From John Wayne to Sid Vicious: the “heroes” John Lennon didn’t want his son to worship
You should never meet your heroes, or so the saying goes. From the 1960s and beyond, John Lennon has been a hero to multiple generations, lauded for his songwriting genius and the political activism that defined the latter part of his life. With The Beatles, Lennon quickly established himself as a charismatic pop star with the talent and artistic vision to back it up. As the songwriter aged, however, he found that the pop heroes of later years were considerably less impressive than he had been back in his heyday.
To his credit, Lennon never really became one of those old-school musicians complaining about new trends and popular artists. Throughout his life, the former Beatle remained endearingly open to new sounds and emerging genres. Even when punk rock came along in the mid-1970s – a genre attempting to tear down the nostalgia-fueled image of the 1960s, an image defined by The Beatles, in search of something new, Lennon was fairly supportive of this stock of young new bands climbing through the ranks.
In terms of punk rock, though, Lennon always identified with the music itself much more than the image and personalities of the people singing it. A man who helped to popularise Mop Top hairdos and fitted suits during the Ed Sullivan years, Lennon was never going to adopt spiked hair, bondage trousers and safety pins as a fashion choice. Nevertheless, he could certainly identify with the adolescent anger and alienation at the heart of the punk revolution.
“I love all this punky stuff. It’s pure,” he told Playboy back in 1980. However, the Merseyside songwriter did lament the ‘live fast, die young’ attitude of the punk age. “I’m not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves,” he shared.
Using this topic of conversation to attack Neil Young’s famous take that “it’s better to burn out than fade away,” Lennon countered, “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
Seemingly, Lennon could see no point in worshipping those stars who burnt out simply for the reason that they burnt out. “I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious, or of dead James Dean, or of dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing,” he said. “Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.”
Sid Vicious lived the archetypal ‘live fast, die young’ lifestyle of a punk rock star. Medicating the effects of late-night gigs and recording sessions with a deadly cocktail of heroin and booze, the Sex Pistols bassist died in 1979 at the age of only 21, shortly after allegedly stabbing his girlfriend, Nancy Sprungen, to death in a New York hotel room. In the months and years after his death, however, Vicious became viewed as a martyr of punk rock, worshipped by thousands.
Lennon was troubled by this hero worship of such a troubled, problematic character, largely due to the potential effects on his son, Sean Ono Lennon. “I don’t want Sean worshipping John Wayne or Sid Vicious,” he explained. “What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? I mean, it’s garbage, you know.”
He concluded, “No, thank you. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”
Only a few months after giving that interview to Playboy, Lennon was gunned down outside his apartment in New York City. His tragic death led to an outpouring of adoration for the iconic songwriter, and his heroic image has only seemed to increase in the decades since. Although, of course, his death can not be compared to the likes of Sid Vicious, who caused their own demise, Lennon’s take on death making artists more heroic in the eyes of the public proved to be hauntingly accurate.
