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- [00:00]
Afwa Haysh
Wondery subscribers can binge seasons of Legacy early and ad free. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:17]
Peter Frankopan
Hello and welcome to the final episode of our series on John Lennon.
- [00:22]
Afwa Haysh
It's spring 1980. The Beatles are no more. John is 39 years old and finding fulfillment as a stay at home dad to son Sean. It's second time around as a parent and he's much more hands on than he was with Julian from his first marriage. The other Beatles have put out 10 albums between them through various solo projects in the last five years.
- [00:45]
Peter Frankopan
Lennon's noodling at home but hasn't released anything. Most people assume he's just retired, but his creative muse isn't finished with him yet.
- [01:09]
Afwa Haysh
From Wondery and Goal Hanger. I'm AFWA Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan and this is Legacy, the show that tells the lives of some of the most extraordinary men and women ever to have lived and asks if they have the reputation they deserve.
- [01:33]
Peter Frankopan
This is John Lennon Episode 4 Imagine.
- [01:47]
Unknown
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- [02:28]
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- [03:19]
Afwa Haysh
On April 20, John and Yoko celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary with lavish gifts by any standards, including a Rolls Royce for John. Is that your usual type of anniversary gift?
- [03:31]
Peter Frankopan
Peter Most Most yes we do. His and hers, but they then take a holiday with Shaun on Long Island. Lennon films them Having lunch, Yoko is looking out to sea and John is strumming his guitar.
- [03:44]
Afwa Haysh
Yoko thinks John needs some inspiration, and he's often talked about sailing in the past, so now she wonders whether that could be the jolt he needs. So, before any respectable sailing trip, as I'm sure you would, Peter, she consults their trusted numerologist, Takashi Yoshikawa.
- [04:04]
Peter Frankopan
Yeah, he detects clouds of evil forming over Lenin's head and says that he should travel in a southeasterly direction to escape them. That's why I keep changing my numerologists, because, you know, I need to know which direction. But so anyway, they decide that Bermuda fits the bill.
- [04:19]
Afwa Haysh
Well, I have a lot of time for numerology, but do you? Oh, yeah, I do. It's a really interesting ancient.
- [04:25]
Peter Frankopan
What is numerology? Just beyond counting.
- [04:27]
Afwa Haysh
It's the idea that numbers have certain values, spiritual values, universal values, and that you have numbers that align more to your spirit and character and destiny, but they're also omens that you can read in the choices you make and the way you navigate predictions. So it's basically just more information. Information is good, Peter. And, you know, if you're going sailing, you want to check the weather and the forecast, but you wanna check the numbers. Makes total sense to me.
- [04:56]
Peter Frankopan
I think that's how we should choose the date for our podcast recordings with a numerologist.
- [05:00]
Afwa Haysh
Obviously, I carefully consult this planetary alignment before we record, and I'm sure our listeners will notice. That's why there is, like a magical element to how great this series is.
- [05:10]
Peter Frankopan
Well, as it happens, I'm pretty sure I'm sitting in a southeasterly direction while recording this one. But anyway, on this case, Bermuda fits the bill. That fits the sailing, and it fits the numerology, and it fits the southeasterly direction.
- [05:24]
Afwa Haysh
Except if there's one thing I know about sailing, and I really know very little, this might be the only thing I know about sailing.
- [05:30]
Peter Frankopan
Come on.
- [05:31]
Afwa Haysh
It's that Bermuda is basically the hairiest place ever.
- [05:36]
Peter Frankopan
John has got virtually no sailing experience, but he has got an experienced crew with him. So they set sail from Newport, Rhode island, which is quite a long way to get down to Bermuda in a Hinckley sloop named the Megan J. But as you guessed, afwa. But I don't think the numerologist did. The weather turns dangerously nasty.
