John Lennon’s Intuition, Inspiration, and Songwriting as Receiving from Spirit
John Lennon, still taken from the footage featured in the video for “Look at Me” (Ultimate Mix, 2021).
John Lennon’s abundant spiritual and creative powers recently have been passing through my mind. In November 2023, Lennon’s estate announced a 2024 Ultimate Mix boxset release of Lennon’s 1973 Mind Games album, which was his profound fourth solo record. Soon after the release of the remastered album materials, a new book will appear, also with the same title of Mind Games. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are listed as the coauthors of the book, now set to come out in September 2024.
The book’s description notes the turbulent political environment and activist efforts that both artists were navigating around the time of the album’s birth. Most fascinating for me, though, was a line on the resurgence of mysticism in their lives: “It was also an exciting time when they both re-embraced mysticism and magical thinking.”
Further, a short film cowritten by their shared son, Sean Ono Lennon, called “WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko,” won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film a few days ago, on March 10, 2024. Sean Ono Lennon joined forces with director, writer, and animator Dave Mullins to cowrite this film, and he and Yoko Ono Lennon served as executive producers.
All has left me wondering whether Lennon’s politics surrounding peace promotion and anti-war activism also may have resonated with his experiences of spirituality, intuition, and creativity. Were these aspects of his life simply coincident, or were they synergistic or otherwise deeply related?
There is much we do not know or have on record, of course, yet his work and interviews offer several clues and moving intimations.
Right at the start of the Mind Games album, which was created while Lennon was in the throes of psychoanalysis, he offered a remarkably clear set of statements. They appeared in the lead song, also called “Mind Games”:
“We’re playing those mind games together /
Pushing the barrier, planting seeds /Playing the mind guerilla /
Chanting the mantra, ‘peace on Earth’ /
We all been playin’ those mind games forever /Some kind of Druid dude, lifting the veil /
Doing the mind guerilla /
Some call it magic, the search for the grail /
Love is the answer /
And you know that for sure /
Love is the flower /
You gotta let it, you gotta let it grow.
. . .
So keep on playing those mind games together /
Doing the ritual dance in the sun /
Millions of mind guerillas /Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel /
Keep on playing those mind games forever /
Raising the spirit of peace and love . . .”
Or take Lennon’s crystal-clear words in “Intuition,” also on the Mind Games album:
“As I play the game of life /
I try to make it better each and every day /
And when I struggle in the night /
The magic of the music seems to light the way /
Intuition takes me there /
Intuition takes me everywhere . . .”
Or see “You Are Here,” one of Lennon’s beautiful odes to Ono that appeared on the album. In this song, Lennon alluded to their spiritual union, or perhaps to a broader sense of the continuous spiritual connection of genuine love:
“From Liverpool to Tokyo /
What a way to go /
From distant lands, one woman, one man /
Let the four winds blow /
Three thousand miles over the ocean /
Three thousand light years from the land of the rising sun /
Love has opened up my eyes /
Love has blown right through /
Wherever you are, you are here /
Wherever you are, you are here . . .”
While the Mind Games era certainly was one of marked introspection and transformation in Lennon’s art and life, shimmering insights and spiritual traces can be found throughout the full arc of his lyrics, music, and visual art.
A powerful collection of Lennon’s interviews was published in book form in 2016, under the title Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, edited by author Jeff Burger. This book is part of a series,“Musicians in Their Own Words,” published by Chicago Review Press.
In a September 1980 interview for Newsweek, “The Real John Lennon,” by Barbara Graustark (now art editor for the New York Times), Lennon shared:
“Being with Yoko makes me whole. I don’t want to sing if she’s not there. We’re like spiritual advisers. When I first got out of the Beatles, I thought, ‘Oh great. I don’t have to listen to Paul and Ringo and George.’ But it’s boring yodeling by yourself in a studio. I don’t need all that space anymore” (in Lennon on Lennon, p. 395).
Lennon had a poignant final interview with music director Dave Sholin and journalist/newscaster Laurie Kaye, who visited Lennon and Ono in The Dakota with Warner Brothers/Geffen Executive Bert Keane and engineer/producer Ron Hummel on December 8, 1980, the same day Lennon was tragically killed at age 40. In the conversation, Lennon shared multiple insights into his spirituality and creativity. Ono also participated in the interview.
Kaye wrote the radio show that featured their interview, and RKO Radio Network (US) ran the broadcast of it on December 14, 1980. Kaye titled the show “John Lennon: the Man, the Memory.” It is also included in the Lennon on Lennon collection. The audio of the interview can be found here.
In the interview, while discussing their new Double Fantasy album (released on November 17, 1980), Lennon reflected on the generative co-creative process he had shared with Ono, and how he felt that the best songs are ones that arrive, rather than being intentionally created with some preformulated utility or end-product in mind:
“It inspired me completely. As soon as she would sing something to me, or play the cassette down the phone, within ten or fifteen minutes, whether I wanted to work or not, if you call it work, I would suddenly get this song coming to me. And I always felt that the best songs were ones that came to you rather than … I do have the ability, you know, if you asked me to write a song for a movie or something and they say, ‘It’s about this,’ I can sit down and sort of make a song. I wouldn’t be thrilled with it, but I can make a song like that. I find it difficult to do that, but I can do it. I call it craftsmanship. I’ve had enough years at it to sort of put something together. But I never enjoyed that” (Lennon on Lennon, p. 405).
Lennon then shared how he preferred that his music come from spiritual inspiration:
“I like it to be inspirational, from the spirit. And being with Sean and switching off from the business sort of allowed that channel to be free for a bit. You know, it wasn’t always on. It was switched off, and when I sort of switched it on again, zap, all this stuff came through. So now, well, we did enough material for the next album almost, and we’re already talking about the third album. So, we’re full of [shouts in deep voice] vim and vigor!” (Lennon on Lennon, p. 405)
In the book, there is a transcript of Sholin’s voiceover on the radio broadcast of the interview, following Lennon’s passing back to spirit. Toward the very end, Sholin reminded listeners of Lennon’s powerful presence and impact that would continue:
“For John Lennon, there will be no more earthly existence. But to say he is dead is wrong. His spirit, his love, his music, his power … none of these are gone or forgotten” (Sholin, in Lennon on Lennon, p. 441).
There is beautiful video footage from 1983, where David Bowie reflected on Lennon’s songwriting magic. Lennon, Carlos Alomar, and Bowie had cowritten the song “Fame,” which was Bowie’s first song that would reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian Singles Chart. Bowie released the song in 1975 on his ninth studio album, Young Americans. Bowie recalled:
“I’ll never forget something that John Lennon told me. We were talking about writing, and I always admired the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit, just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say. And he said, ‘It’s very easy. All you have to do is say what you mean to say, make it rhyme, put a backbeat to it.’ And I keep coming back to that principle. … John had incredible charisma that made you cut through things. I can see the effect that he must’ve had on [Paul] McCartney, and I would imagine McCartney sorely misses that now.”
Lennon’s spirit and legacy continue to live on, very tangibly, through so many of his friends, family members, and collaborators, or through those deeply influenced by his work. The brilliant short film, “WAR IS OVER!,” and the forthcoming Mind Games boxset and book releases are only a few of the most recent examples of the powerful, enduring phenomenon that is Lennon’s creative spirit.
About the Author
Lauren Coyle Rosen is a cultural anthropologist, artist, and author who focuses on the roles of spirituality and creative inspiration in art, music, and culture. She is the author of The Spirit of Ani (with Ani DiFranco, forthcoming), Hannibal Lokumbe (with Hannibal Lokumbe, Columbia University Press, 2024), Law in Light (University of California Press, 2024), and Fires of Gold (University of California Press, 2020), as well as eight volumes of poetry. Coyle Rosen is currently a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. She was a cultural anthropology professor at Princeton University, where she received the President’s Award in Distinguished Teaching. She lives in Washington, DC, and in Philadelphia with her husband, Jeffrey Rosen. She has a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.
