Musée de la Musique. Paris.
20 October 2005 - 25 June 2006
JOHN LENNON. UNFINISHED MUSIC.
Saturday, October 22nd, 2005
On Wednesday 19 of October, Yoko Ono attended the inauguration of a exhibition on the work of John Lennon, titled JOHN LENNON. UNFINISHED MUSIC, in the Museum of the Music at Paris. The exhibition, located in the complex of “Cite de la Musique” (City of the music) in La Villette, coincide with the 65th anniversary of his birth and the 25th anniversary of his murder, and it will last from Thursday 20 of October until Sunday 25 of June of 2006.
Taking advantage of a flying and quick trip to Paris, because of the Amparo’s 40 birthday, we seized the opportunuty to visit the exhibition on Saturday 22 October.
This exhibition consists of 2 plants. The First one (350 m2) is divided in 5 stays, and it is centered in John’s life since his childhood until the disolution of the Beatles.
Downstairs, we can find a big white panel with 21 photos (15 of them different). Alongside, a television screen where we can see those 15 photos.
These are the fifteen photos:
1946- John at age of 6, with a school hat
1962- Astrid Kirchherr’s photo at Hamburg
1962- Astrid Kirchherr’s photo at Hamburg
1965- Robert Whitaker’s color photo (sun glasess)
1965- Robert Whitaker’s color photo (black & red)
1965- Robert Whitaker’s B&W photo
1965- Robert Whitaker’s photo (flower in eye)
1966- Robert Whitaker’s photo (British flag drawn in face)
1967- Richard Avedon psichodelic photo
1969- Iain MacMillan’s photo of John and Yoko
1971- Iain MacMillan’s photo. John Legend
1974- Bob Gruen’s photo. NYC T-Shirt - Denim Jacket
1974- Bob Gruen’s 'Walls And Bridges Portrait' photo
1980- Allan Tannenbaum’s photo
1986- Andy Warhol’s photo
In the center of this first room, we can find a red telephone box, where we can listen to an extract of the Dave Sholin’s interview, December 8th 1980.
The first stay is titled “Childhood and Adolescence (1940-1958)”, where we find a panel with the map of Liverpool, with 10 emblematic photos of the city.
Those 10 photos are the Maternity where John was born, Julia’s home, Menlove Avenue, Strawberry Field, Dovedale, St. Peter's Church, Penny Lane, the Cavern, the LIPA and the Pier Head.
This leads us to a room where 2 videos were projected, taken from de John Lennon’s Legend DVD: Mother and Working Class Hero, with interviews in audio from Mike Douglas Show of 1972, with a total duration of 11:20 minutes. Framed in the walls of this room, we can find two John’s original drawings from 1952 (they later appeared in the LP Walls & Bridges). One is Indians and the other Football. We can also see two cartoons drawn by pen, Hairy Smelly Smith and Hairy B. Turner, both of 1957, and also a wonderful reproduction of the Daily Howl Diary of 1950, with 10 pages. A treasure!!!. Alongside, the manuscripts of In My Life and Working Class Hero.
The second room is titled “The Beatles in concert (1958-1966)” includes 3 showcases. In the first one, we can see a neon label of the Star Club over a photo of itself and a John’s harmonic. The second one is dedicated to the Cavern Club, with a poster of it, next to a Rickenbacker guitar and an amplifier.
The third one is dedicated to the Shea Stadium performance, with a Gibson J160E acoustic guitar and a Rickenbacker 325/12 electric guitar.
The following room, the third, is titled “Beatlemania (1963-1966)” . In a display cabinet, we can see a lot of memorabilia from the private collection of Christian and Sebastien Himoun, of Covigny, where we can find guitars of toy, scrapbooks, dolls, pennants, etc. In the center of the room, on a circular platform, we were with an amplifier VOX AC30, a guitar Epiphone E2305D Casino, a Gibson EJ160E guitar and another Gibson J160E, an electric VOX Continental organ, as well as a manuscript of Help!.
The fourth room is titled “The Beatles, John Lennon and the cinema” (1964-1970)” , and we can find a big showcase with 5 suits: the one that used in the TV broadcasting of All You Need is love, in 1967, the white smoking used in the film Magical Mystery Tour, in the sequence of ‘Your Mother Should Know’, a repro of the Sgt. Pepper's suit, a military jacket used in 1966 in the Life magazine and the typical one of Douglas A. Millings of 1963.
Opposite to the showcase we find a cinema screen, with 9 armchairs, in which images from the three films directed by Richard Lester are projected: ‘A Hard Day's Night’, ‘Help!’ and ‘How I Won The War’. Alongside, the psichodelic photography of John by Richard Avedon, as well as the psichodelic photo made to all the 4 Beatles. Besides, we can find posters of Yellow Submarine, “Au Secours” (Help), “4 garçons dans le Vent” (A Hard Day's Night) and “Come Ho Vinto la Guerra” (How I Won The War).
