Speaker 1: Blood on the Tracks is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Double Elvis. John Lennon was a musical genius
Speaker 1: and one of the most beloved cultural figures of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. His songs inspired dreamers to imagine, his search
Speaker 1: for the truth gave power to the people. But some
Speaker 1: thought he dreamed too much. Others thought he was too powerful.
Speaker 1: So he was followed, he was threatened, he was declared
Speaker 1: a danger to the United States, and in night he
Speaker 1: was assassinated. This is his story told by his so
Speaker 1: called friends. This especial agent Jim Steele with the Federal
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation work in case number double oh nine
Speaker 1: dash zero eight dash zero four nine one. Case subject
Speaker 1: is Lennon, John Winston on no. This information pertains to
Speaker 1: a period ending August seventy four. Interview subject is Nixon
Speaker 1: Richard Millhouse interview number zero dash aid zero dash December.
Speaker 1: I do not consider myself to be anything but an
Speaker 1: average person. None of us should, really, although we all
Speaker 1: think we're a little smarter than we actually are to
Speaker 1: be at the unhappiest people in the world are people
Speaker 1: on the self coase To Ference in Newport and Palm
Speaker 1: Springs and Palm Beach, going to parties every night, playing
Speaker 1: golf and then bridge, drinking too much, talking too much,
Speaker 1: thinking too little, no purpose. I feel the life of
Speaker 1: our purpose, life in which an individual is forced to
Speaker 1: go against his intuition about what he thinks he ought
Speaker 1: to do. That's where life becomes almost unbearable, not having
Speaker 1: anything to look for. It could be a dur an experience.
Speaker 1: It may have looked like Johnny and believe in the
Speaker 1: courage of his convictions. But I believe he was forced
Speaker 1: to go against his intuition. He didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was doing. What makes life means something? This purpose a gold,
Speaker 1: a battle, a struggy even if you don't win it,
Speaker 1: even if when you look back on the path you
Speaker 1: took to arrive at the end of That's drubble, all
Speaker 1: you could see is bought on the tracks h Chapter two.
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Richard Nixon. I think it's only human
Speaker 1: nature to be myopic. We see things how we want
Speaker 1: to see them. We remember things the way we thought
Speaker 1: they happened. So of course it's only natural that when
Speaker 1: you think about me and my presidency and my legacy,
Speaker 1: there are things that immediately come to your mind. There's
Speaker 1: a narrative, and in that narrative, I'm either a crook
Speaker 1: or a villain, or some sort of metaphorical blight on
Speaker 1: the history of our great country. Offered were a little smartly.
Speaker 1: I'm an adjective now Nicksonian. And believe me when I
Speaker 1: tell you that resigning the opposite of the president was
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult. You can't begin to imagine how difficult it was.
Speaker 1: I felt like I had no purpose. That's from words
Speaker 1: people's able should burrow. The history was truly written by
Speaker 1: the victors, and I believe that it is well. The
Speaker 1: victors are just as myopic as any of us. The
Speaker 1: victors don't remember the remarkable things that I was able
Speaker 1: to accomplish as president, the things my administration accomplished. We
Speaker 1: extended the Voting Rights Act, We signed the Clean Air
Speaker 1: Act into law and the Water Pollution Control Act. We
Speaker 1: established the Environmental Protection Agency for crying out aloud, We
Speaker 1: made diplomatic progress with Moscow and Beijing. We wanted to
Speaker 1: bring the Cold War to an end. We set up
Speaker 1: an Office of Consumer Affairs in the White House, expanded
Speaker 1: the National Park System, created OSHA, reduced the voting age
Speaker 1: to eighteen and dramatically increased funding to the arts and
Speaker 1: public broadcasting. Not Kennedy, not Johnson. My administration history is
Speaker 1: to find me not as a progressive, but as a boogeyman.
Speaker 1: They've been calling me tricky dick for years, ever since
Speaker 1: the election in nineteen fifty when I became a state senator.
Speaker 1: When I was president, I brought massive health care reform
Speaker 1: at the table, and you know what happened. The Democrats
Speaker 1: have posted I'm talking sweeping reform, the very kind of
Speaker 1: reform that the Democrats have been fighting for for years.
