All these friends and lovers... (Interviews with those who knew them) | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Keith Richards
I was downtown on Fifth Avenue in New York. The first bit of news I got, I thought: ‘He’ll make it. It’s just a flesh wound.’ And then, later on, the news really came. He wasn’t just a mate of mine, he was a mate of everybody’s, really. He was a funny guy. And you realise that you’re stunned. You really don’t believe it. And you think, ‘God , why can’t I do anything about it?’ I got well drunk on it. And I had another one for John. Then there was the confusion, the phone calls, trying to find out if Yoko was OK.
   There were the Beatles, and there was John. As a band, they were a great unit. But John, he was his own man. We got along very well. We didn’t see each other very often, but he would sort of turn up at your hotel. Usually, if I was in the city, I’d stay at the Plaza. If John turned up, that meant he wanted to party. He didn’t come there to discuss, you know, philosophy, although it would end up like that. I would just get into town, and there’d be a knock at the door: ‘Hey, man, what’s going on around here?’ We would get the guitars down and sing. And, in our spare time, discuss world domination.
   He’s rubbed off on me as much as anybody. A bit of me rubbed off on John, too, you know. He took it with him. My father just passed away, and he winked at me just before he died. I really feel a lot better about death now. I’m getting off on that wink. I’d give the wink to John.

Marianne Faithfull
I had just gotten into a minicab in London when the news came on, and then they played all John Lennon songs. The first was ‘A Day In The Life ‘. I was completely shocked but, in a way, not that surprised.
   The most amazing time I ever had with John is when we went to see the Maharishi, and that’s when I really got closest to him. He was so funny. I was always a bit frightened of him because he was so incredibly clever. The weekend we went to Bangor where the Maharishi was delivering a lecture was very intense because we all went on the train there: the Beatles and me and Mick Jagger and the Maharishi. Then, over the weekend, we got the news that Brian Epstein had overdosed. John was devastated. I wish I’d gone on the retreat in India – not because I liked the Maharishi, because I didn’t. Just to be there to hear Lennon’s asides and to watch the whole thing unravel – because it did. I would have loved to be there for that.

Noel Gallagher
I was in my front-room in Manchester listening to a football match, and they interrupted it to say that John Lennon had been assassinated. It was like, ‘F**k,’ it was just silence. Especially for my mum; she was a teenager in the Sixties and into the Beatles. Lennon dying had a more profound effect on her than on me, because at the time I was thirteen.
   I didn’t know what it meant until I dissected ‘The White Album ‘. And then I thought: ‘F**k, this guy is not even around any more.’ Lennon’s legacy is absolutely 100 per cent his music. I’m not really interested in his politics or his bandwagon-jumping towards the end of his life.
   His music is just completely timeless and unsurpassable. If it wasn’t for John Lennon , I think that Paul McCartney would have had the Beatles writing ‘Yesterday ‘ right up until the day that they split up.
   Ask any cutting-edge musicians in London, like the Chemical Brothers or Prodigy, if you trace all that music backwards, it all stops at ‘Tomorrow Never Knows ‘. It was 1966 when Lennon wrote that song. All the other songs that were around, it was still all, ‘You love me/I love you/Whoopie-doo.” Lennon wanted to sound like a thousand monks chanting on top of a hill. He’s probably still twenty years ahead of his time.

Sting
I think the Police had just come off stage in Miami. I was told that he’d been shot, and I had the reaction that everybody had – disbelief, shock, horror. What happens when people like him die is that the landscape changes. You know, a mountain disappears, a river is gone. And I think his death was probably as significant as that. The Beatles were formative in my upbringing, my education. They came from a very similar background – the industrial towns in England, working class; they wrote their own songs, conquered the world. That was the blueprint for lots of other British kids to try to do the same. We all miss him, and I think about him every time I walk by that building.

Michael Douglas
I have a newborn son, so I’ve been listening a lot to ‘Beautiful Boy’. John wrote it for Sean, and it’s a lovely song to a child. It’s been bringing back all of those times for me, in the Sixties and Seventies, when the Beatles and Lennon meant so much. And with the [2000 US presidential] election, I’m reminded of how politics today could really use John Lennon – his truthfulness. He’s needed.

