[continued from previous message]
was a forgery, all this really weird stuff, brought in people to say that I
... people like [Rolling Stone publisher] Jann Wenner to say that I was a nobody, that they'd never heard of me ... and then
my lawyer said "Can we talk about how many times you've mentioned him in your
magazine?"... He made Jann read those on the stand.
Q: John was talking about touring?
A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Q: What was his plan?
A Oh, tremendous production, including and these have to be on some of the
"Lost Lennon Tapes" or whatever they call them his arrangements of songs that
he said 'we never got right,' which were "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold
Your Hand".
Q: He was gonna do them?
A: Yeah, he was gonna do them. He was going, "You know, we never - we always
wanted to do something like ... but it never got done exactly the way we
wanted to do it."
Q: You remember how he wanted to do some of those songs?
A: He played them on guitar.
Q: And how were they different?
A: Maybe the tempo was a little different but it was more like ideas he had
for what the rest of the band was gonna do. But that was gonna -be in the
show.
Q: He was gonna do some Beetle songs?
A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Q: I heard that McCartney or Harrison called the studio during the sessions
and Yoko didn't allow the call to be placed through.
A: No, it was McCartney.
Q: What happened?
A: Well, from what I heard and from what I heard from John as well, he was
looking to get. like, hooked up with Paul before Paul went o t' Japan, to do
some writing.
Q: They were going to write together?
A: Yeah. And ... after the sessions, John never left immediately, he'd
always sit in the control room and usually took a little grass. He had this
old opium pipe, it was probably 500 years old, and he'd say to me, "is it all
over?" 'Cause he would never do anything if we were working. And I'd say,
"It's over, John." And he'd sit back and put his feet up on the console and
he'd load up the pipe and sit back and light up and a few of us - I'd ride
home with him because I only lived two blocks from him. And he'd start
talking, you know, reminiscing about things, we'd listen to tile radio and if
a Beatles song came on, he'd talk about it. But the one thing - the
overwhelming feeling about the things that he was saying was that he loved
the guys in that band more than anybody else, you know? He was pissed off at
George because George's book had come out and didn't mention John. You know,
like, "How can he write a book about his life and not mention me? I'm the
most important…" Yeah. But he loved the guys in The Beatles. He loved them.
And he loved that band. And, you know, it was like his band. And I mean,
the way he went on about it ...
Q: And he was gonna write with Paul?
A: He was looking to get hooked up with Paul" yeah. But yeah, that call came
through and that didn't happen. And Paul went off and got in trouble. And
when he got in trouble ...
Q: He didn't get the message from anyone?
A: No.
Q: Who kept him away?
A: I think Yoko probably thought ... I can't speak for Yoko. Maybe she
thought it'd be a distraction. I don't think it would have been.
Q: Who knows what would have happened. But when Paul got busted for pot in
Japan, we were in the studio, when that call came in that he was in trouble,
man, you oughta see John flippin' out.
**
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I had not seen this before. It is extremely interesting. The parts about Yoko paying people to speak ill of Douglas (when all he expected was Yoko to fulfill her part of their contract) and the break-in of Douglas' home are
troubling.
It's what we know about her though. She also forced Cheap Trick of the album saying they wanted to cash in on John's fame. Which is ironic coming from her.
Yeah, and this episode of Yoko's not keeping her contract with Douglas reminds me of something else she did at about this same time. She had been in a relationship with the art dealer Sam Green for several years. This was the guy
who got the Lennons to President Carter's inaugural gala (there's footage of them there online). This was the guy who saw Yoko through her detox from heroin. They traveled together and supposedly some of Yoko's songs on Double Fantasy were written to Mr.
Green.
I've read that Yoko had assured Sam that she would cover a loan he owed to his bank. On the day the payment was due, Yoko called Sam and told him to move out of an NYC apartment of which he was very proud. Sam refused, and Yoko
told him: "You will be destroyed." Yoko didn't keep her promise about the loan and that was the end of this seemingly significant relationship.
