John Lennon, a man and his women, a two-part special report.
I don't think John was the marrying kind to be perfectly honest.
John was the original macho man, or he tried to be.
He was great because he had his wittiness, he wouldn't make me laugh.
Or else he'd just pick up the guitar and serenade me. I mean, it's the best thing in the world.
Many of the things I discovered about John, I don't see how anybody could either admire or excuse.
I mean, the violence, the selfishness, the using people, and the sheer waste and self-destructiveness of a life like his is appalling.
His temper is well controlled, but you do see that there's a temper, and why not? I mean, he's human.
John wasn't out to win any popularity contests. John was out to make a statement.
Yes, folks.
Hello, everyone. I'm Ari Povich, and welcome to A Current Affair.
And we'll be right back with the naked truth about John Lennon from the women who loved him after this.
As a lover, he was my teacher.
The minute you tell them a macho pop star is capable of doing something with a man, they go through the ceiling.
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The Cue for the Blues.
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He was the genius of the Beatles. At least we thought so.
He was a man of peace and love. And now it seems lust.
One thing is for sure. Once more he is the attention of every generation, even though he has been gone for eight years.
There is a best-selling controversial book, a new movie about him, and enough rumor to fill Oprah and Phil programs for a year.
John Lennon may not be alive, but he is back.
His loyal friends and family say there's nothing new about Lennon that we didn't know before.
Others say the dark side of John Lennon is finally being exposed.
First, a look at Lennon from three of the women who loved him.
The Liverpool's bad boy, a rocking superstar who took the world by storm.
But beneath the tough, self-confident exterior, a more intimate portrait.
John Lennon through the eyes of the women who loved him.
He was fascinated with his charisma, the fact that he could always hold attention.
It didn't matter what he did, he was a bit of a lunatic in those days.
And his sense of humor was always a bit scathing, to say the least.
Spring of 1968, she returned home from a vacation in Greece, walked into the house with her friends.
The house seemed deserted. She looked for him in the dining room, in the living room, in the kitchen.
Finally found him sitting at a table with this petite, kind of rotund at the time, Japanese artist named Yoko Ono in her bathrobe.
And it finally dawned on Cynthia Lennon that her time with John was up.
We inspired each other, we understood each other, and it was pretty powerful in that sense that we were encouraged by each other.
She haunted John Lennon. She was on the doorstep. She was in the front of his house.
The guards at Abbey Road Studios joked that she was going to handcuff herself to the fence.
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways. My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
And when there were problems in the bedroom, Yoko not only permitted John to have an affair, she even picked out his lover herself.
Yoko handed John Lennon over to Mei Pang for 18 months.
She told me a few months prior to his going back, she said, I'm thinking of taking John back.
And I said, what? And she said, I'm thinking of taking him back.
She had no explanation. She said, I think it's time.
With Mei Pang, who was a girl who loved John totally and sacrificed herself to him totally, time and again he did outrageous things to her.
Once she was nagging him or some trivial provocation in a little pool in a hotel in Palm Springs.
And he seized her, both hands, strong man around the neck, and started strangling her to death.
There were times that John had actually physically hurt me.
He's, when I was driving, instead of stopping the car, he would say, Mei, stop. And he would just all of a sudden grab and pull my hair.
Or he's actually throwing me someplace else. But, you know, I knew it wasn't coming from him because the next morning he did not remember.
And he used to see the look on my face of, you know, being scared. And he would say, what did I do?
They shared the happy memories.
He had a very sort of fun sense of being an artist that was very much avant-garde.
And when we met, we felt like we met somebody we knew, you know.
People ask me how John was as a lover. Okay.
John was great. He was my friend. He was definitely the closest friend I had at that time.
You know, and he, as a lover, he was my teacher.
They share a sadness.
His music was an illustration of his life. The moment that stops, it means there's no life.
It's very sad that there's no continuation of that man's dreams, I suppose.
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me?
When we come back, the magical and not so magical mystery tour of John Lennon's life.
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These days it is coming close to Lenin-mania.
There's a new movie about him, very much like a documentary.
The new book by Albert Goldman is so controversial,
Goldman is speaking from outside the U.S. borders,
not wanting to expose himself to the traditional book tour.
Rolling Stone magazine has taken it upon itself to go after Goldman,
all because of John Lenin. His life and the memory of it.
Now, part one of the Naked Truth about John Lenin.
Imagine there's no heaven, diddle-doodle-doo.
It's easy if you try, diddle-doodle-doo.
No hell below us, above us only sky.
John Lenin was the voice of his generation.
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
On December 8th, 1980, that voice was silenced by a madman's bullet.
Music fans lost their hero. The 60s generation lost its innocence.