Ronnie Spector
I first met him in London in 1963. The Ronettes were the top group in England at the time. He saw us and got in touch with our manager, and there was this party and we danced with all the fellas, taught them the New York dances. He liked me for more than just my voice. As the party wound down, we started talking. I was just nineteen years old, and starting to make it big, and he knew things. He told me: ‘It’s all going to change, you’re going to start riding in limousines.’ I’m, like, ‘You’re kidding me!’
   I met him in the street years later. He called my name: ‘Ronnie!’ and I turned around; it was so f*****g cool. When he called my name, everyone turned around and saw him (and recognised him), and he didn’t care. He got shot right after that.
   When he was shot, I was so devastated, I stayed in bed for a week. I was in the studio when I heard; I just dropped the phone – it broke my heart. I always think of John Lennon every time I’m in the recording studio. I can’t help it. He’s my spirit talking to me, saying, ‘Don’t give up.’

Lenny Kravitz
I met Yoko Ono and Sean on my first tour. For my birthday one year, Yoko gave me one of John’s shirts. It’s black, one of those disco rollerskating shirts; he used to wear those tight, glittery shirts.
   Today, I think John would be doing some cutting-edge hardcore music. His first solo record is one of the most hardcore pieces of music ever recorded. And at the end of ‘Mother ‘, when he’s saying, ‘Mama, don’t go, Daddy, come home,” his soul is just spilling out; it’s so hardcore.

Sinéad O’Connor
It was my twelfth birthday and I was walking home from school. I guess I would have been young enough to not see death as entirely disastrous. The nature of my own personality is that I don’t see death as a disastrous thing. It’s just a door that opens, and somebody goes somewhere else.
   Lennon had a sense of everybody’s right to stir s**t. He was very brave and vulnerable, and saw that it was brave to show one’s vulnerability.
   He would probably love the rap movement. In a lot of ways, rap is where his voice can still be heard. People underestimate the subliminal impact of not just his music but the things he was doing publicly, like the s**t-stirring. All of that had a huge influence on rap, and on little, bold, big-mouthed Irish singers. You almost forget how sexy he was. Plus, he was wonderful and gorgeous.

Sheryl Crow
I was watching Monday night football at the University of Missouri and Howard Cosell announced Lennon’s death. He basically denounced the importance of the game and proclaimed that one of this generation’s icons had been killed.
   In the band that influenced music and, moreover, culture, he represented the rock’n’roll attitude of rebellion, dissatisfaction and social consciousness, the idea that we as people can expand our minds, grow, live together and love in peace. He tried to incorporate those ideals in his music and his life. His influence is everywhere – in every rock’n’roll singer-songwriter.

Tom Petty
I was in Cherokee Recording Studios in Hollywood when I heard. I was working with producer Jimmy Iovine, who knew John and had worked with him quite a bit. Someone called the studio from New York and said that John had been shot. We thought it was a gag and we kept working. Then someone called and said: ‘John’s dead.’ It just stopped the session. I went home and on the way I could see people sitting in their cars at traffic lights just crying. It was a hard thing to believe. I still have trouble believing it.
   John Lennon meant everything. His influence was immeasurable when I started to play in the mid-Sixties. He was probably one of the two or three great rock singers ever, and what can you really say about his songwriting? He was just… transcendental. And his rhythm guitar playing – I really studied it quite a bit. If you ever want to see some great rhythm guitar, check out in A Hard Day’s Night when they do ‘And I Love Her ‘. He could really make a band just kind of surge and jump.
   To me, Lennon’s legacy is honesty. When I was young and seeing the Beatles performing on TV, they were the first ones who weren’t just saying pat, showbiz banter. They’d actually say something. He was a great role model for my whole generation, because you knew when John suffered and you knew when John was happy, but it all somehow came out OK.

Shirley Manson
I was fourteen, and I was in my first class of the day and some girls in the class who knew I was a freak about the Beatles started teasing me, saying, ‘Oh, you know John Lennon , he’s dead.’ Then our teacher told us the news, and there were other girls in the class who loved the Beatles like I did, and we all cried and cried. Nobody has been able to encompass his humanity, his humility and his humour, his wit and his intelligence quite the same way he has done – like the perfect rock star.
   The best dream I ever had was that I was sitting next to him in an airplane. I was his wife, but I was me. Nothing happened in the dream except that I could hear the drone of the airplane. And I said nothing, but I could feel the connection between us. When I woke up in the morning, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so deeply contented.

John Travolta
I blocked out where I was when I heard – I kind of just travelled in my mind to where it happened. I was so familiar with that spot, because I had lived in the building next door. There was a building that Carly Simon and James Taylor, the Beatles and Mick Jagger had lived in at various times, and it was right around the block.
   I imagined how safe he must have felt going in and out of there, because I know I did. Even though it had been years since I had lived there, it was kind of like finding out that it had happened to somebody on your block.
   The Beatles meant everything to me growing up, and John was part of that. I loved Lennon’s persona. He knew who he was and he knew what he represented to a worldwide public. John knew he had the floor, he knew he had to parlay that into something. I think he incited and inspired a whole group of youth to speak out and say what they felt.

