The
fourth part of my 1973 interview with John.
John admits he’s dropped out a little
recently, and has deliberately stopped making explosive statements that would
make newspaper headlines. He says this may have something to do with his visa
situation, that he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself in ways that might
jeopardise his position. In any case, there has, he says, not been much to talk
about. “I think I’ll always be the same whenever there’s an issue. In the olden
days, the MM would carry headlines like ‘Lennon Blasts Hollies’ and, not
that I’d regret saying what I’d said, it would reverberate back to me for
months afterwards.
“So
then I’d drop back a little. I’m going through one of those phases now. Either
Lennon is all over the place or he’s invisible. Like other things, I don’t plan
it. It just happens naturally.”
The
next project coming up for John, though, is an album of oldies he’s due to make
with Phil Spector. “Phil and I have been threatening to do this for years.
“I
want to go in and sing some ‘Ooo eeh baby’-type songs that are meaningless for
a change. Whenever I’m in the studio, between takes, I mess around with oldies.
I even used to do it in the studio in the Beatle days, so now I’m finally
getting round to doing a John Lennon sings the oldies album.
“This
will be my next album. I hope people won’t think I’ve run out of songs, but sod
it, I just want to do it. I’m not going to tell you what numbers I’ll be doing;
I don’t even know for sure myself. Phil and I are sorting through loads of
songs right now.
“I
enjoy working with him, but I equally enjoyed doing the latest album on my own.
There was nobody to lean on, and this was a good exercise for me. I always
control everything anyway, but this time I thought I’d do it all on my own.”
Conversation
turned to the recent double Beatles compilation albums [the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’
albums] that have been so successful, a fact which pleases Lennon almost as
much as when ‘Imagine’ occasionally creeps back into the charts. He gets a
bigger kick, however, out of his own albums doing well rather than Beatle
material.
“George
controlled the choice of the material on those albums more than any of us. They
sent me lists and asked for my opinion, but I was busy at the time. I think it
was the pressure of the bootlegs that finally made us put them out after all
this time.
“Did
you know that there’s a bootleg out now of the Decca audition which The Beatles
did? I have a copy of it, but I’m trying to find the tape. It’s beautiful.
There’s us singing ‘To Know Her Is To Love Her’, and a whole pile of tracks,
mostly other people’s but some of our own. It’s pretty good, better than that
Tony Sheridan thing on Polydor.
“Every
time I go on TV here somebody tapes it and within a week it’s in all the shops.
In a way I dig it because it’s good for your ego, but I know I’m not supposed
to because it’s against the business. I got copies made from this Decca
audition and sent it to them all. I wouldn’t mind actually releasing it.”
I
told John I had a copy of The Beatles Live At Shea Stadium. “Yes, I’ve
got that,” he said. “I think I’ve got them all. There’s one of a Beatles show
at the Hollywood Bowl which was an abortion, and there’s others from everywhere
we played, obscure places here in the States. It seemed someone was taping it
everywhere.
“I
think the official reissue albums came out around the right time. Maybe we’d
have sold more if we’d got them out before the bootleggers, but they didn’t do
too badly at all. They got gold records each. They brought back the sixties.”
With
talk having moved to The Beatles, not a subject I’d intended to discuss, I
asked John if he had a favourite Beatles song. “Not really,” he said. “I usually
preferred whatever was current at the time. I have a favourite of Paul’s, and a
favourite of George’s and a favourite of my own.
“Of
mine I like ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Walrus’, of Paul’s I like ‘Here, There And
Everywhere’, of Ringo’s I like ‘Honey Don’t’ and of George’s I like ‘Within
You, Without You’. Of course I still like ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and another I liked
was ‘For No One’.
“I
have favourites from different periods. When I first received a copy of the
compilation albums, I was too nervous to play them in case they were mixed
badly. I thought the sound was a bit rough.
“I
heard they’ve tried to stereoise the old albums. I wish they hadn’t. I also
think they could have put some of the tracks out that were B-sides and aren’t
available any more. Maybe they still will. I hope so.”
My
last question was the inevitable... any chance of us seeing the four Beatles on
a stage or record together again?
“There’s
always a chance,” grinned John. “As far as I can gather from talking to them
all, nobody would mind doing some work together again. There’s no law that says
we’re not going to do something together, and no law that says we are.
“If
we did do something I’m sure it wouldn’t be permanent. We’d do it just for that
moment. I think we’re closer now than we have been for a long time. I call the
split the divorce period and none of us ever thought there’d be a divorce like
that.
“That’s
just the way things turned out. We know each other well enough to talk about
it.”
And
just as John said that the tape ran out. In fact he’d leaned over to push the stop
button on my tape recorder after I’d asked him the question about The Beatles
getting back together in some form or other, and I’d grabbed his hand to
prevent him. I guessed he didn’t really want quoting on the issue in case I
wrote up another ‘Beatles to reform story,’ a bad habit of mine in those days.
We’d been nattering for about 90
minutes by the side of Lou Adler’s swimming pool. In the living room of the
house was a Gibson Melody Maker guitar, a good omen I thought. This interview
was the beginning of a friendly relationship I enjoyed with John that lasted
until 1975 when I saw him get his green card at a hearing in New York. I’ll
post about that tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment