Elton John Corporation: Song of the Week: “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)”

quinta-feira, 25 de dezembro de 2025

Song of the Week: “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)” – Elton John

On the night of December 8, 1980, the music world suffered one of its most devastating blows. John Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota building in New York, only hours after leaving the studio. The news caused immediate and global shock. Radio stations interrupted their programming, fans gathered in silent vigils, and artists across generations reacted in disbelief. It was not simply the loss of a former Beatle, but the sudden silencing of a voice associated with imagination, creative freedom, and the hope of a less hostile world.

For Elton John, the loss was deeply personal. His relationship with Lennon went beyond artistic admiration. They were friends, had collaborated musically, and shared the stage in 1974 at Madison Square Garden during Lennon’s last full live performance. Lennon’s death left Elton emotionally shaken and creatively paralyzed for months.

During this period of mourning, Elton composed an instrumental piece titled “The Man Who Never Died.”

https://youtu.be/2eQN315RuFU?si=tQWYLIlfC5LvUTem

The piece carried an evident emotional weight, but it was ultimately shelved. Something essential was missing: a language capable of expressing absence without turning tragedy into spectacle or literal retelling. Only later, when Elton reunited with Bernie Taupin, did the music find its definitive and symbolic form, giving rise to “Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny).”

Taupin deliberately avoided describing the murder or mentioning the crime directly. Instead, he built a poetic narrative grounded in metaphor. At its center is the garden, understood as a space of creation, coexistence, and artistic fertility. John Lennon appears as the gardener, the one who cared, tended, and made everything bloom. With his absence, the garden remains physically intact but spiritually hollow.

The most unsettling element in this construction is the presence of the insect. The assassin is never named, humanized, or described. He is symbolically reduced to a creeping, parasitic creature — incapable of understanding the garden and, therefore, incapable of creating anything. His only function is destruction. This literary choice removes any spotlight from the violence and shifts the focus of the song to what was lost: creation, life, and meaning.

One of the most sophisticated elements in the lyric is the way it uses the word “play,” drawing on its two essential meanings: to play music (to play an instrument) and to engage in the innocent act of play associated with childhood.

In a statement given in an interview reported on the site Meet the Beatles… for Real, Elton John said:

> “When he died, we were in Australia and we heard it on the plane … we did go to the cathedral to have ten minutes of silence to coincide with Yoko’s request.”

Report link:

https://www.meetthebeatlesforreal.com/2017/12/elton-john-talks-lennon.html?m=1

Original video:

https://youtu.be/EQxNTMRbdTA?si=EVdfAaA19lVzyZlN

Queen – “Life Is Real (Song for Lennon)” (1982)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl20NGS3VF8

Paul McCartney – “Here Today” (1982)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzT1fDE5JzA

Bob Dylan – “Roll On John” (2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25vvCs_lxuw

The Cranberries – “I Just Shot John Lennon” (1996)

https://youtu.be/f0n9-3M6EzA?si=ikxC9oWfP0O2Y4eZ