Part 4
LENNON: It's from
"The Walrus and the Carpenter." "Alice in
Wonderland."
To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll
was
commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that
bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles'
work. Later, I went
back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the
story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked
the wrong guy. I
should have said, "I am the carpenter." But that wouldn't have been the
same, would it? [Singing] "I am the carpenter...."
PLAYBOY: How about "She Came in Through the Bathroom Window?"
LENNON: That was written by Paul when we were in New York forming Apple,
and he first met Linda. Maybe she's the one who came in the window. She
must
have. I don't know. Somebody came in the window.
PLAYBOY: "I Feel Fine."
LENNON: That's me, including the guitar lick with the first feedback ever
recorded. I defy anybody to find an earlier record -- unless it is some
old blues record from
the Twenties -- with feedback on it.
PLAYBOY: "When I'm Sixty-Four."
LENNON: Paul completely. I would never even dream of writing a song like
that. There are some areas I never think about and that is one of them.
PLAYBOY: "A Day in the Life."
LENNON: Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed
two stories. One was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That
was the main
headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a
story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is.
They were going to
fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the
song "I'd love to turn you on." I had the bulk of the song and the words,
but he contributed this
little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for
anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.
PLAYBOY: May we continue with some of the ones that seem more personal
and see what reminiscences they inspire?
LENNON: Reminisce away.
PLAYBOY: For no reason whatsoever, let's start with "I Wanna Be Your
Man."
LENNON: Paul and I finished that one off for the Stones. We were taken
down by Brian to meet them at the club where they were playing in
Richmond. They
wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Paul had
this bit of a song and we played it roughly for them and they said,
"Yeah, OK, that's our style."
But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of
the room and finished the song off while they were all sitting there,
talking. We came back and
Mick and Keith said, "Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and
wrote it." You know, right in front of their eyes. We gave it to them. It
was a throwaway.
Ringo sang it for us and the Stones did their version. It shows how much
importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great,
right? That was
the Stones' first record. Anyway, Mick and Keith said, "If they can write
a song so easily, we should try it." They say it inspired them to start
writing together.
PLAYBOY: How about "Strawberry FieldsForever?"
LENNON: Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at
Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice
semidetached place
with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around -
- not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles
stories. In the class
system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George and Ringo, who
lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a
garden. They didn't
have anything like that. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house
near a boys' reformatory where I used to go to garden parties as a kid
with my friends Nigel
and Pete. We would go there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a
penny. We always had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the
name. But I used it
as an image. Strawberry Fields forever.
PLAYBOY: And the lyrics, for instance: "Living is easy---- "
LENNON: [Singing] "With eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see." It
still goes, doesn't it? Aren't I saying exactly the same thing now? The
awareness apparently
trying to be expressed is -- let's say in one way I was always hip. I was
hip in kindergarten. I was different from the others. I was different all
my life. The second
verse goes, "No one I think is in my tree." Well, I was too shy and
self-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was saying.
Therefore, I must be crazy or
a genius -- "I mean it must be high or low," the next line. There was
something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other
people didn't see. I
thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other
people didn't see. As a child, I would say, "But this is going on!" and
everybody would look at
me as if I was crazy. I always was so psychic or intuitive or poetic or
whatever you want to call it, that I was always seeing things in a
hallucinatory way.
It was scary as a child, because there was nobody to relate to. Neither
my auntie nor my friends nor anybody could ever see what I did. It was
very, very scary and the
only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan Thomas or
a Vincent van Gogh -- all those books that my auntie had that talked
about their suffering
because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by
society for trying to express what they were. I saw loneliness.
PLAYBOY: Were you able to find others to share your visions with?
LENNON: Only dead people in books. Lewis Carroll, certain paintings.
Surrealism had a great effect on me, because then I realized that my
imagery and my mind
wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I belong in an exclusive club
that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic
vision to me is reality. Even
as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I
used to literally trance out into alpha. I didn't know what it was called
then. I found out
years later there is a name for those conditions. But I would find myself
seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and becoming cosmic and
complete. It
caused me to always be a rebel. This thing gave me a chip on the
shoulder; but, on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted. Part
of me would like to be
accepted by all facets of society and not be this loudmouthed lunatic
musician. But I cannot be what I am not.
