Subject: John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview (1968)
John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview
>From Rolling Stone #22, November 23, 1968
By Jonathan Cott/Rolling Stone
The interview took place at John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's temporary basement
flat in London -- a flat where Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, and William
Burroughs, among others, have stayed. But the flat seemed as much John's and
Yoko's as the Indian incense which took over the living room. The walls were
covered with photos of John, of Yoko, a giant Sgt. Pepper ensign, Richard
Chamberlain's poster collage of news clippings of the Stones bust, the Time
magazine cover of the Beatles.
We arrived at five on the afternoon of September 17, said hello to Robert
Fraser, who arranged the interview, to John and Yoko, sitting together,
looking "tres bien ensemble." We sat down around a simple wooden table,
covered with magazines, newspapers, sketch paper, boxes, drawings, a beaded
necklace shaped in the form of a pentangle.
John said he had to be at a recording session in a half hour, so we talked
for a while about John's show at the Fraser gallery. John wrote some
reminders to himself in the wonderfully intense and absorbed way that a kid
has painting the sun for the first time. As a philosopher once remarked:
"Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the
seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness."
When we arrived the next afternoon, September 18, John was walking around
the
room, humming what sounded like "Hold Me Tight" -- just singing the song to
the air. Old '50's forty-fives were scattered about the floor, and John
played Rosie and the Originals' version of "Give Me Love." We talked about
the lyrics of Gene Vincent's "Woman Love." In spite of having slept only two
hours, John asked us to sit down on the floor and begin the interview.
Any suspicions that John would be ornery, mean, cruel or brutish - feelings
attributed to him and imagined by press reports and various paranoic
personalities - never arose even for the purpose of being pressed down. As
John said simply about the interview: "There's nothing more fun than talking
about your own songs and your own records. I mean you can't help it, it's
your bit, really. We talk about them together. Remember that."
It's impossible to recapture in print John's inflections and pronunciations
of words like "happens," for example. Wish you had been there.
Jonathan Cott
I've listed a group of songs that I associate with you, in terms of what you
are or what you were, songs that struck me as embodying you a little bit:
"You've Got To Hide Your Love Away," "Strawberry Fields," "It's Only Love,"
"She Said She Said," "Lucy In The Sky," "I'm Only Sleeping," "Run For Your
Life," "I Am The Walrus," "All You Need Is Love," "Rain," "Girl."
Ah, yeh! I agree with some of them, you see. Things like "Hide Your Love
Away," right, I'd just discovered Dylan really. "It's Only Love" - I was
always ashamed of that 'cause of the abominable lyrics you know - they're
probably all right. George just came and talked about it last night. He
said,
remember we always used to cringe when the guitar bit came on, when we did
that blamm blam-blam-blam, we liked it but there was something wrong.
And "She Said She Said" - yeh, I dug that cause I was going through a bad
time writing then and so I couldn't hear it, but then I heard it and so I
dug
it. "Lucy In The Sky," all right. "Sleeping," it's like that. "Run For Your
Life" I always hated, you know. "Walrus," yeah, "Girl," yeah, "All You Need
Is Love" - hah, you know that's sort of natural.
The ones that really meant something to me - look, I don't know about "Hide
Your Love Away," that's so long ago - probably "Strawberry Fields," "She
Said," "Walrus," "Rain," "Girl," there are just one or two others, "Day T
ripper," "Paperback Writer," even. "Ticket To Ride" was one more, I remember
that. It was a definite sort of change..."Norwegian Wood" - that was the
sitar bit. Definitely, I consider them moods or moments.
I feel you in these songs more than in a song like "Michelle," for example.
Yeah, right, they're my touch. Well the thing is, I don't know how they'd
work out if I recorded them with other people, it would be entirely
different. But it's my music with my band when it's me singing it, and it's
Paul's music with his band. Sometimes it's halvey-halvey you know. When we
write them together, they're together. But I'm not proud of all my songs.
"Walrus," "Strawberry Fields," you know -- I'll sort of stick my name on
them, the others are a bit...I think they're more powerful.
I heard that "Strawberry Fields" was written when you were sitting on a
beach
alone.
