Major trigger warning for discussions of death, murder, and suicide. All very in depth.
I've been hyperfixated on the Beatles for some time now, and it's been really delightful time for the most part.
Like most people especially around my age, I had a vague awareness of the Beatles growing up."Imagine" by John Lennon played every year during Remembrance Day assemblies in elementary school. I knew "Hey Jude" and "Here Comes The Sun" before I could even conceptualise what the 1960s were. I was once on a road trip with some relatives for like 8 hours where the song "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" played seemingly on loop and in my kid brain it felt like torture. I didn't realize that last song was the Beatles until a month ago but the point stands.
My parents weren't big on music at all and in fact shunned me being so passionate for it until recently. Nobody really taught me anything about The Beatles unless I dug for myself and that happened over the course of the last few years, but really not much until this year. I didn't take them seriously in any way as a relevant band until I heard "I Want You (She's So heavy)" and "Eleanor Rigby" when I was 16. This fact is even crazier to me because my favourite album in middle school was Panic! At The Disco's "Pretty. Odd." which only exists because the band discovered the Beatles and 60s/70s rock music but that's neither here nor there.
Before hearing the heavy drudged up guitars on "She's So Heavy" or the somber seriousness of "Eleanor Rigby," I thought the Beatles were nothing more than boring old music that may have been cool at the time but were shallow and about shallow things.
My perception of the Beatles themselves didn't help. Paul McCartney was just some old annoying rich ex-rockstar, Ringo Star was the jokey funny Beatle, George Harrison barely existed in my mind, and John Lennon was dead but first made 2 songs that were shitty ways to bring people together and he also beat his wife. That's all they were to me and all I cared to know about.
While rooted in some truth and it's easy to trace back where these perceptions came from, the deeper I go into their discographies and into their histories, the more complex each of them get for me. All are three dimensional, heavily flawed, severely British men who made some interesting music.
Yet then there's still more that gets me about John Lennon.
While every Beatle is now understood pretty commonly to be pretty shitty and have done terrible things, John Lennon's reputation is so beyond that in my eyes. He died first after a quiet period in his life so while the other three were able to live on and clean up their reputations and legacies with age, what the world has left is just Lennon at his most extreme. A martyr for his beliefs, an abuser to his first wife and son, a loving husband and father to his second, an activist for love and world peace, a violent young man riddled with grief, a Beatle who changed the world, and a musician who got lucky and took all the credit for change.
More than any other Beatle, it seems to me that John Lennon fully becomes the fading photographs and newspaper clippings left for people to obsess over, even if that's what he never wanted in the first place. Always seemingly first to share his own mistakes and god awful actions, not taking away from how terrible they were (I mean everything that happened during the White Album alone is terrible let alone the mess before and after) but open to note he wasn't ever perfect and he didn't think anyone should view him that way. He became a caricature of himself in the public eye after dying but in his post-Beatle years, he seemingly just wanted to be John, the regular imperfect guy, at least from what I've gathered.
I try really hard to view him as such when I listen to his music, and honestly it's not hard to do since I disliked him so much growing up and my favourite Beatle is actually Paul McCartney (will probably write about that later), but in viewing him as a troubled man who made some great music, I find myself resonating with his music a bit more. In doing so, his death starts to hit not just because of what it is but also because of what I am forced to face back.
When John Lennon was shot, he wanted to turn his life around. He had spent years in domestic bliss, he was going to return to music, and be better. He was shot before any of that could come to fruition. While he did live for 40 years, now Paul and Ringo have both lived twice as long as that. His death became a gaping hole in their lives and careers for decades.
I am very lucky to say that aside from a couple grandparents I was never very close to, I never fully had to grieve a loved one. There were many close cases though. Almost every close friend of mine growing up ( were extraordinarily depressed and suicidal (including myself, more on that in a different post). Many still are. In grade 12 alone, 2 of my closest friends attempted suicide and I only learned well after the fact in the surrounding weeks and months. One told me in a casual conversation about their toxic relationship and the other after his quiet return from a week away in the psych ward. The first friend and I fell out due to their erratic and increasingly manipulative behaviour worsened by their mental health issues that was taking a large toll on my life, the other remains like a brother to me and I see firsthand how he's lived and grown. Both keep me up at night thinking about, fearing the day I wake up to a horrific phone call and a gaping hole in my chest. They weren't the first or the last to get close, and I'm only 19.
