|
Nowhere
Man:
The Final Days Of John Lennon
A
Conversation with Robert Rosen author of Nowhere
Man
by
Sydney L. Murray
EXCERPT:
 John
Lennon was an extremely complex man who inspired
millions of people to believe in the power of
love and the possibility of peace on Earth. I
had the opportunity to speak with Robert Rosen
a New York City journalist and writer, whose book
"Nowhere Man, The Final Days of John Lennon"
was recently released. His story is truly stranger
than fiction. I've included part of the book's
introduction, along with our conversation. After
reading this book I felt an affinity for Lennon;
his life with all of its torments, joys and pains
was real to me. He struggled to be better and
sometimes succeeded and sometimes didn't, but
he never really stopped trying. "Twenty-four
hours after John Lennon was murdered on December
8, 1980, his personal assistant Fred Seaman, a
close friend of mine came to my apartment. He
was visibly shaken, his eyes blood shot, tears
streaming down his face. There was work to be
done he said. The previous summer, during an extended
stay in Bermuda, John had told him should anything
happen to him, it was Seaman's job to write the
true story of his final years. It would not be
the official tale of a happy, eccentric household
raising Sean and baking bread while Yoko ran the
family business. Instead it would be the story
of a tormented superstar, a prisoner of his fame
locked in his bedroom, raving about Jesus Christ
while a retinue of servants tended to his every
need. Still it was not until Wednesday October
21, (1981) that I began the process of transcribing
Lennon's diaries. It was exhausting work that
continued unabated until the end of November.
No matter how much I transcribed there was always
more; the task seemed endless. I forced myself
into a routine that rarely varied: I woke at 5AM
rolled out of bed and tore into the journals.
Then for the next 16 hours, fueled by coffee and
amphetamines, I wrestled with Lennon's scrawls
and codes and symbols. As I transcribed these
words on my IBM Selectric, I said them out loud
like an incantation, and began to feel what seemed
to be Lennon's energy flowing through me. For
six weeks I lived like a monk, confronting on
a daily basis The Gospel According to John. To
get a visceral sense of Lennon's life, I ate the
foods that he ate. I fasted, starving off 12 pounds
until I'd achieved a weight of 138, close to Lennon's
135. I lived as he would have lived, but without
Yoko, without Sean, without a staff of maids,
cooks, governesses, chauffeurs, and other assorted
servants, seers and personal assistants. Then
on January 4, 1982 Ono fired Seaman. He assured
me the project would continue; he'd given John
Lennon his word that he'd tell his true story.
Yoko, he said would not object. On February 9,
1982 I flew to Jamaica. When I returned to New
York on February 27, my apartment had been ransacked.
Everything I'd been working on-the diaries, the
photocopies of the diaries, the transcripts, the
manuscripts, the tapes, the photos-had all been
taken. There was no sign of forced entry. It was
Seaman. He had the keys. It was only then that
I realized that virtually everything Seaman had
told me about why we were doing the project was
a lie. I sank into a state of near paralysis but
managed to file a complaint with the police. Lennon's
diaries haunted me. I'd wake up in the morning
and details would come flooding back. I began
taking notes on everything I could remember. By
mid-April I'd put together a manuscript that included
the information from the diaries and everything
that had happened since the day Lennon was murdered.
Nowhere Man is a work of both investigative journalism
and imagination. I have used the memory of Lennon's
diaries as a road map to the truth. But I have
used no material from the diaries. The result
of this confluence of information, imagination
and intuition is the story of what it was like
to be John Lennon."
Robert
Rosen, New York City
Vision: What was the prevalent emotion Lennon
recorded in his diaries?
Robert
Rosen: What came across in the diaries was a combination
of boredom, pain, isolation and confusion. What
astonished me about the diaries is here's an ex-Beatle,
who has 150 million dollars, who is living in
the Dakota, downtown from where I was living in
Washington Heights at the time, and you would
think that somebody in this position would have
a life which is completely different from mine.
At the time I was a starving artist living in
a garret. Yet, his diaries seemed to be so strikingly
similar to my own sense of being isolated and
adrift in New York City. He had all these things
and yet it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
He had a few more zeroes at the end of his monthly
living expenses, but in terms of what he was doing
hour-to-hour, day-to-day it was not terribly different
from what I was doing, which was essentially sitting
alone in my room writing in a notebook.
Vision:
Was Lennon a spiritual man?
