Speaker 1: Personology is a production of I Heart Media. The Beatles
Speaker 1: have been famous in a way that few others can
Speaker 1: even imagine, existing in a rapidly changing time period when
Speaker 1: a new era of growing globalization and increased communication. Where
Speaker 1: it is with the old system of media gatekeepers who
Speaker 1: controlled music distribution, the pressures were almost unimaginable. This is
Speaker 1: the second part of this two part look at John Lennon.
Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard the first part, I suggest
Speaker 1: you find that now. My guest once again is Jordan Runtug,
Speaker 1: one of the two hosts of the podcast Rivals, a
Speaker 1: show about the greatest music rivalries in history. Check it out.
Speaker 1: But now we'll dive back into John's story. At this point,
Speaker 1: the Beatles are just starting to become world famous, but
Speaker 1: in the meantime, John has been dealing with the death
Speaker 1: of his mother, a crumbling relationship with his first wife,
Speaker 1: and trying to be a father while traveling the globe
Speaker 1: as an international music megastar. All this time he is
Speaker 1: writing music, right, he is writing. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: if people look back at even the songs, then they
Speaker 1: all sound cheery and upbeat and love me do and
Speaker 1: so on. But there are songs like Help. You know,
Speaker 1: there are songs that clearly belie some of this emotional
Speaker 1: longing and emotional difficulty and trauma along the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny going through John's story kind of in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. The most boring period, when you actually
Speaker 1: get down to the emotional graph of it, are the
Speaker 1: Beatlemania years, because he actually just felt like he was
Speaker 1: asleep for most of it. A lot the ways he
Speaker 1: was he said, he just was miserable, and he would
Speaker 1: cite Help is the first real song he ever wrote,
Speaker 1: because it was actually coming from him, was a cry
Speaker 1: for help, not just he would call his fat Elvis period,
Speaker 1: when he just was indulging in all the food, all
Speaker 1: the women, all the drugs, all the drink, everything you
Speaker 1: can imagine. He got into rock and roll to avoid
Speaker 1: convention and structure, and suddenly he was more structured and
Speaker 1: reigned in than a normal person. Through fame. It's a
Speaker 1: common thing to hear celebrities now, but at the time
Speaker 1: there was really no precedent for fame on that global scale.
Speaker 1: And maybe Sinatra and Elvis and Glenn Miller or something
Speaker 1: like that, but they didn't know the part that you
Speaker 1: can't leave your house. You you're you're stuck. They would
Speaker 1: get a hotel suite and they'd all be in the
Speaker 1: bathroom because it was the only room that they could
Speaker 1: get any real peace. You know. They'd all just would
Speaker 1: hide in the big bathroom of their hotels suite and
Speaker 1: just to hang out and be together. So it was
Speaker 1: really tough for him. He found himself in a life
Speaker 1: that he didn't really want. He somehow wound up in
Speaker 1: what was called the London suburb they called the Stockbroker's Belt,
Speaker 1: which is where all the rich people would get mansions
Speaker 1: outside of London, which is not you know, I think
Speaker 1: of John Lenny, you don't think of stock brokers. And
Speaker 1: he had this boring house and a boring suburb of
Speaker 1: a sorry pretty boring wife. Paul McCartney would later say, yeah,
Speaker 1: Cynthia at the time would tell me that she really
Speaker 1: wanted him to just calm down and settle down and
Speaker 1: the pipe and slippers, and he said, that was when
Speaker 1: alarm bells went off on my head because I know
Speaker 1: that's not the John Lennon that well, she wanted him
Speaker 1: to stop doing drugs. She definitely wanted him to start
Speaker 1: being around his son. But yes, she was. She was
Speaker 1: not sort of intellectually and artistically perhaps a good match
Speaker 1: for him. He didn't like performing and having this public
Speaker 1: public life on the one hand. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it did give him some structure, some reason I could
Speaker 1: get up in the morning and do something, as opposed
Speaker 1: to later. After you know, they stopped and he was
Speaker 1: really rudderless and and didn't know what he was going
Speaker 1: to do with his life. But then there's this important
Speaker 1: juncture where their fame grows so huge that at some
Speaker 1: point John makes the statement, Wow, the Beatles were like
Speaker 1: bigger than Jesus. And this is not taken well internationally speaking. No,
Speaker 1: he was talking to a journalist who was a very
Speaker 1: close friend of his. He was being sarcastic, he was.
Speaker 1: He was kind of saying, well, what's wrong with the
Speaker 1: church there? You know, the Beatles are bigger than Jesus.
Speaker 1: Right now, they got to do more. It was printed
Speaker 1: in in a very large interview in England in March
Speaker 1: of sixty six, and no one picked up on it.
