Lennon

by Tim Riley

  With the birth of Sean in October 1975, life at the Dakota quieted down, and Gruen’s pictures of Lennon holding Sean show a smile breaking his face. There’s a fairy-tale aspect to Lennon’s Dakota years that bathes his second fatherhood period in a halo of goodness and light. Compared to his lifestyle as a Beatle, and his “lost weekend,” this period seems relatively calm: and while the lack of incident sends some biographers off on tangents, it’s just as plausible to believe that Lennon enjoyed serious downtime and took care of personal matters.

  Gruen stayed close, and now talks openly about how nurturing the John and Yoko myth meant finagling a more practical marital arrangement. “They were friends, they were married, and they figured out a way to make it work,” Gruen says. “They had decided to be friends rather than jealous lovers. . . . But he always emphasized: JohnandYoko is one word—they were a team.”2 And Gruen stresses this had as much to do with aesthetics as it did with parenthood. As with many other bohemian couples throughout the ages, the arrangement figured in intimate compromise that snubbed middle-class convention.

  Lennon hadn’t seen or heard from his father since the confrontation at Tittenhurst in 1970, after which Lennon revoked his allowance and lost touch again. But early in 1976, Alfred’s young wife, Pauline, contacted Lennon again through the Apple offices to let him know that Alfred had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Lennon immediately put a call through to the local hospital in March and had one last conversation with “that Alf.” According to Alfred’s autobiography, published by Pauline in 1991, John was full of cheer and apologies, saying, “How you doing, whacker? I’ve been very worried about you.”

  “Fifteen two,” Freddie responded, using one of his favorite non sequiturs. Lennon told his father about his new grandson, Sean, and promised they would meet one day. What must have passed through Lennon’s mind now as he spoke with his estranged father? “I’m sorry I treated you the way I did, Dad,” Pauline Lennon reports his saying. “I should never have gone to the head shrink. It was a big mistake.”

  “Forget it, John,” Alf replied. “It’s just bloody marvelous to talk to you again.” The next day, a huge bouquet of flowers arrived at the hospital with a note: “To Dad—Get well soon—With much love from John, Yoko and Sean.”3 Alfred Lennon died on April Fools’ Day, 1976, at the age of sixty-three, a month after their final talk. Lennon never spoke of this reconciliation to reporters.

  By 1976, rumors of a Beatle reunion sparked a bidding war between promoters, a renowned comedy gag, and a colossal opportunity missed. From Los Angeles, promoter Bill Sargent offered the Beatles a guarantee of $50 million to reunite for a single concert, which would fan out via closed-circuit television around the world. None of the Beatles responded. After a month, Sargent doubled his offer, promising payment upon signing. He proposed the Fourth of July as the date, the American Bicentennial. A British promoter, Mike Mathews, responded with an offer of £3 million and proceeds from the closed-circuit revenues, which he estimated at around £30 million.

  This gulf between the scale of American and British figures triggered a famous Saturday Night Live routine that aired on April 24, 1976, with producer Lorne Michaels offering them $3,000 to sing three songs. “If you want to give Ringo less, that’s up to you,” he quipped.4 Lennon happened to catch the show live at the Dakota with Paul and Linda McCartney, who were eager to see that evening’s SNL guests, former Lovin’ Spoonful singer-songwriter John Sebastian (enjoying a revival as the author of the theme song to the Welcome Back, Kotter sitcom) and Raquel Welch.

  It must have given John and Paul a boost, since they both talked admiringly about SNL’s spoof afterward as something they would have scrambled to be a part of. Only they were spent. “He [Paul] and I were watching it,” Lennon remembered, “and we went ha-ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we went down and we almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into the cab, but we were actually too tired.”5

  Staying at home must have felt right—Lennon started turning down all public appearances. Eager to keep the good vibe going, perhaps even do some writing, McCartney came back the next day with a guitar, but Lennon was stressed out and told him, “ ‘Please call before you come over. It’s not 1956, and turning up at the door isn’t the same anymore. You know, just give me a ring.’ That upset him, but I didn’t mean it badly. I just meant that I was taking care of a baby all day, and some guy turns up at the door with a guitar.”6 McCartney headed to Dallas, for more rehearsals with Wings for the forthcoming tour supporting Wings at the Speed of Sound.

