Within the past couple of days, Bob Dylan has announced that he will be releasing a new studio album, Tempest, set to be released September 11th of this year. Yesterday he announced the track listing for the album. Included on the album will be a song entitled "Roll On John". As reported by Rolling Stone, the song will be in tribute to John Lennon. Dylan has worked several of Lennon's lyrics into the track. Amongst them, "Come together right now" and "I read the news today, oh boy". Not only did this news immensely excite me, but it prompted me to think of other tribute songs to John Lennon. Interestingly enough, three of them come from his former band mates in The Beatles. All three possess an unique nature distinct to the musician who crafted them and speak to the relationship the musician had with John.
The first of these songs came from George Harrison in 1981. "All Those Years Ago" aims to romanticize the time Harrison and Lennon spent in The Beatles and almost places it as a far off period in a distant past (The Beatles had only broken up eleven years prior). The lyrics of the song praise John for his personal philosophy and outlook on life. For example, Harrison references one of Lennon's most personal Beatles song, "All You Need Is Love" and sings "But you point the way to the truth when you say / All you need is love." Harrison also looks back at the treatment John received for his "controversial" views and declares "They've forgotten all about God / He's the only reason we exist / Yet you were the one that they said was / So weird / All those years ago." It appears that in this song Harrison attempts to connect to Lennon on a philosophical level. For example, the song opens with "I'm shouting all about love / While they treated you like a dog / When you were the one who had made it / So clear". He is positioning himself on the same level of Lennon's love for peace and happiness. It is a positioning I can support. Like Lennon, Harrison made his views known through his music. His view for his fallen friend shines forth in this song.
Paul McCartney released "Here Today" in 1982. Honestly, I came into this song with a few reservations. Personally I get turned off by Paul McCartney a lot. Probably because of the fact that he is the only one left to speak of the legacy of Lennon/McCartney. But I do feel that in this song he takes the high road and expressed love for John. I enjoy the fashion in which he does it. Whether in this live version I included or the original studio recording, the choice of acoustic guitar fosters an intimate feel. The listener is invited into Paul's reflection on his old friend. It is a reflection on the entire narrative of their friendship. The song opens with a lighthearted and honest reading of how John would feel about Paul at the time. It has been reported that John and Paul used to talk on the phone some what frequently toward the end of John's life. Friends talk on the phone with one another and friends can joke around. Paul then focuses in on the time that he met John. As seen in the movie, Nowhere Boy, John had the band already and Paul wanted to join. John gave him a hard time at first but they grew as friends because of their musical ability. I do not know what is referenced when "the night we cried" is mentioned, but similar to the fact that in "Hey Jude" there are lyrics that do not necessarily apply to Julian Lennon (the person for whom the song is supposedly written), there are lyrics in this song that do not necessarily apply to Paul's relationship with John. Overall this song is a nice, short, and extremely sweet sentiment for an old friend.
Ringo recorded the third of these tribute songs in 2009 for his album Y Not. Simply titled "Peace Dream", Ringo shares of a dream he had of utopia based around the frameworks Lennon envisioned in "Imagine" . The quoting of Lennon continues throughout the song. Ringo pleads with the listener "So try to imagine / if we give peace a chance." This combination of two of Lennon's most important and personal songs really stands as fitting tribute. Ringo directly quotes Lennon when he sings "Just as John Lennon said in Amsterdam from his bed / 'One day the world will wake up to see the reality'". This song matches Ringo's personal mission to carry on John's mission for peace and love. Ringo ends most conversations with "peace and love". It is nice to see him capture that work in a song which is a tribute to the man who inspired it.
An interesting fact about these songs is that they may be credited to one of The Beatles individually but on two out of the three, the other members appear. Ringo plays drums on Harrison's track and Paul sings back up vocals. On Ringo's song, Paul plays bass. George had passed away in 2001 and consequently could not appear on the track. However these two songs are not the only instances of the band "reforming" in order to honor John. In 1995, with the help of Yoko Ono, the three surviving Beatles or "The Threetles" worked with two of John's demos to create two new songs. These songs are "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" . The former has a narrative filled music video and the latter intermingles the recording of the song with images from the career of The Beatles. These two songs honor John not through lyrics but through music; something I am sure he would approve of.
So as Dylan, someone from the same era and of the same talent as John Lennon, prepares to honor him, we can look back at how his former band mates did. I believe that it speaks to his character that people continue to express there love for him in song. Dylan shall be the latest. Most definitely he will not be the last.
Please enjoy,
Nick Howard
