LENNON: It did for this man. But
don't forget, I'm the one who benefited the most from doing it.
Now I can step back and say Sean is going to be five years old
and I was able to spend his first five years with him and I am
very proud of that. And come to think of it, it looks like I'm
going to be 40 and life begins at 40 -- so they promise. And I
believe it, too. I feel fine and I'm very excited. It's like, you
know, hitting 21, like, "Wow, what's going to happen
next?" Only this time we're together.
ONO: If two are gathered together, there's nothing you can't do.
PLAYBOY: What does the title of your new album, "Double
Fantasy," mean?
LENNON: It's a flower, a type of freesia, but what it means to us
is that if two people picture the same image at the same time,
that is the secret. You can be together but projecting two
different images and either whoever's the stronger at the time
will get his or her fantasy fulfilled or you will get nothing but
mishmash.
PLAYBOY: You saw the news item that said you were putting your
sex fantasies out as an album.
LENNON: Oh, yeah. That is like when we did the bed-in in Toronto
in 1969. They all came charging through the door, thinking we
were going to be screwing in bed. Of course, we were just sitting
there with peace signs.
PLAYBOY: What was that famous bed-in all about?
LENNON: Our life is our art. That's what the bed-ins were. When
we got married, we knew our honeymoon was going to be public,
anyway, so we decided to use it to make a statement. We sat in
bed and talked to reporters for seven days. It was hilarious. In
effect, we were doing a commercial for peace on the front page of
the papers instead of a commercial for war.
PLAYBOY: You stayed in bed and talked about peace?
LENNON: Yes. We answered questions. One guy kept going over the
point about Hitler: "What do you do about Fascists? How can
you have peace when you've got a Hitler?" Yoko said, "I
would have gone to bed with him." She said she'd have needed
only ten days with him. People loved that one.
ONO: I said it facetiously, of course. But the point is, you're
not going to change the world by fighting. Maybe I was naive
about the ten days with Hitler. After all, it took 13 years with
John Lennon. [She giggles]
PLAYBOY: What were the reports about your making love in a bag?
ONO: We never made love in a bag. People probably imagined that
we were making love. It was just, all of us are in a bag, you
know. The point was the outline of the bag, you know, the
movement of the bag, how much we see of a person, you know. But,
inside, there might be a lot going on. Or maybe nothing's going
on.
PLAYBOY: Briefly, what about the statement on the new album?
LENNON: Very briefly, it's about very ordinary things between two
people. The lyrics are direct. Simple and straight. I went
through my Dylanesque period a long time ago with songs like
"I am the Walrus:" the trick of never saying what you
mean but giving the impression of something more. Where more or
less can be read into it. It's a good game.
PLAYBOY: What are your musical preferences these days?
LENNON: Well, I like all music, depending on what time of day it
is. I don't like styles of music or people per se. I can't say I
enjoy the Pretenders, but I like their hit record. I enjoy the
B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever
goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, "Yeah, she's
copying the B-52s."
ONO: We were doing a lot of the punk stuff a long time ago.
PLAYBOY: Lennon and Ono, the original punks.
ONO: You're right.
PLAYBOY: John, what's your opinion of the newer waves?
LENNON: I love all this punky stuff. It's pure. I'm not, however,
crazy about the people who destroy themselves.
PLAYBOY: You disagree with Neil Young's lyric in "Rust Never
Sleeps" -- "It's better to burn out than to fade
away...."
LENNON: I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier
than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious
or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing.
Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison -- it's garbage to me. I
worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer -- he whipped it like
a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that -- I'm sorry
for his family -- but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I
don't want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do
they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So
that we might rock? I mean, it's garbage, you know. If Neil Young
admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he
sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us.
No, thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.
PLAYBOY: Do you listen to the radio?
LENNON: Muzak or classical. I don't purchase records. I do enjoy
listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music. My
tastes are very broad. When I was a housewife, I just had Muzak
on -- background music -- 'cause it relaxes you.
PLAYBOY: Yoko?
ONO: No.
PLAYBOY: Do you go out and buy records?
ONO: Or read the newspaper or magazines or watch TV? No.
PLAYBOY: The inevitable question, John. Do you listen to your
records?
LENNON: Least of all my own.
PLAYBOY: Even your classics?
