Article

John Lennon
Happy 50th John
by Rand Marsh

October 9, 1940 John Lennon was born in Oxford Street Maternity Hospital Liverpool, England.  His mother Julia was a dreamy, ethereal woman, and his father was a rounder who shipped himself off to sea. And he, John Winston Lennon, later known as John Ono Lennon, was for many of us who grew up in the 60's our Star, our Sun, and our Moon.

Fifty years ago this month, on the night John was born, the moon was full, high in the sky and in the Tenth House of his birth chart.  This usually means fame, fortune and an enormous influence over masses of people.  In the summer of 1966 John said in an interview for the London Evening Standard, "Christianity will go.  It will vanish and shrink.  I needn't argue about that.  I'm right and I will be roved right.  We are more popular than Jesus now.  I don't know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity."  and this remark taken out of context as "We are more popular than Jesus." caused protest along with the Beatle's first popularity backlash.  It was true that in the year 1966 more Beatles records were sold than Bibles.  The enormous influence of John Lennon and the Beatles is legendary.   Just as others of their generation can remember where they were when they heard the news that the Archduke Ferdinand had been shot, or the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we Beatle-maniacs (reformed or otherwise) can still remember our first attack of Beatlemania.  I can, as if it were yesterday.

Everyone had their favorite Beatle, but I had them all.  At first it was Ringo, then Paul, and then it was John.  He held sway until the mid 70's when he dropped out to beocme a house husband and I was entering my meditative state and tuned into George.  No matter what Beatle I was "maintaining" at any given moment, it was always John that I felt was the heart and soul of the Beatles.  We all knew that it was he and Paul that did all the writing.  I felt of the two it was John who was the true force in the duo.

When on December 31st, 1970 Paul McCartney initiated legal proceedings to end the business partnership of the Beatles the glue came apart, but I was still stuck on John. I know that a great many Beatle-maniacs held Yoko Ono responsible for the breakup.

John's Sun Sign was Libra and he had Aries rising, which made him passionate, and probably more romantic than he may have cared to admit.  But, because Venus was in Virgo he was also extremely critical of the women in his life.  And then there was Yoko Ono; we saw them come together, we saw them in bed for trying to give peace a chance, we saw them nude on an album cover, we heard them singing together, we saw them split up, we saw them come together again and we saw them exchange roles.

Who was this avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono.. Some said that beneath that Mona Lisa veneer, that inscrutable smile, that flawless skin, that whisper-shy voice, she is about as frail as Darth Vader.  John said of her, "It wasn't that she inspired the songs.  She inspired me." When at the age of forty, in an attempt to explain why he had written at the age of twenty-three that "Women should be obscene and not heard", he said "I was a working class macho guy that didn't know any better. I was used to being served (by women).  I used to be cruel to my women.  Yoko taught me about women.  From the day I met her, she demanded equal time, equal space, equal rights.  An I'm thankful to her for the education."

In 1980 after five years of silence, restraint and privacy that was spent raising his son Sean, who was born on the same day as his father in 1975.  John emerged pale and whipper-thin on his macrobiotic diet.  He had finally lost the beatle baby fat and also gone was the melancholia expressed in a poem to Stu Sutcliffe; "I can't remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me."  Now there was buoyancy, candor, sheer happiness, optimism and their album "Double Fantasy" was selling well.

Then suddenly it was December 8, 1980 and the dream was over.  I got all my old Beatles and Plastic Ono Band records and tapes and remembered, cried and wondered why it had to end this way.  John had once said "The King is always killed by his courtiers not by his enemies."

It wasn't until the summer of 1985 that I could finally let him go. The old Beatle synchronicity was at work.  As I was speeding down Sunset Blvd. toward the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine the radio played Beatles songs the entire way.  I was late for the wedding of Gary "Dream Weaver" Wright.  As I rushed down the walk into the chapel I took little notice of another late arrival that entered with me and took a seat beside me.  After we left the chapel I noticed that it was George Harrison.  We were both on our own and so we struck up a conversation that lasted through the reception and into the evening.  He said something to me as we talked of the death of John Lennon that I'll always remember, "We must always have faith in the future."  And how true that is, but I'll never forget how John Lennon made me feel.