The Musical Monument

John Winston Lennon was ahead of his time. And ahead of his band. At least when it came to his political and philosophical views and insights. The Liverpool-born musician was the founder and official bandleader of the most successful rock group in music history, The Beatles, even though in the late phase of the congenial formation his childhood friend Paul McCartney was often at the forefront, both musically and in the media.

The Beatles’ first single, „Love Me Do“, was released in 1962. After the band had set a great many all-time records that still stand today – and, as in 2018, continues to set them, with the longest span of time between two identical number-one placings –, the paths of the four artists parted ways as early as 1970. Eight years were enough to change the world. The four „Lads“ (boys) are said to have sold around a billion records to date. The band’s appetite for experimentation and its innovative power ensured that their work still reverberates into the present. And even after 60 years the songs still sound astonishingly „fresh“.

In technical matters too, the exceptional musicians – supported by the sound engineers of London’s Abbey Road Studios (formerly EMI Studios) – broke new ground with every release. Beyond that, they redefined the relationship between artists and record labels and producers, delivered the first genuine concept album in pop history and, along the way, invented in the studio the DI box (Direct Injection, direct feed), with which electric guitars could now be connected directly to mixing desks. A revolution. They were the first band to print lyrics on their albums, staged the first stadium concerts, recorded the first hard-rock song in history („Helter Skelter“), were – alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso and Maria Callas – the headliners of the first television broadcast transmitted live worldwide by satellite, and with their music films laid the cornerstone for the format „music video“ as we know it today. The Rolling Stones’ first chart hit, too, came from the pens of Lennon and McCartney. In 2004 the music magazine Rolling Stone therefore rightly awarded the Beatles first place on its list of the 100 greatest musicians of all time.

After the last album they made together, „Abbey Road“ – which in the discography is listed before „Let It Be“ but was recorded after it, because „Let It Be“ is the only Beatles album not produced by George Martin in London but by Phil Spector in the USA, and therefore reached the market later – the band split up over a wide range of differences. Artistic, organizational, personal – they had grown apart, used up their energies. Fame and money exacted an additional toll.

So much for the official story. For the astronomical success of the four bards from Liverpool seemed also to attract and unleash dark forces. To this day, masses of fans and nerds like Mike Williams occupy themselves with the numerous riddles that have always lent the band a mysterious aura. From the alleged swapping of Paul McCartney for a double, because the real Beatle is said to have died in a car accident in 1967, to the picture of Aleister Crowley, the controversial occultist, and other oddities on the cover of „Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“. A multitude of myths entwine the history of the mop-tops.

For example, the rumors circulating since the 1960s that the Tavistock Institute, a British social-engineering establishment, is said to have misused the band to force through the flower-power movement, thereby laying the cornerstone for the fragmented and self-centered society of the media age. Possible. For, as one must concede today, the revolutionary efforts of the flower children of the „Swinging Sixties“ petered out for the most part in the living rooms of a well-to-do middle class. With the end of their adolescence, that class delegated responsibility for saving the planet to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), left-wing parties and a few prominent activists. World peace, however, is still awaited in vain.

Doubts about the official account of the early death of Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ homosexual manager, also persist stubbornly. He is said to have died on 27 August 1967 from a cocktail of drugs. Other voices claim he was eliminated or committed suicide because he was unhappily in love with John Lennon and had been rejected by him. Or because higher powers were keen to cover up sexual escapades between the two. Likewise, questions remain to this day concerning the improbable musical complexity of many a Beatles composition. In the view of quite a few experts, the „Fab Four“, untutored in music theory, could hardly have accomplished this on their own. Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, on the other hand, had enjoyed a classical musical education. It is well known that he was responsible for the string arrangements on pieces like „Yesterday“ or „Eleanor Rigby“ and repeatedly gave the young musicians tips and suggestions. What remains unclear is whether, beyond that, there were persons who exerted significant influence on the compositions.

