Yoko claims John Lennon was gay.
For long time Beatles fans, this was not a surprise, since
questions about his sexuality have been in the air for decades, more secretly
during those early days with Stu, more recently in documentaries reporting on
his relationship with Brian, and that trip John took with Brian after which he
allegedly admitted having an encounter.
In this day and age, John’s sexual preferences mean far less
than during the height of Beatlemania when this news might have been a train
wreck.
But it is one more piece in a very tragic story, the rise
and fall of The Beatles, as sad to me as any Shakespearian play.
On this, Garrick (one of my three closest friends growing
up) and I disagree.
He sees this as a story of four working class lads making it
big – bigger than anyone of their class might ever have expected. Perhaps to
some degree, this is true. But like all tragedies, the story comes with very
flawed characters (John and Paul) in particular, carrying the seeds of their
demise from almost the start when they first got together.
John apparently longed for the early Hamberg days, when they
were wild and free, but also burdened with their own fatal flaws that they
would carry with them into their success.
John was right when he said nothing matters but the music.
And yet, following the threads of their career, how they were exploited, and
became enslaved by their own popularity, I cannot help but pity them.
We – Garrick, Pauly, Hank and I – always envisioned
ourselves as the Beatles, Pauly becoming a clone of John, equally as great as a
musician with fine art very closely resembling that which John did in art
school.
Our story was just as tragic, although we did not reach the
same heights as the Beatles did, making me think this is much too common an
issue, as our personal flaws grow along with the success we so crave.
The more I learn about The Beatles, the sadder I become, as
if looking into a mirror at all our lives, and realizing that people rarely get
what they want most without carrying the burden of our own demise.
How do we manage to survive the impact of actually achieving
our wildest dreams.
Both Paul and John tended to be cruel, maybe more than a
little arrogant, and to a lesser degree the same might be said of George and
Ringo.
But how do you become Gods and now feel that way? Did they
all realize that their rise to fame (and few in the world have become so famous
as they) would come at a terrible cost?
As I learn their songs, I come to agree with John even more.
What they accomplished, what makes them stand out in time, isn’t the fame they
achieved, but the art they left behind.
And thinking this, I wonder, would it have been worth it had
we managed to get even a little of that fame, to gain immortality despite all
our flaws.
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