Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews

by Jann S. Wenner, Philip Castle (Illustrator)

Hugely entertaining interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono conducted by the iconic "Rolling Stone " magazine.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Rock N Roll, History, Memoir, Art

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Jann Simon Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of the music and politics bi-weekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.
Wenner grew up in a secular Jewish family. His parents divorced in 1958, and he and his sisters, Kate and Merlyn, were sent to boarding schools to live. He graduated from high school at Chadwick School in 1963 and went on to attend the University of California at Berkeley. Before dropping out of Berkeley in 1966, Wenner was active in the Free Speech Movement and produced the column "Something's Happening" in the student-run newspaper, The Daily Californian. With the help of his mentor, San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, Wenner landed a job at Ramparts, a high-circulation muckraker, where Gleason was a contributing editor and Wenner worked on the magazine's spinoff newspaper. In 1967, Wenner and Gleason founded Rolling Stone in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was just thinning out the bookshelves a bit, and recently saw the Peter Jackson Get Back culling/curating/cleaned-up version of the last performances of the Beatles, and I saw this hardcover version of this book on me shelves, and sat down and read it through, though friend Maria had gifted it to me twenty years or more ago when it came out. I loved the Jackson film, loved the interactions, acknowledged the conflicts, wanted to pull my hair out every time I saw Yoko sitting taking notes IN the sessions--why? why? why?!! is she there, yeah, she was key to the break-up!--and just loved the rooftop concert. Moving to me. Glimpses of genius. The very seeds of some great songs, developed. A great contribution to a history of rock and The Beatles, obviously.

And though I think Lennon-McCartney is one of the best song-writing teams in history, and I loved John's work, I got to seethe at the fact that Yoko is again part of these interviews. Ugh!! Jann Wenner (the founder of Rolling Stone) is but 24 years old, not a good interviewer at this point, so it is one rambling mess of contradiction--did he really collaborate with Paul? No! Yes!--Huh??!--and it makes the much loved peacenik John look uglier than he may have intended, really nasty about the other Beatles and the world at the time, but I loved his reflections about the music he loved and the music he created. I tried to ignore hard his assertions that Yoko's genius equals Andy Warhol and Picasso and whoever in the history of the arts (argh!!!), but if I can set aside some of his arrogance, just bracket it out, I loved just the honesty of it, and the reflections about his music, and it made it clear in a way that Jackson film did not that the Beatles were truly done at that point. At moments he is quite shy and funny and sweet.

No pictures in this edition, alas. Probably for Beatles fans mainly.

[Todd N · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished a book early last night and wasn't sleepy, so I read this book again -- probably my 10th time reading it.

It's a mass paperback edition of the 1970 Jann Wenner Rolling Stone interviews with John and Yoko. It's John Lennon in full post-Beatles, de-mythologization mode. The first line in the interview: "If I could be a fuckin' fisherman, I would, you know."

In the interview John is alternately funny, self-pitying, angry, bitter, coy, self-contradictory, interesting, and forgetful. Just like I am during a typical working day. Mostly I get the impression John is full of shit -- either that or trying to put one over on the credulous Mr. Wenner.

The best parts are when John talks about the music he grew up with. He has a great bit about how the blues is a chair, not a design for a chair, not an idea of a chair, not a chair meant to be looked at, but a chair that is useful because you sit in it.

[[Update: I found the quote, which I find to be very awesome: "It's not perverted or thought--it's not a concept. It is a chair, not a design for a chair or a better chair or a bigger chair or a chair with leather or with design. It is the first chair, it's chairs for sitting on, not chairs for looking at or being appreciated. You sit on that music."]

I wonder if John really couldn't remember that Revolver came out after Rubber Soul. He doesn't seem to even remember Revolver by its name.

Also why did the editor mix up "balmy" and "barmy." I don't think John meant to say that someone is "balmy."

I picked up some interesting bits:
-The Beatles were careful not to release albums at the same time as other popular artists, including Tom Jones. He would check with the Rolling Stones to make sure they didn't compete.
-Yoko, clearly more aware of PR than John, jumps in to "clarify" that they only sniffed heroin. At other times they bickered like an old English couple.
-After Sgt. Pepper John and George wanted to move to Haight-Ashbury
-Parents would bring crippled children to meet the Beatles and have them be touched by one of the Beatles. The first few rows of their concerts were usually crippled children in wheelchairs or even baskets.
-John and Yoko visited a spiritualist to learn about their past lives, but John wanted to know if this guy was so spiritual why was he so fat.
-John thought his song "Mother" was a commercial recording.