It seems to me that Yoko had a psychopathic side.
Remember that quote by John saying that Yoko views men as assistants? Might be one of the most open things John ever said. Sam Havadtoy was a good assistant, as was John and Tony Cox. I suspect Sam Green ( and couple years earlier,
David Spinozza) was not interested in just being an assistant, which is why they had a falling out.
I do remember that quote and I also remember a quotation from Yoko years before it in which she specifically said that she considered men her assistants. Imagine if a male celebrity were to talk that way about women! His career would
be over. And how strange that a guy like John Lennon, who had achieved so much, and who could have chosen from among so many women, would succumb to Yoko and end up sucked into her narcissistic vortex. He ended up another of her assistants, like Havadtoy,
Mintz, Tony Cox, and even the talented and classically-trained (for real) Toshi Ichiyanagi.
I accept your speculation. I do remember reading of Yoko's attempts to break Spinozza. Rather than bowing to Yoko, he asked her how she could present herself and John as the "Peace & Love Couple" when Yoko privately had such contempt
for John. He challenged Yoko to pay for an album and tour using her own money rather than John's.
It had propably something to do with the way Mimi treated him, combined with his emotional vulnerability of drug use and abandonment issues. When he got with Yoko he seems to be in a real low of his life, he might've seen her as his
saviour one way or the other, a new partner... Then she started dominating him and he gave in.... And that's The Real Ballad.
You know your John Lennon background. Mimi was -- certainly according to Cynthia Lennon in her book "John" -- cold, manipulative, determined to have her way, and ultimately disapproving of John. It's very creepy that, for all of the
success Lennon had achieved, he ended up with somebody else who was just like that.
And the drugs -- particularly the LSD; according to Pete Shotton, Lennon's life had become a "continuous LSD trip" in the period preceding Yoko -- no doubt played a huge role in the destruction of Lennon's powers of discernment. John had
begun to surround himself with nuts, or "human oddities," in Shotton's words. This is why Cynthia didn't recognize the threat Yoko posed to her marriage. She assumed Yoko was just another freak that Lennon had allowed into his orbit.
Yeah I know about Magic Alex, who was a bit like Yoko if Cynthia's assessment of him was correct. Manipulative, a con-artist and jealous of John paying attention to other people like the Maharishi.
Someone who knew Mimi wrote a book about her saying she was lovely, yet a lot of the negative traits which often describe her in Beatles/Lennon biographies do turn up there. IMO the saddest thing Mimi ever did was getting rid of Sally (dog
in the picture of young John) when John was out of the house. That was just plain cruel. John apparently never forgave her for that.
Oh, and have you read this? She goes in all about John's "shameful" behaviour, quite obsessively so.
www.meetthebeatlesforreal.com/2016/07/a-visit-with-aunt-mimi.html
Magic Alex is precisely who I was thinking about when I mentioned the nuts John was associating with during his constant acid-tripping! I'm impressed by your observation that Alex was Yoko-like. He saw that John was susceptible to his con-man
routines (Alex' supposed inventions were BS -- like Yoko's art); *and* he had no qualms whatsoever about using people and then destroying them. I'm thinking of how he gave Cynthia Lennon a sympathetic ear during her time of need (she had just returned
from a vacation to find John and Yoko immersed in each other in her home), plied her with wine, and then had sex with her. Later, he threatened to testify in court on for Lennon that *she* had been an unfaithful wife.
I remember the book you mention. The author seemed to think she had presented a very poisitive portrait of Mimi -- when in fact she had done (for my money) the opposite.
And that article you posted the link to was new to me. Mimi's observation that John's radical phase was all an act and a product of Yoko rings true. The saddest thing is Mimi's statement that she had spoken to McCartney, and that he was sure
that the rift between him and Lennon would be short-lived.
I believe Paul believed this when he said it. What he did not know is that Yoko (and not John) was the source of this estrangement.
