The Last Days of John Lennon Read online

  “The Stones were playing little clubs in London—doing Chuck Berry songs and blues and things—and we thought we were totally unique animals, [that] there was no one like us,” Mick Jagger says, reminiscing. “And then we heard there was a group from Liverpool. They had long hair, scruffy clothes and a record contract, and they had a record in the charts, with a bluesy harmonica on it, called ‘Love Me Do’—when I heard the combination of all these things, I was almost sick.”

  The two bands frequent the same clubs. Mick Jagger sees the Beatles out one night in their matching suede coats.

  “Fuckin’ hell! I want one of those coats,” he says. “I want a long coat like that, but to do that, I’ll have to earn money.”

  With a record climbing the charts, the Beatles are on their way.

  * * *

  “Love Me Do” rises to number 46 in Record Retailer.

  Then it goes to number 41.

  And it keeps climbing.

  “I was on my own at home this morning, and when I looked at the NME and saw we were in at 27 I was delirious,” Paul later says. “‘There it is! There we are!’ I was shaking.” Being on the charts is proof they’ve really made it. “Twenty-seven was the height.”

  Even when they return from another two-week gig back in Hamburg that Brian won’t let them out of, “Love Me Do” remains at number 27 on the NME top thirty and is still moving up other charts. At the end of December, they head back to Germany again for their fifth—and final—Hamburg gig.

  “We went in young boys,” John later says about their time in Hamburg, “and came out old men.”

  * * *

  The Beatles travel to London to meet with George Martin—and are stunned when the producer tells them, “I’m thinking we should make an album.”

  And not just any album. An album featuring their songs.

  The concept of singer-songwriters is still almost unheard of among their contemporaries, but John and Paul grab the chance with both hands.

  The question is, How will they determine credit? Anyone who gets credit will receive an additional—and with any luck, lucrative—future stream of income.

  Paul asks, “Without wanting to be too mean to George, should three of us write or would it be better to keep it simple?”

  John and Paul decide to keep it to the two of them and agree that they’ll be a songwriting duo called “Lennon and McCartney.” In a meeting with Brian, they lay out a plan. “Okay, what we’ll do is we’ll alternate it: Lennon and McCartney, McCartney and Lennon,” based on contribution. But it’s never put in writing, and the original credit order sticks. “I didn’t mind,” Paul claims. “It’s a good logo, like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Hammerstein and Rodgers doesn’t work.”

  Soon thereafter, George notices a shift in the band. “An attitude came over John and Paul of ‘We’re the grooves and you two just watch it,’” he’ll say later.

  On Monday, November 26, the Beatles head back into Studio Two to record “Please Please Me” and the B side, “Ask Me Why.”

  This time, there’s no drama. Buoyed by the success of “Love Me Do,” John and the boys feel relaxed. They have fun, and the chemistry they have onstage is with them in the studio.

  “The thing I like about the Beatles is their great sense of humor—and their talent, naturally,” George Martin tells journalist Alan Smith. “It’s a real pleasure to work with them because they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’ve got ability, but if they make mistakes they can joke about it. I think they’ll go a long way in show business.”

  The Beatles record both singles in the allotted three-hour time frame, and the producer watches from the control room. As they wrap up, he presses the Talkback key, and his posh voice comes into the studio: “Gentlemen, you’ve just made your first number one record.”

  Chapter 18

  I should have known better…

  —“I Should Have Known Better”

  The Beatles tour constantly throughout 1963. In January—as George Martin had rightly predicted—“Please Please Me” scores them the first of what will be twelve consecutive number-one songs.

  On a single day in February, they record ten more songs to fill out their first studio LP, Please Please Me. The tunes are a mix of Lennon-McCartney originals and covers of their favorite American R&B songs, including “Twist and Shout,” a hit the previous year by the Isley Brothers (later inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame by Beatles admirer Little Richard).

  John screams the lyrics of “Twist and Shout” with such raw intensity that everyone fears for his vocal cords. “I was always bitterly ashamed of it,” he’ll say later, “because I could sing it better than that.…You can hear that I’m just a frantic guy doing his best.” Decades later, Rolling Stone magazine readers vote the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” the third-best vocal performance in rock history.

  All four Beatles have aspirations to conquer the American charts. But there’s one fact the boys can’t escape: nearly every band from England has failed to make it there. The Beatles won’t tour America until they’ve achieved a number-one hit, John vows, later saying of the American audience, “We knew we would wipe you out if we could just get a grip on you. We were new.”

  George, though, brings back some daunting intelligence after a September 1963 visit to Benton, Illinois, where his sister, Louise, lives. “They don’t know us,” he reports. “It’s going to be hard.”

