Thank God

Vatican 'forgives' John Lennon
By David Willey
BBC News, Rome



At the time radio stations banned their music and concerts were cancelled
A Vatican newspaper has forgiven the late English singer John Lennon for saying four decades ago that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

In an article praising The Beatles, L'Osservatore Romano said Lennon had just been showing off.

Lennon told a British newspaper in 1966 - at the height of Beatlemania - that he did not know which would die out first, Christianity or rock and roll.

At the time, the comparison sparked controversy in the US.

The semi-official Vatican newspaper marked the 40th anniversary of The Beatles' "White Album" with an article praising Lennon and the Fab Four from Liverpool.

Youthful joke

The paper dismissed Lennon's much-criticised remark that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ as a youthful joke.

The paper described the remark as "showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success".


Charles Wheeler on the reaction to John Lennon's claim in 1966
L'Osservatore Romano recently got a new editor and now - apart from chronicling the Pope's daily doings and printing the texts of papal speeches - it sometimes runs articles on entertainment on inside pages, together with extensive reporting on world affairs.

In a half-page illustrated article, the paper praised The Beatles for what it called their "unique and strange alchemy of sounds and words".

The newspaper said The Beatles's songs had shown an extraordinary capacity for survival and the White Album album remained a "magical musical anthology".

In another article on the same page entitled "Twilight of the gods" the newspaper lamented the passing of the golden days of Hollywood and said the mysterious fascination of the star system of Hollywood in the 1950s had been superseded by the cult of so-called celebrities.

Although Pope Benedict has criticised many aspects of modern pop culture, he now allows the newspaper of the tiny independent Vatican state to reflect the reality of the world outside in a way that would have been unthinkable in the days of Pope Paul VI who reigned during heyday of The Beatles.

Absurd!

John Lennon's Hair Sells for $48,000
By KATE SCHUMAN,AP
Posted: 2007-12-12 09:38:13
Filed Under: Music News
LONDON (Dec. 12) - A lock of John Lennon 's hair fetched 24,000 pounds ($48,000) on Wednesday as part of an auction of Beatles memorabilia collected by the band's hairdresser.

The hair - inside an autographed copy of Lennon's book "A Spaniard in the Works" - sold to an unnamed telephone bidder.




Gareth Fuller, AP
In the auction, Lennon's hair was sold along with an autographed copy of his book, 'A Spaniard in the Works.'


Gorringes, the auction house, had estimated that the hair would sell for 2,000 to 3,000 pounds ($4,000 to $6,000).

Lennon gave the book and the lock of hair to Betty Glasow, the Fab Four's hairdresser during their heyday. He wrote in the book, "To Betty, Lots of Love and Hair, John Lennon xx."

"It is astonishing that there is still so much interest in the Beatles and the sale goes to prove that John Lennon is still an icon," said Francesca Collin, a spokeswoman for Gorringes. "To have some of Lennon's hair along with a signed note from him really does give it fantastic provenance and authenticity."

Glasow, who kept The Beatles ' famous mops trimmed on the "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" film sets in the 1960's, decided to sell the items because she wanted fans to have them, Muston said.

"She feels that rather than these things being stuck in a drawer with nobody enjoying them, real enthusiasts (could) get their hands on these things," said Nick Muston, a director of the auction house.

Other items sold included signed photographs of the band dedicated to Glasow, including one where George Harrison signed the photo George "Dandruff" Harrison, which sold for 6,500 pounds ($13,000).

Glasow also worked with a number of actors, and her collection included an album of signed photos and personal messages from actors such as Michael Caine from "Educating Rita" and Peter Ustinov from "Death on the Nile," as well as Steve McQueen from "The War Love" and Harrison Ford from "Patriot Games," and the cast of the Harry Potter films.

The Toy Boy- 1965

This is a VERY rare poem written by John Lennon in 1965 and published in McCall's Magazine.

THE TOY BOY
BY JOHN LENNON

“I don't believe a word of it,
I think it's too absurd of it,
It's just an Old Wives' Tale, I bet,
The silliest and softest yet.
Imagine, if it walked and that,
Surely it would crush us flat!
It's such a giant thing, you know.
All in all, it goes to show
How stupid can you be?"

This was Ralph the Elephant,
Talking loud and eloquent,
Bossing all the Bears and Cats, .
All the Dogs and Policemen's Hats,
Shouting down the Wise Old Shoe,
Who said that what he said was true.
"I don't care what you say to me.
I've been on his foot, you see?"
And he had.

"I've beard it squeaking," said the horse.
"Though I can't be sure! of course—
I could have sworn it climbed on me
When I was asleep, you see!"
"What nonsense!" Ralph replied at length.
"Do you think it has the strength?
I call this meeting to a close.
All in favor—raise their nose.
We'll take a vote!"

"Unfair, unfair!" the Toys all said.
"Shoes and Hats have got no head!"
"How can they vote, I ask you now?”
Said the 'Brown but friendly Cow.
"We'll wait until the break of day,
To prove the truth of what we say."
"Agreed, agreed!" said Sydney Shoe,
Who felt he was the one who knew.
He probably was.

The Clock struck eight, as clocks will do,
At eight o'clock—that's nothing new
Except that this clock never could,
Unless you asked it if it would.
The clock obligingly conferred,
"I will not chime unless I'm heard!"
He was an artiste, so you see—
He didn't like to chime for free!
You know how it is.

As it struck, the room went dead.
A little voice came from the bed.
"Is anybody there?" it spoke.
"Or is this someone's kind of joke?
I could have sworn I heard a voice-
Perhaps me grannie made the noise,
Her early-warning coughing fit
As she gets her ciggie lit—
But I doubt it.

"Im sure it came from over there,
From my toys, beneath the chair.
I can't believe it—but it's true
Somebody has moved my shoe!
The one I got from Uncle Tom,
Who said he only needed one.
And Elephant and Carol Cow,
They must have moved—I wonder how?
It's most peculiar!

“I think I ought to tell my dad.
I have no secrets," said the lad.
"And Mother, she's a right to see
All this nonconformity."
So he went and told them all,
And suddenly he felt so small,
Because they took him in the car
To see that awful Doctor Parr,
Who certified him.
There you are.

COPYRIGHT© 1965 BYJOHN LENNON

John Lennon Vs. Paul McCartney In Melody Maker- 1971

Lennon & McCartney
Melody Maker Magazine
November 1971
Copyright ©1971 Melody Maker
________________________________________
In November 1971, Paul McCartney shared his thoughts on the Beatles breakup, John and Yoko, and John's song "How Do You Sleep" with Melody Maker magazine. The article infuriated John Lennon so much that Lennon dashed a letter of reply to Melody Maker, and requested that his letter be published in its entirety in an effort to give "equal time" to his version of the story. The exchange read as a very public argument between the two ex-Beatles.

McCartney in Melody Maker
PAUL: "There was a bit of hype on the back of the (Let It Be) sleeve for the first time ever on a Beatles album. At the time, the Beatles were very strained with each other and it wasn't a happy time. It said it was a 'new-phase Beatles album' and there was nothing further from the truth. That was the last Beatles album and everybody knew it... (Allen) Klein had it re-produced because he said it didn't sound commercial enough."

"I just want the four of us to get together somewhere and sign a piece of paper saying it's all over and we want to divide the money four ways. No one else would be there, not even Linda or Yoko or Allen Klein. We'd just sign the paper and hand it to the business people and let them sort it out. That's all I want now, but John won't do it. Everybody thinks I am the agressor but I'm not, you know. I just want out."

"John and Yoko are not cool in what they are doing. I saw them on television the other night and thought that what they are saying about what they wanted to do together was basically the same as what Linda and I want to do."

"John's whole image now is very honest and open. He's alright, is John. I like his 'Imagine' album but I didn't like the others. 'Imagine' is what John is really like but there was too much political stuff on the other albums. You know, I only really listen to them to see if there's something I can pinch." (laughs)

"'How Do You Sleep'? I think it's silly. So what if I live with straights? I like straights. I have straight babies. It doesn't affect him. He says the only thing I did was 'Yesterday.' He knows that's wrong. He knows and I know it's not true."

"John wanted to do a big thing in Toronto (9/13/69 concert, Toronto Rock and Roll Revival) but I didn't dig that at all. I hear that before he went on stage he was sick, and that's just what I didn't want. Like anybody else I have been nervous because of the Beatles thing."

"I wanted to get in a van and do an unadvertised concert at a Saturday night hop at Slough Town Hall or somewhere like that. We'd call ourselves Rikki and the Red Streaks or something and just get up and play. There'd be no press and we'd tell nobody about it. John thought it was a daft idea."

