King Nine To Firefly wrote:

I was six when JFK was killed. 

I was eight, and in Catholic school in a Baltimore suburb. I can remember exactly where I was sitting in the classroom that day.

I can remember the schools were dismissed that afternoon. 

In our suburb/little town we did not have school bus service, although the school was about 2 miles from my house, across a busy street, so the moms (they were ALL stay-at-home moms in the early sixties) took turns two or three days a week. They let us out about an hour early and when I came walking in early my mother was surprised but wouldn't believe me that the president had been shot until she turned on the TV (at least we know she wasn't watching the soaps all day). Since it was a Catholic school and Kennedy was the first Catholic president, this was taken very seriously at the school and that Sunday at the church.

John was my favorite Beatle through 1967.  With Yoko his music from 1968 to 1975 seemed to show a bitter, angry guy.  Something I thought strange, if you had the love of your life with you.

Love does funny things to you. At its best, I think it helps bring out the real "you". My take on Lennon -- who was ALWAYS my favorite Beatle, both in the band and solo -- was that he was brilliant in the early days of the Beatles but lost himself when they became the superstars of the world. Whereas Kurt Cobain under similar circumstances killed himself, Lennon shut himself off from the world in other ways; you can hear it in the lyrics of Help, You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, She Said She Said, A Day In the Life, etc. etc.

It seemed to me that when Yoko entered his life, his Beatles music became absolutely inspired (even if it was in a dark way). Lennon's work on the White Album was, IMFAO, light years ahead of what McCartney was doing: Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Dear Prudence, Yer Blues, Julia, were songs that came from deep within John's soul, and when those tracks were mostly overlooked in favor of relative treacle like Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da and pleasant but mindless rockers like Back In The U.S.S.R. and Birthday, I think John decided to either turn off his muse of keep it to himself. Consider ever other Beatles song that can be credited to John after The White Album:

- Don't Let Me Down - If the effect of Quaaludes could be captured in a song, this would be the song. Good listening because it's Lennon, but his heart is clearly not in it, as you can see in the Let It Be rooftop concert where he completely forgets an entire verse.

- The Ballad Of John And Yoko - A fun autobiographical song tossed off in a half-hour in the studio with Paul, but nothing serious in the least.

- Across The Universe - A stunningly beautiful piece that was basically the first Lennon solo track in its first version, rerecorded with the band during the Let It Be/Get Back sessions because it was one of the only things John had that vaguely fit into the Beatles milieu.

- Come Together - Great riff, but largely (and admittedly) ripped off from Chuck Berry

- I Want You (She's So Heavy) - Another great riff surrounded by a mere 10 to 12 words, John here was experimenting with sound rather than sharing poetry and ideas with the world.

- Because - The second weakest track on Abbey Road

- Sun King - The weakest track on Abbey Road

- Mean Mr. Mustard - A minute-long half-song never completed beyond the first chorus.

- Polythene Pam - A forty-second fragment of a song never completed past the first verse.

- Dig A Pony - Random words strung together to form a waltz rhythm.

(I've Got A Feeling and Two Of Us were not Lennon tunes, they were the last two true co-creations of lennon and McCartney, and One After 909 dated from the late 1950s)

If you've ever gotten a chance to watch the Let It Be film, there's a scene in there that captures perfectly where Lennon's head was at at the time. Paul is sitting with John, very excited and animated, trying to get him to agree to go on tour again and do some live shows to get some excitement and energy back into this band that had been going for about 8 years now -- a band which had been started by John in the first place, but which Paul was quite adamantly taking over. John sits there politely nodding at him but contributing absolutely nothing; John clearly is bored out of his tree and wants nothing more to do with this aggregation of acquaintances any more, but is humoring Paul.

John had found where he belonged in life, and it wasn't with Paul.

You can hear it on his first solo singles, before the break-up was official but recorded and released after he had played his last with the band: Give Peace A Chance, Cold Turkey and Instant Karma. Yes, they were ragged and primitive, but John was finally having a Good Time again. You can hear on the Plastic Ono Band album that his third eye was open. You can hear on Imagine that he was inspired, if a little bit ticked off at Paul's sideswipes of him on songs like Too Many People and Dear Friend. You can hear on Walls And Bridges that he knew where he wanted to go, and it wasn't to an L.A. nightspot with Harry Nilsson and a Kotex on his forehead.

Lennon on his own was not The Beatles. The dream, as he told us himself, was over. But once Lennon found himself after leaving the madness of Beatlemania, he delivered songs that Beatlemania never could.