T/W anorexia, disordered eating, just generally miserable times
Something was bothering me from a few anecdotes that I'd read over the past couple of months regarding John's height. In Elliot Mintz account of John giving him a hug, he mentions that John was no giant, despite apparently being 5"10. Robert Rosen, the man who got hold of Lennon's diaries says that John's shirts fitted his 5"8 frame perfectly (just ... just don't ask how he got them) and Mike Tree estimates that John's height was about 5"8. ((A random redditor further apparently interviewed Halstead, the captain of John Bermuda trip, who said he thought John was 5"7/5"6)). From this it would be a pretty fair to conclude that John had been lying about his height, especially as the Beatles did wear heels.
The thing is that we know from John's midsummer Night's Dream costume fitting was measured to 5"10, a pretty good indicator that John actually was that height. (Note as well that Ringo is listed as 5"6 here when his PR height was 5"8, indicating that these are accurate.)
Even by today's standards, 5"10 is above average height. So what's going on? Why are there multiple accounts of John in the 70s of him not being very tall?
One reason could be his posture and that he may have been slouching, which he seems to have done a bit. The other reason is that John may have just been extremely skinny, but in saying that in my experience skinniness usually makes you look a bit taller.
So let's go back to the drawing board and look at common reasons for what causes an adult to lose height. The obvious answer is age, but what is it about age that causes people to shrink? Welll, many factors, a big one being spinal compression as the vertebrae thins out and loses elasticity. However, two other key factors are muscle wastage and Osteoporosis: a condition where bones lose their density and become weaker. As the bones become weaker, micro breaks in the spine can occur, causing people to stoop and lose height. Muscle wastage on the other hand affects the spine as well as posture.
What does this have to do with John? He was in his late 30s-40 when these stories started coming in, not an old man in the slightest. See unfortunately, Osteoporosis doesen't just occur in old people, it can also crop up in younger people too due to different risk factors; factors like genetics, hormone issues, lack of vitamins and ... malnutrition.
I think anyone who has seen pictures of 1980 John and knows about his eating habits knows where I'm going with this.
Osteoporosis is a common side effect of anorexia, occuring in 30% of sufferers with 90% of sufferers experiencing bone thinning. Osteoporosis can also occur within a year of the onset of symptoms. As far as we know John's disordered eating and periods of starvation started in the late 60s, meaning that he had nearly a decade of consistent bouts of starvation. Muscle wastage too is extremely common with anorexia and from pictures you can see that this is also the case with John. In the picture above, there is no muscle on the chest area to cover the bones. A lack of physical activity would also have exacerbated both conditions.
I could be wrong, man could just have had a terrible posture and people could be misremembering his height. Nevertheless, I think there's a real possibility that John actually starved himself shorter.
My Goodreads review of Sugar Street, the third in the Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Black Swan edition, translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Angele Botros Samaan)
Two main things struck me while I read Sugar Street: firstly that while I don't know Arabic, I got a strong sense of the elegant economy and poetry of the written language from this translation. The second thing was how much traditional Egyptian middle-class life in the 1920s and 30s as depicted in the book reminded me of Irish culture up until relatively recently. While on the surface there wouldn't seem to be many similarities, the conservative, family-focused, deeply religious patriarchy in which mothers dominated the home felt very familiar. Even the way religion infused the language and thinking of the characters, even the nonbelieving ones, was very like the way Irish culture was for much of the 20th century a Catholic culture. Like in Ireland, families observed religion, gossiped about neighbours, argued about the politics of a young nation and mothers hoped for a civil service career for their sons and a good marriage for their daughters.
The story covers a long period of time and is a little episodic - there were many subplots that could have been explored more, and some main plots that could have been trimmed. I had limited patience for Kamal's endless romantic vacillating, but was engaged by his nephew Ahmad's adventures working for a Marxist magazine and trying to break free of the constraints of traditional middle-class life.
Politics runs through the story constantly, as the characters debate and wonder where the new country will go once the double-crossing English are finally gone. It might be advisable to have a wikipedia entry on pre-war Egyptian history open as you read as the various parties and individuals are mentioned without backstory (and there's no reason why they should be, considering the novel was written first for an Egyptian audience.)
