Part 2
LENNON: I
always had an easier time with lyrics, though Paul is
quite a
capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather
than face the
problem, he would avoid it. "Hey, Jude" is a damn good set of lyrics. I
made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has
come up with show
indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere.
Still, in the early days, we didn't care about lyrics as long as the song
had some vague theme -- she
loves you, he loves him, they all love each other. It was the hook, line
and sound we were going for. That's still my attitude, but I can't leave
lyrics alone. I have to
make them make sense apart from the songs.
PLAYBOY: What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?
LENNON: In "We Can Work It Out," Paul did the first half, I did the
middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, "We can work it out/We can
work it out" -- real
optimistic, y' know, and me, impatient: "Life is very short and there's
no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend...."
PLAYBOY: Paul tells the story and John philosophizes.
LENNON: Sure. Well, I was always like that, you know. I was like that
before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did
things and why society
was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently
doing. I always looked below the surface.
PLAYBOY: When you talk about working together on a single lyric like "We
Can Work It Out," it suggests that you and Paul worked a lot more closely
than you've
admitted in the past. Haven't you said that you wrote most of your songs
separately, despite putting both of your names on them?
LENNON: Yeah, I was lying. [Laughs] It was when I felt resentful, so I
felt that we did everything apart. But, actually, a lot of the songs we
did eyeball to eyeball.
PLAYBOY: But many of them were done apart, weren't they?
LENNON: Yeah. "Sgt. Pepper" was Paul's idea, and I remember he worked on
it a lot and suddenly called me to go into the studio, said it was time
to write some
songs. On "Pepper," under the pressure of only ten days, I managed to
come up with "Lucy in the Sky" and "Day in the Life." We weren't
communicating enough,
you see. And later on, that's why I got resentful about all that stuff.
But now I understand that it was just the same competitive game going on.
PLAYBOY: But the competitive game was good for you, wasn't it?
LENNON: In the early days. We'd make a record in 12 hours or something;
they would want a single every three months and we'd have to write it in
a hotel room or
in a van. So the cooperation was functional as well as musical.
PLAYBOY: Don't you think that cooperation, that magic between you, is
something you've missed in your work since?
LENNON: I never actually felt a loss. I don't want it to sound negative,
like I didn't need Paul, because when he was there, obviously, it worked.
But I can't -- it's
easier to say what I gave to him than what he gave to me. And he'd say
the same.
PLAYBOY: Just a quick aside, but while we're on the subject of lyrics and
your resentment of Paul, what made you write "How Do You Sleep?," which
contains lyrics
such as "Those freaks was right when they said you was dead" and "The
only thing you done was yesterday/And since you've gone, you're just
another day"?
LENNON: [Smiles] You know, I wasn't really feeling that vicious at the
time. But I was using my resentment toward Paul to create a song, let's
put it that way. He
saw that it pointedly refers to him, and people kept hounding him about
it. But, you know, there were a few digs on his album before mine. He's
so obscure other
people didn't notice them, but I heard them. I thought, Well, I'm not
obscure, I just get right down to the nitty-gritty. So he'd done it his
way and I did it mine. But as
to the line you quoted, yeah, I think Paul died creatively, in a way.
PLAYBOY: That's what we were getting at: You say that what you've done
since the Beatles stands up well, but isn't it possible that with all of
you, it's been a case
of the creative whole being greater than the parts?
LENNON: I don't know whether this will gel for you: When the Beatles
played in America for the first time, they played pure craftsmanship.
Meaning they were
already old hands. The jism had gone out of the performances a long time
ago. In the same respect, the songwriting creativity had left Paul and me
in the mid-Sixties.
When we wrote together in the early days, it was like the beginning of a
relationship. Lots of energy. In the "Sgt. Pepper"- "Abbey Road" period,
the relationship
had matured. Maybe had we gone on together, more interesting things would
have come, but it couldn't have been the same.
PLAYBOY: Let's move on to Ringo. What's your opinion of him musically?