There are some great pictures in the book. My favorite is the one of Phil Spector looking like Harold from Harold and Maude.

Oh by the way, I stole this book from a high school girl's house in Lafayette, Indiana in 1988. I don't feel bad about this because I am able to appreciate this book far more than she or her family ever could have.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm John fucking Lennon! I'm such a fucking genius it hurst. I can't stand the pain of being the target of businessmen, my former bandmates, the press, and my fucking fans. That's why I went on heroin, to get away from the pain. What do I think of the current music scene? Bullshit. What do I think of Paul's new album? Bullshit. George? I cut him some slack cause he's like a younger brother to me. I can't even turn on the radio without listening to MY SWEET LORD. What were The Beatles? The biggest bastards on earth, and our manager, Brian Epstein? A tantrum-throwing homo. Our fans are an uptight bunch of fucking idiots for whom I am forced to perform. I wouldn't even be here recording music if it wasn't for Mother {Yoko}. Mick Jagger is a joke with his fag dancing. Anything The Beatles did The Stones would copy; LET IT BE-LET IT BLEED. PLASTIC ONO BAND will take the world by storm. It's me singing, not The Walrus. And, if you can't handle that, well, fuck you, brothers and sisters, and that goes for Yoko as well.

I'm thirty years old now {December 1970} and the only change I can see is that I have grown older and a lot more people are wearing long hair.

[Dan Witte · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to imagine not giving this 5 stars, but it’s also hard to know how to rate this at all. It’s basically a word-for-word transcript of a very long interview with John Lennon - and Yoko Ono - shortly after the breakup of the Beatles, and it covers pretty much everything you’d want it to. Jann Wenner, publisher and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, asked every question Beatles and Lennon fans cared about, nothing seems to have been off-limits, and Lennon was simply Lennon, raw and unfiltered, gracious and bitter and madly in love with Yoko. Rating this book is like rating Lennon’s id, and in that context 5 stars seems not only inadequate, but irrelevant.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Lennon Remembers is classic Lennon. It's not a sit-back-and-put-your-feet-up read... It's a jolt on your nerves like bad, bad espresso. People with weak stomachs should close the window before reading. You might just feel like jumping out."
~ Yoko Ono, from the Foreword

I hardly ever read forewords, I want to get to the meat of the story and feel those numeral numbered pages get in the way. But, before starting Lennon Remembers, the 1970 Rolling Stone Interview conducted by Jann Wenner, I did. Yoko Ono's foreword to this documentation was insightful and and well written. Although, at the time of reading it I felt it was exaggerated, I mean seriously, jumping out a window seems a little over the top.

I did not want to open my window and "jump out" as the foreword warned, but this was not the "sit-back-and-put-your-feet-up" Love me Do read I was expecting. Not even close. This is John Lennon post Beatles and shows him as an individual and not just part of the fab four.

The Beatles do play a decent part in the interview (because let's face it, that's what many people want to hear.) and he wades between reminiscence and bitterness/frustration by the disintegration of the band. Which he insists broke up because he and Paul were egomaniacs and had nothing to do with Yoko Ono.

Music obviously is one of the main acts. Lennon, divulges his thoughts on lyrics of both the Beatles and Plastic Ono Band. i.e. Mother, Working Class Hero and the Let It Be Album.

Lennon's passion for peace shines through, though at times he came off as rambling and while I was enthralled with bed peace, I just wanted him to get to the point already. Alas, this rambling passion had a tendency to portray him as a pompous ass and felt his wife (who also sat for the interviews) calmed him, bringing the singer back to Earth.

This set of interviews reminded me of the revised edition of the Diary of Anne Frank. Said edition included entries that Otto Frank omitted. These entries to Kitty hijacked the girl who believes that everyone is good at heart and showed a picture of a girl going through teenage angst making her more "normal". I think that is what Jann Wenner interviews did with John Lennon, it cleanses us of all we thought we knew, "It's a jolt on your nerves."

Lennon Remembers is a very bittersweet read. It is informative and is a heavy look at John Lennon but it also left me feeling heavy-hearted as I knew he would never make it to 64 as the conclusion to the Rolling Stone interview suggests.

