Original subtitles

I just want sashimi.

Yes. Kicho, 45th Street.

Look up in the phone book, Kicho.

Say who it's for.

Yoko Ono, not me.

Say it's for Yoko. Otherwise, I don't get it. I want just sashimi, tuna,

and sashimi. Just give me that raw fish.

Just give me that.

All ready, everybody?

One, two.

One, two, three, four.

He was back in the studio doing what he loved.

He was probably the happiest person in the world.

He's a little kid in a candy store. He was having a ball.

And happy as hell to be singing again.

And we would be in the middle of a good take, and if all of a sudden he just

felt like breaking into some lyric that would make everybody laugh and make

mistakes, he'd just do it.

Okay, we'll try one more.

Okay, just really watch yourself after coming out of the Latin, because the

way I know is because I have to sing it fast at the same time.

It's after... Jessica, I'm pleased I'm so screwed.

And then everybody's coming... We're stepping out!

You see? So just lay back, you know. He's only stepping out. He's not

We were nervous, not only for ourselves, but nervous about John.

If he would, having not been in the studio for five years, have his act

or not.

As far as all that went, he was totally together.

From the moment he picked his guitar up and said, right, here's a song. Let's

start with this one.

I'm stepping out.

I'm stepping out.

I'm stepping out.

How do you reinvent yourself if you were once a Beatle and defined by that

moment in time?

I suppose that New York offers you the opportunity to reinvent yourself.

If immigrants have come to New York for years and years in search of Lord knows

what, John Lennon isn't your typical immigrant, but John has come to find

something, and it seems that he's found it.

John would often say, I should have been born in New York City.

You know, he loved New York.

One of my biggest kicks is just going out to eat or going to the movies.

I'm doing things I couldn't do when I was in the middle of the Beatles stuff.

And I really get off on that. And people, occasionally people ask for

autographs. I just want to shake hands is the coolest one that happens, which

cool with me. And I'm just known enough to keep my ego floating, but unknown

enough to get around, which is nice.

We were at Hit Factory. He comes in. He's got the silver coat with the fur

collar. He said, look at this. What do you think of this?

I said.

It's nice.

He said, it's the greatest ever.

I said, okay, John. I said, no. He said, let me tell you why it's amazing.

He said, you know Charivari? I said, sure. He said, I walked into Charivari.

I walked into the store. People were in there. I walked around.

I picked stuff up.

I tried a few things on. I went into the dressing room.

Yeah.

He said, then I saw this jacket. I liked it. I tried it on. It fit me.

Yeah. He said, I took out this.

Uh -huh, my American Express card, yeah.

I went over, I paid for it myself.

And then I left.

No must, no fuss.

The freedom, finally you had freedom.

That was New York, that's why you loved it.

New York City New York City

New York City

John and Yoko, we came to New York in 71, and they actually moved into Bank

Street literally half a block from my house in the village.

And everybody in the neighborhood, we all knew John and Yoko moved in, like

everybody heard through the grapevine. But, you know, we're in New York, you

don't go, it's not Beatlemania, you don't go knock on his door or scream

comes outside.

Bank Street was really the kind of place that I really wanted the apartment in.

It's a tiny apartment.

I think there was only two rooms.

And we were not really bothered by people so much as in London.

We actually lived in Greenwich Village, which is a sort of artsy -fartsy section

of town, for those who don't know, where all the students and the would -bes

live, you know, and a few old poets and that.

You know, people have lived there for years, you know, still live there.

New York came in the 1970s, was the art capital.

All the music happened in theatre, you know, Andy Warhol.

That was part of also Yoko Ono's life.

And John wanted to be connected with both worlds.

The village was great then.

A little risque sometimes, you know, before they cleaned up New York.

People on the street begging for money, and if you don't give them money, they

would shoot you.

Pulled out on 8th Avenue one night, and there was John and Yoko hailing a cab in

the middle of 8th Avenue.

So I pull over.

Get in the car. What are you doing?

Geez, you're a beetle. You're running around, you know, hailing cabs on 8th

Avenue.

The village sucked you in because there was so much political energy.