LENNON: Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even
met. He was a professional drummer who sang and performed and had Ringo
Star-time and
he was in one of the top groups in Britain but especially in Liverpool
before we even had a drummer. So Ringo's talent would have come out one
way or the other as
something or other. I don't know what he would have ended up as, but
whatever that spark is in Ringo that we all know but can't put our finger
on -- whether it is
acting, drumming or singing I don't know -- there is something in him
that is projectable and he would have surfaced with or without the
Beatles. Ringo is a damn
good drummer. He is not technically good, but I think Ringo's drumming is
underrated the same way Paul's bass playing is underrated. Paul was one
of the most
innovative bass players ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is
directly ripped off from his Beatles period. He is an egomaniac about
everything else about
himself, but his bass playing he was always a bit coy about. I think Paul
and Ringo stand up with any of the rock musicians. Not technically great
-- none of us are
technical musicians. None of us could read music. None of us can write
it. But as pure musicians, as inspired humans to make the noise, they are
as good as anybody.
PLAYBOY: How about George's solo music?
LENNON: I think "All Things Must Pass" was all right. It just went on too
long.
PLAYBOY: How did you feel about the lawsuit George lost that claimed the
music to "My Sweet Lord" is a rip-off of the Shirelles' hit "He's So
Fine?"
LENNON: Well, he walked right into it. He knew what he was doing.
PLAYBOY: Are you saying he consciously plagiarized the song?
LENNON: He must have known, you know. He's smarter than that. It's
irrelevant, actually -- only on a monetary level does it matter. He could
have changed a
couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but
he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just
sort of let him off. [At
presstime, the court has found Harrison guilty of "subconscious"
plagiarism but has not yet ruled on damages.]
PLAYBOY: You actually haven't mentioned George much in this interview.
LENNON: Well, I was hurt by George's book, "I, Me, Mine" -- so this
message will go to him. He put a book out privately on his life that, by
glaring omission, says
that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil. In his book,
which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song
he wrote, he remembers
every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not
in the book.
PLAYBOY: Why?
LENNON: Because George's relationship with me was one of young follower
and older guy. He's three or four years younger than me. It's a love-
hate relationship
and I think George still bears resentment toward me for being a daddy who
left home. He would not agree with this, but that's my feeling about it.
I was just hurt. I was
just left out, as if I didn't exist. I don't want to be that egomaniacal,
but he was like a disciple of mine when we started. I was already an art
student when Paul and
George were still in grammar school [equivalent to high school in the
U.S.]. There is a vast difference between being in high school and being
in college and I was
already in college and already had sexual relationships, already drank
and did a lot of things like that. When George was a kid, he used to
follow me and my first
girlfriend, Cynthia -- who became my wife -- around. We'd come out of art
school and he'd be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the
Dakota now.
I remember the day he called to ask for help on "Taxman," one of his
bigger songs. I threw in a few one-liners to help the song along, because
that's what he asked
for. He came to me because he couldn't go to Paul, because Paul wouldn't
have helped him at that period. I didn't want to do it. I thought, Oh,
no, don't tell me I have
to work on George's stuff. It's enough doing my own and Paul's. But
because I loved him and I didn't want to hurt him when he called me that
afternoon and said,
"Will you help me with this song?" I just sort of bit my tongue and said
OK. It had been John and Paul so long, he'd been left out because he
hadn't been a songwriter
up until then. As a singer, we allowed him only one track on each album.
If you listen to the Beatles' first albums, the English versions, he gets
a single track. The
songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of
my repertoire in the dance halls. I used to pick songs for them from my
repertoire -- the easier
ones to sing. So I am slightly resentful of George's book. But don't get
me wrong. I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul,
George and Ringo go
on.
PLAYBOY: Didn't all four Beatles work on a song you wrote for Ringo in
1973?
LENNON: "I'm the Greatest." It was the Muhammad Ali line, of course. It
was perfect for Ringo to sing. If I said, "I'm the greatest," they'd all
take it so seriously.
No one would get upset with Ringo singing it.
PLAYBOY: Did you enjoy playing with George and Ringo again?
LENNON: Yeah, except when George and Billy Preston started saying, "Let's
form a group. Let's form a group." I was embarrassed when George kept
asking me. He
was just enjoying the session and the spirit was very good, but I was
with Yoko, you know. We took time out from what we were doing. The very
fact that they would
imagine I would form a male group without Yoko! It was still in their
minds. . . .
PLAYBOY: Just to finish your favorite subject, what about the suggestion
that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give
a mammoth
concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?
