John Lennon in New York City: 8th-28th September 1980 - Playboy Interview Part 2

'In Bed'
Dakota Apts, NYC 1975

By David Sheff

September 8-28, 1980

PLAYBOY: What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together? LENNON: In "We Can Work It Out," Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, "We can work it out/We can work it out" -- real optimistic, y' know, and me, impatient: "Life is very short and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend...."PLAYBOY: Paul tells the story and John philosophizes. LENNON: Sure. Well, I was always like that, you know. I was like that before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently doing. I always looked below the surface. PLAYBOY: When you talk about working together on a single lyric like "We Can Work It Out," it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely than you've admitted in the past. Haven't you said that you wrote most of your songs separately, despite putting both of your names on them? LENNON: Yeah, I was lying. [Laughs] It was when I felt resentful, so I felt that we did everything apart. But, actually, a lot of the songs we did eyeball to eyeball. PLAYBOY: But many of them were done apart, weren't they? LENNON: Yeah. "Sgt. Pepper" was Paul's idea, and I remember he worked on it a lot and suddenly called me to go into the studio, said it was time to write some songs. On "Pepper," under the pressure of only ten days, I managed to come up with "Lucy in the Sky" and "Day in the Life." We weren't communicating enough, you see. And later on, that's why I got resentful about all that stuff. But now I understand that it was just the same competitive game going on. PLAYBOY: But the competitive game was good for you, wasn't it? LENNON: In the early days. We'd make a record in 12 hours or something; they would want a single every three months and we'd have to write it in a hotel room or in a van. So the cooperation was functional as well as musical. PLAYBOY: Don't you think that cooperation, that magic between you, is something you've missed in your work since? LENNON: I never actually felt a loss. I don't want it to sound negative, like I didn't need Paul, because when he was there, obviously, it worked. But I can't -- it's easier to say what I gave to him than what he gave to me. And he'd say the same. PLAYBOY: Just a quick aside, but while we're on the subject of lyrics and your resentment of Paul, what made you write "How Do You Sleep?," which contains lyrics such as "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead" and "The only thing you done was yesterday/And since you've gone, you're just another day"? LENNON: [Smiles] You know, I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the time. But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let's put it that way. He saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He's so obscure other people didn't notice them, but I heard them. I thought, Well, I'm not obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he'd done it his way and I did it mine. But as to the line you quoted, yeah, I think Paul died creatively, in a way. PLAYBOY: That's what we were getting at: You say that what you've done since the Beatles stands up well, but isn't it possible that with all of you, it's been a case of the creative whole being greater than the parts? LENNON: I don't know whether this will gel for you: When the Beatles played in America for the first time, they played pure craftsmanship. Meaning they were already old hands. The jism had gone out of the performances a long time ago. In the same respect, the songwriting creativity had left Paul and me in the mid-Sixties. When we wrote together in the early days, it was like the beginning of a relationship. Lots of energy. In the "Sgt. Pepper"- "Abbey Road" period, the relationship had matured. Maybe had we gone on together, more interesting things would have come, but it couldn't have been the same. PLAYBOY: Let's move on to Ringo. What's your opinion of him musically? LENNON: Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even met. He was a professional drummer who sang and performed and had Ringo Star-time and he was in one of the top groups in Britain but especially in Liverpool before we even had a drummer. So Ringo's talent would have come out one way or the other as something or other. I don't know what he would have ended up as, but whatever that spark is in Ringo that we all know but can't put our finger on -- whether it is acting, drumming or singing I don't know -- there is something in him that is projectable and he would have surfaced with or without the Beatles. Ringo is a damn good drummer. He is not technically good, but I think Ringo's drumming is underrated the same way Paul's bass playing is underrated. Paul was one of the most innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He is an egomaniac about everything else about himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. I think Paul and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians. Not technically great -- none of us are technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, they are as good as anybody. PLAYBOY: How about George's solo music? LENNON: I think "All Things Must Pass" was all right. It just went on too long. PLAYBOY: How did you feel about the lawsuit George lost that claimed the music to "My Sweet Lord" is a rip-off of the Shirelles' hit "He's So Fine?" LENNON: Well, he walked right into it. He knew what he was doing. PLAYBOY: Are you saying he consciously plagiarized the song? LENNON: He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that. It's irrelevant, actually -- only on a monetary level does it matter. He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off. [At presstime, the court has found Harrison guilty of "subconscious" plagiarism but has not yet ruled on damages.] PLAYBOY: You actually haven't mentioned George much in this interview. LENNON: Well, I was hurt by George's book, "I, Me, Mine" -- so this message will go to him. He put a book out privately on his life that, by glaring omission, says that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil. In his book, which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book. PLAYBOY: Why? LENNON: Because George's relationship with me was one of young follower and older guy. He's three or four years younger than me. It's a love- hate relationship and I think George still bears resentment toward me for being a daddy who left home. He would not agree with this, but that's my feeling about it. I was just hurt. I was just left out, as if I didn't exist. I don't want to be that egomaniacal, but he was like a disciple of mine when we started. I was already an art student when Paul and George were still in grammar school [equivalent to high school in the U.S.]. There is a vast difference between being in high school and being in college and I was already in college and already had sexual relationships, already drank and did a lot of things like that. When George was a kid, he used to follow me and my first girlfriend, Cynthia -- who became my wife -- around. We'd come out of art school and he'd be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the Dakota now. I remember the day he called to ask for help on "Taxman," one of his bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because that's what he asked for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh, no, don't tell me I have to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called me that afternoon and said, "Will you help me with this song?" I just sort of bit my tongue and said OK. It had been John and Paul so long, he'd been left out because he hadn't been a songwriter up until then. As a singer, we allowed him only one track on each album. If you listen to the Beatles' first albums, the English versions, he gets a single track. The songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of my repertoire in the dance halls. I used to pick songs for them from my repertoire -- the easier ones to sing. So I am slightly resentful of George's book. But don't get me wrong. I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on. PLAYBOY: Didn't all four Beatles work on a song you wrote for Ringo in 1973? LENNON: "I'm the Greatest." It was the Muhammad Ali line, of course. It was perfect for Ringo to sing. If I said, "I'm the greatest," they'd all take it so seriously. No one would get upset with Ringo singing it. PLAYBOY: Did you enjoy playing with George and Ringo again? LENNON: Yeah, except when George and Billy Preston started saying, "Let's form a group. Let's form a group." I was embarrassed when George kept asking me. He was just enjoying the session and the spirit was very good, but I was with Yoko, you know. We took time out from what we were doing. The very fact that they would imagine I would form a male group without Yoko! It was still in their minds. . . . PLAYBOY: Just to finish your favorite subject, what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit? LENNON: I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death. PLAYBOY: Why? LENNON: Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock- 'n'-roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You've heard of tithing? PLAYBOY: That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income. LENNON: Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly. PLAYBOY: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed? LENNON: Bangladesh was caca. PLAYBOY: You mean because of all the questions that were raised about where the money went? LENNON: Yeah, right. I can't even talk about it, because it's still a problem. You'll have to check with Mother [Yoko], because she knows the ins and outs of it, I don't. But it's all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don't bother sending me all that garbage about, "Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans," Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn. PLAYBOY: But that doesn't compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert -- playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day. LENNON: That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson. OK. So I don't buy that. OK. PLAYBOY: But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty- stricken country in South America---- LENNON: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway. [Ono rejoins the conversation.] PLAYBOY: On the subject of your own wealth, the New York Post recently said you admitted to being worth over $150,000,000 and---- LENNON: We never admitted anything. PLAYBOY: The Post said you had. LENNON: What the Post says -- OK, so we are rich; so what? PLAYBOY: The question is, How does that jibe with your political philosophies? You're supposed to be socialists, aren't you? LENNON: In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell -- if that's a paradox, then I'm a socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers. PLAYBOY: Whatever your politics, you've played the capitalist game very well, parlaying your Beatles royalties into real estate, livestock---- ONO: There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have to take care of yourself first. You have to survive yourself. I used to say to myself, I am the only socialist living here. [Laughs] I don't have a penny. It is all John's, so I'm clean. But I was using his money and I had to face that hypocrisy. I used to think that money was obscene, that the artists didn't have to think about money. But to change society, there are two ways to go: through violence or the power of money within the system. A lot of people in the Sixties went underground and were involved in bombings and other violence. But that is not the way, definitely not for me. So to change the system -- even if you are going to become a mayor or something -- you need money. PLAYBOY: To what extent do you play the game without getting caught up in it -- money for the sake of money, in other words? ONO: There is a limit. It would probably be parallel to our level of security. Do you know what I mean? I mean the emotional-security level as well. PLAYBOY: Has it reached that level yet? ONO: No, not yet. I don't know. It might have. PLAYBOY: You mean with $150,000,000? Is that an accurate estimate? ONO: I don't know what we have. It becomes so complex that you need to have ten accountants working for two years to find out what you have. But let's say that we feel more comfortable now. PLAYBOY: How have you chosen to invest your money? ONO: To make money, you have to spend money. But if you are going to make money, you have to make it with love. I love Egyptian art. I make sure to get all the Egyptian things, not for their value but for their magic power. Each piece has a certain magic power. Also with houses. I just buy ones we love, not the ones that people say are good investments. PLAYBOY: The papers have made it sound like you are buying up the Atlantic Seaboard. ONO: If you saw the houses, you would understand. They have become a good investment, but they are not an investment unless you sell them. We don't intend to sell. Each house is like a historic landmark and