- [05:54]
Afwa Haysh
Well, if you're fleeing clouds of evil, then clouds of rain don't seem that bad by comparison, right? Saturday, the 7th of June, 1980. North Atlantic Ocean. The storm had been raging for hours, turning the Atlantic into mountains. Of heaving water. John Lennon grips the wheel of the Megan J. He's attempting to steer the 43 foot sloop all the way to Bermuda. And he's on his own. Captain Hank has gone below deck for some sleep. After sailing the boat through the tempest for 30 straight hours, the rest of the crew have succumbed to seasickness. All I've got are these skinny little guitar playing muscles. John had protested when Hank told him he needed to take over. Now Lennon, tethered to the boat by safety harness, stands his ground as 20 foot waves crash over the deck. Spray stings his face and streams down his glasses as he fights to keep Megan J steady. Water pours into the cabin where the seasick crew huddle below. Terror had crossed gripped him initially, but something changed as the hours passed. John begins shouting into the wind the sea shanties he'd learned back home. Bold Riley, Maggie May and the Leaving of Liverpool. So fare thee well my own true love When I return United we will be. It's not the leaving of Liverpool that grieves me but my darling, when I think of thee. He feels like he is living out the seafaring legacy of his father, facing down nature's fury with nothing but his own determination. When Captain Hank finally emerges from his bunk, he finds a transformed man at the helm. Lennon is radiant with a wild joy. When they finally sail into Bermuda's Hamilton Harbour four days later, John knows he's had some kind of epiphany. Misquoting the wizard of Oz, he signs the logbook. Dear Megan, there is no place like nowhere. That storm tossed voyage aboard the Megan J has given John Lennon back to himself, if only for a brief shining moment.
- [08:24]
Peter Frankopan
That all sounds quite upbeat, but I've been in storms on a boat and it's absolutely, totally bloody terrifying. You're convinced you're gonna die?
- [08:32]
Afwa Haysh
Oh my God.
- [08:33]
Peter Frankopan
Because you know, the wind's lashing against the side, you know, you think that's it. So that euphoria, I can get it. And I think maybe with Lennon that that kind of brush with death is something that, that kind of, oh my God, this might be it.
- [08:46]
Afwa Haysh
And it's a sense of like losing control. You're really at the mercy of the elements and those moments, there's so little you can do. But you know, Peter, I love a story about identity and ancestry and for me there's a mystical element to this story as well. I love the idea of him kind of tapping into his Liverpool lineage. You know, he's feeling connected to his father and maybe his grandfather. You know, all these men in his line who were seafarers. I feel like this is a period in his life where he's been quite lost. And you could imagine this existential threat of the ocean and the storm feeling grounded and connected to his ancestors must have meant something quite profound to him as well.
- [09:25]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I think that the sheer relief of having survived, you know, getting back that euphoria is important. And in Lennon's case, it seems to spark something in him. So he stays on the island of Bermuda for a couple of months. He buys some cheap tape recorders and speakers and starts to work on new songs. And his five year hiatus of not really writing any music finally has come to an end.
- [09:45]
Afwa Haysh
For somebody for whom creativity is such a big part of his life, there must have been a relief and a joy in starting to tap into songwriting again, coupled with his son being there. They visit the botanical gardens, and then Lennon spots a clump of yellow freesias called Double Fantasy, which to him seems the perfect description of his life with Yoko. It's the name for his new album.
- [10:11]
Peter Frankopan
They get back to New York and John Lennon's back into the studio, and he hangs a photo of Shaun over the mixing desk, a reminder that Daddy needs to be home to put his son to bed. The band feed on tea and sushi, or dead fish, as John calls it, and they eat plates of sunflower seeds and raisins next to each microphone. So it all feels very wholesome. We get to October 9th in 1980, and to mark his 40th and Sean's 5th birthday, Yoko Ono hires five planes to write birthday messages across the Manhattan station skyline.
- [10:45]
Afwa Haysh
It captures everything. Happy family life, no shortage of funds. It's quite an extravagant birthday gift, but something wholesome about this little family and their unit, you know, making up for a lot of the things that he didn't do in his first relationship. You know, he really has this intimacy with Yoko that he never quite had with Cynthia. He's actually involved in his son's Shawn's life in a way he never was with Julian. He's far from the druggie spaced out days of the latter years of recording with the Beatles. Now he's eating sushi and sunflower seeds with a picture of his son in the studio. Sound engineer Roy Cicala says at this point, Lennon was the happiest person in the world and he's doing great stuff.
- [11:29]
Peter Frankopan
So compared to his experimental and edgy material, this album is actually quite conservative. But it's beautiful, you know, beautiful boys, A love letter to Sean and Woman is dedicated to Yoko Onna, who's shown him the meaning of success. So he's independent now. He's autonomous from the Beatles. I wasn't competing, he said. I was just enjoying the music. And so the circle seems to have been squared. It's a kind of good happy place. But it's not particularly successful, is it his album?
- [11:56]
Afwa Haysh
The critics preferred it when he was unhappy, dysfunctional and off his head because they think Double Fantasy is basically pretty boring. They say the whole thing reeks of indulgent sterility. It's a God awful yawn that stings.
