Rolling Stone issues # 74 & 75
(21 Jan & 4 Feb, 1971)
John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview
by founding editor Jann S. Wenner
Part One: The Working Class Hero
Part Two: Life With The Lions
This interview took place in New York City on December 8th 1970, shortly
after John and Yoko finished their ‘Plastic Ono Band’ albums in England.
They came to New York to attend to the details of the release of the album,
to make some films, and for a private visit.
Those who aided in the transcribing and editing were Jonathon Cott,
Charles Perry, Sheryl Ball and Ellen Wolper.
The full 3.5 hours of interview is available as a FREE iTunes podcast at the iTunes music store, courtesy of Rolling Stone magazine.
What do you think of your album? I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever
done. I think it’s realistic and it’s true to the me that has been
developing over the years from my life. “I’m a Loser,” “Help,”
“Strawberry Fields,” they are all personal records. I always wrote about
me when I could. I didn’t really enjoy writing third person songs about
people who lived in concrete flats and things like that. I like first
person music. But because of my hang-ups and many other things; I would
only now and then specifically write about me. Now I wrote all about me
and that’s why I like it. It’s me! And nobody else. That’s why I like
it. It’s real, that’s all.
I don’t know about anything else, really, and the few true songs I ever
wrote were like “Help” and “Strawberry Fields.” I can’t think of them
all offhand. They were the ones I always considered my best songs. They
were the ones I really wrote from experience and not projecting myself
into a situation and writing a nice story about it. I always found that
phony, but I’d find occasion to do it because I’d be so hung up, I
couldn’t even think about myself.
On this album, there is practically no imagery at all.
Because there was none in my head. There were no hallucinations in my head.
There are no “newspaper taxis.” Actually, that’s Paul’s line. I was
consciously writing poetry, and that’s self-conscious poetry. But the
poetry on this album is superior to anything I’ve done because it’s not
self-conscious, in that way. I had the least trouble writing the songs
of all time.
Ono: There’s no bullshit.
Lennon: There’s no bullshit.
The arrangements are also simple and very sparse.
Well, I’ve always
liked simple rock. There’s a great one in England now, “I Hear You
Knocking.” I liked the “Spirit in the Sky” a few months back. I always
liked simple rock and nothing else. I was influenced by acid and got
psychedelic, like the whole generation, but really, I like rock and roll
and I express myself best in rock. I had a few ideas to do this with
“Mother” and that with “Mother” but when you just hear, the piano does
it all for you, your mind can do the rest. I think the backings on mine
are as complicated as the backings on any record you’ve ever heard, if
you’ve got an ear.
Anybody knows that. Any musician will tell you, just play a note on a
piano, it’s got harmonics in it. It got to that. What the hell, I didn’t
need anything else.
How did you put together that litany in “God”? What’s “litany?”
“I don’t believe in magic,” that series of statements. Well, like a
lot of the words, it just came out of me mouth. “God” was put together
from three songs almost. I had the idea that “God is the concept by
which we measure pain,” so that when you have a word like that, you just
sit down and sing the first tune that comes into your head and the tune
is simple, because I like that kind of music and then I just rolled into
it. It was just going on in my head and I got by the first three or
four, the rest just came out. Whatever came out.
When did you know that you were going to be working towards “I don’t
believe in Beatles”? I don’t know when I realized that I was putting
down all these things I didn’t believe in. So I could have gone on, it
was like a Christmas card list: where do I end? Churchill? Hoover? I
thought I had to stop.
Ono: He was going to have a do it yourself type of thing.
Lennon: Yes, I was going to leave a gap, and just fill in your own
words: whoever you don’t believe in. It had just got out of hand, and
Beatles was the final thing because I no longer believe in myth, and
Beatles is another myth.
I don’t believe in it. The dream is over. I’m not just talking about the
Beatles, I’m talking about the generation thing. It’s over, and we gotta
— I have to personally — get down to so-called reality.
When did you become aware that that song would be the one that is
played the most? I didn’t know that. I don’t know. I’ll be able to tell
in a week or so what’s going on, because they [the radio] started off
playing “Look At Me” because it was easy, and they probably thought it
was the Beatles or something. So I don’t know if that is the one. Well,
that’s the one; “God” and “Working Class Hero” probably are the best
whatevers — sort of ideas or feelings — on the record.
Why did you choose or refer to Zimmerman, not Dylan? Because Dylan is
bullshit. Zimmerman is his name. You see, I don’t believe in Dylan and I
don’t believe in Tom Jones, either in that way. Zimmerman is his name.
My name isn’t John Beatle. It’s John Lennon. Just like that.
Why did you tag that cut at the end with “Mummy’s Dead”? Because
that’s what’s happened. All these songs just came out of me. I didn’t
sit down to think, “I’m going to write about Mother” or I didn’t sit
down to think “I’m going to write about this, that or the other.” They
all came out, like all the best work that anybody ever does. Whether it
is an article or what, it’s just the best ones that come out, and all
these came out, because I had time. If you are on holiday or in therapy,
wherever you are, if you do spend time… like in India I wrote the last
batch of best songs, like “I’m So Tired” and “Yer Blues.” They’re pretty
realistic, they were about me. They always struck me as — what is the
word? Funny? Ironic? — that I was writing them supposedly in the
presence of guru and meditating so many hours a day, writing “I’m So
Tired” and songs of such pain as “Yer Blues” which I meant. I was right
in the Maharishi’s camp writing “I wanna die…”
“Yer Blues,” was that also deliberately meant to be a parody of the
English blues scene? Well, a bit. I’m a bit self-conscious — we all
were a bit self-conscious and the Beatles were super self-conscious
people about parody of Americans which we do and have done.
I know we developed our own style but we still in a way parodied
American music … this is interesting: in the early days in England,
all the groups were like Elvis and a backing group, and the Beatles
deliberately didn’t move like Elvis. That was our policy because we
found it stupid and bullshit. Then Mick Jagger came out and resurrected
“bullshit movement,” wiggling your arse. So then people began to say the
Beatles were passé because they don’t move. But we did it as a conscious
move.
When we were younger, we used to move, we used to jump around and do all
the things they’re doing now, like going on stage with toilet seats and
shitting and pissing. That’s what we were doing in Hamburg and smashing
things up. It wasn’t a thing that Pete Townshend worked out, it is
something that you do when you play six or seven hours. There is nothing
else to do: you smash the place up, and you insult everybody. But we
were groomed and we dropped all of that and whatever it was that we
started off talking about, which was what singing … what was it? What
was the beginning of that?
Was “Yer Blues” deliberate? Yes, there was a self-consciousness about
singing blues. We were all listening to Sleepy John Estes and all that
in art school, like everybody else. But to sing it was something else.
I’m self conscious about doing it.
I think Dylan does it well, you know. In case he’s not sure of himself,
he makes it double entendre. So therefore he is secure in his Hipness.
Paul was saying, “Don’t call it ‘Yer Blues,’ just say it straight.” But
I was self-conscious and I went for “Yer Blues.” I think all that has
passed now, because all the musicians… we’ve all gotten over it.
That’s self-consciousness.
Ono: You know, I think John, being John, is a bit unfair to his music
in a way. I would like to just add a few things… like he can go on for
an hour or something. One thing about Dr. Janov, say if John fell in
love, you know he is always falling in love with all sorts of things,
from the Marharashi to all what not.
[John and Yoko went through four months of intensive therapy with
Dr. Arthur Janov, author of 'The Primal Scream' (Putnam's), in Los
Angeles, June through September of this year. In October they returned
to England, where they made their new albums. "Having a primal," or
"primaling," is an extremely intense type of re-living/acting-out
experience, around which many of Janov's theories are based.]
Nobody knows there is a point on the first song on Yoko’s track where
the guitar comes in and even Yoko thought it was her voice, because we
did all Yoko’s in one night, the whole session. Except for the track
with Ornette Coleman from the past that we put on to show people that
she wasn’t discovered by the Beatles and that she’s been around a few
years. We got stuff of her with Cage, Ornette Coleman… we are going to
put out “Oldies But Goldies” next for Yoko. I’ll play it again and talk
about it later.
Ono: There is this thing that he just goes on falling in love with all
sorts of things. But it is like he fell in love with some girl or
something and he wrote this song. Who he fell in love with is not very
important, the outcome of the song itself is important. That is very
important.
For instance, you have to say that a song like “Well, Well, Well” is
connected with Primal therapy or the theory of Primal Therapy. Why?
The screaming. No, no. Listen to “Cold Turkey.”
Ono: He’s screaming there already.
Lennon: Listen to “Twist and Shout.” I couldn’t sing the damn thing I
was just screaming. Listen to it. Wop-Bop-a-loo-bop-a-Wop-bam-boom.
Don’t get the therapy confused with the music. Yoko’s whole thing was
that scream. “Don’t Worry, Kyoko” was one of the fuckin’ best rock and
roll records ever made. Listen to it, and play “Tutti Fruitti.” Listen
to “Don’t Worry, Kyoko” on the other side of “Cold Turkey.”
I’m digressing from mine, but if somebody with a rock-oriented mind
could possibly hear her stuff, you’ll see what she’s doing. It’s
fantastic, you know. It’s as important as anything we ever did, and it
is as important as anything the Stones or Townshend ever did. Listen to
it, and you’ll hear what she is putting down. On “Cold Turkey” I’m
getting towards it. I’m influenced by her music 1000 percent more than I
ever was by anybody or anything. She makes music like you’ve never heard
on earth.
And when the musicians play with her, they’re inspired out of their
skulls. I don’t know how much they played her record later. We’ve got a
cut of her from the Lyceum in London, 15 or 20 musicians playing with
her, from Bonnie and Delaney and the fucking lot. We played the tracks
of it the other night. It’s the most fantastic music I’ve ever heard.
They’ve probably gone away and forgotten all about it. It’s fantastic.
It’s like 20 years ahead of its time. Anyway, back to mine.
You once said about “Cold Turkey”: “That’s not a song, that’s a
diary.” So is this, you know. I announced “Cold Turkey” at the Lyceum
saying, “I’m going to sing a song about pain.” So pain and screaming was
before Janov. I mean Janov showed me more of my own pain. I went through
therapy with him like I told you and I’m probably looser all over.
Are you less paranoid now? No. Janov showed me how to feel my own fear
and pain, therefore I can handle it better than I could before, that’s
all. I’m the same, only there’s a channel. It doesn’t just remain in me,
it goes round and out. I can move a little easier.
What was your experience with heroin? It just was not too much fun. I
never injected it or anything. We sniffed a little when we were in real
pain. We got such a hard time from everyone, and I’ve had so much thrown
at me, and at Yoko, especially at Yoko. Like Peter Brown in our office —
and you can put this in — after we come in after six months he comes
down and shakes my hand and doesn’t even say hello to her. That’s going
on all the time. And we get into so much pain that we have to do
something about it. And that’s what happened to us. We took “H” because
of what the Beatles and others were doing to us. But we got out of it.
Ono: You know he really produced his own stuff. Phil is, as you know,
well known about as a very skillful sort of technician with electronics
and engineering.
Lennon: But let’s not take away from what he did do, which expended a
lot of energy and taught me a lot, and I would use him again.
Like what? Well, I learned a lot on this album, technically. I didn’t
have to learn so much before. Usually Paul and I would be listening to
it and we wouldn’t have to listen to each individual sound. So there are
a few things I learned this time, about bass, one track or another,
where you can get more in and where I lost something on a track and some
technical things that irritated me finally. But as a concept and as a
whole thing, I’m pleased, yes. That’s about it, really. If I get down to
the nitty gritty, it would drive me mad, but I do like it really.
When you record, do you go for feeling or perfection of the sound? I
like both. I go for feeling. Most takes are right off and most times I
sang it and played it at the same time. I can’t stand putting the
backing on first, then the singing, which is what we used to do in the
old days, but those days are dead, you know.
It starts off with bells: why? Well, I was watching TV as usual, in
California, and there was this old horror movie on, and the bells
sounded like that to me. It was probably different, because those were
actually bells slowed down that they used on the album. They just
sounded like that and I thought oh, that’s how to start “Mother.” I knew
“Mother” was going to be the first track so…
You said that you wrote most of the songs in California? Well,
actually some of it. Actually I wrote “Mother” in England, “Isolation”
in England and a few more. I finished them off in California. You will
have to push me if you want more detail. “Look At Me” was written around
the Beatles’ double album time, you know, I just never got it going,
there are a few like that lying around.
You said that this would be the first “Primal Album.” When did I say
that?
In California. Have you gone off it? I haven’t gone off it, it is just
that “Primal” is like another mirror, you know.
Ono: He is sort of like any artist, because he really wants to be
honest to himself and to the album, I suppose. What he does is just
patching up something that is sort of interesting — so-so, or something.
He really puts himself in it, his life in it, you know, and so, like
when he went to India, he was influenced by the Maharishi.
Lennon: It’s really like, you know, writers take themselves to
Singapore to get the atmosphere. So wherever I am. In that way it is
sort of a “Primal” album. It’s like George’s is the first “Gita” album.
Ono: It’s that relevant. The Primal Scream is a mirror and he was
looking at the mirror.
When you came out to San Francisco, you wanted to take an advertisement
to say, “This Is It!” I think that is something people will go through
at the beginning of that therapy, because you are so astounded with what
you find out about yourself. You think, well, surely this is something,
because it happens to you, and this must be the first time that it
happened.
And, it was that we wanted to come. I need a reason for going somewhere
— otherwise I’m too nervous, so I calm myself. So that was a good way of
coming to San Francisco to see you. Then I have an objective: “I’m going
to do an act and this is what we are coming to do.” And we settle down
and we just talk.
I still think that Janov’s therapy is great, you know, but I don’t want
to make it into a big Maharishi thing. You were right to tell me to
forget the advert, and that is why I don’t even want to talk about it
too much, if people know what I’ve been through there, and if they want
to find out, they can find out, otherwise it turns into that again.
You don’t want people to think that this is the single thing to do. I
don’t think anything else would work on me. But then of course, I’m not
through with it; it’s a process that is going on. We primal almost
daily. You see, I don’t really want to get this big Primal thing going
because it is so embarrassing. The thing in a nutshell: primal therapy
allowed us to feel feelings continually, and those feelings usually make
you cry. That’s all. Because before, I wasn’t feeling things, that’s
all. I was blocking the feelings, and when the feelings come through,
you cry. It’s as simple as that, really.
Do you think the experience of therapy helped you become a better
singer? Maybe.
Do you think your singing is better on this album? It’s probably
better because I have the whole time to myself, you know. I mean I’m
pretty good at home with the tapes. This time it was my album and it
used to get a bit embarrassing in front of George and Paul, because we
know each other so well. We used to be a bit supercritical of each
other, so we inhibited each other a lot. And now I have Yoko there, and
Phil there, alternatively and together, who sort of love me so that I
can perform better, and I relaxed. I’ve got a whole studio at home now,
and I think it will be better next time, because that is even less
inhibiting than going to E.M.I. It’s like that, but the looseness of the
singing was developing on “Cold Turkey” from the experience of Yoko’s
singing. You see, she does not inhibit her throat.
It says on the album that Yoko does wind? Yes. Well, she plays wind,
she played atmosphere. She has a musical ear, and she can produce rock
and roll. She can produce me, which she did for some of the tracks. I’m
not going to start saying that she did this and he did that. But when
Phil couldn’t come at first… you don’t have to be born and bred in
rock, she knows when a bass sound is right, and when a guy is playing
out of rhythm and when the engineer — she had a bit of trouble — the
engineer thinks well, who the hell is this? What does she know about it?
So, she did that for me.
“Working Class Hero” sounds like an early Dylan song. Anybody that
sings with a guitar and sings about something heavy would tend to sound
like this. I’m bound to be influenced by those, because that is the only
kind of real folk music I really listen to. I never liked the fruity
Judy Collins and Baez and all of that stuff. So the only folk music I
know is about miners up in Newcastle, or Dylan. In that way I would be
influenced, but it doesn’t sound like Dylan to me. Does it sound like
Dylan to you?
Only in the instrumentation. That’s the only way to play. I never
listen that hard to him.
Did you put in “fucking” deliberately on “Working Class Hero?” No. I
put it in because it fit. I didn’t even realize that there were two in
the song until somebody pointed it out. When I actually sang it, I
missed a verse which I had to add in later. You do say “fucking crazy”;
that is how I speak. I was very near to it many times in the past, but,
I would deliberately not put it in, which is the real hypocrisy, the
real stupidity.
What is November 5th? In England it’s the day they blew up the Houses
of Parliament so we celebrate by having bonfires every November 5th, Guy
Fawkes Day. It just was an ad lib: it was about the third take, and I
got to remembering, and it begins to sound like Frankie Laine, you know,
when you sing, (sings) “Remember the Fifth of November.” I just broke
up, and it went on for about another seven or eight minutes. We started
ad libbing and goofing about, but then I cut it there and just exploded,
it was a good joke. Haven’t you ever heard of Guy Fawkes? I thought it
was just poignant that we should blow up the Houses of Parliament.
Do you get embarrassed sometimes when you hear the album, when you
think about how personal it is? I get embarrassed. You see, sometimes I
can hear it and be embarrassed just by the performance of either the
music or the statements, and sometimes I don’t. I change daily, you
know. Like just before it’s coming out, I can’t bear to hear it in the
house or play it anywhere, but a few months before that, I can play it
all the time. It just changes all the time.
Sometimes I used to listen to something, Buddy Holly or something, and
one day the record will sound twice as fast as the next day. Did you
ever experience that on a single? I used to have that: one day “Hound
Dog” would sound very slow and one day it would sound very fast. It was
just my feeling towards it. The way I heard it. It can do that. That’s
where you have to make your artistic judgment to say well, this is the
take and this isn’t. That’s the way you have to make the decision: when
it sounds reasonable.
“Isolation” and “Hold On John” are rough remixes. I just mixed them on 7
1/2 [ips, a conventional home tape recorder speed] to take home to play
and see what else I was going to do with them. Then I didn’t even put
them onto 15 [ips — the speed at which professional taping is done], so
the quality is a bit off on them.
What is your concept of pain? I don’t know what you mean, really.
On the song “God” you start by saying: “God is a concept by which we
measure our pain…” Well, pain is the pain we go through all the time.
You’re born in pain. Pain is what we are in most of the time, and I
think that the bigger the pain, the more God you look for.
There is a tremendous body of philosophical literature about God as a
measure of pain. I never heard of it. You see, it was my own
revelation. I don’t know who wrote about it, or what anybody else said,
I just know that’s what I know.
Ono: He just felt it.
Lennon: Yes, I just felt it. It was like I was crucified, when I felt
it. So I know what they’re talking about now.
What is the difference between George Martin and Phil Spector? George
Martin… I don’t know. You see, for quite a few of our albums, like the
Beatles’ double albums, George Martin didn’t really produce it. In the
early days, I can remember what George Martin did.
What did he do in the early days? He would translate… If Paul wanted
to use violins he would translate it for him. Like “In My Life” there is
an Elizabethan Piano solo in it, so he would do things like that. We
would say “play like Bach” or something, so he would put 12 bars in
there. He helped us develop a language, to talk to musicians.
I was very, very shy, and there are many reasons why I didn’t like very
much go for musicians. I didn’t like to have to see 20 guys sitting
there and try to tell them what to do. Because they’re all so lousy
anyway. So, apart from the early days — when I didn’t have much to do
with it — I did it myself.
Why did you use Phil now instead of George Martin? Well it’s not
instead of George Martin. That’s nothing personal against George Martin.
He’s more Paul’s style of music than mine. But I don’t know, really…
it’s a drag to do both. To go in the recording studio and then you run
back and say did you get it?