  Michaels’s Saturday Night Live bit also goes down as the rock fates mocking parental fatigue. It would be the last time Lennon ever saw Paul McCartney.7

  Despite Lennon’s calmer home life, legal problems continued. He appeared in court in New York in the months following Sean’s birth to see through his defense of the Morris Levy suit surrounding opening lines borrowed from Chuck Berry and the Roots album Levy had hijacked to sell on late-night television. “The reason I fought this,” Lennon said, “was to discourage ridiculous suits like this. They didn’t think I’d show or that I’d fight it. They thought I’d just settle, but I WON’T.”8

  Judge Thomas Griesa found in Lennon’s favor for the majority of this case after hearing lots of testimony, including Lennon’s, on the music business and the creative process. In late February 1976, part one of Judge Griesa’s three-part decision stated that Levy’s publishing concern, Big Seven, was not entitled to damages from Lennon, Capitol, or Apple, for his original claim. Finally, that July, the last two parts were handed down: Big Seven was awarded $6,795 for breach of contract (the original agreement whereby Lennon would pay for quoting the opening lines of Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” in “Come Together” by recording two songs from Big Seven’s catalog). Lennon, however, was awarded $107,700 for his counterclaim that Levy’s actions cost him lost royalties on the Rock ’n’ Roll album, and another $3,500 in compensatory damages for “hurt to his reputation.”

  Greisa delivered an unusual personal summation from the bench, which touched on the peculiar crossover nature of Lennon’s persona. “I am convinced of the fact that Lennon perhaps has a career whose balance is somewhat more delicate than the career of other artists. Lennon has attempted a variety of ventures both in popular music and avant-garde music,” he wrote. “Any unlawful interference with Lennon in the way that Levy and the Roots album accomplished must be taken seriously.”9

  That July also saw Lennon’s long-drawn-out immigration case come to a close, with the official award ceremony for his green card. The event was a simple legal formality held in a small hearing room on the fourteenth floor of the INS Building on July 27. Since the previous October, when the Court of Appeals overturned all previous attempts to deport him, the U. S. government had gone silent on the matter. But the public-relations game drove Leon Wildes to summon several prominent character witnesses on Lennon’s behalf to read their endorsements into the record. TV reporter Geraldo Rivera talked about John and Yoko as great humanitarians for the charity work they did on behalf of the children at Willowbrook. Isamu Noguchi, the Japanese sculptor, offered similar remarks. And Norman Mailer reminisced about how American literature still regretted the loss of T. S. Eliot to England, and hoped that America would not also lose Lennon. Even Gloria Swanson, now a physical-fitness freak, testified about what a good influence Lennon could be on the young.

  “It’s great to be legal again,” Lennon said as he held up his green card (actually blue). “And I want to thank the Immigration Service for finally seeing the light of day. I just feel overwhelmed.”10

  Once free of his visa problems, Lennon traveled widely, to places as disparate as Egypt, South Africa, and the Middle and Far East, as often alone as with Ono and Sean. Rolling Stone’s Chet Flippo reports that in the midst of settling his court cases, John and Yoko made a swift trip to Egypt to spend the night at the Great Pyramid. Yoko soon “confounded record-company attorneys at legal meeti
ngs by showing up as John’s only representative (a non-attorney Japanese feminist artist). Now, she turned up for legal conferences garbed in ancient Egyptian robe and headdress.”11

  These furtive jaunts were steered by Ono’s coterie of astrologists, psychics, and numerologists. At this point, British observers like to point out that for all his heavy travel during his professional sabbatical, Lennon never landed on British soil. No longer worried about getting let back into the United States, he staved off any ideas of a homecoming or family visits to Liverpool, Dorset (where Aunt Mimi lived), or London.

  Their most frequent trips as a family were to Japan, where they stayed for five months during 1978. Lennon also started learning Japanese, and drew constantly during his sabbatical, both brief cartoons and more elaborate character sketches in lithograph. (Today Ono places much of this work in revolving circulation in a traveling exhibition.) A disarming “dictionary” of Japanese words and characters appeared in the museum catalog for “The Art of John Lennon: Drawings, Performances, Films,” a 1995 exhibition at the Kunsthalle, in Bremen.12 It begins with Nippon go o narau, or “It takes time to learn Japanese”: a sober man with Japanese characters on his breast lifts an index finger. The next picture shows Jibun, or “Myself,” one of those uncanny Lennon self-portraits with spectacles that capture his whimsically essential disguise. Very quickly Lennon elaborates phrase-by-phrase, drawing-by-drawing, to a wild-haired man at the piano, and brief Asian facial expressions for “Sweet, sour, salty, hot and bitter,” as a balloon coming out of a man’s head.

