When word comes via the Apple offices that John’s sixty-three-year-old father, Alf Lennon, has a diagnosis of terminal stomach cancer, there is little time to make amends. He places a transatlantic call to the hospital.
“I’m sorry I treated you the way I did, Dad,” John says.
Alf pushes off the apology, saying, “It’s just bloody marvelous to talk to you again.”
A large bouquet of flowers arrives in Alf’s room, with a card signed by John, Yoko, and Sean, but Alf will never meet his new grandson. On April 1, 1976, he dies, twelve years to the day since he walked into Brian Epstein’s office at NEMS looking for John.
Because of his unresolved immigration status, John can’t travel to attend the funeral.
* * *
It’s summer in the city, and John’s only thoughts are of Sean and Yoko.
“They’d go to Central Park for picnics: ham sandwiches and Dom Pérignon,” a neighbor observes, adding a critique of their outdoor table manners: “They would drink out of the bottle, passing it back and forth like hippies.”
John and Yoko clean up when, after months of silence from the US government, a hearing is called for July 27 at 20 West Broadway, the Immigration and Naturalization Service building.
With Judge Ira Fieldsteel presiding, attorney Leon Wildes helps his star witness make the case that the United States should finally issue him a green card.
WILDES: Have you ever been convicted of any crime, anywhere in the US?
LENNON: No.
WILDES: Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party or any other organization that may seek to overthrow the US government by force?
LENNON: No.
WILDES: Do you intend to make the US your home?
LENNON: I do.
WILDES: Will you continue your work here?
LENNON: Yes. I wish to continue to live here with my family and continue making music.
A parade of celebrity supporters details the extent of the good John has already done for his adopted country.
“Justice for John & Yoko!” says Bob Dylan in a handwritten plea to the INS, applauding their “great voice and drive for this country’s so called ART INSTITUTION” and insisting, “Let them stay and live here and breathe.”
“We had to prove that John was an important figure to the well-being of American society,” Geraldo Rivera, a witness on Lennon’s behalf, says in a 2019 interview. “I told the judge how important Lennon was to the cause of deinstitutionalizing the mentally disabled in New York through his work in the Willowbrook case.”
Gloria Swanson, a screen siren in the golden age of Hollywood, who’d met and befriended John over their shared passion for health food, also comes to his defense. “We must educate the country,” she tells the judge, “and the Lennons will help do something about it.”
“He is one of the great artists of the Western world,” the writer Norman Mailer states.
After ninety minutes of testimony, the judge grants John’s petition.
“It’s great to be legal again!” John exclaims with a kiss for Yoko.
* * *
A few months later, George delivers the Saturday Night Live punch line.
“See, I thought you would understand,” Lorne Michaels tells his musical guest in the show’s cold open on November 20, in a follow-up to his comedic enticement to the Beatles in April, “that it was $3,000 for four people, and that it would just be $750 for each of you. As far as I’m concerned, you could have the full $3,000.”
“That’s pretty chintzy,” George jokes with the producer.
Later in the show, George performs an acoustic duet with fellow musical guest Paul Simon. They open with “Here Comes the Sun,” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, a song that came to him in April of 1969, when he skipped a meeting at Apple to visit Eric Clapton in his Surrey garden.
The performance resonates for more than a quarter century.
When the White Stripes are invited to perform on the October 19, 2002, episode of SNL, a friend of the band remembers guitarist and songwriter Jack White rhapsodizing “about seeing George Harrison on SNL just sitting down and doing ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ God, it’d be cool to do something like that,” White tells producers, “playing the acoustic guitar.”
Chapter 53
People say I’m crazy
Doing what I’m doing.
—“Watching the Wheels”
I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying,” Linda Ronstadt sings onstage at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, DC. John and Yoko are listening to her cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” at Jimmy Carter’s inaugural gala. The taped program will be broadcast while politicos and celebrities clad in formal wear, including Cher and Gregg Allman, Loretta Lynn, Aretha Franklin, and Muhammad Ali, mingle at the January 1977 festivities.
