Albert Goldman - The Lives of John Lennon

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ALBERT GOLDMAN

THE LIVES OF JOHN LENNON

WILLIAM MORROW AND COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK

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CONTENTS

Wake-Up Taste

Fred and Ginger

Matriarchy's Child

Janus Lennon

Kinky Haven

Summons from Elvis

Quarry Rock

The Artist as a Young Punk

Cyn and Stu

Mersey Beat

Red-Light Rock

"What Brings Mr. Epstein Here?"

Death in Hamburg

The Big Break

To the Toppermost of the Poppermost

Beatlemania!

The Beatles Are Coming!

The Trouble with Success

Fat Elvis

The Domestic Beatle

Flight to the White Light

The Beatles Boomerang

Iron Butterfly

Grapefruit Pits

A Tale of Two Cities

New York

London

Paul Grinds Pepper

The Summer of Love

Brian Breathes His Last

Menage a Trois

"Dear Alt, Fred, Dad, Pater, Father, Whatever"

Does God Live in Old Men?

Grounds for Divorce

Heroin Honeymoon

Get Back!

The Beatles Go Broke

EMI Record Deal

Publishing

Subpublishing

Touring

Movie Deals

Merchandising

Tax Shelter

Incorporation as Apple

Talking Heads in Beds

Crack Up!

A Vote for Peace Is a Vote for Lennon

Cosmic Rock

Nervous Prostration

Hollywood Healer

The Wrath of Lennon

Apple Knockers

The Conning Tower

Water on the Brain

Rock 'n' Revolution

Public Benefactors, Private Persecutors

Burnout

Out of the Dragon's Lair, into the Lion's Den

Ping Pong Pang

Harry the Hustler

Free Fall

Mother's Little Helpers

Like Normal

You Can't Catch Me

A Change of Heart

A Heavy Cough

Lying In

Postpartum Depression

The Lennons Buy a Lenoir

Making Magic

Saving Face

Old MacLennon's Farm

Rock Bottom

The Golden Lady

Creature of Habit

Yoko in Love

Heat Wave

Welcome Home

Cutting

Killer Nerd

Bang! Bang! You're Dead!

Season of the Witch

Sources

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Wake-Up Taste

Like a Zen arrow flying through the night. Kit Carter comes winging up Central Park West in the predawn darkness of a December morning in 1979. When he reaches the intersection with 72nd Street, he glances up at the Dakota, glimmering dimly in the light of a solitary street-lamp, like a ghostly German castle. Darting across the street to the iron portcullis guarding the tunnel-like carriage entrance, he gives the night bell a short, sharp jab. Shuffling restlessly in the chill wind off the park, he waits for the doorman to emerge from the wood-and-glass windbreak surrounding the building's recessed entrance. As soon as the gate lock is snapped. Kit slips through and bounds up the steps to the concierge's office, where he exchanges a perfunctory nod with the night man before plunging into the maze of passageways that leads to the tall oak door of Studio One, the office of Yoko Ono.

Lightly he raps. Instantly he is answered by the metallic snap of the dead bolt. As the towering wooden leaf swings open, there stands little Yoko, her face masked by black wraparound shades. While Kit notes how ill she looks - and that she's dressed in the same black shirt and jeans that she's worn all week - she reaches up like a cat and snatches out of his hand a packet of tinfoil. Ducking into her private bathroom, she slams the door and turns on the faucets full blast. As Kit removes his shoes, preparatory to entering the back office, he hears above the rush of water a series of loud snorts, followed by the hideous noise of retching.

Yok o 's retreat is sumptuous and eerie. Concealed lights shine up from the thick white carpet, casting shadows on the cloud-bedecked ceiling and reflections on the smoked-glass mirrors that rise from the waist-high oak wainscoting. An immense Egyptian revival desk stands eater-corner to the shaded windows on the courtyard, its gleaming mahogany sides inlaid with large ivory reliefs of the ibis-headed Thoth, god of scribes, and the winged disk-and-cobra symbol of the sun. Yok o 's commanding seat is an exact replica of the throne found in King Tutankhamen's tomb.

As Kit sinks into the creamy white leather couch, he stares at the objects that give the room its magical air: the gray little skull between the two white Princess phones, the Egyptian baby's gold breastplate, the bronze snake slithering along the crossbar of the coffee table by Giacometti. This is the sixth week since he began making these deliveries, but he still thinks about the first time.

He had been so frightened that he had brought the heroin in a hollowed-out book wrapped in brown paper. Yoko he found sitting behind the accountant Richie DePalma's desk in the outer office, talking on the phone in Japanese. For five long minutes she continued to jabber away, as unconcerned as if she were holding a delivery boy from the pharmacy. Finally, she hung up and said nonchalantly: "Oh, hi! You're Kit!" Extending her hand, she took his package, dismissing him without another word or look. Later he learned that she had been intensely curious about him, but it was her practice in such situations to feign indifference.

Initially, he made his deliveries once or twice a week. The night before he would pick up the stuff from a 57th Street jeweler, who was the connection. At first a gram of H cost $500, but as soon as Yoko started running up her habit, the price increased. Now Kit is paying $750 for that same little gram, which means that Yoko has got herself a $5,000-a-week habit. A street junkie could score that much smack for a quarter of what Yoko is paying, but she doesn't care. Why should she? John Lennon is a rich man.

By the time Yoko rejoins Kit, she's walking like La Somiambula, trying to appear cool and casual, but betrayed by the faint traces of white powder about her nostrils. She's bearing, as usual, a tray with two turquoise cups in which Lipton's teabags are steeping. Kit was puzzled at first by Yok o 's insistence on serving tea every time he made a drop. Then he realized that a highborn Japanese lady can't score her make-up taste like a common junkie. She has to save face by masking the sordid transaction with a gracious ceremony.

"How are you today?" inquires Yoko politely, as if she were laying eyes on Kit for the first time that morning. "I can see you're miserable," she continues before he can answer. She lights and puffs once on a brown Nat Sherman, before waving it from her mouth with a theatrical gesture. "We're all miserable!" she intones in her drowsy, singsong voice, adding, as if offering the clincher, "I'm miserable!" Then, without a trace of irony, she quotes Woody Al l en as if he were Confucius: "There are two states in which we live - miserable and horrible." A long silence signals that the topic is closed.

As Yoko and Kit take their tea, the plant lights, controlled by an unpredictable timer, suddenly brighten. Instinctively Kit flinches, expecting to hear a tough voice bark, "Freeze! This is a bust! "

Once the demands of Oriental decorum have been satisfied, Yoko rises deliberately and sleepwalks to her massive desk, banging it in passing with her hip. She opens a drawer and removes her antique bag. Snapping its top, she hauls out a huge wad of $100 bills. Counting off eight mint-fresh notes, she hands them wordlessly to Kit. (He always receives a $50 tip.) Before he can turn to leave, Yoko seats herself upon her throne. Fixing him with an imperious look cast through her dark Porsche goggles, she warns, "John must never know."

John Lennon comes to consciousness before dawn in a pool of light cast by two spots above the polished dark wood of his church-pew headboard. These lights are never extinguished because John has a horror of waking in a dark bedroom. Darkness to him is death. The first thing he looks for with his feeble eyes are the fuzzy red reflections in the big oval mirror above his bed. These smudges assure him that his life-support system is working, for night and day he lives buffered by its soothing sounds and flickering images, like a patient in a quiet room.