Lennon on the BBC

We caught a bit of the BBC special "Imagine: John Lennon" the other night, a documentary made up of bits of interviews and film clips of the mostly post-Beatles Lennon, including a lengthy and somewhat cringe-worthy bit on the whole 'Bed Peace' charade.

What struck me was how frankly pointless alot of what Lennon said really was. Apart from the whole 'world peace' and anti-materialist screes that Lennon became sainted for, the guy seemed so often like someone who tried to be profound and tried, in some ways, to justify the adulation that the world heaped on him, and yet failed. Much of what has come out about Lennon since his death in 1980 hasn't been particularly flattering - his narcissism, his selfishness, his sometimes appalling treatment of women. Some of that actually bleeds through in bits and pieces in this documentary, although not enough to really give the observer a sense of whether his personality flaws have been accurately portrayed or overblown merely to sell books - none of which, we'll concede, we've read.

He was desperately flawed in some ways, and seemed sometimes to hate being loved for being a Beatle, wishing he could be loved for something he couldn't really make himself be.

But the special was revealing, refreshingly free of interpretative analysis, and remains still one of the most cruely truncated cultural parables of the late 20th century.

He would have been 70 last October. Thinking about a 70 year old John Lennon is an achingly tantalizing exercise, isn't it?