John Lennon on Love, Life and Music

 

John Lennon on Love, Life and Music

By John Blake

Evening News (London)

November 1, 1974

    "I would like," said John Lennon drawing deeply on his cigarette, "The Beatles to make a record together again." 

    The lean, worried genius whose ideas inspired a generation looked intense behind his strong spectacles as he lolled in a plush leather armchair in his New York office. In the course of an extraordinary exclusive interview, he talked for the first time about a Beatles reunion, his broken marriage, and his homesickness. 

    It's now almost exactly five years since the Beatles split, and Lennon, at 34, has decided the time is right to break his long silence.

     "I am still asked almost every day about the Beatles getting together again by waitresses and almost everyone else I meet." He says, "If we feel like it, we might make a record together sometime soon. I mean, I am a Beatles fan. I realize now that I do like the Beatles. When I hear them on the radio, I think to myself that some of those songs are really, really good. I personally would like the Beatles to make a record together again, but I don't really know how the other three feel about the idea. The trouble is that George and Paul still have so many hassles getting into the States that the four of us have never even sat down in one room together to talk, let alone record. It is feasible, though, that we could all find ourselves in the same recording studio, and that would be fun. "

    How does he regard the work that the four of them have produced by themselves since the Beatles? "Well, when I hear the records played on the radio, I still tend to think of them as individual Beatles songs. They still have that Beatly sound to them. I mean, if you took the best tracks from each of our own albums and put them together, you would have a great Beatles album. There just happened to be four albums instead of one. "

    Now, on Lennon's brilliant new album, Walls and Bridges, Elton, John joins him to sing harmonies and says, John, "When Elton sang along with me, it was like having George or Paul there again. It was the same good feeling."

     The biggest single barrier to a Beatle reunion is Lennon's drawn out battle with the US immigration authorities. They want to deport him as undesirable because of a drug conviction in Britain six years ago. Lennon, fending for his visa, has pumped hundreds of 1000s of pounds into fighting them.

     "About 18 months ago,  it really started getting to me, and it was dragging me down, interfering with my work, and affecting everything I did.," he said. "My lawyer doesn't even give me the details anymore. He thinks it will worry me or something. I think it could easily drag on for years, yet I'm not going to be kicked out in the next few days."

      Why does John want to stay in the States? "Well, I don't necessarily want to stay here all the time. I'd like to be free to travel anywhere. I like to think of the world as a kind of global village, and the one thing my money gave me was the freedom to travel about that village. But the thing is that just as Paris is the place every artist wanted to be in the last century, America is the center of the rock music world today. This is where it all began. It is the place where rock started and  there is still so much energy here.

    "I don't want to become an American citizen or anything. I just want to be allowed in and out like most other British people. Of course, there are times when I miss Britain badly, and I feel like climbing on a plane and going home. It's the little things you miss, like decent sausages or a pub I know in London, or seeing the autumn in beautiful places like Surrey or Wales.  I still consider myself an Englishman, and I'll stay that way until I die.

     It is estimated that Lennon's fight to stay in the States has cost him well over a quarter of a million pounds. Is he growing short on cash? "No, I'm still carning a bit from my songs, so I'm not hard up, and I know that if I needed money, I could go back on stage again. The offers get higher every day for a full Beatles reunion. I have been offered $7 million and I could get about 1 million just by myself. "

    As we spoke John called to his girlfriend May Pang, a Chinese American girl who was his former secretary and who came from the tenements of New York's East Harlem.  

     What has become of his marriage to Yoko Ono? "Well, it sounds funny, but Yoko and I are still good friends. Now we speak to each other almost every day."