It was...

What everybody was consumed with, it seemed.

People would be standing on the corner.

You know, there would be a big Nixon discussion all of a sudden would break

you know, on something that happened in the war, maybe that day in the papers.

And I know John and Yoko, that was so much a part of what their whole New York

thing was about.

New York was a lot easier for them.

Because they were treated so badly in England, they had very, you know, bad

feelings about that, because John admired Yoko, and the press totally

apart and made fun of her.

We really get hurt by abuse. We don't mind criticism of our work at all. But,

mean, the British press actually called Yoko ugly in the papers, and I've never

seen that about any woman or man, even if a person is ugly.

You don't normally sort of say it in the paper, you know, that ugly woman, and

she's not ugly, and if she was...

You wouldn't be so mean. They even say attractive about the most awful -looking

people, just to be kind.

When I first landed in London, I was invited by the Destruction Arts

Anyone who's interested could come up on the stage and try to fly off from these

ladders.

And it was a sort of very artsy crowd of people. They, what, they accepted me.

It was great.

But once I became connected with John, it was a different story. All the people

who used to like me were just kind of looking away.

John was a Beatle, you know, he was a pop star.

And then suddenly he was with this crazy, outlandish, avant -garde artist,

they were sending acorns to all the world leaders. Like, how is that going

bring peace?

Why the bag?

Because we believe it's total communication.

And they were in bags, and how is that going to help anybody?

All we're saying is give peace a chance.

Well, if the least we can do is give somebody a laugh, we're willing to be

world's clowns. They were just a messenger.

You know, and the fact that they were sitting in bed and talking about hair,

that just made it funny and interesting.

But the whole idea was to get that word peace in front of everybody's mind.

I don't go along with the message because you're Japanese or whatever. I

it's because you are an unorthodox figure.

People were not very happy with John either. They felt that John went crazy.

And we both suffered together.

And that kept us so close.

Oh, my love, for the first time in my life,

my eyes are wide open.

I want to love this country because this is my husband's country. But I'll be a

masochist if I love this country, when I'm constantly abused, you know,

whatever.

And I've never experienced anything like that. And that was true with John, too.

It was sort of inhuman.

Oh, I feel loved Everything is clear

in our world But there's an incredible romanticism about being refugees.

We just felt like we returned to our motherland kind of thing, which is New

York, you know, because we really felt that...

Well, we're on the same page with New Yorkers, and we were New Yorkers in our

heads, you know.

When

we

came to New York, the first people we got in touch with was Abby Hoffman and

Jerry Rubin.

When we were in London every night, we were watching TV.

And we saw Abby and Jerry doing their thing in Chicago, the Chicago 7 doing

their thing in front of the judge, you know.

I got a lot of different emotions when I hear this guy, Pearson.

One is I feel like vomiting because it's so nauseating. Because this is the man

that they're trying to use to put all of us in the federal penitentiary for 10

years.

Wow, great, they like us.

And also, we were not only activists, but we had the kind of little touch of

theater.

Well, I have a good seat, and it's unbelievable theater, great show.

Abby and Jerry completely incorporated the Marshall McLuhan notion in that all

that was needed was to seize control of the platform provided by television and

music.

and you would electrify and mobilize millions and millions of young people,

that was the way to subvert the system.

So they were trying to actively recruit John Lennon because they knew that he

could turn on millions of people.

So you're suddenly in New York City now, as you were just saying that.

What are, first of all, your immediate plans for the future?

Shortly we'll be going to a...

A political meeting for John Sinclair, who was a man that was put in prison for

ten years for smoking two marijuana joints.

In Louisiana.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And we've written a special song called John Sinclair, which we'll sing at that

performance. Hello, hello. Hello, hello.

One,

two, three, four.

John has come out in the middle of this explosive era.

And he makes the John Sinclair rally a huge event. 10 ,000, 20 ,000 people show

up in Ann Arbor. We came here not only to help John and to spotlight

what's going on, but also to show and to say to all of you that

apathy isn't it, and that we can do something.

Okay, so flower power didn't work, so what?

We start again.

