Thursday 9th April

It has almost become ‘de rigeur’ to speak of the deceased in hushed tones, with a reverence and a glossing over of their faults.  And John certainly had faults.  He was many facetted but like a flawed diamond he shone brilliantly at times.  Always the most dominant of the Beatles, as a child growing up with them he almost scared me, he was the one pushing the envelope.  He drove them along and was as creative as any of them, absorbing all around him and regurgitating it as something new and different.

And he was clearly going off the rails, addicted to everything going.  He met Yoko and ditched his wife and child.  Then the Beatles split and, like Paul and George, he produced at least two brilliant albums that were as good as anything done by all four of them.   Then he seemed to go off the rails again, and had his ‘lost weekend’, and made a couple of poor albums, though even here there were hidden gems, it was just that the quality control switch was never turned on.  Maybe he was just too big for anyone to say ‘Hold on John, this is rubbish. Let’s think again.’

He had a renaissance just before he was shot, and who knows what brilliance or failure he might have achieved.  Would he have become a respectable elder statesman of rock, or continued a rebel, or sunk into oblivion?

His legacy must be the song ‘Imagine’ – he sung ‘you may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.’  No, John you weren’t the only one, but you more than anyone else put into words what a lot of us have always felt.

Maybe, in a strange way going out in such an awful blaze, has done the memory of John a favour.  I prefer to concentrate on his musical legacy, which is wonderful.