There was lunacy in the air. Soon after the stage adaptation of John’s books, In His Own Write, opened at the Old Vic in June 1968, Yoko Ono summoned Victor Spinetti, its director. Spinetti kept a note of their conversation.
‘“Ah,” she said. “I want you to direct my play.”
‘“Oh,” I said. “What is it? Let me see the script.”
‘“No, no. No script. All audience get in bus. And allowed to go to house. Then all people in bus allowed to come and open door to symbolise awareness. Then everyone get back in bus. Then they go to other house. All allowed to come out. This time allowed to meet one person. Symbolise beginning communication. Then audience get back on bus –”’
Spinetti interrupted her monologue. ‘Now wait a minute, Yoko. What’s the big finish? I mean, what happens?’
‘Oh, everyone go into Hyde Park and wait for something to happen.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like chair falling out of sky.’
At this point Spinetti glanced at John, whose face was radiating love and wonder.
‘Ooh, that’s fookin’ great, that is, Vic, “chair falling out of sky”.’
Spinetti couldn’t work out whether or not John was joking. Thinking it was time to leave, he said, ‘You don’t want me to direct it, darling. You want to get Cook’s Tours. They’re great with buses.’
Yoko was not amused. ‘She didn’t speak to me for months,’ he recalled.
Around the same time, an ambitious eighteen-year-old called Richard Branson secured a promise from John and Yoko to provide the first issue of his new magazine, Student, with a flexidisc recording to be attached to the front cover. On the strength of this promise, Branson had ordered an ambitious print run of 100,000 copies, commissioning the self-styled ‘Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes’, Alan Aldridge, to create one of his psychedelic pictures for the cover.
But as the print date drew closer, the promised recording failed to appear. In desperation, Branson instructed a lawyer to threaten to sue Apple and the Lennons for £100,000, on the grounds of breach of promise.
The threat seemed to work wonders. A few days later, Branson received a telephone call from Derek Taylor. ‘Come round to Apple, Richard. We’ve got something for you.’
Branson was led into the basement studio at Savile Row, where he sat with John and Yoko as Taylor switched on a tape recording. Branson was all ears.
‘The hiss of the tape recorder was followed by a steady, metronomic beat, like the sound of a human heart.
‘“What is it?” I asked.
‘“It’s the heartbeat of our baby,” said John.
‘No sooner had he spoken than the sound stopped. Yoko burst into floods of tears and hugged John. I didn’t understand what was going on, but before I could speak John looked over Yoko’s shoulder straight into my eyes.
‘“The baby died,” he told me. “That’s the silence of our dead baby.”’
Taylor reassured him that it was ‘conceptual art’, but Branson was flummoxed. What should he do? A free recording of a baby dying was unlikely to send his magazine flying off the shelves.
‘I felt unable to release this private moment as a record,’ wrote Branson, with due solemnity, in his autobiography decades later. Instead, he scrapped the cover, redesigned the magazine and reduced the print order. For their part, John and Yoko had successfully sidestepped legal action. A few weeks later, the genial Taylor wrote Branson a note of apology for any trouble caused, signing off ‘All you need is love’.
After Yoko’s miscarriage, John stayed with her at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital while she recuperated.
One morning he phoned Victor Spinetti and asked him to pay them a visit. Spinetti found Yoko sitting up in bed, typing, while John lay on the floor, looking dreadful.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘Which one’s had the miscarriage?’
John laughed; Yoko continued typing. ‘I’m writing to my little daughter,’ she said. ‘I’m sending her a poem.’ She then read out the poem: ‘Do not worry, Kyoko. Mummy is only looking for her hand in the snow.’
Spinetti was taken aback. ‘How old is she?’
‘Five.’
‘And when did you last see her?’
‘Four years ago.’
‘Darling – send her a doll’s house,’ said Spinetti.
On Spinetti’s next visit, Yoko filled him in on her next venture. ‘I have bought ten thousand cups. John and I take hammer. Smash cup. We sell broken cup and people all over the world will buy it and stick broken cup that John and I break, stick it together, because, you see, now we are married, we are more famous than the Burtons.’ This time, Spinetti felt it expedient to keep quiet.