Did Phil make any special contribution? Yes, Yes. Phil, I believe, is
a great artist and like all great artists he’s very neurotic. But we’ve
done quite a few tracks together, Yoko and I, and she’d be encouraging
me in the other room and all that, and — at one point in the middle we
were just lagging — Phil moved in and brought in a new life. We were
getting heavy because we had done a few things and the thrill of
recording had worn off a little. So you can hear Spector here and there.
There is no specifics, you can just hear him.
I read a little interview with you done when you went to the Rock and
Roll Revival over a year ago in Toronto. You said you were throwing up
before you went on stage. Yes. I just threw up for hours until I went
on. I even threw up… I read a review in Stone, the one about the film
[Toronto Pop, by D.A. Pennebaker] I haven’t seen yet, and they were
saying I was this and that. I was throwing up nearly in the number, I
could hardly sing any of them, I was full of shit.
Would you still be that nervous if you appeared in public? Always that
nervous, but what with one thing and another, it just had to come out
some way. I don’t think I’ll do much appearing, it’s not worth the
strain, I don’t want to perform too much for people.
What do you think of George’s album? I don’t know… I think it’s all
right, you know. Personally, at home, I wouldn’t play that kind of
music, I don’t want to hurt George’s feelings, I don’t know what to say
about it. I think it’s better than Paul’s.
What did you think of Paul’s? I thought Paul’s was rubbish. I think
he’ll make a better one, when he’s frightened into it. But I thought
that first one was just a lot of… Remember what I told you when it
came out? “Light and easy,” You know that crack. But then I listen to
the radio and I hear George’s stuff coming over, well then it’s pretty
bloody good. My personal tastes are very strange, you know.
What are your personal tastes? Sounds like “Wop Bop a Loo Bop.” I like
rock & roll, man, I don’t like much else.
Why rock & roll? That’s the music that inspired me to play music.
There is nothing conceptually better than rock and roll. No group, be it
Beatles, Dylan or Stones have ever improved on “Whole Lot of Shaking”
for my money. Or maybe I’m like our parents: that’s my period and I dig
it and I’ll never leave it.
What do you think of the rock and roll scene today? I don’t know what
it is. You would have to name it. I don’t think there’s…
Do you get any pleasure out of the Top Ten? No, I never listen. Only
when I’m recording or about to bring something out will I listen. Just
before I record, I go buy a few albums to see what people are doing.
Whether they have improved any, or whether anything happened. And
nothing’s really happened. There’s a lot of great guitarists and
musicians around, but nothing’s happening, you know. I don’t like the
Blood, Sweat and Tears shit. I think all that is bullshit. Rock and roll
is going like jazz, as far as I can see, and the bullshitters are going
off into that excellentness which I never believed in and others going
off… I consider myself in the avant garde of rock and roll. Because
I’m with Yoko and she taught me a lot and I taught her a lot, and I
think on her album you can hear it, if I can get away from her album for
a moment.
What do you think of Dylan’s album? I thought it wasn’t much. Because
I expect more — maybe I expect too much from people — but I expect more.
I haven’t been a Dylan follower since he stopped rocking. I liked
“Rolling Stone” and a few things he did then; I like a few things he did
in the early days. The rest of it is just like Lennon-McCartney or
something. It’s no different, its a myth.
You don’t think then it’s a legitimate “New Morning”? No, It might be
a new morning for him because he stopped singing on the top of his
voice. It’s all right, but it’s not him, it doesn’t mean a fucking
thing. I’d sooner have “I Hear You Knocking” by Dave Edmonds, it’s the
top of England now.
It’s strange that George comes out with his “Hare Krishna” and you come
out with the opposite, especially after that. I can’t imagine what
George thinks. Well, I suppose he thinks I’ve lost the way or something
like that. But to me, I’m like home. I’ll never change much from this.
Let’s re-approach that: always the Beatles were talked about — and the
Beatles talked about themselves — as being four parts of the same
person. What’s happened to those four parts? They remembered that they
were four individuals. You see, we believed the Beatles myth, too. I
don’t know whether the others still believe it. We were four guys… I
met Paul, and said, “You want to join me band?” Then George joined and
then Ringo joined. We were just a band that made it very, very, big
that’s all. Our best work was never recorded.
Why? Because we were performers — in spite of what Mick says about us
— in Liverpool, Hamburg and other dance halls. What we generated was
fantastic, when we played straight rock, and there was nobody to touch
us in Britain. As soon as we made it, we made it, but the edges were
knocked off.
You know Brian put us in suits and all that, and we made it very, very
big. But we sold out, you know. The music was dead before we even went
on the theater tour of Britain. We were feeling shit already, because we
had to reduce an hour or two hours’ playing, which we were glad about in
one way, to 20 minutes, and we would go on and repeat the same 20
minutes every night.
The Beatles music died then, as musicians. That’s why we never improved
as musicians; we killed ourselves then to make it. And that was the end
of it. George and I are more inclined to say that; we always missed the
club dates because that’s when we were playing music, and then later on
we became technically, efficient recording artists — which was another
thing — because we were competent people and whatever media you put us
in we can produce something worthwhile.
How did you choose the musicians you use on this record? I’m a very
nervous person, really, I’m not as big-headed as this tape sounds, this
is me projecting through the fear, so I choose people that I know,
rather than strangers.
Why do you get along with Ringo? Because in spite of all the things,
the Beatles could really play music together when they weren’t uptight,
and if I get a thing going, Ringo knows where to go, just like that, and
he does well. We’ve played together so long, that it fits. That’s the
only thing I sometimes miss is just being able to sort of blink or make
a certain noise and I know they’ll all know where we are going on an ad
lib thing. But I don’t miss it that much.
How do you rate yourself as a guitarist? Well, it depends on what kind
of guitarist. I’m OK, I’m not technically good, but I can make it
fucking howl and move. I was rhythm guitarist. It’s an important job. I
can make a band drive.
How do you rate George? He’s pretty good. (Laughter) I prefer myself.
I have to be honest, you know. I’m really very embarrassed about my
guitar playing, in one way, because it’s very poor, I can never move,
but I can make a guitar speak.
I think there’s a guy called Richie Valens, no, Richie Havens, does he
play very strange guitar? He’s a black guy that was on a concert and
sang “Strawberry Fields” or something. He plays like one chord all the
time. He plays a pretty funky guitar. But he doesn’t seem to be able to
play in the real terms at all. I’m like that.
Yoko has made me feel cocky about my guitar. You see, one part of me
says yes, of course I can play because I can make a rock move, you know.
But the other part of me says well, I wish I could just do like B.B.
King. If you would put me with B.B. King, I would feel real silly. I’m
an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of
it.
You say you can make the guitar speak; what songs have you done that
on? Listen to “Why” on Yoko’s album “I Found Out.” I think it’s nice.
It drives along. Ask Eric Clapton, he thinks I can play, ask him. You
see, a lot of you people want technical things; it’s like wanting
technical films. Most critics of rock and roll, and guitarists, are in
the stage of the Fifties when they wanted a technically perfect film,
finished for them, and then they would feel happy.
I’m a cinema verite guitarist, I’m a musician and you have to break down
your barriers to hear what I’m playing. There’s a nice little bit I
played, they had it on the back of “Abbey Road.” Paul gave us each a
piece, there is a little break where Paul plays, George plays and I
played. And there is one bit, one of those where it stops, one of those
“carry that weights” where it suddenly goes boom, boom, on the drums and
then we all take it in turns to play. I’m the third one on it.
I have a definite style of playing. I’ve always had. But I was
over-shadowed. They call George the invisible singer. I’m the invisible
guitarist.
You said you played slide guitar on “Get Back.” Yes, I played the solo
on that. When Paul was feeling kindly, he would give me a solo! Maybe if
he was feeling guilty that he had most of the “A” side or something, he
would give me a solo. And I played the solo on that. I think George
produced some beautiful guitar playing. But I think he’s too hung up to
really let go, but so is Eric, really. Maybe he’s changed. They’re all
so hung up. We all are, that’s the problem. I really like B.B. King.
Do you like Ringo’s record, his country one? I think it’s a good
record. I wouldn’t buy any of it, you know. I think it’s a good record,
and I was pleasantly surprised to hear “Beaucoups of Blues,” that song
you know. I thought, good. I was glad, and I didn’t feel as embarrassed
as I did about his first record.
It’s hard when you ask me, it’s like asking me what do I think of… ask
me about other people, because it looks so awful when I say I don’t like
this and I don’t like that. It’s just that I don’t like many of the
Beatles records either.
My own taste is different from that which I’ve played sometimes, which
is called “cop out” to make money or whatever. Or because I didn’t know
any better.
I would like to ask a question about Paul and go through that. When we
went and saw “Let It Be” in San Francisco, what was your feeling? I
felt sad, you know. Also I felt… that film was set-up by Paul for
Paul. That is one of the main reasons the Beatles ended. I can’t speak
for George, but I pretty damn well know we got fed up of being side-men
for Paul.
After Brian died, that’s what happened, that’s what began to happen to
us. The camera work was set-up to show Paul and not anybody else. And
that’s how I felt about it. On top of that, the people that cut it, did
it as if Paul is God and we are just lyin’ around there. And that’s what
I felt. And I knew there were some shots of Yoko and me that had been
just chopped out of the film for no other reason than the people were
oriented for Englebert Humperdinck. I felt sick.
How would you trace the break-up of the Beatles? After Brian died, we
collapsed. Paul took over and supposedly led us. But what is leading us,
when we went round in circles? We broke up then. That was the
disintegration.
When did you first feel that the Beatles had broken up? When did that
idea first hit you? I don’t remember, you know. I was in my own pain. I
wasn’t noticing, really. I just did it like a job. The Beatles broke up
after Brian died; we made the double album, the set. It’s like if you
took each track off it and made it all mine and all George’s. It’s like
I told you many times, it was just me and a backing group, Paul and a
backing group, and I enjoyed it. We broke up then.
Where were you when Brian died? We were in Wales with the Maharishi.
We had just gone down after seeing his lecture first night. We heard it
then, and then we went right off into the Maharishi thing.
Where were you? In Wales. A place called Bangor, in Wales.
Were you in a hotel or what? We were just outside a lecture hall with
Maharishi and I don’t know… I can’t remember, it just sort of came
over. Somebody came up to us… the press were there, because we had
gone down with this strange Indian, and they said “Brian’s dead” and I
was stunned, we went in to him. “What, he’s dead,” and all were, I
suppose, and the Marharishi, we went in to him. “What, he’s dead,” and
all that, and he was sort of saying oh, forget it, be happy, like an
idiot, like parents, smile, that’s what the Maharishi said. And we did.
What was your feeling when Brian died? The feeling that anybody has
when somebody close to them dies. There is a sort of little hysterical,
sort of hee, hee, I’m glad it’s not me or something in it, the funny
feeling when somebody close to you dies. I don’t know whether you’ve had
it, but I’ve had a lot of people die around me and the other feeling is,
“What the fuck? What can I do?”
I knew that we were in trouble then. I didn’t really have any
misconceptions about our ability to do anything other than play music
and I was scared. I thought, “We’ve fuckin’ had it.”
What were the events that sort of immediately happened after Brian
died? Well, we went with Maharishi… I remember being in Wales and
then, I can’t remember though. I will probably have to have a bloody
primal to remember this. I don’t remember. It just all happened.
How did Paul react? I don’t know how the others took it, it’s no good
asking me… it’s like asking me how you took it. I don’t know. I’m in
me own head, I can’t be in anybody else’s. I don’t know really what
George, Paul or Ringo think anymore. I know them pretty well, but I
don’t know anybody that well. Yoko, I know about the best. I don’t know
how they felt. It was my own thing. We were all just dazed.
So Brian died and then you said what happened was that Paul started to
take over. That’s right. I don’t know how much of this I want to put
out. Paul had an impression, he has it now like a parent, that we should
be thankful for what he did for keeping the Beatles going. But when you
look back upon it objectively, he kept it going for his own sake. Was it
for my sake Paul struggled?
Paul made an attempt to carry on as if Brian hadn’t died by saying,
“Now, now, boys, we’re going to make a record.” Being the kind of person
I am, I thought well, we’re going to make a record all right, so I’ll go
along, so we went and made a record. And that’s when we made “Magical
Mystery Tour.” That was the real…
Paul had a tendency to come along and say well he’s written these ten
songs, let’s record now. And I said, “well, give us a few days, and I’ll
knock a few off,” or something like that. “Magical Mystery Tour” was
something he had worked out with Mal and he showed me what his idea was
and this is how it went, it went around like this, the story and how he
had it all… the production and everything.
Paul said, “Well, here’s the segment, you write a little piece for
that,” and I thought bloody hell, so I ran off and I wrote the dream
sequence for the fat woman and all the thing with the spaghetti. Then
George and I were sort of grumbling about the fuckin’ movie and we
thought we better do it and we had the feeling that we owed it to the
public to do these things.
When did your songwriting partnership with Paul end? That ended… I
don’t know, around 1962, or something, I don’t know. If you give me the
albums I can tell you exactly who wrote what, and which line. We
sometimes wrote together. All our best work — apart from the early days,
like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” we wrote together and things like that —
we wrote apart always. The “One After 909,” on the “Let It Be” LP, I
wrote when I was 17 or 18. We always wrote separately, but we wrote
together because we enjoyed it a lot sometimes, and also because they
would say well, you’re going to make an album get together and knock off
a few songs, just like a job.
Whose idea was it to go to India? I don’t know… I don’t know,
probably George’s, I have no idea. Yoko and I met around then. I lost me
nerve because I was going to take me ex-wife and Yoko, but I don’t know
how to work it. So I didn’t quite do it.
“Sexy Sadie” you wrote about the Maharishi? That’s about the
Maharishi, yes. I copped out and I wouldn’t write “Maharishi what have
you done, you made a fool of everyone.” But, now it can be told, Fab
Listeners.
When did you realize he was making a fool of you? I don’t know, I just
sort of saw him.
While in India or when you got back? Yes, there was a big hullaballo
about him trying to rape Mia Farrow or somebody and trying to get off
with a few other women and things like that. We went to see him, after
we stayed up all night discussing was it true or not true. When George
started thinking it might be true, I thought well, it must be true;
because if George started thinking it might be true, there must be
something in it.
So we went to see Maharishi, the whole gang of us, the next day, charged
down to his hut, his bungalow, his very rich-looking bungalow in the
mountains, and as usual, when the dirty work came, I was the spokesman —
whenever the dirty work came, I actually had to be leader, wherever the
scene was, when it came to the nitty gritty, I had to do the speaking —
and I said “We’re leaving.”
“Why?” he asked, and all that shit and I said, “Well, if you’re so
cosmic, you’ll know why.” He was always intimating, and there were all
these right-hand men always intimating, that he did miracles. And I
said, “You know why,” and he said, “I don’t know why, you must tell me,”
and I just kept saying “You ought to know” and he gave me a look like,
“I’ll kill you, you bastard,” and he gave me such a look. I knew then. I
had called his bluff and I was a bit rough to him.
Ono: You expected too much from him.
Lennon: I always do, I always expect too much. I was always expecting
my mother and never got her. That’s what it is, you know, or some
parent, I know that much.
You came to New York and had that press conference. The Apple thing.
That was to announce Apple.
But at the same time you disassociated yourselves from the Maharishi.
I don’t remember that. You know, we all say a lot of things when we
don’t know what we’re talking about. I’m probably doing it now, I don’t
know what I say. You see, everybody takes you up on the words you said,
and I’m just a guy that people ask all about things, and I blab off and
some of it makes sense and some of it is bullshit and some of it’s lies
and some of it is — God knows what I’m saying. I don’t know what I said
about Maharishi, all I know is what we said about Apple, which was
worse.
Will you talk about Apple? All right.
How did that start? Clive Epstein, or some other such business freak,
came up to us and said you’ve got to spend so much money, or the tax
will take you. We were thinking of opening a chain of retail clothes
shops or some balmy thing like that… and we were all thinking that if
we are going to have to open a shop, let’s open something we’re
interested in, and we went through all these different ideas about this,
that and the other. Paul had a nice idea about opening up white houses,
where we would sell white china, and things like that, everything white,
because you can never get anything white, you know, which was pretty
groovy, and it didn’t end up with that, it ended up with Apple and all
this junk and The Fool and all those stupid clothes and all that.
What happened to Magic Alex? I don’t know, he’s still in London.
Did you all really think he had those inventions? I think some of his
stuff actually has come true, but they just haven’t been manufactured —
maybe one of them is a salable object. He was just another guy who comes
and goes around people like us. He’s all, right, but he’s cracked, you
know.
When did you decide to close that down? I don’t know. I was
controlling the scene at the time, I mean, I was the one going in the
office and shouting about. Paul had done it for six months, and then I
walked in and changed everything. There were all the Peter Browns
reporting behind my back to Paul, saying, “You know, John’s doing this
and John’s doing that, that John, he’s crazy,” I was always the one that
must be crazy, because I wouldn’t let them have status quo.
Well, Yoko and I together, we came up with the idea to give it all away,
and stop fuckin’ about with a psychedelic clothes shop, so we gave it
all away. It was a good happening.
Were you at the big giveaway? No, we read it in the papers. That was
when we started events. I learned events from Yoko. We made everything
into events from then on and got rid of it.
You gave away your M.B.E.? I’d been planning on it for over a year and
a bit. I was waiting for a time to do it.
You said then that you were waiting to tag it to some event, then you
realized that it was the event. That’s the truth.
You also said then that you had another thing you were going to do. I
don’t know what it was.
Do you remember? Yes, I do. Well, we always had… we always kept them
on their toes, during our events period. I don’t know, but we said we
had some other surprise for them later. I can’t remember what it was.
Ono: Probably War Is Over, the poster event.
To go back to Apple and the breakup of the Beatles, Brian died, and one
thing and another… I didn’t really want to talk about all this… go
on.
Do you mind? Well, we’re halfway through it now, so let’s do it.
You said you quit the Beatles first. Yes.
How? I said to Paul “I’m leaving.”
I knew on the flight over to Toronto or before we went to Toronto: I
told Allen I was leaving, I told Eric Clapton and Klaus that I was
leaving then, but that I would probably like to use them as a group. I
hadn’t decided how to do it — to have a permanent new group or what —
then later on, I thought fuck, I’m not going to get stuck with another
set of people, whoever they are.
I announced it to myself and the people around me on the way to Toronto
a few days before. And on the plane — Klein came with me — I told Allen,
“It’s over.” When I got back, there were a few meetings, and Allen said
well, cool it, cool it, there was a lot to do, businesswise you know,
and it would not have been suitable at the time.
Then we were discussing something in the office with Paul, and Paul said
something or other about the Beatles doing something, and I kept saying
“No, no, no” to everything he said. So it came to a point where I had to
say something, of course, and Paul said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I
mean the group is over, I’m leaving.”
Allen was there, and he will remember exactly and Yoko will, but this is
exactly how I see it. Allen was saying don’t tell. He didn’t want me to
tell Paul even. So I said, “It’s out,” I couldn’t stop it, it came out.
Paul and Allen both said that they were glad that I wasn’t going to
announce it, that I wasn’t going to make an event out of it. I don’t
know whether Paul said “Don’t tell anybody,” but he was darned pleased
that I wasn’t going to. He said, “Oh, that means nothing really happened
if you’re not going to say anything.”
So that’s what happened. So, like anybody when you say divorce, their
face goes all sorts of colors. It’s like he knew really that this was
the final thing; and six months later he comes out with whatever. I was
a fool not to do it, not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a
record.
You were really angry with Paul? No, I wasn’t angry.
