As well as being the most significant songwriter in history, John Lennon was never afraid to speak his mind. Throughout his life and career, the Liverpudlian shared many notable hot takes, with his outspoken nature one of the defining aspects of his story.
Of course, The Beatles founder’s most notorious opinion arrived in March 1966 when he spoke to the London Evening Standard. Unwittingly changing the dimension of a rockstar forever, he earned widespread condemnation from God-fearing people across the globe when he declared Christianity obsolete. He said: “It will vanish and shrink,” he said. “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 ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me”.
This incendiary comment would earn The Beatles hate from America’s worst fundamentalist Christians in the Ku Klux Klax. On the more solemn side, it also tragically provided a key motivation for his 1980 assassination at the hands of the criminally insane Mark David Chapman.
Yet, although Lennon made a career out of being outspoken, he wasn’t always as controversial. Sometimes, he provided unique insights into other musicians, which said more about him as a person than those in question. One of the most intriguing of these was regarding a man whose music he deeply respected: Bob Dylan. In fact, it was the very fact that Dylan discounted his own name Robert Zimmerman in favour of a pithier stage name that the Scouse icon dismissed as “bullshit”.
Notably, one of the highlights of 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band is the song ‘God’. In it, the former Fab Four leader lists several things he didn’t believe in, including his old friend Jesus, Buddha, and kings, and due to the acrimonious split of his old band, The Beatles. He also says, “I don’t believe in Zimmerman,” referring to Dylan’s real name.
In the book Lennon Remembers, Jann S. Wenner asks Lennon why he used Zimmerman instead of Dylan, and his response is fascinating, outlining his disdain for stage names and the fallacy they represent. “Because Dylan is bullshit,” Lennon explained. “Zimmerman is his name. You see, I don’t believe in Dylan, and I don’t believe in Tom Jones, either in that way. Zimmerman is his name. My name isn’t John Beatle. It’s John Lennon. Just like that.”
