Imagine: John Lennon

I always was a rebel. But, on the other hand, I want...

to be loved and accepted by all facets of society...

and not be this loudmouth, lunatic poet-musician.

But I cannot be what I'm not.

- Good morning. - Good morning.

People say, "Why are you recording your life like a diary?"

The thing is that, as a Beatle, every song and every album...

and every record and every film was a diary of who we were at the time.

But we were in the dark about it till later.

So when I got with Yoko...

we were able to turn a light on in the middle of the creation of it.

The back is going to be eyes with two sunsets in it.

Freaky, isn't it?

What's the tune of lmagine?

It just goes, "Imagine there's no heaven...

"it's easy if you try. No hell below us.

"Only sky. Imagine all the people.

"Living for today." Whatever.

You'll hear the record.

When I think of Ascot, I think of making Imagine...

and also just being together, strolling around in the gardens.

And it was a very intense and beautiful time for us.

- I should do How? First. - All right. Set up How?

We built a studio connected to the house...

and we recorded some songs there, too.

I was raised by my auntie.

My father and my mother split when I was about 4.

I had spent some time with my mother up till about 4.

Then my father split. He was a merchant seaman.

You can imagine, it was the 1940s, in the war and all that.

And he left, and I was brought up by an auntie.

I had to be solid because I had a boy to bring up.

It was my job to be there. He never came into an empty house.

What he could not make out was how I knew...

when he was up to something.

He was inventive and was always the leader.

Every time he sat down, he never wasted a minute.

And it was always either drawing or writing poetry...

or reading. He was a great reader.

And he sang himself to sleep every night.

And then when I was 16...

I re-established a relationship with my mother for about four years.

She taught me music. She first of all taught me the banjo...

and, from that, I progressed to guitar.

And then, unfortunately, she was run over by an off-duty policeman...

who was drunk at the time.

I lost her twice. Once as a 5-year-old when I was moved in with my auntie...

and once again when I was re-establishing a relationship with her.

That was really a hard time for me...

and it just absolutely made me very, very bitter.

The underlying chip on my shoulder I had as a youth was really big then.

It was very traumatic for me.

I had no idea about doing music as a way of life...

until the rock 'n'roll hit me.

Then when rock 'n'roll hit me that changed my whole life.

You know, you went to see those movies...

with Elvis or somebody in it, when we were still in Liverpool.

And you'd see everybody waiting to see him. And I'd be waiting there, too.

And they'd all scream when he came on the screen.

So I thought, "That's a good job."

He was rough, ready...

and not my type at all. To start off with.

But again, this enigmatic character...

you couldn't resist.

He was like a Teddy boy. He walked around without his glasses...

a guitar over his shoulder...

and a look that said, "Kill."

Paul met me the first day I did Be Bop a Lula live onstage.

A mutual friend brought him to see my group, called The Quarry Men.

And we met and we talked after the show.

And I saw he had talent. He was playing guitar backstage...

doing Twenty-Flight Rock, by Eddie Cochran.

And I turned around to him right then on first meeting and said:

"Do you want to join the group?" And I think he said "yes" the next day.

Now George came through Paul...

but the person I actually picked as my partner was Paul.

Hamburg? That city of sin?

No, certainly not. You can't go there.

He said, "Oh, come on, Mimi. We'll get 100 pounds a week. "

So in the end, he went.

I can remember the time when one drunken Kraut...

tried to get onstage and John Lennon was eating onstage...

and he threw his knife at him.

And then, not deterring the fellow...

he promptly kicked him in the face to boot him off the stage.

And so you had this town full of gangsters...

who used to love the Beatles...

and used to send them crates of ale onstage.

And they'd be legless. Absolutely legless onstage.

Everywhere they played, they would finish up in a fight.

In actual fact, one place that I sent them to play...

they used to have to hide behind the piano...

because the popular thing was to throw the chairs at the group.

Then we went back to Liverpool, and there were quite a few bookings.

You know, they all thought we were German.

Anyway, Bill was from Hamburg, and they all said, "You speak good English."

I was told that he was playing in a place called The Cavern.