Speaker 1: I gave it to them on a silver platter. But
Speaker 1: they didn't want it because it came from me, a Republican, sure,
Speaker 1: and not just any Republican, but the Republican who had
Speaker 1: been beaten in the past by Kennedy and that many
Speaker 1: saw as a prior. That's politics, and especially in politics,
Speaker 1: people put other people into these predefined boxes, and you
Speaker 1: can't ever change because if you change, then you're betraying
Speaker 1: the confines of that little box, thereby betraying what has
Speaker 1: been defined as you. Now, maybe my own view of
Speaker 1: John Lennon was myopic thing what an average person. Maybe
Speaker 1: I put him in a box based on who or
Speaker 1: what I thought it was. But you must remember this
Speaker 1: is a very turbulent time in America's history. The radical
Speaker 1: left was encouraging the masses that kildnap ambassadors to hijack
Speaker 1: planes to blow up buildings as protest. So many planes
Speaker 1: were hijacked in the late sixties in early seventies at
Speaker 1: the Secret Service forbade my family from flying on any
Speaker 1: commercial airlines. And then that mess with the weather underground
Speaker 1: making bombs in the basement of a village townhouse. One
Speaker 1: of those damned things won't off and destroyed the building
Speaker 1: all four stories. People think I was out of touch,
Speaker 1: but I was paying attention. I heard Lennon's song give
Speaker 1: Me Some Truth. He's fed up. In that song, he
Speaker 1: called politicians psychotic, said we were the blind leading the blind.
Speaker 1: He enjoyed attacking me personally. Do you see the back
Speaker 1: cover of his album where it's a doctored photo of
Speaker 1: me and mild dancing naked together. But that give Me
Speaker 1: Some truthful? That was a call to arms. I believe
Speaker 1: John wanted to provoke people and get them fired up.
Speaker 1: The John Tour to these conditions. He wanted an uprising.
Speaker 1: There was a clear and present danger to America, to
Speaker 1: me and to my family. All of the songs from
Speaker 1: this period recalls to arms. If you think they'd give
Speaker 1: piece a chance as a peaceful song, you need to
Speaker 1: wake up. That's that myopic thinking again. That is a
Speaker 1: song specifically intended to incite a riot, to get people mobilized,
Speaker 1: to get people marching on mass to a computation with
Speaker 1: the very people they elected. And the ironic thing is
Speaker 1: that very few of these people who sang along with
Speaker 1: these songs and marched along in these protests, the ironic
Speaker 1: thing is that they don't even know what they were
Speaker 1: speaking out against. Forced aboard that she's intuition about what
Speaker 1: does it she ought to do? They were just following
Speaker 1: a famous person down the street, not just famous, but naive.
Speaker 1: M This is a man said that I the president
Speaker 1: should just declare peace, as if you could do such
Speaker 1: a thing. His fans they all thought it was possible,
Speaker 1: so they followed it, and they would go wherever he
Speaker 1: would lead. I didn't know what he was doing, because
Speaker 1: John Oleman was no longer a songwriter. In my eyes,
Speaker 1: he was playing the role of a pie piper in
Speaker 1: a cultural uprising. And that was a threat. John had
Speaker 1: become merely a tool of the radical leftist paramilitary movement,
Speaker 1: and that was dangerous. He wrote songs about John Sinclair
Speaker 1: and Angela Davis and Attica. He hung around Bobby Seal
Speaker 1: and Jerry Ruman and Abby Hoffman. These were well established
Speaker 1: threats to democracy, anti Americans. Those men all used John
Speaker 1: as their megaphone to march their message up and down
Speaker 1: the streets of New York City, and then the streets
Speaker 1: of Washington, and then presumably down the streets of Miami,
Speaker 1: where myself and all the others in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: would be sitting ducks. It's all true. Hoover had John
Speaker 1: Lennon and his wife under surveillance in New York City.
Speaker 1: They were justified in their paranoia, just like I was
Speaker 1: justified in mine. They were followed the planted agents of
Speaker 1: the audience every time he made a public appearance or
Speaker 1: played a concert for importance, every day. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: out there that we authorized the wire tapping of their telephones,
Speaker 1: But between you and me and the Wall, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised if Hoover's men made sure little authorization didn't
Speaker 1: stand between them and the intelligence They needed to collect.
