The Walrus and the Elephants

by James Mitchell

  John and Yoko returned to New York and spent the latter half of August rehearsing with Elephant’s Memory—long, hard, and loud; stories are told that initial sessions in a rented space on West Tenth Street they’d christened Butterfly Studios sparked neighbor complaints, so rehearsals continued at the Fillmore East.

  Photographer Bob Gruen recalled Lennon embracing the increased rehearsal schedule, and his love for music overcame his performance anxieties. “A spirit of rock ’n’ roll really permeated the space,” Gruen said.85 The common denominator of music served as a way to loosen up while getting the show together. Bonding continued during postrehearsal dinners, often at the uptown Home restaurant Lennon had come to enjoy, and on one notable occasion to a Chinatown establishment known to stock a full bar. Gruen said the long night grew longer when Lennon—who had always picked up the group dinner tabs—realized he had no cash on him. Neither did anyone else, and additional rounds of drinks were ordered while they waited for one of John and Yoko’s assistants to wake up and bring money.

  The final selections would be determined from among dozens of songs the group prepared, running through arrangements over and over. Lennon spoke or whispered as often as he sang to avoid shredding his voice prior to showtime.

  Lennon was confident in the music, Adam Ippolito says, at least as far as the band was concerned. The overall sound was enhanced with added thump to the rhythm section: session drummer Jim Keltner served as a second percussionist—a frequent collaborator heard on Lennon’s first two post-Beatles albums—along with former Elephant’s bassist John Ward.

  “By that point he was feeling pretty good,” Ippolito says. “We were in a groove playing together. He was ready.”

  The Elephants needed to be equally prepared. The show represented a marked graduation from what the band had experienced by that point in their career: no matter how enthusiastic the crowds at Max’s Kansas City, club dates were a world away from a packed arena audience eager to cheer for a music legend. The band recalls that Lennon and Apple made sure the group’s equipment was suitable to the venue—Madison Square and beyond. Lennon, Tex Gabriel recalls, was as quick to spread money on the music as he was contributing to underground newspapers or Leftist ideals.

  “There was this guy the Lennons had who carried around this black bag,” Gabriel says. “Inside was thousands of dollars in cash; loads of money like from a bank heist or something. John told him to take a certain amount to go get Marshall amps and whatever else we needed. Didn’t rent them, just bought them.” Bandsmen estimated that Lennon gave upward of $100,000 toward equipment purchases.

  “It doesn’t sound like a lot now,” Van Scyoc says, “but $100,000 in gear at that time was a lot of money.” He recalls being impressed by the quality of equipment, which clearly indicated plans beyond the benefit show. This is the moment the Elephants had been waiting for, to go on the road for Lennon’s debut tour as a solo artist.

  “When the thing came up we thought, ‘Thank God: a gig!’ We jumped all over that,” Van Scyoc says. “We definitely hadn’t been playing venues like the Garden with the Elephants, that’s for sure. We were in front of three thousand seniors once, but this was very high profile, about as high as you can get.”

  More than a just a show, the “Concert to Free the Children of Willowbrook”—as originally called in Billboard magazine—was the climax to “One-to-One Day” in New York City, so declared by Mayor John Lindsay. Lennon’s involvement was not restricted to rehearsal and stage time: he and Yoko joined fifteen thousand Willowbrook volunteers and patients for a preshow picnic in Central Park, where the Sheep Meadow played host to games, music, hot-air balloon rides, and encounters with a wandering Beatle.

  Intentionally, there was limited fanfare at the picnic. Lennon found the balance he’d sought of using his celebrity to help a cause yet remaining one of a crowd, not the spotlit leader—a focus that would be unavoidable when they hit the stage.