Well, when he came out with this “I’m leaving.” No, I wasn’t angry —
shit, he’s a good P.R. man, that’s all. He’s about the best in the
world, probably. He really does a job. I wasn’t angry. We were all hurt
that he didn’t tell us that was what he was going to do.
I think he claims that he didn’t mean that to happen but that’s
bullshit. He called me in the afternoon of that day and said, “I’m doing
what you and Yoko were doing last year.” I said good, you know, because
that time last year they were all looking at Yoko and me as if we were
strange trying to make our life together instead of being fab, fat
myths. So he rang me up that day and said I’m doing what you and Yoko
are doing, I’m putting out an album, and I’m leaving the group too, he
said. I said good. I was feeling a little strange, because he was saying
it this time, although it was a year later, and I said “good,” because
he was the one that wanted the Beatles most, and then the midnight
papers came out.
How did you feel then? I was cursing, because I hadn’t done it. I
wanted to do it, I should have done it. Ah, damn, shit, what a fool I
was. But there were many pressures at that time with the Northern Songs
fight going on; it would have upset the whole thing, if I would have
said that.
How did you feel when you found out that Dick James had sold his shares
in your own company, Northern Songs? Did you feel betrayed? Sure I did.
He’s another one of those people, who think they made us. They didn’t.
I’d like to hear Dick James’ music and I’d like to hear George Martin’s
music, please, just play me some. Dick James actually has said that.
What? That he made us. People are under a delusion that they made us,
when in fact we made them.
How did Dick James tell you that? “Well, I’m…” He didn’t tell us he
did it. It was just a fait accompli. He went and sold his thing to Lew
Grade. That’s all we knew. We read it in the paper, I think.
What was it like? All those meetings and conferences? Oh, it was
fantastic. It was like this room full of old men smoking and fighting.
It’s great. People seem to think that businessmen like Allen, or Grade,
or any of them, are a race apart. They play the game the way we play
music, and it’s something to see. They play a game, first they have a
ritual, then they create. Allen, he’s a very creative guy, you know, he
creates situations which create positions for them to move in, they all
do it, you know, and it’s a sight to see. We played our part, we both
did.
What did you do? With the bankers and things like that? I think Allen
could tell you better because I don’t know. Everything seems as though
it’s going to be trouble, like you can’t say anything about anybody,
because you’re going to get sued, or something like that. Allen will
tell you what we did.
I did a job on this banker that we were using, and on a few other
people, and on the Beatles.
What? How do you describe the job? You know, you know, my job — I
maneuver people. That’s what leaders do, and I sit and make situations
which will be of benefit to me with other people, it’s as simple as
that. I had to do a job to get Allen in Apple. I did a job, so did Yoko.
Ono: You do it with instinct, you know.
Lennon: Oh. God, Yoko, don’t say that. Maneuvering is what it is,
let’s not be coy about it. It is a deliberate and thought-out maneuver
of how to get a situation the way we want it. That’s how life’s about,
isn’t it, is it not?
Ono: Well, you’re pretty instinctive.
Lennon: Ono: The difference is that you don’t go down and bullshit and
get them. But you just instinctively said that Allen is the guy to jump
into it.
Lennon: That’s not the thing, the point I’m talking about is creating
a situation around Apple and the Beatles in which Allen could come in,
that is what I’m talking about, and he wouldn’t have gotten in unless
I’d done it, and he wouldn’t have gotten in unless you’d done it, you
made the decision, too.
How did you get Allen in? The same as I get anything I want. The same
as you get what you want. I’m not telling you; just work at it, get on
the phone, a little word here, and a little word there and do it.
What was Paul’s reaction? You see, a lot of people, like the Dick
James, Derek Taylors, and Peter Browns, all of them, they think they’re
the Beatles, and Neil and all of them. Well, I say fuck ‘em, you know,
and after working with genius for ten, 15 years they begin to think
they’re it. They’re not.
Do you think you’re a genius? Yes, if there is such a thing as one, I
am one.
When did you first realize that? When I was about 12. I used to think
I must be a genius, but nobody’s noticed. I used to wonder whether I’m a
genius or I’m not, which is it? I used to think, well, I can’t be mad,
because nobody’s put me away, therefore, I’m a genius. A genius is a
form of madness, and we’re all that way, you know, and I used to be a
bit coy about it, like my guitar playing.
If there is such a thing as genius — which is what… what the fuck is
it? — I am one, and if there isn’t, I don’t care. I used to think it
when I was a kid, writing me poetry and doing me paintings. I didn’t
become something when the Beatles made it, or when you heard about me,
I’ve been like this all me life. Genius is pain too.
How do you feel towards the Beatle people? All of them who used to —
some still do — work at Apple, who’ve been around during those years.
Neil Aspinal, Mal Evans… I didn’t mention Mal. I said Neil, Peter
Brown and Derek. They live in a dream of Beatle past, and everything
they do is oriented to that. They also have a warped view of what was
happening. I suppose we all do.
They must feel now that their lives are inextricably bound up in
yours. Well, they have to grow up then. They’ve only had half their
life, and they’ve got another whole half to go; and they can’t go on
pretending to be Beatles. That’s where it’s at, I mean when they read
this, they’ll think it’s “cracked John,” if it’s in the article, but
that’s where it’s at, they live in the past.
You see, I presumed that I would just be able to carry on, and bring
Yoko into our life, but it seemed that I had to either be married to
them or Yoko, and I chose Yoko, and I was right.
What were their reactions when you first brought Yoko by? They
despised her.
From the very beginning? Yes, they insulted her and they still do.
They don’t even know I can see it, and even when it’s written down, it
will look like I’m just paranoiac or she’s paranoiac. I know, just by
the way the publicity on us was handled in Apple, all of the two years
we were together, and the attitude of people to us and the bits we hear
from office girls. We know, so they can go stuff themselves.
Ono: In the beginning, we were too much in love to notice anything.
Lennon: We were in our own dream, but they’re the kind of idiots that
really think that Yoko split the Beatles, or Allen. It’s the same joke,
really, they are that insane about Allen, too.
You say that the dream is over. Part of the dream was that the Beatles
were God or that the Beatles were the messengers of God, and of course
yourself as God… Yeah. Well, if there is a God, we’re all it.
When did you first start getting the reactions from people who listened
to the records, sort of the spiritual reaction? There is a guy in
England, William Mann, who was the first intellectual who reviewed the
Beatles in the Times and got people talking about us in that
intellectual way. He wrote about Aeolian Cadences and all sorts of
musical terms, and he is a bullshitter. But he made us credible with
intellectuals. He wrote about Paul’s last album as if it were written by
Beethoven or something. He’s still writing the same shit. But it did us
a lot of good in that way, because people in all the middle classes and
intellectuals were all going “Oooh.”
How would you characterize George’s, Paul’s and Ringo’s reaction to
Yoko? It’s the same. You can quote Paul, it’s probably in the papers,
he said it many times at first he hated Yoko and then he got to like
her. But, it’s too late for me. I’m for Yoko. Why should she take that
kind of shit from those people? They were writing about her looking
miserable in the “Let It Be” film, but you sit through 60 sessions with
the most bigheaded, up-tight people on earth and see what its fuckin’
like and be insulted — just because you love someone — and George, shit,
insulted her right to her face in the Apple office at the beginning,
just being ’straight-forward,’ you know that game of ‘I’m going to be up
front,’ because this is what we’ve heard and Dylan and a few people said
she’d got a lousy name in New York, and you give off bad vibes. That’s
what George said to her! And we both sat through it. I didn’t hit him, I
don’t know why.
I was always hoping that they would come around. I couldn’t believe it,
and they all sat there with their wives, like a fucking jury and judged
us and the only thing I did was write that piece (Rolling Stone, April
16th, 1970) about “some of our beast friends” in my usual way — because
I was never honest enough, I always had to write in that gobbly-gook —
and that’s what they did to us.
Ringo was all right, so was Maureen, but the other two really gave it to
us. I’ll never forgive them, I don’t care what fuckin’ shit about Hare
Krishna and God and Paul with his “Well, I’ve changed me mind.” I can’t
forgive ‘em for that, really. Although I can’t help still loving them
either.
Yoko played me tapes I understood. I know it was very strange, and avant
garde music is a very tough thing to assimilate and all that, but I’ve
heard the Beatles play avant garde music — when nobody was looking — for
years.
But the Beatles were artists, and all artists have fucking’ big egos,
whether they like to admit it or not, and when a new artist came into
the group, they were never allowed. Sometimes George and I would have
liked to have brought somebody in like Billy Preston, that was
exceptional, we might have had him in the group.
We were fed up with the same old shit, but it wasn’t wanted. I would
have expanded the Beatles and broken them and gotten their pants off and
stopped them from being God, but it didn’t work, and Yoko was naive, she
came in and she would expect to perform with them, with any group, like
you would with any group, she was jamming, but there would be a sort of
coldness about it. That’s when I decided: I could no longer artistically
get anything out of the Beatles and here was someone that could turn me
on to a million things.
When did somebody first come up to you about this thing about John
Lennon as God? About what to do and all of that? Like “you tell us
Guru”? Probably after acid. Maybe after “Rubber Soul.” I can’t remember
it exactly happening. We just took that position. I mean, we started
putting out messages. Like “The Word Is Love” and things like that. I
write messages, you know. See, when you start putting out messages,
people start asking you “what’s the message?”
How did you first get involved in LSD? A dentist in London laid it on
George, me and wives, without telling us, at a dinner party at his
house. He was a friend of George’s and our dentist at the time, and he
just put it in our coffee or something. He didn’t know what it was; it’s
all the same thing with that sort of middle class London swinger, or
whatever. They had all heard about it, and they didn’t know it was
different from pot or pills and they gave us it. He said “I advise you
not to leave,” and we all thought he was trying to keep us for an orgy
in his house, and we didn’t want to know, and we went to the Ad Lib and
these discotheques and there were these incredible things going on.
It was insane going around London. When we went to the club we thought
it was on fire and then we thought it was a premiere, and it was just an
ordinary light outside. We thought, “Shit, what’s going on here?” We
were cackling in the streets, and people were shouting “Let’s break a
window,” you know, it was just insane. We were just out of our heads.
When we finally got on the lift [an elevator in England] we all thought
there was a fire, but there was just a little red light. We were all
screaming like that, and we were all hot and hysterical, and when we all
arrived on the floor, because this was a discotheque that was up a
building, the lift stopped and the door opened and we were all [John
demonstrates by screaming].
I had read somebody describing the effects of opium in the old days and
I thought “Fuck! It’s happening,” and then we went to the Ad Lib and all
of that, and then some singer came up to me and said, “Can I sit next to
you?” And I said, “Only if you don’t talk,” because I just couldn’t
think.
This seemed to go on all night. I can’t remember the details. George
somehow or another managed to drive us home in his mini. We were going
about ten miles an hour, but it seemed like a thousand and Patty was
saying let’s jump out and play football. I was getting all these sort of
hysterical jokes coming out like speed, because I was always on that,
too.
God, it was just terrifying, but it was fantastic. I did some drawings
at the time, I’ve got them somewhere, of four faces saying “We all agree
with you!” I gave them to Ringo, the originals. I did a lot of drawing
that night. And then George’s house seemed to be just like a big
submarine, I was driving it, they all went to bed, I was carrying on in
it, it seemed to float above his wall which was 18 foot and I was
driving it.
When you came down what did you think? I was pretty stoned for a month
or two. The second time we had it was in L.A. We were on tour in one of
those houses, Doris Day’s house or wherever it was we used to stay, and
the three of us took it, Ringo, George and I. Maybe Neil and a couple of
the Byrds — what’s his name, the one in the Stills and Nash thing,
Crosby and the other guy, who used to do the lead. McGuinn. I think they
came, I’m not sure, on a few trips. But there was a reporter, Don Short.
We were in the garden, it was only our second one and we still didn’t
know anything about doing it in a nice place and cool it. Then they saw
the reporter and thought “How do we act?” We were terrified waiting for
him to go, and he wondered why we couldn’t come over. Neil, who never
had acid either, had taken it and he would have to play road manager,
and we said go get rid of Don Short, and he didn’t know what to do.
Peter Fonda came, and that was another thing. He kept saying [in a
whisper] “I know what it’s like to be dead,” and we said “What?” and he
kept saying it. We were saying “For Christ’s sake, shut up, we don’t
care, we don’t want to know,” and he kept going on about it. That’s how
I wrote “She Said, She Said” — “I know what’s it’s like to be dead.” It
was a sad song, an acidy song I suppose. “When I was a little boy”…
you see, a lot of early childhood was coming out, anyway.
So LSD started for you in 1964: how long did it go on? It went on for
years, I must of had a thousand trips.
Literally a thousand, or a couple of hundred? A thousand. I used to
just eat it all the time. I never took it in the studio. Once I thought
I was taking some uppers and I was not in the state of handling it, I
can’t remember what album it was, but I took it and I just noticed… I
suddenly got so scared on the mike. I thought I felt ill, and I thought
I was going to crack. I said I must get some air. They all took me
upstairs on the roof and George Martin was looking at me funny, and then
it dawned on me I must have taken acid. I said, “Well I can’t go on,
you’ll have to do it and I’ll just stay and watch.” You know I got very
nervous just watching them all. I was saying, “Is it all right?” And
they were saying, “Yeah.” They had all been very kind and they carried
on making the record.
The other Beatles didn’t get into LSD as much as you did? George did.
In L.A. the second time we took it, Paul felt very out of it, because we
are all a bit slightly cruel, sort of “we’re taking it, and you’re not.”
But we kept seeing him, you know. We couldn’t eat our food, I just
couldn’t manage it, just picking it up with our hands. There were all
these people serving us in the house and we were knocking food on the
floor and all of that. It was a long time before Paul took it. Then
there was the big announcement.
Right. So, I think George was pretty heavy on it; we are probably the
most cracked. Paul is a bit more stable than George and I.
And straight? I don’t know about straight. Stable. I think LSD
profoundly shocked him, and Ringo. I think maybe they regret it.
Did you have many bad trips? I had many. Jesus Christ, I stopped
taking it because of that. I just couldn’t stand it.
You got too afraid to take it? It got like that, but then I stopped it
for I don’t know how long, and then I started taking it again just
before I met Yoko. Derek came over and… you see, I got the message
that I should destroy my ego and I did, you know. I was reading that
stupid book of Leary’s; we were going through a whole game that
everybody went through, and I destroyed myself. I was slowly putting
myself together round about Maharishi time. Bit by bit over a two-year
period, I had destroyed me ego.
I didn’t believe I could do anything and let people make me, and let
them all just do what they wanted. I just was nothing. I was shit. Then
Derek tripped me out at his house after he got back from L.A. He sort of
said “You’re all right,” and pointed out which songs I had written. “You
wrote this,” and “You said this” and “You are intelligent, don’t be
frightened.”
The next week I went to Derek’s with Yoko and we tripped again, and she
filled me completely to realize that I was me and that’s it’s all right.
That was it; I started fighting again, being a loudmouth again and
saying, “I can do this, “fuck it, this is what I want, you know, I want
it and don’t put me down.” I did this, so that’s where I am now.
At some point, right between “Help” and “Hard Day’s Night,” you got
into drugs and got into doing drug songs? A “Hard Day’s Night,” I was
on pills, that’s drugs, that’s bigger drugs than pot. Started on pills
when I was 15, no, since I was 17, since I became a musician. The only
way to survive in Hamburg, to play eight hours a night, was to take
pills. The waiters gave you them — the pills and drink. I was a fucking
dropped-down drunk in art school. “Help” was where we turned on to pot
and we dropped drink, simple as that. I’ve always needed a drug to
survive. The others, too, but I always had more, more pills, more of
everything because I’m more crazy probably.
There’s a lot of obvious LSD things you did in the music. Yes.
How do you think that affected your conception of the music? In
general. It was only another mirror. It wasn’t a miracle. It was more
of a visual thing and a therapy, looking at yourself a bit. It did all
that. You know, I don’t quite remember. But it didn’t write the music,
neither did Janov or Maharishi in the same terms. I write the music in
the circumstances in which I’m in, whether its on acid or in the water.
What did you think of “Hard Day’s Night,”? The story wasn’t bad but it
could have been better. Another illusion was that we were just puppets
and that these great people, like Brian Epstein and Dick Lester, created
the situation and made this whole fuckin’ thing, and precisely because
we were what we were, realistic. We didn’t want to make a fuckin’ shitty
pop movie, we didn’t want to make a movie that was going to be bad, and
we insisted on having a real writer to write it.
Brian came up with Allan Owen, from Liverpool, who had written a play
for TV called “No Trams to Lime St.” Lime Street is a famous street in
Liverpool where the whores used to be in the old days, and Owen was
famous for writing Liverpool dialogue. We auditioned people to write for
us and they came up with this guy. He was a bit phony, like a
professional Liverpool man — you know like a professional American. He
stayed with us two days, and wrote the whole thing based on our
characters then: me, witty; Ringo, dumb and cute; George this; and Paul
that.
We were a bit infuriated by the glibness and shiftiness of the dialogue
and we were always trying to get it more realistic, but they wouldn’t
have it. It ended up O.K., but the next one was just bullshit, because
it really had nothing to do with the Beatles. They just put us here and
there. Dick Lester was good, he had ideas ahead of their times, like
using Batman comic strip lettering and balloons.
My impression of the movie was that it was you and it wasn’t anyone
else. It was a good projection of one facade of us, which was on tour,
once in London and once in Dublin. It was of us in that situation
together, in a hotel, having to perform before people. We were like
that. The writer saw the press conference.
“Rubber Soul” was… Can you tell me whether that white album with the
drawing by Voorman on it, was that before “Rubber Soul” or after?
After. You really don’t remember which? No. Maybe the others do, I
don’t remember those kind of things, because it doesn’t mean anything,
it’s all gone.
“Rubber Soul” was the first attempt to do a serious, sophisticated
complete work, in a certain sense. We were just getting better,
technically and musically, that’s all. Finally we took over the studio.
In the early days, we had to take what we were given, we didn’t know how
you can get more bass. We were learning the technique on “Rubber Soul.”
We were more precise about making the album, that’s all, and we took
over the cover and everything.
“Rubber Soul” that was just a simple play on… That was Paul’s title,
it was like “Yer Blues,” I suppose, meaning English Soul, I suppose,
just a pun. There is no great mysterious meaning behind all of this, it
was just four boys working out what to call a new album.
The Hunter Davies book, the “authorized biography,” says… It was
written in [London] Sunday Times sort of fab form. And no home truths
was written. My auntie knocked out all the truth bits from my childhood
and my mother and I allowed it, which was my cop-out, etcetera. There
was nothing about orgies and the shit that happened on tour. I wanted a
real book to come out, but we all had wives and didn’t want to hurt
their feelings. End of that one. Because they still have wives.
The Beatles tours were like the Fellini film “Satyricon.” We had that
image. Man, our tours were like something else, if you could get on our
tours, you were in. They were “Satyricon,” all right.
Would you go to a town… a hotel… Wherever we went, there was
always a whole scene going, we had our four separate bedrooms. We tried
to keep them out of our room. Derek’s and Neil’s rooms were always full
of junk and whores and who-the-fuck-knows-what, and policemen with it.
“Satyricon!” We had to do something. What do you do when the pill
doesn’t wear off and it’s time to go? I used to be up all night with
Derek, whether there was anybody there or not, I could never sleep, such
a heavy scene it was. They didn’t call them groupies then, they called
it something else and if we couldn’t get groupies, we would have whores
and everything, whatever was going.
Who would arrange all that stuff? Derek and Neil, that was their job,
and Mal, but I’m not going into all that.