"Before John was leaving the Beatles, I was lying in bed at home one night and I thought we could get a band together, like his Plastic Ono Band. I felt the urge because we had never played live for four years. We all wanted to appear on a stage but not with the Beatles. We couldn't do it as the Beatles because it would be so big. We'd have to find a million-seater hall or something."
________________________________________

Lennon's response letter, published in Melody Maker

Dear Paul, Linda et all the wee McCartney's,
Thanks for your letter.
1. We give YOU money for your bits of Apple.
2. We give you MORE money in the form of royalties which legally belong to Apple (I know we're Apple, but on the other hand we're not.).
Maybe there's an answer there somewhere, but for the millionth time in these past few years I repeat, 'What about the TAX?' It's all very well, playing 'simple honest ole Paul' in Melody Maker but you know damn well we can't just sign a bit of paper.
You say, 'John won't do it.' I will if you indemnify us against the tax man! Anyway, you know that after we have OUR meeting, the fucking lawyers will have to implement whatever we agree on, right?
If they have some form of agreement between THEM before WE meet, it might make it even easier. It's up to you, as we've said many times, we'll meet whenever you like. Just make up your mind! E.g. two weeks ago I asked you on the phone, 'Please let's meet without advisors, etc. and decide what we want,' and I emphasized especially Maclen [Lennon and McCartney's songwriting company] which is mainly our concern, but you refused, right?
You said under NO CONDITION would you sell to us if we didn't do what you wanted, you'd sue us again and that Ringo and George are going to break you John, etc. etc.
Now I was quite straight with you that day, and you tried to shoot me down with your emotional "logic." If YOU'RE not the aggressor (as you claim) who the hell took us to court and shat all over us in public?
As I've said before, Have you ever thought that you might POSSIBLY be wrong about something? Your conceit about us and Klein is incredible. You say you "made the mistake of trying to advise them against Klein and that pissed them off" and we secretly feel that you're right! Good God! You must know WE'RE right about Eastman.
One other little lie in your "It's only Paulie" MM bit: Let It Be was not the first bit of hype on a Beatle album. Remember Tony Barrow? And his wonderful writing on "Please Please Me" etc. etc. The early Beatle Xmas records!
And you gotta admit it was a 'new-phase' Beatle album, incidentally written in the style of the great Barrow himself! By the way, what happened to my idea of putting the parody of our first album cover on the Let It Be cover?
Also, we were intending to parody Barrow originally, so it was hype. But what is your LIFE article? Tony Barrow couldn't have done it better. (And your writing inside of the Wings album [Wild Life] isn't exactly the realist is it?) Anyway, enough of this petty bourgeois fun.
Another thing, whadya mean BIG THING in Toronto? It was completely spontaneous. They rang on the Friday, we flew there, and we played on Saturday. I was sick because I was stone pissed. Listen to the album-- with no rehearsal too. Come on Macka! Own up! We'd never played together before! Half a dozen live shows with no big fuss. In fact we've BEEN DOING what you've said the Beatles should do. Yoko and I have been doing it for three years! (I said it was daft for the Beatles to do it. I still think it's daft.) So go on and do it! Do it! Do it! E.g. Cambridge 1969, completely unadvertised! A very small hall. Lyceum Ballroom, 1969, no fuss, great show-- thirty piece rock band! "Live Jam" out soon! Filmore East, 1971, unannounced. Another good time had by all-- out soon!! We even played in the streets here in the Village (our spiritual home!?) with the great David Peel!! We were moved on by the cops even!! It's best just to DO IT.
I know you'll dig it, and they don't even expect the Beatles now anyway!
So you think 'Imagine' ain't political? It's 'Working Class Hero' with sugar on it for conservatives like yourself!! You obviously didn't dig the words. Imagine! You took 'How Do You Sleep' so literally (read my own review of the album in Crawdaddy.) Your politics are very similar to Mary Whitehouse's-- 'Saying nothing is as loud as saying something.'
No hard feelings to you either. I know basically we want the same, and as I said on the phone and in this letter, whenever you want to meet, all you have to do is call.
All you need is love
Power to the people
Free all prisoners
Jail the judges
Love and peace
Get it on and rip 'em off

John Lennon

P.S. The bit that really puzzled us was asking to meet WITHOUT LINDA AND YOKO. I thought you'd have understood BY NOW that I'm JOHNANDYOKO.
P.P.S. Even your own lawyers know you can't "just sign a bit of paper." (or don't they tell you?)

________________________________________

John & Paul's Hindsight Perspective

PAUL circa-1994: "When John did 'How Do You Sleep?' I didn't want to get into a slinging match. Part of it was cowardice. John was a great wit, and I didn't want to go fencing with the rapier champion of East Cheam-- But it meant that I had to take shit-- It meant that I had to take lines like 'All you ever did was Yesterday.' I always find myself wanting to excuse John's behavior, just because I loved him. It's like a child, sure he was a naughty child, but don't you call my child naughty. Even if it's me he's shitting on, don't you call him naughty. That's how I felt about this and still do. I don't have a grudge whatsoever against John. I think he knew exactly what he was doing and because we had been so intimate he knew what would hurt me and used it to great effect. I thought, 'Keep your head down and time will tell,' and it did because in the 'Imagine' film (Imagine John Lennon, documentary) he says it was really all about himself."

JOHN 1974: "It's not about Paul, it's about me. I'm really attacking myself. But I regret the association... well... what's to regret? He lived through it. The only thing that matters is how he and I feel about these things and not what the writer or commentator thinks about it. Him and me are okay."

JOHN 1974: "When I slagged off the Beatles thing, it was like divorce pangs and, me being me, it was 'Blast this! Fuck the past!' I've always had a bit of a mouth and when a thing begins that way you have to live up to it. Then Paul and me had that fight in the pages of MM. It was a period I had to go through. I sort of enjoy the fight at the time-- that's the funny thing. Now we've got it all out and it's cool. I can see the Beatles from a new point of view."

JOHN 1980: "I used my resentment against Paul that I have as a kind of sibling rivalry resentment from youth to create a song... not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta... I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and the Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep.' I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time."


References:
- Imagine John Lennon (video documentary)
- Lennon 1980 (interview with Andy Peebles)
- Lennon The Definitive Biography, Ray Coleman
- Many Years From Now, Barry Miles
- Melody Maker (original 1971 magazine issues)

The Hit Parader Interview- 1972

Beatles Ultimate Experience
Database:
John Lennon Interview
February 1972
Interviewed by Alan Smith
Copyright 1972 Hit Parader Magazine
________________________________________

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW:
Hit Parader's Alan Smith caught up with John and Yoko for a chat during the promotion the new 'Imagine' LP. Topics include John and Yoko's recent film projects, the Beatles, as well as Paul's 'Ram' album. The exclusive interview was published in Hit Parader's February 1972 issue.



Q: "Isn't there room today for the Beatles as a living band? A contemporary band? You're surely now far more aware as people. Must it always now be for you that the Beatles made yesterday's music? Or is it that you're now too egocentric to be able to work together fully, even if you tried?"
JOHN: "We always were egocentric. But look, George is on half of my new album playing guitar. The only reason Ringo wasn't on it was because he was abroad, making his movie. So then the three of us would have been on, but then it wouldn't have been the Beatles. It would have been Plastic Ono because I would have the final say. There would be no decision making by George or Ringo, other than if I liked an idea I'd take it-- which is what happened with the Beatles-- but then it was more diplomatic."
"So yes, it's quite possible about the Beatles working as a unit, because I might play on George's or Ringo's if they wanted my style of playing. But imagine how we've flowered since then. George is suddenly the biggest seller of all of us. I think my music's improved a millionfold lyric-wise and everything. And Ringo's coming out and writing 'It Don't Come Easy' and now he's going to write the title song for this cowboy thing he's in, and he's playing a really tough guy and all that. It's really beautiful."
"The fact is, the Beatles have left school... and we have to get a job. That's made us work-- really work harder. I think we're much better than we ever were when we were together. Look at us today. I'd sooner have 'Ram,' John Lennon Plastic Ono Band, George's album, and Ringo's single and the movies than 'Let It Be' or 'Abbey Road.'"
YOKO: "If the four of them had gone on, then they would have suffocated each other."
Q: "Do you resent journalists talking about the past?"
JOHN: "No. I'm always doing it myself. It's only human. Something funny happened the other day-- I went into Apple and they said, 'Jesus, you look like a Beatle again!' And you know, just for a second I'd forgotten what a Beatle really was. It was because I'd just got back from New York and I hadn't been a Beatle at all. It's just been me and Yoko, and we've been doing all sorts of things."
Q: "Do either of you feel any pain of any kind, any problems, either physical or mental? Or are you totally cleansed of any hangups of the past?"
JOHN: "Oh no. I'm sure not. I just know myself better, that's all. I can handle myself better. That Janov thing-- the Primal Scream, and so on-- it does affect you because you recognize yourself in there. The difference between us and Janov, as Yoko puts it, is that the past we remember is the past we create now because of the necessity of the present. I wouldn't have missed it though. It was very good for me. I still 'prime' and it still works."
Q: "Tell me about your philosophy of life. Many of your comments have been construed as extreme left wing or communist."
JOHN: "They knock me for saying 'Power To The People' and say that no one section should have the power. Rubbish. The people aren't a section. The people means everyone."
"I think that everyone should own everything equally and that people should own part of the factories and they should have some say in who is the boss and who does what. Students should be able to select teachers."
"It may be like communism but I don't really know what real communism is. There is no real communism state in the world-- you must realize that Russia isn't. It's a facist state. The socialism I talk about is 'British socialism,' not where some daft Russian might do it or the Chinese might do it. That might suit them. Us, we'd rather have a nice socialism here-- a British socialism."
Q: "Don't you both spend a great deal of your time filming yourselves, and having yourselves filmed?"
JOHN: "Why not? It's home movies. And the ultimate movie is a home movie. Luc Godard, or whatever his name is, is now making 8mm films. Home movies is where it's at. Poetry's done at home-- why shouldn't movies be the same way?"
"In our film 'Apotheosis' you see us for only two seconds. In 'Fly,' Yoko's film, she's not in it. In 'Rape' there was a Hungarian girl. In 'Erection,' the one I've just made about a hotel, it was done from still photographs over a year and a half. There's only a couple with us in-- so that whole thing is a lie."
YOKO: "If we were putting ourselves in films all the time-- so what. We do not pretend."
Q: "Yoko's art seems to me to exclude appreciation of the more established works of art, the Mona Lisa, and so on."
JOHN: "Not necessarily, but her art is the very opposite of making a saint out of the Mona Lisa or having it in a building where people could be living."
YOKO: "I'm not somebody who wants to burn the Mona Lisa-- that's the difference between some revolutionaries and me-- they think you have to burn the establishment. I'm just saying, make the Mona Lisa into something like a shirt. Change the value of it. It's like those four boys who got together to make the Beatles and without kidding anybody they changed the whole world. And that's beautiful. That's all I'm trying to do-- the only thing with the Beatles is that they changed it and then they stopped there-- they weren't going on being revolutionaries."
JOHN: "I never wanted the Beatles to be has-beens, I wanted to kill it while it was on top. Remember I said ten years ago, 'I'm not going to be singing She Loves You at thirty.' Although I expressed it that, by thirty, I guess I would have woken up a bit or changed my sights."
Q: "Are you now remotely interested in singles or chart success?"
JOHN: "Sure. I get all the musical papers and the daily papers. I get my world chart thing and Billboard, and the other one... Cashbox, and I mark off all the Apple records all 'round the world. The Beatles are blasting the world up. We've got records everywhere and two or three in every chart. I get a kick out of it because I'm getting through to all those people, and because I'm doing it on my own or with Yoko."
"And I like singles, and not LPs. I like the idea of saying everything in three minutes."
Q: "Did you listen to Paul McCartney's 'Ram' album?"
JOHN: "Of course I did. The first time I heard it I thought it was awful, and then the second time, ahem, I fixed the record player a bit and it sounded better. I enjoyed a couple like 'My Dog It's Got Three Legs' or something, and the intro to 'Uncle Albert.' I can't stand the second track from the... well I mean, it doesn't matter anyway. In general I think the other album he did was better in a way. At least there were some songs on it."
"I don't like all this dribblin' pop-opera-jazz. I like pop records that are pop records."
Q: "Is there a song on your album 'Imagine' that refers to Paul... lines about a pretty face and the sound of Muzak?"
JOHN: (smiling) "Er, there's a song which COULD be a statement about Paul. It could be interpreted that way. But then, it could be about an old chick I'd known."
Q: What do you think of your own album?"
JOHN: "It's the best thing I've ever done. This will show them. It's not a personal thing like the last album, but I've learned alot and this is better in every way. It's lighter too-- I was feeling very happy. There's a guy called George Harrison on it and he does some mother of solos. George used to be with The Bubbles or somebody. Then there's a guy called Nicky Hopkins. Then there's Jim Gordon on drums, Alan White on drums, Jim Keltner on drums, and they're fantastic."
"Yoko's on whip, and that's very good. Whip and mirror, actually. Then we had John Barnham on a few things and King Curtis is on sax. The Flux Fiddlers are on violins."
"Eighty percent was recorded in Britain in seven days. I took them, re-mixed them, and took it to America like they used to do in the old days. It took me nine days to make this album, and ten to make the other before... so I'm getting faster."

