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The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of the Death Clues of The Beatles

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One of the more fun and fascinating bits of Beatles lore has always been the whole "Paul Is Dead" hoax. The story spun by that particular hoax is that Paul McCartney allegedly died in an automobile accident in 1966 - a "stupid bloody Tuesday" - and the heartbroken Beatles decided to soldier on without him, replacing McCartney with a lookalike, but planting clues of Paul's demise in Beatles songs and on album covers. Books could be written about the hoax - and, in fact, a few have - but now comes Joseph Niezgoda, in The Lennon Prophecy: A New Examination of the Death Clues of The Beatles to tell us that everyone's got it wrong. The clues aren't there to detail Paul's demise, Niezgoda says, but rather to foreshadow John Lennon's violent death in 1980, payment to the Devil for a 20-year pact Lennon made with Satan in 1960.

Yes, really.

According to Niezgoda, at some point in December 1960 -- likely between the Beatles' anticlimactic return from Germany on December 10, when the group seemed on the verge of breaking up, and their triumphant appearance at the Litherland Town Hall concert on December 27, the night it is generally accepted that Beatlemania was born - John Lennon traded his soul to the Devil in exchange for rock and roll fame and fortune. Twenty years later, in December 1980, the Devil called in the debt, using a demonically-possessed Mark David Chapman as his instrument of death.

On that wacky premise, Niezgoda devotes 186 pages to analyzing John Lennon's behavior, scrutinizing album covers, scrubbing lyrics for hidden meanings, and generally working way too hard to come up with spooky numeric coincidences to support his theory. Like the Paul is Dead theory, I don't buy one word of it; unlike the Paul is Dead theory, however, this one is neither fascinating nor even all that convincing. Niezgoda's theories and his interpretations of events, lyrics, and images, are almost always eye-rollingly dopey, and ultimately require enormous leaps in logic or imagination to make lyrics, album covers, or anything else fit his theory.

Part of the problem is that Niezgoda is completely humorless. Sarcasm, satire, puns and plays on words are completely lost on him. Lennon's wit--one of his most enduring traits--baffles Niezgoda, as does Lennon's use of metaphor and delight in wordplay. And Niezgoda--who calls himself a "life-long Beatles fan, collector, and scholar"--doesn't seem to be able to put Lennon or his quotes in context. He can't tell when Lennon is joking, bragging, or being dismissive. He's absolutely tone deaf.

Anyway, to spare you from ever having to read this thing, I'm going to give you a rundown of some of Niezgoda's claims to give you an idea of just how loopy, and how spurious, Niezgoda and his claims can be.

Early on, in a chapter titled "Bewitchery of the Masses," Niezgoda asks how to explain the enormous effect the Beatles had on their fans. How does one account for the swooning, the fainting, the screaming? Could it perhaps be their undeniable charisma or talent? Ridiculous, Niezgoda says; those are exactly the kinds of "intangible" and "indescribable" qualities that manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin ascribed to the band--and they're indescribable, Niezgoda says, because they were a gift from the Devil. So, Niezgoda's first "evidence" of demonic influence is Beatlemania itself, in all its inexplicable, unexplainable wonder.

It's not enough to sell one's sell to the Devil, though--as Niezgoda explains earnestly, one must also do all he can to actively deride God and religion. Therefore, any time Lennon mentions God, religion, Christ, or his soul, Niezgoda pounces. While he naturally makes hay of the "bigger than Jesus" statement--though not as much as one might expect, giving it only eight pages--any other reference to God is dissected looking for hidden meaning. For example, when John Lennon, following the massive Shea Stadium concert in 1965, remarked that it was "louder than God," Niezgoda arches an eyebrow curtly. "Why did he chose that analogy?" Niezgoda demands. And when an exhausted Lennon tells childhood friend Pete Shotton at the height of Beatlemania that he often feels he's sold his soul, the nonplussed Niezgoda can only take the most literate Beatle literally.

Niezgoda is at his most bizarre, though, when analyzing music, lyrics and album covers. The intricate, interwoven images on the cover of Revolver don't trouble him all that much--but he's convinced that the album's name has to be a foreshadowing of the kind of gun that would be used to kill Lennon fourteen years later. Certainly, the name Revolver has nothing to do with the fact that vinyl records were played by placing them on a turntable that revolved at a certain speed--thus making any record, in a sense, a "revolver," right? Again, that sort of word play is lost on Niezgoda.

