I found this interview from Disc magazine in the Aug/Sept 1975 issue of The Write Thing. Unfortunately they had to edit the interview down to fit into the fanzine.
The following
interview is from Disc- May 31, and June
14, 1975. These are the highlights.
Disc: “Walls and
Bridges” was considered by many to be
the best album you ever made. Is it as
personal an album as it sounds?
John: All my stuff’s
personal, it always has been to a great extent even since early Beatle days, I
mean I think “Help” was personal. “In my
Life” was personal, and “Strawberry Fields” was personal, even though it became
the psychedelic anthem, it really was a personal song. Maybe the lyrics got more refined as I became
older and got to the point quicker, but they are all personal. We’re all sheep, you know, the artists and
the critics alike really. Ever since I
went to Janov’s therapy “personal” took a new meaning. You know, on the so called Janov album I’d
written a couple of tracks before I even went to Janov. They were personal, but they just somehow
fitted in to that category. So I’ve
always been a personal writer, like a
reporter.
Disc: Do you think “Walls
and Bridges” is a bitter album?
John: If it is, it
is. I don’t know. To me ’74 was hell and I am glad to be alive
and out of it. A lot of my friends
thought it was hell too actually, but just personally speaking it was a rough
year and there’s no way I can’t let it show in my work – even if I was trying
to write a third person “Tommy” or write about somebody else or pretend I’m
writing about somebody else, there’s no way it doesn’t show through. So maybe it was bitter. Some of it was just vaguely sad. But there’s not many emotions around. There is up and down, right? In between is a bit boring.
Disc: Are you tempted
to do the music of any of your contemporaries?
John: I’ve often
thought of it, like I’d often thought of doing the “Rock n Roll” album. I’d often thought of doing old Beatle numbers
again myself – I’ve thought about it many times in the last five years. It all depends on how much time there is to
do it. I’d like to do a couple of Dylan’s
and I’d like to do “Your Song” of Elton’s.
I love that song, whether I could do it or not is another point. I’m not going to make a habit of doing other
people’s songs! Somebody reviewed “Rock
n Roll” over here I think and said, “He’s doing it just for the money.” I hope he reads Disc, because I get **** all
from the album, I have to slip the producer some money, so I get least of all
cash for that album.
Disc: I know the
Beatles’ legal problems have at last been settled. Would you mind telling what difference that’s
made?
John: No, I don’t
mind telling about it. All that did in
actuality was to make us get paid directly.
Because even with the individual albums we were doing the money was
still going into a collective pot. So
that meant all the Beatles stuff—which still sells!—and all the new stuff was
all going into one pot and then it had to be worked out to come out again. The main thing of the settlement was to
release the monies to ourselves. It did
not break all ties with each other, because it’s a bit more complicated than
that. We’re still pretty well tied up in
many ways.
Disc: Do you miss
England?
John: Yes, I do, but
I’m not going to walk away from it (immigration struggle) now! I’ve spent so much effort on it. When I get the green card… I keep telling
myself, Britain will still be there when it’s over but from time to time I get
the idea that maybe it’ll float away!
Disc: What will you
do when and if you get that green card?
John: I haven’t
thought that far ahead. I’m just getting
the card. If I ever did tour, I’d
probably tour the world. Touring at the
moment isn’t my idea of fun but I’m always changing my mind so I can’t
tell. If I did I think I’d do it all
over. I just want to go back to Britain
and see it and have a cup of tea, not to perform or anything, just to be
there. When people ask me about it, I
tend to remember my childhood in Liverpool rather than the time I spent in
London in the ‘60’s. And because of that
I may emotionally miss Liverpool, although it is 99 to 1 if I came to Britain I’d
come to London. I probably wouldn’t have
the time to go to Liverpool.
My idea of fun is to travel from London to New York, to
Paris. I may even go to Germany, I don’t
know why but I just fancy going there. I
wanna go and see the places I didn’t see, like Munich and Berlin. Even when we toured Europe, I didn’t see
them.
Disc: I’ve been told
you have a beautiful apartment here.
