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- [00:02]
Alan G. Parker
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Aloe or Allbirds, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and great marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for shoppers, buying. Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does online business better than Shopify. It's home of Shop Pay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going through. To checkout, sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com income all lowercase go to shopify.com income to upgrade your selling today. That's shopify.com income.
- [01:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
- [01:01]
Tariq Ali
Now.
- [01:02]
Ryan Reynolds
I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [01:22]
Alan G. Parker
Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's busy taxes and fees extra. See Mintmo of course, John wasn't a saint. And he would have laughed, roared with laughter at the thought of being, you know, referred to as St John or regarded as a saint.
- [01:41]
Tariq Ali
We all say a lot of things that we don't know what we're talking about. I'm probably doing it now. I don't know what I said, you know. See, everybody takes you up on the words you said in 1940. I'm just a guy who people ask what about things I blab off. And some of it makes sense, some of it, and some of it's lies and some of it's God knows what I'm saying, you know.
- [02:12]
Ryan Reynolds
Hello and welcome to episode 307 of Something about the Beatles podcast, My Conversation with Alan G. Parker, director of the new Lennon documentary Borrowed Time, focusing on his last decade, 1970 through 1980. Sorry, this one's taken as long as it has. But as you know, if you get the newsletter and if you don't get the newsletter, write to satb2010mail to get on it. And every Monday you will get something from me talking about the show, talking about upcoming shows, talking about Beatle history, news, sharing links, etc. Worth your time. I Do not spam, get out whenever you want to, but any event this past week was magical Mystery Camp, which I've talked about on the show a few times, brought to you all by RPM School, Jack Petrozale, Cameron Grider and Walter Everett. Just that lineup alone, if you have heard those shows, gives you an idea of what it's about. Add that to this beautiful locale in the Catskills. Big Indian. To be technical, I don't know who names these things. Evidently there must have been a big Indian at one point. Not Maharishi either. It is an immersive thing. Lots of music going on, presentations and hangouts, etc. Etc. Everybody is empowered who comes, who wants to make music to do so. And you get to learn a lot and get challenged and just enjoy the vibe, which is amazing. So anyway, I don't want to sit here and plug it and oversell it and all that stuff. Suffice to say I didn't know what to expect other than it came from good people and it ended up exceeding expectations. Met a ton of great people, some of them listeners to the show and it was really nice to connect and hang out. It was just really, really cool. But anyway, now the film Borrowed Time. It's one of those things, you know, we seem to be living in a golden age of Beatle adjacent documentaries right now with the May Pang one, Lost A Love Story. Chris Odell's got the film out. We talked about one to One, of course, Daytime Revolution. All kinds of things are out there. This one started back pre Covid, as you'll hear Alan talk about, and then things Happen. And it ended up coming out now roughly concurrent with one to one, but very different films. And I would say quite honestly, having seen all the most recent films, they all sort of complement each other. There's not a whole ton of overlap. And you'll hear him talk about you might be watching this thinking, well, why didn't he get so and so? Well, because they had their own film they were working on at the same time. But who he does have in this film is pretty impressive. And just to give you an idea of how far back the production went, there are a few people that are no longer with us that are in his film. Tony Bramwell for one, Andy Peebles for another. But who is in here is plenty of people that knew John, worked with him, were friends with him, etc. Our own Ray Connolly, who we've had on the show a bunch of times. Always worth his weight in gold. So glad to see him. There and on film, just to sort of run down some names alphabetically. Tariq Ali, who you heard at the cold open of this show, he was the guy connected to red Mole magazine circa 69, 70, 71, that John was interviewed by and sort of challenged on really formulating a solid political belief when he was starting to do that agit prop stuff, Power to the people, etc. It was Tariq Ali that was weighing influence on him at the time. But I'm glad he's part of this film. Jay Bergen, you know him as the attorney. Now, I will point out that there were a couple of cuts of this film, the 2 hour and 14 minute one which I saw, and there is a much longer one with more guests that didn't make it to the shorter cut that are featured in it. So if you are into John, if you are into hearing a series of stories, some of which might not all consistently align at Such Is Life. But as one of the guests said, Jerry Cagle, I believe the radio guy. You could all have dinner with John Lennon. Five people can and you'll get five different accounts of what happened. And that's just life. Other people. Chris Charlesworth, another journalist. Anthony DeCurtis, you know him from Rolling Stone. Who else? Bob Harris for the BBC did those great interviews with John Circus 75. You've got at the onset a discussion about the 1981 planned One World One People tour and the people connected with that at the very onset, which is something I think most of us didn't really know too much about. Earl Slick, who would have been part of that. You also have Vinny Apicey, the drummer, our own Ken Womack, our own Philip Norman, who's been on the show a couple times as well. So it's a great mix of people. Again, I would suggest anybody who's interested in this stuff, check it out. It's presented as sort of a series of talking heads with some great visuals and footage that frankly I, as somebody in this world, for as long as I've been, I've not even seen all this stuff. And he talks a bit how the famous Chicago news conference, the sort of mea culpa for more popular than Jesus. There's footage there past the familiar sound bites and now it's all this that you get to see where he talks about his dad, which is kind of cool. I'd never seen that before. So it's a nice mix of stuff that is that upcoming I'd mentioned in the newsletter, and I'll say it here one more time, I am particularly looking for second gen fans that would have been susceptible to the weight of Beatles illustrated record by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler. I want to get a show put together on that a bunch of you have stepped forward and I'm really just looking for sort of reaction stuff. The book is now 50 years old. Anybody who it was among their first Beatle books and a bunch of guys from all over the world have lined up one woman local to me but it'd be nice to hear from more women, more Brits, anybody else that that was among their first Beatle books and we're gonna put together a show on that a la now and then we'll get a bunch of voices in there and stitch it all together. There is no real optimum time when you're corralling people from all over the world so it'll be an edit piece but anyway that is in the works as well as other things we've talked about in the newsletter. Sappy2010.com it was great to meet everybody that I did at Bing Indian that are listeners to the show. It was super cool. Maybe my favorite part of the whole experience. It was really great summer. Now we've got a whole list of shows that I'm looking to nail down going forward. So it's going to be a busy year and I think we're already mapped out through autumn in terms of topics and stuff. And by the way, some people that I recently connected with had suggested a bunch of new ones, things I hadn't even thought of that I thought were really cool ideas. You don't run out of ideas with the Beatles. There's always fresh angles and I'm happy to be in a position where I can act on that and find people of authority to speak with. And after the show would be Candy Leonard. So you have that look forward to. Anyway, here we go with my talk with Alan G. Parker. I would imagine it's a pretty busy time for you right now.
- [09:55]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah, full on.
- [09:58]
Ryan Reynolds
Probably in terms of getting attention and all the stuff that's going on but they released the film. Maybe not the worst problems to have, but. No, I'm glad you're getting all this attention. I'm glad the film's getting seen.
- [10:09]
Alan G. Parker
Yes, I mean we're remarkably proud of it. It's been a rather long labor of love, shall we say. And this was a film that when it was envisaged was supposed to hit cinemas on 8th December 2020 for the 40th anniversary of John's death. Right but, you know, when it was envisaged, we couldn't pre predict things like Brexit and Covid and everything else that got thrown at it, basically.
- [10:36]
Ryan Reynolds
Sure.