He's more fascinated by the infamous "butcher cover" for the Yesterday ... And Today album--with the Beatles in butcher smocks covered with dismembered dolls and raw meat--which Niezgoda is all but certain is Lennon's nod to "the most reviling sacrifice to Satan . . . the killing of young innocent children--infanticide." Niezgoda quotes Lennon's enthusiasm for the project ("I would say I was a lot of the force behind it going out," Lennon once said) as the final word on the impetus behind the photo--but either doesn't seem to realize or completely ignores the fact that both Paul McCartney and photographer Robert Whitaker have claimed credit for the idea, too. Whitaker's version, in fact, holds up to the most scrutiny, as the photo was actually part of a series of artsy photos Whitaker staged, including one in which George Harrison appears to be driving nails into Lennon's head. Lord knows how Niezgoda would have interpreted THAT photo.

The real stretch, however, comes in his scouring of the cover of A Collection of Beatles Oldies -- a relatively obscure album released in the UK and Australia in late 1966. While the Paul is Dead crowd point to the drawing of the car getting ready to crash into the lounging figure's head as a "death clue" for Paul's alleged death by automobile, Niezgoda's got something much more clever in mind: "[The figure's] right crossed leg, with only slight imagination, can be seen as the letter `J,' and it rests aside the word `OLDIES' . . . [t]ogether, they spell `JOLDIES'" -- or, as Niezgoda explains, "JOL (John Ono Lennon) DIES." Cue the thunderclap and opening notes of Toccata and Fugue. And don't try to tell Niezgoda that Lennon was 16 months away from changing his middle name from Winston to Ono when the album was released -- he's already ahead of you: it's a "craftily constructed prophecy," don't you know?

Sgt. Pepper also falls under a similar scrutiny -- although, unlike the Paul Is Dead gang, Niezgoda isn't as much interested in the front cover as he is the back, where the Beatles, with the album's lyrics superimposed over them, appear against a blood red background (nothing is ever red in Niezgoda's book; it's always blood red!). McCartney famously stands with his back to the camera--"turning his back on John and what he knew of the fatal pact," Niezgoda says solemnly--but the real clue lies in the layout of the lyrics from George's "Within You, Without You": the words "lose their soul" are perfectly centered on John's waistline. Pretty sinister, huh?

Even sillier is Niezgoda's discussion of the drumhead on the cover of Pepper, an image already overanalyzed by the Paul Is Dead aficionados. Niezgoda relies on the same parlor trick as the Paul Is Dead gang, using a mirror to bisect the words LONELY HEARTS (which, he points out sinisterly, are in a different font from the rest of the drum!) to reveal a messy I ONE IX HE DIE. For the Paul Is Dead people, this convoluted hidden message means that Paul died on November 9th (with "I ONE" meaning eleven, and IX meaning 9, for 11/9). Not for Niezgoda. Instead, he reads this as a taunt from Satan to John Lennon: "I won! Nine, he die!" Nine, Niezgoda explains, is the day Lennon died--because it was already December 9th in Liverpool, you see, when John died in New York on December 8th.

That kind of convoluted numerology, in fact, is where Niezgoda becomes wearying. Lennon himself made much of the number 9 in his life--he was born on the ninth and included the number in the title of several songs--but Niezgoda comes up with some truly inane readings and sleights-of-hand to arrive at his nines. For example, he points out that if you dial the name JOHNONOLENNON on a push button phone, you get 564666536666 - and wow, look at all those sixes, which are really just nines standing on their heads. And only Niezgoda could read "One After 909" as an omen--it's waaay too confusing to explain how it predicts Lennon's death down to the day--all the way down to a reference to Yoko as a his "bag."

The punch my ticket moment, though--the moment I knew Niezgoda was in way over his head--arrives on page 122, as Niezgoda does some headscratching over the band's name:

"'The Beatles' was a curious choice of name for a band, especially because it's spelled wrong. In 1961, John wistfully explained to Mersey Beat where he got the idea: `It came in a vision--a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, `From this day on, you are Beatles with an A'"

With an absolutely straight face, Niezgoda explains that Lennon had to spell "beetles" incorrectly so he could use the letters to make an anagram of "seal bet," hiding in plain sight his pact with the Devil. As for the man on a flaming pie, Niezgoda points out, his gears churning, that "man on a flaming pie" scrambles as "pagan flame minion."

