A Little Chat with John and Yoko (1971)

You can see some of the things described in this article, including the Butcher Cover on the wall in this screenshot. 

A Little Chat With John and Yoko

By Tom Zito

Washington Post

November 5, 1971

    Mr. and Mrs. (Yoko Ono)  John Lennon, were feeling down. The new Village Voice had just come out, wherein Jill Johnston spills some uncomplimentary words about Yoko.

     "I like Yoko, but she isn't very nice to people." Is one of the things she writes in this week's Dance Journal column.

     "It's absolutely disgusting," said John, as he assumed a lotus position at the edge of the bed where his wife lay sick, victim of a bad cold, caught in Syracuse at the opening of her first AWL. Museum art show. "You can't imagine how we've tried to be kind to this woman, and then she turns around and stabs us in the back," he says.

     "I always try to go out of my way to be available to female members of the press," added Yoko as she called downstairs for tea, and lit another cigarette.

     John was visibly distressed at his wife's depression. He leaned over to comfort her, running his hand through her long black hair and kissing her on the cheek. They're surprisingly direct. It may be their togetherness that puts many people off. You cannot simply interview John or Yoko. To be with one is to be with both. 

    He is the real surprise. You come expecting the sarcastically witty, tense, hard fellow who romped through the Beatles' films and spewed forth caustically in the pages of Rolling Stone and on the Dick Cavett Show. What you discover is a man unexpectedly kind and gentle. 

    "I'm afraid you're not getting much of an interview," he said apologetically, and then urged Yoko to calmly write a clever letter to the Village Voice, explaining all she had tried to do for Jill Johnston. "But you're getting to see us map out our battle plan. Exciting, isn't it?" And his eyebrows rose in mocking exclamation.

     The Lennons have been living in New York for several months in a 17th-floor suite at the St. Regis Hotel. It contains a complete 16 mm film editing room, a powerful stereo system, Chuck Berry albums everywhere you look, assorted books by authors, including realist editor Paul Krasner and Reverend Daniel Boringen, several unfinished paintings of skulls, a large rack of clothes, an ever-glowing color TV, two acoustical guitars, a vase filled with yellow roses, and walls covered with posters and a rare copy of a withdrawn Beatles album cover of the boys dressed as butchers and holding bloody decapitated dolls and slabs of meat.

     Now they have decided to take up residence in New York. "We are looking around for an apartment," said John, "but rather unsuccessfully. It's getting kind of cramped up here, and today I couldn't even get somebody to come up and turn the bloody heat off. 

    "I didn't like New York at first, but now I've come to love it. It's dead in London compared with living here. It's still a nice place to go for a rest, but this is where everything is happening."

     The couple recently finished off their respective just-released albums, John's Imagine and Yoko's Fly, which had begun in England. They also made several films in the U.S., some of which are still being edited. 

    The phone rang. It's a reporter from Time Magazine. John covered the mouthpiece, and said, "They want some quotations, Yoko. That tells you where their heads are at now, doesn't it?" He ran off to look for a sheet of quotes from the art show catalog.

    While talking about the guitar playing he does on "Night Train," a song on Yoko's album. "You know," he said, "we can just go out here and wander about. Have to give out an average of one autograph a day. The other night we walked up to a kiosk to buy tickets for Death in Venice, and the fellow looked up and said, 'Oh, please go in as guests of the house.' But it was so bloody awful that we left after half the show, and I turned to the fellow on the way out and pointed back and said, 'That's why it's on the house, eh?'"

     He doesn't miss being a Beatle at all, particularly the constant rushing about. "You never had a chance to do anything you wanted to do," he said. "I mean, we had a taste of it again up in Syracuse, now didn't we?"

    The couple had been surrounded there by admirers. Every time they tried to move through Yoko's show, "You have 1000s of people who'd like to meet you and no time to really be with your own friends, and then on top of that, you have people like Jill Johnston saying you're not nice. How are you supposed to be nice to 1000 people?"

     Why had the Beatles split? "For me, at least, things were getting too compartmentalized. Sure, it was nice working with three other musicians. The interplay between us, I've never been, and probably never will be, as close to anyone except for Yoko as I was to them. Paul is an extremely clever boy, and he kept wanting to get back to the "Sergeant Pepper" idea of music, and my spirits lay a lot closer to Chuck Berry. 

    "'Sergeant Pepper' happened out of a vacuum, and it seems useless to go back and try to do it again, like the B side of Abbey Road. I've always liked little packages better than big extended pieces. Haiku seems the ultimate form of writing to me, but anyway, Yoko came along and completely opened my mind to new things. I was becoming aware of all sorts of music that I never would have encountered through the Beatles.

     You know, I still want to perform. In fact, next year I plan to go out on the road with Klaus Voormann, Jim Keltner, Nikki Hopkins, and Eric Clapton. If he'll do it. I want to listen to this Roy Buchanan fellow too. And if I like him, maybe ask him. But this is going to have to be a different kind of tour. Not just music, but a complete range of media. The age of sit back and listen to the band is over. At least for me, the audience has got to be part of the show, even if it only means painting each other's toenails."