Speaker 1: It was just one wine in a very very massive interview,
Speaker 1: and then it got printed in the United States out
Speaker 1: of context, and an American teen magazine. It was called
Speaker 1: deep book out of context. The Beatles are bigger than Jesus,
Speaker 1: obviously pretty inflammatory without everything around that kind of describing
Speaker 1: his argument and his point. It kind of hit right
Speaker 1: when the band We're going on tour in the United
Speaker 1: States in nineteen sixty six, and of course that would
Speaker 1: take them right through the South, the whole Bible Belt,
Speaker 1: and it was really pretty horrific. You had klansmen out
Speaker 1: front of the arena, they had death threats, they had
Speaker 1: people lighting firecrackers in the middle of their shows, and
Speaker 1: there's footage of I think in Memphis, somebody lit a
Speaker 1: firecracker on stage and you see all the Beatles turned
Speaker 1: to one another to see who got hit. There'll be
Speaker 1: bullet holes in the fuselage of the planes they were taking.
Speaker 1: It was really really terrifying, and of course John had
Speaker 1: to be show doubt from they would landed in in
Speaker 1: some southern city and where it said send John out first,
Speaker 1: he's the one they want, and and he had been.
Speaker 1: And then they went to the Philippines, where, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that this was a dictatorship, a
Speaker 1: completely Christian country. People were horribly upset, and well, that
Speaker 1: was actually unrelated that they that was before the whole
Speaker 1: Jesus thing that was actually a few months before, and
Speaker 1: they went and they inavertently snubbed the Marcus from then
Speaker 1: Marcus for some whatever reason, they didn't attend this lunch
Speaker 1: with Fernando and Amelda Marcus. And you don't turn down
Speaker 1: an invitation from the dictator. And so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all the police support, which they desperately needed because of fans,
Speaker 1: was removed. Creepy things like they'd arrive at the airport
Speaker 1: and right when they get on the escalator, the escalator
Speaker 1: be turned off. Angry, very you know, pro Marcus people
Speaker 1: would attack them at the airport, and of course they
Speaker 1: had no police support, so they were just covering themselves
Speaker 1: with guitar cases. John did not enjoy performing when there
Speaker 1: was so much shrieking and screaming that he could really
Speaker 1: not even hear himself. Oh yeah, he used to say,
Speaker 1: we could have been wax works for all the good
Speaker 1: we did. No, couldn't nobody heard anything. It was a
Speaker 1: freak show, and he felt like a performing flee instead
Speaker 1: of an artist, or not even an artist, not even
Speaker 1: a musician, just a sort of freak, which is something
Speaker 1: he probably felt all through his childhood in Liverpool, and
Speaker 1: I don't think he really relished feeling that way. Again, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. He did feel like a freak
Speaker 1: in the sense that he made many comments about saying
Speaker 1: that he saw the world differently than anybody else he knew.
Speaker 1: And I think he describes that both in an alienating way,
Speaker 1: like I feel so alone because no one else sees
Speaker 1: things the way I do. But it also gave him
Speaker 1: a sense of specialness. Oh yeah, you would always as
Speaker 1: a kid, he said, he always used to wonder am
Speaker 1: I insane? Am I a genius? And he would read
Speaker 1: biographies of Van Gogh and James Joyce and Oscar Wilde
Speaker 1: and Dylan Thomas and it would make him feel better
Speaker 1: because he his psychedelic visions were reality to me. And
Speaker 1: so when the whole LSD thing hit, it was kind
Speaker 1: of comforting to him because that was more of how
Speaker 1: he saw the world than the average person about interesting
Speaker 1: And so this being under a microscope and being the
Speaker 1: life of the band, on the one hand, being recognized
Speaker 1: as being special again right, and being loved in this
Speaker 1: overwhelming way probably filled a certain psychic need for him.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, being dogged every moment. It's
Speaker 1: a double edged sword. The other side of intense love
Speaker 1: or overvaluation is devaluation and hate, and that is a
Speaker 1: good part of what happens sort of in the later
Speaker 1: life of the Beatles, that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: devaluing and hating and and attacking and in a frightening
Speaker 1: way for someone who has seen a lot of mortality
Speaker 1: of young people in his young life, so it must
Speaker 1: have been really terrifying, Oh, I'm sure. And it contributed
Speaker 1: in a major way to them stopping touring, which removed
Speaker 1: a lot of stress from his life. But he was
Speaker 1: also completely ruderless. He spend his days at his suburban
Speaker 1: state just wake up in the middle of the afternoon.
Speaker 1: He said, he would just be eating LSD like it
Speaker 1: was candy. He had a mortar and pestle by his
Speaker 1: bed that he would just grind up random pills and
Speaker 1: make an uber pill and just take it to see
Speaker 1: what would happen. And he would just watch TV and
Speaker 1: just kind of zone out. And a crucial song of
Speaker 1: this period I think is um good Morning, Good Morning
Speaker 1: on Sergeant Pepper, because it's just it's about him watching TV.
