John Lennon: The First Modern Man

43rd anniversary of death
John Lennon – the first modern man

He was one of the first artists to address his own weaknesses in his music, he lived his relationship publicly – and he took parental leave in the 1970s: John Lennon is a prototype of the modern man.

He was one of the most successful musicians of the 20th century and one of the most influential personalities: John Lennon, born in Liverpool on October 9, 1940, together with the Beatles shaped Western music culture after the Second World War like only Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan . And so millions of people around the world were in shock when John Lennon was brutally torn from his life on December 8, 1980. His recently released single “(Just like) Starting Over” shot to the top of the charts in many countries.

But as great as the grief for the man was at the time, his death seemed to have little impact on the development of pop music. Because Lennon’s best years were long ago in 1980. The musical development had long since arrived in punk and new wave. Lennon no longer had anything to say to the younger generation. His influence – according to the unanimous opinion at the time – was limited to the great period of the 1960s. With the Beatles he revolutionized the music world and created the blueprint for the music that is now called pop.

John Lennon was full of fears and doubts

But the Beatles also ensured that the music that was initially only heard by teenagers became adult. As the teenage fans grew older, so did their music. While the song lyrics in rock’n’roll and the early Beatles were almost exclusively about youthful, innocent love (“She loves you”, “I want to hold your hand”), their songs from the mid-60s onwards dealt with this more demanding topics. John Lennon in particular played a part in this. Bob Dylan is credited with opening pop music to serious, political subjects. But it was John Lennon who brought the artist with all his feelings, fears and doubts into songs like “I’m a Loser” or “You’ve got to Hide your love away”.

In his solo works, Lennon went much further and mercilessly revealed his private depths: in “Cold Turkey” from 1969, he sings about his torment during cold withdrawal from heroin. In the song “Mother” (1970) he deals with the trauma of losing his mother at an early age: “Mother, you had me, but I never had you/I wanted you, but you didn’t want me,” it says – never Before, one had seen an artist suffer so openly. John Lennon lay down on the psychiatrist’s couch – and shared it with the whole world.

That was unusual for the time – it shaped the music scene decades later: John Lennon can be seen as one of the pioneers of so-called howling pop, which has been enjoying great chart successes since the late 90s. Bands like Coldplay, Starsailor and Muse, mostly from England, eschewed macho gestures and instead openly displayed their suffering to the world. Not the hard, brutal Stone Age type, but the sensitive man is the ideal of these artists – and John Lennon is the father of this school. The second important music movement that came from England in the 90s also goes back to Lennon and the Beatles: The Fab Four are the ancestors of Britpop bands like Oasis and Blur.

With John Lennon, the personal was political

But the way he publicly celebrated his private life was also modern. After his wedding to Yoko Ono in 1969, the couple welcomed the world press – in bed. Here two people linked their most private happiness with a political mission and called the campaign a bed-in for world peace. “The private is political” was a slogan of these eventful years – and they were one of the first celebrity couples to put Lennon/Ono into practice.

Less glorious – but no less modern – was the way Lennon lived out the 18-month separation from Yoko Ono between 1973 and 1975 before the interested eyes of the American audience. Together with his friend, the singer Harry Nilsson, Lennon went on notorious drinking sprees through Los Angeles at night – to the delight of the tabloids, who documented all the freakouts. For example, that night in March 1974 when Lennon was thrown out after a fight at the legendary Troubadour club. Here, too, the ex-Beatle was unfortunately a role model: for embarrassing celebrities from Mel Gibson to Lothar Matthäus, whose misery also amuses an entire society.

Lennon eventually gave up the tough rocker poses of those wild years and presented himself as a fragile, vulnerable man. How modern he was only became apparent in the last years of his life: Lennon gave up his music career for a while in 1975 to devote himself entirely to his son Sean. His wife Yoko Ono took care of the business during this time. This meant that Lennon was once again a social avant-garde: While German men are now being persuaded with financial injections to look after their offspring for at least two months, Lennon spent five years as a family man. If you believe his statements, they were his most beautiful years.

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