LENNON: I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been
benefited to death.
PLAYBOY: Why?
LENNON: Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal
gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since
then, Yoko and I
did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock-
'n'-roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we
give money to who we
want. You've heard of tithing?
PLAYBOY: That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income.
LENNON: Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get
locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is
always a mess and the
artist always comes off badly.
PLAYBOY: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other
people such as Dylan performed?
LENNON: Bangladesh was caca.
PLAYBOY: You mean because of all the questions that were raised about
where the money went?
LENNON: Yeah, right. I can't even talk about it, because it's still a
problem. You'll have to check with Mother [Yoko], because she knows the
ins and outs of it, I
don't. But it's all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are
reading this, don't bother sending me all that garbage about, "Just come
and save the Indians, come
and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans," Anybody I want to
save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever
we earn.
PLAYBOY: But that doesn't compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein,
said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert -- playing
separately, as
individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise
over $200,000,000 in one day.
LENNON: That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish
schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson.
OK. So I don't buy
that. OK.
PLAYBOY: But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty- stricken country in
South America----
LENNON: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give
$200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into
places like that. It
doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It
lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes
round and round in
circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then
Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of
our lives to one world
concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
[Ono rejoins the conversation.]
PLAYBOY: On the subject of your own wealth, the New York Post recently
said you admitted to being worth over $150,000,000 and----
LENNON: We never admitted anything.
PLAYBOY: The Post said you had.
LENNON: What the Post says -- OK, so we are rich; so what?
PLAYBOY: The question is, How does that jibe with your political
philosophies? You're supposed to be socialists, aren't you?
LENNON: In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are
either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you
become a
right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become
an instinctive socialist, which I was. That meant I think people should
get their false teeth
and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I
worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell -- if that's a
paradox, then I'm a
socialist. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about
money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing
myself to be screwed by
so-called managers.
PLAYBOY: Whatever your politics, you've played the capitalist game very
well, parlaying your Beatles royalties into real estate, livestock----
ONO: There is no denying that we are still living in the capitalist
world. I think that in order to survive and to change the world, you have
to take care of yourself
first. You have to survive yourself. I used to say to myself, I am the
only socialist living here. [Laughs] I don't have a penny. It is all
John's, so I'm clean. But I was
using his money and I had to face that hypocrisy. I used to think that
money was obscene, that the artists didn't have to think about money. But
to change society,
there are two ways to go: through violence or the power of money within
the system. A lot of people in the Sixties went underground and were
involved in bombings
and other violence. But that is not the way, definitely not for me. So to
change the system -- even if you are going to become a mayor or something
-- you need
money.
PLAYBOY: To what extent do you play the game without getting caught up in
it -- money for the sake of money, in other words?
ONO: There is a limit. It would probably be parallel to our level of
security. Do you know what I mean? I mean the emotional-security level as
well.
PLAYBOY: Has it reached that level yet?
ONO: No, not yet. I don't know. It might have.
PLAYBOY: You mean with $150,000,000? Is that an accurate estimate?
ONO: I don't know what we have. It becomes so complex that you need to
have ten accountants working for two years to find out what you have. But
let's say that
we feel more comfortable now.
PLAYBOY: How have you chosen to invest your money?
ONO: To make
money, you have to spend money. But if you are going to
make
money, you have to make it with love. I love Egyptian art. I make sure to
get all
the Egyptian things, not for their value but for their magic power. Each
piece has a certain magic power. Also with houses. I just buy ones we
love, not the ones that
people say are good investments.
PLAYBOY: The papers have made it sound like you are buying up the
Atlantic Seaboard.
ONO: If you saw the houses, you would understand. They have become a good
investment, but they are not an investment unless you sell them. We don't
intend to
sell. Each house is like a historic landmark and they're very beautiful.
PLAYBOY: Do you actually use all the properties?
ONO: Most people have the park to go to and run in -- the park is a huge
place -- but John and I were never able to go to the park together. So we
have to create
our own parks, you know.
PLAYBOY: We heard that you own $60,000,000 worth of dairy cows. Can that
be true?
ONO: I don't know. I'm not a calculator. I'm not going by figures. I'm
going by excellence of things.
