There are many who would argue that John Lennon is the coolest man to have ever lived.
In fact, get me on the right side of a Beatles listening session and in the depths of a pub conversation, and I’m sure I would be one of those people – arguing that his tortured artistic outlook combined with proud social activism made him cooler than any of the supposedly aloof cultural icons he rubbed shoulders with.
But more than that, this is a man who wrote some of the best songs in history. Because surely, if you can’t be considered cool after writing ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, then I fear being cool is an entirely unattainable pursuit. As Brian May put it, he turned from “a frankly less-than-glamorous teenager with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, developed into the coolest guy on Earth”.
But maybe that coolness had an expiry date, which triggered into action at the end of the 1960s. Maybe, just maybe, when The Beatles broke up, the jigsaw pieces of Lennon’s coolness shattered and thus left a void of trendiness to be filled by his artistic successors. There were, of course, plenty of candidates in the ‘70s: David Bowie, Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye, to name but a few.
But maybe the real answer was a little closer to home and came in the form of his son Julian. Born in 1963, Julian was the son of Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia and grew up under the bright spotlight of his father’s own stardom in the ‘60s. He watched as his father became a cultural icon and, in turn, got a first-hand view into some of the greatest artistry ever created – in turn, making him one of the most underrated tastemakers of the era.
A fact that struck his father as entirely true came in the mid-70s, when he was no longer at the spearhead of innovation and instead found himself trying to craft an understanding of what was at the essence of new coolness, at the behest of his son Julian.
Lennon remembered one distinct moment, when Julian turned him onto a band he quite frankly, should have known already: “I called him and he said, ‘Have you heard Queen?] I said, ‘No, what is it?’ He says, “Oh, they’re great.’ and I said, ‘Well, I’ve heard of…’ not Slade. What’s that other one? The one with a guy that looks like Hitler playing the piano, an English group. Sparks. You know, I’m hip. I’ve seen Sparks on American TV”.
Lennon added, “So I call him and say, ‘Hey, have you seen Sparks? He’s got Hitler on the piano.’ ’Anyway, he says, ‘No, uh, they’re all right, but have you seen Queen?’ I said, ‘No, what’s Queen?’ And then he tells me, right.”
So much for the coolest guy on planet earth, hey Brian May? When Queen were hitting the peak of their powers in ‘75, Lennon had no idea who they were and had to consult his son in order to join the world in a state of cultural coolness.
