POWER TO THE PEOPLE: JOHN & YOKO LIVE IN NYC

Concert appearances by John following the dissolution of The Beatles can be counted on the fingers of one hand. George was first off the mark with his 1971 show to relieve suffering in Bangladesh, by which he single-handedly invented the concept of the big rock charity show, and Paul wasn’t far behind with Wings, starting small and winding up in arenas. Ringo bided his time before launching his All Starr Band, a good-time supergroup with changing personnel and repertoire that enabled old timers to strut their stuff in the autumn of their years. 

        John, on the other hand, seemed strangely reluctant to set foot on stage, perhaps due to stage fright, perhaps because high profile stage appearance might jeopardise his uncertain immigration status in the US, perhaps because he simply couldn’t be bothered. In August of 1972, however, he topped the bill at what was called the One To One concerts, afternoon and evening shows at Madison Square Garden in New York that attracted 20,000 each, all for charity. 

        Backed by New York rockers Elephant’s Memory – christened for the occasion The Plastic Ono Elephant’s Memory Band and augmented by Yoko, drummer Jim Keltner and a second bass player – John’s sets at these shows were filmed and while various clips of varying length have been shown over the years, the whole show – or most of it – has now been turned into a 90-minute movie, the upgrading process overseen by a team headed by Sean, his son. I watched it last week at the Addlestone Light Cinema near Chertsey, a wonderful picture house where the comfy seats are huge and recline, alongside five others in a screening room that could have housed 100 or more. 

        It was not clear whether I was watching the afternoon or evening performance and it may be that what was up on the occasionally split screen was what the producers considered to be the superior song renditions from both. Either way, it was clear that John meant business. He’d put the Elephant guys through their paces over the preceding days and, in his dirty jeans, military shirt and cowboy boots, he’s the generalissimo at the head of a small revolutionary army intent on getting across an agitprop agenda in line with his soon to be released Some Time In New York City LP. 

        As the world knows, Some Time… was neither an artistic nor a commercial success, its strident lyrics about feminism, racism, Irish troubles and the Attica prison riots set to fairly basic rock and roll that somehow never reached the musical standards we expected from John, this despite production from Phil Spector who was watching over the recording process at the Garden. Nevertheless, Elephant’s Memory played with plenty of heart, especially saxophonist Stan Bronstein, who soloed prodigiously, and, to lesser extent, guitarist Wayne Gabriel. Keltner was no doubt brought on board to ensure that everyone kept proper time. 

        Yoko played an electric piano and gamely sang four songs in her customary shrieking style, a bit squeaky on the top notes, her braless chest leaving little to the imagination behind a white top adding to the rather curious nature of her unorthodox musical approach. “Open your box, open your trousers, open your sex, open your legs,” she yelled during ‘Open Your Box’, the B-side of John’s ‘Power To The People’, adding that it was banned in the USA. Not surprising really. Her other songs were equally uncompromising. 

        But it was John they’d all come to see and he doesn’t disappoint, even if many of the songs he sang from the upcoming Sometime In… were unfamiliar to the enthusiastic audience. For all but one he played a reddish-brown Gibson Melody Maker guitar worn high on his chest, Beatles-style, probably the same one I clocked on the sofa in the house he was occupying in LA in November of 1973, switching to a Gibson Thunderbird to play bottleneck only on ‘Cold Turkey’. He stuck to rhythm throughout, barring up and down his fretboard which, to some extent, he used as a conductor’s baton to marshal the band. He left the trickier guitar parts to Wayne Gabriel. It was the first (and last) band I’d ever seen with two bass players.

        It was telling that ‘Come Together’, from Abbey Road, was rapturously received – before playing it John stated it would be the only nod to his past – and after feeling his disease John sang “over you”, not “over me”. He changed the words in ‘Imagine’, too, referring to the “brotherhood and sisterhood of man”, in keeping with his newfound feminist solidarity. His readings of both ‘Cold Turkey’ and, most especially, ‘Mother’ were incendiary. Before ‘Mother’ he instructed Keltner to “keep it steady” and you could have heard a pin drop in the Garden as John intoned ‘Mother, you had me but I never had you,’ his throat searing vocals screeched as if his life depended on it. I also rather liked ‘New York City’, played at the start as an update to the 1969 Beatle travelogue song ‘Ballad Of John And Yoko’, and he certainly enjoyed himself on ‘Hound Dog’, the penultimate number of his set.  

        The combined cast of thousands – acts who’d played before John for about five hours if contemporary accounts are to be believed – came on stage to join in ‘Give Peace A Chance’, played at John’s insistence with a reggae rhythm. Among them were Stevie Wonder, Melanie, Roberta Flack, members of Sha Na Na, Spector, David Peel, Alan Ginsberg and the girls from a New York band called Teenage Lust whom I would befriend during my New York stint two years later. Realising that the melee was getting out of hand, John and Yoko disappeared from the stage without taking a final bow, their contribution over. 

        At times during the film the camera focuses exclusively on John, his face filling the screen to the extent that you can make out the individual hairs of his sideburns, his slightly pinched nose and the strong lenses in his tinted granny glasses. His command of the stage is absolute and if this footage was scrutinised by Nixon’s henchmen they would have detected the extraordinary intensity of John’s performance, communicated to an adoring crowd that, should he have wished, would have followed him anywhere, not least the Capitol Building in Washington DC, to protest against the iniquities of American’s ruling elite. It’s no wonder they wanted to chuck him out. 

(Screen grabs courtesy of Lisa Pettibone, aka Mrs C.)

