DESPITE WARTS, LENNON WAS A TRUE WORKING-CLASS HERO

By Juan Montoya
"As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be, 
A working class hero is something to be."
Those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 70s have very special memories of the times and music of the era.
It was the time of the Ed Sullivan Show on grainy black and white television. It was the Civil Rights struggle and the Reverend Martin Luther King battling Bull Connor's police dogs and water cannons in Selma, Alabama.
It was the flower-power hippie movement in San Francisco, the anti-war movement across the country (and the world), and the landing of man on the moon.
It was all those things and none.
It was the time when people still hitchhiked across the country and other people picked them up and gave them a lift. It was a time when pot was a rite of passage for many teenagers, and crack cocaine and drug cartels of the future were a bummer trip someone imagined when they copped some bad acid. It was love beads and bell bottom jeans.
Through all that, Lennon's lyrics reverberated and provided us a mirror for self exploration.

"They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be."

Lennon, whose father abandoned the family when he was just a boy, was the epitome of someone rising above the bad hand that life had dealt him and he found a way though his music to escape the grim, sooty streets of the industrial port of Liverpool.
Those of us us who listened to him and his fellow songwriter Paul McCartney as they evolved in their music and life perspectives, grew up along with them. We went from "I want to Hold Your Hand" to "Why don't We Do it in the Road?" and from "Nowhere Man" to "A Day in the Life."
And when the Beatles broke up and McCartney started making "nice" for the pop market, Lennon remained brutally honest to himself, and to us.

"When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be."

He saw through it all, the fame, the drugs, the rock and roll hype. He saw though the the Maharishi Mahesh's meditation cult when the master started amassing a fortune through his teachings and rumors about his penchant for pretty Western women surfaced.The song "Sexy Sadie" was the result of that encounter with the still memorable lyrics "Sexie Sadie, you broke the rules, you laid it down for all to see...you made a fool of everyone..."
The FBI hounded him for his antiwar activities, and the immigration authorities sought to bar him from this country for a pot possession charge in England. He thought those facts alone would make him fit right in in the USA.
And who can forget the furor that erupted when he said that to young people that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus?

"Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.


Perhaps, to those of our generation, as we went on to school, college, and a profession, his voice still had a way of bringing you back to the ground, to realize your humanity and your bond with those who are making the journey with you. His music kept us grounded.

"There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me"


I heard about Lennon's death when I was pulling an all-nighter and writing a term paper for one of my journalism classes in Madison, Wisconsin in 1980, 35 years ago. Howard Cosell announced his death during Monday Night Football.
Even though the paper was due the next morning, I dropped everything and trekked across the frozen Lake Mendota to the Rathskeller at the U. of Wiconsin Student Union.
Silently, many other students started coming in asking each other in hushed whispers whether we had heard about his death.
We drank a couple of Old Style draft beers quietly and then went back to our tasks feeling somehow less complete because of the news.
Lennon would have been 75 this year if Mark Chapman hadn't gone crazy and assassinated him. I still miss him.