John Lennon: The Life (108 page)

“That song broke my heart after he died; I couldn’t listen to it for about ten years without getting upset because I was there when he recorded that, and I remember it coming into the universe. And I remember how when he died,
Double Fantasy
was all over the radio, you couldn’t get away from it. Every time I heard his voice, it was like a knife in my heart, it hurt so much. And it took me a good ten years before hearing his voice wasn’t an incredibly difficult thing.”

And, he admits, it still is. “If I’m at a party and someone casually puts on
Sgt. Pepper
, it’s hard for me. I can’t just hang out, drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and listen to those songs. I’m not saying it’s less intense for my mom. But she had him, she had a relationship with him. I think what hurts for me so much is that I didn’t. And it really hurts to hear his voice and hear him sing. I have to feel very strong to deal with it.

“It’s so beautiful—and it’s my dad; it’s that resonance of voice that I remember from my childhood, the first voice I ever heard. It’s the first voice I ever heard speak English. It’s the voice from which I learned to speak English.”

To many, Sean’s life might appear an enviable, effortless one, cushioned by the Lennon millions—the big houses and numerous servants; the private schools in New York and Switzerland; the doting love of a mother to whom he is everything; the reflected love of a whole planet. Yet there are signs that his chief inheritance from his father may be a horribly vulnerable heart. His romance with Elizabeth Jagger, daughter of Mick—which might have created the greatest dynastic union in pop—fizzled out when Elizabeth let it be known that she had yet to fall
properly
in love. Even more bruising was a relationship with the actress and model Bijou Phillips, whom he found to be cheating on him with his childhood friend and Dakota neighbor Max Leroy. Then Max was killed in a motorcycle accident before the two friends could reconcile. At one point in our conversation, Sean remarks that beautiful girls are doomed to a special kind of unhappiness, possibly his way of consoling himself for the unhappiness they cause him. One can almost hear an echo of John’s most wounded song on
Rubber Soul
: “Aaah—
Gerl!
”

Sean admits he has little to do with the millions of people for whom his father has become a secular saint, who speak the name “John Lennon” in the same breath as “Albert Schweitzer” or “Nelson Mandela” and create monuments to him of every kind, from an airport in Liverpool to a “tower of light” in Iceland and a graffiti wall in Prague. “My mom doesn’t really understand why I don’t want to meet those who worship John Lennon, why I don’t want to visit the John Lennon tribute concerts or go to the John Lennon Museum. It just hurts too much. I’ve sung ‘This Boy’ at a tribute concert because I love the song and I’m a professional musician, I can do any gig I’m asked to, but I didn’t like doing it.

“It’s not that I don’t want to honor him, because I feel like my whole life is a living tribute to him. But to go to a museum or see a movie that depicts his life, it just hurts. Watching a show about him on Broadway for me was like going naked through the flames of Hell. Because those memories that I have of my childhood are so important to me. To see them co-opted to make a diorama in a museum or a Broadway show makes me feel like I’m being violated.”

He accepts it is his duty to support Yoko in administering and protecting the Lennon legacy. “If I owe it to my mom to do it, I’ll do it, because I love her the most. But on a spiritual level, it doesn’t enrich my life to do interviews, to do tributes and museums and have my experience of my father turned into media. I don’t read books about him, I don’t need to see movies or shows about him. I don’t need to prove to the world that he did all these things.

“And I don’t think he’d be all that bothered that I’ve inherited his streak of rebelliousness. I have the music and I have the memories and that’s what is precious to me. I have him in my heart.”

In September 2003, I suggested to John’s widow, Yoko Ono, that I should become his biographer. I felt thoroughly qualified for the task: my book
Shout!
was regarded as the definitive work on the Beatles and I had known Yoko personally since 1981, when she invited me to the Dakota Building just five months after John’s murder. Since then, surprisingly, there had been only two full-scale biographies of the man and his music, both published in the 1980s, neither doing him justice. Ray Coleman’s
Lennon
was an honorable attempt but one that never quite brought John alive on the page, while Albert Goldman’s malevolent, risibly ignorant
The Lives of John Lennon
could be totally discounted.

