Lennon Remembers
Lennon Remembers is a 1971 book by Rolling Stone magazine co-founder and editor Jann Wenner. It consists of a lengthy interview that Wenner carried out with former Beatle John Lennon in December 1970 and which was originally serialised in Rolling Stone in its issues dated 21 January and 4 February 1971. The interview was intended to promote Lennon's primal therapy-inspired album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and reflects the singer's emotions and mindset after undergoing an intense course of the therapy under Arthur Janov. It also serves as a rebuttal to Paul McCartney's public announcement of the Beatles' break-up, in April 1970.
Author
Accompanied by his wife, Yoko Ono, Lennon aired his grievances to Wenner about the Beatles' career and the compromises the band made during their years of international fame. He makes cutting remarks about his former bandmates, particularly McCartney, as well as associates and friends such as George Martin, Mick Jagger and Derek Taylor, and about the group's business adversaries. Lennon portrays himself as a genius who has suffered for his art. He also states his disillusion with the philosophies and beliefs that guided the Beatles and their audience during the 1960s, and commits to a more politically radical agenda for the new decade.
Although Wenner's decision to re-publish the interview was done without Lennon's consent, the book helped create an enduring image of Lennon as the working-class artist dedicated to truth and lack of artifice. While some commentators question its reliability, the interview became a highly influential piece of rock journalism. It also helped establish Rolling Stone as a commercially successful magazine.
Background[edit]
Rolling Stone had included a picture of John Lennon on the cover of its inaugural issue, dated 9 November 1967,[1] and did so again a year later, when the magazine featured a photo of him and Yoko Ono naked, in support of the couple's controversial avant-garde album, Two Virgins.[2] Jann Wenner, the magazine's editor, also supported Lennon[3] when other counterculture publications were critical of his and the Beatles' pacifist stance in reaction to the politically turbulent events of 1968.[4][5] In May 1970, a month after Paul McCartney had announced the Beatles' break-up, Rolling Stone published Lennon's response, in which he depicted McCartney as taking credit for the situation when in fact he, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had each left the band on occasion.[6] At this time, with Lennon and Ono in California to continue their primal therapy treatment under Arthur Janov,[7] Wenner had wanted to carry out an in-depth interview with Lennon for Rolling Stone.[8] Instead, Lennon and Ono undertook four months of therapy with Janov and then returned to London to record their respective albums
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – Lennon's first collection of songs outside the Beatles – and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.[9]
Wenner was finally able to interview Lennon in late 1970,[10] when he and Ono were in New York City visiting friends and filming Up Your Legs Forever and Fly with avant-garde film-maker Jonas Mekas.[11][12] The interview took place on 8 December in the boardroom of Allen Klein's company ABKCO, at 1500 Broadway,[10] and was intended to promote John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.[13] Lennon was accompanied by Ono,[10] and Wenner taped the proceedings.[14]
Lennon had arranged to meet with McCartney while they were both in New York, in order to discuss their differences regarding the Beatles' company Apple Corps, but McCartney cancelled the meeting.[15] Lennon said that he was planning on not showing up anyway.[15] Since making his announcement in April, McCartney had told London's Evening Standard newspaper that he wanted to leave the Beatles' record label, Apple Records, and reiterated his opposition to Klein's appointment as the band's business manager.[16] With no further explanation on the break-up, media speculation had instead focused on the possibility of the band members solving their differences and reuniting.[17][18]
Publication[edit]
Serialisation in Rolling Stone[edit]
Rolling Stone published the interview in two parts, in its issues dated 21 January 1971 and 4 February 1971.[27] Wenner allowed Lennon to edit the transcripts before publication.[49] At 30,000 words, the interview was considerably longer than the standard feature on a rock or pop artist.[19][37] Both issues of the magazine featured Lennon on the cover, with photos taken by Annie Leibovitz.[50] The first part was subtitled "The Working Class Hero" and the second, "Life with the Lions",[51] which was the title of Lennon and Ono's 1969 experimental album.[52] For Beatles fans, the content of the interview furthered the distasteful atmosphere surrounding the group's demise.[53] Its publication followed the announcement, on 31 December 1970, that McCartney had launched an action against Lennon, Harrison and Starr in the London High Court of Justice,[54] in an effort to extricate himself from Klein[23] and all contractual obligations to Apple.[55][56]
The two issues sold out immediately.[14] The interview elevated Rolling Stone to its most prominent position yet in the US and established the magazine as an international title.[50] Time magazine dubbed the combination of McCartney's lawsuit and Lennon's interview "Beatledämmerung", in reference to Wagner's opera about a war among the gods.[10]
