John Lennon never learnt his lesson. The Beatles used to get in a lot of trouble when it came to Lennon’s problem with God, at once either declaring to be bigger than the lord almighty or, in this instance, that he himself was the higher power.
Musicians are often asked how they feel after writing a great new song. Do they know instantly that it’s good? Can they feel in their bones if it’s a hit? For Lennon, in the band’s mid-1960s success, a good new song put him in a heavenly mood.
He probably felt that way often as the band were prolific, especially Lennon. On the band’s earlier albums, he raced ahead as their premium songwriter while McCartney took a little while longer to find his musical feat, though he would eventually be the songwriter behind the most Beatles tracks. In the mid ‘60s though, it was Lennon’s work and his interest in all corners of rock, blues and country that defined the band.
Helping to push their sound away from being just another rocking boy band riding the Elvis wave, even by their fourth album, Beatles For Sale, in 1964, he was looking around for different influences.
In the same year, Bob Dylan was on the come up. He released Another Side Of Bob Dylan with the hit ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ and began appearing at folk festivals with Joan Baez. John Lennon was an immediate fan.
When it came to writing one album track, he channelled the new folk legend. “‘I’m A Loser’ is me in my Dylan period because the word ‘clown’ is in it,” Lennon said. “I objected to the word ‘clown’, because that was always artsy-fartsy, but Dylan had used it, so I thought it was all right, and it rhymed with whatever I was doing.”
In the same way that Dylan toes the line between being the working man versus being the mouthpiece for the muses to speak through, that’s what Lennon thought he was doing here. While diving deeper into autobiographical or more introspective writing, he felt he was expanding the band’s sound to genius effect. In short, he thought he was really clever.
He even goes further than that. While the lyrical content of ‘I’m A Loser’ is harsh on his character, the crafting of the song made him feel quite the opposite. “Part of me suspects I’m a loser, and part of me thinks I’m God Almighty,” he said.
Lennon would go on to have somewhat of a God complex. In 1966, the band got themselves in serious hot water in America after Lennon’s infamous comment that the band were “More popular than Jesus.” Upsetting the staunch Christian states, there was uproar and even scenes of people burning Beatles records as the KKK began threatening the band. Even Lennon’s eventual killer, Mark Chapman, was a strict Christian who later cited the quote as a possible motivation.
The full quote from Lennon reads: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
Believing that God may go but art remains, ‘I’m A Loser’ stood out as one of the compositions that made Lennon feel truly divine.
