HERE COMES SANTA CLAUS

On television they’re trotting out Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, It's a Wonderful Life and seemingly-infinite variations on A Christmas Carol.  Here at Creation Point we have our own Yuletide tradition, a short Christmas tale of mine called The Truth About Santa Claus:  offered annually as a kind of cyber Christmas present.  My way of wishing all of you who visit this site the happiest of holidays and the most magical of Christmases.  I offer it again this year—along with a trio of wonderful illustrations by my friend and collaborator Vassilis Gogtzilas.  So grab a plate of Christmas cookies, pull a chair up close to the fireplace and enjoy.

THE TRUTH ABOUT

SANTA CLAUS

“THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS!”

He’d been thinking about it for days—ever since he heard Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo announce it on the school bus—and he didn’t believe a word of it, not one word.  (Well, maybe ONE.)  But Cody had to be sure, absolutely, positively sure—

—and that’s why he was hiding behind the couch at midnight on Christmas Eve.

His mother was there, asleep in his dad’s old easy chair, the reds and blues of the Christmas tree lights making her look peaceful and happy and impossibly young.

The tree, by the way, had not ONE SINGLE PRESENT underneath it.

That didn’t make sense.  If there WAS no Santa Claus, if his mother was the one who bought the presents, wrapped the presents, stacked them under the tree, then how come she hadn’t done it?  How come she wasn’t awake RIGHT NOW arranging them all?

He got scared.  Maybe there wasn’t going to BE a Christmas this year.  Maybe Mom had lost her job and they didn’t have any money and so she COULDN’T buy him any presents and—

And then Cody glanced over at the windows and noticed that it was snowing.

Or was it?

If that was snow, it was the WHITEST snow he’d ever seen.  It was snow as bright as moonbeams, as bright as sunlight, as bright as...

Stardust.

Quickly, but quietly (he didn’t want to wake his mother), he scurried to the window and looked out.

It was coming down and coming down and COMING DOWN all across town, whirling and whipping, spinning and gyrating, out of the night sky.  Glowing so brightly that it almost hurt his eyes to look at it.  And Cody saw that it certainly wasn’t snow, and it absolutely wasn’t rain, it wasn’t ANYTHING he’d ever seen before.  But each drop, no...each flake, no... each BALL of glowing WHATEVER IT WAS, seemed to pulse and spin, soar and vibrate, as if it were alive.

And the stuff, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS (and he knew now that it was magic.  He just KNEW), wasn’t collecting on the streets, wasn’t piling up on the rooftops.  It was MELTING INTO (that’s the only way he could put it:  MELTING INTO) every house (no matter how small) and apartment building (no matter how big).

EVERY house and apartment building.

EVERY.

He looked up.

And there it was:  coming RIGHT THROUGH THE CEILING of Apartment 3F, HIS apartment, swirling, like a tornado of light, around the chandelier and then down, down, down—

—STRAIGHT FOR HIS MOTHER.

At first he almost yelled out a warning, “Mom!  Wake up!  MOM!”  But something made him stop.

Instead of yelling he ducked back behind the couch and watched, eyes peering over the top.

Watched as the light-tornado wheeled around his mother, so fast, so bright, that he could hardly even SEE her.  But he COULD see her.  Most of her, anyway.

And what he SAW...

The light poured in through the top of her head, through her eyes, through her chest, through her toes.  It lifted her up—still sleeping!—and carried her out of her chair and across the room.  And as she floated—

—she started to change:

Her hair became white, her nose became red, her belly ballooned like the most pregnant woman in the history of the world.  Her feet grew boots, her head grew a hat, her nightgown grew fur.  An overstuffed sack sprouted, like a lumpy angel’s wing, from her shoulder.  And then—

AndthenandthenandTHEN, it wasn’t his mother there at all, it was him, it was SANTA CLAUS!  STANDING RIGHT THERE IN CODY’S LIVING ROOM!  Santa Claus who, with a laugh (exactly like the laugh Cody always knew he had, only better) and a twinkle in his eyes (exactly like the twinkle he’d always imagined, ONLY BETTER) reached into his sack and pulled out package after package, present after present, and placed them, carefully, like some  Great Artist contemplating his masterpiece, under the tree.

