John Lennon’s youngest son yesterday blamed the fatal shooting of his father almost 20 years ago on a conspiracy backed by the United States government.
Sean Lennon, who made his debut as a solo artist last month, told New Yorker magazine that the ex-Beatle was a “counter-cultural revolutionary” who the American government could not ignore. He said: “He was dangerous to the government. If he had said, ‘Bomb the White House tomorrow’, there would have been 10,000 people who would have done it. These pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government.
“Anybody who thinks that Mark Chapman [who shot Lennon outside his New York apartment in 1980] was just some crazy guy who killed my dad for his personal interests, is insane. Or very naive. Or hasn’t thought about it clearly. It was in the best interests of the United States to have my dad killed. Definitely. And, you know, that worked against them because, once he died, his powers grew . . . They didn’t get what they wanted.”
The young Lennon, 22, told the magazine that his childhood with mother Yoko Ono was “as close to normal” as it could be, except that he had two armed detectives as companions. Like his father, he has an elder Japanese girlfriend – 37-year-old Yuka Honda – and is passionate about racism, rain forests and sexual harassment. He is also a big Beach Boys fan.
While his half-brother Julian’s singing career faded quickly, Sean Lennon told New Yorker he wanted to be known for his own style of music. He said “The more I make my own path, the less people will associate me with my parents. If you go to a high school and ask kids to tell you the difference between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, they don’t even know what band they were in.”
New York Police Department’s exhaustive investigation into John Lennon’s killing found no evidence that the disturbed Chapman did not act alone.
The young Lennon’s debut album, Into the Sun, has recently appeared in American record shops. In 1995, he sang with his mother on an album, Rising. He said of his new album: “This is a time when a lot of people are making records that are negative and sad, and I just wanted to do the antithesis of that, so I tried to do something that was light and romantic and beautiful and positive. I felt that would be a kind of rebellious thing to do.”
Havana, Cuba Communist-run Cuba came full circle Friday to fete John Lennon, whose music was once frowned on as a decadent Western influence, as a “revolutionary” hero.
Official honors for the Beatles star on the 20th anniversary of his death included a documentary by President Fidel Castro’s personal cameraman, the unveiling of a bronze statue of Lennon in a Havana park and an open-air concert planned for Friday evening.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Beatles’ songs were considered “ideological diversionism” by Cuban authorities. Local music- lovers recount that the Fab Four were barely heard on the island, with the exception of clandestine parties where smuggled tapes might be listened to with the lights off.
In the still tightly-controlled but culturally more liberal Cuba of today, Lennon is now cast as a man who was a born rebel and a constant victim of U.S. harassment.
Friday’s honors were intended to “integrate Lennon into the patrimony of the cultural values that our people admire and respect,” an official statement said.
“Declassified FBI documents have made public the aggression he suffered for his radical position against the Vietnam War during Richard Nixon’s administration,” it added.
While the majority of Cubans love the Beatles, and now listen to them openly, some were left scratching their heads at Friday’s celebration of the cultural volte-face.
“What? Now they’re going to honor Lennon? I can’t believe it,” mused one self-styled former Cuban “hippy” as he stopped his bike opposite the arena where preparations were under way for the Lennon homage concert Friday night.
Communist Party daily Granma last year included the Beatles on a list of the most “relevant” figures of the 20th century, below Castro, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and Argentine-born guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Castro Hails Once-Shunned Lennon As Fellow Dreamer
(caption: A statue of John Lennon, made by artist Jose Villa, is unveiled in a park in Havana on December 8, 2000) by Isabel Garcia-Zarza Havana – President Fidel Castro led a day of homage on Friday to John Lennon as a “revolutionary” hero in a cultural about-face by Cuba’s communist authorities toward the Beatles star, whose music was once frowned on as a decadent Western influence.
To the musical backdrop of “All You Need Is Love,” a military-dressed Castro, aided by star Cuban singer Silvio Rodriguez, unveiled a bronze statue of Lennon sitting on a bench in a Havana park.
“What makes him great in my eyes is his thinking, his ideas,” Castro told reporters after the ceremony, which was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Lennon’s murder in New York.
“I share his dreams completely. I too am a dreamer who has seen his dreams turn into reality,” added the 74-year-old former guerrilla who took power in the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Other honors for the Beatles star included a documentary by Castro’s personal cameraman, Roberto Chile, tributes from state media and an open-air concert on Friday evening in Cuba’s ”anti-imperialist” arena opposite the U.S. diplomatic mission.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Beatles songs were considered ”ideological diversionism” by Cuban authorities. Local music lovers recount that Liverpool’s Fab Four were barely heard on the island, with the exception of clandestine parties where smuggled tapes might be played with the lights off.
In the still tightly controlled but culturally more liberal Cuba of today, Lennon is now cast as a born rebel and a constant victim of U.S. harassment. Friday’s honors were intended to ”integrate Lennon into the patrimony of the cultural values that our people admire and respect,” an official statement said.
“Declassified FBI (news – web sites) documents have made public the aggression he suffered for his radical position against the Vietnam War during Richard Nixon’s administration,” it said.
No Time To Listen
Despite his enthusiastic tribute, Castro confessed that he did not listen much to the Beatles in their heyday because “I did not have much time.” He added with a smile that unlike others around the world who cut their hair Beatles-style, “I never cut my hair modeled on anyone.”
What would he say to Lennon if the singer and songwriter were still alive? “’I’m sorry I didn’t meet you before,”’ Castro said.
