Glass Onion: On John Lennon

Following our last exploration of a biopic of dubious quality, Antony flies solo this time to explore another one which, despite having some sense of time and place, is also somewhat lacking and to some extent unintentionally comedic.

‘Birth of the Beatles’, which came out in 1979, will always hold a unique place as the on...

Ghosty joins Antony once again to wrap up our dissection of ‘John & Yoko: A Love Story’, and there is also some discussion of two other presentations from 1985.

‘John Lennon: A Journey In The Life’ is a ‘cheap and cheerful’ trawl through the Lennon story, with another Liverpudlian Bernard Hill portraying our hero in John’s...

We’re happy to welcome back David ‘Ghosty’ Wills to discuss John & Yoko: A Love Story, a 1985 biopic starring Mark McGann and Kim Miyori that was very dear to our hearts, at least until we rewatched it!

We discuss some of the better scenes and also the unintentional comedy and ‘TV movie tropes’ of others. We cover about tw...

Another podcast journey comes to an end as we conclude our look at John Lennon (and The Beatles’) religious, spiritual and philosophical journey by use of Steve Turner’s excellent book ‘The Gospel According To The Beatles’

After a brief recap of the previous episodes, Part 4 picks up from the formation of Apple in 1967, ou...

Continuing our lengthy exploration of John Lennon’s religious, spiritual and philosophical journey by use of Steve Turner’s excellent book ‘The Gospel According To The Beatles’, Part 3 covers some fascinating chapters spanning the years 1964 to 1968 in the book’s rough chronology.

John starts to consider the limitations of...

We kick off 2025 with the continuation of our lengthy exploration of John Lennon’s religious, spiritual and philosophical journey.

Part 2 starts with more of John and the Beatles’ general beliefs about the world before starting a chronology of the Beatle years from the particular perspective of Steve Turner’s book ‘The Gos...

We end Glass Onion’s 6^th year with the start of another multi-part series, the first 4-parter in the history of the podcast.

Using (mostly) the John Lennon parts from Steve Turner’s excellent 2006 book ‘The Gospel According To The Beatles’, we trace our hero’s religious, spiritual and philosophical journey throu...

We conclude our look at John Lennon as an actor, starting from 1965’s ‘Help!’ and with particular emphasis on what was arguably his only ‘serious’ role, albeit in an anti-war satire ‘How I Won The War’. He also voices a famously sprawling Beatles TV film about a bus, and there’s a film cameo and brief comedy sketch in amongst it all as well.

The show keeps rolling with a look at John Lennon as an actor, both in films and TV sketches and also in his persona as Beatle John with the press and on stage. Antony is joined in this endeavour by professional actor Ross Marshall, and the conversation also looks at the craft of acting itself in terms of styles and John Lennon’s (un)suitability for it.

For our latest bonus episode, we offer a diversion and a trip back to the past as your humble host is interviewed about his and other people’s music by a friend in Madrid in 2016. Topics touched upon include songwriting, creativity, performance, recording and (no surprise) The Beatles and John Lennon.

Preceding the intervi...

We complete our 2-part look at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert of September 1969 and the ‘white-suited apostle’ John Lennon’s involvement in it with the highly flexible Plastic Ono Band. Following ‘Revival ‘69’, Antony and Dave Thurmaier turn their attention to a 1971 film that should be in every Lennon fan’s video collection, namely D.A. Pennebaker’s film ‘Sweet Toronto...

And so the next century of Glass Onion begins. We’ve got another fine 2-parter for you, with Antony joined by Dave Thurmaier, the co-host of the ‘I’ve Got A Beatles Podcast’ and former guest of the show way back in 2019 and 2020.

The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert of September 1969 yielded a live album for John & Yo...

Over 4 years on from our original episode about ‘Revolution 9’ (episode 25, in the show notes), we return to the topic with an audio version (including multiple sound clips) of a discussion that originally went out on video on Matt Williamson’s excellent...

And so we complete the milestone!

Scott Phipps once again joins Antony to complete their whistle-stop, greatest hits tour through Jo...

What better way to mark Glass Onion’s century than with a traditional multi-parter? In the first of two shows to celebrate our milestone, Antony is joined again by Scott Phipps to take a whistle-stop, greatest hits tour through John Lennon and the decade that made him and which he helped propel into history.

Scott puts on ...

In the last episode before we notch up our century, Antony flies solo to muse on and discuss various items of Lennon interest.

In order, these are the 40^th anniversary of the ‘Milk And Honey’ album, the cancelling and virtues of the Lennon-penned Beatles song ‘Run For Your Life’, May Pang’s 2022 documentary ‘The...

We round off Glass Onion’s 5^th year with a personal episode. Antony explores further his origin story with John Lennon and the ongoing relationship and fascination with the subject of our show (yes, it’s our show).

You will also hear some writing that didn’t quite culminate in a book this year, and there’s some ...

We conclude our 1967 odyssey by picking up from mid-June and detailing all the main Lennon and Beatles events for the rest of 1967.