JOHN LENNON V THE US GOVERNMENT

It was 50 years this week that I wrote my first big story for Melody Maker about John Lennon’s fight to remain the US. It was an ongoing story that I covered a lot when I lived in New York and as a result I made the acquaintance of John’s lawyer, Leon Wildes, seen above with John at one of the many hearings devoted to the case. Leon was a seeker of the truth, and in John’s case the truth of the matter – the real reason why the US Government wanted to expel him – was crucial in the successful outcome from Leon and John’s point of view.

It wasn’t often that my stories for Melody Maker read like formal law reports but this one does, a bit anyway. Here it is, as published in MM dated March 1, 1975. 

John Lennon’s protracted negotiations to stay in the United States will reach a climax within the next three months, according to his attorney, Leon Wildes, who this week explained to the Melody Maker exactly how John stood in relation to the Immigration Authorities.

        John entered the US on August 31, 1971, at St Thomas in the Virgin Islands, originally intending to stay for “about two months” and specifically to attend a court hearing concerning the custody of Kyoko, Yoko Ono’s daughter by her first marriage to film director Tony Cox.

        Leon Wildes was retained as Lennon’s attorney at the beginning of 1972 when it became necessary for him to apply for an extension to his visa to stay in the States.

        Since then there have been numerous attempts by the US government to have John deported, but constant appeals against Government action have enabled him to remain, if a little precariously, in the US. The situation, however, has meant that John is unable to leave the country for any reason. If he did, the chances are that he wouldn’t be able to get back in again, and this is a situation he dare not risk.*

        Lennon has travelled extensively within the US during his sojourn here. He has spent periods in Los Angeles, staying at a house belonging to record producer Lou Adler, whose name, incidentally, is currently coupled with actress Brit Ekland. He has also spent time in Florida with his son Julian**, but for the most part has lived in New York, mostly at an apartment in the Dakota building on New York’s West Side with Yoko. Recently they have separated and John is living with Yoko’s former assistant May Pang in a small apartment on the East Side.

        The Government case against Lennon is now before the US Second Court of Appeal in the Second (New York) Circuit. Lennon’s case has to be presented before the end of next week, and the Government’s likewise. The law will be argued in court and reaching the decision that follows will take between one and three months. 

        This need not necessarily be a final decision. Either party in the suit can make a further appeal to the Supreme Court which first of all decides whether or not to try the case or stand by the decision of the Appeal Court. If this court decides to hear a further appeal, then further delays will ensue.

        At the same time, Lennon’s attorney has filed two actions against the Government, which complicates matters further. The first and most important claims that the Immigration Department prejudged John’s case in the first place without giving him a fair opportunity to state his reasons for wishing to remain the US.

        This case was first brought in October, 1973, and the judge in question sustained Lennon’s claim. As a result John was given leave to examine the Government witnesses involved and already proceedings are in motion to question the man who was the District Director of the Immigration Office at the time of John’s original deportation order. This man, Sol Marks, who has since retired to Florida, held this position that charged him by law to decide whether proceedings should be taken against an illegal alien. Lennon, of course, is claiming that Marks should not have started these proceedings, that he prejudged the case. 

        Lennon’s second action is his “non priority” case which, like his first action, is being heard in the New York Federal District Court. This “non priority” list is a list of aliens within the US who are allowed to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons despite having convictions that would otherwise render them liable for expulsion. 

        Leon Wildes has secured copies of the “non priority” regulations, and a copy of other approved cases on the list. There are, he says, other persons on that list who have convictions for trafficking in drugs and he contends that Lennon ought to be on that list. Lennon, of course, has only one conviction for possession of marijuana, a considerably lesser offence than trafficking in illegal narcotics.

        Still another application was filed in 1972 contending that John and Yoko were outstanding artists and, as such, ought to be allowed to remain in the US because of their contribution towards the culture of the country.

Wildes claims he has information that shows that the Government deliberately hid this application, actually locking the relevant documents away in a safe, thus holding up or attempting to ignore the application. This, says, Wildes, was because of a memorandum which was circulated by an unknown Government agency to other Government agencies which stated that John and Yoko were to be kept under physical observance at all times because of possible political activities.

Wildes is currently attempting to find the source of this document. If he does, he says, it will break the case wide open and prove there has been a miscarriage of justice. “We have never deliberately asked for support from any important people or politicians, but several have come forward and indicated that they want to help,” Wildes told me. 

        “At this point I think we have got more law on our side than ever before. I think we have a better chance in view of the present political climate because attitudes towards John are changing all the time. Ultimately, of course, we hope that the law of drug convictions and entry into the US will be changed.”

        Finally, one other factor has arisen in John’s favour. England has just passed a law called the Uniform Rehabilitation Act which wipes out certain convictions from a person’s record after a certain number of years. This comes into effect on July 1 this year and will wipe out the original drug conviction against John’s name which was, of course, the US Government’s only concrete excuse for starting the proceedings against him on the first place.

        Meanwhile Lennon rocks on. This week sees the release of another solo album, a collection of oldies entitled Rock’n’Roll, the result of tapes made with Phil Spector in Loa Angeles last October.

        Yet another controversy surrounds the release of this set which was originally scheduled for April. An unauthorised bootleg album, titled Roots, and emanating from the same sessions has been advertised on TV as available by mail order only in the US. It contains much of the same material but in an uncompleted state. How these copies of the tapes disappeared from the studio and came into the hands of the “Adam VIII” label (the label mentioned in the TV ads) is a mystery but the situation resulted in Capitol’s decision to rush-release Lennon’s official album ahead of schedule.

____

* In a private conversation, John told me that every time he flew anywhere in the States he was terrified that for some reason, perhaps bad weather, the plane might be diverted out of the US and, on its return, he’d be barred from entering the US again.

** John also told me that it was when he was in Florida, staying with Julian at the Disney World resort near Orlando, that he signed the papers that finally dissolved the Beatles’ business partnership, the last Beatle to do so. 

