Once again, Lennon fulfilled the role of peacemaker, smoothed the bumpy introductions, and told the band not to worry about “Phil and his attitude. He’s just here to produce and do what he’s gotta do.” It was agreed that Spector would be a rare studio presence and instead would work independently with the material as he had with Let It Be.
The Elephants began to see the potential genius of this unexpected pairing, of what Lennon had seen in choosing them over all the other bands he could have picked. They were, in fact, John Lennon’s full-time band. They had done the Mike Douglas week, were in the studio to record an album, and were told of very tempting possibilities for the year ahead. Lennon was ready for more, and the Elephants were an integral part of the plan.
“John didn’t do anything together without us, musically, for that period,” Van Scyoc says. “It wasn’t like we were a side project. He was talking about a world tour.”
That plan, as with other ideas, awaited the outcome of Lennon’s immigration status. It also made pinpointing the schedule for rehearsals, recording time, and promotional efforts a bit more vexing than it might have been otherwise.
“They were trying to set up some high-profile things with John,” Van Scyoc says. “And he couldn’t do it because of the green card. That was a big part of what was happening. He had that, and the search for Kyoko, and they were always taking off. He wanted Yoko to have his total, 100 percent support.”
The hectic schedule often changed at the very last moment. A phone call inviting the band to get together meant little an hour later when they learned that Lennon had flown off to Houston; conversely, unexpected calls to grab their instruments were not uncommon.
“It was just absolutely crazy,” Van Scyoc says. “You never knew where they were. You’d get a call, ‘Let’s rehearse in an hour.’ Then there were weeks at a time when they wouldn’t be around and we resumed our normal thing. That was his career at that point.”
• • •
They worked fast because they had to, and also by artistic design. Recording enough material for an album over several weeks was a relatively short production; Lennon wanted Some Time in New York City to have the immediacy of a newspaper, a “concept” album in both content and delivery.
“We’re like journalists only we sing about it,” he had said to David Frost, and the sessions were approached with deadline urgency as they worked on the tracks. Work typically began at seven p.m., all-nighters that allowed enough time to relax, warm up on the guitars, kick around song ideas. The recording room itself was fairly small, its walls lined with amplifiers bearing paper cups or beer cans. Cushioned cubicle-walls dampened a drum kit; microphone and music stands stood in clusters; guitars dominated the center area. Lennon was the focal point as he explained each song to the band.
Musical familiarity formed during early rehearsals in the Village continued when they recorded tracks. Lennon asked for and welcomed opinions, although he brought to the sessions songs that were mostly formed, his efficiency honed after a decade spent in recording studios. The routine worked well: Lennon sketched a foundation in need of bass-and-drum rhythm, keyboard or lead guitar lines, saxophone work from Stan Bronstein. The Elephants were more than capable of keeping pace with Lennon’s range of styles; their own credits spanned an impressive spectrum of rock, blues, jazz, and pop.
Some of the songs had been previewed by Lennon in December: “John Sinclair” and its bluesy backing; “Attica State” and its thumping protest chant; Yoko’s feminist cry “Sisters O Sisters” tinted with a reggae accent; and “Luck of the Irish,” a pub-worthy sing-along voicing the troubles in Northern Ireland. Additional songs included “Angela,” a ballad telling the story of activist Angela Davis and her incarceration; “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” also about the Derry massacre in Ireland; and the autobiographical “New York City,” which in classic rock and roll style continued the story told in “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” Lennon’s chorus shouts of “Que pasa, New York” joined verses that described meeting Rubin and Peel, hearing the Elephants at Max’s Kansas City, jamming with the group to old songs, and absorbing all things Manhattan.
A straight-out rocker, some thought “New York City” could have been another hit for Lennon if selected as the first single for the LP. “Such a great song, to this day,” Van Scyoc says. “In my opinion one of the best songs on the record.”