Yoko agreed to my suggestion, with the proviso that it should not be called an “authorized” biography. Over the next three years, in a series of interviews in New York and London, she spoke with remarkable honesty and passion about the life she and John had shared. She also made it possible for me to talk to others close to John, in particular their son Sean and her daughter, Kyoko. The only other condition was that she should read the manuscript for factual accuracy. I assumed she would approve of what I had written since it was in the same spirit as
Shout!
: candid about John’s many flaws, but portraying him as both a massive influence on twentieth-century culture and an ultimately adorable human being. Part of my mission, too, was to correct some of the myths about Yoko herself, which after these years still make her a figure of hatred and ridicule for so many. I was amazed therefore when, in late 2007, she told me she was upset by the book and would not endorse it. Her reasons were various but the
principal one was that I had been “mean to John.” I hope that in time she may revise this judgment, for I do not think any other reader will share it.

As a journalist during the Sixties, I met John only twice: first in 1965, during what turned out to be the Beatles’ last UK tour, and again in mid-1969, while he and Yoko were orchestrating their peace campaign from the Apple house in Savile Row. For his view of the world I have inevitably had to rely on quotes he gave to other people, collated from famously forthright sessions with magazines like
Rolling Stone
and
Playboy
and innumerable other sources, major and minor—for here was, perhaps, the only celebrity in history who never did a dull or dishonest interview. Otherwise, my aim was to reconstruct his life completely afresh, writing for a hypothetical reader who has never heard of him or listened to a note of his music, ignoring all preconceptions, including my own. Indeed, I would frequently find myself correcting inaccuracies and misjudgments which had been in every edition of
Shout!

Biographers rely greatly on luck, and with this project my share was exceptional. Despite the widespread (and untrue) perception that I am “anti-Paul,” Sir Paul McCartney agreed to answer questions of fact by e-mail, and did so promptly and in generous detail. Notwithstanding a conviction that he had nothing new left to say, the Beatles’ nonpareil record producer Sir George Martin saw me at his AIR studios—situated fortuitously just a couple of streets from my London home—and said much that was fascinatingly new. The late Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ closest and most loyal associate, broke a forty-year rule not to talk to writers, granting me several interviews and also checking part of the manuscript. John’s cousins Mike Cadwallader and Liela Harvey were both unstinting in their help, as was his stepmother, Pauline Stone, who showed me documents which cast somewhat different light on his much maligned father, Freddie. John’s two closest friends from the New York years, Elliot Mintz and Bob Gruen, shared intimate memories and checked relevant portions of the text, I also received invaluable guidance from Leon Wildes, the lawyer who masterminded his fight against deportation from the United States.

Peter Trollope proved a brilliant researcher, tracking down lost links in John’s life with an indefatigability worthy of Sherlock Holmes. For fact-checking and advice I am deeply indebted to Bill Harry, John’s friend at art college, later founder-editor of
Mersey Beat
and author of the
John Lennon Encyclopedia
. Invaluable editorial help from my old
Sunday Times
colleague, Nick Mason, slimmed down the first draft from its original 360,000 words. Allan Kozinn of the
New York Times
provided CDs of John’s lesser-known American radio interviews and took immense pains in weeding out errors from the manuscript—as did my fellow biographer Johnny Rogan during a six-hour session at London’s Groucho Club. In Liverpool, many old friends made through
Shout!
were kind and hospitable all over again, notably Brian Epstein’s old friend and adviser Joe Flannery, and former Quarrymen Colin Hanton and Len Garry. New ones also emerged, like Bill Heckle of Cavern City Tours, who gave me the run of his contacts book, and Colin Hall, the custodian of John’s childhood home in Woolton, now run by the National Trust.

Although every care has been with fact-checking, a work of this size cannot hope to be 100 percent error-free. Few subjects generate experts like the Beatles and I am aware how many will be combing my text for the smallest slips. For these I apologize in advance and promise that as many as possible will be rectified in future editions.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sir Paul McCartney for the quotation from
Many Years from Now,
his authorized biography by Barry Miles (Secker & Warburg, 1997); to Pauline Stone for the unpublished writings and deposition of Freddie Lennon; to Michael Cadwallader for Mimi Smith’s letters; and to Bill Harry for material from
Mersey Beat.

