Chapter One:
p1 ‘Conceived on the kitchen floor’. From Daddy, Come Home by Pauline Lennon based on Freddie Lennon’s unpublished memoir.
p1-3 Courtship details of John’s parents. The Beatles Authorised Biography by Hunter Davies.
p5 ‘His story differed from hers’. Letter from John’s uncle Charlie Lennon to this author, 1982.
p6 ‘No “tug-of-love” scene and “no raised voices”’. The Beatles – Tune In by Mark Lewisohn.
p6 ‘Every child has a right to a safe and happy home life’. Aunt ‘Mimi’ Smith in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p7 ‘I’ve done a very wicked thing’. Allegedly said by Mimi Smith and recounted to this author by Cynthia Lennon in 2005.
Chapter Two:
p9 ‘I was a nice, clean suburban boy’. John in The Beatles Authorised Biography, later, in variations, to this author and several other interviewers.
p12 ‘As bright as a button and quick in his movements’. Mimi Smith to this author.
p13 ‘I was passionate about Alice In Wonderland’. John in The Beatles Authorised Biography, and to this author and others.
p13 ‘I used to think about becoming a journalist . . .’ John to this author.
p14 ‘One of the great moments of my life . . . first harmonica . . .’ John in Ken Zelig interview.
p14 ‘He wasn’t a sit-in-the-corner quiet Harry’. Jimmy Tarbuck in the Guardian, 2009.
p15 ‘I was aggressive because I wanted to be popular’. John in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
Chapter Three:
p16 ‘John desperately needed the supportive presence of whoever he felt closest to at the time . . .’ Pete Shotton in John Lennon In My Life.
p17 ‘The sort of gang I led went in for things like shoplifting’. John in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p17 ‘He was known in the neighbourhood as “that John Lennon!!”’ Rod Davis to this author.
p18 ‘That was typical of John . . . supporting the underdog . . .’ Mimi Smith to this author.
p18 ‘I can see him now in the garden, dancing around Pete Shotton who was tied up to a tree . . .’ Mimi Smith in John Lennon by Ray Coleman.
p19 ‘The Stanley sisters . . . five strong women’. John to this author.
p20 ‘Freddie had “made a shambles” of his life . . .’ Freddie Lennon’s recollection of Mimi’s letter to him, from Daddy, Come Home.
Chapter Four:
p23 ‘I’m either a genius or I’m mad’. John to this author (London Evening Standard) and many other interviewers.
p23 ‘On the road to Damascus a burning pie . . .’ John’s own memory of a school essay in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p24 ‘I’ve been proved right. They were wrong and I was right’. John on school memories to this author (Evening Standard) and other interviewers.
p24 ‘He would get what we used to call “black marks” all the time . . .’ Rod Davis to this author.
p27 ‘I’ve had a lot of death in my life’. John Lennon to this author (Evening Standard).
Chapter Five:
p31 ‘He showed me the name “Elvis Presley” in the charts in the New Musical Express . . .’ Ibid.
p32 ‘I thought about it for days at school, about the labels on the records . . .’ Ibid.
p33 ‘Nobody was fighting and dancing in the aisles . . .’ John Lennon to this author, Ibid.
p33 ‘I was a very insecure male . . .’ John to Playboy, 1980.
Chapter Six:
p37 ‘I was never really a street kid or tough guy’. John to Rolling Stone magazine and reprinted in Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner.
p38 ‘I couldn’t take my eyes off him . . .’ Mimi Smith in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p40 ‘I learned a lot from Paul . . .’ John to this author (Sunday Times Magazine).
p41 ‘So, what are you going to do with him?’ Mimi in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p42 ‘He has been a trouble spot for many years in discipline . . .’ Quarry Bank headmaster in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
Chapter Seven:
p45 John arrived at art college looking like a Teddy boy . . . Bill Harry and Thelma McGough to this author.
p47 ‘He was very simple, yet complex . . .’ Mike McCartney to this author.
p50 Account of Barbara, his on-off girlfriend . . . John Lennon (Philip Norman).
p50 ‘What’s so sad about the past, is that it’s passed . . .’ John to Howard Cosell, ABC Radio.
p50 Account of an early girlfriend. Ibid.
p50 ‘I wonder who’s kissing her now’. Title and first line of a popular song, written in 1909 by Will M. Hayes and Frank R. Adams.
