November 17, 2025 • 16 mins
The HBO Original documentary ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO, directed by Academy Award® winner Kevin Macdonald (HBO's "One Day in September"), debuts FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14 (8:00-9:45p.m. ET/PT) on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max. The film screened to critical acclaim at multiple film festivals including Venice, Telluride, and Sundance.A rare and revelatory inside look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono's first year in New York City in the early 1970s, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO delivers an immersive, cinematic experience that brings to life a chapter of explosive creativity and political activism in their lives.By 1971, John and Yoko had just arrived in the United States. They lived in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watched hours of American television. The film integrates a riotous mélange of television to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the screen - the Vietnam War, "The Price is Right," President Richard Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Walter Cronkite, and "The Waltons." As they experience a year of love and transformation in the U.S., the couple begins to change their approach to protest. This ultimately led to the "One to One" benefit concert, which they organized after seeing Geraldo Rivera's exposé on child neglect and abuse at the Willowbrook State School.On August 30, 1972, John performed at the "One to One" benefit concert at Madison Square Garden - his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles. Footage of this electrifying performance from John and Yoko along with The Elephant's Memory Band had been restored for the documentary and is interwoven throughout the film along with other never-before-seen material.Featuring music newly remixed and produced by Sean Ono Lennon, the documentary takes that legendary musical event and uses it as the starting point to explore 18 defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the duo's New York City apartment, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO offers a bold new take on a seminal time in the lives of two iconic artists and how their work continues to resonate today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listening to a podcast to me, is like listening to music.
You don't stay in the same genre. You're all over
the place, which is the reason why at Aro dot
net Arroe dot net seventeen different podcasts to choose from,
because we know that you're everywhere, why not be there
with you, Kevin, I gotta tell you, I am such
a huge John Lennon fan. I was not into the
(00:21):
Beatles era because that wasn't my generation, but once John
Lennon stepped into my life, I mean, it became my life.
And to experience this documentary is one of the greatest
things that I've ever gone through because I got to
see John and Yoko in a different limelight. And I'm
just so proud of you for putting this project together.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That's so lovely to hear, and that was really the
goal of this film. When I was originally approached about
making something about are around this famous concert that John
gave in seventy two, the One to One concert, which
turns out to be the only concert that he gave
after the Beatles, which is an incredible fact. But when
I was first approached, I was not sure whether the
(01:01):
world needed another Beatles or John Lennon related film. But
then when as I started to look into it, I thought, no,
there's there's a lot of fascinating and amazing stuff in here,
this archive that the family made available, all these audio recordings,
phone recordings, as well as of course the beautiful sanding
new restoration of the concert itself, which is kind of
(01:23):
the core of the film.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, it opened up my eyes because I mean, I mean,
we've seen all these other videos of John and Yoko
up on that stage. And the thing about it is, though,
is that it isn't presented the way that you presented,
and it's like you've got like a magic formula here,
and it's like I have to go back and watch
this over and over again to figure out what is
it that you've done here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, that's a probably a two technical and detailed thing
to talk about on the radio now, but basically we
you know, I made a lot of music related films.
I made one about Whitney Houston, I mean, one about
Bob Marley, and I've I've made many documentaries about the past,
(02:05):
about historic things that happened in the past, and you
get trapped in various kind of formulas about how a
documentary should work, you know, with historians or older people
sitting talking remembering things. And I thought that is not
We don't need another Beatles film like that. So how
can I, you know, evoke the past and bring to live,
(02:27):
bring to life a period in someone's life in a
different way. And that was really the impulse for how
to do this film. So we The key to me was,
you know, John. I read this little interview that John
gave where he's talked about how he loved TV in
America so much, and that was what he did for
most of the first year he was in the US,
(02:47):
which just sit and watch TV. And that was, as
he called it, his window on the world. He learned
about the country, he learned about the politics through watching TV.
And I was so fascinated by that, and I thought
that that is a way into this. We could basically
have John watching TV with Yoko in this tiny apartment
and in the West village that they moved into when
they first came to the New York in nineteen seventy one,
(03:09):
and inter cut into that all these other relements. It's
but it's the backdrop to the whole film is what
is going on in the United States at this period,
so you get immersed in the commercials, the talk shows,
the the the the Mary Tyler Moore Show, whatever, all
(03:30):
the stuff that's happening at that period. So you get
a real feel and sense of America, of New York
at that time, and then you start to understand the
songs in a different way because they put it into
the context of the of the time. So yeah, it's
it's it's it's a different approach. And really the key
to it was finding these audio recordings of John and
(03:54):
Yoko on the phone that the family found in their
archives somewhere that nobody'd ever listened to them before. They
didn't even know what they had. It was this box.
