August 19, 2021 • 33 mins
John Lennon’s second wife and creative muse, Yoko Ono, recalls their time as one of the most simultaneously beloved and feared couples of 1970s New York City. Yoko’s tales include drug busts, government surveillance, robbery, extortion, fear, and paranoia.
All this and more in the season two premiere of BLOOD ON THE TRACKS: The John Lennon Story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Blood on the Tracks is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. John Lennon was a musical genius
and one of the most beloved cultural figures of the
twentieth century. His songs inspired dreamers to imagine, his search
for the truth gave power to the people. But some
thought he dreamed too much. Others thought he was too powerful.
(00:23):
So he was followed, he was threatened, he was declared
a danger to the United States, and in night he
was assassinated. This is his story told by his so
called friends. This is special Agent Jim Steele with the
(00:46):
Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double oh
nine dash zero eight dash zero four nine one, case
subject of Lennon, John Winston oh No. This information pertains
to a period and in December seven interview subject as
Yoko oh Oh Lennon interview number zero dash zero two
dash zero six one dash nine eight one. We call
(01:08):
number one December. If John and I did something that
the people didn't like, it was my fault. And if
we did something successful, John about the credit that was
(01:30):
a learning process. I think that life is a process
of learning. We're given each of us are guing the
light we use the light to learn the things we
have to learn. John and I had to learn those things,
especially me. I had to learn the experience of humiliation.
(01:56):
It was probably good that I learned it, otherwise I
would have stayed at the proud yoga on now And
in a funny sort of way, I felt the weight
of the beatles break up because John expected all of
that to be replaced by me. All of us are
(02:18):
trying to win some kind of fight. Jaunt. Did I
do you do? The fight of learning of light? The
fight and experienced the kind of fight that leads to
blood on the Transah Yeah. Year one, John Lennon and
(03:03):
Yogo Werner, they called us subversives. They said we were dangerous,
a threat to national security, enemies of the state. That
(03:27):
wasn't just the American people talking. The American government said this.
As soon as John and I stepped foot in New
York City in nineteen seventy one. The American government wanted
us out. They said we were bad for the impressionable youth.
You know, the impressionable youth as in the eighteen to
twenty one year old who could buy records. But I've
never been able to cast a vote in their life
(03:49):
until now. So they followed us, They tapped our phones,
they tracked our every movement. Yeah, they even change in
their own rules to get us, you know, just because
they had a fire on John. Not just one file,
lots of files. The files ran up the chain of
(04:12):
command all the way to Hoover Nixon. But they needed
a legitimate reason to kick John out, so they leaned
on the cannabis charge from a few years before. That
was their excuse, the reason for why John Lennon was
not fit for a green card. The cannabis charge was
from back in London, nine October. It was late morning.
(04:37):
John and I were in bed. We weren't wearing much,
which was normal for us, you know. Recently John had
gotten a tip from newspaper friend thought he was going
to be the next target of London's drug squad. The
squad wasn't just feared, they were entitled. They were the
same entitled group that busted down Donovan's drawer at what
one thirty in the morning for what some hash the
(04:58):
same squad that found us and coke on making teeth.
One perhaps doesn't ask for responsibilities, Perhaps one has given responsibilities.
One One News pushed into the limelight in this particular sphere,
rather than ask him to be asked to be pushed
into this in any way, merely asked to be my
(05:21):
private life, to be left alone, so as it were.
The drug squad was led by Sergeant Norman Pilcher. Pilcher
was on his own crusade, his own trip. Everyone knew
he was going after rock and rollers, and everyone also
knew that he was dirty. He planted evidence, he wrote
(05:41):
false rewards. Half of the arrest that he made in
the late sixties were probably frame ups. It's true. He
was convicted of perjury years later and they sent him
to jail. Earlier that morning, John had vacuum to the flat.
Jimmie Hendricks had once lived there amongst others, and John
(06:02):
was just being extra careful that there was no evidence
hanging around that could be used against us in case
his friend's tip was legitimate. If those walls could talk,
you know. In fact, at the time, we weren't doing
any drugs. We were on a microbiotic diet, no drugs,
no caffeine. Even so, we were in bed. There was
(06:28):
a knock on the door. Someone on the other side
of the door yelled something about a warrant. I looked
at John and panicked, what should we do? We knew
exactly who it was. We knew it was Piltra, and
we had nothing to hide, but still feeling a panic
came over me. John said, don't answer the door, so
we didn't. They kept knocking, They got louder, more voices.
(06:52):
They were trying the doriendal, and suddenly there was a
commotion at the rear of the flat. John left out
of bed and ran out back, where he found one
of Pilcher's officers trying to get inside through a rear window.
John was in his underwear with his hands on top
of the window, pushing it down while the officer outside
was trying to pry it open. At this point I
(07:13):
think John was beginning to panic as well. The officer
at the window was yelling that he was going to
break the window if he had to. It didn't matter
that John was John Lennon or that he was a beatle.
The police didn't care. Actually it worked against us. The
beatle thing. Being a beatles what got John in this
(07:36):
mess in the first place. John knew he wasn't going
to be able to hold back a team of determined
police officers, so he relented. He told the man at
the window to stand down and he would go open
the front door. There were seven of them, detective sergeants,
detective constables, all policewomen, dog handlers, and of course, Sergeant Pilcher.
(08:00):
They barged inside the flat. Once John had unlocked the door.
Piltre had victory in his eyes. Before he even stepped
foot in the place. You could just see it written
on his face that he was about to bust the
John Lennon, the one who was bigger than Jesus Pulture
told the dog handlers to let the dogs loose. Their
(08:21):
names were Yogi and Boo Boo. I'm not kidding what
you gonna do about a yo game. They sniffed around
the flat while John argued with Pilcher and the others.
John was getting angry. He knew there was nothing illegal
in the place, and he kept telling Pilture there was nothing.