While most Cubans love the Beatles and now listen to them openly, some people were left scratching their heads at Friday’s celebrations.
“What? Now they’re going to honor Lennon? I can’t believe it,” mused one self-styled former Cuban hippie as he stopped his bike opposite the arena, where preparations were under way for the Lennon homage concert.
“You see this bump on my head? I got this when I was a kid for listening to the Beatles and playing their music!” he added with a laugh, showing what he said was the lump left when his ideologically strict father smashed his guitar over his head.
The Communist Party daily, Granma, put the Beatles on a list of the most “relevant” figures of the 20th century last year, below Castro, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and Argentine-born guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Underlining the importance that Cuba’s senior leadership decided to give to Lennon on Friday, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon attended the unveiling of the statue. He praised the British singer in a speech as “the paradigm of a free and creative intellectual.”
Castro said the tribute to Lennon had made him feel young, adding, “Youth is all about thinking, enthusiasm and the capacity to dream.”
John Lennon, who was widely regarded as the most thoughtful and outspoken of the four Beatles during their peak of popularity during the 1960’s, dropped out of the music business, to devote his attention to his newly-born son, Sean, and to his wife, Yoko Ono. Then in November 1980, he reentered the pop mainstream with the introduction of a new album, “Double Fantasy,” which, Lennon said at the time, was an extension of his family life, as the songs were direct celebrations of enduring love and the pleasures of home and hearth.
On December 8, 1980 at around 5 p.m., John and Yoko left their apartment in the historic Dakota on Central Park West in New York City to go to their recording studio to supervise the transfer of some of the “Double Fantasy” album numbers to singles. David Geffen, their record producer and friend, said that more than 700,000 copies of the album had already been sold up to that time.
As they were leaving the Dakota, they were approached by several people who were seeking autographs. Among them was a man who would be later identified as Mark David Chapman. John Lennon scribbled an autograph on the cover of “Double Fantasy” for Chapman.
The Lennons spent several hours at the studio on West 44th Street, returning to the Dakota at about 10:50 p.m. They exited their limousine on the 72nd Street curb even though a car could have driven through the entrance and into the courtyard.
Three witnesses–a doorman at the entrance, an elevator operator and a cab driver who had just dropped off a passenger–saw Mark David Chapman standing in the shadows just inside the arch.
As the Lennons walked by, Chapman called, “Mr. Lennon.” Then he dropped into “a combat stance” and fired four pistol shots. According to the autopsy, two shots struck John Lennon in the left side of his back and two in his left shoulder. All four caused internal damage and bleeding.
According to police, Lennon staggered up six steps to the room at the end of the entrance used by the concierge, said, “I’m shot,” then fell down.
The first policemen at the scene were Officers Steve Spire and Peter Cullen, who were in the patrol car at 72nd Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots fired at the Dakota. The officers found Chapman standing “very calmly” where he had been.
The police said he had dropped the revolver after firing it, and said Chapman had a paperback book, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” and a cassette recorder with 14 hours of Beatles tapes.
The second police team at the Dakota, Officers Bill Gamble and James Moran, took Lennon to Roosevelt Hospital. Officer Moran said they stretched Lennon out on the back seat and that the singer was “moaning.” He said he asked, “Are you John Lennon?” and that Lennon had moaned, “Yeah.”
Dr. Stephen Lyman of Roosevelt Hospital said Lennon was dead when the policemen arrived with him. He was pronounced dead at 11:15 p.m. Dr. Elliott M. Gross, the Chief Medical Examiner, said after the autopsy that Lennon had died of shock and loss of blood and that no one could have lived more than a few minutes with such injuries.
Yoko Ono, crying “Tell me it’s not true,” was taken to Roosevelt Hospital and led away in shock after she learned her husband was dead. David Geffen later issued a statement in her behalf: “John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him.”
Within minutes of the first broadcasts of the news of the shooting, people began to gather at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota, reciting prayers, singing Lennon’s songs and burning candles.
On December 14, all around the world, people paused to stand alone or come together in silence, heeding a plea from Yoko Ono that they take 10 minutes to remember the former Beatle.
Q: “I’ve listed a group of songs that I associate with you, in terms of what you are or what you were, songs that struck me as embodying you a little bit: ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,’ ‘Strawberry Fields,’ ‘It’s Only Love,’ ‘She Said She Said,’ ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ ‘I’m Only Sleeping,’ ‘Run for Your Life,’ ‘I Am the Walrus,’ ‘All You Need Is Love,’ ‘Rain,’ ‘Girl.'”
JOHN “The ones that really meant something to me… Look, I don’t know about ‘Hide Your Love Away,’ that’s so long ago. Probably ‘Strawberry Fields,’ ‘She Said,’ ‘Walrus,’ ‘Rain,’ ‘Girl,’ there are just one or two others, ‘Day Tripper,’ ‘Paperback Writer,’ even. ‘Ticket To Ride’ was one more, I remember that. It was a definite sort of change. ‘Norwegian Wood’ …that was the sitar bit. Definitely, I consider them moods or moments.”
Q: “There have been a lot of philosophical analyses written about your songs, ‘Strawberry Fields,’ in particular…”
JOHN: “Well, they can take them apart. They can take anything apart. I mean, I hit it on all levels, you know. We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don’t realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like ‘Walrus.’ The whole first verse was written without any knowledge. And ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ …I didn’t know what I was saying, and you just find out later. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig I know that somewhere people will be looking at them. And I dig the people that notice that I have a sort of strange rhythm scene, because I’ve never been able to keep rhythm on the stage. I always used to get lost. It’s me double off-beats.”
