The Walrus and the Elephants

by James Mitchell

  Recovering from a lengthy hangover in many ways, in “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)” Lennon recalled a bad night of drinking, a legendary romp when he was bounced out of the Troubadour club in LA, a three a.m. bar-worthy confession of self-pity. He wondered in lyric where his true friends, his own peace, might be found.

  “Nobody loves you when you’re down and out,” Lennon sang. Instead of reliving his youth, his recent antics had him feeling his age: “Nobody loves you when you’re old and gray . . . I’ve shown you everything, I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Lennon told the tale himself through song of the fallen idol response: “Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.”

  • • •

  Tired of waiting, John Lennon took the offensive.

  There had been limited progress with immigration during Lennon’s California blowout. In early 1974 Leon Wildes had finalized “nonpriority status” for Lennon, which allowed them time to properly address the many remaining questions through the system.

  “I requested documentation relating to the nonpriority program,” Wildes says, “a humanitarian program that was not part of the statute or regulations and simply a matter of secret law.” Wildes documented numerous cases where, due to hardship or family obligations, “aliens who were fully deportable—including those with multiple convictions for serious drug offenses, murder, and rape—were nevertheless permitted to remain in this country.”

  Wildes sensed some encouragement when he was able to convince the federal prosecutors to publish the complaint. “The US attorney said it had to be published, even though it was against his client,” Wildes says. “They have limited capacity to remove aliens and they should only be removing the serious aliens, not disrupting lives. It was later called ‘deferred departure.’ He ordered that the Lennon case should be considered, and nobody would touch the case before.”

  Wildes fought long and hard to get his hands on the documents and memos that told the tale of the true motivations behind the deportation attempt, dating back to Strom Thurmond’s cover letter advising that deportation would be a good “strategy countermeasure.” A paper trail began to emerge, and Wildes soon reviewed files including the Senate Internal Security Committee report that attempted to link Lennon to plans for disrupting the Republican convention.

  Wildes returned to court in October 1974 with a judicial challenge: it was the government, not the rock singer, that had crossed legal lines. Given the developments of the Watergate investigation that resulted in the unprecedented August 1974 resignation of a president, Lennon’s paranoia suddenly didn’t seem as far-fetched.

  The affidavit submitted in Lennon’s name to Judge Fieldsteel launched a counterattack, an accusation that a few years earlier might have seemed the product of ego but made far more sense given the current state of political affairs. Lennon had been “selectively prosecuted in a discriminatory manner,” the affidavit began: “I have been the subject of illegal surveillance activities on the part of the government; as a result, my case and the various applications filed in my behalf have been prejudged for reasons unrelated to my immigration status.”112

  • • •

  Lennon may not have known he was about to take an extended bow.

  If falling short of the sales success achieved by other Beatles bothered Lennon, the Walls and Bridges album reached the top of the album charts, aided by the number one hit duet with Elton John, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”

  When they had recorded the song in July, Elton John made a bold studio declaration that the single would top the charts, which Lennon doubted. A bet was made, and Lennon “paid up” by returning to Madison Square Garden as surprise guest during an October 28, 1974, Elton John show. The hit duet was joined by renditions of “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which Elton had recorded that year as a tribute.

  Lennon walked offstage to find Yoko waiting in the wings, as orchestrated by Elton John, who had become friend to both that year. The public was unaware of backstage, private conversations among friends who—no matter the harsh opinions aired about Yoko—knew that the couple belonged together. Paul McCartney’s West Coast time included more than a few heart-to-hearts on the topic, brotherly chats that had nothing to do with Beatles or rock and roll. It was time for the two to talk, to start over if possible.

  “It was a great high night,” Lennon told Rolling Stone. “A really high night. Yoko and I met backstage. I didn’t know she was there, ’cause I’d have been too nervous to go on, you know. There was just that moment when we saw each other and like, it’s like the movies, when time stands still? So it was a great night.”113

  The reunion proved permanent. One final issue was left to settle, a matter of principle absent any concerns of fame or fortune.

  • • •

  There were some concerns over bad publicity generated by the lost weekend, and Lennon had accepted a few invitations to portray himself in a positive light: Lennon and Harry Nilsson had made a walk-on, nonperforming appearance at a Central Park March of Dimes benefit concert in April 1974, and in May he spent two days in Philadelphia for radio appearances during WFIL-FM’s “Helping Hands” marathon fundraiser before turning his attentions to Walls and Bridges. Approaching fall and winter, nearly three years after the INS first filed an order with the name John Lennon on it, Lennon took his turn at the legal plate and submitted a lawsuit: a basic First Amendment issue in which the rock star took on two former attorney generals of the United States.

  As reported in a Rolling Stone article, “Justice for a Beatle,” Wildes filed a case against the INS and former AGs John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst, charging that “selective prosecution” was born of political motivations, and that the information used in making that case was obtained illegally through unwarranted surveillance and wiretaps. The lawsuit simply asked US District Court Judge Richard Owen to let Lennon prove the claim, and Wildes did just that.

