John Sinclair, the subject of John Lennon's protest song
"John Sinclair," died a few days ago at age 82. Lennon
was unacquainted with Sinclair when he wrote that song.
However, he and Yoko had been groping around for hippie
causes to sing about in the early 70s, and they sympathized
with Sinclair's plight -- he'd been locked up for giving
a modest quantity of marijuana to an undercover cop.
In fact, much of that late 60s/early 70s hippie scene were
fixated on Sinclair. During the Who's set at Woodstock,
Abbie Hoffman leapt onstage and began to rant into the
microphone about Sinclair. Pete Townshend whacked him
offstage with his guitar, snarling "Get the f*ck off my
f*cking stage."
Sinclair's prison sentence was reduced, and he eventually
met John and Yoko. "The first time I met [John Lennon,]"
Sinclair recalled in the early 80s, "to express my
appreciation for his help, we sat around and smoked quite
a bit of herb, and made the fact that the stuff was illegal
the object of much laughter and ridicule."
I think Lennon's radical phase -- the causes he took up,
the freaks he associated with, the songs he wrote -- is
cringeworthy. I think he truly *had* lost a lot of his
intelligence due to all the drug use and his associations
with people -- including Yoko and Alex Mardas -- who were
cons and predators.
I had a phase in which I smoked more than my share of
marijuana. I stopped using it because its effect became
unpleasant, leaving me anxious and paranoid. I'm thankful
for this -- because I'm not among the local glazed-eyed
freaks shuffling about and muttering about the Storm,
the Cabal, or Hollywood's being run by devil-worshipping
vampires.
In fairness, I have friends who use marijuana and have
stayed sane and functional. There's something about the
people, or the dope, or the *amount* of the dope consumed
around here (suburban Massachusetts) that has resulted in
their transforming into psychotic freaks.
That's an outstanding post and I agree with you. I maintain
that there was a decrease in the post-LSD Lennon's powers
of discernment, however. The pre-acid John Lennon would
have found characters like Ono and Alex Mardas and probably
the Maharishi daft. I'm not sure the younger Lennon would
have gone for Janov's purported therapy, either; he said
once that what attracted him to it was the word "scream";
he probably supposed this was a sort of vindication of
Yoko's singing style.
Also, while the younger Lennon could manage the occasional
amusing pun and quip, even this deteriorated, giving way
to Ono-promotion, hostility towards his Beatles work,
and paranoia (e.g., his statement that McCartney would
"subconsciously sabotage" his work.
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