When he was done, Santa Claus stood there, grinning and shaking his head, as if he couldn’t BELIEVE what a beautiful tree this was, how wonderful the presents looked beneath it.  As if this moment was the greatest moment in the history of Christmas, as if this apartment was the only place in all the universes that such a Christmas could ever POSSIBLY happen.

And then the MOST amazing thing happened:

Santa Claus turned.

He turned slowly.  So slowly Cody couldn’t even tell at first that he was moving at all.  And—slowly, SLOWLY—those twinkling eyes, that Smile of smiles, fixed itself on the two boy-eyes peering, in wonder, over the top of the couch.

And what Cody felt then he could never really say:  only that it was better than any present anyone could ever get.  Only that it made his heart so warm it melted like magical WHATEVER IT WAS, trickling down through his whole body.  Only that it made him want to reach out his arms and hug Santa Claus, hug his mother, hug his father (and FORGIVE him too, for running out on them) and his aunts and uncles and cousins (even his Cousin Erskine who was SUCH a pain) and Big Mouth Jenny Rizzo (who really wasn’t so bad most of the time) and all his  friends and teachers and the kid in his karate class who always smelled SO BAD and, embarrassing as it sounds, it made him want to hug everyone and everything in the whole world including rabbits and snakes and trees and lizards and grass and lions and mountains and, yes, the EARTH HERSELF.

Cody wanted to hold that gaze, to keep his eyes locked on Santa’s, forever. (Or longer, if he could.)  Wanted to swim in that incredible feeling, drown in it, till GOD HIMSELF came down to say:  “Enough!”

Except that he blinked.  Just once.  But in that wink of an eye, Santa was gone.  Cody’s mother was asleep in the chair again and, for one terrible moment, the boy thought that the whole thing must have been a dream.

Except, under the tree:  THERE WERE THE PRESENTS.

Except, out the window:  THERE WAS THE SNOW, the rain, the magical WHATEVER IT WAS, shooting up, like a blizzard in reverse, from every house, every apartment building.  Shooting up into the heavens, gathering together like a fireball, like a white-hot comet—

—and fading away into the night:  going, going...

Gone.

Without so much as a tinkling sleigh-bell or a “Ho-ho-ho.”

Not that it mattered.

Cody looked at his mom.

Cody kissed her.

“I love you,” he said.  And he was crying.  Happy tears.  Christmas tears.  Like moonbeams, like sunlight.  Like stardust.

Mom stirred in the chair, smiled the softest sweetest smile Cody had ever seen. “I love you, too,” she said.

And then she drifted back to sleep.

Cody sat at her feet, warming himself, warming his SOUL, by the lights of the tree.

And soon, he, too, was drifting off to sleep.  And as he drifted, a wonderful thought rose up, like a balloon, inside him.  Rose, then POPPED—spreading the thought to every corner of his mind.  Giving him great comfort.  Great delight:

“One day,” the thought whispered, “when you’re all grown-up, when you have children of your own.  ONE DAY,” the thought went on...

“It will be YOUR TURN.”

Merry Christmas.

Story ©copyright 2015 J.M. DeMatteis

Art ©copyright 2015 Vassilis Gogtzilas

A CENTURY OF SINATRA

As I've said many times before, Frank Sinatra's always been there in my life.  My mother—who, as a teenager, would cut high school to go swoon over Sinatra at New York's Paramount theater—made sure his songs were playing constantly in our house.  (For the record:  My father loved Frankie just as much.  If you were Italian, you had to.  It was a genetic imperative.)  I may have been a child of the rock and roll generation, but I was always under Sinatra's spell; and the older I got, the more I came to love—make that revere—his mix of swagger and vulnerability, bravado and tenderness.  Most of all I came to appreciate the aching humanity in Frank Sinatra's music.  For all his Vegas, Rat Pack glamor, he was, beneath it all, a skinny kid from Hoboken who knew the same loneliness and despair, hope and joy, that we all do.  And he was blessed with an extraordinary voice that could express it in the most natural, and yet magical, of ways.

In honor of what would have been Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday, here are some classic moments—starting with a very young Sinatra singing what was then his signature song.

