Bigger, Older and Meaner than Jesus: Analysing Lennon’s Occult-Assassination

When I first heard that John Oswald shot John Lennon, I found it hard to believe.  Quite frankly, I even laughed.  I thought it was a mistake; maybe even a joke.  After all, everyone knows that John Oswald sits a free man somewhere in his mountain-top Mystery Labs, while Mark “David” Chapman rots in gaol, sentenced for Lennon’s murder.  Plain and simple.
 
Or so I thought.  When I checked my facts, it seemed things were a little more complicated.

The Motorcade

At the time of his murder, Lennon was “re-emerging after a self-imposed four-year exile from music” (Encyclopedia of Rock Deaths, Talevski; Omnibus Press, 1999).  Exile?  Self-imposed?  From music?  I did a double-take; I may have even dribbled. What had Lennon done that he had to run so far, so hard, and for so long?  What had scared him so much, terrified him so much, that he refused to make music of any sort (even skiffle) for four years?  And why, just weeks after his new single is released, is he gunned down?  What was so powerful about this new album of his (‘Double Fantasy’) that he needed to die?

I was determined to find out, or at least just make something up.

(As it turned out, the things I actually discovered began to make me fervently wish I had just made something up.)

On December the 8th, 1980, the Lennon/Oko Peace Motorcade was doing its final circuit of Central Park, New York, throwing flowers, poetry and LSD to the ecstatic crowd.  Just before 11pm, the motorcade heads towards Lennon’s apartment, the ‘Dakota on Central Park West’.  Lennon smiles, waves at the cameras.  Suddenly, shots ring out – five? Seven?  Lennon falls; he is immediately rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where he dies en route.  

Oswald is captured straight away, but rumours are already spreading: was the CIA really behind it?  Wasn’t Oswald in cahoots with those shadowy Mystery Labs?   Did “McCartney” have anything to do with it?   Where can I get a really good coffee?

The Oswald trial is hijacked by technicalities, strange evidence (apparently, all seven of the bullets fired turned ninety-degrees in mid-flight before they hit Lennon), and the apprehension of a new suspect, and Oswald is set free.

The new suspect is Mark “David” Chapman, who is eventually convicted, despite being quite clearly completely mad.  He has been eligible for parole since 1990, but refuses to leave prison, claiming ‘it might want to get me next...’

Cover-up?  Conspiracy?  Both?  Or all three?

It was impossible to decide from what I had so far.

It was time to go back to the very beginning.

The Moonbeasts and the Silver Beatles

John Winston Lennon was born on October the 9th, 1940 (Talevski, 1999).  Surprisingly, little of his early life has much to do with the Beatles at all, and even less to do with John Oswald, or his Plunderphonic Techniques.  Then suddenly, out of the blue, in 1957 Lennon meets the real Paul McCartney(Talevski, 1999).  

Discovering each other at a church fete, the two share a doobie or two behind the mausoleum, and chat over devonshire tea about their mutual interests in religion, politics, environmental issues, music, ancient thrashing malevolencies from beyond the universe (and how to contact them), and tusked sea mammals.  Quickly, they decide to form a band.

(I was sweating.  So much that I had assumed was lies, or at least a weak attempt at humour, was turning out to be unutterably true.  Dare I turn another page in Talevski’s ancient tome? Dammit, I had to.)

A fresh-faced mystic named George Harrison offers to sell the young musicians a bag of ‘special herbs’, at very low prices.  The three exchange looks, nods, words, and some very fine-looking product.  It is decided then and there that all three shall form a band together (maybe with someone else on drums or something), and they shall name it after its driving force (John Lennon), and the sinister Elder Creatures that live on Earth’s natural satellite (as catalogued by H.P.Lovecraft).  

The band was named ‘Johnny and the Moondogs’ (Talevski, 1999).