  At the same time, Lennon also wrote some autobiographical sketches in plain verse that appeared later as Skywriting by Word of Mouth, and which, like some of his later songs, assume the voice of a parent explaining things to a child.

  “John was moving about and sometimes he moved on his own,” Ringo Starr remembers. “Yoko used to send him away on his own so he’d grow up. I don’t know if he grew up but he certainly went places without her. And I think he had a very strange time in Macao if my memory serves me well.” From Nippon, Lennon sent Starr a postcard which read: “back by 9 Oct. love,” signed with another drawing of John, Yoko, and Sean, with a sun and a flower, and two stars popping out around Ringo’s Monaco address.13

  One day in November 1976, Lennon came home from his Japanese language course to find a note from his Woolton friend Pete Shotton, who was visiting his elder brother in New Jersey.14 Shotton had been roaming around Central Park with a friend and asked directions to the notorious Dakota, which he recognized from Rosemary’s Baby. Lennon rang him up later that same afternoon and sent a car to New Jersey to pick him up for dinner.

  Within the hour, the Dakota doorman ushered Shotton into the elevator. When its doors reopened, he saw John beaming from the doorway with his infant son Sean cradled in his arms. Shotton was struck both by the baby’s gorgeous features (combining the best features from his parents, he thought) and Lennon’s fit physical stature.

  Following the Japanese custom, Lennon had Shotton take off his shoes, and he remarked how serendipitous Shotton’s appearance seemed. He told Pete about taking language lessons, and learning the new word shoton, which had made him wonder how his old friend was doing. John and Yoko’s numerologist cleared Shotton for a visit once Lennon came home to his note.

  Shotton writes about how composed Yoko looked compared with when he had last seen her, and Lennon announced he had made dinner reservations at his favorite Japanese restaurant. What impressed Shotton the most, though, was how cavalierly Lennon refused the offer of his cigarette. He claimed to have quit smoking altogether, which struck his Merseyside visitor as nothing short of miraculous.

  Lennon tucked Sean into bed, and the three set out on foot for the restaurant. Having been beside John during the height of Beatlemania, Shotton was nonplussed at how casually Lennon took this early evening public stroll—and how nonchalant New Yorkers were about the rock star in their midst. Lennon clearly enjoyed the relative anonymity of New York’s streets. He never got hassled, he said, and people only approached him to tell him how much they loved his music, or perhaps pass along a furtive joint. One thing Lennon had never enjoyed on the streets of London, Shotton reflected, was the respectful distance of strangers.

  Shotton describes Lennon’s temperament that evening as warm and humorous, as if he had finally reconciled himself to his ex-Beatles status. To top it off, Lennon insisted on paying for the meal and calculating the tip—something his friend had never seen him do as a Beatle. Back at the Dakota, they sat up with Yoko watching Sally Field in the TV movie Sibyl, with the sound turned way down low so as not to disturb the sleeping baby. As John proclaimed he had quit alcohol (again), they chatted over several pots of tea, and then he recounted a recent solo adventure to Hong Kong following Yoko’s mysterious calculations to reset John’s clock with the planet’s rotations.

  Like many Lennon friends who reported of constant astrological consultants and vague, New Age–y trips to adjust his karma, Shotton simply nodded appreciatively. Whatever he might be doing, Shotton thought, Lennon seemed happy, and looked better than Shotton could have hoped. Lennon pressed a copy of William Duffy’s Sugar Blues into Shotton’s hand as he left, which he did with countless other visitors as well. This became another late Lennon signature: adopting an anti-sugar regimen while sneaking Hershey bars and Gitane cigarettes. That first night sent Shotton home with a warm afterglow.

