A complete file of my notes on Jann Wenner's interview with John Lennon for Rolling Stone

1. Notes on ‘Lennon Remembers’ (2000) by Jann S. Wenner (January
Wenner)
This is a transcript of an interview with John Lennon by Jann Wenner who
was editor of Rolling Stone magazine when the interview was published, over
two issues of the magazine. At the time, many stoned freaks would have
ploughed their way through the dense type over many pages of the magazine
for the two issues. It epitomised the difference between Rolling Stone and
its contemporaries, IT (International Times) and Oz. The latter two papers
would be lighthearted with cartoons and tips on growing cannabis at home.
After many years of being straight, it remained quite a task to read through
this compendium of the two parts of the interview. With hindsight of the
passed years, you get a better understanding of where John was coming
from. Many subjects he talks about relate to the twenty-teens obsession
with fame and personality. His descriptions of his times to 1971 are clearer
by looking back over the years, the careers of the other Beatles, the deaths
of John himself and George, and the zeitgeist he details with his own
philosophy and personality.
A visit to Liverpool will allow you to go on a Beatles Tour. Not only is it
helpful to see local places such as Strawberry Field, Penny Lane and places
referred to in song lyrics, you can see the Beatles home territory. The posh
places where Brian Epstein and his family lived. The houses where the
Beatles lived. John had connections to a business in the family. Paul’s Mum
was a stalwart of the local health community. George and Ringo lived in
terraced houses. The places where the Fab Four were mobbed even in 1963
shortly after they hit the charts. The houses they bought for their parents
and family once they had made it rich: the stories about John arriving in his
flower-painted Rolls Royce.
A visit to some of their early haunts puts the context of their youth culture
allegiance. A drummer before Ringo was Pete Best. The group played at the
Casbah Coffee Club which you can still visit. It’s in the basement of a
detached house in its own garden. The Cavern Club was demolished, the
Casbah remains. Pete Best’s Mum owned the Casbah and his brother Roge will
now give you a quality tour of the place and tell you how the Best family was
involved in the starred trajectory of the Beatles. Many people will associate
the Beatles with the Swinging Sixties, with Swinging London, the Union Jack
Mods. However, they were Rockers in Liverpool. They would play all the rock

2. and roll songs associated with leather jackets, crash helmets, and
motorcycles such as AJS, Norton, Matchless, Francis Barnett, Ariel Arrows,
BSA, and so on. They were Rockers, not Mods. Yet a few months later they
would be hip, members of My Generation alongside the Kinks, the Small
Faces, The Who, and the Rolling Stones. They would be playing on Top of the
Pops on TV to an audience of mini-skirted girls and boys with backcombed
hair. In 1967 they would don the late Mod uniform of antique military
uniforms for the cover of Sergeant Pepper. John really throws into relief
this change, puts it in his personal context.
Another interesting feature of John’s interview is his references to
paranoia, in the 21st
century definitely associated to mental illness. So it’s
good that John discusses this readily and openly, to talk is something still an
aspiration only for many affected by mental illness and the accompanying
stigma in modern times. John talks about drug use, and it’s far and away not
what the average pop fan or pot-head thought was going on. For pot-heads it
was that cannabis was a soft drug, not addictive like heroin or cocaine. So
the drug use that John relates to that time, of thousands of LSD trips and
sniffing H, and other stuff, is way beyond what was in the public domain at
the time.
‘Forward’ by Yoko Ono, July 2000: Yoko starts by saying John would have
loved new media and the internet. She says John was a punk before Sid
Vicious came on the scene with the Sex Pistols a few years after this
interview. John uses ‘politically incorrect’ terms and had married Yoko who
was ‘eight years older,’ and a Jap, or a Chink, or a Bitch. There was an ugly
caricature of Yoko with John on her leash in the press. John hits back at
these attacks, and Yoko is his sidekick laughing at the right and wrong times.
Introduction to the New Edition by Jann S. Wenner, July 2000: This
was originally published in 1971. It’s candid and a running commentary of
John’s fresh and urgent matters, and Rolling Stone is a public outlet for the
couple. Jann restates that the Beatles were ‘more popular than Jesus’, which
did not go down well everywhere, particularly in parts of the States. John
had just been through Primal Scream Therapy with the practitioner Arthur
Janov, and Rolling Stone magazine remained a vehicle for John. Johns says
this : One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were.
(Me: what a statement, and crucial to where John was at and how to
understand him.) John can’t think of anything to ameliorate that fact. Jann

3. asks about the track ‘When I’m 64’. Coincidentally I have just turned 64 in
writing this summary. All proceeds from John’s interview will go to gun
control.
Introduction (to the interview) by Jann S Wenner, San Francisco 1971:
The interview took place in December 1970, and Jann mentions John’s
humour and Arthur Janov, who he now denounces. (Primal therapy with Dr
Janov was just a fad.) This was an early interview after the break up of the
Beatles and John is described as the group’s leader. Jann mentions that his
publication, Rolling Stone magazine, featured the ‘Two Virgins’ picture in an
edition in 1968 - that was of John and Yoko. Once when Jann attempted to
interview John, he could not do that as John was ‘too paranoid.’ John saw
Janov in LA and Jann met him at that time (1970). John, Yoko, and Jann and
his wife saw a private screening of ‘Let It Be’, a film record of the last days
of the Fab Four.
Index of this summary:
Page 3: Where John is at
Page 4: Beatles music and John’s solo work
Page 6: The breakup of the Beatles, and John is a genius
Page 7: John talks about Yoko, and Peace and appearing in bags
Page 9: John talks about LSD
Page 10: John talks about Beatles films
Page 11: Shall we go on?
Page 11: John talks about Brian Epstein and business
Page 11: The Beatles early days in London
Page 12: John talks about drugs
Page 12: John talks about aspects of life with Yoko, and Music
Page 15: John on the album ‘Let It Be’
Page 16: John on his public
Page 19: The interview winds up
THE INTERVIEW:
In this first section, John discusses some issues around where he is at.
(Page 1 in the book.)
There’s an ice-breaker chat about John’s new LP ‘Plastic Ono Band’ which was
his first album after the official break up of the Beatles. They talk about