The Rolling Stone Interview- 1975

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW:
Journalist Pete Hamill spoke with John Lennon for an interview that was published in Rolling Stone Magazine's June 5th 1975 issue. John speaks of his recent separation and reconciliation with Yoko Ono and the recent Beatles legal settlement.
With a refreshing perspective on his past, Lennon also speaks positively on the possibility of a Beatles reunion. Other topics include his own recent solo albums, his pending immigration case, and working with Phil Spector, Elton John and Harry Nilsson.

- Jay Spangler, Beatles Ultimate Experience
________________________________________
A Long Night's Journey into Day:
A Conversation with John Lennon
Article ©1975 Rolling Stone
There is John Lennon: thin bare arms, a rumpled T-shirt, bare feet, delicate fingers curled around a brown-papered cigarette, reaching for a cup of steaming coffee. A pale winter sun streams into the seventh-floor apartment in the Dakota, an expensive apartment house that stands like a pile of nineteenth-century memories on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West. Earlier, the Irish doorman had expressed surprise when I asked for John, because this is where Yoko Ono had lived alone for a year and a half. The building, with its gargoyles and vaulted stone turrets, has seen a lot, and has housed everyone from Lauren Bacall and Rex Reed to Rosemary's baby. There is certainly room for Dr. Winston O'Boogie.
And now John Lennon is talking in a soft, becalmed voice, the old jagged angers gone for now, while the drilling jangle of the New York streets drifts into the room. He has been back with Yoko for three days, after a wild, painful year and a half away, and there is a gray morning feel of hangover in the clean, bright room. Against a wall, a white piano stands like an invitation to begin again; a tree is framed by one window, a plant by another, both in an attitude of Zen-like simplicity, full of spaces. I think of Harold Pinter's words: 'When true silence falls we are still left with echo but are nearer nakedness.' There is, of course, always echo when you are with John Lennon, an echo of the loudest, grandest, gaudiest noise made in our time. But John Lennon is more than simply a Beatle, retired or in exile, more than just an echo. At thirty-four, he is moving into full maturity as a man and an artist and seems less afraid than ever before of nakedness.
We talked only briefly about the Beatles. A few years ago, John told everybody how the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ and for a couple of weeks that summer most of the Western world seemed to go into an uproar. Was the world really that innocent so short a time ago? No. It was just that John Lennon was explaining that the world had changed and the newspapers had to catch up; we were not going to have any more aw-shucks heroes. So we could all run in the endless emptiness of the rugby field in A Hard Day's Night, rising and falling, in slow motion or fast, but sooner or later we would have to grow up. The Beatles were custodians of childhood. They could not last.
And yet... and yet, it seemed when it was finally over, when they had all gone their separate ways, when Brian Epstein lay dead and Apple was some terrible mess and the lawyers and the agents and the money men had come in to paw the remains, it often seemed that John was the only one whose heart was truly broken. Cynthia Lennon said it best, when all of them were still together: 'They seem to need you less than you need them.' From some corner of his broken heart, John gave the most bitter interviews, full of hurt and resentment, covered over with the language of violence.
We only know a small part of what really has happened to him in the years since he met Yoko Ono. The details belong to John Lennon alone. But we know how the other Beatles stood in judgment ('like a jury') on Yoko. We know how viciously the press in England sneered at them and attacked them. Yoko saw the artist in him: 'John is like a frail wind..." But reviewers were already saying that Yoko had ruined his art. People started to write him off. His records were selling but it wasn't like the Beatles, it wasn't even like the other Beatles. John was the one Who Had Gone Too Far.
A year and a half ago, he and Yoko split up and some people cheered. We live in strange times. And then, as if from nowhere, came Walls and Bridges. John had a big hit single with 'Whatever Gets You Thru The Night.' And the music was wonderful: full of invention, tenderness, remorse, more personal than anything he had written before; the music clearly showing the effects of his time with Yoko. More than anything else, though, the songs were essays in autobiography, the words and music of a man trying to understand a huge part of his life. 'I've been across to the other side / I've shown you everything, I've got nothing to hide...'
What follows is the result of two long talks with John Lennon at the end of a difficult year. As an interview, it is far from definitive, but nothing with ever be definitive in John Lennon's life: He is the sort of artist who is always in the process of becoming. I think of this as a kind of interim report from one of the bravest human beings I know. Oh, yes. He looked happy.

