Why Did John Lennon Not Like the Song Named Do You Want to Know a Secret
Published in January 1981 issue
Interviewed by David Sheff, September 1980
Article ©1981 Playboy Press
Introduction / Page 1 / Folio two / Page 3
PLAYBOY: "What do you lot say to those who insist that all rock since the Beatles has been the Beatles redone?"
LENNON: "All music is rehash. In that location are just a few notes. But variations on a theme. Attempt to tell the kids in the Seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was merely the Beatles redone. At that place is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees. They do a damn good chore. There was cypher else going on then."
PLAYBOY: "Wasn't alot of the Beatles' music at least more intelligent?"
LENNON: "The Beatles were more intellectual, so they appealed on that level, besides. Simply the basic appeal of the Beatles was non their intelligence. It was their music. It was only after some guy in the 'London Times' said there were Aeolian cadences in 'Information technology Won't Be Long' that the middle classes started listening to information technology... because somebody put a tag on it."
PLAYBOY: "Did you put Aeolian cadences in 'It Won't Be Long?'"
LENNON: "To this mean solar day, I don't have any idea what they are. They audio similar exotic birds."
PLAYBOY: "How did you react to the misinterpretations of your songs?"
LENNON: "For case?"
PLAYBOY: "The most obvious is the 'Paul is expressionless' fiasco. You already explained the line in 'Glass Onion.' What about the line in 'I am the Walrus'... (correction: Strawberry Fields Forever) ...'I buried Paul'?"
LENNON: "I said 'Cranberry sauce.' That'south all I said. Some people like ping-pong, other people like digging over graves. Some people will do annihilation rather than exist here at present."
PLAYBOY: "What well-nigh the dirge at the end of the song: Smoke pot, fume pot, everybody smoke pot'?"
LENNON: "No, no, no. I had this whole choir saying, 'Everybody'southward got ane, everybody's got one.' Merely when you get thirty people, male person and female person, on superlative of 30 cellos and on meridian of the Beatles' rock 'northward roll rhythm section, you can't hear what they're saying."
PLAYBOY: "What does 'everybody got'?"
LENNON: "Annihilation. You name information technology. Ane penis, one vagina, one asshole-- you proper name information technology."
PLAYBOY: "Did information technology problem you when the interpretations of your songs were subversive, such as when Charles Manson claimed that your lyrics were messages to him?"
LENNON: "No. It has nothing to practice with me. Information technology'due south like that guy, Son of Sam, who was having these talks with the dog. Manson was merely an farthermost version of the people who came up with the 'Paul is dead' thing or who figured out that the initials to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' were LSD and concluded I was writing about acrid."
PLAYBOY: "Where did 'Lucy in the Sky' come up from?"
LENNON: "My son Julian came in ane day with a picture he painted about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some stars in the sky and chosen it 'Lucy in the Heaven with Diamonds,' Simple."
PLAYBOY: "The other images in the song weren't drug-inspired?"
LENNON: "The images were from 'Alice in Wonderland.' It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty Dumpty. The woman serving in the store turns into a sheep and the side by side minute they are rowing in a rowing gunkhole somewhere and I was visualizing that. At that place was also the image of the female who would someday come save me... a 'daughter with kaleidoscope eyes' who would come out of the heaven. It turned out to be Yoko, though I hadn't met Yoko yet. So maybe it should be 'Yoko in the Sky with Diamonds.'"
PLAYBOY: "Exercise you take any involvement in the pop historians analyzing the Beatles as a cultural miracle?"
LENNON: "Information technology's all every bit irrelevant. Mine is to exercise and other people's is to tape, I suppose. Does it matter how many drugs were in Elvis' body? I mean, Brian Epstein'southward sex life will brand a nice 'Hollywood Babylon' anytime, but information technology is irrelevant."
PLAYBOY: "What started the rumors about you and Epstein?"
LENNON: "I went on holiday to Spain with Brian... which started all the rumors that he and I were having a love affair. Well, it was almost a love affair, simply not quite. Information technology was never consummated. Simply we did have a pretty intense relationship. And it was my first experience with someone I knew was a homosexual. He admitted it to me. We had this holiday together because Cyn was pregnant and we left her with the babe and went to Spain. Lots of funny stories, you lot know. We used to sit in cafs and Brian would look at all the boys and I would ask, 'Exercise you like that one? Do yous like this one?' Information technology was just the combination of our closeness and the trip that started the rumors."
