Lennon in America: 1971-1980, Based in Part on the Lost Lennon Diaries 9780815411574, 9781461635611, 1461635616

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Table of Contents
Introduction Imagine Nation: Uncovering the Lennon Legacy
Prologue Cry Baby Cry: Early Neglect And Sex Thereafter
One: Who Loves a King --
1971: Revolution For The Hell Of It
Two: Lifting The Veil --
1972-1974: Beyond The Lost Weekend
Three: Kaleidoscope Eyes --
1975: Apple And Isolation
Four: Two Virgins --
1976: The Conning of A Beatle
Five: Tunnel of Love --
1977: Born Again Beatle
Six: Paper Soul --
1978: Genius of Pain
Seven: Conspiracy of Silence --
1979: Love, Lies, And Death. Eight: Stupid Bloody Tuesday Man --
1980: The Assassination of John LennonFamily Tree
Chronology
Discography
A Note on Sources/Credits
Index
The Author.

Citation preview

L E N N O N I N

A M E R I C A

BASED I N PART ON THE LOST LENNON DIARIES 1971-1980

Geoffrey Giuliano

ISBN: 978-0-8154-1157-4

Dedicated to His Divine Grace

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada My eternal muster and mentor and Vrnda Devi My e v e r y h y Goddess

Introduction Prologue

IMAGINE NATION Uncovering the Lennon Legacy CRY BABY CRY Early Neglect And Sex Thereafter

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One WHO LOVES A KING 1971 Revolution For The Hell Of It Two LIFTING THE VEIL 1972-1974 Beyond The Lost Weekend Three KALEIDOSCOPE EYES Apple And Isolation Four

1975

TWO VIRGINS 1976 The Conning Of A Beatle

Five TUNNEL OF LOVE Born Again Beatle Six

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1977

PAPER SOUL 1978 Genius Of Pain

Seven CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE Love, Lies, And Death Eight

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1979

STUPID BLOODY TUESDAY M A N The Assassination Of John Lennon

Family Tree Chronology Discography A Note on SourceslCredits Index The Author

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1980

IMAGINE NATION

Introduction Uncovering The Lennon Legacy

Now that John Lennon is twenty years dead, the law of the land will tell you that any appreciable remnant of his manifest time on this earth belongs chiefly to the corporate entity formed around his good name after his assassination. Still, if you think carefully about what Lennon stood for as an artist and a human being, it's difficult to go along with this suit-and-tie theory that anybody can ever actually own music. Let alone something as ethereal and delicate as the persona of a breakout artist like John. Certainly one's descendants should be allotted a share, perhaps even the lion's share, of any profits accruing from the remaining portfolio of their loved one's creative endeavors. Once an artist projects himself into the world, however, and is embraced by the public, how his works are regarded and what history has to say about him have little to do with anyone, not his business associates, his family, nor in the end, even himself. Of course, there exists a profound interest in maintaining the status quo, thus protecting said commercial concerns, but some things are quite simply bigger than that. Bigger than money, bigger than ego, bigger often than even time itself. Things like the consciousnessexpanding, life-altering, knee-trembling mind and music of John Winston Ono Lennon. There's a danger too (which is something we see now with the current Lennon estate) that in so tightly sitting on John's cultural legacy there is the urge to embrace revisionist history. That is, trying to sanitize (and therefore commercialize) the life and times of the artist toward a more satisfactory bottom line. That the

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several-hundred-million-dollar empire currently controlled by the acquisitive Yoko Ono is a significant impediment to the free flow of ideas regarding the truth about brother John seems to me obvious. To see Yoko and her right-hand man Elliot Mintz rolling through life on the momentum of John's international love and goodwill is, frankly, frustrating. The fact is that John and Yoko endured a complicated, often explosive, ultimately painful relationship which, in my opinion, said much more about John's gnawing need, abject insecurity, and external emptiness than anything to do with universal love and peace. Mintz, too, has literally made a career from his relationship with John, but the truth is that Lennon, by his own admission, was generally contemptuous of the man, rarely wanting him around, and considered him exploitive, divisive, and even dangerous. With the publication of this book, when Mintz is out there blowing smoke about what great buddies he and John really were, it might be instructive to inquire as to what Lennon actually had to say about him in his journals. Elliot's profound silence, I'm sure, would very neatly fill the Albert Hall. When you respect and admire someone as much as I do John Lennon, it's difficult to sit back and allow anyone to try to turn the man into some sort of psychedelized Disney character with their tatty line of happy Lennon greeting cards, barbecue aprons, eyewear, and so much else even less tasteful and more humiliating. I admit it may seem presumptuous for me, who only ever spent ten minutes in the man's company, to step forward with the kind of potentially myth-busting views presented in this book. I know too that the popular concept says one has to be personally intimate with one's subject to accurately portray them in print, but those familiar with the art of biography will realize this can actually be a serious impediment to the committed truthseeker. Rather, in this case, I have spent some twenty-five years studying and writing about John Lennon and his milieu, not to mention the deep relationships I've developed along the way with John's Liverpool family and his inner circle of friends and associates. Ultimately, I don't give a damn about what anyone says about me. All that seems to fade away rather rapidly after one reaches forty, But I do have a real interest in the facts about truth-teller John's life being told, and so far that hasn't happened. Not with May Pang's only occasionally insightful book; Albert Goldman's full frontal assault; tarot guru John Green's generally evenhanded memoir; or even Lennon-