Speaker 1: Good Morning, good Morning was a corn Flakes theme, and
Speaker 1: it's just about him watching afternoon soap operas and uh,
Speaker 1: nothing to do to save his life, nothing to do
Speaker 1: to save his life. His wife. Then it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting song when you actually look at the lyrics and
Speaker 1: know what it's about. It's just it's almost like nowhere, man,
Speaker 1: it's just a guy. It's a nihilistic song about a
Speaker 1: guy who's nothing to say. But it's okay. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1: So in reference that time period and Sergeant Pepper, many
Speaker 1: people have tried to understand what Lucy and the Sky
Speaker 1: with Diamonds? What? What what was that about? And what
Speaker 1: really informed that? Of course, there are millions of theories
Speaker 1: and so on, But he himself says, even though people
Speaker 1: keep saying, oh, Lucy in the Sky with diamonds, obviously LSD,
Speaker 1: this must be about l. S D. This song, he
Speaker 1: was using a lot of LSD at that time, But
Speaker 1: he says the song is not about l. S D.
Speaker 1: He says that specifically, he says that his son Julian,
Speaker 1: at age four, you know, gave him this drawing of
Speaker 1: a girl floating in the sky, said she was Lucy.
Speaker 1: That caught his imagination um and that that was involved
Speaker 1: in the writing of that song. What he doesn't talk
Speaker 1: about and is interesting, and you know, psychobiographers have gone
Speaker 1: back and looked at the words specifically. It's probably a
Speaker 1: conglomeration of a number of these things. I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: there's reference to psychotic thinking, I mean, floating in the
Speaker 1: sky and so on, all of these things that probably
Speaker 1: are somewhat references to trips on LSD. But the girl
Speaker 1: in the sky that you want to be with but
Speaker 1: you can't get to does seem to refer to his
Speaker 1: mother in some way, that she's there but he can't
Speaker 1: really get to her. There are a lot of words,
Speaker 1: if you break them down in in the song that
Speaker 1: do refer to separation. Particularly separation is the big theme
Speaker 1: really of his whole life, but certainly of his whole
Speaker 1: growing up, and that it came from Julian who is
Speaker 1: Julia plus John specifically, and that it also makes a
Speaker 1: lot of references to words that were in the Lewis
Speaker 1: Carol poems that he read as a boy that we're
Speaker 1: hugely important to him and specifically refer to his boyhood times,
Speaker 1: times when he had his Julia or his Mimi or
Speaker 1: the woman in his life who was being sort of
Speaker 1: the mother figure to him. Yeah, now that I had
Speaker 1: never thought of that, and it's it's funny, he would
Speaker 1: later say. From when they stopped touring through to maybe
Speaker 1: the White album period from like late sixty six to
Speaker 1: early sixty eight, he didn't write a lot. Paul was
Speaker 1: kind of the one who would say, Okay, it's now
Speaker 1: time to make an album, and Paul would have all
Speaker 1: these songs and he would have to scramble stuff together.
Speaker 1: If you look at his contributions to Sergeant Pepper, they're
Speaker 1: all kind of meditations on the mundane. You've got good Morning,
Speaker 1: Good Mornings, you said about just basically him watching TV.
Speaker 1: You've got a day in a Life, which was just
Speaker 1: him reading the newspaper propped up on the piano, and
Speaker 1: I read the newsday boy and all the stories in
Speaker 1: it about potholes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and then losing this
Speaker 1: guy with diamonds, just his little boy brought home a
Speaker 1: painting from school. It's funny how as a guy who
Speaker 1: didn't like writing story songs as he called them, like
Speaker 1: Paul did, like eleanor Rigby or Penny Lane or things
Speaker 1: that that were a bit more of like a novelist.
Speaker 1: He always prided himself on writing from him. It's very
Speaker 1: telling what he's writing in this period. And there's a
Speaker 1: line that I noticed in UM, good morning, good morning,
Speaker 1: you go to the show you hope she goes, which
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm probably reading far too much into it,
Speaker 1: but I always wanted to. That was a very very
Speaker 1: very very very early reference to Yoko Ono, who had
Speaker 1: met in November sixty six, right when he was in
Speaker 1: the midst of this very rudderless period. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break here. We'll be back in a minute. So
Speaker 1: John had a lifetime of emotional trauma he was dealing with,
Speaker 1: coupled with the fact that he was now an international
Speaker 1: superstar and the pressures that come with that. It was
Speaker 1: perhaps partly due to this that he spent years in
Speaker 1: and out of a haze of drugs and alcohol. But
Speaker 1: a huge event that would change his life happened in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen sixty six. He met Yoko Ono. He
Speaker 1: went to the Indica Art Gallery where she had a
Speaker 1: show going on. A mutual friend was was putting on
Speaker 1: her show, and he went. He'd been up, I guess
Speaker 1: for three days before, just tripping and so he arrived
Speaker 1: and really he was just fried. He was so out
Speaker 1: of it that he spent an hour in the car
Speaker 1: out front trying to get a nerve. Just leave the
Speaker 1: car and go in. He was he was not doing
Speaker 1: well at the experien and he went in. He had
Speaker 1: not really had much exposure to conceptual art, which was
Speaker 1: Yoko's medium, and so he walked in and there would
Speaker 1: be things like an apple on a pedestal for two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, which is a lot of money now but
Speaker 1: a lot of money then, and nails on a plexiglass
Speaker 1: box or something, and he the hell is this? What
Speaker 1: is this? Yoko was led over and she was introduced,
Speaker 1: and she had him a little car that said breathe,
Speaker 1: and he thought, oh, this is interesting. She sent him notes.
