Does anyone ever feel that John's talent and all his musical contributions are sometimes diminished by his mythical status? For example, it's easy to see him at the top of lists and polls, but often I read the reasoning and it maddens me. It's like they look far beyond the music and focus on the most pithy things, like
only his persona, which had a lot to do with who he was but not totally. I think a lot of people are undermining just what he was about. I think part of it has to do with his death. No matter who you are, when you die (especially the way John did), you take on a whole new status. My feeling is, John was already a countercultural musical legend
before his death, and then afterward there were people proclaiming he had become a martyr.
My own opinion is that he wasn't totally martyr-ized, because there was so much negativity directed towards him and the personal situations that occurred in the last few years of his life...that bastard's book made him sound like a complete a-hole, and none of it was true. So people got these two very different images of John, and it seems now it's either one way of thinking or another.
But I think John will always be somewhere in the middle, always misunderstood and misrepresented- because all the most amazing and most fascinating people are. I really wish all these people would see him for all he made, all that beautiful music, his rhythm guitar playing, that
voice, his incredibly witty and extremely enigmatic personality, his charm and charisma, the poetry, the books, the drawings, the humor he injected into everything, his campaigns for peace which seemed so ridiculous but really impacted society in the long-run...I mean, you can't simply focus on one thing and look at only one side of the man.
I don't know, maybe it's just me. What do you think? Do you think that John's being looked at fairly? And if not, what do you wish people would focus more on?
Sorry its long. I've been wanting to say this for awhile.