PLAYBOY: "It'due south interesting to hear you talk about your one-time songs such equally 'Lucy in the Sky' and 'Glass Onion.' Will y'all give some brief thoughts on some of our favorites?"
LENNON: "Right."
PLAYBOY: "Let'south outset with 'In My Life.'"
LENNON: "It was the first song I wrote that was consciously almost my life. (sings) 'There are places I'll remember/ all my life though some accept inverse...' Before, we were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly-- popular songs with no more thought to them than that. The words were near irrelevant. 'In My Life' started out as a bus journey from my house at 250 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning all the places I could recall. I wrote it all downwards and it was boring. So I forgot about it and laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about friends and lovers of the past. Paul helped with the eye-eight."
PLAYBOY: "'Yesterday.'"
LENNON: "Well, we all know virtually 'Yesterday.' I take had so much accolade for 'Yesterday.' That is Paul'due south song, of course, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful-- and I never wished I had written it."
PLAYBOY: "'With a Piffling Aid from My Friends.'"
LENNON: "This is Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you lot run across when you turn out the calorie-free/ I can't tell yous, but I know it's mine...' is mine."
PLAYBOY: "'I am the Walrus.'"
LENNON: "The showtime line was written on i acid trip i weekend. The second line was written on the next acrid trip the side by side weekend, and information technology was filled in after I met Yoko. Part of it was putting down Hare Krishna. All these people were going on about Hare Krishna, Allen Ginsberg in particular. The reference to 'Element'ry penguin' is the simple, naive mental attitude of going around chanting, 'Hare Krishna,' or putting all your religion in any one idol. I was writing obscurely, a la Dylan, in those days."
PLAYBOY: "The song is very complicated, musically."
LENNON: "It actually was fantastic in stereo, but y'all never hear it all. In that location was too much to become on. It was too messy a mix. One track was alive BBC Radio-- Shakespeare or something-- I simply fed in whatsoever lines came in."
PLAYBOY: "What about the walrus itself?"
LENNON: "It'due south from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland.' To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social organisation. I never went into that bit nearly what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' Only that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) 'I am the carpenter....'"
PLAYBOY: "How about 'She Came in Through the Bathroom Window'?"
LENNON: "That was written past Paul when we were in New York forming Apple, and he first met Linda. Maybe she's the one who came in the window. She must have. I don't know. Somebody came in the window."
PLAYBOY: "'I Experience Fine.'"
LENNON: "That'south me, including the guitar lick with the first feedback ever recorded. I defy anybody to find an earlier record... unless information technology is some erstwhile blues record from the Twenties... with feedback on it."
PLAYBOY: "'When I'm Lx-4.'"
LENNON: "Paul completely. I would never even dream of writing a song like that. There are some areas I never think almost and that is one of them."
PLAYBOY: "'A Twenty-four hour period in the Life.'"
LENNON: "Simply as information technology sounds: I was reading the newspaper one day and I noticed ii stories. I was the Guinness heir who killed himself in a car. That was the main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next folio was a story about 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the beautiful little lick in the song 'I'd love to turn you lot on.' I had the majority of the song and the words, but he contributed this footling lick floating around in his caput that he couldn't use for annihilation. I thought it was a damn good work."
PLAYBOY: "May we continue with some of the ones that seem more personal and see what reminiscences they inspire?"
LENNON: "Reminisce away."
PLAYBOY: "For no reason whatsoever, permit'due south starting time with 'I Wanna Exist Your Human being.'"
LENNON: "Paul and I finished that 1 off for the Stones. Nosotros were taken downwardly by Brian to encounter them at the lodge where they were playing in Richmond. They wanted a song and nosotros went to see what kind of stuff they did. Paul had this chip of a song and we played it roughly for them and they said, 'Yes, OK, that'southward our style.' But information technology was only really a lick, and so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all sitting there, talking. We came back and Mick and Keith said, 'Jesus, look at that. They simply went over there and wrote it.' You lot know, correct in front end of their eyes. We gave information technology to them. It was a throwaway. Ringo sang it for us and the Stones did their version. It shows how much importance nosotros put on them. We weren't going to give them annihilation great, right? That was the Stones' first tape. Anyway, Mick and Keith said, 'If they can write a song so hands, we should try information technology.' They say information technology inspired them to start writing together."
