The first voice I truly heard: John Lennon
There’s many things about John Lennon’s influence in my life that
I’ve never talked about with anyone. That’s because
his influence reaches so far back into my life that it has taken me many
years to begin to understand it myself. I can’t possibly talk about
everything, so I’ll just talk about how it all started.
There wasn’t a time in my life when the Beatles didn’t matter. Some of my earliest memories of listening to my mother’s Beatles LPs on my little red, kiddie record player. To claim the Beatles taught me my first lessons in music is not quite a sentimental exaggeration. I learned to sing by singing along with the Beatles, as well as the other 60′s music my mother liked. And because I was hyperlexic and obsessed with learning anything with words, I attentively memorized every lyric to every song I heard, including every Beatles song on every album I had. Granted, I hadn’t a clue what songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or “The Fool on the Hill” might be about, but by age of four I could have sung them for you at the drop of a hat.
I didn’t really give much concern over the Beatles as celebrities–the very concept of the Beatles’ celebrity itself would remain elusive to me until I saw the TV coverage of the masses of people mourning John’s death in 1980. But John stood out to me. Or rather, his voice. Something in John’s voice just sounded different and unique, as if it was set apart from everything else. That voice had a special way of asserting itself from within the music. Some unimaginative, hackish music critic might ascribe this to John’s ego, performing persona and hunger to be noticed. While all things were certainly a part of John as a musician, what I was hearing was something more basic and more human than any of that.
Every time I as a child would listen to John sing, whether lead or harmony, whether on my record player or on radio or TV, it sounded more than just a man singing a song. It sounded like someone trying to grab my attention and make me to listen. It wasn’t an aggressive ”Hey listen to me!” sort of thing, but something more earnest and gentle, and it evoked a special kind of wonder in me. It didn’t matter when or where I heard John’s singing–his voice always had that power over me. I wasn’t sure what I was suppose to hear. I only knew that nothing in the world sounded anything like John’s voice to me. For a kid like I was, this was something extraordinary.
It is difficult to explain what life is like for young kid with autism. Most of the world seems like something you can only observe at a distance and the notion of participating in that world in the ways you observe other people doing is counter-intuitive, if not unnerving and overwhelming. You hear people talk, they may even be talking to you, but something seems to be missing in your understanding of what’s going on. You may even be aware of that on some vague level. Nonetheless, everything about other people talking is kind of vague and fuzzy and while you want to know what to do, how to respond and what to say, you just can’t figure it out. The cues that guide other kids just aren’t accessible to you. You don’t even know such cues exist. Every social interaction seems like a baffling riddle and you don’t know even where to begin to solve it. You feel like a very small, isolated person adrift in a vast, unknowable sea of these riddles, without anything to help you steer or even keep you afloat.
Like many autistic kids, I coped with this mostly by withdrawing from social situations and playing alone. A good amount of my solitary playtime was spent with music. It made that solitary world of my early years a lot less lonely. No doubt music was helping my young autistic brain make connections that it was struggling to make with other types of experiences. But even so, some dimensions of music seemed elusive, especially the way singers would sing the words to help convey their meaning. It baffled me and made me feel there was something “important” that I was missing.
Then there was John’s voice. I didn’t struggle to hear that voice. It
never made me feel like I was missing anything. It had a fullness, a
depth, an energy that no other voice I had ever heard before had, and it
cut right through all the vagueness and fuzziness that bogged my child
mind when I listened to other people. Imagine being underwater and
hearing the sounds of muffled, distorted voices all around you, and
then coming to the surface and hearing the voice of the first person to
talk to you, so suddenly, surprisingly clear and intelligible–that’s
what John’s voice was to me. While I was not aware of it at the time,
that wonder his voice evoked in me was me experiencing for the first
time a human voice as it should truly be heard, with all its
intimate resonance, nuance and emotion. Somehow,
whatever cognitive or neurological barrier that made listening to other
people such an exhausting, confusing struggle for me simply wasn’t there
with John’s voice. I heard things in that voice that I hadn’t heard
before–not in the voices of my parents or brother, or of other people in
my neighborhood, or on TV, radio or anywhere else. I sensed, on some
level, John communicating something of himself through that voice when I heard him sing.
It was, as they say, a connection. In my case, it was the connection that made my young autistic brain aware that such a connection could happen. I couldn’t make much sense of it, naturally, but it didn’t have to make sense. I mean, autistic or not, I was still just a kid, still learning and becoming aware of the world. But because I am autistic, it was a major milestone, an undeniably profound one–one that very likely changed my developmental path for the better.
I spent my entire childhood and teen years unaware I had autism. But I did know I was different and that there were many things for which I had to find alternative ways to understand and learn. And all through that I had music and, in particular, the Beatles. The Beatles, and John specifically, became something of a keystone in my life. My musical interests would evolve around the Beatles–from other 60′s groups to their influences, to the musicians they influenced, and so on. The singing skills I learned from hours of listening to Beatles songs evolved into a full-fledged “Aspie interest” in learning everything about music and playing music. I got a degree in music and had planned to be a professional musician until a life-shattering, PTSD-related breakdown in my mid-20′s derailed my plans and dreams. Even then, John’s influence would steer me where I needed to go: in the years following my breakdown, I thought I would never be able be able to play music again, until I came across, by sheer accident, the music of Elliott Smith. Elliott, like myself, had grown up with a passion for the Beatles and he sang in a very earnest, very communicative style deeply reminiscent of John’s own style. It would be Elliott’s music and his singing and lyrics so heavy influenced by John and the Beatles that helped me reconnect to music–and the rest of the world through it–as I had first done so as kid listening to John’s voice on that little red, kiddie record player.