Over and over. John argued that just because he was
(08:43):
a rocky musician didn't mean that he was sitting on
a pilot drugs. Yogi and Boo Boo told a different story. Allegedly,
they found grass in a binoculars case. Grass and film
canister and more grass and a cigarette roller, something like
an ounce total. It was bullshit. It wasn't ours. We
(09:07):
never proved that it wasn't ours, or that Piltre had
planted the evidence. Python did a funny sketch about him
with a pultry character was arresting someone and saying, I'm
charging you with the illegal possession of whatever we can
happen to have down there. Pultre did have to face
questions from the Home Secretary, however, who wanted to know
why so many officers had been used for such a
(09:27):
small bust. Pilcher's response was that he thought he'd be
busting some wild sex party again because John was a beatle.
That was what he thought of us. He couldn't imagine
that a rock star could just be enjoying a lazy
morning in bed with his wife. Well, technically we weren't
(09:47):
married quite yet. In a few months time we would be.
But that's the thing. What Piltre couldn't imagine, what he
couldn't see. It was the same thing that the whole
world couldn't see. They couldn't see John as anything but
a beatle. They couldn't see him without his myth As
(10:13):
John began to extract himself from that myth, his fans
in England got confused and angry and looked for someone
to blame for their anger and confusion. Of course, they
directed it at me at the experience of humiliation, because
(10:33):
I was the one who took their beetle away from them.
I was the one who opened his eyes and woke
him up. I was the one who liberated him. I
(11:08):
loved John for John, not for being famous, or being
a beetle or any of that. I didn't even know
John Lennon the Beatle when I first met him, which
people find hard to believe because the group was so
famous at the time. I knew of the phenomenon of
the Beatles, and I knew Ringo's name, I think subconsciously,
because Ringo means apple in Japanese. I don't think John
(11:32):
even knew who John was until we got together. He
said himself that our relationship brought out the best in him.
He said something like the king is always killed by
his courtiers, not his enemies. That the psycho fans surrounding
the king do whatever they need to do in order
to keep him on that throne. They overfeed him over
(11:52):
drug him, over indulge him. But I was able to
extract him from that fate about It wasn't easy. John
was difficult, and that should have been his nickname, the
Difficult Beetle. And then the nineteen seventies were difficult decade
for us. Our marriage was tested, our trust was tested,
(12:15):
our love was tested. There are a lot of awful
things that happened in the seventies to John and me
that I would really rather not get into al We
spent a lot of time apart before we reconciled. You know,
I spent too many nights alone and afraid, my entire
(12:35):
body just shaking, you know, just completely and utterly alone
in our apartment near Central Park, where we settled in
nineteen seventy three. Once it was clear we were going
to be in town for a while, John was out
god knows where, in Los Angeles or somewhere else in
New York City, or maybe even somewhere in between. There
(12:57):
were moments when I thought we wouldn't pulter. More moments
when I thought John would wind up dead, shot to
death by Phil Specter, the crazy pastor, or silenced for
good by the FBI men who wouldn't leave him alone.
There were always fans hanging out outside the Dakota. The
(13:19):
most of the time, they were friendly and respectable, and
John was friendly back to them. But occasionally things got
out of hand. Fans would get past the lobby and
find their way up to our place, apartment seventy two
up on the seventh floor. They just walk right in
the door, looking for John to fight. That kind of
(13:40):
thing terrified me, never mind that I had suspicions about
the apartment to begin with. It used to belong to
Robert Ryan, and his wife had died there, which is
why he left it and we moved him. You know,
Robert Ryan, right Crossfire, the wild Bunch. Anyways, I used
to think the place was haunted or at least a
(14:00):
little unsettled, and that it was because Robert Bryant's wife
had died there. Maybe she didn't want us there, maybe
she didn't want anyone there. I know that I didn't
want those fans in the apartment. I don't even know
if they knew that. It wasn't okay that they would
do that, just come in. I hired security to help us,
but it made John even more uncomfortable. He used to say,
(14:22):
if they're going to get you, they're gonna get you.
So just killed the bodyguard first. I'm getting off track.
As I said earlier, there's a lot I don't want
to talk about. I want to talk about the good things,
the happy moments, the moments when all our hard work
paid off. I want to talk about October nine. October nine,
(14:48):
that was the day Shawn was born, our son. It
was also John's thirty five birthday the same day. We
were able to enjoy the indescribable joy of that day
in the way we hadn't been able to enjoy anything
for a while. Because October nine was also the day
after we had heard from our lawyer, Leon Wilds that
three panel judge had ruled in John's favor in the U.
(15:09):
S government's case to haven't deported. John would be able
to stay in the United States. We could go on
living at the Dakota On that day, at that moment,
anything was possible for us. We had beat back a
government that wanted us gone. We had conquered the unknowable
months in which we put our relationship on indefinite hiatus.
(15:33):
We were just two people, a man and a woman
who know had a third, A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
We just wanted to be us. Whatever that meant, we
were going to figure it out. We'll be right back
after this word word word. Well. When we first came
(16:00):
to New York City in n I was more than
happy to leave England, not just because it got us
away from Norman Pilcher. But bothered me were the Beatle fans.
They were awful. They waited for us outside of Abbey
Road Studios, and when we would leave after a session,
they would attack. This is when the Beatles were still together.
(16:23):
They would yell insults at me, racial insults, hurtful insults.
They would bring roses simply so they could use the
thorns to attack me. I just hated England. Plus, John
loved America. He loved New York City. He loved the people,
(16:44):
the cultures. He loved being able to walk through the
streets of New York just as John and not necessarily
as a Beatle. I wanted to do everything I could
to ensure that John would be allowed to stay. John
had taken sole responsibility for the possession charge back in London.
