The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie, was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence. The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John. Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart, and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair. Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm, and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?" He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle- lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet. Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin. Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through 20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks, which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in. We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross- legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity. Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart- wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy. John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console. Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple. What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th. Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green. John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms. When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was really saying was that their relationship was dead.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie, was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence. The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John. Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart, and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair. Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm, and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?" He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle- lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet. Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin. Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through 20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks, which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in. We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross- legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity. Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart- wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy. John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console. Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple. What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th. Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green. John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms. When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was really saying was that their relationship was dead.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie, was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence. The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John. Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart, and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair. Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm, and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?" He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle- lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet. Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin. Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through 20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks, which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in. We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross- legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity. Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart- wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy. John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console. Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple. What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th. Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green. John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms. When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was really saying was that their relationship was dead.
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER. By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power. During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet. Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin. Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room. "She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay. He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy. John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy". Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!" This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:You're welcome!
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay. Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power. During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet. Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room. "She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy". Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers. John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!" This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons' sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons' accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay. Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power. During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room. "She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately. We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key. Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers. John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!" This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless. He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
On Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 10:15:33 AM UTC-6, Pamela Brown wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay. Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends. Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover. But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers. John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless. He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 12:00:00 AM UTC-8, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER >> SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH >> ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to >> distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie, >> was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence. >> The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John. >> Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the >> astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or >> possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking >> control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She >> had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart, >> and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam >> Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta >> Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko >> was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they >> decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert >> grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his >> nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of >> Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her >> through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good >> measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and >> John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean >> was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water >> the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her
directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental >> science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for >> someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm, >> and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in >> Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car >> and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?" >> He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she >> was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet >> and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she >> didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from >> apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when >> Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after >> his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was >> tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a >> dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell >> had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through >> 20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties >> in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their >> peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks, >> which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in. >> We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said >> the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't >> happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually >> ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John >> angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional >> Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested >> because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity. >> Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he >> kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea >> with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the >> fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected >> when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food >> detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his >> idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was >> duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea >> she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who >> still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on >> with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay. >> He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart- >> wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for >> my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things >> from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told >> me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top >> session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th >> Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The >> plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console. >> Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the >> name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the >> end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her >> recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a >> status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy >> followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly >> established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple. >> What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure >> Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will >> inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's >> genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great
significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an >> outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an >> indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane >> she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th. >> Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John >> hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There >> was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and >> held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green. >> John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was >> also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me >> full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but >> also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when >> people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for >> her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and >> heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America >> but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally >> had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite >> flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was >> wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was >> really saying was that their relationship was dead.
I wonder where the piano Yoko gifted to Sam has ended up.
If you watch the movie Savage Grace, you'll encounter Sam Green. Green himself
admitted that they got his look from that time (early 70s) down. The book of the same name is even better, and it has some of the letters between Barbara Baekeland and Green. He seems to have had a knack for attracting strange wealthy women.
On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 11:59:58 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:Lennon, so she mimicked his songwriting approach and often revealed surprising things about her personal life. There's a reference to her use of hard drugs in "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss." There's acknowledgement of her weariness of John in "I'm Moving On."
On Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 10:15:33 AM UTC-6, Pamela Brown wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends. Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her
directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover. But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great
significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
I'll see if I can locate a copy of that book.Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
Here's the thing. I believe that, because John Lennon treated his songwriting as a kind of diary, he inadvertently revealed his marriage as a wreck in several of the DF songs. Yoko didn't have any songwriting experience prior to her involvement with
After John's death, Yoko became involved with a gay interior decorator named Sam Havadtoy. She wrote a song in this time called "No, No, No" which includes the line: "You're thinking of Rock Hudson when we do it."In Seaman's book The Last Days of John Lennon he says that John knew all about Sam 1 and Sam 2, but was not able to or did not want to deal with the consequences of confronting these issues...