Because of my attitude, all the other boys' parents, including Paul's
father, would say, "Keep away from him." The parents instinctively
recognized what I was, which
was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their
kids, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friend's home I had.
Partly, maybe, it was
out of envy that I didn't have this so-called home. But I really did. I
had an auntie and an uncle and a nice suburban home, thank you very much.
Hear this, Auntie.
She was hurt by a remark Paul made recently that the reason I am staying
home with Sean now is because I never had a family life. It's absolute
rubbish. There were
five women who were my family. Five strong, intelligent women. Five
sisters. One happened to be my mother. My mother was the youngest. She
just couldn't deal
with life. She had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and
she couldn't cope with me, and when I was four and a half, I ended up
living with her elder
sister. Now, those women were fantastic. One day I might do a kind of
"Forsyte Saga" just about them. That was my first feminist education.
Anyway, that knowledge and the fact that I wasn't with my parents made me
see that parents are not gods. I would infiltrate the other boys' minds.
Paul's parents
were terrified of me and my influence, simply because I was free from the
parents' strangle hold. That was the gift I got for not having parents. I
cried a lot about not
having them and it was torture, but it also gave me an awareness early. I
wasn't an orphan, though. My mother was alive and lived a 15-minute walk
away from me all
my life. I saw her off and on. I just didn't live with her.
PLAYBOY: Is she alive?
LENNON: No, she got killed by an off-duty cop who was drunk after
visiting my auntie's house where I lived. I wasn't there at the time. She
was just at a bus stop. I
was 16. That was another big trauma for me. I lost her twice. When I was
five and I moved in with my auntie, and then when she physically died.
That made me
more bitter; the chip on my shoulder I had as a youth got really big
then. I was just really re-establishing the relationship with her and she
was killed.
PLAYBOY: Her name was Julia, wasn't it? Is she the Julia of your song of
that name on "The White Album?"
LENNON: The song is for her -- and for Yoko.
PLAYBOY: What kind of relationship did you have with your father, who
went away to sea? Did you ever see him again?
LENNON: I never saw him again until I made a lot of money and he came
back.
PLAYBOY: How old were you?
LENNON: Twenty-four or 25. I opened the "Daily Express" and there he was,
washing dishes in a small hotel or something very near where I was living
in the
Stockbroker belt outside London. He had been writing to me to try to get
in contact. I didn't want to see him. I was too upset about what he'd
done to me and to my
mother and that he would turn up when I was rich and famous and not
bother turning up before. So I wasn't going to see him at all, but he
sort of blackmailed me in
the press by saying all this about being a poor man washing dishes while
I was living in luxury. I fell for it and saw him and we had some kind of
relationship. He died a
few years later of cancer. But at 65, he married a secretary who had been
working for the Beatles, age 22, and they had a child, which I thought
was hopeful for a man
who had lived his life as a drunk and almost a Bowery bum.
PLAYBOY: We'll never listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" the same way
again. What memories are jogged by the song "Help!?"
LENNON: When "Help!" came out in '65, I was actually crying out for help.
Most people think it's just a fast rock-'n'-roll song. I didn't realize
it at the time; I just
wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But
later, I knew I really was crying out for help. It was my fat Elvis
period. You see the movie:
He -- I -- is very fat, very insecure, and he's completely lost himself.
And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest,
looking back at how easy it
was. Now I may be very positive -- yes, yes -- but I also go through deep
depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. It
becomes easier to deal
with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you
grow up, you calm down a little. Anyway, I was fat and depressed and I
was crying out for
help.
In those days, when the Beatles were depressed, we had this little chant.
I would yell out, "Where are we going, fellows?" They would say, "To the
top, Johnny," in
pseudo- American voices. And I would say, "Where is that, fellows?" And
they would say, "To the toppermost of the poppermost." It was some dumb
expression
from a cheap movie -- a la "Blackboard Jungle" -- about Liverpool. Johnny
was the leader of the gang.
PLAYBOY: What were you depressed about during the "Help!" period?