Speaker 1: It was because of the surveillance that we were able
Speaker 1: to uncover a very troubling plot, which at Holmes, the
Speaker 1: head of the CIA, brought a memo to Hoover, and
Speaker 1: Hoover brought it to me. John Lennon wasn't playing the
Speaker 1: rock and roll tour in the traditional sense. He was
Speaker 1: plotting a direct route from New York to Miami, a
Speaker 1: route that directly followed my campaign trail, and then he
Speaker 1: was hatching a plot to disrupt the Republican National Convention
Speaker 1: in Miami at the end of that route in August.
Speaker 1: We needed a strategic countermeasure. That's what Hoover said, and
Speaker 1: I trusted him. Of course, he'd been director of the
Speaker 1: FBI for almost fifty years, and Hoover was intimately familiar
Speaker 1: with what Lennon had been doing for years, Even back
Speaker 1: in nine when he and his wife released that unlistenable
Speaker 1: album with a filthy cover, the two of them start
Speaker 1: really naked. A congressman centered angry letter about such unnecessary
Speaker 1: filth to Hoover, and that's probably when the FBI opened
Speaker 1: a file. The congressman called it a vulgar display of garbage,
Speaker 1: Whover sent some men to tail Lennon when he visited
Speaker 1: the States in ninety seventy and went to California. They
Speaker 1: were under strict direction together whatever evidence they could to
Speaker 1: prove that London was engaged in violent anti war demonstrations
Speaker 1: or narcotics. America's public enemy Number one in the United
Speaker 1: States is drug abuse. They hit the jackpot when they
Speaker 1: caught wind of the plan in to destruct the Republican
Speaker 1: Convention in Miami. Lennon put it together with help from
Speaker 1: Ruben Hoffman, Sinclair and Alan Ginsburgh. Was there. At the
Speaker 1: center of this plan was John Lennon being used as
Speaker 1: a tool to so discontent among youth. But he was
Speaker 1: forced to god this as a tuition, and now twelve
Speaker 1: million new voters would be going to the poll since
Speaker 1: we reduced the voting age. John Lennon was not an American,
Speaker 1: He paid no taxes, but yet he was here in
Speaker 1: this country spreading an anti American message to millions of
Speaker 1: impressionable minds. That's what sent red flags up the chain
Speaker 1: of command all the way to meet a strategic countermeasure,
Speaker 1: Hooever said, the easiest thing was to port John Lennon
Speaker 1: as soon as possible. Fort makes slay named something coopish.
Speaker 1: John Lennon's status in this country was as a guest
Speaker 1: who had made an exception for him to be here
Speaker 1: to be with his wife for a brief amount of time.
Speaker 1: He wasn't eligible for a visa because of the drug
Speaker 1: convection back in England, the one where the drug squad
Speaker 1: found cannabis resident in his London flat back in ninety
Speaker 1: but nevertheless he'd been able to secure a sixty day
Speaker 1: visa with the help of his lawyers. We used that
Speaker 1: London drug conviction as a major reason why he should
Speaker 1: be told he had a month to leave the country.
Speaker 1: This was March of nineteen seventy two. If London did
Speaker 1: as he was told, he would be out of the
Speaker 1: country long before my campaign trail at to Miami, and
Speaker 1: therefore he would not be able to rally his fans
Speaker 1: and bring violence and descent to the Republican National Convention.
Speaker 1: That was our strategic counter measure that when a little
Speaker 1: smarter than actually law. But London had strategies of his own.
Speaker 1: He hired an immigration lawyer and fought tooth and nail
Speaker 1: to stay. His lawyer applied for permanent status for both
Speaker 1: John Lennon and his wife that Yoko Ono, well, she
Speaker 1: could get permanent status because she was the mother of
Speaker 1: an American child. So if we granted her residence and
Speaker 1: then denied Lennon, that same movement that he was mobilizing
Speaker 1: would accuse us of breaking up a family could be
Speaker 1: showing experience. Yoko Oono sat on a witness chair in
Speaker 1: the hearing room at the Immigration and Naturalization Service building
Speaker 1: in Manhattan and said, and I quote, they're asking me
Speaker 1: to choose between my child and my husband. And then
Speaker 1: she said, I don't know if there's any mercy to
Speaker 1: plead for because this is an a federal court, but
Speaker 1: if there is, I'd like it please. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: I was told this was a done deal. They're removing
Speaker 1: John London from the United States would be easy board.
