The Last Days of John Lennon Read online

  Those paying attention to the ongoing feud among the ex-Beatles can’t help but notice that this album, with its peace-loving title track, fires some vicious shots in the direction of John’s former musical partner. John would claim that Paul started it with his album Ram, which was released in May of 1971 and opens with a track that complains of “Too many people preaching practices”—widely interpreted (correctly, as Paul would later confirm) as criticism of John and Yoko’s activism. The cover art, aside from showing Paul grabbing a ram by the horns, includes a not-so-subtle photo of one beetle screwing another.

  Lo and behold, the Imagine album comes with a postcard depicting John parodying Paul’s cover pose by clutching a pig’s ears. That’s child’s play compared to the brutal assault of “How Do You Sleep?,” which namechecks several of Paul’s songs (“The only thing you done was yesterday…”) while declaring, “Those freaks was right when they said you was dead” and “The sound you make is Muzak to my ears.” Adding further injuries to the insults is that John’s musical accomplice is George Harrison, who serves up some wicked slide-guitar solos.

  Melody Maker isn’t shy about proclaiming a victor: “Lennon’s won, hands down.” In a piece titled “John Sings Long Track About Paul,” a New Musical Express writer states, “Listening to this LP [Imagine] is like hearing McCartney ballads, and McCartney rockers, the way McCartney should be doing them.”

  Paul presents a musical olive branch a couple of months later with the December 7 release of Wild Life, the hastily recorded debut of his new band, Wings (which features his wife, Linda, on keyboards). Although its concluding song, “Dear Friend,” apparently was recorded before the release of Imagine, Paul intends it as a peace offering to his longtime musical soul mate, singing, “I’m in love with a friend of mine.”

  Rolling Stone makes the distinction that while John seems eager “to represent himself as the spokesman for the politically conscious avant-garde,” Paul appears “content to make straightforward pop music, to entertain,” and that in answer to John’s musical query, Paul “apparently sleeps soundly.”

  December 7, 1980

  Mark puts on a bright, happy face as he approaches the doorman at Lennon’s building.

  “Is John Lennon around?” Mark asks casually.

  “Don’t really know; I think he may be outta town.”

  The doorman says the words by rote.

  They probably told him to say that.

  Mark feels certain that Lennon is home right now. His hand on the gun, he contemplates shooting the doorman and rushing inside. He knows exactly where Lennon lives, can reach the apartment easily.

  But what if Lennon isn’t home? What if Lennon’s door is locked? There are a dozen things that could go wrong. Best to be patient, wait for the man to show up outside—and Lennon will come outside at some point.

  I have all the time in the world. Lennon doesn’t.

  “Do you mind if I wait and see?”

  “It’s a public sidewalk,” the doorman replies. “As long as you don’t block the driveway, you can stand anywhere you want.”

  Mark waits with his copy of Double Fantasy.

  Three hours pass.

  Enough, he thinks. John Lennon is hardly the only celebrity in New York City.

  He takes a self-guided walk of fame and adds a sound track—his edited and altered versions of Beatles songs.

  He sees a crowded art gallery. He steps in, eyes peeled for celebrities or even rich people—though none of them is anywhere near as rich as Lennon.

  A group of people is huddled around two men. Probably famous artists, he thinks and, wondering who they are, moves closer. The crowd is so large he has to crane his neck.

  Mark spots two actors—Leslie Nielsen, whose Airplane! was last summer’s comedy blockbuster, and Robert Goulet, who starred in Camelot on Broadway.

  I can take anyone here.

  Mark puts his hand on the singer’s shoulder.

  Goulet pulls away and turns.

  “Excuse me?” Goulet says. “What is this?”

  “You’re no Lancelot,” Mark says to the dashing baritone.

  Goulet ignores the taunt. “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

  Mark’s hand is on the revolver. He imagines pulling it out and firing a shot into the actor’s face, blowing his brains across the canvas behind him.

  Goulet glares at him, then starts to turn his back.

  It’s like he’s daring me to do it.

