On John Lennon and Glenn Gould - kindred souls that just did not know it!

John Winston Lennon

Glenn Herbert Gould

 Acerbic. Sharp. Cynical. Contradictory.Compassionate. Authentic. Mesmerising. Brilliant. Enigmatic. It might be a coincidence that Glenn Gould and John Lennon were both born under the zodiac sign of Libra but I've been thinking about both men and musicians for a while, and have found them to have far more in common than Gould would ever admit!

On the surface, there appears to be little evidence that their paths ever crossed. One can speculate that Lennon might have come across Gould's Solitude Trilogy radio documentaries, via Yoko Ono's friendship and collaborative history with John Cage, a composer with whom Gould also communicated and collaborated. There's no definite proof that Lennon ever heard Gould's documentaries, but The Beatles' Revolution Number 9 uses the same recording techniques (loops, overdubs, sound effects, noise addition) that Gould himself used in the Trilogy, as well as musical innovations that were also used by John Cage, Beethoven and Bach! Ian Hammond goes into more detail about the possible sources of inspiration for Revolution Number 9 in his essay on this explorative piece, but apart from that, there is no evidence that The Beatles ever knew or even cared about Gould's work. Gould's opinions on The Beatles, on the other hand, are well documented - it is safe to say that he had very few good words to say about most of their recording output, and was almost as damning towards them as he was to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

How is it that two men who lived such radically different lives could have anything in common? One, a caustic Liverpudlian who would go on to create music that would redefine the 20th Century. The other, a Canadian icon who would shatter the sterile "classical music" industry, and abandon the concert platform at the height of his fame. Yes, on the surface, these two brilliant minds appear to have made their mark on the world, on humanity and on music in very different ways - in a sense, I would never be able to choose between Lennon's creative genius or Gould's puritanical art. But I was drawn to Lennon in the same way as I was drawn to Gould - through their musicianship and later, through their brilliant, if sometimes flawed personalities. They were both geniuses, yet their lives were shaped by the decisions they made and the often controversial disregard they both had for authority, for the press and for the commodification of their art.

Glenn Gould spoke about his dislike of The Beatles in a conversation with Jonathan Cott - who, as fate would have it, was the last person to interview John Lennon. Cott (being writer/critic for Rolling Stone) was not going to accept a lukewarm dismissal, so Gould had to articulate his thoughts on the subject - though I'm sure Gould was bright enough to know Cott might have asked him about The Beatles, given the writer's own background! Gould claimed to be irritated by the "middle period Beatles" with their "sitars" and "new-fangled mysticism" - in a sense, he blamed The Beatles for the dominance of harder rock music within the popular music genre. For Gould, who had grown up with the Big Band sound, The Beatles represented the end of an era in  popular music that he felt was more refined, more sophisticated than the loud, simplistic rock music the Merseyside lads created, so he turned on them in typical Gouldian fashion. I honestly don't believe for one second that Glenn Gould really hated the music of The Beatles as much as he claimed to - I think it was simply the fact that he did not know many other rock bands, and because The Beatles were so highly regarded by composers such as Ned Rorem (who called them the greatest tunewriters since Schubert), Gould felt he had to intervene with a typically convoluted criticism. I sometimes feel (and this is the case with Gould's criticism of Mozart's Piano Sonatas) that Gould could be so over the top in his dismissal of someone or something because he felt he had something in common with the person in question but could not bring himself to admit to it, or that he really admired the person in question and was a bit irritated, a bit insecure about the fact that they had done creative things that he himself wanted to but could not find the means to do so. Before all the crazy Gouldians start screaming at me, I'm not suggesting that Gould was any less of a genius for thinking and feeling this way. It is a very basic, human response to aggresively criticise or outwardly dislike the very same person you deeply admire or love (don't most teenagers do this when falling in love for the first time?). I don't think Gould was obsessed with Lennon, obviously, or The Beatles for that matter, but I don't believe for one second that he was as ignorant of their music as he claimed to be. In Gould's case, it is just that apart from his mother and one other teacher, he never had any other formal musical education - so he was exposed to a restricted number of composers, allowed to form his opinions early, and never really given the push to expand his horizons or challenge his preconceptions.

Yet, both Glenn Gould and John Lennon were not afraid to take a chance when it came to music. Gould was brave enough to record interesting, out-there repertoire, (the Goldbergs or Schoenberg's Piano Concerto) that other pianists would not touch, and even braver to record this music in a way that completely surpassed anything that had been done before. Lennon was brave enough to take Rock and Roll by the balls and write songs that summed up the most fundamental of human emotions - love - in a way that was edgy and authentic, pure and visceral. Take "I want to hold your hand" or "Help" - both songs that produce the same effect on me that Gould's Goldberg Variations did. Even Gould admitted he could not fault "I want to hold your hand" - it sums up Lennon's genius in under three minutes. 