WE ALL SHINE ON – John, Yoko & Me by Elliot Mintz

“They were paradoxes, John and Yoko, filled to the brim with internal contradictions. On the one hand they could be incredibly sensitive, honest, provocative, caring, creative, generous and wise. On the other they could be self-centred, desperate, vain, petty and annoying. In John’s case, also shockingly cruel, even to Yoko.”

        So writes Elliot Mintz, spokesman for the Lennons both before and after John’s brutal murder, who certainly has a tale to tell and it is to his great credit that he has waited so long to tell it. A radio broadcaster by trade, his introduction to the Lennon’s came in 1971 after he interviewed Yoko about her LP Fly. Sympathetic attitudes towards Yoko being thin on the ground in those days, she was charmed by Mintz’s support and they stayed in touch, or at least she continued to phone him to chat, often late at night, for reasons he at first found difficult to understand. 

        Several months went by before she put John on the phone, ostensibly to interview him on air too, and much the same thing happened. Indeed, he and John spoke so regularly that Mintz had a second phone installed in his LA home for calls from the Lennons, with a blinking red light to warn him one of them was on the line. When they finally met in person a friendship developed and Mintz became privy to their bizarre lifestyle, not as a paid employee but as a reliable, discreet ally, a sounding board with whom they might discuss anything under the sun, a resource upon whom they could occasionally rely in emergencies and someone who would turn a blind eye to indiscretions. He filled this role with tact and distinction and the tone of his book suggests it remains the most fulfilling relationship of his life.

        Mintz’s services were definitely required. “John was functionally a child when it came to taking care of himself,” he writes. “He never learned to do his own grocery shopping, never paid a utility bill or mailed a package or involved himself in any of the myriad mundane tasks the rest of us spend so much of our daily lives mired in. He was clueless about the most basic elements of human commerce, like money and how to buy stuff with it.”

        The book spans the 1970s, the final decade of John’s life, and for the most part describes encounters between Mintz and the Lennons, most of which shed light on their occasionally perplexing beliefs and lifestyle. These reminiscences are clearly selective, chosen for their weirdness, which enlivens the book no end, but we are led to believe that many more encounters took place about which Mintz does not write, possibly because they were not as interesting, or possibly because he’s saving them for a sequel. Moreover, it’s a shame his tape machine wasn’t hooked up to the Lennon hot line, as we also learn that “hundreds” of phone calls occurred between him and the Lennons, just as they exchanged “hundreds” of letter and postcards*, a handful of which are included as illustrations in the book. Dialogue is therefore assumed, but it rings true, Mintz having learned to translate John’s idiosyncratic speak patterns, part funny, part Scouse, part endearingly Lennonesque. He always referred to Yoko as Mother. 

        Much of what Mintz writes about John chimes with my own beliefs or what I have read elsewhere. He was a klutz when it came to practical matters, and a terrible driver. He spent lengthy periods of time alone, often watching TV, mostly in their expansive apartments in the Dakota on New York’s Westside. He was fiercely protective of The Beatles’ legacy and disliked any comparisons that suggested they were influenced by others, especially Bob Dylan. He was a fan of numerology, as practised by Yoko, and food fads designed to reduce weight or otherwise enhance his health. Also, like the other three, he was not above playing the Beatle card to ease his passage through life. 

        Surprisingly, Mintz wasn’t at the judicial hearing in 1975 when John was awarded his green card, which enabled him to travel freely, but he did accompany the Lennons to Japan in 1977, a delightful trip for everyone involved, and became a sort of temporary third parent to John’s sons Julian and Sean when child minding was required. He was also present when, one Christmas (the year is unstated), Paul McCartney turned up at the Dakota where conversation between him and John was strangely stilted. It goes without saying that he was devastated by the events of December 8, 1980, and flew immediately to New York to offer himself as a pillar for Yoko to lean on. Aside from a few swipes at certain individuals who sought to capitalise on John’s death, the book contains very little about the years that followed. 

        We All Shine On is not a long book – I read it in two four hour sittings – its 300 pages are typeset sparsely with generous leading and there are plenty of unused pages throughout. It is illustrated with photos at the start of each of its four parts, has 16-page plate section and a useful index. 

_____

*Hunter Davies’ book The Lennon Letters, published in 2012, is an illustrated, annotated collection of over 200 letters that John wrote to all and sundry, authorised by Yoko, but it contains not a single one to Elliot Mintz, nor is Mintz mentioned in its index. In the light of the “hundreds” of letters Mintz claims to have received from John, I thought this was curious but Hunter enlightened me. “I never saw any letter [Mintz] says he received,” he informs me. “Yoko provided none alas, just her blessing and an intro and [she] allowed me to use her copyright on all John’s writings. For which she got 50 percent of all proceeds, without providing any letters. She said she was keeping what she had.”

JOHN LENNON – 1980: THE LAST DAYS OF HIS LIFE by Kenneth Womack

I wasn’t entirely sure what John Lennon meant when he sent me a postcard on January 28, 1977, telling me he was ‘invisible’ but it became pretty clear soon enough. In the years that followed he was invisible to the rock world, wiling away his days on an extended break from music and all the promotional chores that releasing records entailed. The only other musician of John’s stature to have taken a similar step back is David Bowie, ironically also during the last decade of his life, a career decision that might have been promoted by John’s absenteeism.

        Only a select few people knew precisely what John was up to: Yoko, of course, and their infant son Sean; staff at their homes in New York’s Dakota apartment building and elsewhere; a few people from his past, among them the other three Beatles, the odd musician and, probably, son Julian from his first marriage; and a handful others that John bumped into in the course of his wanderings. 