Eight years later, a controversial new book paints a darker portrait.
It has generated such rage from Lenin fans and family,
that its author, Albert Goldman, has forsaken the traditional American book tour,
remaining for the past few months in Europe with a bodyguard.
We caught up with him in Rome.
Many of the things I discovered about John,
I don't see how anybody could either admire or excuse.
I mean, the violence, the selfishness, the using people,
and the sheer waste and self-destructiveness of a life like his is appalling.
I mean, it seems at times as though after his early burst of genius and fame,
John decided life wasn't worth living
and really just wanted to step onto the other side and try it all over again.
I was raised by my auntie. My father and my mother split when I was about four.
I spent some time with my mother up until about four.
Then my father split. He was a merchant seamen, you know, you can imagine,
and it was the 1940s in the war and all that.
And he left and I was brought up by an auntie.
John was raised by his Aunt Mimi,
but he reestablished a close friendship with his mother, Julia, when he was in his early teens.
She was avant-garde, whimsical. She taught him to play the banjo.
She brought music into his life.
She was passionate about him and he about her too.
We were aware of the feeling between them, never excluded,
but always aware of that special feeling.
When John was 17, his mother was run over by a drunken policeman.
John's world collapsed.
Some say he was looking for his mother his entire life.
She never lived to see his success as a Beatle.
John's first avocation was not music but art.
It was at the Liverpool Art School that he met his first wife, Cynthia,
a sweet classmate and no doubt unusual match for the tough boy from Liverpool.
We spoke with Cynthia Lennon at her home on the Isle of Man off the English coast.
I was fascinated by John from the fire. I was fascinated with his charisma,
the fact that he could always hold attention.
It didn't matter what he did. He was a bit of a lunatic in those days.
And his sense of humour was always a bit scathing, to say the least.
So was his classroom behaviour, insolence, cutting class, going AWOL
and throwing the blackboard out the window.
John's musical hobby took off at 16 when he formed a band
with 15-year-old Paul McCartney and 14-year-old George Harrison.
Harrison's mother let them practice at her house.
Ringo Starr came later but the seeds for the Beatles were planted.
It seemed like a hobby gone crazy, if you like,
which is why Mimi made the famous remark that the guitar's all very well, John,
but you'll never make a living out of it.
Well, shake it up, baby, now. Shake it up, baby.
Twist and chow. Twist and chow.
Well, Aunt Mimi changed her tune with the explosion of Beatlemania.
Meanwhile, when Cynthia got pregnant, she and John were married in a secret ceremony.
A married Beatle was no good for the group's image,
so Cynthia's existence remained secret.
Did you ever have a chance, John, to just get away on your own
without anybody recognising you?
I followed a couple of millionaires' houses, you know.
Well, what have you been doing?
You could afford to buy a couple of millionaires' houses, couldn't you?
No, no, no.
We're soon to borrow them. It's cheaper.
And we did a bit of water skiing. Well, sort of, anyhow.
Did your wife enjoy it over there?
She loved it. Who? Who?
Don't tell him he's married. It's a secret.
Oh, I'm sorry.
But it didn't bother me. It truly didn't bother me.
It was the dumb thing in those days.
No pop stars in England admitted ever to being married.
It was just a follow-on. It wasn't John's decision.
It was a thing that happened in those days.
When Cynthia gave birth to son Julian,
John came to the hospital for two days, then left again on vacation.
He came to visit me at the hospital. It was chaos.
There were fans everywhere.
And I was tired. I didn't want him around.
And if he had the opportunity at that point to go on holiday with Brian,
then I said, well, fine. Do.
It was on this Barcelona vacation where John Lennon had an alleged
homosexual affair with Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
It was a sexual relationship which Albert Goldman contends
lasted for the rest of Epstein's life.
Who was it, or what was it, that led you to believe
that John Lennon was a homosexual?
Nobody ever led me to believe he was homosexual,
and I don't say he was.
What I say is that he had a homosexual affair with his manager.
What led me to believe that was John Lennon.
I was on holiday with Brian Epstein in Spain,
where the rumors went around that he and I were having a love affair.
Well, it was almost a love affair, but not quite.
It was never consummated, but it was pretty intense relationship we had.
And it was my first experience with a homosexual
that I was conscious was homosexual, and that he'd admitted it to me.
I don't see it as a big issue, and it's not a big issue in my book,
but obviously there are a lot of homophobes out there who,
the minute you tell them a macho pop star is capable of doing something with a man,
they go through the ceiling.
But was this an ongoing homosexual affair?
Stephen Gaines wrote Beatle biography The Love You Make
with Beatle insider Peter Brown, a close friend of Brian Epstein.