  But in England, it seems everyone knows them. When they return to Heathrow the following month after a tour of Sweden, the size of the crowds gathered to welcome them home astonishes even Ed Sullivan, whose eponymous variety show is among the most popular in America. Sullivan wagers that the excitement is translatable to the American market and invites the Beatles to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

  In November, they’ll play for royalty. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother asks the band to perform as part of a celebrity musical lineup that includes Marlene Dietrich and Burt Bacharach at her annual charity event. Her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, and Margaret’s husband, Lord Snowdon, also attend (Queen Elizabeth, pregnant with Prince Edward, does not). John makes sure the glittering show at Prince of Wales Theatre, in London’s West End, is unforgettable.

  “For our last number,” he announces from the stage with a mischievous grin, “I’d like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.”

  It is a cheeky thing to say (John originally told Brian he was going to ask the audience “to rattle their fucking jewelry”), but the audience is charmed.

  “The Beatles are most intriguing,” the Queen Mother pronounces, and the Daily Mirror exclaims, “How refreshing to see these rumbustious young Beatles take a middle-aged Royal Variety Performance by the scruff of their necks and have them beatling like teenagers.”

  The band closes out the year with a special supplement put out by the London Evening Standard declaring “1963…the Year of the Beatles.” They also set a national milestone: their second album, With the Beatles, released November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy is assassinated, is the first rock album in Britain to sell one million copies.

  On January 13, 1964, the single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is released in America.

  The next day, the band flies to Paris for a three-week booking at the prestigious Olympia theater. They check into the George V hotel.

  A French DJ sends over The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the folksinger’s second album. “For three weeks in Paris, we didn’t stop playing it,” John says. “We all went potty about Dylan.” He even has a leather cap identical to the one Dylan wears on the cover of his first album. “Everyone will think I copied it from him,” John laments.

  “Beat-les! Beat-les! Beat-les!” fans chorus outside the sold-out shows.

  The British press, ever skeptical that Beatlemania is likely to spread across the Channel—or the Atlantic Ocean—gathers at the hotel on J
anuary 17, where news is breaking. After just three days on sale, the Beatles’ new single has sold over 250,000 copies. Capitol Records telegrams Brian: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is the number-one single in America.

  According to road manager Mal Evans, the Beatles celebrate with their own brand of hijinks. “They always act this way when anything big happens—just a bunch of kids, jumping up and down with sheer delight. They felt this was the biggest thing that could have happened. And who could blame them.”

  Daily Express photographer Harry Benson witnesses the scene. “One morning, the press is invited up to their room and Paul says, ‘That was some pillow fight we had the other night,’” Benson recalls in a 2019 interview. “My eyes went up and I looked over at another photographer from the Daily Mail and I wondered if the bastard had picked up on it.”

  He hasn’t. Benson is alone in his quest for the perfect shot.

  “How about a pillow fight?” Benson asks the giddy band.

  “John looks away, grabs a pillow and comes back hitting Paul in the back of the head,” Benson recalls. “Now it’s game on.”

  December 6, 1980

  Society means nothing to me, except as a tool to be used, Mark tells himself as he leaves the YMCA. People are things, objects for my pleasure.

  He can fool anyone.

  Just like John Lennon fooled the world.

  The Dakota is only a few blocks away. As he walks, he sees Lennon’s face everywhere promoting his new release, Double Fantasy.

  He locks eyes on the image all over newsstands, record stores, and billboards. His target.

  It frightened him the first time he saw the Dakota, ringed by dozens of cast-iron black gargoyles, the creatures’ jaws open, bodies and tails curled around the railings.

  The more he studied the Gothic revival–style building, gazing deeply into the gaslit entryway, the more his fear turned to excitement. By the time he’d crossed the street, he felt like Dorothy approaching the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.

  As he draws closer, Mark sees three people gathered in front of the Dakota hoping to get a glimpse of Lennon—maybe even an autograph, if they’re lucky.

  He assesses the doorman, Jay, who’s too friendly to be any threat. Now that Mark has made up his mind to kill Lennon, no one can stop him, really.

  He notices a park bench across the street from the building. It’s the perfect vantage point to look up at the seventh floor, where Lennon lives with Yoko, his second wife.

  The shades and curtains are drawn, but Mark has no need to see inside. He has studied the details and photographs in a book about Lennon’s life at the Dakota. Lennon, he knows, often prowls around at night and sleeps through the day, so he could be up right now serving lunch to his young son, Sean.

  How can he get Lennon out of the apartment?

  A bomb threat would do it. Mark has done it before, back in Honolulu, when from a pay phone he called one in to the Ilikai Hotel. He watched the evacuation proceed before him, the sight made even more beautiful by the knowledge that he was in total control. The only greater thrill he could imagine was shooting the people as they came out one by one.

  But can he be sure that Lennon is even home?

  Mark looks over at the knot of fans. Only two remain, both women.

  He gets to his feet. As he crosses the street, hands in his pockets and gripping the gun, the piano intro to “Imagine” plays in his head.

