The Last Days of John Lennon Read online

  “putting a microphone at the tail end of a 747 jet”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 150.

  “I used to have to follow their three bums wiggling”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 150.

  “I fell in love with Hollywood then”: Jordan Runtagh, “Eight Days a Week: The Beatles’ Touring History in 8 Concerts,” People, November 21, 2017.

  “John grabbed Mansfield and they started making out like mad”: Spitz, The Beatles, 530.

  “sitting on the plane, reading the paper and there was the photo of me”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 150.

  “‘You guys never go out anywhere’”: Spitz, The Beatles, 530–31.

  “that Bob Dylan wrote poetry added to his appeal”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 158.

  on Freewheelin’, he wrote twelve of thirteen: Alan Light, “‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’: Inside His First Classic,” Rolling Stone, May 26, 2013.

  “Congratulations from the Beatles (a group)”: Obituaries: “Mickie Most: Record Producer Who Scored Hit After Hit,” The Independent, June 2, 2003.

  double entendre: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.

  “Zimmerman is his name. My name isn’t John Beatle”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “the crowning achievement”: Valerie J. Nelson, “Al Aronowitz, 77; Rock Writer Introduced Dylan to Beatles,” Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2005.

  “cheap wine”: Norman, John Lennon, 375.

  “I get high, I get high”: Norman, John Lennon, 375.

  “royal taster”: Norman, John Lennon, 376.

  “This is Beatlemania here”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 158.

  “That was a hell of a night”: Derek Taylor, Fifty Years Adrift, edited and annotated by George Harrison (London: Genesis Publications, 1984), quoted in “Bob Dylan turned the Beatles on to cannabis,” BeatlesBible.com.

  “Paul came up to me and hugged me for ten minutes”: Andy Greene, “6 Things We Learned from the New Bob Dylan Tell-All,” Rolling Stone, September 9, 2014.

  “smoking dope, drinking wine, and generally being rock ’n’ rollers”: Jeff Giles, “55 Years Ago: Bob Dylan Introduces the Beatles to Marijuana,” UltimateClassicRock.com, August 28, 2015.

  Chapter 23

  “John was basically a lazy bastard”: Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 224.

  “I wanted to live in London”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), 159.

  number 1 in both America and Britain: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 294.

  “We struggled to record it and struggled to make it into a song”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 160.

  “looks, frankly, knackered”: “The Beatles: Beatles for Sale Review,” BBC.co.uk.

  “I started thinking about my own emotions”: Jann S. Wenner, “Lennon Remembers, Part Two,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.

  “Prellies”: Dan McQuade, “The Drug That Helped Turn the Beatles into the World’s Greatest Band,” Village Voice, August 14, 2014.

  “on pot”: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.

  “a happy high”: Norman, Paul McCartney, 219.

  “smoking pot for breakfast”: Scott Beauchamp and Alex Shephard, “Bob Dylan and John Lennon’s Weird, One-Sided Relationship,” The Atlantic, September 24, 2012.

  to avoid arousing suspicion: Norman, John Lennon, 396.

  “I’ve always needed a drug to survive”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “Let’s go”: Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me (New York: Crown Archetype, 2007), 101.

  London dentist John Riley: Mikal Gilmore, “Beatles’ Acid Test: How LSD Opened the Door to ‘Revolver,’” Rolling Stone, August 25, 2016.

  Klaus Voormann’s new band: Norman, John Lennon, 422.

  “You haven’t had any coffee yet”: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 101.

  “These friends of ours are going to be on soon”: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 101.

  “I advise you not to leave”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “It was in the coffee”: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 101.

  “How dare you fucking do this to us!”: Gilmore, “Beatles’ Acid Test.”

  “I think he thought that there was going to be a big gang bang”: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, “The Oral History of the First Two Times the Beatles Took Acid,” Vice.com, December 4, 2016.

  Pattie’s orange Mini Cooper: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 101.

  “All the way the car felt smaller and smaller”: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 101.