A multitude of dubious deaths in the band’s circle likewise remain unexplained to the present day. First and foremost that of Mal Evans, the Beatles’ long-time road manager and „man for all jobs“, along with Neil Aspinall probably the person who stood closest to the band over all those years. A friend. In 1976 he was shot dead by the American police in Los Angeles with six bullets. Supposedly because he opened his motel door holding a gun. As it turned out, however, it was merely a toy rifle lying on the table in the room. Moreover, Mal Evans was regarded as a level-headed, reliable and loving person – Paul McCartney called him a „good-natured teddy bear“. Yet not a single Beatle attended Mal’s funeral.

Piquant detail: Evans had a manuscript with him. And a suitcase full of documents containing intimate information about his time with the Beatles. He intended to discuss both the next day with his publisher Grosset & Dunlap, who was also to help him publish an insider book. Both the manuscript and the suitcase of papers have been missing since the LAPD’s (Los Angeles Police Department) lethal visit. The former Beatles roadie was cremated on site in LA and then shipped back to England in an urn – which at first got lost in the mail.

Dubious, too, were the circumstances of the near-fatal attack on George Harrison in December 1999. At 3:30 in the morning the perpetrator, Michael Abraham, broke into Friar Park, the Harrisons’ estate. George, who had woken up, confronted the intruder. The attempt to overpower Abraham in order to wrest the knife from him failed, however. Whereupon the latter stabbed the ex-Beatle several times. Afterwards he even went at Harrison’s wife. She, however, managed to tear herself free and hide. After 15 minutes the police arrived at the scene and arrested the attacker. As his motive, he stated – analogously to Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon – that he had heard voices in his head which had motivated him to the attack. Harrison survived it. Severely injured.

Like Mark David Chapman, Michael Abraham too was an unstable personality, suffered from psychological problems in the run-up to the deed, took drugs and had repeated contact with law enforcement agencies. After a mere 19 months of inpatient treatment in a psychiatric clinic, Abraham has been at liberty again since 2002. It is remarkable to note that the knife attack on Harrison took place only 24 hours after a conversation between George and Ringo Starr, the Beatles’ drummer, in the course of which Harrison apparently let it be known that he wanted to put an end to the secrecy surrounding the Beatles, above all to the rumors about Paul, and go public with the truth. George Harrison never commented on the subject again afterwards.

That is of course grist to the mill of those Beatles fans who take Paul McCartney to be a double. „Faul“. And as absurd as such a theory may appear – there do indeed exist indications that push the scenario at least into the realm of the possible. Such as the fact that during a visit to Japan in 1980, McCartney spent a full nine days in the local drug jail. And not because he had a bag of marijuana in his luggage upon entry, but because the Japanese authorities could not verify the music legend’s fingerprints. They differed from those McCartney had given in the 1960s, when, with the Beatles, he toured through Japan and likewise had contact with the police. Only the intervention of the British government ensured that McCartney was able to leave Japan again on 25 January 1980. Without legal consequences, despite the not inconsiderable quantity of weed in his luggage, for which ordinary mortals in Japan can easily spend seven years behind bars. Until a few years ago, an informative article from a Tokyo daily newspaper about this incident could still be found on the internet. In the meantime, however, it has been deleted.

Also giving pause in this context are the findings of Italian forensic scientists, published in 2009 in Wired Magazine. Biometric data and the scientific analysis of photos from various periods moved the two researchers to conclude that there were at least two persons who appeared as Paul McCartney over the course of time. Similar findings were reached by a 2019 study from the University of Naples (Italy), which noted a clear difference in Paul McCartney’s manner of expression during the creative phases before and after the album „Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“ – the period in which the double is said to have taken over.

Similarly confusing is the story surrounding a paternity suit that was pending against „Macca“ in Germany. SPIEGEL International reported on it on 21 May 2007. So did the FAZ and the English newspaper The Telegraph. At issue was the accusation that Paul McCartney was denying paternity of a child conceived out of wedlock in Hamburg in the early 1960s. Furthermore, he was said to have submitted false DNA samples in the first trial on the matter, which had already taken place in the 1980s and was decided in McCartney’s favor. According to more recent findings, the signature on the relevant documents came from a right-handed person – whereas Paul, as is well known, writes and plays guitar with his left hand.

