On the Trail of John Lennon (1980)

 On the Trail of John Lennon

By Al Cohn

Newsday

October 23, 1980

    Presumably, John Lennon exists. At least one couple on Long Island where the composer-singer owns one of his several mansions, has seen him in recent years and has gotten to know him well enough to respect his wish for privacy.

    Jeffrey Buck of Brookhaven was quoted in the current issue of Esquire about his association with Lennon, and Buck's wife, Joanne, said yesterday that she and her husband were "extremely distressed" with the magazine's account of their meeting with the article's author. 

    In recent years, Lennon has spent much of his time in seclusion with his wife Yoko Ono and their five-year-old son, Sean--doing what and where?

     Esquire offers a cover story in which the author, Lawrence Shames, concedes that after a four-month search, "I never did get my man." Shame said he learned, however, that the ex-Beatle is "a businessman who watches a lot of television and has $150 million."

     In his travels, Shames, a New York-based freelance writer, visited the home of Buck, a real estate broker who had dealt with Lennon several years ago, when the singer-composer, was considering buying a house in Bellport. 

    Shames writes that Buck knew Lennon "fairly well", having met him several years before on the Caribbean island of Tortola. He said Buck sees Lennon as a "depressed guy who watches a whole lot of TV and doesn't know what to do with himself. "

    According to Shames, Buck added, "He once told me he'd give anything just to be able to walk down the street like anybody else and buy his kid an ice cream cone. He's a prisoner."

     Shames writes that his chat ended with Buck "when he walked me to the car."

     Yesterday, Joanne Buck told Newsday that she and her husband felt Shames took everything out of context, and that part of the article was untrue. "We lived in the Caribbean in the 1960s, but we did not meet John Lennon there," Ms Buck said. "We met him on Long Island when he was looking for a house."

     Mrs. Buck did not deny the remarks about Lennon attributed to her husband, but said they told Shames, who she said was snooping around "behind hedges", that they wished to honor Lennon's desire to maintain a low profile and ask the writer to leave. 

    "That's pretty funny. The part about my husband walking him to his car", she said, "we practically had to throw him out."

     In January, police in Laurel Hollow said Lennon, 40, bought a waterfront home on 2.35 wooded acres in the secluded North Shore village. A real estate source said the asking price was more than $500,000.

     Recently, Lennon and Ono have been at work in a Manhattan studio on their first album in almost seven years. Last month, Newsweek said that in his first major interview in five years, Lennon explained he withdrew because he feared too much success. "The King is always killed by his courtiers," he said. "He is overfed, overindulged, and overdrunk to keep him tied to his throne."