Song 543: This week on the playlist you can hear Happy Xmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. 40 years ago, in early December of 1980, a murderer who claimed to have been a John Lennon fan shot and killed him. At the time, my good friend and singer/songwriter colleague Jeff Larson still lived with his parents in Fremont, CA, while I resided in Oakland, and I would regularly take the BART train down to his neighborhood so we could share our fresh musical ideas. On the early evening of 12/8/80, when he picked me up at the station, he told me the tragic news about Lennon. A recent reminder of that sad memory made it seem appropriate to feature this particular cut as the SotW for Christmas week this year. And so Happy Christmas for black and for white, for yellow and red ones, let's stop all the fight. John's surviving widow Yoko recently tweeted that if we truly want war to be over, we should all toss our pebbles in that direction, and if enough of us do, a large-enough wave could end the fight. A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let's hope it's a good one without any fear. I will admit that John’s holiday opus played a role in convincing me that I needed to also craft one of my own, and when Jeff did his Yuletide anthem Home for the Holidays, it really moved me to put all the pieces together for Commoner’s Carole, which appears on my Holiday Card CD, and you can check out the lyric video of that by clicking on the title.
No comments:
Post a Comment