John Lennon Say Exile Saved Him From Disaster (1980)

 John Lennon Says Exile Saved Him From Disaster

By Robert Hilburn

New Journal

November 23, 1980

     Janice Joplin and Jim Morrison lived so close to the emotional edge that their deaths, in retrospect, were not all that surprising. But it's hard to think of John Lennon as a rock fatality. 

    He was the intellectual Beatle, the one who taught and led, yet Lennon believes he, too, was headed for disaster before going into exile in 1975, resurfacing last month with a single appropriately titled "Starting Over."

     Lennon said his danger point was an 18-month "lost weekend" in the early 1970s.  Depressed by a  separation from his wife, Yoko Ono, and the pressures of living up to public expectations, he spent much of that period in Los Angeles on drugs and booze. "I think I was suicidal on some kind of subconscious level, night and day drinking or taking Librium or whatever," he said recently, sitting in one of his luxury apartments at the Dakota Building. "The goal was to obliterate the mind so that I wouldn't be conscious. I didn't want to see or feel anything. 

    "Part of me can't believe I would self-destruct -- the youthful heart that feels invincible. Yet another part realizes that I could have died. I was consuming at least a bottle of vodka a day and a half a bottle or more of brandy. Also, I did things like jumping out of cars. It was crazy kind of teenage game I had. Telling myself I wasn't meant to die at this moment so I can jump out of the car. What I was ignoring, of course, was that the next car after us could have run me over."

     Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were more popular, but John Lennon and Bob Dylan were the two 60s rock stars who touched us most deeply. Though both later rejected the spokesman role, they probed and provoked, articulating the aspirations and frustrations of a generation. The idealism of that period now seems naive, but its original impact was enormous thanks to Lennon and Dylan rock themes no longer had to revolve around girls on Saturday night.  Social concerns became an acceptable pop subject matter.

     Lennon's activism made him a target when the Beatles split in 1970; all Paul, George, and Ringo had to do after that was make catchy records. Lennon was expected to come up with hit records and continue commenting. Lennon met the challenge of the 70s head on, even before the Beatles' breakup, he released "Give Peace a Chance", a tune whose hymn-like tone contrasted brilliantly with the prevailing public hostility toward anyone who resented the Vietnam War. 

    Lennon's real statement, however, was the first solo album of the 1970s, Plastic Ono Band, an absorbing social documentary that foresaw most of the 70s social complacency, attacking political hypocrisy. He also scolded young fans for relying on rock stars or other idols for answers. And the album's most moving tune, he stressed self-reliance. "I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in Elvis. I don't believe in Beatles. The dream is over. I was the walrus, but now I am John."

     Realizing the album was too stark for most pop tastes, Lennon restated many of the themes in the softer Imagine a 1971 album that went to number one on the charts. Lennon's next three solo albums, however, lacked the elegance or power of those works. Sometime in New York City was an interesting but badly flawed attempt at pop political reporting. Mind Games and Walls and Bridges were well crafted, but contained only hints of the early Lennon vision. 

    "That period of Mind Games and Walls and Bridges was pretty rough going. I'm not ashamed of the albums, but if you listen to my voice on Bridges, you can see how tired I was. I was absolutely depressed. Yoko and I were apart. I had been through the immigration stuff, and there was all the pressure of the music business. Making music was no longer a joy. For 20 years, I'd been under this pressure to produce, produce, produce. My head was cluttered. Every time I'd sit down to write, there would be a cloud between me and the source, the cloud that hadn't been there before. I was trapped and saw no way out."

     The breakthrough for Lennon was when he and Yoko reconciled. "Without her, I'd probably be dead," he continued. "She was the one who literally said to me, 'You don't have to do this. You exist outside of the mud'. That was a frightening concept for me. My whole security and identity was wrapped up in being John Lennon, the pop star. But Yoko told me the same way she had told me, with The Beatles, 'You are in a phony scene and you are surrounded by phonies'. She didn't mean George, Paul, and Ringo. She meant the machine, the whole shebang. That was one liberation for me. I didn't have to be in the Beatles. The second liberation was that I didn't have to make records that I still existed if my name wasn't in the gossip columns or whatever."

     During the five-year break from recording, Lennon and Ono switched the traditional marital responsibilities. She took over management of the family's financial affairs. He became a house husband, supervising and raising their son, Sean, now five. It was an important shift for both they maintain. 

    Ono, a respected avant-garde artist in the 1960s, felt smothered after her marriage to Lennon because people no longer took her art seriously, thinking chiefly of her as the wife of an ex-Beatle. By concentrating on family affairs, she found a new private outlet for her energies. Lennon, meanwhile, benefited from focusing his attention on Sean. He no longer spent his time worrying about the next record and the artistic shadow of the Beatles, using the Dakota apartment as a home base, the Lennons traveled a lot during the five years, bought some property, and kept out of sight. They did such a good job of the latter that Lennon became the subject of numerous Howard Hughes recluse rumors. 