He did it so that I wouldn't have to face
the charges. He did it for me. He also did
(17:08):
it because he thought he could simply pay a fee,
move on with his life and never have to worry
about it ever. Again, maybe it was naive. We were
used to being called naive, some people said, are political
views where naive? You know? Give piece of chance? War
is over if you wanted the idea that people could
(17:30):
have peace, if they really wanted peace. Is that so naive?
Many people thought so, though I'm not exactly sure why
we were talked down to by people who had a
million complicated reasons why something so uncomplicated was impossible. You
know why, though, I know why, because war is a
(17:57):
business and peace is not. And just like one of
those million little reasons preventing world peace, the United States
decided that the reason John couldn't stay in the country
was because of this possession charge, which we all saw through. Well,
I mean, let's say that a few friends of ours
in the pop business have exactly the same conviction as me,
(18:19):
and I'll have to come and go as phrase they like.
There was the thing with John Sinclair. John saw solidarity
in that fight. John Sinclair was sent to prison for
ten years for having two joints that's the mentality we
were up against. The government was waging not just a
war in Vietnam, but a war at home on how
to think and how to act. John fought for John
(18:42):
Sinclair's release, and by aligning himself with that movement, he
was made a public enemy as well. So did his
relationships with Jerry Ruben and Abby Hoffman and Bobby Seal.
One of John's first friends when we came to New
York City was David Peel over at St. Mark's Place. David,
it was very vocal anti government, prograss. John even produced
(19:05):
one of his albums, The Pope Smokes Dope, put it
on Apple Records. It was widely banned. You know. This
was the same time Paul was getting banned for his
song Hi Hi Hi. Let you know. David Peel, Bobby Seal,
Abby Hoffman, they were all radicals to Hoover Nixon, and
(19:26):
so John was a radical by association. John and I
were very much anti war and pro peace. We were
anti Nixon. Nixon was Cambodia and Kent State an Attica.
In nine seventy one or nineteen seventy two, John was
(19:47):
the highest profile rabble rouser in the United States and
he had built an audience that would hang on his
every word, not to mention, a media that would follow
his every move. So the US government bugged our phones.
This is when we were on Bank Street in the
West Village before we moved to the Dakota, a two
(20:10):
room apartment that we were renting from Joe Butler of
The Loving Spoonful. We've got into some hot water, just
knowing Joe Butler. I'll tell you about that in a minute. First,
the bugs. They bugged our phone. They bugged our lawyer's phone.
Someone told us about a number you could dial to
tell if they were listening or not. If you've dialed
(20:31):
the number and you've got a busy signal, then you
were good. Your line was clean. But if you dialed
and heard, then they were on the call with you.
Hoover's men. Our lawyer started to conduct all his phone
conversations in Yiddish, just to be extra careful. And it
wasn't just our phone conversations they were paying attention to.
(20:55):
They were combing through John's lyrics. Agents were in the
audience that night at the John Sinclair Rally, scribbling these
brand new song lyrics into little spiral notebooks. Someone at
m I five thought that John was secretly funding the
i RA in Ireland, so the Feds poured over songs
like Sunday, Bloody Sunday and Luck of the Irish. Later
(21:19):
I'd find out they were even looking into whether or
not John had earned money in the United States while
he was in the country on a tourist visa, you know.
And they followed us everywhere we went, if we took
a walk through the village or took a cab across
town or whatever. They tried to dress casual, but to
(21:43):
quickly learned how to pick them out. They were just
about the only people who couldn't blend in into a
crowded Manhattan street. I'm not exactly sure why John opened
the door to the apartment on this particular night when
the doorbell rang out of the blue. We were both
so par annoyed, par annoid about what we said and
who we were with and what we were doing. It
(22:05):
seemed common sense not to open the door without first
figuring out who was calling. But John opened it, and
these two well, they looked like junkie's there's no better
way to describe them. These two junkies came marching in.
They were here to collect, they said, collect what John
yelled at them. But these guys were dead to the
(22:27):
world hard fight. They took our color TV, a Salvador
Dolly lithograph, and a small antique table. I was dumbfounded.
The worst of it came after the thieves were gone.
John gasped. Then he went mad. He started to rummage
(22:50):
through the place himself, frantically looking for something he would
he was rambling. He wouldn't tell me what he was
looking for. Once it was clear that he wasn't going
to find it, he told me I address book, he said.
The blood had trained from his face. My address book
was in the drawer of that table. His address book
contained not just the phone numbers of every anti authority
(23:14):
radical he knew, but their physical locations as well. Like
Dana Biel, the Yippie he was the head of the
legalization fight. He was on the FBI shortlist. And Timothy Learry,
who was hiding in Switzerland after he walked out of
prison where he was serving a sentence for possession. He
(23:36):
literally walked out of jail. I escaped with the help
of the Weatherman Underground of their crack Underground operators came
to California six weeks before my escape, and it was
a very complicated operation. They found Larry's danhim prison uniform
in one of his socks in the restation bathroom a
(23:57):
few miles down the one oh one. He was long gone,
but John knew where Larry was. It was in that book,
and if that book fell into the wrong hands, it
could be disastrous to the movement. That's when we began
to think that maybe the junkies who had bust into
(24:18):
our apartment weren't actually junkies at all. Maybe they had
been planted there by the government. Maybe they were two
guys from the government playing the roles of junkies in
order to justorient us so that they could take the table.
Because they knew the address book was in that table,
and they knew that the address book was in that
table because they were listening in on all of our conversations.
(24:44):
We were so paranoid we actually believed that for a while.
It turns out, however, that Joe Butler, that guy from
the Loving Spoonful who was renting us the apartment, it
turns out he had some pretty serious gambling debts, and
that's who the junkies had come to collect from, not us,
(25:07):
Joe Butler. The realization didn't mean that we stopped worrying
right away. We worried a little bit less when John
had a front track down our table and it is
address book back. And then we worried even less when
we dialed the number over and over and never heard
the static squeel. That meant we were under surveillance. By
(25:28):
the end of the decade, our guards were down. We
had put so much behind us. We simply weren't prepared
for what was coming. And when it hit, it seemed
to come out of nowhere. New York City, December. It
(26:13):
was shortly after midnight when the telephone inside Apartment seventy
two at the Dakota Building rang out. Yoko Ono answered.
