Denim John in 1976

Stories about meeting John outside of the Dakota just fill me with happiness.  I hope this one makes you happy as well.

Photo by Vinnie Zuffante

Photo by Vinnie Zuffante

John Lennon

By Barb Clark

With a Little Help from my friends issue #17 (January 1977)

November 7, 1976 --NYC

Outside of John’s apartment building early that morning, we (Tempy S., Kay P, and I) met up with George Tebbens, Sharon U., and Carol and Nancy.  We all happened to be in NYC to see John and maybe George in court, for the settlement of “My Sweet Lord” vs. “He’s so Fine.”

Too cold outside to stand, we sat in our cars.  George’s car was parked in front of John’s.  We were parked across the street, wondering if he’d come out at all, it being Sunday and the weather looking down.  I kept an eye glued to the front of his house.  People came and went.  Then, there he was! I yelled, “There’s John!”  We ripped open the car doors, and not looking at the on-coming traffic, raced across the street, which explains the look on John’s face --- a bit worried that one of us would get run over.  The Chicago gang was then out of the car – John stood and signed autographs.  He looked as good as ever – dressed in jeans and a denim jacket with fur trim.  His hair was cut a bit like “Walls & Bridges” time and he was so nice.   He asked where we were all from.  I uttered “Cincinnati” under my breath.  As someone else said “Chicago,” he said “Why are you all here?”  No one answered.  Finally Kay said, “too see you.”  Yoko stood there quietly—looking a bit scared.   They posed for pictures.  John said, “Wait here, we’ll be back, you wait here, don’t follow us.”  He and Yoko turned and walked down 72^nd Street.  We watched them walk down the street.  A car had pulled out and left a parking spot almost behind George’s car, so we all spread out and stood in the space until Kay got her car.  The nanny brought Sean out for a stroll – cute as ever a getting big.  They weren’t out very long.  She took Sean back in.  We sat in our cars.  A cab pulled up alongside of us.  It was John and Yoko.  As John got out so did everyone else!  He signed autographs again.  As cameras went clicking and questions were asked, he laughed and said, “This is like a press conference!”  He wanted to know why we weren’t in school.  He was in a great mood.  A cop walked by and said, “Was that Paul McCartney?”

He came out later.  Yoko was dressed up.  They hurried and got into a cab.  We waited for them to come back.  A couple hours later they returned.  As he got out, he uttered, “You’re all crazy!”  He laughed a bit and looked up at us and repeated again, “You’re all crazy!”  As they started into the apartment he said something like, “You all go and get some rest.  We won’t be out any more tonight.”  I said “Okay John.  Goodnight.” And patted him on the shoulder.  After that we all went out and celebrated!  About 2 am we called it a night and went back to our hotel, the Holiday Inn.  About 4am this alarm went off.  I thought it was an alarm clock in the next room.  Then I woke Kay and Tempy up thinking maybe it’s a fire alarm.  I went to the door, being stopped by Tempy who wouldn’t let me open the door for anything, thinking it was a trick and someone wanted to ransack the rooms.  So we went out the patio doors.  No sign of fire.  Someone called on the phone finally and said, “get out, the place is on fire!”  A fireman came through the patio door helping us get out.  We grabbed camera first and then whatever else we could.  We went out in our pajamas and stood outside.  About 6am they sent us back to our rooms.  The fire happened to be 3 doors down from us!  We went to bed for about an hour, got up and got to the courthouse by 8a.m.  But we found out they didn’t have the trial until that afternoon.  And that George didn’t have to be there.  So we all went back to John’s.  The afternoon came.  The Chicago gang stayed at John’s while Kay, Tempy and I got a cab and went back to the courthouse only to find that George wasn’t going to show up.  The courtroom was the same one used in the promo film for “This Song.”  We got the subway back to John’s and about an hour later John arrived in a gray limo.  He signed a couple autographs and said he was tired and that he’d been at this all day.  And that was the last time we saw him.

Later we met up with Michael Stankowitz and talked a bit.  His friends and he left, and then we all went down and had pizza.  The Chicago gang then left for home.  We left the next morning.

Chicago promotion

George was a busy guy in the fall of 1976 and part of his busy schedule was to promote his new album at that time, 33 1/3.  With stops in Chicago and Boston, it was almost like a mini-tour to the fans during that time.   This story REALLY shows how managed to appear everywhere at once and stay one step ahead of one of the guys.     It sounds like a really fun time.

