Glass Onion: On John Lennon

A deep dive into the music and complex psychology of John Lennon, featuring interviews with such noted authors and podcasters as David Bedford, Dan Richter, Jude Kessler, Kit O'Toole and Ken McNab, as well as ex-Quarrymen bandmates Rod Davis and Colin Hanton

Episode 87- All We Are Saying: The 1980 Playboy Interviews (Part 1 of 2) 03/18/2023

Episode 87- All We Are Saying: The 1980 Playboy Interviews (Part 1 of 2) John Lennon’s series of interviews for Playboy magazine in September, which also included Yoko Ono, are not only a fascinating and multi-layered study of a highly eccentric artist but also form an integral part of the official narrative of John and Yoko’s relationship in 1980 before his death and of the genesis of the songs for their joint album ‘Double Fantasy’. This episode is the first of a 2-parter that picks out some interesting extracts from the book ‘All We Are Saying’, based on the transcripts of the interviews. A lot of the narrative promoted by John & Yoko in these interviews has been reasonably debunked, including the obvious and provable point that John's songs for 'Double Fantasy' were worked on for years rather than being the product of pure inspiration. The overall contention over what the truth is has helped form the Coleman-Goldman continuum that has been a almost frequent topic of study on this podcast Before the main topic, there is also a recommendation and critique of Madeline Bocaro’s epic new 500-page book on Yoko Ono, whose narrative fits neatly with the interviews being studied in this episode. There are numerous audio clips to complement the conversation, including some of John from the interviews themselves. Enjoy! Feedback and voluntary Paypal donations to OR Support the show at Facebook page- Twitter handle Antony's website (music, podcasts, blog, life coaching) Antony's 'Life And Life Only' podcast (on Psychology) Antony on Luke’s English Podcast talking about meditation episode links The Playboy Interviews (more than 3 hours of audio clips) link to Madeline Bocaro’s new book on Yoko Ono Madeline and Dan Richter on the ‘Things We Said Today’ podcast ‘John Lennon’s Original Lost Weekend’ (episode of ‘The Beatles Naked’) Double Fantasy Revisited (‘Something About The Beatles’ podcast) Kirby Ferguson’s ‘Everything Is A Remix’ website, documentary and TED talk Huxley vs Orwell (dystopia and modern reality) ‘Amusing Ourselves To Death’ audiobook ‘Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah’ by Richard Bach audiobook /episode/index/show/a4d9ac0e-cb79-4830-933b-f463b99e7d24/id/26268633

The Beatles And A Mass of Humanity 01/31/2023

The Beatles And A Mass of Humanity The Beatles were a pop/rock group and were and are a phenomenon that has been a major part of my life and my psyche for over 30 years, ever since the day in about 1988 when a boy in his early teens brought up on mainly commercial 1980s music suddenly encountered music that was largely new to his ears but which had been created 25 years previously. The music I'd known up to that point mainly featured the 'self-conscious synths' of the New Romantics and the 4-minute single created by gifted songwriters but with an overemphasis on production and electronic technology. Through the compilation 'A Collection of Beatles Oldies... But Goldies', which spanned the singles and most famous album tracks from 1963 to 1966, I marvelled first at the 2-minute immediacy of 'She Loves You' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' from '63, so direct, exciting and driven by guitar and voices that were young, raw and uninhibited with the power and energy to immediately excite the ears and lift the spirit. From there came the still catchy but more world-weary 'Ticket To Ride' from '65 and then the next sensation of 'Eleanor Rigby' from '66, 3 years on from 'She Loves You' but a quantum leap in terms of progress. Rather than go through the incredible Beatles story and try to make it my own, I'm instead going to just jump to one small but significant aspect that perhaps typifies both their appeal and what we are all striving for. In around 2010, I watched some video clips of Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn, a veteran of many reference books and radio specials about the group, discussing a forthcoming trilogy of Beatles books called 'All These Years' that he was writing and which would eventually offer the complete story up to the split in unprecedented detail and drawing from truly obsessive full-time research. Even when I saw the length of the first one released in late 2013 (900 pages, with an 'author's cut' edition of 1700 pages!), I didn't really believe that there could be much information that a seasoned Beatles expert like me