New York - yeah, just like I pictured it

Picture: Simon Poulter

New York was - like Stevie Wonder's Mississippi émigré in Living For The City - just as I'd pictured it when I first came here almost 20 years ago.

American cities are like that. You almost know what you're going to get before you get there. What never prepares you is the scale and, in New York's case, the energy. It's hard to describe, but when you're here, you feel it. It pulses from every street and every block, night and day.

Like all great cities New York commands superlative. Even in the face of Chinese urban expansion, New York is still the world's most densely populated city, and it feels it.

It's 12 million citizens may sprawl across five boroughs but for the most part we think about Manhattan, that Daliesque teardrop of an island seemingly built on one flat piece of Lego and piled high with hundreds of multi-story Lego columns sprouting upwards.

23 square miles of steel and concrete, streams of yellow taxis and constant bustle. New York's energy keeps it going 24/7, and that's just one of the reasons why I love this self-styled "greatest city in the world". It is here that epitomises the image of steel canyons more than anything else.

It's here you want to be, whether melting you credit cards in the 5th Avenue boutiques, or doing equal financial damage for a Broadway show ($200 at face value prices to see Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross anyone?), or the needle-bearing haystack that is Manhattan's bewildering away of restaurants.

You can come here for the weekend and just for the hell of it. Because it's a seven-hour flight that makes a weekend trip doable, because - or, in my case, it's just before Christmas and I needed to come back. I've developed a craving for New York. I don't want it all the time, mind, but having last been here just over a year ago - for a memorable birthday on 11.11.11 - I wanted to gulp in another extended breath of New York's chilly winter air and a whole lot of the holiday season.

New York is an incredible hub of world life. From publishing and fashion to music and theatre, more than any other city in the world, it's where the good things in life take place. It's also where some of the less good things in life take place, but as a tourist, there's very little to bring you to Wall Street.

Not far away, however, is a reason to venture south: the 9/11 memorial. It's hard to imagine the Twin Towers that once stood on that plot. But I remember being overawed by the size of the World Trade Center on my first visit here, taking the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island excursion from Battery Park, with the towers in the background.

They looked like steam funnels, representing the toil and graft that New Yorkers put in, regardless of their trade. Exactly a month after 9/11 I was in a taxi coming over one of the bridges from Queens and I was just stunned by the gap in the skyline. 

The absence of those towers made New York's topography look like an old man's teeth with the front set missing. But on that same visit, I got to recognise the real New York: it's not a compressed jungle of anti-social curmudgeons, but a city just getting on with life. To stand on a street corner and watch ordinary people - office workers, shoppers even street hustlers stop and spontaneously applaud a passing fire engine brought a lump to my throat and a simple memory I will never forget. Because that was New York getting back on its feet.

Picture: Simon Poulter

A month ago it was doing it all over again after Sandy tore up the Atlantic states, turning New Jersey and New York upside down in particularly unpleasant fashion. Once again, New York cleaned up and got back on with being New York.

If you're in the privileged position of having holiday days to burn off before the end of a year, a three or even four-day trip to New York is the perfect destination: never too short to miss out on the mustn't-miss attractions, never too long to feel like you're running out of ideas.

It is absurd to think of Manhattan - even at this time of year - as merely an elongated shopping mall. From a European perspective, retail therapy is still the main reason people come. For Brits, the days of 2-for-1 currency exchange are long gone, but with a pound and and even a euro buying you a dollar-and-half, it still makes sense filling up your second permitted suitcase here (another reason to keep the loathsome Ryanair in Europe...).

Picture: Simon Poulter

But once your plastic has been slapped about like La Motta in Raging Bull, there's no shortage of places to go and things to do, depending on your tastes and interests.

First-time visitors will make a beeline for the Empire State Building, but there is just as thrilling an experience to be had at the top of The Rock, the observation deck up on 30 Rockefeller Plaza - yes, 30 Rock.

For culture you have the magnificent Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, New York’s most popular individual attraction hosting more than five million visitors every year. And it's not difficult to see why.

You may want to spend your entire weekend in New York shopping, but do allow yourself some time to come here (and it's open on Sundays, too, so there's no excuse).

Equally, a little bit of Subway time (and I'm not talking about six inch sandwiches) and you can get out and see the bits of Brooklyn, Queens or rustic Staten Island that Sandy left standing.

All three are areas to devote time to: Brooklyn is a city within a city, and as ethnically diverse as any in the fabulous melting pot that is New York itself. And, should you be so inclined, includes Coney Island, the somewhat quaint seaside resort with its fairground rides providing thrill-seeking New Yorkers with a different type of adrenalin rush that that they normally get just crossing the street.

