WEBVTT - John Lennon - Part 2: Joined to Yoko 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:09.480 Personology is a production of I Heart Media. The Beatles 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:11.720 have been famous in a way that few others can 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:15.800 even imagine, existing in a rapidly changing time period when 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:19.759 a new era of growing globalization and increased communication. Where 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:22.880 it is with the old system of media gatekeepers who 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:28.560 controlled music distribution, the pressures were almost unimaginable. This is 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.520 the second part of this two part look at John Lennon. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:33.839 So if you haven't heard the first part, I suggest 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.280 you find that now. My guest once again is Jordan Runtug, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.280 one of the two hosts of the podcast Rivals, a 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.480 show about the greatest music rivalries in history. Check it out. 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:47.680 But now we'll dive back into John's story. At this point, 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:50.879 the Beatles are just starting to become world famous, but 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.400 in the meantime, John has been dealing with the death 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.360 of his mother, a crumbling relationship with his first wife, 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:58.920 and trying to be a father while traveling the globe 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:06.480 as an international music megastar. All this time he is 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:09.880 writing music, right, he is writing. And I think you know, 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:13.080 if people look back at even the songs, then they 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.000 all sound cheery and upbeat and love me do and 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.440 so on. But there are songs like Help. You know, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.399 there are songs that clearly belie some of this emotional 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.560 longing and emotional difficulty and trauma along the way. Yeah, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.280 it's funny going through John's story kind of in a 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:32.759 lot of ways. The most boring period, when you actually 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:34.920 get down to the emotional graph of it, are the 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.880 Beatlemania years, because he actually just felt like he was 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:39.679 asleep for most of it. A lot the ways he 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:41.960 was he said, he just was miserable, and he would 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:44.360 cite Help is the first real song he ever wrote, 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:46.800 because it was actually coming from him, was a cry 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:55.200 for help, not just he would call his fat Elvis period, 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:58.040 when he just was indulging in all the food, all 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:00.400 the women, all the drugs, all the drink, everything you 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.520 can imagine. He got into rock and roll to avoid 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.520 convention and structure, and suddenly he was more structured and 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.720 reigned in than a normal person. Through fame. It's a 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.079 common thing to hear celebrities now, but at the time 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.720 there was really no precedent for fame on that global scale. 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.919 And maybe Sinatra and Elvis and Glenn Miller or something 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:19.480 like that, but they didn't know the part that you 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.839 can't leave your house. You you're you're stuck. They would 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.040 get a hotel suite and they'd all be in the 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.200 bathroom because it was the only room that they could 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.240 get any real peace. You know. They'd all just would 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:30.680 hide in the big bathroom of their hotels suite and 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:32.720 just to hang out and be together. So it was 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.360 really tough for him. He found himself in a life 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.160 that he didn't really want. He somehow wound up in 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.760 what was called the London suburb they called the Stockbroker's Belt, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.280 which is where all the rich people would get mansions 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.200 outside of London, which is not you know, I think 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:48.240 of John Lenny, you don't think of stock brokers. And 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.799 he had this boring house and a boring suburb of 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:55.639 a sorry pretty boring wife. Paul McCartney would later say, yeah, 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:57.239 Cynthia at the time would tell me that she really 0:02:57.280 --> 0:02:59.800 wanted him to just calm down and settle down and 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.040 the pipe and slippers, and he said, that was when 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:03.880 alarm bells went off on my head because I know 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.040 that's not the John Lennon that well, she wanted him 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.360 to stop doing drugs. She definitely wanted him to start 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.600 being around his son. But yes, she was. She was 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:16.320 not sort of intellectually and artistically perhaps a good match 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.680 for him. He didn't like performing and having this public 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.120 public life on the one hand. On the other hand, 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.160 it did give him some structure, some reason I could 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.840 get up in the morning and do something, as opposed 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.720 to later. After you know, they stopped and he was 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.520 really rudderless and and didn't know what he was going 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:36.560 to do with his life. But then there's this important 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:40.800 juncture where their fame grows so huge that at some 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:44.320 point John makes the statement, Wow, the Beatles were like 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:51.440 bigger than Jesus. And this is not taken well internationally speaking. No, 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.600 he was talking to a journalist who was a very 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.920 close friend of his. He was being sarcastic, he was. 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.400 He was kind of saying, well, what's wrong with the 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:02.320 church there? You know, the Beatles are bigger than Jesus. 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:04.480 Right now, they got to do more. It was printed 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.280 in in a very large interview in England in March 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.040 of sixty six, and no one picked up on it. 