- [12:10]
Peter Frankopan
Still, there's talk of a world tour and plans for a long overdue visit to England, including seeing Aunt Mimi in Dorset. And to be fair, Lennon doesn't really care about the reviews. He's on a roll with back to back interviews to promote Double Fantasy, and he's already thinking about his next release. There's so much to look forward to.
- [12:42]
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- [15:17]
Afwa Haysh
It's 7:30am on Monday 8th December. Lennon has had breakfast in his favorite diner, La Fortuna. Afterwards, he gets his hair cut into a 50s style with a quip rock and roll will never die. It's a busy day ahead. Interviews to promote the new album and then working with their producer Jack Douglas, on songs for the next Release.
- [15:42]
Peter Frankopan
Late afternoon, 8 December 1980 the Dakota Building, New York. The December air is mild as John, Yoko and a journalist emerge from the building where John and Yoko have lived for seven years. There's always a group of fans outside the Dakota. Groupies, john calls them. Usually they're polite. Today one man stands slightly removed from the others. He's clutching a copy of Double Fantasy. The man's hands tremble slightly as he holds out the album towards John. As he's about to get into a car, John takes the album and a pen, looking briefly at the young man's face. Another photographer in the group raises his camera, capturing the moment as John Lennon signs his name and the year across the front cover. John glances up at the man's eerily calm expression. Is that all you want? The man responds in a monotone. Yes.
- [16:45]
Afwa Haysh
John and Yoko continue with a round of promotional interviews, and Annie Leibowitz arrives at their apartment to take photos for a special for Rolling Stone magazine. It's the last picture ever taken of them and Peter. It is a very unsettling, highly memorable and incredibly striking image. Lennon has taken all his clothes off and lies with a fully clothed Ono, draping himself over her in a fetal position. And there are so many things that are quite haunting about that image, I think for me. One is the proximity of his nudity and vulnerability next to her fully clad, totally covered up. It just seems like a real contrast in the levels of exposure and vulnerability. The second thing is the way that he's curled into this fetal position. It really seems like a very direct, literal reference to his relationship with his own mother, which was one that was complicated, partially unfulfilled. There's a sense that he didn't get the level of maternal attention and love that he needed. But there was also a very weird dynamic in his relationship with his mother where the boundaries were blurred, that there was like inappropriate sexual energy in their dynamic. And you just can't help but think of that when you look at him lying with Yoko in this image. And I really recommend for anyone listening to have a look at that picture, because I do think it speaks to the dynamic between them, but also these very deep, unresolved issues that he seems to have in himself.
- [18:31]
Peter Frankopan
You're so eloquent and smart, Afra, you know, you put it so well. You know, I think that's exactly right. It captures so much of what you've been saying about his wife, his mother, his personality, his experimentation, the provocation. You couldn't have a more interesting sort of tragic final photo. When John and Yoko get back to the Dakota that evening, the man who'd been there earlier, he's still there. He's a 26 year old former security guard called Mark Chapman. Chapman emerges from the shadows and he says, hello, Mr. Lennon. Then he takes aim and fires multiple shots. And Lennon has fatal wounds to his chest, left arm and back. Police arrive and they find the gunman leaning against the Dakota brickwork, calmly reading the Catcher in the Rye. The gun and the signed album have been discarded. Nearby.
- [19:27]
Afwa Haysh
All night, radio programmes start announcing the murder. Newspaper and wire service switchboards are flooded with calls.
- [19:37]
Peter Frankopan
I remember watching John Kramer's Newsround, which broke the news to my age group that John Lennon had been shot. And it was a real shock. I mean, I hadn't been born when JFK or Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. And the idea that somebody could just be shot dead in broad daylight, it was really shocking at the time. So, I mean, it was devastating.
- [19:58]
Afwa Haysh
Can I just ask you your thoughts about the significance of Catcher in the Rye? Cause I feel like it Also captures a moment in the culture that's his killer was reading that book and actually catch her in the Rye. I mean, while it doesn't in any way endorse or try to instigate violence or murder it, I guess it's a whole story about, you know, catching out phonies and protecting the innocent. I can see how that does like feed into quite a conspiracist worldview. And people who maybe like have delusions of grandeur or mental health issues could imagine their role like to be self appointed guardians in that respect. It's a weird, dark thing. And it's funny because when I first read Catcher in the Riot, it just never occurred to me that it could be interpreted that way. But now I guess I can see how it could feed into that worldview.
