Playboy Interview 1980
Page 20
John: 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?
John: 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?"
John: 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?
John: I never saw him again until I made a lot of money and he came back.
Playboy: How old were you?
John: 24 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!?"
John: 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?
John: 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?
John: 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?"
John: 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?
John: Not really. If somebody gives me a joint, I might smoke it, but I don't go
after it.