they're very beautiful. PLAYBOY: Do you actually use all the properties? ONO: Most people have the park to go to and run in -- the park is a huge place -- but John and I were never able to go to the park together. So we have to create our own parks, you know. PLAYBOY: We heard that you own $60,000,000 worth of dairy cows. Can that be true? ONO: I don't know. I'm not a calculator. I'm not going by figures. I'm going by excellence of things. LENNON: Sean and I were away for a weekend and Yoko came over to sell this cow and I was joking about it. We hadn't seen her for days; she spent all her time on it. But then I read the paper that said she sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. Only Yoko could sell a cow for that much. [Laughter] PLAYBOY: For an artist, your business sense seems remarkable. ONO: I was doing it just as a chess game. I love chess. I do everything like it's a chess game. Not on a Monopoly level -- that's a bit more realistic. Chess is more conceptual. PLAYBOY: John, do you really need all those houses around the country? LENNON: They're good business. PLAYBOY: Why does anyone need $150,000,000? Couldn't you be perfectly content with $100,000,000? Or $1,000,000? LENNON: What would you suggest I do? Give everything away and walk the streets? The Buddhist says, "Get rid of the possessions of the mind." Walking away from all the money would not accomplish that. It's like the Beatles. I couldn't walk away from the Beatles. That's one possession that's still tagging along, right? If I walk away from one house or 400 houses, I'm not gonna escape it. PLAYBOY: How do you escape it? LENNON: It takes time to get rid of all this garbage that I've been carrying around that was influencing the way I thought and the way I lived. It had a lot to do with Yoko, showing me that I was still possessed. I left physically when I fell in love with Yoko, but mentally it took the last ten years of struggling. I learned everything from her. PLAYBOY: You make it sound like a teacher-pupil relationship. LENNON: It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the one who's supposed to know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I fucking know. She was there when I was nowhere, when I was the nowhere man. She's my Don Juan [a reference to Carlos Castaneda's Yaqui Indian teacher]. That's what people don't understand. I'm married to fucking Don Juan, that's the hardship of it. Don Juan doesn't have to laugh; Don Juan doesn't have to be charming; Don Juan just is. And what goes on around Don Juan is irrelevant to Don Juan. PLAYBOY: Yoko, how do you feel about being John's teacher? ONO: Well, he had a lot of experience before he met me, the kind of experience I never had, so I learned a lot from him, too. It's both ways. Maybe it's that I have strength, a feminine strength. Because women develop it -- in a relationship, I think women really have the inner wisdom and they're carrying that while men have sort of the wisdom to cope with society, since they created it. Men never developed the inner wisdom; they didn't have time. So most men do rely on women's inner wisdom, whether they express that or not. PLAYBOY: Is Yoko John's guru? LENNON: No, a Don Juan doesn't have a following. A Don Juan isn't in the newspaper and doesn't have disciples and doesn't proselytize. PLAYBOY: How has she taught you? LENNON: When Don Juan said -- when Don Ono said, "Get out! Because you're not getting it," well, it was like being sent into the desert. And the reason she wouldn't let me back in was because I wasn't ready to come back in. I had to settle things within myself. When I was ready to come back in, she let me back in. And that's what I'm living with. PLAYBOY: You're talking about your separation. LENNON: Yes. We were separated in the early Seventies. She kicked me out. Suddenly, I was on a raft alone in the middle of the universe. PLAYBOY: What happened? LENNON: Well, at first, I thought, Whoopee, whoopee! You know, bachelor life! Whoopee! And then I woke up one day and I thought, What is this? I want to go home! But she wouldn't let me come home. That's why it was 18 months apart instead of six months. We were talking all the time on the phone and I would say, "I don't like this, I'm getting in trouble and I'd like to come home, please." And she would say, "You're not ready to come home." So what do you say? OK, back to the bottle. PLAYBOY: What did she mean, you weren't ready? LENNON: She has her ways. Whether they be mystical or practical. When she said it's not ready, it ain't ready. PLAYBOY: Back to the bottle? LENNON: I was just trying to hide what I felt in the bottle. I was just insane. It was the lost weekend that lasted 18 months. I've never drunk so much in my life. I tried to drown myself in the bottle and I was with the heaviest drinkers in the business. PLAYBOY: Such as? LENNON: Such as Harry Nilsson, Bobby Keyes, Keith Moon. We couldn't pull ourselves out. We were trying to kill ourselves. I think Harry might still be trying, poor bugger -- God bless you, Harry, wherever you are -- but, Jesus, you know, I had to get away from that, because somebody was going to die. Well, Keith did. It was like, who's going to die first? Unfortunately, Keith was the one. PLAYBOY: Why the self-destruction? LENNON: For me, it was because of being apart. I couldn't stand it. They had their own reasons, and it was, Let's all drown ourselves together. From where I was sitting, it looked like that. Let's kill ourselves but do it like Errol Flynn, you know, the macho, male way. It's embarrassing for me to think about that period, because I made a big fool of myself -- but maybe it was a good lesson for me. I wrote "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out" during that time. That's how I felt. It exactly expresses the whole period. For some reason, I always imagined Sinatra singing that one. I don't know why. It's kind of a Sinatraesque song, really. He would do a perfect job with it. Are you listening, Frank? You need a song that isn't a piece of nothing. Here's the one for you, the horn arrangement and everything's made for you. But don't ask me to produce it. PLAYBOY: That must have been the time the papers came out with reports about Lennon running around town with a Tampax on his head. LENNON: The stories were all so exaggerated, but. . . . We were all in a restaurant, drinking, not eating, as usual at those gatherings, and I happened to go take a pee and there was a brand-new fresh Kotex, not Tampax, on the toilet. You know the old trick where you put a penny on your forehead and it sticks? I was a little high and I just picked it up and slapped it on and it stayed, you see. I walked out of the bathroom and I had a Kotex on my head. Big deal. Everybody went "Ha-ha-ha" and it fell off, but the press blew it up. PLAYBOY: Why did you kick John out, Yoko? ONO: There were many things. I'm what I call a "moving on" kind of girl; there's a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems in relationships, I've always moved on. That's why I'm one of the very few survivors as a woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually, but I wasn't.... LENNON: Yoko looks upon men as assistants. . . . Of varying degrees of intimacy, but basically assistants. And this one's going to take a pee. [He exits] ONO: I have no comment on that. But when I met John, women to him were basically people around who were serving him. He had to open himself up and face me -- and I had to see what he was going through. But ... I though I had to move on again, because I was suffering being with John. PLAYBOY: Why? ONO: The pressure from the public, being the one who broke up the Beatles and who made it impossible for them to get back together. My artwork suffered, too. I thought I wanted to be free from being Mrs. Lennon, so I thought it would be a good idea for him to go to L.A. and leave me alone for a while. I had put up with it for many years. Even early on, when John was a Beatle, we stayed in a room and John and I were in bed and the door was closed and all that, but we didn't lock the door and one of the Beatle assistants just walked in and talked to him as if I weren't there. It was mind- blowing. I was invisible. The people around John saw me as a terrible threat. I mean, I heard there were plans to kill me. Not the Beatles but the people around them. PLAYBOY: How did that news affect you? ONO: The society doesn't understand that the woman can be castrated, too. I felt castrated. Before, I was doing all right, thank you. My work might not have been selling much, I might have been poorer, but I had my pride. But the most humiliating thing is to be looked at as a parasite. [Lennon rejoins the conversation.] LENNON: When Yoko and I started doing stuff together, we would hold press conferences and announce our whatevers -- we're going to wear bags or whatever. And before this one press conference, one Beatle assistant in the upper echelon of Beatle assistants leaned over to Yoko and said, "You know, you don't have to work. You've got enough money, now that you're Mrs. Lennon." And when she complained to me about it, I couldn't understand what she was talking about. "But this guy," I'd say, "He's just good old Charley, or whatever. He's been with us 20 years...." The same kind of thing happened in the studio. She would say to an engineer, "I'd like a little more treble, a little more bass," or "There's too much of whatever you're putting on," and they'd look at me and say, "What did you say, John?" Those days I didn't even notice it myself. Now I know what she's talking about. In Japan, when I ask for a cup of tea in Japanese, they look at Yoko and ask, "He wants a cup of tea?" in Japanese. ONO: So a good few years of that kind of thing emasculates you. I had always been more macho than most guys I was with, in a sense. I had always been the breadwinner, because I always wanted to have the freedom and the control. Suddenly, I'm with somebody I can't possibly compete with on a level of earnings. Finally, I couldn't take it -- or I decided not to take it any longer. I would have had the same difficulty even if I hadn't gotten involved with, ah---- LENNON: John -- John is the name. ONO: With John. But John wasn't just John. He was also his group and the people around them. When I say John, it's not just John----LENNON: That's John. J-O-H-N. From Johan, I believe. PLAYBOY: So you made him leave? ONO: Yes. LENNON: She don't suffer fools gladly, even if she's married to him. PLAYBOY: How did you finally get back together? ONO: It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We laugh about it now, but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I'm thankful to John's intelligence---- LENNON: Now, get that, editors -- you got that word? ONO: That he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we could save our marriage, not because we didn't love each other but because it was getting too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs. Lennon again. PLAYBOY: What did change? ONO: It was good for me to do the business and regain my pride about what I could do. And it was good to know what he needed, the role reversal that was so good for him. LENNON: And we learned that it's better for the family if we are both working for the family, she doing the business and me playing mother and wife. We reordered our priorities. The number-one priority is her and the family. Everything else revolves around that. ONO: It's a hard realization. These days, the society prefers single people. The encouragements are to divorce or separate or be single or gay -- whatever. Corporations want singles -- they work harder if they don't have family ties. They don't have to worry about being home in the evenings or on the weekends. There's not much room for emotions about family or personal relationships. You know, the whole thing they say to women approaching 30 that if you don't have a baby in the next few years, you're going to be in trouble, you'll never be a mother, so you'll never be fulfilled in that way and---- LENNON: Only Yoko was 73 when she had Sean. [Laughter] ONO: So instead of the society discouraging children, since they are important for society, it should encourage them. It's the responsibility of everybody. But it is hard. A woman has to deny what she has, her womb, if she wants to make it. It seems that only the privileged classes can have families. Nowadays, maybe it's only the McCartneys and the Lennons or something. LENNON: Everybody else becomes a worker-consumer. ONO: And then Big Brother will decide -- I hate to use the term Big Brother.... LENNON: Too late. They've got it on tape. [Laughs] ONO: But, finally, the society---- LENNON: Big Sister -- wait till she comes! ONO: The society will do away with the roles of men and women. Babies will be born in test tubes and incubators.... LENNON: Then it's Aldous Huxley. ONO: But we don't have to go that way. We don't have to deny any of our organs, you know. LENNON: Some of my best friends are organs---- ONO: The new album---- LENNON: Back to the album, very good---- ONO: The album fights these things. The messages are sort of old-fashioned -- family, relationships, children.