It just said audio recordings, Bank Street, nineteen seventy two,
and they said, are you interested in listening to these?
We just dug them up and I said, yeah, of course,
and what's on them? And they said, We've had no idea.
So this huge amount of tapes turned up, and it
(04:18):
was their phone calls. They recorded their own phone calls
because they believed that the FBI, and I think correctly
the FBI were tapping their phones and they thought they
got kind of paranoid. They thought we better record these
calls ourselves, because then we'll have a record of what
we said in case we get accused of anything smart
that you know it's not true. So and then they
(04:38):
recordings were put away in a box and forgot about.
But what they do is they give you this intimate
sense of them. They're sitting on their bed, they're talking
on the phone. Some of it's totally banal kind of stuff.
Some of it's really emotional and intricate, like Yoko talking
to somebody about her experience of the split of the
Beatles and how the Beatles the other Beatles treated her,
(05:00):
and and and then you've also got you know, them
talking a lot about the politics and and what they
want to do to to you know, try and sway
the election for against Nixon, a former governor who was
the Democratic candidate, kind of radical Democratic candidate who's not,
by the way, a very good candidate. So he did
he did in the end, he did very badly. And
(05:20):
they're and their their their kind of attempt to influence
the election didn't actually come to very much.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, I mean the way that you bring things together,
because I mean, you do set it up with the
Campbell soup, the the Mary Anne from Gilligan's Island and things.
But the thing is is that I'm seeing a side
of Yoko Ono here I've never seen because and watching
that this is not the Yoko I was blessed with
the opportunity to share a conversation with. I got to
see the stronger Yoko, the one that had a voice,
(05:47):
a presence, and she wanted to make sure that people
knew that it was Yoko that was on the phone
with them.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And you get them real sense
that they are in a deep way. They were a
partnership and they respect each other so deeply. I think.
I think one of the one of the early things
that I discovered, And it's not it's not like I
discovered it, because nobody else had heard had knew about this,
But it made a difference, such a difference to my
understanding of Yoka. But one of the things I found
(06:14):
out about was that the reason that they came to
New York, other than to escape the sort of the
chaos in the in the aftermath of the Beatles split,
one of the reasons that came was to look for
Yoko's missing daughter, Kyoko, who had been effectively kidnapped by
her ex husband and they were somewhere in America and
nobody knew where, and John Yoka were paying for private
(06:34):
detectives to try and track them down and find them.
And so what you're seeing in the film is a
woman who's in mourning in a way. She's she's experiencing
grief at the loss of her child. And when you
suddenly see her through those eyes as a mother who's
going through a really horrible experience. And by the way,
(06:54):
they never found the daughter and she only reappeared in
the nineties. I mean, it's an amazing story. You know,
once you see her in that light and you start
to humanize her, I think you can, you know, really
really feel for her. And there's a bit at the
end of the film where John and Yoko go in
early nineteen seventy three up to Harvard, up to Cambridge,
(07:19):
Massachusetts to attend the first International Feminist Conference, and John
is the only man there. He's the only man in
the room, which is very typical of John because he's
kind of so open minded and so adventurous. He doesn't,
you know, his ego doesn't get in the way, which
one of the things I love about him, you know,
in this period particularly, But Yoko talks when she's there
(07:41):
about how difficult it was being married to John, and
you start to see everything from a different perspective and
you think, oh, yeah, God, you were married to this
guy who the world loves, who's this icon or she says,
a monument, and she lost all her confidence. She started
to develop a doctor. She says, she had a couple
(08:01):
of miscarriages, you know, and you really begin to see, Oh,
it was hard being Yoko. And I think also you
appreciate her performances more. You understand that her performance in
the film of Don't Worry Kyoko at the concert, the
one to one concert, it's like a punk expression of emotion. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And one of the things that really sticks out to
me is when you talk about the emotions and the
things that she's gone through. This helps me understand her
presence when she just goes into the studio and makes sounds,
because it makes me want to go in there and
listen to those groans, in those moans, in those different sounds,
because there's something to it. It's coming from somewhere, and
this at least is an open door for me to say, hey,
(08:43):
look before I go and listen to that, I need
to study this more so that I know Yoko the
person and the performer, more so that when she does
make those sounds, I'm going, God, dang it, I know
exactly where.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
She is exactly. And I think that's the thing, is
that she's a very direct, visceral performer. Yeah, and people
always sort of mock her for not being a good singer,
but she can sing beautifully. You hear the harmonies she
sings with in one of the home videos in this
film of Luck of the Irish. She's singing and it's beautiful,
(09:13):
her harmonies. But when she's performing, she's not necessarily only
going to do conventional kind of harmonic singing. She feels like,
you know, in the experimental artist that she is yep.