Q: “What is Strawberry Fields?”
JOHN “It’s a name, it’s a nice name. When I was writing ‘In My Life,’ I was trying ‘Penny Lane’ at that time. We were trying to write about Liverpool, and I just listed all the nice-sounding names, just arbitrarily. Strawberry Fields was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But Strawberry Fields– I mean, I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny Lane, and the Cast Iron Shore, which I’ve just got in some song now, and they were just good names– just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go.”
Q: “Pop analysts are often trying to read something into songs that isn’t there.”
JOHN: “It is there. It’s like abstract art really. It’s just the same really. It’s just that when you have to think about it to write it, it just means that you labored at it. But when you just say it, man, you know you’re saying it, it’s a continuous flow. The same as when you’re recording or just playing. You come out of a thing and you know ‘I’ve been there,’ and it was nothing, it was just pure, and that’s what we’re looking for all the time, really.”
Q: “How much do you think the songs go toward building up a myth of a state of mind?”
JOHN: “I don’t know. I mean, we got a bit pretentious. Like everybody, we had our phase and now it’s a little change over to trying to be more natural, less ‘newspaper taxis,’ say. I mean, we’re just changing. I don’t know what we’re doing at all, I just write them. Really, I just like rock & roll. I mean, these…” (pointing to a pile of Fifties records) “…are the records I dug then, I dig them now and I’m still trying to reproduce ‘Some Other Guy’ sometimes. or ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’ Whatever it is, it’s the same bit for me. It’s really just the sound.”
Q: “The Beatles seem to be one of the only groups who ever made a distinction between friends and lovers. For instance, there’s ‘baby’ who can drive your car. But when it comes to ‘We Can Work It Out,’ you talk about ‘my friend.’ In most other groups’ songs, calling someone ‘baby’ is a bit demeaning compared to your distinction.”
JOHN “Yeah, I don’t know why. It’s Paul’s bit that… ‘Buy you a diamond ring, my friend’ …it’s an alternative to ‘baby.’ You can take it logically, the way you took it. See, I don’t know really. Yours is as true a way of looking at it as any other way. In ‘Baby, You’re a Rich Man’ the point was, stop moaning. You’re a rich man and we’re all rich men, heh, heh, baby!”
Q: “I’ve felt your other mood recently: ‘Here I stand, head in hand’ in ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,’ and ‘When I was a boy, everything was right’ in ‘She Said She Said.'”
JOHN: “Yeah, right. That was pure. That was what I meant all right. You see, when I wrote that I had the ‘She said she said,’ but it was just meaning nothing. It was just vaguely to do with someone who had said something like he knew what it was like to be dead, and then it was just a sound. And then I wanted a middle-eight. The beginning had been around for days and days and so I wrote the first thing that came into my head and it was ‘When I was a boy,’ in a different beat, but it was real because it just happened. It’s funny, because while we’re recording we’re all aware and listening to our old records and we say, we’ll do one like ‘The Word’ …make it like that. It never does turn out like that, but we’re always comparing and talking about the old albums– just checking up. What is it… like swatting up for the exam– just listening to everything.”
Q: “Yet people think you’re trying to get away from the old records.”
JOHN: “But I’d like to make a record like ‘Some Other Guy.’ I haven’t done one that satisfies me as much as that satisfied me. Or ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ or ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ or ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’ or ‘Whole Lot of Shakin.’ I’m not being modest. I mean, we’re still trying it. We sit there in the studio and we say, ‘How did it go, how did it go? Come on, let’s do that.’ Like what Fats Domino has done with ‘Lady Madonna’– ‘See how they ruhhnnn.'”
Q: “Wasn’t it about the time of ‘Rubber Soul’ that you moved away from the old records to something quite different?”
JOHN: “Yes, yes, we got involved completely in ourselves then. I think it was ‘Rubber Soul’ when we did all our own numbers. Something just happened. We controlled it a bit. Whatever it was we were putting over, we just tried to control it a bit.”
Q: “Are there any other versions of your songs you like?”
JOHN: “Well, Ray Charles’ version of ‘Yesterday’ …that’s beautiful. And ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is a groove. I just dig the strings on that. Like Thirties strings. Jose Feliciano does great things to ‘Help!’ and ‘Day Tripper.'”
“‘Got To Get You Into My Life.’ Sure, we were doing our Tamla Motown bit. You see, we’re influenced by whatever’s going. Even if we’re not influenced, we’re all going that way at a certain time. If we played a Stones record now, and a Beatles record– and we’ve been apart– you’d find a lot of similarities. We’re all heavy. Just heavy. How did we ever do anything light? What we’re trying to do is rock ‘n roll, with less of your philosorock, is what we’re saying to ourselves. And get on with rocking because rockers is what we really are. You can give me a guitar, stand me up in front of a few people. Even in the studio, if I’m getting into it, I’m just doing my old bit– not quite doing Elvis Legs but doing my equivalent. It’s just natural. Everybody says we must do this and that but our thing is just rocking, you know, the usual gig. That’s what this new record (‘The White Album’) is about. Definitely rocking. What we were doing on Pepper was rocking– and not rocking.”
“‘A Day in the Life’– that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the ‘I read the news today’ bit, and it turned Paul on. Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said ‘yeah’– bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don’t often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but that would have been forcing it. All the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble, and to write a middle-eight would have been to write a middle-eight, but instead Paul already had one there. It’s a bit of 2001, you know.”
