The following codes have been used to indicate frequently referenced works:
BA
Beatles, The. The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
BC
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Chronicles. London: Hamlyn, 2006.
BJY
Rolling Stone, Editors of. The Ballad of John and Yoko. Garden City: Doubleday Dolphin, 1982.
BL
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Live! New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1986.
CLJ
Lennon, Cynthia. John. New York: Random House, 2005.
CLT
Lennon, Cynthia. A Twist of Lennon. New York: Avon, 1980.
DCH
Lennon, Pauline. Daddy, Come Home: The True Story of John Lennon and His Father. London: Angus and Robertson, 1990.
IT
Baird, Julia. Imagine This. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007.
JLE
Harry, Bill. The John Lennon Encyclopedia. London: Virgin Publishing, 2000.
JLMB
Baird, Julia, with Geoffrey Giuliano. John Lennon, My Brother. London: Grafton, 1988.
MYFN
Miles, Barry. Paul McCartney Many Years from Now. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1997.
PB
Lennon, John, Yoko Ono, and David Sheff. The Playboy Interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York: Putnam, 1981.
RTB
Kehew, Brian, and Kevin Ryan. Recording the Beatles. Houston: Curvebender Publishing, 2006.
SS
Pete Shotton and Nicholas Schaffner. John Lennon in My Life. New York: Stein and Day, 1983.
TBRS
Lewisohn, Mark. The Beatles Recording Sessions: The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes 1962–1970. London: Harmony, 1988.
Chapter 1: No Reply
1. BA, 4.
2. S. Almond and B. J. Marsh, Home Port: Bootle, the Blitz and the Battle of the Atlantic (Sefton: Metro Borough of Sefton Education Department, 1993), 7.
3. S. C. Leslie, Ministry of Home Security, Bombers Over Merseyside: The Authoritative Record of the Blitz, 1940–1941 (Liverpool: Scouse Press, 1983), 8.
4. William Manchester, The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1988), 679.
5. Isaiah Berlin, with Henry Hardy, Roger Hausheer, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 618.
6. CLJ, 29.
7. Jan Morris, “In Liverpool,” from The Ballad of John and Yoko (Garden City: Doubleday Dolphin, 1982), 4.
8. JLMB, 19.
9. During the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, 9,000 Irish arrived in its ports each day, swelling the population from 286,000 to 376,000 between 1841 and 1851.
10. Danny Ross, A Blue Coat Boy in the 1920s (Gunnison, Colorado: Pharaoh Press, 1996). Ross writes about his childhood friend, Alfred Lennon, who gave Danny a mouth organ and taught him how to play.
11. JLE, 474. Harry reports that the Blue Coat orphanage publicly “berated” Alfred, but he seems to be the only source for this incident.
12. JLMB, 8–9.
13. Ibid.
14. DCH, 75.
15. Although it is an important primary source, very few Lennon narratives work in Alf’s quotes from Daddy Come Home surrounding any of these key events.
16. JLE, 476.
17. DCH, 33.
18. Ray Coleman, John Lennon (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 25.
19. The October 10, 1940, edition of the Liverpool Echo reported only news about British raids on Germany, especially on its armament factories in Krupps. But there is no mention of raids on the Merseyside area that night of October 9, just a single bomb falling “in a north-west town,” again, name withheld for security reasons. On this same night, forty London districts were detailed as bombed. Aunt Mimi may have been misremembering bombs which fell on the night of October 10 and 11. From author correspondence with Quarrymen member and Lennon confidant Rod Davis.
20. Coleman, 25.
21. JLE, 821.
22. Ibid, 34.
23. DCH, 30–33. This narrative reports that Julia, Alf, and John had shared the apartment with the Stanleys since John was born; others differ as to precisely when the Stanleys gave up the Berkeley Street dwelling. But Anne’s death brought about some sort of living readjustments if only because the balance of family chemistry changed radically.
24. Ibid, 40.
25. Ibid, 42.
26. JLMB, 13.
27. Maritime Museum exhibition, Liverpool, May 2008.
28. Walter Everett, The Beatles As Musicians: The Quarry Men Through Rubber Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 14.
29. Ibid, 369; DCH, 61.
30. Paddy Shennan, “Teenage Teds Without a Care in the World,” Liverpool Echo, October 3, 2007, http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-entertainment/the-beatles/the-beatles-news/2007/10/03/teenage-teds-without-a-care-in-the-world-100252-19888187/. If this expulsion came in the spring of 1946, this preceded the Blackpool scene, which signals how boisterous Lennon’s temperament had grown in advance of this defining trauma.
31. DCH, 65.
32. JLE, 480. Sydney Lennon claims that he and his wife also took the boy in for nine months when John was four, during this same period.
33. DCH, 67.
34. Founder Alderman William George Bean quoted in 1896, in the same turn-of-the-century park fever that inspired Chicago’s White City and later Disneyland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackpool_pleasure_beach.
35. Hunter Davies, The Beatles—The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 9.
36. DCH, 70.
37. Ibid, 72.
38. Ibid, 75; 110.
39. MYFN, 47.
40. Davies, Beatles, 12.
41. Ibid, 44.
Chapter 2: Something to Hide
1. MYFN, 44.
2. JLMB, 15.
3. Author interview with Len Garry, Chicago, 2007.
4. “Leila” seems to be spelled “Liela” on the Liverpool Lennon.net family Web page, http://www.lennon.net, and in IT, but not JLMB.
5. All these Stanley Parkes quotes come from the Lennon.net family Web site, at http://www.lennon.net/reflections/s_parkes.shtml, stories that have not been reproduced elsewhere until now. Mimi and George lived in “The Cottage” before taking over Mendips; her sister Harriet moved in with Leila after the war.
6. JLMB, 28.
7. Coleman, 25.
8. CLJ, 106.
9. Coleman, 30–31.
10. Ibid.
11. SS, 23.
12. Ibid, 27–28.
13. Ibid.
14. David Ashton, A Woolton Childhood, unpublished memoir, http://www.beatlesireland.utvinternet.com/John7020Lennon/Woolton.Woolton1.html, 3.
15. SS, 33. Although it’s not uncommon for adolescents to fantasize about places more magical and mysterious than their ordinary surroundings, the early ambition to write a work resembling Lewis Carroll’s points to Lennon’s nonlinear bent that would produce such surreal pop landscapes as “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “I Am the Walrus,” “Glass Onion,” “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” “Across the Universe,” and “I Dig a Pony.”
16. Ibid.
17. Coleman, 32.
18. Hunter Davies, The Quarrymen (New York: Omnibus Press, 2001), 23.
19. Reproduced in James Henke, Lennon Legend: An Illustrated Life of John Lennon (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003), 8.
20. Davies, Quarrymen, 23.
21. SS, 38–39.
22. Ibid, 29.
23. Ibid, 29.
24. Author interview with Liverpool resident Paul McNutt, 2008.
25. SS, 30.
26. Author interview with Michael Hill, January 2005.
27. Allen Ginsberg, with Bill Morgan, ed., The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (New York: Da Capo, 2008), 223.