Speaker 1: That's a tuition. Consider it done. That's what they told me.
Speaker 1: And now we're stuck in this impasse. Lennon's lawyer kept
Speaker 1: buying him a little more time and then a little more.
Speaker 1: How is it possible that you can get these little
Speaker 1: extra bits of time? I kept asking Hoover that question,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't getting the goddamn answer that I wanted,
Speaker 1: and Miami was approaching. I can only imagine how much
Speaker 1: anger at John Lennon was becoming, and how much is
Speaker 1: hatred of me and my administration had been exacerbated by
Speaker 1: our deportation efforts, and that he would funnel that anger
Speaker 1: into his so called revolution at the upcoming convention. So
Speaker 1: I took matters into my own hands, which is what
Speaker 1: you have to do as presidents sometimes, just like I
Speaker 1: did in nineteen fifty two when the papers called for
Speaker 1: me to abandon my run for vice president over what
Speaker 1: they perceived as some secret fund. But in all of
Speaker 1: my years of public life, I have never profited, never
Speaker 1: profited from public service. I earned every singer I went
Speaker 1: on live TV and got my base in my corner.
Speaker 1: When I lost the nineteen sixty presidential election to Kennedy,
Speaker 1: I didn't mope about it. I hit the road and hustled,
Speaker 1: and my efforts helped me get Republicans elected in droves,
Speaker 1: the House, the Senate Governors. Fort makes life read something.
Speaker 1: It set me up to become president in n and
Speaker 1: in all of my years public life, I have never
Speaker 1: obstructed justice. But back in v two, taking matters into
Speaker 1: my own hands when it was clear that deporting John
Speaker 1: Lennon was going to be harder than I thought. I
Speaker 1: bent the year of a young White House staffer, a
Speaker 1: kid named Tom Houston. I asked him to look into
Speaker 1: this whole situation, the bombmakers, the dander get her uppers,
Speaker 1: the rabble rousers, and how someone is famous and infelluctual
Speaker 1: as John Lennon fit into it all you people in
Speaker 1: the world m I asked Tom to come back with
Speaker 1: a plan for us to combat the approach, the storm
Speaker 1: of resistance. Tom delivered. He may have delivered a little
Speaker 1: too much. I think he even scared Hoover. His plan
Speaker 1: called for widespread mail, opening of known radicals and something
Speaker 1: I've been told was referred to as black bag jobs,
Speaker 1: or breaking into residences to install tabs and bugs again
Speaker 1: on known radicals. Were these taxics illegal? Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: a crop. You're asking the wrong question. The question you
Speaker 1: should be asking is what would you do to protect
Speaker 1: your country. We'll be right back after this word word
Speaker 1: word now. I like music and musicians just fine. The
Speaker 1: great R and B artist James Brown played at my
Speaker 1: inauguration in nine. He played a trip song of his
Speaker 1: called say It Loud, I'm Block and I'm Proud, which,
Speaker 1: if I may be so bold, was perhaps one of
Speaker 1: the most culturally important songs played her the presidential inauguration ever.
Speaker 1: Because James Brown wanted to bring people together with his
Speaker 1: music and I wanted to bring people together. James Brown
Speaker 1: believed in what I was doing so much that he
Speaker 1: even endorsed me when I ran a second time. And
Speaker 1: then there was Elvis. Elvis came to see me at
Speaker 1: the White House in he told me that he was
Speaker 1: on my side, just like James Brown. Before he left,
Speaker 1: Elvis asked for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics
Speaker 1: and Dangerous Trucks. Why the hell not, He was a king,
Speaker 1: after all. Someone told me later that the only reason
Speaker 1: Elvis wanted the badge was because he thought it would
Speaker 1: give him carte blanche to carry guns and drugs with
Speaker 1: him wherever he went. I don't know if I believe that.