Instead, Lennon defied convention and expectations. The first song from Some Time to vie for radio play reported society’s treatment of women; Lennon’s feminist ballad invited controversy beginning with its title, “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.”
• • •
John Lennon’s take on the women’s movement may have been puzzling to some old-boy Beatles fans, but feminist leader Gloria Steinem wasn’t surprised. Steinem recalls Lennon’s history of embracing causes. It was a trait she saw early on; in 1964 she had accepted a Cosmopolitan magazine assignment to shadow the Beatles around Manhattan, and the hordes of young women who followed them everywhere they went.
“He seemed to be much less interested in them than the other Beatles,” Steinem says. “Perhaps I was biased because I’m a writer, too, but I found him more interesting than the others.”
Steinem says she’d “read some writings and realized how imaginative he was. He had a great heritage in cockney, rhyming words; you get a sense of them and they contain meaning in an imaginative way.” Steinem disagrees with critics who claim Lennon’s earliest work reflected a chauvinistic if not misogynistic man, and says Lennon’s 1964 book of prose, In His Own Write, reveals a deeper soul.
“It’s not antiwoman; it doesn’t take on sexism,” Steinem says. “It’s whimsical and imaginative and humane, so he must have been unusually open.”
Contrasting with previous perceptions of Lennon in the early Beatles days—when the band and its entourage were seen as very much a boys’ club—Lennon welcomed the rise of feminism and the women’s movement, which in the early 1970s was in its heyday. Just as the struggle for black civil rights required white awakening, the feminist movement needed the involvement of men. Lennon, Steinem says, had the strength of his convictions and a willingness to defy stereotypes, to walk a different path on principle: “He was antiwar in a country and a world that sometimes measures masculinity by being aggressive. He was creative, again in a world where men are more rewarded for being aggressive than creative. His life—as well as his work—was and still is a liberating influence for everyone, especially for men.”
Lennon credited his awakening to Yoko’s influence; she asked to be referred to professionally as “Ms. Ono,” with the recently coined hybrid of Miss and Mrs. In turn, Lennon legally added “Ono” to his own name, hardly a common practice for men in the late 1960s or any era. In his 1971 Red Mole interview, Lennon said that the feminist movement needed to be part of the New Left agenda, whose male leaders were guilty of sexism even as they accused the establishment of being racist: “We can’t have a revolution that doesn’t involve and liberate women. It’s subtle the way you’re taught male superiority. It took me a long time to realize that my maleness was cutting off certain areas for Yoko. She’s a red hot liberationist and was quick to show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was just acting naturally. That’s why I’m interested to know how people who claim to be radical treat women.”
In many ways, Steinem says, the women’s movement rose from the shadows of the antiwar and civil rights movements. There were few opportunities at the battlefront, and female volunteers found themselves taking a backseat to the new-boy network.
“If those movements had been equal for women there probably wouldn’t have been a women’s movement,” Steinem says. “Women were still expected to make coffee and do the mimeographing—there’s a word from the past—and provide sex and be supportive.”
No matter how solemn the issues being addressed—the need for civil
rights and an end to war—Steinem says that a certain percentage of men inevitably degraded women in sexual terms, a difficult if not impossible environment to remain sympathetic. Steinem says the problem was best displayed at an antiwar rally in Washington.
“A woman activist got up onstage speaking against the war,” Steinem recalls, “and the veterans yelled, ‘Take her off and fuck her.’”
Lennon seemed sincere in his feminist values, and Steinem says she understood his decision to sing about it in a shocking, potentially offensive song. In what may be the first feminist pop song of the late ’60s or early ’70s to come from a man—Helen Reddy’s 1971 “I Am Woman” was the unofficial anthem—“Woman Is the Nigger of the World” was released in April 1972. The title was guaranteed to add to the obstacles facing the record in terms of getting radio airplay and the other mechanisms that might make it a hit. Steinem says the effort was notable in ways other than record sales.