Then there's Queens, New York's dormitory, founded by the Dutch (the influences are still there - Flushing was named after Vlissingen), and the first borough you're likely to see if you fly in via Kennedy airport. Staten Island is a charming, peaceful appendage to New York, more village than urban sprawl, it is a place to pull on walking boots and explore, and it's only a short ride across the bay on the Staten Island Ferry.

Picture: Simon Poulter

For me, the jewel of New York City is Central Park. Plenty of cities enjoy giant green lungs places like this - London's Regents, Hyde and Richmond parks, Berlin's Tiergarten, Amsterdam's Vondelpark, the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and so on - but somehow Central Park is the greatest of them all, a beautiful and tranquil oasis in a truly hectic metropolis, curtained by the über-expensive properties of the Upper West and Upper East sides.

Picture: Simon Poulter

Here you can bike ride in safety, stretch your legs and feel at peace with the world, even the at-times crazy world on its borders.

Here you'll also find the tranquil Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon, who was shot dead in front of his apartment building, The Dakota, just across from the park.

New York can be a mad place. Lennon's death no better example of the kind of darkness that can befall America.

20 children and six adults shot dead yesterday morning at a Connecticut junior school demonstrate how that madness never goes away for long. But that should never be a reason not to come here. New York may be loud, brash and intimidating, but it's intoxicating energy is like the metropolitan equivalent of a shot of Red Bull. You would't want to be drinking it all day long, but a blast every now and again does the soul good. It's great to be back.

The difference between Fab and fabricated

Can you hear that? That's the sound of shuddering at the idea of James McCartney, Sean Lennon, Dhani Harrison and Jason Starkey forming a band.

Not that they would be bad - quite the opposite. However...

Talk of The Beatles being 'reformed' by their offspring - arguably the head-on collision between a Hollywood remake and a tribute band - was sparked earlier this week when James McCartney, the 34-year-old son of Sir Paul, suggested - and I stress, suggested - in a BBC interview that a Beatles reboot might be fun.

McCartney Jr may have ill-advisedly answered a question by saying that he, plus the younger Lennon and Harrison, might be up for it, with either of Ringo Starr's drumming sons Zak or Jason yet to be canvassed. It was only a suggestion but it nonetheless struck a chord of terror.

Surely a band trading off the coincidence that each of its members' fathers were in the greatest pop band in recording history is a recipe for disaster? I'm sure they've been friends since childhood, but that wouldn't give forming a band any more legitimacy.

Talent obviously runs through the respective McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr/Starkey bloodlines: James McCartney is currently promoting his own, emerging solo career while sister Stella has become one of the world's leading fashion designers (other half-siblings Heather and Mary keep low profiles). Julian and Sean Lennon have both enjoyed varying degrees of music success, though the former hadn't been heard of much since early hits in the 1980s before re-emerging last year with a new album. Ringo'a sons Zak and Jason became professional drummers, but only Zak has enjoyed any degree of prominence, touring as drummer for The Who and playing for both Paul Weller and Oasis.

And then there's Dhani Harrison - who looks and sounds uncannily like George - and who made his professional debut as a guitarist on his late father's final album, Brainwashed. Since then his career has been developing relatively modestly, with guest appearances and collaborations here and there, including the formation of Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur a couple of years ago.

Harrison has also been involved in the band thenewno2, from which a cryptic tweet appeared this week which many suspected was from The Quiet One's son himself, nixing the whole idea. That hasn't prevented a media frenzy at the idea of a Fab Second Coming, with some wag already naming them the 'Mop Tots'.

"If they want to play together privately to entertain themselves and their friends, that would be terrific," offered Beatles biographer Ray Connolly in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, who then helpfully pointed out the size of the shadows are probably perfectly aware of standing in: "Forged by the accidental cross-seeding of extraordinary talents in a post-war environment of social change, [The Beatles'] grip on the world’s imagination cannot be replicated. All the elements that came together then and helped create them and their myth cannot recur."

The familiar-looking cheekbones of Coco Sumner

We should be now well used to musical offspring making a go of it themselves, being well inside the second age of rock and pop.

Bob Dylan's son Jakob was one of the first of his generation of showbusiness kids to embark upon a prominent music career of their own, with others like Ziggy Marley, Rufus and Martha Wainright, Dweezil Zappa and more recently Coco Sumner joining the family firm. 

Comparable, in terms of parental reputation, to this story, Lisa Marie Presley has made several attempts at a music career, with her 2003 debut album To Whom It May Concern even reaching No.5 in the Billboard album chart (and who has been working with the omnipresent T-Bone Burnett on a new record due this year).

Others, however, have steered well clear: Duncan 'Zowie Bowie' Jones adopted his father's real surname and took up film directing (what would David Jones do...?), various members of the Jagger brood have found their way into fashion, while many more have simply found something altogether less laden with expectation to forge careers upon.