But there's different ways to express yourself and to express
emotions through through sound and through music, and that's what
she's doing. So she's always a kind of an experimentalist,
(09:35):
and I think, you know, people are only just catching
up to that and understanding what it was she was
trying to do with her music.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Please Do Not Move. There's more with Kevin McDonald coming
up next. The name of the documentary one to one
John and Yoko, we are back with Kevin McDonald. Well,
kudos to you for bringing Bob Dylan into this in
the way of explaining that before the activation of John
and Yoko, there had to be activating somewhere else. And
I'm glad that you tie that together because there's a
(10:03):
lot of Generation Alpha and Beta that does not understand
this full story, but you bring it to them in
the way of saying, by the way, what you have
for music today, there there was somebody before this and
they were very active, and so are your artists today.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, I mean I think that. I think that you know,
there have never probably been artists as politically engaged ever
in history, and except for this, you know, this period,
this period, you know, John was willing to put himself
on the line, and that's why that's why you know
the FBI were after him when you know Nixon's White
(10:39):
House was worried about him swaying the youth vote. I
think today's political artists, and there are many of them,
I don't think in the same way, they're quite putting
themselves on the line. Maybe in the US and maybe
I don't I don't know. About that, and I think,
you know, you see again in residence with today, you
see that that the Nicks people, you know, try to
(11:02):
throw John out of the country. They withdraw his visa,
they come up some trumped top charges to say that
he's not a legal a legal migrant, and that goes
on for I think six years or something before he
gets his green card, and I think in nineteen seventy
six or something. So yeah, it's a it's there's so
many parallels between then and now. That's that's that's the thing.
(11:24):
You watch this film and you're like, oh, there were
there were protests on the campus against Vietnam War. Oh
they look very like what's going on in Columbia now,
or against gaza, you know, and and so many, so
many other things, whether it be attempted assassinations of politicians,
or whether it be the first black woman running for president,
Charley Chisholm. And we've just been through another version of that,
(11:45):
and all the same the same stories were being told
about Shirley Chisholm. They've been told about Kambla Harris. So yeah,
it feels it feels sometimes like America is on some
weird fifty five year cycle. You know that I have
seventy two or fifty three year cycle. You know that
the same things are coming around again, the same sense
of division in society.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well maybe it's my radio idiotself in the way that
you know, you just read what was available to you
through Joel Whitburner even Billboard magazine, But I did. I
never understood why the President Nixon wanted John out until
this documentary, and all of a sudden, I'm going, why
have I never seen anything like this that is so
genuine and so transparent that it gives me the side
(12:29):
that I'm sure that Richard Nixon was going, what the
hell is going on up there with John Lennon? What
he's riling the people?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah? Well that's the thing, is he That's why I
think this that the Nixon's people so tried so hard
to stop this tour that Joe wants to do what
he called the Free the People Tour, which he wanted
Dylan to join him on, and they were going to
go around to different times and play to the young people,
and the money was going to be the money that
they raised was going to be used for to give
(12:57):
bail to people. I'm in the low jails, and this
was seen as like, you know, revolutionary stuff, and it
was going to be you know, it was going to
be a real challenge to the status quote the political
status quote. And that's why, you know, the Nixon and
his people had to you know, threaten John and tape
his calls and threaten to throw him out of the country.
