The Day Yoko Cracked Up (Part 2 of Julian Lennon Interview)

 The Day Yoko Cracked Up

By Anne Nightingale

Daily Express 

April 25, 1986

    In December 1980 came the shattering blow of John Lennon's death, and Julian Lennon, a comparatively anonymous schoolboy, was suddenly exposed to the public eye.  Speculation raged about what would happen to the Lennon millions.

     His firstborn son was summoned to New York by the grief-stricken Yoko Ono. He said, "My father's death was too much for Yoko. I had to be strong to cope with it myself, and I had to be strong to give her support for a while after it happened. She was cracking up all the time."

     When he arrived at the Dakota Building, the eerie Gothic apartment block in New York where John had lived with Yoko, she had not yet told her son, Sean, that his father was dead. She sought Julian's advice on how to break the news to him. Yet, according to Julian's mother, Cynthia Lennon, it took Julian years to take in the reality of his father's death. 

    With Yoko in control of Lennon's estate, the world wondered how Julian would come out of it. John had, in fact, set up a comparatively small Trust Fund for Julian shortly after his divorce from Cynthia, but it had all but dwindled. Even a guitar, which had belonged to John and had been handed over to Julian by an anonymous messenger, became the center of an unpleasant controversy. Yoko became suspicious that the gift was linked to the theft of John's diaries. 

    "Soon after his death," Julian said, "Yoko found out about the guitar being given to me and sent someone over from New York so that I could sign for it. Then I was flown to New York to sign a confession, to say that I knew nothing about the diaries. Apparently, someone had told Yoko that my father's diaries had been given to me, which they weren't. Some have now been found, but not all of them, unfortunately."

     Julian replayed this extraordinary piece of information as a matter of fact, as though he had been talking about a missing library book. But with his father's murder and mourned by millions, nothing was to be ordinary. Again, for 17-year-old Julian, the media had not given a jot for Lennon's firstborn son for years. His death changed all that overnight; at 17 and totally unprepared for it, Julian began to live the sort of goldfish bowl existence that once caused his father to remark, "All our mistakes have to be made in public," and so too were Julian's. 

     He, while still a vulnerable teenager, fell prey to the temptations of London's nightlife and the publicity that goes with it.  He now deeply regrets it. "I feel I have a lot to live down," he says. "My playboy image seems to stick in people's minds. I almost feel that if I'm on TV in Britain, people have already made up their minds about me and will switch over to another channel. I think it's because of all the publicity I had before I'd done anything in terms of making records. I wasn't taken seriously because I was always seen hanging around nightclubs. Maybe people thought I was just messing around to get publicity and money," Julian added with disarmament modesty. 

    Julian is now based in New York. "I have just rented a brownstone house with a basement, kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, and a back garden, right in the middle of the city in New York. After what happened to his father there?  Young Lennon replied, "I don't feel nervous about it, not at all." He hesitated.  "Well, only in a certain few situations. Not so much going on stage but doing live radio shows where I have to walk through an audience; that's when one needs a bit of protection to get through the crowds. And of course, there are certain areas of New York to be avoided. I realized that anything could happen to me at any time, but I'm not going to sit around worrying about it. I'd just worry myself into the grave. I'd rather go out and have a good time. If something happens. Well," he shrugged, "That's it."

     That's the way it is. Now, Julian sees Yoko often. "As the years have gone by, she's relaxed a bit, and I'm certainly relaxed with her now. All that pain and anguish has got cleaned out, and we can go be normal together again."

     Julian talked about his own marriage prospects, which are no more at this time than a far-off possibility. "Each time I have a new relationship with a girl, I think, 'this is it,' and it never is. I have a girlfriend in New York that I really care about, but I travel so much that is more difficult to maintain a friendship. I don't want to be unfaithful, but sometimes it all becomes very difficult. I don't necessarily want to go to bed with other girls, but it's good just to hang out with different women, different characters. In my head, I like the idea of a girl who will be with me all the time, but it never works out. You get on each other's nerves being together all the time, and then there's the problem of working and not being able to give a girlfriend enough attention. So now it turns out that I prefer a girl who has independence, and if it means being a part of it well, absence makes the heart grow fonder."

     For the moment, though, it is Julian's eminent London concert that is occupying his attention. His first performance in Britain is at the Royal Albert Hall next month.

     In spite of playing a string of concerts to capacity crowds in America and Australia, Julian admits to being a bit apprehensive. "Britain will be tougher to crack than America," he said, "and "added bluntly, "they don't like me here. I'm sure it's because of the publicity I've had in the past. I almost don't want to play in Britain because of it. We'll see what happens, but it will be depressing if I fail here."

     In general, America has taken to Julian, some believe, because of a collective guilt that his father should have been killed in their country for it's hard for Julian Lennon to be his own man. Many of his American fans are looking to him to be the sort of political activist that his father was. But his answer is, "No, I'm not going to get seriously into politics". He said, "I suppose the idea that I should is a legacy from the past."  And that, like his name, is something he's learning to live with

This is not Good Night Vienna

 

This photo of Ringo appears to it should be an outtake from the Good Night Vienna video shoot, but nope!  It is for an advertisement for suits in Japan.  