- [20:50]
Peter Frankopan
Well, you know, it was also a book that was read by John Hinckley, who attempted to kill President Reagan just a few months later in 1981. And I think it's partly that Holden Caulfield, the lead character, he uses vulgar language, you know, it's very sexualized, lots of ideas about subverting families, friends and so on. So it was a kind of outsider's guidebook. But the combination of how you could look for inspiration in somebody's book to then go and murder it feels a false one to me. I mean, in fact, with all these things, and we talked about this before, when someone does something as awful as the man who killed Lennon, I mean, even naming them or talking about their motivations gives them a role in the story that we both feel very uncomfortable about because it allows people to take oxygen away from the real protagonist. But the shock that goes through the world when Lennon's killed, it was totally devastating. At 6am, someone from California rings the office in the Dakota and threatens to kill Yoko. So I mean, she's immediately being blamed somehow for what's happened to her husband. By 7 in the morning, radio stations are playing Beatles non stop, including by the way, one in East Berlin, in East Germany, which breaks its ban on western music. And Joko rings Paul to tell him. And then when he talks to the press, he mutters, it's a drag, you know, not the best way to respond. But that gets misinterpreted as him uncaring, when in fact he explains that he was just completely speechless. Not surprisingly.
- [22:23]
Afwa Haysh
George Harrison cancels a recording session and Ringo Starr and his fiance Barbara Bach fly back from their holiday, also in the Bahamas, and they slip in the back door of the Dakota to see Yoko and Leaving, they have to force their way through hysterical fans who try to reach out to touch Ringo. And Ringo said, I was disgusted, not with the idea that they were there, but with the fact that you had a lot of dummies in the crowd, all shouting at Yoko and saying, come to the windows.
- [22:52]
Peter Frankopan
In Dorset, Aunt Mimi's at home and wakes after hearing the words John Lennon on the BBC World Service. And almost immediately the phone rings. It's Neil Aspinall, the Beatles fixer, and says, mimi, have you heard? And she clearly hasn't. And he puts the phone down, crying without saying any more. And she soon finds out why.
- [23:10]
Afwa Haysh
In the uk, the song Just Like Starting over goes to number one in the charts, soon to be knocked off the top spot by 1971's Imagine. Double Fantasy wins a Grammy for Album of the Year.
- [23:24]
Peter Frankopan
The murder trial takes place in June 1981. The murderer's attorney urges him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but he ignores him and pleads guilty. And Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life and is still in prison today.
- [23:39]
Afwa Haysh
It's not really the end for John Lennon. It's a transformation. Because now, from the moment of his death, he's gone from being John Lennon the man to John Lennon the myth.
- [23:49]
Peter Frankopan
The legacy of John Lennon. You see it everywhere. I mean, there's John Lennon airport in Liverpool, the Strawberry Fields memorial site in Central park in New York, and you know, John Lennon's glasses, the legacies of the Beatles on film. They've interested everybody from Sam Mendes to Martin sc. But what about the deeper reality of legacy? Lennon as a musician, Lennon as a peacemaker, John Lennon as a parent. John Lennon as an icon.
- [24:32]
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- [26:03]
Afwa Haysh
So John Page said something about the legacy of the Beatles as a whole. Peter. Which I think is a big statement. He said, my impression is that the Beatles place is not so much in the world of serious music as it is in the world of revolution that hits. Because I think there's a lot of truth in that.
- [26:23]
Peter Frankopan
The Beatles, obviously, they're seminal. Cause so much gets pinned onto the four of them. Where they come from, the music, the time, the decade and so on. I mean, look, fair enough, but you could go too far with this and think that the Beatles somehow are the kind of only engine of social cultural innovation and change. You know, they're in the right place at the right time. In the 60s. The music is fantastic, they're interesting characters. But, you know, it's only music. It's not actually doing anything for civil rights. It's not changing that many mores. But, you know, isn't calling it a revolution maybe going a bit too far? Afwa.
- [26:59]
Afwa Haysh
I mean, I hope you could see my facial expression when you said it's only beetles.
- [27:03]
Peter Frankopan
You don't look convinced.
