Like a Rock

A coupla weeks ago my nephew Paddy Mac casually mentioned that he'd visited the Rock of Gibraltar, even christening it with the highest teenager compliment of all: "it was pretty cool." It struck me that as much as I don't remember being alive and NOT having heard of the Rock of Gibraltar, literally the only thing I knew about it is that it was where John Lennon and Yoko Ono got married:

Lennon later crafted an autobiographical Beatles song titled "The Ballad of John and Yoko" that laid out the rest of their journey: "Finally made the plane into Paris, honeymooning down by the Seine. Peter Brown called to say, you can make it okay; you can get married in Gibraltar near Spain." The couple arrived at the British Consulate Office there, and they were married in a 10-minute ceremony. Since Gibraltar was a British colony, and Lennon a British citizen, there was no issue. 

"We went there and it was beautiful," Lennon said. "It's the 'Pillar of Hercules,' and also symbolically they called it the 'End of the World' at one period. They thought the world outside was a mystery from there, so it was like the Gateway to the World."

Besides Lennon poking his finger into the eyes of people previously upset at his "We're bigger than Jesus" with the line "Christ you know it ain't easy/the way things are going, they're gonna crucify me", the most fascinating thing about The Ballad of John and Yoko is that it's the only Beatles song on which only John & Paul play (thus setting the stage for decades of "the best drummer in The Beatles is the bass player" jokes.)

Anyway I was very impressed Paddy Mac had been there and I haven't. PRETTY, pretty, pretty cool, indeed...