http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/imagine-a-life-in-lennons-shoes-1861323.html
Playing the role of the legendary Beatle has defined the career of
actor Mark McGann, writes Evan Fanning
By Evan Fanning
Sunday August 16 2009
MARK McGANN has been becoming John Winston Lennon for almost as long
as he can remember. In fact, he's been giving performances as his
Liverpudlian compatriot in public performances for nearly the same
amount of time as Lennon was on stage, having first played the
working-class hero back when he was just 18.
Now 48, McGann admits he was "just a snotty-nosed backstreet kid from
Liverpool" when he first donned the Lennon wig and trademark round
glasses -- a role he now jokingly refers to as his "pension fund" --
but as he prepares to perform the great man's songbook at the
National Concert Hall in Dublin, he's in a position to take a
contemplative look at Lennon's life. "It's more acceptable to be
reflective when I'm doing him now," he says. "I'd have to be, because
I'm now seven years older than he was when he died."
It's easy to spot McGann when he arrives for lunch at River Cottage
in the picturesque city of Bath in south-west England. The McGann
clan are instantly recognisable. If he wasn't familiar from his
portrayals of Lennon on stage or screen, or his role in The Hanging
Gale (the BBC drama series he also produced centred around the Irish
Famine) or as explorer Tom Crean alongside Kenneth Branagh's Ernest
Shackleton in the film about the fearless explorer, then you are
bound to come across one of his near-identical looking brothers,
Paul, Joe or Stephen, who are also professional actors.
While Paul will forever be known for his performance in Withnail and
I, Mark has made Lennon something of his trademark. "If it's a case
of being born to play a role and this is the role I was born to play,
then I'd much rather that than Alfie Bass or de Valera or someone
like that," McGann explains. "It's a genuine joy [to play him] and
I've never felt that I've done it so much that I've ever tired of
doing it or that it was a strain."
McGann's journey as Lennon has brought him around the world several
times over, and into contact with those inherently intertwined in the
Beatles story. While filming the movie John and Yoko -- A Love Story
for American television, he had his first encounter with Lennon's second wife.
"I'm filming a sequence outside the Dakota building in New York and
we were going to do the scene where he got shot. The next thing that
happens is that Sean, who's about 10 at the time, and Yoko appeared
in front of me. Sean takes one look at me and freaks out and starts
crying. Yoko got really embarrassed and said she'd call me in the
hotel later on."
She invited him to come and visit her in the seventh-floor apartment
where she lived with Lennon. "I go up there and it was spooky," he
explains. "This was five years after he died. His cat is roaming
around -- she said it hadn't been the same since he died -- the white
piano is there in the room where he wrote Imagine with the Elizabeth
Browning prints he bought for her.
"Then we started to talk and she said, 'OK, what do you want to
know?' I can remember saying to her what was it like on the first
night they spent together.
"She said, 'I won't go into the gory details', but it was all
happening at John's house in Surrey. Cynthia [Lennon's first wife]
was away with Julian at the time. She said they'd played music all
night and done all this kind of stuff and on the Sunday morning John
went out to get the papers. When John came back, he put them across
the coffee table, but when Yoko reached out to take one of the papers
he slapped her hand."
McGann asked her if he was joking and she said that he meant it:
"[John] looked at me and he said, 'I read them first'.''
"So I asked her what did she do and she said, 'That was the first
thing I sorted out'. The reason it was so poignant and revealing to
me was that I don't think anyone else in his life up to that point
was able to cope with him. I think she was. I think she was
much-maligned and it was outrageous what happened to her."
Growing up in Liverpool in the Sixties and Seventies as four local
boys changed the face of music, it was inevitable that impressionable
teenagers would find themselves with a guitar in their hand, and Mark
was no different, although he insists that it is not only the
influence of the Beatles that inspired his creative side.
"When leaving Liverpool for the first time, aged 16, and moving to
London and then going back for a little while to finish studies, you
become incredibly aware that your whole social experience of growing
up where we grew up -- that very close kin, familial thing -- is
closer to the Irish experience than anything else. I suppose it's no
surprise when you think of the effects of the Diaspora -- a doubling
in the population of Liverpool practically overnight in the
mid-1800s. It's a very Irish place.
"It didn't make sense fully until I visited Ireland for the first
time and found myself surrounded not only by people who looked more
like us than people from outside of Liverpool, but who also had a
similar sensibility. Liverpool, as far as the arts were concerned, is
the only northern working-class city where it wasn't frowned upon to
consider becoming an actor. If you came from Manchester or Leeds,
there must have been something effeminate about contemplating it but
we always had a massive tradition of it, and I think that's Irish.
It's the same with the music."
While the McGanns are an acting and musical dynasty of their own,
Mark is married into an even more famous family name. His wife is
Caroline Guinness, daughter of Jacqueline Brink and Howard Guinness,
who was from a South African branch of the family.
He was instantly smitten, having seen her at a party held by Jackie
and Bill Curbishley, former manager of The Who. "I said to this
bloke, 'Who is that woman?' She had this amazing energy about her
like it was this light. And also I realised it was the first time I
had truly fallen in love."
What he didn't know at that point was that Caroline was HIV-positive,
a result of a one- off sexual encounter in the mid-Eighties. The two
became friends for a year, with Caroline unaware that Mark had
learned of her condition and had met consultants alone to learn about
the disease. "I set about finding out as much as I could to save both
our anxieties," he explains.
"One day she talked to my brother Joe and said to him, 'There's
something I have to tell you. I really like Mark.' He said: 'You two
should get together. You'd be perfect for each other.' So she said to
him, 'I've actually got a confession to make. I'm HIV positive.' He
said: 'Caroline, we all know that.'"
Away from her courtship with Mark, Caroline had been campaigning for
awareness and funding for what was then a relatively new illness.
"She was so courageous; she stood up in the House of Commons in the
Eighties and spoke about it. She helped start a charity called
Positively Women because there was nothing out there for heterosexual
women, it was all only for gay men."
The two have been married since 2000 and together work towards
greater awareness of the illness and safe-sex methods. "She's an
extraordinary woman," McGann says. "I can live with the risks. I take
bigger risks every time I get into my car. There's no point in living
life in denial of anything. Acceptance is the only way forward, but
it doesn't define who we are.
"If it wasn't for the challenges that go hand-in-hand with Caroline's
condition we wouldn't have the depth and extra dimensions to our
relationship that I suspect other married couples don't have. We are
incredibly devoted to each other."
--
Mark McGann, Curtis Stigers and Claire Martin join the RTE Concert
Orchestra for the John Lennon Songbook on Friday, August 21 at the
National Concert Hall. See www.rte.ie/ performinggroups for more
information. For bookings phone (01) 417-0000 or visit www.nch.ie
.
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