PLAYBOY: "How about 'Strawberry Fields Forever'?"
LENNON: "Strawberry Fields is a real place. After I stopped living at Penny Lane, I moved in with my auntie who lived in the suburbs in a nice semidetached identify with a small garden and doctors and lawyers and that ilk living around... not the poor slummy kind of image that was projected in all the Beatles stories. In the form system, it was nigh half a grade higher than Paul, George and Ringo, who lived in government-subsidized housing. We owned our house and had a garden. They didn't have anything like that. Near that home was Strawberry Fields, a house about a boys' reformatory where I used to become to garden parties every bit a child with my friends Nigel and Pete. We would get there and hang out and sell lemonade bottles for a penny. We e'er had fun at Strawberry Fields. So that's where I got the proper name. But I used it as an image. Strawberry Fields forever."
PLAYBOY: "And the lyrics, for instance: 'Living is easy...'"
LENNON: (singing) "'...with optics airtight. Misunderstanding all you lot see.' It notwithstanding goes, doesn't it? Aren't I maxim exactly the same matter now? The awareness apparently trying to exist expressed is-- permit's say in one mode I was always hip. I was hip in kindergarten. I was unlike from the others. I was different all my life. The second verse goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, I was too shy and cocky-doubting. Nobody seems to be as hip as me is what I was maxim. Therefore, I must be crazy or a genius-- 'I mean information technology must be loftier or low,' the next line. There was something wrong with me, I thought, considering I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I thought I was crazy or an egomaniac for claiming to see things other people didn't see. Every bit a child, I would say, 'Only this is going on!' and everybody would expect at me every bit if I was crazy. I always was and then psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you lot want to phone call it, that I was ever seeing things in a hallucinatory style. It was scary as a child, considering there was nobody to relate to. Neither my auntie nor my friends nor everyone could e'er see what I did. It was very, very scary and the only contact I had was reading about an Oscar Wilde or a Dylan Thomas or a Vincent van Gogh-- all those books that my auntie had that talked about their suffering because of their visions. Because of what they saw, they were tortured by guild for trying to express what they were. I saw loneliness."
PLAYBOY: "Were you lot able to find others to share your visions with?"
LENNON: "Only dead people in books. Lewis Carroll, sure paintings. Surrealism had a great effect on me, considering then I realized that my imagery and my mind wasn't insanity; that if it was insane, I vest in an exclusive club that sees the world in those terms. Surrealism to me is reality. Psychic vision to me is reality. Even as a child. When I looked at myself in the mirror or when I was 12, 13, I used to literally trance out into blastoff. I didn't know what it was called then. I found out years subsequently in that location is a name for those conditions. Only I would find myself seeing hallucinatory images of my face changing and condign catholic and consummate. Information technology caused me to e'er be a insubordinate. This affair gave me a bit on the shoulder; only, on the other mitt, I wanted to exist loved and accepted. Part of me would like to exist accepted by all facets of club and non be this loudmouthed lunatic musician. Only I cannot be what I am not. Considering of my attitude, all the other boys' parents, including Paul'south father, would say, 'Proceed abroad from him.' The parents instinctively recognized what I was, which was a troublemaker, significant I did not adjust and I would influence their kids, which I did. I did my all-time to disrupt every friend's dwelling house I had. Partly, mayhap, information technology was out of green-eyed that I didn't have this so-called home. But I really did. I had an auntie and an uncle and a nice suburban home, thank you very much. Hear this, Auntie. She was injure by a remark Paul fabricated recently that the reason I am staying domicile with Sean now is because I never had a family life. It's absolute rubbish. There were five women who were my family. Five strong, intelligent women. Five sisters. 1 happened to exist my mother. My mother was the youngest. She just couldn't deal with life. She had a husband who ran away to sea and the war was on and she couldn't cope with me, and when I was four and a one-half, I ended up living with her elderberry sister. Now, those women were fantastic. One day I might do a kind of 'Forsyte Saga' just almost them. That was my first feminist education. Anyhow, that knowledge and the fact that I wasn't with my parents made me see that parents are non gods. I would infiltrate the other boys' minds. Paul's parents were terrified of me and my influence, simply because I was gratis from the parents' strangle hold. That was the gift I got for not having parents. I cried a lot most not having them and it was torture, just it also gave me an sensation early. I wasn't an orphan, though. My mother was alive and lived a 15-minute walk away from me all my life. I saw her off and on. I only didn't alive with her."
