SOME TIME in NEW YORK CITY JOHN LENNON 'S TOWN Hinckley, David
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Document 1 of 1 SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY JOHN LENNON 'S TOWN Hinckley, David. New York Daily News [New York, N.Y] 09 Mar 2005: 30. Abstract Nonetheless, all four, particularly [JOHN LENNON] and [Paul McCartney], took a liking to the town. Being that one of their major quests during their first years was to convince the world their music and messages could inspire more than teenage shrieking, New York was a good place to find validation. Both McCartney and Lennon enjoyed more than somewhat the attention of sophisticated and avant-garde artists. His next musical direction was somewhere else altogether. By 1971 he and [Yoko Ono] were keeping company with radical activists like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who were, of course, delighted to have Lennon's aura behind them. On Dec. 17 of that year, the Lennons made a rare live appearance, at an Apollo Theatre benefit for the wives of people killed in the Attica prison uprising. IN MARCH, around the time the FBI was telling Richard Nixon that Lennon might be part of a plot to disrupt the 1972 Republican convention, Lennon was handed a deportation order, citing a 1968 conviction for marijuana possession. Full Text CONSIDERING THAT both his first and final moments in the city drew saturation worldwide media coverage, it is mildly ironic that the reason John Lennon really loved New York was that he could walk around without anyone paying him any mind. Lennon arrived here at the well-documented moment of 1:20 p.m. on Feb. 7, 1964, aboard Pan American Flight 101. He was 23 years old and with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr comprised a rock 'n' roll band called the Beatles that would shortly become so popular they needed bodyguards to cross the street. Nonetheless, all four, particularly Lennon and McCartney, took a liking to the town. Being that one of their major quests during their first years was to convince the world their music and messages could inspire more than teenage shrieking, New York was a good place to find validation. Both McCartney and Lennon enjoyed more than somewhat the attention of sophisticated and avant-garde artists. Lennon also enjoyed the city on a more visceral level. He liked cities surrounded by water, as his native Liverpool is. He liked the fact New York stays open 24 hours, because like many musicians he did not work bankers' hours. On Aug. 13, 1971, then, Lennon boarded another jet at Heathrow Airport and flew to New York for good. While he would travel the world over the next nine years, he never returned to England - making New York his last home. BY 1971, Lennon had long since outlived his original image as the Beatles' "clever one." But exactly what he did become during his New York years remains, 25 years after his death, a matter of sharp ongoing debate. Did he lurch from dilettante radical chic to self-destructive drug- and booze-fueled indulgence to a life of lonely and quiet desperation in his apartment at the Dakota? Or did he find his honest inner voice, come to terms with his music and soothe his tortured soul through the simple peace of raising his young son Sean with the woman who completed him, Yoko Ono? Wherever the truth fell, it seems clear Lennon thought New York was the toppermost of the poppermost. "New York is what Rome used to be," he told biographer Ray Coleman. And he explored the city voraciously, on foot or by taxi. He took tea in the Palm Court at The Plaza. He shopped by whim on Madison Ave. His immersion had accelerated in late 1966 after he met Ono. Soon they were making music together, much of it as esoteric as "Two Virgins," which got worldwide attention for its nude cover photo and little for its musical content, which ran toward ambient and random sound. Even as he was recording primal screams, John could still write the peace-and-love anthem "Imagine," which came out around the time he moved permanently to New York. But his next musical direction was somewhere else altogether. By 1971 he and Ono were keeping company with radical activists like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, who were, of course, delighted to have Lennon's aura behind them. On Dec. 17 of that year, the Lennons made a rare live appearance, at an Apollo Theatre benefit for the wives of people killed in the Attica prison uprising. And in January 1972 they joined up with Elephant's Memory, a bar band with activist sympathies. Together they created "Some Time in New York City," a double album with a potpourri of live and studio material that defended radical activists Angela Davis and John Sinclair and attacked the Brits over Northern Ireland. All this got the ear of the Nixon administration, which by early 1972 was moving to crack down on peace creeps and other subversives by any means necessary. IN MARCH, around the time the FBI was telling Richard Nixon that Lennon might be part of a plot to disrupt the 1972 Republican convention, Lennon was handed a deportation order, citing a 1968 conviction for marijuana possession. He appealed and the world watched for three years until, in October 1975, the state Supreme Court overturned the deportation order. In July 1976, he was given a green card. By then, his world had changed again. AFTER "SOME Time in New York City," he quickly turned out three more albums: "Mind Games," "Walls and Bridges" and "Rock 'n' Roll." He called this period his "lost weekend," 18 months when he was separated from Ono and not always behaving himself. But he hadn't forgotten how to rock. "Walls and Bridges" and its single, the rollicking "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," hit No. 1 in late 1974, which led to both his final stage appearance, during an Elton John show at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 28, and his reconciliation with Ono, whom Elton invited to the show. By January 1975 Yoko was pregnant, at which point she and Lennon stepped back from music to their apartment at the Dakota to raise their son. As the boy grew, Lennon would put him into the baby carriage and wheel him down the pathways of Central Park. He spent thousands of dollars at FAO Schwartz. He loved Forbidden Planet, a game store in the Village, and he and Yoko were regulars at Caf La Fortuna on W. 71st St., where they would linger over an afternoon beverage and a sweet. The music resumed in the fall of 1980, with the joint album "Double Fantasy." While Lennon wasn't quite accurate when he said he "hadn't picked up a guitar for five years," it was true that one way or another he was "no longer riding on the merry-go-round." Instead, he walked the streets like anyone else. THIS, BIOGRAPHER Coleman has written, "was a trait that enabled him to break free from the strictures of stardom. It might also have cost him his life." Late in the evening of Dec. 8, 1980, a stranger walked up to John Lennon outside the Dakota and shot him to death. SONGBOOK CHALLENGE TODAY'S QUESTION: The Dakota stood in for "The Bramford" in what horror film? ANSWER TO LAST QUESTION: "Can't Stop the Music" Indexing (details) People: Lennon, John, McCartney, Paul, Ono, Yoko Title: SOME TIME IN NEW YORK CITY JOHN LENNON'S TOWN: [SPORTS FINAL Edition] Authors: Hinckley, David Publication title: New York Daily News Pages: 30 Number of pages: 0 Publication year: 2005 Publication Date: Mar 9, 2005 Year: 2005 Section: NEWS Publisher: Daily News, L.P. Place of Publication: New York, N.Y. Country of publication: United States Source type: Newspapers Language of Publication: English Document Type: NEWSPAPER ProQuest Document ID: 305940590 Document URL: http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/ docview/305940590?accountid=10226 Copyright: Copyright Daily News, L.P. Mar 9, 2005 Last Updated: 2010-07-30 Database: 2 databases - ProQuest Central - National Newspapers Premier << Link to document in ProQuest Contact ProQuest © 2010 ProQuest LLC.All rights reserved. - Terms and Conditions.