Speaker 1: Pressley seemed like a decent fellow to me. John Lennon,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, did not. This is how John
Speaker 1: Lennon was different in my eyes from other musicians like
Speaker 1: James Brown and Elvis Pressley. John Lennon was no longer
Speaker 1: a Beatle. He was no longer John Lennon the musician.
Speaker 1: As soon as he stepped onto American soil, he changed
Speaker 1: such a tution. He became John Lennon the distructor, and
Speaker 1: I was his target. Now. The intel about the Republican
Speaker 1: Invention business wasn't the first time we had received information
Speaker 1: claiming that John Lennon was planning something. Jerry Reuben himself,
Speaker 1: when talking to the press about the concert, a bunch
Speaker 1: of that we're going to stage at the Republican Party's
Speaker 1: presidential nominating convention in San Diego. That was a summer
Speaker 1: of se We didn't have to tap any phones or
Speaker 1: pull any black bag jobs to get that info. Jerry
Speaker 1: Reuben just went ahead and told whoever wanted to listen
Speaker 1: talking to so hohover ran with that information and became
Speaker 1: increasingly concerned that whatever it was that they were planning
Speaker 1: was more than a concert. They wanted chaos, They wanted
Speaker 1: me out, that was for damn sure. They wanted the
Speaker 1: top of the system as we knew it, as we
Speaker 1: still know it today. It was either the Yippies, or
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers, or the White Panthers, or just some
Speaker 1: hodgepodge all of the above misguided anti war radicals, and
Speaker 1: John was part of that mix. Whatever we did to
Speaker 1: monitor John Lennon's activity, people he associated with, the meetings
Speaker 1: he attended, the ideas he sought to disseminate. We did
Speaker 1: it all because we thought we had to. And if
Speaker 1: it made him nervous, if it made him paranoid and
Speaker 1: cause him to rethink what he was doing and saying, well, good,
Speaker 1: so be it. First Lennon thought he heard clicking sounds
Speaker 1: on his phone line. Then he thought he heard footsteps
Speaker 1: walking behind him on the sidewalk, And then he couldn't
Speaker 1: look at any regular person the same way anymore. Mailman,
Speaker 1: dog walkers, cab drivers, nanny's pushing babies through men hat
Speaker 1: and a stroller. They all look suspect to him. He
Speaker 1: couldn't trust anyone. He couldn't turn his back on strangers,
Speaker 1: every phone call, every knock on the door, every passing
Speaker 1: good morning, pleasantry. Pretty Soon he couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: And then, partly through the dress we put upon him,
Speaker 1: John Lennon came to his senses. He looked at all
Speaker 1: these coked spirits in their eyes. What in the hell
Speaker 1: were they thinking? Didn't they remember Chicago in the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention, the National Guard and the cops and billy
Speaker 1: clubs and tear gas? Is that what they wanted? And
Speaker 1: if God forbid, they were successful. If this rag tag
Speaker 1: group of violent insurrectionists got what they wanted the top
Speaker 1: of the system, then what what would they replace it with?
Speaker 1: What was the point of all this? I didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was doing. Now. Len his decision to bow
Speaker 1: out of it all, first to abandon the San Diego
Speaker 1: and then abandoned Miami plot, certainly he made that decision
Speaker 1: with the safety of his own life on his mind.
Speaker 1: I think these other people, Reuben Seal Sinclair, they all
Speaker 1: lived this life from the get gods people in the world,
Speaker 1: a life of surveillance and danger and the edge never
Speaker 1: being edgy enough. And it was a new territory for Lenin.
Speaker 1: And let's face it, when it came down to it,
Speaker 1: what we exposed in John Lennon is that he was
Speaker 1: no revolutionary, He was no activist. He was a dilettante
Speaker 1: who was forced to go this a tuition. He even
Speaker 1: said so before he died. He did it out of guilt,
Speaker 1: guilt for being rich and famous, guilt for not being
Speaker 1: a man of the people. As he liked to pretend,
Speaker 1: he allowed ourselves to be manipulated by people whose purpose
Speaker 1: in life was to minibate a horrible people in order
Speaker 1: to get what they wanted. Talking to Bush, well, they
Speaker 1: never got what they wanted, but I got what I wanted. First,
Speaker 1: we defused John Lennon's influence. And then on Tuesday, November
Speaker 1: seventy two, I was re elected President of the United
Speaker 1: States over George mccombery. And do you know what, there
Speaker 1: was no surge of young voters between ages of eighteen
Speaker 1: and one. In fact, it was the lowest voter turnout
Speaker 1: in over twenty years. And the Americans that did go
Speaker 1: to the polls, they re elected me in a landslide.
