by Peter Brown
4
Little could anyone, not even Cynthia, have expected the Next Big Thing to be Yoko Ono. It was on the airplane going home from Delhi that John and Cynthia first had that little talk about their marriage. Cynthia doesn’t remember exactly how they eased into it, but it started with lots of scotch and Cokes, which they hadn’t had in a long time, and ended with John making the most remarkable admission to her; he hadn’t been faithful to her throughout their married life.
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Cynthia said, staring out of the plane window with a sad, distant look on her face. “It’s worse knowing than not knowing,” she said. She also worried that John’s sudden need for confession was a bad omen of things to come.
“But you’ve got to bloody hear it, Cyn,” John said, putting his hand on her arm. “What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing on the road all those years? There was a bloody slew of girls—”
“In Hamburg,” Cynthia interrupted. “Yes, I knew that—”
“In Liverpool, too! Dozens and dozens, the whole time we were going together.”
Tears welled in Cynthia’s eyes and spilled out onto her cheeks. She wiped them away with one finger under her glasses.
“There were an uncountable number,” John insisted, “in hotel rooms throughout the bloody world! But I was afraid for you to find out. That’s what ‘Norwegian Wood’ was all about, the lyrics that nobody could understand. I wrote it about an affair and made it all gobbledygook so you wouldn’t know. And do you remember whatshisname and his sobbing wife turning up at the door while I was away on tour? Yeah, her too.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” Cynthia pleaded. But John had caught fire with the idea, the flames fanned by winds of release and honesty. He went on to claim affairs with a well-known English journalist and in America with Joan Baez, among others. There had also been an intermittent affair with an English actress. The rest were one-night stands, sometimes Playboy bunnies set up for him at the homes of friends in London.
By the time their plane landed at Heathrow, Cynthia was in a panic. John’s confession had made her so insecure, it was all she could do to stop herself from clinging to him in the terminal. She worried herself sick over his infidelities, and in the coming weeks she became impossible for him to be with. The following weekend John went away by himself to visit with Derek Taylor and his wife and four children. He spent the day tripping on LSD, one of the first trips since returning from India. Derek spent the day feeding John’s ego, reminding him of how lucky and talented he was. The day with the happy family in the country lifted John’s spirits temporarily. He returned home that night still tripping, ebullient about having more children. He hugged Cynthia to him and said, “Christ, Cyn, it was great. We’ve got to have more children!” Cynthia was so disheartened by this sudden burst of affection, which she knew was only a side effect of the LSD, she burst into tears.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he shouted at her.
“One LSD trip isn’t going to guarantee my future!” she shouted back at him. “What’s that going to solve?”
“Goddamn you, Powell!” he shouted at her.
“It’s not me you want, it’s that Japanese woman, Yoko Ono,” Cynthia said through her tears. “Maybe you’re right, maybe she is the woman for you.”
John said that was ridiculous. Yoko Ono was crazy. He had no interest in her.
The atmosphere in the house became impossibly tense. Cynthia was nervous and depressed, on the verge of a breakdown. “I felt ... as though I was sitting on the edge of a volcano,” she said. “John suggested that as he had to work for long hours in the recording studios for a few weeks, I should accompany Jenny and Alex on a holiday to Greece.”
Julian was packed off to live with Mrs. Jarlett, and John sat alone in the house. He dipped his fingers into his magic mortar, wandered around London, and had a few laughs with his mates Terry Doran and Derek. He called up Pete Shotton at the Apple Boutique and asked him if he would like to spend the night at Kenwood with him, so he wouldn’t have to watch TV alone. Late that night they sat in the sunroom at the back of the house, the TV on with the sound off, music on the stereo, shooting the bull about their favorite conquests. Suddenly, Jonn said, “I’ve met this woman called Yoko. She’s Japanese.”
It was nearly the middle of the night when John called her up and asked if she wanted to make the trip to Weybridge. Yoko arrived in a taxi an hour later. They had always been so shy around each other John wasn’t sure what to do, so he took her on a tour of the house, which included a stop at the mortar and pestle, where they both took LSD. Later John took her upstairs to his studio and played some tapes of electronic music he had been experimenting with. John had, on occasion, tried to play these tapes for the other Beatles, suggesting they be included on a cut on an album, but Paul wouldn’t ever bother to listen to them. Yoko, however, loved the tapes; they didn’t sound very different from her own avant-garde “music” of howls and screams. She giggled and smiled, and it pleased him no end.
“Let’s make one ourselves,” he said.
Fused on acid, they spent the rest of the night recording together. Yoko’s Oriental sense of metric time challenged and confused John, mocking his commercial approach to music. The recording was like an aural doodle of a man and woman in heat late at night, naked and high. When the sun rose they made love and named the tape Two Virgins, for both of them felt reborn.
It was a few days later that Cynthia came home from Greece with Magic Alex and Jenny to find John and Yoko sitting so comfortably in her kitchen.