“A very serious and important song,” Steinem reflects. “Sometimes in order to get one thing taken seriously you have to compare it to something else that is already taken seriously. Women had been called the ‘mule of the world,’ but not as a phrase in a song.”
As often happened with Lennon, lyrics followed the title statement with both a confirmation and a challenge to white men everywhere: “Yes she is, think about it; do something about it.”
• • •
Round one went to John and Yoko. The March 16, 1972, hearing at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization concluded with an adjournment until May, giving Leon Wildes time to prepare residence applications and for Lennon to try to have the marijuana conviction expunged.
A recent Texas court ruling that granted Yoko custody of Kyoko largely supported the decision. It was, however, a semihollow decision that failed to immediately reunite mother and daughter. The New York Times called the victory “a pyrrhic one, for the child and her father, Anthony D. Cox, have vanished.” According to Yoko, Cox planned to remain in hiding and wait out the deportation.52 Other sources believed that Cox recognized a potential payoff: new husbands of ex-wives are rarely welcomed by the former spouse, but a multimillionaire rock star invited certain obvious speculations about Cox’s motives.
Justice faced a conundrum: The custody order required that Yoko live in America, leaving the INS burdened with splitting up a family if they deported Lennon. Yoko was certain to be granted semipermanent residency; Lennon appeared ready to fight for his, publicly if necessary. On the steps of the INS building, extension in hand, Lennon held an impromptu press conference.
Journalists weren’t the only ones taking notes: “A representative of the FBI,” as described in a memo, joined the crowd of “eighty-five reporters including radio and television.”53
When asked, Lennon told what he believed was the truth. According to the memo, “he inferred the INS was attempting to deport him due to his political ideas and present policy of the US government as to aliens who speak out against the administration.”
The battle lines were drawn. From the FBI perspective, Director J. Edgar Hoover seemed frustrated that what he considered a problem—Lennon fronting an anti-Nixon concert—had not been quickly solved.
“Strong possibility looms that subject will not be deported any time soon,” Hoover advised in early April. “And will probably be in US at least until [Republican National Convention].”
A summary of where things stood after the hearing was sent to individuals not typically involved in deportation hearings, including US attorney general John Mitchell and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman. They were in for a fight: Hoover advised that Lennon was more than capable of financing a lengthy legal challenge, and that the media would gladly tell Lennon’s side of the story. John Lennon was hardly the exclusive interest of the underground press or Rolling Stone; the man whom the FBI had difficulty obtaining a photograph of was a frequent presence in the New York Times, Daily News, New York Post, and countless other publications.
The deportation effort became a public drama, and since the true motivation was supposed to be a secret, the rush to kick Lennon out puzzled many. Support for granting residency came from a growing number of people whose standing in the community demanded attention. On behalf of the city Lennon loved, New York mayor John V. Lindsay was among the first to step forward. Lindsay authored an April letter to INS commissioner Raymond Farrell.54
Deporting Lennon would be “a grave injustice,” Lindsay said. “I consider it to be very much in the public interest, from the point of view of the citizens of New York as well as the citizens of the Country, that artists of their distinction be granted resident status.” Lindsay said he’d met with John and Yoko and was told “of their love for New York City and that they wish to make it their home.”
Citing the compelling motivation of a mother wishing to be with her child, Lindsay said “the removal of the Lennons from this Country would be contrary both to the principles of our Country as well as the humanitarian practices which should be implemented by the Department of Immigration.”
Lindsay did not address Lennon’s marijuana conviction, but instead questioned the true reasons for the harassment. Yes, John and Yoko spoke their mind on the issues of the day, but that alone is not a crime: “If this is the motive underlying the unusual and harsh action taken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, then it is an attempt to silence constitutionally protected 1st Amendment rights of free speech and association and a denial of the civil liberties of these two people.”