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.240 It was just one wine in a very very massive interview, 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:15.920 and then it got printed in the United States out 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:18.480 of context, and an American teen magazine. It was called 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.119 deep book out of context. The Beatles are bigger than Jesus, 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.839 obviously pretty inflammatory without everything around that kind of describing 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:27.080 his argument and his point. It kind of hit right 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.159 when the band We're going on tour in the United 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.160 States in nineteen sixty six, and of course that would 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.440 take them right through the South, the whole Bible Belt, 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:39.280 and it was really pretty horrific. You had klansmen out 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.520 front of the arena, they had death threats, they had 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.000 people lighting firecrackers in the middle of their shows, and 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:47.680 there's footage of I think in Memphis, somebody lit a 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.360 firecracker on stage and you see all the Beatles turned 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.839 to one another to see who got hit. There'll be 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.360 bullet holes in the fuselage of the planes they were taking. 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.880 It was really really terrifying, and of course John had 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.839 to be show doubt from they would landed in in 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.599 some southern city and where it said send John out first, 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.320 he's the one they want, and and he had been. 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:09.679 And then they went to the Philippines, where, of course, 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.480 I mean, you know that this was a dictatorship, a 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.880 completely Christian country. People were horribly upset, and well, that 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.640 was actually unrelated that they that was before the whole 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:22.000 Jesus thing that was actually a few months before, and 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.960 they went and they inavertently snubbed the Marcus from then 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.880 Marcus for some whatever reason, they didn't attend this lunch 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:31.040 with Fernando and Amelda Marcus. And you don't turn down 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:34.600 an invitation from the dictator. And so all of a sudden, 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.039 all the police support, which they desperately needed because of fans, 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.320 was removed. Creepy things like they'd arrive at the airport 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.400 and right when they get on the escalator, the escalator 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.200 be turned off. Angry, very you know, pro Marcus people 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:49.360 would attack them at the airport, and of course they 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:51.840 had no police support, so they were just covering themselves 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:57.480 with guitar cases. John did not enjoy performing when there 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.400 was so much shrieking and screaming that he could really 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:03.600 not even hear himself. Oh yeah, he used to say, 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:05.039 we could have been wax works for all the good 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:06.880 we did. No, couldn't nobody heard anything. It was a 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.480 freak show, and he felt like a performing flee instead 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.520 of an artist, or not even an artist, not even 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.200 a musician, just a sort of freak, which is something 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.200 he probably felt all through his childhood in Liverpool, and 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.880 I don't think he really relished feeling that way. Again, well, 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.159 you know, it's interesting. He did feel like a freak 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:27.520 in the sense that he made many comments about saying 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:32.000 that he saw the world differently than anybody else he knew. 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:36.400 And I think he describes that both in an alienating way, 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:38.719 like I feel so alone because no one else sees 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:41.720 things the way I do. But it also gave him 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.000 a sense of specialness. Oh yeah, you would always as 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:45.680 a kid, he said, he always used to wonder am 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:47.920 I insane? Am I a genius? And he would read 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.520 biographies of Van Gogh and James Joyce and Oscar Wilde 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:53.919 and Dylan Thomas and it would make him feel better 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.680 because he his psychedelic visions were reality to me. And 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.800 so when the whole LSD thing hit, it was kind 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:02.960 of comforting to him because that was more of how 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.440 he saw the world than the average person about interesting 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.560 And so this being under a microscope and being the 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:13.080 life of the band, on the one hand, being recognized 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:17.160 as being special again right, and being loved in this 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:21.360 overwhelming way probably filled a certain psychic need for him. 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.680 But at the same time, being dogged every moment. It's 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:26.920 a double edged sword. The other side of intense love 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:32.040 or overvaluation is devaluation and hate, and that is a 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:34.000 good part of what happens sort of in the later 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.080 life of the Beatles, that there was a lot of 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.480 devaluing and hating and and attacking and in a frightening 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:44.840 way for someone who has seen a lot of mortality 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.960 of young people in his young life, so it must 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.720 have been really terrifying, Oh, I'm sure. And it contributed 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.640 in a major way to them stopping touring, which removed 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.160 a lot of stress from his life. But he was 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:59.960 also completely ruderless. He spend his days at his suburban 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.520 state just wake up in the middle of the afternoon. 