Like businessmen at a convention. When we hit town, we hit it. There
was no pissing about. There’s photographs of me crawling about in
Amsterdam on my knees coming out of whore houses and things like that.
The police escorted me to the places, because they never wanted a big
scandal, you see. I don’t really want to talk about it, because it will
hurt Yoko. And it’s not fair. Suffice to say, that they were “Satyricon”
on tour and that’s it, because I don’t want to hurt their feelings, or
the other people’s girls either. It’s just not fair.
Ono: I was surprised, I really didn’t know things like that. I thought
well, John is an artist, and probably he had two or three affairs before
getting married. That is the concept you have in the old school. New
York artists group, you know, that kind.
The generation gap. Right, right, exactly.
Let me ask you about something else that was in the Hunter Davies book.
At one point it said you and Brian Epstein went off to Spain. Yes. We
didn’t have an affair though. Fuck knows what was said. I was pretty
close to Brian. If somebody is going to manage me, I want to know them
inside out. He told me he was a fag.
I hate the way Allen is attacked and Brian is made out to be an angel
just because he’s dead. He wasn’t, you know, he was just a guy.
What else was left out of the Hunter Davies book? That I don’t know,
because I can’t remember it. There is a better book on the Beatles by
Michael Brown, “Love Me Do.” That was a true book. He wrote how we were,
which was bastards. You can’t be anything else in such a pressurized
situation and we took it out on people like Neil, Derek and Mal. That’s
why underneath their facade, they resent us, but they can never show it,
and they won’t believe it when they read it. They took a lot of shit
from us, because we were in such a shitty position. It was hard work,
and somebody had to take it. Those things are left out by Davies, about
what bastards we were. Fuckin’ big bastards, that’s what the Beatles
were. You have to be a bastard to make it, that’s a fact, and the
Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.
Ono: How did you manage to keep that clean image? It’s amazing.
Lennon: Everybody wants the image to carry on. You want to carry on.
The press around too, because they want the free drinks and the free
whores and the fun; everybody wants to keep on the bandwagon. We were
the Caesars; who was going to knock us, when there were a million pounds
to be made? All the handouts, the bribery, the police, all the fucking
hype. Everybody wanted in, that’s why some of them are still trying to
cling on to this: Don’t take Rome from us, not a portable Rome where we
can all have our houses and our cars and our lovers and our wives and
office girls and parties and drink and drugs, don’t take it from us,
otherwise you’re mad, John, you’re crazy, silly John wants to take this
all away.
What was it like in the early days in London? When we came down, we
were treated like real provincials by the Londoners. We were in fact,
provincials.
What was it like, say, running around London, in the discotheques, with
the Stones, and everything? That was a great period. We were like kings
of the jungle then, and we were very close to the Stones. I don’t know
how close the others were but I spent a lot of time with Brian and Mick.
I admire them, you know. I dug them the first time I saw them in
whatever that place is they came from, Richmond. I spent a lot of time
with them, and it was great. We all used to just go around London in
cars and meet each other and talk about music with the Animals and Eric
and all that. It was really a good time, that was the best period,
fame-wise. We didn’t get mobbed so much. It was like a men’s smoking
club, just a very good scene.
What was Brian Jones like? Well, he was different over the years as he
disintegrated. He ended up the kind of guy that you dread when he would
come on the phone, because you knew it was trouble. He was really in a
lot of pain. In the early days, he was all right, because he was young
and confident. He was one of them guys that disintegrated in front of
you. He wasn’t sort of brilliant or anything, he was just a nice guy.
When he died? By then I didn’t feel anything. I just thought another
victim of the drug scene.
What do you think of the Stones today? I think it’s a lot of hype. I
like “Honky Tonk Woman” but I think Mick’s a joke, with all that fag
dancing, I always did. I enjoy it, I’ll probably go and see his films
and all, like everybody else, but really, I think it’s a joke.
Do you see him much now? No, I never do see him. We saw a bit of each
other around when Allen was first coming in — I think Mick got jealous.
I was always very respectful about Mick and the Stones, but he said a
lot of sort of tarty things about the Beatles, which I am hurt by,
because you know, I can knock the Beatles, but don’t let Mick Jagger
knock them. I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones
did two months after on every fuckin’ album. Every fuckin’ thing we did,
Mick does exactly the same — he imitates us. And I would like one of you
fuckin’ underground people to point it out, you know “Satanic Majesties”
is Pepper, “We Love You,” it’s the most fuckin’ bullshit, that’s “All
You Need Is Love.”
I resent the implication that the Stones are like revolutionaries and
that the Beatles weren’t. If the Stones were or are, the Beatles really
were too. But they are not in the same class, music-wise or power-wise,
never were. I never said anything, I always admired them, because I like
their funky music and I like their style. I like rock and roll and the
direction they took after they got over trying to imitate us, you know,
but he’s even going to do Apple now. He’s going to do the same thing.
He’s obviously so upset by how big the Beatles are compared with him; he
never got over it. Now he’s in his old age, and he is beginning to knock
us, you know, and he keeps knocking. I resent it, because even his
second fuckin’ record we wrote it for him. Mick said “Peace made money.”
We didn’t make any money from Peace. You know.
Ono: We lost money.
When “Sgt. Pepper” came out, did you know that you had put together a
great album? Did you feel that while you were making it? Yeah, yeah and
“Rubber Soul,” too, and Revolver.
What did you think of that review in the New York Times of “Sgt.
Pepper”? I don’t remember it. Did it pan it?
Yes. I don’t remember. In those days reviews weren’t very important,
because we had it made whatever happened. Nowadays, I’m as sensitive as
shit. But those days, we were too big to touch. I don’t remember the
reviews at all, I never read them. We were so blas?©, we never even read
the news clippings. It was a bore to read about us. I don’t even
remember ever hearing about that review.
They’ve been trying to knock us down since we began, specially the
British press, always saying, “What are you going to do when the bubble
bursts?” That was the in-crowd joke with us. We’d go when we decided,
not when some fickle public decided, because we were not a manufactured
group. We knew what we were doing.
Of course, we’ve made many mistakes, but we knew instinctively that it
would end when we decided, and not when NBC or ATV decides to take off
our series, or anything like that. There were very few things that
happened to the Beatles that weren’t really well-thought out by us —
whether to do it or not, and what the reaction would be and would it
last forever. We had an instinct for something like that.
But you got busted. Yeah, but there are two ways of thinking: they are
out to get us or it just happened that way. After I started Two Virgins
and doing those kind of things, it seemed like I was fair game for the
police. There was some myth about us being protected because we had an
MBE. I don’t think that it was true, it was just that we never did
anything. The way Paul said the acid thing… I never got attacked for
it, I don’t know whether that was protection, because it was openly
admitting that we had drugs. I just think nobody really bothered about
us.
Why can’t you be alone without Yoko? I can be, but I don’t wish to be.
There is no reason on earth why I should be without her. There is
nothing more important than our relationship, nothing. We dig being
together all the time, and both of us could survive apart, but what for?
I’m not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any fuckin’ whore, or
any friend, or any business, because in the end, you’re alone at night.
Neither of us want to be, and you can’t fill the bed with groupies. I
don’t want to be a swinger. Like I said in the song, I’ve been through
it all, and nothing works better than to have somebody you love hold
you.
You said at one point, you have to write songs that can justify your
existence. I said a lot of things. I write songs because that’s the
thing I chose to do. And I can’t help writing them, that’s a fact.
Sometimes I felt as though you worked to justify your existence, but you
don’t; you work to exist, and vice versa, and that’s it, really.
You say you write songs because you can’t help it. Yeah, creating is a
result of pain, too. I have to put it somewhere, and I write songs. But
when I was hiding in Weybridge (1968) I used to think I wasn’t working
there. I made 20 or 30 movies, just 8mm stuff but still movies, and
many, many hours of tape of different sounds, just not rocking. I
suppose you would call them avant-grade. That’s how Yoko met me. There
were very few people I could play those tapes to, and I played them to
her, and then we made Two Virgins a few hours later.
How are you going to keep from going overboard on things again? I
think I’ll be able to control meself. “Control” is the wrong word. I
just won’t get involved in too many things, that’s all. I’ll just do
whatever happens. It’s silly to feel guilty that I’m not working, that
I’m not doing this or that, it’s just stupid. I’m just going to do what
I want for meself and for both of us.
You say on your record that “The freaks on the phone won’t leave me
alone, so don’t give me that brother, brother.” Because I’m sick of all
these aggressive hippies or whatever they are, the “Now Generation,”
being very up-tight with me. Either on the street or anywhere, or on the
phone, demanding my attention, as if I owed them something.
I’m not their fucking parents, that’s what it is. They come to the door
with a fucking peace symbol and expect to just sort of march around the
house or something, like an old Beatle fan. They’re under a delusion of
awareness by having long hair, and that’s what I’m sick of. They
frighten me, a lot of uptight maniacs going around, wearing fuckin’
peace symbols.
What did you think of Manson and that thing? I don’t know what I
thought when it happened. A lot of the things he says are true: he is a
child of the state, made by us, and he took their children it when
nobody else would. Of course, he’s cracked all right.
What about “Piggies” and “Helter Skelter”? He’s balmy, like any other
Beatle-kind of fan who reads mysticism into it. We used to have a laugh
about this, that or the other, in a light-hearted way, and some
intellectual would read us, some symbolic youth generation wants to see
something in it. We also took seriously some parts of the role, but I
don’t know what “Helter Skelter” has to do with knifing somebody. I’ve
never listened to the words, properly, it was just a noise.
Everybody spoke about the backwards thing on “Abbey Road.” That’s
bullshit. I just read that one about Dylan, too. That’s bullshit.
The rumor about Paul being dead? I don’t know where that started,
that’s balmy. You know as much about it as me.
Were any of those things really on the album that were said to be
there? The clues? No. That was bullshit, the whole thing was made up.
We wouldn’t do anything like that. We did put in like “tit, tit, tit” in
“Girl,” and many things I don’t remember, like a beat missing or
something like that could be interpreted like that. Some people have got
nothing better to do than study Bibles and make myths about it and study
rocks and make stories about how people used to live. It’s just
something for them to do. They live vicariously.
Is there a point at which you decided you and Yoko would give up your
private life? No. We decided that if we were going to do anything, like
get married or like this film we are going to make now, that we would
dedicate it to peace and the concept of peace. During that period,
because we are what we are, it evolved that somehow we ended up being
responsible to produce peace. Even in our own heads we would get that
way. That’s how it is. Peace is still important and my life is dedicated
to living — just surviving is what it’s about — really from day to day.
What do you think the effects were? I don’t know. I can’t measure it.
Somebody else has to tell us what the reaction is.
What happened in Denmark? During the Peace Festival scene? There was a
doctor. Hamrick was brought over by Tony, because he said this was a
great doctor — he hadn’t mentioned the flying saucers until he was on
his way — and he was going to hypnotize us so we would stop smoking.
Ono: We felt it was very practical.
Lennon: We thought “great.” Tony said it really worked, because it
worked on him and it was easy. So this big guy comes in who seemed to be
primaling all the time — he was always crying a lot, and talking — and
then he tried it and it didn’t work. He talked like crackers and then he
said he would put us back into our past life. We were game for anything
then, it’s like going to a fortune teller — so we said all right, do it.
He was mumbling, pretending to hypnotize us; we’re lying there, and he’s
making up all of these Walt Disney stories about past lives, which we
didn’t believe. But he was such a nice guy in a way. I was more into it
then than Yoko; she’s not quite as silly as I am. But I was thinking,
“You never know, do you” — I had this thing: believe everything until it
is disproved — it came from giving up ciggies and he was going on about
how he had been on a space ship, so I said, come on, tell us more, I was
suspicious, but I wouldn’t stop the stories coming out. But they were
obviously all insane people, and then these other two came with him….
Actually, we went there to talk to Kyoko, and it was really a case of
“brothers” and all that.
What do you think rock and roll will become? Whatever we make it. If
we want to go bullshitting off into intellectualism with rock and roll
then we are going to get bullshitting rock intellectualism. If we want
real rock and roll, it’s up to all of us to create it and stop being
hyped by the revolutionary image and long hair. We’ve got to get over
that bit. That’s what cutting hair is about. Let’s own up now and see
who’s who, who is doing something about what, and who is making music
and who is laying down bullshit. Rock and roll will be whatever we make
it.
Why do you think it means so much to people? Because the best stuff is
primitive enough and has no bullshit. It gets through to you, it’s beat,
go to the jungle and they have the rhythm. It goes throughout the world
and it’s as simple as that, you get the rhythm going because everybody
goes into it. I read that Eldridge Cleaver said that Blacks gave the
middle class whites back their bodies, and put their minds and bodies
together. Something like that. It gets through; it got through to me,
the only thing to get through to me of all the things that were
happening when I was 15. Rock and roll then was real, everything else
was unreal. The thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll — whatever
good means and all that shit — is that it’s real and realism gets
through to you despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is
true, like all true art. Whatever art is, readers. OK. If it’s real,
it’s simple usually, and if it’s simple, it’s true. Something like that.
Rock and roll finally got through to Yoko.
Ono: Classical music was basically 4-4 and then it went into 4, 3, 2,
which is just a waltz rhythm and all of that, but it just went further
and further away from the heartbeat. Heartbeat is 4-4. Rhythm became
very decorative, like Schoenberg, Webern. It is highly complicated and
interesting — our minds are very much like that — but they lost the
heartbeat.
I went to see the Beatles’ session in the beginning, and I thought, Oh
well. So I said to John, “Why do you always use that beat all the time?
The same beat, why don’t you do something a bit more complicated?
Lennon: If somebody starts playing that intellectual on me, I’m going
to start thinking. I’m a very shy person; if somebody attacks, I shrink.
Yoko is an intellectual, a supreme intellectual, so I really know what
I’m talking about; they have to have sort of a math formula.
You feel basically the same way about rock and roll at 30 as you did at
15. Well, it will never be as new and it will never again do what it
did to me then, but like “Tutti Fruitti” or “Long Tall Sally” is pretty
avant garde. A friend of Yoko’s in the village was talking about Dylan
and “the One Note” as though he just discovered it. That’s about as far
out as you can get.
The Blues are beautiful because it’s simpler and because it’s real. It’s
not perverted or thought about: It’s not a concept, it is a chair; not a
design for a chair but the first chair. The chair is for sitting on, not
for looking at or being appreciated. You sit on that music.
How would you describe “Beatle music”? It means a lot of things. There
is not one thing that’s Beatle music. How can they talk about it like
that? What is Beatle music? “Walrus” or “Penny Lane?” Which? It’s too
diverse: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Revolution Number Nine?”
What was it in your music that turned everyone on at first? Why was it
so infectious? We didn’t sound like everybody else. We didn’t sound
like the black musicians because we weren’t black and we were brought up
on an entirely different type of music and atmosphere. So “Please,
Please Me” and “From Me To You” and all of those were our version of the
chair. We were building our own chairs, that’s all, and they were sort
of local chairs.
The first gimmick was the harmonica. There had been “Hey, Baby” with a
harmonica and there was a terrible thing called “I Remember You” in
England. All of a sudden we started using it on “Love Me Do.” The first
set of tricks was double tracking on the second album. I would love to
remix some of the early stuff, because it is better than it sounds.
What do you think of those concerts like the Hollywood Bowl? It was
awful, I hated it. Some of them were good, but I didn’t like Hollywood
Bowl. Some of those big gigs were good, but not many of them.<
In an interview with Jon Cott a year or so ago, you said something
about your favorite song being “Ticket to Ride.” Yeah, I liked it
because it was a slightly new sound at the time. But it’s not my
favorite song.
In what way was it new? It was pretty fuckin’ heavy for then. It’s a
heavy record, that’s why I like it. I used to like guitars.
In “Glass Onion” you say, “The Walrus is Paul,” yet in the new album
you admit that you were the Walrus. “I Am the Walrus” was originally
the B side of “Hello Goodbye”! I was still in my love cloud with Yoko
and I thought, well, I’ll just say something nice to Paul: “It’s all
right, you did a good job over these few years, holding us together.” He
was trying to organize the group, and organize the music, and be an
individual and all that, so I wanted to thank him. I said “the Walrus is
Paul” for that reason. I felt, “Well, he can have it. I’ve got Yoko, and
thank you, you can have the credit.”
But now I’m sick of reading things that say Paul is the musician and
George is the philosopher. I wonder where I fit in, what was my
contribution? I get hurt, you know, sick of it. I’d sooner be Zappa and
say, “Listen, you fuckers, this is what I did, and I don’t care whether
you like my attitude saying it.” That’s what I am, you know, I’m a
fucking artist, and I’m not a fucking P.R. Agent or the product of some
other person’s imagination. Whether you’re the public or whatever, I’m
standing by my work whereas before I would not stand by it.
That’s what I’m saying: I was the Walrus, whatever that means. We saw
the movie “Alice in Wonderland” in L.A. and the Walrus is a big
capitalist that ate all the fuckin’ oysters. If you must know, that’s
what he was even though I didn’t remember this when I wrote it.
What did you think of “Abbey Road”? I liked the “A” side but I never
liked that sort of pop opera on the other side. I think it’s junk
because it was just bits of songs thrown together. “Come Together” is
all right, that’s all I remember. That was my song. It was a competent
album, like “Rubber Soul.” It was together in that way, but “Abbey Road”
had no life in it.
What was it like recording “Instant Karma” with Phil? It was the first
thing you did together. It was great. I wrote it in the morning on the
piano. I went to the office and sang it many times. So I said “Hell,
let’s do it,” and we booked the studio, and Phil came in, and said, “How
do you want it?” I said, “You know, 1950’s.” He said, “right,” and boom,
I did it in about three goes or something like that. I went in and he
played it back and there it was. The only argument was that I said a bit
more bass, that’s all; and off we went.
You see Phil is great at that; he doesn’t fuss about with fuckin’ stereo
or all the bullshit. Does it sound all right? Then let’s have it, no
matter whether something’s prominent or not prominent. If it sounds good
to you as a layman or a human, take it, don’t bother whether this is
like that or the quality of this, just take it.
When did you first become aware of the idea of stereo, being able to
work with stereo? Oh, some time or other. There was a period when we
started realizing that you could go and remix it yourself. We started
listening to them and started saying, “Well, why can’t you do that?”
We’d be just standing by the board saying, “Well, what about that?” And
George Martin would say, “Well, how do you like this?” In the early
days, they just would present us with finished product. We would ask
what happened to the bass or something. And they would say “oh, that’s
how it is, you can’t…” That kind of thing. It must have been a gradual
thing.
What do you think of “Give Peace A Chance?” As a record?
Yes. The record was beautiful.
Did you ever see Moratorium Day in Washington, D.C.? That is what it
is for, you know. I remember hearing them all sing it — I don’t know
whether it was on the radio or TV — it was a very big moment for me.
That’s what the song was about.
You see, I’m shy and aggressive so I have great hopes for what I do with
my work and I also have great despair that it’s all pointless and it’s
shit. You know, how can you beat Beethoven or Shakespeare or whatever?
In me secret heart I wanted to write something that would take over “We
Shall Overcome.” I don’t know why. The one they always sang, and I
thought, “Why doesn’t somebody write something for the people now,
that’s what my job and our job is.”
I have the same kind of hope for “Working Class Hero.” It’s a different
concept, but I feel it’s a revolutionary song.
In what respect? It’s really just revolutionary. I think its concept
is revolutionary, and I hope it’s for workers and not for tarts and
fags. I hope it’s what “Give Peace A Chance” was about, but I don’t
know. On the other hand, it might just be ignored.
