Happy times with John

Photo by Paul Goresh 

 

The last photos of John

Photos by Paul Goresh 

 

December 8, 1980

So much sadness is in these photos.   I keep thinking about how these shouldn't be sad photos.  They should just be some typical run of the mill snapshots of John Lennon on his way to the studio.   

I really don't have much more to say.   Like all of you, I love and miss John Lennon.   What more is there to say today? 

Crossing the street

Photos taken by Paul Goresh 

 

John sticks his tongue out again

Photo taken by Paul Goresh 

 Photo taken on November 17, 1980 

Happy Birthday Sean Lennon

Photos by Paul Goresh 

 

This is a bittersweet photo.   Sean is celebrating his 6th birthday.  He looks like an adorable kindergartner with his handmade birthday crown.    I am sure he had a wonderful party with his friends.   However, I am sure that there was a little bit of sadness because John wasn't there for his 41st birthday.   

Having been born almost one year after Sean's birthday -- I always remember him on his birthday and I hope his 45th birthday is a great one.   Happy birthday Sean!

First Day Back

Photos by Paul Goresh 

August 7, 1980 --  John and Yoko return to the studio!!!   If Blogger wasn't impossible, I would have put these photos in the correct order so that it would look like John and Yoko are walking out of the building.   But yeah -- Blogger does not like me to do that.  They like to put photos however they want. 

Still -- I love these shots. 

Remembering Paul Goresh

It is with much sadness that I share that Beatles fan and John Lennon photographer, Paul Goresh passed away after a long illness on January 9, 2018.   

The post I did about Paul in the early years of this blog remains the most popular post on the entire blog and currently is getting even more hits.    There is something about this man that interests us so much.   Who was he?   Why did he take photographs of John Lennon?   Why was he outside of the Dakota on the night John was killed?

Since first posting about him in 2010, I became friends with him on Facebook and found Paul to be a very nice, humble man.   He was happy to share some of the photos of John that he had taken to be on this blog, but told me that he had over 200 photographs of John that no one has ever seen, including the very last photo of John ever taken.   Paul snapped one more shot of John in the car as he and Yoko were leaving in the studio.    I still hope that we will see a least some of those photos.

So how did this regular fan get to meet John Lennon?   It is a pretty wild story -- but no wilder than any of the stories that included crazy things fans did to meet the Beatles.     On February 12, 1979 Paul and his friend Mario dared each other to meet John Lennon.     He worked for an electronics shop at the time and decided to act like they were VCR repairmen  and try to get into the Dakota to meet John.    Paul had on a clipboard that he was supposed to fix a VCR for a "J. Lennon."    The doorman waved them through.     The crazy part of this story was that John really WAS having problems with his VCR, but hadn't gotten around to telling anyone on the staff to call a repair man. 

So Paul and Mario knock on the door of John's apartment and were extremely shocked that John answered the door.    John was mad because he figured his secretary had scheduled the appointment and didn't bother to tell him, so he asked the guys to leave.    The secretary told them to come back a few days later.

Not toally sure if this note from John has anything to do with Paul but look at #6

And so they came back but John had bought himself a new VCR.    Paul asked him to sign his copy of "In his own write"  and John agreed just as long as Paul wouldn't take any pictures.     Goresh even showed me a photo of the book he had autographed.   

Photo by Paul Goresh 

And the story could have ended there and it would have been a great "meet the Beatles...for real" story.   However,  Paul Goresh wasn't going to be satisfied until he got photos of John Lennon.   So he started snapping some pictures of John coming and going from the Dakota with a telephoto lens.  John sees him and gets angry about it.     The next time, Paul apologizes to John and the two of sort of developed a bit of a friendship.   They would occasionally go for walks together for five minutes here and there.      So when it was time for John to go public again, he told Paul that he could take photos.   And that is how Paul got to take that famous photo that ended up on the cover of "Watching the Wheels."

Paul was at the Dakota on December 8, 1980, and we all know that he took that terrible photograph of John with his killer.    At the time of taking the photo, it would have just been a snapshot of John signing an autograph for someone.    There was no way that Paul or any other person there knew what was going to happen.   I personally do not know why Paul chose to go public with the photograph -- but I never did ask him about that. 

My condolences go out to Paul Goresh's family and friends and for all of us in the Beatles community that had the opportunity to get to know him. 

Watching the Wheels

All photos taken by Paul Goresh 

Paul and John

On November 17, 1980 John Lennon posed for this photo with fan, Paul Goresh around 11am.  John had been up all night and was wearing the same clothing from the night before.     And for those who were wonder that is NOT Jose the doorman behind them---not sure who the photobomber is.