On Monday, January 23, 2023 at 7:24:46 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:Lennon, so she mimicked his songwriting approach and often revealed surprising things about her personal life. There's a reference to her use of hard drugs in "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss." There's acknowledgement of her weariness of John in "I'm Moving On."
On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 11:59:58 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 10:15:33 AM UTC-6, Pamela Brown wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her
directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam. The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her. To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great
significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
I'll see if I can locate a copy of that book.Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
Here's the thing. I believe that, because John Lennon treated his songwriting as a kind of diary, he inadvertently revealed his marriage as a wreck in several of the DF songs. Yoko didn't have any songwriting experience prior to her involvement with
After John's death, Yoko became involved with a gay interior decorator named Sam Havadtoy. She wrote a song in this time called "No, No, No" which includes the line: "You're thinking of Rock Hudson when we do it."In Seaman's book The Last Days of John Lennon he says that John knew all about Sam 1 and Sam 2, but was not able to or did not want to deal with the consequences of confronting these issues...
On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 5:25:41 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:with Lennon, so she mimicked his songwriting approach and often revealed surprising things about her personal life. There's a reference to her use of hard drugs in "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss." There's acknowledgement of her weariness of John in "I'm Moving On."
On Monday, January 23, 2023 at 7:24:46 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 11:59:58 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 10:15:33 AM UTC-6, Pamela Brown wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there.
As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage.
As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her
directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam. The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her. To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other."
When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great
significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
I'll see if I can locate a copy of that book.Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
Here's the thing. I believe that, because John Lennon treated his songwriting as a kind of diary, he inadvertently revealed his marriage as a wreck in several of the DF songs. Yoko didn't have any songwriting experience prior to her involvement
money. Yoko had found a younger gay male version of her predatory self.Right! Seaman also noted that, while John admired Sam Green's "gift of the gab," John deemed Havadtoy a "mercenary pretty boy." It's interesting that Yoko's longest intimate relationship with a man was with a gay man who was basically using her for herAfter John's death, Yoko became involved with a gay interior decorator named Sam Havadtoy. She wrote a song in this time called "No, No, No" which includes the line: "You're thinking of Rock Hudson when we do it."In Seaman's book The Last Days of John Lennon he says that John knew all about Sam 1 and Sam 2, but was not able to or did not want to deal with the consequences of confronting these issues...
There's debate as to whether Ono and Havadtoy privately got married. Havadtoy's boyfriend Luciano Sparacino insisted that they did and that the wedding took place in Havadtoy's country of birth, Hungary. Sparacino said that upon his return, Havadtoysaid, "Luciano, do you realize that I am now a man?" Sparacino answered: "What were you before? Tinker Bell?"
On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 7:46:38 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:with Lennon, so she mimicked his songwriting approach and often revealed surprising things about her personal life. There's a reference to her use of hard drugs in "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss." There's acknowledgement of her weariness of John in "I'm Moving On."
On Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 5:25:41 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Monday, January 23, 2023 at 7:24:46 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 11:59:58 AM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 10:15:33 AM UTC-6, Pamela Brown wrote:
On Wednesday, January 18, 2023 at 8:17:24 AM UTC-6, Norbert K wrote:
On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 4:42:37 PM UTC-8, pamel...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, December 7, 2000 at 2:00:00 AM UTC-6, veritas...@cotse.com wrote:That is disturbing.
The Sunday Mirror (London), 17th September, 2000Granted probate the following day?
BEATLE JOHN NEVER STOPPED LOVING YOKO ONO. BUT IN THE YEAR BEFORE HIS MURDER
SHE WAS A HEROIN ADDICT WHO HAD GROWN TIRED OF HIM. NOW THE MAN WHO KNEW JOHN
BEST REVEALS FOR THE FIRST TIME HOW YOKO HAD A SECRET PASSIONATE AFFAIR WITH
ANOTHER MAN ... AND PLANNED TO DIVORCE JOHN SO SHE COULD MARRY HER LOVER.