Q: "What's your life like right now?"
JOHN: "Well, life... It's '75 now, isn't it? Well, I've just settled the Beatles settlement. It must've happened in the last month. Took three years. (pause) And on this day that you've come here, I seem to have moved back in here. In the last three days. By the time this goes out, I don't know... That's a big change. Maybe that's why I'm sleeping funny. As a friend says, I went out for coffee and some papers and I didn't come back. (chuckles) Or vice versa. It's always written that way, y'know. All of us. You know, the guy walked. It's never that simple."
Q: "What did happen with you and Yoko? Who broke it up and how did you end up back together again?"
JOHN: "Well, it's not a matter of who broke it up. It broke up. And why did we end up back together? (pompous voice) 'We ended up together again because it was diplomatically viable...' Come on. We got back together because we love each other."
Q: "I loved your line: 'The separation didn't work out.'"
JOHN: "That's it. It didn't work out. And the reaction to the breakup was all that madness. I was like a chicken without a head."
Q: "What was the final Beatles settlement?"
JOHN: "In a nutshell, what was arranged was that everybody gets their own individual monies. Even up till this year, till the settlement was signed, all the monies were going into one pot. All individual records, mine, Ringo's, Paul's - all into one big pot. It had to go through this big machinery and then come out to us, eventually. So now, even the old Beatle royalties, everything goes into four separate accounts instead of one big pot all the time. That's that. The rest of it was ground rules. Everybody said the Beatles've signed this paper, that means they're no longer tied in any way. That's bullshit. We still own this thing called Apple. Which, you can explain, is a bank. A bank the money goes into. But there's still the entity itself known as the Beatles. The product, the name, the likeness, the Apple thing itself, which still exists, and we still have to communicate on it and make decisions on it and decide who's to run Apple and who's to do what. It's not as cut and dried as the papers said."
Q: "Do the old Beatles records still go in a pot?"
JOHN: "No one of us can say to EMI, 'Here's a new package of Beatle material.' We still have to okay everything together, you know, 'cause that's the way we want it anyway."
Q: "There's still a good feeling among the guys?"
JOHN: "Yeah, yeah. I talked to Ringo and George yesterday. I didn't talk to Paul 'cause he was asleep. George and Paul are talkin' to each other in L.A. now. There's nothin' going down between us. It's all in people's heads."
Q: "You went to one of George's concerts, what are your thoughts on his tour?"
JOHN: "It wasn't the greatest thing in history. The guy went through some kind of mill. It was probably his turn to get smacked. When we were all together there was periods when the Beatles were in, the Beatles were out, no matter what we were doing. Now it's always the Beatles were great or the Beatles weren't great, whatever opinion people hold. There's a sort of illusion about it. But the actual fact was the Beatles were in for eight months, the Beatles were out for eight months. The public, including the media, are sometimes a bit sheeplike and if the ball starts rolling, well, it's just that somebody's in, somebody's out. George is out for the moment. And I think it didn't matter what he did on tour."
Q: "George told Rolling Stone that if you wanted the Beatles, go listen to Wings. It seemed a bit of a putdown."
JOHN: "I didn't see what George said, so I really don't have any comment. (pause) Band on the Run is a great album. Wings is almost as conceptual a group as Plastic Ono Band. Plastic Ono was a conceptual group, meaning whoever was playing was the band. And Wings keeps changing all the time. It's conceptual. I mean, they're backup men for Paul. It doesn't matter who's playing. You can call them Wings, but it's Paul McCartney music. And it's good stuff. It's good Paul music and I don't really see the connection."
Q: "What do you think of Richard Perry's work with Ringo?"
JOHN: "I think it's great. Perry's great, Ringo's great, I think the combination was great and look how well they did together. There's no complaints if you're Number One."
Q: "George said at his press conference that he could play with you again but not with Paul. How do you feel?"
JOHN: "I could play with all of them. George is entitled to say that, and he'll probably change his mind by Friday. You know, we're all human. We can all change our minds. So I don't take any of my statements or any of their statements as the last word on whether we will. And if we do, the newspapers will learn about it after the fact. If we're gonna play, we're just gonna play."
Q: "In retrospect, what do you think of the whole "Lennon Remembers" episode?"
JOHN: "Well, the other guys, their reaction was public. Ringo made some sort of comment that was funny, which I can't remember, something like, 'You've gone too far this time, Johnnie.' Paul said (stuffy voice), 'Well, that's his problem.' I can't remember what George said. I mean, they don't care, they've been with me for fifteen or twenty years, they know damn well what I'm like. It just so happens it was in the press. I mean, they know what I'm like. I'm not ashamed of it at all. I don't really like hurting people, but Jann Wenner questioned me when I was almost still in therapy and you can't play games. You're opened up. It was like he got me on an acid trip. Things come out. I got both reactions from that article. A lot of people thought it was right on. My only upset was Jann insisted on making a book out of it."
Q: "'Walls and Bridges' has an undertone of regret to it. Did you sit down consciously to make an album like that?"
JOHN: "No, well... Let's say this last year has been an extraordinary year for me personally. And I'm almost amazed that I could get anything out. But I enjoyed doing Walls and Bridges and it wasn't hard when I had the whole thing to go into the studio and do it. I'm surprised it wasn't just all bluuuugggghhhh. (pause) I had the most peculiar year. And... I'm just glad that something came out. It's describing the year, in a way, but it's not as sort of schizophrenic as the year really was. I think I got such a shock during that year that the impact hasn't come through. It isn't all on Walls and Bridges though. There's a hint of it there. It has to do with age and God knows what else. But only the surface has been touched on Walls and Bridges, you know?"
Q: "What was it about the year? Do you want to try talking about it?"
JOHN: "Well, you can't put your finger on it. It started, somehow, at the end of '73, goin' to do this Rock 'n' Roll album (with Phil Spector). It had quite a lot to do with Yoko and I, whether I knew it or not, and then, suddenly, I was out on me own. Next thing I'd be waking up, drunk, in strange places or reading about meself in the paper, doin' extraordinary things, half of which I'd done and half of which I hadn't done. But you know the game anyway. And find meself sort of in a mad dream for a year. I'd been in many mad dreams, but this... It was pretty wild. And then I tried to recover from that. And (long pause) meanwhile life was going on, the Beatles settlement was going on, other things, life was still going on and it wouldn't let you sit with your hangover, in whatever form that took. It was like something, probably me-self, kept hitting me while I was trying to do something. I was still trying to do something. I was still trying to carry on a normal life and the whip never let up - for eight months. So... that's what was going on. Incidents: You can put it down to which night with which bottle or which night in which town. It was just sort of a mad year like that... And it was just probably fear, and being out on me own, and gettin' old, and are ye gonna make it in the charts? Are ye not gonna make it? All that crap, y'know. All the garbage that y'really know is not the be-all and end-all of your life, but if other things are goin' funny, that's gonna hit you. If you're gonna feel sorry for yourself, you're gonna feel sorry for everything. What it's really to do with is probably the same thing that it's always been to do with all your life: whatever your own personal problems really are, you know? So it was a year that manifested itself (switches to deep actor's voice) in most peculiar fashion. But I'm through it and it's '75 now and I feel better and I'm sittin' here and not lyin' in some weird place with a hangover."
Q: "Why do you feel better?"
JOHN: "Because I feel like I've been on Sinbad's voyage, you know, and I've battled all those monsters and I've got back. (long pause) Weird."
Q: "Tell me about the Rock 'n' Roll album."
JOHN: "It started in '73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of mad, drunk scenes in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on me own. And there was still problems with it up to the minute it came out. I can't begin to say, it's just barmy, there's a jinx on that album. And I've just started writing a new one. Got maybe half of it written..."
Q: "What about the stories that Spector's working habits are a little odd? For example, that he either showed off or shot off guns in the studios?"
JOHN: "I don't like to tell tales out of school, y'know. But I do know there was an awful loud noise in the toilet of the Record Plant West."
Q: "What actually did happen those nights at the Troubadour when you heckled the Smothers Brothers and went walking around with a Kotex on your head asking the waitress, 'Do you know who I am?'"
JOHN: "Ah, y'want the juice... If I'd said, 'Do you know who I am?' I'd have said it in a joke. Because I know who I am, and I know she knew, because I musta been wearing a Kotex on me head, right? I picked up a Kotex in a restaurant, in the toilet, and it was clean and just for a gag I came back to the table with it on me head. And 'cause it stuck there with sweat, just stayed there, I didn't have to keep it on. It just stayed there till it fell off. And the waitress said, 'Yeah, you're an asshole with a Kotex on,' and I think it's a good remark and so what? Tommy Smothers was a completely different night and has been covered a million times. It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders and my last (laughs). And I was with Harry Nilsson, who was no help at all (laughs)."
