http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/john-lennon-at-70-201009
As he approaches the big milestone and his highly anticipated reunion
dates with the Plastic Ono Band, the irrepressible ex-Beatle talks
about cows, survival, and Yoko.
By David Kamp
September 24, 2010
The scars run up and down John Lennon's torso, unignorable souvenirs
of that night nearly 30 years ago when a team of Roosevelt Hospital
physicians, led by Dr. Stephan Lynn, heroically patched back together
an upper body torn open by the gun of Mark David Chapman. Four
plastic surgeries followed in the next eight months, as did an
intensive rehabilitation program of physical therapy, but no amount
of medical expertise could disappear the various discolored nebulae
of scar tissue that blotch Lennon's chest and back.
Not that he seems to care on this scorching, sun-blasted August 2010
day. He bounds about the pastures of his dairy farm unabashedly
shirtlessnearly naked, in fact, wearing only skimpy white tennis
shorts with the top snap undone and a pair of olive-green Wellies
"because Mother doesn't want me getting Lyme's again."
His assistant has fixed us iced cappuccinos in tall fountain glasses,
which slosh their contents precipitously as we hustle down the mown
path from the back porch of his 19th-century farmhouse through fields
of tall grass. About a quarter mile in, we come upon a winding creek
out of Huckleberry Finn. "Time for me mornin' swim," says Lennon, who
has only just woken up. It is two p.m.
Lennon, who will turn 70 on October 9, remains enviably slim and has
a deep late-summer tan. The longish hair is mostly white and a bit
thinned out on top but becomingly so, in the manner of late-period
Richard Harris. We stop at a crook in the creek where the waters slow
and eddy, and where a stand of willows shades the bank scenically.
Hung on a hook nailed to one of the trees is a handmade sign bearing
the words "old mclennon's swimmin hole." Lennon hands me his
cappuccino glass, drops his shorts, and Nestea-plunges backward into the water.
He re-emerges with a splash and a triumphant whoop, pushing his hair
out of his face. Then he gently lowers himself back in, lying supine
and semi-submerged, his penis bobbing upward, pointed right at me.
"Alrighty then," he says. "First question."
I've driven up to his estate in Delaware County, 160 miles northwest
of New York City, for the ostensible purpose of discussing the
40th-anniversary reissue of John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band and the
highly anticipated live shows that will accompany it. Lennon's
publicist, Elliot Mintz, has warned me off any deviations from the
topic at hand, but I quickly discover, as so many interviewers have
before me, that there's no distinction between on- and off-topic
where Lennon is concerned. He cheerfully waves away my softball
inquiry about whether he is excited about the album's re-release,
laughing at the flagrant commercial opportunism of the whole enterprise.
"Look," he says, "every month is the anniversary of something that
the record company can repackage and resell to you in
re-digified-nanofied-retromastered form for a luxury fee. 'Here's the
47th-anniversary edition of the alternate take of "From Me to You"
with John playing lead because George was off having a wee. Pre-order
now on iTunes!' It's a con. But a brilliant one that keeps me in
ruby-spangled codpieces and caviar hosiery."
And from there, there's no stopping him: the stream of consciousness
flows as freely as it did in the days of In His Own Write, with
Lennonesque aperçus on everything from his Club Penguin addiction
("I've 16 Puffles in me igloo, man") to his pre-sleep regimen ("a
potent cocktail of vino rosso, Klonopin, and Craig Ferguson") to his
bafflement at the praise heaped upon Bob Dylan's so-called Never
Ending Tour ("It's rubbish! They've taken his guitar away, and he
stands over the keyboard like it's a Zimmer frame. Zimmer-man frame,
more like").
When he hops up from the creek to towel off and reclaim his shorts, I
seize the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. "John," I ask, "are
you nervous about performing with Yoko again?"
He suspends his vigorous toweling and fixes me with a serious look.
"I'm scared shitless of performing," he says. "But not about with
Yoko. She's the reason I'm even doing it."
It's the participation of Yoko Ono, Lennon's ex-wife, that has
ratcheted up to extraordinary heights the already high expectations
for his six-night November engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music. Together with a reconstituted Plastic Ono Bandfeaturing Ringo
Starr and Klaus Voormann, who played drums and bass on the original
album, plus Sean Lennon, John and Yoko's son; Mark Ronson, the
musician and producer; and Cynthia Hopkins, the multi-instrumentalist
and performance artistthe former Mr. and Mrs. Lennon will play John
Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band from start to finish, plus a second set of
what Lennon describes as "happenings, pranks, surprises, and maybe
the odd Oasis cover."
Twenty-seven years ago, you'd have been hard-pressed to envision a
time when Ono would ever again speak to Lennon, much less share a
stage with him. Their acrimonious 1983 divorce came amidst a
ferocious midlife crisis that saw Lennon womanizing with abandon
(most notoriously with Beverly D'Angelo, then still married to an
Italian duke) and renouncing their lovey-dovey triptych of "heart
play" albumsDouble Fantasy, Milk and Honey, and Grow Old with Meas
"a diabetic coma." Lennon further torpedoed his public image later
that year when, upon taking his oath of U.S. citizenship, he
announced that he would cast his vote in the '84 presidential
election for Ronald Reagan.