By Fred Seaman
Lennon's personal assistant and friend
From the first day I started work for John Lennon, I found it difficult to
distinguish the bizarre from the merely eccentric. I was employed as an
assistant, not just because my Uncle Norman and Aunt Helen were old friends of
the Lennons but, crucially, because my astrological charts indicated I would be
highly compatible with John, who was born on October 9. I was born on October
10. Another favourable omen was my name, given that John's father, Freddie,
was a seaman. John and Yoko attached great significance to this coincidence.
The way they saw it, I was predestined to work for them.
For two all-consuming years I had a tremendous time, enjoying the trappings of
a celebrity lifestyle, until December 8, 1980, when Mark Chapman shot John.
Barely an hour after John was shot dead I was back inside the Lennons'
sprawling New York apartment. I was in shock and in tears, as well as feeling
a tremendous sense of anger.
Yoko was talking to detectives and looked very upset. But the Lennons'
accountant Richie DePalma was already there and the moment the police left she
went into business mode, giving the staff orders and speaking to lawyers on the
phone.
Amazingly, Yoko was granted probate for John's estate on December 9, 1980, the
morning after he was gunned down. This can take weeks or even months, so the
astonishing speed raised a lot of eyebrows.
What purpose could it have served? I can only speculate that perhaps Yoko was
concerned that John's British relatives might make a claim of their own, or
possibly there was a previous will kicking around. Whatever it was, taking
control of John's estate was her priority.
I cried for the man I had worked for as a personal assistant for two years, but
grown to love as an older brother. But I never saw Yoko shed a tear. She
ordered me to take down all his photographs, but then had second thoughts and
told me to put them back.
To this day I wonder how somebody could be so emotionally under control in such
bleak circumstances.
In 1980, the year John died, Yoko had fallen in love with someone else. She
had even moved John's clothes out of their apartment, planning to divorce him
and marry for the fourth time.
While this obsessive affair was going on she had to keep John out of the way.
So she came up with a catalogue of reasons why he should go on journeys without
her.
In that last year of his life, John and Yoko spent nearly four months apart,
and until shortly before John's death she was having secret afternoon trysts in
hotels with her lover. He was a handsome and cultured art curator called Sam
Green who adored powerful women. He was 40 then, an intimate friend of Greta
Garbo who like to sunbathe naked in his garden.
As he was single, it was sometimes wrongly presumed that he was gay.
Since 1976 he had been close to the Lennons and was a great fixer with
excellent connections. The Kennedys and Rothschilds were friends.
Sam acquired exquisite works of art for Yoko, including a Renoir and an
Egyptian sarcophagus which had contained the remains of a princess that Yoko
was convinced had been her in a past life. He fixed it for the Lennons to
attend the inauguration party for President Jimmy Carter in 1977 when they
decided on a whim at the last minute they had to be there. As a token of their appreciation for all he'd done, they gave him a concert
grand piano with a plaque which read: "For Sam — Love From Yoko and John —
1979."
At the end of that year, when John was making out his will, he trusted Sam so
much that he specified that if he and Yoko died together Sam should be Sean's
guardian and custodian of his entire fortune.
It was in April, 1980, when Yoko's relationship with Sam became more than
friendship. Her heroin addiction was out of control and she had begged him to
help her to detox secretly without John's knowledge.
First she had to get rid of the family. On April 9 she sent John, Sean, his
nanny (my Aunt Helen, who helped get me my job) and me out to their mansion in
Cold Spring Harbour on Long Island for two months.
Her masterly stroke was convincing John to take a vow of silence for 10 days,
specifically designed to increase his self-discipline and will-power.
During those 10 days she didn't visit — her absence explained by a dose of
Russian flu. This paved the way for Yoko to go "cold turkey" in her bedroom at
the Lennons' apartment in the Dakota building with Sam moving in to help her
through the agonies of heroin withdrawal.
The doctor supervising her detoxification warned Sam that junkies usually
replace one addiction with another, but he didn't take seriously the suggestion
that her next craze would be him.
As Yoko recovered, her sexual appetite, long-suppressed by heroin use, quickly
returned. And there at the end of her bed, keeping a friendly eye on her, was
Sam — who up to then had never been physically attracted to the woman he saw as
a client.