The death of Suze Rotolo is sad news; it almost seems symbolic of the passing of a certain kind of 60s innocence and idealism. But more than a symbol of an era, or a poet's muse, Rotolo seems to have been a talented artist and an interesting and thoughtful person. Her interviews in 'No Direction Home' Martin Scorsese's celebrated documentary on Dylan were illuminating and good-humoured, and she came across as very likeable. Her 2008 memoir of life in Greenwich Village, 'The Freewheelin' Years' bears this out. When reading the book, I found the sections where she described her upbringing, political awakening and youthful exploration of art and poetry more interesting than those describing her relationship with Dylan, which after all only took up four years of a full and varied life. I was struck by her descriptions of time spent studying in Perugia - her solitary excursions into the countryside to draw and write indicated a broad creative curiosity and need for solitude quite at odds with the intense, incestuous atmosphere of New York's folk scene. No wonder she felt compelled to leave, despite being subjected to a barrage of disapproval on her return for 'abandoning' Bob. I'm sure he, even in the midst of his bellyaching, recognised that her absence during that period was crucial to his artistic development, providing the creative fuel for some of his finest early songs. Judging by the book and the testimony of those who knew her, Suze was very much her own person, loyal to her principles and friends and stands out among the baby-boomer generation for remaining married to same person for 40 years! (film-maker Enzo Bartoliucci.)
In some of the interviews from the time her book came out she mentioned the lot of so-called 'red-diaper' children of Communist parents, who were obliged for years to keep quiet about their parents' political activities due to the insidious atmosphere of the McCarthy era, a necessary secrecy that she reckons contributed to the atmosphere of lively storytelling and self-mythologising of the early folk scene. Her account of growing up in what she described as a materially poor but 'culturally wealthy' family and her own love of poetry, art and literature growing up is very moving, as well as her commitment to civil rights and similar causes early on. In the memoir, she captured the essence of being young, idealistic and thrilled by art in the same way that Dylan captured the essence of being young and in love in his early songs inspired by her. It would have been good to know more of her art and writing during her lifetime, but ultimately it seems she preferred a private life above all, and would never sacrifice that for fame or wide renown. She speaks of reading Francoise Gilot's memoir of life with Picasso at the time of her trip to Perugia and feeling a strong sense of recognition at the plight of the talented woman forced to play second fiddle to her genius lover. There was no way she could fit herself into the reductive 60s role of a male singer’s ‘chick’, even if she had wanted to. Her wit is evident in this podcast, where she nicely skewered the essence of Dylan (and perhaps the essence of all geniuses who seek fame) when she described a song of his ('What Was It You Wanted' from the 80s album Oh Mercy) as 'very clever, very funny, with a big nasty streak!'. True, witty, and delivered with a wry smile and not a shred of bitterness. Both her natural sense of privacy and her strong sense of self could not continue in a relationship with Dylan as his fame began to spiral into the stratosphere, though by all accounts making the break was a long, painful process. One gets the feeling from her interviews of great love shared in those early days, but no regret now for how things panned out. Seeing how insane things got for Dylan in later years, I think the modern term for Suze’s experience is ‘bullet dodged’.
Though it's sad she's gone before her time (she had been suffering cancer for some years), it's still in keeping to raise a glass to a good person who lived her life well. RIP Suze.
The camera lens as a ruthless eye – it’s a well-worn cliche, but one that keeps demanding to be used. Photographs, even the most carefully shot, can reveal elements utterly unplanned by the photographer and the subject, from an previously unnoticed tower in a landscape to the lines in the face of a movie star clinging to youth. Since its invention the camera’s capacity to invade privacy has been readily exploited, leading to excitement and anxiety in equal measure.
Another common, but apposite cliche, is the idea that the photographer somehow violates their subject – even if the latter is willing to be photographed – by capturing their raw, unmediated image. As Henri Cartier-Bresson put it: ‘The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.’ Referring to the subject as ‘prey’ sounds slightly terrifying, but is probably a sentiment familiar to many photographers. Even inanimate objects and views become a kind of prey in the avaricious aperture of a camera.