Apparently, the pun on "beat" in the word "Beatles" seems to never have occurred to the humorless Niezgoda--he's too busy making scary sounds and tut-tut noises. (As for the "pagan flame minion," you can also anagram "man on a flaming pie" to make "film an ape moaning," but that hardly means Lennon had hidden aspirations of being a voyeuristic zookeeper). I can't tell if Niezgoda is being intentionally ridiculous here, or if he's really that clueless.

Niezgoda's last chapter contains two incredibly odd bits of contrived thinking and backwards logic. The first is a way-out reading of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake - a book published a year before Lennon's birth, but which Niezgoda is nonetheless convinced contains prophecies of Lennon's life and death. And that's mostly because, at certain points over its 600 pages, Joyce uses words like "beetle," "pepper" and "funeral."

The second is a wacky bit of mathematics in which Niezgoda chooses three songs he believes "place the final moments of John Lennon's life to music": "I Am The Walrus," "Revolution 9," and "#9 Dream." Niezgoda informs us that the total elapsed time from the moment Lennon was shot to the moment he died was 17 minutes--and I think we're supposed to get chills when he informs us that the total time playing time for those three songs is 17 minutes, 42 seconds. Niezgoda provides us with absolutely no reason why there should or should not be a correlation between the playing time of these songs and Lennon's last moments. It's a completely nonsensical premise and farcical train of thought, and we're supposed to somehow be spooked by it.

But that sort of spurious thinking is the norm for Niezgoda. His premise is a bizarre one to begin with, but The Lennon Prophecy is full of so many thin, lame, and eye-rollingly ridiculous theories that it's impossible to take seriously. Yet, Niezgoda does. And "no one," he writes in his wistful introduction, "is sorrier than I about what is written here." Except maybe those of us who've read it.

There is no longer any question that John Lennon sold his soul to Satan? The case Joseph Niezgoda makes in "The Lennon Prophecy" is about as airtight as it gets. I mean, hey, we're talking creation science levels of proof here. Niezgoda's conclusions are unassailable.

Each proof--whether it's the missing "The" on the back of the "Abbey Road" album or the fact that Charles Manson believed the title of the song "Revolution #9" sounded a lot like the Bible's Revelations Chapter 9--is incontrovertible. Yes, it's as incontrovertible as the fact that Adam loved to feed carrots to his pet stegosaurus, Pokey.

But as good as this book is, the addition of a chapter about all the country musicians who've bested Satan would have made it even better. That's a story that doesn't often get told in the libumetrocialist media. They'd rather we believed that Lucifer has domain over all music, when in fact Beelzebub only digs rock and the blues. That's why there's never been a book written about how Charlie Daniels out-fiddled The Deceiver or how the second most heterosexual American (I'm the first), Horatio Lee Jenkins, kicked Satan's puking butt in a drinking contest Drunker Than Satan Ep. The libumetrocialists don't want us to know.

There's also the question about whether John Lennon, Nancy Pelosi, Mia Farrow, Dan Rather, and Satan all participated in a ceremony that resulted in Obama's conception. It's not covered in this book at all. I mean, sure, we've all seen Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate--so maybe he was born there--but does anyone really know how and where he was conceived? Was Lennon's Satanic seed involved? Was it in a foreign place like San Francisco? We don't know, because Niezgoda fails to address it. But then maybe that's another book.

While there is some interesting historical data about the Beatles in this book, I totally reject the premise of the author that their success was due to a pact John Lennon made with the devil. It is certainly true that Lennon had a hard childhood and in his early years often mocked the Christian religion. It is also true that the rise of the Beatles was phenomenal; it is hard to explain to anyone not conscious at the time (I was) how extensive their celebrity was. However, it is absurd to claim that all this is evidence that Lennon made a Faustian bargain.
Many if not most successful people had a very difficult upbringing; in fact the successful people argue that it was those early problems that instilled in them their drive to succeed. The sixties was a time of enormous social change, the number of dramatic alterations, from the civil rights movement to the development of the birth control pill is so numerous that not all of them can be mentioned. In the early sixties, the social change cauldron was in a superheated state and the arrival of the Beatles simply tapped into that tremendous potential energy. Therefore, one does not have to conjure up mystical explanations for the success of the Beatles.
As a co-editor of "Journal of Recreational Mathematics" I regularly encounter material based on numeric coincidences using arithmetic operations. Given the number of ways in which computations can be done, there are always many ways in which numbers can be "massaged" to return whatever values you desire. On page 117 there begins a list titled "The Number Nine in John's Life." Some of the entries are:

*) John Lennon was born on October 9.
*) During Chapman's first trip to New York, he stayed in the YMCA on West 63rd (6+3 = 9) Street. He checked in on December 6 (inverted 9).
*) His early band, Quarry Men, has nine letters.

