Dakota Days: The true story of John Lennon’s final years

by John Green

A candid, poignant portrait of John Lennon focuses on the last six years of his life, detailing his stormy relationship with Yoko Ono, his personal and artistic problems and triumphs, and his tragic death

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information. This profile may refer to several different authors.

Reviews

[Davida · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really not good. Bad writing. Hard to tell if any of it is actually true.

[Brenda Pizzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dakota Days opens with John Lennon returning home after an eighteen month disappearance when last he told Yoko he was going out for a newspaper. Upon entering the apartment he said, “they were out of papers.” Such wit. The year is 1973 and John has just seven more years left. Meanwhile, Yoko has employed, John Green, a tarot card reader. Among the many reasons Yoko needed Green’s services was to track John’s whereabouts in California when Lennon was separated from Yoko and motel hopping with his secretary, May Wong. The tarot card reader would read on the most likely motels to guess which motel John might be staying. Yoko would call the motel and ask for John. Most of the time, John would be at that exact motel. Yoko reasoned, how would it look if she called a motel and John wasn’t there?
John Green was at her beck and call 24/7 for emergencies big and small. A 2:00 AM call might be a small emergency, the cat is under the sofa. A big emergency mercury is in retrograde and a trip to California would require traveling East by way of Timbuktu before arriving in Los Angeles.
Now that Lennon had returned there was another pressing problem, John Lennon could not be privy to the tarot card reader’s real name, which was John, the same as his. So Yoko made Green promise to be , Charlie Swan. Lennon was introduced to him as Charlie Swan and addressed him as Charles. Always. During the time of Charlie Swan’s employ, Lennon lost his muse became depressed and stayed in bed for fifteen months. This fact is unsettling because we, the reader not Charlie the reader, knows John is wasting valuable time. John thinks he’s got forever, but who does? We know better, John has less.
The first chapter is probably the best at setting the mood and the lunacy that was life in apartment #72 at the address known as The Dakota located on the park in New York City’s west side. Without question Yoko is bananas and John is self aware, selfish, depressed and probably most certainly bipolar. At this point, John has lost his will for living and has developed a distaste for money. Yoko is panicked because more money is going out than coming in and at an alarming speed. She has not lost her taste for money. Their finances are at a deficit as they wait for their Apple money to be distributed to them. John has appointment Yoko as his business representative. She enjoys the status and political maneuverings at the Apple meetings. It means more tarot card readings as Yoko assesses who on Apple’s board is for her and who is against her. John couldn’t care less. Money means nothing to him. And he reasons even if he loses all of it he still can’t consider himself poor because he had wealth. Holding on to the money is business and Yoko must take care of it, and if and when she does take business and meetings seriously, it means for John that she has less time to spend on him. John becomes resentful, petulant, sometimes drunk and violent. This is difficult to accept given that John’s fans think of him as super human. As the situation becomes more dire, Yoko and Charlie Swan go to Cartagena where Yoko hires a witch. A real witch who performs on Yoko magic spells. Charlie is there to do daily readings on everything the witch does or proposes to do. This is some crazy voodoo.
Then there are the trips to Japan where Yoko chooses just the right hotel by way of numerology and Tarot but because the imperial suite that she must have “for John,” who doesn’t care what room they stay, is not available for the entire two months Yoko wants to book the suite for, she has to talk John into leaving the hotel for constant side trips for when the suite is available so they can return to the imperial suite. Consequently the trip is a disaster and John hates Japan. They go again the next year with the same disastrous outcome. In fairness, this is the time period when John is in his bed watching the television screen but not watching television.

With the rereading 36 years later, I now believe John suffered from bipolar disorder. It is only a hunch. The book is interesting because it reveals John as complex, uncooperative, and unapologetic. John we have to face is Human. He has no friends or no friends he feels he can trust. It’s a very bleak point in his life. At this time, he and Yoko had a baby together, Sean, but he finds difficulty in relating to Sean. As a dad and as a husband, John is less than exemplary. He realizes his toddler doesn’t like him, fears him, but he is paralyzed to change at this point. Charlie Swan’s card readings continues on a daily basis for all matters large and small. Yoko and John both use Charlie as their medium to communicate. They do not talk to each other directly. They have lost the ability. They are both paralyzed by fear and paranoia. John comes out of his funk barely and rents a house on Long Island. He loves spending time at the ocean and away from Yoko and the city. He meets some new friends and agrees to sail on a small sailboat to Bermuda with Sean who is five. He asks Charlie to read on the sailing trip even while realizing that it is a bad idea. Charlie and the cards agree. John goes anyway. The “crew” are three men, one woman and John who has taken sailing lessons. Somewhere in the Atlantic during the journey down an horrific storm materialized. The boat pitched and lurched violently. John thought, somebody should do something or they were all going to die. Then it hit him, he was somebody. Securing Sean below decks, he took the wheel, shouted the right commands and brought them out of the storm’s clutches. In the next two days he wrote all the songs to his final album Double Fantasy. He found his muse, found his old and improved self and was back with only two months more to live.

[Gaby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This gave me a headache. I suppose I could say that it was an interesting read because it works with a completely different angle than most Beatles/John Lennon biographies I've read (And I have read many, trust me), and because this is supposed to come from an "insider" I suppose I should give it some credit. In a way, I do - I mean, it does mirror a lot of thoughts that people surrounding John and Yoko have voiced, especially during the Dakota days, but boy.. I swear that a lot of the times this just sounded like a bad, and horrible fanfic.

That being said, if you are a John Lennon fanboy, (one who can endure a couple of painful anecdotes and portrayals of John) you may want to check up this book.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book at the behest of a friend. I'm not into the Beatles or John Lennon. Reading this book pretty much aggravated the crap out of me because both John Lennon and Yoko Ono come off as pretty cuckoo for cocoa puffs. The writing itself is easy to read. Since this was written by a former employee of the couple who I'm sure was looking to make some easy money, who knows how much of it is genuine. I'm sure at least some of it was exaggerated for dramatic effect.

[Leland · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book tacky and hard not to put down in indignation. Written in sincere and gentle manner, it is written from the perspective of a Tarot card reader who found himself in John and Yoko's favor for a time in the last five years of John's life.

[Gilly McGillicuddy · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Green’s “Dakota Days” read like a really cracky but heartbreaking fanfic. I think that’s the best I can sum it up.

[Jazz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankly I believe it all sounded rather believable to me. I mean it definitely read as more summations of many conversations they probably had. And I’m sure his responses were much clear headed than he ever was at the time. But still. I found it fascinating. Especially the parts that overlapped with other people’s narratives and the parts that didn’t. It always makes me think how much John kept things from pretty much everyone.

[Fred Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book lets you see the man behind the curtain. So many people idolize this guy but we see that he is a mere human like the rest of us - yet not any less remarkable for what he accomplished in a life cut short by a yet another mentally ill person with all-too-easy access to a gun. The whole idea that someone has a "right" to a weapon that can murder another human being is ridiculous.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are better books on this subject.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The man, the myth....mostly about the man John Lennon.

[Carissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed in JL after reading :(