Shameless Lennon merchandising can't dim a truly iconic talent

REVOLVER:'THE John Lennon Edition is based on John Lennon's genius, reflecting his iconic status through the creation of a fountain pen, ballpoint pen, a roller ball and a record of Lennon's most famous single Imagine. Sharing many convictions about the responsibility of art and culture, Montblanc will honor John Lennon's life, his music and his dreams by contributing to selected cultural projects."

That’s a bit of the high-brow spiel from a pen company about their “exclusive” John Lennon range. Featuring a “Special Edition”, a “Commemoration Edition” and, naturally, a “Limited Edition”, the Lennon pens start at about $700 (€514) and soar upwards from there.

The connection between Montblanc and John Lennon? Well, Lennon was known to have used a pen at various stages of his life so why not rush-release some overpriced tat to tie in with what would have been his 70th birthday next week (October 9th). Especially when everyone else is doing it.

The music magazine Q boasts two “previously unpublished pictures” of The Beatle on its four- different-front-covers November edition (available now at all good newsagents). If you want all four covers, send Q a cheque for £9.99 – and if you take out a yearly subscription you’ll get an “exclusive version” of one of the Lennon photos. Whatever that means.

Films, documentaries, tribute concerts . . . anyone whoever so much as ever passed John Lennon in the street is being wheeled out for their “impressions” and “recollections”. Lady Gaga and Susan Boyle are the latest to muscle in on the act. The former will join The Plastic Ono Band at a concert in Los Angeles next week; the latter’s brother fears that she will be shot just like Lennon. Painting a vulgar picture.

Time capsules are being bundled up, souvenirs are being dusted down. The toilet from Lennon's Tittenhurst Park house, where he lived from 1969 to 1972, went for £9,500 (€11,029) at auction earlier this month, 10 times more than the asking price. There's a worldwide contest to find the best new cover of a John Lennon song (send your video to Billboardmagazine). Even Mark Chapman is having his say. Quotes from his appeal to the New York City Parole Board appeared earlier this month. "I killed him to become a somebody" etc have been widely circulated.

If you were to compose an identikit of someone with across- the-board appeal (and his reach was bigger than just musical), it could only reveal John Lennon. Other icons have simply never managed to align the twin attributes of authenticity and commerciality. But Lennon had it all and more: he could hold the counter-culture while still being a pop star; he was “arty” and “loveable”, intelligent and irreverent.

Even when he was resurrected to front an advertising campaign for a Citroen car earlier this year, using words from a 1968 BBC interview (“Why all this nostalgia? Start something new. Live your life now”), Lennon managed to put a nebulous gloss on a tacky enterprise. And even his estate holders turned it into something vaguely “humanitarian” by arguing that they were merely trying to keep his message alive: “We’re just wanting to keep him and all he stood for out there in the world,” chimed Sean Lennon.

All of this, though, is merely a sideshow to the main attraction. It's easy to lose sight of the music with all the surrounding Lennonphilia that, over the next few weeks, will be particularly cloying and suffocating. But hit the play button on The Plastic Ono Band(Lennon's first solo album) and revisit the neglected masterpiece that is Walls and Bridges, along with so much more of his re-upholstered solo work, and you will be able to hear an artist locating the fault line between pop and rock and mining one of the richest veins in music. Lennon still shines on.