Speaker 1: She was senting notes in India. This is before they
Speaker 1: were officially together. And actually it's important to know. When
Speaker 1: John was asked about Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to do with Yoko, he said, well,
Speaker 1: I hadn't even met her yet, which was untrue. He had,
Speaker 1: whether he remembered or not, he had met her at
Speaker 1: this art gallery that you're talking about, exactly that night,
Speaker 1: and that was very recent, so they weren't together. He
Speaker 1: had just gone to see it, but they had talked
Speaker 1: and he had had this interaction with her and her
Speaker 1: art right as she was writing basically Lucy and the Sky.
Speaker 1: Yoko came along at a time when he is rudderless,
Speaker 1: He's not feeling good. He sounds depressed. Actually, right, did
Speaker 1: you look at pictures of him, He looks town away, right,
Speaker 1: he just looks like achingly sad. So he's achingly sad,
Speaker 1: but he's not able to outwardly talk about or process
Speaker 1: or grieve whatever is making him sad. Instead, he's just
Speaker 1: doing a lot of drugs. When you look at what
Speaker 1: is bubbling up in the music and what is bubbling
Speaker 1: up in the words, and whether that also either further
Speaker 1: informed this desire to be attached to Yoko Ono, who
Speaker 1: he's just met, who presents, as you said, unlike Cynthia
Speaker 1: right as this really the opposite, right, this artistic and
Speaker 1: sees the world differently than anybody else's he does. That
Speaker 1: would be a time that he was really longing for
Speaker 1: someone who would be you would understand him and be
Speaker 1: his someone even maybe even more than understand him. Attached
Speaker 1: to him and mother him and be with him, and
Speaker 1: in fact he goes on to call her mother what
Speaker 1: he calls her mother and the beginning of their relationship.
Speaker 1: Literally she is with him seven and also an important
Speaker 1: thing to bring up about immediately prior to them getting
Speaker 1: together in a serious way. Brian Epstein died suddenly, probably
Speaker 1: have a drug overgain. But yeah, they're some people say
Speaker 1: it was suicide. I don't think it was. I think
Speaker 1: it was just an accidental mixing boozing pills, very sudden,
Speaker 1: although he'd been depressed, and maybe it wasn't the world's
Speaker 1: biggest surprise, but to them it came out of the blue.
Speaker 1: It was a huge shock from a friends standpoint, from
Speaker 1: a business standpoint too, and a lot of that his death.
Speaker 1: If you could point to one thing that I think
Speaker 1: kind of herold the end of the Beatles, I would
Speaker 1: say it would be that because it made Paul take
Speaker 1: on a more dominant role, which annoyed certainly John and
Speaker 1: even the rest of the band, and it it made
Speaker 1: them have to take control of their own finances and
Speaker 1: managerial stuff which had never really been good at or
Speaker 1: had much of an interest in doing, and suddenly they
Speaker 1: were squabbling over business stuff. That had never really been
Speaker 1: something that they dealt with. I mean, obviously there's other
Speaker 1: things like just growing up and wanting to be an individual.
Speaker 1: So it probably would have happened anyway. If you think
Speaker 1: about the public psyche, that they couldn't bear the idea
Speaker 1: that these brothers would break themselves up, that that was
Speaker 1: just a sort of an unbearable thought. Instead, they really
Speaker 1: they blamed Yoko Ono for being the one to come
Speaker 1: in and break things up, but it did have a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the Beatles themselves. Yoko became a
Speaker 1: constant presence in John's life, including in the studio, which
Speaker 1: was unheard of the studio, it was a sacred space
Speaker 1: for the four of them, off limits to really anybody.