John Lennon in New York City: 8th-28th September 1980 - Playboy Interview Part 1

'On Wall'
NYC 1974

Playboy Interview

By David Sheff

September 8th-28th, 1980

A candid conversation with the reclusive couple about their years together and their surprisingly frank views on life with and without the Beatles.
To describe the turbulent history of the Beatles, or the musical and cultural mileposts charted by John Lennon, would be an exercise in the obvious. Much of the world knows that Lennon was the guiding spirit of the Beatles, who were themselves among the most popular and profound influences of the Sixties, before breaking up bitterly in 1970. Some fans blamed the breakup on Yoko Ono, Lennon's Japanese-born second wife, who was said to have wielded a disproportionate influence over Lennon, and with whom he has collaborated throughout the Seventies.
In 1975, the Lennons became unavailable to the press, and though much speculation has been printed, they emerged to dispel the rumors -- and to cut a new album -- only a couple of months ago. The Lennons decided to speak with Playboy in the longest interview they have ever granted. Free-lance writer David Sheff was tapped for the assignment, and when he and a Playboy editor met with Ono to discuss ground rules, she came on strong: Responding to a reference to other notables who had been interviewed in Playboy, Ono said, "People like Carter represent only their country. John and I represent the world." But by the time the interview was concluded several weeks later, Ono had joined the project with enthusiasm. Here is Sheff's report:
"There was an excellent chance this interview would never take place. When my contacts with the Lennon-Ono organization began, one of Ono's assistants called me, asking, seriously, 'What's your sign?' The interview apparently depended on Yoko's interpretation of my horoscope, just as many of the Lennons' business decisions are reportedly guided by the stars. I could imagine explaining to my Playboy editor, 'Sorry, but my moon is in Scorpio -- the interview's off.' It was clearly out of my hands. I supplied the info: December 23, three P.M., Boston. "Thank my lucky stars. The call came in and the interview was tentatively on. And I soon found myself in New York, passing through the ominous gates and numerous security check points at the Lennons' headquarters, the famed Dakota apartment building on Central Park West, where the couple dwells and where Yoko Ono holds court beginning at eight o'clock every morning.
"Ono is one of the most misunderstood women in the public eye. Her mysterious image is based on some accurate and some warped accounts of her philosophies and her art statements, and on the fact that she never smiles. It is also based -- perhaps unfairly -- on resentment of her as the sorceress/Svengali who controls the very existence of John Lennon. That image has remained through the years since she and John met, primarily because she hasn't chosen to correct it -- nor has she chosen to smile. So as I removed my shoes before treading on her fragile carpet -- those were the instructions -- I wondered what the next test might be.
"Between interruptions from her two male assistants busy screening the constant flow of phone calls, Yoko gave me the once-over. She finally explained that the stars had, indeed, said it was right -- very right, in fact. Who was I to argue? So the next day, I found myself sitting across a couple of cups of cappuccino from John Lennon.
"Lennon, still bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and scruffy from lack of shave, waited for the coffee to take hold of a system otherwise used to operating on sushi and sashimi -- 'dead fish,' as he calls them -- French cigarettes and Hershey bars with almonds.
"Within the first hour of the interview, Lennon put every one of my preconceived ideas about him to rest. He was far more open and candid and witty than I had any right to expect. He was prepared, once Yoko had given the initial go-ahead, to frankly talk about everything. Explode was more like it. If his sessions in primal-scream therapy were his emotional and intellectual release ten years ago, this interview was his more recent vent. After a week of conversations with Lennon and Ono separately as well as together, we had apparently established some sort of rapport, which was confirmed early one morning.
"'John wants to know how fast you can meet him at the apartment,' announced the by-then-familiar voice of a Lennon-Ono assistant. It was a short cab ride away and he briefed me quickly: 'A guy's trying to serve me a subpoena and I just don't want to deal with it today. Will you help me out?' We sneaked into his limousine and streaked toward the recording studio three hours before Lennon was due to arrive. Lennon told his driver to slow to a crawl as we approached the studio and instructed me to lead the way inside, after making sure the path was safe. 'If anybody comes up with papers, knock them down,' he said. 'As long as they don't touch me, it's OK.' Before I left the car, Lennon pointed to a sleeping wino leaning against the studio wall. 'That could be him,' Lennon warned. 'They're masters of disguise.' Lennon high-tailed it into the elevator, dragging me along with him. When the elevator doors finally closed, he let out a nervous sigh and somehow the ludicrousness of the morning dawned on him. He broke out laughing. 'I feel like I'm back in "Hard Day's Night" or "Help!"' he said.
"As the interview progressed, the complicated and misunderstood relationship between Lennon and Ono emerged as the primary factor in both of their lives. 'Why don't people believe us when we say we're simply in love?' John pleaded. The enigma called Yoko Ono became accessible as the hard exterior broke down -- such as the morning when she let out a hiccup right in the middle of a heavy discourse on capitalism. Nonplused by her hiccup, Ono giggled. With that giggle, she became vulnerable and cute and shy -- not at all the creature that came from the Orient to brainwash John Lennon.
"Ono was born in 1933 in Tokyo, where her parents were bankers and socialites. In 1951, her family moved to Scarsdale, New York. She attended Sarah Lawrence College. In 1957, Yoko was married for the first time, to Toshi Ichiyanagi, a musician. They were divorced in 1964 and later that year, she married Tony Cox, who fathered her daughter, Kyoko. She and Cox were divorced in 1967, two years before she married Lennon.
"The Lennon half of the couple was born in October 1940. His father left home before John was born to become a seaman and his mother, incapable of caring for the boy, turned John over to his aunt and uncle when he was four and a half. They lived several blocks away from his mother in Liverpool, England. Lennon, who attended Liverpool private schools, met a kid named Paul McCartney in 1957 at the Woolton Parish Church Festival in Liverpool. The following year, the two formed their first band, the Nurk Twins.
"In 1958, John formed the Quarrymen, named after his high school. He asked Paul to join the band and agreed to audition a friend of Paul's, George Harrison. In 1959, the Quarrymen disbanded but later regrouped as Johnny and the Moondogs and then the Silver Beatles. They played in clubs, backing strippers, and they got their foot in the door of Liverpool's showcase Cavern Club. Pete Best was signed on as drummer and the Silver Beatles left England for Hamburg, where they played eight hours a night at the Indra Club. The Silver Beatles became the Beatles and, by 1960, when they returned to England, the band had become the talk of Liverpool.
"In 1962, John married Cynthia Powell and they had a son, Julian. John and Cynthia were divorced in 1968. Later in 1962, Richard Starkey -- or Ringo Starr -- replaced Best as the Beatles' drummer and the rest -- as Lennon often says sarcastically -- is pop history."

John Lennon in New York City: 5th June 1975 - Part 5

'Beige Suit'
1975

By Pete Hamill

June 5th, 1975

Do you think much of yourself as an artist at fifty or sixty?
I never see meself as not an artist. I never let meself believe that an artist can "run dry." I've always had this vision of bein' sixty and writing children's books. I don't know why. It'd be a strange thing for a person who doesn't really have much to do with children. I've always had that feeling of giving what Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island gave to me at age seven and eight. The books that really opened my whole being.
Is there anything left to say about the immigration case?
People get bored with hearin' about Lennon's immigration case. I'm bored with hearin' about it. The only interesting thing is when I read these articles people write that were not instigated by me. I learn things I didn't know anything about. I didn't know about Strom Thurmond. I had no idea - I mean I knew something was going on, but I didn't have any names. I'm just left in the position of just what am I supposed to do? There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. It's just . . . bloody crazy. Terry Southern put it in a nice sort of way. He said, "Well, look, y'keep 'em all happy, ya see? The conservatives are happy 'cause they're doin' somethin' about ya and the liberals are happy 'cause they haven't thrown you out. So everybody's happy! [pause] Except you!" [laughter] I'm happy I'm still here. I must say that. And I ain't going. There's no way they're gonna get me out. No way. They're not gonna drag me in chains, right? So I'm just gonna have to keep paying. It's bloody ridiculous. It's just . . . beyond belief.
So nothing has changed with the departure of Nixon.
I'm even nervous about commenting on politics. They've got me that jumpy these days. But it's a bit of an illusion to think 'cause Old Nick went that it's all changed. If it's changed, prove it, show me the change.
Does the case get in the way of your work?
It did. It did. There's no denying it. In '72, it was really gettin' to me. Not only was I physically having to appear in court cases, it just seemed like a toothache that wouldn't go away. Now I just accept it. I just have a permanent toothache. But there was a period where I just couldn't function, you know? I was so paranoid from them tappin' the phone and followin' me. How could I prove that they were tappin' me phone? There was a period when I was hangin' out with a group called Elephant's Memory. And I was ready to go on the road for pure fun. I didn't want to go on the road for money. That was the time when I was standing up in the Apollo with a guitar at the Attica relatives' benefit or ending up on the stage at the John Sinclair rally. I felt like going on the road and playing music. And whatever excuse - charity or whatever - would have done me. But they kept pullin' me back into court! I had the group hangin' 'round, but I finally had to say, "Hey, you better get on with your lives." Now, the last thing on earth I want to do is perform. That's a direct result of the immigration thing. In '71, '72, I wanted to go out and rock my balls off onstage and I just stopped.
Have you made any kind of flat decision not to ever go on the road again?
No. I've stopped making flat decisions. I change me mind a lot. My idea of heaven is not going on the road.
Will you ever be free of the fact that you were once a Beatle?
I've got used to the fact - just about - that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul's bowling. So that I'll have to live with. But I've come to learn something big this past year. I cannot let the Top Ten dominate my art. If my worth is only to be judged by whether I'm in the Top Ten or not, then I'd better give up. Because if I let the Top Ten dominate my art, then the art will die. And then whether I'm in the Top Ten is a moot point. I do think now in terms of long term. I'm an artist. I have to express myself. I can't be dominated by gold records. As I said, I'm thirty-four going on sixty. The art is more important than the thing and sometimes I have to remind meself of it. Because there's a danger there, for all of us, for everyone who's involved in whatever art they're in, of needing that love so badly that. . . . In my business, that's manifested in the Top Ten.
So this last year, in some ways, was a year of deciding whether you wanted to be an artist or a pop star?
Yeah. What is it I'm doing. What am I doing? Meanwhile, I was still putting out the work. But in the back of me head it was that: What do you want to be? What are you lookin' for? And that's about it. I'm a freakin' artist, man, not a fuckin' racehorse.