- [27:05]
Afwa Haysh
Was quite horrified. I definitely don't think there is such thing as only music. Music is a profound engine of social change. I think that it's true to call the Beatles a revolution because you can separate it, right? There are the songs, and the songs are obviously super successful. Some of them are very commercial. Some of them are very experimental. We can have a whole conversation dissecting the critical merits of the Beatles as musicians. But for me, the culture that grew up around them was really revolutionary. And I'm not just talking about the screaming girls who followed them everywhere or the people who showed up to see their gigs. I'm talking about the kind of collapsing of social hierarchy that meant that these four young men with no class status, really from like a marginalized region of England, could become so rich, so influential, so widely followed, so powerful in dictating fashion and political ideology and taste. I think they're both symptom and cause of some of the huge changes we saw in the second half of the 20th century where young people were identifying as young People for the first time, where young people were rejecting the norms and mores of their parents for the first time, where they were embracing much more liberal sexual and gender ideas, where they were dressing different ways, where they regarded themselves as entitled to spend money and have their own tastes and consumption and then started rejecting all those capitalist ideas about what you should be part of with your life and your career and your agency. Even the way they normalized drugs is so radical given how strictly society disapproved of those ideas before. For me, when I just think about the ways in which the BBC refused to play some of their songs, some of the songs that now seem so innocent just because it was regarded as too shocking for a public service broadcaster to air. It really gives me a sense of how old fashioned England was when they emerge and how radical an energy threw into that mix. I mean, it may be a little bit of a kind of fantasy version of what it was like because I wasn't there, but I imagine post war England as this really like quite gray, austere, still Edwardian place. And they do feel like this kind of Technicolor hippie, totally disdainful of authority, totally creative bombshell that was dropped into that drab world and played such a big part in renewing it and then exported that renewal around the world. When I was growing up, it was the 90s, it was new Labour and the new era of Cool Britannia. But I even then felt I couldn't really understand how that was being perceived without looking back to the ways in which the Beatles globalized British culture in their time. So I think they were so much more than a band. And even if you don't really engage that deeply with their music, what they represent socially and culturally is completely undeniable.
- [30:12]
Peter Frankopan
I find it very hard to argue with any of that. I think part of my pushback is that, you know, I'm a historian and you know, it's the fact that they're so over dominant. I mean, it doesn't mean that they're not all the things you've just said. And I agree completely and I'm a huge fan of the music, I really mean that. But it's the fact that everything goes the Beatles. It feels a bit like Henry VIII is a kind of the massive gorilla in the room that everybody wants to work on and think about because it's much easier to do that rather than think about what else is going on. The Beatles are seminal for all those reasons you mentioned, but I just wonder whether also we can project so much onto their Music, their lyrics, their fashion, the haircuts, the working class, the Britain, the 60s. I sort of just think that the complexity of thinking about everybody else just gets pushed out the way. That's something I recognize from my own field.
- [31:02]
Afwa Haysh
I think about this a lot in a slightly different context. I think a lot about how academics, intellectuals, writers and thinkers do such nuanced work over really long periods of time, advocating new ideas or social progress or new ways of thinking of things. And then one super high profile celebrity or band or artist will just like come through and overnight popularize those ideas that have been germinating for sometimes generations and make them mainstream, household, accessible. And I think both of those things are true. The people that are doing the work and really like generating the culture more slowly deserve to be understood and credited. But it doesn't detract from the fact that it often does take a very commercial, salable, marketable product or brand to accomplish overnight almost what those generations couldn't quite break through. And I think that there is a real injustice and inequality in the way that happens. But that's a critique of our whole culture. Like why does it take for boys who the girls think are cute and are in love with to popularize an idea that has so much merit in its own right? But that's why I think about it. Cause I know that I read so many books that are such powerful ideas, but when Beyonce puts them in an album, suddenly they become mainstream. You know, she can place black feminist tradition into the mainstream instantly by putting it in lyrics to her song or imagery in one of her music videos. And I'm not wild about that. It feels like a kind of simplification and a commoditization, but it's still true. That's what ends up reaching a lot of people.
- [32:58]
Peter Frankopan
So tell me, Afra, about the role of race in this and music in particular. I mean, we've got Craig McDonald in 1970, just after the Beatles split up, saying it's a cruel paradox and a damaging one for the new culture that the most important group in rock history should have been white instead of black and English instead of American. How does the way in which the Beatles sounds, influences and so on, how does that get interpreted by the fact that four white working class boys from Liverpool that make it. Is there a significance in the cultural influences? Does that matter?