Yeh, in Spain, filming How I Won The War. I was going through a big scene
about songwriting again you know - I seem to go through it now and then, and
it took me a long time to write it. See, I was writing all bits and bits. I
wanted the lyrics to be like conversation. It didn't work, that one verse
was
sort of ludicrous really, I just wanted it to be like {John sing-talks}
"we're talking and I just happen to be singing" - like that. And it was very
quiet. But it was written in this big Spanish house, part of it, and then
finished on the beach. It was really romantic - singing it too - I don't
know
who was there.
Don't you find something special about the song?
Oh yes, definitely yes. It was a big scene, like I'd say "Ticket To Ride"
was
a big scene, "Rain" was, not so much, not so much, but because of the
backwards, you know. That was the time I discovered backwards accidentally.
It was the first time I discovered it. On the end of "Rain" you hear me
singing it backwards. We'd done the main thing at EMI and the habit was then
to take the songs home and see what you thought a little extra gimmick or
what the guitar piece would be.
So I got home about five in the morning, stoned out me head, I staggered up
to me tape recorder and I put it on, but it came out backwards, and I was in
a trance in the earphones, what is it - what is it? It's too much, you know,
and I really wanted the whole song backwards almost, and that was it. So we
tagged it on the end. I just happened to have the tape the wrong way round,
it just came out backwards, it just blew me mind. The voice sounds like old
Indian.
There have been a lot of philosophical analyses written about your songs,
"Strawberry Fields" in particular...
Well, they can take them apart. They can take anything apart. I mean I hit
it
on all levels, you know. We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don't
realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or
some of the more flowing ones, like "Walrus." The whole first verse was
written without any knowledge. And "Tomorrow Never Knows" -- I didn't know
what I was saying, and you just find out later, that's why these people are
good on them. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig I know that
somewhere people will be looking at them, and with the rest of the songs it
doesn't matter cause they work on all levels. Anything. I don't mind what
they do. And I dig the people that notice that I have a sort of strange
rhythm scene, because I've never been able to keep rhythm on the stage. I
always used to get lost. It's me double off-beats.
In "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" what about an image like "newspaper
taxis"?
That was a Paul line, I think. In a lot of them you'll get so far. You've
lumbered yourself with a set of images and it's an effort to keep it up.
Pop analysts are often trying to read something into songs that isn't there.
It is there. It's like abstract art really. It's just the same really. It's
just that when you have to think about it to write it, it just means that
you
labored at it. But when you just say it, man, you know you're saying it,
it's
a continuous flow. The same as when you're recording or just playing, you
come out of a thing and you know "I've been there" and it was nothing, it
was
just pure, and that's what we're looking for all the time, really.
What is Strawberry Fields?
It's a name, it's a nice name. When I was writing "In My Life" - I was
trying
"Penny Lane" at that time - we were trying to write about Liverpool, and I
just listed all the nice sounding names just arbitrarily. Strawberry Fields
was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But
Strawberry
Fields -- I mean, I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny
Lane, the Cast Iron Shore which I've just got in some song now, and they
were
just good names, just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry
Fields is anywhere you want to go. Actually I've just written a song which
goes "I told you about Strawberry Fields/And you heard about the Walrus and
me/Told you about the Fool on the Hill...," it's amazing.
How much do you think the songs go towards building up a myth of a state of
mind?
I don't know. I mean we got a bit pretentious. Like everybody we had our
phase and now it's a little changeover trying to be more natural, less
"newspaper taxis," say. I mean we're just changing. I don't know what we're
doing at all, I just write them. Really, I just like rock & roll. I mean
these {pointing to a pile of '50's records} are the records I dug then, I
dig
them now and I'm still trying to reproduce "Some Other Guy" sometimes or
"Be-Bop-A-Lula," whatever it is, it's the same bit for me, it's really just
the sound.
What's the flip side of "Angel Baby" called - the song you played before we
started the interview?