Chapter Eight:
p52 ‘We asked George to join us because he knew more chords . . .’ John to this author.
p52 ‘George looked even younger than Paul, and Paul looked about ten with his baby face . . .’ Ibid.
p52 ‘Your little friend’s here, John’. Paul McCartney’s recollection to Barry Miles in Many Years From Now.
p53 ‘But for your mum to be actually living somewhere else . . .’ Ibid.
p55 Account of Mimi and Michael Fishwick’s relationship from The Beatles – Tune In by Mark Lewisohn.
p55 John’s account of accidentally catching his mother with Bobby Dykins from John Lennon: In My Life (Pete Shotton and Nicolas Shaffner).
p56 ‘I was never neat. They might as well have put me in sky-diving for the use I was at lettering . . . ’ John to Rolling Stone and other interviewers.
p56 ‘Some blokes will do anything to get out of the army’. John, as remembered by Thelma McGough and told to this author.
p57 ‘In the front room of some guy’s house that he called a recording studio . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
Chapter Nine:
p60 ‘I turned to see her body flying through the air . . .’ Nigel Walley in The Beatles – Tune In.
p60 ‘The copper came to the door . . . asking if I was her son . . .’ John in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p61 Julia’s daughters were told their mother was in hospital. John Lennon – My Brother by Julia Baird and Geoffrey Giuliano.
p61 ‘I couldn’t leave John now. He had nobody’. Mimi in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
Chapter Ten:
p62 ‘The underlying chip on my shoulder that I already had, got really big then . . .’ Rolling Stone.
p62 ‘Don’t take it out on me because your mum’s dead’. Thelma McGough quoting John to this author.
p63 ‘Even though it wasn’t my stop, I collected my drums, left the bus, and left them’. Colin Hanton quoted in The Quarrymen by Hunter Davies.
p65 Stuart was ‘the nicest of all John’s friends’. Mimi Smith in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p66 ‘That was the big occasion, to watch his fingers . . .’ Paul in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles.
Chapter Eleven:
p69 ‘No dirty jokes in front of Miss Powell . . .’ John quoted in A Twist of Lennon by Cynthia Lennon.
p71 ‘There was something wrong with me . . .’ John in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p91 ‘It was terrible. I couldn’t stand being without her . . .’ John in The Beatles Authorised Biography,
p72 ‘Was I to blame for being unfair?’ A lyric from ‘I Call Your Name’ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
p72 ‘John wasn’t the best, but he wasn’t the worst’. Cynthia Lennon to this author, Daily Mail.
p72 Mimi ‘didn’t think any girl was good enough for her boy . . .’ Ibid.
Chapter Twelve:
p75 ‘Paul could have gone to university . . .’ John to this author.
p76 ‘Anyone can play the bass. It’s only got four fucking strings’. Ibid.
p76 ‘I decided to spell it BEAtles to make it look like beat music as a joke . . .’ To this author and other interviewers.
p78 ‘George and I were always slightly jealous of John’s other friendships. He was the older fella . . . and . . . when Stuart came in . . . we had to take a bit of a back seat’. Paul McCartney in Many Years From Now.
p79 ‘We looked at the group. “One in every four” . . .’ Paul McCartney in Many Years From Now.
p80 ‘We’d tell Stu he couldn’t sit with us . . .’ John to Rolling Stone and several interviewers.
Chapter Thirteen:
p83 ‘That’s very nice, John. So, what are you going to do now?’ Mimi Smith in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p84 ‘He could keep one beat going for long enough . . .’ John talking about Pete Best to Rolling Stone.
Chapter Fourteen:
p88 ‘We’d have to eat and drink on stage’. John in The Authorised Beatles Biography and to many interviewers.
p90 ‘I might have been born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg . . .’ John to Rolling Stone and in other interviews.
p91 ‘The sexiest letters this side of Henry Miller’. John in The Authorised Beatles Biography.
Chapter Fifteen:
p93 ‘Women should be obscene and not heard’. John, joking in many interviews.
p94 ‘I thought I could chat him up . . . kid him on we could get him some birds’. In The Authorised Beatles Biography, and variations in other interviews.
Chapter Sixteen:
p97 ‘Is this what I want to do? Night clubs? Seedy scenes?’ John to Yoko’s friend Elliot Mintz in 1976.
p97 ‘. . . spent his money on a gangster’s moll . . .’ from John by Cynthia Lennon.
p98 The Beatles at Litherland Town Hall on 27 December, 1960 – as remembered in The Beatles by Bill Harry.
p100 Stuart beaten up. From various accounts, including Pauline Sutcliffe to this author, The Beatles Authorised Biography, John Lennon (Philip Norman) and The Beatles – Tune In.
p102 ‘Being a Short Diversion on the Dubious Origins of the Beatles’ – headline in Mersey Beat.