Q: "What's your relationship with Nilsson? Some critics say that he's been heavily influenced, maybe even badly screwed up by you."
JOHN: "Oh, that's bullshit."
Q: "...and that you've also been influenced by him."
JOHN: "That's bullshit, too. I haven't been influenced by Harry, only that I had a lot of hangovers whenever I was with him (laughs). I love him. He's a great guy and I count him as one of me friends. He hasn't influenced me musically. And there's an illusion going around about my production of Harry's album. That he was trying to imitate me on his album."
Q: "You mean that he'd gone into his primal period..."
JOHN: "That's it. They're so sheeplike - put this in - and childlike about trying to put a tag on what's going on. They use these expressions like 'primal' for anything that's a scream. Brackets: Yoko was screaming before Janov was ever even heard of-- that was her stint, usin' her voice like an instrument. She was screamin' when Janov was still jackin' off to Freud. But nowadays, everything that's got a scream in it is called primal. I know what they're talkin' about. The very powerful emotional pitch that Harry reaches at the end of 'Many Rivers to Cross' on the album I produced for him (Pussy Cats). It's there, simply enough, because when you get to a certain point with your vocals, there ain't nowhere else to go. Was Little Richard primaling before each sax solo? That's what I want know. Was my imitation Little Richard screams I used to put on all the Beatles records before the solo - we all used to do it, we'd go aaaarrrrgggghhhh! Was that primaling? Right?"
Q: "Richard Perry has described you as a superb producer but maybe in too much of a hurry."
JOHN: "That's true [laughs]."
Q: "But supposedly, when making the Beatles records, you were painstaking and slow."
JOHN: "No, I was never painstaking and slow. I produced 'I Am the Walrus' at the same speed I produced 'Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.' I would be painstaking on some things, as I am now. If there's a quality that occasionally gets in the way of my talent, it's that I get bored quick unless it's done quick. But 'I Am the Walrus' sounds like a wonderful production. 'Strawberry Fields' sounds like a big production. But I do them as quick as I possibly can, without losing (a) the feel and (b) where I'm going. The longest track I personally spent time on was 'Revolution 9,' which was an abstract track where I used a lot of tape loops and things like that. I still did it in one session. But I accept that criticism and I have it of myself. But I don't want to make myself so painstaking that it's boring. But I should (pause) maybe t'ink a little more. Maybe. But on the other hand I think my criticism of somebody like Richard Perry would be that he's great but he's too painstaking. It gets too slick and somewhere in between that is where I'd like to go. I keep finding out all the time - what I'm missing that I want to get out of it."
Q: "Is there anybody that you'd like to produce? For example, Dylan?"
JOHN: "Dylan would be interesting because I think he made a great album in Blood on the Tracks but I'm still not keen on the backings. I think I could produce him great. And Presley. I'd like to resurrect Elvis. But I'd be so scared of him I don't know whether I could do it. But I'd like to do it. Dylan, I could do, but Presley would make me nervous. But Dylan or Presley, somebody up there... I know what I'd do with Presley. Make a rock & roll album. Dylan doesn't need material. I'd just make him some good backings. So if you're reading this, Bob, you know..."
Q: "Elton John has revived 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' How do you feel about him as an artist?"
JOHN: "Elton sort of popped in on the session for Walls and Bridges and sort of zapped in and played the piano and ended up singing 'Whatever Gets You Thru the Night' with me. Which was a great shot in the arm. I'd done three quarters of it, 'Now what do we do?' Should we put a camel on it or a xylophone? That sort of thing. And he came in and said, 'Hey, ah'll play some piano!' Then I heard he was doing 'Lucy' and I heard from a friend - 'cause he was shy - would I be there when he cut 'Lucy'? Maybe not play on it but just be there? So I went along. And I sang in the chorus and contributed the reggae in the middle. And then, again through a mutual friend, he asked if it got to be Number One, would I appear onstage with him, and I said sure, not thinkin' in a million years it was gonna get to Number One. Al Coury or no Al Coury, the promotion man at Capitol. And there I was. Onstage."
Q: "I read somewhere that you were very moved by the whole thing."
JOHN: "I was moved by it, but everybody else was in tears. I felt guilty 'cause I wasn't in tears. I just went up and did a few numbers. But the emotional thing was me and Elton together. Elton had been working in Dick James's office when we used to send our demos in and there's a long sort of relationship musically with Elton that people don't really know about. He has this sort of Beatle thing from way back. He'd take the demos home and play them and... well, it meant a lot to me and it mean a hell of a lot to Elton, and he was in tears. It was a great high night, a really high night... Yoko and I met backstage. And somebody said, 'Well, there's two people in love.' That was before we got back together. But that's probably when we felt something. It was very weird. She came backstage and I didn't know she was there, 'cause if I'd known she was there I'd've been too nervous to go on, you know, I would have been terrified. She was backstage afterward, and there was just that moment when we saw each other and like, it's like in the movies, you know, when time stands still? And there was silence, everything went silent, y'know, and we were just sort of lookin' at each other and... oh, hello. I knew she'd sent Elton and I a flower each, and we were wearin' them onstage, but I didn't know she was there and then everybody was around us and flash flash flash. But there was that moment of silence. And somebody observed it and told me later on, after we were back together again, and said, "A friend of mine saw you backstage and thought if ever there was two in love, it's those two." And I thought, well, it's weird somebody noticed it... So it was a great night."
Q: "There seems to be a lot of generosity among the artists now."
JOHN: "It was around before. It's harder when you're on the make, to be generous, 'cause you're all competing. But once you're sort of up there, wherever it is... The rock papers love to write about the jet-setting rock stars and they dig it and we dig it in a way. The fact is that, yeah, I see Mick, I see Paul, I see Elton, they're all my contemporaries and I've known the other Beatles, of course, for years, and Mick for ten years, and we've been hangin' around since Rock Dreams. And suddenly it's written up as they're-here-they're-there-they're-everywhere bit, and it looks like we're trying to form a club. But we always were a club. We always knew each other. It just so happens that it looks more dramatic in the paper."
Q: "How do you relate to what we might call the rock stars of the Seventies? Do you think of yourself as an uncle figure, a father figure, an old gunfighter?"
JOHN: "It depends who they are. If it's Mick or the Old Guard, as I call them, yeah, they're the Old Guard. Elton, David are the newies. I don't feel like an old uncle, dear, 'cause I'm not that much older than half of 'em, heh heh. But... yeah, I'm interested in the new people. I'm interested in new people in America but I get a kick out of the new Britons. I remember hearing Elton John's 'Your Song,' heard it in America - it was one of Elton's first big hits - and remember thinking, 'Great, that's the first new thing that's happened since we happened.' It was a step forward. There was something about his vocals that was an improvement on all of the English vocals until then. I was pleased with it. And I was pleased with Bowie's thing and I hadn't even heard him. I just got this feeling from the image and the projections that were coming out of England of him, well, you could feel it."
Q: "Do you think of New York as home now?"
JOHN: "Yeah, this is the longest I've ever been away from England. I've almost lived here as long as I've lived in London. I was in London from, let's see, '64, '65, '66, '67, actually in London 'cause then it was your Beatlemania bit and we all ended up like a lot of rock & rollers end up, living an hour away from London in the country, the drivin'-in-from-the-big-estate bit. 'Cause you couldn't live in London, 'cause people just bugged the ass off you. So I've lived in New York longer than I actually lived in London."
Q: "In view of the immigration case, is one reason you've stayed here so long because if you left, they'd pull a Charlie Chaplin on you and not let you back in?"
JOHN: "You bet. There's no way they would let me back. And... it's worth it to me. I can last out, without leaving here, another ten years, if that's the way they want to play it. I'll earn enough to keep paying them. I'm really getting blackmailed. I'm paying to stay. Paying takes, on one hand, about a half million dollars, and I've hardly worked very hard for that. I mean, that's with sittin' on me arse and I've paid a half million in taxes. So I'm paying them to attack me and keep me busy and harass me, on one hand, while on the other hand I've got to pay me own lawyers. Some people think I'm here just to make the American dollars. But I don't have to be here to make the dollars. I could earn American dollars just sittin' in a recording studio in Hong Kong. Wherever I am, the money follows me. It's gonna come out of America whether they like it or not."
Q: "Right. And the government doesn't choose that John Lennon makes money. The people who buy your music do that."