28. Lisa Philips, ed., Beat Culture and the New America—1950–1965 (Paris and New York: the Whitney Museum of Art in association with Flammarion, 1995), http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Carney.html.
29. CLT, 25.
30. BA, 9.
31. JLE, 72.
32. Davies, Quarrymen, 32.
33. Author interview with Rod Davis, Chicago, August 2007.
34. Davies, Quarrymen, 23.
35. Ibid, 20.
36. As evidenced in Henke, 8.
37. Author interview with Rod Davis, 2007.
Chapter 3: She Said She Said
1. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The Twenties to the Nineties (revised edition) (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 439.
2. Jann Wenner, Lennon Remembers (San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1971), 146.
3. Dave Cotterill and Ian Lysaght, directors, Liverpool’s Cunard Yanks (Souled Out Films, 2007).
4. Tony Bramwell and Rosemary Kingsland, Magical Mystery Tours: My Life with the Beatles (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006).
5. Author interview with Colin Hanton, Liverpool, 2005.
6. BA, 11.
7. Pauline Sutcliffe and Douglas Thompson, The Beatles’ Shadow: Stuart Sutcliffe & His Lonely Hearts Club (London: Macmillan, 2002), 31. Jackson was an innovator as well, stringing together sound effects to create jingles between songs that accented the music’s inanity. On Jackson’s show, rock ’n’ roll sprouted comic leaks; the only thing on the three BBC frequencies that came anywhere close was Lennon’s beloved Goon Show with Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and Peter Sellers, which got considerable comic leeway.
8. John Firminger and Spencer Leigh, Halfway to Paradise: British Pop Music 1955–1962 (Liverpool: Finbarr International, 1996), 30.
9. Ibid, 29.
10. Alan Clayson, Beat Merchants: The Origins, History, Impact and Rock Legacy (London: Blandford Press, 1996), 30–31.
11. Ibid, 18.
12. BA, 28, and MYFN, 19.
13. Author interview with Colin Hanton, Liverpool, 2005.
14. Mark Lewisohn Beatle Days conference interview with Julia Baird, Liverpool Adelphi Hotel, August 2005.
15. JLMB, 25.
16. Ibid, 28.
17. SS, 38.
18. Author interview with Len Garry, Chicago, 2007.
19. JLMB, 23.
20. BA, 11.
21. Ibid.
22. All quotes from this scene from an author interview with Michael Hill, January 2005.
23. BA, 10.
24. Ibid, 11.
25. Ibid.
26. Davies, Beatles, 12.
27. JLMB, 27.
28. Stanley Parkes, quoted in a 2002 interview on lennon.net, the Lennon Family Web page, http://www.lennon.net/reflections/s_parkes3.shtml.
29. Ibid.
30. BA, 8.
31. SS, 38.
32. Ibid, 38.
33. JLMB, 49–50.
34. Julia Baird interviewed at Beatle Days conference by Mark Lewisohn, August 2005.
35. Jim O’Donnell, The Day John Met Paul: An Hour-by-Hour Account of How The Beatles Began (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 69.
36. Author interview with Len Garry, 2007.
37. Davies, Quarrymen, 39.
38. Ibid, 43.
39. BL, 19. “The 550th Anniversary of King John, who issued the royal Charter ‘inviting settlers to take up burgages or building plots in Liverpool, and promising them all the privileges enjoyed by free boroughs on the sea.’ ” Also, Quarrymen has always been a single word band name.
40. JLMB, 34.
41. BA, 20.
42. Ibid.
43. Author interview with Colin Hanton, 2005. McCartney is alone in remembering Lennon’s alcoholic breath; Colin Hanton and Rod Davis swear the drinking was at a minimum, and have no distinct memories of Lennon chugging at ale or anything else. Others speculate Julia may have bought a pint for him.
Chapter 4: Nobody Told Me
1. This “Auntie Jin” shows up in McCartney’s Wings song, “Let ’Em In,” in 1976.
2. MYFN, 21.
3. Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 89.
4. Ibid, 90.
5. MYFN, 32.
6. BA, 134.
7. Spitz, 110.
8. MYFN, 46.
9. Author interview with Colin Hall, Mendips curator, 2005.
10. Simon Frith and Howard Horne, Art into Pop (London: Methuen and Co., 1987), 73.
11. John Goldrosen and John Beecher, Remembering Buddy (New York: Da Capo, 1996), 29.
12. Ibid, 65.
13. JLE, 514.
14. Bramwell, 32.
15. Goldrosen and Beecher, 159.
16. Author interview with Colin Hall, August 2005.
17. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 16. This is yet another important first-person account of the young Lennon that has eluded previous Lennon biographers.
18. Ibid, 18.
19. Ibid, 20.
20. Ibid, 17.
21. Davies, Beatles, 65.
22. BL, 20.
23. BC, 16. Lewisohn pegs the date as February 6, 1958.
24. BL, 17.
25. Ibid, 18.
26. Author interview with Colin Hanton in Liverpool. Lewisohn claims Hanton did not participate in the recording. Hanton remembers it vividly.
27. Ibid.
28. JLMB, 51.
29. Ibid, 51–52.
30. Spitz, 146.
31. Paddy Sherman, Liverpool Echo, October 5, 2007.
32. JLMB, 52.
33. Ibid, 54–55.
34. JLE, 958.
35. MYFN, 48.
36. Ibid, 49.
Chapter 5: Pools of Sorrow
1. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 44.
2. Frith and Horne, 40.
3. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 40.
4. Ibid, 40.
5. Davies, Beatles, 55.
6. Steve Stark, Meet the Beatles (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 72.
7. CLT, 18.
8. Davies, Beatles, 57.
9. Ibid, 57–58.
10. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 32.
11. Ibid, 37.
12. Ibid, 39.
13. Davies, Quarrymen, 63.
14. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 25.
15. Ibid, 52.
16. Ibid, 122.
17. Spencer Leigh, The Best of Fellas: The Story of Bob Wooler—Liverpool’s First D.J., the Man Who Introduced “The Beatles” (Liverpool: Drivegreen Ltd, 2002), 160.
18. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 122.
19. BL, 16.
20. Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen, Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music (Chicago: Ballantine Books, 1999), 123. Less than two months later, early on the morning of August 14, his mother died in Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Elvis was granted emergency leave from Killeen to be at Graceland when she passed.
21. John Lennon, The Lennon Tapes: John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Conversation with Andy Peebles, 6 December 1980 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1981), 203.
22. Patricia Romanowski with Jon Pareles and Holly George-Warren, The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 72. A hat-checker in Berry’s St. Louis nightclub. She complained to the police when Berry fired her. “After a blatantly racist first trial was disallowed, he was found guilty at a second. Berry spent two years in federal prison in Indiana, leaving him embittered.”
23. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 64.