        John was all too well aware that the contradiction between the enormous fame he attained as the boss Beatle and the lower-than-low profile he maintained from 1976 onwards would attract intrusive press speculation but, by and large he succeeded in his quest to become invisible. His whereabouts and doings between 1976 and 1980 were shrouded in relative secrecy at the time and only became public knowledge in a sort of drip-by-drip fashion, mostly from interviews undertaken immediately before his assassination in December 1980 and biographical or memoir-style books published thereafter. Now, all that information has been assembled into this one volume, somewhat misleadingly titled since the first half of the book liberally strays into the half-dozen or so years before 1980. 

What we learn is that John’s relationship with Yoko had its ups and downs, and they spent time apart, albeit remaining faithful in the bedroom department after the 1973-4 separation. Such separations, although temporary, invariably caused John anguish, especially if for some reason he was unable to reach Yoko by phone. Yoko took care of business, buying cows and houses, often basing her decisions on numerical or astronomical charts, leaving John to take up the role of hands-on father to Sean, perhaps to make up for paying scant attention to Julian’s upbringing when he was distracted by Beatle business. 

        He stayed home a lot, read books, magazines and newspapers and watched TV, following the news avidly. He picked up a guitar every now and again to write a snatch of a tune, often recording these bits and pieces on cassette and hoarding them until such a time when he opted to release music again. He was largely graceful to fans who encountered him on his wanderings in the New York Westside neighbourhood where he lived, even to those who somehow eluded the Dakota’s security system, but the most important thing is that he was agreeably content, relaxed, unburdened by any contractual obligations, free to do precisely what he wanted, even learn to bake bread.

        With his green card secured, he was able to travel outside of the US without fear of being refused re-entry, and such travels are covered here in extraordinary detail, thanks no doubt to the author’s interviews with Fred Seaman, the Lennon’s PA, whose 1991 book The Last Days Of John Lennon covered much the same ground. John flew to Japan with Yoko, and, alone, to South Africa for no good reason than a need to observe the Table Mountain at close quarters. He also piloted a yacht to Bermuda in challenging weather conditions, the perilous nature of the voyage suggesting we were lucky not to have lost John to the Black Hole of Andros close to Bermuda, the journey’s destination. This adventure reflects his wilful, slightly eccentric character, the odd leaps and bounds he took when no one, not even Yoko, was looking. Such escapades endear him to me almost as much as his music. 

As the years rolled by, however, the need to make music was uppermost in his mind and second half of the book, largely devoted to 1980, faithfully records numerous sessions under the production aegis of Jack Douglas at the Hit Factory studio in New York. We learn in tremendous detail how the songs that mainly comprised the Double Fantasy album were written and recorded and who played on them, which is not quite as interesting as John’s peripatetic habits in the first half, though there are tantalising particulars of tentative plans he was making for a world tour in 1981. Finally, I was pleased the author avoided all mention of John’s assassin and any gory details of the appalling crime he committed. 

Still, for a detailed account of John’s final days this book is unrivalled. In the picture on the cover, taken by Jack Mitchell on November 2, 1980, during an assignment for The New York Times, bespectacled John, his smile assured, his arms folded, looks to me rather like a left-leaning lecturer on sociology at a red-brick university in the north of England. Among the photos inside is a map of the Dakota’s interiors, as well as a few other pictures from the lost half-decade I hadn’t seen before. There are copious source notes, a comprehensive bibliography but the books lacks an index.  

JOHN LENNON 1940-1980

To mark the 40th anniversary of the death of John Lennon I am posting on Just Backdated today the obituary of John that appeared in the book The Encyclopedia of Rock Obituaries by Nick Talevski, published by Omnibus Press in 1999. I make no apology for this because, in reality, the entry was written by Johnny Rogan and myself. Johnny and I jointly edited this 490-page book and decided along the way that certain entries for rock’s most major figures, among them Lennon, needed a fresh approach. As a result, Elvis, Keith Moon and a handful of others were re-written from scratch by us without objection from the author. 

This version has been slightly re-edited and/or corrected to take into account information that has come to light since the book was first published. Also, in accordance with current day thinking on the issue, the name of John’s killer is not mentioned. 

Picture by Bob Gruen

No rock death has caused such worldwide grief as that of John Lennon, senselessly gunned down outside his New York home by a deranged Beatle fan. From that day forward, all around the world, the image, legend and devotion surrounding The Beatles was never quite the same. 

As the pivotal member of The Beatles, Lennon was a towering figure in rock, universally respected for his achievements not just as a musician, singer and songwriter but as a spokesman for his generation, a peace campaigner and a romantic philosopher. At the time of his death he was re-emerging after a self-imposed five-year exile from music, feeling his way once again into the public consciousness. 

John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool, England, a year after the start of World War II. His parents, Fred and Julia Lennon, split up when he was two. Julia Lennon gave up custody of young John to her sister Mary (Mimi) who raised him in a middle-class area of Liverpool. His seafaring father all but abandoned him, and his wayward mother, who lived close, visited her son on a regular basis until she was killed in a traffic accident when John was 17. 

By this time Julia had given John an inexpensive guitar and taught home some banjo chords. An impressionable teenager, he was eager to be a part of the British skiffle craze and in 1957 formed The Quarrymen with his friend Peter Shotton on washboard. He met Paul McCartney the same year at a church fete where The Quarrymen were performing. Impressing Lennon with his ability to tune a guitar, McCartney was brought on board and with the addition of a young guitarist, George Harrison, the group evolved into Johnny & The Moondogs.

Heavily influenced by American musicians, they swapped skiffle for R&B and rockabilly hits, but at the same time Lennon and McCartney began writing their own material together and occasionally performing these original songs. 

