Once There Was a Way

by Bryce Zabel

  Images were soon beamed around the world of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in a tearful and emotional embrace.

  “You found me, Mama,” he said to her.

  Yoko, practical even then, used the close embrace to whisper into his ear: “Don’t say anything to them. Only talk to lawyers.”

  John nodded, and after he and Yoko broke apart, he received a bracing welcome from Paul McCartney.

  “Are you all right, mate?” asked Paul.

  “They broke me two tiny fingers,” answered John. “Might play even worse than before.”

  On that note, with network and local TV cameras rolling, Lennon, Ono, McCartney, Klein, the lawyers, Jobs, plus McNary and his team, and the FBI, all got into their respective cars and headed away in a procession.

  One man, standing with a group in the street with his friends, was heard to call out as Lennon’s car passed by: “You found your way back home, John!” Again, as had happened so often, Lennon found McCartney’s lyrics quoted back to him as if they were his own.

  From inside the car, Lennon flashed the peace sign at the crowd. As the images and the breaking news about Nixon’s fall and Lennon’s rescue spread across the nation, there were concurrent reports from coast to coast of people dancing in the streets.

  Famous Last Words

  With the world watching, the FBI chose not to arrest John Lennon, even though he was on their “Ten Most Wanted” list. Instead, they released him into a legal limbo, referring to him as a “person of interest” in multiple Weather Underground crimes, including several that happened even before his kidnapping.

  Lennon never went back to Los Angeles or his home on the beach, calling them both “cursed and unlucky.” Instead, he returned with Ono to New York and moved back into the Dakota, which greatly increased its security measures as a result of his kidnapping.

  “John had nightmares every night,” Yoko said. “We did not speak when he woke up, and I would just hold him close to me.”

  After a few weeks, Lennon confided in Ono that in order to survive the ordeal, he had gone inside his head and written music. He had a collection of new songs, formed from his experience, that included revisions to the newly emergent “Mind Games,” “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” “#9 Dream,” and “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out).”

  The songs were so vivid in his memory that he sat down and recorded a demo of each in a single day. It pained him terribly to play the guitar without the use of his two little fingers, and he was not sure he had done them justice. On three of the tracks, he chose to pick them out on a piano instead.

  Yoko listened attentively to all of them and felt differently. “They’re beautiful. What do you want to do with them?”

  This was another way of asking the big question. After six months in cruel captivity, what did John Lennon think of the Beatles?

  “You’re telling me that Paul moved to New York just to help you?” he asked.

  “He was very worried about you. I think he loves you.”

  Lennon thought for a moment. “Well, since I can’t play the guitar worth shit anymore, I’m going to need all of them, so what the hell?”

  Yoko immediately rang up Paul, who had returned to London to “pay some bills and see some friends” and told him that John would be ready to record again after he’d had a week or so to get his head together.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Sounds a bit on the early side, don’t you think?”

  Indeed, she did not think so. Yoko and Paul had worked side by side for six months. At this point, she knew him as well as her husband. They spoke directly to each other and had both come to appreciate the openness in their new relationship. “John needs this. Get everyone. Come now.”

  Exhausted as he was by his stay in New York City, McCartney made plans to return. There was talk of recording at the high-profile Record Plant on 44th Street, where fans would often wait outside to catch a glimpse of their favorite artists. But the Record Plant would not do for these recording sessions, particularly after what had happened to Lennon. After some debating, the band decided to move to the boondocks of 48th Street and 9th Avenue, where a new and relatively unknown studio known as the Hit Factory was available and discreet.

  Lennon had not spoken to the press due to his own reticence and the advice of his lawyers, but he did release a statement.

  [John] “Yoko and I send our love to our fans who have given me the greatest gift, the freedom of being alone together with the woman I love. It looks like all that time away has squeezed one last album out of the Beatles. I have some songs that I wrote in my own head during those days, and Paul, George, and Ringo have all agreed to come to the greatest city on Earth and help me get them out of my head and onto an album. Love, John.”

  With that, the four Beatles showed up at the Hit Factory and prepared to make more history. The security presence outside the recording studio was fierce.

  [Paul] “I think we all figured that John had traveled more than enough in the past year. We decided to come to him, assuming we could all get visas extended, which, after Nixon’s resignation, we miraculously did. So we took our Apple to the Big Apple and got to work.”

  Soon enough, all four of the musicians had resolved to make their time together count. No walking out or walking away. They were determined to do the job like the professionals they were, and as a result, the work turned fun again. Linda McCartney was allowed to document the sessions in photographs, many of which showed the Beatles laughing together—in stark contrast to the glum images from earlier albums. Yoko participated, too, and contributed a vocal riff on McCartney’s “Junior’s Farm” that fans came to regard as a key part of the song’s sound.

  If McCartney had been ascendant in their previous effort Band on the Run, then Last Words was Lennon’s turn, featuring his collection of deeply personal songs.