24. Philip Norman, Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1981, 67.
25. Before his recording career, Vincent had suffered a leg injury during a motorcycle accident in the navy, which required a metal brace. Part of his appeal stemmed from his sexual demeanor in spite of this wound.
26. Alan Clayson, Hamburg—The Cradle of British Rock (London: Sanctuary Publishing, 1998), 50.
27. Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned: A Memoir of London in the 1960s (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 133. Oldham’s remark gets argued through many British band encores, from the Who and T. Rex covering “Summertime Blues” to Led Zeppelin’s “C’mon Everybody.”
Chapter 6: Well Well Well
1. Paul Du Noyer, Liverpool: Wondrous Place, From the Cavern to the Capital of Culture (London: London Virgin, 2002), 32.
2. BA, 46.
3. Norman, Shout!, 95.
4. BA, 47.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Pete Best and Patrick Doncaster Beatle! The Pete Best Story (London: Plexus, 1985), 111. It’s one of those Lennon stories you hope is true, but it’s disputed by Harrison, who was probably there.
8. This same Casey later performed with Paul McCartney’s Wings Venus and Mars tour in 1975–76.
9. Author interview with Howie Casey, 2004.
10. Best and Doncaster, 115.
11. Spitz, 228.
12. Devin McKinney, Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004), 4.
13. Alan Clayson, John Lennon: The Unauthorised Biography of John Lennon (New York: Chrome Dreams, 2001).
14. Guralnick and Jorgensen, 41.
15. BA, 49.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Doncaster and Best, 46.
19. Andy Babiuk, The Beatles Gear: All the Fab Four’s Instruments, from Stage to Studio (San Francisco: Backbeat, 2001), 35.
20. Doncaster and Best, 42.
21. Ibid, 55. Also, Stark, 150. Stark comes up with the best interpretation of this Scouser term: “No translation necessary.”
22. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 99.
23. Philip Norman, Shout!, 97.
24. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 135.
25. Norman, Shout!, 97. A deliciously ironic quote: innocence is not “all-protecting,” it requires protecting.
26. CLJ, 69.
27. Frith and Horne, 85.
28. “Living together” before marriage was more common among European families than it was in American homes of the period. Cynthia Powell soon moved in to live with John at his aunt Mimi’s house later in 1962, strictly as a “boarder” in the adult’s mind, but quite something else for the young couple. And Paul famously lived with his girlfriend Jane Asher’s family when he settled in London in 1964.
29. Author interview with Astrid Kirchherr, 2008.
30. Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd (Princeton: Vintage Books, 1960).
31. Doncaster and Best, 58.
32. Ibid, 59.
33. Norman, Shout!, 100.
34. Doncaster and Best, 120.
35. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 88.
36. Du Noyer, 32.
37. BA, 45.
38. Author interview with Tony Bramwell, 2006.
39. BA, 49.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Coleman, 132.
43. Bramwell, 4.
44. BA, 56.
45. Doncaster and Best, 85.
46. Clayson, Hamburg, 188.
Chapter 7: I Found Out
1. BA, 69.
2. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 121.
3. Ibid.
4. Author interview with Astrid Kirchherr, April 2008.
5. Sir Eduardo Paolozzi received his knighthood in 1989; his sculpture of Sir Isaac Newton (on William Blake’s image) sits outside the British Library in London.
6. Sutcliffe and Thompson, 134.
7. JLE, 64.
8. Bill Harry, Mersey Beat—The Beginnings of the Beatles (New York: Omnibus Press, 1977), 22.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. “One After 909” was recorded during 1963 then held, and later revived as a delirious throwaway during the Let It Be sessions in 1969. It remains the largest question hovering over their early set list: apparently, Lennon was never satisfied with the lyric.
12. BA, 67. McCartney: “We would still do our rock act, though we wouldn’t get decent money for any gig apart from cabaret. I could pull out ‘Till There Was You’ or ‘A Taste of Honey,’ the more cabaret things, and John would sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and ‘Ain’t She Sweet.’ These did have cred for us because they were on a Gene Vincent album and we didn’t realize ‘Rainbow’ was a Judy Garland number, we thought it was Gene Vincent, so we were happy to do it.”
Chapter 8: A Man You Must Believe
1. Debbie Geller, In My Life: The Brian Epstein Story (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 24.
2. Ibid, 23.
3. Ibid, 42.
4. Author interview with Colin Hanton in Liverpool, 2005.
5. Harry, Mersey Beat, 10.
6. Ibid, 19.
7. Alistair Taylor, With the Beatles (England: John Blake, 2003), 13.
8. Author interview with David Backhouse, Liverpool architect, May 2004.
9. BA, 65.
10. Geller, 37.
11. Taylor, Alistair, 28.
12. Geller, 25.
13. Ibid, 25–26.
14. Ibid, 21.
15. CLJ, 103.
16. Geller, 37.
17. Taylor, Alistair, 29.
18. Ibid, 31.
19. Ibid, 33.
20. Gay conspiracy theories swarm the Lennon-Epstein relationship, to the point where they have them hooking up in Hamburg in 1961, long before Epstein sees Lennon at the Cavern, and postulate Epstein’s 1967 death as a suicide at Lennon’s break-off of the five-year affair. While unverifiable on any number of levels, it still says a great deal about the alternative sexuality underground that such whispers were fervent throughout Lennon’s career, and spoke to their sense of his heroic stature.
21. BA, 98.
22. Ibid, 58.
23. Leigh, 160.
24. Author interview with Spencer Leigh in Liverpool, May 2004.
25. Oldham, 132.
26. Taylor, Alistair, 28.
27. MYFN, 75.
28. BC, 65.
29. Jonathan Gould, Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America (New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 166.
30. Leigh, 158–59.
31. The eleven CDs of this material collected on bootlegs (The Complete Beatles at the BBC, on the underground labels Great Dane and Purple Chick) sport a feast of material, and diagram their songwriting, vocal, and ensemble models the way few bands ever get to chart.
32. BA, 69.
33. Some biographies insist Lennon confessed to L.A. session guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, a notoriously unreliable source.
34. Kirchherr in Yoko Ono, Memories of John Lennon (Brattleboro: Harper Paperbacks, 2006), 119.
Chapter 9: Isolation
1. At EMI this boiled down to the difference between a regular session, capturing sound for a possible release, and test session, where newly signed acts were recorded at a preliminary session for audio diagnostics, which the producer rarely attended.
2. In 1923, Oscar Preuss founded the label’s British branch. Like many labels of this period, it hooked up through leasing arrangements with other small labels, like Okeh Records in the United States. Columbia Graphophone Company UK acquired a controlling interest in 1927, and in 1931, Columbia merged with the Gramophone Company to form EMI.
3. BC, 55.
4. Taylor, Alistair, 81.
5. TBRS, 17.
6. This version appeared on 1995’s Anthology 1, track twenty-one. See discography. George Martin also found an acetate of “Love Me Do” in his attic while preparing the Anthology.