- [10:37]
Alan G. Parker
So when we did finally start shooting properly, which would have been, I guess, about May 21, the potential release date was behind us. You know, we're looking at it through the rear view mirrors, they say. And so we sort of thought to ourselves, well, you know what? Now that we know we've missed what we thought was the ideal window for it. And especially also given the fact, as I was just saying to someone earlier this evening, normally when we do documentaries, and we've made a lot of these things by now, sometimes you've got anywhere between, let's say 20, 25, 30 interviewees, but that would be it right across the board. Right. In this instance, we had done a previous Beatles film, and that Beatles film had gained quite a bit of traction over the years between it coming out and Borrowed Time being a thing. And an awful lot of people who either A, knew John Lennon very well or B, had written extensively on John Lennon over the years. The line I've been using is, from the Tony Bramwells to the Kenneth Womacks and all the way back again, they were the ones who basically were. They were coming to us as good as. And the phone almost didn't stop ringing. And so we found ourselves in this wonderful position by the summer of 21, whereby we had just under 60 people who wanted to be in the movie. Okay, Most of those 60 people had known John Lennon for about seven years. And the ones that hadn't had written so much on John Lennon over the years that I doubt if you printed it all out. I doubt you'd get it into one room. So we were in a pretty good situation.
- [12:14]
Ryan Reynolds
That's amazing. I would think that if you're a filmmaker working on a particular project, being glutted with people with stories to tell would be a fantastic position to be in. Absolutely.
- [12:24]
Alan G. Parker
There was an unwritten rule at the beginning of this one. And the rule kind of was because I'd been such a great big John Lennon fan and still am, and a big Beatles fan and still am. I'd seen all the official documentaries. I'd seen all the unofficial documentaries. I'd seen things that were made for, like, YouTube and smaller, you know, kind of sites and stuff. What I thought to myself is, if we can get access to as many people as we ended up with that have got something new to add, or maybe if not even something new to add, then Maybe they can put another twist on something we're already aware of. Then maybe because we're not going through the estate of John Lennon, we have the somewhat envious, I guess in some filmmakers minds position of being able to think to ourselves, you know what, we don't need to present St. John and we don't need to present synergy on. We can weave right through the middle and find out who John Lennon actually was. It is funny because in the past we've made films, they've started off with a working title like a lot of bands do with albums. And then by the time it's been released, the working title's been long gone. This was Borrowed Time from the summer of 2019. The only thing that changed about it remotely is that when we came to release it and fix Release Day went to imbd, that's when we realized there's about three and a half thousand films in the world, including dramas called Borrowed Time. And that's when we gave it the subtitle Leonard's Last Decade. But it's been borrowed time since day one.
- [14:01]
Ryan Reynolds
That definitely suggests a concept in mind. And I could totally see you start out with one notion of where this is going to go at the onset and then the thesis sort of emerges as you start doing the work, as people come forward to you, people start presenting all these stories. So if there is a through line to this, I don't think it's necessarily there's a specific agenda that this is the story I want to tell of John. It's much more impressionistic than that. It's more, this is John as known by the people who knew him. This is the John these people know.
- [14:35]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah.
- [14:35]
Ryan Reynolds
So there's definitely inconsistencies in that. I can't remember which one of your interviewees says you can talk to five.
- [14:42]
Alan G. Parker
People that were with John at the.
- [14:43]
Tariq Ali
Same dinner and you're going to get five different stories.
- [14:46]
Ryan Reynolds
And that's sort of the subtext of this whole thing really.
- [14:49]
Alan G. Parker
That was Jerry Cagle, who'd known John a number of years. He, he was the boss of the radio station who ultimately commissioned the very last interview with John, the Dave Showing interview, which Jerry paid for because when the radio station were offered it, they turned around and said, who would want a John Lennon interview in 1980? It was like. So Jerry paid for that out of his back pocket. Yeah.
- [15:13]
Ryan Reynolds
And ended up being the substantive interview with the tragic timing of being his last full length conversation for media on the day he was killed, as we know.
- [15:24]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah.
- [15:24]
Tariq Ali
I mean the Fact is, people are believing in projecting their own power, visualizing goals, visualizing positiveness and doing these things that changing the world, it all takes time. You see, I think the bit about, you know, the 60s, we're all full of hope. And then everybody got depressed and the 70s were terrible. That attitude that everybody has that the 60s was. Was therefore negated for being naive and dumb. And the 70s is really where it's at, which means, you know, putting makeup on and dancing in the disco, which was fine for the 70s, but I don't negate the 60s. I don't negate the 70s. The seeds that were planted in the 60s, and possibly they were planted generations before, but the seed that whatever happened in the 70s, 60s, the flowering of that is in the feminist feminization of society, the meditation, the positive learning that people are doing in all walks of life, that is a direct result of the opening up of the 60s. Now, maybe in the 60s, we were naive and like children, everybody went back to their room and said, well, we. We didn't get a wonderful world of just flowers and peace and happy chocolate. And it wasn't just pretty and beautiful all the time. And that's what everybody did. We didn't get everything we wanted, just like babies. And everybody went back to their rooms and sulked. And we're just going to play rock and roll and not do anything else. We're going to stay in our rooms. And the world is a nasty, horrible place because it didn't give us everything. We cried, right? Crying for it wasn't enough. The thing the 60s did was show us the possibility and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility and the 70s, everybody's going, and possibly in the 80s, maybe everybody say, okay, well, let's project the positive side of life again. You know, the world's been going on a long time, right? It's probably going to go on a long time.
- [17:27]
Ryan Reynolds
So lots of places to go with this. You'd alluded to being a lifelong Beatle fan and a Lennon fan in particular. You're second gen. You wouldn't have been old enough to experience them. As the records are coming out starting in 62, 63. What was the gateway for you? Was it just the environment? You're from Lancashire, right?
- [17:44]
Alan G. Parker
Blackburn, Lancashire, yeah. Yeah.
- [17:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Place of the halls.
- [17:48]
Alan G. Parker
The halls, yeah. Basically, the upshot was I was what a tiny kid I was. I was born with this thing. Malicefia means double skull, big head. You got a thing on the back as well. But as a kid I was really tiny. I was kind of eight, nine years of age, maybe, I don't know, just about five foot and body like a pipe cleaner. So I looked like one of those Wobbly Head dolls. Any bullying or any first in line for anything like that completely. And it became that. I almost had to invent a world for me which existed within the bedroom of my parents, which Marvel Comics, although I was into all the obvious ones, Spider man, the Ilk and the Avengers, et cetera. I also drew myself very closely to Howard the Duck based purely on the fact that on every issue you have the strap line trapped in a world he never made, which I could relate to completely. There was a cassette tape presented, I think around the time of my 9th birthday, or just before an old TDK 90 minute. On one side was Rubber Sole and on one side was Revolver. And I went away upstairs and listened to this tape and I came back down crying. And my mother said, what's wrong? And I said, there's a guy in this band has written a song for me. She said, darling, I don't think they did play it. So I rewound the song and played it. It was no one. I just related to it completely, you know, I thought that was my song. What's funny about it is that that Christmas dad was a music fan, so he would buy albums for me and my brother at Christmas time. He said to me, what album would you like? And I told him the one with all the people on the COVID And I got pepper, and on Christmas Day I went to play it and I'm sat there in this little two up two down in Blackburn, Lancashire. And suddenly this guy, who by now, in my little childhood mind, I'm convinced has come to save me, sings the words. I read the news today. Oh, boy. 4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire. And I was running around every room in the house going, he's name check where we live.
- [19:55]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow.
- [19:55]
Alan G. Parker
You know, it's not just nowhere, man. He's name check where we live. And with that, I was hooked. That would have been 1974. So as soon as you start mentioning the Beatles in 74, it's not long before the grandparents appear with the red one and the blue one, you know, right? And go, it's happy whatever day it is, you know, those ones. And on it goes. And he really was like the big brother I didn't have. There was something to look to. There was something to look to in reading about this band. There was something to look to in just Gazing at the record sleeves, it just gave me some hope that hadn't previously been there.
- [20:33]
Ryan Reynolds
That is a very critical period for a lot of people like myself who weren't of age to be fans in real time when they started. But Red and Blue albums, total gateway drug. Now I'm wondering for you because clearly you're a reader and you're a big music fan. Were you aware of the book the Beatles Illustrated Record when it came out?
