The Last Days of John Lennon
Page 33
“I want the white noise to take over and blot out the music altogether”: Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 300.
“this marriage had come to an end—and boy does it show”: Hobbs, “I Took the Last Ever Shot of the Beatles.”
“We were very square people in a way”: Kenneth Womack, “In 1969 the Fifth Beatle Was Heroin: John Lennon’s Addiction Took Its Toll on the Band,” Salon, February 15, 2019.
“John’s gone away for two weeks, just to get away from it all”: Jerry Hopkins, “James Taylor on Apple: The Same Old Craperoo,” Rolling Stone, August 23, 1969.
“It took courage enough for John to go cold turkey on his own”: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 619.
leave the band: David L. Ulin, “All You Need Is Love, and a Good Lawyer,” Tampa Bay Times, July 16, 2010.
“How would you fancy playing at a rock ’n’ roll festival with the Plastic Ono Band in Toronto?”: Philip Norman, Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton (New York: Back Bay, 2019), 220.
“Nothing’s expected of John and Yoko or the Plastic Ono”: Barry Miles, “My Blue Period: John Lennon,” MOJO, 1995, from original interviews on September 23 and 24, 1969, at Apple.
“We tried to rehearse on the plane”: Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Back Bay, 2006), 845.
Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto: Barry Miles, The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 352.
hasn’t played to a crowd this size since the Beatles’ 1966 American tour: Norman, Slowhand, 221.
“I am the King and I should close the show”: Juliette Jagger, “The Domino Effect: How One of Toronto’s Most Iconic Rock Concerts Almost Never Happened,” Noisey, April 13, 2015.
“Everyone get out your matches and lighters, please”: Jagger, “The Domino Effect.”
“only with all of us blasting it. Fantastic. It’s just pure sound”: Miles, “My Blue Period.”
“What’s next?” Miles, The Beatles Diary, 352.
“Then we went into ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ which was just unbelievable”: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 352.
“The buzz was incredible”: Norman, John Lennon, 622.
“I don’t care who I have to play with, I’m going back to playing rock onstage!”: Spitz, The Beatles, 846.
a new deal with EMI’s Capitol Records: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 353.
“I never liked that sort of pop opera on the other side”: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.
“You don’t seem to understand, do you?”: Norman, John Lennon, 624.
“I felt guilty at springing it on them at such short notice”: Norman, John Lennon, 624.
“‘It’s weird, this, telling you I’m leaving the group, but in a way it’s very exciting’”: Norman, John Lennon, 624.
Eric Clapton on guitar, Klaus Voormann on bass, and Ringo on drums: Norman, Slowhand, 222.
Twenty-six takes: “Cold Turkey by John Lennon,” Songfacts.com.
“reached the point where nobody worries TOO much about what the Beatles are doing”: Chris Welch, “Natural Born Beatles,” Melody Maker, September 27, 1969.
“probably the nicest melody I’ve ever written”: Ritchie Yorke, “George Harrison Talks About the Beatles’ Album, Abbey Road,” Detroit Free Press, September 26, 1969.
“the greatest love song in the past fifty years”: Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 553.
“John, Paul, and George looked like they had gone back in time”: Emerick and Massey, Here, There and Everywhere, 295.
“‘Cold Turkey’ talks about thirty-six hours rolling in pain”: Mike Gormley, “Are We Burying McCartney Before He Is Dead?” Detroit Free Press, October 17, 1969.
“They thought it was a pro-drugs song”: “Cold Turkey by John Lennon,” Songfacts.com.
“One for both, both for each other”: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 341.
a backing track of their heartbeats: Jason Farago, “Hearing Yoko Ono All Over Again,” New York Times, June 25, 2015.
“We didn’t expect a hit record out of it”: “Wedding Album,” BeatlesBible.com.
“When people get married they usually make their own wedding albums”: Richard Williams, “John and Yoko (Part 2),” Melody Maker, December 13, 1969.
“I’d enjoy reading Jackie and Onassis’s album”: Williams, “John and Yoko.”
Pete Seeger leads 250,000 demonstrators through Lennon’s lyrics: Jon Wiener, “‘War Is Over! If You Want It’: John and Yoko, 40 Years Later,” The Nation, December 27, 2009.