Well aware of potential public backlash, Lennon told the New York Times that Lindsay’s letter was “a beautiful thing,” and he hoped “no one would be offended by it.” Lennon was prone to speak positively rather than critically. Talking to the press he maintained his political ground but also expressed great admiration for the country he sought to call home, an America he hadn’t really seen . . . at least not as he would have wished.
“All I’d seen of New York was hotels when I was here as a Beatle,” Lennon explained, but he’d grown to love the Village and the life he’d found. He spoke of simple pleasures like coffee ice-cream malts and his desire to see more of America, landmarks like the Grand Canyon or cities such as New Orleans.
Mayor Lindsay’s voice was not unique. An announcement at Washington’s National Press Club reported the formation of the National Committee for John and Yoko (yet another “organization” that bore watching by those concerned about radical groups). Artist and friend of the Lennons John Hendrix rallied the cause and told a gaggle of Beltway journalists that the true reason for the deportation was Yoko and Lennon’s “antiwar stand, their ability to affect the thinking of youth and their support of unpopular beliefs.”
Preparing to fight a government clearly out to harass him, Lennon and attorney Leon Wildes welcomed support from an impressive body of notable individuals.55 Letters from the creative world poured in, prominent and respected names, some either as representatives of the Committee for Artistic Freedom, others independently yet with shared outrage and sympathy: actor Tony Curtis; Dick Cavett; artist Andy Warhol; filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Elia Kazan; novelists Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Heller, and John Updike, who said of John and Yoko, “They cannot do this great country any harm, and might do it some good.” Composers John Cage and Leonard Bernstein weighed in; Bernstein called Lennon “an important creative force in music.” Joan Baez added a handwritten comment to the boilerplate letter: “Keeping people confined to certain areas of the world was one of the reasons we’ve had six thousand years of war instead of six thousand years of peace.” Actress and singer Diahann Carroll wrote, “If an appeal to the ethical or moral position of these freedom loving artists will not move you, perhaps you will give special allowance to Mrs. Lennon’s position as a mother and the terrible potential danger that she might lose her child by this action. I beg you to give a favorable answer to Mr. and Mrs. Lennon in this matter
.”
Support also came from outside of the entertainment world. United Auto Workers chief Leonard Woodcock said, “It would be an outrage and a tragedy for this country if John Lennon and Yoko Ono are deported,” and cited Lennon’s “clear eloquent commitment to nonviolence, and to participation in action for constructive social change.”
Rock and roll was represented by Bob Dylan, in a suitably poetic, handwritten scrawl introduced as “Justice for John & Yoko!” that included a healthy dose of cynicism:
John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to this country’s so-called ART INSTITUTION / They inspire and transcend and stimulate that by doing so, only they can help others to see pure light and in doing that put an end to this wild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as artist art by the overpowering mass media. Hooray for John & Yoko! Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space.
• • •
The names Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Rennie Davis were notably absent from the defense side of the showdown between the INS and John Lennon. The New Left and Yippie leaders—those who had enlisted Lennon to play the concert that kick-started the deportation effort—didn’t rally to the cause. Curiously, there was also a void in support from the antiestablishment rebels of rock and roll. Rolling Stone writer Ralph J. Gleason wondered, “Where the hell is everybody?” The very musicians whom Lennon inspired were sadly silent. Had the generation become as apathetic as Lennon hinted in Ann Arbor?
“There was no effort by Jerry or anyone to make the John Lennon immigration issue a Movement issue,” Jay Craven says.
On the other hand, support from suspected criminals—including those with active suspended sentences—might have been more trouble than help, something Lennon seemed to realize by then. Recording work and trips to Texas demanded much of his time, and he hadn’t formally committed to Rubin’s uncertain plans. The anticipated tour leading up to an August finale was an idea that faded into memory. And perhaps the absence of letters of support from people in the Movement was judicious, came from their recognition that their letters might hurt rather than help Lennon’s case.
The Walrus and the Elephants Page 10