And now here's Frankie at the height of his powers, with the amazing Count Basie and his orchestra storming away behind him.

And, finally, Sinatra in the autumn of his years, voice waning (and all the more poignant for it), facing down the darkness with eloquence and heart.

Happy Birthday, Frank.  The song is you, indeed.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS

Some time after ten o'clock, on the night of December 8, 1980, my phone rang:  it was my old friend Karen Berger calling to tell me that John Lennon had been shot. "Is he okay?" I asked.  "He's dead," she replied—and it was clear from her tone that she knew it was true, but couldn't digest that awful reality.

I got off the phone, switched on the television—and the global mourning ritual soon began.  At first I was taken aback by the public displays of grief.  Strange as it sounds, my connection to John Lennon—to his extraordinary life and music—ran so deep that his death felt profoundly personal.  It was as if I'd lost one of my dearest friends.  I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that millions of people around the world had lost one of their dearest friends, as well.

"He's dead."  Those words still resonate in my mind and heart.  Thirty-five years ago?  It feels like thirty-five minutes.

DIANE

Today is the birthday of my beautiful wife, Diane.  In her honor, I thought I'd share a song I wrote way back in 1993, when we were on our honeymoon (well, one of our honeymoons, we had a few of them) in India.  I think the song—which I eventually recorded for my CD, How Many Lifetimes?—is self-explanatory.

Happy Birthday to my sweet bride!

OUR TRUE HEIGHT AND POWER

This is an edited version of an essay that was originally posted back in 2010.

***

Avatar Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine

In 1988, I made my second trip to Meher Baba’s Tomb-Shrine (also known as the Samadhi) near Ahmednagar, India.  I’d been to Meherabad for the first time in the summer of 1987 and was planning a return trip the following July.  But in early March of 1988 something strange happened:  One morning I woke up—abruptly yanked into awareness—to hear a voice:  very clear, very powerful, as if someone was in the room talking to me.  Only the voice wasn’t coming from across the room, it was coming from inside me.  It was coming the center of my chest, from my heart.  I don’t recall the exact words, but the message—actually, it was more like an order—boiled down to this:  “Come to Meherabad.  Come now.”  Those words had such force, such impact, that I couldn’t ignore them.  Oh, I tried to.  There was no way I could just drop everything, get on a plane and go to India.  I had work, I had obligations.  Even if, by some miracle, I could go, the ashram where most visitors to the Samadhi stay during their pilgrimage was only open until March 15th.  (After that, the Maharashtra heat becomes unbearable.  The Meher Pilgrim Center doesn’t reopen till the end of June.)   If I was going to travel around the world, I’d need to stay for at least two weeks, not swoop in and out like some spiritual lunatic.   Nope, no matter what that voice was, no matter where it came from (a passing angel, my unconscious mind or Meher Baba Himself), I was ignoring this order.

But the thing is I couldn’t ignore it.   It was as if the order itself contained the ability to execute it.  As if each of those words, spoken in my heart, were energy-eggs that cracked open and provided the strength and will for me to (with seeming effortlessness, I don’t recall there being any blockades along the way) rearrange my life, race to the Indian Consulate for a tourist visa, buy a plane ticket and—within a few days—fasten my seat belt for a journey to Bombay (which, for the record, didn’t become Mumbai till 1995).

By the time I arrived in India, I was—as I’d been the first time around—a sleep-deprived wreck (I’m not one of those people who can sleep on airplanes.  I’m from the fitful dozing school).  I hustled from the international to the domestic airport, waited the requisite interminable hours, then took an Indian Airlines flight—aboard a small, propeller-driven plane—to Pune.  From there, I rickshawed to a taxi stand and began the long drive to Ahmednagar.  You can imagine the shape I was in when I got there:  it was as if I was a creature molded from cracked glass and every step brought me closer to totally shattering.  But, after arriving at my destination and settling into my room at the Pilgrim Center, I couldn’t go to sleep.  However exhausted I was, I had to make the trip up the hill to Meher Baba’s Tomb-Shrine.  I had to lay down my head at his feet and say, “Baba, I’m here.  I listened to the voice, I followed the order, now wrap your arms around me and flood me with your love.”  (One thing you have to grok in order for this story to work:  Despite the fact that He died in 1969, my experience with Avatar Meher Baba has been that He’s very much alive, and incredibly accessible.  Master and companion, guide and best friend.  And MB’s Tomb-Shrine is, for me, like a direct radio link to that Living Presence.  You don’t have to believe that—feel free to think I’m completely nuts (you won’t be the first)—I’m just asking you to understand it.)