Carter, who led his inaugural parade wearing a $175 suit he brought with him from his home state of Georgia, doesn’t recognize John when John steps forward to congratulate America’s thirty-ninth president, even with the prompt, “I used to be a Beatle.”
True to the spirit of the 1971 Plastic Ono Band song “Power to the People,” Carter styles himself as the “people’s president.” Long gone is the armed guard, nearly ten thousand strong, that Nixon marshaled in 1969 for his first inauguration.
“We’re living in a more tranquil period of society,” Don Zimmerman, executive director of Capitol Records, observes to the New York Times. “The average age of the artists is older. Most rock stars are over thirty.”
One of them is thirty-six-year-old John, who says, “I’m talking to guys and gals that have been through what we went through, together—the sixties group that has survived. Survived the war, the drugs, the politics, the violence on the street—the whole she-bang—that we’ve survived it and we’re here. And I’m talkin’ to them.”
John is also talking to the younger generation. The much younger generation. John is not releasing records, but he’s still making home recordings with and for his toddler son, Sean.
“Do you need anybody?” the little boy sings with feeling. “I need somebody to love.”
“Very good,” John says when Sean names the tune as “my favorite song,” the one off Sgt. Pepper that his father has played for him over and over.
“Who’s singing? You?” Sean asks.
“No. Ringo,” John answers, “but Paul and I are singing it with him.”
When Sean asks the name of the song, John has a flash of forgetfulness.
“Oh,” he remembers. “‘A Little Help from My Friends,’ that’s what it’s called.”
John tries to be Sean’s best friend as well as his teacher. John plays him the guitar, and they watch The Muppet Show together—but never the commercials. “Anything you ever see on a commercial is a lie,” John always tells him.
He makes a nighttime ritual for the two of them, flicking the lights off and on in a rhythm that means it’s time to go to bed.
“Good night, Sean,” he says in a soothing voice.
* * *
A mysterious letter finds its way to the Dakota on November 29, 1977.
John unseals the envelope with a kitchen knife. He extracts the letter, reaches for his glasses, and reads the first two lines.
WE ARE THE TERRORISTS [FROM] THE FALN PUERTO RICAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT. This letter is a positive (THREAT) to your life.
The group is targeting all three members of the Lennon family. There is also a demand—that John leave $100,000 in a “strong package” at the front entrance to “Dakota House.”
A nine-day countdown is already ticking away.
If John tries “to play any trick to us” by contacting the FBI or the police, the note warns, “we are good preparedly for it.”
John’s pulse starts to race as he runs through his options, seeing none other than to contact the FBI, the US government agency that had previously placed him under surveillance because the Nixon administration didn’t like his politics.
&nb
sp; In consultation with the FBI, John decides not to comply with the demands.
On December 19, a second letter arrives, claiming that on the day the cash should have been delivered, “your building was surrounded by 23 armed man’s of our troop,” then acknowledging the holiday season: “This is Christmas time, do your normal life, don’t be afraid is no body outside looking for you, on this you can have our trust.”
The threat, though the FBI can’t identify its source, turns John’s heart to lead.
Now I’ll be looking over my shoulder no matter where I go.
Now it’s no longer safe to go outside.
Now I need to get Yoko and Sean away from the city.
John acts quickly, and in February of 1978 he purchases a thousand acres of land in Delaware County, three hours north of Manhattan. Yoko can look after her latest investment there, a herd of registered Holstein cattle. The dairy cows are prizewinners at the New York State Fair.
“Only Yoko,” John marvels, “could sell a cow for $250,000.”
Even as they reside in the secluded Catskills, thoughts of looming danger cloud John’s mind. He donates $1,000 to the New York Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association so the police can buy bulletproof vests.