JOHN: "The implication that John Lennon wants to come to the land of milk and honey 'cause it's easier to pick up the money, so I can pick it up directly instead of waiting for it to arrive in England. Or Brazil. Or wherever I decide to do it. I resent the implication, especially as I'm payin' through the nose. I don't mind paying taxes, either, which is strange. I never did. I don't like 'em using it for bombs and that. But I don't think I could do a Joan Baez. I don't have that kind of gut. I did never complain in England either, because, well, it's buying people teeth... I'm sick of gettin' sick about taxes. Taxes is what seems to be it, and there's nothin' to be done about it unless you choose to make a crusade about it. And I'm sick of being in crusades because I always get nailed up before I'm even in the crusade. They get me in the queue while I'm readin' the pages about it: 'Oh, there's a crusade on, I wonder should I...' I mean, I get caught before I've ever done anything about it."
Q: "You went through a period of really heavy involvement in radical causes. Lately you seem to have gone back to your art in a more direct way. What happened?"
JOHN: "I'll tell you what happened literally. I got off the boat, only it was an airplane, and landed in New York, and the first people who got in touch with me was Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. It's as simple as that. It's those two famous guys from America who's callin': 'Hey, yeah, what's happenin', what's goin' on?' And the next thing you know, I'm doin' John Sinclair benefits and one thing and another. I'm pretty movable, as an artist, you know. They almost greeted me off the plane and the next minute I'm involved, you know."
Q: "How did all of this affect your work?"
JOHN: "It almost ruined it, in a way. It became journalism and not poetry. And I basically feel that I'm a poet. Even if it does go ba-deeble, eedle, eedle, it, da-deedle, deedle, it. I'm not a formalized poet, I have no education, so I have to write in the simplest forms usually. And I realized that over a period of time - and not just 'cause I met Jerry Rubin off the plane - but that was like a culmination. I realized that we were poets but we were really folk poets, and rock & roll was folk poetry - I've always felt that. Rock & roll was folk music. Then I began to take it seriously on another level, saying, "Well, I am reflecting what is going on, right?" And then I was making an effort to reflect what was going on. Well, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work as pop music or what I want to do. It just doesn't make sense. You get into that bit where you can't talk about trees, 'cause, y'know, y'gotta talk about 'Corruption on Fifty-fourth Street'! It's nothing to do with that. It's a bit larger than that. It's the usual lesson that I've learned in me little thirty-four years: As soon as you've clutched onto something, you think - you're always clutchin' at straws - this is what life is all about. I think artists are lucky because the straws are always blowin' out of their hands. But the unfortunate thing is that most people find the straw hat and hang on to it, like your best friend that got the job at the bank when he was fifteen and looked twenty-eight before he was twenty. 'Oh, this is it! Now I know what I'm doing! Right? Down this road for the next hundred years...' and it ain't never that. Whether it's a religious hat or a political hat or a no-political hat: whatever hat is was, always looking for these straw hats. I think I found out it's a waste of time. There is no hat to wear. Just keep moving around and changing clothes is the best. That's all that goes on: change."
"At one time I thought, well, I'm avoidin' that thing called the Age Thing, whether it hits you at twenty-one, when you take your first job - I always keep referrin' to that because it has nothing to do, virtually, with your physical age. I mean, we all know the guys who took the jobs when we left school, the straight jobs, they all look like old guys within six weeks. You'd meet them and they'd be lookin' like Well, I've Settled Down Now. So I never want to settle down, in that respect. I always want to be immature in that respect. But then I felt that if I keep bangin' my head on the wall it'll stop me from gettin' that kind of age in the head. By keeping creating, consciously or unconsciously, extraordinary situations which in the end you'd write about. But maybe it has nothin' to do with it. I'm still mullin' that over. Still mullin' over last year now. Maybe that was it. I was still trying to avoid somethin' but doin' it the wrong way 'round. Whether it's called age or whatever."
Q: "Is it called growing up?"
JOHN: "I don't want to grow up but I'm sick of not growing up - that way. I'll find a different way of not growing up. There's a better way of doing it than torturing your body. And then your mind. The guilt! It's just so dumb. And it makes me furious to be dumb because I don't like dumb people. And there I am, doing the dumbest things... I seem to do the things that I despise the most, almost. All of that to - what? - avoid being normal. I have this great fear of this normal thing. You know, the ones that passed their exams, the ones that went to their jobs, the ones that didn't become rock & rollers, the ones that settle for it, settled for it, settled for the deal! That's what I'm trying to avoid. But I'm sick of avoiding it with violence, you know? I've gotta do it some other way. I think I will. I think just the fact that I've realized it is a good step forward. Alive in '75 is my new motto. I've just made it up. That's the one. I've decided I want to live. I'd decided I wanted to live before, but I didn't know what it meant, really. It's taken however many years and I want to have a go at it."
Q: "Do you think much of yourself as an artist at fifty or sixty?"
JOHN: "I never see meself as not an artist. I never let meself believe that an artist can run dry. I've always had this vision of bein' sixty and writing children's books. I don't know why. It'd be a strange thing for a person who doesn't really have much to do with children. I've always had that feeling of giving what Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island gave to me at age seven and eight. The books that really opened my whole being."
Q: "Is there anything left to say about the immigration case?"
JOHN: "People get bored with hearin' about Lennon's immigration case. I'm bored with hearin' about it. The only interesting thing is when I read these articles people write that were not instigated by me. I learn things I didn't know anything about. I didn't know about Strom Thurmond. I had no idea - I mean I knew something was going on, but I didn't have any names. I'm just left in the position of just what am I supposed to do? There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. It's just... bloody crazy. Terry Southern put it in a nice sort of way. He said, 'Well, look, y'keep 'em all happy, ya see? The conservatives are happy 'cause they're doin' somethin' about ya and the liberals are happy 'cause they haven't thrown you out. So everybody's happy! (pause) Except you!' (laughter) I'm happy I'm still here. I must say that. And I ain't going. There's no way they're gonna get me out. No way. They're not gonna drag me in chains, right? So I'm just gonna have to keep paying. It's bloody ridiculous. It's just... beyond belief."
Q: "So nothing has changed with the departure of Nixon."
JOHN: "I'm even nervous about commenting on politics. They've got me that jumpy these days. But it's a bit of an illusion to think 'cause Old Nick went that it's all changed. If it's changed, prove it, show me the change."
Q: "Does the case get in the way of your work?"
JOHN: "It did. It did. There's no denying it. In '72, it was really gettin' to me. Not only was I physically having to appear in court cases, it just seemed like a toothache that wouldn't go away. Now I just accept it. I just have a permanent toothache. But there was a period where I just couldn't function, you know? I was so paranoid from them tappin' the phone and followin' me. How could I prove that they were tappin' me phone? There was a period when I was hangin' out with a group called Elephant's Memory. And I was ready to go on the road for pure fun. I didn't want to go on the road for money. That was the time when I was standing up in the Apollo with a guitar at the Attica relatives' benefit or ending up on the stage at the John Sinclair rally. I felt like going on the road and playing music. And whatever excuse - charity or whatever - would have done me. But they kept pullin' me back into court! I had the group hangin' 'round, but I finally had to say, 'Hey, you better get on with your lives.' Now, the last thing on earth I want to do is perform. That's a direct result of the immigration thing. In '71, '72, I wanted to go out and rock my balls off onstage and I just stopped."
Q: "Have you made any kind of flat decision not to ever go on the road again?"
JOHN: "No. I've stopped making flat decisions. I change me mind a lot. My idea of heaven is not going on the road."
Q: "Will you ever be free of the fact that you were once a Beatle?"
JOHN: "I've got used to the fact - just about - that whatever I do is going to be compared to the other Beatles. If I took up ballet dancing, my ballet dancing would be compared with Paul's bowling. So that I'll have to live with. But I've come to learn something big this past year. I cannot let the Top Ten dominate my art. If my worth is only to be judged by whether I'm in the Top Ten or not, then I'd better give up. Because if I let the Top Ten dominate my art, then the art will die. And then whether I'm in the Top Ten is a moot point. I do think now in terms of long term. I'm an artist. I have to express myself. I can't be dominated by gold records. As I said, I'm thirty-four going on sixty. The art is more important than the thing and sometimes I have to remind meself of it. Because there's a danger there, for all of us, for everyone who's involved in whatever art they're in, of needing that love so badly that... In my business, that's manifested in the Top Ten."
Q: "So this last year, in some ways, was a year of deciding whether you wanted to be an artist or a pop star?"
JOHN: "Yeah. What is it I'm doing. What am I doing? Meanwhile, I was still putting out the work. But in the back of me head it was that: What do you want to be? What are you lookin' for? And that's about it. I'm a freakin' artist, man, not a fuckin' racehorse."