Note that in one case the 6 must be inverted in order to get the desired nine.
Given that nine is a single digit, any person who understands how ubiquitous numbers are and how they can be manipulated will never be impressed by a list of numeric coincidences involving 9, no matter how long.
The most appalling statement appears on page 88 and is reproduced here in its entirety.

"The timing of Epstein's death is notable. Once John's rise to the top was complete, his manager was gone. That fact is feasibly coincidence, but could also be attributed to the idea that when one deals with the devil, sometimes an intermediary is used either to arrange the pact or to carry out the deeds that fulfill it. In fact, Maximilian Rudwin writes that historically Jews have acted as such intermediaries for Christians, not because the former have any sort of sinister leanings, but simply because `the zealot in one religion prefers a zealot to a liberal, even in an opposing religion.'"

Since Brian Epstein was Jewish and was the manager of the Beatles when they rose to stardom, the implication here is obvious. What is appalling is that over history the allegation that Jews are agents of Satan has been used as a justification for their persecution. That claim is repeated here with no justification whatsoever. This is a bad book full of nonsense and outlandish and manufactured claims.

The author recently said the 'Yesterday and Today' album cover was evidence of the Beatles' affiliation with the Devil.
Since everyone has known for over 40 years that the cover was in fact
nothing more than symbolism for the 'butchery' the Beatles felt was taking place in Vietnam, why would anyone bother wasting a dime on this book? Such a ridiculous assertion as this could only serve as 'exhibit A' on a long list of subsequent fabrications meant to portray the subject as
other-worldly and evil personified- when in reality Lennon was often
exhibiting a life-long inclination toward the dark side of human nature,
NOT devil worship. Appears the author may be taking artistic license to an extreme, in effect cutting jigsaw pieces that make up Lennon's life- to
make them fit into a preconceived (and tantalizing) book subject.

This book is CRAP. It has nothing to do with John Lennon or the Beatles. It's all made up bunk. It's Albert Goldman style journalism. CRAP.

If you want to know about John Lennon, play the music. Buy the Ray Coleman "LENNON" book....great book.

Do not buy this garbage! It doesn't deserve any stars!

This book states that John Lennon sold his soul to become successful? What a bunch of bull...this author should make a book with made up clues about Paul McCartney since he is still successful, filling stadiums and alive so maybe he sold his soul too....Like another review said, all this book does is force "clues" together, this book is a complete waste of time and money.

It is amazing how many gullible people there are out there. The author claims to be a Beatles fan and then speaks of Lennon's "quest for fame" and how quickly it came after his "deal with the devil." Any mild Beatles fan knows nothing came quickly for them, and even once they'd made some kind of waves in Britain their first singles completely stiffed in the US. Most think "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was their first US single. Wrong. I won't bore you with the details, they are easily looked up.

I have a newsflash....John Lennon didn't need a deal with the devil. He was a genius at popular songwriting and had one of the most unique and powerful voices in rock history. Sometimes the simple answer is just too easy for some people....

As far as the myriad of "evidence," it's ALWAYS easy to go back and make a lyric mean something it didn't (which The Beatles constantly talked about people doing), or read something into a phrase that just isn't there.

Like the ghostly shadows of the phantom shooters on the Grassy Knoll, there will always but conspiracy theorists, as well as outright charlatans out there. Don't join them. Save your money and buy a couple of Beatles albums for the same price.

TH

This is a thinly disguised mini Lennon bio with lots of information found in many many other sources. Although the author gives credit to all sources, When opening the book we must first accept the authors assumption that we all believe " pacts with the devil" are literally true. And when Lennon is quoted as saying " I sold my soul to the devil" he is not speaking figureatively! ( of course he was) " clues" are few and even rely upon taking some of the " Paul is dead" clues and substituting Lennon. I was not convinced after reading the book of anything, not even convinced my time wasn't wasted! The author is obviously a fundamentalist Christian( "oh Look Out !") one who misses the mark here as well. He says that since there are Gargoyles surrounding the Dakota apartments where Lennon was shot, and they can serve to ward off demons, the demons probably left John alone until he was away from the Dakota ??? look here! Lennon gave so much peace and happiness through his gifts, and tried to get people to think peace was possible. He really believed this! don't you think any loving God if one exists, would take notice of this, when judging a soul? watch your sodium levels with this one it takes a mighty big grain of salt to ingest this book !

