John Lennon’s unwritten song with lyrics by Marshall McLuhan
Lennon sang the first line but then stopped
In a miniplay included in his Mysteria (see my review of Mysteria), B.W. Powe narrates his version of the interview Marshall McLuhan had with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which took place on December 19, 1969, at the Coach House (McLuhan’s Centre for Culture and Technology) at the University of Toronto. Lennon and Ono were touring the world with their “War is over” campaign. (Lennon said they would like to make a Christmas something about it, and the song indeed appeared in 1971. Lennon: “And so this is Christmas. And what have you done…” Children’s choir: “War is over, if you want it…” Nice: all you need is imagine there’s no countries, nothing to kill or die for. But he was an artist; you may say he was a dreamer.)
In Mysteria, Powe rewrote the interview.
YO: What’s the revolution?
What revolution?JL: The revolution is desperation.
Class realignment
A just redistribution of wealth
I write love songs, protest songs.MM: Wait.
Hold on.
You must see.
The revolution is over.JL: (Taken aback.)
In political terms?
The questions of justice?
Inequality? Alienation?
Control by the very few?
Overproduction?
Peace and bread for everyone?MM: Celebrate your senses
The revolution is in sensation.
In sensibility. The sensorium.
Cosmic mind. The extensions of feeling.
Celebrate your ears, eyes, taste, touch and tongue.
Planetary evolution overtaking the political
Revising rewiring us. Overrunning nature herself.
The ideological revolution disappeared
when the Beatles appeared.(I feel this is the view from before. By now, the revolution has reappeared. Or is reappearing. Perhaps because the Beatles disappeared.)
Then, in B.W.’s alternative history, McLuhan, Lennon, and Ono discuss the nature of perception and creativity. For those familiar with their real encounter, the alternative story told by Powe is full of Easter eggs alluding to all things McLuhan, Lennon, Ono, and media.
In the real conversation, which took place in the Coach House in 1969, they did not sync. Lennon, clearly the bigger celebrity, seemed to be in defense mode, as if afraid of being intimidated by the professor–media guru. McLuhan fired his media metaphors in a language Lennon did not speak. As usual, he preferred to oracularize rather than elucidate. Lennon tried to philosophize on par while also staying cool and hippie, which is impossible. Yoko Ono served as a mediator and saved the talk from the awkward misalignments between the two luminaries.
But there was a moment when they almost clicked—a moment largely overlooked by most McLuhanatics and Beatlomaniacs.
Marshal McLuhan: One of the interviewers here a few minutes ago said that I live in the new media, and every year, every day is a decade…
John Lennon (animated): Oh, that’s nice. (Sings) “EVERY DAY IS A DECADE...” (Yoko sings alone and right in tune—on the fly, just within that small phrase. And you realize at once why he was with her.) It’s beautiful!...
It seemed like a new song had just begun growing in him. Can you imagine: a John Lennon song with lyrics by Marshall McLuhan?
John Lennon: …It’s beautiful! (Looking at the people around.) Who, who said that?
Marshall McLuhan: My daughter Stephanie.
John Lennon: Ah, yours… (Looking at her.) Alright, you’re living with the guru, aren’t you?
The song did not happen. Lennon did not write it.
The episode with John Lennon singing the McLuhans’ line (Stephanie’s and Marshall’s) starts at 36:14.
In Powe’s alternative history, McLuhan elaborates on his thesis that the ideological revolution is over.
MM: You’re the incarnation
of the sensation revolution.
From the Beatles to the raw beatitudes
Nerves and be attitudes.
You plugged into the energyYO: The sway.JL: Sorry. Man. I’m not gettingMM: You don’t need to get it. You are it.They discuss perception, and Lennon seems to grasp (Powe makes him grasp) the distinction between visual and acoustic—between rational and immersive.
JL (The spotlight returns to his face.)
I’m getting it. Liberate your mind thru your ears.
We want the whirlwind, and we want it nowDespite their different ways of thinking, Lennon and McLuhan were still linked by their shared focus on perception—and a strange twist of fate. In Powe’s miniplay, Yoko foresees it.
YO: (Alone.)
We can’t stop but I have to stop now
A premonition. An intuition.
(Speaking slowly.)
Both of you will disappear within weeks of one another.
On the cusp of the decade’s turn. You two, vanishing...They both passed away in December 1980. John Lennon was shot on December 8. Marshall McLuhan died in his sleep on December 31, after a stroke the year before that left him unable to read, write, or speak.
See also books by Andrey Mir:
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology (2024)
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect (2024)
Beautiful
Please take a look at mine on Lennon and strawberry fields forever
https://substack.com/@collapseofthewavefunction/note/p-181780578?r=5tpv59&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Hunter Thompson wrote the same idea in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971):
"And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” "