New York City: Bank Street Pier, 1972 & 2009.

Wasn't it Voltaire that said something about owing respect to the living, but only truth to the dead? Well...maybe so. But it seems to me, the older I get, that there isn't much flesh to be had on the bones of objective fact. Beyond a certain point, it's all subjective. So what truth is owed Mr J.W.O. Lennon esquire? Lazy iconoclasts, most of them up against a deadline and desperate, will tell you ad nauseam that, brace yourselves, our boy was no candidate for sainthood. Any book you read on the subject will, to a lesser or greater extent, make the same point (occasionally ludicrously so). The important thing (I mean beyond the music - all the rest is jibber-jabber) is that it seems almost everyone who knew him still retains a good deal of affection for the man - including those he behaved badly towards. Everything else is gossip and tall tales. Which can be entertaining, and even informative on some level, but what is actually true? Several hundred books later, I have little or no idea.
Which brings us to these photos, the first taken as dawn broke on the pier at the end of Bank Street, a couple of days after John had, by all accounts, disgraced himself at a party during an alcohol fuelled berserk following the re-election of Tricky Dick. You can, if you so desire, date the start of the Lost Weekend to that evening, although it would take some time to actually bear fruit. John seems to know it in this pic, however. The second taken the other week as the sun set over the same spot, the pier mouse masticated and the Jersey shoreline almost unrecognisable...