At the Mill with Paul

 

March 10, 2015 

Trident Studio

March 10, 1970 
 

Wearing little sunglasses in cramped together in a car...

 

McCartney comes alive

 

Paul and Peter Frampton 

Shopping in the Bahamas

March 9, 1965 -
 

Traveling with the baby

 March 9, 1980 

Life With Lennon

 

This interview with Julian from 1986 is interesting.  According to this, he was at the Concert for Bangladesh and played the tambourine on stage at the end?   Any proof of that?  Could he have been thinking of George's 1974 concert in December?   

Life With Lennon

By Anne Nightengale

Daily Express

April 24, 1986

    There was no mistaking the likeness. The spade blade-shaped face, the long, flat nose, ironic humor, and twisted grin, but Julian Lennon has his mother's expressive brown eyes, and his nasal intonations have more to do with the side effects of jet lag than a Liverpool heritage.

     His hair is fashionably streaked blonde, and he swishes around his five foot, ten-inch spare frame, so unlike his father,'sstocky build, in  an ankle-length leather coat.

     In pop terms, Julian has made it. Nominated for this year's American Grammy Award as best newcomer. His first album, Valotte, sold more than 2 million copies, and he has had hit singles all over the world.

     In two years, he has established himself as the heir apparent. Easy peasy, say some of his critics for the son of a Beatle, but it has not been an easy mantle for him to carry. In reality, Julian has inherited none of his father's millions. Saw little of him during his formative years and felt even less of his influence. John left Julian's mother, Cynthia, for Yoko Ono when Julian was little more than five.

     Julian's memories of life with Father are a hazy, almost surreal collection of strange, unconnected images. He says, "I always knew there was something different about my father from those of the other kids at school. I knew he was in a band that was very big, and then he toured the world and therefore was away from home a lot."

     "I knew. That's why I didn't see a lot of him. We lived in Weybridge, Surrey, in a house with a drive and gates at the end. Fans stood outside the gates all the time, but I didn't know who the Beatles were or what they represented until I was much older. 

    "Ringo lived down the road from us at that time, and Dad would take me to see him on his motorbike. I'd sit on the back. Dad would bank it really steeply, and I was scared as hell.

     "We used to go to George Harrison's house, too, when he was married to Pattie Boyd. Their house, I seem to remember, was all on one level, with willow trees around it and this one big room an open space" Julian struggled with the recollection... "carpets, weird fish tanks, stars and moons everywhere."

     "I was really spoiled with material things in those days, I had everything that other kids had, but I don't think I would say, 'Dad, can I have one of those toys?' Things were just given to me, thrown at me. These days, thank God, I realize what things are worth."

     It was during his early school days that Julian unwittingly inspired one of the Beatles' classic songs, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The record was released during the height of the Beatles' craziest times when they were openly discussing their drug taking and the effects and influences of drug experiments, particularly with the hallucinogenic LSD. A fervor erupted when Beatles fans assumed that the song, with its surreal references to newspaper taxis and marmalade skies, was a piece of pro-drug propaganda inspired by an acid trip, mainly because the initials of the title spelled out the drug LSD.

     But John Lennon told me at the time that this interpretation was completely wrong. "It was inspired by a picture Julian painted at school," he said. "He showed it to me and said, 'This is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'. It was a picture Julian had painted of one of his schoolmates. The fact that the initial spelled out LSD is entirely coincidental."

     Julian was, of course, oblivious to this fuss and knew nothing about it until later. He says, "Now, I don't remember, and I hardly remember the girl, except that I know she had long brown hair. But strangely enough, I remember carrying the picture home, walking down the drive." The picture has long since disappeared.

    The carefree days of Julian's childhood were abruptly and cruelly ended when Yoko Ono appeared, and his parents split up. Cynthia and Julian moved from Weybridge to start another life together. I don't remember much about  the split," said Julian, "but my mom says it was a bit traumatic for me, that I went a bit crazy and smashed things."

    It was a big lifestyle change. There were no more fans outside his home. He saw nothing of John. "I had to get used to a new Italian dad." This was Cynthia's second husband, hotelier Robert Bassanina. This marriage, too, ended in divorce. 

    Julian, by now, was living out of the public eye in North Wales. He says, "I saw my father only once in a blue moon." Then, in fact, he was 11 when he next saw his father. "In 1974 I was flown over to him to New York to stay with him. He lived in a little apartment on the east side."

     When Julian arrived in New York, John had temporarily split from Yoko and was enjoying the charms of another part Japanese friend, May Pang. Says Julian, "My father was spending a lot of time in LA then, but when we were in New York, May Pang would stay in during the evening to look after me. When Dad was around, he would give me drum machines and more toys to play with.