The man on the other end spoke broken English with
a Puerto Rican accent. He wanted to know if Yoko
Ono and John Lennon had his money, the money he
had demanded in the letter he sent back in November.
(26:33):
John and Yoko got this letter right, of course they did,
so where was his hundred grand? He wanted to know.
December nine was the date they were supposed to get
him the hundred grand and now it was fifteen minutes
into December. They were late. Where was the money? Yoko stalled,
Of course she knew about the letter. The letter was
(26:54):
written by people claiming to be the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.
They described themselves as Terror US and took responsibility for
explosions and several major cities in the US. Even though
they didn't cite specific incidents, they bemoaned money problems within
the organization, and thus we're hoping to solve set money
problems by extorting one of New York's most rich and
(27:15):
famous couples. That letter had set Yoko's anxiety on eleven,
As if New Yorkers didn't already have enough to fear.
In seven the city was still recovering from the shocking
murders that the forty four caliber killer a k a.
The Son of Sam had committed, putting every borrow on
high alert during one of the hottest summers on record.
(27:37):
The letter brought that powerless feeling of fear right back,
as well as the feeling of paranoia, the same feeling
that Yoko and John regularly experienced at the start of
the decade when federal agents were monitoring their every move
the self described terrorist letter had demanded that John and
Yoko leave one hundred thousand dollars in a quote unquote
(27:58):
strong package in the lobby the Dakota. The letter gave
John and Yoko nine days to get the money together
December nine, and if John and Yoko didn't do is
the letter instructed, there would be extortion. Is threatened to
kidnap or even kill one of them. Would they go
after John? Yoko sean it was crystal clear that these
(28:18):
people weren't above kidnapping a two year old. John brought
the letter to the FBI, which he knew was more
than a bit ironic given the fact that he and
the FBI have been mortal enemies just a few years earlier.
The FEDS agreed to help and tapped John and Yoko's phone,
again ironic, given that the last time the FEDS tapped
the couple's phone it was to build a case against them.
(28:43):
Undercover agents went to work at the Dakota. The FEDS
posted armed guards. They arranged to get the requested hundred grand,
rolled it up in a newspaper, and left it into
the lobby of the Dakota on December nine, As instructed,
the FEDS had enough agents haunting the place that when
the so called Puerto rican An independence movement came to collect,
they would be easily tracked and apprehended, and John and
(29:05):
Yoko could put this harrowing experience behind them and stopped
fearing for the life of their taught their son. But
no one ever came to claim the money. Hours went by.
Soon the FEDS were concerned that the money might be
accidentally taken by someone else who wasn't even involved in
the shakedown, so they took the money back and remained vigilant.
Later that night is when Yoko received the call. They
(29:29):
were late, Where was the money? Yoko tried to explain
that the money had been prepared for them as requested,
but seeing as nobody ever picked it up, it took
it back for safe keeping. The caller got impatient. You've
made a big mistake, he said, right before he hung up.
Yoko hoped in vain that the whole thing would just
go away. It didn't. A week later, another letter arrived
(29:50):
at the Dakota. This particular letter informed John and Yoko
that back on December nine, the day that the money
was due, twenty eight members of the Puerto Rican independ
Pendance movement had surrounded the Dakota Building around eleven in
the evening. They were all armed to ensure they had
proper backup while they sent in a man to collect
the quote unquote strong package from the lobby, and they
(30:13):
were expecting an ambush from the police. But of course
there was no ambush, and there was also no strong
package of money. The Puerto Rican Independence movement were disappointed
in the wealthy celebrities they were trying to extort, and
they told John and yokos so and the letters that followed.
The FBI continued their surveillance. Nothing out of the ordinary happened,
(30:35):
and they ran latent prints from the envelopes and paper
in their lab no matches. As weeks turned into months
and the letters and phone calls stopped, the FBI eventually
decided that John and Yoko were no longer in any danger.
The FEDS wondered if there ever was any danger at all.
John and Yoko weren't sure if they should take the
American government's reassurances at face value, seeing as how this
(30:57):
was the same government that spent an incredible amount of
man hours and taxpayer dollars in the nine seventies trying
to deport a Beatle for promoting peace. So they're feelings
of true safety came and went. Because this was New
York City, it didn't sleep. Anything went. You could let
your guard down, but you couldn't be too careful. And
(31:18):
if it wasn't the government or terrorists, or a drug
squad or table stealing junkies, it would be something else,
something random, unexpected in a city of seven millions, something
so random and so disruptive that it would leave destruction
in its wake. And Blood on the Tracks. All right, everybody,
(31:50):
thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks. If you
like what you hear, be sure to find and follow
Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, app,
Amazon Music, or wherever you get with podcasts. On this
season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll be releasing
ten episodes on the Incredible life of John Lennon, with
a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge all
(32:10):
ten episodes of season one on the insane story of
the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's available
wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Blood on
the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted an
executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by
Brady sab Story and copy editing by Pat Heally. This
episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score
(32:33):
elements by Ryan Spreaker. This episode featured Mikayla Whit as
Yoko Ower. Blood on the Tracks is produced by Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
Blood on the Tracks series page. If you want to
chat about this show or hear more about the other
shows we're making it Double Elvis, tap in on Instagram
(32:54):
at double Elvis, on Twitter at Double Elvis FM, and
now on Twitch, where we're streaming three days a week.
At Twitch dot tv slash Double Elvis Podcasts, and finally,
be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning
music and true crime podcast that I also host. Disgrace
Land is available only on the free Amazon Music app.