4. recording techniques and John says he likes to do just one take rather than
laying down a backing track which is how the Beatles used to start recording.
John has finished some tracks in California with some tracks appearing over
a time. John and Yoko began Primal Scream Therapy in April 1970 and Jann
suggests this is the first primal album. John doesn’t confirm that, saying
George (Harrison - Beatle) has an album out and is that Gita. (The Beatles
were with the Maharishi in India in 1967 and now John’s with Janov in 1970.
Yoko explains this.) John says Primal Therapy works well but it’s not going to
be a big thing like the Maharishi was. There will be multiple influences. He
states that therapy has not made him a better singer. John liked working
with Yoko and Phil Spector and has a studio at home. John states that Yoko
can produce rock and roll and she is a valid part of what he does now.
Including in the studio. Jann suggests the track on the album Imagine,
‘Working Class Hero,’ is like an early Bob Dylan acoustic track. John says
that is natural because they are both singing with an acoustic guitar. On his
new album, John says he is not embarrassed when he listens to it, only
sometimes. When an album is due for release, John can’t bear to hear it.
John’s made his decisions on which take of a song to use.
John talks about the musical side of the Beatles and his solo work (Page
7 in the book):
Jann quotes ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain’ from the song
‘God’. John says we need lots of Gods. They talk about the producing styles
of George Martin and Phil Spector. John tells how much of a part the
Beatles played in producing some of their albums. George Martin is more
Paul’s (McCartney) style of music. Phil Spector made some special
contributions to John’s album. John thinks the album is the best thing he’s
done, and traces his progress through some songs. John says the only true
songs he wrote were ‘Help!’ and ‘Strawberry Fields.’ He says the lack of
imagery on Imagine is because there was no hallucination. Yoko and John say
there is no bullshit. John says he was influenced by psychedelia but really he
likes rock & roll. Currently he likes ‘I Hear You Knocking’ and ‘Spirit In The
Sky.’ (Current singles). John’s unclear what ‘litany’ means but talks about the
beginning of ‘God.’ John says he doesn’t believe in I Ching or the Bible, and
Jann mentions ‘don’t believe in Beatles.’ John says ‘The dream is over’. It’s
a generational thing. John says he refers to Bob Dylan as Zimmerman (his
born name) in ‘God’ because Dylan is bullshit compared to his born name. God
is the most played track on the radio (me: but not in 2015 or 1995 when you

5. never heard it at all.) Jann asks about the track ‘My Mummy’s Dead’ and
John says that’s what’s happened. (On a Beatles Tour you will see the
stretch of road where John’s formerly estranged mum, Julia, was killed by a
car. John doesn’t go into explanations of this during the interview.) John
talks about other tracks, which go into pain, ‘Yer Blues’ and ‘I’m So Tired’.
His old track ‘Cold Turkey’ was about when he wanted to die in the
Maharishi camp. ‘Yer Blues’ parodied the white middle classes playing black
blues, and Americans doing the same. On stage, the Beatles deliberately
avoided moving like Elvis, but Mick Jagger reinvented that type of
movement. In Hamburg in the early days, 1962 and 1963, the Beatles were
rebels, smashing up stuff like The Who did later. After six or seven hours
playing there was nothing else to do. Yoko states that if John falls in love, it
doesn’t have to be a person, it’s the artistic outcome from that love that’s
important, not the relationship. They talk about screaming on records - is it
all from Janov and Primal Scream? No - go back to old records like ‘Twist
and Shout’ or ‘Cold Turkey’: there was lots of screaming there. John says
don’t confuse the therapy with the music. John points to Yoko’s song on
the flip side of ‘Cold Turkey,’ to see what she’s doing. He says her singing is
20 years ahead of its time, fantastic. On ‘Cold Turkey’, John announced it at
a concert as a song about pain. Pain came before Janov. Is John now less
paranoid? - No, but he feels his own pain and fear. On heroin, John never
injected, but it was fun. They sniffed to cope with pain. People ignored Yoko,
so they took H because of the pain. (The average hippy or Mod didn’t know
this - it was all about peace, love, and legalise cannabis because it’s a soft
drug and not addictive.) Although John has produced his own stuff, Phil
Spector brought a lot of energy and taught John things. On Sgt Pepper, Paul
says ‘come and see the show’ while John says ‘I read the news today, oh boy.’
At that time John was very paranoid, could hardly move. John threw up
before his show in Toronto, he was ‘full of junk.’ He was ‘full of shit.’ He is
always nervous before appearing in public. (Perhaps social anxiety disorder
which has aspects of public performance?) John doesn’t want to hurt
George’s feelings about his album, but he thinks it’s better than Paul’s, which
he thinks is rubbish. John states his personal tastes as rock & roll. (Me: like
they were back at the Casbah Club in Liverpool, with the Rockers and Teds.)
That is what inspired John; no group has ever done better that Jerry Lee
Lewis and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.’ John says right now (in 1970) there
are lots of great musicians and guitarists, but nothing’s going on.
Bullshitters are going for excellence, while John considers himself to be in