- [20:51]
Alan G. Parker
Yes. The first two Beatles books I ever received actually were the Beatles Illustrated Record. And also an auntie who I think had been in the fan club or had been a fan when she was younger, had an original 1968 copy of Hunter Davis book that was passed down to me by the age of about 10 or 11. And I always say that to people. If you want to read a great book about the Beatles, read unto his book, but read the original version because it's fascinating towards the end of the book to realize that he's getting very excited about this mammoth 30 track double album project that no band's ever attempted before. And he really does sound like he's extremely excited about it. You have a mind to take a good licking.
- [21:40]
Tariq Ali
I am not in the mood for words.
- [21:43]
Alan G. Parker
If you can be counted out in the region.
- [21:50]
Tariq Ali
Here, the 30 new creations.
- [21:56]
Alan G. Parker
On two LPS in one album and.
- [22:03]
Tariq Ali
The center spread poster of the Beatles.
- [22:10]
Alan G. Parker
The album is called the Beatles.
- [22:17]
Tariq Ali
There's nothing else this year. The Beatles here now on Capital's double record album and on double cartridge tape.
- [22:32]
Alan G. Parker
So you can turn your car on too.
- [22:35]
Tariq Ali
Take this, brother. May it serve you well.
- [22:38]
Alan G. Parker
And of course, at that point when that book came out, no one had heard or knew the White Album. It was just. It was the forthcoming record, right?
- [22:45]
Ryan Reynolds
And the thing about that book, as amazing as it is as a snapshot of their history. And then you've got Hunter Davies there. That is a witness to the writing sessions for Pepper, which is an amazing thing. It's like there's this seismic shift, right, about to happen as soon as this book hits the streets. Brian's gone, Cynthia's gone, Now it's Yoko and Apple starting up. It documents everything in great detail up until that point, but by the time it comes out, it's a whole new story.
- [23:13]
Alan G. Parker
It is, yeah, completely. I mean, we were lucky enough to interview Hunter when we did the Sergeant Pepper film some years ago. And he was an amazing guy, really, really amazing bloke. But he said the same. He said, you know, it's almost like I was brought along to document everything. Just as they were about to walk through this huge door of change, you know.
- [23:33]
Ryan Reynolds
Right, right. He's got it up until then.
- [23:35]
Tariq Ali
Yeah, it was really bullshit, you know, it was written in the sort times, you know, the Fab Four and no truth was written. And my auntie knocked all the truth bits about my childhood and my mother out and I allowed her, which is my cop out. Etc. Etc. There was nothing about the augies and the. That happened on tour and all that. And I wanted a real book to come out but we all had wives and didn't want to hurt their feelings. End of that one because they still have. The Beatles tours were, were like satirical, you know, I mean that we had that image but man, our tours were like something else. If you could get on our tours you were in, you know, they were satiric corner just everywhere. Satiricon. Just think of satirical only with four musicians going through it. Wherever we went there was always a whole scene going. We had our four bedrooms separate from. Tried to keep them out of our room. And Derek and Neil's rooms were always full of junk and whores and fuck knows what and policemen and everything. Satiricon, you know, we really, we have to do something.
- [24:34]
Ryan Reynolds
There's so many questions I've got, but one of the things the people listening to the show should be aware of is that what is out now as this 2 hour and 14 minute film is not even the director's cut, this is the short version that there is a more substantive version of this with a lot more talking heads that didn't make the cut there. Can you name some of them? Just so people know that, okay, if you're going to rent this thing now, here's who else is going to be coming out in the Blu Ray.
- [25:01]
Alan G. Parker
Well, there's another version which is, I think it's 97 or 98 minutes longer than the original version.
- [25:08]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay.
- [25:08]
Alan G. Parker
The brief reason being when we first started putting it together, we had that many people talking and access to animation stills and archive. The first idea on the first edit was to cut something ultra long, didn't matter how long because when we went to sell it, we'd say to the distribution sales guys, let's do a four part TV series that was taken out. And it seemed at the time that most of the people it was offered to said, oh, we know his work, he's good at the films, he's good at the big screen stuff. Why bother watering it down and having a TV thing? Let's do something for the big screen. The late great Tony Bramwell, among others around the team and friends of team, had actually seen the long version. And Tony, when he saw the long version, sat with me and believe me, it's not far shy of four hours long, he said to me at the end of it, it was quite funny. He looked, he said, I thought you were making a film about my mate. And I thought, oh, God, he doesn't like it. And I looked at him and I said, and. And he said, well, you didn't make a film about my mate, you made the film about my mate. And he. And he hugged me. And because of that, normally, because it was very much a rough working version, I mean, we'd left sort of tops and tails in places where we kind of thought, well, if we do do a series, we can maybe chop that guy there out, and then we'll go from him to him in between episodes, say two and three or whatever, you know. And so when we went back in to cut it down for a cinematic release, which is what we decided by then we're gonna do, we didn't, at any given point in time ever not think about taking the long version and just dumping it. Because now it's a working version, it's been truncated, why bother keeping it? But I kept coming back to the fact that somewhere between Tony and a few team members and a few people from the studio and a couple of mates, people had told me how much they loved it. Well, normally when we deliver a movie, we deliver the film. And also we deliver quite a bit of DVD or Blu Ray extras, you know, three hours or two hours of things we film. Specially in this instance, we'd never done that. But the project had been totally focused on making borrowed time happen. And so when it came to do the deal with the distributors, which we did In November of 24, when I went to see them, I said, by the way, as well as this version, there's another version and it's nearly four hours long. And they went four hours long. Wow. Would you mind us seeing it? No problem. I showed it to them. They said, we'll take both. We understand completely what you're trying to do. I think realistically speaking, yes, there's one or two people who didn't make the shorter cut that did make the longer cut. But there are also people like, for example, Tariq Ali and Tony Palmer who were in the shorter cut, but are in the longer cut a whole lot more. Tony Branwell's in the longer cut more we got hold of. Oh, boy, his surname escapes me now. He was one of John's best friends in the early to mid-60s. Married to Marianne Faithful. John.
- [28:19]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh, John Dunbar.
- [28:20]
Alan G. Parker
John Dunbar. John's in. Yeah, he's in it. I think there's a wee bit more from Helen Anderson. There's more on those last few days with Andy Peebles. And folks, there's definitely more on the early backstory through people like Kenneth Womack. There's more focus on the political side of things as well. There was a certain degree of politics in the shorter version, but in the longer version, when you consider. I've never been a political animal in my life, but we did manage to get a real big slab in there in the middle. Kris Salawit's. Again, more there from him. I haven't seen the long version for a while, but I just. I know there's a lot more. As I say, it's 97, 98 minutes longer than the version that people are getting used to now. You know what's been funny, because obviously in the UK now, the DVD and Blu Ray are both released. And what's been funny on social media is I'm getting private messages a lot these last few days from people who say, just got the Blu Ray. Watch the normal version. Really loved it. One of my favorite Lennon films. 24, 36, whatever. Hours later, you get another message from the same person who says, just watch the longer version. And it's blown my mind, you know, it's kind of more of the same, you know, but it's in a different order as well. We switched the order about as well. So it does come across like two quite separate films.
- [29:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, that's very interesting. So safe to say, to tell our listeners that the longer version, longer iteration, with all that content will be available to people if the short theatrical release, and I say short, still two plus hours, if that whets your appetite, you have access to a bunch more.
- [30:00]
Alan G. Parker
Yes, yeah, definitely.
- [30:02]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, great. What a great resource. And especially with the view that some people have now passed, like Tony Bramwell and Andy Peebles.