The fifth and last room of this first part of the exhibition is titled the ”Recording studio (1966-1970)”. In this section we accede to a repro of the Abbey Road recoding studio, with two George Martín’s photos, one with trombone in the head and another one with Norman Smith, as well as different recording instruments. Alongside, a mellodron M400.
The second plant (450 m2) is divided in 7 rooms. This plant is focused in John’s solo career, next to Yoko.
The first room, dedicated to Yoko, is titled “The Sixties: Fluxus & Andy Warhol. Yoko Ono and the Experimental Musical Scene (1966-1971)” . In this room we can see different objects from the first encounter of John and Yoko in Indica Gallery, in 1966, with the famous stairs with a magnifying glass hung of the ceiling and word YES written in it, an apple, a white chess, a half an armchair and, in a TV screen, we can see the Happening titled “Cut Piece”, of 1964. In this room, we can also see the famous “Acorns for Peace” and the “Peace Telephone”.
The second room, titled “Peace and Love (1968-1972)” , is dedicated to Johan and Yoko Amsterdam and Montreal Bed-in. We find a big bed, an acoustic guitar and “HAIR PEACE, BED PEACE” posters, as well as the John’s erotic drawings. In the back of the room, a screen with images of these events.
The following and third room is titled “Imagine (1971)”, where we find a white piano, used in the recording of Imagine, different photographies from this recording and the scores of the songs “Gime Some Truth” and “Crippled Inside”.
The 2 following rooms are titled “Sometime in New York City (1971/1972)” and “The Lost Weekend (1973/1974)” , and in them we can find different panels covering this frantic period in John’s life, with several photographies. Also, in a display cabinet, we can find a photography of the Elton John’s concert in New York, the Thanksgiving day of 1974, in which John went up to the stage to perform the songs “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “I Saw Her Standing There”, and the guitar used by John, a black Fender Telecaster Custom.
The following and sixth room is titled “Double Fantasy (1975-1980)” where we can find diffrerent collages made by John: “Ringo Starr and George Harrison” (1975), and “Elton John Animal”, “Table”, “Running Woman”, “Allien”, “Woman & Moon” and “Baby”, all of them of 1977.
In a display cabinet we can see the kimonos used by John and Yoko in a photographic session of November of 1980, and with wich they appeared in the videoclip “(Just Like) Starting Over”.
In a TV screen, with a total duration of 21.40 minutes, we can see videoclips from “Watching The Wheels”, “Beautiful Boys”, “Woman” and “(Just Like) Starting Over”, next to a Steinway piano used during the sessions of the Double Fantasy. Alongside, a cabin recreates the Hit Factory Studios. Inside we can listen “Starting Over” and “Beautiful Boy”, while we read the original scores of these songs.
The seventh and last room is the most emotional and touching one. Titled “The death of John (1980)”: a very small room where an emotive and terrifying document is projected. A filming titled “TEN MINUTES OF SILENCE FOR JOHN LENNON”, made by Raymond Depardon. It is simply that, the recording of the touching tribute dedicated to John by American people after his murder, that took place in Central Park, the 14 of December. The ten minutes of silence in New York’s Central Park allows a deep observation of the particularly immobile people, feelig the immense pain that produced John’s death in the people reunited there. The documentary moved all the assistants to the exhibition.
Finally, after the seven rooms, we can go through a runner in whose lateral we can observe different snapshots from the famous John Lennon’s wall in Prague.
The runner ends in another stay, titled “Names and Aphorisms of John Lennon”, where we can see diverse Yoko’s works like the “Tree of desires”, where you can write and hang the desire that you want. A beautiful way to finish the visit.
After leaving the museum, we went to te store, where you could buy the program of the exhibition (30 €), two posters, one giant (12 €) and another smaller (5 €), a postcard (1 €), as well as different books and cds.
Really, a very worthy exhibition that we hope can move to other cities.
Finally, taking advantage of the visit to the city of the light, we visited other places of Beatle interest, like the George V Hotel (where they stayed in 1964), the Olimpia and the Museum of Orsay, where are the paintints “The room of Vincent in Arlés”, 1889 by Van Gogh, that appear in the LP Pipes of Peace, and “Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe”, 1863, by Manet, that inspired to Paul for an scene of Give my Regards to Broad Street. Surely Paul had to visit the museum in 1983!
© 1998 MELGAR PRODUCTIONS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
©1998 Jordi and Amparo. ©2000 Jordi, Amparo and Jordi Jr. ©2002 Jordi, Amparo, Jordi Jr and Marian.