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:04.960 He said, he would just be eating LSD like it 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.320 was candy. He had a mortar and pestle by his 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.800 bed that he would just grind up random pills and 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.280 make an uber pill and just take it to see 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:15.520 what would happen. And he would just watch TV and 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.400 just kind of zone out. And a crucial song of 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.000 this period I think is um good Morning, Good Morning 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.239 on Sergeant Pepper, because it's just it's about him watching TV. 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.200 Good Morning, good Morning was a corn Flakes theme, and 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.640 it's just about him watching afternoon soap operas and uh, 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.160 nothing to do to save his life, nothing to do 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:38.719 to save his life. His wife. Then it's a very 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.079 interesting song when you actually look at the lyrics and 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.679 know what it's about. It's just it's almost like nowhere, man, 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:45.960 it's just a guy. It's a nihilistic song about a 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:49.600 guy who's nothing to say. But it's okay. So it's interesting. 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.000 So in reference that time period and Sergeant Pepper, many 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.160 people have tried to understand what Lucy and the Sky 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:57.320 with Diamonds? What? What what was that about? And what 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.320 really informed that? Of course, there are millions of theories 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.560 and so on, But he himself says, even though people 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:08.160 keep saying, oh, Lucy in the Sky with diamonds, obviously LSD, 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:17.520 this must be about l. S D. This song, he 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:19.640 was using a lot of LSD at that time, But 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:21.959 he says the song is not about l. S D. 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.600 He says that specifically, he says that his son Julian, 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:29.080 at age four, you know, gave him this drawing of 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.400 a girl floating in the sky, said she was Lucy. 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:37.600 That caught his imagination um and that that was involved 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:39.800 in the writing of that song. What he doesn't talk 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.320 about and is interesting, and you know, psychobiographers have gone 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:46.880 back and looked at the words specifically. It's probably a 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:49.360 conglomeration of a number of these things. I mean, certainly 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.400 there's reference to psychotic thinking, I mean, floating in the 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.600 sky and so on, all of these things that probably 0:09:56.640 --> 0:10:00.559 are somewhat references to trips on LSD. But the girl 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.920 in the sky that you want to be with but 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.840 you can't get to does seem to refer to his 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.880 mother in some way, that she's there but he can't 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.160 really get to her. There are a lot of words, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:15.240 if you break them down in in the song that 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:20.440 do refer to separation. Particularly separation is the big theme 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:22.880 really of his whole life, but certainly of his whole 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.000 growing up, and that it came from Julian who is 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:31.400 Julia plus John specifically, and that it also makes a 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.600 lot of references to words that were in the Lewis 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.760 Carol poems that he read as a boy that we're 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.840 hugely important to him and specifically refer to his boyhood times, 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.000 times when he had his Julia or his Mimi or 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.200 the woman in his life who was being sort of 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:51.840 the mother figure to him. Yeah, now that I had 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.720 never thought of that, and it's it's funny, he would 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.000 later say. From when they stopped touring through to maybe 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.439 the White album period from like late sixty six to 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.599 early sixty eight, he didn't write a lot. Paul was 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:05.439 kind of the one who would say, Okay, it's now 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.280 time to make an album, and Paul would have all 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.320 these songs and he would have to scramble stuff together. 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:11.840 If you look at his contributions to Sergeant Pepper, they're 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:15.320 all kind of meditations on the mundane. You've got good Morning, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.320 Good Mornings, you said about just basically him watching TV. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:19.079 You've got a day in a Life, which was just 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.120 him reading the newspaper propped up on the piano, and 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.480 I read the newsday boy and all the stories in 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:33.640 it about potholes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and then losing this 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:35.360 guy with diamonds, just his little boy brought home a 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.240 painting from school. It's funny how as a guy who 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.200 didn't like writing story songs as he called them, like 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.000 Paul did, like eleanor Rigby or Penny Lane or things 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:45.800 that that were a bit more of like a novelist. 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.480 He always prided himself on writing from him. It's very 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:50.560 telling what he's writing in this period. And there's a 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:53.720 line that I noticed in UM, good morning, good morning, 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.320 you go to the show you hope she goes, which 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:58.640 I mean, I'm probably reading far too much into it, 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.400 but I always wanted to. That was a very very 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:05.040 very very very early reference to Yoko Ono, who had 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.120 met in November sixty six, right when he was in 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:12.520 the midst of this very rudderless period. Let's take a 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:23.080 quick break here. We'll be back in a minute. So 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.200 John had a lifetime of emotional trauma he was dealing with, 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.000 coupled with the fact that he was now an international 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.960 superstar