Comments on: Serve Yourself

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 12:49:07 +0000

Seriously? John deserved to be murdered for song? And an unreleased one at that. You have a few things wrong with you, Daniel.

By: Craig H

Craig H — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 18:47:12 +0000

he used to call these religions Phallic worship because they whitewashed the importance of females in history and the one thing they have in common is its all Men

By: Daniel Malloy

Daniel Malloy — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 03:14:20 +0000

Notice right after writing this anti Dylan as Christian song Lennon gets gunned down in the streets. Play with fire get burned.

By: sertaneja

sertaneja — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 22:43:54 +0000

Glad I found it here. I had never heard this song, and I found it I didn’t have a clue. Thank you for all the information. This is hilarious to say the least. I love his accent, Scouse? Irish? Another one? But it is a bit sad he sort of disrespect Dylan’s freedom.
I only didn’t get the ‘mother bit”.What he really meant by that. the fact he considered Yoko as mother doesn’t explain, as Dylan was not married to Yoko.

By: mja6758

mja6758 — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:24:11 +0000

Thanks for taking on board my thoughts, Joe. Glad they made some sense.
Anyway, it got me to looking at what there is around “Serve Yourself”, and how that helps in dating.
As you yourself say, there is the spoken reference to “Gotta Serve Somebody” in 5th September ’79 audio diary. So we can say without doubt that he’s heard “Slow Train Coming” (released 20 August) by then, and he’s beginning to have a reaction to it.
Then there is Bob’s “SNL” appearance on 20th October, which included a performance of “Gotta Serve Somebody”, and is what’s often cited as the spark. Thoughts about the song already bubbling in his head, sees Bob perform it along with two other “Born Again” songs (the magnificent “I Believe in You” and “When You Gonna Wake Up?”) and, BANG!, Johnny’s back to writing a straight of-the-moment song like “Instant Karma” or, as he’d show in Bermuda a few months later, “I’m Stepping Out”.
Anyway, point of this wasn’t just to restate things I’ve already said, but to say looking at the available tapes I’ve discovered another piece of evidence in the “Sean” tapes.
“In the Sky”, “With a Little Help”, “Loud”, etc.
They are dated to either Thanksgiving Weekend or late 1979. My guess, listening to them, is that they are all Thanksgiving Weekend.
The important thing in regard to this is that one of the unreleased segments of that tape has Sean singing a little bit of “Be-Bop-a-Lula” preceded by around thirty seconds of “Serve Yourself”, which means “Serve Yourself” had been heard enough by Sean by 22 November for him to give a little rendition, maybe what he’d been listening to Daddy work hard on over the previous month?

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 19:48:47 +0000

Thanks. I wasn’t aware it was that early, but you may well be right. My sources were Eight Arms To Hold You by Madinger/Easter, and The Art & Music of John Lennon by Peter Doggett. Eight Arms says there *may* have been a version dating from September/October 79, but doesn’t say conclusively, and Doggett doesn’t mention it at all until 1980.

I’ve amended the article to hopefully clear things up a little!

By: mja6758

mja6758 — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 21:29:08 +0000

I have to disagree with your dating, Joe. The story is that Lennon wrote it in response to Dylan’s “Saturday Night Live” appearance on 20 October 1979, which included a performance of “Gotta Serve Somebody”. It seems to me that the earliest demos date to late-October/November 1979 (though some claims are that the first two demo’s are September – could be true if Lennon was responding to the album version). My view is that it was the “Saturday Night Live” performance he responded to, and that he would have done within it in days/weeks, not months – which even if you placed it in January 1980, would still be 2 months plus. I just don’t see John responding that slowly. I am not questioning your dating of the released versions, just whether the song is early 1980 or late 1979. Just came to mind as I’ve just been listening to Bob’s “Saturday Night Live” performance.

By: GniknuS

GniknuS — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:01:12 +0000

The best Lennon demo ever? I can’t think of any song that makes me laugh more than this one. Awesome article Joe.