- [33:27]
Afwa Haysh
I feel like these forces are so powerful that even when a group like the Beatles credits the black artists who inspired them, which to his credit, Lennon did, I mean, he said the one thing we always did was to make it known when he's talking about his early covers of black artists, that these were black originals. We loved the music. We wanted to spread it any way we could. In the 50s, there were few people listening to blues, R and B, rock and roll in America as well as Britain. People like us drank, ate and slept the music and also recorded it. Many kids were turned onto black music by us. It wasn't a ripoff, it was a love in. And you know, I respect that. I think culture is always merging and cross pollinating and exchanging. And that's completely natural. I don't think that artists should just stay in their lane and only be inspired by other artists who look like them or come from the same traditions. That's like profoundly not how art works. It is exchange and it is inspiration. But what I find fascinating is that even when someone as high profile and famous as Lennon credits the black artist that inspired him, it still doesn't change the fact that those black artists don't get remembered, don't get remunerated, don't get celebrated. And Lennon does. And for me, that doesn't necessarily say anything about John Lennon. It says something about our culture and about how deep the roots of that inequality go.
- [34:51]
Peter Frankopan
And I guess the Beatles also play an important role in sexual equality. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author and activist, described it as saying to abandon control, to scream, faint, dash about in mobs, was to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of female teen culture. It was the first and most dramatic uprising of women's sexual revolution.
- [35:14]
Afwa Haysh
Just on the girls. I love the footage of, like their first trip to America, for example, you know, landing in New York, and these girls almost in a religious frenzy, a kind of like out of body state, screaming and like wailing and flinging themselves and weeping and collapsing. And what I love about that footage is the reaction of the police who are trying to protect the barricade and protect the Beatles. They look like they're in shock. They look as if these young American girls who are part of their community, maybe some of them are their daughters or their neighbors, they look as if they're this new wild species that they've never seen before. As if they're trying to work out where they came from. And the reason I love that is because it conveys this sense that these young women had never had permission to express themselves in that way before. They had never had a context in which they could be wild and proud, primal and completely possessed with emotion. And there's something really liberating about that. It's like they just don't care. They will do anything to express how they feel and try and touch a beetle. And the men who are policing them look completely freaked out. Like one, who knew women were capable of this kind of emotion and strength and power? And two, how could they control it? And I think that's a metaphor for a lot of the change in the 20th century that men had been able to police women's bodies and expression. And this is an era where that's all changing. And women are starting to say, I refuse to be policed. And if I'm going to go down, I'm not going to go down quietly. And I don't care about the social consequences and I don't care about respectability or being humiliated or looking stupid. I feel this and I'm going to let it out. And like screaming fans for a rock band is not that deep. But women breaking free from centuries of very repressive norms about how they have to behave in public is very profound.
- [37:19]
Peter Frankopan
Let's do a bit of legacy roundup. So in terms of John Lennon as a songwriter, he's ranked number three in the list of greatest songwriters of all time behind Paul McCartney and Marvin Gaye of Rolling Stone's 2023 Best Albums of All Time. In the top 35, they're are five Beatles albums. That's pretty something. John Lennon, the most number ones for a songwriter in the UK according to Guinness Book of Records. So in terms of his musical legacy and contribution, you can't touch John Lennon. Right. What about as an activist, a change maker, peace, love and so on? How do you evaluate that?
- [37:55]
Afwa Haysh
If we're going to judge John Lennon's activism by its ability to stop violence, then it definitely didn't have the legacy he would have liked. So he really staked his whole identity on protesting against the Vietnam War. The Vietnam war continued until 1975, didn't end as a result of his protests and the bed ins that he and Yoko Ono conducted were ridiculed, especially in the media, where they were described, for example, as the spectacle of two hairy hedonists spreading the gospel of peace as they vibrate all the way to the bank. But I do think there is another way of looking at it, which is that it did set a precedent for somebody who has so much to gain from being vanilla and not rocking the boat, from actually really taking a stand and even being willing to weather ridicule because they want to stand up for a cause. And I think that has had a legacy. You can take so many causes now, whether it's climate, whether it's war, whether it's humanitarian causes. We're used to seeing celebrities do things, speak up, pull stunts back campaigns. And I think they owe him a legacy in the way he normalized that kind of behavior. And he also fired shots at the class system. We heard earlier about how all the beatles were given OBEs by the Queen. John Lennon sent his back out of protest for the war in Biafra. You know, again, like giving back your OBE isn't going to change anything, but it also sends a message. And since then, we've seen other high profile celebrities either reject OBEs or send them back as a statement of protest. Even as somebody who had amassed a huge amount of wealth and privilege, he didn't lose his sense of what unfairness looked like and that he wanted to be somebody who was trying to, in some ways, dismantle it. And if dismantle it is too strong a word, then at least fire shots at it.
