Requiem for a Beatle
Bakshjan., Aram Jr.
"Yes, I guess not," answered the Cowardly Lion. "But how else can I get people to be afraid of me?" "I certainly don't know," said Dorothy, "But from what I've heard, the great Oz is a wise and...
...Oz was not in at the moment, but he would be back to them as soon as he could...
...They learned from a friendly policeman where the great Oz had his office, but an unfriendly policeman at the main door refused to let them in...
...My boy, you haven't really listened to their music because you don't Aram Bakshian, Jr...
...But I don't think you'll ever find him...
...writes frequently on politics, history, and the arts...
...While I suspect Jesus would have won by a nose, Lennon did unconsciously suggest a more valid comparison between some of the cruder early Christians and his own musical apostles when he graciously added that, "Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary...
...A good melody-and the Beatles have created more than one-is like a beautiful, strongly woven piece of material...
...Hear, hear...
...Arf, arf, Oz is...
...But we don't need the '60s and we don't need the Beatles and we don't need the Kennedys...
...Of course, the great Oz believed they could make a useful contribution to the new America...
...0 Aram Bakshian, Jr...
...Let's leave them where they are in a nice memory...
...But it was the venerable little maestro who defended the Beatles' music when I made a disparaging remark about it...
...Just try one more telephone call...
...May John Lennon rest in Strawberry Fields, and may what was worthwhile in his art outlive that which was dross...
...said the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion in unison...
...For a number of people with a serious interest in music, the same applied' to the Beatles...
...Why, child, of course there's an Oz...
...Unfortunately, Mr...
...They got an early start and reached the capital about lunchtime...
...Each generation has its heroes, some admirable, some absurd, and some obscene...
...Who knows, maybe he'll be back from his meeting...
...His ineffectual advocacy of various fads and crank political causes will soon be forgiven and forgotten by most...
...Because I was only four years younger than John Lennon, and because I always considered the Beatles more of a social phenomenon than a source of listening pleasure, I tried to enjoy their antics while taking their serious posing and propagandizing with a grain of salt...
...Listening to the interviews was instructive...
...Why, in the good old days, you could call Oz collect...
...John Lennon and Paul McCartney-especially McCartney-understood that only melody can make a song weather changing fads and generations to become a true evergreen...
...For many members of my generation (though not, I hasten to add, for me) the Beatles were a musical extension of self-sometimes echoing and sometimes foreshadowing the set of virtues, vices, conflicts, ideals, and delusions which they thought of, probably mistakenly, as uniquely theirs...
...They seemed more intent on mourning (and celebrating) their own lost adolescence, what they had been in the sixties and early seventies, the slogans, the alienated pose, the infinite self-pity and self-indulgence-in short, the mass-marketed adolescent counterculture some of them have never really outgrown...
...But since the time this story was first written, the cost of a telephone call has risen to fifteen cents...
...Please don't give up," said the Cowardly Lion...
...Why, the next thing you'll be telling us is that there's no yellow brick road either...
...Again and again they mouthed the same phrase about the fallen forty-year-old from Liverpool: "I grew up (sic) with him and his music...
...What then, to the extent that it can be pinned down this early, is the Lennon legacy-beyond an estate estimated at from $30 million to $235 million...
...There's always been an Oz and there always will be...
...What indeed...
...Humpf," said Dorothy, after placing her sixth telephone call, leaving only one useless dime, "I'm beginning to wonder whether there really is any Oz at all...
...But all we have left is one dime, and that's not enough," Dorothy protested...
...the dupe of quack Gurus and other exotic con artists promising better living through vegetarianism, hempheadedness, or transcendental meditation...
...Yes, they should check back with the great Oz in the morning...
...Well, I still don't believe you," said Dorothy, "and I'm going back to Kansas...
...And he will occupy a sombre footnote in the social history of his era as one of the first pop heroes to use his position to glamorize the drug culture to a susceptible audience which still suffers the consequences, even as it laments his death at the hands of one of the all-too-many moral and mental burnouts of the Beatles Generation...
...it is a pity that John Lennon and his uneven but real talent should die a comparatively early death...
...The latter fact was painfully obvious even before Lennon's blood had congealed on the pavement in front of the Dakota Apartments...
...One hopes that they were wrong because, if they were right, even the best music of the Beatles is doomed to automatic oblivion the moment the last member of the Beatles Generation signs off some time in the middle of the next century...
