The lost politics of John Lennon

The Paul Richards column

This morning, to honour the anniversary a lifetime ago of John Lennon’s murder outside the Dakota Building, I put on my vinyl copy of Double Fantasy. For those under 30, vinyl is what records are made from, and records are the format music came in, before CDs ruined everything. I bought Double Fantasy, Lennon’s first record for five years, as soon as it came out in Autumn 1980, with my pocket money. Three weeks later Lennon was dead.

It’s not a very good album, if we’re honest. Aside from Woman, and Watching the Wheels, there’s not much to commend it. I’m afraid Yoko Ono’s contributions are painful to listen to, but then I still blame her for breaking up the Beatles. What makes the album important is that the voice singing about the love of his life and his beautiful child was silenced by Mark Chapman – who had asked Lennon to sign a copy of the sleeve a couple of hours before shooting him to death.

Lennon was 40 when he died; two months ago, he would have been 70 had he lived. After five years off work, bringing up his son Sean, Lennon had adopted a middle-of the-road style free from the rage, drug references and psychological unburdening of his post-Beatles work. We’ll never know, but my guess is that the 50 and 60 year old Lennon would have produced grown-up rock and roll music; he would have dueted with Elton John; he would have given concerts with the odd Beatles track thrown in; he may even have got back together with Paul McCartney in some great cause such as AIDS awareness. His themes would have reflected his middle-age – love, children, and his love of New York.

It’s hard to believe the man who wrote Double Fantasy was a political radical in his 30s and placed under CIA surveillance. He was considered a threat to Richard Nixon’s re-election (if only!). Everyone knows Imagine, the saccharine hymn to internationalism and humanity. Give Peace a Chance still makes it appearance on anti-war rallies. John and Yoko’s anti-Vietnam anthem Happy Xmas (War is Over) can heard this time of year as one of those ‘Christmas songs’ which appears on a loop on radio stations (step forward Jona Lewie, The Waitresses, the Pogues with Kirsty McColl and Slade). Power to the People can still get the blood pumping.

In 1969, Lennon returned the MBE Harold Wilson had given him in protest at Britain’s involvement in the civil war in Nigeria. Lennon’s politics took a sharp left turn after 1970. Tariq Ali claimed that Lennon was sympathetic to the International Marxist Group (IMG), one of the 57 varieties of Troyskyism which ended up as the Socialist Action faction around Ken Livingstone. Lennon was alleged to have given money to the Black Panthers, and the IRA, and wrote Bloody Sunday for the Some Time in New York album in 1972. This is Lennon’s most political album. Tracks include the feminist song Woman is the N*gger of the World, Attica State, about the prison riots, Angela, about the communist activist Angela Davis, and a song in support of poet John Sinclair who had been imprisoned for possession of marijuana.

In an interview with Tariq Ali’s Red Mole in 1971, Lennon describes his political outlook: ‘I’ve always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It’s pretty basic when you’re brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere. I mean, it’s just a basic working class thing.’ He goes on to say that he and George Harrison wanted to speak out against the war in Vietnam, but were stifled by Brian Epstein. At one point in the interview, Lennon echoes the view of Richard Neville, one the defendants in the Oz Trial, that the difference between Harold Wilson and Edward Heath may only be an inch, but it’s the inch where we want to live. Tariq Ali slaps him down. For the Trotskyist Ali, there can be no concession to the Labour Party.

Lennon led an extraordinary, short life. His politics are lost amidst his contribution to music. Perhaps that’s just as well, given their excesses. I know today is all about tuition fees, but take a moment to remember a remarkable talent.