How John Lennon influenced and affect american culture and media?
Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at
7:42 pm
I need to do a paper on this topic..any ideas of how affected american culture. I’m trying to get other people’s perceptives first.
Thank you
Tagged with: affect • american • culture • Influenced • john • lennon • media
Filed under: The Beatles
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Anti-war activities
Lennon and Ono sit in front of flowers and placards bearing the word “peace.” Lennon is only partly visible, and he holds an acoustic guitar. Ono wears a white dress, and there is a hanging microphone in front of her. In the foreground of the image are three men, one of them a guitarist facing away, and a woman.
Recording “Give Peace a Chance” with Yoko Ono
and Timothy Leary (centre)
Lennon and Ono used their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton, in March 1969, as a “Bed-in for Peace” that attracted worldwide media coverage.[118] At the second “Bed-in” in Montreal, in June 1969, they recorded “Give Peace a Chance” in their hotel room at The Queen Elizabeth. The song was sung by a quarter million demonstrators in Washington, D.C. at the second Vietnam Moratorium Day, on 15 October 1969.[157] When Lennon and Ono moved to New York City in August 1971, they befriended peace activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Lennon performed at the “Free John Sinclair” concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on 10 December 1971.[158] Sinclair was an anti-war activist, co-founder of the White Panther Party and poet who was serving ten years in state prison for selling two joints of marijuana to an undercover policeman after a series of previous convictions for possession of marijuana.[159] Lennon and Ono appeared on stage with David Peel, Phil Ochs, Stevie Wonder and other musicians, plus anti-war radical and Yippie member, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers.[160] Lennon performed the song, “John Sinclair”, which he had just written, calling on the authorities to “Let him be, set him free, let him be like you and me”. Some 20,000 people attended the rally, and three days after the concert the State of Michigan released Sinclair from prison.[161] This performance was released on the two-CD John Lennon Anthology (1998) and the album Acoustic (2004). Lennon later performed the song on the David Frost Show accompanied by Ono and Jerry Rubin.[158] According to former MI5 intelligence officer David Shayler, Lennon gave financial aid to the Irish Republican Army, a claim which Sinn Féin have neither substantiated or denied.[162]
Deportation attempt
In 1972, the Nixon Administration tried to have Lennon deported from the US, as Richard Nixon believed that Lennon’s proactive anti-war activities and support for George McGovern could cost him re-election.[163] Republican Senator Strom Thurmond suggested, in a February 1972 memo, that “deportation would be a strategic counter-measure” against Lennon.[164] The next month the Immigration and Naturalization Service began deportation proceedings against Lennon, arguing that his 1968 misdemeanor conviction for cannabis possession in London had made him ineligible for admission to the US. Lennon spent the next four years in deportation hearings.[89] While his deportation battle continued, Lennon appeared at rallies in New York City and on TV shows, including a week hosting the Mike Douglas Show in February 1972, where Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale appeared as his guests.[165]
On 23 March 1973, Lennon was ordered to leave the US within 60 days, while Ono was granted permanent residence.[166] In response, Lennon and Ono held a press conference at the New York chapter of the American Bar Association on 1 April 1973 to announce the formation of the conceptual state of “Nutopia”; a place with “no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people”, and all of its inhabitants would be ambassadors.[167] The Lennons asked for political asylum in the US while waving the white flag of Nutopia; two white handkerchiefs. The entire press conference can be seen in the 2006 documentary released by Lions Gate, The U.S. vs. John Lennon.[168] In June 1973, Lennon and Ono made their last political statement by attending the Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C.[169]
Lennon’s order of deportation was overturned in 1975. In 1976, Lennon’s US immigration status was finally resolved favourably, and he received his green card. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle. When Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as president on 19 January 1977, Lennon and Ono attended the Inaugural Ball.[170][171]
FBI surveillance and de-classified documents
After Lennon’s death, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI files on Lennon,[172] which document the Bureau’s role in the Nixon Administration attempt to deport Lennon in 1972 to stop his anti-war campaign before the Nixon re-election campaign.[173] The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon but refused to release most of them, they contained “national security” information. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. It took 14 years of litigation to force the FBI to release the withheld pages.[174] The ACLU, representing Wiener, won a favorable decision in their suit against the FBI in the Ninth Circuit i
Steve, John Lennon’s music, art and writings touched the world. Lennon was placed “as the leader of a revolution in which the center of creative conscious shifted to young people”.
Through this role he changed the way pop music was conceived, he made it something that mattered, could take a stand, and “insinuated rock and roll into the realm of art.”
In the band that most influenced music and, moreover, culture, John represented the rock’n'roll attitude of rebellion, dissatisfaction and social consciousness, the idea that we as people can expand our minds, grow, live together and love in peace.
He tried to incorporate those ideals in his music and his life.
His influence is everywhere – in every rock’n'roll singer-songwriter.
Sheryl Crow
This website will be a big help to your paper:
http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=658
Check http://johnlennonmusic.net/