Let John and Yoko stay in the USA

In recently reading through fan magazines that I have obtained from the early and mid 1970's, I am reminded of the fact that Beatle fans worked very hard for John Lennon to stay in the U.S.A.   Each fanzine has addresses and petitions to send in for John.   It is easy after the fact to forget that it was John's fans that really did all that they could for John to get his green card.   I am not sure how much help it really gave John, but I'd like to think that it was maybe that little extra to help him win his case.   

Here is a story written by Barbara Clark for "McCartney Lovers and Friends" from January 1973 from when she and her friends hung around during one of John's immigration hearings in April 1972.

 

So I thought I would write about last April 18, 1972, when we went to see John at court.  We started off at 7am for the city, but heavy traffic, the car getting sick on the way (the car stalled out while turning a corner, and a taxi pushed us down the road, where we had to stop for over ½ hour) and the location of the 20 West Broadway (Immigration Office) being unfindable, slowed us down a bit and we didn’t arrive there until 9:30. 

Having missed John by a few minutes, we were killing each other, and then noticed that a crowd had already assembled (waiting for him to come out).  There were photographers, news reporters, groupies, teenyboppers and assorted people who didn’t know what the hell was going on, but stayed anyway just to see what was happening.  Three long hours passed, and finally John made his way out.  Seeing the reporters, he threw his arm around Yoko, and seemed to dread the upcoming serge.  They literally jumped on him.  He spent about 15 minutes answering questions about the court proceedings.  Answering some questions on the lighter side, he said that in kindergarten and all through school, nobody liked his face, and he seemed to always be in real bad trouble because of it.  He answered a girl’s question about his LP that was going to come out in a few weeks (He was really cheerful about that).  He finally pushed his way through the mob and smiled when he looked our way.  “Thomas” opened the car door and they were off.  Tommy, Marie, Sagi and I were at Apple on a hunch, when Geraldo Rivera from ABC news arrived along with some cameramen.  (They went inside to interview John, and it was on TV that night).  Marie suggested that he ask John to do a concert for the children of Willowbrook as George had done for Bangladesh.   He said that he would (Well it worked!)  He seemed to be rather snotty, he thinks he’s a real celebrity you know.  We waited and waited and waited.  Soon after, two true blue Beatle fans (guys) from New Jersey arrived.  They came to give John a letter.  It was about Yellow Matter Custard.  They kept asking Marie if she knew where John lived so that they could visit him and send him letters (“How should I know?” she said innocently).  Eventually, we saw Tom (his driver) come out from Apple, and John came out about five minutes later.  The two guys managed to speak to him and asked him about Yellow Matter Custard.  John told them to contact Dave Morrell (He’s about 17 ad calls himself the #1 Beatle fan because he has every LP and bootleg going and about $1000.00 worth of Beatle collections.)  Anyway, this Dave bloke was on the radio once bragging about his bootlegs, and John was interested in Yellow Matter Custard so he got to meet John and give him a copy (Oh yeah, he was also at Apple earlier in the dya).  Anyway he walked towards Marie’s car looked in and then saw Tom behind us and got into the blue station wagon.  They took off and when we decided to go our way we found that they were going in the same direction.  We almost went through a red light, got hit by a bus, and then found John in front of us.  His lane was going too slow and we didn’t know what to do.  A cab driver yelled out for us to pass him and Tommy yelled back, “but you don’t understand the situation!”  Marie, having one of her nervous attacks, kept saying “let’s take a vote on this.”   We had to pass, but I did look back and saw John resting his arm and hanging out the window smiling at all the people passing by.