“It is ‘the’ place”: America’s greatest music venue, according to John Lennon
By 1971, John Lennon was undoubtedly the most famous musician on the planet. There wasn’t a corner of the world he could go without getting recognised, and so, in a desperate need for personal solace, he moved to the busiest, most commercial city in the world: New York.
Ultimately, it was a stroke of genius from Lennon. Almost as though he was hiding in plain sight, he could step outside of the glass box the world had carved for him, and ultimately blend in with a generation of fellow artists who populated the city and rid himself of the pressures of Beatlemania.
With Yoko Ono by his side, he embarked on his solo career that immersed itself in the city’s burgeoning artistic radicalism. But while it was American natives like Harry Nilsson, Andy Warhol and Frank Zappa that inspired a new artistic language for him in New York, it was a fellow Beatle that showed him the wild possibilities of this new city.
George Harrison’s Concert For Bangladesh took place in New York’s Madison Square Garden and was an overwhelmingly successful return to live music for him. While it achieved many things for him both musically and philanthropically, it also guided his fellow bandmate Lennon into returning to live performance, and more specifically, aiming for a show at the famed venue.
Lennon revered the garden, considering it the premier venue in all of America. He said, “Madison Square is the place. When anybody tours America or comes from England, wherever they come from, they have to hit Madison Square Garden and the place in LA, which I can’t remember. That’s the ones that count. The rest is just travel.”
He elaborated on the spectacle of Madison Square Garden shows. Clearly recovering from the mania of The Beatles, Lennon realised that the media circus surrounding venues as prestigious as this brought with it some reverence and, in turn, made the shows bigger and better.
He explained that a show at The Garden is “A big event. And the local newsmakers, four or five channels of news. I mean, there’s three big ones. And there’s a couple thrown in the local stations. And then there’s sort of BBC one, I call it, the WNET. So there’s eight news, and they’re all looking for something to say because they always cover the big events, especially Madison Square, whether it’s Muhammad Ali or Jethro Tull. It’s a big event, and the industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. I think it’s bigger than the film industry now. And I think they’re getting aware of that.”
Unsurprisingly, then, the trademark show from Lennon’s solo career came from when he played at the venue in 1972 with Yoko Ono.
It was a triumphant return to the live stage for a man who had been exiled from it due to his own fame. Moving to the biggest city in the world and immersing himself in the wild ambition of its artistic culture meant that he could return to where he truly belonged: the stage.
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