Saddest Passage Among Lennon's Last Interviews

[Norbert]

Q: How did you and Paul happen to be watching TV together?

Lennon: That was a period when Paul just kept turning up at the door
with a guitar. I would let him in, but finally I said to him, "Please
call before you come over. It's not 1956 and turning up at the door
isn't the same anymore."

-- from Lennon's Playboy interview of 1980

A few years later, in their own Playboy interview, the McCartneys
mentioned that they had heard Lennon was having trouble writing music
and that McCartney had shown up to help Lennon. Linda McCartney added
that Lennon had been going insane or some such -- which, judging from
the accounts of Goldman and John Green, was a fair assessment.

[pamina58]

How smug the McCartneys seem here.
It's a wonder they can sleep...

[Norbert]

I don't agree! McCartney showed up out of a generous desire to help
Lennon -- just as he later attempted to get through to Lennon offering
to share some "dynamite weed" with him before his trip to Japan.

And, I suspect, Lennon declined to accept Paul's offer to work on music
not because he was worn out from caring for Sean (which the Lennons
employed numerous nannies for), but because he was out of it and didn't
feel up to the challenge.

[pamina58]

Nonsense.

[Norbert]

Well, Lennon himself admitted that McCartney was regularly showing up
with a guitar. What do you think McCartney's purpose was?

And Lennon himself admitted that they ended up just watching television
instead of working on music.

[pamina58]

I think John tired of Paul's 'cute' music long before then...

[Norbert]

Fred Seaman says that, while he was driving John around, Paul's "Coming
Up" came on the radio and John was wildly excited by it ("F*ck a pig!
It's Paul!").

In the mid-70s, John deemed Band on the Run "good Paul music."

McCartney had stayed active in music through the 70s; Lennon gave up
after returning to Yoko and the Dakota. I suspect it was at Yoko's
behest that he shelved his at-least half-written "Between the Lines"
project. In any event, Lennon had, as he said to John Green, "lost me
muse." When McCartney showed up with a guitar, Lennon simply didn't
feel up to the task of collaborating. He preferred to smoke dope and
watch television.

[pamina58]

Why do some people consider themselves 'fans' when they do nothing but
slander their idol in life and in death?

[Norbert]

Who and what specifically are you referring to, Pamela?

If you're trying to talk about me, none of it's accurate. I've never
slandered Lennon. BTW, I have not claimed he was my idol, either.
Grownups don't have idols.

Liking some of a person's work doesn't entail liking all it --
especially with a person like Lennon, whose work was astoundingly
uneven. Liking some of a person's work doesn't entail approving all of
that person's behavior, either. E.g., the way Lennon left his first
wife is despicable -- as it the manner in which he adopted Yoko'
resentment towards Paul (based, in Yoko's case, on Paul denying her
advances).

[Geoff]

Post by pamina58
Why do some people consider themselves 'fans' when they do nothing but
slander their idol in life and in death?

Slander - doesn't that imply actually false statements, as opposed to
conjecture around a deeper understanding of a person's complexity -
'warts and all' ?

Should we all be 'fan-boys' (or girls) to the extent that our heads are
totally buried in the sand ?

geoff

[Norbert]

BTW, what are John's "Beautiful Boy," "Dear Yoko," and "Starting Over"
if not cute songs?

While with Fred Seaman in Bermuda, Lennon hit upon the idea of doing an
album about "living on borrowed time." Yoko insisted on being involved,
and told him to write odes to her and their supposedly shared lives
instead. He duly scrapped his idea, and came up with the DF songs.

And he knew they were mostly bad. On the demo tape of them he made for
Jack Douglas, he would comment after most of the songs, "It's not very
good. Maybe I should give it to Ringo, instead."

[Geoff]

Post by pamina58
Nonsense.

Congrats on condensing your usual wacky spiels to a single word.

geoff