It’s the camera’s invasion of human privacy that is the focus of an exhibition beginning at the end of the month in Tate Modern, entitled Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera. Grouped under various themes that range from the obvious (sexually explicit or graphically violent shots) to more subtle examples of voyeurism like government surveillance and street photography, the sample of images available online indicates an exploration of humanity’s secret moments. Some are shocking, like the terrified face of a young South African man clinging to the side of a building while a jeering crowd urges him to jump, some are unsettlingly banal, like the couple kissing at the New York Tortilla Factory, but all share that strange intimacy that comes when a photography ‘steals’ a moment that a subject would never intend to be recorded.
One photograph from the exhibition that captures a thing rather than a person is a powerful image of a British army watchtower at the Crossmaglen security force base in South Armagh. On an otherwise normal-looking street the watchtower looks utterly unnatural, bristling with wire fencing and multiple aerials. Obviously this photo was illicitly taken, and yet the tower looks somewhat ridiculous, rather than threatening. Its incongruity highlights the unnatural political situation that gave rise to its creation.
Ideas of reality and artificiality are thrown into relief in Walker Evans’ 1927 Street Scene (above), where the hatted man viewed from above, bathed in intense shadow, look like figures from the set of a film noir. The fetishisation of the past in film and art often means that genuinely contemporary images end up looking like pastiches.
The value of this exhibition is not just the interesting images that will be on show, but the questions it raises about the function and power of photography, which are even more relevant now than in the past, considering we are under more surveillance now than ever before.
THE BEATLES at a hotel in Weston Super Mare, Somerset, by Bruce Leak, an 11 year old boy who was on a family holiday with his parents and sister. 1963.
On Saturday night BBC 2 broadcast a one-off feature length film based on Christopher Isherwood's biography of his early life in Berlin, the period that inspired Goodbye to Berlin. 'Christopher and his Kind, starring Dr Who's Matt Smith, followed the young Isherwood's sexual and political self-discovery in 1930s Berlin, against the backdrop of rising Nazi influence and power. It was an ambitious production, taking in Isherwood's exciting new gay relationships, his friendship with a drama-queen cabaret singer, his befriending of a prominent Jewish family and the continuing intrusion of politics into his life, despite his attempts to ignore the coming disaster.Smith's performance took a while to warm to - his no-doubt accurate rendition of Isherwood's camp voice was grating at the beginning, not helped by an opening scene involving a petulant row with his chilly mother (Rome's Lindsey Duncan), but once the action moved to Berlin, things picked up. In the company of friend and occasional lover WH Auden, Christopher throws himself into Berlin's gay scene, benefiting from the Weimar Republic's catastrophic inflation rate which lets him have his pick of handsome young men desperate for British money. The exploits of Isherwood and Auden with various German boys seem less like mutual self-discovery and more like sex tourism, especially, as Auden notes drily 'They're all rampant hetters, they only use our money to pay for cunt'. I've explored this theme of straight men from poorer countries performing gay sex acts on rich foreigners for money before, and it certainly casts a different, more economically driven light on Berlin's reputation as the gay capital of the world in the 30s. But that is literally another post.
Christopher falls quickly for Caspar, a young Polish man with limited English, and befriends the collection of eccentrics that occupy his boarding house. These include Jean Ross, a hyperactive young English cabaret singer who talks, smokes and drinks incessantly, and with whom Isherwood forms a friendship despite her tendency to tap him for money. Jean is somewhat over-played by Imogen Poots, but some little details ring true – her slightly-less-than cut glass accent indicates her middle-class origins, and her decidedly off-key but heartfelt singing captures the do-it-yourself appeal of cabaret. Christopher starts out amused by her but believes her to be vapid, only to be given an unexpected lesson on political awareness when he glibly announces he has been commissioned to write for Oswald Mosely’s magazine. Jean is just one example of a character who Christopher initially underestimates, only be to humbled by them. As Jean says 'I may wear green nail varnish, but I'm not completely vacuous'.