Chapter Seventeen:
p105 ‘There was a certain type . . . you’d call them groupies now’. John to Rolling Stone.
p106 ‘It was terrible . . . It was just Tony Sheridan singing with us banging in the background. It could have been anyone’. John in John Lennon (Ray Coleman)
p107 ‘I really got lumbered [with the bass]’. Paul McCartney in Many Years From Now.
Chapter Eighteen:
p110 ‘Paris . . . all the kissing and holding . . . it was so romantic’. John to Playboy in 1980.
p111 ‘They’d have more chance with the bohemian beauties on the Left Bank . . .’ Jürgen Vollmer in The Beatles – Tune In.
Chapter Nineteen:
p112 ‘Brian Epstein looked efficient and rich. We were in a daydream till he came along’. John to Rolling Stone.
p115 ‘Late. But very clean’. George Harrison in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p115 ‘It was a choice of making it, or still eating chicken on stage’. John in Rolling Stone.
p115 ‘Paul has the glamour. John has the command’. Brian Epstein in A Cellarful Of Noise, his autobiography.
p115 On becoming ‘a performing flea’. John to this author (Evening Standard).
p116 ‘I thought the only place John was going was the Labour Exchange’. Mimi Smith in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
Chapter Twenty
p120 Cynthia told to stay away from the Cavern . . . Told to this author.
p121 ‘. . . what John would call his “spazzie” act . . .’ George Harrison in The Beatles Anthology.
p121 ‘I’m sure Brian was in love with John . . .’ Paul in Many Years From Now.
p122 ‘I was the closest to Brian . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
p123 ‘You have a good record business in Liverpool . . .’ Allegedly Dick Rowe of Decca to Brian Epstein, quoted in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p123 ‘Brian would come back from London and he couldn’t face us . . .’ John in John Lennon (Ray Coleman) and with variations to other journalists.
p124 ‘I asked whether they had been published . . .’ Ardmore and Beechwood employee Jim Foy to Mark Lewisohn in 1987 (The Beatles – Tune In).
Chapter Twenty-one:
p126 ‘I looked up to Stu. I depended on him to tell me the truth . . .’ John in The Beatles Authorised Biography.
p127 ‘You have to decide if you want to die or go on living’. John to Astrid Kirchherr, in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p127 John wrote ‘pornographic’ love letters . . . Cynthia Lennon to this author.
p128 George Martin’s background. Interview with this author, Daily Mail
p128 ‘Rock and roll was alien to me . . .’ Ibid.
Chapter Twenty-two:
p132. ‘They were charismatic . . .’ George Martin to this author, Ibid.
p133 ‘We’ll have to get married . . .’ John in John (Cynthia Lennon).
p134 ‘I’ve got some bad news for you . . .’ Pete Best to this author about being sacked, Daily Mail.
p134 ‘We were cowards . . .’ John to this author re. Pete Best.
p135 Description of her wedding – from John (Cynthia Lennon).
Chapter Twenty-three:
p138 ‘John was seeing a girl who I knew and I was dying to tell her that he was married . . .’ Freda Kelly to this author.
p139 ‘When the dirty work came . . .’ in Rolling Stone.
p139 ‘When you write something as good as that song, I’ll let you record it’. George Martin to this author, Daily Mail.
p140 Brian Epstein was to act as their songwriting agent and would take 20 per cent of their royalties. You Never Give Me Your Money by Peter Doggett.
p141 ‘I used to scream at him to open his mouth and sing . . .’ John to this author.
p141 ‘Brian used to bring rock stars who were not making it any more . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
p143 ‘Please, lend your little ear to my pleas’. Lyrics to popular song ‘Please’, written in 1933 by Ralph Rainer and Leo Robin.
p143 ‘We were the best bloody band there was . . .’ John to this author, Radio Times.
p144 Dick James’s background from conversations with this author.
Chapter Twenty-four:
p148 ‘Not for a minute’. George Martin when asked if he’d ever thought ‘Please Please Me’ was a song about sex to this author, Daily Mail.
p149 Helen Shapiro ‘just had to carry on singing and smiling her way through it all’ Fan Plum Balmforth, 1963.
p151 ‘If they were lousy we gave them to George or Ringo’. John to this author.
p151 ‘It nearly killed me . . . Every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper’. John to various reporters.
p152 ‘We’d sung for twelve hours, almost non-stop . . .’ John in many interviews.
p152 ‘From Me To You’: ‘We nearly didn’t do it, because it was too bluesy’. John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
Chapter Twenty-five:
p156 ‘I watched Brian picking up boys and I liked playing it a bit faggy’. John to Rolling Stone.
p157 ‘What about that then, Pete? Fancy swapping wives?’ John quoted in Pete Shotton’s memoirs, John Lennon: In My Life.
p158 ‘I must have had a fear that maybe I was homosexual to attack him [Bob Wooler] like that’. John to Andy Peebles, BBC radio, 1980.