    "The funny thing is, when we were doing the bed-ins and all the other strange 'John and Yoko things' in the '60s, people kept saying, 'well, they'll do anything for publicity'. But the stories continued even after we dropped out of sight. I kept reading these mysterious little items about how I had become a lunatic or something, who sat in a dark room all day with his long hair and long fingernails. I thought it was all hysterical."

     Lennon's return to the record business began during a Bermuda vacation last spring. "When I took the break, I never had any time limit in mind," he said, sitting at a kitchen table holding one of the couple's three cats. "I wanted to be with Sean the first five years, which are the years that everyone says are the most important in a child's life. When he was coming up to five, Yoko and I thought that maybe it was time to record again. But then I remembered all the mess. It's not just the making of an album; it's all the other stuff: dealing with the record people, The Beatles stuff, and people wanting this or that. So I said, 'No.' I found I could live without that."

     In Bermuda, however, a relaxed Lennon began writing songs again. He recorded them on a tape recorder and played them over the phone to Ono, who had remained in New York on business. She then wrote, replied in songs, and the album took shape. Due in the stores this week, the LP is titled Double Fantasy and examines the strain of modern relationships.

     Lennon and Ono each wrote and sing lead on seven of the LPs, 14 tunes. Rather than put all his songs on one side and all hers on the other, the Lennon and Ono numbers are alternated on both sides so that they form a dialogue. This sequencing is bound to alarm many Lennon fans, because much of the music on Ono's early solo albums was dismissed by critics and the public as far-out ravings. The irony is that many of the peppy rhythms and eccentric vocals on those albums are now in vogue with a wing of rock's, New Wave audiences .Ono's "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss", the flip side of Lennon's smash, "Starting Over" single will be mistaken by many young listeners as a copy of the B-52s, but that group was clearly influenced by Ono. 

    Fiercely independent, Ono resists listening to other people's work, but Lennon finally convinced her to sample the B-52s' "Rock Lobster" so that she could see that a record in her style was now a hit. More amused and flattered, she said of the B-52's hit, "It seems a little contrived, but it's okay. It's just a little funny that they should be doing that now, because 10 years ago, it was new. I expect young people to do something more far-out than that."

     Today, Ono doesn't rely just on the quirky rhythms of "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss", for every track.  There's a teasing vaudevillian bounce to her. "Yes, I'm an Angel", and an uplifting gospel feel to "Hard Times are Over."  More than music, however, she's interested in the message. "We are doing this album not just dealing with our own personal life, but the relationship of men and women in society," she said during a break in the recording studio where they're putting the final touches on the new album. "This is a very difficult time for relationships, but I think a new age is coming. I think there's hope that men and women will get closer together again. That's why I think John's song "Starting Over" is so beautiful. It's a personal message to me, but it's also like all men sing to all women, 'let's try again'. It's not going to be easy. In the 60s, there was the sexual revolution, which resulted in women waking up to the fact that it was a sexual revolution only for men, and that women were really being used. So in the 70s, women became very bitter, which was understandable. They didn't want to just be toys. So there was this breakdown in relationships between the family..  I think the 80s could be a time of reaching out and trying again, but women can't do it alone. Men are going to have to give too."

     Lennon may have written the "Starting Over" single as a second honeymoon celebration to Yoko, but the records Presley-esque undercurrent also allows the song title to apply to Lennon's return to his own rock and roll roots. That fondness for early rock makes him pleased with today's New Wave movement, which also celebrates the passions of 1950s music. "I love the music of today," he explained, "It's the best period since the 60s. The Pretenders, the B-52's, Madness. Someone showed me a video of the Clash. They're good. It's the perfect time for me to be coming back. I started noticing what was happening when Queen did that Elvis-sounding tune, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". I thought, 'This is my period again'. I think a lot of the new kids went to the 50s because they were sick of hearing so much about the 60s. They all said, 'screw the 60s and all that intellectualizing. Let's go back to when it was fun."

     Lennon's love of 50s rock doesn't mean he's no longer proud of the 60s and the Beatles' accomplishments. He even sympathizes with those who keep hoping for a Beatles reunion. "All those Beatles rumors are silly," he said.  "I mean, do we really want to go out there and try to recreate something that happened 15 years ago? There's no way we could live up to their dreams. The only time I think about it is when someone asks me, but I do know how people feel. When I was a kid in Liverpool, we used to always get these rumors about Elvis coming to London. Would save our money and try to figure out how we'd get a ticket, then nothing would happen. It went on for years, but he never played in England. I guess the Beatles rumors will go on, too."