(33:14):
To hear tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians
getting away with murder and behaving very badly, go to
Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land, or if you have
an Echo device, just say Alexa play the Disgrace LAMB Podcast,
rock Alo or Dad
Blood on the Tracks is a production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. John Lennon was a musical genius
and one of the most beloved cultural figures of the
twentieth century. His songs inspired dreamers to imagine, his search
for the truth gave power to the people. But some
thought he dreamed too much. Others thought he was too powerful.
(00:23):
So he was followed, he was threatened, he was declared
a danger to the United States, and in night he
was assassinated. This is his story told by his so
called friends. This is special Agent Jim Steele with the
(00:46):
Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double oh
nine dash zero eight dash zero four nine one, case
subject of Lennon, John Winston oh No. This information pertains
to a period and in December seven interview subject as
Yoko oh Oh Lennon interview number zero dash zero two
dash zero six one dash nine eight one. We call
(01:08):
number one December. If John and I did something that
the people didn't like, it was my fault. And if
we did something successful, John about the credit that was
(01:30):
a learning process. I think that life is a process
of learning. We're given each of us are guing the
light we use the light to learn the things we
have to learn. John and I had to learn those things,
especially me. I had to learn the experience of humiliation.
(01:56):
It was probably good that I learned it, otherwise I
would have stayed at the proud yoga on now And
in a funny sort of way, I felt the weight
of the beatles break up because John expected all of
that to be replaced by me. All of us are
(02:18):
trying to win some kind of fight. Jaunt. Did I
do you do? The fight of learning of light? The
fight and experienced the kind of fight that leads to
blood on the Transah Yeah. Year one, John Lennon and
(03:03):
Yogo Werner, they called us subversives. They said we were dangerous,
a threat to national security, enemies of the state. That
(03:27):
wasn't just the American people talking. The American government said this.
As soon as John and I stepped foot in New
York City in nineteen seventy one. The American government wanted
us out. They said we were bad for the impressionable youth.
You know, the impressionable youth as in the eighteen to
twenty one year old who could buy records. But I've
never been able to cast a vote in their life
(03:49):
until now. So they followed us, They tapped our phones,
they tracked our every movement. Yeah, they even change in
their own rules to get us, you know, just because
they had a fire on John. Not just one file,
lots of files. The files ran up the chain of
(04:12):
command all the way to Hoover Nixon. But they needed
a legitimate reason to kick John out, so they leaned
on the cannabis charge from a few years before. That
was their excuse, the reason for why John Lennon was
not fit for a green card. The cannabis charge was
from back in London, nine October. It was late morning.
(04:37):
John and I were in bed. We weren't wearing much,
which was normal for us, you know. Recently John had
gotten a tip from newspaper friend thought he was going
to be the next target of London's drug squad. The
squad wasn't just feared, they were entitled. They were the
same entitled group that busted down Donovan's drawer at what
one thirty in the morning for what some hash the
(04:58):
same squad that found us and coke on making teeth.
One perhaps doesn't ask for responsibilities, Perhaps one has given responsibilities.
One One News pushed into the limelight in this particular sphere,
rather than ask him to be asked to be pushed
into this in any way, merely asked to be my
(05:21):
private life, to be left alone, so as it were.
The drug squad was led by Sergeant Norman Pilcher. Pilcher
was on his own crusade, his own trip. Everyone knew
he was going after rock and rollers, and everyone also
knew that he was dirty. He planted evidence, he wrote
(05:41):
false rewards. Half of the arrest that he made in
the late sixties were probably frame ups. It's true. He
was convicted of perjury years later and they sent him
to jail. Earlier that morning, John had vacuum to the flat.
Jimmie Hendricks had once lived there amongst others, and John
(06:02):
was just being extra careful that there was no evidence
hanging around that could be used against us in case
his friend's tip was legitimate. If those walls could talk,
you know. In fact, at the time, we weren't doing
any drugs. We were on a microbiotic diet, no drugs,
no caffeine. Even so, we were in bed. There was
(06:28):
a knock on the door. Someone on the other side
of the door yelled something about a warrant. I looked
at John and panicked, what should we do? We knew
exactly who it was. We knew it was Piltra, and
we had nothing to hide, but still feeling a panic
came over me. John said, don't answer the door, so
we didn't. They kept knocking, They got louder, more voices.
(06:52):
They were trying the doriendal, and suddenly there was a
commotion at the rear of the flat. John left out
of bed and ran out back, where he found one
of Pilcher's officers trying to get inside through a rear window.
John was in his underwear with his hands on top
of the window, pushing it down while the officer outside
was trying to pry it open. At this point I
(07:13):
think John was beginning to panic as well. The officer
at the window was yelling that he was going to
break the window if he had to. It didn't matter
that John was John Lennon or that he was a beatle.
The police didn't care. Actually it worked against us. The
beatle thing. Being a beatles what got John in this
(07:36):
mess in the first place. John knew he wasn't going
to be able to hold back a team of determined
police officers, so he relented. He told the man at
the window to stand down and he would go open
the front door. There were seven of them, detective sergeants,
detective constables, all policewomen, dog handlers, and of course, Sergeant Pilcher.
(08:00):
They barged inside the flat. Once John had unlocked the door.
Piltre had victory in his eyes. Before he even stepped
foot in the place. You could just see it written
on his face that he was about to bust the
John Lennon, the one who was bigger than Jesus Pulture
told the dog handlers to let the dogs loose. Their
(08:21):
names were Yogi and Boo Boo. I'm not kidding what
you gonna do about a yo game. They sniffed around
the flat while John argued with Pilcher and the others.
John was getting angry. He knew there was nothing illegal
in the place, and he kept telling Pilture there was nothing.