  Most surprising to McCartney was Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.” In Nigeria, during a tense moment, Paul had challenged John to “write one fucking happy song once in a while.” The fact that he had done it while wondering if he would live long enough to record it was mind-blowing.

  Lennon’s “Mind Games,” a melody he’d composed years before under the title “I Promise,” now came with an entirely different meaning. During the long days and nights of silence, John had to rely on mind games to get him through the night. They had manifested themselves in song.

  McCartney came to the sessions with some power rockers in the form of “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” and “Junior’s Farm.” He even brought “Let Me Roll It,” a song that sounded like it came from Lennon, which he had written for his partner during one of the long nights of waiting in New York.

  Harrison placed three songs on the album: “The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp,” “Dark Horse,” and “The King Is Dead.” The lyrics were universal enough in “The King Is Dead” that it was widely interpreted to be about Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, and the Beatles. Harrison gave one of his song positions to Lennon, not wanting to cause trouble after the ordeal of last year.

  Starkey actually wrote the upbeat “Oh My My” and delivered a fine performance on a song written for him by Lennon: “(It’s All Down To) Goodnight Vienna.”

  Last Words ends with McCartney’s own final statement—the bittersweet “Picasso’s Last Words,” which took its title from the death of Pablo Picasso the year before and was inspired by a dinner that McCartney had with actor Dustin Hoffman during his time in New York, who challenged the composer to write a song based on any article from the most recent issue of Time magazine. McCartney did, on the spot, forever earning Hoffman’s admiration. In some ways, when the album first came out, this final song felt like the saddest thing ever recorded by the Beatles, and yet fans couldn’t help but fall in love with it.

  That Lennon let McCartney take this final studio bow has been seen by virtually all observers as a grudging acknowledgment of his lifelong partner’s influence on him. It wasn’t.r />
  Lennon had gone back to work too early, clearly suffering from what we now call PTSD and had fallen into deep depression. With the songs now cleared from his head, he retreated to his apartment in the Dakota and resumed his tortured isolation.

  Chapter Eight:

  LIVE FROM NEW YORK (1975)

  Silent Reckoning

  John had briefly come back to life in the fall of 1974 to record the Last Words album. Yet like a man who comes out of a coma for a day, then slips back into his quiet state once his contribution had been made, Lennon faded away.

  John and Yoko once again hunkered down in their now-beloved residence in the Dakota Building. John refused prescription medication, shunned marijuana and alcohol, and dismissed outright the idea of stronger drugs. “My head got scrambled and I don’t need anything to cover that up,” he said to his wife. “I need to do this by myself.”

  The world outside had become a dangerous place. Even when they went out for a small errand, the Lennons were never without security. No more did they sign autographs or interact with fans outside the building. Even when they had a car, the driver was instructed to go directly into the parking garage entrance on the back side of the building and under no circumstances drop them at the front curb where fans were known to gather.

  According to Yoko, John would stand in the window, often using binoculars, watching the park and the people walking through it. She described the action as “trance-like,” but it seemed to calm him down. Without questioning him, she would continue to work around the apartment and would join him at the window from time to time. After weeks of looking out over a Central Park that was now covered in snow, John spoke to Yoko when she’d come to join him.

  “You realize that we could be here just enjoying the view, and suddenly men with guns could come through that door, throw me in handcuffs, and take me away?” He was speaking about the legal jeopardy the FBI had placed him in.

  Yoko agreed that this could happen. “We have to work harder at enjoying the view.”

  “I loved that she said that,” John told countless interviewers in later years. “She knew me as a man who always spoke his mind, and she knew I’d speak again, and probably too much. So she gave me my space and she gave me my moment of silence.” Even now Lennon talks about this period with an uncharacteristic reserve.

  For her part, Yoko never pried—she knew that John would share what he could, when he could. It took months for him to confide all his feelings, and, by his own account, he “held nothing back.”

  Over the Christmas holidays, Lennon had outpatient surgery at Mount Sinai to re-set his fingers. The surgery, performed by an elite team of surgeons, was considered a success. He got most of the use of his fingers back but for the rest of his life would have trouble playing certain chords with his left hand.

  As he recovered at home, lost in contemplation, Yoko was as busy as ever running the new team of lawyers with the same bravado and competence that she had exhibited during the nationwide manhunt for her husband.

  [Yoko] “It had so many moving parts, you know, all the government agencies, investigators, Apple, press people and, of course, Paul. When John came home, everybody acted like it’s all over, everybody go home. But, of course, it wasn’t over. John was in just as much jeopardy, I think, after he came home as he was when he was a prisoner.”

  On the day that John Lennon was rescued and Richard Nixon was sent packing, Vice President Gerald Ford ascended to the office of president of the United States. He knew the country was in a terrible state, and when he addressed the nation, he told citizens that “our long national nightmare is over.”

  Except it was not.

  As it turned out, separate federal grand juries on two sides of the continent were considering what to do about the most unlikely pair—Richard Nixon and John Lennon.

