My Musical Education – part 1 – the back seat of Dad’s car

Saturday 23rd January

It was a Ford Zodiac, a shiny chrome-gilded beast with sharp wings, a car-wide front seat and plenty of room in the back – and best of all, a fitted radio.  We used to go for runs in the car on a Sunday afternoon, especially in the summer and we always had the radio on.  Frank Ifield and Connie Francis and the occasional Elvis number, or as we drifted into the sixties “Speedy Gonzalez” and “We’re All having Fun, Sitting in the Back Seat, Kissing and a-huggin’ with Fred.” This was way before Radio 1 and we listened to The Light Programme, but it did have a few ‘pop songs’ on it.  And life might have continued in this way for years, me, mucking about in the back, trying to ignore my nuisance of a younger sister, not really listening to the music on the radio at all and dreaming of….well, just dreaming my life away really.

Then I heard them.  The Beatles.  It must have been ‘Please Please Me’ or ‘Love Me Do’ – one of the first ones anyway, they were unheard of at the time.  And suddenly music made sense.  It was that immediate for me, before The Beatles boring old rock’n’roll and then Clarity and “Music”.   Well, as it transpired it took ages until I heard the song again. How do you even begin to explain to young people what Music was like in the early sixties.  Or to be precise how little of it there was around.  No shops played music, and hardly anyone had record players.  The BBC radio played the occasional ‘pop’ record and absolutely nothing on TV.  So it was maybe a week until I heard them again on the back seat of Dad’s car.  Everyone at school was talking about them.  You had to get a transistor radio and listen to Radio Luxembourg they all said.   I had a paper round and saved enough money for a ‘tranny’ and would listen secretly under the covers as Luxemburg drifted in and out of signal.

And slowly the BBC begun to play more ‘young people’s music’ and the radio at home was always on, so I heard “Saturday Club’  and ‘Pop Go The Beatles’ at home.  Then in the mid-sixties we had ‘Ready Steady Go’ and ‘Juke Box Jury’ and eventually ‘Top of the Pops’ on the telly and you could actually see your musical heroes.

It was probably Christmas 1965 or 1966 when Dad bought me a second-hand reel to reel tape recorder and I would tape ‘Top of the Pops’ every week and listen to the tapes over and over again.  And still every Sunday we would go out in the car and we would now listen to the Chart show and I learnt every song off by heart even though it would be a few years before I got my very own record player.

2066 – The Interrogation – part one

Friday 22nd January

Date of log – 20660612

Transcribers note – for the purposes of clarity it has been decided that the words of the Interrogator shall be indicated by indented paragraphs, those of the Prisoner shall be in straight text.

-[Good morning Mr. Smith.  May I call you Janek?  For so long I have thought of you as Janek that the formality of referring to you as Smith seems ridiculous.  Don’t you agree?]-

If you say so.  Though….actually, I am past caring.

-[Well, let’s just take that as read then shall we.  Now Janek, we have, as I am sure you will have guessed, read the single file on your ‘laptop’, though I am not sure if the term applies to such a strange antique and hybrid creation.  My first question to you, and I am sure you must realise that I have many, very many questions to ask, is where exactly did you buy the machine?]-

I can’t remember.

-[Oh dear.  Not a good start.  I am afraid that answers of that nature really will not do Janek.  I am sure you must realise that.  Before I ask you again maybe I should remind you of the reason you are here.  Along with the many crimes you have committed, both by commission and omission, and your futile attempts to evade your arrest, probably the most serious error you have made was in betraying our trust.  Do you understand me, Janek?]-

If you say so, but actually as I said already – I really don’t care.

-[But we do, Janek, and that is the important thing.  We most certainly do care; that is the point I am trying to make.  In a way I actually have some sympathy with you, believe it or not.  Reading your little journal I can see that you have had rather a rough old time of it, one way or another.  And you know; it didn’t need to be like that.  Not at all.  I am sure that had you expressed some of your dissatisfaction through official channels we would not be sitting here now.  And let me just add, this discussion doesn’t need to be conducted in such an atmosphere of hostility either.  It will be much better all round if you co-operate with us.  Don’t you agree?]-

I suppose so.  But I don’t know what good it will do.  I mean here I am; your prisoner, you can do whatever you like with me.  I am helpless against your power.  Whatever I do or say, you will still be in control.  Is that not the case?