For the record, I think Magic Alex was playing both John and Cynthia during the events of 1968. Cynthia seems to realise what was going on with him, however.
I haven't read the book, but I saw people say that a lot of John's more negative traits has been clearly taught by Mimi. ( Not to say he didn't learn any positive, he certainly learned manners from her)
I don't think John was living a complete lie in 1969-1972 or anything, I do think he was interested in the cause ( they didn't like the war but weren't allowed to comment on it by Brian, and "All You Need Is Love" was certainly Pre-Yoko), but
50,000,000 Beatles fans can't be wrong. If a lot of people (including Mimi, who knew John very well) saw John changing pretty soon after he hooked up with Yoko, then there is something going on. And it's not a coincidence that John's hostile attitude
towards Paul was at it's peak during this period, while during Lost Weekend he was way gentler about Paul ( and The Beatles in general).
I know John was genuinely opposed to the Vietnam war -- he had this stance well before Yoko came along. I was referring (with "radical phase") more to his David Peel/John Sinclair/Abbie Hoffman/Elephant's Memory stuff. I suspect that this was a
product of Yoko's influence. She persuaded John that his music was the "people's music," the music of the street, etc. John assumed he should trust her on that, when in fact her assessment of his music was born of resentment of its success. Yoko talked
as if the reason her stuff was not popular was that it was of the upper class; and that John's stuff was popular was that it was simple and accessible. Her work was "too complex" for the common man. Or so she purported to believe.
Would John have done Sometime In New York City if he hadn't been with Yoko? I doubt it very much.
I've read a lot of the "Lost Weekend" interviews and articles. John was indeed warming up to McCartney and the Beatles during this period. And he was finally back on track musically with Walls and Bridges. Then John's *real* Lost Weekend came:
his return to Ono, followed by 5 years of seclusion.
Oh you have read May's book as well, right? In there it's all over the place that Yoko considers herself superior to "simple" Beatles music and considers herself the true songwriter of the family. Also she suggested to John that he really belonged
on the streets, kicking of the STINYC period. And no, I don't think he would've gone this far if she wasn't there. And look what happened : It was a critical and commercial flop, and he didn't record for more than a year. ( I like STINYC quite fine
myself, but I can see why it's the worst of his solo-career, and as a 20 year old I obviously had to google about what all these causes actually meant at the time, so it hasn't aged well in that regard either)
John was planning to continue his lost weekend with the Between The Lines album, which propably would've come out in 1975. I've read that Nobody Told Me actually should've been on that album, together with a couple of other songs he wrote around
that time. I would've loved if John continued to be productive, but ah well...
Coincidentally, I just quoted from May's book in another thread. I've got a debate going on Vincent Bugliosi in another venue and I wanted to find a particular passage pertaining to John and his fear about Manson-types' interpretations of the Beatles'
work. I thought the passage might be of interest to members of this group.
You are amazingly well-informed on this stuff for a 20-year old. Yes, John was planning on following Walls and Bridges with an album called Between the Lines. I found a quote from him in which he enthused that he had 6 songs written for this project.
Who knows how far along he was when Yoko became pregnant and John's professional life ended.
May said in an interview that John basically quit the moment he went back to Yoko, even before the pregnancy. Although he was still finishing up the Rock n Roll album and still had a social life, lol. Not long after Sean's birth that's when the real
Howard Hughes type of behaviour started kicking in. John once said that when he didn't make music he fell into depression, which we can see in his well-documented "high and low" behaviour. So here we have John not recording music for more than 5 years
and living a quite reclusive life. The happy househusband stereotype falls flat on it's face if you put that together, especially if May and Fred's account on this time period is to be believed.
The derailing if John's music career just as he was getting back on track is tragic -- almost as tragic as the demise of the Beatles.
May picked up the phone during one of Yoko's calls at the time when Walls & Bridges was topping the charts. "Isn't it wonderful?" May asked. "It's just hype," Yoko hissed.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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