When an artist passes away before their time, they leave behind the question of what they would’ve created if their work was not curtailed. Would Kurt Cobain have gone fully acoustic? How would Buddy Holly have faired when things got psychedelic? And would John Lennon have returned to a punk-infused simplicity? When it comes to the former Beatle, the records he was listening to at the time seemed to prognosticate that visceral fun may well have been in store.
In a Playboy interview back in 1980, the bespectacled intellectual expressed his appreciation of the billowing genre. “I love all this punky stuff. It’s pure. I’m not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves,” he said. The potent attitude of the spiky revolution took youth culture back to the vitality of the 1960s. Paul McCartney, likewise, said, “If you listen to the music, that’s the enthusiasm for me. The music is really good rock ‘n’ roll.“
Finally, the youthful tenets of Beatlemania were being reawakened, and Lennon was filled with inspiration from what he heard. One song, in particular, had become an obsession for the ‘Smart One’. As his son Sean Lennon recalled in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2006: “My father had an old Wurlitzer in the game room of our house on Long Island. It was filled with 45s, mostly Elvis and The Everly Brothers.”
“The one modern song I remember him listening to was ‘The Tide Is High’ by Blondie, which he played constantly,” the future musician remembered. “When I hear that song, I see my father, unshaven, his hair pulled back into a ponytail, dancing to and fro in a worn-out pair of denim shorts, with me at his feet, trying my best to coordinate tiny limbs.”
But this wasn’t the only Blondie song that he was digging at the time. A few months prior to endless dancing in denim to the band’s punky take on reggae, he also had ‘Heart of Glass’ on repeat a few months earlier. In fact, he even reached out to Ringo Starr with a postcard that saw him write: “‘Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’ is the type of stuff y’all should do – Great + Simple.” Evidently, he was a huge fan of the CBGB-affiliated group.
But they weren’t the only band from that scene who had reawakened a passion within him for rock ‘n’ roll. In his final ever interview, he even heaped praise on The B52s ‘Rock Lobster’, explaining that when he heard the song, “I said to meself, ‘It’s time to get out the old axe and wake the wife up!’” And that’s just what he did; he picked up his guitar and headed down the studio, where he was recording tragically on the last day of his life.
Nevertheless, there is comfort to be derived from the fact that his inspiration was firmly flowing in his final days thanks to the more sugary side of punk. And as was proved even further by the recent release of the final Beatles single ‘Now and Then’, his music still lives on. As Blondie’s sticksmith Clem Burke exclusively told Far Out: “Being here in London on the day of its release, I’m finding it a very poignant and profound listening experience with the string arrangement adding to its emotional impact. I also think it sounds a bit like Oasis. Ha!”
