God is a concept by which we measure our pain

I am listening to Lennon tonight. I had kind of forgotten about that chap. I guess there is a massive influence of his in Minor Coles, despite my Beatles-obsessive phase being redundant now. Although, of course, once you truly immerse yourself in The Beatles then it remains an obsession in some capacity for the rest of your life. I can't call it redundant yet, really.

So I came back to him tonight. I felt like listening to something real and pure. Emo if you like, before emo was even a concept in proper Emo bands like Sunny Day Real Estate's mothers minds. I've listened to a lot of the Smiths recently and although I love The Smiths and Morriseys lyrics, it's time for something a bit more to the point. And for that, I guess Lennon is one of the first real original Emo's.

The song 'Mother' being the prime example. Lennon lost his mother twice - first as a toddler when his mother gave him up (abandoned him, to put it in blunt terms) and put him in the care of his Aunt Mimi. Then, just after he and his mother had reunited after a decade and a half of having only seen eachother a few times, and just as he had finally developed a relationship and bond with his own mother.......she was knocked over and killed by a car. 'Mother, you had me....but i never had you'

You can hear at the end of this song everything was flooding out of his head about this. You can picture the scene in the vocal booth. You can imagine how his face would have looked (not quite so carefree as the photo below, mind).....just pure and sheer emotion, primeval, unforced and utterly honest. In part this was in-line with the primal therapy he was experimenting with at the time, which was an un-conventional psychiactric attempt at ruthlessly purging childhood memories and 'moving on' through the expression of animal like emotions. However, to put all of that real emotion into song and make it feel unforced and brutally honest is something I find pretty special. So it is probably in many respects one of my favourite John Lennon songs.

'Mother'