John and Yoko at Home, at Ease, At Last (1971)

 

John and Yoke at Home, at Ease, at Least (And When Things Get Tough, There's Always the Bag)

By Margaret Pride

Detroit Magazine

October 31, 1971

    There is a notice etched above the door of the country mansion near Ascot. It reads, "This is Not Here." Another notice farther down on the door says, "Please go round to the side." A walk around the side leads to an open door, inside which are a pile of slippers. There is another notice. "Please exchange your shoes for slippers, or use your feet."

     The mansion, set in 75 acres of garden, woodland, and fields, belongs to two geniuses. I know they are geniuses because they told me. John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono live there. It is a large household busy with people, secretaries, a housekeeper, sundry workmen in the garden, John's assistant and his assistant's assistant. 

    John, Yoko, and I sat in the kitchen. "It's the quietest place," said John, drinking tea from mugs and eating cherries from a large teak bowl set on an enormous natural pine table. John has mellowed. Gone is the Jesus hairstyle and the long beard, the four-letter words, the arrogant, prickly young man.

     In his place is a clean, reasonably short-haired man of 30. He studies you through yellow-tinted spectacles and says he swears only occasionally. He is fond of recounting that he and Yoko met over a hammer and a nail. "She was giving this art exhibition in London. As I went in, she asked me for five shillings for the privilege of banging a nail into a piece of wood. I wasn't having it, so I said I'd give her an imaginary five shillings if she'd give me an imaginary nail."

     Says Yoko, "We realized that we were people who thought the same way."

     "From that moment," says John, tweaking Yoko's nose, "it was love, love, love all the way." He was married at the time to Cynthia, his Liverpool sweetheart from pre-Beatle days. He poo-poo's the idea that Yoko was responsible for the breakup of his marriage. "You don't get divorced and then look around. So Cynthia and I hung on. We were carrying on with a nonviolent marriage that was slowly dying. There was nothing in it, no spark. When I met Yoko, I came face to face with reality and realized I'd been living in a vacuum.

     "A lot of people thought we wouldn't bother to get married, what with this permissive business and all that. But we wanted to commit ourselves completely, and marriage is still the only way. It's a nice old ritual. We have no religious beliefs, but we like a bit of nice, old ritual."

     Their honeymoon in 1969 was famous because they were photographed sitting in bed. "We called it a 'bed-in,'" said John, "but people thought we were potty. It was a publicity stunt for peace. There we were sitting up wearing our white virginal nighties, and there were the photographers saying, 'Come off it, John. When are you going to make love?' If we hadn't invited the press, they would have chased us around everywhere. I mean, look at the shambles of Mick Jagger's wedding when he tried to keep it a secret. 

    "Our honeymoon was a happening, a fantastic theatrical event. We were advertising peace, and it helped because we were famous. I think it gave encouragement to kids to do peace events."

     They're a very pleasant couple. I had expected them to be brash, slightly contentious, difficult to talk to. John could not understand this. "We are people, as near normal as we can be. I suppose, in a way, our lives have been unnatural because of the Beatles. People tended to think we were special, but that is over. We have nothing to hide. We like to communicate, apart from the fact that we are famous people and make the front pages; we are perfectly normal."

    He turned the tables on me. "Okay, so we have a responsibility because of our position. I think you, as a journalist, have even more of a responsibility. If I say 'I'm mad,' people might think I am joking. If you say you have interviewed me and find me mad, then people will believe you."

     I saw his point, which he immediately spoiled by laughing and saying, "Anyway, I probably am mad. All geniuses are mad. Genius is pretty close to madness, and we are a damned mad couple. So perhaps we are mad geniuses. I always considered I was an undiscovered genius at school at the age of 11. I wondered why people hadn't discovered my art and my poetry. I decided I couldn't be completely crazy because no one had put me away; therefore, I must be a genius, and that's the way I'll stay." He added, "definitely."

     John ponders on the Beatle way of life. He says Beatlemania is over. "It is gone, finished. I am sure that the four of us will never make a record together again. We will have our own. We all have our own lives now."