In 1959 Lennon attended Liverpool Art College where he befriended Stuart Sutcliffe, a talented painter, who the following year became the group’s bass player, and as The Silver Beatles they toured Scotland behind pop star Johnny Gentle. During this period Lennon was also mastering harmonica and tentatively learning piano.

In search of regular club work, in August of 1960 the group fled Liverpool with new recruit, drummer Pete Best, for the first of five spells performing in the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany. There, Lennon and the group would hone their musical skills in gruelling, several-hour-a-night performances. Returning to Liverpool much improved, The Beatles made the first of almost 300 appearances at the Cavern Club. Sutcliffe elected to stay in Hamburg and in October 1961, Brian Epstein first saw the group and became their manager. 

After failing an audition with Decca Records in January 1962, The Beatles were signed by George Martin to EMI’s Parlophone subsidiary. In August, Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr, another Liverpudlian who had befriended The Beatles in both Hamburg and their home city, and sat in with them when Best was unavailable. Lennon married his pregnant girlfriend Cynthia Powell in August, 1962. His first son Julian was born the following April.

The Beatles’ début British hit was the modest chart entry ‘Love Me Do’ (October 1962), followed by the chart-topping ‘Please Please Me’ (January 1963). Thereafter they could do no wrong in their home country, and the fan-driven chaos that followed in their wake was dubbed Beatlemania. They enjoyed a string of number one hits in Britain, all of them penned by Lennon & McCartney, and in so doing changed the face of pop music forever, establishing the self-contained ‘group’ as its dominant force, simultaneously wresting power from the music publishers and investing it in the artists and writers themselves.

In 1964 The Beatles conquered America, topping the US charts early in the year with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. On February 9, 1964, The Beatles captured the heart of America with the first of three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Rivalling only the early Elvis Presley in their domination of the charts, The Beatles transformed pop music during this period with hits like ‘From Me To You’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, the title track from their first film A Hard Day’s Night, and ‘I Feel Fine’. In April 1964, the group occupied the first five places in the Billboard Hot 100, a feat never repeated. By this time – a mere 18 months after ‘Love Me Do’ – The Beatles were the biggest pop group in the world, their fame on a par with anyone in the field of entertainment and even royalty. 

Lennon was already acclaimed as a powerhouse vocalist, most notably on the Beatles’ cover of the Isley Brothers’ ‘Twist And Shout’, which appeared on their début LP. He was also known for his word-play and clever song titles. His engaging Liverpool wit and love of puns were evident in two self-illustrated books of prose published during this period, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard In The Works (1965). 

The Beatles’ success story continued throughout 1965, a year when they received MBE awards from the Queen and enjoyed chart-topping hits with ‘Ticket To Ride’ and the film theme ‘Help’, one of the first Beatles songs to expose Lennon’s insecurity at the height of his fame. In America McCartney enjoyed additional success with ‘Yesterday’, effectively a solo performance. The year ended with the double-sided number one ‘We Can Work It Out’/‘Day Tripper’ and the highly influential album, Rubber Soul, which featured several Lennon classics, among them the sarcastic, punning, Dylan-inspired ‘Norwegian Wood’, the titillating ‘Girl’ and the starkly autobiographical ‘In My Life’. 

In March 1966 Lennon created a furore by telling a British journalist that The Beatles “are bigger than Jesus”, a quote widely circulated but taken out of context by US teen magazines. The Beatles’ subsequent American tour was beset with problems, including public burnings of Beatles merchandise and death threats. It proved sufficient to convince the group to retire from public performance following their final concert at San Francisco on August 29. 

        Meanwhile, in the studio, their work continued in groundbreaking fashion. Revolver (1966) featured some of Lennon’s most adventurous work, most notably the world-weary ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, and two LSD-inspired compositions ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. 

        After a long break in singles releases, the group returned in early 1967 with the brilliant double A-side ‘Penny Lane’/’Strawberry Fields Forever’. The latter was one of Lennon’s most striking and original works. This was followed by the summer release of one of rock music’s most famous albums, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One of the great studio albums of the era, it revolutionised rock music with its complex array of electronic recording techniques, original ideas and strong lyricism. Lennon’s influence was notable on several of the tracks, including the psychedelic-tinged ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ (inspired from a drawing by his son Julian), ‘Good Moring, Good Morning’, ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite’ and the awe-inspiring ‘A Day In The Life’.

        Thereafter the group members slowly drifted apart. Lennon became the first Beatle to pursue a film role outside of the group, cutting his long hair for the role of Private Gripweed in Richard Lester’s black comedy How I Won The War. In August 1967, while The Beatles were studying transcendental meditation in Wales with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, their manager Brian Epstein died from a drugs overdose. Lennon was stunned by the news of his mentor’s death and later admitted it signalled the demise of The Beatles. 

        McCartney took the helm for their next venture Magical Mystery Tour, which included Lennon’s Edward Lear-influenced ‘I Am The Walrus’. Lennon continued to provide the group with startling compositions during this period, including ‘Revolution’, the B-side of ‘Hey Jude’, the first Beatles single to appear on Apple, their own record label. Over the next couple of years the group would record three more major albums, The Beatles (a double LP, aka The White Album), Abbey Road and Let It Be. 

        During this period Lennon became romantically involved with Japanese artist Yoko Ono, whom he had first met in 1966 at a London art gallery. By November 1968 he had divorced his wife Cynthia, and four months later, on March 20, he married Yoko in Gibraltar. The nuptials were immortalised in the autobiographical ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’, a Beatles single recorded without George and Ringo, and the group’s last UK number one single.