LENNON: Sean and I were away for a weekend and Yoko came over to sell
this cow and I was joking about it. We hadn't seen her for days; she
spent all her time on
it. But then I read the paper that said she sold it for a quarter of a
million dollars. Only Yoko could sell a cow for that much. [Laughter]
PLAYBOY: For an artist, your business sense seems remarkable.
ONO: I was doing it just as a chess game. I love chess. I do everything
like it's a chess game. Not on a Monopoly level -- that's a bit more
realistic. Chess is more
conceptual.
PLAYBOY: John, do you really need all those houses around the country?
LENNON: They're good business.
PLAYBOY: Why does anyone need $150,000,000? Couldn't you be perfectly
content with $100,000,000? Or $1,000,000?
LENNON: What would you suggest I do? Give everything away and walk the
streets? The Buddhist says, "Get rid of the possessions of the mind."
Walking away
from all the money would not accomplish that. It's like the Beatles. I
couldn't walk away from the Beatles. That's one possession that's still
tagging along, right? If I
walk away from one house or 400 houses, I'm not gonna escape it.
PLAYBOY: How do you escape it?
LENNON: It takes time to get rid of all this garbage that I've been
carrying around that was influencing the way I thought and the way I
lived. It had a lot to do with
Yoko, showing me that I was still possessed. I left physically when I
fell in love with Yoko, but mentally it took the last ten years of
struggling. I learned everything
from her.
PLAYBOY: You make it sound like a teacher-pupil relationship.
LENNON: It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't
understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the
one who's supposed to
know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I
fucking know. She was there when I was nowhere, when I was the nowhere
man. She's my Don
Juan [a reference to Carlos Castaneda's Yaqui Indian teacher]. That's
what people don't understand. I'm married to fucking Don Juan, that's the
hardship of it. Don
Juan doesn't have to laugh; Don Juan doesn't have to be charming; Don
Juan just is. And what goes on around Don Juan is irrelevant to Don Juan.
PLAYBOY: Yoko, how do you feel about being John's teacher?
ONO: Well, he had a lot of experience before he met me, the kind of
experience I never had, so I learned a lot from him, too. It's both ways.
Maybe it's that I have
strength, a feminine strength. Because women develop it -- in a
relationship, I think women really have the inner wisdom and they're
carrying that while men have
sort of the wisdom to cope with society, since they created it. Men never
developed the inner wisdom; they didn't have time. So most men do rely on
women's inner
wisdom, whether they express that or not.
PLAYBOY: Is Yoko John's guru?
LENNON: No, a Don Juan doesn't have a following. A Don Juan isn't in the
newspaper and doesn't have disciples and doesn't proselytize.
PLAYBOY: How has she taught you?
LENNON: When Don Juan said -- when Don Ono said, "Get out! Because you're
not getting it," well, it was like being sent into the desert. And the
reason she
wouldn't let me back in was because I wasn't ready to come back in. I had
to settle things within myself. When I was ready to come back in, she let
me back in. And
that's what I'm living with.
PLAYBOY: You're talking about your separation.
LENNON: Yes. We were separated in the early Seventies. She kicked me out.
Suddenly, I was on a raft alone in the middle of the universe.
PLAYBOY: What happened?
LENNON: Well, at first, I thought, Whoopee, whoopee! You know, bachelor
life! Whoopee! And then I woke up one day and I thought, What is this? I
want to go
home! But she wouldn't let me come home. That's why it was 18 months
apart instead of six months. We were talking all the time on the phone
and I would say, "I
don't like this, I'm getting in trouble and I'd like to come home,
please." And she would say, "You're not ready to come home." So what do
you say? OK, back to the
bottle.
PLAYBOY: What did she mean, you weren't ready?
LENNON: She has her ways. Whether they be mystical or practical. When she
said it's not ready, it ain't ready.
PLAYBOY: Back to the bottle?
LENNON: I was just trying to hide what I felt in the bottle. I was just
insane. It was the lost weekend that lasted 18 months. I've never drunk
so much in my life. I
tried to drown myself in the bottle and I was with the heaviest drinkers
in the business.
PLAYBOY: Such as?
