Reflections on the Death of Lucy Vodden

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet …

– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Lucy Vodden never met John Lennon. And she was but a child of ten, living quietly in a suburban British home, when, on the other side of the planet, Donald Johanson discovered the fossilized remains of the oldest known hominid skeleton. Yet Lucy nevertheless inspired both men indirectly, and left her mark on human history.

By pure chance, Lucy’s parents enrolled their daughter in 1967 at the same nursery school in Weybridge, England where John Lennon sent his son Julian. The two children often played together and shared a common passion for art (Lucy recalled once standing on opposite sides of a double easel with young Master Lennon; the two children splashed each other with paint). Julian drew a portrait of his friend floating in a field of stars, and presented it to his father with the explanation, “That’s Lucy in the sky with diamonds.” The name struck a chord with the Beatle, and inspired him to write his pop psychedelic masterpiece.

Lucy didn’t much like the tune. She told a reporter many years later that she felt uncomfortable with the lyrics’ drug-related connotations. (Lennon claimed the song’s vivid imagery was inspired by his readings of Lewis Carroll, and insisted that the title’s LSD acronym was entirely coincidental).

But Donald Johanson liked the song. Or at least some of the other scientists working alongside him in 1974 at an archeological dig in Hadar, Ethiopia liked it. Indeed, the workers at the site liked the tune so much, that they had it playing on a continuous loop while they were digging for fossils. When the team of researchers unearthed the fossilized remains of Australopithecus afarensis, they nicknamed the skeleton “Lucy,” in honor of the song. Many anthropologists now consider the ancient woman, whose bones lay hidden for more than three million years until Johanson found them, to be “the mother of all humanity.” She was also given the Amharic (Ethiopian) nickname “Dinkenesh,” which means “You are Beautiful,” though few westerners refer to her by the Billy Preston song title she evokes. Everyone just calls her “Lucy.”

Lucy Vodden died September 28, 2009 in London, from complications of lupus. In the last few months of her life, Julian Lennon renewed his acquaintance with her, and sent her cards and vouchers to support her gardening hobby. He never stated publically if he sent her a card decorated with splashes of children’s tempera paint.

Lucy left behind a husband, but no children. Yet she gave her name to one of the most iconic songs in popular music history, and in due course, passed it along to the “mother of mankind.” All in all, that’s not a bad way for a person to be remembered. To quote the Bard again, in his sonnet (17) wherein he compared his own verse with his muse’s possible progeny,

But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.

Classic Poems/Classic Rock

My middle-school-aged daughter’s English teacher recently had her examine the lyrics of some pop songs, looking for examples of poetic devices. I remember my own high school English teacher Joe Libis giving me the same assignment many years ago. But I think it might be more helpful if a teacher gave his students examples of pop lyrics which actually borrowed directly from literary works. Here are a few that I’ve always liked:

Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush retold the story Emily Bronte’s classic novel (from the ghost’s point of view!) in this song, and took it to the top of the British Charts in 1978. Pat Benatar covered it in 1980, but my favorite version is the Puppini Sisters’ cover from 2006.

Grow Old With Me – John Lennon took the first two lines of one of Robert Browning’s most beautiful love poems for his wife Elizabeth, and developed them into a love song for Yoko. Such a pity that he never completed a “finished” sounding version of this song before his death. Nevertheless, I much prefer the plaintiff “demo” version included on 1984’s Milk and Honey to the doctored and digitized version included on the 1998 Lennon Anthology.

... and while on the subject of John Lennon ...

I Am the Walrus includes not only a shout-out to that unfortunate kicking boy Edgar Allen Poe, but an early and decidedly peculiar version of “sampling” (with bits of dialogue from a BBC production of King Lear spliced onto the ending of the song).

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds got Lennon in trouble with teetotalers who noticed the “LSD” acronym in the title, but Lennon always insisted that the song’s imagery was inspired by his readings of Lewis Carroll (well, okay, maybe some of that wacky imagery was inspired by acid-trips too!)

Richard Cory – I heard Paul Simon’s song on the Sounds of Silence album years before I read Edwin A. Robinson’s actual poem, so maybe that has prejudiced me. But I’ve always preferred Mr. Simon’s version of the story to the poet’s original!

Romeo and Juliet – who but Dire Straits could re-write and sum-up Shakespeare’s immortal love poetry with the evocative line, “You and me, babe – how about it?”

Sister Moon – Sting made references to Faust and The Odyssey in Wrapped Around your Finger, and did some literary namedropping about “the old man in that book by Nabokov” in Don’t Stand So Close to Me, but he came right out and quoted Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 in this beautiful song.

And finally—

To Know Him is to Love Him – Phil Spector claimed this song was inspired by the epitaph on his father’s tombstone. Yet Bram Stoker used an almost identical phrase in the second chapter of his best-known novel. Dracula informs his real-estate agent that in anticipation of moving to Great Britain, he has been reading everything he can about the country, and the guide books have become “his friends.” The count then sums up: “Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her.” Fateful words indeed, when spoken by a dangerous man to his newly arrived houseguest …

The Fabs Try Out Their Acting Chops

While on the subject of The Beatles and The Bard, check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOpEZM6OEvI

This article is based on an essay I wrote in college back in the early 1980s. Versions of it have appeared on the websites “Beatles Ireland” and “Beatlefan/PLUS!”)

