The Rolling Stone interviews
Page 7
And when we got here, you were all walking around in fuckin’ Bermuda shorts, with Boston crew cuts and stuff on your teeth. Now they’re telling us, they’re all saying, “Beatles are passé, and this is like that, man.” The chicks looked like fuckin’ 1940 horses. There was no conception of dress or any of that jazz. We just thought, “What an ugly race”; it looked just disgusting. We thought how hip we were, but, of course, we weren’t. It was just the five of us, us and the Stones were really the hip ones; the rest of England were just the same as they ever were.
You tend to get nationalistic, and we would really laugh at America, except for its music. It was the black music we dug, and over here even the blacks were laughing at people like Chuck Berry and the blues singers; the blacks thought it wasn’t sharp to dig the really funky music, and the whites only listened to Jan and Dean and all that. We felt that we had the message which was, “Listen to this music.” It was the same in Liverpool; we felt very exclusive and underground in Liverpool, listening to Richie Barret and Barrett Strong, and all those old-time records. Nobody was listening to any of them except Eric Burdon in Newcastle and Mick Jagger in London. It was that lonely, it was fantastic. When we came over here and it was the same—nobody was listening to rock & roll or to black music in America—we felt as though we were coming to the land of its origin, but nobody wanted to know about it.
What part did you ever play in the songs that are heavily identified with Paul, like “Yesterday”?
“Yesterday” I had nothing to do with.
“Eleanor Rigby”?
“Eleanor Rigby” I wrote a good half of the lyrics or more.
When did Paul show you “Yesterday”?
I don’t remember—I really don’t remember, it was a long time ago. I think he was . . . I really don’t remember, it just sort of appeared.
Who wrote “Nowhere Man”?
Me, me.
Did you write that about anybody in particular?
Probably about myself. I remember I was just going through this paranoia trying to write something and nothing would come out, so I just lay down and tried to not write and then this came out, the whole thing came out in one gulp.
What songs really stick in your mind as being Lennon-McCartney songs?
“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “From Me to You,” “She Loves You”—I’d have to have the list, there’s so many, trillions of ’em. Those are the ones. In a rock band you have to make singles; you have to keep writing them. Plenty more. We both had our fingers in each other’s pies.
A song from the ‘Help’ album, like “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” How did you write that? What were the circumstances? Where were you?
I was in Kenwood, and I would just be songwriting. The period would be for songwriting, and so every day I would attempt to write a song, and it’s one of those that you sort of sing a bit sadly to yourself, “Here I stand, head in hand . . .”
I started thinking about my own emotions—I don’t know when exactly it started, like “I’m a Loser” or “Hide Your Love Away” or those kinds of things—instead of projecting myself into a situation, I would just try to express what I felt about myself, which I’d done in me books. I think it was Dylan helped me realize that—not by any discussion or anything but just by hearing his work—I had a sort of professional songwriter’s attitude to writing pop songs; he would turn out a certain style of song for a single, and we would do a certain style of thing for this and the other thing. I was already a stylized songwriter on the first album. But to express myself I would write Spaniard in the Works or In His Own Write, the personal stories which were expressive of my emotions. I’d have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn’t consider them—the lyrics or anything—to have any depth at all. They were just a joke. Then I started being me about the songs, not writing them objectively, but subjectively.
What about on ‘Rubber Soul,’ “Norwegian Wood”?
I was trying to write about an affair without letting me wife know I was writing about an affair, so it was very gobbledygook. I was sort of writing from my experiences, girls’ flats, things like that.
Where did you write that?
I wrote it at Kenwood.
When did you decide to put a sitar on it?
I think it was at the studio. George had just got his sitar and I said, “Could you play this piece?” We went through many different sort of versions of the song; it was never right, and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn’t coming out like I said. They said, “Well, just do it how you want to do it,” and I said, “Well, I just want to do it like this.” They let me go, and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time, and then George had the sitar and I asked him could he play the piece that I’d written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit, and he was not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn’t done much on the sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learned the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections.
You also have a song on that album, “In My Life.” When did you write that?
I wrote that in Kenwood. I used to write upstairs where I had about ten Brunell tape recorders all linked up. I still have them. I’d mastered them over the period of a year or two—I could never make a rock & roll record, but I could make some far-out stuff on it. I wrote it upstairs; that was one where I wrote the lyrics first and then sang it. That was usually the case with things like “In My Life” and “Universe” and some of the ones that stand out a bit.
Would you just record yourself and a guitar on a tape and then bring it in to the studio?
I would do that just to get an impression of what it sounded like sung and to hear it back for judging it—you never know till you hear the song yourself. I would double track the guitar or the voice or something on the tape. I think on “Norwegian Wood” and “In My Life” Paul helped with the middle eight, to give credit where it’s due.