I think it’s for the people like me who are working class — whatever,
upper or lower — who are supposed to be processed into the middle
classes, through the machinery, that’s all. It’s my experience, and I
hope it’s just a warning to people. I’m saying it’s a revolutionary
song; not the song itself but that it’s a song for the revolution.
[Here we took a break, during which John and Allen Klein went out to
discuss the possibility of a single. We began talking again, alone with
Yoko, about that.]
Do you have a feeling for a Number One record? I keep thinking
“Mother” is a commercial record, because all the time I was writing it,
it was the one I was singing the most, it’s the one that seemed to catch
on in my head. I’m convinced that “Mother” is a commercial record.
I agree. You agree? Well, thank you, but you said “God.”
No, I didn’t. They’re all playing “God” or “Isolation.”
Well, you’re right about “Mother” because it’s the one I have in my
head most of the time. It’s the politics in it, too. Politics will
prepare the ground for my album, same as “My Sweet Lord” prepared the
ground for George’s. I’m not going to get hits just like that; people
are not just going to buy my album just because Rolling Stone liked it,
or because they’re going to play it tonight, or because Pete’s a good
pusher. People have got to be hyped in a way, they’ve got to have it
presented to them in all the best ways that are possible. Maybe “Love”
is the best way. I like the song “Love”; I like the melody and the words
and everything, I think its beautiful, but I’m more of a rocker. I
originally conceived of “Mother” and “Love” as being a single, but now,
I think that “Mother” is too heavy. Maybe Allen’s right. “Love” will do
me more good.
I don’t think so. I think “trust your own instinct.” The thing with
“Mother” is that’s what the album’s about. What will stay in your head
the longest? I’m opening a door for John Lennon, not for music or for
the Beatles or for anybody or anything.
Capitol is now trying to say that this is John Lennon, one of the
Beatles and therefore, it’s a different deal. When they were on the
McCartney bandwagon, which they were on, and they thought that I was
just an idiot pissing about with a Japanese broad, they didn’t want to
put out the music we were making like “Toronto” because they didn’t like
the idea. They were content to let me be a “Plastic Ono Band” and give
me a special release I have to get, because the Beatles are tied up as
Beatles.
What are the implications? The implications are all money — all of it
is money, man. They’ve been hinting around, they’ve been saying “Well,
now, this looks like a John Lennon album, not Plastic Ono,” well, to me
it’s Plastic Ono or I wouldn’t put it out like that.
I’m going to think about “Love.” The original feeling was that there
weren’t enough things on the album to put out a single, only ten songs,
only nine if you don’t count “Mummy” and that means there’s nothing to
buy then. To me, it sounds like there are 40 songs on there. There’s
that side of the market and I’m not going to disregard it.
I mean to sell as many albums as I can, because I’m an artist who wants
everybody to love me, and everybody to buy my stuff. I’ll go for that.
There is no great shakes to the idea of putting out something that’s
commercial to get people to buy the album; the question is which is most
commercial, “Love” or “Mother”? How quick do you get to Number One? The
thing is “Love” would attract more people, because of the message, man!
There are many, many people who would not like “Mother.” It hurts them.
The first thing that happens to you when you get the album is you can’t
take it. Everybody’s reacted exactly the same. They think “fuck.” That’s
how everybody is. The second time they start saying oh, there’s a
little… So if I laid “Mother” on them it confirms the suspicion that
something nasty is going on with that John Lennon and his broad again.
People aren’t that hip; students aren’t that aware; they’re just like
anybody else. “Oh, misery! Don’t tell me that’s what it’s about, its
really awful. Be a good boy, now, John, you had a hard time, but me, me
and my mother…” So there’s all that to go through. “Love” I wrote in a
spirit of love for Yoko, and it has all that. It’s a beautiful melody,
and I’m not even known for writing melody. You’ve got to think of that.
If it goes, it’ll do me good.
Did you write most of the stuff in this album on guitar or on piano?
The ones on which I play guitar, I wrote on guitar; the ones on which I
play piano, I wrote on piano.
What are the differences to you when you write them? Because I can
play the piano even worse than I play the guitar — a limited palette, as
they call it — I surprise myself. I have to think in terms of going from
“C” to “A”, and I’m not quite sure where I am half the time. When I’m
holding a chord on the guitar it’s only a sixth or seventh or something
like that; on the piano, I don’t know what it is. It’s got that kind of
feel about it. I know such a lot about the guitar, that with it I can be
buskin’; if I want to write just a rocker, I have to play guitar,
because I can’t play piano well enough to inspire me to rock. That’s the
difference, really.
What do you think are your best songs that you have written? Ever? The
one best song?
Have you ever thought of that? I don’t know. If somebody asked me what
is my favorite song, is it “Stardust” or something, I can’t answer. That
kind of decision-making I can’t do. I always liked “Walrus,” “Strawberry
Fields,” “Help,” “In My Life,” those are some favorites.
Why “Help”? Because I meant it — it’s real. The lyric is as good now
as it was then. It is no different, and it makes me feel secure to know
that I was that aware of myself then. It was just me singing “Help” and
I meant it.
I don’t like the recording that much; we did it too fast trying to be
commercial. I like “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” We wrote that together,
it’s a beautiful melody. I might do “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and
“Help” again, because I like them and I can sing them. “Strawberry
Fields” because it’s real, real for then, and I think it’s like talking,
“You know, I sometimes think no…” It’s like he talks to himself, sort
of singing, which I thought was nice.
I like “Across the Universe,” too. It’s one of the best lyrics I’ve
written. In fact, it could be the best. It’s good poetry, or whatever
you call it, without chewin’ it. See, the ones I like are the ones that
stand as words, without melody. They don’t have to have any melody, like
a poem, you can read them.
That’s your ultimate criterion? No, that’s just the ones I happen to
like. I like to read other people’s lyrics too.
So what happened with “Let It Be”? It was another one like “Magical
Mystery Tour.” In a nutshell, it was time for another Beatle movie or
something; Paul wanted us to go on the road or do something. He sort of
set it up, and there were discussions about where to go, and all of
that. I had Yoko by them, and I would just tag along. I was stoned all
the time and I just didn’t give a shit. Nobody did. It was just like it
was in the movie; when I got to do “Across the Universe” (which I wanted
to rerecord because the original wasn’t very good), Paul yawns and plays
boogie. I merely say, “Anyone want to do a fast one?” That’s how I am.
Year after year, that begins to wear you down.
How long did those sessions last? Oh, fuckin’ God knows how long. Paul
had this idea that he was going to rehearse us. He’s looking for
perfection all the time, and had these ideas that we would rehearse and
then make the album. We, being lazy fuckers — and we’d been playing for
20 years! We’re grown men, for fuck’s sake, and we’re not going to sit
around and rehearse, I’m not, anyway — we couldn’t get into it.
We put down a few tracks, and nobody was in it at all. It just was a
dreadful, dreadful feeling in Twickenham Studio, being filmed all the
time, I just wanted them to go away. We’d be there at eight in the
morning. You couldn’t make music at eight in the morning in a strange
place, with people filming you, and colored lights flashing.
So how did it end? The tape ended up like the bootleg version. We
didn’t want to know about it anymore, so we just left it to Glyn Johns
and said, “Here, mix it.” That was the first time since the first album
that we didn’t want to have anything to do with it. None of us could be
bothered going in. Nobody called anybody about it, and the tapes were
left there. Glyn Johns did it. We got an acetate in the mail and we
called each other and said, “What do you think?”
We were going to let it out in really shitty condition. I didn’t care. I
thought it was good to let it out and show people what had happened to
us, we can’t get it together; we don’t play together any more; you know,
leave us alone. The bootleg version is what it was like, and everyone
was probably thinking they’re not going to fucking work on it. There
were 29 hours of tape, so much that it was like a movie. Twenty takes of
everything, because we were rehearsing and taking everything. Nobody
could face looking at it.
When Spector came around, we said, “Well, if you want to work with us,
go and do your audition.” He worked like a pig on it. He always wanted
to work with the Beatles, and he was given the shittiest load of badly
recorded shit, with a lousy feeling toward it, ever. And he made
something out of it. He did a great job.
When I heard it, I didn’t puke; I was so relieved after six months of
this black cloud hanging over me that this was going to go out.
I had thought it would be good to let the shitty version out because it
would break the Beatles, break the myth. It would be just us, with no
trousers on and no glossy paint over the cover, and no hype: This is
what we are like with our trousers off, would you please end the game
now?
But that didn’t happen. We ended up doing “Abbey Road” quickly, and
putting out something slick to preserve the myth. I am weak as well as
strong, you know, and I wasn’t going to fight for “Let It Be” because I
really couldn’t stand it.
Finally, when “Let It Be” was going to be released, Paul wanted to
bring out his album. There were so many clashes. It did come out at the
same time or something, didn’t it? I think he wanted to show he was the
Beatles.
Were you surprised when you heard it, at what he had done? Very. I
expected just a little more. If Paul and I are sort of disagreeing, and
I feel weak, I think he must feel strong, you know, that’s in an
argument. Not that we’ve had much physical argument, you know.
What do you think Paul will think of your album? I think it’ll
probably scare him into doing something decent, and then he’ll scare me
into doing something decent, like that.
I think he’s capable of great work and I think he will do it. I wish he
wouldn’t, you know, I wish nobody would, Dylan or anybody. In me heart
of hearts, I wish I was the only one in the world or whatever it is. But
I can’t see Paul doing it twice.
What was it like to go on tour? You had cripples coming up to you.
That was our version of what was happening. People were sort of touching
us as we walked past, that kind of thing. Wherever we went we were
supposed to be not like normal and we were supposed to put up with all
sorts of shit from Lord Mayors and their wives, be touched and pawed
like “Hard Day’s Night,” only a million more times, like at the American
Embassy or the British Embassy in Washington here or wherever it was
when some bloody animal cut Ringo’s hair. I walked out of that, swearing
at all of them. I’d forgotten but you tripped me off into that one. What
was the question?
The cripples. Wherever we went on tour, in Britain and everywhere we
went, there were always a few seats laid aside for cripples and people
in wheelchairs. Because we were famous, we were supposed to have
epileptics and whatever they are in our dressing room all the time. We
were supposed to be sort of “good,” and really you wanted to be alone.
You don’t know what to say, because they’re usually saying “I’ve got
your record” or they can’t speak and just want to touch you. It’s always
the mother or the nurse pushing them on you, they themselves would just
say hello and go away, but the mothers would push them at you like you
were Christ or something, as if there were some aura about you which
would rub off on them. It just got to be like that and we were very sort
of callous about it. It was just dreadful: you would open up every
night, and instead of seeing kids there, you would just see a row full
of cripples along the front. It seemed that we were just surrounded by
cripples and blind people all the time, and when we would go through
corridors, they would be all touching us and things like that. It was
horrifying.
You must have been still fairly young and naive at that point. Yeah,
well, as naive as “In His Own Write.”
Surely that must have made you think for a second. Well, I mean we
knew what the game was.
It didn’t astound you at that point, that you were supposed to be able
to make the lame walk and the blind see? It was the “in” joke that we
were supposed to cure them; it was the kind of thing that we would say,
because it was a cruel thing to say. We felt sorry for them, anybody
would, but there is a kind of embarrassment when you’re surrounded by
blind, deaf and crippled people. There is only so much we could say, you
know, with the pressure on us, to do and to perform.
The bigger we got, the more unreality we had to face; the more we were
expected to do until, when you didn’t sort of shake hands with a Mayor’s
wife, she would start abusing you and screaming and saying “How dare
they?”
There is one of Derek’s stories in which we were asleep after the show
in the hotel somewhere in America, and the Mayor’s wife comes and says,
“Get them up, I want to meet them.” Derek said, “I’m not going to wake
them.” She started to scream, “You get them up or I’ll tell the press.”
There was always that — they were always threatening that they would
tell the press about us, if we didn’t see their bloody daughter with her
braces on her teeth. It was always the police chief’s daughter or the
Lord Mayor’s daughter, all the most obnoxious kids — because they had
the most obnoxious parents — that we were forced to see all the time. We
had these people thrust on us.
The most humiliating experiences were like sitting with the Mayor of the
Bahamas, when we were making “Help” and being insulted by these fuckin’
junked up middle-class bitches and bastards who would be commenting on
our work and commenting on our manners. I was always drunk, insulting
them. I couldn’t take it. It would hurt me. I would go insane, swearing
at them. I would do something. I couldn’t take it.
All that business was awful, it was a fuckin’ humiliation. One has to
completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that’s
what I resent. I didn’t know, I didn’t foresee. It happened bit by bit,
gradually until this complete craziness is surrounding you, and you’re
doing exactly what you don’t want to do with people you can’t stand —
the people you hated when you were ten. And that’s what I’m saying in
this album — I remember what it’s all about now you fuckers — fuck you!
That’s what I’m saying, you don’t get me twice.
Would you take it all back? What?
Being a Beatle? If I could be a fuckin’ fisherman I would. If I had
the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It’s no
fun being an artist. You know what it’s like, writing, it’s torture. I
read about Van Gogh, Beethoven, any of the fuckers. If they had
psychiatrists, we wouldn’t have had Gauguin’s great pictures. These
bastards are just sucking us to death; that’s about all that we can do,
is do it like circus animals.
I resent being an artist, in that respect, I resent performing for
fucking idiots who don’t know anything. They can’t feel. I’m the one
that’s feeling, because I’m the one that is expressing. They live
vicariously through me and other artists, and we are the ones… even
with the boxers— when Oscar comes in the ring, they’re booing the shit
out of him, he only hits Clay once and they’re all cheering him. I’d
sooner be in the audience, really, but I’m not capable of it.
One of my big things is that I wish to be a fisherman. I know it sounds
silly— and I’d sooner be rich than poor, and all the rest of that shit—
but I wish the pain was ignorance or bliss or something. If you don’t
know, man, then there’s no pain; that’s how I express it.
What do you think the effect was of the Beatles on the history of
Britain? I don’t know about the “history”; the people who are in
control and in power, and the class system and the whole bullshit
bourgeoisie is exactly the same, except there is a lot of fag middle
class kids with long, long hair walking around London in trendy clothes,
and Kenneth Tynan is making a fortune out of the word “fuck.” Apart from
that, nothing happened. We all dressed up, the same bastards are in
control, the same people are runnin’ everything. It is exactly the same.
We’ve grown up a little, all of us, there has been a change and we’re
all a bit freer and all that, but it’s the same game. Shit, they’re
doing exactly the same thing, selling arms to South Africa, killing
blacks on the street, people are living in fucking poverty, with rats
crawling over them. It just makes you puke, and I woke up to that too.
The dream is over. It’s just the same, only I’m thirty, and a lot of
people have got long hair. That’s what it is, man, nothing happened
except that we grew up, we did our thing— just like they were telling
us. You kids— most of the so called “now generation” are getting a job.
We’re a minority, you know, people like us always were, but maybe we are
a slightly larger minority because of maybe something or other.
Why do you think the impact of the Beatles was so much bigger in
America than it was in England? The same reason that American stars are
so much bigger in England: the grass is greener. We were really
professional by the time we got to the States; we had learned the whole
game. When we arrived here we knew how to handle the press; the British
press were the toughest in the world and we could handle anything. We
were all right.
On the plane over, I was thinking “Oh, we won’t make it,” or I said it
on a film or something, but that’s that side of me. We knew we would
wipe you out if we could just get a grip on you. We were new.
And when we got here, you were all walking around in fuckin’ bermuda
shorts, with Boston crew cuts and stuff on your teeth. Now they’re
telling us, they’re all saying, “Beatles are pass?© and this is like
that, man.” The chicks looked like fuckin’ 1940 horses. There was no
conception of dress or any of that jazz. We just thought “what an ugly
race,” it looked just disgusting. We thought how hip we were, but, of
course, we weren’t. It was just the five of us, us and the Stones were
really the hip ones; the rest of England were just the same as they ever
were.
You tend to get nationalistic, and we would really laugh at America,
except for its music. It was the black music we dug, and over here even
the blacks were laughing at people like Chuck Berry and the blues
singers; the blacks thought it wasn’t sharp to dig the really funky
music, and the whites only listened to Jan and Dean and all that. We
felt that we had the message which was “listen to this music.” It was
the same in Liverpool, we felt very exclusive and underground in
Liverpool, listening to Richie Barret and Barrett Strong, and all those
old-time records. Nobody was listening to any of them except Eric Burdon
in Newcastle and Mick Jagger in London. It was that lonely, it was
fantastic. When we came over here and it was the same — nobody was
listening to rock and roll or to black music in America— we felt as
though we were coming to the land of its origin but nobody wanted to
know about it.
What part did you ever play in the songs that are heavily identified
with Paul, like “Yesterday”? “Yesterday,” I had nothing to do with.
“Eleanor Rigby”? “Eleanor Rigby” I wrote a good half of the lyrics or
more.
When did Paul show you “Yesterday”? I don’t remember — I really don’t
remember, it was a long time ago. I think he was… I really don’t
remember, it just sort of appeared.
Who do you think has done the best versions of your stuff? I can’t
think of anybody.
Did you hear Ike and Tina Turner doing “Come Together”? Yeah, I didn’t
think they did too much of a job on it, I think they could have done it
better. They did a better “Honky Tonk Woman.”
Ray Charles doing “Yesterday”? That was quite nice.
And you had Otis doing “Day Tripper,” what did you think of that? I
don’t think he did a very good job on “Day Tripper.” I never went much
for the covers. It doesn’t interest me, really. I like people doing them
— I’ve heard some nice versions on “In My Life,” I don’t know who it
was, though. [Judy Collins], Jose Feliciano did “Help” quite nice once.
I like people doing it, I get a kick out of it. I thought it was
interesting that Nina Simone did a sort of answer to “Revolution.” That
was very good— it was sort of like “Revolution,” but not quite. That I
sort of enjoyed, somebody who reacted immediately to what I had said.
Who wrote “Nowhere Man”? Me, me.
Did you write that about anybody in particular? Probably about myself.
I remember I was just going through this paranoia trying to write
something and nothing would come out so I just lay down and tried to not
write and then this came out, the whole thing came out in one gulp.
What songs really stick in your mind as being Lennon-McCartney songs?
“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “From Me To You,” “She Loves You” — I’d have
to have the list, there’s so many, trillions of ‘em. Those are the ones.
In a rock band you have to make singles, you have to keep writing them.
Plenty more. We both had our fingers in each others pies.
I remember that the simplicity on the new album was evident on the
Beatles double album. It was evident in “She’s So Heavy,” in fact a
reviewer wrote of “She’s So Heavy”: “He seems to have lost his talent
for lyrics, it’s so simple and boring.” “She’s So Heavy” was about Yoko.
When it gets down to it, like she said, when you’re drowning you don’t
say “I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight
to notice me drowning and come and help me,” you just scream. And in
“She’s So Heavy,” I just sang “I want you, I want you so bad, she’s so
heavy, I want you,” like that. I started simplifying my lyrics then, on
the double album.
A song from the Help album, like “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love
Away.” How did you write that? What were the circumstances? Where were
you? I was in Kenwood and I would just be songwriting. The period would
be for songwriting and so every day I would attempt to write a song and
it’s one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, “Here I
stand, head in hand…”
I started thinking about my own emotions— I don’t know when exactly it
started like “I’m a Loser” or “Hide Your Love Away” or those kind of
things— instead of projecting myself into a situation I would just try
to express what I felt about myself which I’d done in me books. I think
it was Dylan helped me realize that — not by any discussion or anything
but just by hearing his work— I had a sort of professional songwriter’s
attitude to writing pop songs; he would turn out a certain style of song
for a single and we would do a certain style of thing for this and the
other thing. I was already a stylized songwriter on the first album. But
to express myself I would write “Spaniard in the Works” or “In His Own
Write,” the personal stories which were expressive of my personal
emotions. I’d have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs
for the sort of meat market, and I didn’t consider them— the lyrics or
anything— to have any depth at all. They were just a joke. Then I
started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but
subjectively.