  “Um, do you think we could take a quick picture?”

  Goulet is annoyed. Finally, he relents and faces Mark.

  “Well,” the actor says, “come on, then.”

  Mark’s hand grips the gun.

  He pulls out his camera, hands it to an onlooker, and poses next to Goulet while the photo is taken.

  Before Mark can shake the man’s hand, Goulet has moved away.

  Even though the man is famous, killing him won’t achieve the result he desires. The actor isn’t the purpose for his visit.

  Outside, Mark hails a cab.

  “I need to find a bookstore,” he tells the driver.

  “There’s one near the Sheraton. Hop in.”

  At the shop, Mark heads straight for the fiction section to buy a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, his favorite book. When he sees a photograph showing Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz, his favorite movie, he’s seized by inspiration.

  While standing in the checkout line, he’s jolted a second time. John Lennon’s name is on the cover of Playboy magazine. It’s the January issue, featuring Lennon’s interview with David Sheff.

  They’re coming together, he tells himself. History and time.

  Chapter 44

  Who on earth d’you think you are?

  A superstar?

  —“Instant Karma!”

  I wanna come home,” says twenty-nine-year-old John Sinclair.

  Thousands and thousands of people witness his plea, his face and voice broadcast on a thirty-foot screen inside the University of Michigan’s Crisler Arena, in Ann Arbor, in the early morning of December 11, 1971.

  Getting him home is why they’re all here. Fifteen thousand protesters pass joints around the smoke-filled stadium at a rally for Sinclair, who’s more than two years into a ten-year prison sentence for a minor drug conviction that involved two marijuana cigarettes and an undercover police officer.

  The political and musical roster kicked off at 8:00 p.m. on December 10 with speeches from activists such as Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Black Panther Bobby Seale and performances by artists ranging from Motown’s own Stevie Wonder to New York street musician David Peel.

  Now it’s after 3:00 a.m., and John and Yoko are still waiting for their cue to go on.

  But no one has been waiting for this moment as long as Sinclair, who’s already spent years behind bars (although not in maximum security). The prisoner—speaking via a telephone hookup from his prison work farm, around fifty miles from the stadium—is a cofounder of the White Panther Party, an antiracist offshoot of the Black Panthers, and is dubbed by Creem magazine the “High Priest of Heavy.”

  The crowd gathered at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally is mesmerized.

  So are the FBI informants embedded among them.

  John and Yoko—dressed, a reporter observes, “in matching black leather jackets, unzipped to reveal ‘Free John Now’ T-shirts”—follow David Peel onstage.

  In addition to being an activist, Sinclair is also known as a poet and a music reviewer and was the manager of the Detroit rock ’n’ roll band MC5. He’d once commented that “rock musicians are often old, retired, and forgotten by the time they’re thirty, and don’t even have the benefit of a pension.” With John Lennon now thirty-one and Yoko thirty-eight, the rockers Sinclair is counting on to save him have, by his own standards, already aged out.

  “Apathy won’t get us anywhere,” John tells the crowd. “So flower power failed, so what, let’s start again.” He pick
s up his acoustic guitar and launches into a set of four political songs, culminating with one he’s written called “John Sinclair,” with its imperative chorus, “Gotta, gotta, gotta set him free.”

  John later acknowledges that his radical period “almost ruined it [his music], in a way. It became journalism and not poetry.” But on this night, fans pass immediate and harsh judgment.

  They walk out.

  “It was a rational act,” Creem magazine writes in its review of the protest concert. “In a word, they were awful. The music was boring. And it was four a.m.”

  * * *

  Clack, clack, clack go the typewriters as FBI agents compile reports based on informants’ findings. The dossier is stamped CONFIDENTIAL and distributed to field offices in seven cities.

  Clipped into the file is the lackluster review of the performance in the Detroit News. “Yoko can’t even remain on key,” notes one complaint lodged against John’s tribute to Sinclair, which the article dubbed “an interesting piece, but lacking Lennon’s usual standards.”