- [39:54]
Peter Frankopan
Then the flip side is, you know, all you need is love. It's a little bit facile. And sometimes we can be over solemn of giving the credit to saying, well, he had his heart in the right place and maybe we should all give peace a chance. But it doesn't actually do too much. You've been very persuasive afua in thinking and framing Lennon of how he took a stand counts for something and it empowers other people to do the same thing. But is it just music? Is it muddying the water by taking stands about things that don't actually go anywhere?
- [40:23]
Afwa Haysh
I'll tell you why I really, really push back against that analysis. Because when somebody who has the world's attention weighs into those issues, they're dismissed as infantile or superficial. It's a complete setup. And how that works is to just shut down anyone who has something to say, who has values that they stand up for. So I think that we should be really skeptical of that. It just becomes very circular and it's a way of basically making sure nobody ever really questions the status quo in a way that is taken seriously. So I think that it's really important that someone like John Lennon, even if it's not the most sophisticated and articulate version, is able to stand for something. And if everybody did that, then the world would be different. That might sound very trite and naive, but it's true.
- [41:10]
Peter Frankopan
It's not a kind of homework scoreboard. But what about the fact that he's obviously complicated as a partner and As a father, you know, he's hot and cold and how he indulges one son and then not the other. You know, his relationship with Cynthia and then with Yoko Ono. Are you generous in how you see how he was with his people who are closest to him too?
- [41:28]
Afwa Haysh
No, I think he was an absolutely terrible father to his first child. Who actually said when dad was fast becoming one of the wealthiest men in his field, Mom. That's Cynthia, John Lennon's first wife. Mum and I had very little and she was going out to work to support us. He was neglectful, abusive of his first family. He could be incredibly cruel. Books that I've read about him by people who clearly loved and respected and appreciated him. Still don't shy away from how cruel he could be. You know, like casual cruelty, homophobia, anti Semitism, racism, total misogyny. He could be violent towards women. I don't think that in order to appreciate the legacy of his ideas, we should be apologists for his behavior in his personal life. And, you know, for somebody so thoughtful, who was capable of deep reflection, who was interested in the world and injustice and power, he was incredibly myopic when it came to his own life, or hypocritical or both. And I think that is a consistent theme throughout his life. And we could maybe tie that to the trauma of his early childhood and the very disrupted relationship he had with his mother and father. But at some point he has to take personal responsibility for making really poor choices and for doing really bad things.
- [42:51]
Peter Frankopan
What do you reckon would have happened if he hadn't died? I mean, it's speculation and total guesswork, but what kind of causes would you think he'd have adopted if he was still alive? Do you think he'd have got on with Paul McCartney? He'd been a national treasure. Would he have been a polarizing force? What would you imagine that he would have gone on to do?
- [43:07]
Afwa Haysh
I do worry that because he had this, like, very provocative tendency and he liked to go against the grain, he might have become one of these people that says really problematic things just to make the point that you can. Whether he would have railed against this idea of cancel culture. And it was funny. We talked about the COVID of Sergeant Pepper. He wanted a picture of Jesus next to a picture of Hitler. And that actually made me think of Kanye west, you know, of somebody who is a genius, an artistic genius, but becomes stuck in a bit of a toxic worldview of his own persecution and not being allowed to say certain things and then just start saying really terrible Destructive, vile things just to make the point that he can. I have like a fear that John Lennon could have become that person. But there's a version of him that he was finding more genuine peace at the end of his life. You know, that transformative sailing trip. He was becoming a much more loving and attentive father. He even started to repair his relationship with Paul McCartney a little bit. He was very devoted to Mimi right to the end of his life. So, you know, there are also suggestions that he could have become a more consistently loving person. It's just. It's so hard to say. What do you think, Peter?
- [44:22]
Peter Frankopan
I'm curious what his musical legacy would have been when the Beatles split up. It was the world that sort of started to give way towards Led Zeppelin and then eventually to punk and then towards disco. And it'd been interesting to see whether he would have been a shapeshifter and being constantly reinventing himself, I suppose, like David Bowie did of anticipating new trends and buying into them, or whether he just stuck. Still, I'm not sure if I'm brutally honest how his musical legacies of the 1970s and double fantasy really stand up compared to the Beatles. I just think there was something completely magical about what those four men did. And I think that's also why in the 21st century, the Beatles and the appetite is still so sharp. You know, there's a kind of alchemy that is. And I think in that sense the Beatles were so important to think about what collaboration looks like. We talked about that once or twice too, about how the sum of the parts can sometimes be just much greater than the individual. So there was something very special about that. You know, you suddenly can have this window where everything you do turns to gold. And it felt that's what the Beatles did. They sold 600 million records. That's more than anybody ever, you know, that I think speaks for itself.
