“I know what it\u2019s like to be dead\u2026I know what it is to be sad…”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
John Lennon was the master of understatement. In a few, simple words, he could summarize a powerful idea, minimizing the emotion behind it. (To wit, “All we are saying is ‘Give peace a chance.'”) He could present a great concept unobtrusively, giving it a chance to be mulled over and accepted.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And that is exactly what John is doing in “She Said, She Said,” the compelling closer song to Side One of Revolver.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Possibly no one who ever lived better understood “what it\u2019s like to be dead” and “what it is to be sad.” At age 4\u00bd, his parents bitterly wrangled over which of them was to have custody of John. Fred Lennon wanted to take his son away to New Zealand to live with him, and Julia Lennon wanted her son to be reared in Liverpool.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Whether Fred and Julia put the boy in between them and made him choose one or the other (the traditional point of view, and the version John always recited) or whether Fred and Julia came to an amicable agreement about John\u2019s care (as Fred\u2019s friend, Billy Hall told Mark Lewisohn\u2026though admittedly, Hall was not actually in the room when this discussion took place), the fact of the matter is, Fred exited John\u2019s life. And Julia \u2013 for extremely complicated reasons of her own \u2013 did return John to Liverpool but dropped the boy that afternoon at her sister Mimi\u2019s house, where John was to live permanently. And, Julia reluctantly walked away to live a life of her own.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Over the next few years, as John struggled to adapt (and was \u2013 no wonder! \u2013 expelled for misbehavior from Mosspits Infant\u2019s School), he thought quite a bit about his vanished parents. Fred\u2019s frequent letters to his son were destroyed by Mimi, who claimed (and perhaps truly believed) that she was creating stability for the child.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Therefore, John \u2013 in essence \u2013 thought his father was, at first, angry with him. And then later, missing in action. And finally, perhaps dead. Even though John reveled in the love that his wonderful Uncle George provided \u2013 clung to that love like a life raft \u2013 the boy still longed for his father. And with each silent, passing year, John understood better and better what it was like to be dead. What it was to be sad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Similarly, John\u2019s mother, Julia, \u2013 though living only a couple of miles away, in Spring Wood \u2013 honored Mimi\u2019s request to minimize intervention into John\u2019s life. Julia was rarely seen, and even when she was, the reunion was brief. But it was enough for John. As Fred\u2019s memory slowly faded, Julia\u2019s did not. He ached for his mother. And John tried everything he could think of (good behavior, bad behavior, wit, talent, and imagination) to reach her\u2026to no avail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The only constants in John\u2019s young life were his decorous Aunt Mimi and his beloved Uncle “Ge\u2019rge.” But the summer before John turned 15 years old \u2013 when he most needed a male role model and a best mate \u2013 kind, funny, gentle Uncle George was taken from him forever. And, as John roared and flailed in the throes of unstoppable hysteria, he knew once again what it was like to be dead\u2026what it was to be sad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You probably know the rest of the story: how Julia returned at this crucial moment in her son\u2019s life and offered herself as his best friend (not his mum, of course\u2026he already had a mother in Mimi). Julia became his constant companion and John, her shadow. She encouraged the teenager to “sag off school” and bike to her house for ginger beer, sweet cakes, and rock\u2019n\u2019roll. She taught her son to play guitar; she spun her Buddy Holly and Elvis records for him. She gave him the gift of extemporaneous laughter. And in the magic of the moment, Julia whispered to the boy that he had “music in bones.” She said, she said that he was destined to form a band \u2013 to see his name in lights, to shine on. And for a time, all was well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But on 15 July 1958, Julia was hit by a drunk off-duty policeman and killed. And in that instant, John changed. He had lost his father, his uncle, and now his mother \u2013 twice. And now, in a deep, violet darkness of the soul, John came to understand intimately what it was like to be dead\u2026what it was to be sad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That, of course, explains August of 1960: The Beatles, happily en route to Hamburg, stop at the Arnhem War Memorial for a snack and a smoke. Manager Allan Williams urges all of the boys out of the minibus for a roadside picnic and photograph. But John will not exit. He refuses to “muck about” in a graveyard\u2026to smile and chit-chat in the presence of death. And so, alone, John broods on the bus, shaken by his surroundings. And though Williams berates the boy for his obstinacy, John turns a deaf ear. Because even on his best of days, John remembers what it\u2019s like to be dead, what it is to be sad. And he does not take it lightly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now\u2026substitute the name “Peter Fonda” for “Allan Williams.”