PLAYBOY: "Is she live?"
LENNON: "No, she got killed by an off-duty cop who was drunkard afterwards visiting my auntie'south firm where I lived. I wasn't in that location at the time. She was just at a motorbus stop. I was 16. That was another big trauma for me. I lost her twice. When I was v and I moved in with my auntie, and so when she physically died. That made me more bitter; the fleck on my shoulder I had as a youth got really big and then. I was simply really re-establishing the human relationship with her and she was killed."
PLAYBOY: "Her proper noun was Julia, wasn't it? Is she the Julia of your song of that name on 'The White Anthology?'"
LENNON: "The song is for her... and for Yoko."
PLAYBOY: "What kind of relationship did you have with your father, who went away to sea? Did you ever see him over again?"
LENNON: "I never saw him again until I made a lot of money and he came back."
PLAYBOY: "How former were you?"
LENNON: "24 or 25. I opened the 'Daily Express' and there he was, washing dishes in a modest hotel or something very nearly where I was living in the Stockbroker belt outside London. He had been writing to me to try to arrive contact. I didn't want to see him. I was too upset nigh what he'd done to me and to my female parent and that he would turn upwards when I was rich and famous and not bother turning up before. Then I wasn't going to encounter him at all, only he sort of blackmailed me in the printing past saying all this about existence a poor man washing dishes while I was living in luxury. I fell for it and saw him and we had some kind of human relationship. He died a few years later of cancer. But at 65, he married a secretary who had been working for the Beatles, age 22, and they had a child, which I thought was hopeful for a homo who had lived his life every bit a boozer and almost a Bowery bum."
PLAYBOY: "Nosotros'll never listen to 'Strawberry Fields Forever' the same way again. What memories are jogged by the vocal 'Aid'?"
LENNON: "When 'Assist' came out in '65, I was actually crying out for assistance. Most people remember it'south merely a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the fourth dimension; I just wrote the vocal considering I was commissioned to write information technology for the picture show. Simply later, I knew I really was crying out for assist. It was my fatty Elvis period. You lot meet the movie: He -- I -- is very fat, very insecure, and he'southward completely lost himself. And I am singing about when I was so much younger and all the rest, looking back at how piece of cake it was. Now I may exist very positive... yes, yes... only I too become through deep depressions where I would like to jump out the window, you know. Information technology becomes easier to bargain with as I get older; I don't know whether you learn control or, when you grow upward, you at-home down a little. Anyhow, I was fat and depressed and I was crying out for aid. In those days, when the Beatles were depressed, nosotros had this little chant. I would yell out, 'Where are we going, fellows?' They would say, 'To the top, Johnny,' in pseudo-American voices. And I would say, 'Where is that, fellows?' And they would say, 'To the toppermost of the poppermost.' It was some dumb expression from a inexpensive motion-picture show, a la 'Blackboard Jungle,' about Liverpool. Johnny was the leader of the gang."
PLAYBOY: "What were you depressed about during the 'Help' menses?"
LENNON: "The Beatles affair had just gone across comprehension. We were smoking marijuana for breakfast. We were well into marijuana and nobody could communicate with u.s., because we were just all glazed optics, giggling all the time. In our own world. That was the song, 'Help.' I retrieve everything that comes out of a vocal-- fifty-fifty Paul's songs now, which are plainly about nothing-- shows something virtually yourself."
PLAYBOY: "Was 'I'm a Loser' a similarly personal statement?"
LENNON: "Part of me suspects that I'm a loser and the other part of me thinks I'thou God Almighty."
PLAYBOY: "How about 'Common cold Turkey?'"
LENNON: "The song is self-explanatory. The song got banned, even though information technology'south antidrug. They're and then stupid about drugs, you know. They're not looking at the cause of the drug problem: Why practice people take drugs? To escape from what? Is life and then terrible? Are we living in such a terrible situation that nosotros tin can't do anything without reinforcement of alcohol, tobacco? Aspirins, sleeping pills, uppers, downers, never mind the heroin and cocaine-- they're merely the outer fringes of Librium and speed."
PLAYBOY: "Do you employ any drugs now?"
LENNON: "Not really. If somebody gives me a joint, I might fume it, but I don't go after information technology."
PLAYBOY: "Cocaine?"