  “Source advised this song [‘John Sinclair’] was composed by Lennon especially for this event,” the FBI report notes, a detail corroborated by the Detroit News—“They were so new that Lennon had to read the lyrics from a music stand as he sang.”

  “I wrote a ditty about John Sinclair and his plight,” John told event organizers. “I’d like to come there and perform it.”

  “I heard the song while I was in prison,” says Sinclair. “I made them bring me in a tape because I didn’t believe Lennon had written it and that he was coming to Ann Arbor to sing it. It was a beautiful thing to do,” he marvels.

  Despite its less than enthusiastic reception, and although the unpolished songs won’t be released by Apple until the following June (September in the UK), on John and Yoko’s 1972 political double album, Some Time in New York City, the raw performance spurs the desired effect.

  Within a week, the Michigan Supreme Court rules the state’s marijuana laws unconstitutional, and the poet-activist becomes a free man.

  “It was the culmination of two and a half years of agitating and organizing to get me out,” Sinclair says of his release. “I just lucked into Lennon hearing about it and wanting to help. That meant a lot to me.”

  The idea that John has the kind of star power to influence cases like Sinclair’s, however, is exactly what the Nixon administration fears most. They wanted him stifled.

  Gone.

  Out.

  December 7, 1980

  Mark is lying on his hotel bed, staring up at the ceiling, when someone knocks on his door.

  The young blonde standing in the hallway is wearing a green dress that hugs her generous curves. She swallows nervously, and when she says hello, he catches a European accent. German, he thinks.

  Good. He specifically told the madam who ran the escort service listed in the Manhattan Yellow Pages that he wanted a woman who came from another country—and she had to be quiet. He didn’t want someone who talked.

  Mark invites her inside. Her eyes flit across the room, looking for signs of trouble.

  “I’m not kinky. I’m clean,” he tells her. “I’m not a weirdo.”

  He explains that he hasn’t asked her here for sex.

  “I just want to be in the company of a woman tonight,” he says. “I’m expecting that tomorrow will be a very difficult day for me. Now take off your clothes and get in bed.”

  She obeys. Mark disrobes and joins her.

  The woman is clearly nervous. He gives her a massage. It takes a considerable amount of time to get her to relax. To trust him.

  He moves his head closer to hers and whispers, “A real man doesn’t have to use a woman. A real man doesn’t have to take from a woman. He can give.”

  She begins to touch him. Her hand softly brushes up against his erection.

  It’s both pleasing and terrifying.

  He enjoys women, but he has never enjoyed intercourse, even with his wife. That warm, wet cleft between a woman’s legs is the entryway to a world he doesn’t understand—a place that reminds him of a black hole that can swallow him if he isn’t careful.

  Mark lies on his back. As the woman begins moving her hand, his wife, Gloria, enters his mind, and he starts to lose his erection.

  He closes his eyes and tries to push the image of Gloria away, but for some reason she won’t leave.

  He stares at the prostitute’s neck, and he thinks of Gloria—all those times he’d grab her and throw her up against the wall when she disobeyed him or questioned something he did. Sometimes he’d spit on her.

  Hit her.

  His erection returns.

  The young woman’s neck is so delicate. He imagines himself snapping it. “It’s easy if you try…”

  That makes him giggle.

  Makes him think of Lennon across the park in his castle.

  But not for long.

  He imagines he’s John Lennon and that the woman touching him is Yoko. He sees himself as important because he is important.

  And come tomorrow, the whole world will know.

  The prostitute slips out of bed and pulls her dress over her head. It’s 3:00 a.m.

  “Your dress is the same color that the woman wore for Holden Caulfield,” Mark says. “It’s synchronicity.”

  “Who is Holden Caulfield?”

  “The main character from The Catcher in the Rye.” He studies her for a moment. “You haven’t read it?”

  She shakes her head.

  He sighs. So many people don’t read anymore. “It’s a wonderful story about a teenager who goes insane because he can’t cope that there’s no love in the world.”