So up the hill I staggered, into the Samadhi I went.  But there was no love-bomb waiting to engulf me, no warm arms waiting to envelop me.  The instant I rested my head against the cloth-covered marble, it was as if a Cosmic Hand sliced open my mind, reached in and untapped a psychic geyser that had been waiting years to explode:  all my self-loathing—every wretched program that told me I was small, insignificant, unworthy, a hopeless waste of space on the planet—erupted up and out, wave after wave of psychic sludge:  pitch black, oily and utterly repugnant.  I felt poisoned, toxic, as it flooded every cell of my body, every corner of my soul, washing away all other thoughts and feelings, every other aspect of Self, until all that remained was the Black Sludge of Unworthiness.  How bad was it?  I remember noticing a bug crawling across the Tomb floor and feeling that the only difference between us was that the insect had more of a right to be alive than I did.

Devastated, I staggered out of the Samadhi and down to my room. wondering why the hell I’d dropped everything and raced across half the world only to be spiritually ambushed by a God who suddenly seemed less-than benevolent.

Once I was rested, free of jet lag and psychic aftershocks, I began to understand what had happened.  I’d been with Meher Baba long enough to know that one of His methods is to shine a light on the shadowed corners of the soul, corners we’re often not even aware of, peeling back the hardened layers of psychic excrement that cover up the Divinity we all are.  Magnifying those aspects and dragging them to the surface of our minds allows us to work with them more directly and, ultimately, dissolve them in the light of awareness.  By letting me see the Black Sludge in its full, flowering ugliness, Baba gave me the tools to deal with it in a conscious way.  Twenty-seven years later, I can’t claim the Sludge is gone—I suspect that, being human, I’ll always carry echoes of it, sometimes faint, sometimes loud—but, since that day, it’s certainly diminished in power.   



But perhaps it hasn’t diminished:  perhaps it’s just transformed.

As the years have passed, I’ve come to believe (well, I think I’ve always believed it, I’ve just come to see it in a deeper way) that these seeming demons, these apparent nightmares born of our unconscious darkness, aren’t really there to prevent us from reaching our true height and power:  they’re here to help us reveal it.  In fact, I’m convinced these devils are actually angels-in-disguise, waiting for the moment when we recognize them so they can spread their wings wide and invite us to fly with them into the heart of a magical, and sacred, universe.   (I’ve also come to believe that it’s ultimately far easier to fly with angels than dance with demons, even illusory ones—that joy is a far more efficient, and delightful, path to awakening than suffering—but that's another discussion for another time.)   

Our true height and power.  I had a memorable glimpse of just how high, just how powerful, we all are two years after my encounter with the Sludge.  It happened, again, in Meherabad—on a December night in 1990.  I had a dream—one of those dreams that seem more real than our waking life—in which I was at an event where one of the Meherabad residents, an extraordinary man called Mohammed the Mast (Mohammed, by the way, was the inspiration for Charlie Limbo in Seekers Into The Mystery), was sitting at a table signing...well, I’m not sure what he was signing:  it might have been books (which, given the dreamer in question, makes sense).  I approached the table, but, rather than sign my book, Mohammed instead scribbled on me, writing his way up from my hand to my upper arm.  When he did that I felt disrespected, powerless, small, ashamed—another echo, I see now, of the Black Sludge—and very angry.  But my anger was so bottled up, my rage so impotent, that I couldn’t express it.  The best I could do was grab Mohammed’s pen and throw it—without even looking—to the floor.  It was a pathetic throw, like something a weak, exhausted two year old would do.  (And that’s pretty much how I felt:  like a vulnerable, utterly overwhelmed child.)   But then...

Then I turned around—absolutely stunned to discover that my “pathetic” throw had sent the pen hurtling across the room, where it smashed into the wall, lodging there with such incredible force that it collapsed the entire thing, not just in the main room where we were, but in the adjoining room, as well.  And, in that moment of assumed weakness, revealed as inexplicable power...

