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Post by sayne on May 24, 2010 15:41:24 GMT -5
I just read the story about John's harrowing sailing trip from Long Island to the Bermudas. All I could think was, "There were people on that boat whose lives depended on a guy who could barely drive a car, who could hardly put tape into a recording machine, who broke an oar (on video even) when trying to simply row a boat into a little pond, who couldn't hold his liquor, and who was as blind as a bat without his glasses".
Boy, they were lucky.
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Post by acebackwords on May 24, 2010 18:43:13 GMT -5
Personally, I might have thought twice before getting in a car or boat with John Lennon behind the wheel. But then, I believe he was a descendent of many generations of sea-man. By most accounts, he mastered the art of sailing.
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Post by John S. Damm on May 25, 2010 9:08:15 GMT -5
I think that sailing story is a big deal in John's life. For the first time in 18 years, John had to do something important on his own, no aides, no Mal, no Neil. And to top it off, lives were on the line besides John's!
John first mentioned this in either the Newsweek interview or the subsequent Playboy interview but wherever I first read it as a 17 year old, I was fascinated by the image of John Lennon steering that sail boat in an Atlantic storm, shouting to the gods and singing those sea shanties heard as a child in Liverpool.
How often, if ever, have any of us engaged in something where lives hung in the balance? I don't mean just driving our families down the freeway(although statistically....). And for a pampered Rock Star to do so, who by his own account went through great spans in the 1960's and 1970's being the real "Nowhere Man," is simply amazing and life-affirming.
That had to awake the sleeping giant in John. On that boat, getting battered by 20 to 30 foot waves, being a Beatle didn't matter. Nothing mattered but keeping that boat from capsizing. We know John claims that it lifted his songwriting block in Bermuda. That is a cool adventure and as noted by sayne, John and his sailing mates were right lucky bastards! ;D
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markc
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Post by markc on May 25, 2010 11:43:28 GMT -5
He always did wear that captains hat on tour in 65 or 66.
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nine
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Post by nine on May 26, 2010 4:57:35 GMT -5
I think that sailing story is a big deal in John's life. For the first time in 18 years, John had to do something important on his own, no aides, no Mal, no Neil. And to top it off, lives were on the line besides John's! John first mentioned this in either the Newsweek interview or the subsequent Playboy interview but wherever I first read it as a 17 year old, I was fascinated by the image of John Lennon steering that sail boat in an Atlantic storm, shouting to the gods and singing those sea shanties heard as a child in Liverpool. How often, if ever, have any of us engaged in something where lives hung in the balance? I don't mean just driving our families down the freeway(although statistically....). And for a pampered Rock Star to do so, who by his own account went through great spans in the 1960's and 1970's being the real "Nowhere Man," is simply amazing and life-affirming. That had to awake the sleeping giant in John. On that boat, getting battered by 20 to 30 foot waves, being a Beatle didn't matter. Nothing mattered but keeping that boat from capsizing. We know John claims that it lifted his songwriting block in Bermuda. That is a cool adventure and as noted by sayne, John and his sailing mates were right lucky bastards! ;D I think had John lived he would have referred frequently to this adventure. It must have been a high equal to or perhaps even greater than what he first enjoyed about Beatlemania.
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