"Give Me Love" by Rosie and the Originals. An amazing record. It's one of
the
greatest strange records, it's all just out of beat and everybody misses
it -
they knocked off the B side in ten minutes. I talk Yoko's leg off telling
her
this is it, this is what it's all about. There's just one line in this
Miracles' record - "I've Been Good To You" - where it goes "You got me
Cry-y-y-y-eying" - no breath, a beautiful little piece, I always love to
hear
it. I think he's [Smokey Robinson] got the most perfect voice, you know, I
just think the group's got into such a samey groove that it spoils it
really.
In "Penny Lane," you have the lines: "A pretty nurse is selling poppies from
a tray/And though she thinks she's in a play/She is anyway." Aside from the
little kid's quality of these lines, isn't this what you've been saying
recently?
Paul had the main bit of that, but I remember working on those lines. It's
always been a bit of "She's in a play, she is anyway heh heh" because you're
saying that again and again, it's a game, man, it's a game, but because you
mean it, it's all right, it's ok. There's all that in it. To us it's just
Penny Lane cause we lived there.
The Beatles seem to be one of the only groups who ever made a distinction
between friends and lovers. For instance, there's the "baby" who can drive
your car. But when it comes to "We Can Work It Out," you talk about "my
friend." In most other groups' songs, calling someone "baby" is a bit
demeaning compared to your distinction.
Yeh, I don't know why. It's Paul's bit that - "Buy you a diamond ring, my
friend" - it's an alternative to baby. You can take it logically the way you
took it. See, I don't know really. Yours is as true a way of looking at it
as
any other way. In "Baby, You're A Rich Man" the point was, stop moaning,
you're a rich man and we're all rich men, heh, heh, baby!
It's a bit of a mocking song, then?
Well they all get like that a bit, cause there is all that in it, that's the
point. As we write them or as we sing them that happens you know. And in
different takes just the inclination of your voice will change the meaning
of
the lyrics, and that's why it's after we've done them that we really see
what
they are. By that time the weight's on it.
I once heard a twelve year old girl singing along with "All You Need Is
Love," and she substituted the word "hate" for "love" as she sang.
Could be right, you know. Well, it's like the old Peter Sellers gag - "If
only I had the Latin" - meaning, if I had the breaks, you know, all you need
is love. I just meant it, I felt it, that's what you needed. Of course when
I'm down it doesn't work at all, but I believe it in the songs - you say,
well, all you need is love, there you go, and it's a bit of a statement, but
you've got to do it. You can't live up to it, that's the thing.
I've felt your other mood recently: "Here I stand head in hand" in "Hide
Your
Love Away" and "When I was a boy, everything was right" in "She Said She
Said."
Yeh, right. That was pure. That was what I meant alright. You see when I
wrote that I had the "She said she said," but it was just meaning nothing,
it
was just vaguely to do with someone that had said something like he knew
what
it was like to be dead and then it was just a sound. And then I wanted a
middle-eight. The beginning had been around for days and days and so I wrote
the first thing that came into my head and it was "When I was a boy," in a
different beat, but it was real because it just happened.
It's funny, because while we're recording we're all aware and listening to
our old records and we say, we'll do one like "The Word" - make it like that
- it never does turn out like that, but we're always comparing and talking
about the old albums - just checking up, what is it? Like swatting up for
the
exam -- just listening to everything.
Yet people think that you're trying to get away from the old records.
But I'd like to make a record like "Some Other Guy." I haven't done one that
satisfies me as much as that satisfied me. Or "Be-Bop-A-Lula" or "Heartbreak
Hotel" or "Good Golly, Miss Molly" or "Whole Lot of Shakin." I'm not being
modest. I mean we're still trying it. We sit there in the studio and we say,
how did it go, how did it go? Come on, let's do that. Like what Fats Domino
has done with "Lady Madonna" - "See how they ruhhnnnn."
Are there any other versions of your songs you like?
Well, Ray Charles' version of "Yesterday" - that's beautiful. And "Eleanor
Rigby" is a groove. I just dig the strings on that. Like Thirties strings.
Jose Feliciano does great things to "Help" and "Day Tripper."
"Got To Get You Into My Life" - sure, we were doing our Tamla Motown bit.