Chapter Twenty-six:
p162 ‘One more ciggy, and I’m going to hit the sack’. The Beatles talking in Love Me Do – The Beatles’ Progress by Michael Braun.
p166 ‘We were downstairs in the cellar . . . and we had the line, “Oh you, got that something”’. John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p167 ‘. . . their flat, submediant key switches . . . chains of pandiatonic clusters’. From a review of the Beatles’ music in The Times by music critic William Mann, 1963.
Chapter Twenty-seven:
p169 ‘This isn’t show business. It’s something else’. John about Beatlemania in press reports.
p171 ‘It just seemed ridiculous . . . It was just something you could never do . . .’ John to Playboy, 1965.
p171 ‘The bread rolls were shaped like penises and the soup was served out of chamber pots’. George Harrison in The Beatles Anthology.
Chapter Twenty-eight:
p173 ‘Everyone in Liverpool thinks they’re a comedian’. George Harrison in The Beatles Anthology.
p174 ‘Never in a million years did we think anything like this’. John in press reports on the Beatles’ welcome in America in 1964.
p175 ‘Come on now, do your stuff’. Press reports of party at British Embassy in Washington.
p175 ‘Then some bloody animal cut Ringo’s hair . . .’ John years later to this author.
Chapter Twenty-nine:
p178 ‘I can’t help my feelings I go out of my mind . . .’ A lyric from ‘You Can’t Do That’ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
p178 ‘It was a comic strip version . . .’ John in Rolling Stone.
p179 ‘It wasn’t what you would call a happy reunion . . .’ when John met his father. Reporter Don Short to this author.
p180 ‘If I hadn’t been a Beatle I wouldn’t have thought of having the stuff published . . .’ To Cliff Michelmore on Tonight, BBC, 18 June, 1965.
p181 ‘It’s about nothing. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t’. Ibid.
Chapter Thirty:
p186 ‘The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and my mentality . . .’ John, with variations, to many reporters.
p186 ‘It was like Fellini’s Satyricon . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
p187 The Beatles meet Dylan. From Bob Dylan And The Beatles by Al Aronowitz.
p187 ‘Part of me suspects I’m a loser . . .’ John to this author.
p188 ‘Paul has a high voice’. Indignant John to this author.
Chapter Thirty-one:
p191 ‘We were like Kings of the Jungle . . . like Caesars . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
p192 Such people seemed ‘so effortlessly perfect’. Cynthia Lennon on meeting Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in John.
p192 ‘a naïve girl who had simply got lucky and didn’t deserve’ to be there. Ibid.
p193 ‘It was obvious that the song (‘Norwegian Wood’) was about what John would later describe as “a little affair”.’ George Martin to this author.
p193 ‘Money flows in and it flows out’. John to this author.
p193 ‘Probably because he never had to work hard for it like some people . . .’ Mimi in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p194 ‘Sometimes I go to John’s house to play with his toys . . .’ Ringo to this author, Evening Standard.
p195 ‘And never once did we come away empty-handed . . .’ Paul to this author, Daily Telegraph.
p196 The song ‘Yes It Is’: ‘Same harmony, same chords and double-dutch words . . .’ John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p197 The song ‘Help!’: ‘That was my “fat Elvis” period . . .’ John to this author, Evening Standard.
p198 ‘On the surface, John was tough, tough, tough’. Paul to Barry Miles, Many Years From Now.
p199 ‘It was at the flat of some trendy, swinger dentist, you know the sort of people who George hangs out with . . .’ John to this author.
Chapter Thirty-two:
p201 ‘Once you plug in and the noise starts, you’re just a group who could be playing anywhere . . .’ John to reporters after the Beatles’ appearance at Shea Stadium.
p202 ‘We could send out four waxwork dummies of ourselves and that would satisfy the crowds . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
p202 ‘The only person in the United States we really wanted to meet’. John to Chris Hutchins and other reporters about Elvis.
p203 Details of the Beatles meeting Elvis. From Elvis Meets The Beatles by Chris Hutchins. Also Paul McCartney to this author.
p205 ‘It was heaven’. Cynthia Lennon to this author of the only picnic she had with John and Julian.