They also purchase property in Florida, where John’s experienced bursts of true happiness on his several trips down there over the years. “I really don’t want to leave Palm Beach,” he’d told a local reporter during a visit in 1974. “I’d like to own a piece of it.”
On January 31, 1980, he does, buying a property that, a year earlier, Yoko had toured and rented under the pseudonym Mrs. Green. Here, at the historic twenty-two-room mansion built in 1919 by renowned architect Addison Mizner and known as El Solano, Julian meets his half brother, Sean, for the first time. It’s a doubly special trip for Julian, and John marks (one week early) the occasion of his son’s sixteenth birthday, April 8, 1979, with a family party on a chartered yacht.
Looking out over the ocean in the early morning hours, John says, “Sunrises rejuvenate you. It recharges the batteries!”
* * *
“Welcome, my dear!” John says to Yoko.
She’s arrived in early 1980 to spend her first night at their newest property, a three-story Tudor-style home called Cannon Hill on the north shore of Long Island, overlooking Cold Spring Harbor.
As they pour tea and light their morning cigarettes, they agree that they’ve found “a gorgeous place.”
“So different than waking up in New York,” Yoko says.
Studio One, the first-floor office where Yoko keeps busy running Lenono Music and growing their fortune, is where Yoko spends most of her time.
“If I’m lucky, maybe she’ll come up and we’ll do something but she’s a workaholic,” John says. “Sometimes she’ll start again at twelve midnight, ’cause she’s always callin’ the West Coast, or England or Tokyo or some Godforsaken place that’s on a different time zone from us.”
This morning John looks out toward the private beach. “It’s better here than real life—you know, the sea is bluer.”
Chapter 54
Go Johnny go!
—“Johnny B. Goode”
Twenty-five-year-old Tyler Coneys carries boxes filled with aspiring artists’ demo tapes into the basement of Cannon Hill. He picks up extra cash sometimes by helping John and Yoko around their Cold Spring property. “John and Yoko would send stuff, fan mail, to the house on Long Island for storage,” Coneys says in 2019. “A box came, and on top of the parcel that I was bringing down to the basement was a mocked-up album cover. On the cover was an overweight young guy with dark glasses. His name was Mark Chapman.”
John has recently been a customer at the marina that Coneys’s family owns in nearby Huntington. Coneys has been teaching John basic seamanship, bringing Sean along for the ride. John has a fourteen-foot single-sail boat named Isis after his and Yoko’s passion for Egyptian art. “All my life I’ve been dreaming of having my own boat,” he says. “I can’t wait to learn how to sail!”
They sail past Billy Joel’s home on Cooper’s Bluff, overlooking Oyster Bay.
“Billy, I have all your records!” Lennon shouts toward the Piano Man’s modern glass mansion.
“I’d like to go say hi to Billy Joel but I don’t want to bother him,” John tells his assistant, Fred Seaman. Ironically, Billy Joel feels exactly the same way. “We both respected each other’s privacy,” Joel says ruefully. “And due to that, we never got to meet.”
John loves the freedom of sailing. Out on the open ocean, fans can’t grab for a piece of him, drag him down.
At the Dakota, photographers are a particular nuisance, especially Paul Goresh, a twenty-one-year-old student of criminal justice at Middlesex County College who once faked his way into John’s apartment by posing as a TV repairman.
Goresh is no longer allowed on Dakota property.
When John sees him snapping photos from across the street, he confronts Goresh.
A young woman is taking photos of the tense exchange. John grabs her camera, threatening to smash it on the ground—right after he smashes Goresh’s.
“Okay, John, I’ll give you my camera roll,” Goresh says. He pulls out the film from his Minolta XG-1 and hands it to him. “We’re good now, right?”
* * *
Yoko consults Takashi Yoshikawa, a Japanese expatriate whose New York clinic advises on macrobiotics—the Lennons’ principal diet—and the ancient Chinese divination method ki-ology. The system holds that “energy numbers,” derived from an individual’s birthday, open the way to a harmonious existence. To clear the clouds that are “casting a shadow over his life and creativity,” Yoshikawa prescribes that John sail southeast—a straight course to the island of Bermuda.
