Jolly Coppers on Parade...

Last night we watched David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's excellent documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
Leaf I only know from his excellent and thorough sleevenotes for the Beach Boys back-catalogue CD reissues (he's written a book on the Wilsons et al too, I believe), so seeing his writing/directorial credit at the end came as something of a surprise. I know I beat this drum frequently, but anyone with a sympathy for the radicalism of the 60s and 70s who watches U.S. v. J.L. will probably come away from it with the same feelings of indignation and shame that I did. The indignation - if one buys the supposition, heavily reinforced - indeed, tacitly assumed - by the film, that Lennon really was the victim of a CIA sponsored assassination - is probably obvious and widely felt. The shame perhaps less so.

Well, I'm probably out on a limb here, but part of the huge emotional impact of the film comes from the (quite shocking, at times) disparity between the contemporary reaction and that of our forbears to a US administration so similar to the current one. I prefer my Lennon less saintly than he's become in years since his untimely death - especially the younger incarnation who pissed on a group of nuns from a Hamburg and would regularly incite the screaming hordes of Beatlemaniacs to clap their hands and stamp their feet like a person with cerebral palsy. But you had to admire the bravery of the man - foolhardy though he often seemed - for wearing his heart on his sleeve so splendidly. The way he commandeered peak-viewing time to campaign for the release of imprisoned stoner peacenik John Sinclair, for instance, simply beggars belief now - a bit like Chris Martin going on the Jonathan Ross Show and pleading on behalf of Abu Hamza today. Indeed, the chat show clips have more of the air of the student dorm than the TV studio about them, as Lennon used his celebrity to bring an assortment of revolutionaries and Black Panther leaders into the spotlight. Between 1971-73, Lennon became a charismatic, walking, talking, all-singing, all-dancing one man Che Guevara t-shirt. If he *was* bumped off, you can almost sympathise with the scarified establishment. Until, that is, one recalls the probable lead up to the dispatch: a badly disturbed individual, whisked off to Cuba, his brain further addled by the cow scarers before being packed off with a copy of Catcher in the Rye and a shotgun to do someone else's dirty work for them. As cowardly and shitty a business as most of Lennon's life was creative and brave.

The usual suspects are wheeled out to vouch for Lennon's radical credentials - Gore Vidal (looking like a pumped up pigeon on heat), Tariq Ali (Omar Sharif), Chomsky ("...if you think that you've heard this one before...") but almost as eloquent is former spook G. Gordon Liddy (Mike Myers doing the baldy thing in Austin Powers whilst auditioning for the Village People), who (unwittingly) reveals a surprising subtext to the disdain with which Lennon was held by 'straight' society. As if the long hair and the oriental wife wasn't bad enough - he was a freakin' *limey* too. The footage of Lennon himself speaks volumes too - even with cynical, post-collapse of the wall bullshit detector on full, you invariably *trust* him. There's a lovely delicate and moving slo-mo clip, accompanied by a wistful Ono commentary, in which we see these two obsessive peace and love proponents sharing an all-too-brief moment of both those precious things.

Walking to work this morning, and apropos of nothing, I listen to Lonely at the Top, a Randy Newman best of. Just as the drum beat of war so easily drowns out the calls for peace, some of its subtleties are lost in the traffic's monotonous drone. But the songs still raise an occasional smile and, more often, a shiver. 'Political Science' has, if anything, become more pertinent than ever.



A couple that I didn't know so well leaped out at me, possibly in light of the Lennon doc. 'In Germany, Before the War' is a wonderfully subtle (and perfectly apt metaphoric) narration of a brief carnal interlude that took place in 1934 by (it transpires) a paedophile. "I'm looking at the river, but I'm thinking of the sea", Newman croons against an arrangement that is reminiscent of Tom Waits' Weimar-influenced material, only stripped of the bulk of its sturm (and most of the drang, for that matter). But more pertinent to this piece is 'Jolly Coppers on Parade'. I suppose we are all kept as innocent and powerless as the rapt voice from a remembered childhood who narrates as he watches the 'mad parade':

They're comin' down the street
They're comin' right down the middle
Look how they keep the beat
Why they're as blue as the ocean
How the sun shines down
How their feet hardly touch the ground
Jolly Coppers On Parade

Here come the black and whites
Here come the motorcycles
Listen to those engines roar
Now they're doin' tricks for the children
Oh they look so nice
Looks like angels have come down from Paradise
Jolly Coppers On Parade

Oh, mama
That's the life for me
When I'm grown
That's what I'm gonna be

They're comin' down the street
They're comin' right down the middle
Look how they keep the beat
Why they're as blue as the ocean
Oh, it's all so nice
Looks like angels have come down from Paradise
Jolly Coppers On Parade

And they have, I suppose. Until you feel the truncheon on your back.


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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