To mark the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon's death, extracts from two earlier posts, both written in 2010. Links to the full versions can be found at the end.
One incident remembered from childhood bears out the "semi-religious" tag being applied to pop music for myself and my brothers. My father was advising a priest who was staying overnight, and we, the children, had a lot of opportunity to talk to him. I think (and this sounds like a lousy joke but isn't) he may have needed time off to reflect on his calling, as a later article in the Daily Express - evidently a class act even then - dignified his dark night of the soul with the heading:
VOCATION? NO - VACATION!
Anyway, the wide-ranging conversation came round to the subject of pop music, and this man of God shocked us by claiming that the Beatles regularly laughed themselves silly at the "cripples and hunchbacks" who would be waiting to greet them at airports; it was all there in the biography, he said, if we didn't believe it.
I can barely remember the incident, let alone the timescale; all I recall is at some point later my eldest brother proclaiming: "It doesn't matter - JL still is King."
