Beatles Book:

The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of the Death Clues of The Beatles Reviews:
Stuff and Nonsense.
2009-11-10 - One of the more fun and fascinating bits of Beatles lore has always been the whole "Paul Is Dead" hoax. The story spun by that particular hoax is that Paul McCartney allegedly died in an automobile accident in 1966 - a "stupid bloody Tuesday" - and the heartbroken Beatles decided to soldier on without him, replacing McCartney with a lookalike, but planting clues of Paul's demise in Beatles songs and on album covers. Books could be written about the hoax - and, in fact, a few have - but now comes Joseph Niezgoda, in The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of the Death Clues of The Beatles to tell us that everyone's got it wrong. The clues aren't there to detail Paul's demise, Niezgoda says, but rather to foreshadow John Lennon's violent death in 1980, payment to the Devil for a 20-year pact Lennon made with Satan in 1960.

Yes, really.

According to Niezgoda, at some point in December 1960 -- likely between the Beatles' anticlimactic return from Germany on December 10, when the group seemed on the verge of breaking up, and their triumphant appearance at the Litherland Town Hall concert on December 27, the night it is generally accepted that Beatlemania was born - John Lennon traded his soul to the Devil in exchange for rock and roll fame and fortune. Twenty years later, in December 1980, the Devil called in the debt, using a demonically-possessed Mark David Chapman as his instrument of death.

On that wacky premise, Niezgoda devotes 186 pages to analyzing John Lennon's behavior, scrutinizing album covers, scrubbing lyrics for hidden meanings, and generally working way too hard to come up with spooky numeric coincidences to support his theory. Like the Paul is Dead theory, I don't buy one word of it; unlike the Paul is Dead theory, however, this one is neither fascinating nor even all that convincing. Niezgoda's theories and his interpretations of events, lyrics, and images, are almost always eye-rollingly dopey, and ultimately require enormous leaps in logic or imagination to make lyrics, album covers, or anything else fit his theory.

Part of the problem is that Niezgoda is completely humorless. Sarcasm, satire, puns and plays on words are completely lost on him. Lennon's wit--one of his most enduring traits--baffles Niezgoda, as does Lennon's use of metaphor and delight in wordplay. And Niezgoda--who calls himself a "life-long Beatles fan, collector, and scholar"--doesn't seem to be able to put Lennon or his quotes in context. He can't tell when Lennon is joking, bragging, or being dismissive. He's absolutely tone deaf.

Anyway, to spare you from ever having to read this thing, I'm going to give you a rundown of some of Niezgoda's claims to give you an idea of just how loopy, and how spurious, Niezgoda and his claims can be.

Early on, in a chapter titled "Bewitchery of the Masses," Niezgoda asks how to explain the enormous effect the Beatles had on their fans. How does one account for the swooning, the fainting, the screaming? Could it perhaps be their undeniable charisma or talent? Ridiculous, Niezgoda says; those are exactly the kinds of "intangible" and "indescribable" qualities that manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin ascribed to the band--and they're indescribable, Niezgoda says, because they were a gift from the Devil. So, Niezgoda's first "evidence" of demonic influence is Beatlemania itself, in all its inexplicable, unexplainable wonder.

It's not enough to sell one's sell to the Devil, though--as Niezgoda explains earnestly, one must also do all he can to actively deride God and religion. Therefore, any time Lennon mentions God, religion, Christ, or his soul, Niezgoda pounces. While he naturally makes hay of the "bigger than Jesus" statement--though not as much as one might expect, giving it only eight pages--any other reference to God is dissected looking for hidden meaning. For example, when John Lennon, following the massive Shea Stadium concert in 1965, remarked that it was "louder than God," Niezgoda arches an eyebrow curtly. "Why did he chose that analogy?" Niezgoda demands. And when an exhausted Lennon tells childhood friend Pete Shotton at the height of Beatlemania that he often feels he's sold his soul, the nonplussed Niezgoda can only take the most literate Beatle literally.

Niezgoda is at his most bizarre, though, when analyzing music, lyrics and album covers. The intricate, interwoven images on the cover of Revolver don't trouble him all that much--but he's convinced that the album's name has to be a foreshadowing of the kind of gun that would be used to kill Lennon fourteen years later. Certainly, the name Revolver has nothing to do with the fact that vinyl records were played by placing them on a turntable that revolved at a certain speed--thus making any record, in a sense, a "revolver," right? Again, that sort of word play is lost on Niezgoda.