Q: “Songs like ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ and ‘Penny Lane’ convey a child’s feeling of the world.”
JOHN: “We write about our past. ‘Good Morning, Good Morning,’ I was never proud of it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit. The same with ‘Penny Lane.’ We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane– the bank was there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just reliving childhood.”
Q: “You really had a place where you grew up!”
JOHN: “Oh, yeah. Didn’t you?”
Q: “Well, Manhattan isn’t Liverpool.”
JOHN: “Well, you could write about your local bus station.”
Q: “In Manhattan?”
JOHN: “Sure, why not? Everywhere is somewhere.”
Q: “In ‘Hey Jude,’ as in one of your first songs, ‘She Loves You,’ you’re singing to someone else and yet you might as well be singing to yourself. Do you find that as well?”
JOHN: “Oh, yeah. Well, when Paul first sang ‘Hey Jude’ to me… or played me the little tape he’d made of it… I took it very personally. ‘Ah, it’s me,’ I said, ‘It’s me.’ He says, ‘No, it’s me.’ I said, ‘Check. We’re going through the same bit.’ So we all are. Whoever is going through a bit with us is going through it, that’s the groove.”
Q: “In the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ theme song you say, ‘The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away.’ In ‘Sgt. Pepper’ you sing, ‘We’d like to take you home with us.’ How do you relate this embracing, ‘come sit down on my lawn’ feeling in the songs with your need for everyday privacy?”
JOHN: “I take a narrower concept of it, like whoever was around at the time wanting to talk to them talked to me, but of course it does have that wider aspect to it. The concept is very good and I went through it and said, ‘Well, okay. Let them sit on my lawn.’ But of course it doesn’t work. People climbed in the house and smashed things up, and then you think, ‘That’s no good, that doesn’t work.’ So actually you’re saying, ‘Don’t talk to me,’ really. We’re all trying to say nice things like that but most of the time we can’t make it– ninety percent of the time– and the odd time we do make it, when we do it, together as people. You can say it in a song: ‘Well, whatever I did say to you that day about getting out of the garden, part of me said that but, really, in my heart of hearts, I’d like to have it right and talk to you and communicate.’ Unfortunately we’re human, you know– it doesn’t seem to work.”
Q: “Do you feel free to put anything in a song?”
JOHN: “Yes. In the early days I’d… well, we all did… we’d take things out for being banal cliches, even chords we wouldn’t use because we thought they were cliches. And even just this year there’s been a great release for all of us, going right back to the basics. On ‘Revolution’ I’m playing the guitar and I haven’t improved since I was last playing, but I dug it. It sounds the way I wanted it to sound. It’s a pity I can’t do it better… the fingering, you know… but I couldn’t have done that last year. I’d have been too paranoiac. I couldn’t play: (‘Revolution’ guitar intro) ‘dddddddddddddd.’ George must play, or somebody better. My playing has probably improved a little bit on this session because I’ve been playing a little. I was always the rhythm guitar anyway, but I always just fiddled about in the background. I didn’t actually want to play rhythm. We all sort of wanted to be lead– as in most groups – but it’s a groove now, and so are the cliches. We’ve gone past those days when we wouldn’t have used words because they didn’t make sense, or what we thought was sense. But of course Dylan taught us a lot in this respect.”
“Another thing is, I used to write a book or stories on one hand and write songs on the other. And I’d be writing completely free form in a book or just on a bit of paper, but when I’d start to write a song I’d be thinking: dee duh dee duh do doo do de do de doo. And it took Dylan and all that was going on then to say, ‘oh, come on now, that’s the same bit, I’m just singing the words.’ With ‘I Am the Walrus,’ I had ‘I am he as you are he as we are all together.’ I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines and then, when I saw something, after about four lines, I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn’t work in the end (sings like a siren) ‘I-am-he-as-you-are-he-as…’ You couldn’t really sing the police siren.”
Q: “Do you write your music with instruments or in your head?”
JOHN: “On piano or guitar. Most of this session has been written on guitar ‘cuz we were in India and only had our guitars there. They have a different feel about them. I missed the piano a bit because you just write differently. My piano playing is even worse than me guitar. I hardly know what the chords are, so it’s good to have a slightly limited palette, heh heh.”
Q: “What did you think of Dylan’s version of ‘Norwegian Wood’?”
JOHN: “I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I don’t like it.’ I didn’t like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn’t like what I felt I was feeling– I thought it was an out-and-out skit, you know, but it wasn’t. It was great. I mean, he wasn’t playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.”
Q: “Is there anybody besides Dylan you’ve gotten something from musically?”
JOHN: “Oh, millions. All those I mentioned before… Little Richard, Presley.”
Q: “Anyone contemporary?”
JOHN: “Are they dead? Well, nobody sustains it. I’ve been buzzed by the Stones and other groups, but none of them can sustain the buzz for me continually through a whole album or through three singles even.”
Q: “You and Dylan are often thought of together in the same way.”
JOHN: “Yeah? Yeah, well we were for a bit, but I couldn’t make it. Too paranoiac. I always saw him when he was in London. He first turned us on in New York actually. He thought ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ – when it goes ‘I can’t hide’ – he thought we were singing ‘I get high.’ So he turns up with Al Aronowitz and turns us on, and we had the biggest laugh all night – forever. Fantastic. We’ve got alot to thank him for.”
Q: “Do you ever see him anymore?”