6. the avant garde of rock & roll. John says Dylan’s new album (New Morning) is
the same as McCartney’s, it’s no different, it’s a myth, and he hasn’t followed
Dylan since he stopped rocking. All Bob has done is sing lower not higher - it
doesn’t mean a f*cking thing- and John prefers Dave Edmunds’ single right
now. What does George now think of John? John doesn’t know, he may be
the opposite of George’s Gita, but John will not change from this. (Where
he’s at now.) John says the whole group believed the Beatles myth, but in
fact they were just a band that made it very big, and John also says their
best work was never recorded. (John states this and elsewhere in the
interview he states that he is more than a musician, he is a unique genius of a
leader.) John says there was no-one to touch the Beatles in Liverpool,
Hamburg and other places when they played rock. When Brian Epstein
became their manager, they sold out:- got the stylised Beatles suits, they
reduced two hours play to twenty minutes which they repeated every night.
Beatles music itself died then. After that they became efficient recording
artists. John rates himself as a guitarist, as a rhythm man with some feeling.
What of George? - he’s OK but John prefers ‘meself’. John mentions Richie
Havens at the Isle of Wight concert playing just one chord, a black guy who
sang ‘Strawberry Fields.’ Eric Clapton thinks John can play, and Paul gave
John a solo guitar spot on ‘Get Back.’ George is the invisible singer, John is
the invisible guitarist. Ringo is seldom mentioned, but is now when John says
Ringo’s record is good but John wouldn’t buy it. John again talks about selling
out, he doesn’t like many of the Beatles records but they made money, he
likes different stuff.
John talks about the end of the Beatles and that he is a genius: (Page
23 in the book)
Jann mentions the viewing of John and Yoko and Jann and his wife, of the
film ‘Let It Be’. John says the film was set up by Paul for Paul. He says that
after Brian Epstein died from an overdose, three of them became sidemen
for Paul. He says the group then went round in circles as Paul ‘led’. It just
became a job for John. The group was with the Maharishi in Wales when
the news of Brian’s death broke and John condemns the Maharishi’s
attitude and saying ‘be happy.’ John thought: We’ve f*cking had it. John is
careful what he says about Paul, but likens him to a parent saying: be
thankful to me for keeping it going. However, John says Paul kept it going
for his own sake. Paul said let’s make a record and they all went along. He and
George went along with Paul’s idea for the Magical Mystery Tour movie.

7. John’s songwriting partnership with Paul ended about 1962, and he can detail
who wrote which songs and which lines. All their best early work was written
together. ‘One After 909’ was an early rocker from Liverpool for the group
which John wrote at age seventeen. The record companies would say to make
an album and they would get together and write some songs, for a job. It
was George’s idea to go to India. John wrote ‘Sexy Sadie’ about the
Maharishi because he was making fools of them. While in India, there was a
sex scandal about the Maharishi and the group went to see the guru and
confront him. John said: we’re leaving. Why? - If you’re so cosmic, you will
know. Jann suggests that John was expecting too much from the Maharishi,
and John says he always does expect too much, like he’s expecting his
mother and doesn’t get her. (Julia was estranged from John when she
started a new relationship and he was brought up by hos aunt. Then when the
relationship was restored, she was killed in the road outside John’s aunt’s
house after a visit.) John then talks about the start of Apple Corp in 1967,
but can’t recall denouncing the Maharishi at that time. The Beatles opened
the Apple Store in the West End because they had to lose some money or
the taxman would have it. John had a role in the Apple business, but some of
the people in the office were reporting John’s activities back to Paul. John
and Yoko came up with the idea of giving everything away from the shop,
they didn’t need to f*ck about with that. The store giveaway was an event,
the start of events for the couple. (Probably the other three did not get
into events, or happenings such as other folk including Andy Warhol put on.)
Another event was when John gave back his MBE in the cause of Peace. Then
Yoko miscarried a child. The next event was the ‘War Is Over’ poster and
publicity campaign which they couple staged around Christmastime. John
came to the point where he told their business manager that he was leaving
the Beatles. Already the manager, Allen Klein, represented the three
Beatles but not Paul, so fault lines were there. John kept on disputing what
Paul wanted to do, then John just said ‘The group’s over. I’m leaving.’ The
others including Allen Klein were glad that John did not turn the end of the
Beatles into an event/happening. Jann asks John if he was angry with Paul,
and John says that while Paul is a good PR man, he (John) just went ‘I was
just - ‘sh*t!’’ Paul came back to John a few days after John said he was
leaving the group and said he was doing like John and Yoko, he was putting
out an album...and he too was leaving the group. The next day the papers said
Paul was leaving the group and John was cursing because he hadn’t done that,
or an event around it. Yoko joked that Paul had sold an album without a

8. message. Then John found out that the major shareholder in Northern
Songs (that held the copyright to Beatles records) had sold up. John says
this guy and George Martin had not made the Beatles, much as they liked to
think they had. The stake in Northern Songs was sold to Lew Grade, an
impresario of the time. John says he used people at this situation with
businessmen and bankers, he did a job on them. John makes situations that
benefit him. John said a little word here, a little word there...It’s just not
going around saying ‘God bless you brother, Hare f*cking Krishna.’ John now
says after working with genius for ten, fifteen years, they begin to think
they’re it. They’re not. John says if there is such a thing as a genius, he’s
it (p36). From an early age John realised he was either a genius or mad, and
as he hadn’t been put away, he must be a genius. John says he either had to
be married to Yoko or the group, and he chose Yoko. And he was right.
John talks about Yoko (book page 37) :
John met Yoko through an ‘underground clique’ in London. John Dunbar,
married to Marianne Faithful, had a gallery called Indica. There were
different exhibitions in different galleries featuring unknown or
underground artists. John heard about some woman putting on a show with
people in black bags (like punx?). At one exhibition there was an apple for
sale for £200 - he got the humour in her work right away. The good part for
John was a ladder leading to a painting hung on the ceiling. The focal point
was ‘yes’ not ‘no’ or ‘f*ck.’ John Dunbar introduced John to Yoko. She sought
funding from John for a show and she gave him a book. He funded her show
of ‘Half’ which was half a bed, half a room, etc (cf Damien Hirst’s half
animals in formaldehyde). John made a contribution to the art, but John
didn’t even go to see the show as he was uptight - maybe paranoia? John
then got ‘Breathe’ and ‘Dance’ cards through the door from Yoko. John went
to India with the Maharishi and they corresponded - he nearly took her with
him. When he got back and Cyn (his wife) was away Yoko came round and he
played her some far out tapes he’d made. They made a tape themselves and
made love at dawn. Jann asks John about their wedding and John says it’s all
in ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’, a song John wrote. Peace events : the first
Peace event was when they got married and had the Bed Peace in the
Amsterdam Hilton. There were rumours that John and Yoko would have sex
in front of the press, and all they got was ‘Peace, brother’ as they said at
the time. The headlines said about Peace. They chose Peace not Love because
the Beatles had done Love. They got reactions when some world leaders