He's more fascinated by the infamous "butcher cover" for the Yesterday ... And Today album--with the Beatles in butcher smocks covered with dismembered dolls and raw meat--which Niezgoda is all but certain is Lennon's nod to "the most reviling sacrifice to Satan . . . the killing of young innocent children--infanticide." Niezgoda quotes Lennon's enthusiasm for the project ("I would say I was a lot of the force behind it going out," Lennon once said) as the final word on the impetus behind the photo--but either doesn't seem to realize or completely ignores the fact that both Paul McCartney and photographer Robert Whitaker have claimed credit for the idea, too. Whitaker's version, in fact, holds up to the most scrutiny, as the photo was actually part of a series of artsy photos Whitaker staged, including one in which George Harrison appears to be driving nails into Lennon's head. Lord knows how Niezgoda would have interpreted THAT photo.

The real stretch, however, comes in his scouring of the cover of A Collection of Beatles Oldies -- a relatively obscure album released in the UK and Australia in late 1966. While the Paul is Dead crowd point to the drawing of the car getting ready to crash into the lounging figure's head as a "death clue" for Paul's alleged death by automobile, Niezgoda's got something much more clever in mind: "[The figure's] right crossed leg, with only slight imagination, can be seen as the letter `J,' and it rests aside the word `OLDIES' . . . [t]ogether, they spell `JOLDIES'" -- or, as Niezgoda explains, "JOL (John Ono Lennon) DIES." Cue the thunderclap and opening notes of Toccata and Fugue. And don't try to tell Niezgoda that Lennon was 16 months away from changing his middle name from Winston to Ono when the album was released -- he's already ahead of you: it's a "craftily constructed prophecy," don't you know?

Sgt. Pepper also falls under a similar scrutiny -- although, unlike the Paul Is Dead gang, Niezgoda isn't as much interested in the front cover as he is the back, where the Beatles, with the album's lyrics superimposed over them, appear against a blood red background (nothing is ever red in Niezgoda's book; it's always blood red!). McCartney famously stands with his back to the camera--"turning his back on John and what he knew of the fatal pact," Niezgoda says solemnly--but the real clue lies in the layout of the lyrics from George's "Within You, Without You": the words "lose their soul" are perfectly centered on John's waistline. Pretty sinister, huh?

Even sillier is Niezgoda's discussion of the drumhead on the cover of Pepper, an image already overanalyzed by the Paul Is Dead aficionados. Niezgoda relies on the same parlor trick as the Paul Is Dead gang, using a mirror to bisect the words LONELY HEARTS (which, he points out sinisterly, are in a different font from the rest of the drum!) to reveal a messy I ONE IX HE DIE. For the Paul Is Dead people, this convoluted hidden message means that Paul died on November 9th (with "I ONE" meaning eleven, and IX meaning 9, for 11/9). Not for Niezgoda. Instead, he reads this as a taunt from Satan to John Lennon: "I won! Nine, he die!" Nine, Niezgoda explains, is the day Lennon died--because it was already December 9th in Liverpool, you see, when John died in New York on December 8th.

That kind of convoluted numerology, in fact, is where Niezgoda becomes wearying. Lennon himself made much of the number 9 in his life--he was born on the ninth and included the number in the title of several songs--but Niezgoda comes up with some truly inane readings and sleights-of-hand to arrive at his nines. For example, he points out that if you dial the name JOHNONOLENNON on a push button phone, you get 564666536666 - and wow, look at all those sixes, which are really just nines standing on their heads. And only Niezgoda could read "One After 909" as an omen--it's waaay too confusing to explain how it predicts Lennon's death down to the day--all the way down to a reference to Yoko as a his "bag."

The punch my ticket moment, though--the moment I knew Niezgoda was in way over his head--arrives on page 122, as Niezgoda does some headscratching over the band's name:

"'The Beatles' was a curious choice of name for a band, especially because it's spelled wrong. In 1961, John wistfully explained to Mersey Beat where he got the idea: `It came in a vision--a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, `From this day on, you are Beatles with an A'"

With an absolutely straight face, Niezgoda explains that Lennon had to spell "beetles" incorrectly so he could use the letters to make an anagram of "seal bet," hiding in plain sight his pact with the Devil. As for the man on a flaming pie, Niezgoda points out, his gears churning, that "man on a flaming pie" scrambles as "pagan flame minion."

Apparently, the pun on "beat" in the word "Beatles" seems to never have occurred to the humorless Niezgoda--he's too busy making scary sounds and tut-tut noises. (As for the "pagan flame minion," you can also anagram "man on a flaming pie" to make "film an ape moaning," but that hardly means Lennon had hidden aspirations of being a voyeuristic zookeeper). I can't tell if Niezgoda is being intentionally ridiculous here, or if he's really that clueless.

Niezgoda's last chapter contains two incredibly odd bits of contrived thinking and backwards logic. The first is a way-out reading of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake - a book published a year before Lennon's birth, but which Niezgoda is nonetheless convinced contains prophecies of Lennon's life and death. And that's mostly because, at certain points over its 600 pages, Joyce uses words like "beetle," "pepper" and "funeral."