(13:20):
So but of course the tragedy is that after all
of this that they tried to do, Nixon won the
biggest landslide ever of any president I think in nineteen
seventy two. He didn't last much longer in power, obviously
because Watergate was already underway. The water Gate investigation was
already underway. But Nixon thought he was a threat and
thought that he would sway the youth vote. But at
(13:41):
last he didn't, and that I think was a It
was a huge turning point for John and Yoka because
they turned away from politics after this. They were like, oh, look,
we've tried and we've failed, and maybe that's not what
we should be doing. Maybe we're just artists and we
should be doing our art keeping out of politics. And
part of that transformation in their political understanding was putting
(14:01):
on this concert. Because this concert was a benefit for
physically and mentally disabled kids at this institution called will
of Rook. They had seen a TV report by Kerala
Rivera which was about this, the terrible medieval conditions in
this horrible institution in upstate New York, and they thought,
(14:23):
we need to do something about it. And so instead
of being on the barricades chanting slogans with the yippies
and Jerry Rubin, they are actually trying to make the
world a bit of better place, you know, you know,
one child at a time, I'm raising money for these kids.
And the title one to one actually comes from the
goal of this, of all the money they were trying
(14:44):
to raise, which was one on one care for every
child at this institution. So it's a it's a very
you know, practical way of trying to improve the world.
And I think that's where they ended up politically, which
is a kind of interesting thing to me.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Where can be people go to find out more about this?
And more importantly, I realized that it's an HBO documentary.
But will I be lucky enough, maybe through Fathoma Advans
or something, to see this up on the big screen,
because I want to be able to be oh, wowed
and shocked up on that big screen as well.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well. Unfortunately you've missed the opportunities on the big screen.
It did have a limited theatrical release a few months ago,
but obviously it's so hard to get the word out
about these things these days. People aren't going to theaters
and the way they used to, so unfortunately, I think
you've missed that opportunity. But if you've got a nice
big TV and a good sandsis from at home, you
can experience it almost as good at home on HBO.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
And I know I'm running out of time here, but
just give me your quick thoughts about the John Sinclair song.
I didn't know it existed, but now I can't get
enough of it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So this was actually the beginning of John Joko's belief
that they could help change the politics of America. They
were asked to go and play at a benefit culcerre
in Michigan in late nineteen seventy one for a character
called Johnson Claire who had been arrested for having two
joints and he was given five years in prison, and
there was a huge the kind of culture was just
(16:08):
up in arms and outraged by this, and the injustice
of this, and John decided to write a song, and
he wrote a song called John Sinclair and he went
to Michigan and he played it and a couple of
other songs, and lo and behold, the pressure of having
John there made the governor change his mind. The commuted
the sentence, and two days after the concert, Sinclair walks
(16:28):
out of prison, which is in the film. So John's like, Wow,
I really do have power. I really can change things.
And this was the inspiration that led to him getting
so engaged politically.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Wow, you've got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. Man, you are talking about one of
my favorite subjects on the planet.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Dude. Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad
you're so into well everyone should be.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Okay, sir, thank you.
Listening to a podcast to me, is like listening to music.
You don't stay in the same genre. You're all over
the place, which is the reason why at Aro dot
net Arroe dot net seventeen different podcasts to choose from,
because we know that you're everywhere, why not be there
with you, Kevin, I gotta tell you, I am such
a huge John Lennon fan. I was not into the
(00:21):
Beatles era because that wasn't my generation, but once John
Lennon stepped into my life, I mean, it became my life.
And to experience this documentary is one of the greatest
things that I've ever gone through because I got to
see John and Yoko in a different limelight. And I'm
just so proud of you for putting this project together.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That's so lovely to hear, and that was really the
goal of this film. When I was originally approached about
making something about are around this famous concert that John
gave in seventy two, the One to One concert, which
turns out to be the only concert that he gave
after the Beatles, which is an incredible fact. But when
I was first approached, I was not sure whether the
(01:01):
world needed another Beatles or John Lennon related film. But
then when as I started to look into it, I thought, no,
there's there's a lot of fascinating and amazing stuff in here,
this archive that the family made available, all these audio recordings,
phone recordings, as well as of course the beautiful sanding
new restoration of the concert itself, which is kind of
(01:23):
the core of the film.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, it opened up my eyes because I mean, I mean,
we've seen all these other videos of John and Yoko
up on that stage. And the thing about it is, though,
is that it isn't presented the way that you presented,
and it's like you've got like a magic formula here,
and it's like I have to go back and watch
this over and over again to figure out what is
it that you've done here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, that's a probably a two technical and detailed thing
to talk about on the radio now, but basically we
you know, I made a lot of music related films.