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turncoat Fred Seaman's pithy, self-serving tome. Further, John's English family doesn't really know anything about his later years, the Beatles certainly won't turn any heads with their own rumored multipound press release memoir, and Yoko has already said she's waiting for many of the principals in John's life to die before she even considers putting pen to paper or indeed publishing his lost diaries. As far as I'm concerned, that leaves me. An enthusiastic rebel ever since I was sent home from a junior high school dance for wearing a dickie instead of a tie in 1966, I have no problem going toe-to-toe with Yoko or anyone else. For all the deep internal trekking done by John on behalf of all of us, it seems a small price to pay. Despite its early revolutionary overtones rock 'n' roll is perhaps the most deeply conservative business on earth. So patently incestuous and uptight are these old rock stars and the people around them that literally no one is ready to own up about anything. With so much money at the end of each dangling chord, these one-time precocious pop stars are now firmly fixed at the very pinnacle of the cautious institutions they once so abhorred. It seems only right therefore that someone, somewhere, call a halt to all this towering, temporal, selfinterest and take up the challenge of John's great, still untold tale. I have had possession of copies of John's never-published diaries (via my old chum Harry Nilsson) since early 1983 and was frankly very, very reticent to try and do anything with them. Can you imagine what it feels like to hold in your hand a document you know has the power to change the course of Beatles history completely and forever? What do you do with that? Finally, after a great deal of concentrated soul searching I set off on my quest, amassing quite a lot of equally intoxicating source material, including much of Lennon's final private correspondence, rare audio tapes, and of course, many exclusive eyewitness accounts from insiders like May Pang, Fred Seaman, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney, to name only a few. What you will not find in this book, however, is the personal voice of John Lennon as quoted from his diaries. Lennon's journal entries were often incomplete thoughts and snippets-the exact meaning of which is difficult to discern, absent the knowledge I gleaned from my many other sources. Instead, the diaries served as firsthand source material for the provocative true story of Lennon's final years. I absorbed not only factual information from the diaries, but also a small mountain of other materials reveal-

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ing more than twenty years of John's dangling thoughts and feelings as committed to both paper and magnetic tape by the great man himself. Perhaps the real challenge was "filtering" so much incredible source material through my poor Beatle-obsessed brain into the broader, rounder epic of Lennon's incredible life in America that is this book. Though Lennon was certainly my inspiration throughout, this is the story of John's final years from my viewpoint as told in my own words. On occasion you will find direct quotes of Lennon or others in his orbit. Those are not from his diaries, but rather, from the voluminous record I have gathered through the years by conducting numerous personal interviews, sleuthing amid piles of memorabilia, and combing through various biographies and memoirs. Altogether some sixteen years of nearly full-time research and writing went into the book you now hold. I pray the narration herein ultimately proves enlightening as to the still largely misunderstood force and character of this troubled genius. I'm sure some, perhaps many, will see this sometimes unusually frank memoir as yet more of the kind of self-interested Lennon bashing which has flared up from time to time since his murder in 1980. My heart, however, tells me something different. Lennon and the Beatles meant everything to me, a lonely kid in Tampa back in the sixties. I raced out and bought everything they ever did, concentrating my devotion primarily on John. To my small circle of friends this man's incredible music and searing lyrics were so much more than mere teen pop. This was important stuff: Lennon casting himself out over the edge of his own musical mortality, shuttling back his perceptions to a turned-on audience of pimply wannabe hipsters-many, like me, already flirting with psychedelic reality, mysticism, various eco-causes, and the like. Then, as now, John Lennon was a bona fide cultural hero. I admired him as much for his whimsy as his grit. It is out of my enduring affection for John that I now forever tie myself to the whipping post with the publication of this similarly in-your-face book about his unhappy last years. Providence, one might reason, bestowed upon me all this unseen info for a reason. Frankly, the only audience whose often tender sensibilities give me some pause in relation to this work are the tens of thousands of dedicated Beatles People the world over whose enduring love for John Lennon and the Beatles compels them to attend just about every Fab-related anniversary, travel the world to stand where their heroes

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once stood, anti scour Beatle conventions for the latest gunk fro111the ever-rolling ineinorabilia rliill surrour~dii~g the group. I trust they will try and understand the sincerity of my mission to ferret out the facts on the dismal final davs of the charismatic founder of the Beatles-a difficult task given one's personal hopes that Mr. Lennon's turbulent life had turned out less tragically than it ultirnately did. Beyorld that, I respect the solidarity of their affection for all of the Ueatles and the alrnost transcendent aura which still surrounds their ~lnbarreledpersona some tliirty years after they split up in April 1970. Soine nlay also question why, in this enlightened age of sexual choice, Lennon's various bedroorn or bathroom habits are anyone's concern. The simple answer is that they urouldn't be if he \ E r e a phiriiber, or an accountant, but as a renowned poet who mirrored his irlnertliost thoughts and feelings about life, all life, in his work, it is indeed rnost relevant. Deeply ingrained in the public's neurotic need to ply into the private lives of famous people is the subtler quest for real insight into those whose life arid work have so intinlately ilripacted ours. To ignore something as fundamental as an artist's sensual proclivities, especially ail artist of Lennon's mythic proportions, would be a profound disservice to his mernory. Moreover, in John's case where his often bizarre sexual habits were key signposts to forming an acciirate composite picture of the man? such a discussioii is not only warranted but essential. l