LENNON: The Beatles thing had just gone beyond comprehension. We were
smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody
could
communicate with us, because we were just all glazed eyes, giggling all
the time. In our own world. That was the song, "Help!." I think
everything that comes out of a
song -- even Paul's songs now, which are apparently about nothing --
shows something about yourself.
PLAYBOY: Was "I'm a Loser" a similarly personal statement?
LENNON: Part of me suspects that I'm a loser and the other part of me
thinks I'm God Almighty.
PLAYBOY: How about "Cold Turkey?"
LENNON: The song is self-explanatory. The song got banned, even though
it's antidrug. They're so stupid about drugs, you know. They're not
looking at the cause
of the drug problem: Why do people take drugs? To escape from what? Is
life so terrible? Are we living in such a terrible situation that we
can't do anything without
reinforcement of alcohol, tobacco? Aspirins, sleeping pills, uppers,
downers, never mind the heroin and cocaine -- they're just the outer
fringes of Librium and speed.
PLAYBOY: Do you use any drugs now?
LENNON: Not really. If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I
don't go after it.
PLAYBOY: Cocaine?
LENNON: I've had cocaine, but I don't like it. The Beatles had lots of it
in their day, but it's a dumb drug, because you have to have another one
20 minutes later.
Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. Really, I find
caffeine is easier to deal with.
PLAYBOY: Acid?
LENNON: Not in years. A little mushroom or peyote is not beyond my scope,
you know, maybe twice a year or something. You don't hear about it
anymore, but
people are still visiting the cosmos. We must always remember to thank
the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Everything is
the opposite of
what it is, isn't it, Harry? So get out the bottle, boy -- and relax.
They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us
freedom. Sometimes it works in
mysterious ways its wonders to perform. If you look in the Government
reports on acid, the ones who jumped out the window or killed themselves
because of it, I
think even with Art Linkletter's daughter, it happened to her years
later. So, let's face it, she wasn't really on acid when she jumped out
the window. And I've never
met anybody who's had a flashback on acid. I've never had a flashback in
my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties.
PLAYBOY: What does your diet include besides sashimi and sushi, Hershey
bars and cappuccinos?
LENNON: We're mostly macrobiotic, but sometimes I take the family out for
a pizza.
ONO: Intuition tells you what to eat. It's dangerous to try to unify
things. Everybody has different needs. We went through vegetarianism and
macrobiotic, but now,
because we're in the studio, we do eat some junk food. We're trying to
stick to macrobiotic: fish and rice, whole grains. You balance foods and
eat foods indigenous to
the area. Corn is the grain from this area.
PLAYBOY: And you both smoke up a storm.
LENNON: Macrobiotic people don't believe in the big C. Whether you take
that as a rationalization or not, macrobiotics don't believe that smoking
is bad for you.
Of course, if we die, we're wrong.
PLAYBOY: Let's go back to jogging your memory with songs. How about
Paul's song "Hey Jude?"
LENNON: He said it was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with
Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello.
He had been like an
uncle. And he came up with "Hey Jude." But I always heard it as a song to
me. Now I'm sounding like one of those fans reading things into it. . . .
Think about it:
Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. "Hey, Jude" -- "Hey,
John." Subconsciously, he was saying, Go ahead, leave me. On a conscious
level, he didn't
want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying. "Bless you." The Devil
in him didn't like it at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner.
PLAYBOY: What about "Because?"
LENNON: I was lying on the sofa in our house, listening to Yoko play
Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on the piano. Suddenly, I said, "Can you
play those chords
backward?" She did, and I wrote "Because" around them. The song sounds
like "Moonlight Sonata," too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no
imagery, no obscure
references.
PLAYBOY: "Give Peace a Chance."
LENNON: All we were saying was give peace a chance.
PLAYBOY: Was it really a Lennon-McCartney composition?
LENNON: No, I don't even know why his name was on it. It's there because
I kind of felt guilty because I'd made the separate single -- the first
-- and I was really
breaking away from the Beatles.
PLAYBOY: Why were the compositions you and Paul did separately attributed
to Lennon-McCartney?
LENNON: Paul
and I made a deal when we were 15. There was never a
legal
deal between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together
that we put both
our names on it, no matter what.