George 1976

Barb Clark

With a little help from my friends issue #17 (January 1977)

Knowing about the promotional party that Warner Brothers was having for George’s new album, 33 1/3 and knowing he’d show up, we—Tempy S., Kay P. and I packed our bags and drove to Chicago.  We went to O’Hare Airport thinking he’d get into town a few hours before the party.  There we met up with George Tebbens, Sharon U., and Carol or was it Nancy?  I got them mixed up.   They were sisters.  All of them were from Chicago.  We spent the day meeting all the flights coming from LA.  The flights came 15 to 25 minutes apart, which just gave us time to run to each one.  It started to get late.  The last flight we met, one guy got off with a Warner Brothers jacket on.  We thought, this is it!  The last person got off the plane.  No George.  Tebbens went home to get ready for the party.  We all went over to the hotel where George was staying and went into the lobby to wait.  Kept our eyes glued to the elevator door.  Tempy got up and moved closer.  We sat there a while.   A man came up to us and said we’d have to leave.  He asked who we were waiting for.  We didn’t answer.  He told us to go outside and stand – that he’d be coming out soon!  So we all went out front.  About 20 minutes later out George came; wearing a colored sweater, orange trousers which we later found out was a jumpsuit.   And he looked gorgeous!  Looked a bit like ’68 Yellow Sub. time.   He looked surprised to see all of us waiting for him.  He grinned that grin and said hello to everyone.  Signed some autographs, and then got into the limo and went off to the Ambassador.  We quickly got a cab.   The cab driver was cool—knew what was happening.  He said, “I think we can beat them!”  We got out, threw him some money, and stood in front of the Ambassador.  Three seconds later George arrived!  He rushed through the crowd while we stood around trying to come up with some way to get into the party.  Meantime the crowd started changing, “We want George, we want George!”  Some climbed up on the windows and looked in them – they were chased down.  Everyone still yelled, “We want George!”  And then the curtains opened and some man looked out.  Everyone yelled louder, “We want George!”  Meantime we’d met up with another friend of ours, Howard S. who had a room in there.  Everyone continued shouting “We want George!”  Finally the curtains opened and there stood George, grinning and waving to everyone.  After a b it he waved goodbye, and everyone yelled a bit louder.  It all felt like 1964 again, us yelling and him waving and grinning out the window at us all.  Finally he left the window.

Earlier a police car had arrived.  I thought they’d take us all away.  Overheard the cop saying he was there to arrest the doorman.  We did get into the hotel.  Howard having a room there, but that’s as far as we got.  They had a list of names and as you went into the party, they checked your name off.  So we didn’t get in.  Tebbens got in somehow of course.  Somehow we’d missed seeing George leave, but we all got together to celebrate what had happened, then called it a night and were to meet again the next morning in front of George’s hotel.

We met about 9am except for Howard and George.  Howard got there too late and George (as in Tebbens) had to work.  We stood around for an hour or so.  Char B. met up with us.  We all kept getting crazy remarks from the limo driver, “Why do you still do this?  “You stand out in the cold all this time?”  Someone said, “Yeah, all day if we’d have to.”  We told him where we were all from.  Tempy told him Boston, and he said “you should’ve stayed there, that’s where he’s going next.”  (You can imagine how she reacted to that.)  Kay went to put money into the meter while the limo driver watched her and said, “Is that your car?”  She said “yeah,” and the other guy with the limo driver wrote down her license plate number.  They brought out his luggage then and loaded it into the limo, and then out came George!  Looking surprised as ever, wearing a plaid tweed hat and an army jacket.  He grinned and said hello to us and got into the limo and signed some autographs.  And then the limo took off and so did we.  Tempy, Char, Kay and I ran to the car to follow him.  The limo was already 3 blocks away and almost lost in the traffic.  We had lost it earlier.  We’d found out he landed at Midway Airport in a private jet, so we took off for there.  Getting out of the traffic finally, and onto the Expressway doing about 80.  No sign of the limo.  Kay got it up to about 90.  Still no sign of the limo and then suddenly it came into sight.  We’d caught up with them!  We were all yelling and going mad.  We calmed down a bit, went off the exit with them, got a red light.  The driver looked into the rear view mirror and Kay waved at him.  George and the guy in the back seat then turned around and waved, and we slunk down into the seat.  They turned into the airport and went into a gate leading onto the field.  Tempy and Char jumped out of the car while Kay and I parked it in the middle of the road next to the gates.  WE all ran onto the field.  George was getting out of the limo and going up the stairs leading onto the plane.  He got to the top, stopped and turned around and waved to us.  We waved back and he disappeared into the plane.  Someone looked out the window, but the windows being dark, we couldn’t tell who it was.  The plane started up and we stood back watching it as it took off and disappeared from sight.  George was off for Boston and so was Tempy, as we took her to the airport.  By the way, remember the one who wrote our license number down?  He did that to clear it with the guards or whoever at the airport –otherwise, they would’ve stopped our car from following the limo up to where the plane was!