Christopher also gets to know Wilfrid Landauer, head of the German-Jewish department store range. Played to remote, mysterious perfection by Iddo Goldberg, Landauer is a man completely in control of his life at the beginning of the story, but by 1933 his stores are closed and ransacked and he is missing. Goldberg was underused in this role - in Goodbye to Berlin for example Landauer has a much more prominent role and provides much-needed political context. However he only appears for a handful of scenes in 'Christopher and his Kind' and his fate is left unresolved.
The key love story of the drama is between Christopher and Heinz, a young working-class boy who Christopher pursues after Caspar returns to his 'hetter' ways. Unlike the other boys, Heinz is not selling his body and seem genuinely to be in love with Christopher, but their relationship is complicated by Heinz's brother's antipathy to Christopher and to the nature of their relationship. This leads to a showdown when Gerhardt joins the Nazi party and demands Christopher leave. As the Nazis gain power, the British characters leave one by one, until finally Christopher persuades Heinz to join him in England. The attempt to keep Heinz out of Germany fails thanks to the obtuseness of the Home Office, but Heinz ends up surviving the war and marrying a woman who, as he puts it 'doesn't ask questions'. A postwar encounter with Heinz shows Christopher to have become hardened by his experiences - no longer is he willing to help his former love escape, leading his old friend Auden to damningly tell him "The only cause you really care about, Christopher, is yourself", ameliorating the sting with "But you've turned it into an art form."
But the character of Isherwood is less selfish in those early days in Berlin. True, he is not particularly politically engaged - but then how many people really are, even in times of upheaval? Like many people, he wants to be able to pursue his own literary and romantic interests uninterrupted, but despite himself he cannot but become caught up in the events of the day. The rise of Nazism in Germany is somewhat simplified for the purposes of the film, with some characters engaging in clunky 'background' dialogue describing the Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic. Urban working-class support for the Nazis (as personified by Gerhardt) is emphasised at the expense of the more politically powerful middle-class and clerical (both Protestant and Catholic) support the party enjoyed, giving the impression that the Nazis rose to power chiefly as a party representing the urban working classes when in fact it was often the opposite that was the case, particularly in Berlin.
Perhaps the nature of political change in the period is best summed up by Christopher’s philosophical landlady who said ‘The Kaiser, Herr von Baden, Herr Hitler… the names they change, life goes on’. This could well have been the viewpoint of many ordinary Germans who just wanted some kind of stability, and who, without necessarily supporting Hitler, just saw him as another name in a long list of leaders.
The production values were beautifully done, though an understandable reliance of interior shots didn’t give much of a feel for the city. But considering a set for 1930s Berlin would literally have to be built from scratch the interiors that were used seemed perfect for the period.
The necessity for Christopher to get out of Berlin due to the Nazi stance on homosexuality is made more urgent with Gerhardt’s threat ‘We don’t want your kind here’, the word 'kind' echoing the title. But the title perhaps refers less to homosexuality than to the type of people who inhabit the boarding-house – oddbods, eccentrics, people who could not find a home anywhere else but in the freewheeling, wild world of pre-war Berlin.
Aside from some clunky dialogue, over-acting and historical simplification, 'Christopher and His Kind' is a moving, affecting and intelligent drama.
Under his carpet: Linda Eastman McCartney reflects on the ups and downs her marriage to Paul in a series of snapshots between 1968 and 1990. Chapter 1 of 5 posted.
Plinda fans/Paul superfans dni (JOKING! No sugarcoating, but not a hatchet job on either. Most of it is based on fact, but plenty is invented - speculative fiction an' all that.)
While not shying away from the darker sides of the marriage, this story is primarily intended as a character study about flawed individuals, none of whom are villains. It also explores the tension between visually appearing liberated, as many Boomer women did, and the reality of their domestic lives. A tension which is still relevant today.
(Monthly Book, November 1963)
George Harrison and Paul McCartney interviewed about Bob Dylan and the Beatles by MOJO magazine in 1993, including extracts from John Lennon being interviewed about Dylan in 1979:
GEORGE HARRISON
Do you remember Dylan at The Albert Hall?