PLAYBOY: How about "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"
LENNON: The idea came from this thing my mother used to sing to me when I
was one or two years old, when she was still living with me. It was from
a Disney
movie: "Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell/You are
standing by a wishing well." So, with that in my head, I wrote the song
and just gave it to George
to sing. I thought it would be a good vehicle for him, because it had
only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world. He has
improved a lot since then; but
in those days, his ability was very poor. I gave it to him just to give
him a piece of the action. That's another reason why I was hurt by his
book. I even went to the
trouble of making sure he got the B side of a Beatles single, because he
hadn't had a B side of one until "Do You Want to Know a Secret?"
"Something" was the first
time he ever got an A side, because Paul and I always wrote both sides.
That wasn't because we were keeping him out but simply because his
material was not up to
scratch. I made sure he got the B side of "Something," too, so he got the
cash. Those little things he doesn't remember.
I always felt bad that George and Ringo didn't get a piece of the
publishing. When the opportunity came to give them five percent each of
Maclen, it was because of
me they got it. It was not because of Klein and not because of Paul but
because of me. When I said they should get it, Paul couldn't say no. I
don't get a piece of any
of George's songs or Ringo's. I never asked for anything for the
contributions I made to George's songs like "Taxman." Not even the
recognition. And that is why I
might have sounded resentful about George and Ringo, because it was after
all those things that the attitude of "John has forsaken us" and "John is
tricking us" came
out -- which is not true.
PLAYBOY: "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."
LENNON: No, it's not about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with
a smoking gun on the cover and an article that I never read inside called
"Happiness Is a
Warm Gun." I took it right from there. I took it as the terrible idea of
just having shot some animal.
PLAYBOY: What about the sexual puns: "When you feel my finger on your
trigger"?
LENNON: Well, it was at the beginning of my relationship with Yoko and I
was very sexually oriented then. When we weren't in the studio, we were
in bed.
PLAYBOY: What was the allusion to "Mother Superior jumps the gun"?
LENNON: I call Yoko Mother or Madam just in an offhand way. The rest
doesn't mean anything. It's just images of her.
PLAYBOY: "Across the Universe."
LENNON: The Beatles didn't make a good record of "Across the Universe." I
think subconsciously we -- I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy
my great
songs. We would play experimental games with my great pieces, like
"Strawberry Fields," which I always felt was badly recorded. It worked,
but it wasn't what it could
have been. I allowed it, though. We would spend hours doing little,
detailed cleaning up on Paul's songs, but when it came to mine --
especially a great song like
"Strawberry Fields" or "Across the Universe" -- somehow an atmosphere of
looseness and experimentation would come up.
PLAYBOY: Sabotage?
LENNON: Subconscious sabotage. I was too hurt. . . . Paul will deny it,
because he has a bland face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the
kind of thing I'm talking
about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to think,
Well, maybe I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. It is the absolute
truth. The same thing
happened to "Across the Universe." The song was never done properly. The
words stand, luckily.
PLAYBOY: "Getting Better."
LENNON: It is a diary form of writing. All that "I used to be cruel to my
woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" was
me. I used to be
cruel to my woman, and physically -- any woman. I was a hitter. I
couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is
why I am always on about
peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace.
Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I
am not violent man
who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have
to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a
youngster.
PLAYBOY: "Revolution."
LENNON: We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting really tense
with one another. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single:
as a statement
of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on
revolution. For years, on the Beatle tours, Epstein had stopped us from
saying anything about
Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions about it. But on one
tour, I said, "I am going to answer about the war. We can't ignore it." I
absolutely wanted
the Beatles to say something. The first take of "Revolution" -- well,
George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if
you go into details of what
a hit record is and isn't maybe. But the Beatles could have afforded to
put out the slow, understandable version of "Revolution" as a single.
Whether it was a gold
record or a wooden record. But because they were so upset about the Yoko
period and the fact that I was again becoming as creative and dominating
as I had been in
the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the
apple cart. I was awake again and they couldn't stand it?
PLAYBOY: Was it Yoko's inspiration?
LENNON: She inspired all this creation in me. It wasn't that she inspired
the songs; she inspired me. The statement in "Revolution" was mine. The
lyrics stand
today. It's still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. That
is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if
it is for violence. Don't
expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers.
