Too mighty to be cloistered on an album, this deliberately paced paean to life’s volcanic beauty otherwise not to be captured came in the prime of The Beatles’ power and maturity, 1969. Sounding like he could care less about flowers for hair, a man walking on the moon or even assassinations, Lennon belts out the sum of his emotional existence to Yoko.
Califone has a song called “Don’t Let Me Die Nervous,” and, aside from the obvious phonetic/visual likening, I think it’s linked to this Beatles track in other ways. Continually, on repeated listens, what governs the listeners enjoyment of “DLMD” is its slowness. Possibly, it’s scarier for the listener than it was for Lennon. Indeed, Lennon strikes me as the kind who wasn’t scared by very much.
And in response to the hypothesis that Yoko broke up The Beatles, I’d like to unearth the instance of Phil Spector letting off his gun in the studio to Lennon, to intimidate him and attempt to wield power, and Lennon responding by saying, “Dude, you can take my life, but don’t fu** with my ears, man, I need those.” Talk about a heterogeneous one-track mind.