    "It was on that first visit to New York that I was taken to Madison Square Garden to see George Harrison's concert for Bangladesh. I'd never seen Dad and the Beatles perform?  I don't think so."  An extraordinary admission. He must be the only person in the world who can't remember if he saw the Beatles or not. 

    Julian continued, "I found George's concert very awe-inspiring. Dad didn't want to come for some reason, so I was escorted down the aisle. At the end of the show, the finale, someone pushed me onto the stage and put a tambourine in my hand. I was right at the back. I don't suppose anyone could have seen me."

    "Dad had planned to go out with George for a drink after the show. I asked if I could go with them. But Dad said, 'No, I was too young.' I remember thinking, 'Oh, that's not fair.' I was upset, I suppose because I saw so little of my father. Then I wished I could be with him.

     I think was that was the most annoying part, but I was learning the situation that I would get to see him at Christmas and sometimes during the Easter break for a week or two."

     By his mid-teens, Julian was realizing that carrying his father's name was something he was never going to be able to hide from. He was to be the center of rumors and stories which would have bore no resemblance to the truth. "They used to say that Julian Lennon is so bloody rich that he sticks five-pound notes all over his ceiling. Ridiculous, but people believed it." The irony of the story about his untold wealth was not lost on Julian, even then, after the halachon days in Weybridge ended so abruptly when his parents split up, Julian was no longer a spoiled little rich boy. "I suppose." he said, "that if you get used to having a lot of money, you throw it around. But I wasn't given lots of money."

    For all Cynthia Lennon's attempts to give Julian a normal boyhood, his surname inevitably singled him out for attention. "I'd get the smart ass who would want to have a go at me,". he says. "I wasn't a big guy at school, but there were quite a few who were who would look after me."

     In fact, Julian really enjoyed his stay at boarding school in Ruthland, North Wales. "I was only going to board for six months but I stayed on because I enjoyed it so much." Not it had to be said so much for the discipline in stricter public schools. "No, it was the first chance I had to hang out with guys and cause chaos."

     And just like John Lennon became, right from the start, the Beatles natural leader, his son, too, discovered, as a school boy that he quickly became a gang leader. "I didn't set out to do so, but others would follow me. That led to other boys giving me abuse. 'Who do you think you are?, and 'why do you think you can run around bossing everyone about?

    " In fact, I wasn't trying to prove anything. If the others wanted to follow. It wasn't my fault." Being at a private school led to further aggravation. "There was a comprehensive across the road that, once they found out who I was, the boys from the comprehensive would lie in wait for me."

     One incident which Julian won't forget, happened when he and his schoolmates visited the rivals territory, a chip shop on the other side of town. "We were the last people in the shop before it closed. We looked out of the window and saw about 30 young bikers, 16 to 18 years old, waiting for us outside."

    " When we came out, the bikers pushed one of my friends against the window and poured curry sauce over him just because he was a friend of mine. In the end, we hurled our chips in their faces and ran for our lives. I did the fastest 500-yard dash I'd ever done."

     There were, of course, gentler pursuits. "I liked keeping mice in the dorm, which was not allowed. I kept two gerbils and a plastic screw-top sweets jar with holes in the top for them to breathe through. In the end, I got everyone in my dorm keeping mice."

Air Hostess was NOT a Beatles Fan

Coventry Air Hostess was NOT a Beatles fan

No writer listed

Coventry Evening Telegraph 

February 24, 1964


     The Coventry girl who was a hostess on board the Pan-American jet that brought the Beatles home from their U.S. tour on Saturday is not an ardent Beatles fan.

     As one who was in a position envied by thousands of teenage girls, 22-year-old Miss Christine Standbridge of 109 St. Austell Road, Wyken, felt almost guilty. "I have never bought any of their records, and I doubt if I ever would," she said.  "But I must say that in conversations I had with them, they were awfully sweet."

     Miss Standbridge was on reserve standby at the airport in New York when she learned that a sixth stewardess was required for a flight to London. "I volunteered because I wanted the work and thought that it might give me a chance to come home for a few hours," she explained.

     "It was not until later that I discovered that the Beatles were on that  particular flight." Miss Standbndge looked after the 70 economy class passengers. The Beatles were among the 12 first-class passengers. But she still saw a great deal of them. She spent most of the flight going backward and forwards from the two compartments, collecting autographs at the request of her passengers. 

 "By the time we reached London, I think that just about everybody had their autographs." she said. "While I was at it I got them to sign for myself." Miss Standbndge held up a copy of the American magazine Newsweek. The front cover of which was a picture of the Beatles. Written on the cover was - "To Christine. Love from the Beatles"— and after each of the signatures of John Lennon. Ringo Starr. Paul McCartney and George Harrison were four kisses. 

Fan or not, Miss Standbridge prizes her souvenir and explains: - "This Beatlemania is a bit infectious. you know."

 "The Beatles on the trip, she said, "Seemed tired after their hectic tour of America's East Coast and wanted to sleep."