Oh yeah, I was there. I remember it a lot. First of all you had him saying, You remember this song? This is how it used to go and this is how it goes now! But the thing I remember most about it was all these people who'd never heard of folk until Bob Dylan came around and two years later they're staunch folk fans and they're walking out on him when he was playing the electric songs. Which is so stupid. But he actually played rock'n'roll before. Nobody knew that at the time, but Bob had been in Bobby Vee's band as the piano player and he'd played rock'n'roll. And then he became Bob Dylan the Folk Singer so, for him, it was just returning back. And maybe The Beatles - well, not just The Beatles but the whole wave of rock'n'roll that happened again in the '60s - spurred him on into wanting to get back into the electric guitar.
Was there a degree of Beatles/Dylan mutual envy at that time?
Well, he got a little bit of pleasure out of us and we got a lot of pleasure out of him. But you know everybody starts out being slightly grungey, rebels against the world, we were like that too. You know the famous Beatles story: we cleaned up our act a bit because Brian Epstein could get us more work if we had suits. By the time Bob came along it was like, Yeah, we all want to be more funky again, and please put a little more balls into the lyric of the song. There's a funny thing that I don't think anybody else has noticed and that is when John wrote Norwegian Wood, it was obviously a very Bob Dylan song, and right after that Bob's album came out and it had a song called 4th Time Around. You want to check out the tune of that - it's the same song going round and round.
You were very consciously listening to each other?
Well I can't speak for him but we were listening. I think it was his second album we heard first in February or January of '64 and we were in Paris at The Olympia Theatre and we got a copy of Freewheelin' and we just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude - it was just incredibly original and wonderful, you know.
Did you meet him in '66?
I met him every time. I felt a bit sad for him because he was a bit wasted at that time. He'd been on a world tour and he looked like he'd been on a world tour. He looked like he needed a rest and that was the time he went back home and fell off his bike and almost broke his neck. So...
PAUL MCCARTNEY
What sort of shape was he in? He was just winding up a world tour...
He was pretty wasted. There were a couple of times I went to hotels - one was the Mayfair, I can't remember the other one. But he didn't appear much more wasted than anyone else - you know, we kept up with him! We all sort of lay around together; it wasn't the kind of scene where you had to say anything enlightening.
So it was pretty much Dylan holding court.
Oh it was, very much. It was a little bit An Audience with Dylan in those days: you went round to the Mayfair Hotel and waited in an outer room, while Bob was, you know, in the other room, in the bedroom, and we were getting ushered in one by one. I know Keith was there. And Brian.
Didn't you feel you both had to perform?
No, not really. I was just quite happy to pay homage. The only trouble really was that occasionally people would come out and say, you know, Bob's taking a nap or make terrible excuses, and I'd say, It's OK man, I understand, he'd out of it, you know. And they were a bit guarding, like the Pope's men at The Vatican. He can't see you just now...
Didn't he come round and play you an acetate of Blonde On Blonde? Or you played him an acetate of Revolver?
No, I played him some stuff off Pepper later. And I'd brought it on acetate or a tape of Pepper...
It must have been Revolver. This was '66.
I'm pretty sure it was Pepper 'cos I remember him saying, Oh I get it, you don't want to be cute any more. And I was saying, Yeah, that's it. We really admired him. I'd known his stuff as long as I'd known Ray Charles's, so he was a big hero of ours. He was very keen on I Wanna Hold Your hand - he'd thought the middle eight, "I can't hide, I can't hide" was "I get high, I get high" and was rather amused by that. And we were amused that he was amused. Then we eventually met him in New York, one of the big hotels there, he came round with his road manager who was a nice bloke. Al Aronowitz was there, a kind of mate of ours, Dylan, his road manager and a few other people showed up. And they brought along with some illegal substances of which we partook and had... quite a wild night.
What happened?
Well, I was wandering around looking for a pencil because I discovered the meaning of life that evening and I wanted to get it down on a bit of paper. And I went into a little room and wrote it all down, 'cos I figured that, coming from Liverpool, this was all very exotic and i had to let my ordinary people know, you know, what this was all about: like if you find the meaning of life you've got to kind of put it about! Mal handed me the little bit of paper the next morning after the party and on it was written, in very scrawly handwriting: THERE ARE SEVEN LEVELS. Till ten we'd been sort of hard scotch and coke men. It sort of changed that evening.