\nSubstitute “Hollywood gala” for “Arnhem War Memorial.”
\nSubstitute “August 1965” for “August 1960.”
\nAnd having made those few changes, the backstory for “She Said, She Said” emerges:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At an August 1965 Hollywood gala, John blanches when Peter Fonda “rambles on” about his first-hand knowledge of death. Rattled, John flash-fires at the American film star and silences him forthwith\u2026not because Fonda is downing John\u2019s drug-induced mellow, but because Fonda is trampling on sacred ground. Introducing the topic of death as party prattle \u2013 as idle chatter \u2013 is not, to John\u2019s way of thinking, simply “irritating.” The American star has been grossly inappropriate. He has opened old wounds, and John is left panting for air.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
John swiftly quells the subject, and the party moves on. But the damage has already been done, and in the months that follow, John can never shush the lingering, whispering memories that Fonda\u2019s casual party boast (“I know what it\u2019s like to be dead!”) engendered. The phrase haunts Lennon. And so, just as John in the past had transformed many other wounds and torments into music, he begins to weave Fonda\u2019s hellish echo into something unforgettable as well. John begins to write “She Said, She Said.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But this time, however, John isn\u2019t writing just for himself and about himself. He begins to compose the tragic tale of all four Beatles in the year of our Lord, 1966. And the story isn\u2019t easy to convey\u2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You see, in 1966, The Beatles were living under a dome of stress that would have collapsed most organizations and failed most friendships. The beleaguered boys were getting ready for yet another World Tour, despite the fact that they\u2019d grown bitter and cynical about the grueling experience. Brian Epstein\u2019s heavy-handed influence. which had always held them on course was slipping away, and the boys were arguing with one another \u2013 heavily involving themselves in drugs as pressures all about them were mounting.<\/p>\n
Unfeeling “takers” were attacking them from all sides: screaming fans who didn\u2019t hear them when they sang; journalists and paparazzi who didn\u2019t see how very bored and tortured the boys were, and unfeeling powers-that-be at Capitol, EMI, and Northern Music who didn\u2019t care that The Beatles were utterly exhausted. To all of these users and shakers, the four boys were virtually invisible. It was a harsh reality.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Indeed, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began to feel as if they “had never been born,” as if only “The Collective” \u2013 the band known as The Beatles \u2013 really mattered. The four unique individuals who had once comprised the group had, somewhere along the line, been sacrificed (in true Help! fashion), “jolly with a knife!”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is John\u2019s message in “She Said, She Said.” In simple terms, he conveys each of The Beatles\u2019 feelings. He speaks in muted understatement, presenting his friends\u2019 great hopes and even greater fears as they face the end of touring and the beginning of “the yet-to-come.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This anguished song is pure performance art, a vivid medium through which John can offer listeners the graphic opportunity to see, hear, feel, and experience what he and Paul and George and Ringo were enduring. As the song swirls up and up to confusion and clamor, each of us is given the chance to ride out the mania, to understand. We are privy to madness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“She Said, She Said” is a rare sortie into the most intimate emotions of The Beatles in 1966\u2026and into the solitary, broken life of John Lennon, for whom death and sadness were familiar escorts. Of this John sings, as Revolver finds the playout grooves and Side One concludes. Of course, on the flip side, there was more to come.<\/p>\n
Jude Southerland Kessler is the author of the John Lennon Series:\u00a0www.johnlennonseries.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Jude is represented by 910 Public Relations —\u00a0@910PubRel<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter and\u00a0910 Public Relations<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I know what it\u2019s like to be dead\u2026I know what it is to be sad…” John Lennon was the master of understatement. In a few, simple words, he could summarize a powerful idea, minimizing the emotion behind it. (To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[98,111,122,117,30],"class_list":["post-6845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-boomer-beatles-blog","tag-jude-southerland-kessler","tag-revolver","tag-she-said-she-said","tag-the-beatles","tag-the-fest-for-beatles-fans"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6845"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6847,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6845\/revisions\/6847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}