You
see we're influenced by whatever's going. Even if we're not influenced,
we're
all going that way at a certain time. If we played a Stones record now - and
a Beatles record - and we've been way apart - you'd find a lot of
similarities. We're all heavy. Just heavy. How did we ever do anything
light?
We did country music early because that was Ringo's bit. His song on the new
album just happens to be country and we got this old fiddler in. But we
weren't aware of the country kick coming in. But there we go, so it's all
right. On the new album we've done a blues.
What we're trying to do is rock and roll, with less of your philosorock is
what we're saying to ourselves and get on with rocking because rockers is
what we really are. You can give me a guitar; stand me up in front of a few
people. Even in the studio if I'm getting into it I'm just doing my old bit,
you know, not quite doing Elvis Legs, but doing my equivalent - it's just
natural. Everybody says we must do this and that, but our thing is just
rocking - you know, the usual gig. That's what this new record is about.
Definitely rocking. What we were doing on Pepper was rocking - and not
rocking.
"A Day in the Life Of" - that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece
of
work between Paul and me. I had the "I read the news today" bit, and it
turned Paul on, because now and then we really turn each other on with a bit
of song, and he just said "yeah" - bang bang, like that. It just sort of
happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't
often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all
got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang
half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but that would
have been forcing it, all the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble,
and to write a middle-eight would have been to write a middle-eight, but
instead Paul already had one there. It's a bit of a 2001, you know.
A critic has written about "A Day in the Life Of" as a kind of miniature
"Waste Land."
Miniature what?
Eliot's "The Waste Land."
I don't know that. Not very hip on me culture you know.
So you don't see that song as a peak?
No, I don't. I think whatever we're doing now is past what we were doing
then. Even if there is no song comparable to it, say. It's just not the
scene
now. It was only a song and it turned out well and it was a groove - it did
do all that - but there's plenty more.
Songs like "Good Morning, Good Morning" and "Penny Lane" convey a child's
feeling of the world.
We write about our past. "Good Morning, Good Morning" I was never proud of
it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so
it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit. The same
with
"Penny Lane." We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane - the
bank as there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and
the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just
re-living childhood.
You really had a place where you grew up.
Oh, yeah, didn't you?
Well, Manhattan isn't Liverpool.
Well, you could write about your local bus station.
In Manhattan?
Sure, why not? Everywhere is somewhere.
In "Hey, Jude," as in one of your first songs, "She Loves You," you're
singing to someone else and yet, you might as well be singing to yourself.
Do
you find that as well?
Oh, yeah. Well, when Paul first sang "Hey Jude" to me - or played me the
little tape he'd made of it - I took it very personally. Ah, it's me! I
said,
it's me. He says, no it's me. I said "Check, we're going through, the same
bit." So we all are. Whoever is going through it, that's the groove.
Was, "Hey Jude" influenced - perhaps unconsciously - by mantras?
No, it's nothing conscious - you mean the repeat at the end? I never thought
of that, but it's all valid, you see. I mean we'd just come back from India.
But I always related it to some early Drifters song or "You'd Better Move
On"
or Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" or "Send Me Some Loving" - it has
that feeling.
Does "Tell Me What You See" have the same singing-to-myself feeling to you?
Not consciously, no. I can't remember, it's way back. As soon as you mention
that I just remember running down the stairs at EMI and we went into the
middle-eight, because there wasn't one - that's the picture I get. I'd have
to hear it to get the rest of it. Otherwise it's just an image of the day I
worked on it, what I went through, what I was going through at the time.
Probably paranoia
It usually is the case - lost paranoias.
In the Magical Mystery Tour theme song you say "The Magical Mystery Tour is
waiting to take you away." In Sgt. Pepper you sing, "We'd like to take you
home with us." How do you relate this embracing, come-sit-on-my-lawn feeling
in the songs with your need for everyday privacy?
I take a narrower concept of it, like whoever was around at the time wanting
to talk to them talked to me, but of course it does have that wider aspect
to
it. The concept is very good and I went through it and said, "Well, ok, let
them sit on my lawn." But of course it doesn't work. People climbed in the
house and smashed things up, and then you think, "That's no good, that
doesn't work." So actually you're saying, "don't talk to me," really.