Let John and Yoko stay in the USA

In recently reading through fan magazines that I have obtained from the early and mid 1970's, I am reminded of the fact that Beatle fans worked very hard for John Lennon to stay in the U.S.A.   Each fanzine has addresses and petitions to send in for John.   It is easy after the fact to forget that it was John's fans that really did all that they could for John to get his green card.   I am not sure how much help it really gave John, but I'd like to think that it was maybe that little extra to help him win his case.   

Here is a story written by Barbara Clark for "McCartney Lovers and Friends" from January 1973 from when she and her friends hung around during one of John's immigration hearings in April 1972.

 

So I thought I would write about last April 18, 1972, when we went to see John at court.  We started off at 7am for the city, but heavy traffic, the car getting sick on the way (the car stalled out while turning a corner, and a taxi pushed us down the road, where we had to stop for over ½ hour) and the location of the 20 West Broadway (Immigration Office) being unfindable, slowed us down a bit and we didn’t arrive there until 9:30. 

Having missed John by a few minutes, we were killing each other, and then noticed that a crowd had already assembled (waiting for him to come out).  There were photographers, news reporters, groupies, teenyboppers and assorted people who didn’t know what the hell was going on, but stayed anyway just to see what was happening.  Three long hours passed, and finally John made his way out.  Seeing the reporters, he threw his arm around Yoko, and seemed to dread the upcoming serge.  They literally jumped on him.  He spent about 15 minutes answering questions about the court proceedings.  Answering some questions on the lighter side, he said that in kindergarten and all through school, nobody liked his face, and he seemed to always be in real bad trouble because of it.  He answered a girl’s question about his LP that was going to come out in a few weeks (He was really cheerful about that).  He finally pushed his way through the mob and smiled when he looked our way.  “Thomas” opened the car door and they were off.  Tommy, Marie, Sagi and I were at Apple on a hunch, when Geraldo Rivera from ABC news arrived along with some cameramen.  (They went inside to interview John, and it was on TV that night).  Marie suggested that he ask John to do a concert for the children of Willowbrook as George had done for Bangladesh.   He said that he would (Well it worked!)  He seemed to be rather snotty, he thinks he’s a real celebrity you know.  We waited and waited and waited.  Soon after, two true blue Beatle fans (guys) from New Jersey arrived.  They came to give John a letter.  It was about Yellow Matter Custard.  They kept asking Marie if she knew where John lived so that they could visit him and send him letters (“How should I know?” she said innocently).  Eventually, we saw Tom (his driver) come out from Apple, and John came out about five minutes later.  The two guys managed to speak to him and asked him about Yellow Matter Custard.  John told them to contact Dave Morrell (He’s about 17 ad calls himself the #1 Beatle fan because he has every LP and bootleg going and about $1000.00 worth of Beatle collections.)  Anyway, this Dave bloke was on the radio once bragging about his bootlegs, and John was interested in Yellow Matter Custard so he got to meet John and give him a copy (Oh yeah, he was also at Apple earlier in the dya).  Anyway he walked towards Marie’s car looked in and then saw Tom behind us and got into the blue station wagon.  They took off and when we decided to go our way we found that they were going in the same direction.  We almost went through a red light, got hit by a bus, and then found John in front of us.  His lane was going too slow and we didn’t know what to do.  A cab driver yelled out for us to pass him and Tommy yelled back, “but you don’t understand the situation!”  Marie, having one of her nervous attacks, kept saying “let’s take a vote on this.”   We had to pass, but I did look back and saw John resting his arm and hanging out the window smiling at all the people passing by.