Tomorrow, John would have been 71. I know John means many things to countless people and John was a pretty complex person himself, but I think I can say without any hyperbole that his influence changed and enriched my life like no one else has. Pretty amazing how that is. Thank you, John.
There wasn’t a time in my life when the Beatles didn’t matter. Some of my earliest memories of listening to my mother’s Beatles LPs on my little red, kiddie record player. To claim the Beatles taught me my first lessons in music is not quite a sentimental exaggeration. I learned to sing by singing along with the Beatles, as well as the other 60′s music my mother liked. And because I was hyperlexic and obsessed with learning anything with words, I attentively memorized every lyric to every song I heard, including every Beatles song on every album I had. Granted, I hadn’t a clue what songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or “The Fool on the Hill” might be about, but by age of four I could have sung them for you at the drop of a hat.
I didn’t really give much concern over the Beatles as celebrities–the very concept of the Beatles’ celebrity itself would remain elusive to me until I saw the TV coverage of the masses of people mourning John’s death in 1980. But John stood out to me. Or rather, his voice. Something in John’s voice just sounded different and unique, as if it was set apart from everything else. That voice had a special way of asserting itself from within the music. Some unimaginative, hackish music critic might ascribe this to John’s ego, performing persona and hunger to be noticed. While all things were certainly a part of John as a musician, what I was hearing was something more basic and more human than any of that.
Every time I as a child would listen to John sing, whether lead or harmony, whether on my record player or on radio or TV, it sounded more than just a man singing a song. It sounded like someone trying to grab my attention and make me to listen. It wasn’t an aggressive ”Hey listen to me!” sort of thing, but something more earnest and gentle, and it evoked a special kind of wonder in me. It didn’t matter when or where I heard John’s singing–his voice always had that power over me. I wasn’t sure what I was suppose to hear. I only knew that nothing in the world sounded anything like John’s voice to me. For a kid like I was, this was something extraordinary.
It is difficult to explain what life is like for young kid with autism. Most of the world seems like something you can only observe at a distance and the notion of participating in that world in the ways you observe other people doing is counter-intuitive, if not unnerving and overwhelming. You hear people talk, they may even be talking to you, but something seems to be missing in your understanding of what’s going on. You may even be aware of that on some vague level. Nonetheless, everything about other people talking is kind of vague and fuzzy and while you want to know what to do, how to respond and what to say, you just can’t figure it out. The cues that guide other kids just aren’t accessible to you. You don’t even know such cues exist. Every social interaction seems like a baffling riddle and you don’t know even where to begin to solve it. You feel like a very small, isolated person adrift in a vast, unknowable sea of these riddles, without anything to help you steer or even keep you afloat.
Like many autistic kids, I coped with this mostly by withdrawing from social situations and playing alone. A good amount of my solitary playtime was spent with music. It made that solitary world of my early years a lot less lonely. No doubt music was helping my young autistic brain make connections that it was struggling to make with other types of experiences. But even so, some dimensions of music seemed elusive, especially the way singers would sing the words to help convey their meaning. It baffled me and made me feel there was something “important” that I was missing.
John Lennon, performing with the Beatles in France, 1964 (image © Europress/Sygma/Corbis)
It was, as they say, a connection. In my case, it was the connection that made my young autistic brain aware that such a connection could happen. I couldn’t make much sense of it, naturally, but it didn’t have to make sense. I mean, autistic or not, I was still just a kid, still learning and becoming aware of the world. But because I am autistic, it was a major milestone, an undeniably profound one–one that very likely changed my developmental path for the better.
I spent my entire childhood and teen years unaware I had autism. But I did know I was different and that there were many things for which I had to find alternative ways to understand and learn. And all through that I had music and, in particular, the Beatles. The Beatles, and John specifically, became something of a keystone in my life. My musical interests would evolve around the Beatles–from other 60′s groups to their influences, to the musicians they influenced, and so on. The singing skills I learned from hours of listening to Beatles songs evolved into a full-fledged “Aspie interest” in learning everything about music and playing music. I got a degree in music and had planned to be a professional musician until a life-shattering, PTSD-related breakdown in my mid-20′s derailed my plans and dreams. Even then, John’s influence would steer me where I needed to go: in the years following my breakdown, I thought I would never be able be able to play music again, until I came across, by sheer accident, the music of Elliott Smith. Elliott, like myself, had grown up with a passion for the Beatles and he sang in a very earnest, very communicative style deeply reminiscent of John’s own style. It would be Elliott’s music and his singing and lyrics so heavy influenced by John and the Beatles that helped me reconnect to music–and the rest of the world through it–as I had first done so as kid listening to John’s voice on that little red, kiddie record player.
Tomorrow, John would have been 71. I know John means many things to countless people and John was a pretty complex person himself, but I think I can say without any hyperbole that his influence changed and enriched my life like no one else has. Pretty amazing how that is. Thank you, John.
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