“Peace & Love”: Lennon never so relevant

TRTTTRTRETE“Imagine there’s no heaven/It’s easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us, only sky”. These are the immortal verses of John Lennon which come to mind after a first dive into the photographic exhibition “Bob Gruen: John Lennon, The New York Years” proposed as part of the 2024 edition of Medimexin the presence of the same author of the shots, known for having been the official photographer of the English singer-songwriter and frontman of The Beatles, as well as his great friend, in the last nine years of his life; those New Yorkers and of great introspection lived in symbiosis with their partner Yoko Ono.

Bob Gruen he moved among his photographs exhibited at MArTa as if he were climbing over time crystals sensitive to the slightest rustle. From his ancient gaze breathed the air of the wise old man who has nothing to let himself be told: saw the musical twentieth century born and grow in front of his lens from the privileged porthole of the Led-Zeppelin plane; he photographed Rock when it wasn’t yet called Rock – the same goes for the thousand subgenres – and he immortalized the legend of John Lennon in some of the most iconic moments of his life. One of the greatest living music photographerswho with his art has captured many of the bands that were the harbingers of modern sound, has succeeded in the feat of narrating a universe buried in record shops and in the hearts of enthusiasts, starting – in tandem with the artistic director Cesare Veronica – from a simple yet revolutionary concept: peace.

John Lennon has never been just a musical icon, but his large crowd of followers has always been inspired by his social commitment on issues of collective interest (just think of the aforementioned lyrics of “Imagine”). Gruen himself underlined how the former President of the USA, Richard Nixon wanted to expel Lennon for his fervent opposition to the Vietnam War. The fact that during a public participation festival like Medimex one talks so openly about an urgent need for peace, considering the wars that have been tearing Europe and the Middle East apart for some years, would, in theory, be normal. Today it seems, indeed, unconventional to hear talk of peace in an institutional moment – albeit covered in musical haze – like the Medimex, as this dirty word (peace, precisely) seems destined to be expunged from the vocabulary of the good citizen in place of mystified supranational interests.

In Gruen’s photos, which can be consulted at the same price as the ticket for the visit to the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto until 14 July, you can breathe the history of music, but also the history of the twentieth century. It is no coincidence that the press outlet, in the presence of the museum director, Stella Falzoneoccurred right against the backdrop of photo of Lennon with the Statue of Liberty, produced in response to Nixon’s pusillanimous threats. Threats that today’s citizens, perhaps less aware and socially active than yesterday, know all too well, ending up huddling on the beach waiting for “things” to get better.

Bob Gruen poses next to the photograph he took of John Lennon in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York City

The most captivating sequence among those on display, there is no denying it, is the one in which John Lennon appears dressed in the T-shirt with the inscription “New York City”. As Gruen recalled, John wanted to live there because that was the center of the world and two thousand years earlier, for the same reason, he would have been in Rome. John seems to have been very keen on appearing with the NYC brand, so much so that he cut the sleeves of the t-shirt himself, making it into a slightly more “American-style” tank top. And to think that the photographs in the booklet were taken by Gruen on the same day “Walls and Bridges” from 1974… From the slew of photographs exhibited at MArTa an interior reflection cannot escape: isn’t art itself, in this case music, able to tell the story of humanity better than any academic text? The image hits the mark before the textbut the testimony on film provided by Gruen – who began his career by chance, taking photographs of “friends'” bands, only to be recruited by record companies who, having recognized his skills, allowed him to “pay the bills” – it is holistic of a world that didn’t know it was changing at such a fast pace.

John Lennon and his t-shirt

The New York Dolls’ Glam Rock itself didn’t know it was called “Glam Rock”: while Gruen was photographing it, he was not aware that one day we would talk about a movement in the past tense, because only by looking back is it possible to label events. At the time; in the wonderful era when The Clash they went to Bob Gruen’s house to eat a spaghetti dinner with friends and he photographed them understage, also acting as their pseudo-driver, he captured on film “what was happening”: nothing more, nothing less. It was Punk dripping devastation Gruen’s total house, between ripped jeans (when they weren’t in fashion) and hair as unlikely as the authors who wore it. And the photos, for Punk, were free, but from groups like Kansas And Boston wheat began to permeate Bob’s pockets, commissioned by newspapers that had understood the eye of the American photographer.

Not only John Lennon and Yōko Ono in the rooms of the MArTa, but also The Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol, The Ramones, Sid Vicious, Led Zeppelin, Kiss and many other artists who were harbingers of the cultural and musical revolution of the last century, appear as wise sacred icons to genuflect to ask for the grace of wanting to rediscover, if not that sound, at least the courage to produce a new one, which is fueled by a living fire of passion and vindication, and not exclusively aimed at the pecuniary amount to be received in one’s current account following the millions of streaming reproductions which continue, progressively, to obliterate an idea of ​​free, instinctive, healthily angry music, which torments the powerful of the world when they attack to peace, and that it does not stop at the onanism of followers on social media. One wonders, looking at Lennon and the others hanging on the wall: Who would have photographed the legendary Bob today? For whom it may concern: Gruen saw the birth of Rock by portraying his namesake, Dylanwho picked up the electric guitar on 25 July 1965 on the occasion of the Newport Rock Festival. From that day on, the world would never be the same again. “You may say I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one/I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will live as one”.

*All photos by Simone Calienno