The Hit Parader Interview- 1975

ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW:
In December of 1975, Hit Parader magazine published an exclusive conversation between interviewer Lisa Robinson and John Lennon. Topics included The Beatles, Allen Klein (the group's controversial replacement for manager Brian Epstein), the recent separation of John and Yoko, and Lennon's pending deportation case with the US government.
At the time of this interview, John was fighting to remain in the United States. An immigration judge had found that Lennon could not claim permanent residence in the US (due to a British marijuana conviction in 1968) and authorized Lennon to leave voluntarily within 60 days of the March 1973 decision. Lennon appealed the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In 1975 that appeal was still pending before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

- Jay Spangler, Beatles Ultimate Experience
________________________________________

Q: "What is the situation with your deportation case?"
JOHN: "Well, It's hellish really. I don't know where to start. It's going on the same as before-- for me it's the same. They've taken the stance that I have to leave. They always say 'Thirty days' but that passed a month ago. They say that once a year. It's so complicated. It started out because I had a British conviction for possessing marijuana-- which was planted by Sgt Pilcher-- which everybody in England knows now because the guy's in jail... not for my case though, for somebody else's case. Also, at first they jumped on both Yoko and me, although they always kept insisting that they were treating us like normal citizens who had misdemeanor cases against them. Then they suddenly found out halfway through the case that there was no case against Yoko. She was never convicted because the guy said, 'I'll let Yoko off if you plead guilty-- if you cop a plea I'll let her go.' And we weren't married then. It was a bit weird in England. I won't even go into the whole story how we were busted. We were busted by about 20 people. There were dogs... it was a whole film. They busted us in the morning-- they wouldn't even let us get dressed. It took them hours, and there was a question in the Houses of Parliament as to why so many people were needed to arrest two people."
Q: "No one ever advised you to fight the thing initially?"
JOHN: "No. I was just panic stricken. I was a wreck. Aaahh! Cops! In jolly England! You know, I still half-believed about the good old bobby helping you down the street. And I was really nervous about Yoko 'cuz we'd just got living together, and it was all public. And I thought they'd deport her so I copped a plea thinking it would be a misdemeanor. I figured what the hell, it's just a hundred pounds... it's just crazy, and it's been going on since 1971. The first conviction came down in 1973-- they said I had to leave... couldn't be a permanant resident of the United States with a British conviction. Now all the people involved are gone-- the prosecution councel and the head of immigration. We've just received permission to interview them, to question them about papers. I also found out that Senator Strom Thurmond sent a letter to John Mitchell when he was Attorny General. Thurmond was the head of a congressional committee, and whether we'll get our hands on it I don't know. But it said in essence, this guy's looking to stay here and we suggest no. And our lawyers always said that the instructions for Lennon's case are coming from Washington. And the New York people kept insisting it was a local case. But we knew it wasn't just a local case, and this letter from Thurmond could prove it. Just like we knew when we were wiretapped. But how do you prove that? We knew we were being wiretapped on Bank Street. There was a helluva lot of guys coming in to fix the phones... and there were two guys outside who kept following me around in a car. I went on the Dick Cavett show and said it... this is long before Watergate... and people just thought, 'Oh crazy Lennon. Whose gonna bother following him? What an egomaniac.' But we had been associated with Jerry Rubin and John Sinclair and little rallies, and were seen around those people. It really was like a mini-Watergate."
"You know, incidentally, there was a CBS documentary I saw last week about Nazis in America. Allowed, known Nazis who are here. Famous Nazis who killed people from 15,000 up. And the guy who was prosecuting me got taken off my case and put onto this Nazi thing. On TV he said that someone in his office, in the immigration department, had stolen his file on Nazis from the file in his office. Meaning that someone in his own group is protecting these people. They're so busy protecting them, but they're attacking me. I mean, there was a list of Nazis as long as your arm, and one of them was holding a service in Congress at one time. It's just ludicrous. It's Kafka."
Q: "Why then, do you want to live here."
JOHN: "Because it's the same everywhere. Name somewhere where it's different. It's not as if it's a choice between living here or in England where it's different. It's the same in England on a different level, and the Americans and the English are hand in glove. Whatever the game is, it's the same game. It's really a choice between living in the West or the East, but I'm West and I don't want to live in the East. America and England to me are almost very similar places. Maybe you can't see it if you're living in England."
Q: "How frustrating is all of this to you emotionally?"
JOHN: "At one time it was getting to be a bug because I had to keep going to court, and it got to be a way of life as court cases do. It was hassling me, because that was when I was hanging out with Elephant's Memory, and I wanted to rock-- to go out on the road. But I couldn't do that because I always had to be in New York for something... and I was hassled. I guess it showed in me work. But whatever happens to you happens in your work. So while on the surface I tried to make it appear as if I were making a game out of it, trying not to take it seriously, there were periods of paranoia. Even my friends would say, 'Come on John... what do they want with you?'"
"And you know, I see now where Jane Fonda is suing the governemnt for millions, and when I first heard that I thought, 'Aha!' d then 'Uh-oh' ...like, if they left me alone would they be afraid I'd make a fuss and start suing after. I guess it's probably going to have to be the president who decides-- a pure political decision when my paper comes up, as it does every now and then-- into his consciousness."
Q: "Is the president aware of this?"
JOHN: "Oh, you bet. I had a friend who visited there, right? I mean you can't have one junkie in the White House and kick another out, can you? That's being flippant of course. Neither of us are junkies. Anyway. They keep falling back on that law about misdemeanors, and it's some trip to change the law here. Even though in England that law has been reversed."
Q: "But they could get around it."
JOHN: "Of course they can, because they've got around it for the Nazis, for big dope dealers... big heroin-heavy-stuff dealers. My lawyer has a list of people... hundreds of people in here who got around the law for murder, rape, double murder, heroin, every crime you can imagine. People who are just living here. I want it to end, but I can go on as long as they go on. It'll probably go on until it gets to the Supreme Court."
Q: "How much of your time is spent on this?"
JOHN: "Well, when I'm not talking about it, I think about it occasionally. I mean, it's on my list of lawsuits. I was just talking about it with Yoko last night-- there seems to be an awful lot of lawsuits involved with rock and roll."
Q: "There's Allen Klein, right?"
JOHN: Yes, that's about twenty-- He's suing me, and Yoko, and all the ex-Beatles, and everybody that ever knew them! And he's suing me individually, me collectively, any version of me you can get hold of is being sued. But immigration is the important one-- the others are all just money, somehow a deal will be made. Immigration, that's the one. I mean, if they can take Helen Reddy, they can take me..."
Q: "Would you want to become a US citizen?"
JOHN: "I'm too involved with this to think about citizenship. I'd prefer to do a P. G. Wodehouse. I found out before he was knighted that he was living here (America), and I thought well, that's cool. Nobody thinks P. G. Wodehouse is not English. He was English until his last breath and he lived on Long Island. And that suits me fine. I'm English but I want to live here. And the funny thing about America is that there's almost no such thing as American. You go on the streets and everybody's Italian or Irish or Israeli or English or Jamaican or Nigerians... and if you go out into the sticks you've got the German group or the Dutch group and the names tell you which race dominates. It's just a pack of Europeans living here with Africans, Indians, and Asians thrown in. Thousands of Chinese, Japanese... It's like the old gag about the melting pot."
"I always liked Liverpool and London-- places like that had alot of different races living in them. You could go to Soho and see all kinds of races on earth and I like that, but there's even more of a mixture here. My ideal is to be able to travel, that's the thing I really miss most. I miss England, Scotland, Wales, all that sentimental stuff... but I also miss France, Holland... Germany I haven't been to for years. I'd like to go to South America. I've never been. I'd like to be based here, and just travel."
Q: "Do you ever think you'll be so overcome with all the legal hassles that you'll get like Lenny Bruce and become obsessed with learning the law?"
JOHN: "No. I got obsessed with the politics for awhile... but law is, well... I could never take it that seriously. At a certain point I would just see the funny side of it and say fuck it. The worst that happens with most of these lawsuits is that they'll take more money off of me, and the worst that would happen with immigration is that I'd have to move."
Q: "Where would you move? I've heard rumors of Canada."
JOHN: "No. They always say that because whenever I go to Canada the Canadians as me if I like Canada, So I say yes, I like Canada-- I like Montreal and Toronto. I don't know the rest of it-- and the next minute they say I'm going to live there. And they always ask, 'Have you ever thought of living here?' Well, every country I've ever been to I've thought, 'Could I live here...'"
Q: "If you attempted to be a US citizen, would it be easier or more difficult because of your present status?"
JOHN: "Well, unless I get rid of this thing I can't even consider it I mean, if I can't get a green card, no way can I be a citizen. Not with a misdemeanor. See, the law in England has changed since the time when all rockstars were busted-- that tricky law where 'you' were responsible if 'this building' had it in it-- you were responsible if you owned the building. No possession, I never had any stuff on me. It was mysteriously found in the building, in the apartment. I think they've wiped the slate clean and it's retroactive in England, but not here."
Q: "What can people do about this?"
JOHN: "Well, the English really can't do anything, except those that care to could write to the American Embassy. The thing with politicians and ambassadors is that if they get one letter they count it as twenty. One letter keeps them aware, it keeps them realizing about it. But it's really a bore for me and I'm sure a bore for people listening about it..."
Q: "Does it help when you have a hit album-- keep a high profile, so to speak?"
JOHN: "Well, you see more of me if I've got a product to sell, it's as simple as that. Unless I feel like goofing around to a few openings with friends or hanging out in the 'rock biz.' But when you;ve got a product out you have to be seen or they'll forget. This sort of thing reminds the powers that be of me and what I represent."
Q: "Can that work against you?"
JOHN: "No. No, because power is power. Whatever power I have they're aware of it. Power doesn't frighten power, it makes them respect it-- that's their business. You've got the bomb, we've got the bomb. Everything's okay. If you aint got the bomb you don't even get a look-in. So I'm always aware of keeping my bomb, you know. Even though I blow it a few times, I always manage to put my bomb back together again, because that power is necessary. It's not good if I don't put records out and become invisible and go away, because then they come out and say nobody gives a dmn... people have forgotten about you."
Q: "Let's just say that there's a happy ending to all of this, and there comes a day when you're knighted, or the Academy Awards brings you back to receive a special award. What would your reaction be? Would you tell them to fuck off?"
JOHN: "Well, there will be a happy ending. But I have no idea what I'll do at age 70 or 80 like Charlie Chaplin, or P. G. Wodehouse. I don't really know his story but there was something weird about him and being captured in France by the Nazis and doing broadcasts. And I think that was one of the reasons he left, although he was forgiven. But the real official forgiveness was when they knighted him last year, and he died happy, right? So... I'm not really interested if I get knighted when I'm seventy. I'll deal with it when it comes. I want it now-- not the knighthood-- I'll take the green card, and a passport, and the cash I earn in the band in my own name. And I'll let my music, or my art, speak for me. If they give me knighthood at age 70 I'll deal with it then. Sir John..."
Q: "To turn to your music for a moment, what happened at Madison Square Garden when you were to have performed with George Harrison? Is it true that Klein had the place staked out with subpoenas?"
JOHN: "Well, Klein was chasing George all over New York. George was running down back elevators. I mean, Ringo won't come to New York. I live here so I get ALL the papers, and I'm always doing depositions. See, at the time he was doing his concerts we were also finalizing the Apple papers. And what actually happened was that at the last minute I wouldn't sign it. Actually my astrologer said it wasn't the right time to sign it. George got a little angry with me for not signing it, and he decided to finish the tour as he started it. That was cool by me, because I'd just done Elton, but I didn't want to do George... because it was expected. But he probably made the right decision. I saw him afterward, at the party."
Q: "Was it true that you or the McCartney's were denied a backstage pass?"