hadn't already come across. Tackling the author's cut this year, it turned out to be a 3-month odyssey of steady reading and one fantastic revelation after another, giving a much clearer sense of why the Beatles became so big. Bear in mind that this first book of the trilogy, entitled 'Tune In', only takes the story up to the end of 1962, where The Beatles are on the cusp of fame but without a hit single to their name, so the utter powerhouse that The Beatles have already become is at this point without the force of the now-legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership and their incredible creations that have been with us 50 years and are probably going to last for as long as music is appreciated. What comes across clearly from 'Tune In' is that The Beatles were stars from about 1961, 2 years before anyone outside their immediate part of the world (the north-west of England) and one city in Germany had ever heard of them. After an incredible Hamburg apprenticeship which encompassed 415 stage hours in 14 weeks from August-December 1960, followed by a mind-boggling 503 hours in 92 straight evenings from April-July 1961 and would include 3 more visits of varying lengths in 1962, the basic elements of their appeal were already there, and they had a following which was intensely loyal and already showing signs of becoming obsessional. They weren't the only band to log this approximate number of hours on stage in Hamburg, but crucially they were the ones who seemed to take full advantage of the remarkable opportunity to grow that the relentless Reeperbahn slog, which began on the 20-year anniversary of the first Nazi bombs hitting Liverpool, afforded. To cut a very long story short, they learned incredible stagecraft, being able to take all the various elements of the music they loved and meld them into something hard rocking but also soulful, soaring harmonies of incredible beauty contrasting with a relentless beat and the raw brilliance of John Lennon's driving rhythm guitar. They weren't afraid to branch out and play all kinds of songs, including show tunes and music hall numbers. They provided cabaret and comedy, able to ad lib when there was electrical failure in the venues they were playing, but they also had 'the toughness of hard lives in dangerous places', as Lewisohn's book puts it. Their shows seemed to have everything and encompass the history of music and the experience of life in every note, chord and beat. Two glorious nights at 'The Cavern', the legendary venue on Mathew Street in the centre of Liverpool that in its original form was a converted fruit warehouse cellar used as an air-raid shelter during the Second World War, exemplified The Beatles' appeal. (For the record, the Liverpool tourism industry rather dishonestly omits to mention that the Cavern that exists now is a replica, built a few doors down from the original, which was demolished in the 1970s to make way for a car park!) The venue itself had a pungent aroma (odour) that none who played there have ever forgotten, a mixture of disinfectant, damp, fruit from the warehouses, toilets, perspiration, body odour, soup, hot dogs and cigarettes, an awful but incredibly evocative combination. The Beatles played theirs and the club's first all-night session in summer 1961, with all the usual raw energy and breathless atmosphere heightened in this '6-act, 10-hour party'. One can only imagine what it was like, all the smells previously described intensified even further by even more heaving bodies than usual and the cooking, serving and consumption of large amounts of scouse (onions, carrots, potatoes and meat), once the favourite dish of Norwegian sailors and which gave Liverpudlians their nickname. There are overflowing toilets, pouring ceilings and walls, blown fuses, and lots of musical equipment being lugged through the crowds and into the crowded club. In early April 1962, they managed to top this night with a private party aptly called 'The Beatles For Their Fans', a farewell before their 3rd 'tour' of Hamburg, which saw them become headliners at the newly-created Star-Club. The night was everything they hoped it was going to be, and the 650 or so who attended were treated to a set by the leather-clad Beatles who, after an interval and then an announcement by resident D.J. Bob Wooler, suddenly appeared in their new mohair suits, which garnered a mixed reaction initially from the fans who couldn't quite let them evolve from what was familiar to them but which was eventually accepted as inevitable to ensure progress. Aside from their usual set, The Beatles and support act The Four Jays jammed the jazz standard 'Mama Don't Allow' for a full 20 minutes, including George on trumpet (which he couldn't