What about on “Rubber Soul,” “Norwegian Wood”? I was trying to write
about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an
affair, so it was very gobbledegook. I was sort of writing from my
experiences, girls’ flats, things like that.
Where did you write that? I wrote it at Kenwood.
When did you decide to put a sitar on it? I think it was at the
studio. George had just got the sitar and I said “Could you play this
piece?” We went through many different sort of versions of the song, it
was never right and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn’t coming
out like I said. They said, “Well just do it how you want to do it” and
I said, “Well I just want to do it like this.” They let me go and I did
the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time and
then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that
I’d written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit, and he was
not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn’t done much on the
sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learned
the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections.
You also have a song on that album “In My Life.” When did you write
that? I wrote that in Kenwood. I used to write upstairs where I had
about ten Brunell tape recorders all linked up, I still have them, I’d
mastered them over the period of a year or two— I could never make a
rock and roll record but I could make some far out stuff on it. I wrote
it upstairs, that was one where I wrote the lyrics first and then sang
it. That was usually the case with things like “In My Life” and
“Universe” and some of the ones that stand out a bit.
Would you just record yourself and a guitar on a tape and then bring it
in to the studio? I would do that just to get an impression of what it
sounded like sung and to hear it back for judging it— you never know
’til you hear the song yourself. I would double track the guitar or the
voice or something on the tape. I think on “Norwegian Wood” and “In My
Life” Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it’s due.
From the same period, same time, I never liked “Run For Your Life,”
because it was a song I just knocked off. It was inspired from— this is
a very vague connection — from “Baby Let’s Play House.” There was a line
on it— I used to like specific lines from songs— “I’d rather see you
dead, little girl, than to be with another man”— so I wrote it around
that but I didn’t think it was that important. “Girl” I liked because I
was, in a way, trying to say something or other about Christianity which
I was opposed to at the time.
Why Christianity in that song? Because I was brought up in the church.
One of the reviews of “In His Own Write” was that they tried to put me
in this satire boom with Peter Cook and those people that came out of
Cambridge, saying well he’s just satirizing the normal things like the
church and the state, which is what I did in “In His Own Write”. Those
are the things that you keep satirizing because they’re the only things.
I was pretty heavy on the church in both books, but it was never picked
up although it was obviously there. I was just talking about
Christianity in that — a thing like you have to be tortured to attain
heaven. I’m only saying that I was talking about “pain will lead to
pleasure” in “Girl” and that was sort of the Catholic Christian concept—
be tortured and then it’ll be alright, which seems to be a bit true but
not in their concept of it. But I didn’t believe in that, that you have
to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happens that you were.
Let me ask you about one on the double album, “Glass Onion.” You set
out to write a little message to the audience. Yeah, I was having a
laugh because there’d been so much gobbledegook about Pepper, play it
backwards and you stand on your head and all that. Even now, I just saw
Mel Torme on TV the other day saying that “Lucy” was written to promote
drugs and so was “A Little Help From My Friends” and none of them were
at all — “A Little Help From My Friends” only says get high in it, it’s
really about a little help from my friends, it’s a sincere message. Paul
had the line about “little help from my friends,” I’m not sure, he had
some kind of structure for it and— we wrote it pretty well 50-50 but it
was based on his original idea.
Why did you make “Revolution”? Which one?
Both. There’s three of them.
Starting with the single. When George and Paul and all of them were on
holiday, I made “Revolution” which is on the LP and “Revolution #9.” I
wanted to put it out as a single, I had it all prepared, but they came
by, and said it wasn’t good enough. And we put out what? “Hello Goodbye”
or some shit like that? No, we put out “Hey Jude,” which was worth it—
I’m sorry— but we could have had both.
I wanted to put what I felt about revolution; I thought it was time we
fuckin’ spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we
stopped not answering about the Vietnamese War when we were on tour with
Brian Epstein and had to tell him, “We’re going to talk about the war
this time and we’re not going to just waffle.” I wanted to say what I
thought about revolution.
I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this
“God will save us” feeling about it, that it’s going to be all right
(even now I’m saying “Hold on, John, it’s going to be all right,”
otherwise, I won’t hold on) but that’s why I did it, I wanted to talk, I
wanted to say my piece about revolution. I wanted to tell you, or
whoever listens, to communicate, to say “What do you say? This is what I
say.”
On one version I said “Count me in” about violence, in or out, because I
wasn’t sure. But the version we put out said “Count me out,” because I
don’t fancy a violent revolution happening all over. I don’t want to
die; but I begin to think what else can happen, you know, it seems
inevitable.
“Revolution #9″ was an unconscious picture of what I actually think will
happen when it happens; that was just like a drawing of revolution. All
the thing was made with loops, I had about thirty loops going, fed them
onto one basic track. I was getting classical tapes, going upstairs and
chopping them up, making it backwards and things like that, to get the
sound effects. One thing was an engineer’s testing tape and it would
come on with a voice saying “This is EMI Test Series #9.” I just cut up
whatever he said and I’d number nine it. Nine turned out to be my
birthday and my lucky number and everything. I didn’t realize it; it was
just so funny the voice saying “Number nine”; it was like a joke,
bringing number nine into it all the time, that’s all it was.
Ono: It also turns out to be the highest number you know, one, two,
etc., up to nine.
Lennon: There are many symbolic things about it but it just happened
you know, just an engineer’s tape and I was just using all the bits to
make a montage. I really wanted that released.
So that’s my feeling. The idea was don’t aggravate the pig by waving the
thing that aggravates— by waving the Red flag in his face. You know, I
really thought that love would save us all. But now I’m wearing a
Chairman Mao badge.
I’m just beginning to think he’s doing a good job. I would never know
until I went to China. I’m not going to be like that, I was just always
interested enough to sing about him. I just wondered what the kids who
were actually Maoists were doing. I wondered what their motive was and
what was really going on. I thought if they wanted revolution, if they
really want to be subtle, what’s the point of saying “I’m a Maoist and
why don’t you shoot me down?” I thought that wasn’t a very clever way of
getting what they wanted.
You don’t really believe that we are headed for a violent revolution?
I don’t know; I’ve got no more conception than you. I can’t see…
eventually it’ll happen, like it will happen— it has to happen; what
else can happen? It might happen now, or it might happen in a hundred
years, but…
Having a violent revolution now might just be the end of the world.
Not necessarily. They say that every time, but I don’t really believe
it, you see. If it is, OK, I’m back to where I was when I was 17 and at
17 I used to wish a fuckin’ earthquake or revolution would happen so
that I could go out and steal and do what the blacks are doing now. If I
was black, I’d be all for it; if I were 17 I’d be all for it, too. What
have you got to lose? Now I’ve got something to lose. I don’t want to
die, and I don’t want to be hurt physically, but if they blow the world
up, fuck it, we’re all out of our pain then, forget it, no more
problems!
You sing, “Hold on world…” I sing “Hold on John,” too, because I
don’t want to die. I don’t want to be hurt, and “please don’t hit me.”
You think by holding on it will be all right? It’s only going to be
all right— it’s now, this moment. That’s all right this moment, and hold
on now; we might have a cup of tea or we might get a moment’s happiness
any minute now, so that’s what it’s all about, just moment by moment;
that’s how we’re living, cherishing each day and dreading it, too. It
might be your last day— you might get run over by a car— and I’m really
beginning to cherish it. I cherish life.
“Happiness is a Warm Gun” is a nice song. Oh, I like that one of my
best, I had forgotten about that. Oh, I love it. I think it’s a
beautiful song. I like all the different things that are happening in
it. Like “God,” I had put together some three sections of different
songs, it was meant to be— it seemed to run through all the different
kinds of rock music.
It wasn’t about “H” at all. “Lucy In The Sky” with diamonds which I
swear to God, or swear to Mao, or to anybody you like, I had no idea
spelled L.S.D.— and “Happiness”— George Martin had a book on guns which
he had told me about— I can’t remember— or I think he showed me a cover
of a magazine that said “Happiness Is A Warm Gun.” It was a gun
magazine, that’s it: I read it, thought it was a fantastic, insane thing
to say. A warm gun means that you just shot something.
When did you realize that those were the initials of “Lucy In The Sky
With Diamonds”? Only after I read it or somebody told me, like you
coming up. I didn’t even see it on the label. I didn’t look at the
initials. I don’t look— I mean I never play things backwards. I listened
to it as I made it. It’s like there will be things on this one, if you
fiddle about with it. I don’t know what they are. Every time after that
though I would look at the titles to see what it said, and usually they
never said anything.
You said to me ” ‘Sgt. Pepper’ is the one.” That was the album? Well,
it was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together, especially
on “A Day In The Life” that was a real… The way we wrote a lot of the
time: you’d write the good bit, the part that was easy, like “I read the
news today” or whatever it was, then when you got stuck or whenever it
got hard, instead of carrying on, you just drop it; then we would meet
each other, and I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the
next bit and vice versa. He was a bit shy about it because I think he
thought it’s already a good song. Sometimes we wouldn’t let each other
interfere with a song either, because you tend to be a bit lax with
someone else’s stuff, you experiment a bit. So we were doing it in his
room with the piano. He said “Should we do this?” “Yeah, let’s do that.”
I keep saying that I always preferred the double album, because my music
is better on the double album; I don’t care about the whole concept of
Pepper, it might be better, but the music was better for me on the
double album, because I’m being myself on it. I think it’s as simple as
the new album, like “I’m So Tired” is just the guitar. I felt more at
ease with that than the production. I don’t like production so much. But
Pepper was a peak all right.
Ono: People think that’s the peak and I’m just so amazed… John’s
done all that Beatle stuff. But this new album of John’s is a real peak,
that’s higher than any other thing he has done.
Lennon: Thank you, dear.
Do you think it is? Yeah, sure. I think it’s “Sergeant Lennon.” I
don’t really know how it will sink in, where it will lie, in the
spectrum of rock and roll and the generation and all the rest of it, but
I know what it is. It’s something else, it’s another door.
Ono: That you don’t even know yet or realize it.
Lennon: I’m sneakingly aware of it, but not fully, until it is all
over like anyone else. We didn’t really know what Pepper was going to do
or what anything was going to do. I had a feeling, but, I don’t know
whether it’s going to settle down in a minority position. The new album
could do that because, in one way it’s terribly uncommercial, it’s so
miserable in a way and heavy, but it’s reality, and I’m not going to
veer away from it for anything.
Ono: I was thinking that Tom Jones is like medium without message, but
John’s stuff is like the message is the medium; it’s the message. He
didn’t need any decorative sound, or decorativeness about it. That is
why in some songs it seems that the accompaniment is simple but it’s
like an urgent message, I feel.
Lennon: Thank you and good night.
How did you get in touch with Allen Klein? I got various messages
through various people that Allen Klein would like to talk to you.
Really, it was Mick who got us together. I mean I knew who he was. I
didn’t want to talk. I had heard about him over the years; the first
time I heard about him was that he said one day he would have the
Beatles, and this was when Brian was with us. He had offered Brian this
good deal, which in retrospect was something Brian should have done.
This was years ago. I had heard about all these dreadful rumors about
him but I could never coordinate it with the fact that the Stones seemed
to be going on and on with him and nobody ever said a word. Mick’s not
the type to just clam up, so I started thinking he must be all right.
But still, when I heard he wanted to see me, I got nervous, because
“some business man wants to see me, it’s going to be business and
business makes me nervous.” Finally I got a message from Mick— Allen had
really set up the whole deal you know, Mick and us nearly went into
Apple together a few years back and we had big meetings and discussions
about the studios and all of that, but it never happened— and Allen
would have come in that way. That was after Brian died, but it didn’t
happen. All these approaches were coming from all over the place, and
then I met him at the “Rock and Roll Circus” [the TV film] which has
never been seen, with John and Yoko performing together for the first
time with a crazy violinist and Keith on bass and all that— I always
regret that— and I met him there. I didn’t know what to make of him; we
just shook hands and then… Yoko, what happened next?
Ono: Then one day we finally decided to meet him, you remember…
Lennon: I don’t know, we just decided to meet him. Did we call him or
did we accept his call? He called me once, but I never accepted it; I
never accepted the call at the house; I think in Kenwood once he called,
and I didn’t take it, I was too nervous.
I don’t like talking to strangers as it is, strangers want to talk about
reality, or something else, so I didn’t accept the call. Then finally
did we accept the call or did I put a call through? He’ll tell you.
Do you know he knows the lyrics to every fuckin’ song you could ever
imagine from the Twenties on? I was with him last night eating, and I
was just singing a few things— Yoko thinks I know every song, I know
millions of songs— I’m like a juke box, thousands upon millions. G
chords and so on— but Allen not only knows it, but he knows every
fuckin’ word, even the chorus. He’s got a memory like that, so ask him.
But then we met and it was very traumatic.
In what way? We are both very nervous. He was nervous as shit, and I
was nervous as shit, and Yoko was nervous. We met at the Dorchester, we
went up to his room, and we just went in you know.
He was sitting there all nervous. He was all alone, he didn’t have any
of his helpers around, because he didn’t want to do anything like that.
But he was very nervous, you could see it in his face. When I saw that I
felt better. We talked to him a few hours, and we decided that night, he
was it!
What made you decide that? He not only knew my work, and the lyrics
that I had written but he also understood them, and from way back. That
was it. If he knew what I was saying and followed my work, then that was
pretty damn good, because it’s hard to see me, John Lennon, amongst
that. He talked sense about what had happened. He just said what was
going on, and I just knew.
He is a very intelligent guy; he told me what was happening with the
Beatles, and my relationship with Paul and George and Ringo. He knew
every damn thing about us, the same as he knows everything about the
Stones. He’s a fuckin’ sharp man.
There are things he doesn’t know, but when it comes to that kind of
business, he knows. And anybody that knew me that well— without having
met me— had to be a guy I could let look after me.
So I wrote to Sir Joe Lockwood that night. We were so pleased, I didn’t
care what the others might say. I told Allen, “You can handle me.”
Yoko had become my advisor so that I wouldn’t go into Maharishi’s
anymore. It was Derek and Yoko and I interviewing people coming in to
take over Apple when we were running it at Wigmore Street, and Yoko
would sit behind me and I’d play me games and she would tell me what
they were doing when I blinked, and how they were in her opinion,
because she wasn’t as stupid or emotional as me. And I’ve never had that
except when the Beatles were against the world I did have the
cooperation of a good mind like Paul’s. It was us against them.
So you wrote Lockwood? So I wrote Lockwood saying: “Dear Sir Joe: From
now on Allen Klein handles all my stuff,” Allen has it framed somewhere.
I posted it that night and Allen couldn’t believe it. He was so excited—
“At last, at last!” He was trying not to push, and I was just saying
“You can handle me, and I’ll tell the others you seem all right and you
can come and meet George and everything, and Paul and all of them.”
I had to present a case to them, and Allen had to talk to them himself.
And of course, I promoted him in the fashion in which you will see me
promoting or talking about something. I was enthusiastic about him and I
was relieved because I had met a lot of people including Lord Beeching
who was one of the top people in Britain and all that. Paul had told me,
“Go and see Lord Beeching” so I went. I mean I’m a good boy, man, and I
saw Lord Beeching and he was no help at all. I mean, he was all right.
Paul was in America getting Eastman and I was interviewing all these
so-called top people, and they were animals. Allen was a human being,
the same as Brian was a human being. It was the same thing with Brian in
the early days, it was an assessment; I make a lot of mistakes
characterwise, but now and then I make a good one and Allen is one, Yoko
is one and Brian was one. I am closer to him than to anybody else,
outside of Yoko.
How did the rest of them react? I don’t remember. They were nervous
like me, because this terrible man who had got the Rolling Stones, and
said that he was going to get the Beatles years ago— you don’t know
what’s going on. I can’t remember. I don’t know what we did next…
Ono: So somebody said, please, let’s see Allen and Eastman together,
and see how it is.
Lennon: Right. But what did I say to George then, did I ring them or
something? I suppose I rung them.
Ono: We were going to Apple all the time so we met George there.
Lennon: What did I say? “This is Allen Klein, we met him last night.”
I just sort of said he was OK, and you should meet and all that.
[Paul meantime had met and married American photographer Linda
Eastman whose father Lee and brother John were music business lawyers,
who also wanted to "manage" the Beatle affairs.]
Then we got Paul. John Eastman had already been in, in fact, we almost
signed ourselves over to the Eastmans at one time, because when Paul
presented me with John Eastman, I thought well… when you’re not
presented with a real alternative, you take whatever is going. I would
say “yes”, like I said “Yes, let’s do “Let It Be.” I have nothing to
produce so I will go along”, and we almost went away with Eastman. But
then Eastman made the mistake of sending his son over and not coming
over himself, to look after the Beatles, playing it a bit cool.
Finally, when we got near the point when Allen came in, the Eastmans
panicked; yet I was still open. I liked Allen but I would have taken
Eastman if he would have turned out something other than what he was.
We arranged to see Eastman and Klein together in a hotel where one of
them was staying. For the four Beatles and Yoko to go and see them both.
We hadn’t been in there more than a few minutes when Lee Eastman was
having something like an epileptic fit, and screaming at Allen, that he
was “the lowest scum on earth,” and calling him all sorts of names.
Allen was sitting there, taking it, you know, just takin’ it. Eastman
was abusing him with class snobbery. What Eastman didn’t know then is
that Neil had been in New York and found out that Lee Eastman’s real
name was Lee Epstein! That’s the kind of people they are. But Paul fell
for that bullshit, because Eastman’s got Picassos on the wall and
because he’s got some sort of East Coast suit; form and not substance.
Now, that’s McCartney. We were all still not sure and they brought in
this fella, and he had a fuckin’ fit.
We had thought it was one in a million but that was enough for me, soon
as he started nailing Klein on his taste. Paul was getting in little
digs about Allen’s dress. I mean you just go and look at Paul’s dress,
or at his father, or anything — who the fuck does he think he is? Him
talking about dress!
Man, so that was it, and we said, “fuck it!” I wouldn’t let Eastman near
me; I wouldn’t let a fuckin’ animal like that who has a mind like that
near me. Who despises me, too, despises me because of what I am and what
I look like.
You know, these people like Eastman and Dick James and people like that,
think that I’m an idiot. They really can’t see me; they think I’m some
kind of guy who got struck lucky, a pal of Paul’s or something. They’re
so fuckin’ stupid they don’t know.
The reason Allen knew was because he knew who I was. He wasn’t going on
what a pretty face I’ve got. Eastman blew it, and then he went on to do
it again. Where did he do it? Next time he did it was in the Apple
office. He kept coming to me, trying to hold his madness down, this
insanity that kept coming out. He was coming up to me saying “I can’t
tell you how much I admire you.” Gortikov [the chairman of Capitol
Records] does that too; you know them, full of praise, like “I can’t
tell you how much I’ve admired your work, John.”
And I’m just watchin’ this and I’m thinkin’ “it’s happening to me,” and
“thank you very much,” and all that [To Yoko:] What was the second fit,
because I want this out. What was the second time he blew it?
Ono: In Apple or something.
Lennon: He did it in front of everybody.
This was supposed to be the guy who was taking over the multi-million
dollar corporation, and it was going to be slick. Paul was sort of
intimating that Allen’s business offices on Broadway were not nice
enough as if that were any fuckin’ difference! Eastman was in the good
section of town. “Oh, boy, man, that’s where it’s at!” And Eastman’s
office has got class! I don’t care if this is fuckin’ red white and
blue, I don’t care what Allen dresses like, he’s a human being, man.