9. planted acorns they sent out. Golda Mair of Israel, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia
and some Scandinavians planted theirs. They didn’t get a reply from Harold
Wilson, UK Prime Minister. Pierre Trudeau of Canada was interested in case
they represented a youth movement. They appeared in bags for James
Hanratty who was hanged for murder, to support his family who were out to
prove his innocence. They went to Vienna and didn’t get out of the bags. It
was a square place. What response did they get from the ‘War Is Over’
poster? They got a great response from other than pop fans. Now they say
‘Good luck with the Peace thing,’ they don’t ask about ‘I Wanna Hold Your
Hand.’ That happened as John walked down a street in New York.
The other Beatles and Yoko (page 44 in the book):
John says the other Beatles despised and insulted Yoko from the beginning.
John says this statement might seem like he or Yoko is paranoid. Yoko says
they were too much in love to notice anything else. John says it’s only idiots
who blame Yoko or Allen Klein or anyone else for the Beatles’ breakup. Why
should Yoko take that sh*t from anyone - John. John doesn’t care about any
sh*t about Hare Krishna or anything - he can’t forgive Paul and George for
the way they treated Yoko, how they openly insulted her. John says the
others will do just what he’s done recording-wise in time. They are imitators.
John’s next thing may be a Little Richard scat. John mentions Billy Preston
joining the group from time to time (he played keyboards), they could have
tried other things but it didn’t work. John decided to leave the group
because it was artistically defunct. On his latest record John uses other
musicians and Ringo - because Ringo knows instinctively where to go next.
John wanted the Beatles to be bigger than Elvis because he was the biggest
and John wanted to be the biggest. First of all John wanted to be the
biggest songwriting partnership, then it was to be bigger than Elvis. Jann
says John refers to ‘The dream is over’ in the song ‘God’ (page 48). John says
if there is a god, we’re all it. (Me: very much ‘it’s all energy, man’ - it’s all one
thing including God and the cosmos.) Spiritual reactions: John refers to a
writer in The Times who intellectualised the Beatles, which did the group a
lot of good. John Lennon is God: that probably came about after acid (LSD)
and that’s when the records started to have a message: ‘The word is love.’
‘You tell us guru’ - the guru was John. Yoko says Strawberry Fields is a
message.
John talks about LSD (page 49 of the book):

10. He relates how it was a dentist that got them into acid, at a dinner party
without telling them. They didn’t realise it was different from pot or pills.
John says it was ‘insane going around London on acid.’ ‘Let’s break a window -
we were insane.’ They thought there was a fire in a lift - it was just a little
light. They had been given a Micky Finn. John describes hallucinating and
likens the effect to opium taken in the days of Blake. John was pretty
stunned for a month or two after that. They were having fun like in Ken
Keysey’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, with George and Patti Boyd. They were
having jokes and John was also always doing speed (amphetamines.) That
first trip, John was doing a lot of drawing. The second trip, in L.A., was
different. They took acid (LSD) deliberately that time. They took acid at a
house they were staying at: George, Ringo, John, and some of the Byrds,
Crosby and McGuinn. There were lots of reporters around at the time. John
thought they would be found out, and how can they act normal? Peter Fonda
was there and kept saying: I know what it’s like to be dead. So John
incorporated that line into ‘She Said She Said’ on the Revolver album. (Ed:
Revolver came out in 1966, and at that time the youth culture awareness of
drugs and famous groups taking drugs told a completely different version to
John’s version of 1966. People just did not know, even the popular press had
not gone sensational on this topic.) John says after that he took a thousand
trips on acid. Only once, by mistake, did he take it in the studio. John had to
leave the studio, George Martin was looking at him funny. George (Harrison)
also took a lot of acid, and Paul took some acid, and John thinks it profoundly
shocked him. John stopped taking acid because of bad trips. He then started
again before he met Yoko, and John got a message on acid to destroy his
ego. One of Timothy Leary’s books said that ego death is coming to you. Acid
was only another mirror for John, as far as his music went. Jann Wenner
mentions ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on Revolver and John agrees that was
referencing acid. John says Rubber Soul (their 1965 LP) was about pot
(cannabis); their time in Hamburg (1962 and 1963) was about pills; and drink
influenced them. Nothing specific. As he just mentioned, John wrote ‘She
Said She Said’ with ‘I know what it’s like to be dead’ because Peter Fonda
had come out with that.
John talks about the Beatles’ films (page 55 in the book):
John says there is another misconception that ‘Hard Day’s Night’ was a
creation by Brian Epstein (the group’s manager) and Dick Lester (who
directed the film.) John thinks the film wasn’t bad. Another collaborator was