Despite their seemingly tough exterior, both Glenn Gould and John Lennon demonstrated that even geniuses are only human - neither of them were exempt from criticism and scrutiny throughout their lives (something which continues decades after their death) and this made them insecure, distrustful and often painfully shy, despite their willingness to embrace new media and technology to share things that were close to their heart. And even though Gould was, in many ways, "the last puritan" and Lennon a "drug taking hippie", their own personalities and the image they presented to the outside world was very different to the kind of men they were behind closed doors. In this respect, they couldn't be more similar. Sadly, the fact that both Gould and Lennon were such enigmatic, creative people meant that the world could never get enough of them. And despite their love for and obsession with their art,both men probably wanted nothing more than to be left alone - this is reflected in Gould's quest for "Solitude" and Lennon's five year hiatus as a house-husband. There is no question about the fact that at their best, Gould and Lennon were incredibly loving, compassionate, kind men with a hatred for injustice of any kind - this is reflected in Lennon's numerous Anti-War campaigns and Gould's bequest of his entire estate to the Toronto Humane Society and the Salvation Army. In fact, their love of animals is something that is often glossed over - Lennon was an ailurophile who always had many cats no matter where he lived. Gould, a dog lover, could not bear cruelty to animals, and said he got on better with animals than with people.

Yet when it came to relationships with people, Gould and Lennon could be as cutting and cold, as they could be generous and giving. I find revelations of Gould's "affair" with Cornelia Foss utterly pointless and dreary - his private love life is meant to be just that - private. But what can be confirmed is that he was as obsessive and passionate in love as he was when immersed in a musical project - provided his other half could accept his madness and genius for what it was, without any need for him to change or compromise. The same can be said of Lennon's relationship with Cynthia Lennon, and his behaviour towards Cynthia and Julian when the latter was still a child. In many ways, Yoko Ono was probably the only woman who "got" Lennon, in that she accepted him for what he was and who he was, a flawed, imperfect, brilliant man with more good qualities than bad. Sadly for Gould, there was nobody, man or woman, who was willing to love him as he was - Cornelia Foss stated that while she lived with Gould for four years, and he was also excellent with her children, the arrangement and environment was too unstable, too difficult long term, which is why she returned to Lukas Foss and reconciled with him. If Cornelia Foss is to be believed, then Glenn Gould was more "human" than some people like to believe (the same sort who think that God and the church were the sole inspiration for Johann Sebastian Bach's art). He was passionate and not repressed sexually, and the very fact that he chose to fall for a married woman and be with her makes him have more in common with someone like John Lennon (who left Cynthia, fell in love with Yoko, then went off for a year with May Pang).

In December 1980, when John Lennon was shot to death, Glenn Gould had begun thinking about re-recording Bach's Goldberg Variations. He was approaching fifty, and was excited about revisiting this immense work with which he had begun his career as a recording artist. He was also strangely philosophical about life itself - and had become fixated with the notion that he would not live past the age of fifty. Lennon was no stranger to Eastern mysticism and theories of reincarnation, but then again, neither was Gould. Both men were fascinated by the idea of reincarnation and the multi-life view - Gould spent quite a bit of time reading about the hereafter, numerology and mysticism and was convinced he would be reincarnated a couple of years after his death as Sam Caldwell. Lennon, who had been to India, followed the Maharishi, then seen through him and written about his experiences in the brilliant "Sexy Sadie",  also had a strong idea of reincarnation. He simply said “I imagine that death is like getting out of one car and getting into another.”

If that is true, then both John Lennon and Glenn Gould are very much here, the question is where - or "within whom?" Does it matter? I don't think so - I'm just fascinated by the fact that when I listen to a John song like Isolation, or hear Gould's distinctive humming in a Sarabande by Bach, it produces the exact same reaction within me. A combination of bliss at the beauty of the music itself, and sadness that both men are not alive and creating right here and now. They may be long gone, but I can't help but think that if their take on the afterlife is to be believed, both John Lennon and Glenn Gould are hard at work in a recording studio somewhere, adding overdubs to contrapuntal poetry. Gould might even have gotten over his youthful dislike of The Beatles, and I wouldn't be surprised if he took it upon himself to play the Baroque interlude in "In my Life" with John singing and playing guitar. There might be a few cats in this studio in the clouds, and an old stray dog as well - come to think of it, when I die, I very much hope I get the chance to express my crazy thoughts and ideas to both these creative minds in person. Until then, I can only hope that I go on as truthfully and with as much integrity as I can summon up, and using both Glenn Gould and John Lennon as examples in how to live your life without selling your soul or yourself for the sake of fame and money.

© Karishmeh Felfeli