john lennon

hey! monzo, peace and tofu...

although, i confess to 'beatle bashing' on occasion,
there is no question about the influence of and
lennon's legacy.

now, i checked out an 'official site' and lennon went
to art school, which would have been at 16 in england.
and, there, "he wasn't allowed to play rock"...

so i am fairly certain he ended up doing a little
classical piano. but i don't know for sure. and i think
i found the right tape, and i'm not as certain that
lennon borrowed chord progressions straight from bach,
or i haven't gotten far enough to pin it down in notation.

it wasn't meant to disparage lennon's memory.

well without getting into it a whole lot. rock is
awfully white and awfully middle class. something
akin to 'rap music' where mostly black 'musicians'
sell their wares to a mostly white audience.

something completely different. way back when in my
sophmore year, every afternoon, 'norewegian wood'
got played and piped into the lounge, and well i
stopped listening to the beatles, etc.... even 25
years later...

it drove me nuts. though, i still like 'helter skelter',
though probably because it doesn't get any airtime,
ever since the DA in the tate-labianca murders titled
his book about charlie manson, 'helter shelter'.

funny thing, 'helter shelter', is the brit word for
a slide, like kids use on a playground.

hi novosonic,

From: "novosonic" <novosonic@...>
To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 9:53 PM
Subject: [metatuning] john lennon

> hey! monzo, peace and tofu...
>
> although, i confess to 'beatle bashing' on occasion,
> there is no question about the influence of and
> lennon's legacy.
>
> now, i checked out an 'official site' and lennon went
> to art school, which would have been at 16 in england.
> and, there, "he wasn't allowed to play rock"...
>
> so i am fairly certain he ended up doing a little
> classical piano. but i don't know for sure. and i think
> i found the right tape, and i'm not as certain that
> lennon borrowed chord progressions straight from bach,
> or i haven't gotten far enough to pin it down in notation.
>
> it wasn't meant to disparage lennon's memory.

oops ... OK, my bad. i had quite forgotten about
Lennon's art school days, and the aunt he lived with
who wanted him to be cultured (which he wouldn't
have been if he had been rasied by either of his
parents).

so you might be right that he learned a bit of
piano as a teen. i should have thought about it
more before i gave such a conclusive reply.

I *do* know that Lennon got inspired to write the
music to the song "Because" from _Abbey Road_
("because the world is round, it turns me on...")
when he heard Yoko playing Beethoven's "Moonlight
Sonata". The rhythm of the rocking accompaniment
figure in _Because_, played on the guitar, is a
little different, but the notes of most of the
main part of the song are the exactly the same as
the "Moonlight", and the song is also in C#-minor,
the same key as the sonata. ... but note that that
figure *is* played on the guitar, and not on the
piano the way Beethoven wrote it.

i have a good and very detailed biography of Lennon
which i read a few years ago. i'll dig it out and
take another look at what it says about this period
in his life.

> well without getting into it a whole lot. rock is
> awfully white and awfully middle class. something
> akin to 'rap music' where mostly black 'musicians'
> sell their wares to a mostly white audience.

i don't think it's fair to pigeonhole either rap
or (especially) rock into such a neat small (OK,
actually pretty big) category. "rock music" can
be almost a meaningless label, largely thanks to
the variety and experimentation of musical styles,
instrumentation, and technique used by the Beatles.

what kind and what size audience listens to and,
more importantly, buys this music, is more a result
of capitalism and the commercialization of popular
musical styles, than of anything inherent in the music
itself, or in many of the artists that produce it.

this can all get into a very complicated dialog
about politics, economics, etc., which i too really
don't want to get into. just wanted to resond with
a couple of ideas for you to consider.

> something completely different. way back when in my
> sophmore year, every afternoon, 'norewegian wood'
> got played and piped into the lounge, and well i
> stopped listening to the beatles, etc.... even 25
> years later...
>
> it drove me nuts. though, i still like 'helter skelter',
> though probably because it doesn't get any airtime,
> ever since the DA in the tate-labianca murders titled
> his book about charlie manson, 'helter shelter'.
>
> funny thing, 'helter shelter', is the brit word for
> a slide, like kids use on a playground.

yep -- the whole song is simply a metaphor equating
sex with a day at the amusement park:

> When I get to the bottom
> I go back to the top of the slide
> Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
> Then i get to the bottom and I see you again
> Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

etc.

McCartney said in an interview way back then that
the reason he wrote "Helter Skelter" was that he
had read a review of a Rolling Stones record somewhere
which said that the Stones had just released the
hardest rock song ever recorded, and McCartney
thought, "well, we've got to top them again".

-monz