George and the Jubers

 April 19, 1986 

Yoko's Marriage to Beatle Lennon Reinforced Each Others Creativity (1969)

 

Yoko's Marriage to Beatle Lennon Reinforced Each Others Creativty

By:  Earnest Leogrande

Niagara Falls Gazette

January 25, 1970

    John Lennon has become the outstanding member of The Beatles because of his diversity of talent as well as outspokenness. With Paul McCartney, he has composed most of the Beatles' songs. He has shown a James Joyce-like adroitness with words and in writing two humorous books (one letter adapted to the stage). He has been featured as a movie actor, apart from his fellow Beatles, in the anti-war How I Won the War. He has filmed an experimental movie with his wife, Yoko Ono, plus an anti-capital punishment TV documentary. He has drawn a series of erotic lithographs, which will be published by Avant-Garde magazine. 

    Yoko has made a reputation of her own as an offbeat artist making a taboo, challenging movie consisting of a succession of 364 bare bottoms and encouraging people to crawl into bags, where shut off from the outside environment, they can confront themselves. 

    When these two divorced their mates and married, they reinforced each other's exploratory creativity. "We were both doing things, but when we came together, I think the forces became naturally stronger," Yoko told me in her quiet, almost shy voice. "It was like meeting a mirror and knowing where you're at. Both of us sort of serve as each other's mirror."

     Their great peace campaign came naturally out of this union. "Both of us were peacenicks, you know," Yoko explained. "Alone, maybe we'd have been discouraged. We influenced each other. Peace was a very natural outcome of our work. If you remember, John wrote the song, 'All You Need Is Love'. And that was like a beautiful message. I was doing things in my own way, which was to stand in Trafalgar Square with a bag over me to protest."

     The couple having forsaken the bed as a place for interviews, were sitting on a couch in the living room of friend country western singer Ronnie Hawkins and his wife. The Lennon had just come in from a romp in the snow. The house is in the country, an hour's drive from Toronto, and both looked as cheery and healthy as a couple of youngsters after recess period. 

    Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins go for plain cooking, but the smell of macrobiotic cooking permeated the house. The Lennons follow this diet, which is related to Zen Buddhism, and they had brought in Mr. and Mrs. Martin Schlass, proprietors of the macrobiotic Cauldron restaurant in New York's East Village, to cook for them. 

    John's beard looked a bit short because he had shaved it off and now regrowing it. "It's growing fine, thank you," he said.

     Yoko assured me that she didn't object to John's beard. "That was just a reporter's story. We like to change our hairstyle, but because we are in a constant spotlight, the reporter played it up. We were wearing totally black yesterday, so that was an issue. We'd like some freedom too."

     There had been a report that Lennon was considered for the title role of Jesus Christ in a rock opera to be presented at St Paul's Cathedral next spring. Christ is referred to as a "Superstar" in the musical production. "I never got the offer," he told me. "I'm always reading. I've been offered these parts to play, but no one ever offers them to me. Then when, the press asks, 'Did you offer this to him?' They'd say 'We wouldn't offer it to that idiot.'

     Actually, the writers of the opera said they had decided it was better to give the role to an unknown. they may have been swayed by the recollection that Lennon was called a blasphemous egotist in 1966 when he said "The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. now." He later tried to explain by saying it was meant as a criticism of fans' distorted values. 

    I asked him if he agreed that the emphasis on material possessions prevented society from achieving peace after 1000s of years of war experience. "It hasn't helped," he said. "If you imagine material possessions as being a kind of drug, many people are hooked on it. That's why you get things like dropouts and hippies."

     How could he square this attitude, I asked, with the material wealth that being John Lennon Superstar has brought him? His ready response indicated he contemplated the question before. "As a result of having all the material wealth I could have and still not finding any satisfaction or peace or happiness or whatever, that made me think, well, what else is there in life?

    "Am I just going to sit here watching 20 TVs in 20 suites with 20 cars for the rest of my life? What shall I do after having achieved so-called success and fame that Western civilization says you should have? I'm finding out, it's nowhere. I'm them rather than giving them up."

     The early Beatles told us in song that you can't buy love, but John Lennon is trying to find out if his fame and wealth can buy peace. Yoko concluded the interview with a benediction "We should all try together." She said, "Peace to you."

Mills, McCartney and Powell

April 19, 2001 - Washington D.C. 
 

Message in a bottle

 

John in 1969 in stills from a home movie made by Yoko.   John has messages of peace in the bottle that he is trowing in to the ocean.    Much thanks (and love) to fellow Lennon lover,  Ingryd.  

A fan and a guitar

 

A Night at the Marquee Club

 April 18, 1966

Brain Damage Control (2009)

 Brain Damage Control

By Paul Krassner

High Times

2009

    When Phil Spector was sentenced 19 to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, I had a flashback to 1971 at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse.

     I was a guest of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the celebration of Yoko's show, This is Not Here. The Videofrex, a counterculture video commune, was there to shoot a documentary titled, You're Not Here, Yoko 

    Nancy Kane recalls, "We were all going up for the opening, which would be jammed because John Lennon and Ringo Starr were going to be there too. And it was true.  In the crush of people, there went Ringo. He was being swept past us into the main gallery. There he goes, "Hi, Ringo!", he was gone, but we could play our video as much as we wanted to. There he goes, "Hi Ringo". There he goes again, "Hi Ringo."

     It was, in fact, Ringo's birthday, [sic] and I found myself sitting on the floor in a large room where a group of friends and associates sang "Happy Birthday" to him, and then "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" with each individual singing a chorus. The Women's Liberation Movement was flourishing at the time, and I sang, " She's Got the Whole World in Her Hands."