But what if McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starkey did give it a go, and Beatles: The Next Generation became reality? A charity project, may be (and hats off, too - no better way to leverage the ancestral arms). As long as we didn't end up with a Beatle-version of S Club Juniors, the "franchised" S Club 7 spinoff. Because we would not be talking about a Toytown pop group, but scions of a band to which few will ever hold a candle. Trying to compete with that legacy for any band, let alone The Beatles' children, would, I'm afraid, only end in tears.

Checking out early

For the return from absence of What Would David Bowie Do? (no note from matron, just been busy with other things), I'd like to draw your attention to death. Not an uplifting topic, nor particularly entertaining. In fact, death is quite serious.

If there is, though, one certainty in life, it is that some day we will all pop our clogs. Sorry if you had another expectation, but it clearly says in the instruction manual that we turn up, we schlep around for however many years the Great Life Lottery allocates us, and then that's it. Ta-ta.

When someone we know, or know of, dies, our response ranges from mortification and deep gloom, to mild acknowledgement and a token, and somewhat disposable, comment of condolence. For the family of the deceased, it's an understandable tragedy, even it provides welcome respite from the condition that preceded the terminal breath.  For everyone else, grief will only ever be an assumed state, the acquisition of a character, no matter how genuinely-intentioned it might be.

This morning I woke up to the sad news that Clarence Clemons, the iconic saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band had passed away at the age of 69 following a stroke. By spooky coincidence (and unaware that the big man had even been ill) I'd been playing the Born To Run 30th Anniversary box set only the night before, luxuriating in Clemons' sax solo on Jungleland and considering that after lead guitarist, there is only one other solo star in any band.

Clemons was more than just the cool horn player with his moment in the spotlight each time the middle eight came around; his sax, tied to the blatant Spector soundscapes, shaped the Springsteen sound, and made it and Springsteen himself, a musical representation of the size, scale and enormity of America.

It is sad: life is finite, we all know, but seeing anyone who has contributed - even a little - to the cultural enjoyment of my own life pass away while still active and still able to contribute more, saddens me. Is it a vacant emotion? Should I just get a grip?

Last October it was Solomon Burke, a performer who I'd come to appreciate late in my life and even later in his, but whom I realised - only through accessing his back catalogue - what a true musical pioneer he was.  Just last month I was confronted with the demise of another legend, Gil Scott-Heron, whose early albums like Pieces Of A Man exposed me - relatively young - to another side of jazz, funk and whatever it was you could call Heron's music. I felt compelled to express my sadness about his death, for the simple and self-indlugent reason that like so many others who have gone before they should - John Lennon, George Harrison, Nick Drake and my über-hero, John Martyn, to name just four - their music has had a profound influence on my listening enjoyment.

Keith Richards once famously remarked that some musicians aren't meant to live beyond 30 (or thereabouts): the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Marc Bolan, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison all had some degree of misadventure to their expiration (though to be fair, Bolan's had more to do with his Mini losing an argument with a tree on Barnes Common). Were they just destined to go young? Should we feel any less grief for John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters reaching their dotages and then pegging out, much like anyone else who isn't in the spotlight?

Not wishing to get over psychoanalytical about it, it boils down to association and impact. John Martyn's death affected me for days, and still does. I should get over it. One musician out of millions. Likewise the comedian and writer Spike Milligan. He was 83 when he went. "He'd had a good innings" trilled the frequently issued and thoroughly vacuous platitude. To me, it was tragic, because it removed someone who had played a part in my own development, the gradual genetic shape-shifting that is each of our lives. Milligan's sense of humour, channelled through tapes of The Goon Show my father blessed my family life with, influenced my sense of fun, appreciation of English wordplay and the absurd, and to this day, still brings amusement to the moribund downward escalator we call existence.

To see great people taken away from the world at any age is, sadly inevitable and inevitably sad. We should move on, celebrate all the other good things that are out there, of course. But those who make some impact on the lives of many and the lives of only a few - who might have only been responsible for something of just fleeting enjoyment - deserve whatever appreciation comes their way.

Imagine

I was just 13 years old when, 30 years ago today, Mark Chapman fatally shot John Lennon outside his New York apartment building. At the time, I knew of The Beatles, of course: I was familiar with their hits, though not yet the more interesting diversions of The White Album, Revolver and Abbey Road. I'd seen Help!, A Hard Day's Night and the animated Yellow Submarine. And I knew some of Lennon's solo material, like Imagine, Whatever Gets You Through The Night and (Just Like) Starting Over, which had been a radio hit in the months leading up to the release of Double Fantasy, just two weeks before his death.

