Easy, Stimulating Man to be With (1980)

 

Easy, Stimulating Man to Be With

By Robert Hilburn

Los Angeles Times

December 14, 1980

    With the Beatles, John Lennon helped stretch rock and roll from its infancy into an art form. Yet it's Lennon, the man whom I'll miss more than Lennon, the rock and roll star. That's not a shot at his music, but a tribute to the warmth of the man. 

    Few people I've met in rock are as easy or as stimulating to be around. The quality of his albums fell after the brilliant Imagine in 1971, but the former Beatle never lost the graciousness or enthusiasm that made him such a delightful host. 

    Perhaps the most comforting thought that can be passed on to fans saddened by his death is this: if you had been able to meet Lennon, you wouldn't have been disappointed. He was a person of profound commitment and integrity. In an age of tarnished heroes, he remained remarkably true to his ideals. Beneath the hoopla over the Beatles and superstardom, Lennon was usually unaffected. He was a man who could be equally thrilled by the simple pleasures of the rock and roll music that he'd heard as a youth and by the promise of peace and love, not a Utopian fantasy for Lennon but a legitimate, if elusive, social goal. 

     Relations between journalists and performers are often strained. Strained interviews are frequently coldly professional exercises that force together artists who need publicity to sell themselves and writers who need information to attract readers. This form of exchange rarely results in genuine human contact. Often, there's little said when the tape recorder is turned off.

     An added problem is that many rock personalities are dull, vain, and deceitful. Lennon was an exception; much like his music, he was engaging, open, and appreciative. It's frequently possible to draw striking parallels between a performer's attitude in an interview and his musical output. David Bowie and Mick Jagger, for example, are as elusive and manipulative when confronted by a journalist as they are when teasing audiences from the stage.

    Bowie was so sophisticated about the press that when he found out I was going to use an early 70s interview for an English publication as well as in the  Los Angeles Times, he said, "Oh, I'd better give you something for the boys back home." After a pause, Bowie announced, "I'm interested in politics. I think I want to run for Prime Minister someday." I placed those remarks at the end of my article, and the editors in London pulled them to the top. The headline read, "Bowie wants to be PM."

     Paul McCartney, a conservative music maker, is also so cautious at times in interviews that you sense him editing his thoughts to see how they'll read in print. 

    In the several times I spoke with him, Lennon was filled with the wit, candor, and imagination that mark his most probing songs, and he was aware that being an ex-Beatle could lend him an intimidating presence. He seemed to go out of his way to make people feel at home. Nothing was off the record, and he let the conversation go wherever you wanted to take it, whatever the subject. He attacked it with a draining intensity, as in his music, he wanted to dig as deeply as possible.

     Despite his graciousness during interviews and visits in Los Angeles in the early 70s, I felt a little apprehensive in October when I came here to interview him for the first time in five years. While I was sitting in Yoko Ono's office at the Dakota Building, Lennon burst in holding a copy of Donna Summer's single "The Wanderer", saying to me, "You've got to hear this. She's singing just like Elvis. Listen to that tape echo on her voice. It's like 1958 all over again."

     There was no need for a formal reintroduction. He picked up where we'd left off, and it was as if we'd been apart for like five minutes, rather than five years. Unlike McCartney, Lennon would only interrupt himself when he felt he was becoming stuffy. Once, during a half-hearted, less-than-convincing defense of his notorious drunken behavior at a West Hollywood nightclub, he cut himself short. "I just wish I had a new record coming out. All the publicity would have helped."

     Lennon loved to have his music played on the radio and move up the charts, but he didn't need constant reinforcement of his celebrity status. When most visiting top-level rock figures go out in Los Angeles, they invariably order a limousine. They also enjoy it when someone in the entourage lets the restaurant owner know that they'll be favoring the establishment with their presence; they enjoy the stir that usually creates-- flattery, a special table and special wine. 

    When Lennon and I went out to dinner late one night in Beverly Hills, we went to the restaurant, unannounced, in my car; there was no fuss, and he didn't seem to miss it. 

    He never lost touch with his child-like side. During one especially long mixing session in the New York recording studio in October, he disappeared into a nearby lounge area every few hours with some musicians. You'd suspect a drug break, but it didn't seem likely. In Lennon's case, he and Yoko had been on a strict macrobiotic diet for years. Curious, I followed him on his third trip and saw him reach into a refrigerator and gobble something down. After he returned to the studio, I walked over to the refrigerator to see his diet supplement: a stack of King-size Hershey bars.

     Lennon's candor sometimes came across as harshness. When I asked him about some of his scathing remarks about his former Beatle-mates, he said, "That's why I am the one who others understood what I was saying, because they had to deal with me since they were 16. So I didn't really surprise them. It just surprised everyone else. But I couldn't not be what I am."

     In Yoko Ono, he found someone who was as forceful and direct as he was. When she made what he felt was too much noise while he was answering a question in an interview, he snapped, "Yoko, could you do that somewhere else?" Later, when he came into an interview room and started being playful, she barked, "John, this isn't the time for that. Can't you see, I'm talking?"

     To anyone unfamiliar with them, their actions seemed insensitive, but this give-and-take is what both Lennon and Ono seemed to thrive on. 

     On the last day of my four-day visit with the Lennons in October, both spoke deeply of their need for each other. Lennon acknowledged that she was even more important to him than his music. "She's my other half," he said. "I'm always scared that she will die or something, and I won't be prepared, because I wasn't prepared for losing my mother when I was a teenager. I'm terrified of that deep down all the time. I need her so much. How will I survive when Yoko is gone?"