To this day Cynthia still regrets having gone to bed with Magic Alex that night, but at the moment it must have seemed the perfect revenge. She awoke the next morning in Alex’s bed, disgusted with herself and determined to fight for her husband. A few days later, when Cynthia returned to Kenwood to pick up more of her clothing, there was a reconciliation of sorts. Yoko was gone—John said he had gotten bored with her—and Cynthia was invited to move back in if she wanted. She was only there a few days when John said he had to go to New York on a business trip with Paul to announce the opening of Apple. Cynthia begged to accompany him on this trip, but John said he would be too busy, and anyway, when he got back to London he had to return to the studios to work on a new album. Once again, John packed her off, this time with her mother and Julian, to Pesaro, Italy. Reluctantly, Cynthia kissed John goodbye for what was to be the last time.
chapter Fifteen
I was used to a situation where the newspaper was there for me to read,
and after I’d read it, somebody else could have it.... I think that’s what
kills people like Presley and others of that ilk .... The king is always
killed by his courtiers, not by his enemies. The king is overfed, overdrugged,
overindulged, anything to keep the king tied to his throne. Most people in
that position never wake up. They either die mentally or physically or both.
And what Yoko did for me, apart from liberating me to be a feminist, was
to liberate me from that situation. And that’s how the Beatles ended. Not
because Yoko split the Beatles, but because she showed me what it was to be
Elvis Beatle and to be surrounded by sycophants and slaves who are only
interested in keeping the situation as it was. And that’s a kind of death.
—John Lennon, Newsweek, October 1980
1
That May, when the Beatles met again with George Martin at the Abbey Road studios to record the material they had accumulated in India, they discovered an unexpected presence in their midst: Yoko Ono.
Yoko was at John’s side at all times. Literally at his side, as if she had been surgically attached to him. It was bizarre to see, this small figure with all the wild hair, dressed in black, sitting, standing, walking next to John, peeking out from just under the neck of his guitar as he played. At first we thought Yoko would leave when the album
’s work began in earnest, but it soon became clear that John intended for her to stay.
This was more than unusual; it was in defiance of one of the Beatles’ most carefully kept covenants; nobody was allowed in the studio while they were working, save for Neil and Mal. When Dick James showed up at the studio, he was politely asked to leave. Even Brian was encouraged to get his business over with and get out. Once, when Brian brought with him a young man he wanted to impress, he made a musical suggestion to John over the intercom from the control room. John shot back, “You stick to your percentages, Brian. We’ll look after the music.”
Yoko might have been more tolerated if she had kept a discreet distance, but instead she was in the middle of everything. If she had an opinion about their music, she offered it. Not just once, but insistently. She spoke with the conviction of the ignorant, because she knew nothing about rock music, and it galled them. One night the Beatles were reminiscing about a concert at Shea Stadium, and Yoko asked what the boys were doing at a baseball stadium. When told they had sold out Shea Stadium, twice, Yoko said, “That was 1966? Well, that year I gave a concert in ...” Her story was greeted with stony silence.
At first Paul tried to understand about Yoko and not make a big crisis about it. Paul was a showman, and the album came first. But Yoko wore him down. He and the others soon lost their patience, and the hostility poured out. To her face they were sarcastic and cold; behind her back they called her the “Jap Flavor of the Month” and made jokes about her vagina being slanted like her eyes. When someone asked Neil if he had forgotten to shave or was he growing a moustache, Neil said, “We’re all trying to grow one, even Yoko.” There was also some conjecture as to why Yoko followed John into the men’s toilet every time he went. It was assumed she assisted him in his chore.
Ringo even went to see John at Weybridge. “Listen, John, does Yoko have to be there all the time?” he asked.
“You just don’t understand,” John told him. “It’s different with Yoko and me.”
For John, each nasty crack about Yoko was like the thrust of a knife in his back. The omnipotent northern men were clearly threatened by this small woman and closed off to her. As far as John was concerned, it was completely their loss; for in the past few weeks together with Yoko, she had given John more alternatives in his life than the Beatles had in eight years. She revitalized his rebellious nature, awoke in him the stir-rings of the artist he once wanted to be in Liverpool Art College. She confirmed to him the hollowness of being a pop star. Life with Yoko was like living one of her instructional poems—whimsical, silly, often provocative. Yes, he misused her to rile the other Beatles, but she was much more important to him than they could ever realize. She was his staff, his strength, his new lease on life. What John and Yoko were developing between them was a love of classic proportions, a legend as big as the Beatles themselves.
In early May, with Cynthia still tucked safely away in Pesaro, John brought Yoko out of the background and into the public eye. They staged their first art exhibition together at the Drury Lane Arts Lab consisting of wooden “objects to be taken apart or added to,” which were speedily disassembled and carted off by the public. Later in the month Yoko attended a press conference with him to publicize the opening of Apple Tailoring, and on June 18 she attended the opening of In His Own Write, John’s book of doodles and drawings that had miraculously been adapted and directed for the stage by John’s friend, actor Victor Spinetti.31 In His Own Write was opening the summer season at the National Theatre.