But as he explained after he had been dragged into bed: "Yoko, she always got
what she wanted. She harangued me."
Meanwhile John, a natural chatterbox, wasn't happy about his silent vow, which
started on Saturday April 19 with a ban on coffee and TV thrown in for good
measure. He became increasingly irritable and at one point hurled a glass into
the sink and shards flew across the kitchen.
When his mute ordeal was over, Yoko announced she was coming for a visit and
John was beside himself with excitement.
I helped John videotape himself playing a new song he'd just written for her,
Dear Yoko. We had a huge brunch on the lawn running down to the water. Sean
was delighted to see her and hung on to her as she smiled weakly for the
Polaroid shots John was taking.
The next day she was gone — back to the Dakota and Sam Green. John and I spent
May sailing in a little boat I'd bought. The more time he spent on the water
the more he talked about wanting to go on an ocean voyage. As the idea took hold, he discussed it with Yoko. She consulted her
directionalist Takashi Yoshikawa — directionalism is the ancient Oriental
science of controlling one's destiny by defining which route is better for
someone to travel in. He advised her that John had to sail south-east from New
York.
That meant Bermuda was the obvious destination. Yoko couldn't believe her luck
because it meant John would be out of the way while she continued her affair.
Two amazing things happened next. John's boat nearly sank in a fierce storm,
and Yoko consulted lawyers about divorcing John to marry Sam.
The lovers spent an unforgettable evening at his parents' 32-room mansion in
Connecticut while John was out of the way. They had rented a convertible car
and were driving along when she asked: "Don't your parents live near here?"
He was appalled at the idea of taking home such a famously married woman, but
couldn't talk her out of it. When they arrived, they were seated at a candle-
lit table on an evening arranged for Sam's sister and her boyfriend, who were
expecting to announce their engagement.
Sam's mother was fascinated by Yoko, as her confirmed bachelor son had rarely
taken a woman home before and his new "girlfriend" gave every indication she
was meeting her prospective in-laws. As Sam sat rigid, she leapt to her feet
and gave a flowery little speech on the family.
When it was time for bed, Yoko was given the grandest guest bedroom. But she
didn't bother to make her bed look slept in or even try to be discreet.
Instead she made a terrible racket as she bounded along the creaky old
floorboards to join Sam in his room.
Yoko also plagued Sam with incessant phone calls when she wasn't with him. One
morning she called him 41 times. Eventually he hung up on her.
To appease him she sent a courier by seaplane who handed over a package
containing a 4.5 carat yellow diamond which he had made into a lapel pin.
Then Yoko issued instructions for all of John's belongings to be moved from
apartment 72 at the Dakota Building, where they lived, into apartment 71, which
was mainly used for storage. Stunned employees followed her orders, but when
Sam found out he went into shock. After a row, John's things were brought back.
I found a completely different man when I went to join John in Bermuda after
his five-day voyage. I was startled by how much healthier he looked. He was
tanned and talked enthusiastically about his sailing trip, which had taken a
dangerous turn when the boat ran into a powerful Atlantic storm and all hell
had broken loose. Everybody was sick and John had to steer the boat through
20ft waves by himself.
He told me: "At first I was terrified but I knew it was do or die. Once I
accepted the reality of the situation something greater than me took over and
all of a sudden I lost my fear. I started to sing and shout old sea shanties
in the face of the storm and felt total exhilaration.
"The only time I felt as centred was in 1961 when The Beatles were at their
peak as a live band and I knew nothing could stop us."
We rented an amazing seaside mansion called Villa Undercliff for six weeks,
which cost around £15,000. It had a piano and a sailboat for us to play in.
We had a day out in Hamilton watching a parade on the harbourfront to mark the
Queen's birthday. We stood Sean on a windowsill so he could see. John said
the marchers in their pith-helmets and all the pomp made him feel patriotic and
he loved it because nobody bothered him.
He sent me out to buy two large radio cassette recorders and set up a makeshift
recording studio. He began to feverishly write and record song after song. It
was as if the artistic floodgates had opened.