Chapter Thirty-three:
p208 ‘Girl’ – on which the Beatles sang the disguised words ‘tit . . . tit . . . tit’. John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p208 ‘In My Life’: ‘It was pretty truthful. No psychedelia. No gobbledegook . . .’ John to this author, Ibid.
p209 ‘We Can Work It Out’: Paul was the optimist, wanting to work things out, while he was impatient, always in a hurry – John’s view of the difference between him and Paul to this author.
p211 ‘A tiny man with lank grey hair, balding on top . . .’ Cynthia’s first view of Freddie Lennon in her biography John.
Chapter Thirty-four:
p213 ‘We’re more popular than Jesus now’. John to Maureen Cleave, Evening Standard.
p214 ‘Sex is the only physical thing I can be bothered with any more’. Ibid.
p215 ‘Reality leaves a lot to the imagination . . .’ One of John’s frequent jokes about drugs.
p216 ‘For No One’: ‘That was one of Paul’s good ones . . . all his semi-classical ones are his best . . .’ John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
Chapter Thirty-five:
p218 ‘It’s like we’re four freaks being wheeled out to be seen, shake our hair about and get back in our cage afterwards’. John to Rolling Stone, 1970.
p218 ‘Only someone who was very silly would have enjoyed it’. George Harrison in The Beatles Anthology.
p221 ‘They punched and kicked at us as we rushed by . . .’ Accounts of scare at Manila airport by Peter Brown and Tony Barrow to this author.
Chapter Thirty-six
p223 ‘He was not comparing the Beatles with Christ . . .’ Maureen Cleave, Evening Standard.
p224 ‘If you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry’. John at Chicago news conference, 1966.
p225 ‘Our lives had been threatened and then someone in the audience let off a firecracker . . . It went BANG!’ John to Rolling Stone.
p225 ‘One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were . . .’ John to this author (Evening Standard) and also Rolling Stone.
Chapter Thirty-seven:
p229 ‘I was expecting an orgy, but we met and it was all quiet’. Ibid.
p229 ‘What if I give you an imaginary five shillings . . .’ John to this author and many other journalists about his first meeting with Yoko Ono.
p230 ‘Stir inside of your brains with a penis until things are mixed up . . .’ An instruction in Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit.
Chapter Thirty-eight:
p232 ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ ‘is about me, and I was having a hard time’. John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p234 ‘. . . the biggest mistake of my professional life’. George Martin to this author on leaving ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ off the Sgt. Pepper album.
p235 ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’: ‘No secret message’. John to this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p236 ‘In fact, I was so innocent [about LSD] that I took John up to the roof of the studio’. George Martin to this author.
p237 ‘I never know what John and Paul are on about half the time’. Ringo to this author, Evening Standard.
p237 ‘We had no problems at home. We were two people living in the best way we could under the circumstances’. Cynthia Lennon to this author.
Chapter Thirty-nine:
p241 ‘“All You Need Is Love” . . . a subtle bit of PR for God . . .’ George Harrison in The Beatles Anthology.
p242 ‘Did you know, Mick Jagger wears a codpiece . . . ?’ John in wicked mood to this author.
Chapter Forty:
p248 John sent Brian some flowers with the message ‘You know I love you . . . I really do’. From The Love You Make, Peter Brown’s memoir.
p248 ‘I introduced Brian to pills – which gives me a guilt association with his death’. John to Rolling Stone.
p248 ‘I knew we were in trouble then’. John, reflecting years later to this author on the death of Brian Epstein
Chapter Forty-one
p251 Not one of them could find a copy of a single contract or document that they had signed. Peter Brown in The Love You Make and You Never Give Me Your Money by Peter Doggett.
p252 Filming of Magical Mystery Tour, as witnessed by this author for the Evening Standard.
p254 ‘I Am The Walrus’: ‘It could have been the “pudding basin” for all I care. It’s not that serious . . .’ John to Andy Peebles, BBC radio.
p257 ‘I had been about the only person John hadn’t danced with’. Cynthia Lennon in her autobiography John.
p257 ‘From the point of view of good Boxing Day entertainment we goofed really’. Paul to this author, Evening Standard.
Chapter Forty-two:
p258 ‘Watch your arse in Brighton . . .’ John joking in a letter to his father in The John Lennon Letters (Hunter Davies).
p258 ‘Across The Universe’ was ‘one of the best songs I ever wrote . . . It’s good poetry’. To this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p259 ‘As we entered the main room I saw . . .’ Cynthia Lennon in John.
p261 ‘He would get up early every morning and leave our room . . .’ Ibid.
p262 ‘Yoko wrote these crazy postcards . . .’ John to this author.
p262 ‘I’m So Tired’: they ‘should have used it for an anti-smoking campaign’. To this author, Sunday Times Magazine.
p263 Rishikesh ‘was just like Butlin’s . . .’ Ringo to this author, Evening Standard.
p263 ‘. . . if George is doubting him there must be something in it’. John to this author and others.
p264 ‘There have been other women, you know . . .’ From John by Cynthia Lennon.