The second is a wacky bit of mathematics in which Niezgoda chooses three songs he believes "place the final moments of John Lennon's life to music": "I Am The Walrus," "Revolution 9," and "#9 Dream." Niezgoda informs us that the total elapsed time from the moment Lennon was shot to the moment he died was 17 minutes--and I think we're supposed to get chills when he informs us that the total time playing time for those three songs is 17 minutes, 42 seconds. Niezgoda provides us with absolutely no reason why there should or should not be a correlation between the playing time of these songs and Lennon's last moments. It's a completely nonsensical premise and farcical train of thought, and we're supposed to somehow be spooked by it.

But that sort of spurious thinking is the norm for Niezgoda. His premise is a bizarre one to begin with, but The Lennon Prophecy is full of so many thin, lame, and eye-rollingly ridiculous theories that it's impossible to take seriously. Yet, Niezgoda does. And "no one," he writes in his wistful introduction, "is sorrier than I about what is written here." Except maybe those of us who've read it.


Magical & Mystery Lennon
2009-09-05 - "The Lennon Prophecy" has already started fierce debate with people taking sides. I have to say that it's a book I'm glad I bought. I think it was worth the money and an enjoyable if disturbing read.
I was around when John Lennon first became famous. I can remember the Beatles first appearance on "Thank Your Lucky Stars" a British pop show in, I think, 1963. From what I saw of the Beatles on the News, in interviews and so on, I--like everyone I knew--was charmed from the outset. The Beatles had that "special something" which attracted. Though I prefer other kinds of music, I have continually listened to their music if only for nostalgic reasons.
However, as Niezgoda shows in his book, there was another side to Lennon of which we were oblivious.
Parts of that side are presented in his overall objective book. The facts are recorded facts, many of which are hearsay. Though they are hearsay, it does not mean they are not true. Though hearsay can be false, we have to see if it fits in with the facts, otherwise. Mostly, in "The Lennon Prophecy" I'd say that it does. Mostly, that is, but not always.
I am inclined to believe the outrageous and vicious behaviour Lennon indulged in towards others--especially religious people--as reported by those who knew him well. I do so because they were there, they were credible witnesses, and because of his troubled childhood:
I personally have worked with and known people from troubled backgrounds, as John Lennon had, who have reacted with such hatred, anger and resentment towards others. Those people could also be calm and charming otherwise, as John Lennon was.
Sometimes when Niezgoda presents actual facts, such as the picture with Lennon next to the initials of his assassin, we have to ask if it's simple co-incidence, and ask if the author is reading too much into things. Sometimes it was difficult to figure out. For one thing, if co-incidences happen a little too often, they have to be regarded as more than co-incidence.
I did not see this book, as one reviewer suggested, having tones of anti-Semitism. I found it to be the opposite, especially where it exposes Lennon himself in a brutal mood making cruel anti-Semitic statements to a Jewish piano player. He was so aggressive that the horrified onlookers were too afraid to intervene as the pianist was reduced to tears. There is criticism and no sympathy at all for Lennon's anti-Semitism.
I can remember John Lennon's outrageous mocking of Christ back in 1969 with the song "The Ballad of John & Yoko", putting himself on a par with Jesus Himself. The refrain claimed the press were trying to crucify Lennon by not giving him a chance. What he omitted from the song was that he was turned back at Southampton because he didn't have his passport--as anyone else would have been--and not because of who he was.
I can also remember being annoyed at friends in a disco in the 1970s who were dancing to Lennon's "Power to the People" because they were agreeing with the words. John Lennon hardly exhibited the lifestyle of a committed socialist. (On the contrary, it was more like that of a socialist politician!) And when his song "Imagine" was released, I opined that he was being somewhat hypocritical; especially considering the line "image no possessions" coming from a man who had far more possessions than the overwhelming majority of human beings!
Lennon was well known to be involved in the occult. He openly advocated Transcendental Meditation, and his visits with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were publicly recorded, and they actually contradicted any aspects of spirituality in "Imagine"--a song which implied that ignoring all religions and politics would lead to "a brotherhood of man." So much for the Maharishi and so much for "Power to the People"!
Again, the circumstances of his death showed satanic strangeness as well as precision. Lennon owned the building where the film "Rosemary's Baby" was filmed, and he even lived on the same level as the flat where, in the film, the anti-Christ was conceived and born. It was outside that building where he was shot. Here, also, Niezgoda builds up a convincing picture of satanic involvement.
Lennon was also known to use hallucinogenic drugs. The reason many young people of my generation took LSD--including peers of my own--was because the Beatles advocated their use.
Such drugs open people up to occult forces. That is undeniable. Indeed, some occult religions use hallucinogens for that very reason.
One thing that many older people felt when John Lennon was in his heyday was that he was a confused and foolish young man. He irritated them, as he did my own father. But no-one, then could have conceived that he was involved in anything satanic. It is sad to think that he may have been. But that's how Satan always works: behind the scenes.
There was another thing I did pick up on in the book, though I don't believe that the author intended it or was even insinuating it. Though he did show how Lennon and the Beatles' fame was almost immediate, it made me consider how the same thing has happened to other people who have virtually rocketed onto the world scene to international fame and adulation.
This happened with Adolf Hitler, it happened--very recently--with President Obama--and it happened with John Lennon.
All three men have several things in common: They had all been in obscurity and then they all rapidly shot to fame. That fame was international. They spellbound others to the point of adulation as if they were gods. Nothing would be heard against them from their worshippers, even if objective statements or proven facts.
It is interesting that the prophecies in the Bible regarding anti-Christ related to someone who is the same kind of personality.
Anti-Christ is first and foremost a man of peace [Daniel 8:25]. Hitler got to power by making the claim to be a man of peace as has Obama. John Lennon's fans loved him because he claimed to be the same. Hitler also claimed to be a man of the people who came from the people as does Obama. John Lennon did so too. Neither Hitler nor Lennon lived like the people. They both had nothing but contempt for them. We can see that from what history shouts clearly of Hitler. Lennon's own songs show that he was the same, let alone what "The Lennon Prophecy" clearly shows. Well, Obama's lifestyle needs no comment here as to whether he lives like the average person! In the first place he is a politician and like ALL politicians speaks for this world. Jesus Christ did not, He gave His life for it and said, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive" [John 5:43], speaking of the Anti-Christ to come in the last days.
Niezgoda does not say those things in his book, but they led me to think along those lines.
I'm still not sure whether John Lennon sold his soul to the devil. What I am sure of is that the devil led this troubled young man away from God and that he fell for it. The saddest part of that is, he influenced millions of young people to go the way he went. And Lennon, like Hitler, still has many worshippers who will not hear a word said against him, true or not. I think I can safely say, though, is that Lennon has more worshippers than Hitler.
I use the term "worshipper" in the Judeo-Christian sense: Whatever you put before the true God is your god, and you therefore worship it.
When I think of John Lennon--or Hitler, Stalin, the last few British Prime Ministers, US Presidents, sports stars and rock stars--I wish they all would have/still would ponder/pondered on the words of Jesus Christ "For what would it profit a man if he gained the whole world and suffered the loss of his soul."
Either way, John Lennon got a bad deal. The book shows that much. I would recommend it. It's up to you to come to your own conclusion.