     He is glad it is over because now he can do his own thing, make films for television and records with Yoko. In short, be a more private person, be himself. During the Beatles years, he tried to do many different things, some of which came with a lot of criticism. He has no regrets about anything.

     "Everything was a form of release from all the pressures of those years, and the pressures were enormous. A person who has not experienced 1000s of kids and grown-ups screaming at you and chasing you everywhere cannot begin to realize just how fearful the whole thing could be.

     "I was a vegetarian, a health food addict. I went to India, to the Maharishi, to meditate. I experimented with drugs, appeared naked, said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. I regret none of it. At the time, I believed I was doing the right thing. To say that I have found myself sounds pompous, but I am discovering the joys of being a more private person. I can now go into shops or walk along the street. People might say 'hello,' but nobody is going to mob me.

     "It was Paul McCartney who came in for the biggest press beating over drugs. It was a shame, really," comments John. "George, Ringo, and I had experimented, and Paul decided to have a go. Somehow it leaked out, and he was cornered by the press, who asked him if it was true that he had taken LSD. Being an honest lad, he said 'yes.' All the headlines said 'Paul McCartney admits drug taking', and  there were we other three chuckling."

     John may say he is a normal human being again, but he still retains what seems to be an odd sense of humor. His aim in life is peace, relaxation, humor in that order; the humor is sometimes unusual. Yoko has just had a paperback of her book Grapefruit published. She calls it "a selection of her random thoughts, which will help people to relax and be happy."

     Some of it is beautiful, some strange, some I did not understand. One poem is called "Wall Peace for Orchestra" by Yoko Ono. It consists of one line: "Hit a wall with your head."

     They think the world would be more amusing if there were more nudity. "Can you imagine a board meeting of stuffy businessmen and someone saying, 'Right now, everybody will take their trousers down.'"  John talked about nudity. "I don't know why people make so much fuss about it. Everybody is the same. If you took all your clothes off, what I saw wouldn't surprise me. The trouble is, people are afraid of being seen naked. They think the milkman or the baker might come to the door and see them. So what if they do? People are so afraid of so many things. It is a shame."

     John says he sometimes regretted that he had been so successful because he sometimes wondered what life was all about and why he should have been so lucky. "Not that I'm complaining. We appreciate what it has brought us. We have this lovely place where we can enjoy space and solitude. This is very necessary to me. Space. Even when I was a kid, I used to walk in the fields because there was this feeling of infinity.

     "When you get famous, you need even more space. So now I have my own big pad. If we didn't have the money, we'd try to find a big loft."

     Though they love the wide open spaces and occasionally get into very claustrophobic situations, there is the bag event. "It began," says Yoko, "when I was very shy and afraid to meet a certain professor, so I turned a sheet into a bag, got inside, and talked to the professor. Everybody thought it was a very good idea, and we have done it often since."

    It appears that you don't judge a person just by their appearance, but by how they think and talk. It would have been a waste for Yoko had been inside a bag when we met. She is much prettier than her photographs portray, with delicate features and a tiny frame. Yoko said, "I feel very maternal towards John. He is not only my lover, my husband, my best friend, but also my little boy." She giggled a little at him. John blew her a kiss and said, "Yes, Mum." 

    They say they stimulate each other, give each other ideas for their work, but are not above kidding each other. "We are like most happily married couples," said John. "I tell her she's a rotten artist. She tells me I'm a stinky musician. It's all part of the joy of being married to the right person."

     Yoko has had two miscarriages and says she has not given up hope that she and John will have a child. "It would be nice, but John and I are so complete, just the two of us, that children would be a nice addition, but not strictly necessary."

     It was time to go. We had almost talked ourselves hoarse. Before I went, John and Yoko insisted I go over to their art gallery. There was John and Yoko's smile box. You had to lift the lid to see a smile. There was nothing inside except a mirror at the bottom of the box, so it was my smile I was looking at. It seemed to me mostly do-it-yourself art, like having to look through a hole in a piece of whiteboard to see the sky. Some of it was subtle. There was a clock without any hands entitled "The Timeless Clock." There was a chess set with all the squares painted white. "Try playing with that," laughed John. I told you he had an offbeat sense of humor.