Power To The People

Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements,especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that yourviews are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start tohappen?

John Lennon: I've always been politically minded, you know, andagainst the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, tohate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as somethingthat takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere.

I mean, it's just a basic working class thing, though it begins to wear offwhen you get older, get a family and get swallowed up in the system.

In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended toovershadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And thatreligion was directly the result of all that superstar shit--religion was anoutlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to life,isn't there? This isn't it, surely?'

But I was always political in a way, you know. In the two books I wrote, eventhough they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocksat religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've beensatirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in schooland hand them around.

I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder,because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression comingdown on us--it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle world it got leftout, I got farther away from reality for a time.

TA: What did you think was the reason for the success of your sort ofmusic?

JL: Well, at the time it was thought that the workers had brokenthrough, but I realise in retrospect that it's the same phoney deal they gavethe blacks, it was just like they allowed blacks to be runners or boxers orentertainers. That's the choice they allow you--now the outlet is being a popstar, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As Itold Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class systemdidn't change one little bit.

Of course, there are a lot of people walking around with long hair now andsome trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except thatwe all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.

Robin Blackburn: Of course, class is something the American rockgroups haven't tackled yet.

JL: Because they're all middle class and bourgeois and they don't wantto show it. They're scared of the workers, actually, because the workers seemmainly right-wing in America, clinging on to their goods. But if these middleclass groups realise what's happening, and what the class system has done, it'sup to them to repatriate the people and to get out of all that bourgeois shit.

TA: When did you start breaking out of the role imposed on you as aBeatle?

JL: Even during the Beatle heyday I tried to go against it, so didGeorge. We went to America a few times and Epstein always tried to waffle on atus about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when George and Isaid 'Listen, when they ask next time, we're going to say we don't like that warand we think they should get right out.' That's what we did. At that time thiswas a pretty radical thing to do, especially for the 'Fab Four'. It was thefirst opportunity I personally took to wave the flag a bit.

But you've got to remember that I'd always felt repressed. We were all sopressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especiallyworking at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of mythsand dreams. It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying howwonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it'spretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't want to be king, I wantto be real.' So in its way the second political thing I did was to say 'TheBeatles are bigger than Jesus.' That really broke the scene, I nearly got shotin America for that. It was a big trauma for all the kids that were followingus. Up to then there was this unspoken policy of not answering delicatequestions, though I always read the papers, you know, the political bits.

The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn'tsaying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more,it was just too much for me. Of course, going to America increased the build upon me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to bea Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugsand sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when theystarted dropping us.

RB: Wasn't there a double charge to what you were doing right from thebeginning?

Yoko Ono: You were always very direct.

JL: Yes, well, the first thing we did was to proclaim ourLiverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool andtalk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, TommyHandley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC. They wereonly comedians but that's what came out of Liverpool before us. We refused toplay that game. After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting ona Liverpudlian accent.

TA: In a way you were even thinking about politics when you seemed tobe knocking revolution?

JL: Ah, sure, 'Revolution' . There were two versions ofthat song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count meout'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I putin both because I wasn't sure. There was a third version that was just abstract,musique concrete, kind of loops and that, people screaming. I thought I waspainting in sound a picture of revolution--but I made a mistake, you know. Themistake was that it was anti-revolution.

On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destructionyou can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know thatmuch about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yetthey painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to getpicked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the originalCommunist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't goaround shouting about it. That was how I felt--I was really asking a question.As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and Chinaand everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing thecapitalist game.

At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used togo around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion islegalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feelmy own pain.

RB: This analyst you went to, what's his name. ..

JL: Janov ...

RB: His ideas seem to have something in common with Laing in that hedoesn't want to reconcile people to their misery, to adjust them to the worldbut rather to make them face up to its causes?

JL: Well, his thing is to feel the pain that's accumulated inside youever since your childhood. I had to do it to really kill off all the religiousmyths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life--it'sexcruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes youwake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result ofsomebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment.

As I realised this it all started to fall into place. This therapy forced meto have done with all the God shit. All of us growing up have come to terms withtoo much pain. Although we repress it, it's still there. The worst pain is thatof not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way youneed them.

When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness,not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes andinto my mind. Janov doesn't just talk to you about this but makes you feelit--once you've allowed yourself to feel again, you do most of the workyourself.

When you wake up and your heart is going like the clappers or your back feelsstrained, or you develop some other hang-up, you should let your mind go to thepain and the pain itself will regurgitate the memory which originally caused youto suppress it in your body. In this way the pain goes to the right channelinstead of being repressed again, as it is if you take a pill or a bath, saying'Well, I'll get over it'. Most people channel their pain into God ormasturbation or some dream of making it.

The therapy is like a very slow acid trip which happens naturally in yourbody. It is hard to talk about, you know, because--you feel 'I am pain'and it sounds sort of arbitrary, but pain to me now has a different meaningbecause of having physically felt all these extraordinary repressions. It waslike taking gloves off, and feeling your own skin for the first time.

It's a bit of a drag to say so, but I don't think you can understand thisunless you've gone through it--though I try to put some of it over on the album.But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip orfather-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kindof heaven.

RB: Do you see the family in general as the source of theserepressions?

JL: Mine is an extreme case, you know. My father and mother split andI never saw my father until I was 20, nor did I see much more of my mother. ButYoko had her parents there and it was the same....

YO: Perhaps one feels more pain when parents are there. It's like whenyou're hungry, you know, it's worse to get a symbol of a cheeseburger than nocheeseburger at all. It doesn't do you any good, you know. I often wish mymother had died so that at least I could get some people's sympathy. But thereshe was, a perfectly beautiful mother.