Chapter Forty-three:
p267 ‘I think I’m Jesus Christ’. John in John Lennon In My Life.
p268 ‘I fancy having a woman around, Pete. Do you mind if I get one?’ Ibid.
p269 ‘You had to be in the situation to realise the horror of it . . .’ Cynthia Lennon to this author.
Chapter Forty-four:
p270 Biographical details of Yoko Ono told by her to this author (Evening Standard), and also from Jerry Hopkins’ book Yoko Ono.
p270 ‘God was always watching . . .’ Yoko Ono to this author, Evening Standard.
p272 ‘My first husband was very kind . . .’ Ibid.
p273 Cox had once been ‘kept prisoner in his bath’. From Yoko Ono by Jerry Hopkins and The Lives Of John Lennon by Albert Goldman.
Chapter Forty-five:
p274 ‘We were both so excited about discovering each other . . .’ Yoko in John Lennon (Philip Norman).
p275 He barely recognised John as the person he’d known for the past five years. Tony Barrow in conversation with this author.
p276 ‘We’ve got about two LPs’ worth of songs . . .’ John in postcard to Ringo.
p276 ‘If I started to think of a line . . .’ Paul McCartney to this author, Evening Standard.
p276 ‘I was afraid about the possibility of a break-up of a great musical partnership’. Ibid.
p277 ‘I’m sick of those aggressive hippies or whatever they are’. John to Rolling Stone.
Chapter Forty-six:
p279. ‘I’m not here to tidy up your underpants and fold your girlfriend’s knickers’. Pete Shotton in John Lennon: In My Life.
p280 ‘I haven’t been unfaithful to you. I’m sure you know that’. Cynthia to John, as recounted in John.
p282 Freddie was anxious to marry Pauline. From Daddy, Come Home.
p282 ‘I took one look at her . . .’ Mimi on seeing Yoko, Liverpool Echo.
p284 ‘It’s not specifically about anything’. John on ‘Revolution 9’ in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p284 ‘I was thinking that Jimi Hendrix had lived there, so God knows what we might find in the carpets’. John to this author.
p285 ‘She told him how when he’d been in India she’d gone to Paris and had been offered heroin . . .’ From Yoko Ono by Jerry Hopkins.
p285 ‘I never injected . . . Just sniffing, you know . . .’ John to Rolling Stone.
Chapter Forty-seven
p287 ‘I must admit I was a bit shocked . . .’ in Rolling Stone.
p288 ‘Ah, the bottoms girl, Yoko, has persuaded John into it’. Yoko to this author, Evening Standard.
p288 ‘Making an exhibition of himself’. Mimi Smith to this author.
p288 John wrote down a list of all the women with whom he had slept. John to this author.
p289 ‘John was scared that if I stayed in the studio out with a lot of other men . . .’ Yoko joking to this author.
p289 ‘What we did was to purposely not have a pretty photograph’. John to Rolling Stone.
p290 ‘People just want me to be lovable. But I was never that. Even at school I was just “Lennon!”’. John to this author and variously to other interviewers.
p291 ‘There’s a forty-three-pound turkey . . .’ From John Lennon (Philip Norman).
Chapter Forty-eight:
p293 ‘I’m warming to the idea of doing it in a lunatic asylum’. John in an out-take of the film Let It Be.
p294 ‘There are only two things to do . . .’ Paul McCartney recorded during filming of Let It Be – The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p294 Let It Be . . . ‘the most miserable sessions ever . . .’ – John to this author. Ibid.
p294 ‘On this one, George, we don’t want any of your production crap . . .’ John to George Martin – who told this author, Daily Mail.
p295 ‘Haven’t you written anything yet?’ Paul on the soundtrack of Let It Be – The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p295 ‘We probably do need a central daddy figure . . .’ On an unused out-take of the film Let It Be, Ibid.
p296 ‘I think you’re both nuts, the pair of you’. Ringo, Ibid.
p297 ‘Thank you very much. We hope we passed the audition’. John on the Let It Be soundtrack.