John: I guess it’s
pretty good, yeah. It’s in a building
called the Dakota, and it’s really very European, in other words it’s very very
old building. It’s on the park and most
of the rooms face the park. So it’s good
and it’s large enough to get a little lost in i. If the “garden” which is Central Park,
belongs to New York and there’s a doorman at the door to keep Jesus from
Toronto coming in and asking me for the message and the answer, that suits me
fine. I get a lot of weirdos here. I don’t know why, because most of my lyrics
and sons are pretty straightforward.
They were more sort of mystic in the ‘60’s. But still somehow that word
Beatle manifests some sort of mysticism in people’s head and I’m thinking ‘why
are they calling? What are they
bothering me for?” I just say I feel
crap or I feel great in my songs, there’s no mysticism in it.
Disc: Not so much was
heard in England about the Janov thing. Could
you tell us a little about it?
John: The Janov thing
was just a new form of therapy. I’m very
English in that respect – think psychiatrists need to see psychiatrists. They’re a lot of baloney psychiatrists, and I
was never interested unil I read his original book ‘the Primal Scream” and my
instincts told me there was something about it, that there is some kind of
primal scream in all of us. That’s how I
got interested.
In a nutshell the only thing I can tell you that I learned
was to cry. That’s something you lose
the art of because of the way one is brought up. A lot of women already do that but men don’t
have it: they’re told not to. It was good for me. It didn’t help me not to. It didn’t help me behave myself in ’74, but I think if I hadn’t been there I might have
even been in worse condition. It took me
a little time to recover from the Janov
experience which left me bitterer than when I went in, and that did shake me up
for a couple of years. In fact, I
probably only just recovered from it this year.
It was a bit of a mind blower and it left me—well, I suppose faithless
is the best way to put it. I do have
faith now, and have still gained something from the experience of going there.
John was then asked about Julian
John: Well ,he was
here—because I can’t leave the country, he has to come here and see me—and I
was working, and I was worried that he might be a bit bored. But he loved the studio, and he was always
playing and banging round. So I recorded
him, or the engineer did, when he was banging on the drums and I was playing
piano. I thought he’d be thrilled by it,
I kept saying “there’s a surprise on ‘Walls and Bridges’ when it comes out.” And he called me: he said, ‘Was that it?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,
didn’t you like it?’ He said, “Is that
on every record?” Also I said “Yeah”
thinking he’s love it and he said, “that’s terrible, we should have done it
again!” He takes it so seriously and it
was only an ad-lib
He’s into guitar and piano and playing in this group. He knew all the chords and all that. I spent hours with him trying to work out the
lick from “My Sweet Lord” and I couldn’t play the damn thing because I didn’t
have anything to do with it. It was
George. We had a terrible three hours
with Julian furious at me because I didn’t know how to play it.
Disc: About the other
Beatles, have you seen or heard from the others recently?
John: I spoke to
Ringo on the phone before he left for England (in May), and then I spoke to him
there. The last one I saw was Paul on
his way down to New Orleans. Like I said
before, I was supposed to go down to New Orleans to mess around with him, but I
got back to Yoko instead and I was too busy going home to go to New Orleans.
The others are alright by me. There’s nothing in the wind about working
together but I’m game for anything, it’s just that I can’t get it
together. Yoko and I are together and we’re
happier than ever before. We were so
wrapped up in each other that I just never made it to New Orleans. Sorry Paul.
It's a shame John was so public about where he lived. He should have never given his address out :(
ReplyDeleteThanks Sara. This was a really perceptive and prescient interview.
ReplyDeleteLefty
it was common knowledge when John lived on Bank Street & then the Dakota and fans were always around but he seemed to be ok with it until the tragedy happened
ReplyDeleteThis is great, Sara. Obviously, your work is a lifeline for The John Lennon Series. I could not do my work without your info, links, blogs, photos and careful vetting. I can't thank you enough for being the researcher you are. Great work, as always. Jude
ReplyDeleteThe bit about him & Julian was rather funny! I can so imagine Julian being furious with his dad xD
ReplyDelete