Radio review: Great Lives, John Lennon
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1970. Photograph: Rex Features
John Harris, arguing for John Lennon in Great Lives (Radio 4),
remembered the first time he encountered The Beatles. He was five, and a
babysitter put Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club on ("to shut me
up"). Harris sat there, entranced, for 20 minutes. "That was when I
first understood," he recalled, "that pop music was this huge,
fascinating and enticing universe."
A lively on-air discussion ensued, with Harris volunteering pithy comments about Lennon's less glorious moments, mostly in the Yoko era. "He gets co-opted into the more moronic aspects of the avant-garde," he suggested, dismissing the political Lennon ("pretty abjectly awful") and countering any notion that he eschewed pretention: "He became one of the most self-indulgent and pretentious musicians the world has ever seen." Host Matthew Parris described The Beatles' psychedelic output as "complete crap" and Barry Miles – who ran the gallery where Lennon met Yoko – debunked some of the Lennon myth: "Most of the rapier wit was actually just rudeness because he was so defensive."
But the awareness of flaws or less brilliant output didn't weaken Harris's admiration – in fact, it was at its core. Lennon represents irreverence, mischief and a challenge to hierarchies that had stifled Britain, he said, but his real appeal is that he is "as full of uncertainty and doubt about the ultimate meaning of everything as the rest of us".
A lively on-air discussion ensued, with Harris volunteering pithy comments about Lennon's less glorious moments, mostly in the Yoko era. "He gets co-opted into the more moronic aspects of the avant-garde," he suggested, dismissing the political Lennon ("pretty abjectly awful") and countering any notion that he eschewed pretention: "He became one of the most self-indulgent and pretentious musicians the world has ever seen." Host Matthew Parris described The Beatles' psychedelic output as "complete crap" and Barry Miles – who ran the gallery where Lennon met Yoko – debunked some of the Lennon myth: "Most of the rapier wit was actually just rudeness because he was so defensive."
But the awareness of flaws or less brilliant output didn't weaken Harris's admiration – in fact, it was at its core. Lennon represents irreverence, mischief and a challenge to hierarchies that had stifled Britain, he said, but his real appeal is that he is "as full of uncertainty and doubt about the ultimate meaning of everything as the rest of us".
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