“We’ll keep promoting peace in the way we do”: Williams, “John & Yoko.”
“Laurel and Hardy, that’s John and Yoko”: Norman, John Lennon, 627.
“all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi get shot”: Wiener, “‘War Is Over!’”
“Cold Turkey slipping down the charts”: John Lennon, The John Lennon Letters, edited by Hunter Davies (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 168.
“Really shouldn’t have taken it”: Gloria Emerson, “John Lennon Returns Award as a Protest,” New York Times, November 26, 1969.
“War is over! If you want it”: Wiener, “‘War Is Over!’”
“You’ve got to turn on and drop in. Or they’re going to drop all over you”: Wiener, “‘War Is Over!’”
Clown of the Year: Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon: A Restless Life (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018), 318.
Man of the Decade: Norman, John Lennon, 630.
“Not many people are noticing all the good that came out of the last ten years”: John Lennon, interview with Desmond Morris, Man of the Decade, ATV, December 2, 1969, BeastlesInterviews.org.
“The sixties was just waking up in the morning, and we haven’t even got to dinnertime yet”: Lennon, interview with Desmond Morris, Man of the Decade.
Chapter 41
“John just wrote a great song and he wants to cut it as a single”: David Browne, “Flashback: John Lennon Writes and Records ‘Instant Karma!’ in One Day,” Rolling Stone, January 27, 2019.
“I’m going to record it tonight and have it pressed up and out tomorrow”: Nick DeRiso, “Why John Lennon Recorded ‘Instant Karma’ So Quickly,” UltimateClassicRock.com, February 6, 2016.
“there really is a reaction to what you do now”: DeRiso, “Why John Lennon Recorded ‘Instant Karma’ So Quickly.”
“Alan, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it”: DeRiso, “Why John Lennon Recorded ‘Instant Karma’ So Quickly.”
“Uh, could you put the cymbals down?”: Browne, “Flashback.”
wants no input from Apple engineers: Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 316–17.
“You’re making Phil a bit uncomfortable”: Emerick and Massey, Here, There and Everywhere, 317.
“How do you want it?”: Browne, “Flashback.”
“It sounded like there was fifty people playing”: DeRiso, “Why John Lennon Recorded ‘Instant Karma’ So Quickly.”
“I wrote it for breakfast”: Rob Sheffield, “And in the End,” Rolling Stone, August 17, 2020.
ten days after John first conceived of the song: Barry Miles, The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 368.
“That Would Be Something”: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 369.
the solo work lifts his spirits: Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 571.
Top of the Pops: Sheffield, “And in the End.”
thirteen songs to fill a homemade eponymous album: Miles, Paul McCartney, 572.
All four Beatles have approval over who will polish the songs: Jim Irvin, “Get It Better: The Story of Let It Be�
��Naked,” MOJO, 2003.
“harps, horns, an orchestra, and women’s choir”: Miles, Paul McCartney, 575.
“I would never have female voices on a Beatles record”: Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon: A Restless Life (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018), 323.
“We’re sorry it turned out like this—it’s nothing personal”: Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 413.
“The Beatles are alive and well and the Beat goes on”: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 374.
start of a solo career or a break with the Beatles: Norman, Paul McCartney, 418.
PAUL QUITS BEATLES: Kitty Empire, “Paul McCartney Leaves the Beatles,” The Guardian, June 11, 2011.
“I only had me to ask for a decision, and I agreed with me”: “What Paul Said,” Record Mirror, April 18, 1970.
“He gets all the credit for it!”: Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Back Bay, 2006), 854.
“cardboard tombstone”: Alan Smith, “New LP Shows They Couldn’t Care Less: Have Beatles Sold Out?” New Musical Express, May 9, 1970.
“Musically, boys, you passed the audition”: John Mendelsohn, “The Beatles: Let It Be,” Rolling Stone, June 11, 1970.
“no one wanted to be the one to say the party’s over”: Norman, Paul McCartney, 419.
“He’s crying, she’s crying, and we’re just trying to hold on to ourselves”: Joe Hagan, “Jann Wenner, John Lennon, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever,” Vanity Fair, November 2017.