In '66 it seemed as though you almost wanted to change places: Dylan was the mystic folk prophet who wanted to be a pop star; The Beatles were the pop stars who wanted to go underground. Was there a kind of mutual envy?
None whatsoever, no. I think it was mutual admiration, certainly from our side there was admiration. I mean to this day... I just met him at the airport about a year ago and he just kind of shambles up and says, Hey Paul, y'alright man, and we give each other a big hug. I was in Heathrow and he was. He had an anorak on and had the hood pulled up. He was really like a kind of bagman, you know. And he just kind of shambled up to me, Hey Paul, alright man.
He seemed very attracted at that time by the idea of being a pop star, the suits, the screaming women...
Well I think he found something attractive about that. I don't really think it changed his stuff an awful lot. I don't know, there might have been some feeling that it was time for him to get off the street and into the hotel or something. I don't know.
That was the time when your music had the most in common, Revolver and Blonde On Blonde. You almost crossed over at that point.
Well, he influenced us and a lot of people. He influenced the Stones. Sympathy For The Devil is very Dylan, just the endless lyrics. I remember us being round at John's house at Weybridge, when I went round to write once, and he'd just got Like A Rolling Stone and we put it on and it seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful. I don't know if he aspired to that showbiz thing you were saying but he showed us all that it was possible to go a little further. But the nice thing about Dylan for me was that he brought back poetry. We'd come from that student scene, 'cos we'd all started as students, you know - I was a kind of sixth form layabout, John was at the art school next door - and we'd started out with things rather like poetry readings in Liverpool. Hamburg was a student scene. There were kids in Hamburg who called themselves The Exies - The Existentialists - and wore a lot of black; Astrid and Jorgen and Klaus, they figured they were Exies. That was one of the sad things about The Beatles: we got so huge that that kind of student thing got cut short, but Dylan reintroduced that into all our lives. I always thought of Dylan as a poet first - him and Allen Ginsberg holding up signs, all very hand-held camera from New York, all very enigmatic.
You were never in awe of each other?
Oh he wasn't in awe of us. He just liked "I get high." As the guy who introduced us to smoking dope he just thought it was hilarious! I always like those sort of things, it's like Jake Riviera thinking "living is easy with eyes closed" was "living is easy with nice clothes". They're always better, those adaptations. But John was probably the most influenced. And George is one of those guys who can quote all Dylan's lyrics. There's always a lyric for an apt situation: George goes, Oh well! Remember! The pumps don't work 'cos the vandals took the handles! George knows the whole works of Dylan. But I think John was the most influenced in the vocal style. Certainly You've Got To Hide Your Love Away is a direct Dylan copy, it's like an impression of Dylan, Yeeew've got to hayed... that lerv ay-wayyy. Just saying ay-wayyy, rather than away...
Did John ever mention that car ride with Dylan which was filmed for Eat The Document?
Mmm?
You know, when the two of them got driven around Hyde Park with Pennebaker filming them?
Well he might have but not at length. We didn't really chat about that too much. I know he was very keen on Dylan.
There's a great bit in the film, when he's in the car with Dylan and it's five in the morning, and Dylan's drunk and completely out of it and threatening to throw up and John says: Do you suffer from sore eyes, groovy forehead or curly hair? Take Zimdon!
Zimdon! Ha ha ha. Zimdon! Well that's nice stuff, but he turned on the whole Zimmerman bit and made a lot of fun of Bob later.
When do you mean?
Later, you know. I got a feeling...
He recorded those Dylan parodies in the '70s, didn't he? [There are tapes of three of them - Serve Yourself, an acid response to Dylan's You've Got To Serve Somebody, the equally self-explanatory Mama Take This Make-Up Offa Me, and a spontaneous moulding of the live TV news into Stuck Inside of Lexicon With The Roget's Thesaurus Blues Again.]
He did. He always had a go at people, John. That was really part of his charm. He was ballsy enough to have a go at you, you know, then he'd lower his little glasses, look at you over the top of them and say, It's only me! John was the mouth. He was a lovely boy but he did shoot his mouth off. Quite often.
Why did he have a go at Bob?
I think he was quite disappointed that his name wasn't Dylan. Finding out that it was a Jewish name that he'd changed I think he felt a bit betrayed. I remember him making quite a stink about that.