I was stunned.  The ‘Moondogs’ (or ‘Moonbeasts’ as Lovecraft refers to them) are large, oily, greyish slave-driving alien creatures dwelling on the dark side of the Moon, whose scarred and malnourished extraterrestrial slaves “hail from all corners of the known universe, though Lunar proximity makes humans the slaves of choice” (A Field Observer’s Handbook of Preternatural Entities; Peterson, Sullivan, Wallis (et al); Chaosium, 1988).  Ruthless, ugly, and incapable of making a decent sandwich, these bleak slug-frog-dog creatures wallow in the dust and cold of the lunar surface, waiting to scoop up unwary sentient beings, brand them with gruesome scarification rituals, and offer them some limp lettuce, sweaty cheese and old wrinkly tomato on stale bread with no butter, before trading them in to some sex-starved alien zoophile for the price of a standard six-hub star destroyer.  

Why would such foul creatures be invoked in the name of one’s band – unless one was already thinking of dabbling in the Dark Notes and Forbidden Beats?

I could think of no other reason.

The band travelled from church fete to church fete, entertaining the several with their cover songs of African-American musicians, interspersed with Lennon’s whimsical, whiter-than-white, English pantomime skiffle songs.  The blend seemed to work; by 1959, as ‘the Silver Beatles’, they played the Vatican Fete in Rome, where they were photographed having devonshire tea (and a doobie) with the Pope.  

Obviously, even if they were dabbling in the Things In Which One Should Not Really Dabble, they were not at dangerous levels yet.

No, that was still to come.

The Biter and Jesus

In 1962, Ringo Starr joined the band, and they became ‘the Beatles’(Talevski, 1999).

(A small amount of etymology will reveal that the word ‘beatle’ is in fact derived from ‘beetle’, which, in turn, is derived from the Old English ‘bitula’, a derivative of the verb ‘bitan’, ‘to bite’.  Therefore,  ‘beetle’, etymologically, is ‘the biter’ (Dictionary of Word Origins, page 58).   Again, a sinister choice of name for a band that was merely about innocent fun, a splash of vaudeville, and a couple of doobies.)

Under this mysterious and potentially evil name, the band tours the world.  During this period, Lennon and Harrison’s use of the Dark Notes increases, and Ringo is several times asked by Paul McCartney to play some of the Forbidden Beats.  

He refuses.

Increasingly, Lennon and McCartney are writing songs together, which become, as if by magick, instant hits.  And in March of 1966, Lennon claims that the Beatles are “bigger than Jesus”(Talevski, 1999).

(My heart skips a beat, then another; my forehead is suddenly slick with perspiration; I pass wind uncontrollably.   This is almost too much.  The same year the the real Paul McCartney dies, and is replaced by an Enochian-sponsored Voodoo Space Zombie, Lennon claims that the band is now ‘bigger than Jesus’.  Bigger, broader, older, and meaner than Jesus.   More slimy, more amorphous, more anciently quasimisanthropic than Jesus.  The evidence is overwhelming; Lennon, Harrison and McCartney are no longer dabbling.

They have dived right in the Deep End, and are doing doggy-paddle with the Things that Should Not Be.)

‘Surlaw’ Eht dna ‘Ruot Yretsym’ Eht

It seems clear what has happened here.  Harrison, McCartney and Lennon have made contact with something, and gained infamy and success from what they have ‘learned’; or, perhaps, they were merely bending ‘time’.  But “One shood Never calle upp what One cannot Put Downe”, as Charles Dexter Ward is warned by Joseph Curwen (one of the Original Elders).   The Beatles reliance on the Dark Notes and Forbidden Beats began to take its toll.  
Soon, their ‘friend’ would need to ‘feed’.  

Soon, their ‘record deal’ would go ‘platinum’.

And ‘go platinum’ it did, in June of 1966, resulting in the pre-arranged sacrifice of the genuine McCartney to the Outer Gods, the Ancient Ones and the blood-hungry Moonbeasts.  Drawing the short straw (or coerced by Harrison and Lennon?), McCartney valiantly goes under the bone-and-silver blade of African Voodoo, and his lifeless husk is filled with Ectoplasmic Energies from beyond the spheres.  Energies of good?  Evil?  Or something far more alien?