7. TBRS, 17.
8. BA, 71.
9. Steve Garofalo and Reebee Chapple, Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here to Pay, the History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1977), 70.
10. CLJ, 90.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. BA, 71.
15. Ibid, 72.
16. Ibid, 71.
17. Ibid, 49.
18. Leigh, 167.
19. JLMB, 73.
20. BA, 72.
21. Wedding quotes from CLJ, 96. Bolthole, or “fuckpad.”
22. Bramwell, 77.
23. There are, however, several versions of “Love Me Do” in “official” circulation. They are easy to distinguish: on Ringo’s version, there is no tambourine. Which raises yet another question: if they are that similar in tone and effect, why did Martin sweat the difference?
24. BA, 77.
25. Harry, Mersey Beat, January 3–17, 1963, 49.
26. Ibid.
27. Norman, 292.
28. Oldham, 173.
29. Southall, 11–15.
30. John Winn, Way Beyond Compare: The Beatles’ Recorded Legacy, Volume One (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008), 21–24.
Chapter 10: Hold On
1. Gould, 91.
2. To Britons this term is derogatory slang for “prostitute.”
3. Christine Keeler, The Truth at Last (New York: Picador, 2002). Keeler has since claimed she was a patsy for an Anglo-Soviet spy ring.
4. John Lennon, The Writings of John Lennon: In His Own Write/A Spaniard in the Works (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 39.
5. Michael Braun, Love Me Do: The Beatles’ Progress (New York: Penguin, 1964), 52.
6. Leslie Fiedler, A New Fiedler Reader (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1999), 282.
7. Greil Marcus, “The Beatles,” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1976), 181.
8. Author interview with Billy J. Kramer, 2005.
9. Oldham, 172. Mark Wynter, Oldham’s friend, was also at this rehearsal, and impressed enough to call his agent, Ian Bevan of the Harold Fielding Agency, which handled Tommy Steele. “I’m not interested in handling groups” was Bevan’s reply.
10. Oldham had shepherded Dylan and his manager around London during this little-known BBC appearance in 1962.
11. Oldham, 171.
12. Ibid, 182.
13. Helen Shapiro quoted in Uncut Legends, No. 7 (2005): 18.
14. BA, 90.
15. Ibid, 92.
16. TBRS, 26.
17. Gould, 103.
18. The songwriting credit reads “Medley-Russell” because Berns sometimes wrote with his partner Phil Medley under the name of “Bert Russell.” He went on to refashion “Twist and Shout” into “Hang on Sloopy” for the McCoys, and to write “Here Comes the Night” for both Lulu and Van Morrison’s Them. There is no evidence that Lennon ever heard this original Top Notes track, although he probably spoke with Phil Spector about it later on.
19. Notably on a UK TV special called The Beatles in the Round from 1964.
20. BA, 95; in TBRS, Lewisohn has “From Me To You” dashed off on February 27.
21. Oldham, 175.
22. Ibid.
23. Bramwell, 101.
24. Geller, 56.
25. Screenplay to The Hours and Times by Christopher Munch, unpublished, http://imdb.com/title/tt0104448/quotes.
26. Richard Harrington, review of “The Hours and Times,” Washington Post, November 17, 1992, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/thehoursandtimesnrharrington_a0ab53.htm.
27. SS, 73.
28. Taylor, 72.
29. BA, 94.
30. Author interview with Billy J. Kramer, May 2005. Lennon gave Kramer his faux middle initial: “I went into Brian’s office, and he said, ‘John’s got a suggestion. How about Billy “J” Kramer. It’s American sounding, it’s catchy, it flows.’ And I said ‘What do I say if someone asks what it stands for?’ And he said, ‘Julian.’ Now I didn’t even know John was married, let alone had a son called Julian, so I said, ‘I don’t like that name, that’s a real poofter’s name!’ ” Uncut Legends, No. 7 (2005): 18.
Chapter 11: Thick of It
1. Winn, Way Beyond Compare, 91.
2. Oldham, 234–35.
3. Ibid, 235.
4. Ibid, 236.
5. Author interview with Kim Fowley, 2005.
6. Barry Miles, The Beatles Diary Volume I: The Beatles Years (London: Omnibus Press, 2001), 118.
7. Oldham, 169.
8. Robert Freeman, Yesterday: The Beatles 1963–1965 (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1983), 12.
9. Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette (New York: HarperPerennial, 1990), 72.
10. D. Lowe and Thomas Whiteside, “Talk of the Town,” “Beatle Man,” New Yorker, December 28, 1963, 23.
Chapter 12: One Sweet Dream
1. BA, 116.
2. Spector, 72.
3. Author interview with Barry Miles, May 2008.
4. Without consulting Epstein, producers of The Ed Sullivan Show ran each Beatle’s name beneath his head as they performed “Till There Was You,” their second song. Beneath John’s name came the message: “Sorry girls, he’s married.” It won Lennon’s argument for him.
5. Spector, 76.
6. J. Hoberman, The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties (New York: The New Press, 2003), 92.
7. Spitz, 458.
8. Braun, 28.
9. BA, 116.
10. Directors: Albert Maysles, David Maysles; Susan Frömke, Beatles—The First U.S. Visit (Capitol, 2001), DVD.
11. Steve Sutherland, editor, John Lennon: New Musical Express Originals (October 2003), 17.
12. BA, 119.
13. For the record: Magician Fred Kaps’s Card and Salt Shaker Trick, the Broadway cast of Oliver! singing “I’d Do Anything,” and “As Long as He Needs Me,” Frank Gorshin’s Hollywood impressions, Olympic athlete Terry McDermott, a show tune medley from Tessie O’Shea, and McCall and Brill’s office comedy sketch.
14. Author interview with Richard Meltzer, 2005.
15. BA, 120.
16. Author interview with Marshall Crenshaw, December 2006. Crenshaw played John Lennon on Broadway in Beatlemania in the early 1980s.
17. BA, 120.
18. Keith Badman, The Beatles Off the Record 2: The Dream Is Over (New York: Omnibus Press, 2008), 87–88.
19. BA, 123.
20. Badman, 88.
21. All in the Family producer Norman Lear later adapted this British series for America’s early 1970s hit, Sanford and Son.
22. BA, 128.
23. Ibid.
24. Braun, 51.
25. Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus, ed., Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 325.
26. Author interview with Victor Spinetti, August 2007.
27. Taylor, With the Beatles, 109. Also DCH, 110–112.
28. BA, 135.
29. Kane, 14.
30. Ibid, 21.
31. Ibid, 28.
32. Spector, 77.
33. Ibid, 80, 84. Ronnie describes how she lost her virginity to Phil several months later when he brought over the test pressing of the new Ronettes record, “Do I Love You?” to her house. “Phil and I made love for the first time listening to that record. And every two minutes and fifty seconds, Phil would reach over from the bed and lift the needle back to the beginning of the record. We must’ve played that song fifty times, because we made love on that mattress until late into the night.”