Drew Barrymore
When he died I was only five. I just remember when I discovered the Beatles, feeling sad because the one that I loved so much wasn’t here. It was the early Eighties, and then I didn’t listen to the Beatles for a few years after that.
   I really got into them again when I was sixteen, and it’s been all I’ve listened to since then. That’s when I really started falling in love with John Lennon . Every song he sings, I freak. I feel like I can’t speak eloquently enough. Anything in life, whatever your question is for the universe, if you put on a John Lennon song, he will answer you.
   I think ‘Watching The Wheels ‘ is the song I love the most, because it is so true. I completely feel like that song. I feel like sometimes he’s saying that the people he’s talking about are himself – himself looking at himself. And just how perfect a song it is for how we feel inside our own minds: We’re trying to go on these paths that feel right and good to us, but we’re always questioning how it’s affecting others along the way.
   He gave everyone great music to be sad to and to make love to and laugh to and drive to, and every sort of thing that you live for in the world. If you put his music on to anything that you’re doing in life, it fits right alongside of it.

Peter Fonda
I was ploughing the snow from my driveway in Montana in the morning, and I went inside and heard on the news that he had been shot the night before.
I couldn’t imagine why somebody would want to shoot someone who had done so much explaining of our lives through his art.
   I met the Beatles individually in 1965, then spent a couple of days with them. We took LSD at my house. I knew John was having trouble with me. We put on a movie of Jane’s, and he was upset. There was too much Fonda going on: my dad, myself, my sister. But as the trip wore on, he became easier with me. I was right there with him the whole time. We ended up in the bathroom, in a big sunken tub – fortunately not filled with water – playing electric guitars that were amplified by the room, singing songs.
   Out of that experience came ‘She Said, She Said’. John said in Rolling Stone that I had something to do with that song. I thought that it was so far out that he had made something of it. He used the exact words I said to George [Harrison], who thought he was dying during the acid trip. I had said: ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’
   John and George are sitting at the table with me, and John says: ‘How do you know what it’s like to be dead?’ And I said: ‘I shot myself when I was a boy. But by accident. Everything was all right in my mind.’ Of course, it wasn’t. Then I hear the song: ‘When I was a boy/Everything was right.’
   I see Lennon’s influence in my children. They think of ‘Imagine ‘ as an anthem. There’s a generational zap there. The Beatles wrote these crowd-pleasing dance songs, which evolved into songs of our moments on this planet.
   Thank God we had him, that his essence didn’t float by us to some other place. We got lucky.

Steven Tyler
I remember going to write alone up in New Hampshire – to get in touch with my insides. Then, when I heard the news, it was almost too much for my insides to handle. It ripped out a piece of me – I don’t know how to say it any other way. I was so angry for so long – I was physically angry for years after that f****r shot him. It felt good to have a cry because I was so fuckin’ pissed off.
   As a kid, I used to go down to Greenwich Village all the time and fantasise I was going to bump into one of the Beatles or Stones. I never got to meet John, but I always felt like I knew him anyway. The Beatles taught us to fly, and John taught us to freefall back to earth. All songwriters ever want to do is crawl inside other people’s souls and psyches, and change everything. Jesus, what part of John or the Beatles did not get inside every one of us?

Wyclef Jean
When I heard that John Lennon had died, I was in my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn. I was like: ‘That’s f****d up.’ I was mad, young. I got that same butterfly feeling in my stomach when Marvin Gaye died. It was completely unexplainable. I didn’t even know the guy.
   Lennon was just a great songwriter. The simplicity with which he wrote songs… it’s something even a child can understand. But it’s not easy to write a simple song. And every one of Lennon’s songs had a dope hook.
   He wrote about what was going on, and he always encouraged world peace. Like Bob Marley and even Sting, he transcended his border to make a difference. He came to New York and sang about the Vietnam War. Although he never saw world peace, I think he changed a lot of people’s minds.

Graham Nash
I was lying on my bed watching Monday night football – it was Miami and the New England Patriots – when I heard the news. Howard Cosell broke the news. Apart from being very, very upset by the loss of someone whom I had met many times, the first thing that occurred to me was wondering how many songs we were never going to get to hear, that were working around in his head.
   I’d been acquainted with John since about 1958, before the Beatles. The first time I actually met him was at the Cavern in Liverpool in 1962, when the Hollies were playing on the same bill as the Beatles. John was always on the front edge – it’s very much the same as what Neil Young does. All those incredible people are always on the front edge. And sometimes they fall, and sometimes they fly. John’s legacy is that he gave as much dignity to the common man as he could. He stood for dignity and respect and songs that had a reason for being.