11. Alun Owen who John saw as a phoney, a professional Liverpool man, who
characterised the Fab Four in a truly glib way. John restates that the people
involved behind the scenes did not make the film, did not make the group:
they were the ones creating. Jann tells John that many American musicians
saw ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and that the film made rock and roll OK. John
wasn’t aware of those impacts. The single of the time ‘Day Tripper’ was a
drug reference. Between Help! and Hard Day’s Night, John got into drugs.
For Hard Day’s Night John was on pills, speed, which he’d been on since he
was seventeen. Just before the film Help! The Beatles were turned on to pot
(cannabis) and dropped drink. John took more pills and drank more than the
others because he’s more crazy. ‘Day Tripper’ wasn’t a serious message song
but after they met Bob Dylan was probably when they started to write
message songs (maybe around the time of Rubber Soul LP in 1965 - Ed.) John
says their music was less aggressive when they dropped pills and alcohol for
pot. John can’t place the sequence of Rubber Soul and Revolver but puts
Rubber Soul as the album they are talking about. That’s when they got
better musically and took over the studio. Paul made the pun with Rubber
Soul, a bit like ‘Yer Blues’, it was English Soul, which four boys worked out
for their album title. Soul but not Soul.
Shall we go on? (page 59 in the book):
There is an interlude where Jann offers to stop for a while. Yoko stays, she
is indispensable for John, who vows not to give up real love for any
substitute, and groupie or business. When John was at his mansion in
Weybridge, he made lots of tapes and films. He thought: if it’s not Beatles
work, it’s not work. John just has to write songs, he can’t help writing them.
John talks about Brian Epstein (Beatles manager) and business (page 60
in the book):
John uses the term ‘fag’ to describe Brian’s gay identity and says he was
very insecure and threw tantrums. The only people the group hired were
driver/security guys from Liverpool, Brian hired everyone else. On tour one
room of the entourage was always full of whores and junk, and including
policemen. The road crew would manage all that, and John doesn’t want to go
further into that. John was even escorted from whorehouses by the police
to avoid scandals, and he won’t go into that to avoid hurting Yoko. Yoko says
she thought John might have had affairs before getting married. John
denies having an affair with Brian Epstein. John went on holiday with Brian

12. and watched him picking up boys (he again uses the term ‘fag’.) John says
Brian told him, don’t throw it in my face that I’m a fag (gay). And Brian
robbed them. John says the Beatles were f*cking big bastards. One of the
crew had a Christmas card with the line about ‘though I walk in the valley of
the shadow of death I fear no evil because I am the most evil bastard
there.’ Yoko asks how the Beatles then kept their clean image - it’s because
everybody wanted the clean image to carry on. John is giving Jann the dirt,
but a lot of it was great fun. Like Bob Dylan sang: ‘Don’t follow leaders.’
John talks about the early days in London (page 65):
They were firstly treated as provincials by the Cockneys. They were close to
the Rolling Stones, especially Mick and Brian (Jagger and Jones.) Brian Jones
just disintegrated in front of them, and yet when he dies they just said he
was another victim of the drugs. John calls Mick’s dancing and prancing on
stage ‘faggy’ and says that’s a joke, really. John thinks the Stones were a bit
jealous, and they brought out albums just like the Beatles, just after the
Fab Four, they were copying the Beatles. So it was ‘Let It Bleed’ from the
Stones right after ‘Let It Be’ from the Beatles. And of course after Sgt
Papper’s psychedelia, the Stones did ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request.’ John
resents that the Stones may be called revolutionaries and the Beatles
weren’t. John always admired the funky music and style of the Stones. He
liked the direction they took after they got over imitating the Beatles. John
mentions about ‘Wanna Be Your Man’, a rocker written for the Stones by the
Beatles. And Yoko says Mick said ‘Peace’ made money, which it didn’t. John
knew after they had made Sgt Pepper that it was a great album, and the
same for Rubber Soul and Revolver. John rode the critics and the group
would go when they wanted, not when the critics wanted, because they were
not a manufactured group and would not go just because ATV takes off their
latest series.
John talks about drugs and protection and rumour (page 69 in the book):
There was a rumour that George Harrison was in the same place as Mick and
Keith when they were busted for drugs, but got out. John doesn’t believe
that. Only on tour were the Beatles protected because everyone was paid
off on tour. John thinks nobody really bothered about the group, even when
Paul mentioned about acid in the press that was cool, even though it was an
admission of having drugs. John says in a song, ‘Don’t give me that brother,
brother,’ and that’s because he sick of all the aggressive hippes and the Now

13. Generation. He’s sick of their delusion of awareness by having long hair. John
is asked about Beatles song lyrics and mass murderer Charles Manson’s claim
to have been driven by the song ‘Helter Skelter,’ and that the song was
about was a message on the LP Abbey Road. John says that’s bullsh*t as was
the rumour that Paul was dead. They did a few things to see if people
noticed, like missing the odd beat or putting ‘tit-tit-tit’ in ‘Girl.’
John talks about aspects of life with Yoko (page 72 in the book):
John says they never agreed to give up their private lives, but they did
decide to dedicate marriage and their upcoming film, to Peace. John says his
daily life is about surviving. The couple want to promote Peace, but be human
too. John can’t estimate the public impact of events like the Bed-In during
their honeymoon. (From page 73): They have visited Yoko former husband,
Tony Cox, in Denmark. He brought in a hypnotist to stop them smoking
(tobacco) but it doesn’t work. Then the guy talks about being in a spaceship,
and John’s not so sure...There is a threat to put spells on everyone, and John
says all of them think they’re higher beings.
John talks about music (page 75 in the book):
He starts by saying if music is a better form of communication than talking,
and he may or may not have said that, then that’s true one minute and not
true the next. (Good reply, very Andy Warhol.) To make real rock & roll, we
need to stop being hyped by revolutionary image and long hair. Rock & roll is
so good because of the beat, it gets through to you. There is some talk
about Yoko and the group playing the same beat all the time, and John
talking about intellectualising rock and roll. John talks about the thirty years
of rock & roll, mentions ‘Tutti Fruiti’ and ‘Long Tall Sally’ (by Little Richard
and others). They have met someone in Greenwich Village who characterises
Dylan as singing one note, as if he’s just discovered that (implying John’s
always known that.) White middle-class jazz opposed to the blues - is the
blues simpler? - No, it’s real. (This is a theme of John’s.) He says it’s like
having chairs to sit in, not appreciate and admire the design of. Jann asks
about the breakout ‘Love Me Do.’ John says it didn’t do anything, in the early
days their songs were building their own chairs. The first gimmick was the
harmonica, mouth organ to John, and John refers to ‘Hey! Baby’ by Bruce
Channel and ‘I Remember You’ by Frank Ifield which had harmonica riffs.
They used harmonica on some early tracks as a gimmick and then they
dropped it. ‘It got embarrassing.’ In the early days at the Cavern, the group