        By this point Lennon had effectively begun the second stage of his career, working with Ono on the avant-garde Unfinished Music No 1 – Two Virgins, distributed by Track Records after EMI objected to its full-frontal nude shot of the two artists. The audio-verite LP consisted of 30 minutes of voices, distorted instruments and various sound effects. This was rapidly followed by two further avant-garde experiments, Unfinished Music No 2 – Life With The Lions and The Wedding Album. Both offered snapshots of the pair’s eventful lives, including Yoko’s miscarriage and John’s protective pleading of guilty to a marijuana possession charge against the couple. 

        Lennon and Ono created more headlines when they embarked on a series of ‘Bed-In’ peace missions, inviting television crews to their room at the Amsterdam Hilton where they stayed in bed for a week “to register our protest against all the suffering and violence in the world”. 

        One month later, Lennon launched his next project, The Plastic Ono Band, whose single ‘Give Peace A Chance’, recorded at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel with the world’s media present, became a summer hit and remains a universal peace anthem to this day. It was followed by the harrowing ‘Cold Turkey’, Lennon’s brittle account of his withdrawal from heroin. Its release coincided with the return of his MBE to the Queen as a protest against Britain’s involvement in Biafra and against “’Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts”.

        In September, an ad hoc version of The Plastic Ono Band, including Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Alan White, made a surprise appearance at The Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Concert. An album, Live Peace In Toronto 1969 was issued at the end of the year. A third POB single, ‘Instant Karma’, produced by Phil Spector, once more displayed Lennon’s talents to the fore and rewarded him with another Top 10 hit in early 1970.

        Following the dissolution of The Beatles in April 1970, John and Yoko enrolled in Arthur Janov’s primal therapy programme, which inspired Lennon’s first solo album proper – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – one of the most lacerating and self-analytical records ever released by a popular performer. It remains the most accomplished work of Lennon’s post-Beatles period. The follow up, Imagine, was more successful commercially and its title track became one of Lennon’s most well-known and best-loved songs. 

        In September 1971, the Lennons settled in New York and John would never return to the UK. His involvement with politics was evident on the sloganeering ‘Power To The People’ while his quest for peace reached an unexpected apogee on the festive standard ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’, another Spector production. Embraced by New York radicals such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, John & Yoko teamed up with the bar band Elephant’s Memory in 1972 for the overtly politicised Some Time In New York City, which offered Lennon’s views on such topics as women’s liberation, the IRA and US prison riots.  

        By this time the Lennons had scaled down their public appearances, although they headlined at Madison Square Garden for the charitable One To One concerts. The following year Lennon released the accessible Mind Games whose standout title track proved a highlight.

        In the late autumn of 1973 Lennon temporarily separated from Yoko Ono in what he later called his “lost weekend”. Living in Los Angeles with May Pang and hanging out with drinking/drug buddies Harry Nilsson (whose Pussycats LP he produced), Ringo, Keith Moon and Jesse Ed Davis, Lennon’s occasionally foolhardy behaviour was well reported in the US press. 

        Despite his recklessness he managed to complete the melodic and accomplished Walls And Bridges, which included two major hits, a chart-topping duet with Elton John – ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night’ – and the ethereal ‘#9 Dream’. Lennon’s final concert appearance occurred when he guested with Elton John at Madison Square Garden on November 28, 1974. Soon afterwards he reunited with Yoko.

        In 1975 he co-wrote and guested on ‘Fame’, David Bowie’s first US number one single, and resolved a long-standing legal dispute with music publisher Morris Levy by releasing Rock’N’Roll, a back to the roots album of covers that included songs to which Levy owned the rights and a modest US hit courtesy of Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me’.

        On October 9, 1975, Lennon and Ono’s son Sean Tara Ono Lennon was born. This triggered what was effectively Lennon’s retirement from professional music making for the next five years to become what he termed a “house husband”. Regularly targeted by the US government for his political views, it wasn’t until 1976 that he finally earned permanent residency status after a long legal battle that cast further doubt on the integrity of the now disgraced Nixon administration. Now assured that he could safely return to the US, Lennon visited Japan, the Bahamas and, curiously, South Africa during this period. 

        In late 1980 Lennon re-emerged into the public eye with a series of interviews promoting the comeback album Double Fantasy on which he and Yoko had recorded alternate tracks. Released just before Lennon’s death, the first single, a retro-sounding pop-rocker ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’ was zooming up the charts. 

        John Lennon was shot dead outside his apartment building, the Dakota on Central Park West in New York City, shortly before 11 pm US Eastern Standard Time by an unstable 25-year-old man. The gunman, who did did not flee, was sentenced to 20-years-to-life at the Attica Correctional Facility where he remains to this day. 

        With Lennon’s death mourned on a worldwide scale Yoko Ono vowed to continue releasing Lennon material to keep his memory alive, and there have been several posthumous releases including boxed sets, books, some of doubtful authority, and videos. A reissue of ‘Imagine’ topped the charts in the month following the atrocity. 

        The passing years have done nothing to diminish John Lennon’s status as a giant of contemporary music. While at times he was inclined to disparage some of his Beatle music, he seemed towards the end to have come around to agreeing with the world that the group’s legacy is triple-locked, and that no matter how many pretenders may come and go, the crown The Beatles wear as pop’s greatest ever pop group is simply unassailable. Once viewed with some suspicion as a questionable influence on her husband, Yoko Ono has now emerged as a heroic figure in her own right, not just as a pioneering avant-garde artist and musician, but as an indefatigable peace campaigner and, like Olivia Harrison, a dignified Beatle widow. 

        In 100 Greatest Britons, a television series broadcast by the BBC in 2002, John Lennon came seventh, one place below Elizabeth I and one place above admiral Admiral Nelson. Paul McCartney, the only other pop musician in the Top 20, came 19th. 

 

Johnny Rogan’s book Lennon: The Albums was published by Omnibus Press in 2006 

and is still in print. 