Special thanks to Michael Sissons and Peter Matson for unfailing support and friendship; to Dan Halpern of Ecco, a rock throughout the long and often fraught composition process; to Trevor Dolby who commissioned the book for HarperCollins UK and Carole Tonkinson who took it over; to Carol MacArthur and Fiona Petheram at PFD, and Sam Edenborough and Nicki Kennedy at the Intercontinental Literary Agency for taking the book so enthusiastically to its non–English language publishers; to Tariq Mazid for ever reliable
technical support; to Gordon Smith and Stephen Simou of Citroen Wells; and to François and Danièle Roux for giving me a summer sanctuary at La Colombe d’Or in St. Paul de Vence.

Grateful thanks also to: Helen Anderson, Les Anthony, David Ashton, Andrew Bailey, Tony Barrow, Dot Becker, Sid Bernstein, Cilla Black, Tony Bramwell, Peter Brown, James Burrows, Tony Calder, Ronnie Carroll, James Chads, Maureen Cleave, Tyler Coneys, John O’Connor, Wendy Cook, Ray Connolly, Celia Crighton, Rod Davis, Sheridon Davis, Jeff Dexter, Sonny Freeman Drane, John Dunbar, Ron Ellis, Royston Ellis, Horst Fascher, Yankel Feather, Colin Fellows, Michael Fishwick, Ray Foulk, June Furlong, Johnny Gentle, Olwen Gillespie, Harry Gooseman, Bob Green, Sam Green, Frances Greenhous, the late Eric Griffiths, John Gustafson, Rolf Harris, Jon Hendricks, Kevin Hewlett, Simon Hilton, Peter Hodgson, the late Nicholas Horsfield, Thomas Hoving, Peter Howard, Maurice Hyams, Patricia Inder, Arthur Janov, Vivian Janov, Tim and Joyce Jeal, Iris Keitel, Jim Keltner, Jonathan King, Astrid Kirchherr, Cosmo Landesman, Sharon Lawrence, Sam Leach, Caroline Lee, Spencer Leigh, Joyce Lennon, Richard Lester, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Kenny Lynch, Barbara McKie, Laurie Mansfield, Gerry Marsden, Ann Mason, Albert Maysles, Barry Miles, Lee Montague, Colin Morris, Rod Murray, Paul du Noyer, Geoff Nugent, Andrew Oldham, Simon Osborne, William Pobjoy, Sir Cliff Richard, Dan Richter, Cynthia Riley, Charles Roberts, Craig Sams, Gregory Sams, Sandy Sams, Robert Sandall, Art Schreiber, Jackie de Shannon Tony Sheridan, Victor Spinetti, Peter Stockton, Ursula Stone, Peter Suchet, Jimmy Tarbuck, Joan Taylor, Klaus Voormann, Nigel Walley, Michael Ward, and Jane Wirgman.

Finally to my wife Sue, who suggested I should write this book, go all my love and gratitude.