I made one about Whitney Houston, I mean, one about
Bob Marley, and I've I've made many documentaries about the past,
(02:05):
about historic things that happened in the past, and you
get trapped in various kind of formulas about how a
documentary should work, you know, with historians or older people
sitting talking remembering things. And I thought that is not
We don't need another Beatles film like that. So how
can I, you know, evoke the past and bring to live,
(02:27):
bring to life a period in someone's life in a
different way. And that was really the impulse for how
to do this film. So we The key to me was,
you know, John. I read this little interview that John
gave where he's talked about how he loved TV in
America so much, and that was what he did for
most of the first year he was in the US,
(02:47):
which just sit and watch TV. And that was, as
he called it, his window on the world. He learned
about the country, he learned about the politics through watching TV.
And I was so fascinated by that, and I thought
that that is a way into this. We could basically
have John watching TV with Yoko in this tiny apartment
and in the West village that they moved into when
they first came to the New York in nineteen seventy one,
(03:09):
and inter cut into that all these other relements. It's
but it's the backdrop to the whole film is what
is going on in the United States at this period,
so you get immersed in the commercials, the talk shows,
the the the the Mary Tyler Moore Show, whatever, all
(03:30):
the stuff that's happening at that period. So you get
a real feel and sense of America, of New York
at that time, and then you start to understand the
songs in a different way because they put it into
the context of the of the time. So yeah, it's
it's it's it's a different approach. And really the key
to it was finding these audio recordings of John and
(03:54):
Yoko on the phone that the family found in their
archives somewhere that nobody'd ever listened to them before. They
didn't even know what they had. It was this box.
It just said audio recordings, Bank Street, nineteen seventy two,
and they said, are you interested in listening to these?
We just dug them up and I said, yeah, of course,
and what's on them? And they said, We've had no idea.
So this huge amount of tapes turned up, and it
(04:18):
was their phone calls. They recorded their own phone calls
because they believed that the FBI, and I think correctly
the FBI were tapping their phones and they thought they
got kind of paranoid. They thought we better record these
calls ourselves, because then we'll have a record of what
we said in case we get accused of anything smart
that you know it's not true. So and then they
(04:38):
recordings were put away in a box and forgot about.
But what they do is they give you this intimate
sense of them. They're sitting on their bed, they're talking
on the phone. Some of it's totally banal kind of stuff.
Some of it's really emotional and intricate, like Yoko talking
to somebody about her experience of the split of the
Beatles and how the Beatles the other Beatles treated her,
(05:00):
and and and then you've also got you know, them
talking a lot about the politics and and what they
want to do to to you know, try and sway
the election for against Nixon, a former governor who was
the Democratic candidate, kind of radical Democratic candidate who's not,
by the way, a very good candidate. So he did
he did in the end, he did very badly. And
(05:20):
they're and their their their kind of attempt to influence
the election didn't actually come to very much.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, I mean the way that you bring things together,
because I mean, you do set it up with the
Campbell soup, the the Mary Anne from Gilligan's Island and things.
But the thing is is that I'm seeing a side
of Yoko Ono here I've never seen because and watching
that this is not the Yoko I was blessed with
the opportunity to share a conversation with. I got to
see the stronger Yoko, the one that had a voice,
(05:47):
a presence, and she wanted to make sure that people
knew that it was Yoko that was on the phone
with them.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And you get them real sense
that they are in a deep way. They were a
partnership and they respect each other so deeply. I think.
I think one of the one of the early things
that I discovered, And it's not it's not like I
discovered it, because nobody else had heard had knew about this,
But it made a difference, such a difference to my
understanding of Yoka. But one of the things I found
(06:14):
out about was that the reason that they came to
New York, other than to escape the sort of the
chaos in the in the aftermath of the Beatles split,
one of the reasons that came was to look for
Yoko's missing daughter, Kyoko, who had been effectively kidnapped by
her ex husband and they were somewhere in America and
nobody knew where, and John Yoka were paying for private
(06:34):
detectives to try and track them down and find them.