-[That is one way of looking at things, certainly.  But, in life there is always a choice, even if that choice is simply to keep on living or to die.  Which would you rather?  Or is that a stupid question?]-

Are you really asking me if I would rather stay alive?  Are you telling me that if I refuse to co-operate I will die?  Is that it?  Is that what all of this has come down to?  Just because I decided to opt out of your pretty little strata system I have to die, is that it?

-[You are taking me too literally Janek.  Such melodrama.  It is really not helpful, and I would have thought in your situation you need all the help you can get.  I was using the question of life or death as an example of the choices before you.  It was not meant to be taken literally.  No-one is suggesting that you might be killed.  As usual your descent into hyperbole is quite ridiculous.   However it must be obvious, even to you in your depressed state that your co-operation, or possible lack of it, will have some bearing on the outcome of your case.  All I am really saying is that it will be much better for you if you co-operate.  Do you not agree?  Besides you really are in no position to argue.]-

I wondered how long it would take.  For the facade to drop, I mean.  Look, as you say, I am in no position to argue, but I am tired.  Actually I am very tired; both physically and mentally.  I will answer your questions, or try to, as well as I am able.  But I won’t be betraying anyone else, I can assure you.  If this is some sort of witch-hunt I will not co-operate.  Besides I can assure you I have acted alone in all of this.  So do what you want with me, but I won’t be betraying anyone.

-[But you already have Janek.  Don’t you see?  By the very act of recording, of writing your little journal, you have betrayed everyone mentioned in it.  How long do you think it will take us to find them?  A week?  Even that is stretching things.  But, actually apart from the Aldwych cell, none of them interests us in the slightest.  No.  I think you misunderstand the nature of this conversation.  We are not specifically interested in people you may have met, who may or may not have assisted you.  We are fairly sure that you were never a part of any organised movement.  It is you we are interested in.  The reasons you became a ‘reb’ at all.  Why you felt it necessary to turn your back on the world, on our world, on all of us.  Why you thought you might be cleverer than us.  That is what we are interested in.]-

But as you have told me already, you have read my Journal.  It’s all in there.  Everything is there, in black and white, and no doubt uploaded and being scrutinised as we speak.  You’ve already told me you have read it.  Save yourself some time.  Read it again, then you needn’t waste both our time by asking me to repeat myself.

-[Well you certainly let rip in places there, didn’t you?  You sounded really angry, outrageously so.  I want to know exactly why?  What was so wrong with your life; that you, rather than everyone else who complained, should decide to do something about it.  What was it about you Janek Smith that made you behave in that particular way?  What in short is so special about you?]-

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing, I can assure you.  I just felt I had had enough.

-[Enough of what exactly, Janek?  Your life seemed quite pleasant from where I am standing.  Better than many anyway.  As you know, and so eloquently have written of, there have been three great financial crashes this century.  The whole system has had to be rebuilt from the ground up.  Look at what we have achieved; almost everyone now has some sort of employment, even the poor are much better looked after than previously, we have stability.  Surely that is better than what went before.   I want to know what was it about your life that seemed too much for you to take anymore?  And I want to hear it from your own lips; one can read all one wants and still not understand half of what the spoken word can tell us.]-

I don’t know really.  It wasn’t anything specific.  It was just a feeling that had been growing in me.  Over a few years too, it wasn’t triggered by anything specific really.  I suppose I had been unhappy for years without really formulating it into concrete ideas.  Then when I started writing the journal, this incredible feeling of freedom overcame me, and the words just tumbled out of me.  I never edited anything; I didn’t go back and correct anything.  Not a single word.  Everything you can read is just as I wrote it.  And then after the exhilaration came the fear, the fear of discovery, the fear of being down-strata-ed and Cosmos knows what else.  One thing led to another I suppose and escape loomed larger and larger.  It felt as if I wasn’t really in control of things, it was as if there was someone else making the decisions for me.  Mind you that’s more or less how I used to feel all the time anyway.  But this was different, this wasn’t some impersonal system controlling me, this was immediate, this was suddenly real.  And when the chance came I took it.

-[The laptop intrigues me.  Let me repeat my first question to you, where did you buy it?]-

I bought the shell, you know the keyboard and the screen and the simple processors, at an antiques fair in a bit of G.L., north I think – Welwyn Garden City.  My wife’s sister lives there, and we were paying her a rare visit.  It was over two years ago now.

