THE BEST OF IT
JOHN LENNON
s Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr drift into “ageing rocker” territory, one Beatle has attracted the aura of untouchable myth. John Lennon, assassinated at 40, is now a cult personality, evoked as the epitome of a tortured, brilliant and politically radical musician. His music is among the most innovative the Beatles produced, inspiring a generation of artists; and his political activism against the Vietnam War made him a role model for peaceful protest across the world. You may say that Lennon, with his Indian ashrams with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, his transcendental meditation and his and wife Yoko Ono’s week-long “bed-ins” for peace (and the world’s media), invented himself. But we all invent ourselves to some degree, and an invisible rope runs from the child to the