'Do you have a picture of, "When I'm 64"?'

No, no. I hope we're a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that, looking at our scrapbooks of madness.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lennon has been essentially sainted since he got shot. This book is great because it demonstrates what an arrogant asshole he could be. He talks all kinds of shit about Jagger, McCartney, and every other 60s British rock star. Worth a read for Beatles fans and Beatles haters.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting enough interview & I just thought it was so funny how he was just mad at everything and everyone. my paperback had pictures in between the interview & i got jumpscared by john lennon's penis

[Driscoll (Joe & Jerry) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems as though there was a lot that Winston O'Boogie didn't quite remember......and then there was Yoko.

[Craig Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Lennon Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews by Jann Wenner in early 1981. The book chronicles the lengthy interviews Wenner had with Lennon in late 1970 which were serialized in two editions of Rolling Stone magazine in early 1971. The contents and Lennon quotes have gone down in history. These interviews exposed more about the insecure Lennon psyche than any other. In my forty years of Beatles fandom I had long known the contents of these interviews since they have been cited in countless Lennon biographies yet I had never read them all in one dose. That for me proved to be an exercise in patience. I base that remark on the transcript. It could have been edited to flow more smoothly, so that meaningless words were edited out and answer start-overs didn't appear halfway down in John's reply. I had to cast out what in my opinion was too much unnecessary language which only made me need to read entire paragraphs all over again. The transcripts were however not as bad as Andy Warhol's a, but I still felt I had read each page twice before going on to the next. 

John often couldn't remember what Wenner attributed to him as saying, even when he quoted him in interviews from merely one year ago. John frequently refuted his own past statements, a point Wenner raised in the introduction. Thus the reader got the idea that John, by then thirty, was still finding himself and discovering new philosophies while discarding others as rubbish. 

In December of 1970 John had just released his soul-baring album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and much of the interview was devoted to the making of the album and the songs on it. John praised the primal scream therapy he and Yoko underwent with Arthur Janov although he was not in that type of therapy any longer. Throughout the interview though John told of his fits of nervousness when going on stage or meeting important people. Thus during the Beatles years John must have suffered from stage fright and at the time of these interviews, still was. He took a lot of heat from friends in his inner circle when he blasted them during this interview: not just the expected target Paul McCartney, but also George Martin, George Harrison and Mick Jagger among others. 

Yoko was alongside for much of the interview and it is thanks to her for guiding John's train of thought and directing him back to Wenner's original questions. At times John would start to answer a question with a long introduction, with the reader expecting him to phase into an answer, yet sometimes he'd never get there. Yoko would sometimes ask the question again or insert a prompt to get John back on topic. I believe that without Yoko's involvement in the interview, Wenner might not have gotten the answers he was striving for and perhaps wouldn't have gotten such candid replies if it was only him around doing the asking. 

One minor point of confusion centred on the authorship of "I Want to Hold Your Hand". Early in the interview John claimed that it was not a collaborative effort with Paul McCartney. Then in two separate instances over halfway through when Wenner wanted to discuss the Lennon/McCartney partnership John asserted that it was a joint effort.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must have read this book when I was 12 or 13 the first time and I remember it made a huge impression on me, its anger and passion and pain. Now I’m impressed that this 30-year-old had the self-insight to simultaneously blame the Beatles and Paul McCartney for the harrowing eight or nine years he’s just closed the chapter on *and* to realize that he was also full of shit. He was angry that no one accepted Yoko, who had rescued him from his own self-loathing and anxiety. He was angry at all the hangers-on who wanted to take full credit for the Beatles’ success. And he was exasperated at his own shyness and anxiety and aggression. But he was also full of remarkable insights about art and music, too. On putting the Beatles together: “Was it better to have a guy who was better than the people I had—obviously—or not? To make the group stronger or let me be stronger? That decision was to let Paul in to make the *group* stronger” (133). “I read that Malcom X or Eldridge Cleaver or somebody said that, with rock, the blacks gave the middle-class whites back their bodies, put their minds and bodies to it…. It was the only thing that could get through to me of all the things that were happening when I was fifteen” (76). If only Lennon had lived to be part of that nice old couple “off the coast of Ireland, looking at our scrapbook of madness” (151).

[Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read an edition published in the early seventies. I don't know how the current edition differs from that one, but I gather the current one is complete and that the one I read was a little more complete than editions published between then and the time of the current publication.
These are interviews John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave together to Jann Wenner, the founder of ROLLING STONE, shortly after the Beatles broke up in 1970.
It is valuable as a record of John Lennon's state of mind in 1970. You simultaneously get a sense of Lennon's integrity and a sense of his cruelty. His famous sense of humor is completely lacking here. He is angry to the point of having no objectivity. His bitterness toward Paul McCartney is understandable only up to a point. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, Lennon and McCartney had a professional rivalry which shattered their friendship. But as you read along you realize John Lennon is obsessed with his old musical partner. Paul McCartney seems to be the focus of all the rage John Lennon felt for the people who abandoned, mistreated and ignored him as he grew up.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeowch! Caustic and biting, this is certainly not the Beatles America embraced in 1964. Reading Lennon’s harsh opinions of Paul McCartney can be wince inducing. Lots of self-aggrandizing as well, from both Yoko and John.

Even so, I’ll take this bad-mouthing, ego-tripping Lennon interview over the middle aged-soft and squishy one present in All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. At least this one had his wry sense of humor intact, and had me laughing out loud on several occasions.

[Finnegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Lennon is such a pretentious dick.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. John had a lot of pain from being a Beatle. A musical force that changed everything, music and culture took a toll on these guys.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, revealing, insightful, true. I think this must be the closest to being inside of John Lennon's mind. He speaks truths here - during a very tumultuous time - that are just fascinating and rip the laminate off of the image of the Beatles in their final years. This is like ripping off the peel of a 1970 orange and inhaling the citrus - it's sharp, fresh, bittersweet. John talks about Paul, George, Allen Klein, George Martin, the Eastmans, Yoko, Dylan, the Stones, art, his own genius, Liverpool, London, New York, poetry, avant garde, Mal Evans, Derek Taylor, Neil Aspinall. He opens up the entire can of worms and dissects them with razor-sharp critique.

The quotes on the back of the book say it best:

"Arguably the most legendary interview ever conducted with a major celebrity." Library Journal

"This is the only voice that will ever articulate what it was really like to be in the Beatles when it all went wrong - caught in a moment, rasping, raving, and flaming mad." Uncut

"Finds Lennon in fine form, still bitter about the breakup of the Beatles, full of optimism about his future solo projects, opinionated emotional and full of life. It captures his mercurial character more exactly than any other book on the Beatles I've read." Independent on Sunday

[Renee G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Candid John Lennon, proving that words have power.

I didn't realize how much he respected Yoko Ono as an artist. I'm going to start listening to her music. I've seen some of her art.

[Lukas Massarotti · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Lennon remains a pillar example of the breadth of a human being. The spectrum of emotions, the spectrum of influence, from the brutal honesty to the emotion-driven bitching about his friends and contemporaries, it all serves as an intimate picture of this most influential of artistic figures, I simply loved this read.

[Loona Mets · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Just like Van Gogh was or any other of those fucking people, they're no more nor less than I am or Yoko is. They're no more, no less, they were just living those days. I am interested in producing - expressing myself, like they expressed it, that will mean something to people in any country, in any language, and at any time in history."
- John Lennon (p 137)

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of:
Lennon Remembers - Rolling Stone Interview
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 6, 2008

After decades of not much caring about The Beatles & John Lennon & whatnot, I recently made a movie called "Backwards Masking In Rocks" that references The Beatles & Lennon & Ono, etc.. & I discovered that I really DO like The Beatles. In my movie, Lennon et al are The Crystals & backwards masking allegations are made against ROCKS in general (rather than rock music). Now, opening this bk again for the 1st time in a long time, I open to a section that addresses the reputed hidden messages in Beatles' material:

"Why do you think people start rumors, like that whole death thing would happen...

People have got nothing better to do than study bibles and make myths about it, and study rocks and make stories about how people used to live and all that. You know, it's just something to do for them, they live vicariously."

[Evan Whitlock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Insightful, and no matter how many times he says she didn’t break up the band, I still don’t believe him. Considering how often she finishes his sentences and cuts him off. He was a strange cat, and tried to fill the void in his life with way too many substances and by this time it was definitely showing.

