Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Not to steal Elizabeth's thunder or expertise (her answer will
undoubtedly be interesting)...

I just finished reading a section in the big, fat, recently published
Spitz biography about the Beatles where John and George, especially,
developed a big interest in American politics and social changes during
their American tour in the summer of 1964. One of the reporters on
their plane was Art Schreiber, who was covering the tour for the
Westinghouse network. He had been with Martin Luther King in Selma and
with James Meredith in Mississippi, and had been in the press corps
following the Kennedy campaign in 1960. According to Schreiber (as
quoted in the book): "Lennon couldn't get enough of it; he was
fascinated. I tried to familiarize him with segregation in the South,
about how blacks moved north to avoid discrimination and go where jobs
were available, but that there was as much segregation in the North,
only in a different way."

The Beatles were under strict orders from Brian Epstein not to talk
about politics, however. Writes Spitz: "It wasn't appropriate,
[Epstein] felt, for pop stars to air particular opinions inasmuch as it
might alienate -- or as George put it, 'rattle' -- a segment of their
audience, expecially over a hot potato like Vietnam. 'We were being
asked about it all the time and it was silly,' said John. 'We had to
pretend to be like in the old days when artists weren't meant to say
anything about anything.' But the Beatles weren't about to be silenced
-- especially George and John, both of whom in a relatively short
amount of time became consumed by social and political issues." 
  

    
I have a hard time seeing Yoko as the impetus behind John's political
consciousness. John was a keen social observer and self-identified
outcast/artist from the time he was a teenager, at least. Yoko may have
influenced his political perspective, but he had a political
perspective and he and the other Beatles were commenting on the Vietnam
War etc long before he met Yoko.

To bring this back to questions for Elizabeth, however.... I've been
chewing over the title to your book, which of course comes from a song
on one of his earlier solo albums. And it strikes me, all these years
later, that wrapped up in that song and that line are the two sides of
John's confoundingly brilliant and excessive sensibility: the idealist,
the "dreamer," the deeply compassionate and humanitarian soul who
refused to believe that a saner, healthier, more peaceful and
"truth"-full world was beyond our grasp; and the obsessive, judgmental,
impatient, hyper-opinionated wag who was convinced that he was better
qualified or situated than just about anyone else to determine exactly
what "truth" was. I'm overstating the case a bit, of course, but
re-reading interviews and watching videos of John over the last 20 or
30 years have definitely flavored my understanding of him, to the point
where I now see someone I formerly regarded as an idol, a demigod, as
an extremely complicated person--a nonpareil artist who produced some
of the very best work of this or any other time, but a person who could
be mean and cutting as much as he could be kind and generous. 

So anyway...whew, I didn't mean to go on at such length there...but I
was wondering, Elizabeth, if you could comment on that aspect of John,
and how your own understanding of him as an artist and especially as a
person (*not* an activist) evolved as a result of your research for and
writing of your book.

(Thanks for indulging me in my gratuitously long buildup to a sort-of
question.)
  

    
Eric Alterman tells a wonderful story about sitting in a Manhattan
restraunt, getting no service at all, while Yoko and a friend of hers were
being fawned over at a nearby table.   In frustration he asked loudly, "What
do you have to do to get service around here?   Break up the Beatles?"

Sorry, but it's my favorite Yoko story.   I'll take your answer to Phil's
question off the air, please.
  

    
Too hilarious!
  

    

heh


Elizabeth, I admit that I stopped following the Beatles around the time they
broke up, so perhaps I'm asking something that's totally obvious. 

As your book nears its end, there seems to me to be a blank spot as far as
tracking what Lennon was doing the last 4 years of his life. What *was*
he doing between '76 and '80? 
  

    
that's a great story about getting restaurant service! funny!

The Dakota years. They were often considered to be very reclusive, but
John was able to be out and about, both in NYC and in the world. I've
heard many stories from people about how they saw him, and said hello,
and he said hello back. People rarely wanted to even ask for his
autograph. John also went on several long trips during this period.

The person who wrote the most about this period of time was not
someone I was willing to quote from. He was John's assistant/secretary,
and took some of John's diaries from the Dakota after his death. This
was so horrific to me I was unwilling to consider what he had to say.

I think it was a very necessary time of John's life. He'd been under a
microscope for so many years. The pressure on him was intense. During
the Dakota years he wasn't recording or performing. It gave him a long,
necessary period to just be John. 