There are many songs in the Beatles' solo discographies that make me reflect on this fear of sudden death, most notably Paul McCartney's song "Here Today" which was written after Lennon's death. It's a final conversation and reflection of their entire relationship, and it breaks me to listen to every single time. It's my favourite song he's ever made and though the circumstances of John Lennon's death are very different than the potential suicide of many Canadian teenagers, the song forces me to realize that as much as I wish I will never have to relate to this song, it's always a non-zero chance I will.
It's for all of these reasons that listening to "Grow Old With Me" by John Lennon is a task I will never be able to accomplish.
I discovered the song very recently. Before this fixation, the only solo songs by any ex-Beatle I knew were the two Lennon songs from school assemblies and the Glee cover of Silly Love Songs. Its been exciting for the most part to dive into what they did after the 60s and gave me a deeper appreciation for the band. I simply added a few Lennon songs to my monthly playlist and let it play on shuffle.
This song played and hit me like a gut punch.
A slower lo-fi home demo recording of a song where John Lennon softly asks for his wife, Yoko Ono, to grow old along with him, stating that the best is yet to come and he wants to live alongside her. It's never a question on whether or not he will grow old, the only unsureness is if she joins him. The cruel ironic joke fate had played is that this song was only released on their joint album after his death. He died as a 40 year old man while Yoko was in fact forced to grow old without him.
The context that weighs around the track is heavy and thick, a tense air I can't breathe in. I listen to the song and feel as though I'm watching an intimate moment I was never supposed to see. A domestic memory drowning in surrounding ironic tragedy, impossible to divorce from circumstance. It sounds the most raw and authentic and human I've heard Lennon be so far and it makes me feel nauseous. In this song he truly just becomes a man who loves his wife, and died before he could go through with it. He died prematurely with so much left to do and it leaves this song with such a haunted hollow feeling. The song is barely three minutes and I have yet to get past the first.
I can't help but think of the friends I nearly lost, the friends I soon may still. I wouldn't know how to even prepare to grieve if I had to, feeling loss with my last grandmother's passing a bit but even that was more based on the potential relationship we might've had than the one we actually had. Something about this small homely song cracks me open and forces me to reckon with how potentially terrifying it may be. I am so scared not of death but of it prematurely taking anyone right now. I know I'm more unstable than I would like to be but I've been trying so hard to be better and my friends are fighting valiantly to stay alive. I believe so thoroughly that we'll all make it to 86 at least that I hate even considering something alternative happening yet when I hear "Grow Old With Me" I picture them all and remember how temporary life is. One moment you're wishing to grow old together, imagining a future years down the road, and the next it's over.
Did I say "I love you" enough to my loved ones? Does my father know how much I appreciate his efforts to keep this house afloat? Does my best friend realize the amount of joy and love they bring into my life? Will I be riddled with regrets on my death bed? Will I be left writing songs haunted by what never was? I don't know. I'll do whatever I can every day to make it enough but I'm never sure it is. "Grow Old With Me" haunts me and mocks me while I try.
It's such a short and simple beautiful song. He was just a person that existed decades before I was born. I hate defining John Lennon by his death and understand in a way I am doing that here but I can't help the dread that fills when I hear this song with the context in mind. What a terrifying thing it is to be alive.
I don't know what to do with all of this potential grief and fear but I suppose what I can do for now is just live my best and continue to show love and support to everyone I love and care for. I don't if I can even try anything else. Nothing has changed any of the impending doom I feel or the mental wellbeing of my closest companions, but I feel more at ease writing this out which is a start, I suppose. Maybe one day I'll be able to listen to this song and have it feel real and genuine instead of cruel irony or a tortured memory.
All I can really do is hope.
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