“This music is bringing on the revolution, the unorganized overthrow of the establishment”: David Felton and David Dalton, “Charles Manson: The Incredible Story of the Most Dangerous Man Alive,” Rolling Stone, June 1970.
“It’s not my conspiracy. It is not my music”: “Helter Skelter,” BeatlesBible.com.
“What’s ‘Helter Skelter’ got to do with knifing somebody?”: Miles, The Beatles Diary, 319.
Chapter 42
drink Dr Pepper while they play on a Mellotron: Jude Rogers, “Not the Only One: How Yoko Ono Helped Create John Lennon’s Imagine,” The Guardian, September 6, 2018.
“It was like a house of fun”: Event magazine, “John and Yoko Unseen: Playing Pool at His White Mansion, Boating with His Son…Rare and Intimate Photos of Lennon’s Last Idyllic Summer in Britain,” Daily Mail, September 29, 2018.
“If you die, will I ever see you again?”: Debra Wallace, “Julian Lennon on His Father’s Legacy, White Feathers, and His New Book Love the Earth,” Parade, April 30, 2019.
a loss of $8 million: Barney Hoskyns, 75 Years of Capitol Records (Cologne: Taschen, 2016).
“I should have been born in New York, I should have been born in the Village”: Jann S. Wenner, “Lennon Remembers, Part Two,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.
Grapefruit, Yoko’s book of poetry: Nell Beram, “The Book That Inspired ’Imagine,’” Slate, July 4, 2014.
“For Yoko, Happy Birthday, love John”: “John Lennon Wrote ’Imagine’ on His White Steinway. What Would You Write on Yours?” Daily Mail, July 23, 2011.
“I quickly jumped into a white Rolls-Royce with Nicky Hopkins”: Alan di Perna, “’Imagine’ This: How John Lennon and George Harrison Teamed Up to Record a Classic Album in 1971,” Guitar World, May 2019.
“It’s a piece of wood with strings on it. You just play it, OK?”: di Perna, “‘Imagine’ This.”
“I’m just a guy who writes songs”: Alastair McKay, “Weekend’s Best TV: Imagine All the People Who Adored John Lennon…Then Spare a Thought for David Cassidy,” Evening Standard, November 23, 2018.
“always felt responsible for these people because they were the result of his songs”: Rogers, “Not the Only One.”
booked the Record Plant: Keith Badman, The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break-Up, 1970–2001 (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 38.
“the air of a luxurious space capsule”: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Poetic Larks Bid Bald Eagle Welcome Swan of Liverpool,” The New Yorker, December 2, 1972.
“Harrison’s guitar playing was more classically beautiful”: di Perna, “’Imagine’ This.”
Only Ringo accepts: “The George Harrison Bangla Desh Benefit,” Rolling Stone, September 2, 1971.
“wants to go onstage at George’s Bangladesh thing. I’m not gonna do it”: Dan Richter, “What John and Yoko’s Butler Saw: A Surreal Account of the Lennons’ Live-In Assistant During the Last Dark Days of the Beatles,” Daily Mail, August 4, 2012.
“We are not trying to make any politics”: Geoffrey Cannon, “George Harrison & Friends: The Concert for Bangladesh,” The Guardian, January 4, 1972.
“What Woodstock was said to be”: Cannon, “George Harrison & Friends.”
“much easier for me to say I’m not taking anything, so I don’t have to answer any questions”: “The George Harrison Bangla Desh Benefit.”
eventually embroiled in several lawsuits: Pierre Perrone, “Allen Klein: Notorious Business Manager for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones,” The Independent, July 6, 2009.
Chapter 43
“You could say I fell in love with New York on a street corner”: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 683.
six-month B-2 tourist visas: Jon Wiener, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 213.
“Mr. and Mrs. John W. Lennon”: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Poetic Larks Bid Bald Eagle Welcome Swan of Liverpool,” The New Yorker, December 2, 1972.
“cheaper and more functional to actually live here”: Keith Badman, The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break-Up, 1970–2001 (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 47.
“‘You can have my wife, but you can’t have my child’”: David Sheff, “Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono,” Playboy, January 1981.