Lenin had learned that the anti -war movement was exhausted and despairing.

Because all the people that say that the movement, the revolution is over, they

ought to see what's going on right here because it doesn't look over to me.

People are feeling weaker and more powerless.

People forget that a war that brings home 100 to 300 dead bodies a week

is particularly urgent the killing is monotonous and by 67 68 it's it's

hundreds a week that are dead so it incites a now or never mentality that

this is it we have to step up we have to end this and gradualism is

inappropriate so we have to block the war machine by whatever means are

available

When do we get it? Now!

We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South

Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U .S. combat ground forces and

their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled time

period.

In 1971, the sense was that if the American war machine escalates its war,

we have to escalate our tactics.

And the solution was more militants.

We must move from protest to resistance.

That was Logan, and that was the world into which Lenin stepped when he arrived

in the United States in 1971.

I read somewhere that the war movement was over.

They thought that it had all come undone with the killings at Kent State in

1970.

Remember, the largest student strike in the history of the United States stopped

everything on campuses. Many schools did not complete the semester in the spring

of 1970.

So they already thought they were looking at an imminent revolution.

led by students and blacks.

And then here comes John Lennon to add his luster and lyric to the uprising.

It's an exciting and optimistic moment, and the most amazing thing of all is 48

hours later, John Sinclair gets out of jail, something no one thought would

happen. So John and Yoko, Jerry and Abby, they're just feeling triumphant.

only do they have a great concert, they got John Sinclair out of jail.

It seems like at this moment, anything is possible.

like a magical mystery tour has begun, that somehow if John Lennon shows up, he

so changes the equation that a man in prison is released. So you can imagine,

you know, with the addition of chemical substances, what this did to the yippy

mind. You know, the possibilities were infinite.

We need John to help us rise up like a hurricane, to sweep this man Nixon and

his war makers into the sea.

We need John.

Jerry and Abby and Rennie Davis have an idea.

Actually, it's quite a good idea.

London should lead a national concert tour that will bring not just the rock

roll, but an anti -war message and voter registration across the United States.

Now, this voter registration thing is actually the key because...

72 was going to be the first election in which 18 -year -olds had the right to

vote. So the question was, how can we get 18 -year -olds to register to vote,

vote against Nixon, vote for peace?

And the idea was, well, Lenin will tell them to do this, and we'll have voter

registration right at the concerts.

And this would have been the first tour of the United States by any of the ex

-Beatles since...

The Beatles' final American tour when they waved farewell in Candlestick Park

1966.

Six years, no Beatles. This would have been big.

They knew that he could turn on millions of people.

And I remember going to the woods outside of Washington for a meeting that

thought was secret with Rennie Davis, which shows up in the FBI files.

at which he tried to incorporate me into this scheme for the John Lennon

speaking tour.

Turns out that among the 20 ,000 people in Chrysler Arena that night, there's a

FBI undercover agent who's taking complete notes on what everybody says,

down every word Lennon says, the lyrics to Lennon's song. He writes down, John

Sinclair, it ain't fair in the stir for breathing air. This report.

get sent to J. Edgar Hoover.

The FBI's ostensible reason for being interested in this is they're supposed

protect the president at the Republican National Convention, and these people

are talking about protest demonstrations.

The same people who caused all those problems in Chicago in 68, and now

talking about doing it again, but with John Lennon in the front.

So they've got to be stopped.

Of course, John wouldn't do it in the way that Jerry and Abby wanted to do

things.

But in his way, he was really trying to make it happen about McGovern to be

the next president and also that we are heading towards peace.

So we were trying to, with our effort, we can make it.

The Nixon White House decided they've got to be stopped.

And so the word gets passed.

through the FBI to Senator Strom Thurmond, a Republican of South

And he writes a memo to Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell.

And the Strom Thurmond memo concludes, Lenin is planning to do this, but

deportation would be a strategic countermeasure.

A couple of weeks later, they begin deportation proceedings against John

I know we're going to end up with that clean, clean fucking recorded sound,

which I hate.

Two, three, four.

It was Jerry Rubin that introduced us to John Lennon.