The then 46-year-old plaintiff also told BILD-Zeitung that in 1966 Paul had given her mother a one-off payment of 30,000 deutschmarks as compensation and hush money – and had subsequently transferred 200 deutschmarks a month in maintenance for many years thereafter. The public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation. But the proceedings were discontinued in 2007. For even if the offense had taken place, according to justice spokesman Michael Grundwald, it was by now barred by the statute of limitations.

The question arises why the mother brought a paternity suit at all, if she had to assume that in the course of the taking of evidence a DNA test would be produced, by which it could be determined beyond doubt whether she was telling the truth – if that were precisely not the case? The same applies to the daughter’s renewed suit. On this premise, one must actually assume that the ladies seriously believed they could ultimately have the suits decided in their favor, because the „real“ Paul would have to have his genetic material tested. Consequently, McCartney’s DNA sample from the 1980s, which did not match the DNA of the disputed offspring, was in fact „fake“ – that is, it did not come, at least, from that Paul with whom the Hamburg woman had been intimate between 1959 and 1962, or it is simply not the same person. Or the plaintiff was not in full possession of her mental faculties when she went to the public prosecutor.

It would also be interesting to learn what Paul McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills was talking about live on US television when she spoke of „truths beyond the imaginable“ regarding her former husband. Truths so „shocking that the world could not bear them“. Mills further reported that she had deposited corresponding documents and evidence with third parties in order to protect herself and her family from Paul and his entourage. She also emphatically makes clear that these truths are not about affairs or similarly common rock-star scandals. That naturally arouses curiosity.

Corresponding stories can be found in abundance if one follows the more-than-60-year history of the most successful band of all time. And new books and documentaries on the subject keep appearing. Most recently, for example, Faul – The Musical or the ominous book series The Memoirs of Billy Shears, written by the equally ominous author Thomas E. Uharriet, who otherwise seems to concern himself primarily with the subject of haiku. How he came, years ago, to put himself in the role of Paul’s double – or, should such a double exist, managed to obtain his secret information – remains in the dark. On Wikipedia there even exists a dedicated discussion forum on the topic complex „Paul is dead“. But that, too, has been unable to create certainty thus far.

So the doubting Beatles fan must presumably continue to live with the nagging uncertainty of whether it is the real Paul McCartney who tirelessly keeps touring the world – or whether it might, after all, be Vivian Stanshell, William Campbell, Phil Ackrill of „Danny Laine and The Diplomats“ or Bill Shepherd, frontman of the band „Billy Pepper & The Pepperpots alias Billy Shears, all held in high regard among „Paul-is-dead nerds“, who have been playing the Beatle since 1967. How the named candidates manage or managed to carry on their own lives in parallel with portraying the busy Beatle is unfortunately left open by the theories in question.

But perhaps some things one does not even want to fathom more closely – preferring instead, as in the present case, for once simply to content oneself with the shimmering illusion, the end result, the art. For the timeless quality of the music suffers to this day in no way whatsoever from the potentially dark stains in the band’s history or from alleged manipulations out of a deep-state background.

Life is what happens while you are making plans.

After the breakup of the Beatles it was, in any case, Paul McCartney who, as the first former band member, released his eponymous solo album. He had already been working on it during the recordings for „Abbey Road“, which at the time caused additional friction within the band. John, it is true, had likewise already worked on new music with his wife Yoko Ono in 1968 and 1969, thereby beginning, as it were, to distance himself from his band, but he did not put his first solo record on the market until after the last Beatles album and McCartney. Title of the record: „John Lennon/Plastik Ono Band“, hailed by many critics as the most honest rock record of all time.

After years of touring stress, Beatlemania and manifold bad experiences with the dark sides of the music industry, Lennon at some point no longer had any desire for staged publicity, image design, appointments and marketing. He was searching: for himself, for the meaning of life and for the truth.

Thus John’s solo debut already features the magnificent track Working Class Hero – probably the best political song – or song lyric – of all time. At least in the author’s view. There are several reasons for this decided statement: For one thing, the piece is kept musically very simple and can therefore be learned quickly even by guitar novices. The chord progression consists primarily of A minor and G major and shifts to D major only for one line of the chorus. This gives the song better chances of rapid dissemination. Beyond that, the singing too is of little complexity and invites you to sing along. After a few run-throughs you are able to repeat the lines by heart. Even without musical accompaniment. For another thing – and much more importantly – the lyrics are universally interpretable. For every human being in this world.