Speaker 1: Not even Brian Epstein would ever really come there. You'd
Speaker 1: only come in occasionally. And so suddenly Yoko was brought
Speaker 1: in without really a word to the others, and she
Speaker 1: would follow him up into the control room to talk
Speaker 1: to the producer. She follow into the bathroom, which just
Speaker 1: literally m people fans in later years will blame her
Speaker 1: for breaking up the people who do you think asked
Speaker 1: her to do that, or allowed her to do exactly
Speaker 1: incited her to do that. I mean this man who
Speaker 1: had left his son, he left his why he could
Speaker 1: leave anybody, but he allowed that were he allowed that,
Speaker 1: He demanded that, and she would later say like it
Speaker 1: was kind of his thing. Well, the band were in
Speaker 1: India studying transcendental meditation, as you mentioned, which is important
Speaker 1: that they chose to study. I mean John was looking
Speaker 1: for something, right, and transcendental meditation is a form of
Speaker 1: meditation still today, in fact, probably the most practiced forms
Speaker 1: still today that does relieve anxiety and improve mood for
Speaker 1: many many people. Whether it was defined as such for
Speaker 1: John when he went to learn it, no, I think
Speaker 1: it was more like a hippie and right giving the
Speaker 1: exactly wanted the answer, but he didn't want the answer.
Speaker 1: I mean, he really was a man in search of
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, all kind of answers. But and
Speaker 1: he wanted it now. But it was a relief from
Speaker 1: his suffering, and he clearly was suffering tremendously, and so
Speaker 1: he was looking for that. He did practice that. Whether
Speaker 1: that was a help to him, it may have been.
Speaker 1: It may have been a help to him, because you
Speaker 1: definitely see a shift. But two things are happening. He's
Speaker 1: practicing transcendental meditation. But he's also getting together by letter
Speaker 1: and then physically with Yoko Ono. But you do see
Speaker 1: a change in his mood and in his writings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the key song of the period, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier was Julia mentioned Ocean Child, which is the English
Speaker 1: translation I believe for for Yoko, he said in interviews
Speaker 1: later it was a fusion of his mother and the
Speaker 1: love of his life in that moment. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to be read into that. It was kind of a
Speaker 1: saying goodbye to Julia and welcoming this new person. Who
Speaker 1: really could I think he transferred Julia onto this new person,
Speaker 1: And yoga was this combination for him of lover or mother,
Speaker 1: which you know, as you mentioned about Julia, he was
Speaker 1: never really able to make that distinction area. So he
Speaker 1: gets together with Yoko and they start collaborating, if you will,
Speaker 1: and they also do something else. He reads a book
Speaker 1: about primal screamed arapy and he asks the author to
Speaker 1: come treat him. The author does. The end result is
Speaker 1: you're supposed to scream or physically and vocally release your
Speaker 1: suffering and the agony that you feel. But in that
Speaker 1: you are made to think about deliberately and talk about
Speaker 1: and process and consciously register the things that were traumas
Speaker 1: for you and that make you incredibly sad. And so
Speaker 1: all of this material about his mother and feeling abandoned,
Speaker 1: and his father and feeling abandoned and the chaos and
Speaker 1: the loss was something for the first time he was
Speaker 1: not only allowed to confront, he was made to confront
Speaker 1: and think about and then have this release and screaming.
Speaker 1: It's important because I think that the first album that
Speaker 1: he puts out with Yoko Ono, the Plastic Van, does contain,
Speaker 1: you know, the song mother, Mother, you had me, but
Speaker 1: I never had you. I wanted you, you didn't want me,
Speaker 1: So I I just got to tell you goodbye goodbye,
Speaker 1: same verse about the father, and then children don't do
Speaker 1: what I have done. I couldn't walk and I tried
Speaker 1: to run, So I just got to tell you goodbye, goodbye.
Speaker 1: And then this wailing of Mama, don't go, Daddy come
Speaker 1: home for the whole end of the song, and of
Speaker 1: course also the song Julia specifically his mother. So he emotes,
Speaker 1: he processes, and he releases these painful, painful feelings. I
Speaker 1: would say it's like the first psychotherapy you know that
Speaker 1: John Lennon has in a way to really process what's happened.
Speaker 1: And it was tough because the primal scream therapy. Of course,
Speaker 1: it required I believe, several months, and they had to
Speaker 1: go out to California to be treated, and midway through
Speaker 1: he was ordered to leave the country so that the
Speaker 1: doctor would later say we took him part, we didn't
Speaker 1: put him back together, and so he was incredibly raw
Speaker 1: and the result was this album, which is just some
Speaker 1: of the most nakedly vulnerable music you know I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: I mean, it opens with a funeral bell and goes
Speaker 1: right into mother as you just said, and it closes
Speaker 1: with a song called My Mommy's Dead, which is made
Speaker 1: on a children's tape recorder, and it's just him kind
Speaker 1: of plain song singing it with a plastic guitar, my
Speaker 1: Mom's Dead, So it's been so many years My Mommy's Dead.