[Carlos Hugo Winckler Godinho · Rating 2 out of 5]

Que pessoa confusa que era o Lennon, não? Me parece que ele estava constantemente tentando chamar a atenção. Talvez tenha sido uma fase, como o livro da irmã dele dá a entender (cito porque li ao mesmo tempo), mas a imagem que se tem dele nessa entrevista não é das melhores.

[Danielle Dubois · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entrevue complètement décousue: Lennon qui ne se rappelle pas ses disques, le journaliste qui ne sait pas où il va et Yoko qui ajoute son grain de sel. Personne ne fait rien de bon sauf lui (Lennon), sauf Yoko et lui.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two conclusions.

1. Lennon needed a kick up the arse.

2. Jann Wenner needed to learn the difference between ‘barmy’ and ‘balmy.’

[Brandon Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoko Ono writes in the forward "...Classic Lennon. It's not a sit-back-and-put-your-feet-up read... It's a jolt on your nerves like bad, bad espresso. People with weak stomachs should close the window before reading. You might just feel like jumping out."
And she's right. John oscillates between rage and nostalgia, while simultaneously rejecting both in favor of the now which, to his chagrin, usually leads him back to the past. Likewise, he's both egotistical and self-depreciating, generous and mean spirited, accepting and condemning, deeply flawed and yet admirable - This isn't the St. Lennon he's been made into in the nearly 30 years since his death. It's better; It's John Lennon as a real human being, living with real contradictions and real pain which he speaks of here in a manner that's almost unthinkable for any grown man to discuss their emotions in 1970.

Lennon is exceedingly candid here, and it's by far the most candid "insider" account of The Beatles out there. You'll learn plenty of interesting tidbits along the way, like:

- John wanted to move to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, but it didn't pan out.
- People would actually bring their sick children to the Beatles, hoping that a touch from one of them would cure the child.
- He really disliked the bourgeoisie, calling them "Pigs" and "Animals" (Not that I don't agree.)
- He realized that the peace movement was already being hijacked by people who wanted to be fashionable but otherwise didn't give a damn.
- He thinks a violent revolution is inevitable.
- He supports Chairman Mao.
- McCartney foiled the band's attempts to comment on Vietnam.
- He can't remember if Rubber Soul was before or after Revolver which he never refers to by name and often seems to confuse with The White Album
- Yoko is present for the length of the interview, and she proves to be more PR savvy than her husband.
- He doesn't have to be around Yoko all the time, but "why wouldn't [he] want to be? [They're] in love."
- Groupies didn't exist when the Beatles were touring, but there's plenty of on tour debauchery "That hasn't been written about, because those guys have wives and I have Yoko. It would hurt them."
- John "Isn't your fucking parent."

It's a quick read and an interesting portrait of an icon in flux. An interview that goes for almost 200 pages might sound like a drag, but you ought to pick this up and give it a shot. It never lets up or settles for the superficial.

[Andy Caffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, this book gets five stars because it is John Lennon, the artist of our times.

This Verso 2000 edition is the first time the complete 1970 interview of John & Yoko by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner has been published. And boy, is it raw.

It's interesting to hear John's takes on his favorite Beatles songs, and the discussion of John's & Yoko's famous activist "stunts" like the Bed-In for peace, bagism, and the War is Over billboards. The most fun parts of the interviews are about John's LSD experiences (he took it over 1,000 times, he says). he wanted to move to Haight-Ashbury to further explore that scene.

He seems to have been loathing Paul & George at this time, for being materialist bigots (although his takes on jews and gays are offensive–apparently he didn't know his interviewer is gay! lol). But he seemed to have a lot of love and admiration for Ringo, as a person and as the best drummer he's worked with because of Ringo's instinctual ability to produce what drumming John needed. At the time of this interview John was releasing his first big solo album "Plastic Ono Band."

His final verdict on whether to be in or out of revolution, as he verbally oscillates in the song "Revolution," is that he's in for the revolution. he even has kind words for Chairman Mao.

They all talk a lot about other artists: he was fond of Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

What might bore some readers is all of the discussion about the businessmen who ran Beatles, Inc. and the battles over business with Paul. So this isn't light reading for the typical fan. It's a portrait of an artist, probably of most interest to other artists.

[Sparrow .]

There’s one point where John says: “That white album with the drawings on it, was that before or after Rubber Soul?“

He can’t remember the name of Revolver!