David Crosby
I don’t remember where I was at the time. I just remember being very depressed, because I loved him very deeply. We were friends. I found him to be smart, acerbic, shrewd, witty and a good guy. He and the other Beatles were all very kind to us when we came over to England as the Byrds. They kind of took us under their wing, and from that point forward, we saw each other a lot. Whenever they came to the United States, I would go to the gigs and hang out with them.
   For me, John Lennon ‘s legacy is his songs – all those brilliant, beautiful, incredible pieces of work. John was a very fierce guy – he wasn’t a shy little human being. He was a guy with strong opinions, and he had no problem expressing them.

Art Garfunkel
I remember the day John Lennon died. I was recording at Criteria Studios in Miami, making my Scissors Cut album. I was doing vocals that night, and the second engineer interrupted and said: ‘I have terrible news to tell you.’ I took a long pause, and I tried to carry on, and I failed, and I came into the control room, and I said: ‘That’s it for tonight; I can’t work. I can’t speak, I don’t know what to say.’
   I knew him a little bit, and he was unbelievably engaging. At the Dakota once, after dinner, he pulls me into the bedroom, so I’m sitting on the end of his bed, and he says: ‘I want you to tell me about your work with Paul Simon, because I understand you just recorded in Nashville together.’ We had just done ‘My Little Town’. ‘I’m getting calls from my Paul,’ he said, ‘who’s doing an Allen Toussaint project. And he wants to know if I’m available for the recording. What should I do?’ Can you imagine how I felt? John Lennon asking me for my advice? I could have pinched myself at that moment, because it made me realise in a flash: no wonder he captivated the whole goddamned world – he’s so commercial.
   He knew what to say to me that was connected and human and real and grounded and fascinating. And that’s what he did with the whole planet earth. He was a hit record – his very being was like a hit. And I said to him: ‘John, I would do it – put all personality aside and go with the fun of the blend. Make music with somebody you have made a sound with. A great pleasure is the thing to stick with.’ He didn’t take my advice.

Joe Strummer
I can’t remember where I read this, but it struck me, so I’ll repeat it: the Beatles were from the first generation of working-class kids in Britain, after the war and rationing and all, who were asked to think about their feelings – and to express themselves in an artistic way. Obviously, Lennon was a one-off, but it’s amazing to think of what might have been wasted in other generations. Part of his legacy is opening the door to people who’d never been allowed to dream of such things. We’ll compare our new geniuses against that one forever.

Johnny Marr
I was still at school. I remember the news being on the radio and television; the whole country seemed to be in shock, it was all anyone could talk about.
   The Beatles stuff has always seemed to be there, the sound of Lennon and McCartney’s voices together is a part of British culture. I can remember reruns of A Hard Day’s Night and Help ! And my earliest memory is of seeing him play harmonica on ‘Love Me Do ‘. His legacy has transcended that of the pop star; he’s now a political symbol, a modern mystic.

Mike Myers
I was watching Monday night football. My father referred to it as an ‘assassination’. That’s how much impact his death had in our house.
   My parents are from Liverpool. So you can imagine, he was a god in our house. To say we were intensely proud would be an understatement. I even went through a time when I actually thought I was related to him because he had the same accent as my mum and dad. What I admired most about John was that he was faithfully his own man, and he let his heart dictate his actions.

Hunter Davies
My diary tells me I had a very poorly leg that day; that’s the sort of dopey stuff I record. I’d got injured playing football and was hobbling around. And moaning around. I see I was also doing a children’s book, proceeds to charity, and my editor was chasing me for copy. So I woke up that morning, groaning at the day ahead.
   It was the Jimmy Young programme which informed me. I did a chat with Jim, and then the phone never stopped. Once you do one, they all want you. Since doing my biog in 1968, I’d tried to keep out of Beatles stuff, feeling a fraud, my knowledge so out of date. The day turned into chaos, so my diary says. The full horror of it didn’t strike me for several weeks.

Neil Harrison, aka John Lennon in the Bootleg Beatles
I was in the Bootlegs when he died. We’d been going since about March of that year and we’d just played Keele University. We woke up on the ninth and the landlady at the digs we were staying at said that John Lennon had been shot in New York. She didn’t say shot dead. Then we switched on the news and found out he was dead. We drove back to London and we couldn’t say a word. We were dumbstruck.

Some of these interviews first appeared in Rolling Stone. Others are by Kim Bunce and Chloe Diski.