PLAYBOY: What do you think of Hoffman's turning himself in?
LENNON: Well he got what he wanted. Which is to be sort of an underground
hero for anybody who still worships any manifestation of the underground.
I don't feel
that much about it anymore. Nixon, Hoffman, it's the same. They are all
from the same period. It was kind of surprising to see Abbie on TV, but
it was also surprising
to see Nixon on TV. Maybe people get the feeling when they see me or us.
I feel, What are they doing there? Is this an old newsreel?
PLAYBOY: On a new album, you close with "Hard Times Are Over (For a
While)." Why?
LENNON: It's not a new message: "Give Peace a Chance" -- we're not being
unreasonable, just saying, "Give it a chance." With "Imagine," we're
saying, "Can you
imagine a world without countries or religions?" It's the same message
over and over. And it's positive.
PLAYBOY: How does it feel to have people anticipate your new record
because they feel you are a prophet of sorts? When you returned to the
studio to make
"Double Fantasy," some of your fans were saying things like, "Just as
Lennon defined the Sixties and the Seventies, he'll be defining the
Eighties."
LENNON: It's very sad. Anyway, we're not saying anything new. A, we have
already said it and, B, 100,000,000 other people have said it, too.
PLAYBOY: But your songs do have messages.
LENNON: All we are saying is, "This is what is happening to us." We are
sending postcards. I don't let it become "I am the awakened; you are
sheep that will be
shown the way." That is the danger of saying anything, you know.
PLAYBOY: Especially for you.
LENNON: Listen, there's nothing wrong with following examples. We can
have figure heads and people we admire, but we don't need leaders. "Don't
follow leaders,
watch the parking meters."
PLAYBOY: You're quoting one of your peers, of sorts. Is it distressing to
you that Dylan is a born-again Christian?
LENNON: I don't like to comment on it. For whatever reason he's doing it,
it is personal for him and he needs to do it. But the whole religion
business suffers from
the "Onward, Christian Soldiers" bit. There's too much talk about
soldiers and marching and converting. I'm not pushing Buddhism, because
I'm no more a Buddhist
than I am a Christian, but there's one thing I admire about the religion:
There's no proselytizing.
PLAYBOY: Were you a Dylan fan?
LENNON: No, I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after "Highway
64" [sic] and "Blonde on Blonde," and even then it was because George
would sit me down
and make me listen.
PLAYBOY: Like Dylan, weren't you also looking for some kind of leader
when you did primal-scream therapy with Arthur Janov?
ONO: I think Janov was a daddy for John. I think he has this father
complex and he's always searching for a daddy.
LENNON: Had, dear. I had a father complex.
PLAYBOY: Would you explain?
ONO: I had a daddy, a real daddy, sort of a big and strong father like a
Billy Graham, but growing up, I saw his weak side. I saw the hypocrisy.
So whenever I see
something that is supposed to be so big and wonderful -- a guru or primal
scream -- I'm very cynical.
LENNON: She fought with Janov all the time. He couldn't deal with it.
ONO: I'm not searching for the big daddy. I look for something else in
men -- something that is tender and weak and I feel like I want to help.
LENNON: And I was the lucky cripple she chose!
ONO: I have this mother instinct, or whatever. But I was not hung up on
finding a father, because I had one who disillusioned me. John never had
a chance to get
disillusioned about his father, since his father wasn't around, so he
never thought of him as that big man.
PLAYBOY: Do you agree with that assessment, John?
LENNON: A lot of us are looking for fathers. Mine was physically not
there. Most people's are not there mentally and physically, like always
at the office or busy
with other things. So all these leaders, parking meters, are all
substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political. . . . All
this bit about electing a President. We
pick our own daddy out of a dog pound of daddies. This is the daddy that
looks like the daddy in the commercials. He's got the nice gray hair and
the right teeth and
the parting's on the right side. OK? This is the daddy we choose. The dog
pound of daddies, which is the political arena, gives us a President,
then we put him on a
platform and start punishing him and screaming at him because Daddy can't
do miracles. Daddy doesn't heal us.
PLAYBOY: So Janov was a daddy for you. Who else?
ONO: Before, there was Maharishi.