-[And you adapted it yourself?  You disabled the uplift technology, and loaded an old Microsoft compatible version of Word, is that correct?]-

More or less.  There was quite a bit of trial and error involved.  And the Word compatibility programme didn’t work for ages.  Android and Ms never communicated that well really.  As you must know I studied Computer Science at crammer.  I had a rudimentary understanding of these old machines but I was amazed when it actually worked.   And excited.  Do you understand?   I was so excited, exhilarated actually.  I had no real plans of what to do with it at that point.

-[And yet you had spent months of your spare time trying to get it work.  Doesn’t that sound like some sort of contradiction.]-

If you say so.  Look, I sort of had an idea at the back of mind that I might be able to use it secretly, but I hadn’t really thought it through.

-[Okay, let’s put the laptop to one side, metaphorically speaking anyway.  If we take your explanation at face value does it not seem strange that you should have started your so-called Journal with such a torrent of bile?  I have rarely read anything like it.]-

Why thank-you kind sir……….  I see you aren’t laughing.  Obviously not much of a sense of humour.  Been stuck in here for too long I expect.

-[Sarcasm has little place in my life I must admit.  However we are here to discuss you Janek and your little rebellion.  I should remind you that I am the Interrogator and you are the Prisoner here.  I will only ask you once to keep any comments you may wish to make about me to yourself.   Anyway, I think we have talked for long enough today.  You appear to be tired and out of sorts.  I would like you to reflect on your situation for a day or two.  Then we will talk again.]-

Every Year I Hate The Winters More

Thursday 21st January

A sure sign of growing older; I can remember my parents saying much the same thing at least twenty years ago.  And ‘hate’ is not exactly the sentiment either, it is more an intense dislike of something we cannot escape from but have to endure.  Or most of us, a few people we know here in Eymet decamp to Southern Spain for January and February.  This is my first winter here; we had visited for a few days at New Year before and then again in mid February for half-term and it didn’t seem so bad.  Bright crisp days, frost in the mornings but clear sunny afternoons didn’t seem so unpleasant.  But so far this January has been very very wet, either persistent drizzle or quite heavy downpours – much the same as England I am afraid.  Somehow when you go to work every day and only see and feel ‘the weather’ on the short walk to and from tube stations it doesn’t seem so bad.

We are having the new house re-wired at the moment and every day I seem to be trudging back and forth between houses with things we need in one house or the other, watching as holes are knocked in ceilings and floors by our electrician.  Of course in a few days the work will be finished and we can start re-decorating and enjoying our new house, but it was not the best of times to be moving or to have the house uninhabitable or to be camping back in the old house.  I seem to be forever trying to dry out coats and hats and shoes.

And most of Eymet is very quiet this winter; the market is almost non-existent, only a third of the stalls and many of the English are back in the U.K.  But we know the Summer will soon be here and our real lives can start again.  Maybe we are becoming more like hibernating animals, burrowing down into the warmth, shutting the doors to our burrows and sleeping through the cold and wet Winters.

Car Drivers and Pedestrians

Wednesday 20th January

One would have thought that very often they are one and the same but appearances can be deceptive.  I have found that pedestrians change into another beast altogether when they get behind the wheel and they instantly forget the frustrations and annoyances they had when they were mere walkers and seem intent on making them worse for all those unfortunate enough to remain bi-pedal.

I am sure that it must be just as frustrating for car drivers, and here I must interject that years ago I failed my test and remain a happy/unhappy walker, when a stupid pedestrian decides that they want to cross the road, even at a pedestrian crossing; after all, you have to apply the brakes, depress the clutch pedal and change gear and wait while the stupid individual ambles casually across the road, and this is entirely understandable as it must add all of twenty seconds to your journey time.

But as a pedestrian I have to ask of you car-drivers why you delight in splashing us by driving through roadside puddles at speed.  And why when we decide to cross the road at a crossing-less place do you vary your speed to frustrate us; either speeding up as if you are on the second row of the grid and trying to overtake pole, or even more frustratingly slowing down and giving every indication of stopping only to speed up as we tentatively place a foot into the road.  Then there is the indicator game which car drivers play simply to annoy us; at a junction where they know completely which turning they are taking they delight in not sharing this information with simple pedestrians who have to wait patiently as the indicator-less driver smiles as he decides which corner to turn into.  But by far the worst are the kerb-crawlers.  Now, even in my wildest dreams have I ever looked like a hooker, sexy as I might be, and yet I am constantly beset by drivers who purr along a couple of yards behind me, often for a hundred yards or so and despite my menacing glances over my shoulder keep just two yards behind with a benign smile on their faces only to speed off as soon as I actually stop and turn to confront them.  Exactly what pleasure they get out of this I have no idea but as they do not actually park up and exit their vehicles I can only assume it is one more symptom of car-drivers perpetual hatred of any person poor or stupid enough to not be behind the wheel of their own vehicle.