In other words: everyone who lives in a society shaped by capitalism will, in their own entirely individual way, find themselves in „Working Class Hero“. And that not only in a single line, in the one outstanding metaphor or in a self-standing catchword – but in the entire text, which, in an exemplary and interpretation-open way, traces the life path of a working-class person in the neo-feudalist, corrupt system of our time. From birth to the career peak. Every line immediately creates an image in the mind, awakens childhood memories and calls them to mind. That is what makes the verses John Lennon wrote at the end of 1970 so powerful, the emotions triggered by the piece so overwhelming.

You don't need anyone to tell you who or what you are. You are what you are!

Automatically the listener projects their own life path, subjective experiences, personal memories and forgotten feelings into the lyrics delivered by the ex-Beatle in a calm voice. John Lennon takes the listener along on a journey through their own past. Meaning that of the teenager from Liverpool who grew up with his aunt – and that of the listener alike. He unmasks the school system as indoctrination. Then the world of work as modern serfdom. And distills this information into a handful of syllables. That is high art. Writing complex, cerebral lyrics is comparatively simple. Behind the simplicity, memorability and universal adaptability of a song, beyond one’s own reality of life, one’s own cultural sphere and one’s own era, lies hidden the path to the masterpiece.

And, on top of that, more than ever the plaything of system-inherent incapacitation and dehumanization, of processes of expropriation, ideological power struggles and imposed military-industrial hegemonic interests. These fascistoid tendencies – following almost linearly George Orwell’s dystopia „1984“ – were obviously already clearly foreseeable to Lennon back in the 1970s, as various interviews with the musician and peace activist from that time attest. Even then the politicized Beatle criticized the perfidious geopolitical maneuverings of the dominant power blocs USA, Russia and China. Furthermore, it was absolutely clear to the Liverpudlian that one cannot overcome the state’s mafia-like monopoly on violence by violent means. That resistance and revolution only stand a chance if the protest forces its way through by peaceful means.

When it comes to the point where you have to use violence, then you are playing the system's game. The establishment will provoke you, (…) in order to make you fight. For once they have made you violent, they know how to deal with you. The only thing they cannot deal with is non-violence and humor.

For his campaigns he thus relied on slogans like „Give Peace a Chance“ or „War Is Over If You Want It“, on crowd-pleasing „Bed-ins for Peace“ with Yoko, on artistic freedom and humor – above all in dealing with the dark powers of the deep state, which for their part did everything to drive Lennon out of the United States again as quickly as possible, the country he had chosen as his adopted home after the breakup of his first band. „Working Class Hero“ caused the US establishment headaches right at the start of Lennon’s stay in America in 1971, even though the song had already been released a year earlier. Senators and officials complained about the crude language and the subversive, anti-state tone of the piece. The radio stations played it nonetheless, apart from a few exceptions that went along with the state’s call for a boycott.

Only four months after „Working Class Hero“, in March 1971, John’s single „Power to the People“ was released. Closely followed by his best-known peace hymn – „Imagine“ – in October 1971. With that, the thematic direction was clear. And the ex-Beatle was in disgrace with the US establishment. The American authorities left nothing untried in order to torpedo the British musician’s naturalization application. Meanwhile „Imagine“ rose to become the most successful song of his solo career. To this day more than 200 artists have reinterpreted it. The track is among the 100 most-played songs of all time and was voted number 30 on the list of Songs of the Century by the „Recording Industry Association of America“ (RIAA). John Lennon’s message could no longer be stopped.

„Ideas do not need weapons if they can convince the great masses“ (Fidel Castro).