And for a guy who ruined his life by falling in love with Yoko, he seems quite impatient with her – always interrupting and contradicting her. Hippie guys back then were just no good.

As for Yoko, she seems like the world‘s biggest fangirl of John, as we now say. But she has a grudge against George, which annoys her husband. (“George is like 10 years younger than me,“ John remarks at one point. A footnote explains that the number of years is actually three.)

And John is not mad at Paul! He’s disappointed that his solo album was crap (this was 1970), but through it all, there’s no personal censure.

John is invariably honest, inarticulate, restless, sick of the Beatles, very excited about his new album that he’s just released, which might well be his best ever. (I forgot the title; maybe “The Plastic Ono Band“?) He admires Yoko, recognizes her talent. If only the Beatles had let her join!

I agree with just about everything John says.

Opening at random:

“It’s real, you know. It’s about me, and I don’t know about anything else really. The only true songs I ever wrote were “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields.” And I can name a few, I can’t think of them offhand, that I always considered my best songs. They were the ones that I really wrote from experience and not projecting myself into a situation and writing a nice story about it, which I always found phony.”

PS The album is “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.”

[Jack Daniel Christie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The ultimate testament of a bloviating narcissist. John Lennon was a brilliant songwriter, but he was hobbled by both a tremendous self-regard and a tremendous insecurity (these things often go hand-in-hand), lacking self-awareness about either, and so John never really managed to say much of interest about anything. Wenner, for his part, just enables John to keep rambling. Check out this bit where Wenner just says "yeah there's philosophers who talk about what you vaguely gestured at" and John is like "woah I guess I'm a genius."

The song “God” starts out by saying “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”

Our pain is the pain we go through all the time. You’re born in pain, and pain is what we’re in most of the time. And 1 think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.

There’s a tremendous body of philosophic literature about God as a measurement of pain.

Oh, I never heard about it. See, it was my own revelation. I don’t know who wrote about it or what anybody else said. I just know that’s what I know. Amazing.

YOKO: You just felt it.

JOHN: Yeah, I felt it, you see. So when I felt it, it’s like I was crucified. So I know what they’re talking about now.

Forget that "God" is an excruciatingly stupid song, and one of the worst things Lennon ever recorded, we now have to sit here and pretend John was some kind of master philosopher because of a line that YOU KNOW DAMN WELL he stole from some stupid Leary-ite hippy dipsh*t and did not come up with himself.

[Claire Fairtlough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmm. This sort of solidified how much of an ass John Lennon was. So many things in this interview made me roll my eyes, he really wasn't kidding when he said he was an ego-maniac. But this was a great interview. It's also interesting that Lennon hated this book being put out, famously calling it 'Lennon Regrets'. I think that he was a very hurt individual with a lot of trauma. Trauma from home, trauma that he inflicted on others, and the trauma of fame. I don't think he knew how to handle a breakup really well, and I don't think it was possible for him not to see other people as competition. He very clearly had a 'you're either with me or against me' mindset, while also loving to say problematic shit just to make people upset. But then talk about peace and love? He was a walking contradiction while being so adamant on everything that comes out of his mouth.

But this last question and answer, made me very emotional.

Do you have a picture of “when I’m 64”?

No, no. I hope we’re a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that – looking at our scrapbook of madness.

[Michael Patton]

I read this book on a cross-country bus trip from San Francisco to Boston. Hard to read on a bus--even when the book is presented in the interview format. As I recall, John blamed Paul for the breakup of The Beatles. I think he claimed that he wanted to release a solo album. But Paul asked him to hold up. Then Paul released his own solo album. This story doesn't jibe with recent comments by Paul. But who cares anymore who did what? I don't. I say: it's better to realize when something is finished. Then you can move on without misunderstanding and recriminations. Took me a long time to learn that lesson. So I don't fault anyone in the picture--including Yoko.

[Ella Schilling · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essential text which so much Beatles/Lennon biography is based on. Make sure to listen to the original taped interview as well for more context and to hear the way he says things which may give a different impression than when they are transcribed. Note that not everything he says is factually accurate, and a lot of his opinions changed in later years as well.

As others have noted, a star review is basically irrelevant, since this is just a transcription of a recorded interview. Regardless, this interview contains some very important and oft-quoted information so I enjoyed reading it in full finally. I consider this a useful reference book as well.