It was more than five years since he had last made an album. He had just
passed his hours sitting in the Dakota watching TV, reading books and killing
time in his bedroom. It seemed unlikely his creative side would ever resurface
but his near-death experience changed that.
Yoko made plans to visit us, but constantly cancelled. By the time she finally
visited us late in June he had completed half a dozen demos for what was to be
his comeback album, Double Fantasy.
He serenaded her with his entire new repertoire. All the while she sat cross-
legged and impassive in front of him. Unbeknown to John, Yoko had been working
on her own songs. She was determined to share the record with him. He wasn't
happy about it, but as always he gave in.
She further infuriated him by cutting short her visit, saying there was
business to do at home.
"What's so important it can't wait?" he yelled and warned her that her neglect
of Sean would come back to haunt her.
She stayed in bed for most of her 48-hour courtesy call. She was welded to the
phone, engrossed in selling a prize cow for a record £160,000 and virtually
ignored Sean. Before we knew it she was on her way back to Sam, leaving John
angry and frustrated.
He complained that he didn't get laid and discussed doing something about it.
In the past, Yoko had tolerated him going to brothels or having masseuses
calling at the Dakota. He told me: "At least Yoko gives me elbow room.
"She wouldn't mind if I fooled around a bit as long as I'm discreet. I've been
thinking of finding a real dish for us and bringing her back to the house. We
could pass her off as your girlfriend."
Of course it never happened because he was afraid that our very traditional
Japanese cook and housekeeper, Uda-san, would phone Yoko immediately.
We discussed getting a car so that we could cruise around the island and pick
up hookers but never did. Even worse was when we went to a disco and failed to
chat anyone up. Nobody knew who he was, and teenage girls weren't interested
because he was too old. He always used to say: "Anonymity is like virginity.
Once you lose it you can't get it back." But I think he regretted being quite
so anonymous then.
We spent a lot of time shopping. He even bought new clothes for me when he
kitted himself out with a new wardrobe.
One day he bought six Wedgwood china sets, one for each of their homes and two
to give away. It was his Aunt Mimi's favourite and he talked of sipping tea
with Yoko from lovely cups.
He also got a bee in his bonnet about Sean helping himself to food from the
fridge. He seemed to forget how much growing children can eat, and objected
when Sean wanted ice cream or some other snack.
He was a health-food fanatic who was constantly berating Aunt Helen and Uda-san
for feeding him junk food, so they used to hide it. Then he would turn food
detective, find it and throw it away. He was neurotic about his diet and his
idea of a treat was vegetables and brown rice, dried bananas or carob-covered
peanuts.
He ordered me to buy a padlock so he could lock the fridge. He said: "And
make sure you give me all the keys. I'm serious about this." The fridge was
duly locked but the regime only lasted a couple of days. John was in the
makeshift studio trying to lay down demo tracks for Double Fantasy, and every
five minutes he would be interrupted because somebody wanted the key.
Sometimes John and I would sit on the terrace overlooking the harbour and get
stoned while we played Bob Marley tapes.
Once we went to the Bermuda Botanical Gardens and as we looked at some fragrant
fresias John bent down and saw that they were called Double Fantasy. His face
lit up and he said: "I can't wait to tell Mother (his pet name for Yoko) I've
found the perfect album title."
Yoko appeased John with frequent phone calls and they sometimes spent several
hours at a time talking and playing songs to each other. But we had no idea
she was at Sam's Fire Island Beach House, where she'd had her own line
installed.
Another assistant, Sam Havadtoy, a flamboyant Hungarian-born decorator who
still shares Yoko's life to this day, phoned us in Bermuda to say he couldn't
find Yoko and he urgently needed to discuss the colour of bathroom tiles he was
installing in the Dakota. John was livid. He suspected Yoko was carrying on
with Sam Green but conveniently convinced himself that both Sams were gay.
He wasn't able to locate Yoko and he expressed his impotent rage in a heart-
wrenching song entitled I'm Losing You, which appeared on Double Fantasy.