RR:
Part of what made him such a compelling personality
was the conflict in his life between the material
and the spiritual. As I said in my book, part
of him longed to follow the path of Ghandi and
Jesus. He would meditate for hours and try to
follow the way. And yet the other part of him
longed for carnal pleasures and more wealth and
just liked to sit around smoking dope. So the
answer is yes. Part of him was very spiritual,
but he had so much power, and so much fame and
wealth that it made it really difficult to be
a full time spiritual person and that was the
heart of his struggle: to overcome the corruption
that power and wealth brought.
Vision:
Did Lennon seek help to combat his psychological
demons?
RR:
His whole life seems to have been about dealing
with the abandonment by his father and the death
of his mother when he was 17. He tried through
the Primal Therapy with Dr. Arthur Janoff; meditation
with the Maharishi; taking LSD; his relationship
with Yoko Ono; and the acquisition of great fame
and wealth. Yet, each thing he tried didn't work.
He came to the conclusion he would never be "cured."
He accepted his problems and I don't think he
believed in the last five years (of his life)
that going to a psychiatrist, psychologist or
a guru could possibly help. He believed he had
tried it all, nothing worked and the closest thing
he found to someone who could really help him
was Yoko Ono. That's what he had and that's what
he was staying with.
Vision:
How would you describe his relationship with Yoko
Ono?
RR:
They had been married 11 years at his death. She
was the mother of his child and he certainly believed
in Yoko's powers whatever they might be. I think
in part he felt cut off from Yoko; he didn't see
her as much as he wanted. He was upstairs in his
bedroom watching TV, smoking weed, or programming
dreams and she was downstairs in Studio One conducting
business. Or he was in Bermuda, working on the
demo tape for Double Fantasy and she was in New
York doing what she wanted. Lennon spent a lot
of time longing for the simple pleasure of spending
time with his wife. They were having marital problems-their
sex life was not what he wanted it to be and he
was frustrated by that too.
Vision:
Why did Lennon and Ono go to such extremes to
convince the world of their love?
RR:
The idea of projecting this image was important
to them. They wanted the world to think that they
were the ideal, happy couple. Part of it was a
propaganda war against Paul McCartney. It was
very important to Lennon that he was doing better
than McCartney, that he was happier than McCartney.
I went into great detail in the book about how
he was extremely jealous of McCartney, who was
constantly putting out hit after hit while Lennon
was isolated in the Dakota doing nothing. McCartney
was happily married to Linda, had a big happy
family and that drove Lennon nuts, he was very
jealous. Lennon wanted to be the one who was happier,
had more money, had more hit records. So Lennon
and Yoko were projecting this happy image to the
media. This was part of their magic. According
to magical theory, if they were projecting this
image in the media, and the world perceived it
this way, then it was true. The idea of them being
an eccentric, but happily married couple was not
entirely false. There was a grain of truth in
the myth. They were just amplifying it.
Vision:
Yoko's influence over Lennon in the mystical arts
was very strong.
RR:
There is absolutely no question that Yoko got
him into all of the occult stuff because she was
very into it. She believed in numerology and astrology
in part because these are Japanese traditions.
In 1977, Ono went to Columbia, in South America,
to meet with a witch, whom she paid $60,000 to
teach her to cast magical spells. A lot of this
interest in the occult was driven by the fact
that they felt powerless, there were always legal
battles and the perpetual money squabbles with
Apple Records. They were trying to find some way
to fight the lawyers and the people at Apple with
something that was guaranteed to work. They were
seeking security in an insecure world. Part of
what makes magic work is the belief that it works.
Also behind their magic was their incredible wealth
which allowed them to influence people. So perhaps
there was something to their magic.
Vision:
What inspiration would Lennon want to pass on
to his fans?
RR:
Part of John's message going back to 1965, was
that he didn't want people to follow him or see
him as a Christ-like figure, guru or someone with
all of the answers. He wanted people to seek the
answers in themselves. To think for themselves
just like the song says. To not accept things
at face value, to look at things as they are and
to think about them. And to understand that no
matter how much wealth, fame and power you have
there are still many things in your life that
you can't control. What Lennon really wanted to
do was to lead a pure life. That was his constant
struggle and I think if he was trying to pass
a message on it would be to try and follow "the
way" as he tried to. Sometimes he succeeded
and sometimes he failed, but he did try. He could
have just said, "Forget it, I'm going to
enjoy all my money, houses and travel." But
he had all of these things and still struggled
to stay on the path and follow the way, which
was very inspiring. He fought against corruption,
the corruption of himself.