It was an old wine cellar...

that had been turned into a sort of lunch club.

It was Brian that went there.

And he was only at the back of the hall...

listening to those four boys, but whatever he saw...

he saw that little spark.

And he went right around and offered himself as their manager.

I was immediately struck by their music, their beat...

and their sense of humor, actually, onstage.

And even afterwards, when I met them...

I was struck again by their personal charm.

And it was there that, really, it all started.

It took about eight months to...

get to the stage where we had a recording contract...

and we were having the first record issued.

That was Love Me Do.

I think it was a very fortunate coming together...

that we seemed to hit it off very well.

When we were in the studio, we did really collaborate as a team.

There weren't any egos protruding through.

But I was very, very lucky to have met up with them.

George had done no rock 'n'roll when we met him...

and we'd never been in the studio, so we did a lot of learning together.

He had a very great musical knowledge and background.

So he could translate for us and suggest a lot of things. Which he did.

And he'd come up with amazing technical things.

When the Beatles were depressed, thinking the group was going nowhere...

and this is a shitty deal, and we're in a shitty dressing room...

I'd say, "Where are we going, fellas?"

And they'd go, "To the top, Johnny!"

And I'd say, "Where's that, fellas?"

And they'd say, "To the toppermost of the poppermost!"

And I'd say, "Right!" Then we'd all sort of cheer up.

When I was a Beatle...

I thought, "We're the best fucking group in the goddamn world. "

And believing that is what made us what we were.

It was just a matter of time before everybody else caught on.

Thank you.

For our last number, I'd like to ask your help.

For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands.

And the rest of you, if you'd just rattle your jewelry.

We'd like to sing a song called, Twist and Shout.

Maybe we should just go on and do lmagine, then.

What's this one, a ballad?

Yeah, go on. I'll teach you it.

Imagine was one facet of him.

It crystallized his dream for the world.

It crystallized his idealism.

And it was something that he wanted to really say to the world.

That's a nice one.

Yeah.

- That's the one I like best... - What if there's another piano?

Because if we get the same kind of piano, and do an octave higher or something...

- it would be beautiful. - We can always use this...

Instead of the electric guitar. It's a delicate song.

He could do it on the top half of the piano, maybe.

We could get a mike through to the front...

That's it.

- The white piano? - Yeah.

I'll go on the white one 'cause that's what I wanted to do, use that one.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

Because we want to do the house.

When Dad moved to Tittenhurst...

it was the first time that he actually called me in quite a long time.

It was an exciting thing for me to go and see him again...

after not seeing him for such a while.

And at the time, I was living in...

I won't say a small house, but it was a completely different situation.

It was on a street with lots of houses, lots of friends.

And Tittenhurst was this enormous...

palace-like place with 99 acres...

golf-cart buggies, a lake, a little island in the middle of the lake...

It was like a house of fun.

It was a completely different experience.

It was wonderful. I loved the place.

I don't remember seeing him as a child.

It was the height of the Beatle thing so I was working all the time.

I never considered what it was doing to him. I didn't even count it.

The mother was at home. I was away.

Like most guys at 24 or 25, they're too intent on their career really, you know.

John, as a father, was forced, I'm afraid, to be a part-time dad.

He wrote to me saying that...

"I'm so sad and I'm so sorry that I've missed the fact...

"that Julian has been growing up...

"that he is now a little man and I miss him dreadfully.

"And I've been a right bastard...

"because I've taken no notice of him...

"and I've read the papers and pushed him out of the room...

"because he's been making noises."

That was the point when he suddenly realized that he was a father...

Julian was a special little person...

not just a figment of his imagination when he came home in the early days.

You're going over to the States early in the new year...

and you're going to top the bill on the Ed Sullivan coast-to-coast show.

John, so far, all British pop stars have not

made a tremendous impact on the States.

How do you think you're gonna fare?

Well, I can't really say, can I? I mean, is it up to me? No.

I mean, I just hope we go all right.

Are you going to vary your act at all for the American audience?

No. We haven't really got an act, so we'll just do what we do.

The journey to America was exciting but I had to keep a low profile...

because it wouldn't do for the frenzied fans...