John Lennon in New York City: 5th June 1975 - Part 4

'Working Class Hero'
1975

By Pete Hamill

June 5th, 1975

Do you think of New York as home now?
Yeah, this is the longest I've ever been away from England. I've almost lived here as long as I've lived in London. I was in London from, let's see, '64, '65, '66, '67, actually in London 'cause then it was your Beatlemania bit and we all ended up like a lot of rock & rollers end up, living an hour away from London in the country, the drivin'-in-from-the-big-estate bit. 'Cause you couldn't live in London, 'cause people just bugged the ass off you. So I've lived in New York longer than I actually lived in London.
In view of the immigration case, is one reason you've stayed here so long because if you left, they'd pull a Charlie Chaplin on you and not let you back in?
You bet. There's no way they would let me back. And . . . it's worth it to me. I can last out, without leaving here, another ten years, if that's the way they want to play it. I'll earn enough to keep paying them. I'm really getting blackmailed. I'm paying to stay. Paying takes, on one hand, about a half million dollars, and I've hardly worked very hard for that. I mean, that's with sittin' on me arse and I've paid a half million in taxes. So I'm paying them to attack me and keep me busy and harass me, on one hand, while on the other hand I've got to pay me own lawyers. Some people think I'm here just to make the American dollars. But I don't have to be here to make the dollars. I could earn American dollars just sittin' in a recording studio in Hong Kong. Wherever I am, the money follows me. It's gonna come out of America whether they like it or not.
Right. And the government doesn't choose that John Lennon makes money. The people who buy your music do that.
The implication that John Lennon wants to come to the land of milk and honey 'cause it's easier to pick up the money, so I can pick it up directly instead of waiting for it to arrive in England. Or Brazil. Or wherever I decide to do it. I resent the implication, especially as I'm payin' through the nose. I don't mind paying taxes, either, which is strange. I never did. I don't like 'em using it for bombs and that. But I don't think I could do a Joan Baez. I don't have that kind of gut. I did never complain in England either, because, well, it's buying people teeth . . . I'm sick of gettin' sick about taxes. Taxes is what seems to be it, and there's nothin' to be done about it unless you choose to make a crusade about it. And I'm sick of being in crusades because I always get nailed up before I'm even in the crusade. They get me in the queue while I'm readin' the pages about it: "Oh, there's a crusade on, I wonder should I . . ." I mean, I get caught before I've ever done anything about it.
You went through a period of really heavy involvement in radical causes. Lately you seem to have gone back to your art in a more direct way. What happened?
I'll tell you what happened literally. I got off the boat, only it was an airplane, and landed in New York, and the first people who got in touch with me was Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. It's as simple as that. It's those two famous guys from America who's callin': "Hey, yeah, what's happenin', what's goin' on? . . ." And the next thing you know, I'm doin' John Sinclair benefits and one thing and another. I'm pretty movable, as an artist, you know. They almost greeted me off the plane and the next minute I'm involved, you know.
How did all of this affect your work?
It almost ruined it, in a way. It became journalism and not poetry. And I basically feel that I'm a poet. Even if it does go ba-deeble, eedle, eedle, it, da-deedle, deedle, it. I'm not a formalized poet, I have no education, so I have to write in the simplest forms usually. And I realized that over a period of time - and not just 'cause I met Jerry Rubin off the plane - but that was like a culmination. I realized that we were poets but we were really folk poets, and rock & roll was folk poetry - I've always felt that. Rock & roll was folk music. Then I began to take it seriously on another level, saying, "Well, I am reflecting what is going on, right?" And then I was making an effort to reflect what was going on. Well, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work as pop music or what I want to do. It just doesn't make sense. You get into that bit where you can't talk about trees, 'cause, y'know, y'gotta talk about "Corruption on Fifty-fourth Street"! It's nothing to do with that. It's a bit larger than that. It's the usual lesson that I've learned in me little thirty-four years: As soon as you've clutched onto something, you think - you're always clutchin' at straws - this is what life is all about. I think artists are lucky because the straws are always blowin' out of their hands. But the unfortunate thing is that most people find the straw hat and hang on to it, like your best friend that got the job at the bank when he was fifteen and looked twenty-eight before he was twenty. "Oh, this is it! Now I know what I'm doing! Right? Down this road for the next hundred years" . . . and it ain't never that. Whether it's a religious hat or a political hat or a no-political hat: whatever hat is was, always looking for these straw hats. I think I found out it's a waste of time. There is no hat to wear. Just keep moving around and changing clothes is the best. That's all that goes on: change. At one time I thought, well, I'm avoidin' that thing called the Age Thing, whether it hits you at twenty-one, when you take your first job - I always keep referrin' to that because it has nothing to do, virtually, with your physical age. I mean, we all know the guys who took the jobs when we left school, the straight jobs, they all look like old guys within six weeks. You'd meet them and they'd be lookin' like Well, I've Settled Down Now. So I never want to settle down, in that respect. I always want to be immature in that respect. But then I felt that if I keep bangin' my head on the wall it'll stop me from gettin' that kind of age in the head. By keeping creating, consciously or unconsciously, extraordinary situations which in the end you'd write about. But maybe it has nothin' to do with it. I'm still mullin' that over. Still mullin' over last year now. Maybe that was it. I was still trying to avoid somethin' but doin' it the wrong way 'round. Whether it's called age or whatever.
Is it called growing up?
I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up - that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body. And then your mind. The guilt! It's just so dumb. And it makes me furious to be dumb because I don't like dumb people. And there I am, doing the dumbest things . . . I seem to do the things that I despise the most, almost. All of that to - what? - avoid being normal. I have this great fear of this normal thing. You know, the ones that passed their exams, the ones that went to their jobs, the ones that didn't become rock & rollers, the ones that settle for it, settled for it, settled for the deal! That's what I'm trying to avoid. But I'm sick of avoiding it with violence, you know? I've gotta do it some other way. I think I will. I think just the fact that I've realized it is a good step forward. Alive in '75 is my new motto. I've just made it up. That's the one. I've decided I want to live. I'd decided I wanted to live before, but I didn't know what it meant, really. It's taken however many years and I want to have a go at it.

John Lennon in New York City: 5th June 1975 - Part 3

By Pete Hamill

June 5th, 1975

Richard Perry has described you as a superb producer but maybe in too much of a hurry.
That's true [laughs].
But supposedly, when making the Beatles records, you were painstaking and slow.
No, I was never painstaking and slow. I produced "I Am the Walrus" at the same speed I produced "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night." I would be painstaking on some things, as I am now. If there's a quality that occasionally gets in the way of my talent, it's that I get bored quick unless it's done quick. But "I Am the Walrus" sounds like a wonderful production. "Strawberry Fields" sounds like a big production. But I do them as quick as I possibly can, without losing (a) the feel and (b) where I'm going. The longest track I personally spent time on was "Revolution 9," which was an abstract track where I used a lot of tape loops and things like that. I still did it in one session. But I accept that criticism and I have it of myself. But I don't want to make myself so painstaking that it's boring. But I should [pause] maybe t'ink a little more. Maybe. But on the other hand I think my criticism of somebody like Richard Perry would be that he's great but he's too painstaking. It gets too slick and somewhere in between that is where I'd like to go. I keep finding out all the time - what I'm missing that I want to get out of it.
Is there anybody that you'd like to produce? For example, Dylan?
Dylan would be interesting because I think he made a great album in Blood on the Tracks but I'm still not keen on the backings. I think I could produce him great. And Presley. I'd like to resurrect Elvis. But I'd be so scared of him I don't know whether I could do it. But I'd like to do it. Dylan, I could do, but Presley would make me nervous. But Dylan or Presley, somebody up there . . . I know what I'd do with Presley. Make a rock & roll album. Dylan doesn't need material. I'd just make him some good backings. So if you're reading this, Bob, you know . . .
Elton John has revived "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." How do you feel about him as an artist?
Elton sort of popped in on the session for Walls and Bridges and sort of zapped in and played the piano and ended up singing "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" with me. Which was a great shot in the arm. I'd done three quarters of it, "Now what do we do?" Should we put a camel on it or a xylophone? That sort of thing. And he came in and said, "Hey, ah'll play some piano!" Then I heard he was doing "Lucy" and I heard from a friend - 'cause he was shy - would I be there when he cut "Lucy"? Maybe not play on it but just be there? So I went along. And I sang in the chorus and contributed the reggae in the middle. And then, again through a mutual friend, he asked if it got to be Number One, would I appear onstage with him, and I said sure, not thinkin' in a million years it was gonna get to Number One. Al Coury or no Al Coury, the promotion man at Capitol. And there I was. Onstage.
I read somewhere that you were very moved by the whole thing.
I was moved by it, but everybody else was in tears. I felt guilty 'cause I wasn't in tears. I just went up and did a few numbers. But the emotional thing was me and Elton together. Elton had been working in Dick James's office when we used to send our demos in and there's a long sort of relationship musically with Elton that people don't really know about. He has this sort of Beatle thing from way back. He'd take the demos home and play them and . . . well, it meant a lot to me and it mean a hell of a lot to Elton, and he was in tears. It was a great high night, a really high night . . . Yoko and I met backstage. And somebody said, "Well, there's two people in love." That was before we got back together. But that's probably when we felt something. It was very weird. She came backstage and I didn't know she was there, 'cause if I'd known she was there I'd've been too nervous to go on, you know, I would have been terrified. She was backstage afterward, and there was just that moment when we saw each other and like, it's like in the movies, you know, when time stands still? And there was silence, everything went silent, y'know, and we were just sort of lookin' at each other and . . . oh, hello. I knew she'd sent Elton and I a flower each, and we were wearin' them onstage, but I didn't know she was there and then everybody was around us and flash flash flash. But there was that moment of silence. And somebody observed it and told me later on, after we were back together again, and said, "A friend of mine saw you backstage and thought if ever there was two in love, it's those two." And I thought, well, it's weird somebody noticed it . . . So it was a great night . . . .
There seems to be a lot of generosity among the artists now.
It was around before. It's harder when you're on the make, to be generous, 'cause you're all competing. But once you're sort of up there, wherever it is . . . The rock papers love to write about the jet-setting rock stars and they dig it and we dig it in a way. The fact is that, yeah, I see Mick, I see Paul, I see Elton, they're all my contemporaries and I've known the other Beatles, of course, for years, and Mick for ten years, and we've been hangin' around since Rock Dreams. And suddenly it's written up as they're-here-they're-there-they're-everywhere bit, and it looks like we're trying to form a club. But we always were a club. We always knew each other. It just so happens that it looks more dramatic in the paper.
How do you relate to what we might call the rock stars of the Seventies? Do you think of yourself as an uncle figure, a father figure, an old gunfighter?
It depends who they are. If it's Mick or the Old Guard, as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton, David are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, heh heh. But . . . yeah, I'm interested in the new people. I'm interested in new people in America but I get a kick out of the new Britons. I remember hearing Elton John's "Your Song," heard it in America - it was one of Elton's first big hits - and remember thinking, "Great, that's the first new thing that's happened since we happened." It was a step forward. There was something about his vocals that was an improvement on all of the English vocals until then. I was pleased with it. And I was pleased with Bowie's thing and I hadn't even heard him. I just got this feeling from the image and the projections that were coming out of England of him, well, you could feel it.