LENNON: "I've had cocaine, but I don't like it. The Beatles had lots of it in their day, only it's a dumb drug, because you lot have to have another one 20 minutes after. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next gear up. Actually, I find caffeine is easier to deal with."
PLAYBOY: "Acrid?"
LENNON: "Not in years. A footling mushroom or peyote is not across my scope, yous know, maybe twice a year or something. Y'all don't hear nearly it anymore, merely people are still visiting the cosmos. Nosotros must always retrieve to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it, Harry? So exit the bottle, male child... and relax. They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. If you look in the Regime reports on acid, the ones who jumped out the window or killed themselves because of it, I think fifty-fifty with Art Linkletter's girl, it happened to her years later. So, let'southward face it, she wasn't really on acrid when she jumped out the window. And I've never met anybody who's had a flashback on acid. I've never had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties."
PLAYBOY: "What does your diet include as well sashimi and sushi, Hershey bars and cappuccinos?"
LENNON: "We're mostly macrobiotic, just sometimes I accept the family unit out for a pizza."
ONO: "Intuition tells yous what to eat. It's dangerous to try to unify things. Everybody has different needs. Nosotros went through vegetarianism and macrobiotic, but now, because nosotros're in the studio, we do consume some junk food. We're trying to stick to macrobiotic: fish and rice, whole grains. You balance foods and eat foods indigenous to the area. Corn is the grain from this surface area."
PLAYBOY: "And you both smoke upward a storm."
LENNON: "Macrobiotic people don't believe in the big C. Whether you accept that as a rationalization or not, macrobiotics don't believe that smoking is bad for yous. Of course, if we die, we're wrong."
PLAYBOY: "Let's go back to jogging your retentiveness with songs. How about Paul's vocal 'Hey Jude'?"
LENNON: "He said information technology was written about Julian. He knew I was splitting with Cyn and leaving Julian then. He was driving to see Julian to say hello. He had been like an uncle. And he came up with 'Hey Jude.' Simply I ever heard it as a vocal to me. Now I'g sounding like 1 of those fans reading things into it... Remember well-nigh it: Yoko had simply come up into the picture. He is maxim. 'Hey, Jude'-- 'Hey, John.' Subconsciously, he was saying, 'Go alee, go out me.' On a witting level, he didn't want me to go alee. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like information technology at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner."
PLAYBOY: "What nigh 'Considering'?"
LENNON: "I was lying on the sofa in our firm, listening to Yoko play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' on the pianoforte. Suddenly, I said, 'Can yous play those chords backward?' She did, and I wrote 'Because' effectually them. The vocal sounds like 'Moonlight Sonata,' too. The lyrics are clear, no bullshit, no imagery, no obscure references."
PLAYBOY: "'Give Peace a Chance.'"
LENNON: "All we were saying was give peace a take a chance."
PLAYBOY: "Was it really a Lennon-McCartney composition?"
LENNON: "No, I don't even know why his name was on it. It'south there because I kind of felt guilty because I'd made the divide single-- the first-- and I was actually breaking away from the Beatles."
PLAYBOY: Why were the compositions you and Paul did separately attributed to Lennon-McCartney?"
LENNON: "Paul and I made a deal when we were xv. There was never a legal bargain between us, just a deal we made when we decided to write together that we put both our names on it, no affair what."
PLAYBOY: "How about 'Exercise You Want to Know a Hugger-mugger?'"
LENNON: "The idea came from this thing my mother used to sing to me when I was one or 2 years sometime, when she was still living with me. It was from a Disney movie: 'Practice you want to know a cloak-and-dagger? Promise not to tell? You are standing by a wishing well.' So, with that in my head, I wrote the song and just gave it to George to sing. I idea it would be a good vehicle for him, considering information technology had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world. He has improved a lot since then; but in those days, his ability was very poor. I gave information technology to him just to give him a slice of the action. That'due south another reason why I was injure past his book. I even went to the problem of making sure he got the B side of a Beatles single, because he hadn't had a B side of one until 'Do You Want to Know a Secret.' 'Something' was the first time he e'er got an A side, because Paul and I always wrote both sides. That wasn't considering nosotros were keeping him out but merely because his material was not upwards to scratch. I made sure he got the B side of 'Something,' likewise, and so he got the cash. Those little things he doesn't recall. I ever felt bad that George and Ringo didn't get a slice of the publishing. When the opportunity came to give them five percent each of Maclen, it was considering of me they got it. It was not because of Klein and not considering of Paul only because of me. When I said they should become it, Paul couldn't say no. I don't get a piece of any of George'due south songs or Ringo'south. I never asked for anything for the contributions I made to George's songs similar 'Taxman.' Not fifty-fifty the recognition. And that is why I might take sounded resentful about George and Ringo, because information technology was after all those things that the attitude of 'John has forsaken the states' and 'John is tricking us' came out... which is non true."