I woke up—not just from sleep, but into myself.  To who and what I really am.  To my true height, my true power.  This wasn’t just an intellectual knowing, this was a visceral experience, an inner vision that touched a deeper reality.  I could see and feel that height, that power—I was that height and power—and it was far taller, far mightier, than anything I could have ever imagined:  like looking down at all Creation from the highest rung on Jacob’s Ladder.  I can’t say how long the experience lasted, maybe just a few seconds, maybe a few centuries, but looking at the universe, and at myself, from that extraordinary height became so dizzying, so overwhelming, that it actually frightened me.

And the experience passed.

But the memory didn’t.  I’ve held tight to that vision, that gift of grace, and treasured it all these years, knowing that my job—no, not my job, my pleasure—is to grow into the height and power that I already am.  Looking back, I see that what I was shown was just what I could handle at the time.  It was only one small hint of my true height.  Jacob’s Ladder extends up into infinity (and beyond, as Buzz Lightyear would say)—and I can, I must, continue to grow with it.    



Understand, please, that this experience wasn’t unique to me.  It became very clear that this is the height we all truly are, the divinity that lives and breathes within every last one of us, if we could only see it.

And, yes, that includes you.

So when the Black Sludge comes calling, remember:  take a deep breath, grow tall.  And don’t be afraid to look down.

Avatar Meher Baba and Mohammed the Mast

© copyright 2015 J.M. DeMatteis        

BACK TO THE BAT

Now that the first trailer has been released, I can officially announce that Batman: Bad Blood is my next big project for the DC animated universe.  A sequel to Batman vs. Robin, the movie reunites most of the crew from that film, including director Jay Olivia, producers James Tucker and Alan Burnett and Jason O'Mara as Batman.  I've embedded the trailer below.  Enjoy!

#9 DREAM

October 9th is John Lennon's 75th birthday and, to celebrate, here's a (slightly edited) post that originally appeared here back in 2009...

When John Lennon died he became an instant martyr:  the peacenik saint—”Martin Luther Lennon,” as Paul McCartney famously put it—thrust up on a pedestal he would have loathed.  But the man never sold himself that way.  “Sing out about love and peace,” he wrote in “Scared”—one of the brilliant songs on his brilliant 1974 album Walls and Bridges—“don’t wanna see the red raw meat...the green-eyed goddamn straight from your heart.”   

Some people, attached to the cuddly mop-top Beatles image, are shocked that Lennon—who was, by most accounts, profoundly idealistic, generous to a fault, fiercely intelligent and a brilliant wit—could also be a perfect idiot:  rude, angry, cynical, cruel, and, on occasion, violent.  That’s precisely why I’ve always felt a profound connection to the man:  He was wonderfully, horribly, fully human—trapped in a yin-yang spiral, constantly seeking transcendence through mind-altering substances, God, politics, family.  Throughout his career, his songs painted the portrait of a man always reaching for Heaven—and often tumbling straight into Hell along the way:  forever questing—desperately, defiantly, and always with a sense of humor—to understand himself.

I was in the fifth grade—just ten years old—when the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the winter of l964.  I remember sitting in front of the television set during Week Two of the British Invasion.  The previous Sunday my mind had been completely melted by the Beatles first Sullivan appearance.  Oh, sure, if you were a guy you still had to make obnoxious remarks about their haircuts and the way the girls were squealing over them; but the fact of the matter is we were all squealing in our souls.  Sullivan and the Beatles were in Miami that second week and what I remember more than anything else is the song “This Boy.”  Lennon coming in for his solo during the middle eight.  That voice—that achingly honest, angry, wounded voice—rising above the pubescent shrieks:  “...till he’s seen you cry-hi-hi-hiiiiii!”  Unbelievable.  If I wasn’t sure the previous week, I knew it unmistakably in that moment:  I wanted to take guitar lessons.  I wanted to be in a band.  I wanted to be John Lennon.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why I identified with Lennon more than the other three.  Paul was too cute, too perfect, all toothy grins and charming eyebrows.  Even his voice was perfect:  from Little Richard shrieks to the Broadway crooning of “Till There Was You,” he never wavered, he never missed.  Ringo seemed an endearing doofus, possessed of a sort of divine idiocy, shaking his head and making teenage girls faint without seeming to know why.  George was cool, very cool, there was no denying that, but he wasn’t a leader:  He was more the Tonto, or perhaps Mr. Spock, of the band.  Lennon didn’t have Paul’s good looks or Ringo’s easy charm and he wasn’t the impeccable guitarist George was; but—with that  pointy noise, those squinty eyes, and that aforementioned voice—he radiated attitude and charisma.  Plus you just knew that he was the one the other three looked up to.  