Speaker 1: I won forty nine states. McGovern got one state, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: The silent majority had spoken up, and they had spoken
Speaker 1: up for me. John Lennon's America was not America. The
Speaker 1: Hippies America was not America. The Peace and Love movement
Speaker 1: was a blip on the radar. There was no revolution.
Speaker 1: There was just purpose. And it wasn't John Lennons. It
Speaker 1: was America's. It was mine. August nine, o one pm
Speaker 1: Eastern time, the White House. Richard Nixon felt the heat
Speaker 1: of the excess lighting that had been hauled into the
Speaker 1: Oval Office for the purpose of the television cameras. The lights,
Speaker 1: the camera, the crew. It all seemed a bit overkilled
Speaker 1: to him. Less was more, in his opinion. But what
Speaker 1: was actually occupying Nixon's mind and those final seconds leading
Speaker 1: up to when the cameraman gave him the thumbs up
Speaker 1: and the feed went live into the homes of millions
Speaker 1: of his fellow Americans, was that he would sweat like
Speaker 1: a pig. That the sweaty image of a disgraced president
Speaker 1: throwing in the towel live on national TV would give
Speaker 1: his critics even more ammunition with which they could continue
Speaker 1: to assassinate his character. But at least it wasn't as
Speaker 1: bad as the debates with Jack Kennedy. Nixon had that
Speaker 1: going form that was sixty election year, the first time
Speaker 1: Nixon ran for president. Kennedy didn't need to do much
Speaker 1: to win that first debate. Nixon refused to wear the
Speaker 1: customary makeup one wears when one appears on television. He
Speaker 1: was unshaven and haggard. Nixon looked so bad that night
Speaker 1: that his own mother called him after the debate was
Speaker 1: over to ask if he was ill. Nixon had learned
Speaker 1: from that mistake, a mistake that cost him the election
Speaker 1: by a hair. He didn't contest the like he did
Speaker 1: the honorable thing, which was to concede to his opponent,
Speaker 1: Jack Kennedy, the man with the hair and the smile.
Speaker 1: And then Nixon did the honorable thing again when he
Speaker 1: formerly certified Kennedy's election in front of Congress on January
Speaker 1: six of the following year. After all, Nixon was vice
Speaker 1: president under outgoing President Eisenhower, and so at that moment
Speaker 1: that was his role, his purpose. Now, in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: staring into the reflection of a camera's lens, Nixon had
Speaker 1: a new purpose, and once again it was the honorable thing.
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon stared straight into the glassy abyss of the
Speaker 1: camera lens and resigned the office of the President of
Speaker 1: the United States. Nixon's resignation, of course, was due to
Speaker 1: his involvement in an attempted cover up of a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in
Speaker 1: the Watergate Office Building in Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 1: Tom Houston's black bag job strategy gone wild. The ensuing
Speaker 1: investigation would indict sixty nine people and convict many of
Speaker 1: them in high positions of power within Nixon's administration, and
Speaker 1: as if that wasn't enough, in the midst of the
Speaker 1: Watergate scandal, Nixon's vice president, Spireau Agnew, was embroiled in
Speaker 1: a controversy of his own when it was a reveal
Speaker 1: that Agnew had been taking cash bribes from engineering and
Speaker 1: construction firms for more than ten years, including the years
Speaker 1: he served as vice president. He resigned ahead of Nixon
Speaker 1: in order to avoid his own impeachment. Nixon and Agnew
Speaker 1: were both left to contemplate whether or not they had
Speaker 1: any purpose left in life. In Los Angeles, earlier, in
Speaker 1: the afternoon of August nine four, John Lennon held up
Speaker 1: a copy of the late edition of the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Times for a photographer on the street. Nixon quits read
Speaker 1: the headline, will explain decision on TV tonight. In the photo, John,
Speaker 1: who was still embroiled in a legal battle over the
Speaker 1: status of his US citizenship, looked like a weight had
Speaker 1: been lifted off his shoulders, like he had won the fight.
