Today’ marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination of pop music’s greatest peace advocate.
Rolling Stone is featuring John Lennon on the cover along with a story written from a nine-hour interview he gave just three days before his death.
At the time, he was talking about the possibility of touring again with a band of “born again rockers.”
“There’s plenty of time, right? Plenty of time,” he said.
Three days later a dipwad shot him to death.
But nobody was more aware than Lennon of the dangers of leading a revolution, even a peaceful one. He wanted to live and he had a lot to live for — he said in the Rolling Stone interview that he didn’t want to become a “dead hero.” But he did. He was willing to die in the name of peace.
So who is the new Lennon? What pop culture icon is taking up where the former Beatle left off?
News Junkie Post says WikiLeak’s Julian Assange is the new Lennon, the new face of peace and truth. It’s an odd comparison in a way — Assange is not a musician or artist and doesn’t court the media with wacky press conferences and peace demonstrations. But Post writer Liam Fox makes an interesting case.
Bono comes to a mind as a modern day peace prophet. He even famously said that Yoko Ono once told him he was “Lennon’s son.” Bono, though, has never matched Lennon’s creative, in-your-face, and over the top PR antics when trying to bring attention to his causes. Bono wants to be the world’s version of a global knight.
Lennon preferred being a cheeky court jester for peace. He made enemies of the Richard Nixon administration and the FBI and risked deportation, imprisonment, his career, and his life to tell the world that war was wrong.
I don’t know of any pop culture figure willing to go that far these days to make their point while still maintaining such a positive spirit, peaceful message, and sense of fun.