and the pressures that come with that. It was 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:34.679 perhaps partly due to this that he spent years in 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.400 and out of a haze of drugs and alcohol. But 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:39.840 a huge event that would change his life happened in 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:45.719 November of nineteen sixty six. He met Yoko Ono. He 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:49.320 went to the Indica Art Gallery where she had a 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:51.760 show going on. A mutual friend was was putting on 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.600 her show, and he went. He'd been up, I guess 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.439 for three days before, just tripping and so he arrived 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.400 and really he was just fried. He was so out 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.040 of it that he spent an hour in the car 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.560 out front trying to get a nerve. Just leave the 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:06.040 car and go in. He was he was not doing 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.120 well at the experien and he went in. He had 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.000 not really had much exposure to conceptual art, which was 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.960 Yoko's medium, and so he walked in and there would 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.720 be things like an apple on a pedestal for two 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:18.480 hundred pounds, which is a lot of money now but 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.840 a lot of money then, and nails on a plexiglass 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:24.160 box or something, and he the hell is this? What 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.000 is this? Yoko was led over and she was introduced, 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:29.040 and she had him a little car that said breathe, 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.040 and he thought, oh, this is interesting. She sent him notes. 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:34.760 She was senting notes in India. This is before they 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.040 were officially together. And actually it's important to know. When 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:40.280 John was asked about Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.640 didn't have anything to do with Yoko, he said, well, 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.800 I hadn't even met her yet, which was untrue. He had, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.160 whether he remembered or not, he had met her at 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.800 this art gallery that you're talking about, exactly that night, 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.480 and that was very recent, so they weren't together. He 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.200 had just gone to see it, but they had talked 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:58.600 and he had had this interaction with her and her 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:02.080 art right as she was writing basically Lucy and the Sky. 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.640 Yoko came along at a time when he is rudderless, 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:09.200 He's not feeling good. He sounds depressed. Actually, right, did 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.720 you look at pictures of him, He looks town away, right, 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.880 he just looks like achingly sad. So he's achingly sad, 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.920 but he's not able to outwardly talk about or process 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:23.080 or grieve whatever is making him sad. Instead, he's just 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:25.600 doing a lot of drugs. When you look at what 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.560 is bubbling up in the music and what is bubbling 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.760 up in the words, and whether that also either further 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:36.840 informed this desire to be attached to Yoko Ono, who 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.480 he's just met, who presents, as you said, unlike Cynthia 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.840 right as this really the opposite, right, this artistic and 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:48.120 sees the world differently than anybody else's he does. That 0:14:48.160 --> 0:14:51.920 would be a time that he was really longing for 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.200 someone who would be you would understand him and be 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.920 his someone even maybe even more than understand him. Attached 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.600 to him and mother him and be with him, and 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.800 in fact he goes on to call her mother what 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.080 he calls her mother and the beginning of their relationship. 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.120 Literally she is with him seven and also an important 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:13.200 thing to bring up about immediately prior to them getting 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.800 together in a serious way. Brian Epstein died suddenly, probably 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.760 have a drug overgain. But yeah, they're some people say 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:21.120 it was suicide. I don't think it was. I think 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.400 it was just an accidental mixing boozing pills, very sudden, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.000 although he'd been depressed, and maybe it wasn't the world's 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.160 biggest surprise, but to them it came out of the blue. 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.160 It was a huge shock from a friends standpoint, from 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:35.600 a business standpoint too, and a lot of that his death. 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:38.360 If you could point to one thing that I think 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:40.800 kind of herold the end of the Beatles, I would 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:43.200 say it would be that because it made Paul take 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.760 on a more dominant role, which annoyed certainly John and 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.200 even the rest of the band, and it it made 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:50.360 them have to take control of their own finances and 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:52.320 managerial stuff which had never really been good at or 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.720 had much of an interest in doing, and suddenly they 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.280 were squabbling over business stuff. That had never really been 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.800 something that they dealt with. I mean, obviously there's other 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.720 things like just growing up and wanting to be an individual. 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:04.880 So it probably would have happened anyway. If you think 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:07.320 about the public psyche, that they couldn't bear the idea 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:11.240 that these brothers would break themselves up, that that was 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.920 just a sort of an unbearable thought. Instead, they really 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.280 they blamed Yoko Ono for being the one to come 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.160 in and break things up, but it did have a 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:23.120 lot to do with the Beatles themselves. Yoko became a 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.480 constant presence in John's life, including in the studio, which 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:29.440 was unheard of the studio, it was a sacred space 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.120 for the four of them, off limits to really anybody. 