John Lennon in New York City: 5th June 1975 - Part 2

'Walls And Bridges Portrait'
NYC 1974

By Pete Hamill

June 5th, 1975

Walls and Bridges has an undertone of regret to it. Did you sit down consciously to make an album like that?
No, well . . . Let's say this last year has been an extraordinary year for me personally. And I'm almost amazed that I could get anything out. But I enjoyed doing Walls and Bridges and it wasn't hard when I had the whole thing to go into the studio and do it. I'm surprised it wasn't just all bluuuugggghhhh. [pause] I had the most peculiar year. And . . . I'm just glad that something came out. It's describing the year, in a way, but it's not as sort of schizophrenic as the year really was. I think I got such a shock during that year that the impact hasn't come through. It isn't all on Walls and Bridges though. There's a hint of it there. It has to do with age and God knows what else. But only the surface has been touched on Walls and Bridges, you know?
What was it about the year? Do you want to try talking about it?
Well, you can't put your finger on it. It started, somehow, at the end of '73, goin' to do this Rock 'n' Roll album [with Phil Spector]. It had quite a lot to do with Yoko and I, whether I knew it or not, and then, suddenly, I was out on me own. Next thing I'd be waking up, drunk, in strange places or reading about meself in the paper, doin' extraordinary things, half of which I'd done and half of which I hadn't done. But you know the game anyway. And find meself sort of in a mad dream for a year. I'd been in many mad dreams, but this . . . It was pretty wild. And then I tried to recover from that. And [long pause] meanwhile life was going on, the Beatles settlement was going on, other things, life was still going on and it wouldn't let you sit with your hangover, in whatever form that took. It was like something - probably meself - kept hitting me while I was trying to do something. I was still trying to do something. I was still trying to carry on a normal life and the whip never let up - for eight months. So . . . that's what was going on. Incidents: You can put it down to which night with which bottle or which night in which town. It was just sort of a mad year like that . . . And it was just probably fear, and being out on me own, and gettin' old, and are ye gonna make it in the charts? Are ye not gonna make it? All that crap, y'know. All the garbage that y'really know is not the be-all and end-all of your life, but if other things are goin' funny, that's gonna hit you. If you're gonna feel sorry for yourself, you're gonna feel sorry for everything. What it's really to do with is probably the same thing that it's always been to do with all your life: whatever your own personal problems really are, you know? So it was a year that manifested itself [switches to deep actor's voice] in most peculiar fashion. But I'm through it and it's '75 now and I feel better and I'm sittin' here and not lyin' in some weird place with a hangover.
Why do you feel better?
Because I feel like I've been on Sinbad's voyage, you know, and I've battled all those monsters and I've got back. [long pause] Weird.
Tell me about the Rock 'n' Roll album.
It started in '73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of mad, drunk scenes in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on me own. And there was still problems with it up to the minute it came out. I can't begin to say, it's just barmy, there's a jinx on that album. And I've just started writing a new one. Got maybe half of it written . . .
What about the stories that Spector's working habits are a little odd? For example, that he either showed off or shot off guns in the studios?
I don't like to tell tales out of school, y'know. But I do know there was an awful loud noise in the toilet of the Record Plant West.
What actually did happen those nights at the Troubadour when you heckled the Smothers Brothers and went walking around with a Kotex on your head asking the waitress, "Do you know who I am"?
Ah, y'want the juice . . . If I'd said, "Do you know who I am?" I'd have said it in a joke. Because I know who I am, and I know she knew, because I musta been wearing a Kotex on me head, right? I picked up a Kotex in a restaurant, in the toilet, and it was clean and just for a gag I came back to the table with it on me head. And 'cause it stuck there with sweat, just stayed there, I didn't have to keep it on. It just stayed there till it fell off. And the waitress said, "Yeah, you're an asshole with a Kotex on," and I think it's a good remark and so what? Tommy Smothers was a completely different night and has been covered a million times. It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders and my last [laughs]. And I was with Harry Nilsson, who was no help at all [laughs].
What's your relationship with Nilsson? Some critics say that he's been heavily influenced, maybe even badly screwed up by you.
Oh, that's bullshit.
. . . and that you've also been influenced by him.
That's bullshit, too. I haven't been influenced by Harry, only that I had a lot of hangovers whenever I was with him [laughs]. I love him. He's a great guy and I count him as one of me friends. He hasn't influenced me musically. And there's an illusion going around about my production of Harry's album. That he was trying to imitate me on his album.
You mean that he'd gone into his primal period . . .
That's it. They're so sheeplike - put this in - and childlike about trying to put a tag on what's going on. They use these expressions like "primal" for anything that's a scream. Brackets: Yoko was screaming before Janov was ever even heard of; that was her stint, usin' her voice like an instrument. She was screamin' when Janov was still jackin' off to Freud. But nowadays, everything that's got a scream in it is called primal. I know what they're talkin' about: The very powerful emotional pitch that Harry reaches at the end of "Many Rivers to Cross" on the album I produced for him [Pussy Cats]. It's there, simply enough, because when you get to a certain point with your vocals, there ain't nowhere else to go. Was Little Richard primaling before each sax solo? That's what I want know. Was my imitation Little Richard screams I used to put on all the Beatles records before the solo - we all used to do it, we'd go aaaarrrrgggghhhh! Was that primaling? Right?

John Lennon in New York City: 5th June 1975 - Part 1

'NYC T-SHIRT'
NYC 1974

Photograph: Bob Gruen

Long Night's Journey Into Day

By Pete Hamill

June 5th, 1975

There is John Lennon: thin bare arms, a rumpled T-shirt; bare feet, delicate fingers curled around a brown-papered cigarette, reaching for a cup of steaming coffee. A pale winter sun streams into the seventh-floor apartment in the Dakota, an expensive apartment house that stands like a pile of nineteenth-century memories on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West. Earlier, the Irish doorman had expressed surprise when I asked for John, because this is where Yoko Ono had lived alone for a year and a half. The building, with its gargoyles and vaulted stone turrets, has seen a lot, and has housed everyone from Lauren Bacall and Rex Reed to Rosemary's baby. There is certainly room for Dr. Winston O'Boogie. And now John Lennon is talking in a soft, becalmed voice, the old jagged angers gone for now, while the drilling jangle of the New York streets drifts into the room. He has been back with Yoko for three days, after a wild, painful year and a half away, and there is a gray morning feel of hangover in the clean, bright room. Against a wall, a white piano stands like an invitation to begin again; a tree is framed by one window, a plant by another, both in an attitude of Zen-like simplicity, full of spaces. I think of Harold Pinter's words: "When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness." There is, of course, always echo when you are with John Lennon, an echo of the loudest, grandest, gaudiest noise made in our time. But John Lennon is more than simply a Beatle, retired or in exile, more than just an echo. At thirty-four, he is moving into full maturity as a man and an artist and seems less afraid than ever before of nakedness. We talked only briefly about the Beatles. A few years ago, John told everybody how the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ and for a couple of weeks that summer most of the Western world seemed to go into an uproar. Was the world really that innocent so short a time ago? No. It was just that John Lennon was explaining that the world had changed and the newspapers had to catch up; we were not going to have any more aw-shucks heroes. So we could all run in the endless emptiness of the rugby field in A Hard Day's Night, rising and falling, in slow motion or fast, but sooner or later we would have to grow up. The Beatles were custodians of childhood. They could not last. And yet . . . and yet, it seemed when it was finally over, when they had all gone their separate ways, when Brian Epstein lay dead and Apple was some terrible mess and the lawyers and the agents and the money men had come in to paw the remains, it often seemed that John was the only one whose heart was truly broken. Cynthia Lennon said it best, when all of them were still together: "They seem to need you less than you need them." From some corner of his broken heart, John gave the most bitter interviews, full of hurt and resentment, covered over with the language of violence. We only know a small part of what really has happened to him in the years since he met Yoko Ono. The details belong to John Lennon alone. But we know how the other Beatles stood in judgment ("like a jury") on Yoko. We know how viciously the press in England sneered at them and attacked them. Yoko saw the artist in him: "John is like a frail wind . . ." But reviewers were already saying that Yoko had ruined his art. People started to write him off. His records were selling but it wasn't like the Beatles, it wasn't even like the other Beatles. John was the one Who Had Gone Too Far. A year and a half ago, he and Yoko split up and some people cheered. We live in strange times. And then, as if from nowhere, came Walls and Bridges. John had a big hit single with "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night." And the music was wonderful: full of invention, tenderness, remorse, more personal than anything he had written before; the music clearly showing the effects of his time with Yoko. More than anything else, though, the songs were essays in autobiography, the words and music of a man trying to understand a huge part of his life. "I've been across to the other side / I've shown you everything, I've got nothing to hide . . ." What follows is the result of two long talks with John Lennon at the end of a difficult year. As an interview, it is far from definitive, but nothing with ever be definitive in John Lennon's life: He is the sort of artist who is always in the process of becoming. I think of this as a kind of interim report from one of the bravest human beings I know. Oh, yes: He looked happy.

John Lennon interviewed by Bob Harris: Old Grey Whistle Test 18th April 1975

Bob Harris interviewed John Lennon for The Old Grey Whistle Test on the 18th April 1975.