(These, of course, were just images transmitted over a flickering black-and-white screen.  Instant icons projected out of and reabsorbed into the collective unconscious of a generation.  Paul wasn’t just an eyebrow, he was a musical genius.  Ringo wasn’t an adorable dummy, he was a phenomenal drummer, and a great wit, who had the good sense to marry a Bond girl.  As for George, it always seemed he was exactly what he appeared to be:  quiet, efficient, and extremely cool.) 

I remained a Beatles diehard through the group’s awkward and ugly demise—and on into the following decades.  Beatles music—from “Love Me Do” to “I Am The Walrus,” “Please Please Me” to the grand finale of Abbey Road—is woven into my soul.  When the band split, I followed their individual solo careers with equal enthusiasm (although that enthusiasm was occasionally tested).  But the career that meant the most to me was John’s:  his post-Beatles work was more erratic than his work with the band, but it also reached levels of brilliance he never attained as a Beatle.  Taken as a whole, the material Lennon recorded between l970 and l980 is the greatest musical autobiography in rock ‘n’ roll.  His best songs were as honest, intimate—and, occasionally, embarrassing—as diary entries.  Whether he was campaigning for peace with Yoko, primalling with Arthur Janov, on a Homeric bender in L.A. or experiencing the joys of born-again fatherhood in the Dakota, Lennon’s personal story —as reflected in his music—never failed to resonate with my own life.  

What follows is one Lennon Freak’s tour of those extraordinary—and shockingly brief—solo years.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band  A+

After several experimental albums with Yoko Ono and a trinity of brilliant, unforgettable singles—”Give Peace A Chance,” “Cold Turkey” and the Phil Spector-produced “Instant Karma” (all of which are available on Working Class Hero and other Lennon compilations)—Lennon went into the studio and created his first “official” post-Beatles album:  the result was one of the greatest rock albums ever made.  Forget the multilayered production of Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road:  this was music stripped down to bare essentials, with Lennon screaming his way through childhood pain and adult madness.  Along the way he managed to put the final nail in the coffin of the sixties and anticipate most of the major musical trends of the seventies—from singer-songwriter confessionals to punk’s naked rage—all in eleven glorious tracks.  (Each one is first-rate, but “Mother,” “Working Class Hero,” and “God” are the three monoliths that overshadow everything else on the record.)  The dream was over—but Lennon’s idealism wasn’t easily extinguished, as the title track of his next album would make clear.    

Imagine  A-

“Imagine,” the song, has deepened in meaning and significance as the decades have gone by:  it’s become a kind of planetary anthem—and deservedly so.  The more our world appears to spin out of control, the more we need its optimism and hope.  Imagine, the album, is the one time John managed to be both Lennon and McCartney.  In fact, he managed to embody everything the Beatles stood for, offering up angry rockers, idealistic anthems, political diatribes, and heartfelt love songs—with “Jealous Guy,” “Gimme Some Truth,” and “Oh, Yoko” the real standouts.  (“How Do You Sleep?”—Lennon’s infamous attack on Paul McCartney—may have been cruel, but it certainly made for a great track, especially with George Harrison’s vicious slide guitar added to the mix.)  For all that,  there’s something strangely distant about Imagine:  Lennon seems just out of reach.  It’s almost as if, having revealed himself so nakedly on his previous album, he wanted to hide himself behind the album’s icy, ethereal production.