14. used harmonica as a gimmick, with John the player. They used other tricks
on records. The first trick was double-tracking on the second album. The
recording crew did all the remixing after the group had laid down the tracks.
John would like to do a new remix and visit the early tracks, as the group
were better than they sound. On the big stadium concerts like the Hollywood
Bowl, John says he hated that era. If they were being recorded, it was
‘death,’ the group were so frightened. Jann refers to a previous interview
where John says a favourite song was ‘Ticket To Ride.’ He liked it because it
was new at the time, a new sound. On songs that Paul wrote:- John had
nothing to do with ‘Yesterday.’ John wrote half the lyrics for ‘Eleanor Rigby.’
John can’t remember when Paul showed him ‘Yesterday.’ John can’t think of
anyone who’s done any good versions of John’s songs. Ray Charles’ version of
‘Yesterday’ was OK. John doesn’t like Otis Reading’s version of ‘Day Tripper.’
John wrote ‘Nowhere Man’ (on Rubber Soul.) It may have been about him,
himself. John went through paranoia to get a song out, and that was it
(‘Nowhere Man.) Songs that were true Lennon-McCartney included ‘I Wanna
Hold Your Hand’ and ‘From Me To You,’ ‘She Loves You.’ ‘She’s So Heavy’ on
the so-called White Album (properly ‘The Beatles’) was about Yoko. ‘I want
you so bad, I want you.’ From the album Help! The track ‘You’ve Got Hide
Your Love Away’ was written at John’s mansion at Kenwood. At that time he
was just songwriting all the time. John mentions two of his books, Spaniard
In The Works and In His Own Write. These were his personal stories. The
songwriting John Lennon wrote for the ‘meat market.’ Their lyrics had no
depth, they were a joke. John wrote songs at Kenwood that included stuff to
let his wife Cynthia know he was having the affair with Yoko. These went on
to the Rubber Soul album. George had learned the sitar (in India) - he
learned a bit and it was dubbed on to the album. John wrote ‘In My Life’ at
Kenwood. There he had a bank of tape recorders on which he wrote far-out
stuff and ‘In My Life’ and ‘Universe’ emerged. He would just record himself
with vocals and guitar to get an impression and take it to the studio. Paul
helped with the middle eight on ‘In My Life’ and ‘Norwegian Wood’ : credit
where credit’s due. In ‘Girl’ John was trying to say something about
Christianity which he was opposed to at the time. Christianity:- because
John was brought up in the Church. Things like ‘you have to be tortured to
attain heaven’ (something also through Janov?) John didn’t believe that you
have to be tortured to attain anything, it just so happened that you were
tortured. One message was trash, that with Sgt Pepper you can play it
backwards, stand on your head or whatever. ‘I Am The Walrush’ on the B

15. side of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ (remember that video on Top Of The Pops?) the clue
is...that The Walrus is Paul McCartney. At the time, John was still in his love
cloud with Yoko, so why not be nice to Paul? John is now sick of reading that
Paul is the musician, that George is the philosopher, so where does John fit
in? John gets hurt. John recalls Frank Zappa who says: ‘Listen, you f*ckers,
this is what I did. I don’t care. I’m a f*cking artist, man.’ I’M A F*CKING
ARTIST, MAN. There’s a presumption that ‘I am the walrus’ means ‘I am
God’ but...it’s just poetry. The avant-garde always dedicate their work to
other avant-gardes. John likes the A-side of the LP Abbey Road but he
didn’t like that sort of pop opera, it’s junk. ‘Come Together’ was John’s song.
The Leary’s (of ‘Politics of Ecstasy) wanted John to write them a campaign
song, and their slogan was ‘Come together.’ However before the song, in the
office, John was writing ‘Give Peace A Chance.’ Yoko says ‘I wish you’d send
that to Timothy Leary.’ He never did that and ended up writing ‘Come
Together.’ The Leary’s are now suing because it’s like ‘You Can’t Catch Me.’
But it’s not Timothy that’s suing, it’s his people. ‘Instant Karma’ was great.
John wrote it in the morning on the piano and it was his first recording with
Phil Spector. He spoke to Phil and ‘Boom!’ in three takes it was done. The
Beatles became aware of stereo when they were starting to remix tracks
themselves. In the early days, the production team would present the group
with a track and say: that’s the finished thing. The group would say, where’s
the bass, and just be told: that’s how it is. Rubber Soul was the first album
where the Beatles took control (in 1965, three years after their first LP.)
What did John think of ‘Give Peace A Chance’? - He thought it was beautiful.
Personally, John is shy and aggressive. The job of John (and Yoko) is now to
write for the people. ‘Working Class Hero’ is a song about how the working
class - including John - get made into middle class. It’s a warning. Yoko says
it’s a fantastic song. John says it’s a song for the revolution. John hasn’t got
a feeling for what will make a Number One record, he thinks ‘Mother’ is
commercial (which it wasn’t.) People won’t just buy a record because Rolling
Stone magazine liked it, they have to hyped to buy the record. John writes
singles, all in the same way. But if John can get more sales singing about love
than Mother, he’ll do it. Yoko says it will open a door...John says it will open a
door for John Lennon. He is presenting himself to as broad an audience as he
can. The implications are that it’s money. John talks about him and Yoko
making singles and albums together. John says: I mean to sell as many
albums as I can, as many records as I possibly can, because I’m an
artist who wants everybody to love me and everybody to buy my stuff.