LENNON: Such as Harry Nilsson, Bobby Keyes, Keith Moon. We couldn't pull
ourselves out. We were trying to kill ourselves. I think Harry might
still be trying,
poor bugger -- God bless you, Harry, wherever you are -- but, Jesus, you
know, I had to get away from that, because somebody was going to die.
Well, Keith did. It was
like, who's going to die first? Unfortunately, Keith was the one.
PLAYBOY: Why the self-destruction?
LENNON: For me, it was because of being apart. I couldn't stand it. They
had their own reasons, and it was, Let's all drown ourselves together.
From where I was
sitting, it looked like that. Let's kill ourselves but do it like Errol
Flynn, you know, the macho, male way. It's embarrassing for me to think
about that period, because
I made a big fool of myself -- but maybe it was a good lesson for me.
I wrote "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out" during that time.
That's how I felt. It exactly expresses the whole period. For some
reason, I always
imagined Sinatra singing that one. I don't know why. It's kind of a
Sinatraesque song, really. He would do a perfect job with it. Are you
listening, Frank? You need a
song that isn't a piece of nothing. Here's the one for you, the horn
arrangement and everything's made for you. But don't ask me to produce
it.
PLAYBOY: That must have been the time the papers came out with reports
about Lennon running around town with a Tampax on his head.
LENNON: The stories were all so exaggerated, but. . . . We were all in a
restaurant, drinking, not eating, as usual at those gatherings, and I
happened to go take a pee
and there was a brand-new fresh Kotex, not Tampax, on the toilet. You
know the old trick where you put a penny on your forehead and it sticks?
I was a little high
and I just picked it up and slapped it on and it stayed, you see. I
walked out of the bathroom and I had a Kotex on my head. Big deal.
Everybody went "Ha-ha-ha" and it fell off, but the press blew it up.
PLAYBOY: Why did you kick John out, Yoko?
ONO: There were many things. I'm what I call a "moving on" kind of girl;
there's a song on our new album about it. Rather than deal with problems
in relationships,
I've always moved on. That's why I'm one of the very few survivors as a
woman, you know. Women tend to be more into men usually, but I wasn't....
LENNON: Yoko looks upon men as assistants. . . . Of varying degrees of
intimacy, but basically assistants. And this one's going to take a pee.
[He exits]
ONO: I have no comment on that. But when I met John, women to him were
basically people around who were serving him. He had to open himself up
and face me
-- and I had to see what he was going through. But ... I though I had to
move on again, because I was suffering being with John.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ONO: The pressure from the public, being the one who broke up the Beatles
and who made it impossible for them to get back together. My artwork
suffered, too. I
thought I wanted to be free from being Mrs. Lennon, so I thought it would
be a good idea for him to go to L.A. and leave me alone for a while. I
had put up with it
for many years. Even early on, when John was a Beatle, we stayed in a
room and John and I were in bed and the door was closed and all that, but
we didn't lock the
door and one of the Beatle assistants just walked in and talked to him as
if I weren't there. It was mind- blowing. I was invisible. The people
around John saw me as a
terrible threat. I mean, I heard there were plans to kill me. Not the
Beatles but the people around them.
PLAYBOY: How did that news affect you?
ONO: The society doesn't understand that the woman can be castrated, too.
I felt castrated. Before, I was doing all right, thank you. My work might
not have been
selling much, I might have been poorer, but I had my pride. But the most
humiliating thing is to be looked at as a parasite. [Lennon rejoins the
conversation.]
LENNON: When Yoko and I started doing stuff together, we would hold press
conferences and announce our whatevers -- we're going to wear bags or
whatever. And
before this one press conference, one Beatle assistant in the upper
echelon of Beatle assistants leaned over to Yoko and said, "You know, you
don't have to work.
You've got enough money, now that you're Mrs. Lennon." And when she
complained to me about it, I couldn't understand what she was talking
about. "But this guy,"
I'd say, "He's just good old Charley, or whatever. He's been with us 20
years...." The same kind of thing happened in the studio. She would say
to an engineer, "I'd like
a little more treble, a little more bass," or "There's too much of
whatever you're putting on," and they'd look at me and say, "What did you
say, John?" Those days I
didn't even notice it myself. Now I know what she's talking about. In
Japan, when I ask for a cup of tea in Japanese, they look at Yoko and
ask, "He wants a cup of
tea?" in Japanese.