JL: And Yoko's family were middle-class Japanese but it's all the samerepression. Though I think middle-class people have the biggest trauma if theyhave nice imagey parents, all smiling and dolled up. They are the ones who havethe biggest struggle to say, 'Goodbye mummy, goodbye daddy'.

TA: What relation to your music has all this got?

JL: Art is only a way of expressing pain. I mean the reason Yoko doessuch far out stuff is that it's a far out kind of pain she went through.

RB: A lot of Beatle songs used to be about childhood...

JL: Yeah, that would mostly be me...

RB: Though they were very good there was always a missing element...

JL: That would be reality, that would be the missing element. BecauseI was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of myrepression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was'normal'...

YO: ... and happy ...

JL: The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say:'Now, mummy-daddy, will you love me?'

TA: But then you had success beyond most people's wildest dreams...

JL: Oh, Jesus Christ, it was a complete oppression. I mean we had togo through humiliation upon humiliation with the middle classes and showbiz andLord Mayors and all that. They were so condescending and stupid. Everybodytrying to use us. It was a special humiliation for me because I could never keepmy mouth shut and I'd always have to be drunk or pilled to counteract thispressure. It was really hell ...

YO: It was depriving him of any real experience, you know...

JL: It was very miserable. I mean apart from the first flush of makingit--the thrill of the first number one record, the first trip to America. Atfirst we had some sort of objective like being as big as Elvis--moving forwardwas the great thing, but actually attaining it was the big let-down. I found Iwas having continually to please the sort of people I'd always hated when I wasa child. This began to bring me back to reality.

I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to dosomething about it, though I'm not sure where my place is.

RB: Well, in any case, politics and culture are linked, aren't they? Imean, workers are repressed by culture not guns at the moment ...

JL: ... they're doped ...

RB: And the culture that's doping them is one the artist can make orbreak...

JL: That's what I'm trying to do on my albums and in these interviews.What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All thosewho are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind.The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.

RB: Even in the past, you know, people would use Beatle songs and givethem new words. 'Yellow submarine' , for instance, had a number of versions. Onethat strikers used to sing began 'We all live on bread and margarine' ; at LSEwe had a version that began 'We all live in a Red LSE'.

JL: I like that. And I enjoyed it when football crowds in the earlydays would sing 'All together now'--that was another one. I was also pleasedwhen the movement in America took up 'Give peace a chance' because I had writtenit with that in mind really. I hoped that instead of singing 'We shall overcome'from 1800 or something, they would have something contemporary. I felt anobligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on ademonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution now...

RB: We only have a few revolutionary songs and they were composed inthe 19th century. Do you find anything in our musical traditions which could beused for revolutionary songs?

JL: When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution topeople of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to breakthrough all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids.We were a bit conscious to begin with of being imitation Americans. But wedelved into the music and found that it was half white country and western andhalf black rhythm and blues. Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa andnow they were coming back to us. Many of Dylan's best songs came from Scotland,Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange.

Though I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black onesbecause they were more simple. They sort of saidshake your arse, or your prick,which was an innovation really. And then there were the field songs mainlyexpressing the pain they were in. They couldn't express themselvesintellectually so they had to say in a very few words what was happening tothem. And then there was the city blues and a lot of that was about sex andfighting.

A lot of this was self-expression but only in the last few years have theyexpressed themselves completely with Black Power, like Edwin Starr making warrecords. Before that many black singers were still labouring under that problemof God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks weresinging directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which iswhy I like it.

RB: You say country and western music derived from European folksongs. Aren't these folk songs sometimes pretty dreadful stuff, all about losingand being defeated?

JL: As kids we were all opposed to folk songs because they were somiddle-class. It was all college students with big scarfs and a pint of beer intheir hands singing folk songs in what we call la-di-da voices-'I worked in amine in New-cast-le' and all that shit. There were very few real folk singersyou know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to beheard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio orTV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power ofthem is fantastic.

But mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alivesomething old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thingkept going by a minority group. Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although ithappened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end becausewe wrote our own music and that changed everything.

RB: Your album, Yoko, seems to fuse avant-garde modern music withrock. I'd like to put an idea to you I got from listening to it. You integrateeveryday sounds, like that of a train, into a musical pattern. This seems todemand an aesthetic measure of everyday life, to insist that art should not beimprisoned in the museums and galleries, doesn't it?

YO: Exactly. I want to incite people to loosen their oppression bygiving them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn't be frightened ofcreating themselves--that's why I make things very open, with things for peopleto do, like in my book [Grapefruit].

Because basically there are two types of people in the world: people who areconfident because they know they have the ability to create, and then people whohave been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves because they havebeen told they have no creative ability, but must just take orders. TheEstablishment likes people who take no responsibility and cannot respectthemselves.

RB: I suppose workers' control is about that...

JL: Haven't they tried out something like that in Yugoslavia; they arefree of the Russians. I'd like to go there and see how it works.

TA: Well, they have; they did try to break with the Stalinist pattern.But instead of allowing uninhibited workers' control, they added a strong doseof political bureaucracy. It tended to smother the initiative of the workers andthey also regulated the whole system by a market mechanism which bred newinequalities between one region and another.

JL: It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult--eventhe Chinese seem to need a father-figure. I expect this happens in Cuba too,with Che and Fidel. In Western-style Communism we would have to create an almostimaginary workers' image of themselves as the father-figure.