Speaker 1: Track after track, he was a song called Working Class Hero,
Speaker 1: where he basically just eviscerates at Mimi and her ilk
Speaker 1: and all the people that tried to put him in
Speaker 1: a box when he just wanted to be free to
Speaker 1: think in a moat. A song called God. God is
Speaker 1: a concept by which we measure our pain. And then
Speaker 1: he basically goes through and the whole song, majority of
Speaker 1: the song is him saying thinks he doesn't believe in
Speaker 1: and he just don't believe in Elvis. I don't believe
Speaker 1: in Bob Dylan. I don't believe in Jesus, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in the Buddhas. All these things that he put
Speaker 1: all of his faith into and it let him down.
Speaker 1: And finally it ends in this big crescendo climax. I
Speaker 1: don't believe in Beatles. I just believe in me, Yoko
Speaker 1: and me. And that's reality. Very difficult to listen to,
Speaker 1: but worth hearing for so many reasons. Incredible piece of art,
Speaker 1: a lot of pain that he was processing in that period,
Speaker 1: and his father actually chose that moment to re enter
Speaker 1: his life, and Yoko encouraged that for them to reconnect,
Speaker 1: although it was a chaotic reconnection with a kind of
Speaker 1: comings and goings and move in with me. You know
Speaker 1: it's not going to work. They'd been in contact when
Speaker 1: John was first got famous, and John, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: alarm bells went off. They can like, oh geez, are
Speaker 1: you looking for you know, looking for money? They've been
Speaker 1: off and on tents every couple of years they would
Speaker 1: he would kind of re enter his life. He was
Speaker 1: like fifty something and he married a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: Like they lived with them for a time. It was
Speaker 1: it was definitely a strained I don't want to call
Speaker 1: it a relationship. It was just a strained coexistence. And
Speaker 1: at some point his father like writes a song yeah,
Speaker 1: which is also bizarre, bizarre to John right, like I'm
Speaker 1: John Lemon's dad, I'm gonna be pop star, you know,
Speaker 1: made him mad to no end. They ended up towards
Speaker 1: the end of I guess John found out that his
Speaker 1: dad was sick. I think he had I forget if
Speaker 1: it was cancer or something. And they kind of struck
Speaker 1: up a phone relationship, and so when he died in
Speaker 1: nine seventy six, they had made his Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: at peace with each other, I think as much as
Speaker 1: they were ever. We're going to be. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break here, we'll be back in a minute. John
Speaker 1: has reconnected with his previously estranged father and he's been
Speaker 1: working on music with the Plastic on No band, But
Speaker 1: he's still abusing drugs and trying to find an equilibrium
Speaker 1: with the world. Meanwhile, with Yoko on No, they're right
Speaker 1: constantly together. He's encouraging her writing and her production, um
Speaker 1: and their production together. Then you know, essentially is a magic.
Speaker 1: Really the next album is next album, and he basically
Speaker 1: said that he put a little honey in it. He
Speaker 1: said that it was still the same sense of anger
Speaker 1: and frustration. There are songs on There's a song but
Speaker 1: the relief that I mean, you wanted to write if
Speaker 1: he had some relief in pouring all of this out
Speaker 1: and processing it, if that allowed him to write a
Speaker 1: song about peace and love and you know, seeking that,
Speaker 1: if that could have been sort of the next stage
Speaker 1: in development for him in a way. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly that's true. And then there are a few moments
Speaker 1: on a song called how do You Sleep About as
Speaker 1: nasty as some of the ones in the Plastic Going,
Speaker 1: O'Bannon's directed at Paul and all the resentment that he
Speaker 1: had towards him, adding insult to injury. He got George
Speaker 1: Harrison to play guitar on it, so it's just ganging
Speaker 1: up on Paul. But for the most part it was
Speaker 1: definitely a much more sedate affair. That whole album Shawn's
Speaker 1: birth occurs before after after Sean was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, I think on John's birthday, but prior to that,
Speaker 1: he and Yoko had a separation. John called it his
Speaker 1: lost weekend. It's confusing about exactly whose idea was. The
Speaker 1: official sort of reason is that Yoko basically said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we've been spending too much time together. I
Speaker 1: feel like the passion is starting to go. You should
Speaker 1: go take some time and so you're wild oats. Essentially
Speaker 1: her go sell them with my assistant Pang exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she basically kicked him out. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's not she kicked him out, but she also set
Speaker 1: up off with the keep an eye on right with
Speaker 1: the assistant, who she fully anticipated without his sexual relationship
Speaker 1: with him, but at least knew who it was, I guess,
Speaker 1: and that they had some sort of a deal. He's
Speaker 1: reported as being very remarkably stable during this time. He
Speaker 1: was drinking a fair amount. He was kicked out of
Speaker 1: clubs and stuff. It was like one of the rare
Speaker 1: moments of John being a tabloid fodder kind of situation
Speaker 1: where he was kind of in rough shape and he
Speaker 1: was partying with Alice Cooper and Harry Nilson during this time. No,
Speaker 1: there's some songs. There's an outtake of a song he
Speaker 1: was singing called Just Because, an old cover, and he's
Speaker 1: drunk out of his mind and most of these sessions
Speaker 1: and he's just wailing at the end. So for him,
Speaker 1: this is just a re enactment again of mom kicking
Speaker 1: you out or abandoning you or dropping you by the way. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this whole pattern of alcohol and drugs, which you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately do a lot of destruction in his life. When
Speaker 1: people start drinking before the age of sixteen, the likelihood
Speaker 1: that you will be an alcoholic is like fivefold. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: also having this kind of psychological difficulty to deal with
Speaker 1: and no other outlet, the likelihood for men, particularly that
Speaker 1: they will abuse substances as a sort of self medicating
Speaker 1: or a way of checking out, is also greatly greatly increased.