JOHN “No, ‘cuz he’s living his cozy little life, doing that bit. If I was in New York, he’d be the person I’d most like to see. I’ve grown up enough to communicate with him. Both of us were always uptight, you know, and of course I wouldn’t know whether he was uptight, because I was so uptight. And then, when he wasn’t uptight, I was… all that bit. But we just sat it out because we just liked being together.”
Q: “What about the new desire to return to a more natural environment? Dylan’s return to country music?”
JOHN: “Dylan broke his neck and we went to India. Everybody did their bit. And now we’re all just coming out, coming out of a shell, in a new way, kind of saying, remember what it was like to play.”
Q: “Do you feel better now?”
JOHN: “Yes… and worse.”
Q: “What do you feel about India now?”
JOHN: “I’ve got no regrets at all, ‘cuz it was a groove and I had some great experiences meditating eight hours a day– some amazing things, some amazing trips– it was great. And I still meditate off and on. George is doing it regularly. And I believe implicitly in the whole bit. It’s just that it’s difficult to continue it. I lost the rosy glasses. And I’m like that. I’m very idealistic. So I can’t really manage my exercises when I’ve lost that. I mean, I don’t want to be a boxer so much. It’s just that a few things happened, or didn’t happen. I don’t know, but something happened. It was sort of like (snaps fingers) and we just left and I don’t know what went on. It’s too near– I don’t really know what happened.”
Q: “You just showed me what might be the front and back album photos for the record you’re putting out of the music you and Yoko composed for your film ‘Two Virgins.’ The photos have the simplicity of a daguerreotype…”
JOHN: “Well, that’s because I took it. I’m a ham photographer, you know. It’s me Nikon what I was given by a commercially-minded Japanese when we were in Japan, along with me Pentax, me Canon, me boom-boom and all the others. So I just set it up and did it.”
Q: “For the cover, there’s a photo of you and Yoko standing naked facing the camera. And on the backside are your backsides. What do you think people are going to think of the cover?”
JOHN: “Well, we’ve got that to come. The thing is, I started it with a pure… it was the truth, and it was only after I’d got into it and done it and looked at it that I’d realized what kind of scene I was going to create. And then suddenly, there it was, and then suddenly you show it to people and then you know what the world’s going to do to you, or try to do. But you have no knowledge of it when you conceive it or make it. Originally, I was going to record Yoko, and I thought the best picture of her for an album would be her naked. I was just going to record her as an artist. We were only on those kind of terms then. So after that, we got together, it just seemed natural for us, if we made an album together, for both of us to be naked. Of course, I’ve never seen me prick on an album or on a photo before: ‘What-on-earth, there’s a fellow with his prick out.’ And that was the first time I realized me prick was out, you know. I mean, you can see it on the photo itself – we’re naked in front of a camera – that comes over in the eyes, just for a minute you go!! I mean, you’re not used to it, being naked, but it’s got to come out.”
Q: “How do you face the fact that people are going to mutilate you?”
JOHN: “Well, I can take that as long as we can get the cover out. And I really don’t know what the chances are of that.”
Q: “You don’t worry about the nuts across the street?
JOHN: “No, no. I know it won’t be very comfortable walking around with all the lorry drivers whistling and that, but it’ll all die. Next year it’ll be nothing, like miniskirts or bare tits. It isn’t anything. We’re all naked really. When people attack Yoko and me, we know they’re paranoiac. We don’t worry too much. It’s the ones that don’t know, and you know they don’t know– they’re just going round in a blue fuzz. The thing is, the album also says: ‘Look, lay off will you? It’s two people – what have we done?'”
Q: “Lenny Bruce once compared himself to a doctor, saying that if people weren’t sick, there wouldn’t be any need for him.”
JOHN: “That’s the bit, isn’t it? Since we started being more natural in public, the four of us, we’ve really had a lot of knocking. I mean, we’re always natural. I mean, you can’t help it. We couldn’t have been where we are if we hadn’t done that. We wouldn’t have been us either. And it took four of us to enable us to do it; we couldn’t have done it alone and kept that up. I don’t know why I get knocked more often. I seem to open me mouth more often, something happens, I forget what I am till it all happens again. I mean, we just get knocked, from the underground… the pop world… me personally. They’re all doing it. They’ve got to stop soon.”
Q: “Couldn’t you go off to your own community and not be bothered with all of this?”
JOHN: “Well, it’s just the same there, you see. India was a bit of that, it was a taste of it. It’s the same. So there’s a small community, it’s the same gig, it’s relative. There’s no escape.”
Q: “Your show at the Fraser Gallery gave critics a chance to take a swipe at you.”
JOHN: “Oh, right, but putting it on was taking a swipe at them in a way. I mean, that’s what it was about. What they couldn’t understand was that – a lot of them were saying, ‘well, if it hadn’t been for John Lennon nobody would have gone to it,’ but as it was, it was me doing it. And if it had been Sam Bloggs it would have been nice. But the point of it was – it was me. And they’re using that as a reason to say why it didn’t work. Work as what?”
Q: “Do you think Yoko’s film of you smiling would work if it were just anyone smiling?”
JOHN: “Yes, it works with somebody else smiling, but she went through all this. It originally started out that she wanted a million people all over the world to send in a snapshot of themselves smiling, and then it got down to lots of people smiling, and then maybe one or two and then me smiling as a symbol of today smiling – and that’s what I am, whatever that means. And so it’s me smiling, and that’s the hang-up, of course, because it’s me again. But they’ve got to see it someday… it’s only me. I don’t mind if people go to the film to see me smiling because it doesn’t matter, it’s not harmful. The idea of the film won’t really be dug for another fifty or a hundred years probably. That’s what it’s all about. I just happen to be that face.”