34. Tony Barrow, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me: The Real Beatles Story (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005), 66.
35. James Sauceda, The Literary Lennon: A Comedy of Letters (Ann Arbor: Pierian Press, 1983), 3.
Chapter 13: Watching the Wheels
1. Michael R. Frontani, The Beatles: Image and the Media (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 100.
2. Miles, Diary, 189.
3. Author interview with Victor Spinetti, Chicago, August 2006.
4. Ibid.
5. Victor Spinetti, Up Front . . . His Strictly Confidential Autobiography (London: Anova Books, 2009), 163.
6. George Harrison, I Me Mine (Simon & Schuster, 1980), 47.
7. CLJ, 182.
8. Ibid.
9. Pattie Boyd with Penny Junor, Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me (New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 101–2.
10. The photo for Beatles VI was taken on Lennon’s birthday, October 9, 1964, by Robert Whitaker at Farringdon Studio, with all four Beatles holding a carving knife cutting a cake, cropped from the final photo.
11. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 103.
12. Author interview with Richard Meltzer, 2005.
13. Kane, 225.
14. The Beatles, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, Alan Aldridge, ed. (New York: Delacorte, 1969), 33.
15. Coleman, 310.
16. BA, 193.
Chapter 14: Another Kind of Mind
1. Ringo Starr, Postcards from the Boys (Britain: Cassell Illustrated, 2004), 49.
2. Maureen Cleave, “How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This,” reprinted in Read The Beatles: Classic and New Writings on the Beatles, Their Legacy, and Why They Still Matter, June Skinner Sawyers, ed. (New York: Penguin, 2006), 85–91. Cleave’s Evening Standard article ran on March 4, 1966.
3. BC, 214–15.
4. Author interview with Barry Miles, May 2008.
5. Author interview with Ken Townsend, Abbey Road Studios, London, November 2006.
6. This was long held to be a Lennon move; more recently, Robert Whitaker has done interviews taking credit. (Web: http://www.rareBeatles.com/album2/openalbm.htm).
7. Author interview with Kim Fowley, 2005.
8. Miles, Diary, 234.
9. BA, 216.
10. Robert Cording, ed., with Shelli Jankowski-Smith and E. J. Miller Laino, In My Life: Encounters with the Beatles (New York: Fromm International, 1998), 49.
11. Hoji Murayama, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo’s New York Times), reported to the author that Lennon’s Tokyo spree included a $20,000 bill at a specialty antiques store, which revealed a previously unknown interest in Oriental artifacts. This was four months before he met Yoko Ono, who would immerse him in Japanese culture and turn Japan into his favorite refuge from the world during the 1970s.
12. The first two of these performances were taped for Nippon Television (NTV).
13. Cording, 56–57.
14. BC, 212. 74,450 Philippine pesos, or £6,840.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid, 216; also BA, 205.
17. Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver Through the Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 70. Everett notes that Epstein’s naïve acceptance of the damage unintentionally gave the Lennon flap legs.
18. BA, 226.
19. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 62–63.
20. BA, 227.
21. Ibid, 229.
22. Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1968), 205–6.
23. Mike Evans, ed., The Beatles Literary Anthology (UK: Plexus Publishing, 2004), 184.
24. Wenner, 106–7.
25. Evans, 185.
26. JLE, 682, and MYFN, 272. Miles writes that Lennon later contributed some watercolored lyrics to “The Word,” which he and McCartney gave to Yoko Ono. Cage featured it in his book Notations, among other scores he assembled for the Foundation of Contemporary Performance Arts.
27. Author interview with Barry Miles, May 2008.
28. Badman, 246.
29. BA, 237.
30. MYFN, 306–7.
31. George Martin, All You Need Is Ears (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 204.
Chapter 15: In a Play
1. BJY, 143.
2. Greil Marcus, Interview magazine, March 1, 2000, http://www.beatlemoney.com/paul6467.html.
3. BA, 255.
4. CLJ, 183.
5. Ibid.
6. Mitchell would later collaborate with Lennon and Victor Spinetti on In His Own Write’s stage production in 1968.
7. Most Americans recognize Bach’s third “Allegro assai” movement from this Brandenburg Concerto as the theme music to William F. Buckley’s Firing Line interview show on PBS.
8. BA, 247.
9. Ibid.
10. Bramwell, 191. Bramwell’s film still makes the rounds in various forms, for documentaries and among bootleg collectors, but the BBC banned the broadcast of the footage since the song itself had been banned for “drug references.”
11. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 100.
12. Ibid, 103.
13. Bramwell, 200.
14. Ian MacDonald, Revolution in the Head, The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 192.
15. Davies, Beatles, 266–67.
16. Alistair Taylor, Yesterday: The Beatles Remembered (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, 1988), 108.
17. Simon Napier-Bell, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me (London: Ebury Press, 1998), 129.
18. Bramwell, 200–201.
19. Robert Christgau, Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music, 1967–1978. (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 42.
20. Richard Goldstein, “We Still Need the Beatles, but . . . ,” New York Times, June 18, 1967, 104.
21. Bramwell, 191. Even the iconic Pepper album sleeve, shot by Michael Cooper and with art direction by Peter Blake and Robert Fraser, from McCartney’s design concept, was outrageously expensive. The final costs came to a staggering £2,867, a hundred times more than most album covers, and burst EMI’s “sleeves” budget. But Lennon insisted that art was beyond price. He cracked, “If you can’t stand the art, get out of the kitschen.”
22. Charles Cross, A Room Full of Mirrors (New York: Hyperion, 2006), 322.
23. BA, 255.
24. Chet Flippo, Yesterday: The Unauthorized Biography of Paul McCartney (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 242.
25. Author interview with Barry Miles, May 2008.
26. Many people close to Epstein in this period strongly infer a romantic link without wanting to go on the record. The business deal was far too lopsided to make any other kind of sense.
27. Napier-Bell, 118.
28. Ibid, 120.
29. Ibid.
30. Taylor, With the Beatles, 187.
31. Napier-Bell, 124.
32. Marianne Faithfull, Faithfull: An Autobiography (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 135.
33. BA, 264.
34. Wenner, 25.
Chapter 16: I Should Have Known Better
1. One of the best parodies of “All You Need Is Love” as a swollen sixties bromide came with Nick Lowe’s breezy “What’s So Funny ’Bout Peace Love and Understanding?” which Elvis Costello transformed on 1979’s Armed Forces with reverse irony.
2. Tariq Ali, Street Fighting Years (New York: Verso, 2005), 361.
3. BA, 285.
4. Ibid.
5. In A Twist of Lennon, Cynthia Lennon reports occasional brief contacts from Alf, including an appearance at the Magical Mystery Tour wrap party, 178.