Gambling and Sport

Tuesday 19th January

I have never gambled; maybe because I am scared of my slightly addictive behaviour.  Also, and this is really daft, when I was about 15 my Dad as usual asked us to choose a horse for the Grand National.  I picked Foinavon, and it won at 100-1 because all the other horses fell over in front of it.  I couldn’t believe my luck, and it acted as a salutary lesson – I would never be that lucky again.  The truth about gambling is that a mug’s game.  However it is far easier to win on an odds-on favourite than a rank outsider and professional gamblers often make a living by betting rather large sums at very poor odds to win relatively small amounts, compared to their stake that is.  Of course when they have insider information it is much easier, which is why one should steer clear of the stock market as the really skillful brokers know far more than you will ever do.

Gambling was common for years on the horses, even in Victorian times, but with the advent of the internet and mobile technology and relaxed gambling laws it is now possible to gamble in real time.  And not just on Horse or Dog Racing but on every Sport imaginable – and not just on the result but on ridiculous things such as the next corner or the next foul, or in cricket the number of no-balls bowled, or really anything you can imagine.  It sometimes seems that the world has gone crazy, but the whole thing is driven by greed as usual.  And along with this greed comes corruption.  We have had cricketers banned and footballers investigated and I have just read on the BBC website that there has been suspicion of widespread betting irregularities for many years on tennis matches.  And when you come to think about it, these individual sports are far more prone to a player being paid to throw a match.  We had the unedifying spectacle recently of John Higgins being approached and asked to throw matches; this was caught on camera and Higgins was eventually cleared, but the temptation must be real, especially among minor players whose winnings may be relatively low anyway.  And one has to wonder if Sport is really what we think it is.  Already many events are sponsored by betting organizations, and they are probably making more money than the players.  So, whenever there is a major upset, when a clear favourite plays badly, when a goalkeeper misses easy shots, when players foolishly tackle and get sent off, when snooker players miss sitters, when cricketers bowl terribly – what are we to believe?

And allied with the increasing evidence of drug-taking in so many sports one begins to question any performance at all.  It is all the fault of money of course, there is far too much money in Sport and in Gambling and sadly we know we will never get back to those times of real amateurs untarnished by big wages, or more often the fear of losing them.  And saying that I still enjoy watching Sport, especially Snooker and Tennis and Athletics – but it does make you wonder.

L – is for Lindisfarne

Monday 18th January

I first heard and saw Lindisfarne in 1972 at the Weeley pop festival, and I was a fan straightaway.  They came from Northumberland and were an electric folk band, playing with conventional instruments and a fiddle player.  They were a great ‘good-time’ band, with such songs as ‘Fog on the Tyne’ and ‘We can swing together’ and used to do long jams incorporating folk tunes we all knew into their music.  But they also had a brilliant songwriter in Alan Hull who incorporated Social Justice into songs like ‘Scarecrow song’ and ‘Clear White Light’.  My favourite Lindisfarne song was on their first album ‘Lady Eleanor’, a bewitching tale very much in the folk tradition but sung beautifully.

The original line-up made three records and took the album charts by storm, ‘Fog on the Tyne’ was the best selling album of 1972.  Their third album was called Dingly Dell and was far more prog-rock with wonderful weird bass sounds on it.  But after this album the band split and with a new line-up they continued but somehow the magic had gone and eventually Alan left to go solo.  I bought his two solo records but they weren’t as good as the ones the early ones he made with Lindisfarne.   The original members reformed a few years later and had one excellent album “Back and Fourth”.  They continued to tour and record with diminishing success.  Alan Hull, the real genius of the band died in 1995 and the band finally called it a day in 2004.

They were really a band of that magical time, the first three years of the Seventies, and could never really respond to changing times, but I still love them and will always remember sitting in a muddy field drinking orange juice laced with gin and slimming tablets listening to their sweet music late one summer night in 1972.  And as you can just see it cost a a massive £1.50 for the whole 3 day festival….Life didn’t get much better than that.