Lennon's murder on Monday, December 8, 1980 clearly shocked the world, but it has taken me a lot longer to fully appreciate the cultural impact Lennon had had on that world. The Beatles weren't just another '60s pop band: they'd turned music on its head every bit as radically as Elvis Presley's arrival in 1955. Between 1963 and 1970 they led the charge of evolving the Top 40 from sacharine puppy love songs to bluesy wigouts, transforming themselves at the same time from mop-topped, besuited boys next door, to bearded, long-haired rock musicians. Incredible to think that just seven years separate Please Please Me and  Let It Be, albums which sound as if they'd been made by two different groups.

Lennon may - or may not - have been the chief architect of this transformation, but as arguably the most charismatic of the band, he certainly gave the band their edge. Look back at vintage footage of The Fabs on The Ed Sullivan Show or with Morecombe and Wise, and Lennon stands out as the gum-chewing rock'n'roller. He may have swapped his Quarrymen leather biker's jacket for a mohair suit, but he was still the teenage rebel.

For all the acknowledgement of McCartney's apparent "normality" and his ability to craft a perfect melody, for all the justified appreciation of George Harrison's musicianship and quiet creativity, and for all of Ringo Starr's often underappreciated rhythm and percussive colour - John Lennon was the Beatle with something to say. He was the gobby one, unafraid of courting controversy with a cheeky quip and a wry aside here, and a reference to being bigger than Jesus there.

Lennon represented what I've always felt are the most important qualities of a rock star: artistic talent, a questioning view on the world, and an edge. At the time of his murder, Lennon appeared to be mellowing. He'd learned to accept his fame and Beatle legacy and was moving comfortably into middle age as a devoted father. After five years' in semi-retirement, Double Fantasy was his comback album. While it didn't compare with any of his better known work as a solo artist or band member, it restored him, at the age of 40, to the top table of the rock firmament.

What caused Mark Chapman to murder Lennon at, perhaps, the musician's most settled and contented time of life may never been known. Like Lennon, Chapman had endured a challenging upbringing. Diagnosed with autism as a child, he developed suicidal tendenancies in young adulthood, along with fantasies about replicating Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, as well as an unhealthy obsession with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye (on the morning of the murder, Chapman bought a copy of the novel, inscribed "This is my statement" inside, and signed it "Holden Caulfield"). Amid this gathering storm, a switch flipped and Mark Chapman decided that John Lennon, that most vocal advocate of peace and love, must be killed.

Chillingly, Chapman was photographed just a few hours before the murder asking Lennon to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, believed to be the only Lennon or Beatles album the killer ever posessed. Chapman had approached Lennon and Yoko Ono as they left their apartment in The Dakota building on New York's Central Park West. They'd just taken part in the iconic Annie Leibovitz photoshoot for Rolling Stone, in which a nude Lennon curled up against a clothed Ono.



After spending most of the day working on new songs at The Record Plant studio, Lennon and Ono returned to The Dakota, shortly before 11pm. As Lennon followed Ono into the building's lobby, he caught sight of Chapman, just before the killer fired the fatal rounds of hollow-point ammunition from a .38 Special revolver he'd purchased for the occasion. Lennon was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later.

Rock stars are meant to expire through their own volition: Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Moon, Bonham - you know the list. "Death by misadventure" is their prescribed demise, the result of some drug or alcohol-induced craziness, or sexual experimentation gone horribly wrong. Some, as Keith Richards famously (and defiantly) said, are never meant to exceed the age of 30.

Lennon did, and was well on his way to elder statesman status. In the 30 years since his death, it has been the subject of conjecture, conspiracy and outright cobblers. Daft theories abound that Chapman was a CIA assassin, and that despite his apparent diminished responsibility, was fully in charge of his faculties and took out Lennon for being a subversive influence on American society. Lennon was a charter member of the Awkward Squad, for sure, but even now it's hard to understand what made him a target for murder, irrational or rational.

Whatever or whoever Chapman was, he has taken a place in the infamous history of nobodies who became somebodies through some devilish act, alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr (whose attempt on Ronald Reagan's life came just three months after Lennon's death) and Gavrilo Princip, the young Bosnian who plunged the world into four years of carnage in 1914. Thankfully, however, Chapman must be considered a footnote in John Lennon's 40-year life.

Lennon would have turned 70 in October. He might still have been making music; he might have turned to art, produced challenging documentaries about human rights, or become a riotously opinionated author or newspaper columnist.

In the 30 years since his death, the world has experienced profound change and events: the fall of communism; Thatcherism; two generations of Bush in the White House; the end of apartheid; two wars in and with Iraq; the continuing bloodshed and bloody-mindedness in the Middle East; 9/11; Obama; the rise of China as an economic power; the Internet. Imagine where John Lennon would have stood amid this all.