Vision:
Why do Lennon and the Beatles still hold such
amazing fascination and devotion for so many people?
RR:
For one thing it's really good music. The Beatles
appeared on the scene right after Kennedy was
killed and there was this profound depression
hanging over the United States. The Beatles arrived
from England and they were joyous. They turned
around the entire energy of the time. They were
very talented musicians and all four of them were
smart and clever people. Lennon in particular
became this Christ-like figure because part of
the message he was putting out was very Christ-like
about the word being love. They were preaching
love. Between the four of them they had the power
to change the consciousness of a generation. Culturally
it's one of the most significant things that happened
in the 20th century. It's a fascinating story
which is almost biblical in its power. Vision:
How has this connection to Lennon affected your
life? RR: This is something that goes back 20
years, to 1980 when I first started working on
this project with my former friend and college
newspaper editor Fred Seaman. This is an incredibly
powerful story that I've been carrying for 20
years, and I'd been trying for 20 years to find
a way to tell it. It's been a psychic burden because
people had been telling me, "You can't tell
this story, it's too dangerous, it will never
be published." There have been times over
the last 20 years when I've said, "Maybe
they're right. Maybe I should just try and move
beyond this and get on with my life and career."
But the story itself was so powerful I couldn't
do that. Whatever I tried doing, the story would
always come back to haunt me and demand to be
told. And finally after 20 years, I don't know
what happened-the stars lined up, divine intervention,
who knows? All of a sudden everything came together
and my world exploded in a very positive way.
I always felt it was my obligation as a writer
to tell this story. It amazed me that no one would
allow it to be told in a public forum. People
told me that it was the most incredible story
they had ever heard. I'm very relieved that after
all this time I've been able to tell it. I tried
to tell this story honestly and objectively without
an ax to grind. I tried with my book to tell the
truth as John Lennon saw it. I hope that I succeeded
and with the way the book is being received I
think people are picking up on it.
Nowhere
Man, is available online on at: http://www.softskull.com
OR Put Book Cover with Amazon Affiliate LinkNowhere
Man The Final Days Of John Lennon
A
Conversation with Robert Rosen author of Nowhere
Man
by
Sydney L. Murray
EXCERPT:
John
Lennon was an extremely complex man who inspired
millions of people to believe in the power of
love and the possibility of peace on Earth. I
had the opportunity to speak with Robert Rosen
a New York City journalist and writer, whose book
"Nowhere Man, The Final Days of John Lennon"
was recently released. His story is truly stranger
than fiction. I've included part of the book's
introduction, along with our conversation. After
reading this book I felt an affinity for Lennon;
his life with all of its torments, joys and pains
was real to me. He struggled to be better and
sometimes succeeded and sometimes didn't, but
he never really stopped trying. "Twenty-four
hours after John Lennon was murdered on December
8, 1980, his personal assistant Fred Seaman, a
close friend of mine came to my apartment. He
was visibly shaken, his eyes blood shot, tears
streaming down his face. There was work to be
done he said. The previous summer, during an extended
stay in Bermuda, John had told him should anything
happen to him, it was Seaman's job to write the
true story of his final years. It would not be
the official tale of a happy, eccentric household
raising Sean and baking bread while Yoko ran the
family business. Instead it would be the story
of a tormented superstar, a prisoner of his fame
locked in his bedroom, raving about Jesus Christ
while a retinue of servants tended to his every
need. Still it was not until Wednesday October
21, (1981) that I began the process of transcribing
Lennon's diaries. It was exhausting work that
continued unabated until the end of November.
No matter how much I transcribed there was always
more; the task seemed endless. I forced myself
into a routine that rarely varied: I woke at 5AM
rolled out of bed and tore into the journals.
Then for the next 16 hours, fueled by coffee and
amphetamines, I wrestled with Lennon's scrawls
and codes and symbols. As I transcribed these
words on my IBM Selectric, I said them out loud
like an incantation, and began to feel what seemed
to be Lennon's energy flowing through me. For
six weeks I lived like a monk, confronting on
a daily basis The Gospel According to John. To
get a visceral sense of Lennon's life, I ate the
foods that he ate. I fasted, starving off 12 pounds
until I'd achieved a weight of 138, close to Lennon's
135. I lived as he would have lived, but without
Yoko, without Sean, without a staff of maids,
cooks, governesses, chauffeurs, and other assorted
servants, seers and personal assistants. Then
on January 4, 1982 Ono fired Seaman. He assured
me the project would continue; he'd given John
Lennon his word that he'd tell his true story.