play at all), everyone taking solos and improvisation to the fore. John and Paul later don Santa outfits (in the middle of spring!) and George wore a silk Noel Coward dressing-gown and Christmas-cracker hat. At the end of this incredible night, the Beatles delivered a special pre-planned parting message along the lines of 'don't forget us', the group having a genuine fear despite their apparently untouchable status that in their absence the fickle audiences might move on to someone else, and step down from the stage into a version of what is later to be called 'Beatlemania'. Local music newspaper 'Mersey Beat' wrote this up as their 'greatest-ever performance', and personally it may well have been the highpoint of their collective life together, especially because they were about to be dealt a blow that even these tough Liverpool boys would find it hard to recover from, namely the death at 21 of their friend and former band member, the gifted painter Stuart Sutcliffe. On an April night in this tiny space in the world, unknown to anyone outside its immediate vicinity, there was all kinds of magic created, largely through human connection created by music and the sense of belonging to something, which I believe is that vital and sometimes elusive element that may be the key to a happy life. For all their success, perhaps this is one of the last times that it felt real, with the fans showing a remarkable appreciation for the group's incredible talent without the wild-eyed and berserk hysteria that would eventually drive The Beatles away from live performance into becoming the studio band of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', a million miles away from sweaty Cavern nights. This particular Cavern night in 1962 was most bittersweet for drummer Pete Best, whose tenure in the group was, probably unbeknownest to him, coming to an end. He was front and centre of one of the many highlights of the night, as the Beatles added a new gimmick to their stage act with the song 'Peppermint Twist', which reflected the still-popular but ultimately short-lived dance craze. Pete came out front from behind his drums to both sing and dance the song, with Paul taking over on drums and George playing Paul's left-handed bass upside down. Best was joined in the twist by a fan and regular 'Cavernite' Kathy Johnson, and as the song went on and on without ever looking like it was going to stop, Pete and Kathy began a romantic partnership that has so far lasted more than 50 years. Was Pete, who was sacked as drummer just before stardom but who has maintained his health, sanity and privacy while eventually getting financially-rewarded through royalties from the 'Beatles Anthology' project, the ultimate loser or the ultimate winner? Without wishing to lapse into cliches, the music world and the public were the ultimate winners of the Beatles story. /episode/index/show/a4d9ac0e-cb79-4830-933b-f463b99e7d24/id/25790820

The Rather Strange Last Day In The Life of John Lennon 01/31/2023

The Rather Strange Last Day In The Life of John Lennon First, the facts as they are known John Lennon was born in 1940 and died in 1980, 2 months after his 40th birthday. It's fair to say that he packed a lot of living into his half-a-lifetime, and it's also universally acknowledged that his death in New York on Monday December 8th 1980 came as a huge shock worldwide, prompting a mass outpouring of grief which seemed to be particularly strong in America, more so than in England, the place of Lennon's birth. Inevitably, there have been rumours about whether it really was a 'lone assassin', as seems to be so often the case in high-profile American murder cases, or another hand, but it's fair to say that Lennon and Yoko Ono almost certainly didn't know that anything out of the ordinary was going to happen on that day. What's also strange about that day is that it seemed to play out as both a microcosm of and epilogue to Lennon's life, as will be seen. It might be expected that on an otherwise ordinary day in the life of a rock superstar, the star himself would not be particularly visible, and we probably wouldn't have photos of him, audio of his voice or a picture of him signing an autograph for a fan, but we have all three and more. Lennon's movements on that day, up to the moment of truth, are now well-known . He started the day with coffee at La Fortuna, a favourite local cafe of his, and the events of the rest of the day make quite eerie reading in retrospect. The haircut Fairly innocuous in itself, but Lennon happened to choose this day to have a throwback 50's-style, faux Teddy Boy haircut, as well as wearing a leather jacket throughout the day. The 50's were his years of teenage development, the seminal period of his life, and his love for Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the rest were some of the main reasons why ultimately The Beatles happened. He had recently taken to wearing his old school tie, and had recorded his comeback single, (Just Like) Starting Over, in a vocal style that he called 'Elvis-Orbison'. The photoshoot In the late morning, John and Yoko did a photo session with well-known New York photographer Annie Liebowitz. Easily the most famous shot to emerge from this session was one of a fully-naked John Lennon in a foetal embrace with a fully-clad Yoko Ono. 