South Africa

40 years ago John traveled to South Africa. 

YOU

I am only aware of when Ringo went to South Africa in 1975 and played tennis.   Anyone know about a 2nd trip or is this photo labeled wrong?

John heading home photo

Why are you wasting your time here when you should be at the Beatles photo blog?? Miss Tammy has posted some AMAZING photos that have made me wet my pants in excitement. Here is one of those photos. It was taken I would guess a fan on an airplane from South Africa to New York in May 1980.

Now there has been a lot of discussion about John actually going to Capetown, South Africa in May of 1980. Honestly, there isn't a LOT of information about this trip (it was a short get-away). I quickly scanned my books tonight and I found the most information in the book Nowhere Man by Robert Rosen I will type here part of what it says. I don't' want to type up the whole chapter because it is a little....well...gross!!

The last week of April 1980, Yoko told John that a karmically cleansing directional voyage to the south and east was imperative - he was to leave immediately for Cape Town, South Africa. This was, perhaps, a peculiar choice of destination. The South African Broadcasting Company had banned Beatles music for five years in the wake of John's 1966 comment that the group was more popular than Jesus. And even after lifting the ban, they kept Lennon's solo work blacklisted. Nonetheless, he jumped at the opportunity to get away. Even though he thought the karmic cleansing was a load of bloody crap, he felt the isolation would be beneficial. And having been to C-town before, he knew that it was a good place to get jacked off.

The journey inspired John. He took notes on everything: the scenery, the cab ride to Cape Town form the airport, and his cab driver and self-appointed tour guide, Mohammad. After checking into the Mount Nelson Hotel under an assumed name, John went shopping for a raincoat, shampoo and macrobiotic fruit.

Back at the hotel bar, he couldn't' figure out how much money to put in the cigarette machine. A businessman who recognized him from the plane offered him a cigarette, which he happily accepted.

That day, every time John set foot outside his hotel room, somebody recognized him. Strangers offered him drugs and whores, but he declined. A pretty, blond hotel waitress tried to pick him up, but he turned her down. The last thing he wanted was a story in the gossip rags about being seen in public with a waitress. Alone in his room, he clipped classified ads for massage parlors form a local sex tabloid.....

John sat in his hotel room that night reading the local newspaper. An article reported that he'd been spotted buying a raincoat. HE felt strange -- like a flying saucer. He suspected reporters had somehow gotten into his hotel room when he was out.

Later in the week, he telephoned May Pang. She was depressed and unemployed. They chatted for an hour; he promised to send her a postcard Next he telephoned Yoko. She played a tape of a song she'd just written. John thought that the lyrics were great, but he was concerned that the muse had given Yoko exactly one melody, which she was doomed to repeat for the rest of her life. HE asked God to inspire his wife.

The following afternoon, John sat in his hotel room eating his macrobiotic fruit. He decided to return to the massage parlor....

The next day John returned to Cold Spring Harbor, only the tarot card reader Charlie Swan aware of exactly what he'd been doing in Africa.

The other tidbit about his South African trip comes from a source I find to be more reliable, and that is Philip Norman's book <>John Lennon The Life.

For much of this turbulent time for Yoko, as things turned out, John was not in the same home, the same town, or, finally, even the same country. As spring turned Central Park's trees into pink and white froth, the all-powerful numerologist, Takashi Yoshikawa- presciently but, alas, far, far too prematurely -- detected clouds of evil beginning to form above his head and worked out the direction in which he needed to travel to escape them. At the end of May, he flew off alone on the prescribed course, ending up in Cape Town, South Africa.