LENNON: Maharishi was a father figure, Elvis Presley might have been a
father figure. I don't know. Robert Mitchum. Any male image is a father
figure. There's
nothing wrong with it until you give them the right to give you sort of a
recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good
piece of truth.
Instead of the truth's being looked at, the person who brought it is
looked at. The messenger is worshiped, instead of the message. So there
would be Christianity,
Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism -- everything --
it is always about a person and never about what he says.
ONO: All the isms are daddies. It's sad that society is structured in
such a way that people cannot really open up to each other, and therefore
they need a certain
theater to go to to cry or something like that.
LENNON: Well, you went to est.
ONO: Yes, I wanted to check it out.
LENNON: We went to Janov for the same reason.
ONO: But est people are given a reminder----
LENNON: Yeah, but I wouldn't go and sit in a room and not pee.
ONO: Well, you did in primal scream.
LENNON: Oh, but I had you with me.
ONO: Anyway, when I went to est, I saw Werner Erhardt, the same thing.
He's a nice showman and he's got a nice gig there. I felt the same thing
when we went to
Sai Baba in India. In India, you have to be a guru instead of a pop star.
Guru is the pop star of India and pop star is the guru here.
LENNON: But nobody's perfect, etc., etc. Whether it's Janov or Erhardt or
Maharishi or a Beatle. That doesn't take away from their message. It's
like learning how
to swim. The swimming is fine. But forget about the teacher. If the
Beatles had a message, it was that. With the Beatles, the records are the
point, not the Beatles as
individuals. You don't need the package, just as you don't need the
Christian package or the Marxist package to get the message. People
always got the image I was an
anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was
brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that
Christ was saying in
those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the
message.
PLAYBOY: And the Beatles taught people how to swim?
LENNON: If the Beatles or the Sixties had a message, it was to learn to
swim. Period. And once you learn to swim, swim. The people who are hung
up on the
Beatles' and the Sixties' dream missed the whole point when the Beatles'
and the Sixties' dream became the point. Carrying the Beatles' or the
Sixties' dream around all
your life is like carrying the Second World War and Glenn Miller around.
That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to
live in that dream is
the twilight zone. It's not living now. It's an illusion.
PLAYBOY: Yoko, the single you and John released from your album seems to
be looking toward the future.
ONO: Yes, "Starting Over" is a song that makes me feel like crying. John
has talked about the Sixties and how it gave us a taste for freedom --
sexual and otherwise.
It was like an orgy. Then, after that big come that we had together, men
and women somehow lost track of each other and a lot of families and
relationships split
apart. I really think that what happened in the Seventies can be compared
to what happened under Nazism with Jewish families. Only the force that
split them came
from the inside, not from the outside. We tried to rationalize it as the
price we were paying for our freedom. And John is saying in his song, OK,
we had the energy in
the Sixties, in the Seventies we separated, but let's start over in the
Eighties. He's reaching out to me, the woman. Reaching out after all
that's happened, over the
battlefield of dead families, is more difficult this time around.
On the other side of the record is my song, "Kiss Kiss Kiss," which is
the other side of the same question. There is the sound of a woman coming
to a climax on it,
and she is crying out to be held, to be touched. It will be
controversial, because people still feel it's less natural to hear the
sounds of a woman's lovemaking than, say,
the sound of a Concorde, killing the atmosphere and polluting nature.
Altogether, both sides are a prayer to change the Eighties.
PLAYBOY: What is the Eighties' dream to you, John?
LENNON: Well, you make your own dream. That's the Beatles' story, isn't
it? That's Yoko's story . That's what I'm saying now. Produce your own
dream. If you
want to save Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do anything, but
not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy
Carter or Ronald
Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come
and do it for you. You have to do it yourself. That's what the great
masters and
mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the
way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are
now called holy and
worshiped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the
instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always
will be. There's nothing new
under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it
for you. I can't wake you up. You can wake you up. I can't cure you. You
can cure you.
PLAYBOY: What is it that keeps people from accepting that message?
LENNON: It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be
frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams,
illusions, wars,
peace, love, hate, all that -- it's all illusion. Unknown is what what it
is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is
unknown -- then you're ahead of
the game. That's what it is. Right?