Grant Morrison Gives John Lennon a Chance

Grant Morrison, comics’ hardest-working visionary, grabs a guitar given to him by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way and bangs out a conscientious rocker inspired by the Beatles’ legendary leader.

That’s a lot for one video (above), but every bit of it really happened.

Shot last week at Hollywood’s Meltdown Comics during a post-Comic-Con International stop to promote his new book Supergods, the reel shows off Morrison’s gift for both music and magic. It was during a magic ritual designed to contact the spirit of John Lennon that Morrison claims he first dreamed up the tune, Morrison said.

“I decided to treat John Lennon as a god,” Morrison told the Meltdown crowd, explaining how he created a circle around his Beatles’ albums, donned a paisley shirt and Beatle boots and experienced a vision of Lennon. The ritual was summarily immortalized in Morrison’s so-far unfilmable epic The Invisibles (at right), which itself allegedly inspired The Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix franchise.

It’s a cool back-story for a cool song, which nicely shows off the otherwise soft-spoken Morrison’s growling pipes. And it’s not a bad bit of Lennon homage either, with world-weary lyrics like Keep taking the pills/Keep reading the books/Keep looking for signs that somebody loves you butting up against hopeful advice like One and one and one makes two/If you really want it to/Talking ’bout love.

This article appeared at WIRED