Playboy Interview: Bill Cosby

[Q] Playboy: The word is out: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are back in the studio, recording again for the first time since 1975, when they vanished from public view. Let's start with you, John. What have you been doing?

[A] Lennon: I've been baking bread and looking after the baby.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you become a house-husband?

[A] Lennon: There were many reasons. I had been under obligation or contract from the time I was 22 until well into my 30s. After all those years, it was all I knew. I wasn't free. I was boxed in. My contract was the physical manifestation of being in prison. It was more important to face myself and face that reality than to continue a life of rock and roll-- and to go up and down with the whims of either your own performance or the public's opinion of you. Rock and roll was not fun anymore. I chose not to take the standard options in my (concluded on page 270)Lennon/Ono(continued from page 237) business-- going to Vegas and singing your great hits, if you're lucky, or going to hell, which is where Elvis went.

[Q] Playboy: Why are you returning to the studio and public life?

[A] Lennon: You breathe in and you breathe out. We feel like doing it and we have something to say. Also, Yoko and I attempted a few times to make music together, but that was a long time ago and people still had the idea that the Beatles were some kind of sacred thing that shouldn't step outside its circle. It was hard for us to work together then. We think either people have forgotten or they have grown up by now, so we can make a second foray into that place where she and I are together, making music-- simply that. It's not like I'm some wondrous, mystic prince from the rock-and-roll world dabbling in strange music with this exotic, Oriental dragon lady.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about all the negative press that's been directed through the years at Yoko.

[A] Lennon: We are both sensitive people and we were hurt a lot by it. I mean, we couldn't understand it. When you're in love, when somebody says something like, "How can you be with that woman?" you say, "What do you mean? I am with this goddess of love, the fulfillment of my whole life. Why are you saying this?" Our love helped us survive it, but some of it was pretty violent. There were a few times when we nearly went under, but we managed to survive and here we are. [Looks upward] Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Q] Playboy: You make it sound like a teacher-pupil relationship.

[A] Lennon: It is a teacher-pupil relationship. That's what people don't understand. She's the teacher and I'm the pupil. I'm the famous one, the one who's supposed to know everything, but she's my teacher. She's taught me everything I fucking know. She was there when I was nowhere, when I was the nowhere man.

[Q] Playboy: Yoko, how do you feel about being John's teacher?

[A] Ono: Well, he had a lot of experience before he met me, the kind of experience I never had, so I learned a lot from him, too. It's both ways. Maybe it's that I have strength, a feminine strength.

[Q] Playboy: But what about the charge that John Lennon is under Yoko's spell, under her control?

[A] Lennon: Well, that's rubbish, you know. Nobody controls me. I'm uncontrollable. The only one who controls me is me, and that's just barely possible.

[Q] Playboy: Still, many people believe it.

[A] Lennon: Listen, if somebody's gonna impress me, whether it be a Maharishi or a Yoko Ono, there comes a point when the emperor has no clothes. There comes a point when I will see. So for all you folks out there who think that I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, well, that's an insult to me. Not that you think less of Yoko, because that's your problem. What I think of her is what counts! Because-- fuck you, brother and sister-- you don't know what's happening. I'm not here for you. I'm here for me and her and the baby!

[A] Ono: Of course, it's a total insult to me-- --

[A] Lennon: Well, you're always insulted, my dear wife. It's natural-- --

[A] Ono: Why should I bother to control anybody?

[A] Lennon: She doesn't need me.

[A] Ono: I have my own life, you know.

[A] Lennon: She doesn't need a Beatle. Who needs a Beatle?

[A] Ono: Do people think I'm that much of a con? John lasted two months with the Maharishi. Two months. I must be the biggest con in the world, because I've been with him 13 years.

[A] Lennon: But people do say that.

[Q] Playboy: That's our point. Why?

[A] Lennon: They want to hold on to something they never had in the first place. Anybody who claims to have some interest in me as an individual artist or even as part of the Beatles has absolutely misunderstood everything I ever said if they can't see why I'm with Yoko. And if they can't see that, they don't see anything. They're just jacking off to-- it could be anybody. Mick Jagger or somebody else. Let them go jack off to Mick Jagger, Ok?

[Q] Playboy: He'll appreciate that.

[A] Lennon: I absolutely don't need it. Let them chase Wings. Just forget about me. If that's what you want, go after Paul or Mick. I ain't here for that. If that's not apparent in my past, I'm saying it in black and green, next to all the tits and asses on page 196. Go play with the other boys. Go play with the Rolling Wings.

[Q] Playboy: Do you-- --

[A] Lennon: No, wait a minute. Let's stay with this a second; sometimes I can't let go of it. [He is on his feet, climbing up the refrigerator.] Nobody ever said anything about Paul's having a spell on me or my having one on Paul! They never thought that was abnormal in those days, two guys together, or four guys together! Why didn't they ever say, "How come those guys don't split up? I mean, what's going on backstage? What is this Paul and John business? How can they be together so long?" We spent more time together in the early days than John and Yoko: the four of us sleeping in the same room, practically in the same bed, in the same truck, living together night and day, eating, shitting and pissing together! All right? Doing everything together! Nobody said a damn thing about being under a spell. Maybe they said we were under the spell of Brian Epstein or George Martin [the Beatles' first manager and producer, respectively].

[Q] Playboy: John, how critical are you of the Beatles' music today?

[A] Lennon: When I was a Beatle, I thought we were the best fucking group in the goddamned world. And believing that is what made us what we were.

[A] But you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them. There's not a single one.... I heard Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds on the radio last night. It's abysmal, you know. The track is just terrible. I mean, it's great, but it wasn't made right, know what I mean? But that's the artistic trip, isn't it?

[Q] Playboy: It seems as if you're trying to say to the world, "We were just a good band making some good music," while a lot of the rest of the world is saying, "It wasn't just some good music, it was the best."

[A] Lennon: Well, if it was the best, so what?

[Q] Playboy: So-- --

[A] Lennon:It can never be again! Everyone always talks about a good thing coming to an end, as if life was over. But I'll be 40 when this interview comes out. Paul is 38. Elton John, Bob Dylan-- we're all relatively young people. The game isn't over yet.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about the work you and Paul did together. Generally speaking, what did each of you contribute to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team?

[A] Lennon: Well, you could say that he provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, a certain bluesy edge. There was a period when I thought I didn't write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock and roll. But, of course, when I think of some of my own songs-- In My Life-- or some of the early stuff-- This Boy-- I was writing melody with the best of them. Paul had a lot of training, could play a lot of instruments. I'd be the one to figure out where to go with a song-- a story that Paul would start. In a lot of the songs, my stuff is the "middle eight," the bridge.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Lennon: Take Michelle. Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, you know [sings verse of "Michelle"], and he says, "Where do I go from here?" I'd been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like "I love you!" in one of her songs and that made me think of the middle eight for Michelle [sings]: "I love you, I love you, I l-o-ove you...."

[Q] Playboy: What was the difference in terms of lyrics?

[A] Lennon: I always had an easier time with lyrics, though Paul is quite a capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the problem, he would avoid it. Hey, Jude is a damn good set of lyrics. I made no contribution there.

[Q] Playboy: What's an example of a lyric you and Paul worked on together?

[A] Lennon: In We Can Work It Out, Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you've got Paul writing, "We can work it out/We can work it out"-- real optimistic, y'know, and me, impatient: "Life is very short and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend...."

--January 1981, interviewed by David Sheff