He just showed up one night. He wasn't invited. He just came in and he said,

really like to meet the band.

And my jaw just dropped.

We had a lot of street bands. The Elephant's Memory is known as a

of street band. I think we fueled the energy of everyone in the village on it.

We were the movement band.

Whenever there was a rally or a benefit, we were there.

We were playing, and at one point he looks at me and goes like this.

And I realize that I'm playing there, and I'm like...

So he looked and gave me the face, you know. And then I realized I have to

being cool.

Jerry brought a cassette tape of Elephant's Memory and said, listen to

we listened to it. It's great.

It's just, you know, they had a soul.

I can capsulize it in one word, energy.

There was just an unbelievable amount of energy emulated from the band.

Play some treble, Jack.

Play some top.

Play.

They were crazy musicians.

They just went on and on and on, and John was part of them. He loved them.

They were a village -type recorder.

They should have been in the garage recording, you know, with two

but we tried to do it in the studio, and when we did make it clean, nobody liked

it. So we had to go back into, you know, add the dirtiest sound we could get,

which is easy to get.

But we had to catch them the first two hours of the recording, because they

would never, never land after that.

I think you understand.

It wasn't too long, maybe a week and a half of rehearsing at the most, when

Woman is the Nigger of the World started, where I heard the first words

there was a new tune.

John came in with the lyrics, and we went into the room to the piano, and he

said, here's the song. And he started strumming.

Woman is the nigger of the world.

Woman is the nigger of the world.

And I said, what?

Woman is the nigger of the world.

That's amazing.

You're going to say that? Yeah.

So he put it out, and...

I don't think most of the radio stations would play it. And we got taken off the

air for using dope as a lyric.

So, you know, putting a nigger with a, you know, you can't even say that today.

I understand what he was saying, but I guess I was kind of naive, you know, in

terms of how the media might look at all that stuff.

It was 1972.

Nixon was still president.

We're actually on the Dick Cavett show, and then I realized, ooh, I guess this

is not going to go well in terms of they're going to really get on his case

about some of this stuff.

Will you welcome, please, John and Yoko Plano.

I had John and Yoko on, and Sue said, we're going to write a little insert

before the song for you to say. I said, you are going to censor?

My guests, after I get them on the show, this is ludicrous.

John and Yoko got into something which ABC feels may develop into, in their

words, a highly controversial issue.

So they wrote this thing, and I went in and taped it in order to retain the

song. In the next segment, John Lennon gives his reasons for writing the song

and for using the word.

This is a song about the women's problem. It was written by Yoko and I.

And the song is called Woman is the Nigger of the World.

And obviously there was a few people that reacted strangely to it, but

they were white and male.

Because a lot of stations were saying, well, we're not going to play this

because it says nigger and a white man shouldn't say it.

And then the chairman of the Black Caucus, that great guy, Congressman Ron

Dellums, Democrat of California, says here, he came out with this, which is

fantastic.

If you define niggers as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose

opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by

then good news. You don't have to be black to be a nigger in this society.

Most of the people in America are niggers.

I didn't say that.

Oh, my goodness.

We're navigating now.

About 600 protests did come in.

None of them about the song. All of them about, quote, that mealy -mouthed

statement you forced Dick to say before the show. Don't you believe we are grown

up? Oh, God.

It was wonderful in that sense. It gave me hope for the Republic.

Tell them about the case and everything.

See, we're really frightened now because there's some people feel that

we have to maybe leave this country.

The Nixon administration, in its finite wisdom, wanted John booted out of the

country. I didn't realize quite the seriousness of it and what an awful

burden it was for both of them. We went to an immigration lawyer who knew about

immigration, and he has really been surprised, because he worked in

15 years, he's really been surprised by some of the things that have gone on.

John told me that he had a conviction of possessing hash.

back in London about four years earlier.

So I asked him, what is hash?

I said, is it marijuana?

He said, no, it's much better than marijuana.

He said, it's related, but it is a completely different substance.

So I knew right away that there was something to hang my hat on.

The immigration office said, well, this is only because of the drug case, you

know, and nothing else.

