Playboy Interview 1980
Page 10
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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.
John: 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?
Yoko: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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.
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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.
John: 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?