Yoko, he said would not object. On February 9,
1982 I flew to Jamaica. When I returned to New
York on February 27, my apartment had been ransacked.
Everything I'd been working on-the diaries, the
photocopies of the diaries, the transcripts, the
manuscripts, the tapes, the photos-had all been
taken. There was no sign of forced entry. It was
Seaman. He had the keys. It was only then that
I realized that virtually everything Seaman had
told me about why we were doing the project was
a lie. I sank into a state of near paralysis but
managed to file a complaint with the police. Lennon's
diaries haunted me. I'd wake up in the morning
and details would come flooding back. I began
taking notes on everything I could remember. By
mid-April I'd put together a manuscript that included
the information from the diaries and everything
that had happened since the day Lennon was murdered.
Nowhere Man is a work of both investigative journalism
and imagination. I have used the memory of Lennon's
diaries as a road map to the truth. But I have
used no material from the diaries. The result
of this confluence of information, imagination
and intuition is the story of what it was like
to be John Lennon."
Robert
Rosen, New York City
Vision: What was the prevalent emotion Lennon
recorded in his diaries?
Robert
Rosen: What came across in the diaries was a combination
of boredom, pain, isolation and confusion. What
astonished me about the diaries is here's an ex-Beatle,
who has 150 million dollars, who is living in
the Dakota, downtown from where I was living in
Washington Heights at the time, and you would
think that somebody in this position would have
a life which is completely different from mine.
At the time I was a starving artist living in
a garret. Yet, his diaries seemed to be so strikingly
similar to my own sense of being isolated and
adrift in New York City. He had all these things
and yet it didn't seem to make much of a difference.
He had a few more zeroes at the end of his monthly
living expenses, but in terms of what he was doing
hour-to-hour, day-to-day it was not terribly different
from what I was doing, which was essentially sitting
alone in my room writing in a notebook.
Vision:
Was Lennon a spiritual man?
RR:
Part of what made him such a compelling personality
was the conflict in his life between the material
and the spiritual. As I said in my book, part
of him longed to follow the path of Ghandi and
Jesus. He would meditate for hours and try to
follow the way. And yet the other part of him
longed for carnal pleasures and more wealth and
just liked to sit around smoking dope. So the
answer is yes. Part of him was very spiritual,
but he had so much power, and so much fame and
wealth that it made it really difficult to be
a full time spiritual person and that was the
heart of his struggle: to overcome the corruption
that power and wealth brought.
Vision:
Did Lennon seek help to combat his psychological
demons?
RR:
His whole life seems to have been about dealing
with the abandonment by his father and the death
of his mother when he was 17. He tried through
the Primal Therapy with Dr. Arthur Janoff; meditation
with the Maharishi; taking LSD; his relationship
with Yoko Ono; and the acquisition of great fame
and wealth. Yet, each thing he tried didn't work.
He came to the conclusion he would never be "cured."
He accepted his problems and I don't think he
believed in the last five years (of his life)
that going to a psychiatrist, psychologist or
a guru could possibly help. He believed he had
tried it all, nothing worked and the closest thing
he found to someone who could really help him
was Yoko Ono. That's what he had and that's what
he was staying with.
Vision:
How would you describe his relationship with Yoko
Ono?
RR:
They had been married 11 years at his death. She
was the mother of his child and he certainly believed
in Yoko's powers whatever they might be. I think
in part he felt cut off from Yoko; he didn't see
her as much as he wanted. He was upstairs in his
bedroom watching TV, smoking weed, or programming
dreams and she was downstairs in Studio One conducting
business. Or he was in Bermuda, working on the
demo tape for Double Fantasy and she was in New
York doing what she wanted. Lennon spent a lot
of time longing for the simple pleasure of spending
time with his wife. They were having marital problems-their
sex life was not what he wanted it to be and he
was frustrated by that too.
Vision:
Why did Lennon and Ono go to such extremes to
convince the world of their love?
RR:
The idea of projecting this image was important
to them. They wanted the world to think that they
were the ideal, happy couple. Part of it was a
propaganda war against Paul McCartney. It was
very important to Lennon that he was doing better
than McCartney, that he was happier than McCartney.