LENNON: Are you kidding? For pleasure, I would never listen to
them. When I hear them, I just think of the session -- it's like
an actor watching himself in an old movie. When I hear a song, I
remember the Abbey Road studio, the session, who fought with
whom, where I was sitting, banging the tambourine in the
corner----
ONO: In fact, we really don't enjoy listening to other people's
work much. We sort of analyze everything we hear.
PLAYBOY: Yoko, were you a Beatles fan?
ONO: No. Now I notice the songs, of course. In a restaurant, John
will point out, "Ahh, they're playing George" or
something.
PLAYBOY: John, do you ever go out to hear music?
LENNON: No, I'm not interested. I'm not a fan, you see. I might
like Jerry Lee Lewis singing "A Whole Lot a Shakin'" on
the record, but I'm not interested in seeing him perform it.
PLAYBOY: Your songs are performed more than most other
songwriters'. How does that feel?
LENNON: I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It
gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of
my songs aren't that doable. I go to restaurants and the groups
always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin
in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't
understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't
have gone from table to table playing "I am the
Walrus."
PLAYBOY: How does it feel to have influenced so many people?
LENNON: It did for this man. But don't forget, I'm the one who
benefited the most from doing it. Now I can step back and say
Sean is going to be five years old and I was able to spend his
first five years with him and I am very proud of that. And come
to think of it, it looks like I'm going to be 40 and life begins
at 40 -- so they promise. And I believe it, too. I feel fine and
I'm very excited. It's like, you know, hitting 21, like,
"Wow, what's going to happen next?" Only this time
we're together.
ONO: If two are gathered together, there's nothing you can't do.
PLAYBOY: What does the title of your new album, "Double
Fantasy," mean?
LENNON: It's a flower, a type of freesia, but what it means to us
is that if two people picture the same image at the same time,
that is the secret. You can be together but projecting two
different images and either whoever's the stronger at the time
will get his or her fantasy fulfilled or you will get nothing but
mishmash.
PLAYBOY: You saw the news item that said you were putting your
sex fantasies out as an album.
LENNON: Oh, yeah. That is like when we did the bed-in in Toronto
in 1969. They all came charging through the door, thinking we
were going to be screwing in bed. Of course, we were just sitting
there with peace signs.
PLAYBOY: What was that famous bed-in all about?
LENNON: Our life is our art. That's what the bed-ins were. When
we got married, we knew our honeymoon was going to be public,
anyway, so we decided to use it to make a statement. We sat in
bed and talked to reporters for seven days. It was hilarious. In
effect, we were doing a commercial for peace on the front page of
the papers instead of a commercial for war.
PLAYBOY: You stayed in bed and talked about peace?
LENNON: Yes. We answered questions. One guy kept going over the
point about Hitler: "What do you do about Fascists? How can
you have peace when you've got a Hitler?" Yoko said, "I
would have gone to bed with him." She said she'd have needed
only ten days with him. People loved that one.
ONO: I said it facetiously, of course. But the point is, you're
not going to change the world by fighting. Maybe I was naive
about the ten days with Hitler. After all, it took 13 years with
John Lennon. [She giggles]
PLAYBOY: What were the reports about your making love in a bag?
ONO: We never made love in a bag. People probably imagined that
we were making love. It was just, all of us are in a bag, you
know. The point was the outline of the bag, you know, the
movement of the bag, how much we see of a person, you know. But,
inside, there might be a lot going on. Or maybe nothing's going
on.
PLAYBOY: Briefly, what about the statement on the new album?
LENNON: Very briefly, it's about very ordinary things between two
people. The lyrics are direct. Simple and straight. I went
through my Dylanesque period a long time ago with songs like
"I am the Walrus:" the trick of never saying what you
mean but giving the impression of something more. Where more or
less can be read into it. It's a good game.
PLAYBOY: What are your musical preferences these days?
LENNON: Well, I like all music, depending on what time of day it
is. I don't like styles of music or people per se. I can't say I
enjoy the Pretenders, but I like their hit record. I enjoy the
B-52s, because I heard them doing Yoko. It's great. If Yoko ever
goes back to her old sound, they'll be saying, "Yeah, she's
copying the B-52s."
ONO: We were doing a lot of the punk stuff a long time ago.
PLAYBOY: Lennon and Ono, the original punks.
ONO: You're right.
PLAYBOY: John, what's your opinion of the newer waves?
LENNON: I love all this punky stuff. It's pure. I'm not, however,
crazy about the people who destroy themselves.