6. CLJ, 206.
7. Ibid, 182.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid, 207.
10. Ibid, 206.
11. Ibid, 207.
12. Lewis H. Lapham, With the Beatles (Hoboken: Melville House Publishing, 2005), 63.
13. Ibid, 71–2.
14. Ibid, 78.
15. Mia Farrow, What Falls Away (New York: Bantam, 1997), 137.
16. Ibid, 132–33.
17. Lapham, 84.
18. BA, 291.
19. Ibid.
20. CLJ, 208.
21. BA, 284.
22. CLJ, 209.
23. Ibid, 210.
24. Ibid, 285.
25. Ibid, 211.
26. Ibid, 212.
27. SS, 168.
28. Ibid, 169.
29. CLJ, 213–14.
30. Alexandra Munroe with Jon Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono (New York: Japan Society and Harry N. Abrams, Publishers, 2000), 15.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid, 17.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. CLJ, 221.
37. Lennon’s theatrical piece opened June 18.
38. CLJ, 222.
39. Ibid, 223.
Chapter 17: How?
1. Peter Carlin, Paul McCartney: A Life (New York: Touchstone Books. 2009), 232.
2. CLJ, 225. Also Carlin, 232.
3. Ibid.
4. Spitz, 320. Many years later, band biographer Bob Spitz tracked down McCartney’s steady and sometime roommate of Cynthia Powell, Dot Rhone, who claimed McCartney backed out of his informal commitment to her in 1962 after watching Lennon get hitched. She eventually miscarried.
5. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 187.
6. Author interview with Victor Spinetti, 2007.
7. Richard Dilello, The Longest Cocktail Party: An Insider’s Diary of the Beatles, Their Million-Dollar Apple Empire, and Its Wild Rise and Fall (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2005). The best book on the Apple office atmosphere from one of Derek Taylor’s lackeys.
8. Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey, Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (New York: Gotham, 2007), 246–47.
9. Ibid, 225.
10. BJY, 384.
11. Bramwell, 189.
12. RTB, 489. Trident’s playback speakers were both trebly and loud, and the American recorder hadn’t been tweaked to reproduce properly on EMI’s setup.
13. Emerick and Massey, 262. Also BRS, 147. Emerick remembers Lennon, Lewisohn cites McCartney for this quote.
14. Ibid, 260–63.
15. Eric Clapton, Clapton: The Autobiography (New York: Broadway Books, 2007), 99–100.
16. RTB, 496.
17. Author interview with Chris Thomas, November 2006.
18. Jon Wiener, Come Together: John Lennon in His Time (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 61.
19. Editors of Rolling Stone, The Ballad of John and Yoko (Garden City: Doubleday Dolphin, 1982), 55.
20. Author interview with Chris Thomas, November 2006.
21. Emerick and Massey, 244.
22. Alan Travis, “The Night Yogi and Boo-Boo Helped Semolina Pilcher Snare a Beatle,” The Guardian, August 1, 2005.
23. Ibid. Five months later, when Pilcher raided George Harrison’s Esher estate, he timed his raid to coincide with Paul McCartney’s marriage to Linda Eastman, assuming Harrison’s house would be empty. Pilcher’s name became synonymous with London police corruption. In 1972, he was convicted of “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice” and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
24. Author interview with Barry Miles, 2008.
25. Miles, Diary, 314.
26. The period teems with activity: Lennon’s You Are Here art show opened at the Robert Fraser Gallery in July, as did the movie animated feature, Yellow Submarine. The movie opened to mixed reviews on November 13 in New York City. Two avant-garde films shot at Lennon’s Kenwood home in August, Smile and Two Virgins, were shown at the Chicago Film Festival during this same month. John and Yoko were also plotting the more ambitious seventy-five-minute Rape, which followed the twenty-one-year-old Hungarian actress Eva Majlata around the streets of London.
27. Clayson, Lennon, 170. Based on the 1966 Dangerous Drugs Act, Section 42.
28. Peter Doggett, There’s a Riot Goin’ On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the ’60s (London: Canongate, 2008), 200.
29. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 249.
30. CLJ, 235.
Chapter 18: Thank You Girl
1. Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt, Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles’ Let It Be Disaster (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 169.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, 181.
4. Ibid, 199.
5. Ibid, 169.
6. Preston also likely knew Allen Klein, who had counseled Sam Cooke when he formed his own company in the early sixties.
7. Another layer of Sulpy and Schweighardt’s research for Get Back involves the innumerable musical fragments the Beatles scatter throughout their rehearsals, not just oldies run-throughs but stray lyrics from old radio hits and appreciative romps through work by sixties contemporaries. Harrison and Lennon attempt John Sebastian’s hit with the Lovin’ Spoonful, “Daydream,” their first morning reunited on January 22 (206), and during a rambling blues improvisation on January 9, they start calling out names to each other, diagramming their Quarrymen heroes. McCartney calls out “Cassius Cleavage,” Lennon responds with “Deirdre McSharry,” a magazine editor, McCartney answers with “Humphrety Lestouq,” the Whirligig children’s TV show host. The list continues on through Betty Grable, comedian Ronnie Corbett, Radio Luxembourg deejay Emperor Rosko, and many others. This banquet of inside jokes and adolescent references gives a clue as to how they free-associated as they hunted for song ideas, swapped character names, and killed time while songs took shape. An outline of secretly shared pop history, these references map Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting unconscious, and the sheer number of song titles they drop deserves its own compilation.
8. BA, 321.
9. Starr, 25.
10. Author interview with Barry Miles, May 2008. Also Carlin, 95.
11. In the UK, Denmark Street is roughly analogous to “Tin Pan Alley,” a literal address where Epstein knocked on Dick James’s door in 1962, but also a frame of reference for the older pop tradition it housed.
12. BA, 325.
13. Miles, Diary, 337.
14. BA, 286.
15. Lennon quotes from Amsterdam hotel bed; see http://holysmoke.tripod.com/amsterdam.htm/.
16. Miles, Diary, 338.
17. Ibid, 339.
18. Ibid.
19. Quentin Tarantino uses “You Never Can Tell” for John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s twist contest at Jack Rabbit Slim’s in 1994’s Pulp Fiction. Nick Lowe returned to Berry’s tune for “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)” in 1985.
20. MYFN, 548.
21. Anthony Fawcett, John Lennon One Day at a Time (New York: Grove Press, 1976), 74.
22. CLJ, 234.
23. Winn, That Magic Feeling, 294.
24. Rolling Stone, June 28, 1969, 6.
25. Ibid.
26. Andrew Solt, director, Imagine: John Lennon (Warner Home Video, 1988), DVD.
27. BA, 334.
28. CLJ, 234.
29. Ibid, 236.
30. Ibid, 243.
31. Unpublished Alan White interview, transcript at http://www.quipo.it/mccartney/specials/alanwhite/.
32. Clapton, 118.
33. BA, 184.
34. Ibid, 347.
35. Wenner, 31.
36. Author phone interview with Kim Fowley, 2006.
37. Southall, 81–3.
38. Peter McCabe and Robert D. Schonfeld, Apple to the Core: The Unmaking of the Beatles (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 152.
