Fred Seaman's First Meeting With John

[Norbert K]

"I met John and Yoko for the first time in the fall of 1975, shortly after John won his legal battle to stay in the United States. The Lennons attended a performance by my father, Eugene, a pianist, and Uncle Norman, who told anecdotes and played violin, at the Biltmore Hotel. Afterward the Lennons took the Seaman family to the Russian Tea Room, where John and Norman told amusing anecdotes for most of the evening, while Yoko sat silently next to John, wrapped in a white fur coat. John was dressed conservatively from head to toe in black, but his tie was emblazoned with a portrait of a nude woman.

"When my uncle told the Lennons that I was born near Frankfurt, the son of a Jewish-American father and a German-Protestant mother, John quipped that I was lucky to belong to both the Chosen People and the Master Race. He then began peppering me with German phrases he remembered from his early days in the red-light district of Hamburg with the Beatles, for instance: 'Um zweiundzwanzig Uhr mussen alle Jugendliche den Saal verlassen" -- At 10:00 all minors must leave the premises -- and "Ficken, lecken, blasen!" -- fuck, suck, blow. I complimented John on his excellent German pronunciation and told him that I remembered hearing 'Intant Karma' anf 'Give Peace a Chance' while riding bumper cars during the Octoberfest in my German hometown of Dillenberg."

-- from The Last Days of John Lennon, by Frederick Seaman

[pamina58]

I am reading Seaman's Last Days of John Lennon. It looks like Yoko was surrounded by NYPD people after John's death. Seaman makes a good case for Yoko perhaps having foreknowledge that something was going to happen to John and making sure she controlled the information coming out...

[Norbert]

I don't know if Seaman implied that. He does say that Yoko's bodyguard, Douglas MacDougal, urged Yoko to expand their security and that Yoko brushed these suggestions off.

John Green also advised Yoko that Lennon should have security. Green says that Yoko responded with, "Men don't need security. Women do."

[pamina58]

Seaman also said that when John was in Bermuda, Yoko decided she was going to divorce him. But then something happened, and she changed her mind.

I wonder if that is when she caught wind of the plot to assassinate John.

[Norbert]

Yeah, Sam Green backed out of the marriage plans, insisting that Yoko's way of going about this was too cruel to John.

Green also by now was well aware of how dangerous Ono was; she had sent him sailing into Bermuda in the expectation that he would vanish into the supposed "Bermuda Triangle."

Sam was a reluctant sexual partner of Ono in the first place, telling her, "I love you, Yoko -- but not *that* way!"

Nonetheless, evidence of Yoko's plans linger. E.g., near the end of his life, John modified his will, appointing Sam Green as Sean Lennon's guardian in the event that something happened to him (John).

[Norbert]

I meant to imply that Sam Green was aware that Ono had sent *John* in to Bermuda in the hopes that he'd be swallowed up in he supposed Bermuda Triangle.

[pamina58]

Do you mean this?
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.music.beatles/c/QEMxCpVS-4A

[Norbert]

That article is a good find! Yeah, I was thinking of Frederic Seaman's reports and those of a couple of others who knew Sam Green.

Green had quite a life -- some of it appears in the movie & true-crime book Savage Grace -- and he could have written a hell of a memoir. At least he spoke to Goldman and allowed a few other writers to quote him.