  Litigation, especially when involving a government agency, can take time; the months crawled by, and Lennon’s priority turned to his marriage more than his career. Patiently, Lennon’s legal case grew with each new piece of discovery. As with Watergate coming to a head, insiders came forward with damning information as INS and FBI documents were revealed. A June 1975 United Press International story explained that Wildes had the documentation to prove the deportation attempt came from Washington, and that the INS had misled the press: New York INS director Sol Marks had previously said that he made the decision on his own to proceed against Lennon; in 1975 a different story was told: “Marks said in a deposition last week he acted as a ‘conduit’ for instructions from Washington, which he understood to mean that ‘We were not to give this man a break.’”114

  Wildes never thought they would beat the INS on this one; the odds were too long, the deck stacked too high against Lennon. As far as the INS was concerned, Lennon’s appeal was rejected and on July 17, 1975, he was again ordered to leave the country within sixty days.

  On the other hand, things had changed. The lawsuit filed by Lennon remained undecided, other voices still to be heard.

  Four years after their initial introduction, Wildes was now among the Lennons’ closest friends in New York. It was, then, more than just a professional pleasure when he placed an October phone call with the latest and final report on the matter: “You remember I told you we’re probably not going to win this case,” Wildes asked Lennon, “but that we might survive long enough for the law to be changed? I’m now calling to tell you we actually won it.”

  On October 7, 1975, the US Court of Appeals overturned Lennon’s deportation order, confirming that the allegations made regarding the Nixon administration’s role were all true.

  Wildes called while Lennon was heading to the hospital, where Yoko was expected to give birth at any moment. On John Lennon’s thirty-fifth birthday, O
ctober 9, 1975, so soon after hearing that their protracted fight for free speech had ended in victory, John and Yoko welcomed their son, Sean Ono Lennon.

  Lennon was finally granted permanent residency in July 1976. (Asked if he harbored ill will toward Mitchell, Nixon, Thurmond, et al., Lennon shrugged and smiled at the reporters present: “Well, time wounds all heels.”)

  After more than a decade of fame, wealth, adulation, and the grandest trappings of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, John Lennon was—finally—a happy man.

  Footnotes:

  89Pete Hamill, “John Lennon: Long Night’s Journey into Day,” Rolling Stone, June 5, 1975.

  90Roy Carr, “Instant Karma!” New Musical Express, October 7, 1972.

  91“Random Notes,” Rolling Stone, October 26, 1972.

  92Toby Mamis, review of Elephant’s Memory, Melody Maker, December 2, 1972.

  93Richard Nusser, “Riffs,” Village Voice, October 5, 1972.

  94“Pop Best Bets,” Cash Box, September 30, 1972.

  95Nick Tosches, review of Elephant’s Memory, Rolling Stone, November 5, 1972.

  96Hamill, Rolling Stone.

  97Wiener, Come Together, 253.

  98Calliope Kurtz, “The Feminist Songs of Yoko Ono,” Perfect Sound Forever, May 2007.

  99Bill Dowlding, “em, not just another pretty band,” Milwaukee Bugle-American, November 8–15, 1972.

  100Lenny Kaye, “Sound Scene,” Cavalier, December 1972.

  101Nick Tosches, review of Approximately Infinite Universe by Yoko Ono, Rolling Stone, March 15, 1973.

  102“John Winston Lennon,” FBI Records: The Vault; Wiener, Gimme Some Truth.

  103Davies, ed., The John Lennon Letters, 251.

  104Guiliano, Lennon in America, 54.

  105Jon Landau, review of Mind Games by John Lennon, Rolling Stone, January 3, 1974.

  106Hamill, Rolling Stone.

  107Francis Schoenberger, “He Said, She Said,” Spin, October 1988.

  108Tim Riley, Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music—the Definitive Life (New York: Hyperion), 2011.

  109Christopher Sandford, McCartney (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007), 228.

  110John Lennon, interview with Bob Harris, The Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Radio 2, April 1975.

  111Giuliano, Lennon in America, 60.

  112Anthony Fawcett, John Lennon: One Day at a Time, A Personal Biography of the Seventies (New York: Grove Press, 1976), 145.

  113Hamill, Rolling Stone.

  114Wiener, Gimme Some Truth, 283.

  A Posttrip Postscript

  “We All Shine On . . .”

  “Life is what happens to you

  while you’re busy making other plans.”

  —John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy”

  I recently watched John Lennon’s performance of “Mother” at the One-to-One concert. Forty years have passed since the Madison Square Garden concert. The show was captured on film, transferred to videotape at some point, and eventually digitized. I’ve seen it countless times. Tens of thousands of people were in the arena, but Lennon made you feel there was, in fact, a one-to-one connection between artist and listener. He had a way of doing that, of singing simple truths, addressing his lyrics to “my friends” and making it believable.

  “You were seeing him the way a lot of people saw him,” Tex Gabriel told me, adding that during the actual performance Tex was too focused on his job—and perhaps a bit too young—to fully appreciate the moment. That came later.