...Yes, the great Oz did remember them from the old days...
...My friend was the late Robert Stolz, Austria's last waltz and operetta king...
...It was getting late now, so the five of them decided to go to sleep and resume their journey in the morning...
...But I couldn't help wondering whether some of his more extravagant on-camera mourners had ever privately shed as many tears at the death of a personal loved one as they lavished on this rather ambivalent relic of their lost youth...
...Perhaps, on the threshold of middle age, all Lennon was saying-but with a new conservative twist-was give peace a chance...
...They probably even want a war so that we can have an anti-war movement...
...I don't expect this to happen, because what is best in their work is not shackled to the sixties-although much of what was worst is, and many of their more rabid fans (including John Lennon's alleged killer) seem to be...
...Robert was ninety-two at the time, still actively composing and conducting, and I was twenty-nine...
...like them, " he told me, going on to point out the melodic quality of several popular Beatles tunes...
...It is sad when anyone is cut down prematurely...
...No, it was quite impossible...
...Gee," said the Tin Man after a while, "things sure have changed since I was around here...
...But everyone knows there is one, and everyone knows where it leads...
...I hope that most of their surviving fans will apply the same standard to the flood of crocodile tears being publicly shed on Lennon's behalf, often using his death as a.pretext for everything from gun law lobbying to the mass indictment of America as a "sick" society...
...But if many of his fans had not outgrown their Beatlemania, John Lennon had outgrown many of his fans...
...Wasn't it, after all, the same kind of overblown mass emotionalism, impacting on a warped mind (reportedly further damaged by several bad acid trips) that had led to Lennon's murder by a Beatlemaniac stalking second hand karma...
...It's them twisting it that ruins it for me...
...Yes, the great Oz did have a post office box, but it was filled to overflowing...
...the occasional victim of his fame-induced megalomania as when, in 1966, he claimed that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus now...
...His slaying unleashed a '60s style media orgy-swarms of cameramen, photographers, interviewers, and weeping, laughing, swaying, humming, and occasionally zonked Beatles fans, plus a big contingent of Manhattan's floating population of all-purpose groupies, grieving for a fallen superstar and hoping for a few seconds on the screen...
...John Lennon was a bit of all three by turns-apparently sincere in his vague, muddled pacifism...
...In one of his last public statements, Lennon poked fun at the enthusiasts and rock critics, mostly now in their thirties and forties, ". . . the same age as me, and they're all the ones wishing for the Kennedys to come back, wishing for the '60s . . . They're already locked into the things that rock and roll was supposed to save us from...
...And besides," the maestro smiled, blinking his clear blue eyes, "as our great Viennese philosophe, Karl Kraus, once asked, what is Beethoven's Ninth compared to a familiar tune played by an organ-grinder when the tune is tied to a memory...
...he was part of my life...
...Mark Twain once remarked that Richard Wagner's music was not as bad as it sounded...
...Unless it's slashed to bits it can withstand all manner of mistreatment and still preserve its texture, its tone, and its inherent appeal...
...Fortunately, Dorothy had a dollar bill which, she thought, could be converted into ten dimes for ten telephone calls...
...They gathered around a telephone booth and dialed the great Oz's number...
...No, it was not known when the great Oz would return because he was in a meeting...
...Arf," said Toto in approval...
...properly arranged and performed, some of their work was artistically as well as commercially successful...
...Most of the crowd had little coherent to say about Lennon's music, even less about any of his personal qualities...
...The rest of you can spend the rest of your lives trying to get through to this Oz of yours...
...No Oz...
...REQUIEM FOR A BEATLE Shot in the dark...
...This simple but often-overlooked musical fact was brought home to me by a lovable and rather unlikely friend in his villa overlooking Vienna seven years ago...
...A number of pleasant melodies and lyrics (often derivative rather than purely original) will survive the forgettable bulk of his musical output...
...I certainly don't know," said Dorothy, "But from what I've heard, the great Oz is a wise and kindly man, and I'm sure he'll be able to think of lots of other ways for you to get your courage back...
...the great Oz's secretary was not authorized to give out his home number, nor even his home address...
...They fell silent...
...The youngsters will be screaming the same stuff they always scream, the same stuff we screamed, and it's irrelevant .. . just let it lie...
Vol. 14 • February 1981 • No. 2