     Later, I was about to enter another large room with John and Yoko. It was quite crowded. As I walked through the door, Phil Spector stood up at the far side of the room, pointed at me, and shouted,  "You killed. Lenny Bruce!"  I was stunned. Lenny and I had been close friends, and I was the editor of his autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.  

    Rather than ratchet up the sour vibe that  Specter had just created, I immediately turned around and left the room. John and Yoko ran after me, apologizing profusely for Spector's insane outburst.  A A couple of years later, at the A &M recording studio, he pointed a gun at Lennon, chasing him through the corridors. 

    That incident at the museum wasn't the only occasion I've been falsely accused. I was also accused of being an accessory to an attempted assassination of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas, author of The SCUM Manifesto (SCUM =  the Society for Cutting Up Men).

     Warhol cohort Paul Morrissey said in a 1996 interview with actor Taylor Mead that in the spring of 1968, "Solanas approached underground newspaper publisher Paul Krassner for money, saying, "I want to shoot Olympian press honcho Maurice Grandis." He gave her $50, enough for a .32 automatic pistol."

     Actually, she asked me to lend her $50 for food, which I did, sympathizing with the anguish of a poor pamphleteer. But that was on Friday. On Monday, I took my four-year-old daughter, Holly, out for lunch. On the way, we bumped into Valerie just a block from Warhol's loft. We talked a little. Then Holly and I went to Brownies, a vegetarian restaurant.

     Minutes later, we were seated at a table, and Valerie walked in. "Do you mind if I join you?" She asked. " Yeah, I do mind, actually, but only because I don't get a chance to see my daughter that often." "Okay, I understand," she said and left. 

    Five hours later, she shot Warhol, seeking revenge out of the paranoid belief that he had ruined her literary career. Valerie could have bought the gun with that $50, but if I had known that her intention was to kill Warhol, I might have been able to talk her out of it. Then again, she could have shot me and Holly right there in that restaurant. What do you mean? I can't join you for lunch. Bang, bang. That easy. That's horrible. That's absurd.

Mourning John Lennon and Making Movies (1981)

 

Mourning John Lennon and Making Movies

By Bernard Drew

Gannett News Service

April 17, 1981

    When I asked for "Ringo Starr" at the desk at the Plaza Hotel, they said there was no such person registered. Luckily, his manager's name was listed, and he responded to my phone call by coming downstairs and escorting me up to a large suite where a security officer sat in front of the door. The suite was registered under "Richard Starkey", Ringo Starr's real name. The security precautions were begun after John Lennon's brutal murder in December. 

    Ringo came in to greet me. He has changed a great deal since he was the sassy, fun loving drummer of the pop quartet. Aside from the two memorable movies, the Beatles made A Hard Day's Night in 1964 and Help! a year later. Ringo went on to appear on his own and starred in The Magic Christian, That'll Be the Day, and the prehistoric comedy Caveman, which he co-starred with Barbara Bach.

     He and Bach have been living together since the film was made and have plans to marry. With a mustache, Ringle looks more handsome than he used to be and a lot more serious. He wears one beautiful earring.

     Over lunch, I asked him about his early movies and mentioned that Richard  Lester, who directed those first two Beatles movies, never again achieved the zest and fun he had in the beginning. "Well, Dick was excited too." Then Ringo explained, "Like us, he was fresh and new. In those days, we were just having a good time, having fun with everything. We were like four excited little boys. 

    "There was no undercurrent of seriousness. We had all come from Liverpool, where, despite our success, feelings there and in London were more restrained. Then we came to New York, and the media's carrying on was mind boggling. That's what caused the crowd screaming everywhere. It was almost, but not really, too much. 

    "We'd take an entire floor of a hotel we stayed at and had a different channel on the telly in each suite, and would run from one room to the other. We were together for eight years. I joined the other three in 1962, and we toured for the next four years. Then, by 1966, we decided to make some serious music. So we stopped touring and worked solely in the recording studios, and then it started falling apart. The four of us had been dedicated to one image, the Beatles, but we were getting older, channeling our own individual songs, Paul's songs, John's songs, George's songs; we weren't on the same track anymore. We were turning 30, so that by 1970, it was all over, and we went our separate ways."

     Ringo remained in England until 1975, making a few albums and playing roles in occasional films. He maintains residences in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. Part of the year, he returns to England and visits his children, who live with their mother. 

    Barbara joined us, looking weary and sipping chicken soup, as she was suffering from the flu. "Barbara and I live mostly in Los Angeles now," Ringo stated, "with her two children from her former marriage to an Italian industrialist.

     "After 1975, I did an album a year and a couple of TV specials. Then for two years, I just took off," Ringo recalled. "I didn't want to work. I'd lost my direction and did nothing until Caveman came along."

     All this early success can present problems later on. Is that what happened to John Lennon, too? "Yes, I'm sure of it," Ringo said soberly. "What can I say about John? It was a terrible shock, and we miss him and think about him all the time. I lost a good friend, and the world lost a great artist. John had stopped working because he got tired of it. You reach a point when you don't want to do what you're doing just to do it. I know I had, and John wanted to raise Sean because he missed his older son, who was in England with his mother, and he just wanted the experience of raising a child.

     "I  still can't understand what happened and why," Ringo muttered about John's death. "You can understand a political assassination, bad as it is, but a rock and roll assassination is beyond me. There was no great motive behind it. It was all so dumb and meaningless. A guy came in and went, boom-boom. It makes no sense."

Close to John

 

Stay away from Sir McCartney

April 15, 2011 - Coachella