Posted on 06/30/2005 10:14:05 AM PDT by concrete is my business
Lennon on Live 8
A timely excerpt from David Sheff's September 1980 Playboy interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Sheff: Just to finish your favorite subject [the Beatles], what about the suggestion that the four of you put aside your personal feelings and regroup to give a mammoth concert for charity, some sort of giant benefit?
Lennon: I don't want to have anything to do with benefits. I have been benefited to death.
Sheff: Why?
Lennon: Because they're always rip-offs. I haven't performed for personal gain since 1966, when the Beatles last performed. Every concert since then, Yoko and I did for specific charities, except for a Toronto thing that was a rock-'n'-roll revival. Every one of them was a mess or a rip-off. So now we give money to who we want. You've heard of tithing?
Sheff: That's when you give away a fixed percentage of your income.
Lennon: Right. I am just going to do it privately. I am not going to get locked into that business of saving the world on stage. The show is always a mess and the artist always comes off badly.
Sheff: What about the Bangladesh concert, in which George and other people such as Dylan performed?
Lennon: Bangladesh was caca.
Sheff: You mean because of all the questions that were raised about where the money went?
Lennon: Yeah, right. I can't even talk about it, because it's still a problem. You'll have to check with Mother [Yoko], because she knows the ins and outs of it, I don't. But it's all a rip-off. So forget about it. All of you who are reading this, don't bother sending me all that garbage about, "Just come and save the Indians, come and save the blacks, come and save the war veterans," Anybody I want to save will be helped through our tithing, which is ten percent of whatever we earn.
Sheff: But that doesn't compare with what one promoter, Sid Bernstein, said you could raise by giving a world-wide televised concert - playing separately, as individuals, or together, as the Beatles. He estimated you could raise over $200,000,000 in one day.
Lennon: That was a commercial for Sid Bernstein written with Jewish schmaltz and showbiz and tears, dropping on one knee. It was Al Jolson. OK. So I don't buy that. OK.
Sheff: But the fact is, $200,000,000 to a poverty-stricken country in South America...
Lennon: Where do people get off saying the Beatles should give $200,000,000 to South America? You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn't mean a damn thing. After they've eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles. You can pour money in forever. After Peru, then Harlem, then Britain. There is no one concert. We would have to dedicate the rest of our lives to one world concert tour, and I'm not ready for it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
And THAT used to be a liberal... my goodness, he sounds like a conservative in the interview, perhaps a liberterian...
That last paragraph is a keeper :)
John was right. Without freedom and economic democracy, charity money just goes down an endless rathole.
.daed si nhoJ
Wow...hardly sounds like a commie...
He's right, they are ripoffs. I hear only 15% of the LIVE 8 proceeds go to anything resembling saving the world.
Hard to believe that's the same guy who wrote that piece of elevator-music tripe "Imagine".
THAT and American Pie make me lose my lunch. Two worst songs..EVER!!
Sounds like John was growing old and wise. I guess the commies would say it was good he was cut down before he got too far away from the reservation.
Meaning they have his hippie-nirvana "legacy" without him repudiating it later on, which it sounds like he was starting to do
As a matter of perspective this shows how far back (and to the left) the libs have slid...
but to "imagine there is no country" or "imagine there is no religion" does.
The only thing I didn't like about this interview is that he refers to Yoko as "Mother." Ugh.
Yes, true...
I'd be interested to see what his views would be today...
NOW that we've sunk "The Mambo Kings," let's make a run at another winner, "Lennon."
This jukebox musical, which mines the John Lennon catalogue, opened to poor reviews in San Francisco in May. One critic said: "Imagine something awful."
The producers canceled a Boston engagement so they could do some more work on the show before its New York premiere.
But rather than bring in an experienced Broadway show doctor, they hired one Bob Eaton, a close friend of Yoko Ono's from Liverpool who once wrote a documentary-style musical about Lennon that ran in the West End 20 years ago.
Although the producers have gone on record saying the show is 40 percent new, cast members grumble that Eaton's revisions are cosmetic. He's clarified a plot that was almost impossible to follow in San Francisco, but "Lennon," the cast members say, is still saddled with a wacky concept — nine actors playing different facets of Lennon's personality.
Ono thinks the show's in good shape, and since she's calling the shots, "Lennon" probably won't undergo much more revision.
Indeed, Eaton's already back in England and isn't planning to return to New York until the first preview on July 7 (the show opens at the Broadhurst Aug. 4).
Ono, sources say, has always focused on the music, often at the expense of storytelling.
She is said to be thrilled with the use of a video at the end of the show in which Lennon sits with her at the piano and performs "Imagine" and then kisses her.
A production source says all of "Lennon" seems to be a "nostalgia trip" for Yoko.
Well, it certainly isn't a trip to the bank at this point. Ticket sales are weak. The advance is about $1 million and change — not very impressive for a musical about one of the most famous songwriters of all time.
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