And so what you're seeing in the film is a
woman who's in mourning in a way. She's she's experiencing
grief at the loss of her child. And when you
suddenly see her through those eyes as a mother who's
going through a really horrible experience. And by the way,
(06:54):
they never found the daughter and she only reappeared in
the nineties. I mean, it's an amazing story. You know,
once you see her in that light and you start
to humanize her, I think you can, you know, really
really feel for her. And there's a bit at the
end of the film where John and Yoko go in
early nineteen seventy three up to Harvard, up to Cambridge,
(07:19):
Massachusetts to attend the first International Feminist Conference, and John
is the only man there. He's the only man in
the room, which is very typical of John because he's
kind of so open minded and so adventurous. He doesn't,
you know, his ego doesn't get in the way, which
one of the things I love about him, you know,
in this period particularly, But Yoko talks when she's there
(07:41):
about how difficult it was being married to John, and
you start to see everything from a different perspective and
you think, oh, yeah, God, you were married to this
guy who the world loves, who's this icon or she says,
a monument, and she lost all her confidence. She started
to develop a doctor. She says, she had a couple
(08:01):
of miscarriages, you know, and you really begin to see, Oh,
it was hard being Yoko. And I think also you
appreciate her performances more. You understand that her performance in
the film of Don't Worry Kyoko at the concert, the
one to one concert, it's like a punk expression of emotion. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
And one of the things that really sticks out to
me is when you talk about the emotions and the
things that she's gone through. This helps me understand her
presence when she just goes into the studio and makes sounds,
because it makes me want to go in there and
listen to those groans, in those moans, in those different sounds,
because there's something to it. It's coming from somewhere, and
this at least is an open door for me to say, hey,
(08:43):
look before I go and listen to that, I need
to study this more so that I know Yoko the
person and the performer, more so that when she does
make those sounds, I'm going, God, dang it, I know
exactly where.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
She is exactly. And I think that's the thing, is
that she's a very direct, visceral performer. Yeah, and people
always sort of mock her for not being a good singer,
but she can sing beautifully. You hear the harmonies she
sings with in one of the home videos in this
film of Luck of the Irish. She's singing and it's beautiful,
(09:13):
her harmonies. But when she's performing, she's not necessarily only
going to do conventional kind of harmonic singing. She feels like,
you know, in the experimental artist that she is yep.
But there's different ways to express yourself and to express
emotions through through sound and through music, and that's what
she's doing. So she's always a kind of an experimentalist,
(09:35):
and I think, you know, people are only just catching
up to that and understanding what it was she was
trying to do with her music.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Please Do Not Move. There's more with Kevin McDonald coming
up next. The name of the documentary one to one
John and Yoko, we are back with Kevin McDonald. Well,
kudos to you for bringing Bob Dylan into this in
the way of explaining that before the activation of John
and Yoko, there had to be activating somewhere else. And
I'm glad that you tie that together because there's a
(10:03):
lot of Generation Alpha and Beta that does not understand
this full story, but you bring it to them in
the way of saying, by the way, what you have
for music today, there there was somebody before this and
they were very active, and so are your artists today.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, I mean I think that. I think that you know,
there have never probably been artists as politically engaged ever
in history, and except for this, you know, this period,
this period, you know, John was willing to put himself
on the line, and that's why that's why you know
the FBI were after him when you know Nixon's White
(10:39):
House was worried about him swaying the youth vote. I
think today's political artists, and there are many of them,
I don't think in the same way, they're quite putting
themselves on the line. Maybe in the US and maybe
I don't I don't know. About that, and I think,
you know, you see again in residence with today, you
see that that the Nicks people, you know, try to
(11:02):
throw John out of the country. They withdraw his visa,
they come up some trumped top charges to say that
he's not a legal a legal migrant, and that goes
on for I think six years or something before he
gets his green card, and I think in nineteen seventy
six or something. So yeah, it's a it's there's so
many parallels between then and now. That's that's that's the thing.