I will say, however, that his being a house-husband and primary parent
was probably cranked up in the PR department. Yes he was close to
Sean, and cared what he ate, how he slept, etc, but John wasn't
preparing all his food, putting him to bed every night, etc. John could
just take off on a world trip at a moment's notice. Not primary
parenting as many of us define it...
  

    
John inside the coccoon of domesticity sort of reminds me...

One person who I don't think has received her true due in all this is
Cynthia Lennon. I mean, this woman put up with a *lot*. Even more
important, though, is that she, on her own, more or less had to invent
the role of Beatle wife while the Beatles themselves were having so
much fun, in the early years, inventing the Beatles. Brian Epstein
wouldn't even allow Cynthia to be acknowledged in any way until, what,
1964? (His autobiography, "A Cellarful of Noise," doesn't even mention
her.) So all during those early years of Beatlemania, Cynthia was on
her own trying to figure out how to deal with it and with her Beatle
husband.

I've not read her book, so I don't know if she's bitter, happy,
cynical, elated, or whatever about her association with John and the
Beatles. (I also have no idea if she and Yoko ever speak to one
another.) But I think she endured something that none of the rest of us
can even imagine, and as a not-very-well-educated Liverpool girl, she
wasn't really prepared at all for what life handed her. But she
soldiered on. That's brave.

Elizabeth, your thoughts?
  

    

And to stack up another question:

What if John Lennon hadn't been killed? What do you think he'd be doing now,
Elizabeth? Can you imagine him jamming with Julian and Sean? Would he be
more interested in painting than music? Where do you think his last few
years were taking him?
  

    
The $64,000 question(s), no?
  

    
That IS the $64,000 question! What would John be doing if he had
lived. I love the image of him jamming with Sean and Julian. Wouldn't
that have been a blast! But honestly, I don't know, I REALLY don't
know. If you look at Annie Leibovitz's photos of him the very last day
of his life, he looks so...vulnerable to me. There are smudges under
his eyes... as if his body can't support his spirit. It's not clear to
me how many drugs he was doing those last years... he did say in his
Playboy interview that although he had given up LSD, he was wasn't
opposed to tripping on more natural alternatives-- mushrooms and
peyote-- a couple times a year. Would he have taken on political causes
again? He might well have, as he had strong feelings.

I'd guess that his music would have continued to evolve... maybe
pushed rock and roll in a direction it never went in. Give a listen to
his album/CD John Lennon: Rock 'n' Roll. Though he later excoriated the
making of the album (in LA, miserable, drunk) it is powerful and
awesome. He really tapped back into his love of rock and roll. And his
voice, so plaintive, or driving, or tender.... beautiful.
  

    
Cynthia. I think she had it pretty tough. First of all, those post-war
Northern England boys were raised in a very sexist climate, where they
expected women to satellite around them, not have lives of their own.
Then you throw in the insanity of the Beatles stardom, and that John
was really pretty selfish about how he used up people... 

I think Cynthia is also by nature a fairly quiet, timid person.
(Though she clearly fell for the Bad Boy.) She ends her recently
published book, JOHN, by saying "...if I'd known as a teenager what
falling for John Lennon would lead to, I would have turned round right
then and walked away." Sad, really. The only woman John let contain him
was Yoko.
  

    
Why Cynthia would write such a sentence is understandable, though, and
I think it took some courage to do so for public consumption. There's
nothing in the Spitz bio to suggest that Cynthia ever wanted to
"contain" John, just that she wanted a husband, as she was brought up
to understand husbands should be, and that she wanted a father for
Julian. These are understandable desires.

Yet she adapted. I think her real courage and strength show in her
acceptance of and adaptation to the completely insane lifestyle that
was thrust upon her. Doesn't mean she had to like it, however. 
  

    
If anybody hasn't had a chance to read the section in Elizabeth's book about
how the John and Cynthia relationship unfolded, take a look.  It's terrific.
And priceless is the picture on page 63 of Cynthhia watching the Beatles
playing at the Casbah Club in 1959.  John is deeply focused on playing the
guitar. Paul, on the other hand, is grinning at Cynthia.  It suggests all
kinds of power relationships within the group at that moment.

(As a well, of course, as to the personalities of the two lead singers.)
  

    
That's a great photo. It has been seen before, but not very often.
It's so revealing.