'That's it!, that's our relationship' said Lennon after the photo had been posed for. The idea of being a naked 'artist', both literally, artistically and spiritually, had been perhaps the second great theme of his life and work, after rock'n'roll. In the mid-60's, after the thrill of Beatles fame had long since become more of an empty irritation than a glorious thrill, he had gone into a drug-addled period of seclusion, broken only by Beatle commitments, before he started a relationship with Yoko who, like her or hate her, did seem to bring him back to life. From then to the end of his life, he considered himself an artist, open to ideas and willing to lay himself bare, literally or otherwise, before his audience. He had of course been pictured naked before, with Yoko in a similar state, for the cover of their barely-listenable 'concept art' album, 'Two Virgins'. At that time, the picture seemed to be of two people reduced to a child-like state of innocence in the glow of their new love, but 12 years later, with Lennon alone in the virginal state and having dubbed Yoko 'mother' some years back, the balance of power in their relationship seemed clear. John and Yoko had also recently shot a video of them naked, simulating love-making, to promote one of their latest songs. The interview Between 1-4pm on December 8th 1980, Dave Sholin became the recipient of John Lennon's final interview, held in one of the vast rooms of John and Yoko's many apartments in the Gothic Dakota building, located at West 72nd Street, New York, and formerly the setting for the film 'Rosemary's Baby', made in 1968 by Roman Polanski. One year after the film, Polanski's pregnant wife Sharon Tate was butchered by the Manson family, who wrote in Tate's blood near her body, 'Helter Skelter', the name of a Beatles song from their most-recent album. Lennon was late getting back for the interview, apologising and announcing that Annie Liebowitz had wanted 'one more shot' before he was free to leave. Yoko had taken the floor before his arrival. In the 3-hour Sholin interview, John Lennon, with literally hours to live, ran through a potted history of his whole life, from his troubled family history to the famous meetings with Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono to his hopes for the future of himself and mankind. Towards the end of the interview, John Lennon announced that 'i always consider my work to be one piece, and it won't be finished until i'm dead and buried and i hope that's a long, long time'. Lennon seemed upbeat to all who knew him at this time, while others believe he was actually clinically depressed and addicted to very potent pharmaceuticals. His excessively thin frame was either the result of a healthy diet or heroin. At this very moment in time, a 25-year-old from Georgia, now based in Hawaii, a world away from the superstar John Lennon in terms of status and the love of others, was very close to him, standing outside the Dakota apartment chatting to other fans as well as an amateur photographer of Lennon's acquaintance called Paul Goresh. Mark David Chapman, by his own admission, was holding a gun in his pocket in the crisp December air, waiting for one of the voices in his head, God or Satan, to step forward and help determine the course of his actions and his and Lennon's destinies, just as Lennon spoke those last words. The autograph At around 5pm, Lennon's and Chapman's worlds collided for the first time. John Ono Lennon, world superstar and cultural icon, a man prone to depression and mood swings, stepped out of the Dakota apartments with his wife on his way to a recording studio. Mark David Chapman, a nobody who'd previously attempted suicide and was a man prone to depression and mood swings, stood outside the same building. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there he was, the superstar, the icon, and Chapman froze. His first instinct was not to draw his gun. He simply froze, like any awed fan face-to-face with John Lennon. He'd bought Lennon's latest album, Double Fantasy, the day before, and as Lennon approached, he wordlessly thrust the album in front of him. Lennon dutifully signed the album 'John Lennon 1980'. Amateur photographer Goresh, an opportunist who had once posed as a delivery man in order to get into the Dakota, saw his opportunity and snapped the final pictures of John Lennon alive, signing an autograph for the man who would soon end his life. In the picture (below), Chapman's smile/smirk could be equally interpreted as a devilish appreciation of what was to happen later or simply that of a fan, his demons temporarily set aside, happy to get his album signed by the man himself. One source has stated that Chapman asked Lennon for a job during their encounter, but this is unverified. It's also been written that after giving the autograph, Lennon asked Chapman, 'is that all you want?' , and some even go further and have Lennon asking him a second time and there being a moment suspended in time, as if Lennon had some mystical (or at least vibrational) awareness of something 'fated'. The recording session John Lennon went to the Hit Factory to record guitar on Yoko Ono's 'Walking On Thin Ice', his final contribution to the music business. The end Chapman waited with Goresh, who eventually left for the night. Many hours later, at 10.50pm, Chapman saw Lennon's limousine approach from the distance and park by the kerb outside the Dakota. Yoko got out first, quite a way ahead of John and passed Chapman. Lennon passed him next and may or may not have acknowledged him, and at this point Chapman fired the shots heard around the world. Lennon's painfully thin frame was no match for the hollow-point bullets of the .38 Charter Arms pistol, which ripped through him and sealed his fate. He had enough left to moan 'I'm shot' but was D.O.A. at nearby Roosevelt Hospital 20 minutes later. As if the day couldn't get any stranger, Chapman, upon shooting the star, simply put the smoking gun down by his feet and started reading 'The Catcher In The Rye' by J.D. Salinger, a book he had become seemingly obsessed with over the previous 2 years. So John Lennon, sporting his vintage rock'n'roll haircut and leather jacket, having given the world a final set of pictures and a retrospective interview encompassing most of his life story, and signed an autograph for the worst kind of fan, was gone. The aftermath As a final expression of how media-dominated the world had become even then, there was one more John Lennon photo taken that day before his cremation, of the rock star and ex-Beatle lying on the slab. The world chose to remember him as a saint, something that Astrid Kirchherr, who'd befriended the young Beatles in Hamburg, thought he would have found quite amusing. Chapman has now served over 40 years in Attica Prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Such is the nature of his crime and the person he killed, he will probably never be released. Is this right, when others have done similar things to nobodies and served far less time? It is thought that if he was released, one of those misguided Beatles fans, young or old, who really thinks that John Lennon wrote songs for them and them alone, might earn themselves a life sentence for an act of retribution. It should be remembered that in the end, however gifted, John Lennon was just a man, all too human, so perhaps this is above all a story of the power of celebrity. Postscript As if the story needed any more bizarre twists, how about this recollection from a rock journalist interviewing David Bowie recently. 'I’ve been rattled more than once by a revelation from a musician for which there had been no previous report , but none more sobering than the one David Bowie gave me when the recording machine was turned off : according to Bowie , New York City police discovered that his name was second on a hitlist of targets of John Lennon’s assassin , Mark David Chapman . At the time of Lennon’s December 8 , 1980 murder outside of his Manhattan apartment , David Bowie was starring just blocks away on Broadway in the play “The Elephant Man” . “I was second on his list,” Bowie told me in the New York studio we shared near Madison Square Garden . “Chapman had a front-row ticket to ‘The Elephant Man’ the next night . John and Yoko were supposed to sit front-row for that show, too. So the night after John was killed there were three empty seats in the front row . I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on . I almost didn’t make it through the performance .” The irony is that David Bowie’s first #1 hit “Fame” , from the Young Americans album , was co-written with Lennon who also played guitar on the track . And it was indeed their fame as rock stars which drew Mark David Chapman to stalk them, and subsequently, to murder Lennon.' /episode/index/show/a4d9ac0e-cb79-4830-933b-f463b99e7d24/id/25790775