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The Junior Doctor’s Dispute

Sunday 17th January

Well, we all support the Doctors, don’t we?  Even though by the standards of many they might appear fairly well paid, they have spent years learning to heal us and they notoriously have to work nights and weekends.  And there is the rub.  Their pay at weekends is considerably higher than during the week and the Government is trying to force a new contract on them to reduce the number of hours which are considered as “unsociable”.  Jeremy Hunt argues that it is unacceptable that death rates at Hospitals are higher at weekends than during the week.  He is also somehow trying to blame Junior Doctors for this situation, he claims that the country voted for a 24 hour, seven day a week NHS at the last election and the Junior Doctors are standing in the way of this.

Well, I doubt very much if a single voter voted Tory because of this nebulous promise; all polling suggests that the public do not trust the Government with the NHS at all.  And of course there already is a 24 hour, 7 day a week NHS; there always has been.  Casualty departments have worked on this basis for years, and wards do not shut up and clear their patients out at 6 on a Friday night.  It may be true that there is lower staffing rota-ed on at weekends and nights but who is responsible for that?  Hospital Administrators of course.  And you can hardly blame them, they are being pressured by the Government to keep to ever-tighter budgets and the only tool at their disposal, as every business realises, is to reduce the wage bill.  And in all likelihood even if Mr. Hunt succeeds and Junior Doctor’s pay is reduced somewhat at weekends I suspect that these same Hospital Administrators will simply leave rotas unchanged and save a bit of money from the wage bill.  If the Government is truly concerned at the levels of health care available at weekends the solution is simple.  They could and should order Hospital Administrators to fully staff our wards and hospitals at the weekends and any additional cost should be met by Central Government.  The real scandal in the NHS, and one of the reasons costs are rising so fast is the ridiculous situation where an Agency nurse is paid far more (or actually the Agency which employs them is) than regular NHS nurses, who have had their pay restrained for six years already.  Simple solution here too; raise nurses pay and insist that no Agency nurses will be tolerated after say one year.

You see, all of these decisions are political choices, there is no inevitability, there is no single answer; there is always a choice.  And despite this Government’s declaring that they have continually increased spending on Health, we spend 8% of GDP whereas in Europe it is almost 11%.  And there is no reason why we cannot spend more and tax a bit more to pay for it.  The public has never been explicitly asked if in order to have a world class NHS would they agree to a fair increase in taxation.  I suspect that they might agree, but at the last few elections parties have been forced to deny any plans for tax increase, as if this were the worst thing that could ever be contemplated.  So, support the Doctors but don’t be surprised if whatever the outcome there is little change in weekend coverage after all.

If You Could Read My Mind

Saturday 16th January

What a great title for a song, or for a book for that matter.  But it is a song and one of my very favourite ones at that.  Written as so many were in the very early seventies, but this was almost a one-hit wonder.  Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian singer songwriter was already over 30 and had had minor hits and a couple of folk infused albums in the sixties.  He was probably most famous for his song ‘In the early morning rain’ which was a huge hit for Peter Paul and Mary and has been recorded by hundred of artists including Dylan.  But his solo reputation strangely lies almost entirely with this one song which was not a great hit when it was first released but slowly grew and by April 1971 had sold over a million copies.  He has made many records and years ago I did buy a few, but for me at any rate, nothing ever came close to this song or the album it was on.

I just love the sentiment, and Gordon’s fairly straightforward rendition of the song is just perfect.  “If you could read my mind love, what a tale my thoughts would tell.  Just like an old time movie, ‘bout a ghost from a wishing well.  In a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet. You know that ghost is me, and I will never be set free as long as I’m a ghost that you can’t see.”  Like many great song the lyrics are almost unintelligible but make perfect sense when sung.  This song too has been covered by many artists including Johnny Mathis, Johnny cash and Don McLean – but I still prefer Gordon’s low-key version.  I can’t help it but this is one of those songs I just can’t stop myself from singing along to.

