John Lennon

Twenty-five years ago today, John Lennon was shot dead in front of his hotel at the young-ish age of 40.

Although I always like Paul better, and also thought John had poor taste in women, to commemorate that tragic moment I give you this excerpt from the December 1980 edition of Playboy, which I swiped from Steyn Online.

Take it away, Mark:

Here’s one of my favorite Lennon moments, from one of the last interviews of his life. It appeared in the 1980 Christmas issue of Playboy and, compared to most of the other features—“Cleavage In The Office: The New Breed Of Upwardly Mobile Women by Michael Korda”—and most of the cleavage, it holds up remarkably well:

PLAYBOY: What about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?

LENNON: I don’t want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off.

PLAYBOY: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?

LENNON: Bangladesh was caca. It’s all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don’t bother sending me all that garbage about, “Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans.” Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn.

PLAYBOY: But that doesn’t compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert—playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day. $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America.

LENNON: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I’m not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

What was that line from Churchill? Ah, yes. If you're capitalist at 20, you have no heart, but if you're a socialist at 40, you have no brain.

Rest in peace, John.