THE BEATLES AND THE BARD
Comparing Shakespeare's Sonnets 30 and 8 with the Beatles’ “In My Life” and “Hey Jude”
______________________

Sonnet Number Thirty

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancel’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a varnish’d sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan.

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.

In My Life

There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed;

Some forever, not for better,

Some have gone and some remain.

All these places have their moments

With lovers and friends I still can recall,

Some are dead and some are living -

In my life, I've loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers,

There is no one compares with you.

And these memories lose their meaning

When I think of love as something new.

Though I know I’ll never lose affection

For people and things that went before,

I know I’ll often stop and think about them,

In my life, I'll love you more.
___________________

Sonnet Number Eight

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,

Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother

Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

Sings this to thee: “Thou single wilt prove none.”

Hey Jude

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,

Take a sad song and make it better.

Remember to let her into your heart,

Then you can start to make it better.

Hey Jude, don’t be afraid,

You were made to go out and get her.

The minute you let her under your skin,

Then you can begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain,

Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.

For don’t you know that it’s a fool

Who plays it cool by making his world a little colder?

Hey Jude, don't let me down,

You have found her, now go and get her.

Remember to let her into your heart,

Then you can start to make it better.

So let it out and let it in, Hey Jude, begin,

You’re waiting for someone to perform with.

And don’t you know that it’s just you, Hey Jude, you do,

The movement you need is on your shoulder.

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,

Take a sad song, and make it better.

Remember to let her under your skin,

Then you can begin to make it better, better, better, better...
_____________________

So much has been written about how the Beatles changed the course of popular culture, introducing themes and musical arrangements that had never before been incorporated into traditional Top 40 songs. And yet most of the Beatles’ songs were based on the theme of love, in one form or another. And some of their lyrics bear a striking resemblance to the words of another ground-breaking English artist, William Shakespeare. Two songs in particular, John Lennon’s “In My Life” and Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude,” use similar imagery and tackle the same themes that Shakespeare addressed in his Sonnets Numbers 30 and 8.

“In My Life” and Sonnet 30 both compare reflections on lovers past with the hope of future love. Shakespeare spends the first twelve lines of his sonnet reminiscing about the sadness of his memories. But then he turns the tone of his poem around completely in his final couplet, closing with the happy thought of his new dear friend. Lennon, by contrast, divides his lyrics almost evenly between the “remembrances of things past” and the joy he finds with his new lover, dedicating a verse to each.

Yet the memories of past loves, dead friends and lost places from Lennon’s childhood continue to haunt him throughout both stanzas. And unlike Shakespeare, who proclaims that thinking on his new dear friend restores his losses and ends his sorrows, Lennon points out how the past and present are intertwined (“these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new”). One can almost picture both writers sitting in quiet rooms somewhere in England, lost in “sweet silent thought” as they reflect upon their sad life experiences, yet each feeling the urge to put pen to paper to celebrate the restorative power of finding a new love.

The lyrics to “Hey Jude” and Sonnet 8 approach the notion of “new love” from a different angle. In both poems, the narrator urges another person to seek a lover. However, Paul McCartney's lyrics differ more strongly from the Bard’s than Lennon’s did. McCartney uses several “stanzas” and a “chorus” (okay, verses and a “middle eight”!) to address the common theme of encouraging a young man to seek a lover and end his sadness. But both McCartney and Shakespeare begin and end their poems with similar invocations to “take a sad song and make it better.” Both also draw on the image of being weighed down by carrying a heavy burden alone. And knowing from Beatle history that Paul was inspired to write “Hey Jude” during a visit with Julian and Cynthia Lennon on the occasion of the Lennons’ divorce, I find an unexpected poignancy in my comparative reading of McCartney’s song with Shakespeare's lines,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother

Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing.

The lyrics to “Hey Jude,” of course, constitute barely half of the song, with the latter part of the composition taken up by an extended chorus of “na-na-nas” (a “speechless song” perhaps? Certainly Shakespeare was no stranger to “hey nonny nonnies”!) But the musical arrangement of McCartney’s song, which starts with a single voice and piano, adds acoustic guitar and soft background vocals, then fills up with drums, electric guitars, and finally a choir of singers and a swelling of orchestral support, echoes the sentiment which holds both poems together, that “thou single wilt prove none.”

The centuries that separate the publication of Shakespeare’s and the Beatles’ work saw myriad changes in language and lyrical style. Moreover, the restraints and conventions imposed by the two forms of poetry – writing words to fit the meter of a sonnet and the rhythm of a popular song – differ strongly. But the themes of lost love, fear of new beginnings, and the ultimate redemptive power of love, remain ever fresh.