So you said “No” to Eastman, and what did Paul do? The more we said
“no,” the more he said “yes.” Eastman went mad and shouted and all that.
I didn’t know what Paul was thinking when he was in the room; I mean,
his heart must have sunk.
Ono: They didn’t even want to come to a meeting with Allen.
Lennon: Eastman at first refused to meet Allen. He said “I will not
meet such a low rat.” What the fuck had Klein done? He’d never done a
fuckin’ thing— he’d been cleared of all this income tax shit— and even
if he hadn’t, what the fuck, how dare all these fuckin’ wolves and
sharks call him down for being what he is. How dare they insult anybody
like that? They’re fuckin’ bastards. And Eastman is a Wasp Jew, man, and
that’s the worst kind of person on earth.
They refused to meet him. I said I don’t talk to anybody unless I come
along with Allen. They said “Come on, John, I want to meet you alone,”
and I said “I don’t see any of you, unless Allen’s with me.”
Ono: But the thing is that finally when they met, they invited Allen
to the Harvard Club. Can you imagine that? Just to show, you know…
Lennon: When Eastman was finally signing the Northern Songs deal, God
knows what it was, I had to jump over a fence to get Paul’s signature
for something which finally secured us our position, and then also
Eastman lost his temper. He really started insulting me then. Eastman,
he knew the game was over. This was in London: three of us had to go
there to get his final approval on Paul’s signature, which we got.
He’s initiating all these things just to slow us down, like an
immigration officer, really putting us through it. I’m sitting there,
waiting, and we’re thinking, “sign it you fuckin’ idiot, and let’s get
out,” but he starts insulting me; Yoko said to him “Will you please stop
insulting my husband.” She was saying “Don’t call my husband stupid.” I
wasn’t saying anything but “sign it and give me the signature, just put
your initials on it, Epstein,” I was thinking let’s get out of here, and
we’ll wrap you up, and that’s what we did.
You can’t believe it, man, epileptic fits, and they expected to run the
company. Allen even offered to let John Eastman be the lawyer on the
deals we were making with Northern Songs, but they were screwing
everything Allen did, by putting on an argument. It fucked that Northern
Songs deal and all that, but we still came out with all the money.
Whatever they could do they did but in the end they couldn’t
out-maneuver him. Klein was the only one who knew exactly what was going
on. He not only knew our characters, and what the relationship between
the group was, but he also knows his business, he knows who’s who in the
group, what you have to do to get things done, and he knew about every
fuckin’ contract and paper we ever had. He understood. Eastman was just
making judgments and saying things to Paul based on something that he
had never seen. It was a wipe-out, you can’t imagine. The real story
will come out, because Allen knows every detail and he remembers
everything we’ve said.
Ono: The first approach was, well… he knew I went to Sarah Lawrence.
He was saying “Kafkaesque” and all of that, and talking in a very “in”
way; “we’re middle class, aren’t we?”
But the point is that the Eastman family doesn’t know John’s a drop-out—
I was sick and tired of that middle class thing and I married a “working
class hero”; and if he is a true aristocrat, he is not going to invite
Allen to the Harvard Club, but would make sure that he invites Allen to
somewhere Allen would enjoy.
So what was going down with Paul then? Paul was getting more and more
uptight until Paul wouldn’t speak to us. He told us “You speak to my
lawyer.”
When did you first start having unpleasant words with Paul? We never
had unpleasant words. It never got to a talking thing, you see, it just
got that Paul would say “Speak to my lawyer, I don’t want to speak about
business anymore” which meant, “I’m going to drag my feet and try and
fuck you.”
When the whole Northern thing was going on, we tried to save our fuckin’
stuff [the publishing rights to most of the Lennon/McCartney songs] and
he was playing hard to get, like a fuckin’ chick, because he hadn’t
thought of it. It was a pure ego game, and I got into the ego thing, of
course, but I was really fighting for our fuckin’ business, and what I
believed was our money. It wasn’t just because I’d found Allen. I would
have dropped Allen if Eastman had been something; but he was an animal,
a fuckin’ stupid middle-class pig, and thought he could con me with
fuckin’ talking about Kafka, and shit, and Picasso and DeKooning, for
Christ’s sake, and I shit on the fuckin’ lot of them.
I don’t even know who the fuck they are; I just know that it’s something
that somebody has got hung up on the wall that he thinks is an
investment.
What was the state of the Beatles’ business at that point? Chaos!
Exactly what I’ve said in the Rolling Stone, wasn’t it— it all happens
in the Rolling Stone!
Steve Maltz, I think; Allen said I must have gotten it from Steve Maltz,
this accountant we had had, a young guy, who just sent me a letter one
day saying, “You’re in chaos, you’re losing money, there is so much a
week going out of Apple.”
People were robbing us and living on us to the tune of… 18 or 20
thousand pounds a week, was rolling out of Apple and nobody was doing
anything about it. All our buddies that worked for us for fifty years,
were all just living and drinking and eating like fuckin’ Rome, and I
suddenly realized it and— I said to you— “we’re losing money at such a
rate that we would have been broke, really broke.”
We didn’t have anything in the bank really, none of us did. Paul and I
could have probably floated, but we were sinking fast. It was just hell,
and it had to stop. When Allen heard me say that— he read it in Stone—
he came over right away. As soon as he realized that I knew what was
going on, he thought to himself, “Now I can get through.” Until somebody
knows that they are on shit street, how can somebody come and get in…
it’s just like somebody coming up to me now and saying “I want to help
you with the business.” I would say “I’ve got somebody,” or “I’m doing
all right, Jack…” As soon as Allen realized that I realized all that
was going on, he came over.
How much money do you have now? I’m not telling. Lots more than I ever
had before. Allen has got me more real money in the bank than I’ve ever
had in the whole period and I’ve got money that I earned for eight or
ten years of my fuckin’ life, instead of all the Dick James Music
Company having it.
How much were you making in that period? I don’t know, I just know it
was millions. Brian was a not a good businessman. He had a flair for
presenting things, he was more theatrical than business. He was hyped a
lot. He was advised by a gang of crooks, really. That’s what went on,
and the battle is still going on for the Beatles rights. The latest one
is the Lew Grade thing. If you read Cashbox you’ll see what’s happening—
we’ve put in a claim to Lew Grade for five million pounds [$12,000,000],
in unpaid royalties. They have been underpaying us for years. Dick
James— the whole lot of them— sold us out. They still think we’re like
Tommy Steele or some fuckin’ product. None of them realized— simply
because of “A Hard Day’s Night” — we had to wake up one day, and we were
not the same as the last generation of stars or whatever they were
called.
How did Paul get down to telling Ringo he was going to get him
someday? It was Paul’s new album and he wanted to put it out at the
same time “Let It Be” was scheduled to come out. We weren’t against him
putting an album out, I mean I’d done it, and I didn’t think it was any
different. Mine happened to be Toronto, because that happened to happen.
If I hadn’t gone to Toronto, I would have made an album, probably. I was
half hoping I would make single after single until there was enough for
an album that way, because I’m lazy.
We didn’t want to put out “Let It Be” and Paul’s at the same time. It
would have killed the sales. In the old days we used to watch it: if the
Stones were coming out… we would ask Brian, “who is coming out”? and
he would tell us who’s coming out. We could always beat everyone, but
what is the point of losing sales? There has to be timing. Mick timed
it. We never came out together, we’re not idiots. With Elvis, we miss
every one; I would miss Tom Jones, anybody, now. I don’t want to fight
on the charts, I want to get in when the going is good. It would have
killed — Paul’s was just an ego game — it would have killed “Let It Be.”
We asked Ringo to go and talk to him because Ringo— the real fighting
had been going on between me and Paul, because of Eastman and Klein, and
we were on the opposite ends of our bats— Ringo had not taken sides, or
anything like that, and he had been straight about it, and we thought
that Ringo would be able to talk fairly, to Paul— I mean if Ringo agreed
that it was unfair, then it was unfair. (At one time Paul wanted a
fuckin’ extra vote on a voting trust, but that was the same as like the
four of us at a table, except that Paul has two votes. I mean, Eastman—
something was going on… Paul thought he was the fuckin’ Beatles, and
he never fucking was, never… none of us were the fucking Beatles, four
of us were.) Ringo went and asked him and he attacked Ringo and he
started threatening him and everything, and that was the kibosh for
Ringo. What the situation is now, I don’t know.
Allen says that you are all going to get together in a few months. I
think that we have to have a meeting shortly, because we are all— we all
agreed to meet sometime in February, I think, to see where we are at.
Financially, its business, or whatever.
Do you think you will record together again? I record with Yoko, but
I’m not going to record with another egomaniac. There is only room for
one on an album nowadays. There is no point, there is just no point at
all. There was a reason to do it at one time, but there is no reason to
do it anymore.
I had a group, I was the singer and the leader; I met Paul and I made a
decision whether to— and he made a decision too— have him in the group:
was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had in,
obviously, or not? To make the group stronger or to let me be stronger?
That decision was to let Paul in and make the group stronger.
Well, from that, Paul introduced me to George, and Paul and I had to
make the decision, or I had to make the decision, whether to let George
in. I listened to George play, and I said “play ‘Raunchy’ ” or whatever
the old story is, and I let him in. I said “OK, you come in”; that was
the three of us then. Then the rest of the group was thrown out
gradually. It just happened like that, instead of going for the
individual thing, we went for the strongest format, and for equals.
George is ten years younger than me, or some shit like that. I couldn’t
be bothered with him when he first came around. He used to follow me
around like a bloody kid, hanging around all the time, I couldn’t be
bothered. He was a kid who played guitar, and he was a friend of Paul’s
which made it all easier. It took me years to come around to him, to
start considering him as an equal or anything.
We had all sorts of different drummers all the time, because people who
owned drum kits were few and far between; it was an expensive item. They
were usually idiots. Then we got Pete Best, because we needed a drummer
to go to Hamburg the next day. We passed the audition on our own with a
stray drummer. There are other myths about Pete Best was the Beatles and
Stuart Sutcliffe’s mother is writing in England that he was the Beatles.
Are you the Beatles? No, I’m not the Beatles. I’m me. Paul isn’t the
Beatles. Brian Epstein wasn’t the Beatles, neither is Dick James. The
Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate. George was a
separate individual singer, with his own group as well, before he came
in with us, the Rebel Rousers. Nobody is the Beatles. How could they be?
We all had our roles to play.
You say on the record, “I don’t believe in the Beatles.” Yeah. I don’t
believe in the Beatles, that’s all. I don’t believe in the Beatles myth.
“I don’t believe in the Beatles”— there is no other way of saying it, is
there? I don’t believe in them whatever they were supposed to be in
everybody’s head, including our own heads for a period. It was a dream.
I don’t believe in the dream anymore.
I made my mind up not to talk about all that shit, I’m sick of it, you
know. I would like to talk about the album, I was going to say to you
“Look, I don’t want to talk about all that about the Beatles splitting
up because it not only hurts me, and it always ends up looking like I’m
blabbing off and attacking people.” I don’t want it.
How would you assess George’s talents? I don’t want to assess him.
George has not done his best work yet. His talents have developed over
the years and he was working with two fucking brilliant songwriters, and
he learned a lot from us. I wouldn’t have minded being George, the
invisible man, and learning what he learned. Maybe it was hard for him
sometimes, because Paul and I are such egomaniacs, but that’s the game.
I’m interested in concepts and philosophies. I am not interested in
wallpaper, which most music is.
What music do you listen to today? If you want the record bit, since
I’ve been listening to the radio here, I like a few things by Neil Young
and something by Elton John. There are some really good sounds, but,
then there is usually no follow-through. There will be a section of
fantastic sound come over the radio, then you wait for the conclusion,
or the concept or something to finish it off, but nothing happens except
it just goes on to a jam session or whatever.
You’ve had a chance to listen to FM radio in New York. What have you
heard? Yeah. “My Sweet Lord.” Every time I put the radio on it’s “oh my
Lord”— I’m beginning to think there must be a God! I knew there wasn’t
when “Hare Krishna” never made it on the polls with their own record,
that really got me suspicious. We used to say to them, “you might get
number one” and they’d say, “Higher than that.”
What do we hear? It’s interesting to hear Van Morrison. He seems to be
doing nice stuff — sort of 1960s black music— he is one of them that
became an American like Eric Burdon. I just never have time for a whole
album. I only heard Neil Young twice— you can pick him out a mile away,
the whole style. He writes some nice songs. I’m not stuck on Sweet Baby
[James Taylor]— I’m getting to like him more hearing him on the radio,
but I was never struck by his stuff. I like Creedence Clearwater. They
make beautiful Clearwater music— they make good rock and roll music. You
see it’s difficult when you ask me what I like, there’s lots of stuff
I’ve heard that I think is fantastic on the radio here, but I haven’t
caught who they are half the time.
I’m interested in things with more of a world-wide… I’m interested in,
what’s it called, something that means something for everyone, not just
for a few kids listening to wallpaper. I am just as interested in poetry
or whatever or art, and always have been, that’s been my hang-up, you
know— continually trying to be Shakespeare or whatever it is. That’s
what I’m doing, I’m not pissing about. I consider I’m up against them.
I’m not competing myself against Elvis. Rock just happens to be the
media which I was born into, it was the one, that’s all. Those people
picked up paint brushes, and Van Gogh probably wanted to be Renoir or
whoever went before him just as I wanted to be Elvis or whatever the
shit it is. I’m not interested in good guitarists. I’m in the game of
all those things, of concept and philosophy, ways of life, and whole
movements in history. Just like Van Gogh was or any other of those
fuckin’ people— they are no more or less than I am or Yoko is— they were
just living in those days. I’m interested in expressing myself like they
expressed it, in some way that will mean something to people in any
country, in any language, and at any time in history.
When did you realize, that what you were doing transcended… People
like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine… I
always wondered, “why has nobody discovered me?” In school, didn’t they
see that I’m cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are
stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn’t need.
I got fuckin’ lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie
“You throw my fuckin’ poetry out, and you’ll regret it when I’m famous,”
and she threw the bastard stuff out.
I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin’ genius or
whatever I was, when I was a child.
It was obvious to me. Why didn’t they put me in art school? Why didn’t
they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin’ cowboy
like the rest of them? I was different, I was always different. Why
didn’t anybody notice me?
A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or
other, to draw or to paint— express myself. But most of the time they
were trying to beat me into being a fuckin’ dentist or a teacher. And
then the fuckin’ fans tried to beat me into being a fuckin’ Beatle or an
Engelbert Humperdinck, and the critics tried to beat me into being Paul
McCartney.
Ono: So you were very deprived in a way…
Lennon: That’s what makes me what I am. It comes out, the people I
meet have to say it themselves, because we get fuckin’ kicked. Nobody
says it, so you scream it: look at me, a genius, for fuck’s sake! What
do I have to do to prove to you son-of-a-bitches what I can do, and who
I am? Don’t dare, don’t you dare fuckin’ dare criticize my work like
that. You, who don’t know anything about it.
Fuckin’ bullshit!
I know what Zappa is going through, and a half. I’m just coming out of
it. I just have been in school again. I’ve had teachers ticking me off
and marking my work. If nobody can recognize what I am then fuck ‘em,
it’s the same for Yoko…
Ono: That’s why it’s an amazing thing: after somebody has done
something like the Beatles, they think that he’s sort of satisfied,
where actually the Beatles…
Lennon: The Beatles was nothing.
Ono: It was like cutting him down to a smaller size than he is.
Lennon: I learned lots from Paul and George, in many ways, but they
learned a damned sight lot from me — they learned a fucking lot from me.
It’s like George Martin, or anybody: just come back in 20 years’ time
and see what we’re doing, and see who’s doing what— don’t put me— don’t
sort of mark my papers like I’m top of the math class or did I come in
Number One in English Language, because I never did. Just assess me on
what I am and what comes out of me mouth, and what me work is, don’t
mark me in classrooms. It’s like I’ve just left school again! I just
graduated from the school of Show Biz or whatever it was called.
Who do you think is good today? In any arts… The unfortunate thing
about egomaniacs is that they don’t take much attention of other
people’s work. I only assess people on whether they are a danger to me
or my work or not.
Yoko is as important to me as Paul and Dylan rolled into one. I don’t
think she will get recognition until she’s dead. There’s me, and maybe I
could count the people on one hand that have any conception of what she
is or what her mind is like, or what her work means to this fuckin’
idiotic generation. She has the hope that she might be recognized. If I
can’t get recognized, and I’m doing it in a fuckin’ clown’s costume, I’m
doing it on the streets, you know, I don’t know what— I admire Yoko’s
work.
I admire “Fluxus,” a New York-based group of artists founded by George
Macuinas. I really think what they do is beautiful and important.
I admire Andy Warhol’s work, I admire Zappa a bit, but he’s a fuckin’
intellectual— I can’t think of anybody else. I admire people from the
past. I admire Fellini. A few that Yoko’s educated me to… She’s
educated me into things that I didn’t know about before, because of the
scene I was in; I’m getting to know some other great work that’s been
going on now and in the past— there is all sorts going on.
I still love Little Richard, and I love Jerry Lee Lewis. They’re like
primitive painters…
Chuck Berry is one of the all-time great poets, a rock poet you could
call him. He was well advanced of his time lyric-wise. We all owe a lot
to him, including Dylan. I’ve loved everything he’s done, ever. He was
in a different class from the other performers, he was in the tradition
of the great blues artists but he really wrote his own stuff — I know
Richard did, but Berry really wrote stuff, just the lyrics were
fantastic, even though we didn’t know what he was saying half the time.
Ono: I’m really getting into it.
Lennon: We are both showing each other’s experience to each other.
When you play Yoko’s music, I had the same thing: I had to open up to
hear it— I had to get out the concept of what I wanted to hear… I had
to allow abstract art or music in. She had to do the same for rock and
roll, it was an intellectual exercise, because we’re all boxed in. We
are all in little boxes, and somebody has to go in and rip your fuckin’
head open for you to allow something else in.
A drug will do it. Acid will box your head open. Some artists will do
it, but they usually have to be dead two hundred years to do it. All I
ever learned in art school was about Van Gogh and stuff; they didn’t
teach me anything about anybody that was alive now, or they never taught
me about Marcel Duchamp which I despised them for. Yoko has taught me
about Duchamp and what he did, which is just out of this world. He would
just put a bike wheel on display and he would say this is art, you
cunts. — He wasn’t Dali; Dali was all right, but he’s like Mick, you
know. I love Dali, but fuckin’ Duchamp was spot on. He was the first one
to do that, just take an object from the street and put his name on it,
and say this is art because I say it is.
Why Warhol? Because he is an original, and he’s great. He is an
original great and he is in so much pain. He’s got his fame, he’s got
his own cinema and all of that. I don’t dig that junkie fag scene he
lives in; I don’t know whether he lives like that or what. I dig Heinz
Soup cans. That was something, that wasn’t just a pop art, or some
stupid art. Warhol said it, nobody’s else has said it— Heinz Soup. He’s
said that to us, and I thanked him for it.
What do you think of Fellini? Fellini’s just like Dali, I suppose.
It’s a great meal to go and see Fellini, a great meal for your senses.
Like Citizen Kane, that’s something else, too. Poor old Orson, he goes
on Dick Cavett, and says “Please love me, now I’m a big fat man, and
I’ve eaten all this food, and I did so well when I was younger, I can
act, I can direct, and you’re all very kind to me, but at the moment I
don’t do anything.”
Do you see a time when you’ll retire? No. I couldn’t, you know.
Ono: He’ll probably work until he’s eighty or until he dies.