Speaker 1: So he really pretty much all of his life struggled
Speaker 1: with alcohol and drug use. And when he was with
Speaker 1: Yoga Oh No, he moved from LSD, which causes both
Speaker 1: this feeling of sort of oceanic as he refers to
Speaker 1: in his songs boundary lists at one with the world feeling,
Speaker 1: but also is very reportedly ego destroying, the feeling of
Speaker 1: sort of I am nothing, I am no one, I
Speaker 1: am disappeared, and so there can be terrible mood problems
Speaker 1: on LSD, and of course there's a psychotic hallucinogenic thinking
Speaker 1: that goes on, which interestingly incorporated into his music in
Speaker 1: ways that we say we feel are very creative and artistic.
Speaker 1: And also the mood states also got brought into his
Speaker 1: music in very artistic and creative ways. But Yoko Ono
Speaker 1: moved him away from LSD and into heroin, and the
Speaker 1: two of them end up using heroin together, which has
Speaker 1: very different effects than LSD. Heroin is more about feeling
Speaker 1: like this fantastic high immediately that is reportedly like better
Speaker 1: than an orgasm, and then sort of being out of
Speaker 1: it in a blissful state, but not hallucinatory. The negative
Speaker 1: is the withdrawal, you know, that occurs afterwards. He at
Speaker 1: some point recognizes he's not in good shape, really not
Speaker 1: in good shape, and tries to pull back someone, and
Speaker 1: that seems to be the nature of the way things
Speaker 1: go in the later part of his life, sort of
Speaker 1: using and trying to use less he's certainly aware of
Speaker 1: people who died from overdoses and so on, and he
Speaker 1: tries to be present for this sun. They end up
Speaker 1: getting back together in seventy four and he released his
Speaker 1: last Well for a time, last musical album, and I
Speaker 1: think seventy five and his contract was up. He was just,
Speaker 1: I think, sort of done for a time. I think
Speaker 1: he just wanted to take a break this beautiful period.
Speaker 1: Inteen seventy six, he had had a problem with with
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government. They were trying to deport him
Speaker 1: because he was so outspoken politically. The Nixon government and
Speaker 1: Jake Hoover had files on him, and we're just, you know,
Speaker 1: using all sorts of techniques to try to get him
Speaker 1: out of the Country's finally given his green card and
Speaker 1: allowed the stay. Yoko became pregnant. She had had several
Speaker 1: miscarriages prior relatively older, so it was it was very
Speaker 1: special that she was able to conceive, and the child,
Speaker 1: Sean sean On No Lennon I think it was his
Speaker 1: full name, was born on I believe John's birthday in
Speaker 1: ninety six, and he became in his word, as a
Speaker 1: house husband. He stayed home to take care of Sean,
Speaker 1: he started baking bread. He really enjoyed domesticity in a
Speaker 1: way that he absolutely did not ten years earlier living
Speaker 1: with with Julia had one on one bliss with this baby,
Speaker 1: you know, the baby who I'm sure in some ways
Speaker 1: he wanted to be with a father like he was
Speaker 1: trying to be, and maybe some undoing of the things
Speaker 1: that were done to him he could be a good
Speaker 1: dad and undoing of the things that he did with Julian.
Speaker 1: But clearly he was in a super present and very
Speaker 1: engaged father with Sean in a very different way. And
Speaker 1: you're right. He used to say, we're like twins were
Speaker 1: born exactly the same day, which, yes, you're born on
Speaker 1: the same day, but you're absolutely right. There is a
Speaker 1: lot of transference there. I think, like a real blurring
Speaker 1: of boundaries. Again, this is like repeatedly for John the
Speaker 1: issue of having boundaries is scary because you can disappear.
