" Lennon's music helped others to see pure light." [View All]

[kpete]

John Lennon
Artist. Humanitarian. National Threat

My favorite JL version of Imagine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh-m_7GC-K4&feature=player_embedded#!

Julian Lennon, (R), son of former Beatle John Lennon, and his mother Cynthia at the unveiling of an European peace monument dedicated to the memory of John Lennon in Liverpool Photo: AFP
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/8052634/Monument-to-John-Lennon-unveiled-in-Liverpool-on-his-70th-birthday.html

Bob Dylan's Defense of John Lennon

Explaining what made Lennon important, Dylan wrote that
Lennon added "a great voice and drive to this country's so called ART INSTITUTION."
Lennon's music, Dylan said, "helped others to see pure light."

Jon Wiener
October 8, 2010

On what would have been John Lennon's seventieth birthday—October 9—it's worth noting the letter about Lennon that Bob Dylan sent to the US immigration service in 1972: "John and Yoko," Dylan wrote, "inspire and transcend and stimulate," and thereby "help put an end to this mild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as artist art by the overpowering mass media." Then he added, "Let John and Yoko stay!"

As that concluding line suggests, Dylan's letter was not a spontaneous expression of enthusiasm. It was part of an organized campaign to stop the Nixon administration from deporting the ex-Beatle.

................

Lennon's problem: he and Yoko had been living in New York for a year, which happened to be the year Nixon was running for re-election. The Vietnam war had reached a peak, and Lennon and Ono were singing "Give Peace a Chance" at antiwar rallies—and, they suggested, the best way to give peace a chance was to vote against Nixon.

The Nixon White House responded by ordering Lennon deported.

more:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/155298/bob-dylans-defense-john-lennon
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/9/909027/-You-Say-Its-Your-Birthday