39. The Northern Songs publishing fortune, centered around Maclen, the Lennon-McCartney song catalog, is considered the most valuable property in rock publishing. It differs from Beatle recording royalties in that it earns money whenever somebody performs a Lennon-McCartney song. It finally fell into Michael Jackson’s hands in 1983, after he sought business advice from McCartney himself.
40. David Leaf, director, The U.S. vs. John Lennon (Lions Gate, 2006), DVD.
41. Richard Robinson, “Our London Interview,” Hit Parader, August 1970 (http://www.instantkarma.com/magarchive1_99.html).
42. Interview with Desmond Morris for BBC-TV’s Men of the Decade (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob02.html).
Chapter 19: Just We Two
1. Mark Moses, “The Late Beatles: Carry That Weight,” Boston Phoenix, December 4, 1987, 11, 15–18.
2. Braun, 52.
3. Richard Williams, Out of His Head: The Sound of Phil Spector (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1972), 149.
4. Cox hung onto the film for another twenty-six years, until several collectors formed a consortium and bought the material from him. Yoko Ono successfully fought to prevent its release in 2008.
5. PB, 216.
6. Williams, 153.
7. Ibid.
8. Miles, 345.
9. BA, 350.
10. Keith Badman, The Beatles: After the Break-Up 1970–2000: A Day-By-Day Diary (New York: Omnibus Press, 2000), 4.
11. Ibid, 15.
12. Ibid, 4.
13. Author interview with Ray Connolly, May 2008.
14. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 630.
15. Wenner, 23.
16. Williams, 156–58.
17. Ibid, 159.
18. PB, 104.
19. Fawcett, 109.
20. Arthur Jano to John Harris in Mojo, 2000, http://primaltherapy.com/SED/john-lennon.shtml.
21. Wenner, 24.
22. Author interview wth Richard Lush, November 2006.
23. Badman, After the Break-Up, 24.
24. Christgau, Rock Albums of the Seventies (New Haven: Ticknor & Fields, 1981), 242.
25. Dave Marsh, “John Lennon—Plastic Ono Band, Yoko Ono—Plastic Ono Band,” Creem, March 1971, http://beatpatrol.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/john-lennon-john-lennonplastic-ono-band-yoko-ono-yoko-onoplastic-ono-band-1970/.
26. Howard Smith, WPLJ interview. See: http://tittenhurstlennon.blogspot.com.
27. Badman, After the Break-Up, 25.
28. DCH, 177–81. This is the only account of this scene in the entire span of Lennon literature, and therefore the only quotes of Lennon discussing the choice his parents had him make in Blackpool twenty-five years before. Naturally, the narrative is slanted in favor of Freddie, who behaves with a dignified calm, and against Lennon, even though Pauline recognizes that “following psychotherapy, to experience a death wish towards a parent is part and parcel of the process of freeing oneself from childhood trauma. What was unusual in John’s case was the method whereby he had visualized killing his father. By imagining him dumped deep in the ocean he was finally enacting his revenge on his father for the years he had spent at sea while he was a child.”
29. The date of this interview assumes prophetic significance. Excerpts from the longer interview are available in BJY. The complete text, along with a new introduction from Ono, came out from Verso publishers in 2000.
30. Wenner, 106.
31. Paul McCartney in Life, April 16, 1971, 56.
Chapter 20: I’ll Cry Instead
1. Badman, After the Break-Up, 19. “A declaration that the partnership business carried on by the plaintiff and the defendants under the name of The Beatles & Co., and constituted by a deed of partnership dated 19 April 1967 and made between the parties hereto, ought to be dissolved and that accordingly the same be dissolved.”
2. Ibid, 27.
3. Ibid, 32.
4. Ibid, 24.
5. Wenner, 140.
6. Ali, 381.
7. Badman, After the Break-Up, 4.
8. Transcript from the Apple case, the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, 10:B.
9. Ibid, 26:A.
10. Miles, Zappa, 3.
11. Andy Peebles, The Lennon Conversations (London: BBC, 1981), 46. The Olympics number was “Well (Baby Please Don’t Go),” the B-side to “Western Movies.”
12. Badman, After the Break-Up, 55.
13. Author interview with Ray Connolly, May 2008.
14. Steve Sutherland, “John Lennon: The Beatles and Beyond,” NME Originals, Vol. 1, Issue 113, 2003, 84–85.
15. The Dick Cavett Show—John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Shout DVD, 2005. Paradoxically, this comment foreshadows the hypnosis treatment Yoko will use to lure Lennon away from May Pang in Los Angeles some three years on.
Chapter 21: You Can’t Do That
1. “Another Day” revives McCartney’s “A Day in the Life” character as a Professional Skirt on the A-Side, with a hard-boiled Lennon pulp novel on the B-Side, “Oh Woman, Oh Why.” Instead, most commentators remark on “Let Me Roll It” as McCartney’s best Lennon impersonation.
2. Badman, After the Break-Up, 24.
3. Jon Savage, “Imagine” review, Mojo (158, 2007), 287–29.
4. Doggett, 454.
5. Williams, 2.
6. Ibid, 4.
7. Author interview with Wayne “Tex” Gabriel, August 2008.
8. Author interview with Gary Van Scyoc, August 2008.
9. Author interview with Michael Krauss, July 2008.
10. Alan Parker and Phil Strongman, John Lennon and the FBI Files (London: Sanctuary Publishing, Ltd., 2003), 48.
11. Ibid, 39.
12. Author interview with Bob Gruen, 2008.
13. Wiener, 200.
14. Doggett, 462.
15. John Blaney, John Lennon: Listen to This Book Guildford: (Paper Jukebox, 2005), 89.
16. Ibid.
17. John Lennon, “Peace and Love,” Letter to the Editor, New York Times, December 28, 1971, 28.
18. Doggett, 470.
19. Parker and Strongman, 165.
20. Doggett, 470.
21. “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, January 8, 1972, 28.
22. Author interview with Bob Gruen, 2008.
23. Author interview with Tex Gabriel and Van Scyoc, August 2008.
24. Ibid.
25. Dave Marsh, Cream, August 1972.
26. Ian MacDonald, Uncut, December 1998 (see Rock’s Back Pages online archive, http://rocksbackpages.com).
27. BJY, 172.
28. All quotes from author interview with Gabriel and Van Scyoc, 2008.
29. Ibid.
Chapter 22: I’m a Loser
1. Ryan’s wife had died of cancer. Now largely forgotten, Ryan epitomized the stony male reserve through characters like Deke Thornton in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch; a Hollywood staple in his time, he shared a sensibility with leading men like Robert Mitchum and Sterling Hayden.
2. Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 706. Norman drapes the Dakota in faded chic: “Once the acme of luxury, the Dakota was no longer in Manhattan’s premier real-estate league and had become the haunt of middle-range actors, film directors, and similar bohemian types.”