  She stares at him, dumbfounded, maybe even a bit frightened; he’s not sure.

  He smiles. “You should read it,” he says as he pays her. “The book holds many answers.”

  After she leaves, he grabs his Bible and opens it to the New Testament.

  The title “The Gospel According to John” jumps out at him from the page, as if it’s glowing.

  He studies the words for what seems like hours. Then he adds Lennon’s name to the page in blood-red ink.

  Chapter 45

  I might not give the answer that you want me to.

  —“Oh Well”

  In August of 1971, John Dean, counsel to the president, had written a memo headed “Dealing with Our Political Enemies,” proposing to Nixon, “We can use the available political machinery to screw our political enemies.”

  Six months after Dean wrote that memo, US senator Strom Thurmond answers with one of his own. On February 4, 1972, in his capacity as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thurmond—a Nixon loyalist who represents South Carolina, one of the Bible Belt states caught up in the August 1966 “Beatles bonfires” controversy—forwards to Attorney General John Mitchell a report he’s overseen for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

  “This appears to me to be an important matter, and I think it would be well for it to be considered at the highest level,” the senator writes. “As I can see, many headaches might be avoided if appropriate action can be taken in time.”

  The report’s chief finding: that John Lennon qualifies as one of said political enemies and that his association with “New Left leaders” links him to these “strong advocates of the program to ‘dump Nixon.’”

  And the “political machinery” available to “screw” him? “If Lennon’s visa is terminated, it would be a strategy counter-measure,” Thurmond recommends.

  John and Yoko’s original six-month visas are set to expire on February 29, 1972. They are granted a two-week extension, but Yoko hasn’t been able to reunite with her daughter. Even though on March 3 yet another court determines that Yoko has custody, Kyoko’s father, Tony Cox, has once again taken the girl and vanished. “It was terrible. I didn’t know where she was. It was a kidnapping and a very difficult situation,” Yoko recalls.

  On March 6, Thurmond is notified that his “previou
s inquiry concerning the former member of the Beatles, John Lennon” has been looked into, and “the Immigration and Naturalization Service has served notice on him that he is to leave this country no later than March 15.”

  At the urging of John’s business manager, Allen Klein, Leon Wildes, the thirty-nine-year-old president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, takes on the case. Though he has “never heard of John Lennon, much less Yoko Ono,” Wildes is confident that he can reverse the canceled extension of his clients’ visas, and on March 16 the US immigration authorities grant them four additional weeks.

  But Wildes has the sense that “they were out to get John and Yoko from the first moment I got into the case.”

  Ever since Nixon first opened it, in 1969, John’s FBI file has been growing. When John spoke on the 6:00 p.m. edition of WABC-TV’s Eyewitness News on January 11 about a press conference where he, Yoko, and Jerry Rubin appeared, a special agent amended his event report to the special agent in charge of the New York FBI office with the urgent notation “All extremists should be considered dangerous.”

  Yet on February 23, a confidential informant filed a contradictory report. An “unnamed person” who had engaged in “numerous conversations with John Lennon and his wife about becoming active in the New Left movement in the United States” noted that “Lennon and his wife seem uninterested…Lennon and his wife are passé about United States politics.”

  Wilde places a call to the district director of immigration, who confirms the lawyer’s suspicions. “The situation in Washington vis-à-vis your clients is not a healthy one,” the official says. “They will not be given any further extensions and I suggest you tell them to get the hell out.”

  Get the hell out is what John and Yoko would like to say to the people they keep seeing outside their apartment. Though one February FBI report mangled their home address as “St. Regis Hotel, 150 Bank Street” (they’d left the hotel for their 105 Bank Street apartment four months earlier), they’re nevertheless subject to ongoing observation by “large men in glasses across the street” and “an agent behind every mail box.” It seems so over the top that when John first complained to his journalist friend Ray Connolly that his phones were being tapped, Connolly brushed it off. “I thought he was being paranoid. He sometimes was, but not this time,” Connolly later wrote.