16. On the album, songs he plays guitar on, he wrote on guitar, songs he plays
piano on, he wrote on piano. John’s best ever songs: Walrus, Strawberry
Fields, Help! In My Life. Help! because it’s real - John meant it, the lyrics
are as good now as when he wrote it. That was with no acid, nothing...some
pot (cannabis) or whatever. John always hated ‘Run For Your Life’ as it was
phoney - ‘Girl’ is real.
John talks about the album ‘Let It Be’ (page 100 in the book):
The album came about because Paul said it was time to do something, a
record or film. John didn’t give a sh*t and was stoned all the time on heroin.
Paul had the idea to rehearse the songs and go for ‘perfection’ a la Simon
and Garfunkel, and John and George didn’t go for that, they were adults.
John says it was a dreadful feeling being in Twickenham studios with the
filming going on. They let Glyn Johns edit the tapes and just said : Here, do
it. None of them could be bothered going in to work on the music. They would
each get an acetate and discuss that on the phone, and let it out. There was
24 hours of tape and Glyn Johns edited that. It was ten, twenty, takes of
everything as Paul wanted everything rehearsed. The Phil Spector came on
the scene and he was given absolute crap from the recording sessions. He’d
always wanted to work with the Beatles. They did Abbey Road quickly,
putting out something to preserve the myth. As Paul made the suggestion,
John went along, he’s weak as well as strong. Paul wanted to show he was the
Beatles by bringing out the album McCartney. John thinks his new album will
scare Paul into doing something decent, because Paul is capable of doing
great work. But John wishes it was just John, the only one in the world.
P103.
John talks about his public (page 103 in the book):
Jann uses the terms ‘cripples’ and afflicted ‘people’ to ask about people who
come up to John to be cured. Some of these desperate people did things like
cut Ringo’s hair. John says there were always spaces for ‘cripples’ at his
concerts. John says he doesn’t know what to say, they were supposed to be
good. Every night when they opened up there would be, instead of kids,
cripples and blind people. They’d get touched going through corridors, it was
horrifying. It got to be an ‘in’ joke that the group would be curing these
folks. Also, the bigger the Beatles got, the more unreality they had, with
some mayor’s wife screaming at them because they didn’t shake her hand.
‘How dare they?’ Once an important American wanted the group woken up to

17. meet her, and threatened to tell the press if not. That threat to tell the
press for bad publicity was always there. Like sitting with the governor of
the Bahamas when they were making Help! And they were insulted by
jumped-up middle-class bitches and bastards commenting on their work and
manners. John was always drunk, insulting them. John says: You had to
completely humiliate yourself to be what the Beatles were. If John had
the capability to be something else, he would. It’s no fun being an artist, it’s
like writing - it’s torture. John resents performing for idiots who won’t ever
know anything - they live vicariously through John and other artists. A big
thing for John is that he wishes he was a f*cking fisherman. Did the Beatles
have an effect on the history of Britain? Nothing’s changed - there’s still
the bullshit bourgeois scene and there’s a lot of ‘fag f*cking middle class
kids with long hair and trendy clothes walking around London. And Kenneth
Tynan is making a fortune out of saying ‘f*ck.’ (Ed: No-one had used f*ck on
UK media until one late night in the 1960’s when Kenneth, a writer, was being
interviewed for the up-late audience. So it was a Friday or Saturday evening
on a TV channel. There were only 3 channels then in the UK,: ITV, BBC1 and
BBC2. Kenneth said ‘f*ck’ in a conversation with the interviewer in much the
same way that the Sex Pistols swore on the Bill Grundy early-evening show
some 10 years later.) The class system is going on as before, with arms being
sold to South Africa to kill blacks, people are living in poverty with rats
crawling over them. THE DREAM IS OVER (page 107.) It’s just the same
as always, except John is 30 and a lot of people have long hair. The Now
Generation are getting jobs and all that. John is in a minority. John says:
We’re talking about social revolution in England. His music has nothing to do
with George Harrison’s. By the time John got to the US, he could handle any
press because he had already dealt with the British press, who were the
toughest going. John says the real hip people are the Beatles and Mick
Jagger. They laughed at America except for black music. The only whites
they dug were Californian surfer musicians Jan and Dean. While the Beatles
were listening to underground sounds in Liverpool, Eric Burdon and the
Animals in Newcastle and Mick Jagger in London, were the only others doing
the same. They thought they were coming to the country of the origin of
blues, but nobody wanted to know about it. The track ‘Revolution:’ John says
there are three tracks including ‘Revolution 9.’ John did two of the tracks
while the other Beatles were on holiday. When they got back, the others
said John’s tracks weren’t good enough so they put out ‘Hey Jude,’ which
John says was an OK track. John however wanted to say his piece about

18. revolution and the Vietnam was now that Brian Epstein was gone. John
doesn’t want to die in a violent revolution. Revolution 9 - the 9 was a joke
about John’s birthday on the 9th
, and it was his lucky number. The reference
in ‘Revolution’ about Chairman Mao...don’t wind up Mao but now John is
beginning to think Mao is doing a good job. A revolution will be like an
earthquake, and John would be open to that change, when you could just go
out and steal or do what the blacks do...if he was 17, John would be up for
that, what has he got to lose? If the world gets blown up, there would be no
more pain, a theme of John’s. John is going to live for the moment,
something they forgot on acid. Tracks on the album: John just did a rough
remix, straightaway. John has included ‘f*cking crazy’ on the album as that’s
how he talks. ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ is one of John’s favourite tracks
(white album.) ‘Lucy In the Sky’ is taken by some to mean LSD, but John
never intended that. A warm gun means you’ve just shot something. Sgt
Pepper was the best album, a peak, with him and Paul working together
especially on ‘A Day In The Life.’ John’s music is best on the White Album,
but Pepper was a peak. Yoko says John’s new album is a real peak, better
than anything else he has done. John agrees - it’s like Sgt Lennon. Yoko says
John is like ‘the message is the medium.’ Brian Jones - John can’t see why
the Stones kept on with him in the group, and the group were thinking of
doing an Apple Corp with Mick Jagger. Mick knows every lyric from every
song back to the 20’s. John’s like a jukebox of songs, Mick is even more so.
Mick understood all of John lyrics going way back. Allen Klein knew
everything about the Stones and the Beatles and John wanted him to handle
his dealings. John says Yoko is his advisor so he won’t get into any more
Maharishis. Was Ringo happy to go along? - what happened was the others
got a presentation from Allen. Someone said ‘let’s see Klein and John
Eastman together.’ They almost went with Eastman as manager. However
when Klein met Eastman, Eastman went ballistic. John says Eastman is like
Epstein, a capitalist. With this class aspect, Paul was impressed as he had
Picasso’s hanging up. John would not let an animal like Eastman near him,
someone who despised John through class differences. They think John’s a
guy who has just struck lucky, knowing Paul and all that. John doesn’t care
how Allen dresses, he’s a human being. John, George and Ringo said no to
Eastman, and the more they said ‘No!’, the more Paul said ‘Yes!’ John says
Eastman is a WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) Jew, the worst kind of
Jew on earth. (Definitely not a politically correct term in 2015, but liberal
John uses it in 1970.) There was an agreement to sign with Paul, who took

