Playboy Interview 1980
Page 13
John: He doesn't differentiate between
the Beatles and Daddy and Mommy. He thinks Yoko was a Beatle, too. I don't have
Beatle records on the jukebox he listens to. He's more exposed to early rock 'n'
roll. He's into "Hound Dog." He thinks it's about hunting. Sean's not
going to public school, by the way. We feel he can learn the three Rs when he
wants to - or when the law says he has to, I suppose. I'm not going to fight it.
Otherwise, there's no reason for him to be learning to sit still. I can't see
any reason for it. Sean now has plenty of child companionship, which everybody
says is important, but he also is with adults a lot. He's adjusted to both. The
reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of
bringing them up. Everybody's too scared to deal with children all the time, so
we reject them and send them away and torture them. The ones who survive are the
conformists - their bodies are cut to the size of the suits - the ones we label
good. The ones who don't fit the suits either are put in mental homes or become
artists.
Playboy: Your son, Julian, from your first marriage must be in his teens. Have
you seen him over the years?
John: Well, Cyn got possession, or whatever you call it. I got rights to see him
on his holidays and all that business, and at least there's an open line still
going. It's not the best relationship between father and son, but it is there.
He's 17 now. Julian and I will have a relationship in the future. Over the
years, he's been able to see through the Beatle image and to see through the
image that his mother will have given him, subconsciously or consciously. He's
interested in girls and autobikes now. I'm just sort of a figure in the sky, but
he's obliged to communicate with me, even when he probably doesn't want to.
Playboy: You're being very honest about your feelings toward him to the point of
saying that Sean is your first child. Are you concerned about hurting him?
John: I'm not going to lie to Julian. Ninety percent of the people on this
planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whiskey on a
Saturday night, and there was no intent to have children. So 90 percent of us -
that includes everybody - were accidents. I don't know anybody who was a planned
child. All of us were Saturday-night specials. Julian is in the majority, along
with me and everybody else. Sean is a planned child, and therein lies the
difference. I don't love Julian any less as a child. He's still my son, whether
he came from a bottle of whiskey or because they didn't have pills in those
days. He's here, he belongs to me and he always will.
Playboy: Yoko, your relationship with your daughter has been much rockier.
Yoko: I lost Kyoko when she was about five. I was sort of an offbeat mother, but
we had very good communication. I wasn't particularly taking care of her, but
she was always with me - onstage or at gallery shows, whatever. When she was not
even a year old, I took her onstage as an instrument - an uncontrollable
instrument, you know. My communication with her was on the level of sharing
conversation and doing things. She was closer to my ex-husband because of that.
Playboy: What happened when she was five?
Yoko: John and I got together and I separated from my ex- husband [Tony Cox]. He
took Kyoko away. It became a case of parent kidnaping and we tried to get her
back.
John: It was a classic case of men being macho. It turned into me and Allen
Klein trying to dominate Tony Cox. Tony's attitude was, "You got my wife,
but you won't get my child." In this battle, Yoko and the child were
absolutely forgotten. I've always felt bad about it. It became a case of the
shoot-out at the O.K. Corral: Cox fled to the hills and hid out and the sheriff
and I tracked him down. First we won custody in court. Yoko didn't want to go to
court, but the men, Klein and I, did it anyway.
Yoko: Allen called up one day, saying I won the court case. He gave me a piece
of paper. I said, "What is this piece of paper? Is this what I won? I don't
have my child." I knew that taking them to court would frighten them and,
of course, it did frighten them. So Tony vanished. He was very strong, thinking
that the capitalists, with their money and lawyers and detectives, were pursuing
him. It made him stronger.
John: We chased him all over the world. God knows where he went. So if you're
reading this, Tony, let's grow up about it. It's gone. We don't want to chase
you anymore, because we've done enough damage.
Yoko: We also had private detectives chasing Kyoko, which I thought was a bad
trip, too. One guy came to report, "It was great! We almost had them. We
were just behind them in a car, but they sped up and got away." I went
hysterical. "What do you mean you almost got them? We are talking about my
child!"
John: It was like we were after an escaped convict.
Playboy: Were you so persistent because you felt you were better for Kyoko?
John: Yoko got steamed into a guilt thing that if she wasn't attacking them with
detectives and police and the FBI, then she wasn't a good mother looking for her
baby. She kept saying, "Leave them alone, leave them alone," but they
said you can't do that.
Yoko: For me, it was like they just disappeared from my life. Part of me left
with them.
Playboy: How old is she now?