  “suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a horror film”: McNeil and McCain, “The Oral History.”

  “We were cackling in the streets”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “as if I had never tasted, talked, seen, thought or heard properly before”: Boyd, Wonderful Tonight, 102.

  “just a little red light”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  John’s favorite book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Norman, John Lennon, 423.

  “ten miles an hour, but it seemed like a thousand”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “a big submarine”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “God, it was just terrifying, but it was fantastic”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  Chapter 24

  “my fat Elvis period”: David Sheff, “Playboy Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono,” Playboy, January 1981.

  “get together and knock off a few songs, just like a job”: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.

  “Because John sang it, you might have to give him 60 percent of it”: David Rybaczewski, “Ticket to Ride,” Beatlesebooks.com.

  “That’s me, one of the earliest heavy-metal records”: Sheff, “Playboy Interview.”

  “lowered his glasses”: Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 221.

  “the John Lennon he was frightened to reveal to the world”: Norman, Paul McCartney, 221.

  “why we never improved as musicians”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “I got out of bed, sat at the piano”: Alice Vincent, “Yesterday: The Song That Started as Scrambled Eggs,” The Telegraph, June 18, 2015.

  “You’d think he was Beethoven or somebody!”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), 175.

  “The song was around for months and months”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 175.

  “I was sorry, in a way, because we had so many laughs about it”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology, 175.

  “We have a winner with that ‘Yesterday’”: Vincent, “Yesterday.”

  “I had nothing to do with”: Jann S. Wenner, “Lennon Remembers, Part Two,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.

  Chapter 25

  “they’ve got the cops moaning the blues”: Michael Perlman, “When the Beatles Landed at Forest Hills Stadium,” ForestHillsStadium.com, January 31, 2018.

  PAUL, THROW US A KISS, RINGO, THROW US A RING: John McGee and Leeds Moberly, “The Beatles Play at Shea Stadium in 1965,” Daily News (New York), August 16, 1965, reprinted August 14, 2015.

  “It’s the top of the mountain, Sid”: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 403.

  Olympic-size swimming pool: Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Back Bay, 2006), 578.

  “The only fun part was the hotels in the evening, smoking pot and that”: Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 206.

  an overwhelming feeling of well-being: Mikal Gilmore, “Beatles’ Acid Test: Ho
w LSD Opened the Door to ‘Revolver,’” Rolling Stone, August 25, 2016.

  “a kid who played guitar”: Carol Clerk, “George Harrison,” Uncut, February 2002.

  “a very interesting relationship”: Norman, John Lennon, 426.

  “We are probably the most cracked”: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.

  “we couldn’t relate”: Spitz, The Beatles, 580.

  “felt very left out”: Philip Norman, Paul McCartney: The Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2016), 223.

  “‘Beware the demon drug’”: Norman, Paul McCartney, 223.

  “We’re taking it and you’re not”: Norman, Paul McCartney, 223.

  a helicopter flying far too close: Spitz, The Beatles, 580.

  “Hello, fellas, you dirty bastards!”: Rex Reed, “‘Holden Caulfield at 27’: Esquire’s 1968 Profile of Peter Fonda,” Esquire.com, August 17, 2019.

  “You have to be a bastard to make it”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “I know what it’s like to be dead, man”: Spitz, The Beatles, 581.

  “We gave the whole of our youth to the Beatles”: John Lennon, The John Lennon Letters, edited by Hunter Davies (New York: Little, Brown, 2012), 89.

  “touring was a relief, just to get out of Liverpool”: Davies, The Beatles, 171.

  “I spend hours in dressing rooms and things thinking about the times I’ve wasted”: Lennon, The John Lennon Letters, 89.

  Chapter 26

  an MBE has never before been given to anyone under the age of twenty-five: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 400.

  “a mockery of everything this country stands for”: Dave Lifton, “The Day the Beatles Received Their MBEs,” UltimateClassicRock.com, October 26, 2015.