Speaker 1: But if we're at one, if we're one person, then
Speaker 1: you're with me um something that he tried to have
Speaker 1: at times with Yoko Ono. I mean that's part of
Speaker 1: parenting some degree, right, is that your empathy towards your
Speaker 1: baby is so intense that you're like one person, and
Speaker 1: it seems that he you know, literally, you know, he
Speaker 1: carried him around on his chest, and he seemed to
Speaker 1: have been a positive period for him. There's just so
Speaker 1: many stories of that period of sending polaroids of his
Speaker 1: of the first bread that he banked. He was so
Speaker 1: proud of that. And he and Paul were in contact
Speaker 1: in that period, which they hadn't really been much of
Speaker 1: the first half of the decade, and they would talk
Speaker 1: a lot about having families. Paul had had his a
Speaker 1: little earlier in the in the seventies, and so it
Speaker 1: was a great way to bond and connect for these
Speaker 1: two old friends, to finally sort of reconnect and put
Speaker 1: all the business stuff behind them. And yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a really special time for him, and he didn't really
Speaker 1: care about music at all. You'd say that my guitar
Speaker 1: was hung up above the bed for years, and I
Speaker 1: had more important things that to deal with, like like
Speaker 1: my son and my family, and stay that way for
Speaker 1: a while. He then did start to reconsider writing and
Speaker 1: being involved with music, and in fact was recording. Sadly,
Speaker 1: right at the time of his death, he returned to
Speaker 1: the studio to record an album called Double Fantasy. It
Speaker 1: was a collaborative album with him and Yoko. They had
Speaker 1: alternated songs and it had just been released in the
Speaker 1: fall of eighty doing all sorts of press for you.
Speaker 1: He's getting back into the groove of It was a
Speaker 1: big comeback album for him. He was working on the
Speaker 1: follow up. Left the studio on December eight and was
Speaker 1: walking into Homessy Sean at the Dakota Apartment Complex and
Speaker 1: Central Park West in New York. A fan, if you
Speaker 1: could call him that, A man who sounds deranged. He
Speaker 1: was not diagnosed at the time with schizophrenia or a
Speaker 1: psychotic illness. He just he had some thoughts about needing
Speaker 1: to do this Chapman who prison and shot him, and
Speaker 1: and obviously devastating for the world, devastating for a family,
Speaker 1: devastating for so many reasons. The fact that he appears
Speaker 1: to have achieved some level of peace, he kind of
Speaker 1: rebooted built through raising Sean. I think healed a lot
Speaker 1: within himself and then reintegrated his great passion music into
Speaker 1: it and seemed to be at a place that I
Speaker 1: would have imagined he was probably happy. That he's been
Speaker 1: in a long time makes it even more heartbreaking to me,
Speaker 1: and it's also pretty clear from the album and where
Speaker 1: he was with it that through the tragedies, through some
Speaker 1: resolution of that for himself, through the use of a
Speaker 1: lot of drugs which sometimes really do decrease one's ability
Speaker 1: over time to cognitively function well, he seems to have
Speaker 1: maintained this creativity in both his ability to compose and write.
Speaker 1: It seems as though, you know, had he not died,
Speaker 1: he would have continued to be creatively productive. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he He had a whole wealth of music stored of Actually,
Speaker 1: there are number of albums that released after his death
Speaker 1: that were just things that he was working on. He
Speaker 1: had a lot in the pipe. He's planning on maybe
Speaker 1: going back on tour, which he hadn't done I think
Speaker 1: since the Beatles, and I need to check that, but
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, he was really feeling revitalized and excited,
Speaker 1: which is nice to think of him that way and
Speaker 1: remember him that way, or that at least he achieved
Speaker 1: some of that before he died. Yeah, I mean. The
Speaker 1: opening track of Double Fantasy, which came ten years after
Speaker 1: The Plastic Donal Band, is a bell on Plastic Donal band.
Speaker 1: It was a funeral bell in Double Fantasy, it was
Speaker 1: a wishing bell. It was real high pitched ting and
Speaker 1: the opening song is just like starting over and it's
Speaker 1: just about him rekindling his love with Yoko, and it's
Speaker 1: very sweet. It's a guy who turned forty, who's reevaluating
Speaker 1: his life and is happy where he is and he's
Speaker 1: at peace. It's a nice way to remember him, I think.
Speaker 1: M H. That wraps things up for this episode. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining me today, and a huge thanks to Jordan
Speaker 1: run Tug. If you haven't already, check out his show
Speaker 1: Rivals to hear more about the fascinating world of the
Speaker 1: music industry. If you're interested in more information about the
Speaker 1: people we discussed on the show, you can check out
Speaker 1: my book The Power of Different and you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Dr Gayl Saltz or at Personalogy
Speaker 1: m D Until next time. Personology is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Media. The executive producers are Dr Gayl Salts
Speaker 1: and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The
Speaker 1: Associate producer is Lowell Berlanti. Editing music and mixing by
Speaker 1: Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.