Welcome to Another Saturday Night of music, memories, and conversations.
I was a Beatles fan, after they broke up. (To be fair, they broke up when I was 6, and didn’t really have any independent musical tastes.) And I loved all their solo work. This song blew my little ten-year-old mind:
John Lennon & Elton John - Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (Live MSG 1974)
And lots of people’s favorite Lennon songs are Imagine or Give Peace A Chance, but I’ve always loved Instant Karma:
Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
Yesterday was the anniversary of his murder. I remember finding out about it — this was long before the internet; the information was very slow getting to Austria, where I lived at the time. I was devastated. I remember chemistry class that day, the teacher was showing us how sodium explodes when you put it in water. I didn’t move, not an inch, all class. The teacher pulled me aside after class to see what was wrong with me.
I didn’t get involved in politics then, my parents lived in Saudi Arabia and I went to school in Salzburg — neither place is conducive to American teenagers getting involved in, well, anything. But when I got my hands on newspapers and magazines, I read about how people were getting involved in anti-violence politics, it gave me hope.
And so many tributes broke my heart
Elton John — Empty Garden
Paul McCartney - Here Today
George Harrison - All Those Years Ago
Those of you who are old enough — do you remember how you heard the news? Did it spur you to political action? Or for people not around, was there a musician who inspired you — with either their life or death, to get involved in politics?
I really thought we’d get rid of the damned guns. I was an idealistic teenager, who’d lived in countries where I never saw crime or violence. I couldn’t imagine how much people loved guns. One of the things I saw on Twitter was that over 1.5 million people have been killed by guns since Lennon.
Childish Gambino - This Is America
Gentle reminder: Please continue to put the name of your selection in your comment along with your song. Those of us on our phones? We really appreciate it.
You know how this works — Put your quarter in the slot and your song in the comments. This is your Saturday night jukebox and the party starts NOW~!