Q: “It’s too bad people can’t come down here individually to see how you’re living.”
JOHN: “Well, that’s it. I didn’t see Ringo and his wife for about a month when I first got together with Yoko, and there were rumors going around about the film and all that. Maureen was saying she really had some strange ideas about where we were at and what we were up to. And there were some strange reactions from all me friends and at Apple about Yoko and me and what we were doing– ‘Have they gone mad?’ But of course it was just us, you know, and if they are puzzled or reacting strangely to us two being together and doing what we’re doing, it’s not hard to visualize the rest of the world really having some amazing image.”
Q: “‘International Times’ recently published an interview with Jean-Luc Godard…”
JOHN: “Oh yeah, right, he said we should do something. Now that’s sour grapes from a man who couldn’t get us to be in his film…” (‘One Plus One,’ in which the Stones appear) “…and I don’t expect it from people like that. Dear Mr. Godard, just because we didn’t want to be in the film with you, it doesn’t mean to say that we aren’t doing any more than you. We should do whatever we’re all doing.”
Q: “But Godard put it in activist political terms. He said that people with influence and money should be trying to blow up the establishment and that you weren’t.”
JOHN: “What’s he think we’re doing? He wants to stop looking at his own films and look around. ‘Time Magazine’ came out and said, look, the Beatles say ‘no’ to destruction. There’s no point in dropping out because it’s the same there and it’s got to change. But I think it all comes down to changing your head and, sure, I know that’s a cliche.”
Q: “What would you tell a black-power guy who’s changed his head and then finds a wall there all the time?”
JOHN: “Well, I can’t tell him anything ‘cuz he’s got to do it himself. If destruction’s the only way he can do it, there’s nothing I can say that could influence him ‘cuz that’s where he’s at, really. We’ve all got that in us, too, and that’s why I did the ‘Out, and In’ bit on a few takes and in the TV version of ‘Revolution’– ‘Destruction, well, you know, you can count me out, and in,’ like yin and yang. I prefer ‘out.’ But we’ve got the other bit in us. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I was in his position. I don’t think I’d be so meek and mild. I just don’t know.”
Daily Tribune staff photo by Gary Malerba “Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?” As though acting out the lyrics to a Beatles song (above), Jeremy Treece of Romulus cozies up to Lexie Arnold of Allen Park as the couple looked at sheets of lyrics during the VIP preview of “Come Together: The Artwork of John Lennon” Wednesday evening at the Baldwin Theatre in Royal Oak.
ROYAL OAK – “You say it’s your birthday? It’s my birthday too, yeah …” John Kenyon, 66, of Rochester Hills, could have legitimately sung that famed Beatles song Wednesday night at the preview of “Come Together: The Artwork of John Lennon.”
Presented by Yoko Ono and Stagecrafters and held at the Baldwin Theatre, the VIP and media opening of the show coincided with what would have been Lennon’s 62nd birthday had he not been shot and killed in 1980.
Kenyon shares the birthdate of the legendary musician, artist and poet, and celebrated the occasion by buying two limited-edition Lennon prints with his wife, Lorraine.
When The Beatles made their first landmark appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964, the Kenyons were celebrating their engagement party. Everyone at the party gathered around the TV to watch “The Fab Four.”
The couple has felt a certain kinship with the band ever since and own three pieces of Lennon art.
Their daughter, Jennifer of Pleasant Ridge, also attended the multi-media exhibit, which features film footage, music, original drawings, signed albums, estate pieces and children’s drawings.
Jennifer Kenyon said she was tempted to buy a piece and start a collection of her own.
“You sit there and watch the video and listen to the music, and you become entranced,” she said. “He’s so soulful, and you look at these pieces and you connect.”
According to promoter Larry Schwartz, the exhibit travels to about 20 cities a year to raise money for children’s charities. It’s the second time in three years the show has come to the Baldwin Theatre, with part of the proceeds funding Stagecrafters’ children’s theater programs.
Pieces on sale range in price from $150 for the unframed lyrics to “Little Flower Princess,” to $25,600 for a framed sketch of Lennon and Ono’s “Bed-In for Peace.”
Many of Lennon’s simple line drawings depict him and his life with Ono, and each is accompanied by a description of the inspiration behind the work.
Lennon fans will likely find the exhibit enlightening whether or not they make a purchase.
A placard next to lyrics for “Dear Prudence” explains Lennon wrote the song for Prudence Farrow, the sister of actress Mia Farrow. The Farrows and The Beatles studied under the Maharishi in Rishikesh at the same time, and when Prudence spent too long in meditation, Lennon implored her: “Won’t you come out to play?”
The song “Julia” was a tribute to Lennon’s mother who was killed in car accident in 1958. She bought Lennon his first guitar and taught him how to play.
Lennon wrote “Imagine,” the famous solo song that describes his desire for world peace, on a paper bag while attending a play in London.
Many of the 200 VIP buyers who attended the sneak preview described a personal connection to Lennon’s work.
Paul and Eran Chuhran have the lyrics to “Grow Old With Me” hanging next to their wedding portrait. The couple came from Trenton for the exhibit, and considered delaying a kitchen renovation to buy another piece.
“We didn’t want to miss it,” Chuhran said.
Ann Arbor resident Michelle Spornhauer said she was named after The Beatles song “Michelle,” and purchased the lyrics to “I’m Losing You,” when the show was in Ann Arbor last year.