“We love it, and it’s the center of our world”: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere,” The New Yorker, January 1, 1972.
“America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself”: Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon: A Restless Life (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018), 347.
“They’re like me…they don’t believe in wasting time”: Norman, John Lennon, 683.
“John has a New York temperament in his work”: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
“walk around the streets and parks and squares”: Norman, John Lennon, 683.
“unbelievably creative atmosphere”: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
“Everywhere’s somewhere, and everywhere’s the same, really, and wherever you are is where it’s at”: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
“I’m proud to be a New York hippie!”: Hertzberg, “Poetic Larks Bid Bald Eagle Welcome Swan of Liverpool.”
“we got moved on by the police, and it was all very wonderful”: Steve Marinucci, “Anti-Establishment Icon David Peel Dies at 73,” Billboard, April 6, 2017.
“Picasso spent 40 years trying to get as simple as that”: Daniel Kreps, “David Peel, Folk Singer and Counterculture Figure, Dead at 73,” Rolling Stone, April 7, 2017.
“We loved his music, his spirit, and his philosophy of the street”: William Grimes, “David Peel, Downtown Singer and Marijuana Evangelist, Dies at 74,” New York Times, April 9, 2017.
The Pope Smokes Dope by David Peel and the Lower East Side: Marinucci, “Anti-Establishment Icon David Peel Dies at 73.”
“He was deadly serious, but he knew how to have fun”: Dave Thompson, “Remembering David Peel,” Goldmine, April 6, 2017.
“New York City is your friend”: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
“everybody seems to know everybody”: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
three hotel rooms: Badman, The Beatles Diary, 47.
“I can do the scene better”: Badman, The Beatles Diary, 47.
“The close friendship between Jerry Rubin and John Lennon (and Yoko)”: Ron Hart, “Yoko and the Yippies,” Rock & Roll Globe, December 17
, 2018.
“Yoko Ono told me and Abbie that they considered us to be great artists”: Mitch Myers, “Activist Jerry Rubin’s 1970 Protest Boogie with Bob Dylan, John and Yoko Chronicled in New Biography (Excerpt),” Variety, August 22, 2017.
the same building: Hertzberg, “Everywhere’s Somewhere.”
“imagine the body”: Grace Glueck, “Art by Yoko Ono Shown at Museum in Syracuse,” New York Times, October 11, 1971.
“She thinks up beautiful pure concept things, and I come up with a gimmicky reaction”: Glueck, “Art by Yoko Ono Shown at Museum in Syracuse.”
“There was going to be a secret Beatles reunion concert”: Sean Kirst, “Imagine: John Lennon, and an Almost-Beatles-Reunion, in Syracuse,” Syracuse.com, December 8, 2005.
“a black velvet hotpants suit”: Glueck, “Art by Yoko Ono Shown at Museum in Syracuse.”
a raucous semiprivate performance: Onondaga Historical Association, “John Lennon and Yoko Ono Make Art in Syracuse,” CNYHistory.org, October 2015.
“the single of the year”: Geoffrey Cannon, “George Harrison & Friends: The Concert for Bangladesh,” The Guardian, January 4, 1972.
“Lennon’s won, hands down”: Roy Hollingworth, “All We Need Is Lennon,” Melody Maker, October 9, 1971.
“McCartney ballads, and McCartney rockers, the way McCartney should be doing them”: Alan Smith, “John Sings Long Track About Paul,” New Musical Express, September 11, 1971.
“the spokesman for the politically conscious avant-garde”: John Mendelsohn, “Wild Life [US Bonus Tracks],” Rolling Stone, January 20, 1972.
—
Leslie Nielsen: “A Look Back at Mark David Chapman in His Own Words,” Larry King Live, CNN.com, September 30, 2000.
Robert Goulet: Keith Elliot Greenberg, December 8, 1980: The Day John Lennon Died (Montclair, NJ: Backbeat Books, 2010), 23.
“quick picture”: “A Look Back at Mark David Chapman in His Own Words.”
The Wizard of Oz: James R. Gaines, “In the Shadows a Killer Waited,” People, March 2, 1987.