Over and over. John argued that just because he was
(08:43):
a rocky musician didn't mean that he was sitting on
a pilot drugs. Yogi and Boo Boo told a different story. Allegedly,
they found grass in a binoculars case. Grass and film
canister and more grass and a cigarette roller, something like
an ounce total. It was bullshit. It wasn't ours. We
(09:07):
never proved that it wasn't ours, or that Piltre had
planted the evidence. Python did a funny sketch about him
with a pultry character was arresting someone and saying, I'm
charging you with the illegal possession of whatever we can
happen to have down there. Pultre did have to face
questions from the Home Secretary, however, who wanted to know
why so many officers had been used for such a
(09:27):
small bust. Pilcher's response was that he thought he'd be
busting some wild sex party again because John was a beatle.
That was what he thought of us. He couldn't imagine
that a rock star could just be enjoying a lazy
morning in bed with his wife. Well, technically we weren't
(09:47):
married quite yet. In a few months time we would be.
But that's the thing. What Piltre couldn't imagine, what he
couldn't see. It was the same thing that the whole
world couldn't see. They couldn't see John as anything but
a beatle. They couldn't see him without his myth As
(10:13):
John began to extract himself from that myth, his fans
in England got confused and angry and looked for someone
to blame for their anger and confusion. Of course, they
directed it at me at the experience of humiliation, because
(10:33):
I was the one who took their beetle away from them.
I was the one who opened his eyes and woke
him up. I was the one who liberated him. I
(11:08):
loved John for John, not for being famous, or being
a beetle or any of that. I didn't even know
John Lennon the Beatle when I first met him, which
people find hard to believe because the group was so
famous at the time. I knew of the phenomenon of
the Beatles, and I knew Ringo's name, I think subconsciously,
because Ringo means apple in Japanese. I don't think John
(11:32):
even knew who John was until we got together. He
said himself that our relationship brought out the best in him.
He said something like the king is always killed by
his courtiers, not his enemies. That the psycho fans surrounding
the king do whatever they need to do in order
to keep him on that throne. They overfeed him over
(11:52):
drug him, over indulge him. But I was able to
extract him from that fate about It wasn't easy. John
was difficult, and that should have been his nickname, the
Difficult Beetle. And then the nineteen seventies were difficult decade
for us. Our marriage was tested, our trust was tested,
(12:15):
our love was tested. There are a lot of awful
things that happened in the seventies to John and me
that I would really rather not get into al We
spent a lot of time apart before we reconciled. You know,
I spent too many nights alone and afraid, my entire
(12:35):
body just shaking, you know, just completely and utterly alone
in our apartment near Central Park, where we settled in
nineteen seventy three. Once it was clear we were going
to be in town for a while, John was out
god knows where, in Los Angeles or somewhere else in
New York City, or maybe even somewhere in between. There
(12:57):
were moments when I thought we wouldn't pulter. More moments
when I thought John would wind up dead, shot to
death by Phil Specter, the crazy pastor, or silenced for
good by the FBI men who wouldn't leave him alone.
There were always fans hanging out outside the Dakota. The
(13:19):
most of the time, they were friendly and respectable, and
John was friendly back to them. But occasionally things got
out of hand. Fans would get past the lobby and
find their way up to our place, apartment seventy two
up on the seventh floor. They just walk right in
the door, looking for John to fight. That kind of
(13:40):
thing terrified me, never mind that I had suspicions about
the apartment to begin with. It used to belong to
Robert Ryan, and his wife had died there, which is
why he left it and we moved him. You know,
Robert Ryan, right Crossfire, the wild Bunch. Anyways, I used
to think the place was haunted or at least a
(14:00):
little unsettled, and that it was because Robert Bryant's wife
had died there. Maybe she didn't want us there, maybe
she didn't want anyone there. I know that I didn't
want those fans in the apartment. I don't even know
if they knew that. It wasn't okay that they would
do that, just come in. I hired security to help us,
but it made John even more uncomfortable. He used to say,
(14:22):
if they're going to get you, they're gonna get you.
So just killed the bodyguard first. I'm getting off track.
As I said earlier, there's a lot I don't want
to talk about. I want to talk about the good things,
the happy moments, the moments when all our hard work
paid off. I want to talk about October nine. October nine,
(14:48):
that was the day Shawn was born, our son. It
was also John's thirty five birthday the same day. We
were able to enjoy the indescribable joy of that day
in the way we hadn't been able to enjoy anything
for a while. Because October nine was also the day
after we had heard from our lawyer, Leon Wilds that
three panel judge had ruled in John's favor in the U.
(15:09):
S government's case to haven't deported. John would be able
to stay in the United States. We could go on
living at the Dakota On that day, at that moment,
anything was possible for us. We had beat back a
government that wanted us gone. We had conquered the unknowable
months in which we put our relationship on indefinite hiatus.
(15:33):
We were just two people, a man and a woman
who know had a third, A beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.
We just wanted to be us. Whatever that meant, we
were going to figure it out. We'll be right back
after this word word word. Well. When we first came
(16:00):
to New York City in n I was more than
happy to leave England, not just because it got us
away from Norman Pilcher. But bothered me were the Beatle fans.
They were awful. They waited for us outside of Abbey
Road Studios, and when we would leave after a session,
they would attack. This is when the Beatles were still together.
(16:23):
They would yell insults at me, racial insults, hurtful insults.
They would bring roses simply so they could use the
thorns to attack me. I just hated England. Plus, John
loved America. He loved New York City. He loved the people,
(16:44):
the cultures. He loved being able to walk through the
streets of New York just as John and not necessarily
as a Beatle. I wanted to do everything I could
to ensure that John would be allowed to stay. John
had taken sole responsibility for the possession charge back in London.
He did it so that I wouldn't have to face
the charges. He did it for me. He also did
(17:08):
it because he thought he could simply pay a fee,
move on with his life and never have to worry
about it ever. Again, maybe it was naive. We were
used to being called naive, some people said, are political
views where naive? You know? Give piece of chance? War
is over if you wanted the idea that people could
(17:30):
have peace, if they really wanted peace. Is that so naive?