Book format[edit]
In April 1971, Wenner travelled to the UK to discuss with Lennon the possibility of publishing the interview in book form. Lennon was away in Spain but later left a message for Wenner saying that the interview was not to be re-published and that Wenner was "jumpin' da gun" by discussing the idea with a book publisher.[49] Wenner nevertheless pursued the opportunity and received $40,000 for his book deal.[49] Ono later said that Wenner had placed money before friendship; Wenner agreed, and described it as "one of the biggest mistakes I made".[57] Lennon was incensed and never spoke to Wenner again.[58]
Titled Lennon Remembers, the book was published by Straight Arrow in the autumn of 1971.[49] By this time, Lennon had rejected Janov[59] and, with Ono, had adopted a new philosophy, focused on political radicalism with New Left figures such as Jerry Rubin.[60] In response to Wenner's invitation that they meet and discuss the book's publication, Lennon wrote him a letter, in late November, in which he said that he had only agreed to give Wenner the interview to help turn around the business difficulties that Rolling Stone was facing in 1970, and that Wenner had acted illegally.[61][nb 5] Lennon challenged Wenner to print the letter in Rolling Stone, "then we'll talk." Lennon took to calling the book "Lennon Regrets".[62] In retaliation at Wenner, Apple temporarily withdrew its advertising from Rolling Stone.[62] In early 1972, Lennon and Ono began contributing to a new San Francisco-based political and cultural magazine, SunDance,[63] in an attempt to sabotage Wenner's commercial standing.[62][nb 6]
Lennon Remembers was re-released in 2000 by Verso Books. For this edition, it contained the full two-part interview along with text that had been omitted from the initial publication.[65] In his introduction, Wenner writes that the 1970 Lennon interview represented "the first time that any of the Beatles, let alone the man who had founded the group and was their leader, finally stepped outside of that protected, beloved fairy tale and told the truth ... He was bursting and bitter about the sugarcoated mythology of the Beatles and Paul McCartney's characterization of the breakup."[66][nb 7]
Audio[edit]
In the years following publication in 1971, segments of the recorded interview were broadcast on radio in the US. The most extensive airing was on The Lost Lennon Tapes,[68] a series presented by Elliot Mintz and broadcast on Westwood One between January 1988 and March 1992.[69] Some of Lennon's complaints about the Beatles' business acquaintances were edited out for the program.[68]
In the UK, the interview was broadcast in full for the first time in December 2005.[7] The following year, Rolling Stone made the audio available as a podcast on its website.[33]
Legacy[edit]
Influence on Beatles historiography[edit]
Lennon's 1970 Rolling Stone interview became a key document in Beatles literature and, until the mid-1990s, was often viewed as the definitive statement on the Beatles' break-up.[92] In its espousal of countercultural and New Left ideology, the interview also helped foster among rock journalists a more favourable view of Lennon than of McCartney, whose work as a solo artist, in line with Lennon's description of their respective approaches, was frequently ridiculed for its lack of profundity.[93] The publication in book form aided these developments, in addition to Wenner continuing to present it as an accurate record of events, despite Lennon having contradicted or retracted some of his assertions in the years after the interview.[94] Writing in her book The Beatles and the Historians, historian Erin Torkelson Weber recognises this as typical of a Beatles historiographical approach whereby the band's biographers allowed fact to be determined by "which side spoke loudest and gave the most interviews".[95]
Aware of his betrayal of Lennon's trust when he published Lennon Remembers, Wenner sought to make amends following the singer's fatal shooting in New York in December 1980. For the John Lennon commemorative issue of Rolling Stone, Wenner wrote an effusive feature article that lauded Lennon's achievements during and after the Beatles.[96][nb 9] Having renewed his friendship with Ono, Wenner also used the magazine to champion her work and to defend Lennon's legacy against author Albert Goldman's depiction in the controversial 1988 biography The Lives of John Lennon.[98] McCartney believed that this commemorative issue, along with other posthumous tributes to Lennon,[99] afforded his former bandmate a messiah-like status that served to diminish the importance of his own contribution to the Beatles.[97][100] In his first major interview after Lennon's death, McCartney said, "if I could get John Lennon back I'd ask him to undo this legacy he's left me."[101] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, McCartney sought to correct what he saw as a Lennon-biased revisionism to the Beatles' history, culminating in the 1997 publication of his authorised biography, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, by Barry Miles.[102][103][104] In Weber's view, Many Years from Now represents the "closest thing to a personal rebuttal of the Lennon Remembers interview" from any of Lennon's former bandmates.[105]