PLAYBOY: "'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.'"
LENNON: "No, it's non about heroin. A gun magazine was sitting there with a smoking gun on the comprehend and an article that I never read inside called 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun.' I took it right from in that location. I took information technology as the terrible idea of just having shot some animal."
PLAYBOY: "What well-nigh the sexual puns: 'When you feel my finger on your trigger'?"
LENNON: "Well, it was at the beginning of my human relationship with Yoko and I was very sexually oriented then. When we weren't in the studio, we were in bed."
PLAYBOY: "What was the allusion to 'Mother Superior jumps the gun'?"
LENNON: "I phone call Yoko Mother or Madam simply in an offhand way. The rest doesn't mean annihilation. Information technology'due south just images of her."
PLAYBOY: "'Across the Universe.'"
LENNON: "The Beatles didn't brand a expert record of 'Beyond the Universe.' I think subconsciously we... I thought Paul subconsciously tried to destroy my neat songs. We would play experimental games with my groovy pieces, like 'Strawberry Fields,' which I e'er felt was badly recorded. It worked, merely it wasn't what it could have been. I allowed information technology, though. We would spend hours doing fiddling, detailed cleaning up on Paul's songs, but when it came to mine... especially a great song like 'Strawberry Fields' or 'Across the Universe' ...somehow an atmosphere of looseness and experimentation would come up."
PLAYBOY: "Sabotage?"
LENNON: "Hidden sabotage. I was as well hurt... Paul will deny it, because he has a banal face and will say this doesn't exist. This is the kind of thing I'yard talking about where I was always seeing what was going on and began to recollect, Well, mayhap I'm paranoid. But it is not paranoid. Information technology is the absolute truth. The aforementioned thing happened to 'Across the Universe.' The song was never done properly. The words stand, luckily."
PLAYBOY: "'Getting Ameliorate.'"
LENNON: "It is a diary form of writing. All that 'I used to be vicious to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved' was me. I used to be fell to my adult female, and physically... any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I striking women. That is why I am ever on well-nigh peace, you see. Information technology is the most fierce people who go for dear and peace. Everything'southward the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face up in public how I treated women as a youngster."
PLAYBOY: "'Revolution.'"
LENNON: "We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting actually tense with one another. I did the tedious version and I wanted information technology out every bit a single: as a statement of the Beatles' position on Vietnam and the Beatles' position on revolution. For years, on the Beatle tours, Epstein had stopped us from maxim anything nigh Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn't allow questions nearly it. But on i tour, I said, 'I am going to answer well-nigh the war. We can't ignore information technology.' I admittedly wanted the Beatles to say something. The first take of 'Revolution' ...well, George and Paul were resentful and said it wasn't fast enough. Now, if you go into details of what a hitting record is and isn't... perchance. But the Beatles could have afforded to put out the wearisome, understandable version of 'Revolution' as a single. Whether it was a gilt record or a wooden record. Just because they were then upset nearly the Yoko menses and the fact that I was again becoming as creative and dominating as I had been in the early days, after lying fallow for a couple of years, it upset the apple cart. I was awake once more and they couldn't stand up it?"
PLAYBOY: "Was it Yoko's inspiration?"
LENNON: "She inspired all this cosmos in me. It wasn't that she inspired the songs; she inspired me. The statement in 'Revolution' was mine. The lyrics stand today. It'southward even so my feeling well-nigh politics. I desire to meet the plan. That is what I used to say to Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Count me out if it is for violence. Don't expect me to be on the barricades unless it is with flowers."
PLAYBOY: "What do yous think of Hoffman's turning himself in?"
LENNON: "Well he got what he wanted. Which is to be sort of an underground hero for anybody who still worships whatsoever manifestation of the underground. I don't feel that much about information technology anymore. Nixon, Hoffman, it'due south the same. They are all from the same period. It was kind of surprising to encounter Abbie on Tv set, merely it was as well surprising to see Nixon on TV. Perhaps people get the feeling when they run into me or united states of america. I feel, What are they doing there? Is this an one-time newsreel?"
