Published on the twentieth anniversary of his death, this candid book reveals new information on the breakup of the Beatles, fellow musicians such as Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, Lennon’s attitudes towards revolution and drugs, and his relationship with Yoko Ono. Featuring new introductions by Ono and Wenner, and containing substantial material never before seen in print, Lennon Remembers presents a compelling portrait of a complex musical genius at the height of his career. Sometimes anguished and angry, often tender and poignant, these interviews are indispensable to understanding who John Lennon was and why his legacy continues to resonate today. Lennon Remembers: The Full Rolling Stone Interviews from 1970
Jann S. Wenner ´ 6 Read & Download
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. 1859846009 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.
1859846009 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.
1859846009 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). 1859846009 Seems as though there was a lot that Winston O'Boogie didn't quite remember......and then there was Yoko. 1859846009
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. 1859846009 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. 1859846009 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.
1859846009 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. 1859846009 DON'T read this if you love the cheeky, Hard Day's Night vision of the Beatles. It's an interesting snapshot of Lennon's mind on the day(s) he was being interviewed, and because he's so adamant in everything he says, you might come away feeling he really always hated the other Beatles and so on. But I think he was just a really young guy who didn't yet know how to handle a breakup very well, any kind of breakup. It's an interesting read, but don't get into it if you want your fuzzy Beatles feelings to stay intact. There are plenty of other books and movies out there to show you the other sides of Lennon. 1859846009