  • • •

  “Welcome to the rehearsal,” Lennon greeted the afternoon crowd, fifteen-thousand strong in Madison Square Garden for the first of two shows.86

  On a no-frills stage that barely made room for musicians and amplifiers, harsh spotlights brightened Lennon’s round blue eyeglasses; he’d dressed Village casual in an olive-green US Army shirt that bore sergeant’s stripes, a Second Infantry Division patch, and the name Reinhardt. But despite his outward displays of confidence, the Elephants knew that Lennon was more than a little nervous. There was a lot at stake for him, to prove his worth with new material that had met mixed reactions, and—as all four former Beatles had to come to terms with—expectations as to what he’d play. Everyone had certain hopes, including the Elephants. Gary Van Scyoc recalls preshow discussions regarding the set list.

  “We wanted to do a ton of Beatles songs,” Van Scyoc says. “But he only allowed us to do ‘Come Together.’ We rehearsed about ten, but that was a cool one, we got off on that.”

  The band enjoyed the chance to play a brief set as one of the concert’s opening acts—along with Sha Na Na, Roberta Flack, Melanie, and Stevie Wonder, all of whom performed gratis for the cause. The spotlight, however, was clear, as were hopes for a little musical nostalgia.

  “We’re going back to the past just once,” Lennon emphasized before launching into “Come Together.”

  Lennon may have jinxed himself when he told the crowd, “You probably remember this better than I do . . . something about a flattop.” Sure enough, the lyrical wordplay he sang that began with “Here come old flattop”—a song composed of fragmented imagery—didn’t quite match the Abbey Road recording known so well by the fans. A few stumbles here and there: “over you” rather than “over me”; he didn’t seem sure if he had hair “under,” “beneath,” or “below” his knees. Each misstep produced a visible grimace.

  “I nearly got all the words right,” Lennon said at song’s end. He shook his head as he sat at a piano. “I’ll have to stop writing those daft words, man; I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m getting old.”

  The bandsmen held up their end of the musical ship, doing their damnedest not to disappoint Lennon. Adam Ippolito says that the hour-plus performance was clearly a different and greater pressure than doing one or two quick songs on TV.

  “He was self-conscious and didn’t like the fact that there was a mistake or two,” Ippolito says. “Most people didn’t notice.”

  The set list allowed the band to demonstrate its own place in Lennon’s musical life with selections from Some Time in New York City, and not just serve as stand-ins for Paul, George, and Ringo. “New York City” was a surefire crowd-pleaser at the Garden, and one of five Some Time songs along with “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” “Sisters O Sisters,” “Born in a Prison,” and “We’re All Water.”

  Lennon’s first two post-Beatles albums were well represented: “Imagine” was “one of the supreme songs of the set,” Van Scyoc recalls. Lennon had familiar songs to offer from his solo repertoire: “Instant Karma,” a blistering “Cold Turkey,” and a singalong “Give Peace a Chance,” which featured the audience banging tambourines they’d been given at the door. For a lesser-known number, “Well, Well, Well,” Lennon playfully told the crowd it was “a song from one of the albums I made since leaving the Rolling Stones.”

  Nerves aside, Lennon had fun. The biggest grin he wore that night was during a rowdy rip-up of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog.” Lennon and Gabriel danced with their guitars; Stan Bronstein grabbed a girl and twisted his beefy way through the song, old-time rock and roll at its finest. The Beatles were known to kick-start recording sessions with a romp through tunes they played in the Cavern days, a habit Lennon continued with the Elephants.

  “When rehearsing we used to do those songs just to warm up,” Van Scyoc says. “It wasn’t like a conscious thing, but we got him in a groove doing that stuff. We pulled out old Chuck Berry songs, always revert
ing back to that old ’50s stuff. Whenever John really wanted to relax, that’s where he’d go.”

  The One-to-One show captured moments of pure Lennon, the essence of his life as an artist. While the show was named for its humanitarian cause, Lennon made that personal connection in ways few musicians could. He remained one of the most soul-baring singer-songwriters to ever form an intimate relationship with an audience. Not many would write a song like “Mother”; fewer still would perform it in such stark capacity. A lonely spotlight, spare piano chords, a singular wounded voice revealed Lennon’s deepest pain to thousands of friends:

  Mother . . . you had me, but I never had you;

  Father, you left me, but I never left you.

  So . . . I . . . I just want to tell you . . . Good-bye.