ONO: So a good few years of that kind of thing emasculates you. I had
always been more macho than most guys I was with, in a sense. I had
always been the
breadwinner, because I always wanted to have the freedom and the control.
Suddenly, I'm with somebody I can't possibly compete with on a level of
earnings. Finally,
I couldn't take it -- or I decided not to take it any longer. I would
have had the same difficulty even if I hadn't gotten involved with,
ah----
LENNON: John -- John is the name.
ONO: With John. But John wasn't just John. He was also his group and the
people around them. When I say John, it's not just John----
LENNON: That's John. J-O-H-N. From Johan, I believe.
PLAYBOY: So you made him leave?
ONO: Yes.
LENNON: She don't suffer fools gladly, even if she's married to him.
PLAYBOY: How did you finally get back together?
ONO: It slowly started to dawn on me that John was not the trouble at
all. John was a fine person. It was society that had become too much. We
laugh about it now,
but we started dating again. I wanted to be sure. I'm thankful to John's
intelligence----
LENNON: Now, get that, editors -- you got that word?
ONO: That he was intelligent enough to know this was the only way that we
could save our marriage, not because we didn't love each other but
because it was getting
too much for me. Nothing would have changed if I had come back as Mrs.
Lennon again.
PLAYBOY: What did change?
ONO: It was good for me to do the business and regain my pride about what
I could do. And it was good to know what he needed, the role reversal
that was so good
for him.
LENNON: And we learned that it's better for the family if we are both
working for the family, she doing the business and me playing mother and
wife. We reordered
our priorities. The number-one priority is her and the family. Everything
else revolves around that.
ONO: It's a hard realization. These days, the society prefers single
people. The encouragements are to divorce or separate or be single or gay
-- whatever.
Corporations want singles -- they work harder if they don't have family
ties. They don't have to worry about being home in the evenings or on the
weekends. There's
not much room for emotions about family or personal relationships. You
know, the whole thing they say to women approaching 30 that if you don't
have a baby in
the next few years, you're going to be in trouble, you'll never be a
mother, so you'll never be fulfilled in that way and----
LENNON: Only Yoko was 73 when she had Sean. [Laughter]
ONO: So instead of the society discouraging children, since they are
important for society, it should encourage them. It's the responsibility
of everybody. But it is
hard. A woman has to deny what she has, her womb, if she wants to make
it. It seems that only the privileged classes can have families.
Nowadays, maybe it's only
the McCartneys and the Lennons or something.
LENNON: Everybody else becomes a worker-consumer.
ONO: And then Big Brother will decide -- I hate to use the term Big
Brother....
LENNON: Too late. They've got it on tape. [Laughs]
ONO: But, finally, the society----
LENNON: Big Sister -- wait till she comes!
ONO: The society will do away with the roles of men and women. Babies
will be born in test tubes and incubators....
LENNON: Then it's Aldous Huxley.
ONO: But we don't have to go that way. We don't have to deny any of our
organs, you know.
LENNON: Some of my best friends are organs----
ONO: The new album----
LENNON: Back to the album, very good----
ONO: The album fights these things. The messages are sort of
old-fashioned -- family, relationships, children.
PLAYBOY: The album obviously reflects your new priorities. How have
things gone for you since you made that decision?
LENNON: We got back together, decided this was our life, that having a
baby was important to us and that anything else was subsidiary to that.
We worked hard for
that child. We went through all hell trying to have a baby, through many
miscarriages and other problems. He is what they call a love child in
truth. Doctors told us
we could never have a child. We almost gave up. "Well, that's it, then,
we can't have one. . . ." We were told something was wrong with my sperm,
that I abused
myself so much in my youth that there was no chance. Yoko was 43, and so
they said, no way. She has had too many miscarriages and when she was a
young girl,
there were no pills, so there were lots of abortions and miscarriages;
her stomach must be like Kew Gardens in London. No way. But this Chinese
acupuncturist in San
Francisco said, "You behave yourself. No drugs, eat well, no drink. You
have child in 18 months." And we said, "But the English doctors said. . .
." He said, "Forget
what they said. You have child." We had Sean and sent the acupuncturist a
Polaroid of him just before he died, God rest his soul.
PLAYBOY: Were there any problems because of Yoko's age?