10/9/10: John Lennon at 70...

[N2NH]

What would the world be like if John Lennon was still here? He'd be 70 on October 9th...

Fourteen years after Pete Townshend dismissed the very idea of growing up when he wrote "Hope I die before I get old," a 40-year-old John Lennon sang a very different tune.

"I can hardly wait to see you come of age," he sang in 1980 to his then-5-year-old son, Sean, unabashedly anticipating the future. And to his wife, Yoko Ono, he borrowed a sentiment from poet Robert Browning and crooned "Grow old with me / The best is yet to be … whatever fate decrees, we will see it through."

Fate, however, had something other than old age in store for Lennon, who died at the hands of a crazed fan just a few months after recording those songs and many others that signaled the start of a new chapter in the ex-Beatle's life.

"It's hard to believe he would be 70," Lennon's friend Elton John said last week. "It's hard to believe he missed out on the computer, on Twitter. I wonder what he would have made of it all? I have a feeling he would have grabbed and run with it. John Lennon, who gave so much; he would still be at the forefront."

John Lennon at 70? We can only imagine….

[kc7jty]

Yoko would still be sitting on his head.

[ki4itv]

I hardly think that John would currently be at the forefront of anything the way things are now. He'd be disgusted at our current cultural degradation, and would have walled himself off about 1998, never to be seen or heard from again. He had that in him, didn't need us.
I'd like to believe different, But I don't think he'd have the will for popular culture today. Collectively, we suck.

[suddenseer]

Interesting side note for the surviving Lennon family. Julian is older than his dad was when he was killed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVUWqH5AZiA

[kc7jty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS6OhC-4Zyw

[VK3ZL]

John Lennon's masterpiece, Imagine, was probably the most meaningful message the modern world has ever been given...Sadly the world continues to ignore it...:(

Bob..VK3ZL..

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

There is this understanding that comes with age.
Abbie Hoffman was running on the lamb for quite a few years in Mexico but simply could not get things started there.
When he was back in the US he was clearly over 30, and his direction was to not trust anyone over 30.
John Lennon is something of the same, a person of his generation.
His fame was the beetles.
Had he lived he would be largely ignored by the current generation because he would be 70 years old.
And the cycle would repeat.

[NQ6U]

Hello.

Abbie Hoffman was running on the lamb for quite a few years in Mexico but simply could not get things started there..

That's animal cruelty. There's no way a lamb could withstand the weight of an adult human being. He should have at least used a full-grown sheep, if not a horse.

(Rudy, the expression is "On the lam.")

[WØTKX]

I think he would have done more cat cartoons...

[w3bny]

What would the world be like if John Lennon was still here? He'd be 70 on October 9th...

Just another old hippie in Depends.