- [30:08]
Alan G. Parker
Andy Peebles, yeah. As I say, it's due to the time it's taken to do. I mean, one of the things. Because obviously a lot of the guys in the movie who knew John personally, without sounding remotely morbid, weren't getting any younger. And when I sat them down, I sort of said, look, guys, there is a possibility this could be the last long form interview about John you ever. You ever do. So what might be really cool is if there's a story, you know, that necessarily you don't think has had any airtime, or maybe there's a twist on a story that we think we've known very well for 40, 50 years. But the real version is similar, but kind of slightly different. Then now's the time, you know, there's no point waiting longer. This is it. And I mean, take Ray Conley. I've known Ray a long time. He's a lovely, lovely guy.
- [30:57]
Ryan Reynolds
He's a treasure. I've had him on the show a bunch of times.
- [31:00]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah, he said. He said one of the things that's always irritated me is the May Pang story. Because he said, I know what story everybody's been kind of, if you like, told to stick to. But the reality is a little bit different. He said, the reality is that we know John was playing around. It's well documented. We know that things weren't great within their marriage. Yoko goes to appear in a Chicago Women's Peace protest thing, and once her back's turned, John packs two suitcases and they disappear to la.
- [31:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Did a runner.
- [31:32]
Alan G. Parker
Did a runner, as it is. And Ray said, I found this out firsthand because I'd run to speak to John one day. And she said, he's not here. And thus the story unfolded. But I think there were one or two bits like that where we knew the story, but we got a slightly new twist on it.
- [31:49]
Tariq Ali
That's what I mean. That's what I mean. The way Yoko told story about how she was at the Elton concert with tickets, got her through May. May got the ticket for Yoko to be there. Yeah, she rang her out, I get. And then they get together, but they hardly spoke at the concert, John and Yoko later on. Then Yoko says, well, then he came back to me. It was three months later he came back to her. And that's an important point because actually they both agreed that the awful thing that John agreed this version of the story, which wasn't true, I find that kind of unforgivable. But he did it all the time. He'd get a version of a story and stick with it.
- [32:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, Bramwell was good for stories like that during his book, of course, and he has a lot of things he witnessed that are counter to the prevailing narrative. So I felt it's useful to get that stuff out there because God knows there's not counting things on his death around the Beatles. There are at least a dozen Lenin documentaries out there. And if they're sanctioned, if they run through the cooperation of Lenono, then you know what spin you're going to get in advance.
- [33:00]
Alan G. Parker
Totally yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:01]
Ryan Reynolds
And that's. That leads me to the question I was going to ask you is, with what was all out there? What was it you saw or didn't see that made you say, you know what, there's another documentary to be made to cover this 10 years. What was it you weren't seeing?
- [33:17]
Alan G. Parker
When we first came up with the idea, I sat down with all. You know, when I say all, I mean a huge pile of everything from John Lennon versus America to, you know, lending them win yc lots and lots of different docos, and just sat down and watched them. I didn't really make notes, I just observed what I was seeing. And I thought to myself, I've got a feeling if we're clever here. And obviously, having been a Beatles fan from God knows what age, I've got to know a lot of people who have done conventions and written books and stuff. So I knew that. I knew I could definitely get those people. A few years ago we'd done a film about the English band Status Quo, that was an official movie. And one of the things, I think, that made that film so popular among the fan base and among the reviewers and things in the United Kingdom was when I'd sat the members of Quo down to make the movie, I'd said, said to them, you get one shot at this. So if you stick to the tried and tested story you've all been telling every time someone shoved a microphone in your face for the last God knows how many years, all we're going to get is the same Quo story that the world's been handed on a plate since 1972 or 3. Right? They totally got it. And therefore even the guests we interviewed, some of the famous rock stars are in it. We said, by the way, this is a no olds bard. And having been a Lennon fan for years and then got into making documentaries, one of the things that I was interested in is, could I repeat eloquo. But with John Lennon. And I knew for sure. I mean, not that I'm flattering myself to think that had I gone, I don't think I'm perhaps big enough for name director to get the estate to go, yes, fine, you're next. You know, the name's Parker, not. Not Jackson or Scorsese or whatever it might be.
- [35:06]
Ryan Reynolds
Right, well, maybe they think that you made Evita or the Commitments or something.
- [35:10]
Alan G. Parker
Well, it does happen. And then I thought to myself, this might be. The route is to just do an unofficial one, get everybody together. When we'd done the Pepper film, which is the only other unofficial film we've ever made. There was a really great review in Empire magazine, one of the biggest selling British cinema magazines, and the guy said, given that Pepper is such a big selling album, you almost don't need to hear it playing to make sense of this movie and the story they're trying to tell you. And that to me was my get out of jail free card. Going into borrowed time, it was like, well, I'm not necessarily going to ask anybody too many, if any, questions about specific records. It's going to be more of a timeline, you know, from I kind of guessed about the 1966 Jesus Christ comment to the hail of bullets. Basically, that was my A to B scenario. Hey, business owners, we know you know the importance of maximizing every dollar. With the Delta SkyMiles Reserve business American Express card, you can make your expenses work just as hard as you. From afternoon coffee runs to stocking office supplies and even team dinners, you can earn miles on all your business expenses. Plus you can earn 110,000 bonus miles for a limited time through July 16, the Delta SkyMiles Reserve business card. If you travel, you know, minimum speed, spending requirements and terms apply. Offer n7 1625.
- [36:34]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [37:04]
Alan G. Parker
When we started the process, we didn't really know an awful lot at all about the Post 81 comeback tour. And then suddenly along came Covid. And with COVID absolutely everything changed on that front in a big way. That completely blew my mind in terms.
- [37:22]
Ryan Reynolds
Of getting more time to tease out these threads that you didn't know a whole lot about that now you can track down people that had something to say about it that were witnesses to and get them on the record.
- [37:32]
Alan G. Parker
We knew there were people around. I mean, we'd always known we're going to get Earl Slick, for example. We'd always known we're going to get Andy Peebles. But I kept hearing these stories about 81, but I couldn't seem to nail it down to anything. You'd go on and do a Google search and they might be like one article or two articles or something like that. And then during the lockdown I'd been talking to a Guy on Facebook, who I didn't know in real life when I knew him on Facebook, but I knew we didn't live too far apart. And we got chatting, and then we moved the chat from both of our walls onto Private Message. And when it went to Private Message, he told me that he used to work for a company called Britannia Row and that his boss had been out to New York in October, November 18th. He'd met with John and Yoko, and he had done all the preliminary stage designs for the One World War I People Tour, as it was going to be called. And I suddenly thought, this guy knows more than you can research, you know? And I said, these sketches, do they exist? And then while I'm saying that, I'm thinking, but if they do exist, they probably belong to Lenono. So I asked the question there and then I said, you know, if these sketches do exist, do they belong to Leno know? He said, actually, no, they don't, because the sketches were done for Britannia Row by his old boss, who's now no longer with us. He passed away a few years ago. And he said, but his wife's still around and she has the sketches. And because John was murdered, the sketches never got paid for, so they don't belong to anybody apart from the family that owned the sketches. So soon as you could actually go out and meet people for coffee. I met this guy for coffee who was Mark Cunningham in the movie. Mark was the one who said to me, in no time, have you spoken to Henry the Horse? And I said, well, who the hell's Henry the Horse? Said, oh, he was going to be the tour manager. He ended up working with people like Aerosmith, acdc, some huge bands. Wow. Can you get him? Oh, yeah, we can. We got a number for him. So then we go to Henry the Horse when we interviewed Earl Slick, and we said, by the way, we're going to use a percentage of the movie to talk about the 81 tour. And Earl said, are you interviewing Jet Douglas? I said, no. We did put a request in, but it was. It was turned down because we're not official. He said, well, he's not really the guy you want. You want John, who was the engineer on Double Fantasy, because John was going to be front of our sound. I thought, wow, I've got six people. And the stage designs, I've got more than anybody's ever had. So when we came to actually logically think, right, 81.2, we can do something with it, the sketches were passed over to our animation team. They came back with some great potential recreations of what might have been stage set wise, it's almost like mind blowing because when you think that that too would have taken place in 1981, and when you look at all the video screens and the cantilever arms and screens going out into the audience, it looks like something that either you two or Metallica might have used a decade and a half later, but not in 1981. If you think about Paul's 198990 tour, it was a great tour, but it wasn't that sophisticated as far as stage set is concerned, you know. So, yeah, I mean, it was a pretty special situation to be in. To know that you got that, that's amazing.