  They dined again two nights later, only this time Shotton described a phone call where Lennon argued with Yoko over the invitation, and described him as pale and stuck in a darker mood than before. As usual, Yoko remained quiet as they chatted and never tried to connect with Lennon’s Woolton chum.15

  The following summer, 1977, the Lennon family took a trip to an upscale mountain resort called Karuizawa, outside Tokyo. On Lennon’s instructions, Elliot Mintz followed once they sent him a plane ticket. The day before Mintz left for Japan, however, some epic news came over the wires: Elvis Presley had died of what appeared to be a prescription drug overdose in his bathroom at Graceland, at age forty-two. It was August 16, 1977. The rock press went into overdrive. Millions of fans around the world began to grieve the King; Graceland became glutted with mourners.

  Mintz called Lennon in Japan to give him the news. He remembers Lennon’s outré reaction: “Elvis died in the army. . . . The difference between him and us is that, with us, our manager died and we lived. With Elvis, he dies and his manager lives. Come to Japan.” Apparently, Lennon couldn’t have been less interested in talking to Mintz about Presley’s life or musical legacy. Mintz made his way to the hotel, where he was greeted with a mineral bath, a room filled with incense, and a note saying, “We are all together now, just like a family. We’ll see you in the morning. John, Yoko and Sean.”

  Mintz tucked himself in without waking his hosts. The next morning, Lennon opened a screen, looking “high and wonderful.”16 A typical day began with a shiatsu massage, and an ice bath for Ono. Then they would all do yoga, take Sean for a walk, and stop off somewhere for noodles. Yoko wrote about Karuizawa in her notes to her production of Lennon’s Anthology box set, describing it as a cross between the Hamptons and Vail, Colorado. They cycled to a coffeehouse in a pine forest every day with Sean, and spent afternoons in a huge family hammock in its backyard, giggling and watching the sky. During the rainy seasons, Lennon worked on collages in their hotel room.17

  Collage filtered into Lennon’s personal correspondence as well. A Claes Oldenburg cartoon-gun postcard stamped in New York, overlaid with a headline reading: ADOLF HITLER ARRIVED IN LIVERPOOL IN NOVEMBER OF 1912 FOR A FIVE-MONTH VISIT, came to Ringo Starr’s Monaco address in early May 1979: “Dear Ringo . . . Thought you’d like to know.” Several days later, another card arrived, this time a plain white ruled index card sent to Ringo’s Los Angeles address: “How Hi the Moon (with female vocal harmony) DISCO—NATCH! i know, THIS AIN’T SIMPLE I KNOW” “This is John telling me what sort of things to record,” Ringo lat
er wrote. “He used to say, ‘Do this sort of track.’ ‘Do it in a disco style!’ He’d obviously just heard Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ which we all loved—that was a really cool record.”18

  In Tokyo, John, Yoko, and Sean stayed in the presidential suite at the Hotel Okura. Mintz describes an intimate informal concert Lennon gave to a Japanese couple there one evening in the sprawling set of rooms accessible only by elevator direct from the lobby:

  Around ten o’clock that night, I was sitting on the couch and John was strumming his acoustic guitar. . . . Suddenly, the elevator door opened. I presumed Yoko had returned, but instead a middle-aged Japanese couple who neither of us had seen before walked down the hallway and entered the dimly lit room. They noticed that there was a man playing guitar and another man seated near a table. . . . They spoke softly in Japanese, and seemed to want to listen to the solo music for a few minutes.

  Like Nick Carraway stumbling upon Jay Gatsby as an anonymous guest at one of his own Long Island mansion parties, these tourists didn’t recognize the world-famous Lennon. They started to get fidgety, looking around for a server to bring them cocktails. John gave them “Jealous Guy” in English, and after another few minutes, the couple arose and left. When the elevator door closed, Lennon and Mintz collapsed in laughter.19

  After McCartney toured America with Wings in support of his 1976 single, the adamantly flaky “Silly Love Songs,” Lennon’s absence from the scene became a new rock theme. Critics began remarking on how much expectation had built up around any future moves. In the gap between disco and punk, when the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and Bruce Springsteen were gathering momentum on the sidelines, the mainstream disco pop of Saturday Night Fever’s Bee Gees gave rock fans fits. The unmet expectations of Lennon’s solo career pressed up against everybody’s wavering sense of dislocation, and pop music’s overall lack of spine. (For some, it echoed the ghost of Buddy Holly, memorialized in Don McLean’s “American Pie”: “the day the music died.”) There was a lingering sense that had Lennon kept on writing, he would have made the breakthrough a lot of this early seventies material aimed toward.