John sent me back to New York for a couple of days to deliver an antique
cedarwood box to Yoko with a lock of his hair in it. But the main reason for
my trip was to find out what she was up to.
I found out Sam Havadtoy had cleared some of the contents of apartment 71 and
put stuff in storage. Yoko's intention was to move in all of John's things
from apartment 72.
Her plan was to divorce John and live in apartment 72, while John lived in the
less luxurious space next door.
I didn't have the heart to tell John when I got back to Bermuda because I
thought he would go into a terminal depression. I hoped it was another of
Yoko's fantasies which would pass. He knew something was going on and told
me: "She's playing the two Sams off against each other." When we returned to New York in late July, Yoko had already hired producer Jack
Douglas, who had worked on some of John's previous recordings, a band of top
session musicians and a recording studio called The Hit Factory on West 48th
Street.
Her idea of a nice place to rehearse was Sam's seaside house where she'd
shipped a grand piano as well as a Yamaha electric grand. No mean feat
considering its remote location and the fact that there wasn't a road. The
plan was to have John work there while she played with her lover.
But John refused to stay, and got me to set up a rehearsal studio in apartment
71 before they started recording at The Hit Factory on August 6. The dizzying
pace of the recording sessions was fuelled by liberal amounts of cocaine, which
John sent me out to buy and write off on my expense account as "candy".
Yoko often slept on the couch in the studio — John's cue to get out the Jack
Daniels and tequila which he and Jack kept hidden in the recording console.
Sometimes Yoko disappeared and John's frequent refrain was: "Has anybody seen
my wife?"
I later discovered that she was meeting Sam in a hotel room booked under the
name of Mrs Green. During September, the second month of the recording
sessions, Yoko had six secret hotel assignations with Sam. Upon their arrival
in the luxury suite caviar, champagne and vodka were laid out for their
enjoyment.
Sam was sickened by her demands for him to turn up at a moment's notice and he
insisted the affair should end. She punished him by severing all ties at the
end of October, when she refused to make good a promise to cover a £65,000 bank
loan.
It was a convenient time to switch allegiance, as John was back in the
limelight and required all her attention. She also had to concentrate on her
recordings, believing she would finally achieve the same fame as John — a
status she had always envied. Everything the Lennons could wish for was
installed at the Hit Factory. Their favourite biscuits, booze, coffee and
tea. He was in his element playing and sitting at the 24-track recording
console. Yoko was so nervous before doing I'm Your Angel, she whispered to me
to get her a glass of vodka. "It'll relax my voice. Make it look like water,"
she said.
I got it but it didn't help. Her voice repeatedly cracked in the upper
register.
By the time John's 40th birthday came around on October 9, the album was nearly
finished.
The first single, Starting Over, was released on October 14. Double Fantasy
followed about a month later and included I'm Your Angel which everyone
presumed Yoko wrote for John. In fact, it had been a birthday gift to Sam
Green the previous May. His sudden downfall has been attributed to Sam
Havadtoy telling tales about the man he considered a rival. Havadtoy rapidly
established himself as a key member of her inner circle...and he moved in only
days after John's death. Now 20 years later he and Yoko are still a couple.
What was to be John's last birthday was a double event as Yoko had made sure
Sean was born on the same day.
According to a Hindu superstition a child born on its father's birthday will
inherit his soul when the father dies and Yoko's goal was to bestow John's
genius upon her child.
My birth date was also crucial to my job. My Aunt Helen's husband Norman knew
Yoko during the 60s and they had all remained friends, mentioning me when John
needed a personal assistant. But just as important was my birthday which fell
on October 10, the day after John's, and he and Yoko attached great
significance to this as it meant my and John's astral charts were compatible.
They believed I was predestined to work for them.
Sean was five on October 9, 1980, and the little party for family and staff was
the best. It was in the kitchen at the Dakota where John and Yoko liked to sit
at the butcher's block table, drink tea, smoke and read the papers.
John's birthday was on a different scale. Yoko announced there would be an
outdoor event — a plane skywriting Happy Birthday over Central Park and an
indoor event, the cake-cutting and presents.
