God, John Lennon

June 6, 2007

In a notebook Wallace Stevens wrote: "Loss of faith is growth". Nothing is more dramatic than the internal struggle of losing one's religion. It feels terrible, but at the end there is indeed an abiding sense of growth.

John Lennon's first solo album was John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, released in September, 1970. The cover looks calm enough, with Lennon reclining peacefully in the lap of his wife Yoko Ono, but the songs on the album tell a different story: loss of faith in almost everything.. and lashings out at the social system and those whom he perceived to have failed him. Listening to this album in our conservative and pious latter days is shocking, especially when he takes on such verities as Mother:

Mother, you had me but I never had you,
I wanted you but you didn't want me,
So I got to tell you,
Goodbye, goodbye.

Try singing that Garth Brooks or Kenny Chesney!

The song that gives me chills is "God". If you want to hear what it sounds like to lose your faith, then this is worth a listen. Unlike a standard such as REM's "Losing My Religion", it is hard to imagine anyone except John Lennon singing "God". The song is resolutely personal; its impact depends upon knowing something about who is singing.

The song begins with some lines I have never quite gotten my head around:

God is a concept,
By which we can measure,
Our pain...

There is no build-up or argument.. just a statement that might take some unpacking. Obviously if God is a concept then he is not a person or actual existent being. He is just something that lives in our mind.. a concept. This concept has a particular use: a measure for our pain. Perhaps he means that the strength of our need for something unseen like God is a direct measure of our deepest pain.

But this brief introduction is hardly the meat of the song. Following this enigmatic definition of God Lennon proceeds to list all the false gods he has ever held. It is a long list. Every "I don't believe" bringing forth a name more personal and central to his past:

I don't believe in magic,
I don't believe in I-ching,
I don't believe in bible,
I don't believe in tarot,
I don't believe in Hitler,
I don't believe in Jesus,
I don't believe in Kennedy,
I don't believe in Buddha,
I don't believe in mantra,
I don't believe in Gita,
I don't believe in yoga,
I don't believe in kings,
I don't believe in Elvis,
I don't believe in Zimmerman,
I don't believe in Beatles

It is a rather complete list of anything in the religious, political, and popular worlds that could be thought of as sacred. One by one they are all cast down. He ends with the greatest idol of all: the Beatles.

Who could not call that growth?

Having exorcised all these falsities, Lennon comes round to name something he does believe in:

I just believe in me,
Yoko and me,
And that's reality.

These words are not delivered with soaring confidence.. they seem to be diminished after the grand chords introducing what he doesn't believe in. They are anticlimactic. And when he says "And that's reality", his voice is full of resignation.. not pride. It is hard not to recall his lines from "Isolation":

Just a boy and a little girl
Trying to change the whole wide world

It is a little John Lennon that arises in these songs.. not some monstrous "I".

"God" concludes with what is perhaps the most bluntly beautiful message in the history of popular music:

The dream is over,
What can I say?
The dream is over,
Yesterday,
I was dreamweaver,
But now I'm reborn,
I was the walrus,
But now I'm John,
And so dear friends,
You just have to carry on,
The dream is over.

The dream here has nothing to do with God. Lennon turns now to the Beatles.. a band which after all may be another ideal concept by which we measure our pain. Lennon had played the role over the past 7 years.. he had been the Walrus.. and now he is through. It is telling that Lennon dispenses with the Beatles in the same song that he dispenses with God. It is a clue to the immense and overpowering place of the Beatles in his mind.. and the strength it took to leave it behind.

In contrast to Paul McCartney, who has always tried to get "Back to the Egg" and recapture something of the original magic of the Beatles, Lennon in his solo career was partial to images of rebirth and starting over. Those who want to live with the illusion of fiction would have to find it elsewhere.. he would no longer be dispensing that kind of thing. The dream is over. It is time for reality, painful and diminishing as that might be.