John Lennon: The Wenner Tapes . . .

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/lennon_wenner.shtml

An in-depth portrait of John Lennon, told through the audio of Jann Wenner's seminal 1970 New York interview for Rolling Stone magazine.

The most famous interview Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner ever did was an extensive interrogation, on tape, of Lennon shortly after the Beatles had broken up.

Lennon and Ono had already given the magazine a blessing of sorts by posing nude for its first anniversary issue in late 1968. Their's was a relationship of trust. An edited version of Wenner's interview went to press in 1971, and the two issues in which it appeared both sold out overnight.

The Lennon interview remains one of the most important ever done with a popular musician. Lennon himself regarded it as definitive.

- more (including link to audio) . . .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/lennon_wenner.shtml

[mattclearing]

1. Rolling Stone has a podcast of this up right now.

It's in the current Lennon feature on their website.

www.rollingstone.com

[Dogmudgeon]

2. He was shot by a conservative Ultra-Fundy, wasn't he?

Why isn't this mentioned at least occasionally?

--p!

[ClusterFreak]

7. The press likes "deranged loner" or "lone nut"....kinda like Oswald.

[RandomKoolzip]

9. Chapman wasn't an "ultra-fundy."

He was insane. He wasn't much of a fan of Lennon's music (according to friends, Mark David Chapman's real hero was, uh, Todd Rundgren), but he had fixated on the fact that Lennon was successful and the world hung on his every word and song, while he, MDC, was a loser and a nobody. Eventually the insanity got to be too much, and he decided to shoot John Lennon.

And yes, I've read all the conspiracy theories about Lennon's assassination, from Fenton Bressler's "Chapman was a Manchurian Assassin for the CIA!" nonsense to the guy who thinks Stephen King actually killed John Lennon. And all of it is horseshit. John was shot by a deranged motherfucker with barely any political conciousness, let alone an "ultra-fundy" or a paid assassin of some sort.

Having said that, it IS kinda weird that Lennon was killed right after Reagan was elected, and having him shot matches the "suspicious deaths of prominent liberals" paradigm that the US is famous for since WWII. But Having read every scrap of info I could glean about Lennon and his murder, I'm fairly confident that it was indeed the work of one "lone nut."

[noonwitch]

10. He was a schizophrenic

Chapman thought he was Lennon sometimes, and sometimes he thought God wanted him to kill Lennon. He had been involved in christian groups in his younger years that had gone overboard on the anti-Beatles thing after the "We're more popular than God" quote.

A local radio DJ called the prison Chapman is at one time and talked to one of the guards. The DJ was asking the guard if he could just accidentally shoot Chapman. The guard said that Chapman is not a problem inmate, as long as he takes his meds, and that he was one of the easier inmates to manage there.

I don't think he should ever get out, but I do hope they someday discover a cause and a side-effect free treatment for schizophrenia. It's a sad condition.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. Somewhere in my stuff is a first edition of "Lennon Remembers"...

...the book Wenner published in 1970, containing that interview.

My thoughts initially were "You were a fucking BEATLE...shouldn't you be at least a LITTLE bit more HAPPY?"

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1859846009.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,32,-59_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[mattclearing]

4. Of course not.

Lennon found being a Beatle to be extremely demanding. Fame became a prison for him.

He then used it as a vehicle to challenge commonly-held beliefs. Most people just use it as a vehicle to make more money.

God bless him.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

5. Yeah, I understand that NOW, but not when I first read the book...

...and I have a much deeper understanding of the mixed blessing called "fame," but at the time I was chuckin' around 70 pound boxes in a warehouse for 8 hours a day at $1.75 per hour and saw things a little differently.

:toast:

[mattclearing]

6. Gotcha.

I can imagine the world had a hard time feeling sorry for him when he was alive, wealthy, and preaching.

[Wilms]

8. Hey. Thanks for posting this... n/t