I went into great detail in the book about how
he was extremely jealous of McCartney, who was
constantly putting out hit after hit while Lennon
was isolated in the Dakota doing nothing. McCartney
was happily married to Linda, had a big happy
family and that drove Lennon nuts, he was very
jealous. Lennon wanted to be the one who was happier,
had more money, had more hit records. So Lennon
and Yoko were projecting this happy image to the
media. This was part of their magic. According
to magical theory, if they were projecting this
image in the media, and the world perceived it
this way, then it was true. The idea of them being
an eccentric, but happily married couple was not
entirely false. There was a grain of truth in
the myth. They were just amplifying it.
Vision:
Yoko's influence over Lennon in the mystical arts
was very strong.
RR:
There is absolutely no question that Yoko got
him into all of the occult stuff because she was
very into it. She believed in numerology and astrology
in part because these are Japanese traditions.
In 1977, Ono went to Columbia, in South America,
to meet with a witch, whom she paid $60,000 to
teach her to cast magical spells. A lot of this
interest in the occult was driven by the fact
that they felt powerless, there were always legal
battles and the perpetual money squabbles with
Apple Records. They were trying to find some way
to fight the lawyers and the people at Apple with
something that was guaranteed to work. They were
seeking security in an insecure world. Part of
what makes magic work is the belief that it works.
Also behind their magic was their incredible wealth
which allowed them to influence people. So perhaps
there was something to their magic.
Vision:
What inspiration would Lennon want to pass on
to his fans?
RR:
Part of John's message going back to 1965, was
that he didn't want people to follow him or see
him as a Christ-like figure, guru or someone with
all of the answers. He wanted people to seek the
answers in themselves. To think for themselves
just like the song says. To not accept things
at face value, to look at things as they are and
to think about them. And to understand that no
matter how much wealth, fame and power you have
there are still many things in your life that
you can't control. What Lennon really wanted to
do was to lead a pure life. That was his constant
struggle and I think if he was trying to pass
a message on it would be to try and follow "the
way" as he tried to. Sometimes he succeeded
and sometimes he failed, but he did try. He could
have just said, "Forget it, I'm going to
enjoy all my money, houses and travel." But
he had all of these things and still struggled
to stay on the path and follow the way, which
was very inspiring. He fought against corruption,
the corruption of himself.
Vision:
Why do Lennon and the Beatles still hold such
amazing fascination and devotion for so many people?
RR:
For one thing it's really good music. The Beatles
appeared on the scene right after Kennedy was
killed and there was this profound depression
hanging over the United States. The Beatles arrived
from England and they were joyous. They turned
around the entire energy of the time. They were
very talented musicians and all four of them were
smart and clever people. Lennon in particular
became this Christ-like figure because part of
the message he was putting out was very Christ-like
about the word being love. They were preaching
love. Between the four of them they had the power
to change the consciousness of a generation. Culturally
it's one of the most significant things that happened
in the 20th century. It's a fascinating story
which is almost biblical in its power. Vision:
How has this connection to Lennon affected your
life? RR: This is something that goes back 20
years, to 1980 when I first started working on
this project with my former friend and college
newspaper editor Fred Seaman. This is an incredibly
powerful story that I've been carrying for 20
years, and I'd been trying for 20 years to find
a way to tell it. It's been a psychic burden because
people had been telling me, "You can't tell
this story, it's too dangerous, it will never
be published." There have been times over
the last 20 years when I've said, "Maybe
they're right. Maybe I should just try and move
beyond this and get on with my life and career."
But the story itself was so powerful I couldn't
do that. Whatever I tried doing, the story would
always come back to haunt me and demand to be
told. And finally after 20 years, I don't know
what happened-the stars lined up, divine intervention,
who knows? All of a sudden everything came together
and my world exploded in a very positive way.
I always felt it was my obligation as a writer
to tell this story. It amazed me that no one would
allow it to be told in a public forum. People
told me that it was the most incredible story
they had ever heard. I'm very relieved that after
all this time I've been able to tell it. I tried
to tell this story honestly and objectively without
an ax to grind. I tried with my book to tell the
truth as John Lennon saw it. I hope that I succeeded
and with the way the book is being received I
think people are picking up on it.
Nowhere
Man, available online at: http://www.softskull.com
OR Put Book Cover with Amazon Affiliate Link
|