I was able to find a couple of photos of John that had never been
published. I was out walking one day with my dad, a photographer, when
we ran into Ken Light, another photographer. I asked if he had ever
taken any photos of John Lennon, and he said he had, as a young
photographer. He pulled them out of his negative file and printed up a
couple. I used his photo on pages 168-169. It was such a beautiful
print I could blow it up to a double page spread. It's one of those
photos you want to get up next to and sniff, it's so beautiful. It's
John in a leather jacket playing at the benefit concert for John
Sinclair.  
  

    
I just want to go back to Phil Catalfo's post #27. He makes a great
observation about Lennon and asks my thoughts. Really, I wouldn't be
able to say it as eloquently. It's the beautiful conundrum of John
Lennon.
>I've been chewing over the title to your book, which of course comes
from a song on one of his earlier solo albums. And it strikes me, all
these years later, that wrapped up in that song and that line are the
two sides of John's confoundingly brilliant and excessive sensibility:
the idealist, the "dreamer," the deeply compassionate and humanitarian
soul who refused to believe that a saner, healthier, more peaceful and
"truth"-full world was beyond our grasp; and the obsessive,
judgmental,impatient, hyper-opinionated wag who was convinced that he
was better qualified or situated than just about anyone else to
determine exactly what "truth" was.
  

    
Absolutely.

I've got to admit that this is the first book I've read about John since
he was killed.  I was one of those people who had all the books, the albums
(including _Sometime in New York City_-yipes!) but after he was shot I put
it all away.  I remember when _Double Fantasy_ came out and humming
"Starting Over" again and again.  I also remember my boyfriend at the time
coming into our bedroom and telling me that John had been shot.  My
reaction: that couldn't be right.  But I must say that memory is not nearly
as compelling for me as first hearing "Twist and Shout" on the radio and
insisting to my mom that we had do go buy that record "Introducing the
Beatles" immediately.

So I guess I'm interested in both those memories.  Where you were when you
heard John was killed but also when was the first moment that -- hearing his
music -- you were deeply moved, inspired, rocking?

And, of course, this question isn't just for Elizabeth, but for everybody.
  

    
Like millions of other people, I first heard about Lennon's murder
while watching "Monday Nigh Football." Howard Cosell made the
announcement.

I don't remember when I first heard the Beatles. It wasn't on the
Sullivan show; my parents didn't like Ed Sullivan and we didn't watch
his program. What I do remember is that there was a kid in my
third-grade class, a small, unathletic effeminate kid, who brought a
copy of "Meet the Beatles" to school. This would've been in the spring
of '64. He was teased mercilessly by other boys about the "fag" Beatles
he loved (probably by me, too, I'm not proud to admit). But for some
reason I said to one of the bullies: "Yeah, but we'll probably be
listening to those guys too some day."
  

    
In the 3rd grade I sadly realized I could no longer hang out with my 
former best friend, Janet Dillon, because she didn't like the Beatles. 
  

    
I was heading to school my senior year in high school when "With Love From
Me To You" came on the radio.   Never heard of the the Beetles.   Thought
they were some philly doo-wop group based on the falsettos.   "I Wanna Hold
Your Hand", and actual Beatlemania in the US were a year off yet.    Liked
the song, though.   And that's saying something, since my musical tastes
were completely elsewhere at the time and I was saving to buy a banjo.
  

    

I fell for the Beatles when my friend Margaret came over with a 45 of "I
Wanna Hold Your Hand" -- our mutual admiration for George was cemented by
viewing "A Hard Day's Night" in the theater something like 47 times. We
actually screamed at the movie screen and fell out of our chairs in wiggling
14-year-old excitement.

I was first struck by John Lennon's contribution to the Beatles not too long
after that when a local DJ -- I think it might have been Big Daddy Tom
Donahue -- went crazy for Lennon's harmonica work on "Love Me Do" and
proceeded to play it 10 times in a row on a top-40 radio station
(KEWB, IIRC) one night.

NOBODY in top 40 radio played a song more than once consecutively back then.
It was completely unheard of, and to play it 10 times in a row was
practically insurrection. I was thrilled.

  ************

When Lennon was shot I'd recently moved to Los Angeles with my then-sweetie.
We were watching Monday night football at a friend's apartment. My sweetie
and I were shocked, speechless, sick at heart. Our friend -- who was perhaps
a dozen years younger than either of us -- lacked the same sense of
connection to the Beatles and to Lennon and he simply didn't understand
why were were upset. He returned to watching the game and we went home
in a stunned daze.
  