Waterford resident Lynne Boyens bought her boyfriend Stephen Schmitt the lyrics to “Steppin’ Out” for Christmas because the song reminds him of living in Manhattan near the Dakota, the New York City apartment building where Lennon wrote the song and where he was shot.
“I don’t think there’s anyone who can’t relate to everything that’s here,” Boyens said of the exhibit.
Carl Gustafson and Doug Gunnette, both guitarists from Royal Oak, attended the show together and said The Beatles’ music has influenced theirs.
“How could it not?” Gunnette asked.
While he splurged for a colorized portrait of Lennon, his friend settled for a golf shirt emblazoned with a small “Imagine” logo, chosen from among the T-shirts and other merchandise on sale.
Royal Oak Downtown Manager Jerry Detloff, who volunteered to work at the exhibit and described himself as a die-hard Lennon fan, also considered purchasing a piece. Detloff said “Nowhere Man,” which he bought two years ago, always provokes a smile because of what it represents.
“To me, the message is simple, about peace and love and living in harmony. It’s so evident in his music and you can see it in his artwork,” Detloff said, adding that it’s an honor Ono hand-picked Royal Oak as a destination for the exhibit, even though she will not make an appearance here.
“It means so much. What we feel is such an asset here in this town are the arts and culture,” he said. “It’s a chance to own a piece of history.”
“Come Together: The Artwork of John Lennon” will be open 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday at the Baldwin Theatre, 415 S. Lafayette. A $2 donation is suggested. For more information, call (888) ART-1969 or visit www.johnlennonartwork.com.
I, JOHN WINSTON ONO LENNON, a resident of the County of New York, State of New York, which I declare to be my domicile do hereby make, publish and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all other Wills, Codicils and Testamentary dispositions by me at any time heretofore made.
FIRST: The expenses of my funeral and the administration of my estate, and all inheritance, estate or succession taxes, including interest and penalties, payable by reason of my death shall be paid out of and charged generally against the principal of my residuary estate without apportionment or proration. My Executor shall not seek contribution or reimbursement for any such payments.
SECOND: Should my wife survive me, I give, devise and bequeath to her absolutely, an amount equal to that portion of my residuary estate, the numerator and denominator of which shall be determined as follows:
1. The numerator shall be an amount equal to one-half (1/2) of my adjusted gross estate less the value of all other property included in my gross estate for Federal Estate Tax purposes and which pass or shall have passed to my wife either under any other provision of this Will or in any manner outside of this Will in such manner as to qualify for and be allowed as a marital deduction. The words “pass”, “have passed”, “marital deduction” and adjusted gross estate” shall have the same meaning as said words have under those provisions of the Untied States Internal Revenue Code applicable to my estate.
2. The denominator shall be an amount representing the value of my residuary estate.
THIRD: I give, devise and bequeath all the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, wheresoever situate, to the Trustees under a Trust Agreement dated November 12, 1979, which I signed with my wife YOKO ONO, and ELI GARBER as Trustees, to be added to the trust property and held and distributed in accordance with the terms of that agreement and any amendments made pursuant to its terms before my death.
FOURTH: In the event that my wife and I die under such circumstances that there is not sufficient evidence to determine which of us has predeceased the other, I hereby declare it to be my will that it shall be deemed that I shall have predeceased her and that this, my Will, and any and all of its provisions shall be construed based upon that assumption.
FIFTH: I hereby nominate, constitute and appoint my beloved wife, YOKO ONO, to act as the Executor of this my Last Will and Testament. In the event that my beloved wife YOKO ONO shall predecease me or chooses not to act for any reason, I nominate and appoint ELI GARBER, DAVID WARMFLASH and CHARLES PETTIT, in the order named, to act in her place and stead.
SIXTH: I nominate, constitute and appoint my wife YOKO ONO, as the Gurdian of the person and property of any children of the marriage who may survive me. In the event that she predeceases me, or for any reason she chooses not to act in that capacity, I nominate, constitute and appoint SAM GREEN to act in her place and stead.
SEVENTH: No person named herein to serve in any fiduciary capacity shall be required to file or post any bond for the faithful performance of his or her duties, in that capacity in this or in any other jurisdiction, any law to the contrary notwithstanding.
EIGHTH: If any legatee or beneficiary under this will or the trust agreement between myself as Grantor and YOKO ONO LENNON and ELI GARBER as Trustees, dated November 12, 1979 shall interpose objections to the probate of this Will, or institute or prosecute or be in any way interested or instrumental in the institution or prosecution of any action or proceeding for the purpose of setting aside or invalidating this Will, then and in each such case, I direct that such legatee or beneficiary shall receive nothing whatsoever under this Will or the aforementioned Trust.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have subscribed and sealed and do publish and declare these presents as and for my Last Will and Testament, this 12th day of November, 1979.
/s/John Winston Ono Lennon
THE FOREGOING INSTRUMENT consisting of four (4) typewritten pages, including this page, was on the 12th day of November, 1979, signed, sealed, published and declared by JOHN WINSTON ONO LENNON, the Testator therein named, as and for his Last Will and Testament, in the present of us, who at his request, and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, have hereunto set our names as witnesses.
(The names of the three witnesses are illegible.)