When Bob was interviewed, and asked what his most memorable interview was he said [Without hesitation] "John Lennon in 1975 for Whistle Test. We'd been trying to get him for absolutely ages and he phoned from his office in New York and invited us over. We spent pretty much a day together, and it was the day that they discovered that Yoko was pregnant with Sean, so he was in a fantastically wonderful mood. He saw it as a great opportunity to send a postcard to the Uk, basically because he couldn't leave America due to the green card problems, so we got him at the best time. He and I got on like a house on fire - it happens with some people - and I think the interview reflects that".

Part 1

Part 2

John Lennon & Yoko Ono perform with Chuck Berry on The Mike Douglas Show 1972

John Lennon and Yoko Ono perform Johnny B.Goode with Chuck Berry on The Mike Douglas Show (1972).

John Lennon: I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier

I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don't Wanna Die..

John Lennon Anthology (Ascot CD1)

John Lennon: St Regis Hotel Room Interview - 5th September 1971

To escape the acrimony of The Beatles' breakup, Yoko Ono suggested that they move permanently to New York, which they did on 31 August 1971. They first lived in the St. Regis Hotel on 5th Avenue, East 55th Street, and then moved a loft at 105 Bank Street, Greenwich Village, New York City, on 16 October 1971. After a robbery, they relocated to the more secure Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, in February 1973. Here's an excerpt from an interview with John and Yoko at the St Regis Hotel by Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld on September 5th, 1971..