- [41:04]
Ryan Reynolds
So just to clarify, what you see in the film, those depictions of the One World, One people staging, those are the original sketches or those are what your animators reconstructed from the sketches?
- [41:17]
Alan G. Parker
The pencil sketches you see on screen are the original sketches.
- [41:20]
Ryan Reynolds
I see. Okay. Wow, that's amazing.
- [41:22]
Alan G. Parker
You guys got that and all the recreation stuff is built from those sketches. Yeah.
- [41:27]
Ryan Reynolds
What a great find to be able to work into this film. That's incredible. As you said, nobody else has collated all this information before. That's terrific.
- [41:35]
Alan G. Parker
It was like the Lennon Hawley Grail. We kind of got it and we thought, wow. And that's why when we did the recut, the theatrical cut in the original version, for I guess, obvious reasons, it had been the very last thing on screen. So you have the whole story and then John dies and then a little tribute section to John. And then we went into this black screen which opened up with Mark Cunningham sort of saying, but there is another story. And it went into the 81 thing. A couple of people had said, alan, you've got this massive, massive story that no other Beatles fan has ever got so close to before. Don't you think that it might be an idea to start the film with it? Because they used to say it's either Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, but certainly one of those two who said opening titles out the way and then grab em by the whole cojones in the first two minutes and you've got them for the rest of the journey.
- [42:31]
Ryan Reynolds
That was a great device. I thought that was a novel way. It's kind of like when Paul did the 89 tour, opening with an obscure album track from Flowers in the Dirt, rather than the familiar thing you're welcome with. So that was a nice twist. I appreciated that.
- [42:43]
Alan G. Parker
I just thought, if we can start the film there, there's nobody gonna be. Oh, is that the time? Oh, is it raining? You know, totally. They're going to be in and on. And I just thought that made a huge amount of sense completely. To start there and then get us back to the Jesus Christ thing and then we can move on.
- [43:03]
Ryan Reynolds
Fair enough. So given that you did not make this a sanctioned project, it's not authorized, you're doing it on your own. Were there sort of built in limitations from the get go that you recognize? Okay, well, these are the parameters we have to work within. Let's see what we can do. Did any of that stuff kind of enter your mind, like, well, we're not gonna be able to get this. For example, speaking of 1980, 81 and this tour, you put into my head the thought of that video taken in the studio at the hit factory that they commissioned in the John Tita Barry. I'm guessing, listening to you, that you would have had to have gone through the Dakota to get any kind of access to that. Okay, yeah, so that wasn't gonna happen.
- [43:41]
Alan G. Parker
I mean, there were certain things you'd think you'd go, you know, you'd be speaking to Getty or Rex or one of the big clearinghouses and suddenly two days later they come back and say, very sorry, but that one is third party sign off.
- [43:55]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh, okay.
- [43:57]
Alan G. Parker
So what we tended to do was try and amalgamate as much as we knew we could get our hands on. I mean, there's a funny story that one morning my editor was late getting there, that got stuck in traffic. And at the time I just received about five or six different versions of the Jesus Christ apology. Well, we'd use the color one in the Pepper movie and then we'd used a bit of black and white ones in the Pepper movie as well. So I'm sort of sat there looking through them, but because predominantly, of course, you're looking for the Jesus Christ apology itself, you know, I'm very sorry. I was talking to a reporter I thought, you know, who was a friend, and we've heard it a thousand times.
- [44:38]
Ryan Reynolds
And now it's all this.
- [44:39]
Alan G. Parker
But you don't always necessarily let it roll onward. And I was sat watching one version that I thought was in fairly decent condition. I thought, I'm gonna let it roll onward and just see where it goes, whatever, you know, I don't know what else is gonna get said. And that's when we get to that incredible line which, had the traffic not been bad in London that morning, may never have made the screen.
- [45:02]
Tariq Ali
Well, I don't know. My father, I never I saw him twice in my life Till I was 22, when he turned up after I'd had a few hit records. And I saw him, I spoke to him, and I decided I still didn't want to know him. And that's all there is to it.
- [45:17]
Alan G. Parker
And I thought, wow, that's just told me more than six talking heads could do. And it's less than 20 words. And then when we knew that, we definitely could get the interview with Auntie Mimi, which is, as far as I'm aware, the only visual interview with Auntie Mimi. Wow. We link it all together. Two days later, in comes someone to the studio and said, by the way, there's a US TV interview of John and Yoko. And in that interview, John says because he'd been told his father was a sailor, he only knew he might be close by when he saw a ship on the horizon. And I thought, we've cracked it. Everything we need is somewhere between Mimi's interview and these two things John say to tell us about his entire childhood in less than 4 comments. And how he maybe became the man he was. So, yeah, that was a good place to be, to be honest.
- [46:11]
Ryan Reynolds
And I will say to anybody listening to the show that as somebody that's been in this line for a long, long time has seen a ton of stuff, seen every doc and read every book and all that stuff, as probably yourself has as well. There is an awful lot pictures and footage wise in your doc that I've not seen before. Like stuff going, as you say, beyond the cut that you normally see. This is what came right after that, things like that. It's like, wow, I'm familiar with this scenario, but I've not seen this part of it before. This is cool. Well done.
- [46:43]
Alan G. Parker
We were really lucky. We were in the second edit and we got a call from Getty. Some very famous Japanese photographer just died. And his daughter had been going through everything he had. And almost certainly every Beatles book I'd ever read had said that the first session that Yoko attended was for White Album. And then this guy rings from Getty and says, I'm gonna send a bike to the studio. You are? Yeah. What about this? And it's 100% picture of John from the fool on the Hill sessions. Cause we know he was wearing the white sweater and the cords and sat next to him is Yoko Ono. And I go, wow, there's another one for the let's just slightly rewrite history pile. Bang. Put that on there. I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe It. Because I'd never seen that picture before in my life.
- [47:31]
Ryan Reynolds
And sometimes the people that were there are the worst witnesses. Because John's telling of the story was her first session was hey, Bulldog. Which was extensively photographed and filmed. She's nowhere to be seen there. But yes, the day of the fool on the Hill session, there was some Japanese journalists that came in to interview them at emi and she managed to work our way in. And now we have photo evidence of that as well. So it's great to see in the doc.
- [47:56]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah.
- [47:56]
Ryan Reynolds
Is there anything that stands out in particular that was the most surprising thing that came your way during this long process of putting this together, doing the research and accumulating footage and interviews?
- [48:08]
Alan G. Parker
Probably, as I say, this fact of which I think I've probably said a lot in these last few weeks interviews, is we hadn't come to reinvent the wheel, we come to put a new tire on it. It was like we knew we had an awful lot that was coming at us from lots of different places. And I think once you start marrying it all together, let's use Helen Anderson as a good example. Helen Anderson's interview was incredible, but we couldn't use an awful lot of it because 95% of it, she was Cynthia's best friend. 95% of it took place at Liverpool Art College from 1959 to 1961. Didn't even touch our timeline. But then you have that lovely story where she's at Cynthia's and John rings and Julian's there. This is in 1975, bear in mind. And he says on the phone, we're coming home, we're coming to Liverpool. And I just went, wow. Because I never knew, you know, I'd heard stories for later, for 1881, but not 1975, you know. And obviously he added that we just need the green card first.