  “He absolutely put it all out there,” Gabriel says. What the audience saw gave similar chills to the guitarist standing ten feet away from Lennon. “It was raw, and it was real. Very real. There was no pretense with him.”

  Any fault, Lennon freely said, lay with his own performance, the rough edges heard at times that afternoon and evening. Separate from a critical analysis of the music, Lennon gave every impression of wanting to get back out there and do it better.

  “We’ll get it right next time,” Lennon said near the end of the show, a brief nod to the random flaws likely unheard by the audience.

  Next time never happened. John Lennon never again played a full concert, never again headlined marquees around the country or world. Other than a few brief, one- or two-song performances scattered over the next two years, Lennon’s 1972 Madison Square Garden shows were the warm-ups for a tour unfinished, a legacy of songs unheard.

  • • •

  In a certain regard the One-to-One concerts were an unqualified success. A tremendous amount of good resulted from the overall attention and awareness generated by Rivera, an incalculable amount of assistance to patients and families over the years. Lennon was aware of the recent history of rock charities being taken to the cleaners, as was alleged with Allen Klein and George Harrison’s Bangladesh benefit; he said during the show that he hoped the donated money reached its intended beneficiary.

  It did. Funds from the concert went to three New York charities that built residences for Willowbrook patients and others with similar needs. ABC paid a reported $300,000 for the rights to film and broadcast the event, and negotiations began for an album. More than $1.5 million would be generated over time from broadcast revenue and record sales. The $60,000 contribution to the cause that Lennon made when he purchased tickets for patients and caregivers was left out of FBI reports that speculated on Lennon’s contributions to questionable beneficiaries.

  At the time, the critical reception from music fans and reviewers was mixed. The star attraction was duly praised, but Lennon was again angered at the eagerness by some to publicly deride Yoko, who had a few too many vocal spots in the eyes of her detractors.

  “Everyone loved the band,” Gary Van Scyoc recalls. “But it was a little too much of her and it just rubbed people the wrong way.”

  Not every critic jumped on the anti-Yoko bandwagon. Writing for Soul Sounds magazine, Toby Mamis was among her supporters.87

  “A lot of people don’t get off on Yoko Ono’s music,” Mamis said. “I think she’s taking rock in new directions and we should go with her and see what she discovers. A lot of ostriches like to keep their heads in the sand and pretend things will always be this way and that ain’t true. Someone’s got to find out where we turn next and Yoko, among others, is looking.”

  Mamis reminded skeptics that this was Lennon’s first major production on his own, and that Elephant’s Memory—“one hell of a good hard rock group”—was the first stable team of players Lennon worked with since the Beatles, a band that Lennon recorded with, rehearsed, “planned and sweated with the anticipation of a live concert.”

  Rolling Stone’s conclusion was mixed: “His performance was a fresh reminder of what everybody had known all along, that he is a startlingly good songwriter and a strong, intelligent, expressive singer.” Lennon “appeared to be having a great time,” and even “managed to get some life into ‘Woman Is the Nigger of the World,’ an awful, lapel-grabbing song, the political rectitude of which never compensates for [bad lyrics].”

  Years later, in 1986, Rolling Stone’s David Fricke looked back on the show when a videotape of the concert was released.88 Fricke appreciated the gems in the rough, and applauded the “soulful gusto of Lennon’s singing” and “the surprising breadth of his set list.” He praised Elephant’s Memory—“the left-wing New York club band”—for solid work. The Madison Square Garden concert would be remembered as much for its rarity as its intent. “Classic Lennon,” Fricke called it. “Because it’s all here—his humor, pain, anger and unshakable faith in the power of rock & roll to change the world.”

  • • •

  The Elephants played one final performance with Lennon on September 6 for the Labor Day Jerry Lewis telethon. The annual benefit for muscular dystrophy seemed an odd platform for Lennon—arguably more so than Mike Douglas—given Lewis’s usual guest list of old-guard entertainment in the style of former partner Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and other Las Vegas luminaries.