  In Seattle, in the Western District of the United States District Court, grand jurors were debating whether to add John Lennon to the conspiracy counts that included the Weathermen, who had already been charged in the bombing of the U.S. State Department, in addition to other crimes.

  Lennon, in speaking privately to his lawyers, was clear on the point of his innocence.

  [John] “I think people that really know me can figure it out. They had a ballpeen hammer, man, and they were going to crush my hands one finger at a time. I made it through two of them, then I said whatever they wanted. But I never had anything to do with any bomb. That’s just madness. End of story.”

  Besides Lennon’s predicament, now that Nixon had left office, the grand jury that had named him an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate crimes was considering indicting him outright, which would allow federal prosecutors to put the ex-president on trial.

  Every day that President Ford entered the Oval Office during the fall of 1974, he was confronted by international problems, a failing national economy, and an electorate that had lost faith in government. The last thing he needed on his desk was a briefing about either Nixon or Lennon being on trial. As the new year began, it became more and more obvious that one (or both) of those shoes was going to drop soon.

  Ford knew from close-up experience that Nixon probably deserved to be in jail, though he also believed that for Nixon, a man of enormous pride and ego, being driven from office was a huge punishment in itself.

  The case of John Lennon, however, bothered him greatly. His own children were lobbying him to do something.

  “Is John Lennon a petty criminal, or is he an artist whose fame, and, yes, his political opinions, placed him in a situation I’d wish on no man?” Ford asked his advisors. “Was he under such emotional duress that he started to believe he was part of this Weather Underground?”

  The answer to Ford’s unexpectedly astute analysis was that it was not the job of the president or the U.S. government to make that determination. The question could only be answered in court.

  Ford persisted. “Are we saying that the only way I can help this man,” he asked, “is to let a jury put the matter to rest one way or the other?”

  To Ford, it seemed especially cruel to free Lennon after he’d endured a horrific political kidnapping where his life was in danger every day, only to put him on trial and threaten again to rob him of his freedom.

  At the end of this discussion, Ford was frustrated. To get involved in Lennon’s criminal case or the Beatles’ immigration status would be perceived as a completely political act. This was hugely ironic, of course, because helping Lennon and the Beatles would align Ford on the side of revolutionary criminals and outside agitators. Helping Nixon would align him with the hard right wing that always felt the Watergate charges had been trumped up.

  The system had created a situation that could only be solved by that same system playing itself out, a catch-22 that drove Gerald Ford mad. Management consultants had begun using the phrase “outside the box” to refer to novel or creative problem-solving, but whether the solution to this particular problem was inside or outside of the box, Ford had not yet conceived it.

  Then President Ford got another briefing, shortly before Christmas. This one made it clear that because of the likely illegal FBI overreach from its COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) activities, the Department of Justice was considering dropping charges against the Weather Underground. The DOJ cited a recent decision by the Supreme Court that barred electronic surveillance without a court order. This decision would hamper prosecution of the WUO cases and force the government to potentially reveal foreign intelligence secrets that the court has given orders to disclose.

  Ford went to bed angry, his head spinning. He woke up the next day, summoned his top advisors to the Oval Office, and, after hearing all their objections to his plan, decided to go ahead anyway.

  On the first day of the new year, January 1, 1975, Ford addressed the nation from the Oval Office.

  [President Gerald Ford] “The nation has unfinished business. I have been advised to ignore some of it and allow the legal system to re
solve this business, but my conscience tells me that is something I cannot do. The Vietnam War will soon be firmly in the past, but not the victims of it. Richard Nixon will soon be in the history books alone and not in the newspapers. Even a young man named John Lennon waits to hear what a country he wants to embrace will finally make of him. Today, in the spirit of healing, I intend to use the powers granted me as President to write an end to these stories.”

  With that, President Gerald R. Ford affixed his signature to the collection of documents that had been drawn up in short order by White House lawyers. Known formally as the “Presidential Action for National Reconciliation,” they came to be referred to by average Americans as “Ford’s Olly Olly Income Free,” referring to the phrase shouted at the end of a game of Hide and Seek when players can come out of hiding without losing the game.

  The first documents pardoned all Vietnam War draft resisters, granting them full, free, and absolute amnesty for all offenses against the United States which they might have committed.

  The next set of papers pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes he might have committed while holding the presidency. Those papers became the most controversial act of Ford’s presidency.

  He also pardoned John Lennon for any crimes he might have committed during the period of his kidnapping by the Weather Underground in 1974. For good measure, Ford granted John Lennon and Yoko Ono permanent green card status and removed work visa obstacles that had been put in place to harass George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Richard Starkey.

  In his terse seventeen-minute speech, buttressed by affixing his signature to the legal documents, Ford settled much of the country’s emotional business. There was something in it for everyone, and that may have been part of its genius.

  Ford knew that no single news cycle could deal with these three stories effectively at the same time. Rooting values were scrambled, alliances revised, and across the nation, people were traveling to get home from the holidays and preparing to go back to work. One week later, even the shouts of protest over the bold action had faded.