3. Badman, The Dream Is Over, 101.
4. Bangs and Marcus, 214.
5. Chris Charlesworth, Mind Games review, Melody Maker, November 3, 1973, 37.
6. Badman, The Dream Is Over, 117.
7. Ibid, 98.
8. Badman, After the Break-Up, 95–96.
9. Ibid, 94.
10. Coleman, 489.
11. Author interview with Jack Douglas, August 2008.
12. Author interview with Bob Gruen, August 2008.
13. Ibid.
14. New York Times, September 30, 1973.
15. Ibid.
16. Mark Ribowsky, He’s a Rebel: Phil Spector, Rock & Roll’s Legendary Producer (New York: Dutton, 1989), 266.
17. Author interview with Dan Kessel, June 2007.
18. Ribowsky, 268.
19. Author interview with Dan Kessel.
20. Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978, 161.
21. Ribowsky, 259.
22. “Random Notes,” Rolling Stone, Issue 154, February 14, 1974, 24.
23. All Jack Douglas quotes from author interviews, 2008.
24. Badman, The Dream Is Over, 127.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid, 128–29.
27. Ibid.
28. All quotes, CLJ, 255.
29. Author interview with Bob Gruen, 2008.
30. Ben Gerson, “Together Again: Walls and Bridges,” Rolling Stone, November 21, 1974, 44–46.
31. Author interview with Bob Gruen, 2008.
32. PB, 46.
Chapter 23: Get Back
1. One of the great late themes of Lennon’s development is his immersion in blues forms, beginning with “Yer Blues,” “Come Together,” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” and progressing through “Well Well Well,” “It’s So Hard,” and “I’m Losing You.”
2. Of the four, Ringo Starr refused to take himself seriously and wound up singing “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” at summer shows for the rest of his days. He remains the band’s most underrated musician.
3. Lisa Robinson, Hit Parader, December 1975, http://beatlesinterviews.org/db1975.1200.beatles.html.
4. Ibid.
5. Jerry Hopkins, Yoko Ono (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 124.
6. Fawcett, 139.
7. Jon Landau, “Lennon Gets Lost in His Rock ’n’ Roll,” Rolling Stone, May 22, 1975, 66.
8. In the continuing song volley between ex-collaborators, McCartney closed side one of Band on the Run with “Let Me Roll It,” which had the uncanny air of a Plastic Ono Band outtake. Turns out McCartney impersonated Lennon far better than the other way around (“One Day at a Time”). At least until “Beautiful Boy.”
9. Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon in America (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 71. “Fame” provides the model for the James Brown track “Hot (I Need to Be Loved, Loved, Loved).”
10. Badman, After the Break-Up, 153.
11. Ibid, 160.
12. Author interview with Larry Kane, August 2007.
13. PB, 74.
14. Ibid, 73.
15. Ibid, 75.
16. Badman, The Dream Is Over, 169–70.
17. Author interview with Bob Gruen, 2008.
18. Elliot Mintz, in Yoko Ono’s Memories of John Lennon, 170.
19. PB, 75.
Chapter 24: Three of Us
1. CLJ, 256. Robert Christgau also makes this connection in a 1983 review of May Pang’s Loving John, http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bkrev/rockbios-83.php.
2. All Bob Gruen quotes from author interview, September 2008.
3. DCH, 10.
4. Badman, After the Break-Up, 181–82.
5. Ibid. Later that fall, when Monty Python’s Eric Idle hosted the show, Michaels returned to the gag to introduce Idle’s short film, The Rutles, which became All You Need Is Cash.
6. Ibid, 182.
7. The Saturday Night Live story turned into a 2000 Michael Lindsay-Hogg made-for-TV movie called Two of Us, much distorted in Mark Stanfield’s script.
8. BJY, 165.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid, 141.
11. Ibid, 166.
12. Dorothy Hansen, ed., The Art of John Lennon: Drawings, Performances, Films (Cantz Verlag, 1995). One of the entries in the closing Biographical Notes sounds like it was dictated directly from Ono: “17 November 1980—Lennon and Ono’s joint album Double Fantasy is released to unprecedented critical acclaim for Yoko Ono: she is applauded for contributing the best tracks.”
13. Starr, 82.
14. SS, 190–200. Shotton’s memoirs are riddled with calendar errors, but he describes Lennon carrying Sean as an infant, and the Sally Field TV movie Sybil dates the visit to 1976.
15. Ibid, 200.
16. BJY, 173.
17. Yoko Ono, Lennon: His Life and Work (Cleveland: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2000).
18. Starr, 85.
19. Yoko Ono, Memories of John Lennon, 167–69.
20. Dave Marsh, “An Open Letter to John Lennon,” Rolling Stone, November 3, 1977, 50.
21. “A Love Letter From John and Yoko: To People Who Ask Us What, When, and Why,” New York Times, Sunday, May 27, 1979, 20E.
22. Dave Marsh, “Another Open Letter to John Lennon,” Rolling Stone, August 23, 1979, 28.
23. Norman, Lennon, 788. In addition, Lennon never mentions his reaction to Paul McCartney’s Japanese marijuana bust in January, 1980.
24. PB, 92–93.
25. All Jack Douglas quotes come from author interview, August 2008.
26. All Bun E. Carlos quotes from author interview, July 2008.
27. David Geffen, “A Reminiscence,” Rolling Stone, Issue 335, January 22, 1981, 59.
28. Ibid, 61.
29. Robert Palmer, Blues and Chaos (New York: Scribner, 2009), 251.
30. Geoffrey Stokes, “The Infantalization of John Lennon,” Village Voice, January 7, 1981, 31.
31. Charles Shaar Murray, in Sutherland, 132.
32. Author interview with Andy Peebles, London, 1985.
33. Annie Leibovitz, Rolling Stone, Issue 335, January 22, 1981, 61.
34. David Geffen, “A Reminiscence,” Rolling Stone, Issue 335, Jan. 22, 1981, 59.
35. Ibid.
36. Yoko Ono, quoted in New York Times, December 10, 1980, 1.
37. BJY, 203.
38. Ibid.
Epilogue
1. Author interview with Elliot Mintz, September 2008.
2. JLE, 587.
3. BJY, 205.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid, 207.
6. Badman, After the Break-Up, 276.
7. “Silent Tribute to Lennon’s Memory is Observed Throughout the World,” New York Times, December 15, 1980, 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Jonathan Schell, “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, December 22, 1980.
10. BJY, 61.
11. Author interview with Bob Gruen, August 2008.
12. BJY, 291.
13. All Jack Douglas quotes from author interview, September 2008.
14. Harrison had actually started the song before Lennon’s death and reworked the lyrics once he decided to issue it as a tribute record. He fought off a knife attack by his own delusional fan in his Friar Park home in late 1999.
15. Mikal Gilmore, “The Mystery of John Lennon,” Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents (New York: Free Press, 2008), 158.
16. Anthony Elliott, The Mourning of John Lennon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 6.