  Not that Lennon adapted his style: sunglasses in place, hair flowing in a variety of directions, Lennon first sang “Imagine” before the band rallied the studio audience into joining a reggae-tinted version of “Give Peace a Chance.”

  “Send money now . . .” Lennon sang in between title chants to get the phones ringing.

  Many speculated that Lennon’s brief appearance—coming so soon on the heels of the benefit concert—was designed to curry favor with the government. Doubtful, says Gary Van Scyoc. Lennon was consistent with his views and plans. Critical barbs didn’t dampen Lennon’s eagerness to get back on tour; Lennon believed the deportation effort was based on his peace promotion, which he also continued.

  Van Scyoc recalls the band and Lennon growing equally impatient about touring. They’d started their relationship less than a year earlier from Mike Douglas to the recording studio and Madison Square Garden, getting everyone ready for something that just wasn’t happening.

  “It was just boom-boom-boom at a thousand miles an hour,” Van Scyoc says. “You think it’s going to go on forever and, okay, we’ll be patient. Nobody knew the green card issue was going to take years.”

  Securing his residency would prove a long, frustrating ordeal. The deportation case stalled in court, and motions from attorney Leon Wildes worked their way into a system of extended deadlines, adjournments, and delays. There seemed little threat that he’d be kicked out, but Lennon was unable to leave the country for fear of being blocked Charlie Chaplin–style from reentry. His now-extended visitor’s visa allowed only limited options for what he could do professionally; he could record and perform, but not for a fee.

  Although his case was now considered a low priority, there seemed little interest in pushing the matter to a conclusion and Lennon was left in legal limbo. Media attention faded due to the non-newsworthiness of adjournments and extensions, and Wildes realized they were in for a long wait: “They were afraid if they dismissed it they would be accused from the other side of being too lenient,” Wildes says. “So it just hung out there, they didn’t know what to do with him. They had wanted him out at one time and now they couldn’t care less.”

  Footnotes:

  79Steven D. Price, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about California (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press/Globe Pequot, 2007), p. 151.

  80Paul Krassner, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture (New York: Touchstone, 1994), 181.

  81John Lennon and Yoko Ono, interview with Geraldo Rivera, WABC-TV Eyewitness News, broadcast and unedited footage, recorded August 5, 1972.

  82Sridhar Pappu, “Being
Geraldo,” Atlantic, June 2005.

  83Larry Kane, Lennon Revealed (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2005), 242.

  84“John Winston Lennon,” FBI Records: The Vault, http://vault.fbi.gov/john-winston-lennon. Additional contextual and background information can be found in Jon Wiener, Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

  85Bob Gruen, John Lennon: The New York Years (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2005), 40.

  86John Lennon: Live in NYC (Sony Video, 1986).

  87Toby Mamis, “One to One,” Soul Sounds, December 1972.

  88David Fricke, review of Live in New York City by John Lennon, Rolling Stone, April 10, 1986.

  Chapter 7

  “You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down”

  “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.” —Richard M. Nixon, November 1973

  Lennon continued to feel the relentless pressure of fighting the immigration department, of being under watch, but there was more to it. He would tell Rolling Stone two years later that the myriad legal issues, professional uncertainty, and the ongoing search for Yoko’s daughter took a toll.89

  “It was really getting to me,” Lennon said. “Not only was I physically having to appear in court cases, it just seemed like a toothache . . . a permanent toothache. There was a period where I just couldn’t function, you know? I was so paranoid from them tappin’ the phone and followin’ me. How could I prove that they were tappin’ me phone?”

  Life under surveillance was one more restriction, coupled with and causing Lennon’s inability to schedule tour dates. Reviews of the Madison Square Garden show heightened Lennon’s desire to “get it right next time,” and the perpetual “toothache” left him uncomfortable and irritable that fall. In early October he told the New Musical Express that criticism of his musical direction being “self-indulgent” was getting old: “It’s only because I’m not doing what they want me to do,” Lennon said. “They’re still hung up on my past. People talk about not what you do, but how you do it, which is like discussing how you dress or if your hair is long or short.”90