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We were in a taxi in Managua when we first heard the news. It was the morning after. “Se murio John Lennon” said the radio. Thinking back on it, we hadn’t reacted immediately. For one thing, our Spanish wasn’t so good at the time, and we hadn’t heard the rest of the story. When we got back to the place where we were staying, a young British guy said, “I’ve got some horrible news.” “There’s a U.S. invasion?” I recall saying. I remember that he, I don’t know, smiled ruefully or something, and said “No. John Lennon’s dead.” I slumped against the wall. So we had heard right on the radio. I’d sort of suppressed it, naw that can’t be. I mean, Lennon. The person whose music I loved more than anyone’s, then and now. Lennon, someone who was capable of seeing and saying truth. Shea and I would say, speculating on the looming future, well no matter what happens, at least we’ll have Lennon to go through it with. The four U.S. churchwomen had been murdered (after torture and rape) by the Salvadoran military six days before. We’d been to a memorial ceremony for Sr. Maura Clark, “La angela de abierto tres”, the barrio in which she’d worked for fifteen years. For days after Lennon’s murder, the radio played Lennon & Beatles music. That was it, it was a looming…the spirit in Nicaragua was still high, the Revolution still a toddler at a tender 17 months, lots of building going on, talking, organizing. The contra war was still a premonition. I remember very clearly coming back to the U.S. after that — the first night back, in our apartment, full of friends, buzzing about the trip, the radio’s on to NPR, and here’s a clip of Reagan, on the verge of taking power: we’re going to stop Communism in its tracks in Central America, he said. The maw of the future gaped, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans about to be devoured by the monster while we did whatever we could to pull it off them. Somewhere in the shadows figures sat around a table, planning strategy to deal with the predictable domestic response…
It was more than a decade later when a friend who knew of my love for Lennon showed me a copy of Who Killed John Lennon?, she’d found it in her local library. The book (St. Martin’s Press, 1988, now out of print) was written by the British newspaper reporter Fenton Bresler, who was, and I believe remains, the only person ever to investigate Mark David Chapman. There was never a police investigation, and since Chapman pled guilty and refused (despite his lawyer’s entreaties) to plead insanity, there was no trial. The first part of the book makes the case that the CIA is capable of “programming” an assassin, and while it might be a bit weak, there’s plenty of other evidence that if not, it wasn’t for want of trying (see, e.g., The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: the CIA and the Cult of Mind Control by ex-State Department suit John Marks) — but the evidence he presents regarding Chapman is compelling: his early experience with psychedelics; his turn to Jesus; his involvement with the YMCA (identified by Philip Agee, in CIA Diary, as a favored source of Company recruits at least, in Ecuador in the sixties); his tours of duty in Beirut in 1975(!) followed by a stint in a Vietnamese refugee camp at Fort Chaffee immediately following the fall of Saigon (a camp, incidentally, run by World Vision, widely accused of CIA collaboration); his lack of interest in Lennon or the Beatles (he liked Todd Rundgren); his abhorrence of violence; his friendship with a Georgia sheriff’s officer who gave him the hollow-point bullets he used to kill Lennon …
But what’s missing from Bresler’s account is what has convinced me that he is right, and that is the motive. Bresler only asserts that it was Lennon’s likely re-entry into political life in general — he was about to win U.S. citizenship — that motivated his assassination by some agency of our government. But after a decade of Central America solidarity work I am absolutely convinced that Lennon was a victim of the U.S. government’s counter-revolutionary war in Central America. Remember: Lennon died six days after the four U.S. churchwomen. The mass murder by the military and their allied death squads in El Salvador was just at its exponential upstroke, and the contra war in Nicaragua was just being launched. Reagan had just won the election, not yet taken office, and his “transition team” was at the helm. There can be no doubt that a major item (probably the major item) on their agenda was their war in Central America, and thus there had to be some consideration paid to the management of the domestic opposition, which was already active and getting stronger: after all, they must have foreseen that they were about to massacre several hundred thousand people in our own “backyard” and there would be a predictable resistance (and as is now public knowledge, the Reagan Administration was to infiltrate and subvert CISPES and other solidarity organizations). In my view, Lennon would have been seen as the individual with the greatest power – and perhaps, greatest inclination – to galvanize the popular movement (imagine – more to the point, imagine these creeps imagining -what the demonstrations might have looked like had Citizen Lennon helped to popularize the cause). It doesn’t even matter whether or not Lennon had any intention of getting involved at the time of his murder (and there’s no evidence he was; he and Yoko did have tickets to fly to San Francisco to participate in a demonstration, but it involved supporting immigrant workers, not Central America) it was only necessary that the Forces of Darkness felt it was possible Lennon might take up the cause. Why not? If they did it right, Chapman himself would never realize he was being manipulated, so what did they have to lose? It was only after years of work in the solidarity movement and many more trips to the region, demonstrations, etc. that I became convinced that Lennon was assassinated to pre-empt the potential trouble he might make for their war. I think Bresler didn’t get this because he probably didn’t appreciate the intensity of their war effort. But they had a motive.
So it’s my contention that the bad guys got away with it, free and clear, and I’d like to see that corrected, if nowhere else then in the popular imagination. Even if there’s not going to be justice, at least it might be possible to put the notion that some agency of our government was responsible for John Lennon’s death on a comparable footing to that of the JFK matter.
So this is Xmas And what have you done Another year over And a new one just begun And so this is Xmas I hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young
A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let’s hope it’s a good one Without any fear
And so this is Xmas For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones The world is so wrong And so happy Xmas For black and for white For yellow and red ones Let’s stop all the fight
A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let’s hope it’s a good one Without any fear
And so this is Xmas And what have we done Another year over A new one just begun And so happy Xmas We hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young
A very Merry Xmas And a happy New Year Let’s hope it’s a good one Without any fear War is over, if you want it War is over now
