Some are Dead and Some are Living

When I was in 7th form the Beatles Anthology was shown on TV, and I began one of my obsessive fandom phases. I was really into the Beatles in general, and John Lennon in particular. If you were prepared to sit still I'd be able (which Beatle song has a sung bass line? Which song where they recording when John took Acid in the studio? Who wrote Eleanor Rigby?)

I mention this because it was twenty five years ago today that John Lennon was shot. I was two and a half at the time so I don't remember a time when he wasn't dead - but I do know that my Dad heard on the radio cycling to work, my Mum was making me a Wendy house for Christmas.

I've no idea what he would have been like if he'd lived, perhaps he'd have veered off into 'he's fucking crazy' territory, maybe he'd have always managed to stay on the eccentric side. He was all over the place politically and I don't really agree with any of it (I find the hippy-dippy-trippy and the radical chic thing equally annoying). But he wrote, and performed, some pretty awesome music, and that's the reason I decided to mark his death.

So if you've got a copy go listen to In My Life (it's on Rubber Soul, the Red album and Imagine) it's my favourite Beatles song and particularly appropriate at times like this.