Paul Goresh

It seems like history has not been too kind to Paul Goresh. He is unfortunately linked with John Lennon's murderer, which really is unfair. Paul Goresh is the man who took the photograph of John signing a copy of "Double Fantasy" for the man who would later that night take his life. Obviously when Paul Goresh snapped that photo, he thought it was simply photographing John signing an autograph for a fan. Now it is up to you to decide if it was right or wrong of him to sell that photograph so quickly to the newspapers after John's death, but that has nothing to do with the fact that Paul Goresh was a fan of John's and had gotten to know John on a personal level during the last years of his life. I think it is unfortunate for him that history has him forever linked with the man who killed John. Anyhow...here are some photos Paul took as well as the one of him and John together (I love the door man in the background!) and what Paul had to say in the Summer of 1980 book.

My first meeting with John and Yoko was in February 1979 in their apartment at the Dakota. I have been a Beatle fan for the better part of my life, and a life-long dream was coming true. I was going to be face to face with the man I had always idolized. When I knocked on the door I didn't expect John himself to answer; but there he stood, gold-rimmed glasses, chewing gum and smiling. Evidently in my enthusiasm, I knocked harder than I should have, and John said, "I thought it was the cops," and with an extended hand invited me in. I was very nervous at this point, but I was immediately put at ease by John's well-known humor. I saw John and Yoko a few more times in 1979 and again in early 1980. When I heard the news that John and Yoko were going to start working in the studio, it gave me the impetus to photograph them as often as I could. Between August and December 1980 I think I spent more time at the Dakota than doing anything else.

I will always cherish the meetings I had with John. He was very gracious to me, and the more I saw and photographed him, the more charming he became. John always took several minutes of his precious time for me., although the word precious doesn't justly descibe what my many times with John mean to me. In the almost two years I knew John he was always a gentle, king person. I have copies of In his own Write and A Spaniard in the Works which John signed for me, a signed photo, the pens he used, and several photos of the two of us taken on November 17, 1980. These material possessions give credence to what now seems like a dream.

December 8, 1980, became a day I will always remember vividly. It was the last day I ever saw John. He said to me that evening, as he was leaving the Dakota, "I'll see you tomorrow," for we had arranged for me to show him some photos I had taken on him and Yoko on December 2, 1980. John never saw these photographs, and neither of us realized I was going to take two very important photographs that very evening --- one of John and the one of the person who was to take him from us. They were the last photographs of John alive, photos of him getting into the limousine. John never saw these photographs either. I will always have the memories of the times spent with John, but this one especially. After John got into the limousine on December 8, 1980, he waved goodbye to me as the car pulled away. That wave will always be very special to me.

For the next two weeks my world was completely devastated, and it was Yoko's kindness which helped me accept John's death a little more easily. She opened her doors and her heart to me in the following months, and they have stayed open. My contribution to his book , and Yoko's choice of one of my photographs for the record "Watching the Wheels/I'm your Angel" overjoyed me.

The last thoughts: Yoko, thank you for helping me through my own personal hard times when you certainly had more than your own share; and John, thank you for all the fine memories you've given me, and all the beautiful thoughts and music you have left with all of us. My love to you both

December 8, 1980

This is the last known autograph John gave before he was murdered. It was for a woman named Rabiah Seminole (notice that John misspelled her name, to which she told him and John told her that he wrote it the way it sounded like to him). Rabiah was working at a switchboard operator at the Record Plant and got the autographs of John and Yoko before they left for night which was around 10:30pm. I was so glad when I found out that John's last autograph (at least the last one we are aware of) was for a fan and was not for his killer (as previously believed).

There is no getting around it. As far as I am concerned today is a sad and difficult day for Beatles and John Lennon fans everywhere. As we know, before John went into the studio to work on Yoko's song "Walking on Thin Ice" he stopped to sign autographs for a group of fans waiting outside of the Dakota building. Sadly one of those so called "fans" was the man who would take his life later that day. As far as I know, no other photos or even autographs given at that brief meeting have surfaced except for the photographs taken by long time Lennon admirer and photographer, Paul Goresh. (Paul had snuck into the Dakota disguised as a plumber or something at one point to get photos of John.) He was sort of a paparazzi guy as well as a fan. Some of his photos are well known know (The cover of the Watching the Wheels single was taken by him), but on December 8, 1980 he was just known among the fans as someone who snapped a lot of John photos. Anyhow...here are all of the known photos from that day. Please know that I have purposely left John's killer out of the photos because I do not want a photograph of such an awful man on my blog.