Rock and Roll has certainly made its mark on popular culture and among the bands of early rock and roll, the one that achieved the most popularity and caused the most controversy by far was the Beatles. The world was mesmerized by these four young British lads and they enjoyed unparalleled success during their years as a band. Many books have been written about the Beatles and many writers have been fascinated by the tremendous success of this English band. What, exactly, made the Beatles so unique? What caused their popularity to reach such extreme levels? The Lennon Prophecy feels it has found the answer. This book presents a case that proposes that the Beatles success can be traced to John Lennon; not Lennon's musical talent, but rather his association with evil. This book claims that Lennon sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly success and it presents clues taken from Beatles albums, Beatles lyrics, and John Lennon's own life as proof that Lennon was, indeed, under the influence of darkness.

Some of the evidence presented in this book and the accompanying illustrations are interesting at first and they do seem to back up the book's claims, even if only a little bit. But the majority of the evidence is sketchy at best, and it has obviously been sorted through and selected in order to back the author's objective. Take the evidence about the number nine. The book includes examples of several numbers that correspond to John Lennon (his birth date, time of birth, date of death, etc.) and shows how they can all be tied back to the number nine, which is supposedly a number associated with evil. This is all fine and good, but I would bet that if more numbers relating to John Lennon were examined, there would be plenty that do not add up to nine. By focusing only on those things that do add up to nine, the author tries to prove his point. But if you think about it, this selective process could be conducted on anyone. Most any one of us would have dates and other numbers associated with us that tie back to the number nine, or to any other number.

Among this books many omissions, the one that is most glaring is an examination of Lennon's years as an outspoken advocate of peace. John Lennon's anti- war stance and his social activism are widely known and regarded, but the book completely glosses over this important aspect of John Lennon's life. How could the author overlook something this important? I think the reason is obvious. If Lennon really was in league with the devil, then he would have been a minister of death, hoping and praying for war and destruction. But instead, Lennon wanted peace and love to ring loudly throughout the world. This certainly is not becoming of a person who is supposedly Satan's right hand man. Knowing this would contradict his theory, the author excludes it completely from the book. I would have respected the book more if it admitted that Lennon's pro- peace position is at odds with the book's theory and then tried to reconcile it with the rest of the evidence. But the author chose to ignore this completely. And this, once again, shows that the author was cherry- picking evidence to back his claims.

The Lennon Prophecy is obviously a very far- fetched book and one that many readers will consider good for a laugh and not to be taken seriously. I found the book weird more than anything, and I finished it with a feeling of puzzlement. I couldn't understand why the author chose to write something so unusual and why he felt the need to propose such an outrageous spiritual conspiracy theory. But I have to respect this book at least a little bit for two main reasons: The writing and the general respect the author shows toward the reader. The writing is very good, without a comma out of place or a typo to be found. And I like the respect the author shows toward the reader. He doesn't go over the top in his writing by making extreme, insulting statements toward Lennon or anyone else. As a matter of fact, the author actually seems a little remorseful over the whole ordeal. He grew up liking the Beatles music, and he doesn't want to believe that John Lennon would have sold his soul to the devil, but he reluctantly comes to this conclusion and presents this book as evidence that the way he believes is really the truth.

The Lennon Prophecy is a strange book about John Lennon and one that many will rate among the most ridiculous books they have ever read. The author is convinced that Lennon sold his soul to the devil and he feels he has evidence to back his claims. It's an odd book and its evidence is sketchy at best. While I consider it a below average book, I can see how fans of the Beatles and John Lennon in particular might find it worth a read, just to relive old memories and perhaps enjoy a laugh or two as they contemplate whether or not Lennon really sold his soul in exchange for Earthly fame.

This book is filled with logical fallacies, a loose interpretation of the occult and outright foolishness. The Blair Witch Project was more convincing than this. It is amusing at times however; I especially like the "Brian Epstein as Satan's emissary" theory. It's good for a laugh, but I think your time would be better spent chanting "crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess" backward and forward.