* * *
They set sail out of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, on June 5, 1980, for a voyage expected to cover 650 nautical miles over five days.
Tyler Coneys is aboard the Megan Jaye, a forty-three-foot Hinckley sloop, along with two of his cousins, a small but experienced crew whose birthdays Yoko all finds auspicious. The captain of the vessel is a sailor close to John’s age named Hank Halsted.
“John, since you’re the least experienced sailor on board, I’m appointing you ship’s cook,” Captain Hank announces.
Captain Hank knows the ocean, but he also knows rock ’n’ roll music. In his twenties, he was a concert promoter for the Allman Brothers and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
The captain isn’t afraid to ask tough questions. “You just affected 50 million people there to the positive, big boy,” he says to John. “What are you going to do to follow that up?”
“I’m going to raise my son,” John says.
That plan is in for a drastic shift.
* * *
John is performing his duties in the galley when a powerful mid-Atlantic storm barrels down on the Megan Jaye. As thunder cracks, the crew joins John belowdecks to don their severe-weather gear.
While Captain Hank steers the small yacht through a force 8 gale, John straps himself to the cockpit rails.
The boat pitches violently, and one by one, the crew succumbs to seasickness.
Only Captain Hank and John remain to face the giant waves, some of them cresting past a height of twenty feet. John follows Halsted’s orders as the relentless seas continuously pound the ship over the next forty-eight hours.
In his haze of fatigue, Captain Hank Halsted fears he’ll make a mistake that could cost the lives of everyone on board.
He turns to the last person still standing, the sailor whose only previous experience is guiding a fourteen-footer through Cold Spring Harbor. “I’m gonna need some help here, big boy,” Halsted barks at John, gesturing for him to take the wheel. “I’ll tell you what to do.”
Lennon fights his way toward the helm, gripping the rails, treading gingerly to prevent himself from being hurled over the side. There is no protection now that the stainless-steel dodger, or windshield, has been ripped apa
rt by the frothing ocean.
“Don’t jibe,” Halsted explains. “Never let the wind cross the back of the boat.”
With that, Halsted withdraws.
“He was thin, but very wiry and strong,” Tyler Coneys recalls of John. “This was a terrifying situation for all of us, but Lennon took responsibility and truly stepped into his role as a leader.”
John is alone. He faces down the waves, as if they are the stage fright that so often gripped him. It won’t go away, he tells himself. You can’t change your mind. It’s like being onstage; once you’re on there’s no gettin’ off.
A huge wall of water breaches the bow and crashes over him as he stands at the helm. John grips the wheel, and the torrent of water buckles his knees. When the swell subsides, he pulls himself up and shakes his fist at the sky.
“I feel like a Viking!” he shouts. “Jason and the Golden Fleece.”
Baptized by the storm, he grows more confident with the passing of each massive wave and each desperate hour.
“Freddie!” he calls in tribute of his dead sailor father.
When Captain Hank regains his strength, he returns to the helm to find signs of a calming ocean and “a man who was just enraptured.”
I was having the time of my life, he realizes. I was screaming sea chanteys and shoutin’ at the gods!
When the sloop glides safely into St. George’s Harbour, Bermuda, on June 11, John races from the dock to place a call to the Dakota. He tells his assistant, Fred Seaman, to book himself and Sean on a flight to Bermuda. John also requests a guitar that for the past five years has been hanging in his bedroom, untouched.
It’s time to launch a comeback.
Chapter 55
It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled.
—“Rock and Roll”
John welcomes his four-year-old son to Bermuda with a long hug. Under the pseudonym John Green, he’s rented Undercliff, a house two miles from Bermuda’s capital, Hamilton.
The Last Days of John Lennon Page 23