Some Time in New York City  C-

Not quite the disaster it seemed back in l972 (I remember it being one of the first Beatles solo albums—along with McCartney’s Wildlife—that left me feeling both disappointed and depressed):  there’s some great material alongside the political self-indulgence.  “New York City,” “Woman Is The Nigger of the World” and “John Sinclair” are great—and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is a fierce, honest piece of outrage.  Yoko has one amazing song, “We’re All Water,” and another, “Born in a Prison,” that’s a terrific composition, but a clumsy performance.  The rest of the material fails because it sounds like the Lennons are simply going through the motions.  There may be political conviction at work here, but there’s precious little emotional conviction.  And John Lennon without a heart is a musical Tin Man.  

Mind Games  B+

There’s great writing to be found on Mind Games.  Where Lennon failed himself was as a producer and arranger:  it sounds as if he wanted to get in and out of the studio as fast as possible and couldn’t be bothered building a musical environment worthy of his material.  (Given that, at the time, the U.S. government was hounding him and his marriage was falling apart, perhaps that’s understandable.)  That said, the title track and “Meat City” are certifiable classics, “Out The Blue” is one of the most touching love songs Lennon ever wrote and the rest (with the exception of “Intuition”—a gentle, introspective song that’s undone by a truly dippy arrangement—and the forgettable “Only People”) are all first-rate.  In 2002, Ono released a remastered version of the album that was spectacular, bringing out a richness in sound and texture that wasn’t there in the original.  Which only makes one wonder what this album could have been had Lennon taken his time.

Walls and Bridges  A+

Plastic Ono Band is a grander artistic statement, Imagine more universal in its appeal, but Walls and Bridges, a product of Lennon’s so-called Lost Weekend away from Yoko, combines the emotional nakedness of POB with the melody and warmth of Imagine to create an album that sounds better every year.  Each song—even the wonderfully goofy instrumental, “Beef Jerky”—is a gem, with “Going Down on Love,” “Bless You,” “Scared” and the Beatles-esque “#9 Dream” real standouts.  The album closer, “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out)” is one of the most magnificent songs Lennon ever wrote:  every bit as majestic as “A Day In The Life” and “God.”  It’s Lennon utterly lost at sea:  washed overboard, encircled by sharks, yet clinging to the life raft of his music with his sense of humor miraculously intact.  The production—which has more in common with George Martin than Phil Spector—is perhaps the best of any Lennon solo album.

Rock ‘N’ Roll   B

A heartfelt, but somewhat slapdash, journey through the past.  Lennon is clearly having a great time singing Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino—and it’s great to hear him so relaxed and playful; but the only really memorable tracks are the album closer, “Just Because”—at the end of which Lennon bids adieu to the audience he would soon abandon for five years—and “Stand By Me”:  the definitive version of an already-classic tune.  

Double Fantasy  A

The first thing to realize about Double Fantasy is that it’s not a John Lennon album, it’s a John and Yoko album:  the first musical union between the pair that succeeds as a sustained work of art and entertainment.  DF  is a concept album (a more sustained concept than Sgt. Pepper), about the Lennon-Ono marriage, with husband and wife offering up alternating glimpses into their lives.  What’s fascinating is that John plays McCartney to Yoko’s Lennon:  she’s the hard-edged rocker (and her music, for the most part, is terrific here), he’s the reassuring balladeer (although the bluesy edge still cuts deep in “Losing You” and the introspective inner-space traveler is very much evident in “Watching The Wheels”).  Taken as a Lennon album, it’s a little disappointing.  Heard as the genuine collaboration it is, Double Fantasy is just about perfect.  Whether the Lennon-Ono marriage was as perfect as the image the pair presented to the world in l980 is—according to some biographers—up for debate.  The power of the music they created together isn’t.  

The John Lennon Anthology  A+

Of all the posthumous Lennon releases, The John Lennon Anthology is far and away the best:  We get startling alternate versions of familiar songs and home demos that reveal the inner workings of the Lennon psyche.  The alternate studio tracks are stripped down and in some instances—most notably the Rock ‘N’ Roll excerpts—they actually improve on the “official” versions.  The home demos are magical:  My favorites are “Real Love”—Lennon, alone at the piano, singing  the song later recorded by his three former band-mates for The Beatles Anthology—and “Serve Yourself,” a gleefully nasty—and sadly prescient—rant against the dangers of religious fanaticism.

©copyright 2015 J.M. DeMatteis