Lennon: I can’t foresee it. Even when you’re a cripple you carry on
painting. I would paint if I couldn’t move. It doesn’t matter, you see,
when I was saying what Yoko did with “Greenfield Morning”— took half an
inch she taped and none of us knew what we were doing, and I saw her
create something. I saw her start from scratch with something we would
normally throw away. With the other stuff we did, we were all good in
the backing and everything went according to plan, it was a good
session, but with “Greenfield Morning” and “Paper Shoes” there was
nothing there for her to work with. She just took nothing — the way
Spector did — that’s the way the genius shows through any media. You
give Yoko or Spector a piece of tape, two inches of tape, they can
create a symphony out of it. You don’t have to be trained in rock and
roll to be a singer; I didn’t have to be trained to be a singer: I can
sing. Singing is singing to people who enjoy what you’re singing, not
being able to hold notes— I don’t have to be in rock and roll to create.
When I’m an old man, we’ll make wallpaper together, but just to have the
same depth and impact. The message is the medium.
What is holding people back from understanding Yoko? She was doing all
right before she met Elvis. Howard Smith announced he was going to play
her music on FM and all these idiots rang up and said “Don’t you dare
play it, she split the Beatles.” She didn’t split the Beatles and even
if she did what does that have to do with it or her fucking record. She
is a woman, and she’s Japanese; there is racial prejudice against her
and there is female prejudice against her. It’s as simple as that.
Her work is far out, Yoko’s bottom thing is as important as “Sgt.
Pepper.” The real hip people know about it. There are a few people that
know; there is a person in Paris who knows about her; a person in Moscow
knows about her; there’s a person in fucking China that knows about her.
But in general, she can’t be accepted, because she’s too far out. It’s
hard to take. Her pain is such that she expresses herself in a way that
hurts you— you cannot take it. That’s why they couldn’t take Van Gogh,
it’s too real, it hurts; that’s why they kill you.
How did you meet Yoko? I’m sure I’ve told you this many times. How did
I meet Yoko? There was a sort of underground clique in London; John
Dunbar, who was married to Marianne Faithful, had an art gallery in
London called Indica and I’d been going around to galleries a bit on my
off days in between records. I’d been to see a Takis exhibition, I don’t
know if you know what that means, he does multiple electro-magnetic
sculptures, and a few exhibitions in different galleries who showed
these sort of unknown artists or underground artists. I got the word
that this amazing woman was putting on a show next week and there was
going to be something about people in bags, in black bags, and it was
going to be a bit of a happening and all that. So I went down to a
preview of the show. I got there the night before it opened. I went in —
she didn’t know who I was or anything — I was wandering around, there
was a couple of artsy type students that had been helping lying around
there in the gallery, and I was looking at it and I was astounded. There
was an apple on sale there for 200 quid, I thought it was fantastic— I
got the humor in her work immediately. I didn’t have to sort of have
much knowledge about avant garde or underground art, but the humor got
me straight away. There was a fresh apple on a stand, this was before
Apple— and it was 200 quid to watch the apple decompose. But there was
another piece which really decided me for-or-against the artist, a
ladder which led to a painting which was hung on the ceiling. It looked
like a blank canvas with a chain with a spy glass hanging on the end of
it. This was near the door when you went in. I climbed the ladder, you
look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says “yes”.
So it was positive. I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up
the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say “no” or
“fuck you” or something, it said “yes.”
I was very impressed and John Dunbar sort of introduced us — neither of
us knew who the hell we were, she didn’t know who I was, she’d only
heard of Ringo I think, it means apple in Japanese. And John Dunbar had
been sort of hustling her saying “that’s a good patron, you must go and
talk to him or do something” because I was looking for action, I was
expecting a happening and things like that. John Dunbar insisted she say
hello to the millionaire, you know what I mean. And she came up and
handed me a card which said “Breathe” on it, one of her instructions, so
I just went (pant). That was our meeting.
Then I went away and the second time I met her was at a gallery opening
of Claes Oldenberg in London. We were very shy, we sort of nodded at
each other and we didn’t know — she was standing behind me, I sort of
looked away because I’m very shy with people, especially chicks. We just
sort of smiled and stood frozen together in this cocktail party thing.
The next thing was she came to me to get some backing — like all the
bastard underground do— for a show she was doing. She gave me her
“Grapefruit” book and I used to read it and sometimes I’d get very
annoyed by it; it would say things like “paint until you drop dead” or
“bleed” and then sometimes I’d be very enlightened by it and I went
through all the changes that people go through with her work— sometimes
I’d have it by the bed and I’d open it and it would say something nice
and it would be alright and then it would say something heavy and I
wouldn’t like it. There was all that and then she came to me to get some
backing for a show and it was half a wind show. I gave her the money to
back it and the show was, this was in a place called Lisson Gallery,
another one of those underground places. For this whole show everything
was in half: there was half a bed, half a room, half of everything, all
beautifully cut in half and all painted white. And I said to her “why
don’t you sell the other half in bottles?” having caught on by then what
the game was and she did that— this is still before we’d had any
nuptials— and we still have the bottles from the show, it’s my first. It
was presented as “Yoko Plus Me”— that was our first public appearance. I
didn’t even go to see the show, I was too uptight.
When did you realize that you were in love with her? It was beginning
to happen; I would start looking at her book and that but I wasn’t quite
aware what was happening to me and then she did a thing called Dance
Event where different cards kept coming through the door everyday saying
“Breathe” and “Dance” and “Watch all the lights until dawn,” and they
upset me or made me happy depending on how I felt.
I’d get very upset about it being intellectual or all fucking avant
garde, then I’d like it and then I wouldn’t. Then I went to India with
the Maharoonie and we were corresponding. The letters were still formal
but they just had a little side to them. I nearly took her to India as I
said but I still wasn’t sure for what reason, I was still sort of
kidding myself, with sort of artistic reasons, and all that.
When we got back from India we were talking to each other on the phone.
I called her over, it was the middle of the night and Cyn was away, and
I thought well now’s the time if I’m gonna get to know her anymore. She
came to the house and I didn’t know what to do; so we went upstairs to
my studio and I played her all the tapes that I’d made, all this far out
stuff, some comedy stuff, and some electronic music. She was suitably
impressed and then she said well let’s make one ourselves so we made
“Two Virgins.” It was midnight when we started “Two Virgins,” it was
dawn when we finished, and then we made love at dawn. It was very
beautiful.
What was it like getting married? Did you enjoy it? It was very
romantic. It’s all in the song, “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” if you
want to know how it happened, it’s in there. Gibraltar was like a little
sunny dream. I couldn’t find a white suit — I had sort of off-white
corduroy trousers and a white jacket. Yoko had all white on.
What was your first peace event? The first peace event was the
Amsterdam Bed Peace when we got married.
What was that like — that was your first re-exposure to the public. It
was a nice high. We were on the seventh floor of the Hilton looking over
Amsterdam— it was very crazy, the press came expecting to see us fucking
in bed— they all heard John and Yoko were going to fuck in front of the
press for peace. So when they all walked in— about 50 or 60 reporters
flew over from London all sort of very edgy, and we were just sitting in
pajamas saying “Peace, Brother,” and that was it. On the peace thing
there’s lots of heavy discussions with intellectuals about how you
should do it and how you shouldn’t.
When you got done, did you feel satisfied with the Bed Peace… They
were great events when you think that the world newspaper headlines were
the fact that we were a married couple in bed talking about peace. It
was one of our greater episodes. It was like being on tour without
moving, sort of a big promotional thing. I think we did a good job for
what we were doing, which was trying to get people to own up.
You chose the word “peace” and not “love,” or another word that means
the same thing. What did you like about the word “peace.” Yoko and I
were discussing our different lives and careers when we first got
together. What we had in common in a way, was that she’d done things for
peace like standing in Trafalgar Square in a black bag and things like
that— we were just trying to work out what we could do— and the Beatles
had been singing about “love” and things. So we pooled our resources and
came out with the Bed Peace— it was some way of doing something together
that wouldn’t involve me standing in Trafalgar Square in a black bag
because I was too nervous to do that. Yoko didn’t want to do anything
that wasn’t for peace.
Did you ever get any reaction from political leaders? I don’t know
about the Bed-In. We got reaction to sending acorns— different heads of
state actually planted their acorns, lots of them wrote to us answering
about the acorns. We sent acorns to practically everybody in the world.
Who answered? Well I believe Golda Meir said “I don’t know who they
are but if it’s for peace, we’re for it” or something like that.
Scandinavia, somebody or other planted it. I think Haile Salassie
planted his, I’m not sure. Some Queen somewhere. There was quite a few
people that understood the idea.
Did you send one to Queen Elizabeth? We sent one to Harold Wilson, I
don’t think we got a reply from Harold, did we?
What was it like meeting [Canadian] Prime Minister Trudeau? What was
his response to you? He was interested in us because he thought we
might represent some sort of youth faction— he wants to know, like
everybody does, really. I think he was very nervous — he was more
nervous than we were when we met. We talked about everything — just
anything you can think of. We spent about 40 minutes — it was 5 minutes
longer than he’d spent with the heads of state which was the great glory
of the time. He’d read “In His Own Write,” my book, and things like
that. He liked the poetry side of it. We just wanted to see what they
did, how they worked.
You appeared in the bags for Hanratty. For Hanratty, yes, we did a
sort of bag event, but it wasn’t us in the bag it was somebody else. The
best thing we did in a bag together was a press conference in Vienna.
When they were showing Yoko’s “Rape” on Austrian TV — they commissioned
us to make the film and then we went over to Vienna to see it.
It was like a hotel press conference. We kept them out of the room. We
came down the elevator in the bag and we went in and we got comfortable
and they were all ushered in. It was a very strange scene because they’d
never seen us before, or heard — Vienna is a pretty square place. A few
people were saying, “C’mon, get out of the bags.” And we wouldn’t let
‘em see us. They all stood back saying “Is it really John and Yoko?” and
“What are you wearing and why are you doing this?” We said, “this is
total communications with no prejudice.” It was just great. They asked
us to sing and we sang a few numbers. Yoko was singing a Japanese folk
song, very nicely, just very straight we did it. And they never did see
us.
What kind of a response did you get to the “War Is Over” poster? We
got a big response. The people that got in touch with us understood what
a grand event it was apart from the message itself. We got just “thank
you’s” from lots of youths around the world— for all the things we were
doing — that inspired them to do something. We had a lot of response
from other than pop fans, which was interesting, from all walks of life
and age. If I walk down the street now I’m more liable to get talked to
about peace than anything I’ve done. The first thing that happened in
New York was just walking down the street and a woman just came up to me
and said “Good luck with the peace thing,” that’s what goes on mainly —
it’s not about “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And that was interesting — it
bridged a lot of gaps.
What do you think of those erotic lithographs now? I don’t think about
them.
Why did you do them? Because somebody said do some lithographs and I
was in a drawing mood and I drew them.
You also did a scene for the Tynan play. How did that come about? I
met Tynan a few times around and about and he just said— this is about
two years ago or more— he just said I’m getting all these different
people to write something erotic, will you do it? And I told him that if
I come up with something I’d do it and if I don’t, I don’t. So I came up
with two lines, two or three lines which was the masturbation scene. It
was a great childhood thing, everybody’d been masturbating and trying to
think of something sexy and somebody’d shout Winston Churchill in the
middle of it and break down. So I just wrote that down on a paper and
told them to put whichever names in that suited the hero and they did
it. I’ve never seen it.
What accounts for your great popularity? Because I fuckin’ did it. I
copped out in that Beatle thing. I was like an artist that went off…
Have you never heard of like Dylan Thomas and all them who never fuckin’
wrote but just went up drinking and Brendan Behan and all of them, they
died of drink… everybody that’s done anything is like that. I just got
meself in a party, I was an emperor, I had millions of chicks, drugs,
drink, power and everybody saying how great I was. How could I get out
of it? It was just like being in a fuckin’ train. I couldn’t get out.
I couldn’t create, either. I created a little, it came out, but I was in
the party and you don’t get out of a thing like that. It was fantastic!
I came out of the sticks, I didn’t hear about anything— Van Gogh was the
most far out thing I had ever heard of. Even London was something we
used to dream of, and London’s nothing. I came out of the fuckin’ sticks
to take over the world it seemed to me. I was enjoying it, and I was
trapped in it, too. I couldn’t do anything about it, I was just going
along for the ride. I was hooked, just like a junkie.
What did being from Liverpool have to do with your art? It was a port.
That means it was less hick than somewhere in the English Midlands, like
the American Midwest or whatever you call it. We were a port, the second
biggest port in England, between Manchester and Liverpool. The North is
where the money was made in the Eighteen Hundreds, that was where all
the brass and the heavy people were, and that’s where the despised
people were.
We were the ones that were looked down upon as animals by the
Southerners, the Londoners. The Northerners in the States think that
people are pigs down South and the people in New York think West Coast
is hick. So we were hicksville.
We were a great amount of Irish descent and blacks and Chinamen, all
sorts there. It was like San Francisco, you know. That San Francisco is
something else! Why do you think Haight-Ashbury and all that happened
there? It didn’t happen in Los Angeles, it happened in San Francisco,
where people are going. L.A. you pass through and get a hamburger.
There was nothing big in Liverpool; it wasn’t American. It was going
poor, a very poor city, and tough. But people have a sense of humor
because they are in so much pain, so they are always cracking jokes.
They are very witty, and it’s an Irish place. It is where the Irish came
when they ran out of potatoes, and it’s where black people were left or
worked as slaves or whatever.
It is cosmopolitan, and it’s where the sailors would come home with the
blues records from America on the ships. There is the biggest country
& western following in England in Liverpool, besides London — always
besides London, because there is more of it there.
I heard country and western music in Liverpool before I heard rock and
roll. The people there — the Irish in Ireland are the same — they take
their country and western music very seriously. There’s a big heavy
following of it. There were established folk, blues and country and
western clubs in Liverpool before rock and roll and we were like the new
kids coming out.
I remember the first guitar I ever saw. It belonged to a guy in a cowboy
suit in a province of Liverpool, with stars, and a cowboy hat and a big
dobro. They were real cowboys, and they took it seriously. There had
been cowboys long before there was rock and roll.
What do you think of America? I love it, and I hate it. America is
where it’s at. I should have been born in New York, I should have been
born in the Village, that’s where I belong. Why wasn’t I born there?
Paris was it in the Eighteenth Century, London I don’t think has ever
been it except literary-wise when Wilde and Shaw and all of them were
there. New York was it.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich
Village. That’s where I should have been. It never works that way.
Everybody heads toward the center, that’s why I’m here now. I’m here
just to breathe it. It might be dying and there might be a lot of dirt
in the air that you breathe, but this is where it’s happening. You go to
Europe to rest, like in the country. It’s so overpowering, America, and
I’m such a fuckin’ cripple, that I can’t take much of it, it’s too much
for me.
Ono: He’s very New York, you know.
Lennon: I’m frightened of it. People are so aggressive, I can’t take
all that I need to go home, I need to have a look at the grass. I’m
always writing about my English garden. I need the trees and the grass;
I need to go into the country, because I can’t stand too much people.
Right after “Sergeant Pepper” George came to San Francisco. George
went over in the end. I was all for going and living in the Haight. In
my head, I thought, “Acid is it, and let’s go, I’ll go there.” I was
going to go there, but I’m too nervous to do anything, actually. I
thought I’ll go there and we’ll live there and I’ll make music and live
like that. Of course, it didn’t come true.
But it happened in San Francisco. It happened all right, didn’t it. I
mean it goes down in history. I love it. It’s like when Shaw was in
England, and they all went to Paris; and I see all that in New York, San
Francisco and London, even London. We created something there— Mick and
us, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we were all talking blabbing
over coffee, like they must have done in Paris, talking about
paintings… Me, Burdon and Brian Jones would be up night and day
talking about music, playing records, and blabbing and arguing and
getting drunk. It’s beautiful history, and it happened in all these
different places. I just miss New York. In New York they have their own
cool clique. Yoko came out of that.
This is the first time I’m really seeing it, because I was always too
nervous, I was always the famous Beatle. Dylan showed it to me once on
sort of a guided tour around the Village, but I never got any feel of
it. I just knew Dylan was New York, and I always sort of wished I’d been
there for the experience that Bob got from living around here.
What is the nature of your relationship with Bob? It’s sort of an
acquaintance, because we were so nervous whenever we used to meet. It
was always under the most nervewracking circumstances, and I know I was
always uptight and I know Bobby was. We were together and we spent some
time, but I would always be too paranoid or I would be aggressive or
vice versa and we didn’t really speak. But we spent a lot of time
together.
He came to me house, which was Kenwood, can you imagine it, and I didn’t
know where to put him in this sort of bourgeois home life I was living;
I didn’t know what to do and things like that. I used to go to his hotel
rather, and I loved him, you know, because he wrote some beautiful
stuff. I used to love that, his so-called protest things. I like the
sound of him, I didn’t have to listen to his words, he used to come with
his acetate and say “Listen to this, John, and did you hear the words?”
I said that doesn’t matter, the sound is what counts— the overall thing.
I had too many father figures and I liked words, too, so I liked a lot
of the stuff he did. You don’t have to hear what Bob Dylan’s is saying,
you just have to hear the way he says it.
Do you see him as a great? No, I see him as another poet, or as
competition. You read my books that were written before I heard of Dylan
or read Dylan or anybody, it’s the same. I didn’t come after Elvis and
Dylan, I’ve been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I
love ‘em. I go fanatical about them for a short period, and then I get
over it. If they wear green socks I’m liable to wear green socks for a
period too.
When was the last time you saw Bob? He came to our house with George
after the Isle of Wight and when I had written “Cold Turkey.”
Ono: And his wife.
Lennon: I was just trying to get him to record. We had just put him on
piano for “Cold Turkey” to make a rough tape but his wife was pregnant
or something and they left. He’s calmed down a lot now.
I just remember before that we were both in shades and both on fucking
junk, and all these freaks around us and Ginsberg and all those people.
I was anxious as shit, we were in London, when he came.
You were in that movie with him, that hasn’t been released. I’ve never
seen it but I’d love to see it. I was always so paranoid and Bob said “I
want you to be in this film.” He just wanted to me to be in the film.
I thought why? What? He’s going to put me down; I went all through this
terrible thing.
In the film, I’m just blabbing off and commenting all the time, like you
do when you’re very high or stoned. I had been up all night. We were
being smart alecks, it’s terrible. But it was his scene, that was the
problem for me. It was his movie. I was on his territory, that’s why I
was so nervous. I was on his session.
You’re going back to London, what’s a rough picture of your immediate
future, say the next three months. I’d like to just vanish just a bit.
It wore me out, New York. I love it. I’m just sort of fascinated by it,
like a fucking monster. Doing the films was a nice way of meeting a lot
of people. I think we’ve both said and done enough for a few months,
especially with this article. I’d like to get out of the way and wait
till they all…
Do you have a rough picture of the next few years? Oh no, I couldn’t
think of the next few years; it’s abysmal thinking of how many years
there are to go, millions of them. I just play it by the week. I don’t
think much ahead of a week.
I have no more to ask. Well, fancy that.
Do you have anything to add? No, I can’t think of anything positive
and heartwarming to win your readers over.
Do you have a picture of “when I’m 64″? No, no. I hope we’re a nice
old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that —
looking at our scrapbook of madness.
[From Rolling Stone Issues 74 & 75: 21 Jan & 4 Feb 1971]
ABOUT THE COVER
‘I was sitting around the table and it was quiet at the time and he
looked up and looked back at me for a second and I just took a
picture at the same time. I was really taking a meter reading and
not even trying to take a picture.’
Audio: Hear the full story
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