- [49:12]
Tariq Ali
I said, oh, John, when are you coming back to Liverpool to see us all? Everybody misses you so much, you know. And he said, well, I miss everybody there too. He said, I am coming back as soon as this green card comes through, which is anytime now, and I'm coming back to England, but the first place I go to is Liverpool. I'm gonna see all my old mates and you and Julian, obviously, and Cynthia. He was quite friendly towards Cynthia after.
- [49:38]
Alan G. Parker
All this, but I think there was a lot of that came through that was from the right people who'd been in the right places. And you could just say, right, well, there's a lot of gold coming through the door. And I was really Grateful for it all.
- [49:53]
Ryan Reynolds
Did you feel after having done this, you were focusing on a particular period that these people like Helen Anderson, who you describe, there's enough leftover stuff to craft a whole different story for a future project.
- [50:07]
Alan G. Parker
There's an awful lot that has ended up on the cutting room floor just because of the number of interviews we did. I guess there may be an argument for doing, you know, John Lennon in the early years. There's definitely a lot of Liverpool and Hamburg and that kind of thing there. The difficulty, I've always found, is it's not so much having the Talking Heads, because obviously that's a modern thing. You can do that as of tomorrow morning, if you like. It's. What do you use to illustrate everything? Because the estate does seem to buy things up in bulk completely. I did look into the idea of trying to use some of the early art college cartoons. You can't touch them. They're all estate, estate, estate, you know, and it's kind of like. It's a tough one, really, because I guess if you were doing it as some form of podcast and just linking up some interviews and putting it out there for people to see, then feasibly there is something there. But I think at the moment, I would say I'm definitely all Lennoned out, as they say.
- [51:05]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay.
- [51:06]
Alan G. Parker
Understandably, because it's been a long project and now we've kind of got, I guess, to the end of it, and I'm so excited that people can see it.
- [51:14]
Ryan Reynolds
And on that note, as far as Beatles in Lennon. Yes, you did the 50 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper Doc, now you've got this one out. It's a tribute and a monument to Lennon and the Beatles being the safe place for you as a child. That got you through the toughness of the world, the life you had. I was very intrigued to see that you'd written a book on the who. I have not read it yet, but I would dearly love to. I just became aware of it. But also, you've done stories on the Sex Pistols, the Clash, so you've got other interests that certainly are near and dear to my heart. And I would love to see if there's anything more along those veins that maybe you go down that rabbit hole for a while, then maybe return to this one. I don't know. On that subject, clearly you were of an age in the right place, with the right interest to be into that UK punk scene. Was there anything you picked up on as an element of that scene that you could see a connection with the Persona of Jon as you came to uncover his life from people you talked to.
- [52:11]
Alan G. Parker
I think there's almost certainly the Clash connection, I think, which we mentioned in the film. I've heard from two or three good sources that Julian took the first two Clash albums over to America on his last visit. So I'll take that as red. But I think the Clash certainly would have been on John's wavelength.
- [52:26]
Tariq Ali
Phony Beetlemania has bitten the task.
- [52:30]
Alan G. Parker
I know that Jon, in one interview or another later on did mention the Pistols, did mention Sid, to what degree, I've no idea. I know he'd listen to Madness, that kind of stuff. It's a tough one. I think there's definitely. You know, it's quite funny that the reaction I heard from the person who isn't in the movie just happens to be an old friend in the industry who said, oh, yeah, Julian took the first two albums over, the first two Clash albums over and played them for his dad and said afterwards, rather excitedly, don't you think they were fantastic? To which John is supposed to have replied, well, they're all right, but they're doing nothing that me and her uncle Paul weren't doing in Hamburg in 1961. You know, it's like that. So I can't say that story's 100% true, but it's what I got told. So it may be, you know, it came from a good enough source. But, yeah, I think there definitely would have been something there. That sort of angry young man thing, I think, more so than anything else, really.
- [53:30]
Ryan Reynolds
How much of the Pistols music have you heard?
- [53:32]
Tariq Ali
Only whatever they did a video of it, you know, there was a lot of videos of them down at Max's or wherever the hell they were hanging out and playing and Johnny Rotten and all that stuff. And, yeah, great. To me, initially, on Impact, seeing all that, I thought, oh, that's how we used to behave at the cabin before Brian told us to stop throwing up and sleeping on stage and swearing. I mean, like in Hamburg, I used to sleep on stage, we used to eat on stage, we used to swear on stage. We were absolutely au natural. But nowadays they don't have to put a shine Oliver on it to get a record contract. Even though they are having a hard time with it. But still, yeah, I think it's great. I absolutely do.
- [54:07]
Ryan Reynolds
There's some sort of alignment with what John was trying to do politically in music that got by decade's end, manifested by the Pistols and the Clash, certainly, as well as the reggae aspects that they were all lovers of that for sure.
- [54:21]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah. You know, the coming up thing was mentioned by lots and lots of people. When we do, you know that he did that on the radio and said time to go back. So, yeah, I think there's definitely some of that for certain. It's like a melting pot, isn't it? I think good music will out, they say, you know, and it all kind of finds its own way back to one place.
- [54:38]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. And gets repurposed with a different spin on it. Yeah, absolutely. Were there people you absolutely positively wanted to get involved in this that did just were beyond your reach?
- [54:47]
Alan G. Parker
There were people who reached out to who we knew at the time reaching out to them. We thought, well, we might get them. But we also know that they're always front and center on official projects. So they may just say, no example. I mean, you know, we tried. Jack Douglas just got a very nice polite email back before we even started shooting. We'd spoken to May Pang and I'd even had gone as far as having lunch with May Pang in New York way before we started shooting. And I think we would have got her. With the exception of the fact that obviously during COVID when everybody became incredibly bored and started looking at what to do if we ever got out of this situation is when I'm told that May got the idea for her own film. And obviously once she done her own film, the producers and directors of that particular film didn't want her to be with us because by the time we were shooting interviews, they were getting ready to do pr. You know, I can understand why they would want to defend, you know, and I, I see that completely. We reached out to Bob Gruen, who again I've worked with before, I have met Bob again. He came back and said, is it official? You know, once we said, no, it's not, it was like, well, no, you know, I don't want to do it, you know, but we were lucky. Most of the people that we went looking for, we got. And we got quite quickly.
- [56:00]
Ryan Reynolds
So another way of looking at it is with these other films all coming out on top of each other. The Lost, the Love Story and the one to one film, they're sort of complementary. You could see them all and they'll all fill in different parts of the story.
- [56:14]
Alan G. Parker
I mean, we were kind of a little shocked by one on one, to be honest, because we chose our release date last November. They didn't announce their release date till February, so we didn't know they were coming. So we were kind of a bit like, oh God, it's here and you know, what do we do? I think it has had a bit of a knock on effect, Thomas, because some cinemas in the UK said, well we've already got one on one booked in for three weeks, we can't take you. So we went a different route. We went through a lot of the art house cinemas where they were sticking to places like sort of Odeons and Views and that, you know. So we both found our own path, I suppose, in the end.
- [56:51]
Ryan Reynolds
And we as fans are the beneficiary of having both available.
- [56:55]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah.
- [56:56]
Ryan Reynolds
Even if it's not on the big screen, it's great to have all this content all at once.
- [57:01]
Alan G. Parker
It's amazing. And as you said, there's any of those three films, none of them tread on each other's toes at all.
- [57:08]
Ryan Reynolds
Right.
- [57:09]
Alan G. Parker
They're just there and that's it. And I think that's a nice way to be. People can make their own mind up what they take from them.
- [57:16]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. They're not counter narratives. It's not like they're contradicting each other, they're all in rough alignment. But that's how any human being's life is. Everybody's got a different impression. So in that way they absolutely do.