But the strange thing is people like Donovan, Keith Richard, Mick Jagger,

Harrison, all have exactly the same record around the same time. And they

come and go any time they can. It was. He was a headhunter.

What is it they're after you for?

They're after us because we want peace. We've said the same thing for two years,

different one way or another.

And we believe in it.

My recommendation was that they apply immediately for an extension for about

months or so on their visa.

I went to see my old friend, the district director of immigration in New

because I felt that he could grant an extension on the spot.

And he said that he will look into it.

We better go in. We're late. We'll see you when we come out if you want.

We talked to you when you came out? We have a number of matters that we have to

take care of.

The next day, he called me back, and he said, Leon, we want your clients out of

the United States.

I didn't know who he meant by we.

He said, because it's you, if you file an application for an

extension, I'll grant a month's extension.

But then...

Get them the hell out of the United States. You said before that you love

York and you want to stay here. A lot of people are turned off of New York. What

do you like about it? Well, I've met a lot of New Yorkers who complain about

but nobody moves out.

It's the greatest place on earth. And if this was Rome, I want to live in Rome,

not in Wales.

It is Rome, you know. I've heard a lot of legal proceedings, but I don't think

ever heard so many confusing terms. Did you understand anything that was said up

there? Not really.

Well, ask that lawyer.

I just know we're still here and nobody drives.

We had an expression in the 60s that just because you're paranoid doesn't

you're not being followed.

Yes, we were all paranoid, but yes, we were being followed.

I had a peripheral role being a photographer and yet there were several

instances where I was followed and didn't realize it so much at the time

it would be the furthest thing from my mind to think that I was doing something

that the federal government would be interested in.

That I came out of my studio one time and I looked at the street and I saw

somebody take my picture.

It kind of turned away, and I looked back when I realized somebody had taken

picture, and it was a guy in a fedora hat. They looked like G -men, and he

of ducked down, and they drove down the street really fast, and I knew I had

seen it. And I thought, like, what the hell was that?

I saw the guy on my phone. Those FBI guys were in the basement of my building

for the whole time we were recording.

I would see them. They knew I knew they were there. I would come in. I would

ring my buzzer, and they were in.

around the stairs in the back, and they had their little tape machine set up,

and I could hear the click on my phone every time I picked it up, so it wasn't

hard to figure out. Pretty unnerving, actually, at the time.

More so from my wife, I think she, at the time, she was very paranoid about

that. Who wouldn't be?

When it first started, I was followed in the car, and my phone was tapped.

And I think they wanted me to know to scare me, and I was scared, paranoid.

You can imagine John Lennon says his phones tapped and there's men following

car. And people thought I was crazy then. I mean, they do anyway, but I

more so, you know, Lennon. Oh, you big -headed maniac, right?

Who's going to follow you around? Well, what do they want? You know, that's what

I'm saying. What do they want? They wanted to make it obvious so that we

get scared.

They wanted to shut us up.

They were trying to intimidate them.

They were trying to scare them into leaving the United States.

I did feel bad.

I did try to advise them to lay low.

But this was John and Yoko.

When we did Sometime in New York City, we were doing a newspaper.

In other words, mistakes, a little harmony wasn't perfect. We didn't go

perfect every note. We just printed it out, you know, to make a statement on

society right now, right away, and no BS.

Just say it. I think this is wrong. That's right. This is my opinion.

This has ended up with the worst ever confrontation between the army and the

Catholic people of the Craig and the Kambodscha.

Sometimes in New York City, that was outrageous.

We just went totally against what was acceptable in the music world or the

and roll world. We were just getting to be like Bertolt Brecht.

John was getting very anxious about getting this album out there.

It's going to be political. It's going to be different for him.

This was really just in -your -face politics.

Politics was in the air those days. You know, you couldn't avoid it, right?

She had Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon dancing naked on the cover. It wasn't

really their bodies, we just stuck their heads on. We got into a lot of trouble,

that's all I know.

That was the record that really gave us hell.

A lot of problems with that. And I don't think we sold so much, you know. So I

don't think that people had the same opinion with us.