Chapter Forty-nine
p299. ‘It’s been pie in the sky from the start . . .’ John in John Lennon (Ray Coleman).
p300 Allen Klein ‘not only knew my work, and the lyrics . . . he also understood them . . .’ John to this author and other journalists.
p302 But she did wonder if she needed to get married. From John Lennon (Philip Norman).
p303 ‘It’s sell, sell, sell. If you want peace you’ve got to sell it like soap . . .’ John to this author, Evening Standard.
p305 ‘It was Yoko that changed me. She forced me to become avant-garde . . .’ John to this author, Evening Standard.
Chapter Fifty
p309 A bed brought into Abbey Road studio for Yoko. Told to this author by George Martin – The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p310 John and Yoko were dabbling with heroin. Dan Richter in The Dream Is Over.
p310 ‘I started to smoke at fifteen, though I hated the smell . . . ’ John to this author, Evening Standard.
p313 ‘I began to feel that the only way we could get back to playing good music again . . .’ Paul McCartney to this author, Evening Standard.
Chapter Fifty-one:
p315 ‘Now I’ve become a crutch for the world’s social lepers . . .’ John to this author, (Evening Standard).
p315 ‘Your Majesty, I am returning my MBE as a protest . . .’ John reading his letter to the Queen in a phone call to this author, Ibid.
p317 John and Yoko in Canada. This author’s account of accompanying them, Ibid.
p319 ‘I’ve left the Beatles . . .’ John tells this author – The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
Chapter Fifty-two:
p321 ‘He said he’d been on a flying saucer . . .’ John to this author.
p322 ‘She’s a junkie, you know’. John on Yoko in the London Clinic. This author’s account.
p323 ’I would never have women’s voices on a Beatles record . . .’ Paul McCartney to this author, Evening Standard.
p324 ‘You’re the journalist, Connolly, not me’. John to this author, The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p325 ‘Paul and me were the Beatles. We wrote the songs’. John to this author, Ibid.
p326 ‘I always wanted to be an eccentric millionaire and now I am one’. John to this author, Evening Standard.
Chapter Fifty-three:
p327 John and Yoko and Arthur Janov. John to this author (Evening Standard) and more from John Lennon (Philip Norman) and Rolling Stone.
p328 The last thing he needed was to be filmed lying on a psychotherapist’s couch screaming . . . John to this author.
p329 Plastic Ono Band album is ‘my insight into myself’. John to this author, Evening Standard.
p329 ‘I used to say I wouldn’t be singing “She Loves You” when I was thirty . . .’ Ibid.
p330 ‘I don’t want to die when I’m forty’. Ibid.
p330 Freddie Lennon summoned to Tittenhurst Park. From Daddy, Come Home.
p331 ‘I want you out of the house and I’m cutting off your money . . .’ Ibid.
p332 ‘He left me. I didn’t leave him’. John about his father to this author, Evening Standard.
Chapter Fifty-four:
p335 ‘John wanted to be cool and accepted’. The Dream Is Over by Dan Richter.
p335 Filming of Fly. Dan Richter’s, May Pang’s and Jerry Hopkins’ accounts.
p336 ‘It’s pretty basic . . . to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy . . .’ Interview in Red Mole with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn.
p337 ‘The radicalism was phoney, really, because it was out of guilt . . . [I’m] a chameleon’. – John to David Sheff (Playboy).
p338 Kidnapping/tug-of-love of Kyoko. Press reports and Dan Richter’s account.
Chapter Fifty-five:
p340 Recording of Imagine. From Dan Richter’s account in The Dream Is Over. Further details from the documentary film The Making Of Imagine, and conversations with John when he played the album to this author.
p342 ‘I’m just a guy who writes songs . . .’ John in The Making Of Imagine.
p343 ‘I couldn’t get any peace . . .’ To this author, The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
Chapter Fifty-six
p347 ‘America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself . . .’ John to this author (Evening Standard) and other interviewers.
p348. ‘I don’t even have to bother singing . . . Invitations like this come every day’. John to this author, Ibid.
p348 Yoko’s exhibition in Syracuse. This author was present. Ibid.
p349 ‘You look like a tart, a fucking whore . . .’ Ibid.
p351 ‘Why should I work with Paul McCartney when I have Yoko . . .’ John to this author, The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p353 FBI tapping Lennons’ phones. This author first told in phone conversation with John.
p353 Immigration Service battles from Philip Norman’s John Lennon, Bob Spitz’s The Beatles, The Dick Cavett Show and press reports.
