual fact, it was no more counter-culture than dental floss. Jann Wenner, the publisher, simply realized, before almost anyone else did, that there was a lot of money to be made in the “money can’t buy me love” business. A lot of trinkets to be sold. A lot of images to make and remake and sell. And all of it while pretending to be “different” from the materialistic older generation.

There ought to be a law against exploiting the dead. There is something particularly offensive about taking someone like John Lennon, who genuinely did stand for something, and using his image to market consumer products for one of greediest and most self-centred corporations in Silicone Valley. Yes, Apple, not Microsoft (Dracula, not Frankenstein).

John isn’t around to mock the whole idea the way he probably would. “Imagine there’s no Windows/It’s easy if you try”. He was one of the few rock stars of the 1960’s to stay relatively true to his own vision.

The vampires of Wall Street has no shame.