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October 18, 2004

Why is it that 24 years ago, I decided that John was my favorite Beatle, and to this day, I realize I still like him and all his songs more than the others’? This is most bizarre because although I loved the Beatles, like all good music fiends, I didn’t own one single album of theirs beyond Sgt. Pepper’s (which I received on tape my first summer at sleep-away camp), until No. 1s came out.

Is it because at the age of 3-and-a-little-bit, I was suddenly inundated with John-hysteria and John-mourning and John-memorialization and John-sanctification when Mark David Chapman did the unthinkable and destroyed a legend?

I don’t know. I truly don’t.

Paul, vegan though he now is, social champion though he’s become, and quite the multi-millionaire, always seemed a little too polished, a little too pretty-boy, and a little too pop. He’s the one you could believe had died and been replaced with an impersonator.

George just seemed content with what he was doing. If it was Eastern, cool. If it was a rip-off of another song, oh well, ho-hum, oopsie-daisy, sorry folks, I didn’t mean it.

And Ringo—well, hell. Ringo’s name is enough to be the punchline for a million and a half jokes, none of them particularly good, and though he was apparently a remarkably gifted drummer, technically, no one could get past the Weirdness. He still has a sense for the bizarre and the self-mocking.

But John always seemed a bit more human; more real. He didn’t like where he came from, musically, geographically, or spiritually, and he changed it. He didn’t care that his love might or might not have destroyed the very thing that created him as a hero, and he turned his heroism into calls for social and political change, rather than reveling in the 1970s’ need to unabashedly spoil their musicians.

He was a quintessential New Yorker, though, and that’s perhaps what made me love him before I understood what death had done. He moved to and died on the Upper West Side, and New Yorkers, not usually a particularly loving crowd, embraced and saluted the fallen hero. And I was swept up in it.

John was my favorite Beatle.

And now, listening to my new copies of Revolver, The White Album, and Abbey Road, I find myself going “Ooh. I love that riff” before the vocals begin, and no surprise, I find that it’s John’s high voice that sings the vocal. No matter that it was written by “Lennon/McCartney”—I still love John’s songs the best.

This was Musical Musing , and it appeared on October 18, 2004 10:34 PM.

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