Speaker 1: Nixon's re election in seventy two had served as a
Speaker 1: major turning point in John's political activism. When John heard
Speaker 1: the news that day, boy it nearly killed him. He
Speaker 1: wondered if his attempts to mobilize the youth vote were
Speaker 1: in vain. The bed ends, the rallies, the marches, the songs.
Speaker 1: Didn't the American public know that war was over? If
Speaker 1: they wanted it? Did they not want it? In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, Nixon had one and John was defeated. John
Speaker 1: drank from a tequila bottle until the sun came up
Speaker 1: that night, and then, in front of Yoko, in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of party guests, he took a fellow party
Speaker 1: goer to bed for a shag. All was lost, it seemed.
Speaker 1: He wondered if revolution was nothing but a catchy pop song.
Speaker 1: John thought back to San Diego in Miami. Maybe he
Speaker 1: should have followed through with the plan to violently disrupt
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. Maybe that would have made a difference.
Speaker 1: Maybe violence had been the answer all along. Maybe he
Speaker 1: joined the weather under round, go build bombs in a
Speaker 1: basement in Lower Manhattan, fight fire with fire, or do
Speaker 1: what Eldredge Cleaver the Black Panthers suggested, and off the
Speaker 1: pig or maybe he'd just say fuck it and just disappear.
Speaker 1: He'd go somewhere else entirely, and keep up with a
Speaker 1: diet of tequila and cocaine and forget about revolution for good.
Speaker 1: People would look at him in point and say, with
Speaker 1: equal parts discussed and disbelief, that's John Lennon. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: let the comments bother him. He wouldn't let anything bother
Speaker 1: him anymore, because what did it even matter anymore? In
Speaker 1: a world where Nixon was elected twice, there was no hope,
Speaker 1: just nihilism. It made no difference what John did, how
Speaker 1: hard he tried, what he said, how he's saying. Things
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be getting better all the time. There
Speaker 1: was always a mess, It was always a slog, and
Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be anything anyone could do about
Speaker 1: the carnage left in society's wake. Life just barreled forward fast,
Speaker 1: out of control, leaving behind so much Blood on the
Speaker 1: Track X all right, everybody, thanks for listening to Blood
Speaker 1: on the Tracks. If you like what you hear, be
Speaker 1: sure to find and follow Blood on the Tracks on
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, app, Amazon Music, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. On this season two, of Blood
Speaker 1: on the Tracks, We'll be releasing ten episodes on the
Speaker 1: Incredible Life of John Lennon, with a new episode every Thursday.
Speaker 1: You can also binge all ten episodes of season one
Speaker 1: on the insane story of the notorious record producer Phil
Speaker 1: Spector right now. It's available wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: This episode of Blood on the Tracks was written by
Speaker 1: Zeth Lundie and hosted an executive produced by me Jake Brennan,
Speaker 1: also executive produced by Brady sad Story and copy editing
Speaker 1: by Pat Healy. This episode was mixed by Colin Fleming.
Speaker 1: Additional music and score elements by and Spraker. This episode
Speaker 1: featured Dennis Brennan as Richard Nixon. Blood on the Tracks
Speaker 1: is produced by Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
Speaker 1: com on the Blood on the Track series page. If
Speaker 1: you want to chat about this show or hear more
Speaker 1: about the other shows, we're making a Double Elvis tap
Speaker 1: in on Instagram at double Elvis, on Twitter at Double
Speaker 1: Elvis fm, and now on Twitch, where we're streaming three
Speaker 1: days a week at Twitch dot tv, slash Double Elvis
Speaker 1: Podcasts and Finally, be sure to check out disgrace Land,
Speaker 1: the award winning music and true crime podcast that I
Speaker 1: also host. Disgraceland is available only on free Amazon Music.
Speaker 1: To hear tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians
Speaker 1: getting away with murder and behaving very badly, go to
Speaker 1: Amazon dot com slash disgrace lamb, or if you have
Speaker 1: an Echo device, just say Alexa play the disgrace Land
Speaker 1: podcast black Along by Crazy Ir