We're all trying to say nice things like that, but most of the time we can't
make it - 90 percent of the time - and the odd time we do make it, when we
do
it, together as people. You can say it in a song: "Well, whatever I did say
to you that day about getting out of the garden, part of me said that, but
really in my heart of hearts I'd like to have it right and talk to you and
communicate." Unfortunately we're human, you know - it doesn't seem to work.
How do you feel now about your first couple of albums?
Depends what track it is. I was listening to the very first albums a few
weeks back, and it's embarrassing. It was embarrassing then because we
wanted
to be like this. We knew what we wanted to be, but we didn't know how to do
it, in the studio. We didn't have the knowledge or experience. But still
some
of the album is sweet, it's all right.
Wasn't it about the time of Rubber Soul that you moved away from the old
records to something quite different?
Yes, yes, we got involved completely in ourselves then. I think it was
Rubber
Soul when we did all our own numbers. Something just happened. We controlled
it a bit, whatever it was we were putting over, we just tried to control it
a
bit.
Do you feel free to put anything in a song?
Yes. In the early days I'd - well, we all did - we'd take things out for
being banal, cliches, even chords we wouldn't use because we thought they
were cliches. And even just this year there's been a great release for all
of
us, going right back to the basics, like on "Revolution" I'm playing the
guitar and I haven't improved since I was last playing. But I dug it. It
sounds the way I wanted it to sound.
It's a pity I can't do better -- the fingering, you know -- but I couldn't
have done that last year, I'd have been too paranoic. I couldn't play
dddddddd, George must play or somebody better. My playing has probably
improved a little bit on this session because I've been playing a little. I
was always the rhythm guy anyway, but I always just fiddled about in the
background, I didn't actually want to play rhythm. We all sort of wanted to
be lead -- as in most groups -- but it's a groove now, and so are the
cliches. We've gone past those days when we wouldn't have used words because
they didn't make sense, or what we thought was sense.But of course Dylan
taught us a lot in this respect.
Another thing is, I used to write a book or stories on one hand and write
songs on the other. And I'd be writing completely free form in a book or
just
on a bit of paper, but when I'd start to write a song I'd be thinking dee
duh
dee duh do doo do de do de doo. And it took Dylan and all that was going on
then to say, oh, come on now, that's the same bit, I'm just singing the
words.
With "I Am A Walrus," I had "I am here as you are here as we are here all
together." I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two
weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines, and then when I saw
something after about four lines I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I
had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of
doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't work in the end [sings
like a siren]: "I-am-here-as-you-are-here-as..." You couldn't really sing
the
police siren.
Do you write your music with instruments or in your head?
On piano or guitar. Most of this session has been written on guitar cause we
were in India writing and only had our guitars there. They have a different
feel about them. I missed the piano a bit because you just write
differently.
My piano playing is even worse than me guitar. I hardly know what the chords
are, so it's good to have a slightly limited palette, heh heh.
What did you think of Dylan's "version" of "Norwegian Wood"? ("Fourth time
around").
I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in
London. He said, what do you think? I said, I don't like it. I didn't like
it. I was very paranoid. I just didn't like what I felt I was feeling -- I
thought it was an out and out shit, you know, but it wasn't. It was great. I
mean he wasn't playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.
How do you feel about his new music?
It's fine, you know. I'm just a bit bored with the backing, that's all. But
he's right what he's doing because he usually is. I've only heard the
"Landlord" album. I haven't heard the acetate, I keep hearing about it.
That's something else, you know.
Is there anybody else you've gotten something from musically?
Oh millions. All those I mentioned before - Little Richard, Presley.
Anyone contemporary?
Are they dead? Well, nobody sustains it. I've been buzzed by the Stones and
other groups, but none of them can sustain the buzz for me continually
through a whole album or through three singles even.
You and Dylan are often thought of together in some way.