But he must have known that from the start.
I'm not sure we did. No. I think we sort of found all that out later. He had a go at everyone then. Including, probably most of all himself. That's who the real go was at. You know, to understand John you had to sort of look at his past. The father leaving home when he was three. Being brought up by his aunt. And his mother, you know. It's extraordinary he made it to the age he made it to. So John had a mighty chip on his shoulder - we all did to some extent. John could say to you, Fuck off yer twat. Then he'd just go, Only kidding! You had to accept that he could swing both ways.
Why did he feel so let down by Dylan?
He loved Dylan so much. He did feel a little let down. John was like that. John like gurus. John was always looking for a guru. When he introduced Magic Alex who was just some Greek guy who was a bit of an expert in electronics. And I remember John coming round to my house and saying (mystic voice) This is my new guru, Magic Alex. And you had to sort of smile a little and go, OK well that's cool, Wow, knowing that this may not last. But... John had found a guru.
Was it the same with Dylan? You know, he wanted to sit at his feet?
Yeah. I think he did worship Dylan to some degree. He was certainly the big one. There was Elvis before that... but Elvis was a different kettle of fish. Elvis was going to shop us on the Nixon Tapes. That's another story...
I want to hear it!
You know those Nixon Tapes that he kept rolling all the time? There's a set of tapes were Elvis is trying to shop The Beatles. (Courteous Southern accent) "You know, Sir, They're very un-American! I believe they smoke drugs!" Elvis! Telling Nixon! He's trying to get made a marshal, trying to get made a US marshal.
Have you heard this tape?
No, I've just seen a transcript of it. It's quite wild. 'Cos Elvis is ryng to shop us. No doubt about it. Definite bad move, El!
That's hysterical!
It is, it's wild! You've got to laugh. But as I say, I think to John these people were great heroes and he found out a little later they were only human. Think about the Maharishi. We all went off with this guru and John got very let down and wrote Sexy Sadie. He was always doing that, he was always having an idol and seeing it knocked down. If you think about it it's probably very symbolic of his whole life, the father figure. Yoko in a way was a father figure. Hate to say it. But John always required that. Complex boy. He was a lovely boy but, perhaps, you know... idols with feet of clay. John always wanted people to be magic and, you know, we're all human.
What did he see in Dylan?
Inspiration, maybe. I don't know. Maybe that he allowed us to go further. He allowed the Stones to go further, then we did Pepper and we allowed everyone else to go further, It was like boots walking... we'd take a step, Dylan'd take a step, Stones'd take a step, we'd take another step, John'd take a step. I'd take a step, I'd do Why Don't We Do It In The Road?, John'd go, Fuck, I wish I'd written that...
Which of John's songs would you like to have written?
John's? Oh... if forced on the point I'd have to say, Help, Imagine, Strawberry Fields. But it doesn't matter, all in all, here we are, born, die, and on the way stuff happens. John did some magic stuff, Dylan did, Stones did, all of us have from time to time. I remember Dylan defending one of his loose vocals - some critic somewhere - by saying, (nasal whine) "Listen man there's an A in there somewhere! It goes from A flat to B flat but it goes through an A. Every note's in tune!" You know, there is an A in the middle of it somewhere but he just chooses to go around it. Great! Rules are meant to be broken.
So do you think he's deliberately 'deconstructing the myth'? How many opportunities has he had to reach a larger audience - Farm Aid, he was the final act of Live Aid, The 30 Year Tribute concert? The last two were absolutely appalling.
I think he does it on purpose, you know. He does it on purpose. I know someone played with him in one of his latest bands - G.E. Smith, New York guy - and I said, How is it, man? And he said Oh great! He said, We'd come up to him after a show and say, Fantastic man, Tambourine Man went down so beautifully, and then he wouldn't do it for two weeks! But I can see that...
Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb!
Yeah, it was nice, all that stuff. But the only pity really is that it's all closed up, like Moses passing through the waters, the Red Sea. We all got through it all, it tended to close up when everyone's got through it. Now it's re-opening a little bit. The modern scene's getting a little crazier again, but it's all a little bit corporate now. Very corporate. Sickeningly so. And you know it wasn't that way before. And he was one of the catalysts in the whole movement.
