John Lennon - Legend

...of songs and footage of John and Yoko way back when we were all a lot younger and the gods of rock were the real deal.

The fashion icons, John and Yoko start off the DVD seen from behind as they walk through a misty lane, up a drive to the door of a mansion. They walk in silence as the first verse of Imagine starts playing. Then they disappear into thin air and we are inside the house with John playing in a white room, with white furniture, ...
...is a ‘copter’s eye-view of John and Yoko arriving at a lake in a big black car and going rowing in a boat on a beautiful day. There were some hard times in their relationship and Lennon’s lyric may be an apology to Yoko for that. It has a general and universal applicability, however, that makes it timeless. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m just a jealous guy.’ And during these words at one ... more

Lennon and McCartney were immense influences on my life and on the lives of millions of fans and musicians. This review is about ‘Lennon Legend’ – a DVD of songs and footage of John and Yoko way back when we were all a lot younger and the gods of rock were the real deal.

The fashion icons, John and Yoko start off the DVD seen from behind as they walk through a misty lane, up a drive to the door of a mansion. They walk in silence as the first verse of Imagine starts playing. Then they disappear into thin air and we are inside the house with John playing in a white room, with white furniture, as Yoko goes around the white walls letting light in at the white-shuttered windows. If you’ve not heard this song before – and this seems barely conceivable – it holds a wish for peace and a world with no wars, religious hatred, and Nationalistic divisions.

The next song is ‘Instant Karma’. Yoko is knitting with a blindfold on. This is typical of the surrealistic influence she had at the time. Lennon is shorthaired, wearing headphones and the innovative sound of the music is remarkable even now. The musicians of The Plastic Ono Band look suitably rock and roll except for one remarkable chap on tambourine who is wearing a suit and looks like a computer programmer. He’s a surprise. I always thought that the drum rolls were the product of electronic trickery until I saw this young man in the DVD play them in front of me. ‘We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.’ I quite like the way the session falls to bits at the end and someone laughs. It was a great live performance.

‘Mother’ is next. From John’s first solo album this song has a very curious and interesting musical arrangement. A simple beat drum and bass sit behind some very rich but basic chord playing on piano as Lennon pours his heart out in a melodious song about his parents. ‘Mother I had you but you never had me!’ After this compelling and extremely understated and minimalist arrangement in the verses, John’s vocal in the repeated chorus at the end is just the sort of dangerous thing that only he would have done. His voice begins to get louder as he begins to scream, ‘Momma don’t GO!!!!!’ with no regard at all for any kind of recognisable vocal technique. Lennon was never a slave to convention. This chorus sums up his willingness to break rules and be exciting. A montage of photos of his childhood backs up the whole song.

‘Jealous Guy’ is a lovely ballad. The video is a ‘copter’s eye-view of John and Yoko arriving at a lake in a big black car and going rowing in a boat on a beautiful day. There were some hard times in their relationship and Lennon’s lyric may be an apology to Yoko for that. It has a general and universal applicability, however, that makes it timeless. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I made you cry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m just a jealous guy.’ And during these words at one point, through some editing as a retrospective comment, Yoko as an older woman fades in with tears on her face, offering a very sad perspective on how those happy times came to an end and how those lyrics acquired an even more poignant meaning.

‘Power to the People’ with shots of John as a pop-political activist in America calling for revolution in the face of the Vietnam War is next. There is footage of feminist marches; a woman stands in front of a tank with her shopping bag in her hand. There were student protests aplenty in the streets in about 1968 and this song reflects the whole spirit of protest and being anti-establishment.

‘Cold Turkey’ has such a raunchy rock riff in it. Cold Turkey is the horrible effect of stopping taking drugs where the body reacts badly for a time. ’Oh I’ll be a good boy, please make me well, I’ll promise you anything, get me out of this hell.’

The vocal goes wild at the end as Lennon starts screaming like someone in the throes of this awful experience. It’s quite a disturbing song. The footage of him surrounded by lots of police in the street is also morphed to create a drug-users nightmare perspective.

‘Love’ is a lovely ballad – a love song to Yoko from way back, and it has a great naiveté. With shots of John and Yoko larking about and laughing, dancing in a park, and scrawling their names on a sign – not to mention lying around naked – as the video, we see them writing their names in the sand and the sea washing the words away.

‘Mind Games’ has Lennon strolling through a zoo giving autographs in what must be the best rock star hat I’ve ever seen. He feeds the elephants and dances about playing up for the camera. It’s all very jolly. The actual song is about peace and love.

‘Love is the answer and you know that for sure,
Love is flower you got to let it, you got to let it grow.’

It’s a pretty video of John – a kind of pastoral pose.

‘Whatever gets you through the night’ is from the ‘Walls and Bridges’ album and the video here is a cartoon of John and Yoko interspersed with footage of them in New York.

‘#9 Dream’ has a shot of John and Yoko’s faces merged together and various clips of them walking through misty fields and woods. I have no idea what the song is about although the lyrics are filled with sensual imagery and magic and it is set in a dreamy world of trees and whispers.

‘Stand by Me’ is a great love song. The movie clips of John and Yoko being very attractive young people are set against John in dark glasses, headphones and long hair looking direct into the camera. They dance through an airport in white suits. John teases the camera as he changes his t-shirt in the back of a car. It’s like a photo-album of their happy times. They run along the beach into each others’ arms…miss and go straight past each other.

‘Just like starting over’ is from John and Yoko’s last album, ‘Double Fantasy’. The movie is about when John was once asked how his life would be when he was 64. He thought they’d be together, retired, in a cottage in Ireland, surrounded by memorabilia of their mad life. This is a cleverly constructed movie taking as an engine the fact that this was never to be. The memories and photos blow out of the door, and float around the cottage.

The song is about how precious their life together was. At the end we see his face – as it looked in the photo that came with the double white album – lying on the floor and the camera pans up to the apartment buildings outside of which John Lennon was cut down by the gunfire of a nobody.

‘Woman’ is a love song for Yoko from the same album. The sentiments are mature and very caring. He clearly loved his wife deeply. They are still walking through the trees together in this movie but now they are older and wiser. Then there’s Yoko on her own and a lot older now, looking back at the memories of their happy times in a montage of photos culled from album covers and newspapers. One juxtaposition that screamed out to me and made me rewind to check it was a shot of John lying down, seen in profile on the ‘Imagine’ album cover, and then a shot of what appeared to be him lying dead. ‘I love you, yeah yeah, now and forever’ he sings. This is fine editing and a lovely – though immensely sad – piece of art.

‘Beautiful Boy’ is from the Double Fantasy again. It’s a lullaby filled with things a father might well say to his child. It is for their son, Sean, and has home-video footage of him playing with his mother by the sea.

It has the prophetic line in it: ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’

‘Watching the wheels go round’ is, yet again, from Double Fantasy, and has more footage of Lennon looking after his child. Is he happy at this point in his life? You can imagine people asking. That’s what this song is about. His reply is that he doesn’t miss the big time. ‘I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.’ And, ‘No longer riding on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go.’

A lot of people were missing the Beatles but John seems happy in these home movies.

‘Nobody Told Me’ starts with John in the studio and then we’re off into the footage of John and Yoko again in the park. They seemed to like parks. A line that made me smile in this song that is basically saying that things can get hectic and crazy, ‘Nobody told me there’d be days like these!’ was this: ‘There's nazis in the bathroom just below the stairs.’ When Lennon made a point it was often a really good one, (your highness).

‘Borrowed Time’ has a kind of reggae thing going on with John’s distinctive vocal. ‘Living on borrowed time without a thought for tomorrow’ The film clips here show snaps of Lennon eating, on the ‘phone, laughing, chatting, and just enjoying his life, unaware of how he really was living on borrowed time, and that there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow. His joking about at the end is hilarious, though, and we are spared maudlin irony because of John’s great sense of humour. It’s very silly indeed. Lots of fun.

‘Working Class Hero’ is set here against photos of John in Liverpool as a boy. This one is a soul-searching and bitter criticism of his early life. It has strong swearing in it, which is par for the course with Lennon in that he was never one to observe conventions. It’s an easy one to play. It’s impossible to be John Lennon. Someone should explain that to some of today’s dreadful retro bands who try so hard.

‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ is an anthem that gets brought out along with Roy Wood and Noddy Holder every year. It’s great for that. The video footage that accompanies it here, though, is very bleak and holds a shocking message. There are soldiers and blown up children with missing limbs here. Bodies lie shot. Children hold rifles in the street and fire into the air. It’s a happy sounding song with a contrasting and heart-wrenching video, which will definitely upset you.

‘Give Peace a Chance’ is the live footage of John and Yoko when they took to their bed in a hotel room and invited the media in. They did this to use their celebrity to make people listen to what they had to say about the political situations of the day. There is also footage of huge demonstrations. It was the time of the Vietnam war which was actually stopped due to negative public opinion. It’s another anthem with a memorable chorus, ‘All we are saying is give peace a chance.’

Special Features include John Lennon discussing these issues and others as well as some great and quite odd video clips of performances and odd moments. Lennon in a pink tracksuit with musicians in horror masks at a rather ‘straight’ looking gig was weird. He could be dangerous and unpredictable.

To wind up, this is a DVD about a creative genius who was an icon of fashion, music, and a political activist in the cause of world peace. He was always the raw-edged and less ‘pop star’ member of the Beatles for whom any choice of genre is going to be inadequate.

Without the benefit of the last 25 years, the footage seems dated and quite self-indulgent at times. But if you like Lennon this will be a good thing. His musical career took place when video wasn’t a big industry and production techniques, effects, and costs, weren’t even in their infancy. Bands made records and they we’re made of black vinyl and later cassette tape. They weren’t originally intended to be DVD experiences.

With this in mind, this DVD has some beautifully edited video artwork, and it has a lot of John and Yoko when they were a legend. John once said that The Beatles were bigger than God or Jesus and half of America got mad and started burning Beatles albums. On a recent Jonathan Ross show, Yoko was the guest. She looked great and had lots of interesting things to say, one of which was that so far as she was concerned there was definitely, ‘Life before John, and life after John.’ All I can say is that for myself both statements rang true.

So – ‘Lennon Legend’ - a DVD about a great singer and songwriter, icon of rock music, cut down in his prime by a killer, and a chance to see him in full swing in happier days.

For more information there is an excellent website: http://www.lennonlegend.com/#

I saw it on Tesco's site for £10.99

 

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