JOHN: "Well, there was some funny business... but you know I like him. I love him, we're alright. I don't really want to make a big deal about it. The thing is just that the business was always interfering with pleasure. It was hard to deal with each other anyway, because I had seen alot of Paul and Ringo in the last two or three years-- Paul always comes to New York, or I see Ringo in L.A.-- but I hadn't seen George. And not only were we trying to talk to each other not having seen each other in three years-- all that time only vaguely communicating through lawyers-- we tried to communicate in a hotel. I hung around the hotel for a few days, but it was hard. And then I didn't turn up on the day that I was supposed to sign this agreement. But I finally did sign it, in Disneyland. I wanted to go over it one more time.And I had already seen the concert in Nassau so I wasn't really planning to go to Madison Square Garden anyway. I don't really enjoy sitting in shows, whosoever they are, because you either have to go backstage with all that hassle, or sit in front where you get all that looking at you. I know Mick (Jagger) and everybody's always doing it, but it wears the shred out of me. There's not that many people I want to see in concerts. I'd only go because they're friends, you know. I prefer records, I always did. It's like watching a painter paint... just give me the painting."
Q: "Do you have any plans to perform in concerts on your own?"
JOHN: "Well, performing's not my greatest kick. I had fun with Elton, but that's just because it was Elton. He was really more nervous that I was, because he was nervous for me. I think he felt 'Poor old bugger, maybe he'll collapse.' I don't know... It was just a weird feeling being up there alone, but I knew Elton, and I knew the band, and it was just a one off thing. Don't expect to see me all over the place. I promised him if 'Whatever Gets You Through The Night' got to number one, I'd go one with him-- little thinking that it would. I might do odd TV, or TV specials where I can control the thing... like in the studio. See, I like to see it. I like to HAVE something afterwards. After the concert you don't get anything-- you either get cash or a headache. I hate live albums really, even though I've put a couple out."
Q: "What did you think of George's shows?"
JOHN: "Well, I saw the one without Ravi (Shankar) because he had had a heart attack. But I don't know... that night the band really cooked. The show I saw was a good show. My personal opinion was that even though I know what George was trying to do, I don't think it worked with Ravi... I mean I'm no one to say what works and what doesn't work really, but my personal opinion just was that he would have been better without. I think Ravi's great, but it might have been better to keep Ravi separate. I want to see George do George. I'm with the kids... whether it's George Beatle or George Ex-Beatle."
Q: "Do you think that he's so deeply involved with the Eastern thing that he can't separate that that was George being George-- that he really can't do the rock and roll thing effectively anymore?"
JOHN: "Well, he's just cut off, really. It's easy to get cut off. If you're surrounded by people who aren't rocking, then you just forget what it is. And he is so inolved in the Eastern trip... you know, if you don't listen to the radio, know who the current artists are, the lastest record... if you switch off from that you don't know what people listen to, which happened to me in England! I just suddenly decided because 'Whatever Gets You Through The Night' didn't even crawl around in England... so I said 'Send me a tape of the top ten,' and it's nowhere like America. I was just, 'My God, three years!' I had no idea what was going on there. Now I get them to send it over every few months... It all seems to go Boom-da-da, Boom-da-da, Boom-da-da."
"The album did alright, it could have done better. It would help if I was more visible there, but I can't be. And the TV is sewn up-- You can't get on the TV unless you're on the charts and you can't get on the charts unless you're on the TV. The BBC came over here and filmed me. I guess they figured that the single would jump into the (British) top twenty. But it didn't, it fell over... so they didn't use the film. 'Number Nine Dream' is doing a bit better I hear, so that gives you a clue. I think they're going to like the rock and roll oldies album better than anything, because that's what they seem to be playing over there. But they're doing it a bit tongue-in-cheek I think. I did it for real."
Q: "Do you think that there would be tremndous excitement if you went back to England now? Hysteria?"
JOHN: "No. There was no hysteria when I was living there so why should there be now. I mean, the Beatles nostalgia and getting back together bit goes on as much here as it does there, maybe more... are you kidding? I do alot of radio when I have an album out-- and all the people who call up want to know WHEN ...from Minnesota to Los Angeles to New York... to the hippest and coolest, they want to know when and if and what it's gonna be like. All hysteria is manufactured anyway. At the 'Sgt Pepper' opening it was announced, 'He's going to be there,' so it was bloody Beatlemania going on. I got a fright because I really didn't know what I was letting myself in for. I got the deja vu, as they say, because it was bloody 'Hard Day's Night.' But that's because it had been manufactured, and it was 'Sgt Pepper' and they probably expected all four. Ever since George did Bangla Desh they expect everybody to come on with him."
Q: "Why are there so many lawsuits?"
JOHN: "Ask any rockstar about lawsuits. And the more money there is, the more lawsuits there are, the bigger the artist, the more suits. I mean, people sue for anything-- that bloody fan with the Instamatic who sued me for hitting her.. I never touched her, never went near the girl... in the Troubador, the famous Troubador incident. She sued me, and I had to pay her off to shut her up. That happens all the time, she just wanted money. People sue you if you bump into them on the street. I do admit to chasing some weird people around, but she was not in the scene."
Q: "Weird people?"
JOHN: "Well, I was not in the best frame of mind, and I was wildly drunk. But I was nowhere near this chick. She's got no photographs of me near her. It was my first night on Brandy Alexanders, and they tasted like milkshakes. The first thing I knew I was out of my gourd-- of course Harry Nilsson was no help feeding them to me, saying 'Go ahead John.' It is true I was wildly obnoxious, but I definitely didn't hit this fat broad who just wanted to get her name in the paper, and a few dollars."
Q: "Doesn't all this wear you down?"
JOHN: "Well, I've just come out of it. Last year, with me personal life and the Apple business, the Klein business, and the immigration business... I mean, you don't want to admit it while it's happening that that's what's making you go balmy-- you're still living everyday and you think you're just going to a party, then you end up throwing up in the toilet. Everything was excessive, and you're not quite in control of yourself-- you can't lie back with the hangover and say, 'Now why did this happen to me...'"
Q: "It's surprising that it didn't get to you more."
JOHN: "Well, that was enough. I just woke up in the middle of it and thought, "There's something wrong here. I better straighten myself out.' After I deal with this last batch of lawsuits I aint gonna have anymore. I don't know how they happen-- one minute you're talking to someone, the next minute they're suing you."
Q: "As far as your personal life is concerned, you seem ecstatic to be back here with Yoko..."
JOHN: "Well I am. It's like-- and this is no disrespect to anybody else I was having relationships with--- but I feel like I was running around with me head off, and now I got me head back on. Yoko and I were always in touch, either on the phone or in one way or another. I just sort of came home is what happened. It's like I went out to get a coffee or a newspaper somewhere and it took a year-- like Sinbad. I went on a boat and went around the world and had a mad trip, which I'm glad is over. Yoko and I have known each other for nine years, which is a long friendship on any level. It was a long year, but it's been a nine year relationship, a seven year marriage. Maybe it was the seven year crutch. And apart from the pain we caused each other it probably helped us. We knew we were getting back together it was ust a matter of when. We knew-- everybody else might not have, but we did."
Q: "Actually, there wasn't that much press attention to the separation as one might have expected."
JOHN: "Well I read more about myself than you probably do, and I'll tell you there was. I mean, they would catalogue everyone you went around with, and things like, 'Lennon In Florida Trip' ...things like Rona Barrett wrote that Yoko was living with my ex-wife in a 'strange relationship.' She was putting that around... we got the clippings and everything. I mean that was dead wrong, because Yoko was definitely NOT living with my ex-wife in 'a very feminist relationship!' I see them all, because I've got a clipping service and I get all the newspapers, and you can bet your life somebody's going to send you the clippings..."
Q: "Yeah, your friends..."
JOHN: "Yes, all your best friends let you know what's going on. I was trying to put it 'round that I was gay, you know-- I thought that would throw them off... dancing at all the gay clubs in Los Angeles, flirting with the boys... but it never got off the ground."
Q: "I think I've only heard that lately about Paul."
JOHN: "Oh, I've had him, he's no good."
(laughter)
Q: "What is this about recording with David Bowie?"
JOHN: Well he was doing 'Across The Universe' and I had sort of met him once in L.A. and met him again here. That was an old song of mine. I gave it away because we had made a lousy version of it, and then Spector made an improved lousy version of it and it ended up on the 'Let It Be' LP which none of us would have anything to do with. So I just went down to Electric whatever where he was recording and I did whatever you do. Then he, or the guitarist, had this sort of a lick... and we made a song out of it called 'Fame.' It's an interesting track. So that's the extent of it, and they'll be on his new album-- the one with 'Young Americans' on it."
Q: "I'd like to clear up one of those myths... about Brian Epstein 'packaging' the Beatles. How true is that?"
JOHN: "Everything is true and not true about everything. I mean, we certainly weren't naive. We were no more naive than was he. So Epstein was serving in a record shop and he had nothing to do, and he saw these sort of rockers, greasers, seeming greasers playing loud music and alot of kids paying attention to it. And he thought, well this is a business to be in. And he liked it-- he liked the look of it. He wanted to manage us and we had nobody better so we said alright you can do it. Then he went around shopping, getting us work. And it got to a point where he said 'Look, if you cut your hair you'll get this,' for then it was longer than any of the photographs. It was generally cut or trimmed for the photographs-- like in your school photographs your hair was cut the day before, or when you had a holiday somehow your parents always managed to cut your hair. But there were some private pictures that show it was pretty long for those days, and greased back, hanging around. But there was alot of long hair on the teddy boys, the Tony Curtises that grew larger and larger because they never went to the hairdresser. We were pretty greasy. Outside of Liverpool, when we went down South in our leather outfits, the dance hall promoters didn't really like us-- they thought we looked like a gang of thugs. So it got to be like Epstein said, 'Look, if you wear a suit...' and everybody wanted a good suit, you know. A nice, sharp, black suit, man... We liked the leather and the jeans but we wanted a good suit, even to wear offstage. 'Yeah, man, I'll have a suit!' So if you wore a suit, you'll get this much money... Alright I'll wear a suit. I'll wear a fucking balloon if somebody's going to pay me. I'm not in love with the leather THAT much. Wear a suit, you'll get more money."
"But he was our salesman, our front. You'll notice thaqt another quirk of life is-- I may have read this somewhere-- but self-made men usually have someone with education to front for them... to deal with all the other people with education. Now Epstein had enough education to go in and deal with the hobnobs... and it's the same thing now, if I have a lawsuit, I have to get a lawyer. Epstein fronted for the Beatles, and he played a great part at whatever he did. He was theatrical, that was for sure, and he believed in us. But he certainly didn't package us the way they say he packaged us. He was good at his job, to an extent. He wasn't the greatest businessman. But you have to look at this-- If he was such a great packager, so clever at packaging products, whatever happened to Gerry and the Pacemakers, Cilla Black, and all the other packages? Where are they? Where are those packages? Only one package survived, the original package. It was a mutual deal. You want to manage us? Okay, we'll let you. We ALLOW you to. We weren't picked up off the street... we allowed him to take us. Paul wasn't that keen, but he's more conservative the way he approaches things. He even says that, it's nothing he denies. And that's all well and good, maybe he'll end up with more yachts. But we allowed Epstein to package us, it wasn't the other way around. And the real answer to that question is where are all the other packages? And that goes for all the other myths about people creating us or doing things for us."
Q: "Did you go to Allen Klein because of the Rolling Stones?"
JOHN: "Well, I reckoned Klein was alright because of the Stones. I thought Mick was together-- See, this is the fallacy. Everyone always thinks everyone else is together. You're either together yourself or forget it. I remember asking Mick what Klein was like, and he said, 'He's alright, but it's hard to get your hands on the money.' And even though my instincts were screaming, my intellect thought-- that must mean that he doesn't allow you to waste it or spend it, maybe that's good."
Q: "You should always go by instincts..."
JOHN: "I know. I'm trying to learn. It's a hard thing to learn after being programmed for life not to use your instincts, you know. Women use them a bit more than men-- you're allowed. One benefit you got from slavery was that you were emotional... that's cool. But men were supposed to make decisions on reason and intellect, so it interfered with your instinct. But my instinct is what has always saved me from lots of dragons."