  “Imagine if John Lennon was dead,” he sings under his breath. “It’s easy if you try…”

  Chapter 19

  Climb in the back with your head in the clouds…

  —“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

  In a way I’m sorry they’ve been so successful,” Brian Epstein—whom The Observer deems “a shrewd young man who has caught the lightning”—admits. “It’s just that I’m kept so busy managing their business affairs and I must share them with everybody.”

  It’s February 7, 1964, and the Beatles are aboard Pam Am flight 101 for their first trip to America. The flight’s packed with journalists such as twenty-two-year-old Maureen Cleave, from the Evening Standard, and Daily Express photographer Harry Benson.

  Even though Cynthia Lennon isn’t a Beatle, she’s one of the most famous passengers. Everyone in Britain now knows about her and the baby, thanks to the Express. The paper outed them last year with the headline BEATLE JOHN IS MARRIED.

  Their son, John Charles Julian, was born April 8, 1963, in Liverpool. Though they call him Julian, he has three legacy names—the first for his father, the second for Cynthia’s father, and finally for John’s mother. John was on the road and didn’t arrive at Sefton General Hospital until a week after his son was born. Brian volunteered to be Julian’s godfather.

  The revelation that John’s a husband and father just as the band is peaking in popularity prompted some damage control. In a prepared response published by Mirabelle magazine in October, John spoke of his present life on the road with the band and his past experiences, including being raised by Mimi and the devastating loss of his mother. The story ended with a confession about his new wife: “I’d like to tell you more about her but I’ve this old-fashioned idea that marriage is a private thing, too precious to be discussed publicly. So forgive me and understand.”

  On board Pan Am flight 101, baby Julian is sleeping against his mother. Attuned to John’s many moods (if not always the rationales behind them), Cyn puts her hand on his and asks, “What’s on your mind?”

  John flashes on a conversation he’d had with Sonny Freeman, the model wife of photographer Bob Freeman. Bob took the photo of the Beatles with their half-shaded faces for the cover of With the Beatles and its US counterpart, Meet the Beatles, released just two weeks earlier.

  John has spent many late nights in the Freemans’ wood-paneled apartment, “talking about things like life and death, the way you always do when you’re young.” He’s also shared his premonition that he’d lead a life cut short by a gunshot.

  “A bit nervous, is all,” John says.

  Though Beatlemania is in full swing back home, Capitol Records—EMI’s US counterpart—had only begrudgingly taken the Beatles on, with the proviso that the label be the one to choose the songs for American albums. While it still stings that Capitol turned them down—repeatedly—there are signs that the label is taking the Beatles seriously by mounting a national promotional campaign. They print and distribute five million stickers announcing THE BEATLES ARE COMING and give every single disc jockey in the United States a stack of Beatles records to play.

  Ahead of the American appearances, Capitol Records’ press release had announced Lennon as a “determined twenty-three-year-old whose somewhat stern face gives the impression of an angry young man.”

  And now that face is staring back at his wife.

  Cyn has brought along a stack of fan mail and reads aloud from the letter Sharon Flood of New York has written. “Perhaps you are not aware of this fact, but you are the first happy thing that has happened to us since the tragedy on November 22. You are the first spot of joy to come to a nation that is still very much in mourning, although the grief is personal and unpublicized.”

  The fan is referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963—not only the day EMI released With the Beatles in the UK but also the day Mike Wallace of the CBS Morning News gave the Beatles their American television debut. He aired a performance clip that was set to be rebroadcast by Walter Cronkite on the evening news—until the JFK tragedy struck and the clip was forgotten until December 10.

  That was nearly two months ago.

  On the transatlantic flight, Ringo struggles with the weight of the moment. As he later explains, “I felt as though there was a big octopus with tentacles that were dragging us down into New York.”

  Also on the flight is producer Phil Spector, who’d asked to catch a ride with the Beatles on the rationale that a jet carrying the British pop stars had to be crash-proof.

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p; He’s also a fan. “It’s obvious that Paul McCartney and John Lennon may be the greatest rock and roll singers that we’ve ever had,” Spector later tells Rolling Stone. “I mean there is a reason for the Beatles other than the fact that they’re like Rodgers and Hart and Hammerstein, Gershwin and all of ’em. They are great, great singers. They can do anything with their voices.”

  John and Spector start talking about a new group that Spector has befriended back in London: the Rolling Stones.

  John and the others met them last spring, on a Sunday night at a blues spot in suburban London called the Crawdaddy Club, where the Stones were the house band. The Beatles stopped by after taping the television music program Thank Your Lucky Stars. They were all impressed by the lead singer, Mike (soon to be known worldwide as “Mick”) Jagger, while John was especially drawn to Brian Jones’s technique on the harmonica.

  The two groups started hanging out a lot together backstage, and when the Stones admitted they didn’t have a follow-up to their debut single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” (which came and went), John offered them a Lennon-McCartney original—“I Wanna Be Your Man.”

  That night at the club, John relates, he and Paul “went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all just sitting there, talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, ‘Jesus, look at that. They just went over there and wrote it.’”