Yeh? Yeh, well we were for a bit, but I couldn't make it. Too paranoic. I
always saw him when he was in London. He first turned us on in New York
actually. He thought "I Want To Hold Your Hand" -- when it goes "I can't
hide" -- he thought we were singing "I get high" -- so he turns up with Al
Aronowitz and turns us on, and we had the biggest laugh all night --
forever.
Fantastic. We've got a lot to thank him for.
Do you ever see him anymore?
No, cause he's living his cozy little life, doing that bit. If I was in New
York, he'd be the person I'd most like to see. I've grown up enough to
communicate with him. Both of us were always uptight, you know, and of
course
I wouldn't know whether he was uptight, because I was so uptight, and then
when he wasn't uptight, I was - all that bit. But we just sat it out because
we just liked being together.
What about the new desire to return to a more natural environment? Dylan's
return to country music?
Dylan broke his neck and we went to India. Everybody did their bit. And now
we're all just coming out, coming out of a shell, in a new way, kind of
saying: remember what it was like to play.
Do you feel better now?
Yes....and worse.
I've got no regrets at all, cause it was a groove and I had some great
experiences, meditating eight hours a day - some amazing things, some
amazing
trips - it was great. And I still meditate off and on. George is doing it
regularly. And I believe implicitly in the whole bit. It's just that it's
difficult to continue it. I lost the rosy glasses. And I'm like that, I'm
very idealistic. So I can't really manage my exercises when I've lost that.
I
mean I don't want to be a boxer so much. It's just that a few things
happened, or didn't happen, I don't know, but something happened. It was
sort
of like a [click] and we just left and I don't know what went on, it's too
near - I don't really know what happened.
You just showed me what might be the front and back album photos for the
record you're putting out of the music you and Yoko composed for your film
Two Virgins. The photos have the simplicity of a daguerreotype....
Well, that's because I took it, I'm a ham photographer, you know. It's me
Nikon what I was given by a commercially minded Japanese when we were in
Japan, along with me Pentax, me Canon, me boom-boom and all the others. So I
just set it up and did it.
For the cover, there's a photo of you and Yoko standing naked facing the
camera. And on the backside are your backsides. At your "For Yoko" show at
the Fraser Gallery you just said, "You are here," showed some things that
were there, and then people got the horrors. What do you think they're going
to think of the cover?
Well, we've got that to come. The thing is, I started it with a pure...it
was
the truth, and it was only after I'd got into it and done it and looked at
it
that I'd realized what kind of scene I was going to create. And then
suddenly
there it was, and then suddenly you show it to people and then you know what
the world's going to do to you, or try to do. But you have no knowledge of
it
when you conceive it or make it.
Originally, I was going to record Yoko, and I thought that the best picture
of her for an album would be her naked. I was just going to record her as an
artist, we were only on those kind of terms then. So after that, when we got
together it just seemed natural for us, if we made an album together, for
both of us to be naked.
Of course I've never seen me prick on an album or on a photo before: "What
on
earth, there's a fellow with his prick out." And that was the first time I
realized me prick was out, you know. I mean you can see it on the photo
itself - we're naked in front of a camera - that comes over in the eyes,
just
for a minute you go!! I mean you're not used to it, being naked, but it's
got
to come out.
How do you face the fact that people are going to mutilate you?
Well, I can take that as long as we can get the cover out. And I really
don't
know what the chances are of that.
You don't worry about the nuts across the street?
No, no. I know it won't be very comfortable walking around with all the
lorry
drivers whistling and that, but it'll all die. Next year it'll be nothing,
like mini-skirts or bare tits, it isn't anything. We're all naked really.
When people attack Yoko and me, we know they're paranoic, we don't worry too
much. It's the ones that don't know and you know they don't know - they're
just going round in a blue fuzz. The thing is, the album also says: look,
lay
off will you, it's two people - what have we done?
Lenny Bruce once compared himself to a doctor, saying that if people weren't
sick, there wouldn't be any need for him.
That's the bit, isn't it? Since we started being more natural in public -
the
four of us - we've really had a lot of knocking. I mean we're always
natural,
I mean you can't help it, we couldn't have been where we are if we hadn't
don't that. We wouldn't have been us either. And it took four of us to
enable
us to do it, we couldn't have done it alone and kept that up. I don't know
why I get knocked more often, I seem to open me mouth more often, something
happens, I forget what I am till it all happens again. I mean we just get
knocked - from the underground, the pop world - me personally. They're all
doing it. They've got to stop soon.
