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John Lennon

Was John Lennon Emotionally Intelligent?

Quotes by John Lennon

John Lennon's Playboy Interview

From his interview with Rolling Stone

Editorial about my changing values

Lyrics from Working Class Hero

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Was John Lennon Emotionally Intelligent?

Mayer, Salovey and Caruso seem to believe that a person who "abuses drugs" is not emotionally intelligent. It also seems to be common knowledge that John Lennon used a lot of drugs. Yet he wrote what surely has to be one of the most beautiful songs ever written and recorded, due to its simple message of a united world in peace: the song "Imagine."

I suspect John Lennon was motivated to write that song by his feelings - his feelings of pain when he looked at the world around him. So he used his feelings to write the song "Imagine." I'd say only a person of very high emotional intelligence could author such a beutiful, important song.

Here are the words.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us,
above us only sky.

Imagine all the people
living for today.

Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for
and no religion, too.

Imagine all the people
living life in peace.

You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions.
I wonder if you can.

No need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people
sharing all the world.

You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one.

John Lennon also said this:

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.

--

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

--

When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.

So what do you think? Was John Lennon emotionally intelligent?

Steve Hein
June 6, 2006

--

Notes about Lennon's drug use from his interview with Rolling Stone.

Notes about Lennon's drug use from his interview with Rolling Stone.

How did you first get involved in LSD?

A dentist in London laid it on George, me and the wives, without telling us, at a dinner party at his house. He was a friend of George's and our dentist at the time, and he just put it in our coffee or something.

When you came down, what did you think?

I was pretty stoned for a month or two. The second time we had it was in L.A. We were on tour in one of those houses, Doris Day's house or wherever it was we used to stay, and the three of us took it, Ringo, George and I. Maybe Neil [Aspinall] and a couple of the Byrds - what's his name, the one in the Stills and Nash thing? - Crosby and the other guy who used to do the lead. McGuinn. I think they came, I'm not sure, on a few trips. Peter Fonda came, and that was another thing. He kept saying [in a whisper], ``I know what it's like to be dead.'' It was a sad song, an acidy song, I suppose. ``When I was a little boy'' . . . you see, a lot of early childhood was coming out, anyway. So LSD started for you in 1964. How long did it go on?

It went on for years, I must have had a thousand trips. Literally a thousand, or a couple of hundred? A thousand - I used to just eat it all the time.

The other Beatles didn't get into LSD as much as you did?

George did. In L.A. the second time we took it, Paul felt very out of it because we are all a bit slightly cruel, sort of ``we're taking it, and you're not.'' But we kept seeing him, you know. We couldn't eat our food; I just couldn't manage it, just picking it up with our hands. There were all these people serving us in the house, and we were knocking food on the floor and all of that. It was a long time before Paul took it. I think George was pretty heavy on it; we are probably the most cracked. Paul is a bit more stable than George and I.

And straight?

I don't know about straight. Stable. I think LSD profoundly shocked him and Ringo. I think maybe they regret it.

Did you have many bad trips?

I had many. Jesus Christ, I stopped taking it because of that. I just couldn't stand it.

You got too afraid to take it?

It got like that, but then I stopped it for I don't know how long, and then I started taking it again just before I met Yoko. I got the message that I should destroy my ego, and I did, you know. I was slowly putting myself together round about Maharishi time. Bit by bit over a two-year period, I had destroyed me ego. I didn't believe I could do anything. I just was nothing. I was shit. Then Derek [Taylor, Apple press officer] tripped me out at his house after he got back from L.A. He sort of said, ``You're all right,'' and pointed out which songs I had written: ``You wrote this,'' and ``You said this,'' and ``You are intelligent, don't be frightened.'' The next week I went to Derek's with Yoko, and we tripped again, and she made me realize that I was me and that it's all right. That was it; I started fighting again, being a loudmouth again and saying, ``I can do this. Fuck it. This is what I want,'' you know. ``I want it, and don't put me down.'' I did this, so that's where I am now. At some point, right between `Help!' and `Hard Day's Night,' you got into drugs and got into doing drug songs. A Hard Day's Night, I was on pills. That's drugs, that's bigger drugs than pot. I started on pills when I was fifteen, no, since I was seventeen, since I became a musician. The only way to survive in Hamburg to play eight hours a night, was to take pills. The waiters gave you them - the pills and drink. I was a fucking dropped-down drunk in art school. Help! was where we turned on to pot, and we dropped drink, simple as that. I've always needed a drug to survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of everything because I'm more crazy probably.

How do you think LSD affected your conception of the music? In general?

It was only another mirror. It wasn't a miracle. It was more of a visual thing and a therapy, looking at yourself a bit. It did all that. You know, I don't quite remember. But it didn't write the music. I write the music in the circumstances in which I'm in, whether it's on acid or in the water.

What was your experience with heroin?

It just was not too much fun. I never injected it or anything. We sniffed a little when we were in real pain. We got such a hard time from everyone, and I've had so much thrown at me and at Yoko, especially at Yoko. We took H because of what the Beatles and others were doing to us. But we got out of it.

 

 

Quotes by John Lennon

 

The reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up. Everybody's too scared to deal with children all the time, so we reject them and send them away and torture them. The ones who survive are the conformists -- their bodies are cut to the size of the suits -- the ones we label good. The ones who don't fit the suits either are put in mental homes or become artists.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

I don't believe in killing whatever the reason!

And so this is Xmas for black and for white, for yellow and red, let's stop all the fight.

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

I don't intend to be a performing flea any more. I was the dreamweaver, but although I'll be around I don't intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don't want to die at 40.

I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.


If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.

Love is the flower you've got to let grow.

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Newspaper people have a habit of putting you in the front pages to sell their papers, and then after they've sold their papers and got big circulation's, they say, 'Look at what we've done for you.'

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.
Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.


The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?


The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.


The more I see the less I know for sure.


The older generation are leading this country to galloping ruin!


The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

The worst drugs are as bad as anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's own personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if one can help it.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship.

We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.


You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!


You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.

Many of these are from


From his interview with Rolling Stone

 

Do you think you're a genius?

Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I am one. When did you realize that what you were doing transcended -- People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, ``Why has nobody discovered me?'' In school, didn't they see that I'm cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn't need? I got fuckin' lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie, "You throw my fuckin' poetry out, and you'll regret it when I'm famous, '' and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin' genius or whatever I was, when I was a child. It was obvious to me. Why didn't they put me in art school? Why didn't they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin' cowboy like the rest of them? I was different, I was always different. Why didn't anybody notice me? A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint - express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin' dentist or a teacher.


Help! Lyrics

Help, I need somebody,

Help, not just anybody,

Help, you know I need someone, help.



When I was younger, so much younger than today,

I never needed anybody's help in any way.

But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,

Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.



Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being round.

Help me, get my feet back on the ground,

Won't you please, please help me.



And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,

My independence seems to vanish in the haze.

But every now and then I feel so insecure,

I know that I just need you like I've never done before.



Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being round.

Help me, get my feet back on the ground,

Won't you please, please help me.



When I was younger, so much younger than today,

I never needed anybody's help in any way.

But now these daya are gone, I'm not so self assured,

Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.



Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being round.

Help me, get my feet back on the ground,

Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, oh.



Working Class Hero


As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me