PLAYBOY: "On a new album, you close with 'Difficult Times Are Over (For a While).' Why?"
LENNON: "It'southward not a new message: 'Give Peace a Run a risk'-- we're not being unreasonable, just saying, 'Give it a run a risk.' With 'Imagine,' nosotros're proverb, 'Can you imagine a world without countries or religions?' It's the same message over and over. And information technology'south positive."
PLAYBOY: "How does it experience to accept people conceptualize your new tape because they feel you lot are a prophet of sorts? When yous returned to the studio to make 'Double Fantasy,' some of your fans were saying things like, 'Just as Lennon defined the Sixties and the Seventies, he'll be defining the Eighties.'"
LENNON: "Information technology'southward very sad. Anyway, we're not saying annihilation new. A) we have already said it and, B) 100,000,000 other people have said it, likewise."
PLAYBOY: "Merely your songs practise take letters."
LENNON: "All we are maxim is, 'This is what is happening to us.' We are sending postcards. I don't permit information technology become 'I am the awakened; you are sheep that volition be shown the style.' That is the danger of saying anything, you know."
PLAYBOY: "Especially for y'all."
LENNON: "Listen, there's nil wrong with following examples. We can take figure heads and people we admire, but we don't need leaders. 'Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.'"
PLAYBOY: "You're quoting one of your peers, of sorts. Is it sorry to yous that Dylan is a born-again Christian?"
LENNON: "I don't like to comment on it. For whatever reason he'south doing it, it is personal for him and he needs to do it. Simply the whole religion business suffers from the 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' bit. In that location's besides much talk about soldiers and marching and converting. I'm not pushing Buddhism, because I'grand no more a Buddhist than I am a Christian, but there'south 1 thing I admire most the religion: In that location'southward no proselytizing."
PLAYBOY: "Were yous a Dylan fan?"
LENNON: "No, I stopped listening to Dylan with both ears after 'Highway 64' [sic] and 'Blonde on Blonde,' and fifty-fifty then information technology was considering George would sit me downward and make me listen."
PLAYBOY: "Similar Dylan, weren't you also looking for some kind of leader when you did primal-scream therapy with Arthur Janov?"
ONO: "I think Janov was a daddy for John. I call back he has this father complex and he's ever searching for a daddy."
LENNON: "Had, honey. I had a begetter circuitous."
PLAYBOY: "Would you explicate?"
ONO: "I had a daddy, a real daddy, sort of a big and stiff begetter like a Billy Graham, but growing up, I saw his weak side. I saw the hypocrisy. So whenever I see something that is supposed to exist so large and wonderful, a guru or primal scream, I'm very cynical."
LENNON: "She fought with Janov all the time. He couldn't bargain with it."
ONO: "I'm not searching for the large daddy. I wait for something else in men... something that is tender and weak and I feel like I want to help."
LENNON: "And I was the lucky cripple she chose!"
ONO: "I have this mother instinct, or whatever. But I was not hung upward on finding a male parent, considering I had one who disillusioned me. John never had a gamble to get disillusioned about his father, since his father wasn't around, so he never thought of him as that big human being."
PLAYBOY: "Do y'all agree with that assessment, John?"
LENNON: "Alot of us are looking for fathers. Mine was physically not there. Most people's are not there mentally and physically, similar always at the office or busy with other things. And then all these leaders, parking meters, are all substitute fathers, whether they be religious or political... All this flake about electing a President. We pick our ain daddy out of a domestic dog pound of daddies. This is the daddy that looks like the daddy in the commercials. He'southward got the dainty gray pilus and the right teeth and the parting's on the right side. OK? This is the daddy we cull. The dog pound of daddies, which is the political arena, gives us a President, then we put him on a platform and first punishing him and screaming at him because Daddy tin can't do miracles. Daddy doesn't heal us."
PLAYBOY: "And then Janov was a daddy for you. Who else?"
ONO: "Before, in that location was Maharishi."
LENNON: "Maharishi was a father figure, Elvis Presley might have been a father effigy. I don't know. Robert Mitchum. Any male epitome is a father figure. In that location's null wrong with information technology until you requite them the right to give y'all sort of a recipe for your life. What happens is somebody comes along with a good piece of truth. Instead of the truth's being looked at, the person who brought it is looked at. The messenger is worshiped, instead of the message. So there would be Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Maoism-- everything-- it is always about a person and never well-nigh what he says."
