Music
Ringo Starr recently approved of a book that imagines John Lennon living a long life before The Beatles reunite. Interestingly, the book was written by a noted country musician.
After The Beatles broke up, fans immediately wanted them to get back together. Ringo Starr recently approved of a book that imagines John Lennon living a long life before The Beatles reunite. Interestingly, a noted country musician wrote the book.
A new book focuses on John Lennon getting to perform at 1 last Beatles concert
Gary Burr is a songwriter known for his work in country music, including penning Patty Loveless’ “I Try to Think About Elvis” (which mentions The Beatles in passing). He also penned songs for Ringo. In a 2024 interview with The Tennessean, Burr said he wrote a book called Reunion that provides an alternate history of the Fab Four.
“[The story] starts with a rainy night in Hawaii and there’s a traffic accident and a young man in the back of the car is killed,” Burr said. “The man is [John’s killer] Mark David Chapman. So that means that in my world, my reality, he never did get to New York, he never did kill John. And 20 years later, for the reason that I lay out in the book, Paul needs to see if he could get the lads back together for one big last concert.”
Burr ran the concept by Ringo first. “We are friends and we’ve got a really good relationship,” he said. “And this is tricky. So when I started writing it, I didn’t want to do it without him knowing about it. So I called him up and I told him what I was doing and he was really sweet. He just said, ‘You know, I would never tell you what you can and can’t do with your art.’”
Why the book feels more tasteful than similar works of art
Any work of art that deals with or erases John’s murder has the capacity to be tasteless. Take a listen to The Cranberries’ “I Just Shot John Lennon” as proof. However, it seems that Burr approached his concept respectfully.
Furthermore, he had the good sense to ask Ringo his feelings on the matter. In some ways, The Beatles were a force for free expression, as they sang what they wanted to, even if the BBC banned their songs or disgruntled former fans burned their records. With that in mind, it’s nice to know that Ringo wanted Burr to follow his creative instincts.
Other works of art show John Lennon surviving
Burr is not the first or last artist to create a different story for The Beatles. Everyday Chemistry is a mashup album composed of bits and pieces of songs from the solo careers of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. The conceit of Everyday Chemistry is that it comes from an alternate universe where the band stayed together.
More recently, the comedy film Yesterday is about a singer who wakes up in a timeline where The Beatles never existed — and only he remembers their songs. Eventually, he meets an aged John, who was never a rock star in this dimension but found happiness anyway as a family man. In Yesterday, it is not clear whether John married his first wife, Cynthia Lennon, or his second wife, Yoko Ono.
We all wish John got to live a long life and Burr gave us a glimpse of what the “Instant Karma!” singer would have done in his old age.