When The Devil Went Up To London
2009-07-21 - Mankind has always had a fascination for the dark side of the spiritual realm and its ruler, AKA: the Devil. When great tragedy or hardships occur it's more often than not attributed to the Evil One. However there are other more subtle methods by which the Devil has been said to influence the affairs of humanity. One of them has been romanticized in literature and folklore for centuries, the selling of one's immortal soul for temporary fame and fortune in this life. It's the infamous "Pact with the Devil". This is the subject matter of `The Lennon Prophecy' by Joseph Niezgoda.

I found the book to be well written and enjoyable. It also contained a lot of information about Lennon's life that I was unaware of, however I must confess that I'm not a big Lennon fan and haven't read much about him so said information may not be new to others. Mr. Niezgoda also does a solid job at pointing out the degree of hatred that John Lennon felt for Christianity. In many religious circles such seemingly unprovoked vehement feelings towards the Christian faith would in and of itself be a strong indicator that something beyond the norm was involved in inflaming such hostility.

However the important issue here is whether or not the author was able to convince the reader as to the validity of his hypothesis concerning the existence of a Faustian pact between Lennon and the Devil. It's here that the book either succeeds or fails. The litmus test for such a determination isn't whether or not the reader wholly embraces Mr. Niezgoda's belief, but whether or not he succeeds in planting a kernel of doubt and inquiry in your mind as to the possibility. As for me, he didn't convince me, but the kernel was planted. In my estimation that makes `The Lennon Prophecy' a success.

THE LENNON PROPHECY
2009-07-13 - VERY INTERESTING BOOK AND WORTH READING....ALSO, QUITE AN EDUCATION...I WAS COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO LENNON'S DEATH....

STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO ANY AND ALL INTERESTING IN KNOWING MORE ABOUT LENNON..AND HIS ULTIMATE DEMISE.....

gimmie some truth
2009-05-31 - More like NO STARS. TOTAL poppycock, garbage, malarkey, moralistic lies, funnymentalist fabrications and dross porkies all writ down for the willingly naive to lay out their farthings and take the bait. Instead, buy yourself a pint and drink a toast to our Johnny, may his memory live forever, or buy Ray Coleman's Lennon, or The Life, or I Met the Walrus, or Lennon Legend for a good read about our favorite scouser . But don't be a mugg mate.