PLAYBOY: You disagree with Neil Young's lyric in "Rust Never
Sleeps" -- "It's better to burn out than to fade
away...."
LENNON: I hate it. It's better to fade away like an old soldier
than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious
or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing.
Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison -- it's garbage to me. I
worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
They're saying John Wayne conquered cancer -- he whipped it like
a man. You know, I'm sorry that he died and all that -- I'm sorry
for his family -- but he didn't whip cancer. It whipped him. I
don't want Sean worshiping John Wayne or Sid Vicious. What do
they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So
that we might rock? I mean, it's garbage, you know. If Neil Young
admires that sentiment so much, why doesn't he do it? Because he
sure as hell faded away and came back many times, like all of us.
No, thank you. I'll take the living and the healthy.
PLAYBOY: Do you listen to the radio?
LENNON: Muzak or classical. I don't purchase records. I do enjoy
listening to things like Japanese folk music or Indian music. My
tastes are very broad. When I was a housewife, I just had Muzak
on -- background music -- 'cause it relaxes you.
PLAYBOY: Yoko?
ONO: No.
PLAYBOY: Do you go out and buy records?
ONO: Or read the newspaper or magazines or watch TV? No.
PLAYBOY: The inevitable question, John. Do you listen to your
records?
LENNON: Least of all my own.
PLAYBOY: Even your classics?
LENNON: Are you kidding? For pleasure, I would never listen to
them. When I hear them, I just think of the session -- it's like
an actor watching himself in an old movie. When I hear a song, I
remember the Abbey Road studio, the session, who fought with
whom, where I was sitting, banging the tambourine in the
corner----
ONO: In fact, we really don't enjoy listening to other people's
work much. We sort of analyze everything we hear.
PLAYBOY: Yoko, were you a Beatles fan?
ONO: No. Now I notice the songs, of course. In a restaurant, John
will point out, "Ahh, they're playing George" or
something.
PLAYBOY: John, do you ever go out to hear music?
LENNON: No, I'm not interested. I'm not a fan, you see. I might
like Jerry Lee Lewis singing "A Whole Lot a Shakin'" on
the record, but I'm not interested in seeing him perform it.
PLAYBOY: Your songs are performed more than most other
songwriters'. How does that feel?
LENNON: I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It
gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of
my songs aren't that doable. I go to restaurants and the groups
always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin
in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't
understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't
have gone from table to table playing "I am the
Walrus."
PLAYBOY: How does it feel to have influenced so many people?
LENNON: It wasn't really me or us. It was the times. It happened
to me when I heard rock 'n' roll in the Fifties. I had no idea
about doing music as a way of life until rock 'n' roll hit me.
PLAYBOY: Do you recall what specifically hit you?
LENNON: It was "Rock Around the Clock," I think. I
enjoyed Bill Haley, but I wasn't overwhelmed by him. It wasn't
until "Heartbreak Hotel" that I really got into it.
ONO: I am sure there are people whose lives were affected because
they heard Indian music or Mozart or Bach. More than anything, it
was the time and the place when the Beatles came up. Something
did happen there. It was a kind of chemical. It was as if several
people gathered around a table and a ghost appeared. It was that
kind of communication. So they were like mediums, in a way. It's
not something you can force. It was the people, the time, their
youth and enthusiasm.
PLAYBOY: For the sake of argument, we'll maintain that no other
contemporary artist or group of artists moved as many people in
such a profound way as the Beatles.
LENNON: But what moved the Beatles?
PLAYBOY: You tell us.
LENNON: All right. Whatever wind was blowing at the time moved
the Beatles, too. I'm not saying we weren't flags on the top of a
ship; but the whole boat was moving. Maybe the Beatles were in
the crow's-nest, shouting, "Land ho," or something like
that, but we were all in the same damn boat.
ONO: The Beatles themselves were a social phenomenon not that
aware of what they were doing. In a way----
LENNON: [Under his breath] This Beatles talk bores me to death.
ONO: As I said, they were like mediums. They weren't conscious of
all they were saying, but it was coming through them.
PLAYBOY: Why?
LENNON: We tuned in to the message. That's all. I don't mean to
belittle the Beatles when I say they weren't this, they weren't
that. I'm just trying not to overblow their importance as
separate from society. And I don't think they were more important
than Glenn Miller or Woody Herman or Bessie Smith. It was our
generation, that's all. It was Sixties music.
PLAYBOY: What do you say to those who insist that all rock since
the Beatles has been the Beatles redone?
