Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Grant Morrison in Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone has a nice post-Supergods interview with Grant Morrison, including a description of his magical invocation of John Lennon:

"I put all the Beatles albums in a circle, a magic circle, wore my clothes from the band, tight trousers, Beatle boots, had a Rickenbacker guitar, and I had 'Tomorrow Never Knows' on a loop and I just played it, and I took this tiny lick of acid, just to give an edge. Basically, I got this image, this thing, like a huge Lennon head made out of music. It gave me a song – it's a pretty convincing John Lennon song."

At a Los Angeles book signing for Supergods with Way in late July, Morrison whips out a guitar and plays the song given to him by the floating Lennon head. "Keep taking the pills/Keep reading the books/Keep looking for signs that somebody loves you," he sings in a rough tenor. The audience laughs at first, then falls silent. He gets to the bridge – "One and one and one makes two/If you really want it to" – and the melody suddenly sounds like it could be on the White Album, or at least pass for Oasis.

Way, for one, is convinced. When Morrison performed the song in front of his two-year-old daughter, she started to dance – something she'd never done when her dad played guitar. "I was like, 'Well, clearly this is a John Lennon song,'" Way says. "Clearly!" Or maybe not. As Morrison observes in Supergods: "Things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa."

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