ONO: "All the 'isms' are daddies. It's deplorable that society is structured in such a way that people cannot really open up to each other, and therefore they need a sure theater to go to to weep or something like that."
LENNON: "Well, you went to est."
ONO: "Yep, I wanted to check it out."
LENNON: "We went to Janov for the aforementioned reason."
ONO: "But est people are given a reminder..."
LENNON: "Aye, just I wouldn't become and sit down in a room and not pee."
ONO: "Well, you did in primal scream."
LENNON: "Oh, merely I had you with me."
ONO: "Anyhow, when I went to est, I saw Werner Erhardt, the same thing. He's a nice showman and he's got a nice gig there. I felt the same matter when nosotros went to Sai Baba in Republic of india. In India, you lot have to be a guru instead of a popular star. Guru is the popular star of India and pop star is the guru here."
LENNON: "Merely nobody's perfect, etc., etc. Whether information technology'southward Janov or Erhardt or Maharishi or a Beatle. That doesn't take abroad from their message. It's like learning how to swim. The swimming is fine. But forget about the teacher. If the Beatles had a bulletin, information technology was that. With the Beatles, the records are the bespeak, not the Beatles as individuals. You don't need the package, just every bit y'all don't need the Christian bundle or the Marxist parcel to get the message. People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'thousand a most religious beau. I was brought up a Christian and I only now empathize some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message."
PLAYBOY: "And the Beatles taught people how to swim?"
LENNON: "If the Beatles or the Sixties had a bulletin, it was to learn to swim. Menstruation. And once you learn to swim, swim. The people who are hung upward on the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream missed the whole point when the Beatles' and the Sixties' dream became the point. Carrying the Beatles' or the Sixties' dream around all your life is similar carrying the 2nd Globe War and Glenn Miller around. That's not to say you can't enjoy Glenn Miller or the Beatles, but to live in that dream is the twilight zone. Information technology's not living now. It'south an illusion."
PLAYBOY: "Yoko, the unmarried you lot and John released from your album seems to be looking toward the future."
ONO: "Yeah, 'Starting Over' is a song that makes me feel like crying. John has talked about the Sixties and how it gave u.s.a. a gustatory modality for liberty... sexual and otherwise. Information technology was like an orgy. Then, after that large come that we had together, men and women somehow lost track of each other and a lot of families and relationships carve up apart. I really think that what happened in the Seventies tin exist compared to what happened under Nazism with Jewish families. Only the force that separate them came from the inside, non from the outside. Nosotros tried to rationalize it as the cost we were paying for our freedom. And John is proverb in his song, OK, we had the energy in the Sixties, in the Seventies we separated, but let's start over in the Eighties. He's reaching out to me, the woman. Reaching out after all that's happened, over the battlefield of dead families, is more difficult this time around. On the other side of the record is my song, 'Kiss Osculation Kiss,' which is the other side of the same question. There is the sound of a adult female coming to a climax on it, and she is crying out to be held, to exist touched. It will exist controversial, because people however feel it'southward less natural to hear the sounds of a woman's lovemaking than, say, the sound of a Concorde, killing the atmosphere and polluting nature. Altogether, both sides are a prayer to modify the Eighties."
PLAYBOY: "What is the Eighties' dream to you, John?"
LENNON: Well, yous make your own dream. That'southward the Beatles' story, isn't it? That's Yoko'southward story. That'south what I'grand saying now. Produce your own dream. If yous want to salve Peru, go save Peru. It's quite possible to do annihilation, simply not to put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don't expect Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come up and practice it for you. You accept to do it yourself. That's what the keen masters and mistresses accept been saying ever since time began. They can betoken the mode, go out signposts and petty instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshiped for the encompass of the book and non for what it says, only the instructions are all there for all to meet, take always been and ever will be. At that place's nothing new under the lord's day. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for yous. I can't wake you up. You can wake you lot up. I tin't cure you. You can cure y'all."
PLAYBOY: "What is information technology that keeps people from accepting that message?"
LENNON: "It'due south fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of information technology is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that... it'due south all illusion. Unknown is what what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it'due south plain sailing. Everything is unknown... and then you're ahead of the game. That'south what it is. Right?"
Source: Transcribed past www.beatlesinterviews.org from original magazine issue
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