But when I asked her if she would be going up on the roof to watch the plane
she looked at me as if I was mad and demanded: "Are you kidding?" John didn't
bother either because he wanted to sleep and ignore the fuss over his 40th.
Sean wanted to know when he would get his presents. I explained he would have
to wait until John got up. At 4:30pm it was time for the inside event. John
hadn't shaved in a day or two and wore a party hat made by my Aunt Helen from a
brown paper grocery bag. She stuck the figure 40 on it in orange tape. There
was a cake with five candles which Sean blew out. John stood behind him and
held his hand when they cut the cake together.
Sean ripped open his presents which John had asked me to buy — mostly cartoon
videotapes.
The official birthday party was a few days later at the Tavern On The Green.
John was in a stunningly good mood and credited it to Double Fantasy. He was
also flirting with some of the women there, not surprising as he hadn't had sex
during the three months it took to record the album.
My girlfriend Victoria made up my face with black eye-liner and mascara. John
caught sight of me and sidled up and said: "Love your make-up, honey!"
This was just as Peter Boyle was waving his camera and told his friend Marnie
Hair he would give her $10 to kiss John so he could take a snap. John was
laughing and said: "Here's a picture that's worth a lot more," and kissed me
full on the lips.
Yoko dislike her own birthday partly because of her own fear of ageing, but
also because she would have to give the impression she was enjoying it when
people made a fuss over her.
She was seven years older than John and while she had complete disregard for
her physical well-being in some respects, particularly her chain-smoking and
heroin habit, she was obsessed about her skin.
She went to incredible lengths to get anti-ageing potions illegal in America
but available in eastern Europe. Her bathroom at the Dakota, which naturally
had a phone by the loo — was full of cosmetics promising youthfulness. More
than once she told me she felt her skin was dying.
For her, birthdays were no cause for celebration but John made a big production
of them, especially her 47th in February 1980, which they celebrated at their
villa El Solano in Florida.
John wanted her to wake up to the perfume of 1,000 gardenias, her favourite
flowers. Money was no object but I soon found out they weren't in season so we
had to settle for what I could get my hands on — 100 very expensive blooms.
When she woke up she kept murmuring, "They're so beautiful," but she said it in
such a way as John serenaded her with love songs that I sensed something was
wrong.
When he left the room, she turned to me and said: "Thank you for the flowers,
but they're just not right for the occasion. In Japan, gardenias are the
flowers of death. They're for funerals."
Then I was just embarrassed by our ignorance. But now I'm sure that John, who
had spent the previous three summers in Japan, knew exactly what he was saying
with flowers. They represented a relationship which was passionless.
He was sending Yoko a message in the guise of being romantic but what he was
really saying was that their relationship was dead.
And what was it, a matter of days before Yoko moved her *other* Sam (Havadtoy) into the Dakota?
I'll see if I can locate a copy of that book.Lesley-Ann Jones, in The Search for John Lennon claims that just about everything connected to Double Fantasy was a farce. Yoko had already moved on. She also claims Yoko was much happier after John died...Thanks for this archival find, Pamela! It's very interesting indeed.You're welcome!
Here's the thing. I believe that, because John Lennon treated his songwriting as a kind of diary, he inadvertently revealed his marriage as a wreck in several of the DF songs. Yoko didn't have any songwriting experience prior to her involvement
her money. Yoko had found a younger gay male version of her predatory self.Right! Seaman also noted that, while John admired Sam Green's "gift of the gab," John deemed Havadtoy a "mercenary pretty boy." It's interesting that Yoko's longest intimate relationship with a man was with a gay man who was basically using her forAfter John's death, Yoko became involved with a gay interior decorator named Sam Havadtoy. She wrote a song in this time called "No, No, No" which includes the line: "You're thinking of Rock Hudson when we do it."In Seaman's book The Last Days of John Lennon he says that John knew all about Sam 1 and Sam 2, but was not able to or did not want to deal with the consequences of confronting these issues...
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