  “They’ve not been a bad example to anybody”: “Should the Beatles Have Been Awarded MBEs?,” BBC.co.uk, October 26, 2015.

  “They should have got it and I think they’re great!” “Should the Beatles Have Been Awarded MBEs?”

  “part of the game we’d agreed to play”: Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 207.

  “when you are being decorated, you don’t laugh anymore”: The Beatles, The Beatles Anthology (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000), 181.

  “can’t help being impressed when you’re in the palace”: The Beatles, The Beatles, 181.

  “You deserve this far more than I do”: Rupert Christiansen, The Complete Book of Aunts (New York: Twelve, 2007), 38.

  “We just idolized the guy so much”: Michael K. Bohn, “50 Years Ago: When the Beatles Met Elvis,” Daily Gazette (Schenectady, New York), August 7, 2015.

  “We were all major fans, so it was hero worship of a high degree”: Frank Mastropolo, “The Day the Beatles Met Elvis,” UltimateClassicRock.com, August 27, 2015.

  “another dirty big publicity circus”: Ian Youngs, “When the Beatles Met Elvis Presley,” BBC News, October 5, 2011.

  It’s Elvis! It’s Elvis!: Francis Schoenberger, “He Said, She Said: An Interview with John Lennon,” Spin, October 9, 2019 (reprint of 1975 interview).

  “like subjects calling on the King”: Bohn, “50 Years Ago.”

  “the backbeat with his fingers on the nearest bits of wooden furniture”: Youngs, “When the Beatles Met Elvis Presley.”

  “trying to suss out from the gang if anybody had any reefers”: Mastropolo, “The Day the Beatles Met Elvis.”

  “Elvis was stoned”: Youngs, “When the Beatles Met Elvis Presley.”

  Chapter 27

  “No wonder you can only rock”: Keith Richards, Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2010), 207.

  the Stones’ first number-one hit in America: Rich Cohen, “How the Rolling Stones Found ‘Satisfaction,’” Slate, May 10, 2016.

  “I wrote ‘Satisfaction’ in my sleep”: Cohen, “How the Rolling Stones Found ‘Satisfaction.’”

  writes the song in minutes: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 417.

  “It was a two-way thing”: Rob Sheffield, “50 Years of ‘Rubber Soul’: How the Beatles Invented the Future of Pop,” Rolling Stone, December 3, 2015.

  In one week, the Beatles come up with seven songs: Sheffield, “50 Years of ‘Rubber Soul.’”

  “a completely impractical man”: Norman, John Lennon, 410.

  “Something doesn’t sound quite right”: Norman, John Lennon, 412.

  “just take care of your percentage and leave us to worry about the music”: Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon: A Restless Life (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018), 155.

  on November 12, the album is finished: Sheffield, “50 Years of ‘Rubber Soul.’”

  “We should call it the Pot Album”: Norman, John Lennon, 415.

  “Well, you know they’re good—but it’s plastic soul”: David Rybaczewski, “‘Rubber Soul’ History,” Beatlesebooks.com.

  Chapter 28

  told his life story to Tit-Bits: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 420.

  “Rubber Soul broke everything open”: Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Back Bay, 2006), 595.

  “the ignoble Alf”: Michael Braun, “Love Me Do!”: The Beatles’ Progress (Los Angeles and New York: Graymalkin Media, 2019), 43.

  “I don’t feel as if I owe him anything”: Braun, “Love Me Do!,” 64.

  “It wasn’t what you would call a happy reunion”: Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon: A Restless Life (New York: Pegasus Books, 2018), 179.

  “What do you want, then?” Connolly, Being John Lennon, 179.

  “made me get my teeth seen to”: Hunter Davies, The Beatles: The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 240.

  “only the second time in my life I’d seen him”: Maureen Cleave, “How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This,” Evening Standard, March 4, 1966.

  an accusation Alf’s manager later repeats: Tony Cartwright, “How Lennon Sabotaged His Dishwasher Dad’s Bid to Be a Pop Star: Close Friend Tells Story of the Beatle’s Hard-Drinking Father,” Daily Mail, July 30, 2012.