19. lots of time and made alterations to the text, which John says was a charade
- Paul couldn’t understand a legal document. Klein got a result for the three,
got the money. Yoko says that they are kind of proto-middle-class but that
as his song says, John is a ‘working class hero’ she has married. Paul then
started to say ‘speak to my lawyer, I don’t want to talk business.’ John says
they would have had Eastman over Klein except Eastman was such an animal,
and they they slag off the artist Willem de Kooning. John would kick and
burn a de Kooning. People were ripping off the group through Apple to the
tune of £18,000 to £20,000 a week (a big sum in 1970.) As soon as Allen
realised that John knew what was going on, they got lots and lots of money,
real money, and John’s not going to say exactly how much. The group has
been underpaid for years. Paul said something threatening to Ringo on the
phone one day, John says. John is careful about how to put out records in a
timely way to get the most sales. The Beatles would time record releases
with the Stones to maximise sales. Paul thought he was the Beatles, but none
of them were - all four of them were the Beatles. When Paul threatened
Ringo, that was the end for him. There is not a chance that they will record
again. In the early days, Paul was in the group to make it stronger. John let
George into the group. They had all sorts of drummers - the guys who
actually had a drum kit - and then Pete Best was in the frame as someone
who could go to Hamburg the next day. They were not the Beatles, John was
not the Beatles, John is John. John has written the lyric: Don’t believe in
Beatles. That means he does not believe in the Beatles myth. George has not
done his best work yet (All Things Must Pass was George’s triple LP.) John
can’t assess George’s talents, he doesn’t buy George’s records. John doesn’t
listen to records. He listens to the radio, and likes Neil Young and Elton
John. On FM you get some great sound, and there is no conclusion or
concept. On FM radio in New York you hear ‘My Sweet Lord’ (by George) all
the time. John likes Van Morrison, he’s an adopted American like Eric
Burdon. John is not stuck on James Taylor but he might grow on John, John
likes Creedence Clearwater. John wants to hear something that means
something to everyone, not just kids listening to wallpaper. (Wallpaper
1970.) John is not going up against Elvis, John is in the game of concept, and
philosophy, and ways of life, and whole movements of history. He doesn’t
care for good guitarists. Like Van Gogh, they are no more or no less than
John and Yoko. Rock just happens to be the media John was born into. John
was aware of his genius, so called, at age 8,9,10. He told his aunty: You’ve
thrown away my poetry and you’ll regret that when I’m famous. John was

20. always different. John’s deprivation and people trying to make him something
(like Paul) is what makes John like he is. John knows what Frank Zappa is
going through as a genius. Yoko says: after what John’s done with the
Beatles, you’d think he was satisfied, but actually...John says the Beatles was
nothing. John throws down the gauntlet to George Martin (producer), he
says come back in 20 years and see who’s doing what. Yoko is as important to
John as Paul and Dylan combined. It’s her mind and her work, what it means.
John admires Warhol, Zappa a bit, Fellini, and the NY-based group of artists
Fluxus. But John still loves Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Also Chuck
Berry and Bob Dylan. Acid makes you think: F*cking hell! At art school they
never taught about Marcel Duchamps (dadaist artist who said art will one
day be just pointing at something.) He despises art school for that. Warhol
is so original, although John does not dig the junkie fag scene. John talks of
Andy Warhol’s Heinz soup - it was Campbell’s soup, John!
The interview winds up:
John just could not retire. Singing is singing for people’s enjoyment, not
being able to hold notes. If John’s an old man he and Yoko can make
wallpaper together. Yoko didn’t split the Beatles, and she is far out. Has
anyone really understood Warhol and his films like 24 hours of sleep? People
can’t take Van Gogh because of the pain, and Yoko has pain. John’s great
popularity is because he copped out in the Beatle thing. John had a great
time with the Beatles - chicks, drugs, drink, power! He created, yes, but he
was in the party! It was fantastic. John came out of the sticks to take over
the world: London, Paris, everywhere. America is where it’s at - John should
have been born in Greenwich Village. Yoko says John is very New York, but
he says he is a f*cking cripple and can’t take it. He’s frightened of it, he
needs to go to the country. Liverpool as a port was less hick than other
places and it influenced his art. The sailors would go there with blues
records from America. George went to San Francisco and John was all for
living on Haight Ashbury. History will tell that it all went down in San
Francisco. Even in London they created something with Mick, Eric Burdon,
Brian Jones. (The Rolling Stones also listened to blues records.) With Dylan
it didn’t happen like that, when they met John was always too paranoid or
aggressive. John respected Dylan, but Paul did not, he was jealous. John sees
Dylan as a poet and as competition for John’s early poetry books, John didn’t
follow, he was always around and himself. The last time they met, they were
both wearing shades and on junk. They were in a movie together but John is

21. too frightened to see it. What will John do in London over the next three
months? John’s been worn out by New York. Does he have a vision of where
he’ll be when he’s 64, as the Beatles song says? Andrew was 64 years and 5
days when he began writing this summary.