Chapter Fifty-seven:
p356 John got very drunk at the party. There was a girl there . . . Yoko Ono in telephone conversation with this author.
p358 ‘John and I are not getting along . . .’ Yoko to May Pang. Told to this author by Yoko Ono. Further details from Loving John by May Pang, and in conversation with May Pang.
p358 ‘I’d been trained to believe that men like John . . . never picked women like me’. From Loving John (May Pang) and in conversation with this author.
p359 John’s Eighteen-month ‘Lost Weekend’. From press reports, John Lennon (Ray Coleman), David Sheff of Newsweek.
p360 ‘Into the jaws of the dragon . . .’ From Loving John (May Pang).
p361 ‘Listen, Phil, if you’re going to kill me . . .’ Ibid.
Chapter Fifty-eight:
p364 ‘He has to work at it . . .’ Paul McCartney on getting John back with Yoko. From Many Years From Now (Barry Miles).
p364 ‘I just woke up in the middle of it and thought . . .’ John to Newsweek.
p368 ‘It’s an old Beatles number . . .’ John on stage with Elton John at Madison Square Garden.
Chapter Fifty-nine:
p370 Was Yoko really ‘thinking of taking him back’? May Pang in Loving John.
p372 ‘What would you think if I began writing with Paul again?’ John to May Pang, in Loving John.
p372 ‘Bowies cutting “universe” (Let It Beatle)’. In letter from John to Derek Taylor, The John Lennon Letters.
p373 Yoko called to say the stars were in their right places for John to undergo hypnotism to stop smoking. From Loving John (May Pang).
Chapter Sixty:
p374 ‘The cure was very difficult . . .’ Yoko to May Pang (Loving John).
p374 ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened . . .’ John to May Pang, Ibid.
p374 ‘It was horrible. Just like primal therapy . . .’ John to May Pang re. hypnotism, Ibid.
p376 ‘I’ve been on Sinbad’s voyage . . .’ John to Pete Hamill (Rolling Stone).
Chapter Sixty-one:
p378 ‘John and Yoko have not only come back together . . .’ Postcard from Yoko Ono to this author.
p378 ‘She’d had too many miscarriages . . .’ John to Playboy, 1980.
p378 ‘When John came back, we had great sex and I got pregnant . . .’ Yoko in John Lennon by Philip Norman.
p379 ‘Waking up in strange places, or reading about myself in the papers . . .’ Pete Hamill in Rolling Stone.
p382 ‘My old man has a gun . . .’ Death of Mal Evans. From newspaper reports, conversations with Neil Aspinall and author’s interview with Lil Evans, Daily Mail.
p382 ‘The unmitigated honor . . .’ John’s letter to this author, The John Lennon Letters.
p384 Freddie diagnosed with stomach cancer . . . From Daddy, Come Home.
p385 ‘I would like to thank the Immigration Service . . .’ John to press, 1976.
Chapter Sixty-two:
p386 ‘I myself have decided to be or not to be . . .’ Letter to Derek Taylor, The John Lennon Letters.
p387 ‘Yoko has him all locked up’, Mick Jagger quoted in the Observer.
p389 Buys Long Island house. From Living On Borrowed Time by Fred Seaman.
p390 ‘I never stop wanting to make music’. John to May Pang in Loving John.
p391 Phones May Pang from South Africa. From Loving John.
p392 ‘I felt like a Viking . . . or Jason and the Golden Fleece . . .’ John to Playboy, 1980.
Chapter Sixty-three:
p394 ‘It was amazing. I was there on the beach . . . just playing guitar and singing . . .’ John to Playboy, and in variations to Newsweek, the BBC and others.
p395 ‘Grow old along with me . . .’ Lines borrowed from poet Robert Browning for the song ‘Grow Old With Me’.
p396 ‘Yoko’s a tough customer . . .’ David Geffen overheard talking to John by Fred Seaman. Living On Borrowed Time.
p396 ‘It’s a teacher-pupil relationship . . .’ John to Playboy.
p398 ‘Yoko told me, “you will be able to walk here [in New York]”’. John to Andy Peebles, BBC radio, 1980.
p399 ‘You’ve captured our relationship exactly’. John to Annie Liebovitz, Rolling Stone.
p399 ‘This what you want?’ John’s alleged comment to his assassin Mark Chapman on giving him his autograph (press reports).
Chapter Sixty-four:
p401 Paul McCartney didn’t hear of the murder until Linda returned from the school run the following morning. Paul to this author, Daily Telegraph.
p402 ‘I don’t believe in dead heroes . . .’ John to this author, The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive.
p000 ‘I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious . . .’ John to Playboy.
Afterword:
p404 Mark Chapman’s background. Various Press reports.
p406 ‘I couldn’t shoot him like that . . . I wanted to get his autograph . . .’ Mark Chapman to the police.
p406 ‘I’m sorry I gave all you guys this trouble . . .’ Ibid.