Int.: So the dream is over, the Beatles have split up and you're now a separate entity from Paul McCartney. How does it feel?
John: Well, it's not over yet. With the court case, it could go on for years. And I guess every time I put a record out they'll compare it to Paul's.
Int.: Does that bother you?
John: Sure. What's the fucking point? You might as well compare me with Grand Funk Railroad or something.
Int.: You've been especially vocal lately about the way the Beatles' business was run in the past.
John: Well, look what happened. With Northern Songs, we ended up selling half our copyrights forever. We lost 'em all and Lew Grade's got 'em. It was bad management. We have no company. That's where Brian Epstein fucked up. Who got the beneift? Not us. I mean, since you ask, in retrospect he made mistakes. But to us he was the expert. I mean, originally he had a shop. Anybody who's got a shop must be all right.
Int.: People say it was Epstein who kept you together as the Beatles. What was the mood like among you all after the Beatles stopped touring and before Brian died?
John: Well, after we stopped touring, it always seemed embarrassing. Should we have dinner together? It always got so formal that none of us wanted to go through with it anymore.
Int.: How come it got so formal?
John: Because when you don't see someone for a few months, you feel stilted and you have to start again.
Int.: So things were breaking down before you met Yoko, and before Paul met Linda?
John: It had broken down before that. There was a Liverpool clique thing, and everybody who worked for us was from Liverpool. But that togetherness had gone a long time before Yoko. We were really all on our own, just living in separate vacuums.
Int.: So let's talk about the Beatles' breakup, and the falling out between you and Paul. A lot of people think it had to do with the women in your lives. Is that why the Beatles split up?
John: Not really. The split was over who would manage us, Allen Klein or the Eastmans, and nothing else really, although the split had been coming from Pepper onwards.
Int.: Why, specifically?
John: Well, Paul was always upset about the White Album. He never liked it because on that one I did my music, he did his, and George did his. And first, he didn't like George having so many tracks, and second, he wanted it to be more a group thing, which really means more Paul. So he never liked that album, and I always preferred it to all the other albums, including Pepper, because I thought the music was better. The Pepper myth is bigger, but the music on the White Album is far superior, I think.
Int.: That's your favorite, of all the Beatle albums?
John: Yeah, because I wrote a lot of good shit on that. I like all the stuff I did on that, and the other stuff as well. I like the whole album. I haven't heard it in a long time, but I know there's a lot of good songs on it. But if you're talking about the split, the split was over Allen and Eastman.
Int.: You didn't like Lee Eastman, Linda's father, nor John Eastman, Linda's brother, and the Eastmans didn't like you bringing in Allen Klein to manage you. . . .
John: The Eastmans hated Allen from way back. They're from the class of family . . . like all classes, I suppose, they vote like Daddy does. They're the kind of kids who just think what their fathers told them.
Int.: But for a while you got along with Linda.
John: We all got along well with Linda.
Int.: When did you first meet her?
John: The first time I saw her was after that press conference to announce Apple in America. We were just going back to the airport and she was in the car with us. I didn't think she was particularly attractive, I wondered what he was bothering having her in the car for. A bit too tweedy, you know. But she sat in the car and took photographs and that was it. And the next minute she's married him.
Yoko: She's not the kind of woman who would antagonize other women. She is a nice person who is uptight like her brother, John, but not that uptight. There was a nice quality about her. As a women she doesn't offend you because she doesn't come on like a coquettish bird, you know? So she was all right, and we were on very good terms until Allen came into the picture. And then she said: "Why the hell do you have to bring Allen into it?" She said very nasty things about Allen, and I defended Allen each time she said something about him. And since then she never speaks to me.
Int.: Yoko, you weren't with John the first time he met her?
Yoko: No. The first time I met her was when she came to the EMI studio. And you know, when Beatles are recording, there's very few people around, especially no women. If a young woman comes into the room, everybody just sort of looks at her. So I was there, and the first thing Linda made clear to me - almost unnecessarily - was the fact that she was interested in Paul, and not John, you know? So I thought that was nice. She was sort of presupposing that I would be nervous. Not that I showed I was nervous at all. She just said, "Oh, I'm with Paul." Something to that effect. I think she was eager to be with me, and John, in the sense that Paul and John are close, we should be close too. And couple to couple we were going to be good friends. We went to their house. . . .
John: We stayed there. We lived there.
Yoko: Well, that was not when Linda was around.
John: Oh, that was before Linda, yes.
Yoko: And Linda cooked for us. We had nice dinners together, things like that. And she was pregnant, so it was hard for her to cook. She had a big tummy and all that. But she was doing it, and it was nice.
Int.: Did you think she was a good photographer, Yoko?
Yoko: I never judged her, or even observed her, from that point of view. I'd never really seen any of her photographs.
John: We had heard stories aobut her hanging around - what was it? - Ramparts and Life magazine. Always trying to get in, and nobody wanting her because they didn't think she was a particularly good photographer. . . .
Yoko: They were sufficient photographs. And really, it's unfair to ask me about them because I'm a perfectionist about artists, and there are very few artists that I respect anyway. It has to be someone really special for me to say that I admire his or her art.
Int.: So what was Paul's attitude to you as you got to know him, as things progressed?
Yoko: Paul began complaining that I was sitting too close to them when they were recording, and that I should be in the background.
John: Paul was always gently coming up to Yoko and saying: "Why don't you keep in the background a bit more?" I didn't know what was going on. It was going on behind my back.
Yoko: And I wasn't uttering a word. It wasn't a matter of my being aggressive. It was just the fact that I was sitting near to John. And we stood up to it. We just said, "No. It's simply that we just have to come together." They were trying to discourage me from attending meetings, et cetera. And I was always there. And Linda actually said that she admired that we were doing that.
John: Paul even said that to me.
Int.: So did all this contribute to the split, to Paul leaving the group?
John: Well, Paul rang me up. He didn't actually tell me he'd split, he said he was putting out an album [McCartney]. He said, "I'm now doing what you and Yoko were doing last year. I understand what you were doing." All that shit. So I said, "Good luck to yer."
Yoko: So there really was a lot of misunderstanding, you know.
Int.: And the family thing was a factor? Things you'd said about the Eastmans?
John: Yeah, it's like anybody. If there's anything to say about my family, I'll say it myself. But don't you.
Int.: And Linda didn't like this?
Yoko: I didn't know that. I thought she was one very unusually obedient daughter who was completely controlled by her father, you know?
Int.: Was it the suddenness of Linda's arrival on the scene that disrupted things?
John: Well, Paul had met her before [the Apple press conference], you see. I mean, there were quite a few women he'd obviously had that I never knew about. God knows when he was doing it, but he must have been doing it.
Int.: So, John. You and Paul were probably the greatest songwriting team in a generation. And you had this huge falling out. Were there always huge differences between you and Paul, or was there a time when you had a lot in common?
John: Well, we all want our mummies - I don't think there's any of us that don't - and he lost his mother, so did I. That doesn't make womanizers of us, but we all want our mummies because I don't think any of us got enough of them. Anyway, that's neither here nor there - but Paul always wanted the home life, you see. He liked it with daddy and the brother . . . and obviously missed his mother. And his dad was the whole thing. Just simple things: he wouldn't go against his dad and wear drainpipe trousers. And his dad was always trying to get me out of the group behind me back, I found out later. He'd say to George: "Why don't you get rid of John, he's just a lot of trouble. Cut your hair nice and wear baggy trousers," like I was the bad influence because I was the eldest, so I had all the gear first usually. So Paul was always like that. And I was always saying, "Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can't hit you. You can kill him [laughs], he's an old man." I used to say, "Don't take that shit off him." Because I was always brought up by a woman, so maybe it was different. But I wouldn't let the old man treat me like that. He treated Paul like a child all the time, cut his hair and telling him what to wear, at seventeen, eighteen. But Paul would always give in to his dad. His dad told him to get a job, he fucking dropped the group and started working on the fucking lorries, saying, "I need a steady career." We couldn't believe it - my Aunt Mimi reminded me of this the other night - he rang up and said he'd got this job and couldn't come to the group. So I told him on the phone, "Either come or you're out." So he had to make a decision between me and his dad then, and in the end he chose me. But it was a long trip. So it was always the family thing, you see. If Jane [Asher] was to have a career, then that's not going to be a cozy family, is it? All the other girls were just groupies mainly. And with Linda not only did he have a ready-made family, but she knows what he wants, obviously, and has given it to him. The complete family life. He's in Scotland. He told me he doesn't like English cities anymore. So that's how it is.
Int.: So you think with Linda he's found what he wanted?
John: I guess so. I guess so. I just don't understand . . . I never knew what he wanted in a woman because I never knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted something intelligent or something arty, whatever it was. But you don't really know what you want until you find it. So anyway, I was very surprised with Linda. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd married Jane Asher, because it had been going on for a long time and they went through a whole ordinary love scene. But with Linda it was just like, boom! She was in and that was the end of it.
Int.: Did Paul put Jane off for many years, when she wanted to get married?
John: I have no idea. We never discussed our private lives like that. I never asked him. We'd got over "did you get a bit of tit?" and "what's happening?" All that scene. We didn't talk about it.
Int.: So Paul split, and your falling out was essentially with him?
John: Right.
Int.: So what made you decide not to participate in the Bangladesh concert with George and Ringo at Madison Square Garden? I mean, you were rather conspicuously absent.
John: Well, Allen [Klein] was putting it around that I ran off to England, so I wouldn't be there for the concert. But I told George about a week before it that I wouldn't be doing it. I just didn't feel like it. I just didn't want to be rehearsing and doing a big show-biz trip. We were in the Virgin Islands, and I certainly wasn't going to be rehearsing in New York, then going back to the Virgin Islands, then coming back up to New York and singing. And anyway, they couldn't have got any more people in, if I'd been there or not. I got enough money off records and I don't feel like doing two shows a night.
Int.: So what did you think of the concert?
John: I didn't see it. I mean, I haven't seen the movie. It seemed like a great success, you know. It seemed like a great success, you know. Newspaperwise it turned out great, and it seems like they got a lot of money. So it seemed all right, and from the reports of people there it seemed fine too. I didn't think much more about it really.
Int.: So when you say you don't feel like doing two shows a night, does this mean we've seen the end of live performances from John Lennon?
John: Oh, no. I want to do a big show. I feel like going out with Yoko. It's possible that a museum show of Yoko's, which is going on in Syracuse this October, will tour America, and it's possible that we'd be in the same town. The museum show is a really far-out scene, so if we do that, and if we are playing in the same place, we really could blow the town out. See, George came up with a good idea after the concert, which I heard from Allen - I haven't talked to George about it - which was to take a big tour out, and do one show for free and one show for money, in each city. I thought that was good. Then I thought; "Well, fuck it. I don't want to earn any more money. I get enough off records. I don't want to do a big Apple/Beatle tour," because the thing I didn't like about the Bangladesh concert was that it was "the Beatles playing," and whatever it was they played, it wasn't the Beatles. So then I thought, "I'll go out on me own and take me own people with me."
Int.: So who would you take on tour with you ideally?
John: Well, I'd like to go on the road with Jim Keltner, Klaus Voormann, Yoko, and Eric Clapton, if I can get him out of his house. And maybe when we've got it together, we'd decide if we'd want any saxophones or any kind of jazz like that. Or we might just play village squares or a nightclub.
Int.: Do you have any regrets about not doing the Bangladesh concert?
John: Well, in a way I regretted it. It would have been great, you know. And at first I thought: "Oh, I wish I'd been there. You know, with Dylan and Leon [Russell]. . . . . they needed a rocker, and everybody was telling me, "You should have been there, John." I mean, Leon's a good rocker, but people were telling me, "You should have been there to weigh it up." But I'm glad I didn't do it in a way, because I didn't want to go on as the Beatles. And with George and Ringo there it would have been that connotation of Beatles - now let's hear Ringo sing "It Don't Come Easy." And that's why I left it all, so I wouldn't have to do all that. I don't want to play "My Sweet Lord." I'd as soon go out and do exactly what I want.
Yoko: Because we want to give them reality, you know. Not . . . "Oh, God."
John: And that is a conflict with George.
Int.: Since you mentioned that you'd go out ont he road with Jim Keltner, a drummer, is that any reflection on Ringo's drumming?
John: Oh, no. I love his drumming. I think Keltner is technically a bit better, but Ringo is still one of the best drummers in rock.
Int.: John, you've said a couple of times already that you "get enough off records," yet not too long ago you were saying that you weren't anything like as rich as people thought you were. Are you rich enough finally?
John: Well, I do have money for the first time ever, really. I do feel slightly secure about it, secure enough to say I'll go on the road for free. The reason I got rich is because I'm so insecure. I couldn't give it all away, even in my most holy, Christian, God-fearing, Hare Krishna period. I got into that struggle: I should give it all away, I don't need it. But I need it because I'm so insecure. Yoko doesn't need it. She always had it. I have to have it. I'm not secure enough to give it all up, because I need it to protect me from whatever I'm frightened of.
Yoko: He's very vulnerable.
John: But now I think that Allen Klein has made me secure enough, it's his fault that I'll go out for free.
Int.: Well, I thought I can't really go on the road and take a lot of money. (A) What am I going to do with it? And (B) how could I look somebody in the eye? Why should they pay? I've got everything I need. I've got all the fucking bread I need. If I go broke, well, I'd go on the road for money then. But now I just couldn't face saying, "Well, I cost a million when I sing. It costs that much for me to sing for you."
Yoko: It's criminal.
John: Which is bullshit, because I want to sing. So I'm going out on the road because I want to this time. I want to do something political, and radicalize people, and all that jazz, and this would be the best way. So now I feel like going out on the road. I feel like going out with Yoko, and taking a really far-out show on the road, a mobile, political, rock and roll show, a mobile, political Plastic Ono Bandshow. . . .
Yoko: With clowns as well.
John: . . . and have something going on in the foyer, and something going on in the audience, and not just everything on stage.
Int.: When you say political, what do you mean exactly?
John: Well, I mean political, because everything I do is political. I would take people with me who could speak to the kids, who could speak to them in the foyer, catch them on the way out. Panthers. Weathermen. They can hand all their gear out.
Int.: You want to create a riot in each town?
John: No, I don't want to create a riot or a fight in each town, but I just really want to paint it red.
Int.: So would these be big dates?
