Saved From The Skip

Today marks the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, which Saved From The Skip shall observe with 24 hours of blog silence in honour of one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever seen (and also because I seriously need to get some work done.)

But before shutting down, here are one or two (admittedly unSkiplike) thoughts on the first quarter-century since the passing of John.

One: it is a little dispiriting to see how many people out there just don't get it. Here we are, 25 years later, and the Lennon debate is still raging in the media. Look at them all, the critics and the columnists: was he really the genius he's cranked up to be, asks Mr Music Critic who's never written a melody in his life... or was he just an overrated Liverpudlian who happened to be in the right place at the right time?

And yet, the answer is not that difficult. Clearly, genius itself has a quality that makes certain people misunderstand it completely. Especially if they fall somewhat short of genius themselves. After all, 500 years have elapsed since the death of Shakespeare, and there are still people who claim that he was either overrated, or "too good" to have even existed. By the same token, I imagine that in 500 years's time, people will watch The Simpsons and argue that Matt Groening couldn't possibly have created it all by himself. It's just too damn clever to be the work of only one man. Or is it? Because surely, surely, there'll also be some critic somewhere who'll claim that it wasn't really that clever at all... just an overrated cartoon by someone who happened to be in the right place, at the right time...

My second, more personal comment is that it has just dawned on me that John Lennon was 40 years old when he was shot. In other words, he was only six years older than me. Now, I'm not at all sure how many of you will be with me on this one, but the implications of that statement are just too overwhelmingly huge for me to properly describe in ordinary sentences. You know: that sudden shift in perspective, so very much like panic, and yet somehow not the same thing at all... Oh, never mind. Suffice it to say that the bristles of my beard are still standing on end at the thought...

Right: enough about belated intimations of mortality. I wanted to sign off on a cheerful note, with a Top 10 list of my own personal Lennon favourites. But try as I might, I just couldn't condense the list to even 20 songs, let alone 10, without omitting the unomittable.

So here they are, 25 John Lennon songs for the 25 years he's been gone, in order of purely personal preference (all open to debate, naturally):

1. A Day In The Life
2. Sexy Sadie
3. Revolution
4. Help
5. Tomorrow Never Knows
6. Mother
7. I Am The Walrus
8. Isolation
9. Dear Prudence
10. Imagine
11. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
12. Happiness Is A Warm Gun
13. Mother Nature's Son
14. Strawberry Fields Forever
15. Jealous Guy
16. God
17. Polythene Pam
18. Oh! Darling
19. Come Together
20. She Said
21. Cry Baby Cry
22. A Hard Day's Night
23. I'm Only Sleeping
24. Woman Is The Nigger Of The World.
25. (Just Like) Starting Over

And a few more for good measure:
(26) She Loves You
(27) Julia
(28) Day Tripper
(29) Whatever Gets You Thru The Night