- [45:36]
Afwa Haysh
And it's important to point out that the Beatles are still attracting new generations of fans. There was me in the late 80s at the Merton Beatle Appreciation Society being inducted into this cult for the first time, you know, decades later. But that's still happening. And in 2019 a Forbes report said that 18 to 29 year olds are responsible for 47% of of Beatles stream songs. This is a completely new generation using technology that the Beatles couldn't have even imagined when they were recording now massively downloading and consuming their music. And that in itself is an incredible legacy. I mean, so few musicians achieve that longevity, that ability to transcend generations we're in a different millennium now, let alone a different decade or century.
- [46:26]
Peter Frankopan
And we've got AI to come. So in November 2023, AI extracted Leonard's vocals to produce now and then from demos and cassettes from 1977. And it's up for best song at the 2025 Brit Awards alongside Charlie Exiac's Coldplay and Stormzy. I think that's got one of these kind of minefields around what happens in the creative industries about the resurrection and the recreation of music from the past. But the fact that the Beatles and John Lennon are part of that conversation Today, you know, 45 years after Lennon was killed and 55 years, 60 years since the Beatles split up, it's pretty, pretty amazing. I mean, I don't think we could cover a musician that had a more important legacy in the modern world than John Lennon. Okay, but afwan the bit that you like best, which is your three words. Have you got three of those?
- [47:14]
Afwa Haysh
I do.
- [47:15]
Peter Frankopan
Oh, gosh, you're so good at this.
- [47:17]
Afwa Haysh
Do you?
- [47:19]
Peter Frankopan
Well, I didn't, but now I do. Yeah, go on, you. Shall I go first in case they're your three?
- [47:23]
Afwa Haysh
I got one.
- [47:24]
Peter Frankopan
I'm going to do Let it be.
- [47:25]
Afwa Haysh
Oh, you're stealing my vibe now I'm stealing your.
- [47:29]
Peter Frankopan
I used to be. I used to be. I used to obey the rules, but now I'm following Apple. Hirsch goods.
- [47:33]
Afwa Haysh
Look at you.
- [47:34]
Peter Frankopan
Were those your three?
- [47:35]
Afwa Haysh
No, mine are. War is over.
- [47:38]
Peter Frankopan
Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, that's actually quite nice to finish on a hopeful note, because in my day job, that doesn't look like either John Lennon or you are right. But I hope that both of you are. Here's to peace in the future. Next time we'll be delving into sex, dreams and the psyche as we explore the frankly jaw dropping life of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud himself.
- [48:14]
Afwa Haysh
So excited for that. Peter, prepare to be psychoanalyzed. Follow Legacy on the Wondery app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [48:54]
Peter Frankopan
From Wondery and Goal Hanger. This is the final episode in our series about John Lennon.
- [48:59]
Afwa Haysh
A quick note about our dialogue. We can't know everything that was said or done behind closed doors, particularly when we go far, far back in history. But our scenes are written using the best available sources. So even if a scene or conversation has been recreated for dramatic effect. It's still based on biographical research.
- [49:16]
Peter Frankopan
We've used many sources for this series, including the Beatles after the Breakup by Keith Badman, Mark Lewinson, the Complete Beatles Chronicles and Lenin Remembers by Jan S. Wenner.
- [49:26]
Afwa Haysh
Legacy is hosted by me, Afwa Haysh.
- [49:29]
Peter Frankopan
And ME Peter Frankenburn, scene writer by.
- [49:31]
Afwa Haysh
Stephanie Power for Goal Hanger.
- [49:33]
Peter Frankopan
Our series producers are Kate Taylor and Anoushka Lewis. The associate producer is Karen Pirie. Our production managers are Izzy Reid and Alex Hack Roberts. The executive producers are Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport.
- [49:46]
Afwa Haysh
Legacy is sound engineered and designed by Dan King.
- [49:49]
Peter Frankopan
Music supervision is Scott Velasquez for Fritz and Sync.
- [49:52]
Afwa Haysh
Our producer for Wondery is Emanuela Quinorti Francis and our managing producer is Rachel Sibley.
- [49:58]
Peter Frankopan
Executive producers for Wondery are Estelle Doyle, Chris Bourne, Morgan Jones and Marshall Louis.