The Beatles immediately explode into extraterrrestrial experimental music, utilising the forgotten black arts of Cosmik Sex, Cosmik Drugs, and Cosmik Rock ‘n’ Roll.  In 1966, ‘Revolver’ is released; raucous, experimental, and fueled by drugs and mysticism.  In 1967, ‘Sargeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ is released; even more experimental, tripped out, with plenty of references to Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, and, most predominantly, Yog Sothoth, backmasked into nearly every track.

In August of 1967, “while the Beatles were studying trancendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, their manager Brian Epstein died from a drugs overdose.” (Talevski, 1999)  Drug overdose?  Or was it?

The intergalactic preternatural “entities” with which deals were being done were slowly extracting their toll.  Lennon could take it no more; he knew they should have turned back years ago, maybe even back at that original church fete...  a church fete worse than death.

‘Freaked out’, Lennon gave up reigns of the Beatles and passed them on to the newly-instated alien “McCartney” (Talevski, 1999).

‘The Magical Mystery Tour’.   The White Album.  ‘Abbey Road’.  Have there been three more sinister and mysterious albums, any music more eerie and evocative of ancient realms unimaginable to the human mind?  Probably.  Certainly Lennon felt the chill from these eerie Sound Documents of the Unexplained; more and more he was distancing himself from the Beatles and devoting himself to world peace.  

Trying to undo what he’d already done?  Undoubtably, his most recent “musical” efforts had been precursors to the Oswaldian Plunderphonic Techiques; strange soundtracks floating uneasily between those orbiting worlds of Art and Copyright Infringement.  Could these have been the straw on the back of the horse that bolted before the gate had been shut for Lennon?  Or was he merely beating a drowning man with that straw, clutching the little silver lining he had left?  

Whatever the case, in 1970, that straw would snap:

The Beatles were no more.

Accidentally Decoding the Inscrutable

So, did John Oswald kill John Lennon from that famous grassy knoll on that fateful day in 1980?  I think the evidence speaks for itself.  The real question is “Why?”  
Clearly, it was Lennon who was primarily responsible for the terrible events that unfolded (that still unfold, perhaps, if Michael Jackson is really decoding the Alien Codex “McCartney” backmasked into the White Album).  After all, it was Lennon who first met the real McCartney, and who was advertised as being in league with “the Moondogs”.  It was Lennon who wrote about the Creatures from Beyond the Universe, surRealising entire memetic auranets about “pigs” being shot from “guns”, hordes of interstellar “eggmen”, horrific ritual sacrifice to an Ancient One merely referred to as “the Walrus”, about the Great Old One “Lucy” and her skythrone of intelligent crystal “diamonds”.  

But more than this; the reason John Oswald shot John Lennon was something he had discovered, something ghastly he had decoded with his Plunderphonic Techniques. The Voodoo Space Demon “McCartney” backmasked detailed instructions regarding the Non Ens and/or the Elder Times  deep in the fabric of Beatles songs; what terrified Oswald so much was something that “McCartney” thought no human would ever hear.  Something that was so terrifying that there was nothing for it than to bend exactly seven bullets at right angles into Lennon’s body.  

What did Oswald discover?  What unearthly conspiracy of unfathomable darkness and alien whimsy could Oswald have laid his tender human ears on?  On what album did he discover these secret intergalacic threats?  Through what Plunderphonic Technique?

Listen through John Oswald’s “Plunderphonic: 66/99” boxed set from beginning to end, then on random play.  Note what he says about wanting to create “an entire album” out of “nothing but Beatles samples”.  Then light seven candles (one for each wound in the Body of Lennon) in the safety of a seven-pointed star, and then Listen to the Stars with your Third Ear.  

This will pass the time until someone works out the answers to these questions.  And, as soon as they do, you can be sure the InterWebMegaLink will be right here to guide you through them.

(That way, at least you’ll survive.)

InterWebMegaLink entry, Dec 2002