JOHN LENNON – In His Own Onion

Although there's enough buskers on the streets to fill the holes in the Albert Hall, the Edinburgh Festival is not really about rock music. There were no name acts performing, not unless you count my old pal John Otway, whose name I spotted on a flyer and whose show clashed with a comic we wanted to see, but Otway is as much a comic as a musician anyway. However, another John, born in Liverpool 75 years ago this October and senselessly gunned down in New York 40 years later, was inescapable, the poster below decorating railings everywhere you looked. And nor was this the only Edinburgh manifestation of the chief Beatle, for his 1964 book In His Own Write has been turned into a stage play, of which more later.

The major production, though, is Lennon Through A Glass Onion, which played nightly at the Assembly Hall throughout the Festival; a poignant bio-play that sees grey-haired John R. Waters reflecting on John’s life and music in a series of soliloquies and songs, accompanied for the most part by his own guitar and Stewart D’Arrietta on piano. Waters, an Australian actor, sounds remarkably like John Lennon, at least the Liverpool-accented tenor of his speaking voice if not quite that remarkable singing voice. Light-hearted it wasn’t, Water’s dark attire – black jeans, shirt and leather jacket – setting a tone that to me seemed to echo the imposing but rather grim and sooty stone architecture for which this lovely city is famous.

The 90-minute piece begins at the end, five shots ringing out to remind us of the awful events of December 8, 1980, then slips back to John’s childhood evoked by the Liverpool Lullaby ‘Mucky Kid’, though I’m pretty sure Aunt Mimi, were she alive today, would flinch at the suggestion that the nephew she raised was ‘as dirty as a dustbin lid’. Thereafter John Waters offers a selective account of John’s life in the first person, punctuated by songs, first those Beatles songs that we now know were largely John’s own work – ‘Help’ (taken at a slow pace and all the better for it), ‘Hide Your Love Away’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Strawberry Fields’, ‘Lucy’, ‘A Day In The Life’, ‘Julia’, ‘Come Together’ and more – followed by solo songs, of which ‘Working Class Hero’ and ‘God’ were the most profound. ‘Imagine’ closed the show, perhaps inevitably, and it was clear that all had been chosen for their narrative appeal.

Waters stands with his legs apart, facing down his audience just as John did, and his plain spoken, unsentimental dialogue seems to reinforce the feeling that John Lennon was a bit lost amid the clamour of Beatlemania and the vast, unwieldy fame that came with it. It wasn’t my fault, he seems to be saying, I didn’t ask for this life. It just happened because I liked showing off. There is a deep sense of drama in these spoken words, a sense of impending tragedy that creates an atmosphere of destiny, of impending doom, that was relieved only by the music, especially the up-tempo songs like ‘Revolution’ which was driven along by D’Arrietta’s powerful boogie-woogie piano.

Stewart D'Arietta and John R. Waters 

Yoko is well represented, especially the antipathy she aroused – “British Anglo-Saxon racism – that’s what it was” – but Cynthia didn’t get a mention at all. John’s rivalry with Paul was touched on but unless I missed it I never heard so much as a mention of George or Ringo. John’s drug use, too, is avoided, perhaps on the wishes of Yoko whose blessing must have been sought for copyright purposes. I was also a bit disappointed that two key Lennon songs – ‘I Am The Walrus’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, both personal favourites – were omitted but these are minor quibbles. The audience of mainly over fifties was rapt throughout, breaking into applause after the most memorable songs.

Lennon Through A Glass Onion is by no means new. Waters and D’Arrietta have been performing it since 1992, and it is a tribute to their skills and the show itself that it still feels fresh, contemporary and – most of all – captivating. For those unfamiliar with Lennon’s story it would have been enlightening too, shining a light on what was going on in the mind of the rock star who more than any other, at least in the UK, opened our ears to the music’s potential.

Meanwhile, over the Princes Street Gardens at the Voodoo Rooms, Peter Caulfield, Jonathan Glew and Cassie Vallence, aka Baldynoggin Productions, were enacting In His Own Right as a series of wry sketches taken from the book, a further look into the eccentricity that made Lennon (and The Beatles) as original as they were. The fact that Vallence was visibly pregnant just seemed to add to the sense of absurdity, something that I’m sure John would have appreciated.

When the short stories are acted out in this way, affectionately and with a sly wink here and there, the influences become more obvious: Edward Lear, the Goons, Milligan in particular, and perhaps even Stanley Unwin. We also see the beginnings of Python amid pieces like ‘No Flies On Frank’, ‘At The Dennis’, ‘The Wrestling Dog’, ‘Treasure Ivan’, ‘Nicely Nicely Clive’ and ‘On Safairy With Whide Hunter’. The Enid Blyton Famous Five spoof contains the line ‘keep off the grass’, which I found touching in the light of Bob Gruen’s now famous photo of John by the Statute of Liberty, while the non-PC bigotry in references to people of colour and, more especially, the handicapped seemed to reflect the Lennon of Liverpool as opposed to the Lennon of the World. It also reflects John’s rather cruel sense of humour, epitomised by ‘A Surprise For Little Bobby’, the tale of a one-handed lad who receives a hook for his other arm as a Christmas present, prompting him to chop off his good hand.

The skits were acted out against a screen on which John’s fine line drawings appeared, a further nod in the direction of his restless spirit, and at one point the three actors appeared to read from copies of The Daily Howl, John’s pre-teen school newspaper that at least one of his long-suffering teachers recognised as the work of a fine mind.

While not as ambitious as Lennon Through A Glass Onion, In His Own Write casts more light on John Lennon’s endless inventiveness and offers yet more evidence that America’s irrational gun madness silenced one of the world’s most original creative talents.