PHILIP NORMAN
LONDON
, 2008

Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

Abbey Road
, 608–609, 611–614, 625, 719

ABKCO Industries, 600, 709
Acorn Event
, 542–543

Acorns, burying for peace, 602, 604 Ad Lib club, 325, 423

Adler, Lou, 715, 721

Aftermath
, 480

Alchemical Wedding, 593

Aldridge, Alan, 560, 575

Ali, Tariq, 661–662

“All My Loving,” 349

All Things Must Pass
, 655, 657, 669–670

“All Together Now,” 561

“All You Need Is Love,” 499–500, 561

Allsop, Ken, 417

Alpert, Richard, 430

Amaya, Mario, 476

“And Your Bird Can Sing,” 433

Anderson, Helen, 115, 154, 155–156, 164

Anderson, Jim, 669, 670–671

“Angela,” 699, 700

Animals, 412, 415

Anthony, Les, 388, 466, 545–546, 609, 675

Alf Lennon and, 510, 511

hired, 384–385

How I Won the War
and, 459

JL and Yoko Ono’s wedding and, 594, 595

on marijuana use, 396–397

at Tittenhurst Park, 616

Apotheosis
(film), 620, 668

Apple Corps, 588, 589, 600–601

Bag Productions and, 601–602

JL and, 559, 560

projects of, 514, 515–516, 542, 559–562, 563–565, 584–585, 661

“Western Communism” and, 539, 564, 583–584

Arden, Don, 283

Aronowitz, Al, 351, 660

Dylan meeting and, 374, 375, 376

Asher, Jane, 310, 324, 429, 434

breaks engagement to McCartney, 546

Transcendental Meditation and, 533, 536

Asher, Peter, 324, 429–430

Apple Corps management, 560, 584, 601

Ashton, David, 46, 52, 76

“Ask Me Why,” 270–271, 296

Aspinall, Neil, 223, 230, 243, 683, 773

Apple Corps and, 585, 661, 756–757

Beatles’ drug use and, 396, 492, 573

on Beatles’ performance, 293

Best and, 272, 275

Dylan meeting, 375, 376

Epstein and, 254, 507

Get Back/Let It Be
project and, 587

How I Won the War
and, 458–459

“Imagine” and, 776

on JL and Dylan, 415

JL and Yoko Ono’s wedding and, 594

LSD and, 426

on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 504

Presley meeting and, 405

as road manager, 332–334, 431

on rumored reunion, 786

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
and, 487

Transcendental Meditation and, 534, 536

world tour, 1964, 364–365

world tour, 1966, 441, 442

“Yellow Submarine” and, 434

Astaire, Fred, 682

“Attica State,” 699

ATV company, 603–604, 630, 665, 700

“Baby It’s You,” 295

“Baby You’re a Rich Man,” 503

“Baby’s in Black,” 393, 397–398

“Back in the USSR,” 576

Bag One
, 633–634

Bag Productions, 601–602, 626

“Bagism,” 593

Bailey, R. F., 60

Bainbridge, Beryl, 172

Baker, Barbara, 45, 75–76, 93, 111, 146

“Ballad of John and Yoko, The,” 598–599, 699

Ballard, Arthur, 128–129, 134, 136, 153, 161, 190

Band on the Run
, 729–730

Barber, Chris, 86

Bardot, Brigitte

Cynthia and look of, 166, 203, 302, 457

fantasies about, 73, 131, 521, 525, 550

Inder and, 272

JL meets, 563

Barrow, Tony

on Beatles in 1965, 403

hired, 284

on JL and Cynthia, 344

on JL’s singing, 317

Julian’s birth and, 306

keeps JL’s marriage secret, 301

Presley meeting and, 405

public relations work of, 297–298, 331, 431

US tour, 1966, 451–452, 453

Wooler fight and, 311

world tour, 1966, 441, 442

Bart, Lionel, 496

Bassanini, Roberto, 544–545, 572, 578, 609, 722

BBC Light Programme

Beatles on, 292, 300, 309

JL listens to as youth, 42

“Be Bop-a-Lula,” 746, 750

Beach Boys, 413, 480, 538

Beatals, 171–178

Beatlemania

in UK, 222, 315–322

in US, 343–348, 369–370

Beatles, 192, 308.
See also specific albums, films, individuals, and songs

answers to questions about name, 322

appearance of, 288, 293, 403–404

audition for Decca, 253–254

audition for Parlophone, 259

as Beatals, 171–178

breakup of, 622–625, 645–646

business interests after Epstein’s death, 513–515

at Cavern, 225–232, 258

“comeback film,” proposed, 580–583, 586–588

comedy of, 231

competitors and rivals, 340, 412–415, 479–481

end of touring and, 454–462

Epstein signs to manage, 251–253

first LP of, 294–296

first professional film footage of, 275–276

first single of, 281

friendships among, 333–334

Hamburg trips and, 189–225, 232–240, 265–269

individual names become known, 304

insecurity of, 339–341

JL on breakup of, 645–646

JL’s marriage to Cynthia kept secret, 301

JL’s
Mersey Beat
history of, 241–242

Kirchherr’s photos of, 212–213

with Little Richard, 282–283

management after Epstein, 585, 592

McCartney leaves, 644–645

MBE, 399–400, 407

meet Dylan, 374–376

meet Presley, 404–406

named permanently, 186

record with Sheridan on Polydor, 238–240, 250, 253

recording sessions, 269–270, 408–412, 570–573, 587