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2066 – Janek is Captured

Friday 15 th January

-[And that, sadly in a way, is the last diary entry that poor Janek ever made.  Well on his antique laptop anyway.  He did try to escape but was of course unsuccessful.  We have to thank Mr. Skinner, (though of course that is not his name, we have changed it to protect him) for alerting us to the fact that Janek had overpowered him and at knifepoint had made him open a back window.   He escaped but not for long.  It only took us a few minutes to locate him, dressed in ridiculously short trousers and a tight sweater, huddled in a garden a few houses away.  He didn’t put up any resistance, and in a matter of minutes was identified and in the back of a Polis auto was driven straight to our very own, small but comfortable, detention centre here behind Oxford Circus.  In the olden days this building was the headquarters of the BBC before it merged with Sky.  Of course they are now part of Disnews and there is no need for a London Office.  The place is quite surprising; it seems much larger on the inside than the building would indicate, and it has several floors of basement where the recording used to be done.   I am about to record another for posterity and Janek himself is the star of this little production.  He is waiting for me downstairs, though we haven’t formally been introduced.  I have read and been quite amazed by his little journal; it only took seconds to by-pass his rudimentary passwords and gain access to his one file.  His diary is the sad little record of his one-way excursion, his flight from useful member of society to pathetic prisoner.  And all of it in less than six months.  Amazing.

I am looking forward to our conversation, and have added an abbreviated transcript as the next part of our continuing story of one of the major events, at least for my department, in 2066.  (A full transcript can be obtained for download once security has cleared anyone requiring further study)  Janek should have known that he stood no real chance of surviving without us.  He was never really cut out to be a rebel at all.  This was all some sort of mid-life crisis he was suffering; though he had put us to quite some trouble in retrieving him, so this could not be overlooked as merely some minor misdemeanour.

It was my responsibility to assess the threat he might pose, and to establish if there were any chance of his rehabilitation or if he was a lost cause, and would have to be completely de-strata-ed.   Incidentally one of Janek’s biggest fears was of being ‘clagged’.  This was a common misconception, we had actually dispensed with such barbarity many years ago, (except for non-persons of course) but if the mythical existence and fear of ‘clagging’ remained in societies’ consciousness that was no bad thing (in fact as you know it is simply a recording and restraining device, nothing more, but somehow it has gained notoriety and now that there are no more prisons it has become the middle classes biggest fear).  As I explained before; the threat of the stick has a habit of making the carrot that much more enticing.]-

L – is for John Lennon

Thursday 14th December

Well, he was in the Beatles.  In many ways he was The Beatles; his drive, his personality, his irrepressible rock’roll intelligence was what ensured that they were far more than just a great little beat combo.  And even if Paul and George’s song-writing eventually eclipsed his, he did write Help, In My Life, Strawberry Fields and Day In The Life – to name but a few.  But increasingly he became weirder and weirder (and heavier into drugs) – and then he met Yoko.  And I believe he almost wanted her to become a Beatle, he was that besotted with her.  He recorded a couple of un-listenable sound collage albums with her and incredibly thought they were actually relevant.

But when The Beatles finally imploded he released two brilliant albums.  John Lennn/Plastic Ono Band was the most cathartic soul-bearing record we had ever heard; he laid his pain right down on the tracks and in many ways it was his masterpiece.  He had been attending sessions of Primal Scream Therapy, where he and Yoko were encouraged to re-live the worst and deepest buried parts of their lives.  For John this was probably losing his Mother.  Twice, once when she left him with Aunt Mimi and then when she was killed in a road accident.

He followed this up with Imagine, a more accomplished and conventional record full of great songs which was a huge commercial success.  At this point John was the biggest thing on the planet, we hung on his every word.  Then sadly he began to throw it all away.  Sometime in New York City was really poor, and even Mind Games was a bit bland and sub-standard.  He parted from Yoko for his Lost Weekend which actually lasted 18 months.  Walls and Bridges was another disappointment as was Rock’n’Roll.  Everyone wanted him to write and record some great songs again, but he somehow seemed incapable or bored even.  After a five year retirement where according to him he was a house husband and according to others he and Yoko were trying to wean themselves off Heroin, he released Double Fantasy where half the songs were his and half were sung by Yoko.  It was much better and had a few very good songs, especially “Watching The Wheels”.

But I wonder; if he hadn’t been shot and killed just after its release what we would think of it now.  And what he might have gone on to do.  But we will never know.  For me, the solo years were largely a disappointment – at least the albums, except for the first two, were.  His best years were certainly with the Beatles.  Maybe he had set the bar so high that he could never achieve such heights again.  Still, what a man and what a life…

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