JOHN LENNON
Extracts from interviews broadcast in 1979 on New York's 1027WENW radio in The Lost Lennon Tapes (interviews by Jonathan Cott, David Shepp and Jann Wenner).
You first heard Dylan on a visit to Paris in 1963?
I think that was the first time I heard him at all. I think Paul got the record (Freewheelin') from a French DJ. We were doing a radio thing there and the guy had the record in the studio and we took it back to the hotel and (gauche accent) fell in luv, like!
Do you still see Dylan as a primary influence on your writing?
No, no. I see him as another poet, you know, or as competition. Just read my books which were written before I'd heard of Dylan or read Dylan or even heard of anybody. It's the same, you know. I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But it I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em, you know. I just love 'em. I go fanatical about them - for a short period. And then I get over it! And it they wear green socks, I'm liable to wear green socks for a period, you know.
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away and I'm A Loser?
Yeah, that's me in my Dylan period, 'cos that's got the word 'clown' in it. I always objected to the word 'clown' - or clown image that Bowie was using 'cos that was always artsy-fartsy - but Dylan had used it so I thought it was all right and it rhymed with whatever I was doing. So that was my Dylan period.
So you were saying, If Dylan can go it I can do it?
No, I'm just influenced by whatever's going on. It's the same as if Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can do it. If Goffin and King can do it, Paul and I can do it. If Buddy Holly can do it, I can do it. Whatever it is, I can do it!
How would you characterise your relationship with Dylan?
Whenever we used to meet it was always under the most nerve-wracking circumstances. And I know I was always uptight, and I know Bobby was. And people like Al Aronowitz would try and bring us together. And we were together and we'd spend some time but I always used to be too paranoid or I'd be aggressive or something and vice versa. He'd come to my house - can you imagine it? This bourgeois home life I was leading? - and I used to go to his hotel. And I loved him, you know, because he wrote beautiful stuff. I used to love those so-called protest things. I loved the sound of him. I didn't have to listen to his words. He used to come with his acetates and say, Listen to this John, did you hear the words? And I'd say, It doesn't matter, you know, the sound if what counts, the overall thing. You don't have to hear what Bob Dylan says, you just have to hear the way he says it. Like, the medium it the message.
Your appearance in Eat The Document was a little edgy.
I've never seen it! I'm in it, you know! Frightened as hell, you know! I was always so paranoid. He said, I want you to be in this film and I thought, Why? What? He's going to put me down! It's gonna be... you know and I went all through this terrible thing. So in the film I'm just blabbin' off, just commenting all the time like you do when you're very high and stoned. But it was his scene, you know, that was the problem for me. It was his movie. I was on his territory. That's why I was nervous, you know. I was on his session.
MOJO (November 1993)
The more excerpts I read from that Ian "Monstrous Terf/Zionist" Leslie book the more I see that he just rewrote a bunch of tumblr posts. His contextual knowledge actually seems quite shallow - he just writes in the style of "anecdote we all know + reference to much-shared photo + oft-repeated quote" - a style directly lifted from tumblr. And his apparently not knowing abt the beetles photo on RAM from that talk he did with (puke) Tom Holland is a real tell as to the limits of his knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if most of his research is posts rather than books/primary sources (whatever his bibliography says). His only original writing seems to be some psychology and some song analysis (tho he's stolen a lot of that too eg In My Life trutherism, originally promoted by OSD.)
It all paints a picture of a grimy little opportunist deliberately queerbaiting to sell his book made up of other people's uncredited or barely-credited research. The text I've seen presents that research without sufficient rigour and puts the book in the same category as all the other sloppy, fanfic-y beatles bios. And some fans are falling all over his grotty transphobic ass bc he's "making McLennon mainstream". With friends like that, who needs enemies? There's a better, non-derivitave, non-sloppy J/P book waiting to be written by a decent person. Ian can go back into the hole he crawled out of and take his chickenshit book with him.
Some writing and Beatlemania. The phrase 'slender fire' is a translation of a line in Fragment 31, the remains of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho
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