CYNTHIA LENNON RIP

Few lives can have been buffeted by the winds of fortune as much as that lived by Cynthia Lennon who died yesterday from cancer at her home in Spain, the latest in a long line of deaths of those closely associated with The Beatles. I met her once, quite briefly, at the opening of her restaurant – Lennon’s – in St Martin’s Lane in the late eighties, and it always seemed to me that no matter how much she tried she could never escape the shadow of the man she married in August 1962 and whose son Julian was born to her the following April. Sometime in the eighties she stopped trying, changing her surname back to Lennon by deed poll.

         Cynthia was, it seems, a nice girl, well brought up, well-mannered and well spoken, but ill-suited for marriage to a man like John. I can’t help but think she’d have been happier married to a dependable bloke of conservative outlook, perhaps a clerk in the wages department at Liverpool Council or the assistant manager of a local branch of Barclays on the Wirral.

         In the event she chose John, or John chose her, and life became a roller-coaster. To have been married to a Beatle in the sixties would have placed her in the eye of a cyclone from which there was never any hope of escape, simultaneously euphoric and horrifying, and for her the ordeal was probably far more intense than for the other Beatle WAGS; hidden away, virtually a single mother, married to the most extreme Beatle, the most curious, the least conventional, the leader of the gang, and too often uncertain of his whereabouts, let alone what was going on inside his mind.

         There is a curious symmetry about how the four Beatles chose as their partners English girls of solid backgrounds – John with Cynthia, Paul with Jane, Ringo with Maureen, George with Pattie – but gradually exchanged them for American women – John with Yoko (Japanese by birth, Yoko became a US citizen through her 1963 marriage to Tony Cox), Paul with Linda, George with Olivia and, finally, Ringo with Barbara.

         The newspaper coverage of Cynthia’s passing has granted the right wing, middle-brow media yet another opportunity to condemn John, a man whose philosophy was and will always be at odds with their political leanings and puritanical social agenda. It is regrettable that Beatles biographer Hunter Davis has been quoted as saying: “John treated her appallingly. He slept with Yoko in their marital home and, as we discovered later, he also physically attacked her, but she was loyal to him.” As far as I can establish there is only one confirmed incident of John abusing Cynthia physically, at an art school dance very early on in their relationship when he accused her of flirting with another man. I’m not trying to excuse John here, but let’s not blow this out of proportion by suggesting it was a recurrent theme of their relationship. Amusingly, the Daily Mail captioned one of their photographs: “The couple… at home with Julian in Surrey in 1965 before drugs began to have a destructive effect on the musician.” I always thought drugs had a creatively liberating effect on John, altogether positive, and - heroin aside - quite the opposite of ‘destructive’ in every way.

         Anyway, I’m sorry about Cynthia. It can’t have been easy. She was, by all accounts, a wonderful mother to Julian. She was certainly John’s muse during the first phase of The Beatles’ career and I was gladdened to read on the internet a warm tribute from Yoko. She suffered for someone else’s art. 

JOHN & HARRY CROSSING RIVERS

This morning’s shuffle opened with Harry Nilsson singing ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ from his 1974 album Pussy Cats which was produced by John Lennon, although my version comes from a double Nilsson compilation CD called Personal Best. I’d forgotten how dreadful it was. At this point in his life Harry was on a downward spiral that had ruined his voice and, indeed, he had ruptured a vocal cord while trying to record this album with John in LA. His vocal is hoarse and strained, and it sounds to me as if John is duetting with him here and there in an effort to shore up the vocal track. That probably explains the fat production too, Lennon having wisely decided to throw in everything bar the kitchen sink to mask the shortcomings in his pal’s voice. Either way it pales in comparison to the marvellous Jimmy Cliff version on his album The Harder They Come, the first reggae album I ever owned and still one of the best ever. 

         As it happened The Harder They Come was on heavy rotation on the deck in my flat in Bayswater around the time I found myself being whisked off to the Theatre Antique at Chateau Vallon near Toulon in France to witness the opening night of the first European tour by Wings on July 9, 1972, after which I grabbed a word with their leader, name of Paul, who was surrounded by journalists poking microphones in his face. Somehow the talk turned to reggae, Wings having recorded a reggae inflected version of ‘Love Is Strange’ on their recent Wildlife album, and I found myself in discussion with Mrs McCartney about the merits of this album and whether or not it was ‘politically correct’ – we wouldn’t have used that expression then but you know what I mean – to like Paul Simon’s ‘Mother And Child Reunion’. We decided it was but we both preferred Jimmy Cliff, and I remember telling Linda how back in 1967 I used to dance to ‘007 (Shanty Town)’ by Desmond Dekker at a discotheque in Ilkley in a pub called The Cow And Calf.

         Back on the iPod Harry’s desperate ‘Many Rivers…’ was followed by more ska, The Specials’ ‘Too Much Too Young’, with its surprisingly ‘traditional’ rock guitar solo, so I got to thinking about how The Specials were no doubt inspired by Jimmy Cliff and this strange connection between John and Paul Beatle, a California singer-songwriter, a Jamaican reggae star and an English 2-Tone band from Coventry and how music really is like a great big ocean in which the currents ebb and flow, all mixed together in one way or another.

         Then I got to thinking about John and Harry’s friendship and how, if I’m not mistaken, Harry asked John to accompany him to a meeting with RCA’s top brass convened to consider Harry’s future with the label after disappointing record sales. Aware of this, Harry turned the meeting around, suggesting that if they resigned him John might sign with RCA too, to which John nodded in agreement. Falling over themselves with glee, the RCA men agreed to resign Harry and promptly offered him a generous advance so as to keep in with John. Harry waltzed off to the bank with his check, and soon afterwards John went into hibernation. What it is to have friends like that…

         I think the picture was taken by my mate Dougal Butler.