- [57:27]
Alan G. Parker
Complement each other completely. Yeah. I've got the May Pang one already on Blu Ray and seen it two or three times and enjoyed it because of doing PR and everything. I've still to see one on one. I haven't seen it yet, it's eluded me. It's like there was a couple of times two or three weeks ago when I had a day off and then suddenly I look at all the listings in London, it's not on anywhere. I look at the listings for the following day when say I've got to be in Birmingham on a PR day all day and there's about six screenings of it in. So at the moment. No, I kept. I was looking on Amazon last night for the DVD and Blu Ray because I thought if we've just come out they can't be far away. But I couldn't find it anywhere yet, so maybe they're on their way. I'll keep my eyes open.
- [58:11]
Ryan Reynolds
In speaking with these people, presumably it was you that crafted the questions that you were asking of your interview subjects. Was there particular aspects of the story that you just felt weren't covered in anything you'd seen to that point? Or any of the books you read that you were trying to draw these people out on or that you pretty much give them leave to tell me what You've got that you want the world to hear.
- [58:32]
Alan G. Parker
In some senses. I was trying to get as much as possible about the times we don't know about or are less documented. For example, in the longer version, there's a lot more Lost Weekend stuff with people like, say, Doodle Butler, Keith Moon's factotum. And Chris Charlesworth's got more stuff about the early times of John and maybe arriving back in New York, that sort of stuff. There was a guy who's a really lovely guy, very old friend of mine, known him many years now, who's a sort of music business person, writer, pr, done all kinds of jobs. Guy called David Stark. He had been to interview Mimi towards the end of her life. And she said something to him that as he said, you know, he said, I can't say categorically whether what she told me was right or wrong. But she was very adamant that it had happened. And when he told me, I said, wow, we gotta get that on camera. Again, it didn't make the shortcut, but it has made the long cut.
- [59:29]
Ryan Reynolds
David Stark appears in the long cut saying, the story.
- [59:32]
Alan G. Parker
He's there. Yeah, he's telling this story. So, yeah, there are some nice quirky things that, you know, as I say, didn't fit maybe in one place, but did fit somewhere else, you know. But it was good to just get what I call extra detail on things. And then again, you know, when Jerry Cagle did turn around and say, you can sit five people around a table that knew John very well and you'll get five separate stories. I nearly kissed him. I thought that's the tagline. Is that because after all these years, who knows, you know? I mean, it does tickle me a little occasionally that people can sit there and have very, very open, fluent conversations about things that happened 40, 50, 60 years ago. Sometimes I struggle to remember last year. So I don't know. But these people were obviously around. And I guess it would have a big impact in your life if it happened with John Lennon.
- [60:20]
Ryan Reynolds
That line definitely jumped out at me. So I'm glad it resonated the same way with you. Because it's like, yes, that absolutely is a summary of this film. Because I think people watching it might think, well, you've got people saying different things that might not be in alignment, but that was their experience. Yes, you said that one of the people you had. And I forget which one it was had. It was in the context of talking about the five years. And he'd used the phrase chronic depression. Was that something that leaped out at you and were you thinking, oh, I need to know more about that? What is informing your judgment on that?
- [60:54]
Alan G. Parker
I think it's probably Chris Salowitz. He was talking about the fact that he thought John was probably in a bad way when he retreated, you know, and he was probably, you know, I mean, I think there's two or three people at that point in the movie who all say they don't buy too much into this baking bread malarkey. You know, it might bake one loaf, but don't think necessarily it was baking every day, you know, that kind of thing. Right.
- [61:18]
Ryan Reynolds
What was the staff doing during that time?
- [61:20]
Alan G. Parker
Well, exactly, you know, and I mean, when you think how many people were working at the Dakota building at that point in time, it's an army of people.
- [61:27]
Tariq Ali
He backslides into heroin and then she.
- [61:30]
Alan G. Parker
A little later backslides into heroin as.
- [61:33]
Tariq Ali
Well, you know, so the old kind of, you know, the pain is still there.
- [61:39]
Alan G. Parker
You know, the primal scream therapy, you know, you could say it didn't last long enough. So you do wonder sometimes what the upshot of it all would be in real terms. But, yeah, as I say, it is interesting what came back from different people. I mean, I like the idea of Tony Palmer's, which I can't remember if it's in the short or long version, where Tony said, I have no doubt, had he lived that despite sending back the nbe, we would be looking right now at Sir John Lennon.
- [62:09]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, undoubtedly.
- [62:10]
Alan G. Parker
And I think, well, yeah, if Paul got one, why not?
- [62:13]
Ryan Reynolds
I think at that point in his life, he would have graciously accepted it. He wasn't the guy on a whim who returned it because of Cold Turkey's chart performance.
- [62:23]
Alan G. Parker
By that time, I think you're dead. Right. It's difficult second guessing what, for example, John would be doing now because, you know, the man's been dead longer than he was actually alive for. But there are little things where you think to yourself, I can't imagine him being silent on the current state of the US for example. But then we don't know. You know what I mean? I can imagine. Someone asked me the other week what did I think he'd be up to right now.
- [62:48]
Ryan Reynolds
Social media.
- [62:49]
Alan G. Parker
I said, well, I'm fairly sure he wouldn't have an army of people running his Facebook or Twitter or Instagram pages. He'd be the kind of guy who wants obviously rolled up and do his own page, you know, more than likely, because the way he came across all.
- [63:02]
Ryan Reynolds
The time, as Ray Connolly said, and he Might have said the same thing to you. John spoke in headlines. Yeah, he knew how to put that quote out there that would get legs and would sum it all up in a few words.
- [63:13]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah, I mean he did seem to have an ability to say more in five words than the other three Beatles could say in three paragraphs. But then again, if you think about the Jesus Christ remark as a great example here in England, when it appeared in the Evening Standard, nobody blinked twice. Then it was sold to Date magazine by Tony Barrow and it was like they let off nuclear weapons, you know. And it's the same interview, you know, the one one side of the Atlantic had no impact whatsoever on the other. I think I remember saying to Ray many years ago, because Ray knows Maureen Clay very well and I said, so no impact at all in London he said, Alan, he said the way people looked at it in London, he said it was a bit like, oh here we go, Jones, tomorrow's Tuesday. We on we go, there's no change. But in America, of course, it was a whole different ball game which we covered quite in depth in the Pepper film. But yeah, I mean it was those radio DJs. There's a famous interview with one of the radio DJs and the guy says to him, do you think you'll ever play Beatles music again? He as good as says, well, if they sincerely apologize to me, I might. And I'm thinking, well, who do you think you are? You know, it's my kind of bit of a. I don't know, you know.
- [64:29]
Ryan Reynolds
I get a sense that in England when that was reported, it's like he may be a big mouth, but he's our big mouth, he's one of us.
- [64:36]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah, totally, yeah.
- [64:37]
Ryan Reynolds
And in the States it's the other. Who is this long haired freak from another country coming here saying things like that? I don't know if you've seen the actual Date Book magazine, but it's like they went with the B quote, not the A quote, which was Paul's on racism. Right Barrel thought that was what was going to get all the attention and it didn't. Shockingly, yes.
- [64:57]
Alan G. Parker
It's the Times, isn't it? I think it's one of those things. What's the old saying they say with the press around the world, if you do build anybody up that big, there's always going to come a time when they're going to start knocking them down again.
- [65:08]
Ryan Reynolds
Right, Is that something, I don't know that this might have been conversations you had because there's an awful Lot of UK journalists that you talk to that there was the sense that, I think that John had this feeling, you read things that he said privately in 1980, that he was not sure how well he would be received in England because the British press was so vicious, particularly the Anti Yoko stuff, that he was afraid to flop there in England around.