Let me ask you about one on the double album, “Glass Onion.” You set out to write a little message to the audience.
Yeah, I was having a laugh because there’d been so much gobbledy-gook about Pepper, play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that. Even now, I just saw Mel Tormé on TV the other day saying that “Lucy” was written to promote drugs and so was “A Little Help from My Friends,” and none of them were at all—“A Little Help from My Friends” only says get high in it; it’s really about a little help from my friends, it’s a sincere message. Paul had the line about “little help from my friends,” I’m not sure, he had some kind of structure for it, and—we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty, but it was based on his original idea.
“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” is a nice song.
Oh, I like that, one of my best; I had forgotten about that. Oh, I love it. I think it’s a beautiful song. I like all the different things that are happening in it. Like “God,” I had put together some three sections of different songs; it was meant to be—it seemed to run through all the different kinds of rock music.
It wasn’t about H at all. “Lucy in the Sky” with diamonds which I swear to God, or swear to Mao, or to anybody you like, I had no idea spelled LSD—and “Happiness”—George Martin had a book on guns which he had told me about—I can’t remember—or I think he showed me a cover of a magazine that said “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” It was a gun magazine, that’s it: I read it, thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say. A warm gun means that you just shot something.
You said to me, “ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ is the one.” That was the album?
Well, it was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together, especially on “A Day in the Life,” that was a real . . . The way we wrote a lot of the time: You’d write the good bit, the part that was easy, like “I read the news today” or whatever it was, then when you got stuck or whenever it got hard, instead of carrying on, you just drop it; then we would meet each ot
her, and I would sing half, and he would be inspired to write the next bit and vice versa. He was a bit shy about it because I think he thought it’s already a good song. Sometimes we wouldn’t let each other interfere with a song either, because you tend to be a bit lax with someone else’s stuff, you experiment a bit. So we were doing it in his room with the piano. He said, “Should we do this?” “Yeah, let’s do that.”
I keep saying that I always preferred the double album because my music is better on the double album; I don’t care about the whole concept of Pepper; it might be better, but the music was better for me on the double album because I’m being myself on it. I think it’s as simple as the new album, like “I’m So Tired” is just the guitar. I felt more at ease with that than the production. I don’t like production so much. But Pepper was a peak, all right.
Yoko: People think that’s the peak, and I’m just so amazed. . . . John’s done all that Beatle stuff. But this new album of John’s is a real peak; that’s higher than any other thing he has done.
John: Thank you, dear.
Do you think it is?
Yeah, sure. I think it’s Sgt. Lennon. I don’t really know how it will sink in, where it will lie in the spectrum of rock & roll and the generation and all the rest of it, but I know what it is. It’s something else, it’s another door.
Do you think the Beatles will record together again?
I record with Yoko, but I’m not going to record with another egomaniac. There is only room for one on an album nowadays. There is no point, there is just no point at all. There was a reason to do it at one time, but there is no reason to do it anymore.
I had a group, I was the singer and the leader; I met Paul, and I made a decision whether to—and he made a decision, too—have him in the group: Was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had in, obviously, or not? To make the group stronger or to let me be stronger? That decision was to let Paul in and make the group stronger.
Well, from that, Paul introduced me to George, and Paul and I had to make the decision, or I had to make the decision, whether to let George in. I listened to George play, and I said, “Play ‘Raunchy,’ ” or whatever the old story is, and I let him in. I said, “Okay, you come in”; that was the three of us then. Then the rest of the group was thrown out gradually. It just happened like that; instead of going for the individual thing, we went for the strongest format, and for equals.
George is ten years younger than me, or some shit like that. I couldn’t be bothered with him when he first came around. He used to follow me around like a bloody kid, hanging around all the time. I couldn’t be bothered. He was a kid who played guitar, and he was a friend of Paul’s, which made it all easier. It took me years to come around to him, to start considering him as an equal or anything.
We had all sorts of different drummers all the time, because people who owned drum kits were few and far between; it was an expensive item. They were usually idiots. Then we got Pete Best because we needed a drummer to go to Hamburg the next day. We passed the audition on our own with a stray drummer. There are other myths about Pete Best was the Beatles, and Stuart Sutcliffe’s mother is writing in England that he was the Beatles.
Are you the Beatles?
No, I’m not the Beatles. I’m me. Paul isn’t the Beatles. Brian Epstein wasn’t the Beatles, neither is Dick James. The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate. George was a separate individual singer, with his own group as well, before he came in with us, the Rebel Rousers. Nobody is the Beatles. How could they be? We all had our roles to play.