After the release of his great hit single, John Lennon had only nine years left to live. During the first half of them he drank a lot, took drugs and did not really know what to do with himself. From 1975 to 1980 he primarily looked after his son Sean, his only child with Yoko. Asked what he had been doing since the mid-1970s, he replied in an interview: „Baked bread and looked after the baby.“ And just as he had begun work on new songs, inspired by a stormy sailing trip towards Bermuda, his story was to meet its abrupt and dramatic end. Presumably his mass-mobilizing pacifism and his vociferous criticism of the Vietnam War ultimately proved his undoing. On 8 December 1980, around eleven at night, the then 40-year-old Lennon was shot dead in front of the entrance of New York’s Dakota Building. By Mark David Chapman, a confused lone perpetrator, according to the official account.

After Lennon’s cremation, Yoko Ono scattered his ashes in nearby Central Park. At the spot in question stands today the Imagine Memorial, forever strewn with flowers, letters and devotional objects. His murderer, on the other hand, lives. And at regular intervals files applications for release from prison. In 2020 his eleventh parole application was rejected. The next hearing takes place in August 2022. Presumably with a similar outcome. For Yoko Ono lodges an objection to the petition every two years.

The prevailing opinion on Chapman’s motive was and is that he shot in order to become famous – as a celebrity killer. In light of Chapman’s confession, however, this argument is not really conclusive. For had he sought publicity, he would have followed his lawyer’s advice and gone into the criminal trial, which would presumably have caused a worldwide sensation. Prime-time TV coverage included. Owing to his immediate admission of guilt, however, no show trial took place. Chapman went straight to prison. When it came to interviews and other options for getting attention, too, he generally held back.

During a TV interview with Larry King in 1992, twelve years after the murder, Chapman tried to describe his motives, to pin down the trigger for the deed. His explanations did not come across as logical. The reasons for his actions remained vague. The impression arose that he himself is still searching for answers. Or is not telling the whole story – perhaps cannot tell it. And in doing so he need not even lie, as research by the US author Phil Strongman into the Mark David Chapman case reveals.

In his book „John Lennon: Life, Times and Assassination“, published in 2010, he examines the obvious contradictions regarding the course of events, the nebulous past of the presumed lone perpetrator, his motives and, above all, the striking negligence of the US authorities during the investigation into the assassination. Strongman brings into focus precisely those questions that the FBI would have had to ask if the USA had actually been interested in solving the violent crime, but which it scrupulously avoided raising.

For example: Who is Chapman, the „nobody“, as he calls himself, from a backwater in Georgia? Why is he commonly portrayed as a Lennon and Beatles fanatic? In his apartment not a single record, not a book, not a newspaper clipping or any other material about the Beatles was found. What moved Chapman, in the days before the murder, to fly from his home in Hawaii to New York – and what did he do during the suppressed, unnecessary stopover at Chicago airport? Why did Chapman live in Hawaii at all, near a CIA training camp? What exactly did he do at his employer World Vision International, an organization founded in 1950 and said to be one of countless CIA front companies? Why was Chapman in Beirut, a CIA stronghold during the Cold War?

Why were all the bullet holes on the left side of John Lennon’s body, if Mark David Chapman was standing behind him to the right when he fired? How could he aim so precisely that the medical examiners had difficulty removing the almost overlapping bullets during the autopsy? According to the forensic report, a ballistic masterstroke – and for non-professionals highly improbable, especially from the wrong angle. Why were experts who assumed multiple shooters excluded from the investigations? Why did no one take a closer look at the Dakota Building’s guard on duty at the time of the crime – José Sanjenís Perdomo – even though he had demonstrably worked as a professional killer for the American secret service and signed up as a mercenary for the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba? Why was Perdomo able, after the shots at Lennon, to walk up to Chapman with complete composure and take the loaded weapon from his hand – entirely without any resistance from the shooter? Would not the natural reaction in such a moment of shock be to seek cover, even in the guard booth at the entrance of the Dakota Building, or to return fire on Chapman? For what reason did Perdomo have no fear that Chapman would point the weapon at him and pull the trigger? Was it because Perdomo and Chapman had been loitering alone in front of the Dakota entrance all evening, talking about the Bay of Pigs or the assassination of John F. Kennedy, until Lennon appeared shortly before 11 p.m.?