- [65:36]
Alan G. Parker
That time, you remember you were on New Wave and the hangover from punk. And a lot of the people who got the power, as far as the power of the pen is concerned, are the people who've made their name as big punk rock journalists. So the climate that he came into with that new album in 1980 is not the best climate to arrive in. Because the people whose desks it's going to be landing on, they're not the friendly Ray Conleys and Tony Palmers of this world. They're the completely, I would imagine, anti Lenin. These are the people who spent time writing 16 page features on the Sex Pistols as often as they could. Now they're established because they started in 76, 77. So they've now been there three or four years. Their feet are firmly under the table, as I've said before, and is no more than the truth. In the United Kingdom, Double Fantasy was not a hit album.
- [66:28]
Ryan Reynolds
I was glad you had the Charles Char Murray quote in there. Somebody said it totally.
- [66:32]
Alan G. Parker
It sort of hovered around the sort of number 27 to number 32 position for a few weeks. And then along came five bullets. It went platinum and went straight to number one.
- [66:42]
Ryan Reynolds
Right.
- [66:43]
Alan G. Parker
But even speaking as a John Lennon fan, is it a number one album? Not really. It's All Right album. It's not going to ruin your record collection by any stretch of imagination. But I think from my point of view as a 15 year old kid who's going out to buy his first release day John Lennon album, I'd have been happier if it had been the 10 John songs. Because I remember coming home on the bus with my copy on my knee and thinking, okay, he's been away five years. We got 10 new songs.
- [67:12]
Ryan Reynolds
Had you heard the single already? Had you heard Starting Over?
- [67:14]
Alan G. Parker
I heard Starting over, yeah, yeah. And I put it on the turntable and I suddenly go, hang on, what's this, Johnson, hang on, what's this? And it's like it kind of went on and on and on, you know, and there's some good things on it, definitely. But I mean, some of the journalists in the uk, they just destroyed it. They went after it like it was World War three. One magazine that now, no Longer exists, sort of one of the glossy magazines. English magazines reviewed it, destroyed it, pulled the review and re reviewed it in the first week of January. 81. Like the second coming, which I thought was totally unfair, but by then, of course, it was the second Coming. Right.
- [67:57]
Ryan Reynolds
It was probably number one by then, too.
- [67:59]
Alan G. Parker
Totally. Yeah, yeah.
- [68:01]
Ryan Reynolds
Do you remember getting the news?
- [68:03]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah.
- [68:03]
Ryan Reynolds
That must have impacted you at that age pretty deeply.
- [68:07]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah. My dad used to get up very early every morning, so I think he would have been the first to hear it. He came in to wake me up and he had a few newspapers under his arm. He'd been down. The local news agent was maybe 20 paces away. So he'd been down to the news agent. This is on December 9th in England, and they had all the headlines. There's about nine newspaper covers on my bed. I cried. I went to bed that night, the night before it. The album on the turntable in my room with the jacket behind it was sergeant Pepper. I'd been playing sergeant Pepper the night before. Wow. And I woke up to this news and this bunch of newspapers. And as luck would have it, at school that day, my art teacher, a guy called Jack Jefferson, who knew I was a huge London Beatles fan, and literally came along and pulled me out of a class, whatever it was, maths or French or something, said, I've come for Alan Parker. I'll take him with me. Because I was quite into drawing and painting, and we went to the art department and sat there and played Beatles tapes and talked.
- [69:10]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow.
- [69:11]
Alan G. Parker
That was kind of like my day, you know, it wasn't like a normal school day, it was a John Lennon day.
- [69:17]
Ryan Reynolds
That's some unbelievable empathy and compassion there.
- [69:21]
Alan G. Parker
Lovely, lovely guy. He was. Yeah, yeah.
- [69:23]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow. Has it occurred to you, or did it then with John's loss? Paul is still active, George sort of semi active. Did you ever get drawn into the same kind of fandom? Did you get to see Paul live at any those subsequent years?
- [69:38]
Alan G. Parker
Oh, I mean, I've seen over the years. I mean, when Paul toured in 89 90, me and a couple of mates decided, right, this is our moment. And we went to at least a dozen UK shows and maybe about six or seven European shows.
- [69:51]
Ryan Reynolds
Wow. Hardcore.
- [69:52]
Alan G. Parker
We just thought, this is it, this is our moment. We got access to cash. We were very lucky. In Blackburn in those days, there was a coach company that ran coaches from the front of King George's hall, our local concert venue called Concert Travel. And you could buy packages where you got porch boat, hotel, concert ticket two days away and back again. And that was Paris and Hamburg sorted out, you know, dead simply. It's quite painful to think that. I think for the whole trip it cost about 70 pounds.
- [70:24]
Tariq Ali
Wow.
- [70:24]
Alan G. Parker
And we were away three days and had amazing seats to see Paul at the venue in Paris. I was at Let It Be Liverpool on the barrier with the Bruised Chest the next morning. For all the people pressing behind me, that was an incredible gig. I was at a number of the Birmingham NEC shows, a number of the Wembley shows. Paris was on John's birthday, 10-9-89. So that was the first time they did the medley and including Strawberry Fields.
- [70:53]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh, wow. Okay.
- [70:55]
Alan G. Parker
That was something to be at, believe me. That was amazing.
- [70:57]
Ryan Reynolds
I bet.
- [70:58]
Tariq Ali
Did you hear okay up at the back? All right, okay, this next song we'd like to make a special dedication the John's birthday. Yeah.
- [71:42]
Alan G. Parker
So yeah, we hit that one hard. I've seen Paul a lot over the years, up to and including December, just last year at the Alto Arena. That's my last show, Ringo. I've seen a couple of times in America with the All Stars over the years and seen different lineups of that. Never saw George, although I have been on the pilgrimages down to Henley and been to the Row Barge Pub and because I work with Monty Python, so I kind of got a lot of insights about George working with the Pythons. They had many stories to tell over the years. So yeah, that was cool. And I met George Martin because I worked for EMI Records for a number of years. I met Derek Taylor.
- [72:19]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh, wow.
- [72:20]
Alan G. Parker
So, yeah, I've been very lucky in that I've had firsthand access to people in my lifetime.
- [72:26]
Ryan Reynolds
Do you journal?
- [72:28]
Alan G. Parker
Well, people keep saying about that maybe one day. I don't know. There's certainly lots of stories there.
- [72:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Absolutely, yeah. No, for real, this is a lot of things you've experienced. So I would definitely consider that for sure. Do you get to the States much?
- [72:42]
Alan G. Parker
Yeah, normally it's about once a year or sometimes twice every two years, basically. So yeah, we do get out there normally. Places like LA, NY, San Francisco. Mainly LA, to be honest, I do like LA a great deal. But New York, obviously, and then in the old days when I was on tour with the bands, I got to see places. But how much do you see a place on tour? You're in one city one night and somewhere else the next.
- [73:09]
Ryan Reynolds
So what have you got absolutely on the plate right now going forward? What's the next project? Anything you could talk about?
- [73:14]
Alan G. Parker
No.
- [73:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay.
- [73:16]
Alan G. Parker
There's a few things tingling underneath and we are talking to a few people, but I don't know what the next thing is, to be honest. We hopefully try and start something this year and that's really. That's about as far as the plans are stretched, you know. Okay, well, cool. Yeah.
- [73:47]
Tariq Ali
Are you missing England very much, John? Yeah, I try not to, you know, like I had, you know, your friend here bring me the Chocolate Oliver's. It's little things, you know, you miss, like black pudding, you know, and the Chocolate Oliver's.
- [74:24]
Ryan Reynolds
Something about the Beatles created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, executive producer Rick Way, Title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.
- [75:01]
Tariq Ali
Better than the Mudslide mama. When the morning comes yeah oh, oh.
- [75:20]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh that road.
- [75:35]
Tariq Ali
Ain'T no difference on.
- [75:38]
Ryan Reynolds
The old dead roll.
- [75:42]
Tariq Ali
Tom and feather no older road Trying to show the smoke with a picture.