Many people thought so, though I'm not exactly sure why
we were talked down to by people who had a
million complicated reasons why something so uncomplicated was impossible. You
know why, though, I know why, because war is a
(17:57):
business and peace is not. And just like one of
those million little reasons preventing world peace, the United States
decided that the reason John couldn't stay in the country
was because of this possession charge, which we all saw through. Well,
I mean, let's say that a few friends of ours
in the pop business have exactly the same conviction as me,
(18:19):
and I'll have to come and go as phrase they like.
There was the thing with John Sinclair. John saw solidarity
in that fight. John Sinclair was sent to prison for
ten years for having two joints that's the mentality we
were up against. The government was waging not just a
war in Vietnam, but a war at home on how
to think and how to act. John fought for John
(18:42):
Sinclair's release, and by aligning himself with that movement, he
was made a public enemy as well. So did his
relationships with Jerry Ruben and Abby Hoffman and Bobby Seal.
One of John's first friends when we came to New
York City was David Peel over at St. Mark's Place. David,
it was very vocal anti government, prograss. John even produced
(19:05):
one of his albums, The Pope Smokes Dope, put it
on Apple Records. It was widely banned. You know. This
was the same time Paul was getting banned for his
song Hi Hi Hi. Let you know. David Peel, Bobby Seal,
Abby Hoffman, they were all radicals to Hoover Nixon, and
(19:26):
so John was a radical by association. John and I
were very much anti war and pro peace. We were
anti Nixon. Nixon was Cambodia and Kent State an Attica.
In nine seventy one or nineteen seventy two, John was
(19:47):
the highest profile rabble rouser in the United States and
he had built an audience that would hang on his
every word, not to mention, a media that would follow
his every move. So the US government bugged our phones.
This is when we were on Bank Street in the
West Village before we moved to the Dakota, a two
(20:10):
room apartment that we were renting from Joe Butler of
The Loving Spoonful. We've got into some hot water, just
knowing Joe Butler. I'll tell you about that in a minute. First,
the bugs. They bugged our phone. They bugged our lawyer's phone.
Someone told us about a number you could dial to
tell if they were listening or not. If you've dialed
(20:31):
the number and you've got a busy signal, then you
were good. Your line was clean. But if you dialed
and heard, then they were on the call with you.
Hoover's men. Our lawyer started to conduct all his phone
conversations in Yiddish, just to be extra careful. And it
wasn't just our phone conversations they were paying attention to.
(20:55):
They were combing through John's lyrics. Agents were in the
audience that night at the John Sinclair Rally, scribbling these
brand new song lyrics into little spiral notebooks. Someone at
m I five thought that John was secretly funding the
i RA in Ireland, so the Feds poured over songs
like Sunday, Bloody Sunday and Luck of the Irish. Later
(21:19):
I'd find out they were even looking into whether or
not John had earned money in the United States while
he was in the country on a tourist visa, you know.
And they followed us everywhere we went, if we took
a walk through the village or took a cab across
town or whatever. They tried to dress casual, but to
(21:43):
quickly learned how to pick them out. They were just
about the only people who couldn't blend in into a
crowded Manhattan street. I'm not exactly sure why John opened
the door to the apartment on this particular night when
the doorbell rang out of the blue. We were both
so par annoyed, par annoid about what we said and
who we were with and what we were doing. It
(22:05):
seemed common sense not to open the door without first
figuring out who was calling. But John opened it, and
these two well, they looked like junkie's there's no better
way to describe them. These two junkies came marching in.
They were here to collect, they said, collect what John
yelled at them. But these guys were dead to the
(22:27):
world hard fight. They took our color TV, a Salvador
Dolly lithograph, and a small antique table. I was dumbfounded.
The worst of it came after the thieves were gone.
John gasped. Then he went mad. He started to rummage
(22:50):
through the place himself, frantically looking for something he would
he was rambling. He wouldn't tell me what he was
looking for. Once it was clear that he wasn't going
to find it, he told me I address book, he said.
The blood had trained from his face. My address book
was in the drawer of that table. His address book
contained not just the phone numbers of every anti authority
(23:14):
radical he knew, but their physical locations as well. Like
Dana Biel, the Yippie he was the head of the
legalization fight. He was on the FBI shortlist. And Timothy Learry,
who was hiding in Switzerland after he walked out of
prison where he was serving a sentence for possession. He
(23:36):
literally walked out of jail. I escaped with the help
of the Weatherman Underground of their crack Underground operators came
to California six weeks before my escape, and it was
a very complicated operation. They found Larry's danhim prison uniform
in one of his socks in the restation bathroom a
(23:57):
few miles down the one oh one. He was long gone,
but John knew where Larry was. It was in that book,
and if that book fell into the wrong hands, it
could be disastrous to the movement. That's when we began
to think that maybe the junkies who had bust into
(24:18):
our apartment weren't actually junkies at all. Maybe they had
been planted there by the government. Maybe they were two
guys from the government playing the roles of junkies in
order to justorient us so that they could take the table.
Because they knew the address book was in that table,
and they knew that the address book was in that
table because they were listening in on all of our conversations.
(24:44):
We were so paranoid we actually believed that for a while.
It turns out, however, that Joe Butler, that guy from
the Loving Spoonful who was renting us the apartment, it
turns out he had some pretty serious gambling debts, and
that's who the junkies had come to collect from, not us,
(25:07):
Joe Butler. The realization didn't mean that we stopped worrying
right away. We worried a little bit less when John
had a front track down our table and it is
address book back. And then we worried even less when
we dialed the number over and over and never heard
the static squeel. That meant we were under surveillance. By
(25:28):
the end of the decade, our guards were down. We
had put so much behind us. We simply weren't prepared
for what was coming. And when it hit, it seemed
to come out of nowhere. New York City, December. It
(26:13):
was shortly after midnight when the telephone inside Apartment seventy
two at the Dakota Building rang out. Yoko Ono answered.