John: I don't know. I really haven't thought how to do it. You know what I was thinking - I know I've told you this before - when Paul's going out on the road, I'd like to be playing in the same town for free next door! And he's charging about a million to see him. That would be funny. And of course he's going to think that I'm going out on the road because he's said he's going out on the road, but it'd be a natural thing after Bangladesh.
Yoko: The point is, I really believe that whatever you have, if you don't do as much as you can or have, then you're guilty of not giving. Like, our position is, I come from the East, he comes from the West, a meeting of East and West, and all that. And to communicate with people is almost a responsibility. We actually are living proof of East and West getting along together. It's very important. We are responsible to give whatever we have, or whatever we know.
John: That's why I thought, I can't really go on the road and take a lot of money.
Yoko: No, we can't do that. If you have a lot to give, you have to give. Also, think of the laws of nature. In economic and political and all situations, high water falls low, you know. And if our cup is full, it's going to flow. It's natural for us to give because we have a lot. If we don't give, in a sense that's going against the laws of nature. And in order to go against the laws of nature, you have to use tremendous energy, unnecessary energy, in order to keep it like that, in order to keep that money. That would be very bad for us, and we're not going to do that. If we have more than we need moneywise, we'd rather let the money flow out naturally, you know.
Int.: That's a pretty generous sentiment.
Yoko: It's just wisdom, you know.
John: The wisdom of the East.
Yoko: And if people don't have that wisdom - well, what I mean is - if you're using all that unnecessary energy, it's going to get back at you one way or another. You're going to get cancer or something. And it just isn't worth it.
Int.: From what we've been reading, you are still asked regularly for a lot of money from various underground and leftist causes. Do you always give?
John: Well, I always take care of the underground, whatever I'm doing. And if they get in trouble, I lend them money or invest in them or whatever, because I think they're important. I get asked every two days for at least five thousand pounds, and I usually give it because it's usually somebody that I want to help. So I'm going to try to set up a foundation that can be small, a John and Yoko one, and we might take a dollar a head or anything that's donated at concerts. That would go to this. And then I can pay all these Oz undergrounds, and Clydeside workers, and Timothy Learys, that all want money out of me. And I might be able to fix it up taxwise. George wants to do a foundation, too, but we'll keep it separate because he might want to give it to Hare Krishna, and I won't.
Int.: So you're going to tour for free, and you're going to give a lot of money away. How is your manager, Allen Klein, reacting to all this generosity?
John: I said to Allen, "You're going to get twenty percent of nothing." And I want him to run the tours because he knows how to do it. I said, "Look, I hope you won't mind, but you know George's idea about the concerts? Well, I've decided to do it all for nothing. And I'm sorry, but you're getting twenty percent of nothing." He said, "Oh, I don't mind." I don't know whether he did or not. Maybe he thinks he'll sell some comics on the side. He'll have thought of something.
Int.: Let's talk about Allen Klein because, as you said, the big factor in the Beatles' breakup was the question of who would manage you, Klein or the Eastmans. You, George, and Ringo wanted Klein, and Paul wanted his in-laws. What made you opt for Klein?
John: Well, Allen's human, whereas Eastman and all them other people are automatons. Sure you can hurt Eastman's feelings, or anybody's feelings, but you can tickle Allen, and I can't imagine tickling Eastman.
Yoko: No sense of humor, Eastman's lot.
John: And when Allen's not doing his bit, he's one of the lads, you know. I would go on holiday with Allen, because he's a lad, he pisses about. When him and his crew go on tour, they piss about like school kids, pretending to be deaf and dumb, whatever kind of crazy thing. He's always having fun, trying to go into hotels with the wrong clothes, wearing crazy clothes. Just games like that. So he's good fun to be around, you know.
Yoko: Actually, he's shy and quiet.
John: And so insecure. He was an orphan. How insecure can you get, with nothing to hang on to?
Yoko: Can you imagine? He has to be a genuis to make money. He was a penniless orphan.
John: And it's so easy to hurt him. It's just like Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol is a very sensitive guy, and if your tone of voice isn't right on the phone, he can get very upset and hurt, and think you're attacking him. Well, Allen's just as bas as Andy Warhol. If you don't say it right, he gets very upset, he thinks you don't like him anymore. And I say, "That was a joke. I didn't mean that."
Yoko: But aside from that, he's a shy guy, very quiet inside. He talks a lot, but inside he's very quiet.
John: And like I say, he likes haivng a laugh with the lads, that sort of thing, whereas you can't imagine them others doing anything but playing golf or crushing beetles. And one of the early things that impressed me about Allen - and obviously it was a kind of flattery as well - he went through all the old songs we'd written, and he really knew which stuff I'd written. Not many people knew which was my song and which was Paul's, but he'd say, "Well, McCartney didn't write that line, did he?" And I'd say, "Right," you know, and that's what really got me interested [in him], because he knew what our contributions were to the group. Most people thought it was all Paul, or all George Martin. And he knew all my lyrics, and he understood them, not that there's much to understand, but he was into it, and he dug lyrics. So I thought, "Well, anybody who knows me this well, just by listenings to records, is pretty perceptive."
Yoko: Very perceptive.
John: Because I'm not the easiest guy to read, although I'm fairly naive and open in some ways, and I can be conned easily. But in other ways I'm quite complicated, and it's not easy to get through all the defenses and see what I'm like. Klein knew me quite well, without even meeting me. Also he knew to come to me and not to go to Paul, whereas somebody like Lew Grade or Eastman would have gone to Paul. So he knew that to get in he'd have to come through me. Mind you, he'd been sounding out Mick Jagger and Keith, and all them, saying, "Who runs what?"
Int.: So it's been a few years now since Allen Klein took over managing you and George and Ringo. What's your opinion of him as a manager?
John: Well, I love him, you know. I mean, he really has made me secure enough. I do have money for the first time ever, really. Sometimes he makes me very angry, like when he's pissed off, or pretends he's busy. At any rate, apart from that, I like him, you know. He's a great guy, highly sensitive, highly intelligent. He's not avant-garde or anything like that, he doesn't know from Adam. And it irritates me sometimes when I try and sing him a song before recording, and he can't hear it until it's a finished record. Or if I show him some rushes from a film, and he can't see it until it's a finished film. But apart from that I like him. I don't think he's robbing me, you know. I think he deserves twenty percent because that's his price.
Yoko: He's very creative.
John: He's a creative artist in the way that he will put people together, like Phil Spector and me, which was initially his doing. He tried to create a Rolling Stones/Beatles empire, which might have been a good thing in the early days.
Yoko: Not now.
John: Yeah, but it might have been a good thing. And that's the kind of thing he likes doing, you know. I believe him when he says he looks after Sam Cooke's old father. [Klein managed Sam Cooke, who was shot to death in a motel room.] I think he's a sentimental Jewish mommy, you know. He's got his bad points. He'll be there, and then he's gone, things like that. But he's got a lot of responsibility, and a lot of shit in his head. And it's people like him, or even Brian Epstein, who wasn't quite as clever as Allen, who can't delegate in a way. I know because even if I have a very intelligent assistant, if I piss off, it never gets done.
Int.: Let's talk a bit about Paul's aversion to Klein. From what we've read it seemed as if this wasn't there in the beginning, even though Paul wanted the Eastmans to run things. But it came on later as things progressed. And yet despite this, we gather that Klein was still hoping that Paul would return to the group.
John: Oh, he'd love it if Paul would come back. I think he was hoping he would for years and years. He thought that if he did something, to show Paul that he could do it, Paul would come around. But no chance. I mean, I want him to come out of it, too, you know. He will one day. I give him five years, I've said that. In five years he'll wake up.
Int.: And yet Paul did pretty well from a number of deals Klein negotiated before Paul filed suit to dissolve the group partnership. And not the least of these was the renewed recording contract with EMI, which gave you all much higher royalties. What else was Klein doing to try and lure Paul back?
John: [laughs] One of his reasons for trying to get Paul back was that Paul would have forfeited his right to split by joining us again. We tried to con him into recording with us too. Allen came up with this plan. He said, "Just ring Paul and say, 'We're recording next Friday, are you coming?' " So it nearly happened. It got around that the Beatles were getting together again, because EMI heard that the Beatles had booked recording time again. But Paul would never, never do it, for anything, and now I would never do it. I'm not going to go on a concert tour with Paul, George, and Ringo, because I'm not going to resurrect that.
Int.: But Klein is still hoping?
John: He said to me, "Would you do it, if we got your immigration thing fixed? Or if we could get rid of the drug conviction?"
Yoko: And people don't understand, you know. There're so many groups that constantly announce they're going to split, they're going to split, and they can announce it every year, and it doesn't mean they're going to split. But people don't understand what an extraordinary position the Beatles are in, you know. In every way. They're in such an extraordinary position that they're more insecure than other people. And so Klein thinks he'll give Paul two years Lindawise, you know. And John said, "No, Paul treasures things like children, things like that. It will be longer." And of course, John was right.
Int.: We've heard that Klein has said that Linda and you, Yoko, were a large reason for the Beatles' breakup?
Yoko: Yeah, I don't like it when Allen insinuates that Linda and me, being women, didn't get along, and that this was the cause of the split. It just isn't true.
John: Allen tries hard to understand Yoko and her work, but it's a struggle for him. He doesn't understand it. And it's taken him a long time to come around and realize she just isn't another chick, you know.
Yoko: Can you imagine that? John had a fever once and was asleep upstairs, and Allen visited us and was talking to me. And he said, "Well, you know, if I get to manage John and all that, if it works out that way, then I don't mind if John has a little fun on the side with you." He took me as a groupie chick, you know.
John: Because all the women he'd ever met with the groups were chicks.
Yoko: And I'm a Japanese girl, you know. That bit. So I thought, "What the hell. He didn't discover me yet."
John: He realizes she's intelligent. I think he knows you're proud. Now he's realizing she's not a chick. And if anything, at least his equal.
Yoko: I was laughing. I wasn't insulted. I thought, "My God, I must look young." I was almost flattered.
Int.: Still, in regard to Klein, there had been a tremendous outpouring of negative publicity about him, especially in the English press. And this went on for some time, as he was going after the Beatles. Didn't that bother you, or at least give you cause for reservation?
John: Well, he's a businessman. I feel sorry for him in the way I have some sympathy for Yoko, because it's difficult with all the attacks in the press. And the English do hate Americans and Jews, especially ones who are going to come in and make money in their little Wall Street, you know. They already beat Allen out once when he was trying to buy a music-publishing company. They clubbed together and got rid of him. So okay, he's probably cut many peoples' throats. So have I. I made it too. I mean, I can't remember anybody I literally cut, but I've certainly trod on a few feet on the way up. And I'm sure he did. I don't think he deserves the shit he gets thrown at him, and if time proves me wrong in the end, so be it. I think he deserves what he earns, and I do have more money.
Int.: You were making comparisons earlier between Klein and Brian Epstein. I want to talk more about Epstein later, but could we go on with the comparison?
Yoko: Well, Klein has this reputation as a whacky businessman, but I tell you, he's too conservative in many ways. That may surprise people but it's true. Klein's attitude is, he goes for the top people, right? He doesn't go for anybody but the top . . . Rolling Stones, Beatles, et cetera. Which is all very good, but at the same time that means he doesn't take any risks.
John: He wouldn't have recognized us at the Cavern. And like the film El Topo . . . we talked him into buying it, but he took our word that it was a good film.
Yoko: He would have been the guy who turned down the Beatles. . . .
John: No, he wouldn't. He can spot a good song when he hears it.
Int.: Aren't you really saying that he can only see the dollar signs?
Yoko: Right.
John: That's what it is.
Int.: Let's go back to that comparison with Epstein. You mentioned something about delegating.
John: Yeah. Well, Brian couldn't delegate, and neither can Allen. But what I was sawing was, I understand that because when I try and delegate it never gets done properly. Like with my albums and Yoko's, each time I have to go through the same process: check if it was sent to so-and-so. Did this happen? Get the printing size right. I want it clear and simple and all that. Like for an advert. I have to go through the same jazz all the time. It's never a lesson learned.
Int.: Let's get back to talking about the group, and the four different personalities involved. When we've asked about the split, people give many different reasons for it. Neil Aspinall, you old Liverpool friend and managing director of Apple, said you were like guys going through war on those tours, and when you came back, you found out you were very different people. I asked Lee Eastman for his view of the split, and what it was that prompted Paul to file suit to dissolve the Beatles' partnership, and he said it was because John asked for a divorce.
John: Because I asked for a divorce? That's a childish reason for going into court, isn't it? Have you talked to Lee Eastman for your book?
Int.: Yes.
John: Did he get angry and yell at you?
Int.: He got pretty heated once on the phone.
John: Good; that's shows I'm not making it up. Because I'm the only one who's ever talked about it.
Int.: What was it like for you when the court case was on, with all the publicity?
John: Well, when it first started, I got on a boat and went to Japan for two weeks, and nobody could get in touch with me. They got me in Miami, then I got to Japan and I didn't tell anybody I'd arrived. We just pissed off up in the hills and nobody could find us. Then suddenly I get these calls from the lawyer, fucking idiot. I didn't like his voice, as soon as I heard him, you know. A sort of upper-class Irish-English voice. Fuck. And then he insisted I come home. I could have done it all on the fucking phone. And I came home and we were having meetings all the time with these counsels, every other day, and it went on for weeks and weeks. George and Ringo were getting restless and didn't want to do it anymore. And then George would say, "I've had enough. I don't want to do it. Fuck it all. I don't care if I'm poor." George goes through that every now and then. "I'll give it all away." Will he fuck? He's got it all charted up, like monopolo money.
Int.: Let's talk a bit about George. He's perhaps the most enigmatic Beatle. Are you saying George is more conventional than he makes himself out to be?
John: There's no telling George. He always has a point of view about that wide, you know. [John places his hands a few inches apart.] You can't tell him anything.
Yoko: George is sophisticated, fashionwise. . . .
John: He's very trendy, and he has the right clothes, and all of that. . . .
Yoko: But he's not sophisticated, intellectually.
John: No. He's very narrow-minded and he doesn't really have a broader view. Paul is far more aware than George. One time in the Apple office in Wigmore Street, I said something to George, and he said, "I'm as intelligent as you, you know." This must have been resentment, but he could have left anytime if I was giving him a hard time.

Later John and Yoko moved out of the St Regis Hotel, New York and into the Hotel Syracuse, New York; they held press conferences which were recorded on 5th and 8th October 1971. John and Yoko held press conferences at the Hotel Syracuse, New York on the 5th and at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse on the 8th (at 2pm) to promote the opening of Yoko's art exhibition This Is Not Here which ran from October 9th-27th. Yoko said: "In this show, I'd like to prove you don't need talent to be an artist. Artist is just a frame of mind. Anybody can be an artist. Anybody can communicate if they're desperate enough."