  Lennon is remembered by his fellow musicians as basically a good, decent guy. He was no saint, nor did he claim to be. He had a temper, one that sometimes flared up when he was trying to record a piece of music. He also apologized when he did lose his cool. If they’d wanted to, the Elephants, Bob Gruen, and Lennon’s other close friends had opportunities to tell tales about the sinner behind the martyred idol; they haven’t because—unlike those in search of Lennon’s dark side—they actually knew the man.

  In many ways we all did. People know where they were on that night in December 1980 the way we recall tragedies we simply don’t understand, like the assassination of a president or terrorist attacks on a nation. I was too young for Beatlemania, but my generation—and those that followed—discovered the lads as we did other hot bands. They were better than most—if not all—of the newer musical acts. The Beatles’ music felt fresh, original, and filled with mysteries. Still does.

  I was in suburban Detroit the night Lennon was killed, no longer a teenager and less than six months away from leaving my parents’ house. A picture of Lennon hung on my bedroom wall: one of four portraits packaged with the “White Album.” Somewhere around the time of Sgt. Pepper, album covers had become works of pop art with enough space—compared to a CD case or the nonexistent cover of a download—for images bizarre or beautiful; for lyrics printed large enough to read (or be read into); for cardboard sleeves to contain posters and other goodies. (Hall of fame honors to Cheech & Chong’s comedy album Big Bambú, which included an enormous rolling paper worthy of a joint large enough to challenge John Sinclair.)

  We realized right away that night just how much we’d miss Lennon. The mythology around John Lennon grew over the years. He was not always known back then for the same things he is known for today. He was the “weird one” of the Beatles, the one who lost his mind to a woman and walked away from rock-and-roll fame to raise his kid: that wasn’t really considered cool back then.

  What qualifies as “cool” changes from year to year. Lennon’s core principles didn’t: nonviolent, constructive activism was a constant, as was his opinion that love was better than hate, peace better than war. Maybe we’ve changed. A lot of people who thought they were right back in 1972 turned out to be wrong.

  Some things take a little longer to understand.

  • • •

  Wayne Gabriel was far too young, he later realized, to appreciate the preciousness of his time with John Lennon: no one knew back then that Elephant’s Memory would be the last regular band to work with Lennon.

  The association with Lennon opened doors, including the introduction to Chuck Berry, whose 1973 album Bio featured a rare guest instrumental: “I’m the only other guitar player he ever let solo on an album,” Gabriel says.

  Gabriel saw Lennon a final time in the fall of 1980, an accidental encounter outside of the Dakota, two New Yorkers looking for a cab or late for an appointment. A shame, they agreed, that their musical journey a decade earlier came to an abrupt end.

  “I went to New York to make it,” Gabriel says. “When I got with John Lennon that dream came true. Where could it go from there? Things didn’t work out the way I envisioned.”

  They rarely do, I point out.

  “No, they never do,” Gabriel sighs.

  • • •

  Our talks were somewhat frustrating from a reporter’s perspective: the conversations were too enjoyable and we often drifted to matters irrelevant to the story but far more important—family, friends, memories of common ground in New York or Detroit. We ended our last session with words and thoughts similar to what Lennon had said at the Madison Square Garden closing: no sweat, we’ll get it right next time.

  Like too many other things, that time never came. Early in 2010 Wayne “Tex” Gabriel was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome, a degenerative disorder that took his life in May of the same year. He left behind a loving wife, Marisa LaTorre, children Ataia and Savion Gabriel from his first marriage to Sandra Fulton, stepchildren Sarah and David Goldfarb, and friends who miss him for reasons having nothing to do with guitar chords.

  • • •

  John Sinclair never compromised his values,
a qualified admission.

  “I never sold out,” Sinclair says. “Nobody ever offered me anything.”

  These days, an active Sinclair is as likely to be seen in the jazz clubs of New Orleans as he is in Detroit or Amsterdam, though he does get his share of questions about the good ol’ days of hippie revolution. Sinclair knows it sounds old-fashioned to look back with a sense of loss, but the world has changed considerably.

  “We’ve got a void,” Sinclair says. “There will never be another Beatles. That’s why John Lennon and Yoko Ono were so important: they could reach the masses of people because of who he was. The billboards in Times Square, the bed-ins for peace: all that stuff was powerful because it rang everybody’s bell.”

  Sinclair says that Lennon’s speech at the Crisler Arena about apathetic youth was more prophetic than anything, and holds true today.

  “It was a call to action,” Sinclair says. “They don’t make singles like ‘Give Peace a Chance’ anymore. They don’t see the idea of developing something over a period of time. They want it to happen within the next news cycle.”

  The Movement, Sinclair says, resurfaced in many ways with Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and revolutions launched online in similar spirit.

  “We needed that,” Sinclair says. “If they’re lucky they’ll make it last. This is the best thing to happen to these kids. Who wants to just be a consumer? No matter how many groovy products they got, how many iPads can you have?”