I didn't really have time to think about, you know, that it was such a

I realized that the political issue was something that probably would hold the

album back.

He wasn't disappointed in us, but I think he was disappointed in the

Are we on?

Yeah, anytime you're ready. Okay. Hi, this is John Lennon. This is Yoko. The

-to -one benefit concert for the children of Willowbrook is sold out, and

surprised me too. So we're announcing a special matinee performance.

It's on the same day. It happens at 2 o 'clock. That's also Wednesday, the 30th

of August. John? Yeah?

Let's do it again.

Two, three, four!

The idea for the one -to -one concert came from Yoko Ono. I was a local

and in January 1972, I get the score from Yoko. She tells me that she and

had been watching my coverage of the awful conditions at the Willowbrook

School for the Mentally Retarded, and that they wanted to get involved, and

maybe they could do something.

They started rehearsing for this concert at Massachusetts Garden, and I remember

going into the rehearsal, and they would play a couple of Elvis Presley, Bo

Diddley songs to warm up, and then he started singing Cold Turkey or Imagine,

and it was suddenly, not this new friend of ours, John, it was like, oh my God,

he's that guy, he's the Beatle. Listen to that voice, that's the Beatle voice.

Imagine that it won't happen.

It'd be here, you'd cry.

No hell below us,

above us only sky.

Imagine all the people living

for today.

I think he thought of the one -to -one concert as a rehearsal for the world

tour. And the only way to get around all the green card thing was to do benefit

concerts.

This

is

what we had been building to.

Here we were. We were playing with John Lennon.

I want to tour the universe.

You gotta live.

You gotta love.

You gotta be somebody.

You gotta show.

But it's hard.

You know it's hard.

Sometimes I feel like going down.

This was supposed to be our first show of basically a...

A national tour. We're starting to assemble the gear. We're ordering best

made road cases. It's time to go out and tour.

It was just, we have to put it off because I want to tend to this

thing and get everything straight before we go out.

You gotta run.

You gotta hide.

You gotta keep your woman satisfied.

And we kept hanging on that. Hanging on it. One week to the next.

It's hard to get hard.

Sometimes I feel like going down.

Like at one time I had this group together, Elephant's Memory and a few

people, and I was ready to go on the road just for fun, you know. I didn't

whether I was going to get paid even. I just felt like going out, you know.

I had to send them away, you know, and that put me off performing for a bit.

then I still...

did my work, you know, because I can't stop it even if I'm in a bad state of

mind. But it was affecting me, affecting my whole life, actually.

At

the

time, I didn't think anything of it. We were just doing a good concert to let

people know that peace is important.

Let's end this war.

Now I realize this was when they were trying to deport us.

Are we doing this?

The reviews were great for

us as a band.

Unfortunately, the critics were very tough on John and Yoko.

After the concert, we didn't see him for a week after the reviews came out. He

was very upset.

John and I got off the stage. We hugged each other.

A great thing we did.

The next morning, it's a bad, bad review.

John never experienced that kind of a bad situation before that.

I think it weighed on him more than me.

You know, just one thing was going wrong after another.

John didn't take it very well at all. The critics panned the album. The

panned the concert. They basically hated it.

The Nixon administration issued a deportation order to try to throw John

the country. He started getting legal problems.

And John was really going into a dark place.

President Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, again headed the GOP ticket

in 72.

Solid Nixon country. West Virginia, a surprise, going to the Republicans.

New Hampshire, not a surprise.

Maryland, Agnew's revenge back in the Republican column.

We were in the studio, and somebody came and said, Nixon won.

Gone tonight to the Republicans.

Kansas, Connecticut, Texas, Michigan, Delaware. We found out, I think at the

studio, if I remember correctly, that Nixon had won, and I think that was the

end of the session.

It was just totally...

deflated everybody.

We all got very depressed. John particularly was, you know, he took it

personally. We project that President Nixon will come out of this the winner

with about 60 % of the popular vote and somewhere between 450 and

500 or more electoral votes.

Congratulations on your victory.

That night particularly was pretty ugly.