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:34.720 Not even Brian Epstein would ever really come there. You'd 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.200 only come in occasionally. And so suddenly Yoko was brought 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.120 in without really a word to the others, and she 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:43.000 would follow him up into the control room to talk 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.440 to the producer. She follow into the bathroom, which just 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.560 literally m people fans in later years will blame her 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.920 for breaking up the people who do you think asked 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.400 her to do that, or allowed her to do exactly 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:56.360 incited her to do that. I mean this man who 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:58.000 had left his son, he left his why he could 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:00.720 leave anybody, but he allowed that were he allowed that, 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:03.000 He demanded that, and she would later say like it 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:04.879 was kind of his thing. Well, the band were in 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:09.480 India studying transcendental meditation, as you mentioned, which is important 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.080 that they chose to study. I mean John was looking 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.720 for something, right, and transcendental meditation is a form of 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.960 meditation still today, in fact, probably the most practiced forms 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:23.680 still today that does relieve anxiety and improve mood for 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.919 many many people. Whether it was defined as such for 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:28.639 John when he went to learn it, no, I think 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.639 it was more like a hippie and right giving the 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.639 exactly wanted the answer, but he didn't want the answer. 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.280 I mean, he really was a man in search of 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.440 all kinds of things, all kind of answers. But and 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:42.440 he wanted it now. But it was a relief from 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.080 his suffering, and he clearly was suffering tremendously, and so 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.080 he was looking for that. He did practice that. Whether 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:49.800 that was a help to him, it may have been. 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:51.520 It may have been a help to him, because you 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.200 definitely see a shift. But two things are happening. He's 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:58.520 practicing transcendental meditation. But he's also getting together by letter 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.840 and then physically with Yoko Ono. But you do see 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:05.760 a change in his mood and in his writings. Yeah, 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:07.800 and the key song of the period, and you mentioned 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.880 earlier was Julia mentioned Ocean Child, which is the English 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:22.400 translation I believe for for Yoko, he said in interviews 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:25.280 later it was a fusion of his mother and the 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:27.600 love of his life in that moment. There's a lot 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:29.760 to be read into that. It was kind of a 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:34.600 saying goodbye to Julia and welcoming this new person. Who 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.399 really could I think he transferred Julia onto this new person, 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.000 And yoga was this combination for him of lover or mother, 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:45.280 which you know, as you mentioned about Julia, he was 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.080 never really able to make that distinction area. So he 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:54.000 gets together with Yoko and they start collaborating, if you will, 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.760 and they also do something else. He reads a book 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:02.439 about primal screamed arapy and he asks the author to 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.480 come treat him. The author does. The end result is 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.920 you're supposed to scream or physically and vocally release your 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.359 suffering and the agony that you feel. But in that 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:17.399 you are made to think about deliberately and talk about 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:21.800 and process and consciously register the things that were traumas 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.280 for you and that make you incredibly sad. And so 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.280 all of this material about his mother and feeling abandoned, 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:33.119 and his father and feeling abandoned and the chaos and 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:36.600 the loss was something for the first time he was 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.160 not only allowed to confront, he was made to confront 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.040 and think about and then have this release and screaming. 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.119 It's important because I think that the first album that 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:50.920 he puts out with Yoko Ono, the Plastic Van, does contain, 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:54.040 you know, the song mother, Mother, you had me, but 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:57.280 I never had you. I wanted you, you didn't want me, 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:05.120 So I I just got to tell you goodbye goodbye, 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:10.280 same verse about the father, and then children don't do 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.760 what I have done. I couldn't walk and I tried 0:20:12.800 --> 0:20:15.600 to run, So I just got to tell you goodbye, goodbye. 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.919 And then this wailing of Mama, don't go, Daddy come 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.040 home for the whole end of the song, and of 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:25.560 course also the song Julia specifically his mother. So he emotes, 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:30.639 he processes, and he releases these painful, painful feelings. I 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.679 would say it's like the first psychotherapy you know that 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.920 John Lennon has in a way to really process what's happened. 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.879 And it was tough because the primal scream therapy. Of course, 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.200 it required I believe, several months, and they had to 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:45.600 go out to California to be treated, and midway through 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:47.800 he was ordered to leave the country so that the 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:50.400 doctor would later say we took him part, we didn't 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:54.400