„José Perdomo told the police that Chapman was Lennon’s murderer. One of the arresting officers, Peter Cullen, did not believe that Chapman had shot Lennon. Cullen believed the shooter was a workman at the Dakota, but Perdomo convinced Cullen that it was Chapman“ (Latin News Agency, 8 December 2018)

Beyond that, the imperative of the ABCs of criminology always applies: Follow the money! So how did Chapman finance himself, having never had a steady job, a good income or anything like a career? Where did the man with his odd jobs get the money for his above-average lifestyle? Who paid for the six-week world trip Chapman undertook in 1978 – and what did he do in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, New Delhi, Geneva, London, Paris and Dublin?

Perhaps the most important question: why did Chapman stand around at the scene as if paralyzed after the shots at Lennon? As though he had just awoken from a dream? Passers-by and patrol officers describe his behavior as that of a will-less zombie. Disoriented and confused – about himself and his surroundings. Where was his flight reflex? Why did he not run away? And why was Chapman not subjected to a drug test?

Why does one ignore the fact that Chapman speaks of voices in his head which, before the shots, vehemently urged him „to do it“?

That he himself describes remembering the moment of the crime like „two different films“ – one in the minutes before the firing of the weapon, which made him nervous, agitated, emotionally corrupted, and one after the pulling of the trigger, which he describes as calm, empty, senseless and paralyzing? Chapman stated for the record that in the minutes after the deed he felt as if he had been torn from a deep sleep, from a dream.

None of these questions was clarified in the course of the official investigation. The relevant FBI files are, to this day, under lock and key. Top secret. National security and all that. We know this from the murder of John F. Kennedy. In view of the facts cited above, however, it does not take much imagination to picture what actually happened in New York on 8 December 1980. Especially once one has looked into the disturbing MKULTRA, MKNAOMI, MKOFTEN, MKCHICKWIT, CHATTER or ARTICHOKE programs of the US intelligence services.

The goal of these contemptible human experiments: manipulation of consciousness. The creation of subconsciously operating killers who can be activated out of a normal state by a trigger signal and moved to act. The methods: LSD, electric shocks, psychological torture, sleep deprivation, verbal and physical violence. Anyone who assumes such ideas are fit only as material for a nice spy flick is mistaken. A declassified CIA report from 1975, for example, states:

„If the hypnosis was successful, assassins can be created to murder a prominent (..) politician or, if necessary, an American official.“

Stephen Kinzer, who has long investigated the secret CIA projects, wrote in his book „Poisoner in Chief“, which appeared in September 2019:

„In the early 1950s the CIA set up secret detention centers in the areas under American control in Europe and East Asia. Mainly in Japan, Germany and the Philippines. (…) The CIA captured persons suspected of being enemy agents. And other persons whom it deemed expendable, in order to carry out various kinds of torture and human experiments on them. The prisoners were interrogated while being administered psychoactive drugs, given electric shocks, subjected to extreme temperatures. They were exposed to sensory isolation and the like, in order to develop a better understanding of how to destroy and control the human mind.“

David McGowan, too, describes in his work „Programmed to Kill (2004), drawing on numerous original sources, how US intelligence services breed sleepers. So anyone who still believes the fairy tale that the state is his friend should perhaps reconsider that position now. For the list of unethical human experiments is long. Many of them were astonishingly successful, if one wishes to put it that way. But at the top of the food chain there are simply no scruples. There you learn to smile as you kill.

That is precisely what John Lennon describes with his last line in „Working Class Hero“: „First you must learn how to smile as you kill“. So Mark David Chapman was perhaps a Manchurian Candidate, or merely the useful idiot. Or both.

In any case, the evidence gives every reason to assume that it is the US government that has the Beatles founder on its conscience. Because it could not get him out of the country by legal means and grew increasingly afraid of his ability to rouse the masses against the ruling system. Peacefully, but firmly. With love, humor and creativity.

Fortunately, his death did not silence him. The opposite is the case. For through the assassination John Winston Lennon became even more immortal than he already was as a member of the most successful band of all time. No martyr – but a working-class hero whose ideas and ideals will outlast the ages. Imagine Peace.

„As soon as you’re born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all.
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool,
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules.
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can’t really function, you’re so full of fear.
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill.
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.

If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.“