We were invited down to Jerry Rubin's house to watch the election returns, but

we didn't finish until pretty late at night. And by the time we finished,

had already won.

But we went down to Jerry's house, and there were still some people there. And

we were pretty drunk when we got there, but then there was more drinking.

We were very rowdy, way too rowdy.

My wife had too much to drink. I just wanted to leave.

So it was time to bail for me.

So by the time that we were in a car to go to Jerry Rubin's party, Joe was

swaying.

And I think, you know, what happened there, I totally understand.

You know, that he just pulled one girl and went into the next room.

started to make love, I suppose.

And there's big noise and everything.

And one of the elephant memory guys, Stan, Stan

was very sweet. He just put Bob Dylan's record on and sort of boosted up.

But it just didn't do any good.

But it was that kind of night.

And I felt very sad for myself.

I didn't like it.

But at the same time, I understood what she was going through.

And when I hurt you And cause you pain

Darling, I promise I

won't do it again The next day, we were in the studio.

Anton was still hungover. He looked...

Very sheepish, very remorseful. He knew he had screwed up. He knew as many times

as you try to apologize, it didn't erase the fact that he had embarrassed Yoko

so badly in front of everybody.

And we walked out on the docks by Bank Street and just sort of sat there. And

coming back, we were taking some pictures. There's one where John's on

kind of asking for forgiveness.

She was still dealing with him, but it wasn't okay.

It's hard enough, I know.

To feel, to feel your pain.

I really thought that there was an incredible amount of anger in him. But

because he did not want to be separate from me

at all.

So that we were together 24 hours a day, literally.

I thought that was really getting to us, maybe.

So I thought, well, we need some, you know, separation.

For me, actually, you know, I was not what I envisioned myself to be.

And in a situation like that, why should I want to stay there?

And I just wanted to find myself.

So I thought it was good if he goes to L .A.

Just find himself or just have a rest from the situation.

One thing I've understood.

Good morning, Southern California. It's 619 and 62 degrees in Hollywood.

This is John Lennon. And if you have any requests, call me at 520 -1974.

I've been working with them for three years. And one day, they said to me, you

know that John and I are not getting along.

And I'm looking at her and I said, Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.

And I'm thinking, why is she telling this to me now?

I knew it would be very difficult for him to just go to L .A. by himself, and

never did anything like that. So I felt very responsible.

And so I wanted to make the trip as comfortable as possible for him.

Hey, it's Jay. This is Richard Dixon here. Who's that?

Oh, I'm Dana.

Dana what?

Holden. Holden? Yeah.

Oh, hold on, Dana. Okay.

What's your request and why are we here?

I'd like to hear mind games.

You'd like to hear mind games? So would I. Isn't that wonderful?

I'd like to play some, actually.

Well, it's time to wheel you away.

Before we left New York, I remember John coming in to me and saying, I'm ready.

I said, I looked at him, I said, what do you mean? He goes, book the studio.

I'm going to do it now or I'm never going to do it.

And he didn't have his songs ready yet. But in two weeks he wrote Mind Games.

You know, you talk about somebody's brilliant, I mean, it's just amazing.

He was a very, very powerful songwriter.

He hears the chord structure, and then...

The words go around and around the block for a while.

But

by the

time he gets to the studio, he has the words written, and he's got maybe two

versions, and they go through changes until the word and the sound of the word

match the sound of the chord and the rhythm.

A lot of the writing happened in the studio. While the musicians were

he would be changing lyrics.

I guess he got inspired by the band and the studio atmosphere.

And John was just a very strong force of a personality.

So when he spoke, you listened, you know.

You could be in the other room and you hear his voice. He's just such a

distinctive voice, singing and just talking.

John was honest.

His lyrics were also very bluntly honest.

Everything was right up front with him. There was no mixing his words or being

diplomatic or beating around the bush. And his songs were like that, too. He

came out and just...

Said it. I made you cry.

Oh, well, I didn't want to hurt you. The words he

chooses are for everybody.

John talks of his problems, of the fight he has with himself.

And that's what makes it so strong and that's what people can relate to.

He projected himself. He projected his guts.

And the way he played his guitar, same thing.