The Fleet Street press had been aware of Yoko’s presence but not of her importance. Since he was ostensibly a married man, Yoko had not been photographed or publicized. But by the night of his opening at the National Theatre, the press’s curiosity was piqued. As John and Yoko stepped from John’s Rolls, followed by Neil Aspinall, the flash cameras exploded around them.
“Where’s your wife?” a reporter shouted. “Where’s Cynthia?”
John was so stunned he was speechless; it never crossed his mind that he would be challenged in his love for this woman or even called upon to explain it. He assumed Yoko would be remarked upon by the press but not challenged. Again came the question. “Where’s Cynthia?” “Where’s your wife?” “What happened to your wife, John?”
“I don’t know!” John exploded, pressing his way into the theater.
On June 15 they appeared together at Coventry Cathedral at an exhibit of recent British sculpture. Yoko had managed to wangle an invitation to participate in the exhibit. Yoko and John’s idea was for a “living sculpture,” the ceremonial implantation of two acorns, over which they would place a brass plaque declaring, “‘John’ by Yoko Ono, ‘Yoko’ by John Lennon.” When they arrived at the cathedral for the acorn-planting ceremony, they were met by Canon Verney. “Unfortunately,” the canon told them, “the cathedral authorities have decided they cannot permit you to put your work in the main exhibition area, as it is on consecrated ground.” The canon didn’t consider acorns real sculpture in any event.
Yoko turned into a sputtering little volcano of rage. She launched into a red-faced harangue, insisting that all the leading sculptors in England be telephoned to testify to the validity of her acorn idea. She actually got through to Henry Moore’s house, but fortunately for the great sculptor he was out at the moment. A compromise was finally reached when permission was granted to plant the acorns on a lawn near the cathedral where new-generation sculptors were being displayed. A week later the acorns were dug up and stolen in the night. John and Yoko sent a second set, and a security guard was hired to stand watch over them for the duration of the show.
On July 1 John made a public declaration of his love with an art exhibition he sponsored entitled “You Are Here,” dedicated “To Yoko, from John, with love.” A gala celebration was held for the opening at the Robert Fraser Gallery off Oxford Street, with all the major art critics and Fleet Street regulars in attendance. John and Yoko arrived dressed all in white, the beginning of their color-coordinated phase. John wore a wide-lapeled Tommy Nutter shirt and suit, his hair crookedly parted down the middle of his head; Yoko wore a matching bell-bottom trouser and tunic outfit. They grinned at the guests and reporters like two cats fresh from swallowing canaries.
I remember wandering through the exhibit wondering, “What in blazes could John have been thinking?” The show was an exhibition of collection boxes: charity boxes for the blind, the spastics, the preservation of donkeys, for birds, and for lepers. A mechanical dog, when fed a sixpence, barked, wagged his tail, and lifted his leg. The only vaguely original piece of art in the gallery was a white circle six feet in diameter in the center of which was carefully printed, “You Are Here.” The event was also being videotaped and shown on a TV monitor as it happened. Art students from the Hornsey College of Art who attended the opening were so disgusted with the exhibit they delivered a rusty bicycle to the Fraser Gallery with a tag explaining, “This exhibit was inadvertently left out.” John put the bike on display with the rest and left a pair of shoes in front of it with a note, “I take my shoes off to you.”
The climax of the opening was the release of 365 white helium-filled balloons that were launched into the London sky. Each balloon carried a tag reading, “You Are Here, please write to John Lennon care of the Robert Fraser Gallery.”
The reviews and press coverage of the exhibit were more savage than the reviews for Magical Mistery Tour but no worse than the hundreds of letters from people who found the white balloons. Most of them contained seething racial epithets against the Japanese woman who had suddenly appeared at their hero’s side. What was this nonsense about acorns and collection boxes and balloons? everyone wondered. The public sentiment was, Bring back the old Lennon! Most of all, everybody wanted to know, What happened to Cynthia and Julian?
It was the beginning of a 180-degree turnaround for John, from favorite son to an object of derision and controversy. “I suppose the trouble is I’ve spoiled my image,” John told a j
ournalist. “People want me to stay in their own bag. They just want me to be lovable. But I was never that. Even at school I was just ‘Lennon.’ Nobody ever thought of me as cuddly!”
In Pesaro, at the Cruiser Hotel, Cynthia saw the photographs of John and Yoko together in the British press and tumbled into a black well of depression. She took to bed in her hotel room and stayed there for days, not eating or sleeping. It wasn’t until the beginning of the second week that her mother talked her into leaving the hotel to have dinner. She was accompanied by Roberto Bassanini, the attentive son of the hotel owners, and a waitress from the resort who had befriended her. Bassanini had on an earlier trip to Pesaro rescued little Julian from a mob on the beach that had wanted to touch the “Beatle bambino.” Cynthia’s first night out she threw herself headlong into the task of drowning her sorrows. Cynthia and Bassanini and the waitress went from club to club, drinking until the small hours of the morning, not returning to the hotel until sun-up, laughing as they came down the street.
Magic Alex was waiting on the pavement in front of the hotel.