"I think we're at a point where there's too much government in
everyone's business and too many people looking for handouts," he
told NBC's Lloyd Dobyns on the news program Monitor. "My father was a
merchant seaman who walked out on the family. He couldn't be bothered
with me until I was a rich Beatle, and then he was suddenly coming
'round all the time, hat in hand. That's where we're at with America,
you knowpeople knocking on Uncle Sam's door, hands outstretched,
[doleful voice] 'Help me, man. Gimme, gimme.' Ronnie, he understands
that it's time to bloody slam the door."
The public response was apoplectic, with protesters making bonfires
of Beatles records (again) and Jann Wenner placing his famous "Dear
John" letter on the cover of Rolling Stone, accusing Lennon of
"undoing a legacy of peace and music for a few tax breaks" and
announcing that thereafter, Lennonwho had been the cover boy of
Rolling Stone's very first issuewould never again see his name in
the magazine's pages.
It wasn't long before Lennon issued his "What was I thinking?" mea
culpa and patched things up with Wenner, but his relationship with
Ono took longer to repair. "In a sense I've never lived that down,"
he says today, chalking up this bumpy period to cocaine abuse and
what he calls "Post-Ono Disorder Syndrome, or PODS for short. I was a
pod person. I was lost in the 80s, wearing me sleeves rolled up like
Don Johnson, trying to be an '80s man,' whatever that might be.
Letting the times inform me rather than the other way 'round."
Lennon says he was still in this "fragile ego state" when he
succumbed to the inevitable and agreed to play Live Aid with the
other three Beatles, closing the Wembley show with a sloppy if
ecstatically received "All You Need Is Love."
"Queen mopped the floor with us, but even so, if we'd left it at
that, it wouldn't have been so terrible," he says. It was the
ignominy of 1987's Everest, the first album of new Beatles material
since Let It Be, that made him realize at last how astray his sense
of judgment had gone.
I happen to have a CD of Everest in my work bag, which I take out
when we settle into his barn recording studio to talk further. Lennon
cringes at the sight of it: "Oh, God, the outfits! We look like we're
wearing bloody screen savers!"
Indeed, it's hard to get past Everest's cover image of John, Paul,
George, and Ringo in white puffy shirts and purplish, hideously
patterned brocade vests, all of the Beatles save McCartney wearing
their hair in that acutely late-80s style: long, slicked back, and
cinched tightly into ponytails that trail down their backs.
As every Beatles fan knows, the group flew to the Himalayas in a
symbolic show of unity. Everest had been the original title for what
became Abbey Road, but the name was dropped when the four Beatles,
exhausted and at each other's throats in 1969, were willing to travel
no farther than just outside the doors of EMI's London studio for a
photo shoot. Everest's cover was meant to suggest that in 1987,
things had changed: here are the grown-up Beatles, all friends again,
standing in front of a majestic peak in puffy shirts!
But in truth, the same old arguments and resentments reared their
heads, with Lennon and Harrison chafing under McCartney's
control-freak tendencies, and Starr tiring of playing the jolly
mediator. From the distance of 2010, Everest is not as bad as the
haters found it back thenthe Harrison-written single "Handle with
Care" holds up particularly wellbut it remains a mystique-puncturing
letdown marred by dated Jeff Lynne production (those compressed snare
drums!), and its worst moment undoubtedly belongs to Lennon: the
well-intentioned but abominable "A Day in the Life '87," the
aids-themed re-write whose risible opening verse goes, "I read the
news today, oh boy/ About a wave of boys who died too soon/ They wove
a quilt out of their grief/ It's someone's life you rob/ When you
don't sheathe your knob."
"Well, Elton likes it!" says Lennon, laughing. "I was trying to be
relevant, y'know, but here I was, living in the sticks with a bunch
of cows." (In their divorce settlement, Ono kept the apartment at the
Dakota in Manhattan, while Lennon kept the upstate farm they had
purchased in 1978 to raise Holstein dairy cows. Since 1991, Lennon
has also owned a loft on Warren Street in Tribeca.) "I mean, what did
I know of what was happening in the streets?" he says. "Prince did
the AIDS thing a million times better on Sign o' the Times, which,
I've said it before, was the best Beatles album of 1987."
It took until 2001, with the 9/11 attacks and Harrison on his
deathbed, for Lennon and McCartney to reach a lasting peace. Their
three-song acoustic set at the Concert for New York City at Madison
Square Garden"In My Life," "Hey Jude," and John's solo hit,
"Imagine," in which they traded verseswas not only a cathartic
moment for their fans (and just when their fans most needed it), but
a redemptive moment for the Lennon-McCartney friendship.
"We do e-mails now," Lennon says. "Not about working together
againthat train has sailed, in the words of Austin Powers. Just
old-man stuff: holiday snaps, 'Did you see that so-and-so died?,' the
merits and demerits of coloring one's hair."