How would you assess George’s talents?
I don’t want to assess him. George has not done his best work yet. His talents have developed over the years, and he was working with two fucking brilliant songwriters, and he learned a lot from us. I wouldn’t have minded being George, the invisible man, and learning what he learned. Maybe it was hard for him sometimes, because Paul and I are such egomaniacs, but that’s the game.
I’m interested in concepts and philosophies. I am not interested in wallpaper, which most music is.
When did you realize that what you were doing transcended . . .
People like me are aware of their so-called genius at ten, eight, nine. . . . I always wondered, “Why has nobody discovered me?” In school, didn’t they see that I’m cleverer than anybody in this school? That the teachers are stupid, too? That all they had was information that I didn’t need?
I got fuckin’ lost in being at high school. I used to say to me auntie, “You throw my fuckin’ poetry out, and you’ll regret it when I’m famous,” and she threw the bastard stuff out. I never forgave her for not treating me like a fuckin’ genius or whatever I was, when I was a child.
It was obvious to me. Why didn’t they put me in art school? Why didn’t they train me? Why would they keep forcing me to be a fuckin’ cowboy like the rest of them? I was different, I was always different. Why didn’t anybody notice me?
A couple of teachers would notice me, encourage me to be something or other, to draw or to paint—express myself. But most of the time they were trying to beat me into being a fuckin’ dentist or a teacher. And then the fuckin’ fans tried to beat me into being a fuckin’ Beatle or an Engelbert Humperdinck, and the critics tried to beat me into being Paul McCartney.
Yoko: So you were very deprived in a way . . .
John: That’s what makes me what I am. It comes out; the people I meet have to say it themselves, because we get fuckin’ kicked. Nobody says it, so you scream it: Look at me, a genius, for fuck’s sake! What do I have to do to prove to you son-of-a-bitches what I can do and who I am? Don’t dare, don’t you dare fuckin’ criticize my work like that. You, who don’t know anything about it.
Fuckin’ bullshit!
I know what Zappa is going through, and a half. I’m just coming out of it. I just have been in school again. I’ve had teachers ticking me off and marking my work. If nobody can recognize what I am, then fuck ’em; it’s the same for Yoko. . . .
Yoko: That’s why it’s an amazing thing: After somebody has done something like the Beatles, they think that he’s sort of satisfied, where actually the Beatles . . .
John: The Beatles was nothing.
Yoko: It was like cutting him down to a smaller size than he is.
John: I learned lots from Paul and George, in many ways, but they learned a damned sight lot from me—they learned a fucking lot from me. It’s like George Martin, or anybody: Just come back in twenty years’ time and see what we’re doing, and see who’s doing what—don’t put me—don’t sort of mark my papers like I’m top of the math class or did I come in number one in English Language, because I never did. Just assess me on what I am and what comes out of me mouth, and what me work is, don’t mark me in the classrooms. It’s like I’ve just left school again! I just graduated from the school of Show Biz, or whatever it was called.
What accounts for your great popularity?
Because I fuckin’ did it. I copped out in that Beatle thing. I was like an artist that went off . . . Have you never heard of like Dylan Thomas and all them who never fuckin’ wrote but just went up drinking and Brendan Behan and all of them, they died of drink . . . everybody that’s done anything is like that. I just got meself in a party; I was an emperor, I had millions of chicks, drugs, drink, power and everybody saying how great I was. How could I get out of it? It was just like being in a fuckin’ train. I couldn’t get out.
I couldn’t create, either. I created a little; it came out, but I was in the party and you don’t get out of a thing like that. It was fantastic! I came out of the sticks; I didn’t hear about anything—Van Gogh was the most far-out thing I had ever heard of. Even London was something we used to dream of, and London’s nothing. I came out of the fuckin’ sticks to take over the world, it seemed to me. I was enjoying it, and I was trapped in it, too. I couldn’t do anything about it; I was just going along for the ride. I was hooked, just like a junkie.
It was a port. That means it was less hick than someone in the English Midlands, like the American Midwest or whatever you call it. We were a port, the second biggest port in England, between Manchester and Liverpool. The North is where the money was made in the eighteen hundreds; that was where all the brass and the heavy people were, and that’s where the despised people were.
We were the ones that were looked down upon as animals by the Southerners, the Londoners. The Northerners in the States think that people are pigs down South, and the people in New York think West Coast is hick. So we were hicksville.
We were a great amount of Irish descent and blacks and Chinamen, all sorts there. It was like San Francisco, you know. That San Francisco is something else! Why do you think Haight-Ashbury and all that happened there? It didn’t happen in Los Angeles, it happened in San Francisco, where people are going. L.A. you pass through and get a hamburger.