Tony Palmer, in an article for The Observer, wrote how he had been
predicting
the Beatles' failure ever since The Cavern days. All he did was recall the
various times he's predicted your failure. And then when he ended this
article, he predicted it again. How does he feel?
I just got a letter from him saying he feels fine. Such a lot of mistakes
and
lies in the article, saying it was Yoko's show and just some very nasty bits
about Yoko, just cruel, you know. I don't know what they think we are. They
really do think that we're very hard people. I mean they must be hard to do
what they do. You just hold your breath and wait.
Couldn't you go off to your own community and not be bothered with all of
this?
Well, it's just the same there, you see. Cause I mean India was a bit of
that, it was a taste of it -- it's the same. So there's a small community,
it's the same gig, it's relative. There's no escape.
Your show at the Fraser Gallery gave critics a chance to take a swipe at
you.
Oh, right, but putting it on was taking a swipe at them in a way. I mean
that's what it was about. What they couldn't understand was that - a lot of
them were saying, well, if it hadn't been for John Lennon nobody would have
gone to it, but as it was, it was me doing it. And if it had been Sam Bloggs
it would have been nice. But the point of it was - it was me. And they're
using that as a reason to say why it didn't work. Work as what?
Do you think Yoko's film of you smiling would work if it were just anyone
smiling?
Yes, it works with somebody else smiling, but she went through all this. It
originally started out that she wanted a million people all over the world
to
send in a snapshot of themselves smiling, and then it got down to lots of
people smiling, and then maybe one or two and then me smiling as a symbol of
today smiling -- and that's what I am, whatever that means. And so it's me
smiling, and that's the hang-up of course because it's me again. But I mean
they've got to see it someday - it's only me. I don't mind if people go to
the film to see me smiling because you see it doesn't matter, it's not
harmful. The people that really dig the film...The idea of the film won't
really be dug for another fifty or a hundred years probably. That's what
it's
all about. I just happen to be that face.
It's too bad people can't come down here individually to see how you're
living.
Well, that's it. I didn't see Ringo and his wife for about a month when I
first got together with Yoko, and there were rumors going around about the
film and all that. Maureen was saying she really had some strange ideas
about
where we were at and what we were up to. And there were some strange
reactions from all me friends and at Apple about Yoko and me and what we
were
doing -- "Have they gone mad?" But of course it was just us, you know, and
if
they are puzzled or reacting strangely to us two being together and doing
what we're doing, it's not hard to visualize the rest of the world really
having some amazing image.
International Times recently published an interview with Jean-Luc Godard...
Oh yeah, right, he said we should do something. Now that's sour grapes from
a
man who couldn't get us to be in his film [One Plus One in which the Stones
appear], and I don't expect it from people like that. Dear Mr. Godard, just
because we didn't want to be in the film with you, it doesn't mean to say
that we aren't doing any more than you. We should do whatever we're all
doing.
But Godard put it in activist political terms. He said that people with
influence and money should be trying to blow up the establishment and that
you weren't.
What's he think we're doing? He wants to stop looking at his own films and
look around.
Time magazine came out and said, look, the Beatles say "no" to destruction.
There's no point in dropping out, because it's the same there and it's got
to
change. But I think it all comes down to changing your head, and sure, I
know
that's a cliche.
What would you tell a black power guy who's changed his head and then finds
a
wall there all the time?
Well, I can't tell him anything cause he's got to do it himself. If
destruction's the only way he can do it, there's nothing I can say that
could
influence him cause that's where he's at, really. We've all got that in us,
too, and that's why I did the "Out and In" bit on a few takes and in the TV
version of "Revolution" - "Destruction, well, you know, you can count me
out,
and in, like Yin and Yang.
I prefer "out." But we've got the other bit in us. I don't know what I'd be
doing if I was in his position. I don't think I'd be so meek and mild. I
just
don't know.
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