The Lennon-Ono reconciliation happened earlier and out of public
view, in the aftermath of the botched Beatles reunion. One late night
at the farm, sozzled with Chartreuse, melancholy, and remorse, Lennon
picked up the phone, called his old number at the Dakota, and
pleaded, "Mother, I want to come home!" Ono assented to have Lennon
spend the night, but in a separate bedrooman arrangement that more
or less stands to this day. Though no longer lovers, Ono and Lennon
are once again each other's confidants and frequent companions, with
"the spare room" open to John whenever he needs emotional ballast.
"Her and me, it's not like a divorce in the Tiger Woods sense, we're
more like a French movie," Lennon says. "We'll have dinner and bring
along whoever I'm seeing, whoever she's seeing, whoever Sean's
seeing, all very Continental and debauched." Over the years, Lennon
has dated women as disparate as Carly Simon, Grace Jones, Betty Blue
star Beatrice Dalle, Padma Lakshmi, and former WCBS-TV news anchor
Michele Marsh. He is currently seeing Katja Auermann, a young milker
who works at the dairy farm.
But what drew Lennon closer still to Onoand convinced him to return
to live performancewas his second near-death experience. Technically
it was not Lyme disease, as Lennon is wont to say, but another
tick-borne infection, ehrlichiosis, that befell him in the summer of
2008. It went undiagnosed for a week, Lennon mistakenly believing
that he'd gotten food poisoning at a sushi restaurant in nearby
Oneonta. By the time his staff at the farm realized it was something
more serious, Lennon's fever had spiked to 106 degrees and he was in
a state of delirium.
Had Ono not rushed up to Delaware County with her doctor, who
administered antibiotics intravenously . . . "Well, I'd have been
compost now, pushing up the daisies," Lennon says. "It really got me
determined to get healthy and get to 70. When you make it this far,
you don't want to fall short of the fucking finish line, y'know? So
Mother put us on a macrobiotic diet, which I've kept to religiously,
apart from the cheeseburgers and alcohol."
Ono stayed on at the farm for more than a month, nursing Lennon back
to health. It was during this period of convalescence that she
broached the idea of doing the Plastic Ono Band anniversary shows.
Lennon was wary but ultimately trustful of her instincts. After all,
it was Ono who brokered the introductions that led to his two small
triumphs of the last decade: his return to movie acting in Jim
Jarmusch's Fish Tanque (2003), in which he affectingly played against
type as the repressed English-expat owner of an aquarium store in
Chicago's Bulgarian-heavy Albany Park neighborhood; and Coarse Salt,
the noise-rock collaboration with Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo that
Pitchfork deemed the fourth-best album of 2007.
John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band was recorded when Lennon and Ono were
in the throes of primal-therapy treatment with the California
psychologist Arthur Janov. It's bookended by two songs, "Mother" and
"My Mummy's Dead," that find Lennon laying bare his pain and the
feelings of abandonment engendered by his mother's early death. As
such, it's a peculiar album to build a series of feel-good reunion
shows around.
"It is, yeah," Lennon says. "And we'll be dealing with that. That's
why Yoko's brought in the conceptual-artist people, to weird it up.
I'll be emerging from a giant birth canal at the top of the show and
tumbling forth into the orchestra seats in a sticky placental coating."
It takes me a moment, and the sight of him tittering at my startled
look, to realize that he is kidding.
"No, some of it will be [making air quotes] 'performance,' and some
of it will be balls-out Johnny Rocker," he says. "Sean and Mark are
playing guitar, no synths or sequencers or any of that
jiggery-pokery. It's going to be the funnest, most rockingest
primal-therapy-rock-'n'-roll-cynical-cash-in show you've ever
mortgaged your house for."
It's still hot at 6:45 p.m., but the sun is setting and Lennon feels
like going to the local dive bar. He puts on jeans and a T-shirt that
says, "FU BP," with the oil company's logo fading from bright green
and yellow to sludgy brown. Auermann joins us: a pneumatic German
blonde from Baden-Baden in short cutoffs, hired as summer help and
retained for non-agricultural purposes.
She and Lennon squeeze into one side of a dark booth illuminated
faintly by a neon Genessee Beer sign. I ask the server, a pretty
local girl who identifies herself as Jenny, what beers they have on
tap. Cheerfully, she responds, "Bud, Bud Light, Genny, Genny Light,
Genny Ice, Genny Cream."
"I'd like some of Jenny's cream," Lennon says. Auermann elbows him.
He gooses her.
There's only time for one beer before I must hit the road. I ask
Lennon, in parting, how it feels to be turning 70.
"Like turning seven!" he says brightly. "I honestly don't feel much
different from then. The same kid who wonders if he's touched with
genius or just touched, who thinks, 'No one, I think, is in my tree.'
But also amazed that I've made it this far. George didn't. Linda,
y'know, didn't. I guess it just wasn't my time two years ago, and
thank Whoever He May Be up there for that. Oh, it would have been
awful! There would have been such a great carrying onvigils in
Central Park and Liverpool, crusties in army jackets outside Yoko's
window singing 'Strawberry Fields.' Can you imagine how horrible that
would be?"
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