I think Brian Epstein was obsessed by John Lennon.
I do believe that Brian Epstein and John Lennon had a single sexual encounter in Spain.
Brian Epstein certainly told all of his intimates about it in tremendous detail,
and we created it in my book The Love You Make.
I don't believe that they went on and had a prolonged homosexual relationship.
I think that's absolute rubbish.
John saw Brian rarely.
When he saw Brian, when they were living, when Brian was in London,
they would all go together.
There was no separate assignations,
and there's no way that I could have been fooled by this situation.
I wasn't fooled by the women either.
I knew about the women.
MUSIC
Cynthia eventually emerged from the shadows to join John in the rock and roll fast track.
It was not a lifestyle conducive to Cynthia or to a stable family life.
I think the biggest tragedy in his life was his mother being killed.
And I think obviously things like that create brick walls that cut you off.
And I think that what John received as a Beatle was tremendous love and adoration
from fans all over the world,
but found it hard to handle the actual innocent love of a child at home.
It was too extreme for a young man to cope with.
I don't remember seeing him as a child.
It was the height of the Beatle thing, so I was working all the time,
and I never considered what it was doing to him.
I didn't even count it.
I think the mother was at home. I was away.
Like most guys at 24, 25, they're two and ten on the career, really.
The end of John's marriage to Cynthia came in 1968
in the package of a small Japanese avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono,
who was seven years John's senior.
While Yoko originally had her sights set on any Beatle
in order to get funding for her art projects,
it was only John who paid her any mind.
She haunted John Lennon. She was on the doorstep.
She was in the front of his house.
The guards at Abbey Road Studios joked that she was going to handcuff herself to the fence.
She tried every possible way to get a hold of him.
If she knew he was going to be the Maori she was going to speak,
Yoko would show up and push her way into the back seat of the limousine
and sit down between him and Cynthia Lennon.
Oh, yes, that was true.
That was an occasion where we went, before we went to India,
we went for a session of meditation at somebody's house,
and I can't remember where it was,
and we got in there and Yoko happened to be there.
I thought, well, that's strange,
but anyway we went through the meditation,
and we got outside and Yoko decided to get in the car with us.
I like the new version of Yoko Ono, thin with the sunglasses and all the great designer clothes,
but at the time she was messy. She had big long hair.
She was kind of fat. She was poor. She was nutty.
She wrote crazy poems.
She sent gifts to John in the mail that drove Cynthia crazy.
She sent him a half of a cup painted blood red in an empty cotex bottle
that Cynthia just went insane about.
She was really kind of this kooky lady,
and one day Cynthia said to John,
you know, I think this Yoko lady is the one for you,
and John said, you must be daft. She's kooky. She's not, you know, she amuses me.
Well, she amused him. She did a lot more than amuse him.
She provoked him.
Oh, my love, for the first time in my life
My eyes are wide open
She opened new doors for him.
She showed him that a woman could be his intellectual equal, which certainly she was.
She mystified him.
She had a way of thinking about things that John had never thought before,
and he became totally involved in this person as a life mate, as a creative force,
and he was deeply in love, I think, with Yoko.
Cynthia's final blow came in the spring of 1968,
when she returned from a vacation in Greece to find John with Yoko,
who was sitting in the kitchen wearing Cynthia's bathrobe.
Being all stupid and romantic,
I was lost in and the two of them were sitting there in dressing rooms,
and it was just an instant dismissal. Instant.
Music
Tomorrow, part two of The Naked Truth about John Lennon,
and we pick it up with the Yoko years.
We'll be back after these messages.
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Their numbers are growing.
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They're here to stay.
Alien Nation, rated R.
Now playing at theaters everywhere.
Now, on our next edition of A Current Affair,
John Lennon the Naked Truth.
We pick it up with his meeting Yoko Ono.
John and Yoko, the post-Beetle years.
Their life was a stage and the whole world watched.
But away from the flash bulbs and press conferences,
this loving twosome had some trying times.
There was also a change in the bedroom.
According to Mae Pang, John and Yoko's former assistant,
Yoko attempted to solve their sexual problems
by arranging an affair between John and Mae.
People ask me how John was as a lover.
Okay, John was great.
Meet the real John Lennon, uncovered by the women who knew him best,
the special report continues.
That's all our next edition.
Thanks for joining us, everyone.
Until next time, America.
Help, I need somebody.
Help, not just anybody.
Help, you know I need someone.
Help!
We've got a special to put the scream back in Halloween.
Shaggy and everybody's favorite canine are going back to school
in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.
Next on Fox 25.
I'm not so self-assured
Now I find a gentle mind
I'll open up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being around
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me
And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need your life I've never done before
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being around
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me
When I was younger so much