    
 I've never forgotten when and where I was when I heard the news
 about Lennon. Chicago.
   At the time I was on a grad. student budget and
 had given up tv. My elderly neighbor told me about it, she thought
I'd "...want to know about it...". 
 Within the next few hours I recall the announcement of a vigil
 in Grant Park. I eventually got to the vigil and can't forget
 the Chicago Police on horseback patrolling a very somber and mournful
crowd.  I listened in on the cop as he chatted on, and then sang a bit
of a lyric from a song popular at the time loud enough so that dozens
could here "....Another one bites the dust...".  

  Just as unforgettable, the crowd ignored it.
  

    
Dang. I somehow heard about it, I don't remember how, the night it
happened. A bunch of my pals around the old band happened to be
together, and we had a little wake, but there wasn't much talking. We
were all so shocked. Nobody was grown up enough at that time to even
cry.

For some reason, I had to be up very early the next morning. I was
walking downtown not long after dawn, and saw all of these "RIP John
Lennon" flyers on storefronts, car windshields, telephone poles,
whatever. It was like they had come snowing down, and just stuck
everywhere. There's a little park in the middle of town. Some folks had
put together an elaborate memorial. It must have been a sizable crew,
judging by the number of pictures and letters and flowers. Where do you
get flowers in the middle of a New England night in December? That
night it seemed to snow flowers, too.

Oh, well…
  

    
Yes, I remember the Shine on, Mr. L. graffitti showing up on Haight Street.
  

    
fwiw, in case anyone isn't already familiar with this, there are lots of
interesting stories about the beatles in the beatles conference here on
the well (g beat).  There are tons of topics with personal stories about
how people have experienced the beatles and their music.  There are 3
topics related to lennon's death--#28, 155, 185 and they have some
excellent reminiscences about that time.
  

    

The Getting Beatlemania part:

I initially was resistant to the Beatle hype: I was seriously into folk
music, Gilbert & Sullivan, and not a whole lot on the pop landscape of
the era. If I was attracted to anything that was getting played on the
radio, it was usually something on the R&B end of the spectrum -- I
loved Lee Dorsey's "Working In A Coal Mine," Gary US Bonds' "Quarter To
Three," stuff like that.  I had seen the Beatle segment on Jack Paar's
show and read about them in Life, and thought the whole thing was kinda
silly. But when they arrived at JFK (or was it still officially
Idlewild?) on 2/7/64, I found my self unexpectedly curious about all the
excitement. And then they had that famous press conference, and my
resistance rapidly began to crumble. Hey! These guys are FUNNY! And
smart! And charming as all get-out!  By the end of the day, I was tuned
in to my transistor radio like everyone else, switching between WINS,
WABC and WMCA for the latest breathless updates, and surprised by how
much I was digging the wall-to-wall Beatle tunes they were playing. And
the moment they lit up the TV screen on the Sullivan show two nights
later, I was a goner.

As for my early impressions of John as a distinct individual personality
instead of just a part of Johnpaulgeorgeringo: I never really got into
the favorite-Beatle debates. I think it was the whole collective, Four
Musketeers vibe that appealed to me most. But as my fanhood deepened, so
did my appreciation of John's smarts and humor: his snappy answers to
interview questions; "In His Own Write;" his featured scenes in "A Hard
Day's Night" -- all that and more made me a John fan as well as a
Beatlemaniac.

The Getting The Horrible News Part:

I seem to be one of the few people who didn't get the word from Howard
Cosell. I have an even stranger set of associations in my mind: Gloria
Swanson, William Holden, Erich Von Stroheim and Buster Keaton. I was
watching, for the umpteenth time, one of my favorite movies, Billy
Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard," on KTVU in Oakland. Forever burned into
memory is the scene that aired just before the news broke: insane
silent-movie has-been Norma Desmond playing bridge with some of her old
pals (or as Holden's character refers to them, her "waxworks"): Keaton,
H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson. They cut away for commercials and I
turned down the sound. After a couple of ads, the station inserted a
"breaking news" graphic and cut to anchor Dennis Richmond, with a
picture of John Lennon behind him. Wondering what the hell John could
have done to warrant a bulletin -- gotten busted again? gotten deported
again? -- I turned the sound back up, just in time to hear the words
"...shot and killed in New York City." I don't remember much else about
that night as far as fine details go, but I do recall that I wound up
over at a friend's house, staying up all night, getting good and drunk,
with John's music turned up loud.

I still love "Sunset Boulevard," but I know I'll never be able to watch
it again without that cold chill coming over me when that bridge-playing
scene comes around.