The man on the other end spoke broken English with
a Puerto Rican accent. He wanted to know if Yoko
Ono and John Lennon had his money, the money he
had demanded in the letter he sent back in November.
(26:33):
John and Yoko got this letter right, of course they did,
so where was his hundred grand? He wanted to know.
December nine was the date they were supposed to get
him the hundred grand and now it was fifteen minutes
into December. They were late. Where was the money? Yoko stalled,
Of course she knew about the letter. The letter was
(26:54):
written by people claiming to be the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.
They described themselves as Terror US and took responsibility for
explosions and several major cities in the US. Even though
they didn't cite specific incidents, they bemoaned money problems within
the organization, and thus we're hoping to solve set money
problems by extorting one of New York's most rich and
(27:15):
famous couples. That letter had set Yoko's anxiety on eleven,
As if New Yorkers didn't already have enough to fear.
In seven the city was still recovering from the shocking
murders that the forty four caliber killer a k a.
The Son of Sam had committed, putting every borrow on
high alert during one of the hottest summers on record.
(27:37):
The letter brought that powerless feeling of fear right back,
as well as the feeling of paranoia, the same feeling
that Yoko and John regularly experienced at the start of
the decade when federal agents were monitoring their every move
the self described terrorist letter had demanded that John and
Yoko leave one hundred thousand dollars in a quote unquote
(27:58):
strong package in the lobby the Dakota. The letter gave
John and Yoko nine days to get the money together
December nine, and if John and Yoko didn't do is
the letter instructed, there would be extortion. Is threatened to
kidnap or even kill one of them. Would they go
after John? Yoko sean it was crystal clear that these
(28:18):
people weren't above kidnapping a two year old. John brought
the letter to the FBI, which he knew was more
than a bit ironic given the fact that he and
the FBI have been mortal enemies just a few years earlier.
The FEDS agreed to help and tapped John and Yoko's phone,
again ironic, given that the last time the FEDS tapped
the couple's phone it was to build a case against them.
(28:43):
Undercover agents went to work at the Dakota. The FEDS
posted armed guards. They arranged to get the requested hundred grand,
rolled it up in a newspaper, and left it into
the lobby of the Dakota on December nine, As instructed,
the FEDS had enough agents haunting the place that when
the so called Puerto rican An independence movement came to collect,
they would be easily tracked and apprehended, and John and
(29:05):
Yoko could put this harrowing experience behind them and stopped
fearing for the life of their taught their son. But
no one ever came to claim the money. Hours went by.
Soon the FEDS were concerned that the money might be
accidentally taken by someone else who wasn't even involved in
the shakedown, so they took the money back and remained vigilant.
Later that night is when Yoko received the call. They
(29:29):
were late, Where was the money? Yoko tried to explain
that the money had been prepared for them as requested,
but seeing as nobody ever picked it up, it took
it back for safe keeping. The caller got impatient. You've
made a big mistake, he said, right before he hung up.
Yoko hoped in vain that the whole thing would just
go away. It didn't. A week later, another letter arrived
(29:50):
at the Dakota. This particular letter informed John and Yoko
that back on December nine, the day that the money
was due, twenty eight members of the Puerto Rican independ
Pendance movement had surrounded the Dakota Building around eleven in
the evening. They were all armed to ensure they had
proper backup while they sent in a man to collect
the quote unquote strong package from the lobby, and they
(30:13):
were expecting an ambush from the police. But of course
there was no ambush, and there was also no strong
package of money. The Puerto Rican Independence movement were disappointed
in the wealthy celebrities they were trying to extort, and
they told John and yokos so and the letters that followed.
The FBI continued their surveillance. Nothing out of the ordinary happened,
(30:35):
and they ran latent prints from the envelopes and paper
in their lab no matches. As weeks turned into months
and the letters and phone calls stopped, the FBI eventually
decided that John and Yoko were no longer in any danger.
The FEDS wondered if there ever was any danger at all.
John and Yoko weren't sure if they should take the
American government's reassurances at face value, seeing as how this
(30:57):
was the same government that spent an incredible amount of
man hours and taxpayer dollars in the nine seventies trying
to deport a Beatle for promoting peace. So they're feelings
of true safety came and went. Because this was New
York City, it didn't sleep. Anything went. You could let
your guard down, but you couldn't be too careful. And
(31:18):
if it wasn't the government or terrorists, or a drug
squad or table stealing junkies, it would be something else,
something random, unexpected in a city of seven millions, something
so random and so disruptive that it would leave destruction
in its wake. And Blood on the Tracks. All right, everybody,
(31:50):
thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks. If you
like what you hear, be sure to find and follow
Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, app,
Amazon Music, or wherever you get with podcasts. On this
season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll be releasing
ten episodes on the Incredible life of John Lennon, with
a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge all
(32:10):
ten episodes of season one on the insane story of
the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's available
wherever you get your podcast. This episode of Blood on
the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted an
executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by
Brady sab Story and copy editing by Pat Heally. This
episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score
(32:33):
elements by Ryan Spreaker. This episode featured Mikayla Whit as
Yoko Ower. Blood on the Tracks is produced by Double
Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio. Sources for this
episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the
Blood on the Tracks series page. If you want to
chat about this show or hear more about the other
shows we're making it Double Elvis, tap in on Instagram
(32:54):
at double Elvis, on Twitter at Double Elvis FM, and
now on Twitch, where we're streaming three days a week.
At Twitch dot tv slash Double Elvis Podcasts, and finally,
be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning
music and true crime podcast that I also host. Disgrace
Land is available only on the free Amazon Music app.
(33:14):
To hear tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians
getting away with murder and behaving very badly, go to
Amazon dot com slash disgrace Land, or if you have
an Echo device, just say Alexa play the Disgrace LAMB Podcast,
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