Happy Birthday, John Lennon

10:17 AM PDT, October 9, 2008

The author of 21 books and coauthor of 7 more, I often am asked how and when I got started as a writer. One answer is the day my high school creative writing teacher, Jim Malone, identified one of my poems as publishable. He was right: About a year later the editor of a small literary review called River Bottom accepted that poem for publication. Malone's encouragement caused me to consider writing as a career. But why did I write that poem in the first place? And why did it have the attributes it did?

I had been writing throughout my school years, but I didn't take it seriously until December 1970. At the time I was a 15-year-old freshman at Canoga Park High School in the San Fernando Valley. Everyone at school was buzzing about the release of John Lennon's first solo album. They called it the "Green" album, because it had no title, only a color photograph on the cover that was predominately green. After school, I rode my Schwinn 10-speed over to Topanga Mall, went into the record shop, and bought the mysterious album. Riding home, I wondered what was inside. Would it sound like a Beatles album? Like Live Peace in Toronto?

I didn't know what to expect as I sat cross-legged in front of my stereo and set the needle on the outer rim of the record—least of all that my life was about to change. The record sounded scratchy, and at first I thought it was defective. I didn't realize the hiss and crackle was a recorded sound effect. The ominous gongs of a church bell tolled. I actually wondered if there had been some mistake at the record plant, if they had slipped the wrong disk into the record jacket. Then, without warning, John's clear voice cried out. "Mother, you had me, but I never had you. I wanted you, but you didn't want me." I had never heard anything like it. Here was a man talking about personal matters—pain and loss in his family, things never said out loud in my family or in any family I had known. It was the first time I realized that writing lyrics or poetry is, or at least could be, deadly serious. The songs that followed—"I Found Out," "Working Class Hero," "Well Well Well," and others—widened the chasm opening inside me between the child who played with words and the young adult who would see and handle them in a completely different way.

I never met or corresponded with John Lennon, but he spoke to me as surely as anyone I have known. Thank you, John. And happy birthday.”

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