(11:24):
You watch this film and you're like, oh, there were
there were protests on the campus against Vietnam War. Oh
they look very like what's going on in Columbia now,
or against gaza, you know, and and so many, so
many other things, whether it be attempted assassinations of politicians,
or whether it be the first black woman running for president,
Charley Chisholm. And we've just been through another version of that,
(11:45):
and all the same the same stories were being told
about Shirley Chisholm. They've been told about Kambla Harris. So yeah,
it feels it feels sometimes like America is on some
weird fifty five year cycle. You know that I have
seventy two or fifty three year cycle. You know that
the same things are coming around again, the same sense
of division in society.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Well maybe it's my radio idiotself in the way that
you know, you just read what was available to you
through Joel Whitburner even Billboard magazine, But I did. I
never understood why the President Nixon wanted John out until
this documentary, and all of a sudden, I'm going, why
have I never seen anything like this that is so
genuine and so transparent that it gives me the side
(12:29):
that I'm sure that Richard Nixon was going, what the
hell is going on up there with John Lennon? What
he's riling the people?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah? Well that's the thing, is he That's why I
think this that the Nixon's people so tried so hard
to stop this tour that Joe wants to do what
he called the Free the People Tour, which he wanted
Dylan to join him on, and they were going to
go around to different times and play to the young people,
and the money was going to be the money that
they raised was going to be used for to give
(12:57):
bail to people. I'm in the low jails, and this
was seen as like, you know, revolutionary stuff, and it
was going to be you know, it was going to
be a real challenge to the status quote the political
status quote. And that's why, you know, the Nixon and
his people had to you know, threaten John and tape
his calls and threaten to throw him out of the country.
(13:20):
So but of course the tragedy is that after all
of this that they tried to do, Nixon won the
biggest landslide ever of any president I think in nineteen
seventy two. He didn't last much longer in power, obviously
because Watergate was already underway. The water Gate investigation was
already underway. But Nixon thought he was a threat and
thought that he would sway the youth vote. But at
(13:41):
last he didn't, and that I think was a It
was a huge turning point for John and Yoka because
they turned away from politics after this. They were like, oh, look,
we've tried and we've failed, and maybe that's not what
we should be doing. Maybe we're just artists and we
should be doing our art keeping out of politics. And
part of that transformation in their political understanding was putting
(14:01):
on this concert. Because this concert was a benefit for
physically and mentally disabled kids at this institution called will
of Rook. They had seen a TV report by Kerala
Rivera which was about this, the terrible medieval conditions in
this horrible institution in upstate New York, and they thought,
(14:23):
we need to do something about it. And so instead
of being on the barricades chanting slogans with the yippies
and Jerry Rubin, they are actually trying to make the
world a bit of better place, you know, you know,
one child at a time, I'm raising money for these kids.
And the title one to one actually comes from the
goal of this, of all the money they were trying
(14:44):
to raise, which was one on one care for every
child at this institution. So it's a it's a very
you know, practical way of trying to improve the world.
And I think that's where they ended up politically, which
is a kind of interesting thing to me.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Where can be people go to find out more about this?
And more importantly, I realized that it's an HBO documentary.
But will I be lucky enough, maybe through Fathoma Advans
or something, to see this up on the big screen,
because I want to be able to be oh, wowed
and shocked up on that big screen as well.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well. Unfortunately you've missed the opportunities on the big screen.
It did have a limited theatrical release a few months ago,
but obviously it's so hard to get the word out
about these things these days. People aren't going to theaters
and the way they used to, so unfortunately, I think
you've missed that opportunity. But if you've got a nice
big TV and a good sandsis from at home, you
can experience it almost as good at home on HBO.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
And I know I'm running out of time here, but
just give me your quick thoughts about the John Sinclair song.
I didn't know it existed, but now I can't get
enough of it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So this was actually the beginning of John Joko's belief
that they could help change the politics of America. They
were asked to go and play at a benefit culcerre
in Michigan in late nineteen seventy one for a character
called Johnson Claire who had been arrested for having two
joints and he was given five years in prison, and
there was a huge the kind of culture was just
(16:08):
up in arms and outraged by this, and the injustice
of this, and John decided to write a song, and
he wrote a song called John Sinclair and he went
to Michigan and he played it and a couple of
other songs, and lo and behold, the pressure of having
John there made the governor change his mind. The commuted
the sentence, and two days after the concert, Sinclair walks
(16:28):
out of prison, which is in the film. So John's like, Wow,
I really do have power. I really can change things.
And this was the inspiration that led to him getting
so engaged politically.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Wow, you've got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. Man, you are talking about one of
my favorite subjects on the planet.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Dude. Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad
you're so into well everyone should be.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Okay, sir, thank you.
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