Father John Misty Covered John Lennon’s ‘God’

Father John Misty Covered John Lennon’s ‘God’


Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without a gift from Father John Misty (a.k.a. Josh Tillman). This year, our favorite crooner delivered with an updated version of John Lennon’s God, which he performed this past Saturday at the 4th Annual Merry Minstrel Musical Circus: A Holiday Gathering & Jamathon in Los Angeles at the Troubadour. You can watch the cover below thanks to blisstanger.

For his rendition, Tillman contemporizes Lennon’s 45-year-old song. In Lennon’s version, he addresses the passing of the Beatles and makes reference to other things that are idolized that he does not believe in such as Buddha, Jesus, yoga, and Kennedy. Tillman replaces some of the items on Lennon’s “idols” list with things such as Facebook, Uber, smoothies, Star Wars, Obama, and Tom Petty (who, incidentally, also performed at the Merry Minstrel that night). By his selection of this song, are we to conclude that Tillman is contemplating saying farewell to his Father John Misty persona? Nah, probably not.

This wasn’t Tillman’s first appearance at the Merry Minstrel Musical Circus. The Christmas-time concert, which is a fundraiser for the Tazzy Animal Rescue Fund, is organized each year by Mike Campbell and Jonathan Wilson and features an assortment of special musical guests. Tillman was also part of the 2013 edition along with Lucinda Williams, Jackson Browne, Susanna Hoffs (The Bangles) and Dawes. That year, he also did fine selection of covers includingWillie Nelson’s On the Road Again, Harry Nilsson’s Jump into the Fire, The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning, and Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is Over). We’ve included his other Lennon cover below.

As mentioned above, in addition to Tillman, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers also took part in the event. It was Petty and gang’s only live appearance in 2015 and they performed ten songs, of which Jeff Lynne (ELO, Traveling Wilburys) joined for three. The evening’s other musical guests included Jackson Browne, Mandy Moore, Dawes, Karen Elson, Benmont Tench, and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and Bo Koster. You can watch other videos recorded at the show on blisstanger’s YouTube page.

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