LENNON: All music is rehash. There are only a few notes. Just
variations on a theme. Try to tell the kids in the Seventies who
were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just the
Beatles redone. There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees. They do
a damn good job. There was nothing else going on then.
PLAYBOY: Wasn't a lot of the Beatles' music at least more
intelligent?
LENNON: The Beatles were more intellectual, so they appealed on
that level, too. But the basic appeal of the Beatles was not
their intelligence. It was their music. It was only after some
guy in the "London Times" said there were Aeolian
cadences in "It Won't Be Long" that the middle classes
started listening to it -- because somebody put a tag on it.
PLAYBOY: Did you put Aeolian cadences in "It Won't Be
Long?"
LENNON: To this day, I don't have any idea what they are. They
sound like exotic birds.
PLAYBOY: How did you react to the misinterpretations of your
songs?
LENNON: For instance?
PLAYBOY: The most obvious is the "Paul is dead" fiasco.
You already explained the line in "Glass Onion." What
about the line in "I am the Walrus" - - "I buried
Paul"?
LENNON: I said "Cranberry sauce." That's all I said.
Some people like ping-pong, other people like digging over
graves. Some people will do anything rather than be here now.
PLAYBOY: What about the chant at the end of the song: "Smoke
pot, smoke pot, everybody smoke pot"?
LENNON: No, no, no. I had this whole choir saying,
"Everybody's got one, everybody's got one." But when
you get 30 people, male and female, on top of 30 cellos and on
top of the Beatles' rock-'n'-roll rhythm section, you can't hear
what they're saying.
PLAYBOY: What does "everybody got"?
LENNON: Anything. You name it. One penis, one vagina, one asshole
-- you name it.
PLAYBOY: Did it trouble you when the interpretations of your
songs were destructive, such as when Charles Manson claimed that
your lyrics were messages to him?
LENNON: No. It has nothing to do with me. It's like that guy, Son
of Sam, who was having these talks with the dog. Manson was just
an extreme 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 acid.
PLAYBOY: Where did "Lucy in the Sky" come from?
LENNON: My son Julian came in one day with a picture he painted
about a school friend of his named Lucy. He had sketched in some
stars in the sky and called it "Lucy in the Sky 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 shop turns into a sheep
and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere
and I was visualizing that. There was also the image of the
female who would someday come save me -- a "girl with
kaleidoscope eyes" who would come out of the sky. 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: Do you have any interest in the pop historians analyzing
the Beatles as a cultural phenomenon?
LENNON: It's all equally irrelevant. Mine is to do and other
people's is to record, I suppose. Does it matter how many drugs
were in Elvis' body? I mean, Brian Epstein's sex life will make a
nice "Hollywood Babylon" someday, but it 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, but not quite. It was never
consummated. But 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 baby and went to Spain.
Lots of funny stories, you know. We used to sit in cafs and Brian
would look at all the boys and I would ask, "Do you like
that one? Do you like this one?" It was just the combination
of our closeness and the trip that started the rumors.
PLAYBOY: It's interesting to hear you talk about your old songs
such as "Lucy in the Sky" and "Glass Onion."
Will you give some brief thoughts on some of our favorites?
LENNON: Right.
PLAYBOY: Let's start with "In My Life."
LENNON: It was the first song I wrote that was consciously about
my life. [Sings] "There are places I'll remember/all my life
though some have changed. . . ." Before, we were just
writing songs a la Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly -- pop songs with
no more thought to them than that. The words were almost
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 down 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
middle eight.
PLAYBOY: "Yesterday."
LENNON: Well, we all know about "Yesterday." I have had
so much accolade for "Yesterday." That is Paul's song,
of course, and Paul's baby. Well done. Beautiful -- and I never
wished I had written it.
PLAYBOY: "With a Little Help from My Friends."
LENNON: This is Paul, with a little help from me. "What do
you see when you turn out the light/I can't tell you, but I know
it's mine ..." is mine.
PLAYBOY: "I am the Walrus."
LENNON: The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend.
The second line was written on the next acid trip the next
weekend, and it 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 elementary, naive attitude
of going around chanting, "Hare Krishna," or putting
all your faith 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 you never hear
it all. There was too much to get on. It was too messy a mix. One
track was live BBC Radio -- Shakespeare or something -- I just
fed in whatever lines came in.
PLAYBOY: What about the walrus itself?