  “I had too many father figures”: Jann S. Wenner, “Lennon Remembers: Part Two,” Rolling Stone, February 4, 1971.

  “I’m not the greatest dad on earth; I’m doing me best”: Jonathan Cott, “John Lennon: The Last Interview,” Rolling Stone, December 23, 2010.

  “a lot of early childhood was coming out”: Jann Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview: John Lennon, Part One—The Working Class Hero,” Rolling Stone, January 1971.

  relax, float downstream: Norman, John Lennon, 421.

  “I should destroy my ego and I did”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  “the acid album”: Norman, John Lennon, 432.

  covers for four British Beatles albums: Matt Schudel, “Robert Freeman, Photographer Who Helped Define the Image of the Beatles, Dies at 82,” Washington Post, November 9, 2019.

  “eating acid all the time”: Wenner, “The Rolling Stone Interview.”

  —

  “You gals are waiting for someone, I bet”: Jack Jones, Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, the Man Who Killed John Lennon (New York: Villard Books, 1992), 8.

  When he met Gloria: CNN Special Report: Killing John Lennon, CNN.com, December 8, 2015.

  “As a matter of fact”: Jones, Let Me Take You Down, 8.

  “I bet nobody ever said that to you before”: Jones, Let Me Take You Down, 8.

  “I heard John Lennon lives here”: Jones, Let Me Take You Down, 8.

  the presents: Vicki Sheff, “The Betrayal of John Lennon,” Playboy, March 1984.

  Imagines himself leaning forward to kiss Yoko: Clyde Haberman, “Of Lennon, Time, Loss and Parole,” New York Times, September 30, 2000.

  Chapter 29

  “How Does a Beatle Live?”: Maureen Cleave, “How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This,” Evening Standard, Mar
ch 4, 1966.

  “Christianity will go”: Cleave, “How Does a Beatle Live?”

  “We’re more popular than Jesus now”: Cleave, “How Does a Beatle Live?”

  “And then it just vanished”: “The Beatles—A Day in the Life: March 4, 1966,” BeatlesRadio.com.

  “I’d watched people worshipping like gods, four Beatles”: Jordan Runtagh, “Inside Beatles’ Bloody, Banned ‘Butcher’ Cover,” Rolling Stone, June 20, 2016.

  “There we were, supposed to be sort of angels”: Philip Norman, John Lennon: The Life (New York: Ecco, 2008), 444.

  “fed up with taking squeaky-clean pictures”: Runtagh, “Inside Beatles’ Bloody, Banned ‘Butcher’ Cover.”

  “It was just dolls and a lot of meat”: Runtagh, “Inside Beatles’ Bloody, Banned ‘Butcher’ Cover.”

  750,000 albums: Norman, John Lennon, 445.

  “It’s as relevant as Vietnam”: Runtagh, “Inside Beatles’ Bloody, Banned ‘Butcher’ Cover.”

  a money loser for Capitol: Douglas Martin, “Robert Whitaker, the Beatles’ Photographer, Dies at 71,” New York Times, October 1, 2011.

  the band’s nickname, the Fab Four: Allan Kozinn, “Tony Barrow, Beatles Publicist Who Coined the Term ‘Fab Four,’ Dies at 80,” New York Times, May 16, 2016.

  “the sort of thing DATEbook likes to use”: Jordan Runtagh, “When John Lennon’s ‘More Popular Than Jesus’ Controversy Turned Ugly,” Rolling Stone, July 29, 2016.

  “our fantastic Beatles boycott is still in effect”: “John Lennon Sparks His First Major Controversy,” History.com, November 16, 2009.

  “your Beatles records and Beatles paraphernalia”: “John Lennon Sparks His First Major Controversy.”

  Chapter 30

  “the Beatle grinder”: Jack Doyle, “Burn the Beatles, 1966: Bigger Than Jesus?,” PopHistoryDig.com, October 11, 2017.